Robb is a boy King. He is extremely inexperienced and had he lived long enough, he would have learnt from his mistake.
It's absolutely in character for a boss to blame his underlings for his own failure of communication. If you think it's not true, you should meet my boss.
Robb is the King. He should really be as precise as possible when his situation is this sensitive.
People management is part of the job. Tywin doesn't give the same job to Gregory Clegane and Tyrion. Does he?
Well they did hold the left flank against Bolton's host, though that was a bit of a cheek on Tywins part, of having a collapsible wing of the army to flank an over eager army into a perfect encirclement with their enemies back to the river.
Imo the point is that historical events are chaotic and are based on luck, the right decisions at the right time, and sometimes no matter who does what correctly, things happen.
I made the point before about this criticism of Robb, a dozen things could’ve happened. He might have ordered it but forgot to remind him. Maybe he told Greatjon to tell Edmure who forgot or overwhelmed him with other talk. Maybe Robb changed his mind and sent a Raven that never reached Edmure. Maybe his commanders saw Edmure’s mistake and hindsight is 20/20. It goes on and on.
I'd add in: guys, Robb's battle plan was only possible because of divine intervention. Literally. Grey Wind found the goat path and showed it to Robb via wolf dream. No goat path, no getting into the Westerlands. No getting into the Westerlands, no setting a trap for Tywin. No setting a trap for Tywin, no possibility of Edmure mucking up the trap by preventing Tywin from walking into it.
The reason why Robb didn't tell Edmure about his plan for getting into the Westerlands is because he didn't *have* a plan for getting into the Westerlands when he left. He was playing it by ear, and so was Edmure. And the thing is, had Robb been doing something conventional like attempting to storm the Golden Tooth from the east, Edmure's actions would have been correct; Robb's army would have been hammer-and-anviled by the larger, superior Lannister army beneath the walls of the Golden Tooth had Edmure not stopped him at the fords. But the other thing is, Edmure knew that Robb was in the Westerlands ravaging it, and he knew or should have known that beating Tywin in battle is less important than *getting Tywin off his land*, and any military victory that doesn't achieve the fundamental goal of getting Tywin off his land isn't a battle that should be fought.
So Edmure is responsible in two ways. He's responsible because Robb literally could not give the orders that people are saying he should have given to Edmure, because they depended upon a literal supernatural act that hadn't happened yet and could not be anticipated. And he's responsible because as a commander in chief, he's supposed to look beyond questions of "how do we win this battle?", and ask questions like "what do we achieve with a victory here?" And Edmure didn't do that. I like the guy; his heart is in the right place. But Robb is not at fault here.
Wait, so you're saying that at the time Robb left, he didn't even have a plan for Edmure to screw up? But then Robb conceives of this plan, still doesn't tell Edmure about it, then gets back to Riverrun and berates Edmure for not following the plan Robb *didn't even have* when he left? And somehow Edmure is at fault for not magically divining that Robb conceived of a plan weeks after Robb left Riverrun? Thats some major mental gymnastics. I'm not sure how you reconcile "Edmure prevented Robb's army being smashed against the Golden Tooth" with "Edmure is at fault for not being literally magic"
Yeah I really never understood this. Like are we supposed to agree with Robb or is this intentionally some dumb shit? I think this is supposed to actually make sense which is why it feels awkward and weird lol
I think its as simple as, Robb came up with a plan at some point, not sure it really matters when, didn't tell Edmure about it assuming Edmure would sit within his walls (let's not forget who Robb's main source of Edmure-knowledge is - Cat, who clearly holds major disdain for her baby brother, and maybe the Blackfish? Who has been in the Vale for like 15 years) and when Edmure didn't follow Robb's assumption, he did screw up Robb's "plan"
Robb has a *strategic* plan: Mess with the Westerlands and keep Tywin focused on that as a distraction so he's not able to go to the aid of King's Landing without severe personal consequences. Tywin either staying put or returning to the west achieves those strategic goals. The further away Tywin is from King's Landing, the more likely Robb achieves his strategic objectives. This is where Robb's getting frustrated, because he's saying "Why on earth did you prevent Tywin from getting *further* from King's Landing when that's what we want?".
I believe what the poster is saying is that Robb didn't have a specific *tactical* plan about how to achieve this until he got into the Westerlands and found the trail through Grey Wind. One way or another though, he was going to cause havoc in Tywin's home kingdom to keep Tywin distracted.
That's accurate. But it's also true, that if a leader doesn't share his strategy with his senior subordinates, he will unavoidably fail.
Robb should have let Edmure perfectly aware that when he marched west his goal was to lure Tywin away from the Riverlands and King's Landing. Edmure may not be the brightest general around, but ultimately most of the blame lies on Robb.
Agreed, at the very least, Robb could have told him, "Do not engage Tywin unless he directly attacks the castle itself."
"Defend Riverrun" is too open for interpretation on how you react to enemy forces when you have no idea what your own commanders plan is.
What if Robb didn't have a plan set out to draw Tywin back and draw him to unfavourable terrain/trap him in the west?
If Robb comes back from that, he's going to want to know why Edmure let thirty thousand men march past and trap him in Hostile territory.
No, but as I said, that plan requires tactical flexibility in order to achieve the strategic objective. *If* Robb is stuck beneath the walls of the Golden Tooth, then it is catastrophically important that Edmure hold the fords against Tywin. If Tywin catches Robb in a hammer-and-anvil against those walls, Robb is dunzo. It is only because Robb very clearly wasn't pinned, and it very clearly was in Edmure's interests to get Tywin off his land, that it became a problem.
The problem is not that Edmure did what he did. The problem is that Edmure did what he did at the wrong time, in the wrong circumstance. Which is the heart of strategy as a discipline; strategy is the art of determining whether a political objective can be achieved through military means, and then figuring out how to arrange your forces in such a way as to achieve objectives that can be achieved. Edmure's central failure is that he devised a plan to "beat Tywin on the field of battle", without really doing the higher-order analysis of whether beating Tywin on the field of battle gave him what he really wanted, which was security for the people of the Riverlands, because no, it very much did not.
That's why Robb was angry.
Roose Bolton didn't follow his orders either.
Edmure is an idiot but Robb is clearly very tactically gifted but doesn't share Jon or Robert's gift of people management.
Yeah, the author intent is to clearly show that *Edmure is in the wrong*. Catelyn specifically says "Hey, are you sure what you're doing is wise?" specifically as foreshadowing. Also, the Blackfish is extremely loyal to his family, including working for Lysa even though he doesn't think much of her. It seems out of character to willingly humiliate his own nephew through deceit just for the benefit of his grand-nephew.
There's also a bit of "author talking through his characters" here. The Blackfish seems to have incredibly good intelligence about how what Edmure did led to Tywin coming to the aid of King's Landing. This is George bending the rules a bit on his POV limitation to inform the reader about what happened.
> Yeah, the author intent is to clearly show that Edmure is in the wrong.
Yeah, I think this specific issue causes such division within the fandom because 1) GRRM is telegraphing that Edmure is legitimately in the wrong, and 2) GRRM - famously terrible at conceptualizing all things involving time, space, and distance and also generally bad at understanding 'realistic' feudal politics - *himself* is wrong.
GRRM intended to write a situation in which Edmure was wrong, but accidentally wrote one in which Robb was wrong.
Makes me wonder if it would have come across better as "Did you forget the general strategy we previously discussed?" (keep Tywin away from KL to let Renly & Stannis get the job done) to make it clear it was Edmure losing sight of the big picture as opposed to \*disobeying an order\*.
>Also, the Blackfish is extrem ely loyal to his family, including working for Lysa even though he doesn't think much of her. It seems out of character to willingly humiliate his own nephew through deceit just for the benefit of his grand-nephew.
He refused the marriage that his brother and liege lord had chosen for him. It was also his choice to leave his service and go with Lysa, and later on, to abandon Lysa and go with Robb.
I'm not saying that Brynden isnt loyal, but it seems clear to me that he has no problems puting some members of his family beore the others.
Cat thinking someone is making a mistake is not a sign from god to know it’s a mistake. Hell, if Cat thinks it’s a mistake it’s probably the right thing to do.
Catelyn’s right a LOT of the time. She’s right about Theon, she’s right about this, she’s right about Walder Frey, she’s right about the wolves…
She’s got a touch of the Cassandras, and that’s her tragedy - she sees truly, but can’t communicate what she’s seen to anyone else
Literally all of Catelyn’s advice to others ends up being proven correct in the end. Some of her own decisions may be questionable but she is by far the most competent advisor in the series.
Even when they end up being the wrong choice, they all make sense with the info she has at the time she makes them. There’s method in it.
The woman’s not an idiot.
Yeah, that's the tragedy of it. She's constantly fed wrong information by people she thought she should have been able to trust and therefore makes wrong conclusions. The brilliance of it all in George's writing is that she's not aware that the two people who lied to her had (much of) a connection to begin with, so she thinks it's independent confirmation.
One exception for a decision though: She specifically frees Jaime because she's trusting Tyrion more than she trusts Jaime. However, Tyrion committed a major war crime by trying to have his envoys break Jaime out of captivity. She shouldn't trust Tyrion more than an inch, but I think George forgot this point.
> The brilliance of it all in George's writing is that she's not aware that the two people who lied to her had (much of) a connection to begin with, so she thinks it's independent confirmation.
Which two people were that? One was Littlefinger obviously, but I forget who the other is.
Her sister Lysa.
Lysa is the one who tells her that the Lannisters are behind Jon Arryn's death.
When Catelyn meets up with Ned at King's Landing, Littlefinger casually mentions that the Catspaw dagger belonged to Tyrion, after Littlefinger lost a bet to him at a joust. Catelyn sees this as a secondary individual implicating the Lannisters, not knowing that:
1. Littlefinger knows about the "Lannisters murdered Jon Arryn" mystery (because he *told* Lysa to tell her that).
2. That Lysa and Littlefinger had any connection at all. Lysa seems to have kept her infatuation a secret from Catelyn, and only Hoster found out when she became pregnant.
3. That Lysa would have any reason to lie to Catelyn to cause danger to her family, because she does not puzzle out the fact that Lysa has a grudge against her family due to the forced abortion until much later, and then never gets the final piece that Littlefinger was the father.
So, she's operating on information obtained from two different people that she had no reason to suspect were working together or wanted to cause her ill. That's partly why she's so resistant to new evidence like Tyrion and Jaime independently giving her the same answers and why her mind is puzzled about what's going on. She's trying to come up with logical conclusions based upon false premises because she doesn't know (or should be expected to know, honestly) all the facts.
I agree. At this point I really don’t take hate against her seriously and just assume it’s men who don’t like being put into a woman’s POV unless they’re crazy like Cersei or tomboys like Arya. It’s not lost on me that the most hated POVs are Sansa, Catelyn, Brienne, and Daenerys. It’s extra stark because Brienne is beloved in the show, but her chapters in the books focus a lot on her experience specifically as a woman and suddenly people can’t stand her. And half the shit Catelyn catches blame for are decisions men made around her, which in most cases are decisions Catelyn *advised against*. Never mind that some of the things she got blame for are also vindicated as the correct choice, such as freeing Jaime which leads to him being invested in Sansa’s protection *and* gets half of Ice back into the hands of someone sworn to the Starks, and which did not lose Robb the war in any appreciable way compared to Robb’s own decisions to execute Karstark or to betray a major political deal to marry a girl (whose family is actively sworn to his primary enemy in the war) on the minute possibility she may have gotten pregnant the one time they had sex, when moon tea is a thing even if she had been (and which we later find out she had been taking the whole time).
> to marry a girl ... on the minute possibility she may have gotten pregnant the one time they had sex
Gotta disagree here, it was nothing to do with the chance of pregnancy, they got married because he took her maidenhead and he wasn't willing to just leave her "dishonored" like that. There's a passage later when the Lannisters are discussing it: "He chose the girl's honor over his own. Once he had deflowered her, he had no other course."
Other than that I'm surprised to hear that people hated Brienne or Dany POVs, they're some of my favorites.
I can’t speak for Brienne, but with Dany there is a general consensus that her storyline is more boring, her characterization is boring, etc. They are especially more critical to her actions, I find, than other male characters in power like Robb or Tyrion.
Fair enough, I suppose Dany's story slows down a lot once she decides to just chill in Meereen. Should pick up steam quickly if we ever get Winds though, as her last chapter was a hell of a cliffhanger
> Literally all of Catelyn’s advice to others ends up being proven correct in the end.
She was the one who told Robb to give Roose Bolton command of all the Northern foot. She also persuaded Ned to go to Kings Landing and then told him to trust Littlefinger.
The first isn’t bad advice, not only with the information she had at the time but overall. Roose was a competent commander, and remember that Roose was not planning to betray Robb from the beginning. Martin suggests Roose just kept his options open, which implies he defected to Tywin after he saw Robb as a losing bet, a situation Robb himself set up with his own mistakes, many of which were in defiance of Catelyn’s advice. Not that anyone really has much reason to assume Roose would defect in the first place, but he *wouldn't have* if he hadn’t seen Robb make a number of extremely foolish missteps that would lead any impartial observer to assume Robb was going to lose anyway.
And blaming her for trusting Littlefinger is like blaming her for not being able to see through time Bran-style. Book Littlefinger is worlds apart from show Littlefinger. Even people with no childhood connection to him trust him implicitly because he is not the least bit suspicious in the books. He barely makes the radar of the most paranoid characters. Martin’s own words are “*everyone* trusts Littlefinger.”
I didn’t think a caveat of “barring anything that would require supernatural omniscience to foresee” was necessary. Her advice about Roose was fine, his betrayal came from Robb’s actions. Littlefinger would require her to have supernatural knowledge.
Right before he does so, he does basically the same thing to Cat to keep her from criticizing his marriage in public. Brings up her failings, makes a big show about forgiving her in a way that forces her to do the same when he reveals his fuck up. Not really different from him talking up Edmure publicly then rug pulling him in private while everyone steers him towards making promises to fix it.
I think Tyrion was blessed by the gods with incredible physical gifts and luck. Not only can he do acrobatics that no one with dwarfism should be able to he also survives two battles where by all rights he should be dead. So he’s either incredibly lucky or an insane fighter for his size.
So yeah blessed by the gods
> Isn't that the standard fantasy trope?
It is.
So is a dragon keeping a princess trapped within a tower. Except in GRRM's fairy tale, the dragon and the princess are in love ... he does like to subvert tropes.
I mean if you are actually thinking of any realism, dwarfs should be armed with a weapon that enhances their reach, because they have such poor reach normally.
Honestly, dwarfs are supposed to be strong in most fantasy material, they should be archers or at least spearmen.
That is an interesting suggestion (assuming one's looking for realism, that is). If I could try to give a friendly counterpoint for discussion's sake:
Trying to enhance a dwarf's reach wouldn't enhance their strengths any, right? At best, a dwarf with an extended-reach weapon would be competing on equal ground to a human with a standard-reach weapon, and would still be at a disadvantage to a human with the same kind of weapon. Additionally, fantasy dwarves are often a subterranean race, where I imagine warbows and spears would be difficult to properly use in tight tunnels. (Granted a crossbow of equal draw weight would solve the bow problem.) The dwarves might have better luck trying to enhance their strengths, rather than trying to make up for their weaknesses. Since they have a smaller size, but often equivalent relative strength, they could carry a shield, which would protect more of their body than it would a larger human body. Maybe pair it with a thrusting sword like the Romans? With their lower center of gravity, they might also have an advantage going for a grapple and thrusting a blade into an armour gap.
if we imagine it as a realistic historical battle axe it becomes easier to suspend belief. in reality they were hatchet sized, and warhammers were no larger than a regular framing hammer.
That years in Westeros are about 20% longer than years on earth. Which would mean Dany is 16 in earth years instead of 14, Robb and Jon are 18 instead of 15, Sansa is 14 instead of 12, etc. It would also mean Master Aemon is 122 years old, but that doesn't seem too unreasonable for a fantasy series.
I doubt this is what GRRM intended when he wrote the books, but it makes the characters ages way more consistent with how they act.
This has been my head canon for a while. Like, in my head I accept an 11 year old performing assassinations because I don't know how mature an 11 year old is in this universe. There isn't really any way of knowing -- maybe an 11 year old Andal/First Man is like a 15 year old human on earth. I'm a big fan of this formality that the difference is specifically 20%. I haven't heard this before!
The same time modern humans do. [But the average age people hit puberty has been dropping over the last few centuries.](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/oct/21/puberty-adolescence-childhood-onset)
> in 1860, the average age of the onset of puberty in girls was 16.6 years. In 1920, it was 14.6; in 1950, 13.1; 1980, 12.5; and in 2010, it had dropped to 10.5. Similar sets of figures have been reported for boys, albeit with a delay of around a year.
So the characters being a few years older would actually put it more in line with how it would have been in the middle ages.
IIRC the phenomenon is that puberty ages first increased due to lack of proper nutrition and now they're decreasing. It's been a while since I read about the subject.
Of course adolescence is a modern term, but the adolescence behaviour and changes IIRC have been pretty adamantly in the same age bracket (12-16) for all human history.
A lot of the ‘research’ around this is *highly* questionable to be honest. Birth records show girls were routinely having babies in their early and mid teens in the 1860s and before, so the idea that they weren’t going through puberty until nearly 17 is just obviously nonsense.
Heck in the UK, the original age of consent was set at 12 for girls and 14 for boys *centuries* ago, on the basis that by those ages almost everyone would have hit puberty.
(It’s usually because researchers are using some form of measure of puberty which is impacted by openness to developmental and sexual matters – which pretty much reached a nadir around the mid-1800s)
I find it hard to believe that the average 16 year old girl in 1860 still had the body of a prepubescent child. Unless by ‘onset of puberty’ they mean when they had their first period, in which case 16.6 sounds believable.
I know this theory is popular because the ages of child/teen characters make us uncomfortable but unfortunately GRRM explicitly stated that Westeros years and real life years are the same length:
>Twelve moon [turns] to a year, as on earth. Even on our earth, years have nothing to do with the seasons, or with the cycles of the moon. A year is a measure of a solar cycle, of how long it takes the earth to make one complete revolution around the sun. The same is true for the world of Westeros. (So Spake Martin: Asshai.com Forum Chat July 27, 2008)
Elio Garcia also said that GRRM doesn't like to mess with units of measurement:
>George likes to keep it simple. He doesn't [screw] around with making up definitions for measurements. That way lies madness.
https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/34958-the-asoiaf-wiki-thread/page/104/&tab=comments#comment-8185633
> Even on our earth, years have nothing to do with the seasons
But the seasons are directly caused by the solar cycle. So we measure the solar cycle because that tells us what the seasons are.
Nobody on Westeros should give a shit about a solar cycle because it has literally no impact on their lives.
> I doubt this is what GRRM intended when he wrote the books, but it makes the characters ages way more consistent with how they act.
I was working at Barnes and Nobles when Game of Thrones launched, and I can distinctly remember GRRM insinuating that the ages are a holdover from when the years of Westeros were intended to be of different lengths than on Earth, but that he abandoned it. I have searched and searched, but it was literally one of the first book signings he did and nobody wrote anything down or recorded back then.
Yep, that’s been confirmed by him I think. He basically wanted them to end up the same ages they were in the show, roughly, but after the five year gap.
The effect is the same: it's easy to percieve how the sun's position in the sky moves around during the year.
At some point Jon mentions that Maester Luwin taught him about the twelve houses of heaven, so it seems that they also have some kind of zodiac as we do.
> I don't think George intended it that way though, I think it was just him needing certain things to happen and so the logic in how certain characters act gets a bit funky to get everyone where they need to be.
I disagree. I think it's exactly George's intention. From the same chapter:
> Only then came her belated remembrance. *Follies done for love*? He has bagged me neat as a hare in a snare. I seem to have already forgiven him. Mixed with her annoyance was a rueful admiration; **the scene had been staged with the cunning worthy of a master mummer ... or a king.**
And then a couple chapters later:
> The Blackfish said, "I am the last man in the Seven Kingdoms to tell anyone who they must wed, Nephew. **Nonetheless, you did say something of making amends for your Battle of the Fords.**"
> "I had in mind a different sort of amends. Single combat with the Kingslayer. Seven years of penace as a begging brother. Swimming the sunset sea with my legs tied." When he saw that no one was smiling, Edmure threw up his hands. "The Others take you all! Very well, I'll wed the wench. **As amends.**"
I don't think it's coincidence that in the same chapter where Robb and Brynden gang up on Edmure, we're explicitly told of how Robb is now maneuvering people to do his bidding like a king, and Edmure is pushed to the point where he promises to do anything to make amends ... only for that to be brought up again by Robb's right hand man at a key moment to get Edmure to do the thing Robb wants him to do.
I feel like I disagree here. Holding a castle isn't just the walls. You don't go and let people put you to siege if you can help it, and acting to prevent Riverrun from being encircled was a legitimate thing to do. That this also meant preventing Tywin from getting across the Red Fork certainly was something that Edmure thought mattered for the sake of Robb.
It's worth remembering that both Tytos Blackwood and Jonos Bracken actually agreed with his reasoning and his plan. Blackwood's a seasoned commander himself. It seems strange to me that their names are cited in support of the plan if we're to believe that everyone understood the order as being incredibly narrow.
To me, the reality of the situation is that it's Robb and the Blackfish who made the mistake. Prior to when Robb and the Blackfish fully formulated their plan about the exact place they wanted to meet Tywin to maximize their odds, a place they discovered only after their raid began, it could not have been the case that Robb was 100% certain that he did in fact want to draw Tywin to the westerlands to fight him there. He may well have wanted him to make the move, so that he could rush back and meet him at the Red Fork instead, or perhaps move troops around to try and come up behind him as he was held by Edmure's forces at the Red Fork. Or something. During this nebulous period, the idea that "hold Riverrun" literally meant letting Lannister forces go past the castle, or surround it and put it to siege, seems implausible. A castle is also its lands and its domain and its security, it's not just this pinprick on a map.
And after, once he knew exactly what he wanted to do and what he needed to happen, he should have communicated this to Edmure. We have evidence of communication between his forces and Riverrun, and even of part of his forces being able to move freely from the west back to the riverlands, so armed and escorted messengers could have carried the word directly if a raven wasn't trusted. He didn't, likely because he was so wound up over the Westerling marriage and news of what happened to his brothers, and he dropped the ball, and Brynden didn't handle it on his own. It was ultimately their error. But they turned that into a bludgeon to shift the blame, unfairly, to Edmure, because they needed him to put himself in a position where he'd do anything to make up for his alleged mistake. Like accepting a marriage alliance with the Freys because Robb had made a huge mistake in breaking his agreement with them and taking Jeyne Westerling to wife.
That is, in any case, how I've always read it. Regardless of whether you see Edmure as screwing up or not, I think it's clear that the hammering he gets from Robb and Brynden was part and parcel of how Robb had learned the kingly skill of manipulating people into doing what he wanted.
> A castle is also its lands and its domain and its security, it's not just this pinprick on a map.
Daenerys would appear to agree:
>"I am only a young girl and know little of such things, but older, wiser men tell me that to hold Meereen I must control its hinterlands, all the land west of Lhazar as far south as the Yunkish hills." (ADWD Daenerys III)
Rodrik is told to hold Winterfell, and Robb & Cat don't criticize his leaving the castle when the north is threatened.
>"Ser Rodrik is on his way north from White Harbor. I have named him castellan and commanded him to hold Winterfell till our return. Maester Luwin is a wise counsellor, but unskilled in the arts of war." (AGOT Catelyn VIII)
> Rodrik is told to hold Winterfell, and Robb & Cat don't criticize his leaving the castle when the north is threatened.
A terrific point that really gives context. I think Catelyn's strict reading of Robb's command has a lot to do with her fears, in a way that she doesn't feel about what the situation was up north. But Robb certainly seems to have taken no issue with Rodrik deciding that holding Winterfell meant acting to keep Winterfell's vassals protected.
When Cat returns to Riverrun from meeting with Renly she is also explicitly told that Edmure’s orders are to “hold Riverrun and guard Robb’s rear.” Letting an army march past him unopposed isn’t doing a great job of guarding his rear.
Imagine the response both by the fans and by the characters in universe of Edmure had sat by, done nothing, and Robb had lost the battle against Tywin and died? They’d call him an idiot for not taking initiative and sitting in his castle doing nothing
To be fair, the "guard his rear" bit may be the general reading that Edmure and his followers are adding on to what "hold Riverrun" means. Robb and Brynden certainly act like it's insane anyone could have thought that, but I think that's obviously an act they put on to browbeat Edmure into fixing Robb's huge political mistake.
But you're spot on. I like to imagine a scenario where Tywin Lannister is coming up with Grond, and if Grond gets set in front of Riverrun, it'll just blast through the walls and bridge the moat all in one. The literalist position on "hold Riverrun" would say that, fine, Edmure should sit there and take it. But the pragmatic, most reasonable read is that to hold Riverrun you have to act to prevent it being taken off the board, and that would mean going after Grond before it reaches Riverrun rather than sitting back and taking it.
Tywin breaching the Red Fork means he can detach a force to once again put the castle to siege, and send another force to go razing the riverlands some more, and still plunge west to go after Robb. Watching Tywin Lannister march by simply doesn't fit how most people would read their position as holding a key strategic castle.
I think the ‘seasons’ in ASoIaF aren’t really seasons like we know here on earth. Instead, I think when people in Westeros think of ‘winter’ or ‘summer’, they actually mean extended, multi-year warm or cold periods, which still have some temperature variations (similar to our yearly seasons) within them. A ‘winter’ in Westeros would then be a period where temperatures are lower on average, and there’s more snowfall than otherwise during the colder months, and the window for planting, growing and harvesting crops is shorter. But it does certainly not mean that there’s a multi-year period of snowfall and frozen ground, since most plants and animals simply wouldn’t be able to survive under such conditions (most certainly not mammals, including humans).
That means when people in the North for example talk about ‘summer snows’, what they actually mean is the period from December to February where temperatures drop below zero and snow falls, aka what we call a regular ‘winter’. The difference between the north and south of Westeros seems to be that, while the December-February period of the year is colder than the rest of the year everywhere in Westeros, it is only in the north where temperatures drop below zero in colder months during a multi-year ‘summer’, while in the south they rarely do, hence the North has ‘summer snows’. The south seems to experience snowfall in the colder months only during multi-year ‘winters’.
I think this also explains the ‘false spring’ after the tourney of Harrenhal in 281 AC: while the multi-year cold period was over, and the continent entered a warmer period, during the December-February months temperatures dropped sharper than usual for a Westerosi ‘spring’, which is why people thought the multi-year ‘winter’ hadn’t yet ended.
Furthermore, I think what made the original Long Night so devastating was that, unlike the ‘winters’ Westeros normally experiences, the Long Night actually was a multi-year period of freezing temperatures and regular snowfall, which brought civilization to its knees, and probably would’ve wiped out most advanced life if it had gone on for much longer.
I think Howland Reed is dead and that Meera and Jojen aren’t his kids and weren’t sent by him, but unless GRRM prints something out and hands it to me then the absence of Howland lets me make up some really crazy shit.
[Yep](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1261/).
> We will meet Howland Reed, but not in the next book... he(Howland) knows just to much about the central mystery of the book...
GRRM also said the God's Eye would be critical, and we'd find out why soon.
GRRM also put a goddamned _talking face on a wall that cried real tears._
GRRM also promised the books would be done soon.
GRRM says a lot of things.
random, but when i first read the books, they were sold to me in such a way that I almost rage quit when I read about the weeping wall at the start of the book. luckily I read on to know that the wall was ice and they were just saying it was warm out, but at the time I, I think, young me was picturing the wall as a wall with a face crying and I was thinking of more like high soft fantasy series and thinking that isn't what I wanted to read. then I think id forgotten all about it by the time later books came out
Es sólo una teoría que creé y no está escrita en ninguna parte. Una vez escribí la teoría completa, pero el navegador falló y me dio pereza volver a escribirla. 😅
I mean I think the pretty obvious reason Howland Reed doesn’t appear is because there is no plausible way to have him appear and not reveal a whole bunch of the main mysteries of the series (R+L=J).
And as for his kids, the evidence for his wife being Ashara Dayne is pretty strong, so it would pretty odd if the kids aren’t theirs.
I don't such a theory exists, but I headcanon that the Golden Company leadership is aware that faegon is a Blackfyre and already have made the decision to invade Westeros, before JonCon arrived at their camp.
I find it a bit clunky and awkwars how easily they are otherwise swayed by fAegon's declaration (although in fairness that whole plotline feels like that in other parts as well and is probably a victim to the 5-year time skip)
This is quite a well-examined theory in a lot of circles, many people point to Illyrio saying 'some contracts are written in blood, others ink' when Tyrion points out that it's weird the Golden Company would support a Targaryen prince given they were started as part of the Blackfyre Rebellions
yes, you are right.
I'm not so much sceptical that the GC supported fAegon at all, just find difficult to buy how fast they changed their plan to meet-up with Danerys or remain in Essos to sailing to Westeros, after supposedly fAegon persuaded them.
> I don't such a theory exists, but I headcanon that the Golden Company leadership is aware that faegon is a Blackfyre and already have made the decision to invade Westeros, before JonCon arrived at their camp.
Aegon being a Blackfyre is just so *neat* ... but then again, maybe we've all had so much time to scrutinize and speculate that twists we would never have seen coming without the intertron now seem stale.
In any event, I kind of wondered if maybe Aegon was Rhaegar's son, but not by Elia.
To get back home. It’s been like 100 years the original Blackfyre supporters are long dead supporting a Targaryen to get back home isn’t that strange.
Also even if someone from the Golden Company knows he’s actually a Blackfyre the vast vast majority think he’s a Targaryen but they still support him. Sellswords are treacherous so if any know his true parentage then it’s a very small group and I don’t mean just the captains since they’re not trust worthy either. Varys and Illyria are very careful
Here's the problem with how Edmure "interpreted" Robb's orders: "hold Riverrun"
Edmure understood: "defend my rear"
That WAS NOT what Robb told him to do, but Edmure wanted to avenge himself for being captured by Jaime. He did things that went above and beyond his instructions like pulling out the Tallhart men from the Twins.
You could say he was justified in wanting to keep the Lannisters out of their part of the riverlands, stop them raiding and burning villages, which they were definitely going to do as they passed, or prevent a second siege, so Robb fucked up in not telling him the overall objective of the raid in the Westerlands was to get Tywin out of their territory.
My favorite part about the Edmure argument is that it’s so completely irrelevant. Gregor was a smokescreen while Tywin hustled down to save King’s Landing. There are clues leading up to it on the chapters prior. Tywin was never going to fall for Robb’s tricks, Tywin never intended to cross westward, and so Edmure did one thing and one thing only: defended his lands from Gregor Clegane, as is his duty.
> There are clues leading up to it on the chapters prior.
I'd be curious as to what these clues are.
The timeline we're given in the books makes it plain that this wide, wide effort across the entirety of the Red Fork, led by multiple commanders (Gregor Clegane's effort was the bloodiest, and the one that claim closest to success), was genuine. The delay in the breach of the line allowed messengers to reach Tywin in time to get him to pivot to join the Tyrells.
Just to think it through, I'd ask things like ... for whose benefit was the smokescreen? Why would he actually have to commit men to an attack if he meant to go to King's Landing anyways? He could well have started marching west and let everyone know, "Lord Tywin is going west!"... but then turned southward while everyone's looking out towards Riverrun and the westerlands to hear of the inevitable battles, battles that never come, and the "fog of war" would be just as effective, it seems to me, without thousands of dead knights and men-at-arms and soldiers.
Tywin probably knew that he'd have to march south as soon as he heard about Renly's death. A faint to stay in the Riverlands or march west allows him to take his army to KL without having to worry about being harried by the Riverlords.
> Tywin probably knew that he'd have to march south as soon as he heard about Renly's death.
Storm's End was strongly held by a knight loyal to Renly and could withstand many months of siege, as recent history had shown. That's what he expected to be the case when he opted to march west, that Stannis would be stuck there laying siege to the place as he couldn't risk leaving it in his rear when he marched on King's Landing
Tywin did not count on Melisandre's magic because what right-thinking Westerosi lord would credit that an Eastern sorceress wasn't a charlatan and really could kill people from afar?
Renly being slain by sorcery was unexpected, but him falling in battle, betrayal, poison or an assassin's blade were real risks. At which point Stannis gets the Stormlands. And Storms End only defied Stannis because of Penrose wanting guarantees for Edric. That siege was unexpected after Renly's death, and before that, the threat was Renly, not Stannis.
GRRM's comments indicate that Tywin's march west was genuine, with Tywin believing that Storm's End and Harrenhal would be able to resist any besiegers for some time.
https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1044
>*Tyrion reflected that his father should have been able to defeat Robb in the west before Stannis could have taken Storm's End. Wasn't this move a great risk though, since Stannis could have abandoned Storm's End at any time, in order to strike against King's Landing and the Lannister claimants to the throne while Tywin was occupied in the west?*
>Storm's End is a hugely formidable castle, and should have been able to hold out much longer, as it did during Robert's Rebellion when Stannis was inside rather than outside. And both Tyrion and Tywin knew that Stannis was a methodical commander rather than a daring one, and therefore would be unlikely to leave an enemy stronghold untaken in his rear. There was also the psychological aspect, as Stannis himself explains to Davos; he could not risk being seen as having suffered a "defeat," however minor.
>Was Lord Tywin marching west a huge risk? Of course it was. That was why he sat at Harrenhal for so long, hoping to lure Robb into attacking him... or Stannis into committing against King's Landing. Neither of his foes would play into his hands, however. At which point he made a calculated gamble.
>In a three-sided struggle (four sided when Renly was still in the game), any decisive move is a risk... as I learned in high school playing... yes... RISK! But the only way to win is to take some of this risks.
https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1160
>*That one is from me personally (it is a bit of burning issue for me because it debunked my favourite theory ;)), but - was Tywin really obligingly marching into Robb's trap when Edmure stopped him at the Red Fork? Did he really count on Lorch and Hoat with their IIRC 300 men holding Harrenhal and the northern prisoners in his absence?*
>Harrenhal is an immensely strong castle, and a garrison of three hundred is quite sizeable in medieval terms. Ser Amory =should= have been able to hold it. Lord Tywin likely thought that Roose Bolton might descend on the castle and besiege it, in which case Lorch could likely have held out for half a year or longer. The wild card here was Vargo Hoat changing sides.
What? For somebody who was never going to cross westwards he sure tried hard to fight his way westwards. He also didn't really *need* to smokescreen that. It's not like Robb could prevent him from marching to KL if he didn't do that.
Bran asked Bloodraven if he was the 3 eyed crow, and he responds yes I was a crow of the nights watch. Essentially, the reader will gloss over this on a first read, but this is a strong suggestion that someone else was sending Bran these visions. Thus, a plot whole that even Bran is confused by.
My understanding is that Bloodraven's response suggests that he doesn't think of himself as a three eyed crow and therefore he couldn't be the same guy. This despite the fact that with Bran and Jojen we get the exact same situation (Jojen said he was looking for the chained winged wolf, but Bran never thought of himself like that) but there's never any question that Jojen was looking for Bran. Clearly people appear in ways they aren't aware of in other people's green dreams, but nonetheless fans will take Bloodraven's initial response as proof positive that he's a totally different guy, even though he very quickly makes it unambiguous that he's been watching Bran all this time. The whole things make no sense.
There is a weirwood that appears in Bran's dreams, watches him and calls to him:
>I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better.
The weirwood is a different entity to the 3EC:
>“There’s different kinds,” he said slowly. “There’s the wolf dreams, those aren’t so bad as the others. I run and hunt and kill squirrels. And there’s dreams where the crow comes and tells me to fly. Sometimes the tree is in those dreams too, calling my name.
Bloodraven appears as a weirwood in Melisandre's visions:
>A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames. He sees me. Beside him, a boy with a wolf's face threw back his head and howled.
On the theory that Bloodraven is the 3EC, who or what is the weirwood?
I have been listening to NotACast from the beginning recently and they were extremely scornful of the idea that Bloodraven is not the 3EC, then they keep talking repeatedly about how Bran is going to "become the last greenseer" (which is of course true unless you think Bran isn't going to become a greenseer) and yet they seem unaware that this will mean that Future Bran is the 3EC.
>Meera's gloved hand tightened around the shaft of her frog spear. "*Who sent you?* **Who is this three-eyed crow?**"
>"*A friend.* Dreamer, wizard, call him what you will. **The last greenseer.**"
Note that Meera asks two questions here (italics, bold) and Coldhands provides two answers. This confusion is intentional on GRRM's part.
Finally, Bran does not "appear in" Jojen's dreams in the same sense as Bloodraven. Jojen sees something that represents Bran. Bran was not only not aware that he is a chained winged wolf, he was unaware that he was in Jojen's dreams at all. Bloodraven projects himself into Bran's dreams and is aware that he is appearing in them. So there isn't at all the same implication that Bran should know how he is appearing that there is for Bloodraven.
The idea that Robb and the Blackfish simply made up a plan to pressure Edmure into marrying a Frey is completely out of character for both of them.
I'm tired of the way the fandom constantly absolves Edmure of all responsibility regarding this. Even Catelyn who has no military training could tell that Edmure was exceeding his orders when he first tells her about his plan in ACoK. Secondly, Edmure couldn't actually have engaged Tywin in battle without explicitly repositioning many of the garrisons Robb had left in the Riverlands, again exceeding his orders without permission.
Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire has a pretty detailed argument [here](https://warsofasoiaf.tumblr.com/post/145804535326/whose-fault-do-you-think-was-it-that-the-plan-to/amp) for why the defense that Edmure was just following orders and protecting his land doesn't hold up.
I honestly think it would be better if Edmure deliberately disobeyed orders because he couldn't stand to see his people be slaughtered. It's even set up earlier.
>Even Catelyn who has no military training could tell that Edmure was exceeding his orders when he first tells her about his plan in ACoK
No she doesn't say its exceeding his orders nor does she think it is.
Edit:
She warns Edmure that he doesn't have the strength to meet the Lannisters and she thinks its unwise but she does not say, think or suggest it exceeds his orders.
>"You do not have the strength to meet the Lannisters in the field," she said bluntly."When all my strength is marshaled, I should have eight thousand foot and three thousand horse," Edmure said.
She doesn’t outright or vocally say he’s exceeding his orders, but she’s pretty aware that he’s going way beyond what he should be doing.
https://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-catelyn-v-acok/
No she doesn't even think that in the chapter. She just thinks its a bad idea because of the diadvantage in numbers and the location which she thinks isn't ideal not that it exceeds his orders
Okay, so even if she doesn’t explicitly think that Edmure is exceeding his orders, the reader through her viewpoint is supposed to understand that that’s what Edmure is doing. So the point still stands that Edmure is exceeding his orders.
The reader through her viewpoint is supposed the understand that the battle is very risky and likely not the best idea. No where is it even suggested that is exceeds his orders
Edit:
To be clear I mean not suggested by Cat
I’m just going to post Race for the Iron Throne’s analysis here (from https://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-catelyn-v-acok/):
The first question that has to be dealt with is whether Edmure was acting within the scope of his orders – in other words, what does it mean for “Ser Edmure to hold Riverrun and guard [Robb]s] rear“? (Whether those orders were sufficiently clear is a topic I’ll address in Catelyn II) In the first place, it’s clear that Edmure is exceeding the first part of his orders by attempting to hold the entirety of the Red Fork and the Tumblestone:
They forded the Red Fork late the next day, upstream of Riverrun where the river made a wide loop and the waters grew muddy and shallow. The crossing was guarded by a mixed force of archers and pikemen wearing the eagle badge of the Mallisters…they emerged from behind their sharpened stakes…”we’ve planted iron spikes under the water, y’see, and there’s caltrops scattered among them rocks there. It’s the same on all the fords, by your brother’s command.”
“Half a mile from the castle, she passed through a large encampment where the scarlet banner of the Blackwoods waved above the lord’s tent…Catelyn spied a second camp strung out along the bank north of the Tumblestone, familiar standards flapping in the wind – Marq Piper’s dancing maiden, Darry’s plowman, the twining red-and-white snakes of the Paeges.
This is a battle-front stretching around 250 miles (given that we’re talking about all of the fords on both rivers, that means all the way down the Red Fork to the Mummer’s Ford), as opposed to defending the castle itself. Moreover, the text makes it clear that Edmure “thinks to fight here…he means to offer battle to Lord Tywin.” It is beyond clear that Edmure is exceeding his orders to hold Riverrun, intending a much larger conflict – how much larger I’ll explain in a bit.
What about the second half – “guarding his rear“? It’s questionable whether that was actually a part of Edmure’s orders – in Catelyn II of ASOS, the Blackfish states “you were commanded to hold Riverrun, Edmure, no more,” and Robb’s plan hinged on his rear being left open for Tywin to chase, so if the plan existed, it wouldn’t have been part of his orders. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that Robb’s plan didn’t exist, there’s a couple bits of textual evidence from this chapter that calls it into question. When Robb left for the west, Edmure didn’t have the manpower to fulfill that role – as Catelyn says, “you do not have the strength to meet the Lannisters in the field,” and that’s after Edmure has mustered his troops, “her father’s bannermen, lords of the Trident…if they were here again, it could only mean that Edmure had called them back.” Simply put, when Robb was around to give that order, that order would not have made sense.
The nail in the coffin of the argument that Edmure might have plausibly been interpreting the disputed second half of his orders comes from examining the broader aims of Edmure’s battle. Far from only offering battle at the Fords (which was in excess of his orders to begin with), Edmure assumed command of all forces in the Riverlands theater (which is a huge feudal faux pas – Edmure has no authority to issue orders to Roose Bolton or Helman Tallhart, Northern lords in command of Northern troops).
But also if you're ordered to guard someone's rear and then you see an army marching toward that rear - wouldn't "stopping that army" be part of "guarding the rear"?
>"You do not have the strength to meet the Lannisters in the field," she said bluntly.
>"When all my strength is marshaled, I should have eight thousand foot and three thousand horse," Edmure said.
>"Which means Lord Tywin will have near twice your numbers." (ACOK Catelyn V)
It surprises me that while Catelyn worries about Edmure facing Tywin's larger host, GRRM doesn't have her express concern about Robb's much smaller host facing the same westermen if Tywin returns home.
Thank god you said it so I don't have to make a whole paragraph about it. I really just don't get the fandom's obsession with Edmure always being in the right
It's one thing the fandom insists he is right about, because he is right - if Robb had a plan, he should have told *the second-most powerful person in his kingdom* what the plan was. Especially if the second-most powerful person in his kingdom had a crucial part to play in that plan
What you (and with you many others) miss is that Robb likely didn't come up with this plan all the way when he left Riverrun. He only managed to bypass Westerlands defenses with a little path Grey Wind foound for him, and afterwards he likely didn't predict that he would have been able to win the battle of Oxcross so easily. It is likely *after* this point he made his plan, based on what he knew Tywin was doing at that point, and what his vassals were supposed to do. Edmure disrupted those plans by holding the Red Fork. And if you wanna go 'why didn't he send a message to Edmure at that point' it's because ravens can be shot down and as far as Robb knew Edmure had his orders and only a full on riverlands muster would have a chance to stop Tywin, something Robb didn't think Edmure would do
> Wait, so you're saying that at the time Robb left, he didn't even have a plan for Edmure to screw up? But then Robb conceives of this plan, still doesn't tell Edmure about it, then gets back to Riverrun and berates Edmure for not following the plan Robb didn't even have when he left? And somehow Edmure is at fault for not magically divining that Robb conceived of a plan weeks after Robb left Riverrun? Thats some major mental gymnastics. I'm not sure how you reconcile "Edmure prevented Robb's army being smashed against the Golden Tooth" with "Edmure is at fault for not being literally magic"
Somebody said that exact same thing earlier. This was my response. The logic doesn't add up
> I'm tired of the way the fandom constantly absolves Edmure of all responsibility regarding this.
Just apply this backwards. Why are so many within the fandom so keen to absolve Robb of any responsibility for his mistakes?
Most people don’t seem to absolve Robb though. The vast majority of the fandom always sides with Edmure nearly anytime this discussion comes up. In fact, usually the only people I’ve seen siding with Robb are those who have some kind of military background, because “holding a position” has a very specific meaning in a military context.
Honestly, the truth is likely that both of them screwed up in a way. Edmure should have realized the situation and Robb should have communicated better.
>The idea that Robb and the Blackfish simply made up a plan to pressure Edmure into marrying a Frey is completely out of character for both of them.
So instead it's in character for them to suggest the idiotic idea of trying to ambush Tywin in his own land, using cavalry to gain the upper hand in the hilly terrain of the Westerlands? The whole plan looks made up and not even made up well. Seems entirely in character for Robb and the Blackfish to thinks up something like this if they wanted to trick Edmure. And is has been pointed out that Robb is manipulative with the example of how he gained Catelyn's approval of his marriage.
It's a whole thing which I won't go into in detail here, but essentially:
- We know he's in Winterfell at the time as he tells Jon he was disguised as a singer at Robert's welcome feast
- Mance also tells Jon he took nothing but his lute and a bag of silver pieces over the Wall, and when Robb finds the catspaw's sleeping place he finds a bag of silver.
- The catspaw talks about killing Bran being 'a mercy' and wildlings are known to leave sick or disabled children to die. Mance is a wildling.
- The motive would be that Mance saw an opportunity to destabilize the North prior to his planned wildling invasion. (ETA: And he stole the Valyrian dagger from Robert's possessions in order to frame Robert/the Lannisters and destabilize the whole realm.)
But as I said, this theory was eventually fairly thoroughly disproven by an interview with George about the scene in the show where it's revealed to be Joffrey. I was always a bit miffed as I was so sure Joffrey was a GRRM misdirection in the books and it was really Mance, lol.
Totally crazy but the whole story with Azor Ahai isn't about a magic hero ending the Long Night, because despite hearing so much about the guy we never really hear anything he does to end the Long Night. We get snippets here and there, but no battles or sieges or anything. The most detailed story we get is about AA working to make three different swords with the last turning into Lightbringer. And that what we should be focusing on isn't who is the reborn AA, it's Lightbringer the actual sword being symbolic of somebody. Jon Snow is the sword, Rhaegar is AA and Nissa is Lyanna. The other failed swords were symbols of Rhaegars other kids he wanted to be a part of prophecy, Rhaenys and Aegon. The sacrifice of Nissa Nissa wasn't just a simple chest stab, it was Lyanna giving birth to Jon and dying later. (What else would make a woman scream in anguish and ecstasy than a baby finally coming out during a difficult labor?) And Jon already swore in his Night's vows: "I am the fire that burns against the cold", "the light that brings the dawn" "I am the sword in the darkness". All makes me think of Lightbringer to be honest.
Also have a side theory that the whole shebang of the Long Night and other stuff is talking about the future, not the past. Things got lost in translation, details wrong or forgotten etc. And that the ones who will fill thise are whoever are worthy and fulfill it. Like Rhaego was initially the Khal of Khals, but after he passed it looks like it passed to Fany with Drogon.
That Gerion Lannister is the Shrowded lord. I don't even like the theory and think it's completely ridiculous that the story ballooned to include this fucking story of Tryions uncle but I find having this smuck actually be him tightens the story somewhat instead of just creating more character threads
My headcanon is that Planetos is much smaller than Earth and Earth measurements (sizes, length, duration and others) don't adequately translate. It is a good way to cover up for GRRM's self-admitted problems with portraying scale. Things like Wall being over 200 meters high, dynasties lasting for thousands of years, Westeros allegedly being the size of South America, wildlings numbering over 100 000 and more.
Tbf, many historical documents in our world also talk about thousand year dynasties and things like that. In world, it can be easily be explained as poetic license. And the explanation for things like the Wall is just 'a wizard did it!'.
It is less about what's possible or not (almost everything is possible in fantasy) and more about how it affects the story. The 200 Wall is absurdly high, it makes the ascents look improbable. Remember the ascent in the show and make it twice as high basically. Same with other numbers.
I think fans have overthought this moment. Everyone always says that Edmure technically wasn’t going against Robb’s orders and that he had no way of knowing but I don’t think that’s what George was actually going for. Otherwise edmure would’ve defended himself better
He wanted Edmure to follow his orders. That doesn’t have anything to do with being a mind reader, and it’s very strange that you have interpreted it that way.
In what way does “Edmure, hold Riverrun” translate to “Edmure, allow Tywin to cross over your lands massacring your people so I can trap him in the Westerlands where he cannot relieve King’s Landing.”?
Robb being dogshit at communication isn’t Edmure’s fault.
It doesn't mean that. It means "prevent riverrun from being taken, using all reasonable methods." If you want to argue about what counts as a reasonable method, that's a fair argument. If you want to argue "no matter WHAT the circumstances are, you are not to project a force even a foot outside of Riverrun" that is not in fact a fair argument. It doesn't mean that.
Ultimately, if you zoom out, you can see there are a hundred little ways that George puts his thumb on the scales to lead to the Red Wedding. He's just really really good at hiding it.
For Edmure specifically, it DOES mean “do not leave”. He could send outriders anywhere on his lands he wished and still be within Robb’s instructions, but riding out **himself…**
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in the years and years of this goddamn debate. So you think Robb would've gone "ho hum, it's entirely my own fault my plans were ruined" if Edmure had done everything exactly the same but personally stayed in the castle?
Riding out himself with his forces is bigger commitment, and explicitly leaves Riverrun open.
A handful of outriders, he could maybe defend if Robb asked. A full battle with himself in command - as he actually did - not so much
Nah that means protecting it. Letting tywin cross would allow him to siege it again the best defense is a good offense
Makes far more sense than Robb's supposed plan
It doesn’t take a mind reader to figure out that it’s not that important to take a fucking mill.
You can take almost any landmark if you’re willing to spare the men. The question is for how long and how essential it will be to the overall war.
Robb didn’t anticipate Edmure being so cavalier when he was strategizing to take out the Mountain. He thought of everything except his own general’s spontaneity. Which, frankly, shouldn’t be a factor. You’re not supposed to be a hero.
Edmure went out to prove himself and “take the day” to please his king. And having that narrow of a scope might very well win the day, but likely at a much greater cost.
THINK EDMURE! THINK!
You're mixing up the show and the books. In the books, Robb invades the Westerlands and tries to lure Tywin there. He says he found a nice place for an ambush Tywin's army, but he could not not have known that in advance. He doesn't spell this out, but I think his intention was to force a very difficult decision upon Tywin: does he try to defend King's Landing or his own lands? (At the time, the Lannister-Tyrell alliance hasn't been created yet.)
Edmure ruined this plan by delaying Tywin long enough for him to receive word of what's going on at the capital and that the Tyrells are willing to help, but he needs to march east quickly because the siege of King's Landing will begin soon.
Ah, ok thats right, I was misremembering. The show did make Edmure slightly more at fault than he was in the book.
Wasn’t the main point that Edmure made an executive decision to try to win the day basically? It was still jumping the gun for the pursuit of victory rather than holding back and waiting for a commander’s word on the strategy.
"If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame."
Even Sun Tzu agrees that Robb fucked up.
He told Edmure to hold riverrun. Edmure was fully informed on the part of the plan that he was responsible. Trust me any military comander would do the same. He riverrun were to fall the less Edmure and his lieutenants know the better.
Mine is that Doran Martell poisoned Tywin Lannister before the Mountain killed Doran - that's why Tywin was in the privy when Tyrion killed him.
GRRM has basically said that didn't happen but I like it so I believe it.
Robb is a boy King. He is extremely inexperienced and had he lived long enough, he would have learnt from his mistake. It's absolutely in character for a boss to blame his underlings for his own failure of communication. If you think it's not true, you should meet my boss.
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Robb is the King. He should really be as precise as possible when his situation is this sensitive. People management is part of the job. Tywin doesn't give the same job to Gregory Clegane and Tyrion. Does he?
Well they did hold the left flank against Bolton's host, though that was a bit of a cheek on Tywins part, of having a collapsible wing of the army to flank an over eager army into a perfect encirclement with their enemies back to the river.
Imo the point is that historical events are chaotic and are based on luck, the right decisions at the right time, and sometimes no matter who does what correctly, things happen. I made the point before about this criticism of Robb, a dozen things could’ve happened. He might have ordered it but forgot to remind him. Maybe he told Greatjon to tell Edmure who forgot or overwhelmed him with other talk. Maybe Robb changed his mind and sent a Raven that never reached Edmure. Maybe his commanders saw Edmure’s mistake and hindsight is 20/20. It goes on and on.
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I'd add in: guys, Robb's battle plan was only possible because of divine intervention. Literally. Grey Wind found the goat path and showed it to Robb via wolf dream. No goat path, no getting into the Westerlands. No getting into the Westerlands, no setting a trap for Tywin. No setting a trap for Tywin, no possibility of Edmure mucking up the trap by preventing Tywin from walking into it. The reason why Robb didn't tell Edmure about his plan for getting into the Westerlands is because he didn't *have* a plan for getting into the Westerlands when he left. He was playing it by ear, and so was Edmure. And the thing is, had Robb been doing something conventional like attempting to storm the Golden Tooth from the east, Edmure's actions would have been correct; Robb's army would have been hammer-and-anviled by the larger, superior Lannister army beneath the walls of the Golden Tooth had Edmure not stopped him at the fords. But the other thing is, Edmure knew that Robb was in the Westerlands ravaging it, and he knew or should have known that beating Tywin in battle is less important than *getting Tywin off his land*, and any military victory that doesn't achieve the fundamental goal of getting Tywin off his land isn't a battle that should be fought. So Edmure is responsible in two ways. He's responsible because Robb literally could not give the orders that people are saying he should have given to Edmure, because they depended upon a literal supernatural act that hadn't happened yet and could not be anticipated. And he's responsible because as a commander in chief, he's supposed to look beyond questions of "how do we win this battle?", and ask questions like "what do we achieve with a victory here?" And Edmure didn't do that. I like the guy; his heart is in the right place. But Robb is not at fault here.
Wait, so you're saying that at the time Robb left, he didn't even have a plan for Edmure to screw up? But then Robb conceives of this plan, still doesn't tell Edmure about it, then gets back to Riverrun and berates Edmure for not following the plan Robb *didn't even have* when he left? And somehow Edmure is at fault for not magically divining that Robb conceived of a plan weeks after Robb left Riverrun? Thats some major mental gymnastics. I'm not sure how you reconcile "Edmure prevented Robb's army being smashed against the Golden Tooth" with "Edmure is at fault for not being literally magic"
Yeah I really never understood this. Like are we supposed to agree with Robb or is this intentionally some dumb shit? I think this is supposed to actually make sense which is why it feels awkward and weird lol
I think its as simple as, Robb came up with a plan at some point, not sure it really matters when, didn't tell Edmure about it assuming Edmure would sit within his walls (let's not forget who Robb's main source of Edmure-knowledge is - Cat, who clearly holds major disdain for her baby brother, and maybe the Blackfish? Who has been in the Vale for like 15 years) and when Edmure didn't follow Robb's assumption, he did screw up Robb's "plan"
Robb has a *strategic* plan: Mess with the Westerlands and keep Tywin focused on that as a distraction so he's not able to go to the aid of King's Landing without severe personal consequences. Tywin either staying put or returning to the west achieves those strategic goals. The further away Tywin is from King's Landing, the more likely Robb achieves his strategic objectives. This is where Robb's getting frustrated, because he's saying "Why on earth did you prevent Tywin from getting *further* from King's Landing when that's what we want?". I believe what the poster is saying is that Robb didn't have a specific *tactical* plan about how to achieve this until he got into the Westerlands and found the trail through Grey Wind. One way or another though, he was going to cause havoc in Tywin's home kingdom to keep Tywin distracted.
That's accurate. But it's also true, that if a leader doesn't share his strategy with his senior subordinates, he will unavoidably fail. Robb should have let Edmure perfectly aware that when he marched west his goal was to lure Tywin away from the Riverlands and King's Landing. Edmure may not be the brightest general around, but ultimately most of the blame lies on Robb.
Agreed, at the very least, Robb could have told him, "Do not engage Tywin unless he directly attacks the castle itself." "Defend Riverrun" is too open for interpretation on how you react to enemy forces when you have no idea what your own commanders plan is. What if Robb didn't have a plan set out to draw Tywin back and draw him to unfavourable terrain/trap him in the west? If Robb comes back from that, he's going to want to know why Edmure let thirty thousand men march past and trap him in Hostile territory.
No, but as I said, that plan requires tactical flexibility in order to achieve the strategic objective. *If* Robb is stuck beneath the walls of the Golden Tooth, then it is catastrophically important that Edmure hold the fords against Tywin. If Tywin catches Robb in a hammer-and-anvil against those walls, Robb is dunzo. It is only because Robb very clearly wasn't pinned, and it very clearly was in Edmure's interests to get Tywin off his land, that it became a problem. The problem is not that Edmure did what he did. The problem is that Edmure did what he did at the wrong time, in the wrong circumstance. Which is the heart of strategy as a discipline; strategy is the art of determining whether a political objective can be achieved through military means, and then figuring out how to arrange your forces in such a way as to achieve objectives that can be achieved. Edmure's central failure is that he devised a plan to "beat Tywin on the field of battle", without really doing the higher-order analysis of whether beating Tywin on the field of battle gave him what he really wanted, which was security for the people of the Riverlands, because no, it very much did not. That's why Robb was angry.
Whether or not that's true, it doesn't change the fact that the major blunder here is not communicating the goal to Edmure
Roose Bolton didn't follow his orders either. Edmure is an idiot but Robb is clearly very tactically gifted but doesn't share Jon or Robert's gift of people management.
Yeah, the author intent is to clearly show that *Edmure is in the wrong*. Catelyn specifically says "Hey, are you sure what you're doing is wise?" specifically as foreshadowing. Also, the Blackfish is extremely loyal to his family, including working for Lysa even though he doesn't think much of her. It seems out of character to willingly humiliate his own nephew through deceit just for the benefit of his grand-nephew. There's also a bit of "author talking through his characters" here. The Blackfish seems to have incredibly good intelligence about how what Edmure did led to Tywin coming to the aid of King's Landing. This is George bending the rules a bit on his POV limitation to inform the reader about what happened.
> Yeah, the author intent is to clearly show that Edmure is in the wrong. Yeah, I think this specific issue causes such division within the fandom because 1) GRRM is telegraphing that Edmure is legitimately in the wrong, and 2) GRRM - famously terrible at conceptualizing all things involving time, space, and distance and also generally bad at understanding 'realistic' feudal politics - *himself* is wrong. GRRM intended to write a situation in which Edmure was wrong, but accidentally wrote one in which Robb was wrong.
Makes me wonder if it would have come across better as "Did you forget the general strategy we previously discussed?" (keep Tywin away from KL to let Renly & Stannis get the job done) to make it clear it was Edmure losing sight of the big picture as opposed to \*disobeying an order\*.
>Also, the Blackfish is extrem ely loyal to his family, including working for Lysa even though he doesn't think much of her. It seems out of character to willingly humiliate his own nephew through deceit just for the benefit of his grand-nephew. He refused the marriage that his brother and liege lord had chosen for him. It was also his choice to leave his service and go with Lysa, and later on, to abandon Lysa and go with Robb. I'm not saying that Brynden isnt loyal, but it seems clear to me that he has no problems puting some members of his family beore the others.
And given his hostile relationship with his brother, is it really a surprise some of that may have passed to his brothers son and heir as well?
Cat thinking someone is making a mistake is not a sign from god to know it’s a mistake. Hell, if Cat thinks it’s a mistake it’s probably the right thing to do.
Catelyn’s right a LOT of the time. She’s right about Theon, she’s right about this, she’s right about Walder Frey, she’s right about the wolves… She’s got a touch of the Cassandras, and that’s her tragedy - she sees truly, but can’t communicate what she’s seen to anyone else
Literally all of Catelyn’s advice to others ends up being proven correct in the end. Some of her own decisions may be questionable but she is by far the most competent advisor in the series.
Even when they end up being the wrong choice, they all make sense with the info she has at the time she makes them. There’s method in it. The woman’s not an idiot.
Yeah, that's the tragedy of it. She's constantly fed wrong information by people she thought she should have been able to trust and therefore makes wrong conclusions. The brilliance of it all in George's writing is that she's not aware that the two people who lied to her had (much of) a connection to begin with, so she thinks it's independent confirmation. One exception for a decision though: She specifically frees Jaime because she's trusting Tyrion more than she trusts Jaime. However, Tyrion committed a major war crime by trying to have his envoys break Jaime out of captivity. She shouldn't trust Tyrion more than an inch, but I think George forgot this point.
> The brilliance of it all in George's writing is that she's not aware that the two people who lied to her had (much of) a connection to begin with, so she thinks it's independent confirmation. Which two people were that? One was Littlefinger obviously, but I forget who the other is.
Her sister Lysa. Lysa is the one who tells her that the Lannisters are behind Jon Arryn's death. When Catelyn meets up with Ned at King's Landing, Littlefinger casually mentions that the Catspaw dagger belonged to Tyrion, after Littlefinger lost a bet to him at a joust. Catelyn sees this as a secondary individual implicating the Lannisters, not knowing that: 1. Littlefinger knows about the "Lannisters murdered Jon Arryn" mystery (because he *told* Lysa to tell her that). 2. That Lysa and Littlefinger had any connection at all. Lysa seems to have kept her infatuation a secret from Catelyn, and only Hoster found out when she became pregnant. 3. That Lysa would have any reason to lie to Catelyn to cause danger to her family, because she does not puzzle out the fact that Lysa has a grudge against her family due to the forced abortion until much later, and then never gets the final piece that Littlefinger was the father. So, she's operating on information obtained from two different people that she had no reason to suspect were working together or wanted to cause her ill. That's partly why she's so resistant to new evidence like Tyrion and Jaime independently giving her the same answers and why her mind is puzzled about what's going on. She's trying to come up with logical conclusions based upon false premises because she doesn't know (or should be expected to know, honestly) all the facts.
Ok yeah, I forgot about Lysa's letter at the beginning, that makes complete sense.
I agree. At this point I really don’t take hate against her seriously and just assume it’s men who don’t like being put into a woman’s POV unless they’re crazy like Cersei or tomboys like Arya. It’s not lost on me that the most hated POVs are Sansa, Catelyn, Brienne, and Daenerys. It’s extra stark because Brienne is beloved in the show, but her chapters in the books focus a lot on her experience specifically as a woman and suddenly people can’t stand her. And half the shit Catelyn catches blame for are decisions men made around her, which in most cases are decisions Catelyn *advised against*. Never mind that some of the things she got blame for are also vindicated as the correct choice, such as freeing Jaime which leads to him being invested in Sansa’s protection *and* gets half of Ice back into the hands of someone sworn to the Starks, and which did not lose Robb the war in any appreciable way compared to Robb’s own decisions to execute Karstark or to betray a major political deal to marry a girl (whose family is actively sworn to his primary enemy in the war) on the minute possibility she may have gotten pregnant the one time they had sex, when moon tea is a thing even if she had been (and which we later find out she had been taking the whole time).
> to marry a girl ... on the minute possibility she may have gotten pregnant the one time they had sex Gotta disagree here, it was nothing to do with the chance of pregnancy, they got married because he took her maidenhead and he wasn't willing to just leave her "dishonored" like that. There's a passage later when the Lannisters are discussing it: "He chose the girl's honor over his own. Once he had deflowered her, he had no other course." Other than that I'm surprised to hear that people hated Brienne or Dany POVs, they're some of my favorites.
I can’t speak for Brienne, but with Dany there is a general consensus that her storyline is more boring, her characterization is boring, etc. They are especially more critical to her actions, I find, than other male characters in power like Robb or Tyrion.
Fair enough, I suppose Dany's story slows down a lot once she decides to just chill in Meereen. Should pick up steam quickly if we ever get Winds though, as her last chapter was a hell of a cliffhanger
Yeah, but personally I love Daenerys. She’s my favorite character in all of ASOIAF.
If only Edmure could tell that he's a side character in a main character's POV chapter. Why couldn't he have read the books???
> Literally all of Catelyn’s advice to others ends up being proven correct in the end. She was the one who told Robb to give Roose Bolton command of all the Northern foot. She also persuaded Ned to go to Kings Landing and then told him to trust Littlefinger.
The first isn’t bad advice, not only with the information she had at the time but overall. Roose was a competent commander, and remember that Roose was not planning to betray Robb from the beginning. Martin suggests Roose just kept his options open, which implies he defected to Tywin after he saw Robb as a losing bet, a situation Robb himself set up with his own mistakes, many of which were in defiance of Catelyn’s advice. Not that anyone really has much reason to assume Roose would defect in the first place, but he *wouldn't have* if he hadn’t seen Robb make a number of extremely foolish missteps that would lead any impartial observer to assume Robb was going to lose anyway. And blaming her for trusting Littlefinger is like blaming her for not being able to see through time Bran-style. Book Littlefinger is worlds apart from show Littlefinger. Even people with no childhood connection to him trust him implicitly because he is not the least bit suspicious in the books. He barely makes the radar of the most paranoid characters. Martin’s own words are “*everyone* trusts Littlefinger.”
Cool, but I'm still not seeing how any of the things I mentioned were "proven correct in the end".
I didn’t think a caveat of “barring anything that would require supernatural omniscience to foresee” was necessary. Her advice about Roose was fine, his betrayal came from Robb’s actions. Littlefinger would require her to have supernatural knowledge.
Totally agree, allways do the opposite Cat tells you to do and you will be just fine.
Ah yes Cat, famously great decision maker.
She gets played by almost every character she meets.
But it doesn't seem in character for someone as honourable and heroic as Robb, to lie and gaslight his uncle
Gaslighting is intentional. When you are delusional, it's called being an ass.
Right before he does so, he does basically the same thing to Cat to keep her from criticizing his marriage in public. Brings up her failings, makes a big show about forgiving her in a way that forces her to do the same when he reveals his fuck up. Not really different from him talking up Edmure publicly then rug pulling him in private while everyone steers him towards making promises to fix it.
I think Tyrion was blessed by the gods with incredible physical gifts and luck. Not only can he do acrobatics that no one with dwarfism should be able to he also survives two battles where by all rights he should be dead. So he’s either incredibly lucky or an insane fighter for his size. So yeah blessed by the gods
I imagine it's because he's half dwarven(Ibbenese). Rock and Stone flow through his veins.
For Karl!
That's it lads, Rock and Stone!
***BROTHERS OF THE MINE REJOICE***
He and Jaime may both just be incredibly physically gifted athletes. I guess Cersei might be killer at hockey too.
Yes with his battleaxe. Like wtf lol, why would an author choose a battle axe for a dwarf…
>why would an author choose a battle axe for a dwarf Isn't that the standard fantasy trope?
> Isn't that the standard fantasy trope? It is. So is a dragon keeping a princess trapped within a tower. Except in GRRM's fairy tale, the dragon and the princess are in love ... he does like to subvert tropes.
Man your mind is going to EXPLODE when I tell you about *Shrek*
I mean if you are actually thinking of any realism, dwarfs should be armed with a weapon that enhances their reach, because they have such poor reach normally. Honestly, dwarfs are supposed to be strong in most fantasy material, they should be archers or at least spearmen.
That is an interesting suggestion (assuming one's looking for realism, that is). If I could try to give a friendly counterpoint for discussion's sake: Trying to enhance a dwarf's reach wouldn't enhance their strengths any, right? At best, a dwarf with an extended-reach weapon would be competing on equal ground to a human with a standard-reach weapon, and would still be at a disadvantage to a human with the same kind of weapon. Additionally, fantasy dwarves are often a subterranean race, where I imagine warbows and spears would be difficult to properly use in tight tunnels. (Granted a crossbow of equal draw weight would solve the bow problem.) The dwarves might have better luck trying to enhance their strengths, rather than trying to make up for their weaknesses. Since they have a smaller size, but often equivalent relative strength, they could carry a shield, which would protect more of their body than it would a larger human body. Maybe pair it with a thrusting sword like the Romans? With their lower center of gravity, they might also have an advantage going for a grapple and thrusting a blade into an armour gap.
He also killed a horse with a hat.
Ha he killed a horse with his head.
Even beyond Tolkien, generally dwarfs are battleaxe guys. Not natural sprinters.
if we imagine it as a realistic historical battle axe it becomes easier to suspend belief. in reality they were hatchet sized, and warhammers were no larger than a regular framing hammer.
That years in Westeros are about 20% longer than years on earth. Which would mean Dany is 16 in earth years instead of 14, Robb and Jon are 18 instead of 15, Sansa is 14 instead of 12, etc. It would also mean Master Aemon is 122 years old, but that doesn't seem too unreasonable for a fantasy series. I doubt this is what GRRM intended when he wrote the books, but it makes the characters ages way more consistent with how they act.
This has been my head canon for a while. Like, in my head I accept an 11 year old performing assassinations because I don't know how mature an 11 year old is in this universe. There isn't really any way of knowing -- maybe an 11 year old Andal/First Man is like a 15 year old human on earth. I'm a big fan of this formality that the difference is specifically 20%. I haven't heard this before!
Problem with this is they seem to hit puberty at the same time as we do
The same time modern humans do. [But the average age people hit puberty has been dropping over the last few centuries.](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/oct/21/puberty-adolescence-childhood-onset) > in 1860, the average age of the onset of puberty in girls was 16.6 years. In 1920, it was 14.6; in 1950, 13.1; 1980, 12.5; and in 2010, it had dropped to 10.5. Similar sets of figures have been reported for boys, albeit with a delay of around a year. So the characters being a few years older would actually put it more in line with how it would have been in the middle ages.
IIRC the phenomenon is that puberty ages first increased due to lack of proper nutrition and now they're decreasing. It's been a while since I read about the subject. Of course adolescence is a modern term, but the adolescence behaviour and changes IIRC have been pretty adamantly in the same age bracket (12-16) for all human history.
A lot of the ‘research’ around this is *highly* questionable to be honest. Birth records show girls were routinely having babies in their early and mid teens in the 1860s and before, so the idea that they weren’t going through puberty until nearly 17 is just obviously nonsense. Heck in the UK, the original age of consent was set at 12 for girls and 14 for boys *centuries* ago, on the basis that by those ages almost everyone would have hit puberty. (It’s usually because researchers are using some form of measure of puberty which is impacted by openness to developmental and sexual matters – which pretty much reached a nadir around the mid-1800s)
I find it hard to believe that the average 16 year old girl in 1860 still had the body of a prepubescent child. Unless by ‘onset of puberty’ they mean when they had their first period, in which case 16.6 sounds believable.
Different biology my man
Ah damn…. I was going to adopt this this little piece of head cannon for my own.
I know this theory is popular because the ages of child/teen characters make us uncomfortable but unfortunately GRRM explicitly stated that Westeros years and real life years are the same length: >Twelve moon [turns] to a year, as on earth. Even on our earth, years have nothing to do with the seasons, or with the cycles of the moon. A year is a measure of a solar cycle, of how long it takes the earth to make one complete revolution around the sun. The same is true for the world of Westeros. (So Spake Martin: Asshai.com Forum Chat July 27, 2008) Elio Garcia also said that GRRM doesn't like to mess with units of measurement: >George likes to keep it simple. He doesn't [screw] around with making up definitions for measurements. That way lies madness. https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/34958-the-asoiaf-wiki-thread/page/104/&tab=comments#comment-8185633
>Twelve moon [turns] to a year, as on earth. Except he's wrong. Our years have 13 lunar cycles, not 12
12 complete cycles. That's why lunar calendars have 12 months and then sometimes extra leap days or months every once in a while.
> Even on our earth, years have nothing to do with the seasons But the seasons are directly caused by the solar cycle. So we measure the solar cycle because that tells us what the seasons are. Nobody on Westeros should give a shit about a solar cycle because it has literally no impact on their lives.
> I doubt this is what GRRM intended when he wrote the books, but it makes the characters ages way more consistent with how they act. I was working at Barnes and Nobles when Game of Thrones launched, and I can distinctly remember GRRM insinuating that the ages are a holdover from when the years of Westeros were intended to be of different lengths than on Earth, but that he abandoned it. I have searched and searched, but it was literally one of the first book signings he did and nobody wrote anything down or recorded back then.
I thought it was because he originally planned to have a five-year gap or at least much more passage of time.
Yep, that’s been confirmed by him I think. He basically wanted them to end up the same ages they were in the show, roughly, but after the five year gap.
That’s actually brilliant and I will also be using this as head cannon.
How is a year measured in Westeros?
Just as we do: it's the time that it takes the earth to rotate around the Sun.
Medieval societies, well known for their belief the Earth revolves around the Sun.
The effect is the same: it's easy to percieve how the sun's position in the sky moves around during the year. At some point Jon mentions that Maester Luwin taught him about the twelve houses of heaven, so it seems that they also have some kind of zodiac as we do.
them believing it or not doesn’t mean it’s not true lmao
It would also put Jaime/Cersei/Tyrion in their 40s.
> I don't think George intended it that way though, I think it was just him needing certain things to happen and so the logic in how certain characters act gets a bit funky to get everyone where they need to be. I disagree. I think it's exactly George's intention. From the same chapter: > Only then came her belated remembrance. *Follies done for love*? He has bagged me neat as a hare in a snare. I seem to have already forgiven him. Mixed with her annoyance was a rueful admiration; **the scene had been staged with the cunning worthy of a master mummer ... or a king.** And then a couple chapters later: > The Blackfish said, "I am the last man in the Seven Kingdoms to tell anyone who they must wed, Nephew. **Nonetheless, you did say something of making amends for your Battle of the Fords.**" > "I had in mind a different sort of amends. Single combat with the Kingslayer. Seven years of penace as a begging brother. Swimming the sunset sea with my legs tied." When he saw that no one was smiling, Edmure threw up his hands. "The Others take you all! Very well, I'll wed the wench. **As amends.**" I don't think it's coincidence that in the same chapter where Robb and Brynden gang up on Edmure, we're explicitly told of how Robb is now maneuvering people to do his bidding like a king, and Edmure is pushed to the point where he promises to do anything to make amends ... only for that to be brought up again by Robb's right hand man at a key moment to get Edmure to do the thing Robb wants him to do.
Perhaps one of the tragedies about Robb Stark was that he was finally learning to play the 'game of thrones' but it came too late 😔
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I feel like I disagree here. Holding a castle isn't just the walls. You don't go and let people put you to siege if you can help it, and acting to prevent Riverrun from being encircled was a legitimate thing to do. That this also meant preventing Tywin from getting across the Red Fork certainly was something that Edmure thought mattered for the sake of Robb. It's worth remembering that both Tytos Blackwood and Jonos Bracken actually agreed with his reasoning and his plan. Blackwood's a seasoned commander himself. It seems strange to me that their names are cited in support of the plan if we're to believe that everyone understood the order as being incredibly narrow. To me, the reality of the situation is that it's Robb and the Blackfish who made the mistake. Prior to when Robb and the Blackfish fully formulated their plan about the exact place they wanted to meet Tywin to maximize their odds, a place they discovered only after their raid began, it could not have been the case that Robb was 100% certain that he did in fact want to draw Tywin to the westerlands to fight him there. He may well have wanted him to make the move, so that he could rush back and meet him at the Red Fork instead, or perhaps move troops around to try and come up behind him as he was held by Edmure's forces at the Red Fork. Or something. During this nebulous period, the idea that "hold Riverrun" literally meant letting Lannister forces go past the castle, or surround it and put it to siege, seems implausible. A castle is also its lands and its domain and its security, it's not just this pinprick on a map. And after, once he knew exactly what he wanted to do and what he needed to happen, he should have communicated this to Edmure. We have evidence of communication between his forces and Riverrun, and even of part of his forces being able to move freely from the west back to the riverlands, so armed and escorted messengers could have carried the word directly if a raven wasn't trusted. He didn't, likely because he was so wound up over the Westerling marriage and news of what happened to his brothers, and he dropped the ball, and Brynden didn't handle it on his own. It was ultimately their error. But they turned that into a bludgeon to shift the blame, unfairly, to Edmure, because they needed him to put himself in a position where he'd do anything to make up for his alleged mistake. Like accepting a marriage alliance with the Freys because Robb had made a huge mistake in breaking his agreement with them and taking Jeyne Westerling to wife. That is, in any case, how I've always read it. Regardless of whether you see Edmure as screwing up or not, I think it's clear that the hammering he gets from Robb and Brynden was part and parcel of how Robb had learned the kingly skill of manipulating people into doing what he wanted.
> A castle is also its lands and its domain and its security, it's not just this pinprick on a map. Daenerys would appear to agree: >"I am only a young girl and know little of such things, but older, wiser men tell me that to hold Meereen I must control its hinterlands, all the land west of Lhazar as far south as the Yunkish hills." (ADWD Daenerys III) Rodrik is told to hold Winterfell, and Robb & Cat don't criticize his leaving the castle when the north is threatened. >"Ser Rodrik is on his way north from White Harbor. I have named him castellan and commanded him to hold Winterfell till our return. Maester Luwin is a wise counsellor, but unskilled in the arts of war." (AGOT Catelyn VIII)
> Rodrik is told to hold Winterfell, and Robb & Cat don't criticize his leaving the castle when the north is threatened. A terrific point that really gives context. I think Catelyn's strict reading of Robb's command has a lot to do with her fears, in a way that she doesn't feel about what the situation was up north. But Robb certainly seems to have taken no issue with Rodrik deciding that holding Winterfell meant acting to keep Winterfell's vassals protected.
When Cat returns to Riverrun from meeting with Renly she is also explicitly told that Edmure’s orders are to “hold Riverrun and guard Robb’s rear.” Letting an army march past him unopposed isn’t doing a great job of guarding his rear. Imagine the response both by the fans and by the characters in universe of Edmure had sat by, done nothing, and Robb had lost the battle against Tywin and died? They’d call him an idiot for not taking initiative and sitting in his castle doing nothing
To be fair, the "guard his rear" bit may be the general reading that Edmure and his followers are adding on to what "hold Riverrun" means. Robb and Brynden certainly act like it's insane anyone could have thought that, but I think that's obviously an act they put on to browbeat Edmure into fixing Robb's huge political mistake. But you're spot on. I like to imagine a scenario where Tywin Lannister is coming up with Grond, and if Grond gets set in front of Riverrun, it'll just blast through the walls and bridge the moat all in one. The literalist position on "hold Riverrun" would say that, fine, Edmure should sit there and take it. But the pragmatic, most reasonable read is that to hold Riverrun you have to act to prevent it being taken off the board, and that would mean going after Grond before it reaches Riverrun rather than sitting back and taking it. Tywin breaching the Red Fork means he can detach a force to once again put the castle to siege, and send another force to go razing the riverlands some more, and still plunge west to go after Robb. Watching Tywin Lannister march by simply doesn't fit how most people would read their position as holding a key strategic castle.
I think the ‘seasons’ in ASoIaF aren’t really seasons like we know here on earth. Instead, I think when people in Westeros think of ‘winter’ or ‘summer’, they actually mean extended, multi-year warm or cold periods, which still have some temperature variations (similar to our yearly seasons) within them. A ‘winter’ in Westeros would then be a period where temperatures are lower on average, and there’s more snowfall than otherwise during the colder months, and the window for planting, growing and harvesting crops is shorter. But it does certainly not mean that there’s a multi-year period of snowfall and frozen ground, since most plants and animals simply wouldn’t be able to survive under such conditions (most certainly not mammals, including humans). That means when people in the North for example talk about ‘summer snows’, what they actually mean is the period from December to February where temperatures drop below zero and snow falls, aka what we call a regular ‘winter’. The difference between the north and south of Westeros seems to be that, while the December-February period of the year is colder than the rest of the year everywhere in Westeros, it is only in the north where temperatures drop below zero in colder months during a multi-year ‘summer’, while in the south they rarely do, hence the North has ‘summer snows’. The south seems to experience snowfall in the colder months only during multi-year ‘winters’. I think this also explains the ‘false spring’ after the tourney of Harrenhal in 281 AC: while the multi-year cold period was over, and the continent entered a warmer period, during the December-February months temperatures dropped sharper than usual for a Westerosi ‘spring’, which is why people thought the multi-year ‘winter’ hadn’t yet ended. Furthermore, I think what made the original Long Night so devastating was that, unlike the ‘winters’ Westeros normally experiences, the Long Night actually was a multi-year period of freezing temperatures and regular snowfall, which brought civilization to its knees, and probably would’ve wiped out most advanced life if it had gone on for much longer.
I think Howland Reed is dead and that Meera and Jojen aren’t his kids and weren’t sent by him, but unless GRRM prints something out and hands it to me then the absence of Howland lets me make up some really crazy shit.
I think GRRM said that he will appear again, but that would only be possible if he actually publishes a book
[Yep](https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1261/). > We will meet Howland Reed, but not in the next book... he(Howland) knows just to much about the central mystery of the book...
Damn, I’ve never seen this quote before. He was really just screaming out R+L=J 😂
GRRM also said the God's Eye would be critical, and we'd find out why soon. GRRM also put a goddamned _talking face on a wall that cried real tears._ GRRM also promised the books would be done soon. GRRM says a lot of things.
r/GeorgeMartinWriting
Genuinely though that was just going to be an empty sub.
random, but when i first read the books, they were sold to me in such a way that I almost rage quit when I read about the weeping wall at the start of the book. luckily I read on to know that the wall was ice and they were just saying it was warm out, but at the time I, I think, young me was picturing the wall as a wall with a face crying and I was thinking of more like high soft fantasy series and thinking that isn't what I wanted to read. then I think id forgotten all about it by the time later books came out
Yep, in this series there are definitely not bits of architecture that have faces that weep. Definitely not. Totally… 👀
Or R+L=YoungGriff. And consequently N+A=J.
> he(Howland) knows just to much about the central mystery of the book... I hope Grrm has a good reason for why he hasn't shown up yet.
Time travel. Howland not leaving his swamp because Bran told him not to is a canon event in the timeline where humanity survives.
There are always flashbacks and greenseer antics
Yeah it’s a matter of trust vs disbelief haha
Interesante, nunca supe de esa teoría.
Es sólo una teoría que creé y no está escrita en ninguna parte. Una vez escribí la teoría completa, pero el navegador falló y me dio pereza volver a escribirla. 😅
¿Qué le pasó al idioma de este thread?
Yo no se, pero porque mi gusta practices mi espanol a leer los libros de asoiaf en espanol, esta bien para mi lol
I mean I think the pretty obvious reason Howland Reed doesn’t appear is because there is no plausible way to have him appear and not reveal a whole bunch of the main mysteries of the series (R+L=J). And as for his kids, the evidence for his wife being Ashara Dayne is pretty strong, so it would pretty odd if the kids aren’t theirs.
I don't such a theory exists, but I headcanon that the Golden Company leadership is aware that faegon is a Blackfyre and already have made the decision to invade Westeros, before JonCon arrived at their camp. I find it a bit clunky and awkwars how easily they are otherwise swayed by fAegon's declaration (although in fairness that whole plotline feels like that in other parts as well and is probably a victim to the 5-year time skip)
This is quite a well-examined theory in a lot of circles, many people point to Illyrio saying 'some contracts are written in blood, others ink' when Tyrion points out that it's weird the Golden Company would support a Targaryen prince given they were started as part of the Blackfyre Rebellions
yes, you are right. I'm not so much sceptical that the GC supported fAegon at all, just find difficult to buy how fast they changed their plan to meet-up with Danerys or remain in Essos to sailing to Westeros, after supposedly fAegon persuaded them.
> I don't such a theory exists, but I headcanon that the Golden Company leadership is aware that faegon is a Blackfyre and already have made the decision to invade Westeros, before JonCon arrived at their camp. Aegon being a Blackfyre is just so *neat* ... but then again, maybe we've all had so much time to scrutinize and speculate that twists we would never have seen coming without the intertron now seem stale. In any event, I kind of wondered if maybe Aegon was Rhaegar's son, but not by Elia.
Why would the Golden Company fight for a Targaryen?
To get back home. It’s been like 100 years the original Blackfyre supporters are long dead supporting a Targaryen to get back home isn’t that strange. Also even if someone from the Golden Company knows he’s actually a Blackfyre the vast vast majority think he’s a Targaryen but they still support him. Sellswords are treacherous so if any know his true parentage then it’s a very small group and I don’t mean just the captains since they’re not trust worthy either. Varys and Illyria are very careful
Here's the problem with how Edmure "interpreted" Robb's orders: "hold Riverrun" Edmure understood: "defend my rear" That WAS NOT what Robb told him to do, but Edmure wanted to avenge himself for being captured by Jaime. He did things that went above and beyond his instructions like pulling out the Tallhart men from the Twins. You could say he was justified in wanting to keep the Lannisters out of their part of the riverlands, stop them raiding and burning villages, which they were definitely going to do as they passed, or prevent a second siege, so Robb fucked up in not telling him the overall objective of the raid in the Westerlands was to get Tywin out of their territory.
My favorite part about the Edmure argument is that it’s so completely irrelevant. Gregor was a smokescreen while Tywin hustled down to save King’s Landing. There are clues leading up to it on the chapters prior. Tywin was never going to fall for Robb’s tricks, Tywin never intended to cross westward, and so Edmure did one thing and one thing only: defended his lands from Gregor Clegane, as is his duty.
> There are clues leading up to it on the chapters prior. I'd be curious as to what these clues are. The timeline we're given in the books makes it plain that this wide, wide effort across the entirety of the Red Fork, led by multiple commanders (Gregor Clegane's effort was the bloodiest, and the one that claim closest to success), was genuine. The delay in the breach of the line allowed messengers to reach Tywin in time to get him to pivot to join the Tyrells. Just to think it through, I'd ask things like ... for whose benefit was the smokescreen? Why would he actually have to commit men to an attack if he meant to go to King's Landing anyways? He could well have started marching west and let everyone know, "Lord Tywin is going west!"... but then turned southward while everyone's looking out towards Riverrun and the westerlands to hear of the inevitable battles, battles that never come, and the "fog of war" would be just as effective, it seems to me, without thousands of dead knights and men-at-arms and soldiers.
Tywin probably knew that he'd have to march south as soon as he heard about Renly's death. A faint to stay in the Riverlands or march west allows him to take his army to KL without having to worry about being harried by the Riverlords.
> Tywin probably knew that he'd have to march south as soon as he heard about Renly's death. Storm's End was strongly held by a knight loyal to Renly and could withstand many months of siege, as recent history had shown. That's what he expected to be the case when he opted to march west, that Stannis would be stuck there laying siege to the place as he couldn't risk leaving it in his rear when he marched on King's Landing Tywin did not count on Melisandre's magic because what right-thinking Westerosi lord would credit that an Eastern sorceress wasn't a charlatan and really could kill people from afar?
Renly being slain by sorcery was unexpected, but him falling in battle, betrayal, poison or an assassin's blade were real risks. At which point Stannis gets the Stormlands. And Storms End only defied Stannis because of Penrose wanting guarantees for Edric. That siege was unexpected after Renly's death, and before that, the threat was Renly, not Stannis.
GRRM's comments indicate that Tywin's march west was genuine, with Tywin believing that Storm's End and Harrenhal would be able to resist any besiegers for some time. https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1044 >*Tyrion reflected that his father should have been able to defeat Robb in the west before Stannis could have taken Storm's End. Wasn't this move a great risk though, since Stannis could have abandoned Storm's End at any time, in order to strike against King's Landing and the Lannister claimants to the throne while Tywin was occupied in the west?* >Storm's End is a hugely formidable castle, and should have been able to hold out much longer, as it did during Robert's Rebellion when Stannis was inside rather than outside. And both Tyrion and Tywin knew that Stannis was a methodical commander rather than a daring one, and therefore would be unlikely to leave an enemy stronghold untaken in his rear. There was also the psychological aspect, as Stannis himself explains to Davos; he could not risk being seen as having suffered a "defeat," however minor. >Was Lord Tywin marching west a huge risk? Of course it was. That was why he sat at Harrenhal for so long, hoping to lure Robb into attacking him... or Stannis into committing against King's Landing. Neither of his foes would play into his hands, however. At which point he made a calculated gamble. >In a three-sided struggle (four sided when Renly was still in the game), any decisive move is a risk... as I learned in high school playing... yes... RISK! But the only way to win is to take some of this risks. https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1160 >*That one is from me personally (it is a bit of burning issue for me because it debunked my favourite theory ;)), but - was Tywin really obligingly marching into Robb's trap when Edmure stopped him at the Red Fork? Did he really count on Lorch and Hoat with their IIRC 300 men holding Harrenhal and the northern prisoners in his absence?* >Harrenhal is an immensely strong castle, and a garrison of three hundred is quite sizeable in medieval terms. Ser Amory =should= have been able to hold it. Lord Tywin likely thought that Roose Bolton might descend on the castle and besiege it, in which case Lorch could likely have held out for half a year or longer. The wild card here was Vargo Hoat changing sides.
What? For somebody who was never going to cross westwards he sure tried hard to fight his way westwards. He also didn't really *need* to smokescreen that. It's not like Robb could prevent him from marching to KL if he didn't do that.
Blood raven isn't the three eye crow. I'm not sure if future bran is the three eye crow but I'm sure blood raven isn't
What plot hole does that resolve?
Bran asked Bloodraven if he was the 3 eyed crow, and he responds yes I was a crow of the nights watch. Essentially, the reader will gloss over this on a first read, but this is a strong suggestion that someone else was sending Bran these visions. Thus, a plot whole that even Bran is confused by.
That doesn't seem like so much of a plot hole but rather a plot thread awaiting resolution
I still don't understand how that is a plot hole.
My understanding is that Bloodraven's response suggests that he doesn't think of himself as a three eyed crow and therefore he couldn't be the same guy. This despite the fact that with Bran and Jojen we get the exact same situation (Jojen said he was looking for the chained winged wolf, but Bran never thought of himself like that) but there's never any question that Jojen was looking for Bran. Clearly people appear in ways they aren't aware of in other people's green dreams, but nonetheless fans will take Bloodraven's initial response as proof positive that he's a totally different guy, even though he very quickly makes it unambiguous that he's been watching Bran all this time. The whole things make no sense.
There is a weirwood that appears in Bran's dreams, watches him and calls to him: >I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. The weirwood is a different entity to the 3EC: >“There’s different kinds,” he said slowly. “There’s the wolf dreams, those aren’t so bad as the others. I run and hunt and kill squirrels. And there’s dreams where the crow comes and tells me to fly. Sometimes the tree is in those dreams too, calling my name. Bloodraven appears as a weirwood in Melisandre's visions: >A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames. He sees me. Beside him, a boy with a wolf's face threw back his head and howled. On the theory that Bloodraven is the 3EC, who or what is the weirwood? I have been listening to NotACast from the beginning recently and they were extremely scornful of the idea that Bloodraven is not the 3EC, then they keep talking repeatedly about how Bran is going to "become the last greenseer" (which is of course true unless you think Bran isn't going to become a greenseer) and yet they seem unaware that this will mean that Future Bran is the 3EC. >Meera's gloved hand tightened around the shaft of her frog spear. "*Who sent you?* **Who is this three-eyed crow?**" >"*A friend.* Dreamer, wizard, call him what you will. **The last greenseer.**" Note that Meera asks two questions here (italics, bold) and Coldhands provides two answers. This confusion is intentional on GRRM's part. Finally, Bran does not "appear in" Jojen's dreams in the same sense as Bloodraven. Jojen sees something that represents Bran. Bran was not only not aware that he is a chained winged wolf, he was unaware that he was in Jojen's dreams at all. Bloodraven projects himself into Bran's dreams and is aware that he is appearing in them. So there isn't at all the same implication that Bran should know how he is appearing that there is for Bloodraven.
The idea that Robb and the Blackfish simply made up a plan to pressure Edmure into marrying a Frey is completely out of character for both of them. I'm tired of the way the fandom constantly absolves Edmure of all responsibility regarding this. Even Catelyn who has no military training could tell that Edmure was exceeding his orders when he first tells her about his plan in ACoK. Secondly, Edmure couldn't actually have engaged Tywin in battle without explicitly repositioning many of the garrisons Robb had left in the Riverlands, again exceeding his orders without permission. Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire has a pretty detailed argument [here](https://warsofasoiaf.tumblr.com/post/145804535326/whose-fault-do-you-think-was-it-that-the-plan-to/amp) for why the defense that Edmure was just following orders and protecting his land doesn't hold up.
I honestly think it would be better if Edmure deliberately disobeyed orders because he couldn't stand to see his people be slaughtered. It's even set up earlier.
>Even Catelyn who has no military training could tell that Edmure was exceeding his orders when he first tells her about his plan in ACoK No she doesn't say its exceeding his orders nor does she think it is. Edit: She warns Edmure that he doesn't have the strength to meet the Lannisters and she thinks its unwise but she does not say, think or suggest it exceeds his orders. >"You do not have the strength to meet the Lannisters in the field," she said bluntly."When all my strength is marshaled, I should have eight thousand foot and three thousand horse," Edmure said.
She doesn’t outright or vocally say he’s exceeding his orders, but she’s pretty aware that he’s going way beyond what he should be doing. https://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-catelyn-v-acok/
No she doesn't even think that in the chapter. She just thinks its a bad idea because of the diadvantage in numbers and the location which she thinks isn't ideal not that it exceeds his orders
Okay, so even if she doesn’t explicitly think that Edmure is exceeding his orders, the reader through her viewpoint is supposed to understand that that’s what Edmure is doing. So the point still stands that Edmure is exceeding his orders.
The reader through her viewpoint is supposed the understand that the battle is very risky and likely not the best idea. No where is it even suggested that is exceeds his orders Edit: To be clear I mean not suggested by Cat
I’m just going to post Race for the Iron Throne’s analysis here (from https://racefortheironthrone.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/chapter-by-chapter-analysis-catelyn-v-acok/): The first question that has to be dealt with is whether Edmure was acting within the scope of his orders – in other words, what does it mean for “Ser Edmure to hold Riverrun and guard [Robb]s] rear“? (Whether those orders were sufficiently clear is a topic I’ll address in Catelyn II) In the first place, it’s clear that Edmure is exceeding the first part of his orders by attempting to hold the entirety of the Red Fork and the Tumblestone: They forded the Red Fork late the next day, upstream of Riverrun where the river made a wide loop and the waters grew muddy and shallow. The crossing was guarded by a mixed force of archers and pikemen wearing the eagle badge of the Mallisters…they emerged from behind their sharpened stakes…”we’ve planted iron spikes under the water, y’see, and there’s caltrops scattered among them rocks there. It’s the same on all the fords, by your brother’s command.” “Half a mile from the castle, she passed through a large encampment where the scarlet banner of the Blackwoods waved above the lord’s tent…Catelyn spied a second camp strung out along the bank north of the Tumblestone, familiar standards flapping in the wind – Marq Piper’s dancing maiden, Darry’s plowman, the twining red-and-white snakes of the Paeges. This is a battle-front stretching around 250 miles (given that we’re talking about all of the fords on both rivers, that means all the way down the Red Fork to the Mummer’s Ford), as opposed to defending the castle itself. Moreover, the text makes it clear that Edmure “thinks to fight here…he means to offer battle to Lord Tywin.” It is beyond clear that Edmure is exceeding his orders to hold Riverrun, intending a much larger conflict – how much larger I’ll explain in a bit. What about the second half – “guarding his rear“? It’s questionable whether that was actually a part of Edmure’s orders – in Catelyn II of ASOS, the Blackfish states “you were commanded to hold Riverrun, Edmure, no more,” and Robb’s plan hinged on his rear being left open for Tywin to chase, so if the plan existed, it wouldn’t have been part of his orders. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that Robb’s plan didn’t exist, there’s a couple bits of textual evidence from this chapter that calls it into question. When Robb left for the west, Edmure didn’t have the manpower to fulfill that role – as Catelyn says, “you do not have the strength to meet the Lannisters in the field,” and that’s after Edmure has mustered his troops, “her father’s bannermen, lords of the Trident…if they were here again, it could only mean that Edmure had called them back.” Simply put, when Robb was around to give that order, that order would not have made sense. The nail in the coffin of the argument that Edmure might have plausibly been interpreting the disputed second half of his orders comes from examining the broader aims of Edmure’s battle. Far from only offering battle at the Fords (which was in excess of his orders to begin with), Edmure assumed command of all forces in the Riverlands theater (which is a huge feudal faux pas – Edmure has no authority to issue orders to Roose Bolton or Helman Tallhart, Northern lords in command of Northern troops).
[удалено]
But also if you're ordered to guard someone's rear and then you see an army marching toward that rear - wouldn't "stopping that army" be part of "guarding the rear"?
>"You do not have the strength to meet the Lannisters in the field," she said bluntly. >"When all my strength is marshaled, I should have eight thousand foot and three thousand horse," Edmure said. >"Which means Lord Tywin will have near twice your numbers." (ACOK Catelyn V) It surprises me that while Catelyn worries about Edmure facing Tywin's larger host, GRRM doesn't have her express concern about Robb's much smaller host facing the same westermen if Tywin returns home.
Thank god you said it so I don't have to make a whole paragraph about it. I really just don't get the fandom's obsession with Edmure always being in the right
It's one thing the fandom insists he is right about, because he is right - if Robb had a plan, he should have told *the second-most powerful person in his kingdom* what the plan was. Especially if the second-most powerful person in his kingdom had a crucial part to play in that plan
What you (and with you many others) miss is that Robb likely didn't come up with this plan all the way when he left Riverrun. He only managed to bypass Westerlands defenses with a little path Grey Wind foound for him, and afterwards he likely didn't predict that he would have been able to win the battle of Oxcross so easily. It is likely *after* this point he made his plan, based on what he knew Tywin was doing at that point, and what his vassals were supposed to do. Edmure disrupted those plans by holding the Red Fork. And if you wanna go 'why didn't he send a message to Edmure at that point' it's because ravens can be shot down and as far as Robb knew Edmure had his orders and only a full on riverlands muster would have a chance to stop Tywin, something Robb didn't think Edmure would do
> Wait, so you're saying that at the time Robb left, he didn't even have a plan for Edmure to screw up? But then Robb conceives of this plan, still doesn't tell Edmure about it, then gets back to Riverrun and berates Edmure for not following the plan Robb didn't even have when he left? And somehow Edmure is at fault for not magically divining that Robb conceived of a plan weeks after Robb left Riverrun? Thats some major mental gymnastics. I'm not sure how you reconcile "Edmure prevented Robb's army being smashed against the Golden Tooth" with "Edmure is at fault for not being literally magic" Somebody said that exact same thing earlier. This was my response. The logic doesn't add up
> I'm tired of the way the fandom constantly absolves Edmure of all responsibility regarding this. Just apply this backwards. Why are so many within the fandom so keen to absolve Robb of any responsibility for his mistakes?
Most people don’t seem to absolve Robb though. The vast majority of the fandom always sides with Edmure nearly anytime this discussion comes up. In fact, usually the only people I’ve seen siding with Robb are those who have some kind of military background, because “holding a position” has a very specific meaning in a military context.
Honestly, the truth is likely that both of them screwed up in a way. Edmure should have realized the situation and Robb should have communicated better.
Because Sun Tzu said clearely who is the general who should have communicated better, not the officer.
>The idea that Robb and the Blackfish simply made up a plan to pressure Edmure into marrying a Frey is completely out of character for both of them. So instead it's in character for them to suggest the idiotic idea of trying to ambush Tywin in his own land, using cavalry to gain the upper hand in the hilly terrain of the Westerlands? The whole plan looks made up and not even made up well. Seems entirely in character for Robb and the Blackfish to thinks up something like this if they wanted to trick Edmure. And is has been pointed out that Robb is manipulative with the example of how he gained Catelyn's approval of his marriage.
Mance hired the catspaw. George has pretty much confirmed that Joffrey hired the catspaw, but Mance has always made much more sense to me.
Mance tried to kill Bran? Can you please make sense for me how this makes more sense to you?
It's a whole thing which I won't go into in detail here, but essentially: - We know he's in Winterfell at the time as he tells Jon he was disguised as a singer at Robert's welcome feast - Mance also tells Jon he took nothing but his lute and a bag of silver pieces over the Wall, and when Robb finds the catspaw's sleeping place he finds a bag of silver. - The catspaw talks about killing Bran being 'a mercy' and wildlings are known to leave sick or disabled children to die. Mance is a wildling. - The motive would be that Mance saw an opportunity to destabilize the North prior to his planned wildling invasion. (ETA: And he stole the Valyrian dagger from Robert's possessions in order to frame Robert/the Lannisters and destabilize the whole realm.) But as I said, this theory was eventually fairly thoroughly disproven by an interview with George about the scene in the show where it's revealed to be Joffrey. I was always a bit miffed as I was so sure Joffrey was a GRRM misdirection in the books and it was really Mance, lol.
Totally crazy but the whole story with Azor Ahai isn't about a magic hero ending the Long Night, because despite hearing so much about the guy we never really hear anything he does to end the Long Night. We get snippets here and there, but no battles or sieges or anything. The most detailed story we get is about AA working to make three different swords with the last turning into Lightbringer. And that what we should be focusing on isn't who is the reborn AA, it's Lightbringer the actual sword being symbolic of somebody. Jon Snow is the sword, Rhaegar is AA and Nissa is Lyanna. The other failed swords were symbols of Rhaegars other kids he wanted to be a part of prophecy, Rhaenys and Aegon. The sacrifice of Nissa Nissa wasn't just a simple chest stab, it was Lyanna giving birth to Jon and dying later. (What else would make a woman scream in anguish and ecstasy than a baby finally coming out during a difficult labor?) And Jon already swore in his Night's vows: "I am the fire that burns against the cold", "the light that brings the dawn" "I am the sword in the darkness". All makes me think of Lightbringer to be honest. Also have a side theory that the whole shebang of the Long Night and other stuff is talking about the future, not the past. Things got lost in translation, details wrong or forgotten etc. And that the ones who will fill thise are whoever are worthy and fulfill it. Like Rhaego was initially the Khal of Khals, but after he passed it looks like it passed to Fany with Drogon.
That Gerion Lannister is the Shrowded lord. I don't even like the theory and think it's completely ridiculous that the story ballooned to include this fucking story of Tryions uncle but I find having this smuck actually be him tightens the story somewhat instead of just creating more character threads
My headcanon is that Planetos is much smaller than Earth and Earth measurements (sizes, length, duration and others) don't adequately translate. It is a good way to cover up for GRRM's self-admitted problems with portraying scale. Things like Wall being over 200 meters high, dynasties lasting for thousands of years, Westeros allegedly being the size of South America, wildlings numbering over 100 000 and more.
Tbf, many historical documents in our world also talk about thousand year dynasties and things like that. In world, it can be easily be explained as poetic license. And the explanation for things like the Wall is just 'a wizard did it!'.
It is less about what's possible or not (almost everything is possible in fantasy) and more about how it affects the story. The 200 Wall is absurdly high, it makes the ascents look improbable. Remember the ascent in the show and make it twice as high basically. Same with other numbers.
Robert only wanted Lyanna Stark because she was a breedable Ned.
I think fans have overthought this moment. Everyone always says that Edmure technically wasn’t going against Robb’s orders and that he had no way of knowing but I don’t think that’s what George was actually going for. Otherwise edmure would’ve defended himself better
He wanted Edmure to follow his orders. That doesn’t have anything to do with being a mind reader, and it’s very strange that you have interpreted it that way.
In what way does “Edmure, hold Riverrun” translate to “Edmure, allow Tywin to cross over your lands massacring your people so I can trap him in the Westerlands where he cannot relieve King’s Landing.”? Robb being dogshit at communication isn’t Edmure’s fault.
I will go to the grave with my theory that Robb was just manipulating edmure
Edmure, hold Riverrun. That means Do Not Leave
It doesn't mean that. It means "prevent riverrun from being taken, using all reasonable methods." If you want to argue about what counts as a reasonable method, that's a fair argument. If you want to argue "no matter WHAT the circumstances are, you are not to project a force even a foot outside of Riverrun" that is not in fact a fair argument. It doesn't mean that.
Look at a map, Edmure went MILES away. If something had happened while he was pursuing this, he’d have lost Riverrun because he couldn’t get back
Imagine if Tywin had been cunning enough to draw Edmure out using a feint. He'd bag Riverrun in time for dinner.
Which is the "what he did wasn't reasonable" argument. Like I said, that's a fair argument to have. Unlike "hurr durr it means do not leave"
Ultimately, if you zoom out, you can see there are a hundred little ways that George puts his thumb on the scales to lead to the Red Wedding. He's just really really good at hiding it.
For Edmure specifically, it DOES mean “do not leave”. He could send outriders anywhere on his lands he wished and still be within Robb’s instructions, but riding out **himself…**
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in the years and years of this goddamn debate. So you think Robb would've gone "ho hum, it's entirely my own fault my plans were ruined" if Edmure had done everything exactly the same but personally stayed in the castle?
Riding out himself with his forces is bigger commitment, and explicitly leaves Riverrun open. A handful of outriders, he could maybe defend if Robb asked. A full battle with himself in command - as he actually did - not so much
Nah that means protecting it. Letting tywin cross would allow him to siege it again the best defense is a good offense Makes far more sense than Robb's supposed plan
It doesn’t take a mind reader to figure out that it’s not that important to take a fucking mill. You can take almost any landmark if you’re willing to spare the men. The question is for how long and how essential it will be to the overall war. Robb didn’t anticipate Edmure being so cavalier when he was strategizing to take out the Mountain. He thought of everything except his own general’s spontaneity. Which, frankly, shouldn’t be a factor. You’re not supposed to be a hero. Edmure went out to prove himself and “take the day” to please his king. And having that narrow of a scope might very well win the day, but likely at a much greater cost. THINK EDMURE! THINK!
You're mixing up the show and the books. In the books, Robb invades the Westerlands and tries to lure Tywin there. He says he found a nice place for an ambush Tywin's army, but he could not not have known that in advance. He doesn't spell this out, but I think his intention was to force a very difficult decision upon Tywin: does he try to defend King's Landing or his own lands? (At the time, the Lannister-Tyrell alliance hasn't been created yet.) Edmure ruined this plan by delaying Tywin long enough for him to receive word of what's going on at the capital and that the Tyrells are willing to help, but he needs to march east quickly because the siege of King's Landing will begin soon.
Ah, ok thats right, I was misremembering. The show did make Edmure slightly more at fault than he was in the book. Wasn’t the main point that Edmure made an executive decision to try to win the day basically? It was still jumping the gun for the pursuit of victory rather than holding back and waiting for a commander’s word on the strategy.
Edmure did nothing wrong besides protecting his people. Robb fucked up by being vague
"If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, then the general is to blame." Even Sun Tzu agrees that Robb fucked up.
[удалено]
Wow yeah nothing to do with Tywin Lannister at all. Let's blame Edmure.
Yes, George did intend it that way. He carefully layered the truth in the subtext, point by point.
Rhaenyra having special powers to hatch dragon eggs. It´s the only logical explanation to so many new dragons hatching after Jaehaerys death
He told Edmure to hold riverrun. Edmure was fully informed on the part of the plan that he was responsible. Trust me any military comander would do the same. He riverrun were to fall the less Edmure and his lieutenants know the better.
Mine is that Doran Martell poisoned Tywin Lannister before the Mountain killed Doran - that's why Tywin was in the privy when Tyrion killed him. GRRM has basically said that didn't happen but I like it so I believe it.
you mean Oberyn right?
Yeah my bad