there will be blood

maybe this is uncharitable but I really did feel like it was similar to what shippers do when they want that pesky third party out of the way of their otp. she's just a lesbian don't even worry about it. the fact that Elia and Ashara aren't even an active relationship left me with this impression moreso - so Elia is in love with Ashara but still is left for someone else? ok. girl really gets nothing in this huh.

That great black tom cat who haunts the corridors and yards scratches anyone in Lannister gold and red, so when you feed him scraps you remove any tabards with those colours.

Most of the kitchen staff adore him, he lets you pet his belly if you feed him long enough.

You're fairly certain there's ghosts in the keep.

Maegor's Holdfast is the worst.

You hear the sound of children's laughter in the distance. One maid swears she saw a pair of silver haired children, a boy and a girl, running through the corridors. Sometimes you find the old tom under a particular bed and you swear you hear a little voice shush you.

There's a part of the training yard you hear the sound of a child crying as he's being beaten.

Some of the servants leave toys and offerings for the young ghosts. The sacrificial children of the dragon kings.

you're aegon iii and you're forced to marry the daughter of the man who killed your mother and your brothers. her only friend is her dragon and you hate dragons because one killed your mother in front of you and two others killed your brothers. she hates you and would kill you if that didn't mean her own demise. your best friend is also a son of aegon ii, but he hates him too, as he is responsible for the death of his mothers, he was a pretender, he is a nice kid who wants to help people just like you. he's the only one that understands you.

you're jaehaera, your father won the war, but you're forced to become the wife of the son of the man who killed your twin, the woman who put a bounty on your other brother's head and who drove your mother to suicide. your grandmother, the only family you have left, is crazy with grief, she wants you to kill aegon. you're just a child. your dragon is a wretched delicate thing, just like you, your husband hates it. he is afraid of it, it makes you happy. your only brother (if he is your brother) doesn't like you, he spends all his time with aegon, you try to bond with him, but he is not jaehaerys. he will never be.

[mine]

The supreme canon is the work published under George R.R. Martin’s name as author [this play is not]. First and foremost, that means A Song of Ice and Fire, along with the Dunk and Egg stories (collected in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) and his other authored works set in the world.

of course this also includes the histories like F&B and the world book — but these are written from multiple sources and are meant to be ambiguous

And then there’s the category of adaptations, works created by others based on his work, with more or less participation from Martin as a guide or consultant. This is the realm of the HBO shows, and now of the play as well. These are not canon as a whole, though they may contain canon in parts.

translation: the Mad King play is as canon as the got tv series and hotd. simple as that! another interpretation of events we’ve already heard through other characters plus a few theories confirmed by grrm (Lyanna being the KOTLT etc) but it’s very clearly NOT the supreme version of these events…

So, again, to the question: Is it canon? Game of Thrones: The Mad King is not canon as a whole, but some parts of it are, and some parts of it are not. In fact, early reports cite a number of details which are very much expressly non-canonical, showing that the needs of the play and the story the creatives wanted to tell trumped attempting to stick to every piece of canon, old or new.

to me, this obviously includes details like Jon and Dany being conceived on the same night in the play when George himself stated before that Jon is ~8 months older than Dany. it’s clear that the play did a little time crunch to maybe flow a bit better, so can we stop having discussions like “maybe Ned lied about Jon’s age” “but maybe Aerys tried to conceive Dany on the night of the comet” about the books??

it’s like trying to discuss F&B Dance but basing your argument on hotd-only events (like Rhaena = Nettles) — IT DOES NOT WORK

Some of its foundations come directly from George. Some of its major answers may reflect truths that will eventually appear, perhaps in a different form, in his own work. Around those foundations, however, the playwright, director, actors and other collaborators have built a drama. The details of that drama should be understood as an imaginative dramatic interpretation unless and until George specifically confirms otherwise in things like interviews. Or until the books themselves settle the matter with finality.

it’s okay to criticise the play canon, but there’s no way to conflate it with book canon in a way that’s not purely speculation

like, there are several things about the play I hate (the Dornish orientalism and bi fetishisation and Rhaegar’s whitewashing chief amongst them), but I can’t really blame GRRM for them now can why? ultimately I have zero (and I mean ZERO) idea what comes from him and what comes from any of the other 20+ people (being generous) involved with this production

“They grow quickly now, and when they are grown I shall have my wings.”

“If I had wings, I would want to fly too, Dany thought.”

instead there's this exchange between bran, jojen, and meera in asos: "but you just said you hated them." / "why can't it be both?" / "because they're different. like night and day, or ice and fire." / "if ice can burn. then love and hate can mate."—and i think it's talking about reconciling two conflicting ideas. because the dream of an eternal summer is just as unsustainable as the threat of eternal winter. i think the battle for dawn is more about questions of seasonal harmony. the first line from agot's summary says, "long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance", so it's not totally out of question for the series to end with that seasonal balance restored once more. and that question of balance and how it can be achieved then works as a metaphor for a bunch of other things. because asoiaf at its core is very interested in exploring big contradictions, like love and duty? how do you keep all your oaths without betraying someone you love? how can one hope for a just, rightful ruler in a world where the systems in place can never allow such a thing? how do dragons plant trees?

but the thing that interests me is that the burning of harrenhal also positions the targaryens as capable of status quo upsetting, radical change. they can disrupt existing power structures because what are walls in front of a dragon? dragons fly. the visionary bit here is the unification of the realm, which is definitely framed as an admirable thing by the narrative because of the upcoming threat of the long night—what aegon invades westeros for. i don't think the targaryens are, like, evil for being conqueror kings, that's a disingenuous reading, but i do think this is a somewhat corrupt idea of 'unification' as it is primarily focused on the dynastic interests of this one family. because the other thing he did was make the iron throne, something that's currently the biggest obstacle to the possibility of the realm uniting in the face of a common enemy. it's significant that a fight over the throne is what kills their dragons, that's a very blunt way of saying that the the iron throne is what ultimately smothers their ability to enact any wider social change, by the end they weren't any different from the other houses. so king's landing is no longer a symbol of targaryen rule, both their dragons and their dynasty died there and any vision of radical change that they began the conquest with was consumed by the iron throne. kl as a whole is symbolic of the game of thrones, the city's geography is modeled after the iron throne with the king within the red keep on top of aegon's hill and the smallfolk left to rot at the bottom. and the inheritors of 'the game' are the lannisters, the ones who swindled the city and the throne from the targaryens. tywin continues aerys's legacy of violence, aerys would burn a city out of 'madness', tywin would do it out of pragmatism ("Lord Tywin would not have bothered with a search. He would have burned that town and every living creature in it"), so it makes sense for tywin's philosophy, that of exploitative and dehumanising violence in the pursuit of power, to be the cause of its destruction. several posts have been made about why joncon and cersei are the ones haunted by the memory of tywin's crimes with reasons to want to emulate him, so i'm not going there, but i feel it's also really important for king's landing to go out because of purposeful grasping over the iron throne and without any dragonfire (even accidental) involved. king's landing is doomed in a very apocalyptic sense because 'the game' is unsustainable. nothing new will come out of the city's destruction and dany's use of fire is always transformative, she creates life out of death. wildfire only destroys.