Nah, I made a mistake about that part of the scene. But it doesn’t change what I meant to say about it.
At the beginning they really built up the wildlings as boogiemen outside the social order. A lot of them were deserters, and my original point was that Ned Stark was killing someone for not fitting into his idea of civilization, which puts all the “The North is Free” sentiment into question, even after the series has ended.
They reduced the chance of rogue dragon and wight attacks, but they didn’t upend what made a lot of them hardscrabble, miserable and unsafe from raping knights and murdering thieves of higher rank.
The bombs were absolutely dropped to make a point, but that point was to end the war early. There’s a pretty clear line about mass murdering populations after they have surrendered, and it is an important one to remember not only for your standing in the world but also for how your enemies will treat your people on that fateful day when you lose. Warcrimes aren’t some bleeding heart thing, they are rooted in the very notions of limited war. Notions that have become increasingly important as our ability to kill and destroy has greatly expanded over the years.
Obviously the best solution is no war at all, and in the modern era among first world nations this has been somewhat successful, but it’s far from universal at this point.
I’m not so sure, the dragons have a fair bit of their own agency as has been shown in the past, like in the video@tuhu posted in another thread. I still think the iron throne just happened to be in the way when drogon rage-flamed or dragons really understand metaphor. The trouble is there are so many plot threads that haven’t satisfactorily been answered and a lot of those concern bran, it feels like in the end they just didn’t know where to go with it and just pushed them aside. Can bran even warg into a dragon? We’ve never seen any hints that he even can as far as i remember.
I think a lot of people judging the dragons by a sample size of about three, when we’ve mostly thought of them as babies, might be clouding how smart they’re perceived to be.
Tyrion was just barely confident enough to put himself in their jaws based on how smart they were supposed to be, based on everything he read second- and third-hand.
The series end made me wonder about warging in general. If the dragons are anything like human intelligence, why assume it would only ever be one way control in favor of the human? Did Dany become more dragon-like after she connected with her dragons? Was her desire to solve most of her problems specifically by burning them a humany desire or pushed by the wargy business? For that matter, did the Stark kids get more wolfy, as their direwolfs thought about them? Bran constantly says that he’s not Bran anymore, and that he’s the Three-eyed Raven. Doesn’t that mean what we call Bran might just be a human suit being constantly warged by some bird-like creature (or part of a tree) from far away? Isn’t that what he was doing with Hodor in shorter bursts?
All fictional, fun to speculate about. But they’ve given plenty of hints that the dragons were always more than larger pets.
It’s not that DT became a villain that’s problematic… it was that her journey over to ‘the dark side’ lacked all gradual buildup and nuance; robbing the overall arc of any plausibility, let alone satisfaction.
As much as I adore Peter Dinklage, Tyrion still shouldn’t have had to lay it all out for Jon the audience after the fact.
I think that was a case of the showrunners thinking it would be clever, knowing “democracy” was out there in the fan world and wanted to address it. But the way they did was ham-handed, I will grant you that. It ended up just being a case of comic relief, making Sam appear once again like a naïve bumbler. And I think the main fault of the last season is the same fault that J.J. Abrams has: a gift for doing fan service tends to come with a deficit of good storytelling skills.
I think the greatest proof that dragons are intelligent is how all other dragons stay the fuck away from the human kingdoms. Which means the three dragons we met have the mental capacity, but simply lacked the experience.
But here’s another possibility: what if the smart dragons of old were warged dragons? What if the seers controlling them were smart enough to not let it be known? It probably isn’t the case, but then it would be a fun subversion.
Sure, that would work as much as something else. At that point it’s just the source of intelligence, not the amount, which makes it the same question as “Was Jon Snow stupid, or was it Bran warging John to be stupid?” (I don’t think it really matters to the plot which it is, in the end. So much cringe from so many stupid choices.)
Here’s something that’s been bothering me that I haven’t seen discussed much, and please correct me if it has (and I’m sure it has):
Drogon burned the iron throne. Alright, it’s weird how the dragon understands synecdoche and symbolism, but I get it. He’s symbolically destroying the iron throne.
Except… he doesn’t. Bran takes the throne and, as everyone has pointed out, life basically returns to the way it was at the beginning of the series.
So what was the point of melting the throne, from a plot/symbolic point of view? Nothing! There is still a king ruling from a throne, just, a little more wheely and less pointy. And while I get that “plus ça change…” is one of the ending themes, that theme didn’t need the symbolic melting of the throne. Indeed, that theme is kind of hurt by it.
(And for The Gods’ sake, Tyrion’s speech about “that’s what breaking the wheel means,” i.e. not having a hereditary king, but instead having 6 hereditary nobles pick one of their own for a king, that’s clearly not enough to merit the symbolism of melting the throne.)
You’re right that the political structure looks pretty identical.
I don’t think Drogon was upending the system, more like flipping a table. If you think dragons are sophisticated, you could better say they were removing a Targaryen symbol, since the throne was made by the first Targaryen conqueror with dragon-fire (the castle too, now that I think about it). Drogon was taking down their “flags and banners”, and probably not telling humans how to govern themselves. Or, a kind of spiteful “If we can’t have it, then neither will you.”
Dany didn’t break the wheel, because all the “good” people decided they wanted some incrementalism, and no change to the customary breakfast service.
Lets face it, in the setting Democracy makes very little sense. The commoners are almost entirely uneducated dirt farmers. There is no mass media. Most don’t even know who their lord is, or anything about them. Rolling out democratic elections would require a massive social upheaval first.
That said, the council could have definitely expanded the vote to at least landed nobles. There’s no reason it needs to be restricted to just the lords of the six kingdoms, the grandmaester, and for some reason the head of the Kingsguard.
Oh it would be a nauseating spectacle, no question.
But I think the current system is still a loose form of “surprise knife in the face in the middle of a random day of the week” form of government succession, so it’s a little like deciding which dumpster fire should be your bed for the night.
I had no idea “democracy was in the fandom world” because I try not to pay attention to fandoms as they’re largely obnoxious bunch of toxic entitled brats (as evidenced by the reaction to the last season).
In a sense, I think they were working from notes GRRM provided, where the idea was to institute the Holy Roman Empire sort of election, with the sevensix lords becoming Electors (Kurfürsten in German), meaning whoever is lord of that realm gets to elect. And to be fair, it was a pretty stable system that took Napoleon to dissolve it. It should also be noted that the HRE was originally gave a vote to all landed nobles, but was soon restricted to just the electoral college of the seven.
Oh, and Sam was there not as Grand Maester, but as the last surviving head of House Tarley. Same for Ser Brienne, who was representing Tarth.
Otherwise, I agree that making Samwell suggest democracy was dumb fan service. There was simply no way to hold an election amongst the seven Kingdoms and have the results verified. Better to trust the Electors to decide in the best interests of those they represent.
I wasn’t necessarily saying “Democracy would be truly breaking the wheel and lead to immanentizing the eschaton”. Just it was an open derision at everyone else. Not everyone was a dirt farmer… there obviously were large amounts of merchants and skilled trades people.
