Rightful King of Westeros FTW

Siddig interview does not have dangerous sodium levels, but enough:

Q: Our prince did not meet a pleasant end…

He didn’t. It’s funny, I’m not really sure what happened there. I was contracted to do at least four episodes this season, but then I was in L.A. doing publicity for something else, and I got a call at the Chateau Marmont and there were familiar voices on the other end of the phone. It was one of those guys, and because they didn’t introduce themselves it was like, “Hi, it’s me.” I was like, “Is that David or Daniel?” Anyway, they said, “You know what this phone call is about.” I was like, “Yeah, well, I guess I do.” “So we were going to kill you off at the end of last season, but we decided that we’re going to have to kill you off at the beginning of next season.” I was like, “Okay, life goes on.” But there was something wrong about that because I had been contracted for four episodes in the following season, so if they were going to kill me off at the end of the last season why would they contract me for those four episodes? Because it costs them money whether I do them or not, so it’s not great business sense to do it just in case.

So something happened; I have no idea what. There was an enormous amount of fan excitement when I got named to be on the show, and everyone was like, “Oh my god, yes, Doran Martell. He’s going to be great as Doran Martell.” That might have been the kiss of death. Maybe they didn’t want quite that much attention on that character. Maybe they thought, “Well, let’s prove that we’re going to stray from the books. We’re going to do something else, and he will be our first example of that.” So maybe that could have been the case. Or maybe I just screwed up. Maybe I said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

Or maybe these writers are talentless hacks ¯\_(シ)_/¯ 

emmy voters: 

the episode that had Yara go “I’m up for whatever” (<--direct quote) won best writing

a song of ice and fire aesthetics:

Brisbane Times interview with Stephen Dillane (x)

LOL

(via maidenoftheforestlight)

@bienenkiste

Well, you have to look at the line in its entirety and in context.

“You came because we sent for you, I hope. Though I could not say why you took so long about it.“

Surprisingly, Stannis smiled at that. “You’re bold enough to be a Stark. Yes, I should have come sooner. If not for my Hand, I might not have come at all. Lord Seaworth is a man of humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.” Stannis pointed north. “There is where I’ll find the foe that I was born to fight.”

Stannis’ endgame was always saving the kingdom, whether from the Lannisters or the Others. But before the end of ASOS, Stannis always filtered this genuinely righteous drive through his bitter resentments and grievances. There’s a certain catharsis in imagining Stannis striding into King’s Landing at the end of ACOK and uprooting every conspiracy within in one fell swoop (indeed, my first time through AGOT, I was expecting Stannis to show up at the end to save Ned’s ass), but he lacked the right mindset at that point to be the best possible version of himself. As we see in ASOS regarding Edric Storm, Stannis was buying into an ends-justify-means philosophy aptly summarized as “win the throne to save the kingdom.” The struggle over Edric’s fate crystallized the costs of such an approach, and ended with Davos making the case that it matters how Stannis comes into his rightful power. He must demonstrate what kind of king he would be. He must save the kingdom first. 

And Stannis does exactly that, because not only does he save the Watch and North from the wildlings, he then proposes to let the latter through the Wall under terms of peace. In the context of a book in part about war between the wildlings and the Watch, it’s a radical proposal, one from a man who has come to see his kingdom as more than an abstraction on a painted table. Jon and Stannis forge an alliance on the idea that the wildlings are included in the realms of men. 

Short answer: I love GRRM’s “long autumn” themes of death and decay. The Lannisters are as delightful to me as the crunch of dry leaves on an October sidewalk. 

“I’ve always been attracted to twilights, endings, the idea that summer is over and winter is coming. We’re in the long autumn.” [x]

Long answer: I can’t discuss this without discussing what I see as House Lannister’s place in the narrative. 

I think of ASOIAF as having three major families, in terms of how the narrative is constructed: Targaryen, Stark, and Lannister.