Game of Thrones -- TV ONLY

bungobaggins wrote:wtf

Oh but then again this is all theory. I bet GRRM won't even tell us.

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Lancebloke wrote:Hold on... didnt the Andals conquer Westeros? Aren't the first men the rightful lords after coming to an agreement with its original inhabitants?

“Tell me about the children,” Bran said. It was important.
“What do you wish to know?”
“Everything.”
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck. “They were people of the Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms,” he said. “In those days, there were no castles or holdfasts, no cities, not so much as a market town to be found between here and the sea of Dorne. There were no men at all. Only the children of the forest dwelt in the lands we now call the Seven Kingdoms.
“They were a people dark and beautiful, small of stature, no taller than children even when grown to manhood. They lived in the depths of the wood, in caves and crannogs and secret tree towns. Slight as they were, the children were quick and graceful. Male and female hunted together, with weirwood bows and flying snares. Their gods were the gods of the forest, stream, and stone, the old gods whose names are secret. Their wise men were called greenseers, and carved strange faces in the weirwoods to keep watch on the woods. How long the children reigned here or where they came from, no man can know.
“But some twelve thousand years ago, the First Men appeared from the east, crossing the Broken Arm of Dorne before it was broken. They came with bronze swords and great leathern shields, riding horses. No horse had ever been seen on this side of the narrow sea. No doubt the children were as frightened by the horses as the First Men were by the faces in the trees. As the First Men carved out holdfasts and farms, they cut down the faces and gave them to the fire. Horrorstruck, the children went to war. The old songs say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land, shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on until the earth ran red with blood of men and children both, but more children than men, for men were bigger and stronger, and wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze. Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the great lake called Gods Eye.
“There they forged the Pact. The First Men were given the coastlands, the high plains and bright meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to remain forever the children’s, and no more weirwoods were to be put to the axe anywhere in the realm. So the gods might bear witness to the signing, every tree on the island was given a face, and afterward, the sacred order of green men was formed to keep watch over the Isle of Faces.
“The Pact began four thousand years of friendship between men and children. In time, the First Men even put aside the gods they had brought with them, and took up the worship of the secret gods of the wood. The signing of the Pact ended the Dawn Age, and began the Age of Heroes.”
Bran’s fist curled around the shiny black arrowhead. “But the children of the forest are all gone now, you said.”
“Here, they are,” said Osha, as she bit off the end of the last bandage with her teeth. “North of the Wall, things are different. That’s where the children went, and the giants, and the other old races.”
Maester Luwin sighed. “Woman, by rights you ought to be dead or in chains. The Starks have treated you more gently than you deserve. It is unkind to repay them for their kindness by filling the boys’ heads with folly.”
“Tell me where they went,” Bran said. “I want to know.”
“Me too,” Rickon echoed.
“Oh, very well,” Luwin muttered. “So long as the kingdoms of the First Men held sway, the Pact endured, all through the Age of Heroes and the Long Night and the birth of the Seven Kingdoms, yet finally there came a time, many centuries later, when other peoples crossed the narrow sea.
“The Andals were the first, a race of tall, fair-haired warriors who came with steel and fire and the seven-pointed star of the new gods painted on their chests. The wars lasted hundreds of years, but in the end the six southron kingdoms all fell before them. Only here, where the King in the North threw back every army that tried to cross the Neck, did the rule of the First Men endure. The Andals burnt out the weirwood groves, hacked down the faces, slaughtered the children where they found them, and everywhere proclaimed the triumph of the Seven over the old gods. So the children fled north-”

Eldorion wrote:As Blue points out, the idea of "Seven Kingdoms" was likely inspired by the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy (the traditionally seven realms established by those invaders in Britain).  However, both in Westeros and in historical Britain, the number of kingdoms and their extent fluctuated greatly over the centuries.  In Westeros, it was not until the Targaryens arrived with the revolutionary military power of dragons that the kingdoms were united.  It's worth pointing out that Westeros is supposed to be roughly the size of South America, which is vastly larger than any historical feudal realm ever was, and the existence of dragons (not just their power but also their speed) is the only thing that makes unification over such a large area even remotely plausible, given the stage of technological and social development in Westeros.

Eldorion wrote:Most noble houses claim descent across the millennia, and in the North especially the stories claim that the Starks, Boltons, Night's Watch, and various Kings-beyond-the-Wall have been fighting each other in basically the same pattern for like 8,000 years.  But plenty of Maesters think that's self-evidently absurd, an outlook that we as readers are likely to share, given our knowledge of real world historical patterns, but of course, ASOIAF works differently with magic, the Wall, etc.  So who knows?  It's deliberately left vague, since the characters don't know either.

Eldorion wrote:
I'm surprised no one else in this thread has heard of this theory.

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bungobaggins wrote:

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Eldorion wrote:

bungobaggins wrote:

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Ramsay's a lovely guy. Really warm, friendly person. Likes to take walks in the countryside... Murdering people. flaying people, torturing people, that kind of thing. Yeah, he enjoys doing it. It's not kind of "I'm a bad person," it's like "This is great, I'm really enjoying this." That's sort of key to the character.
- Iwan Rheon

Bluebottle wrote:

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Bluebottle wrote:

I've always wanted that theory to be true.

Eldorion wrote:I've heard nothing but good things about Jack Gleeson from interviews and the like, but he really sells the character of Joffrey.  It's pretty damn impressive.

When I read the script on episode nine of the first series, when Sean get's it, I got to the end.. Head chopped off. I went "No, no, no. You don't kill of Hamlet in the middle of the play scene." So I went right back through the script and read it really properly, because I thought I must have missed something. No, I hadn't missed anything at all. And he get's his head chopped off. One of the bravest things I've ever known on television. And they had the courage to chop his head off and go on with the series. And of course the character, the name of the character, lives on. That chap will always be aorund in peoples mind, either as a threat or someones who's very good. To have that sort of enourmous figure chopped in the first series.. but they had the courage to go on with it. And now look at it, you can't stop it. It's a roller coaster and I see no reason why it shouldn't go on right to the end of the sixth book. And who knows maybe he could write another. Because it's timeless, as we know. People come and people go. Mostly people go. Amazing piece of imagination, the whole thing. In the fact that it isn't in any particular period. It's just got every period that ever happened in it. They don't have pin striped suits, but you know what I mean. All the artifacts and things come from every period in history and from all over the world. And the idea of that ice wall. In the very first episode, when we went to the very first showing of the very first episode, we had no idea what it was going to look like, and that ice wall presented itself at the beggining, with that little hole at the bottom of it with the people coming out on their horses. Oh my God.. what a piece of imagination. And the idea of having two seperate parts of England, which is such a small island, perpetually at odds with each other, with completely different sorts of people because of the weather. That's a wonderful idea, a wonderful idea. So imaginative.

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Bluebottle wrote:

I've always wanted that theory to be true.

I gotta admit that it seems like one of the more questionable ones to me, but who knows.

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Ringdrotten wrote:Pretty impressive list of franchises. Though credit should be given to whom it's due - George R. R. Martin, not the script writers