Game of Thrones Season 7, Episode 7 discussion thread *SPOILERS*

[OlennasWimple]

CAUTION - HERE BE DRAGONS (PROBABLY) AND SPOILERS!

THIS THREAD IS FOR DISCUSSION OF SEASON 7, EPISODE 7 "THE DRAGON AND THE WOLF"

Come and discuss the very last episode in the penultimate series, airing August 27th at 2am UK time! Don't read the thread if you want to avoid finding out what happens in Season 7 but also Seasons 1-6.

Please avoid discussing leaks and production details for Seasons 7 and 8 but speculate away on what we have learnt from the new episodes and what it might mean for the rest of the Season and the ultimate winner(s) of the Game of Thrones.

He didn't tell Catelyn because it would have put Jon at risk. He had to maintain complete secrecy even from Cat. Remember he barely knew her when he brought Jon home. Maybe after ten years of marriage he might have behaved differently but he didn't know he could trust her.

Thanks Adalind, does make sense when you think they were newlyweds when he brought him home.

Thanks Arya and McTufty, all makes a lot more sense now re: Cersei, Golden Company, Jon not being a bastard etc.

Agree that Eddard would have been waaay better than Aegon! at Daedard.

Daedard. Just because Ned is dead. Anyway...

I would have been so happy if Jon was a legitimate Targaryan named after Ned! That would have been perfect.

Can someone help me out with a plot point please, I may be being dense! So Euron and cersei plotted for him to make a show of pissing off home to the Iron islands, presumably to put Team targ off the scent of what was coming (the Golden Army thing). But he buggered off in response to the wight and it not being able to swim? No? So they couldn't have planned it before he saw it could he? It's only a small point but it's bugging me!

Also where's Meera now? I've forgotten.

indubiousbattle

They couldn't have planned that specific excuse but perhaps they planned him storming off under a fake falling out?

InDubious, they could have planned that he would find some reason to visibly storm off, as you say to make Team Targ think Cersei is losing support. If it hadn't been the wight it would be something else. Euron also interrupts Tyrion right at the beginning of the meeting and tries to pick a fight with Theon which doesn't work.

I'm ok with that bit but I lost patience with trying to make sense of Cersei's motivations and I suspect it's just poor writing. If her ultimate aim was just to lie baldly and get them off her back, why all the to and fro about trying to extract a promise of neutrality from Jon, storming off etc.

This is very much a post-GRRM thing, scenes seem to happen because the TV writers want to put a cool bunch of people together and get a few laughs rather than because characters have specific goals and things they want to extract from each other.

Meera was going to head home, she specifically mentioned her father Howland. Who may yet come back into the story to tell Jon he's really a Targaryen (Howland was the only other survivor besides Ned from the fight outside the Tower of Joy where Lyanna was giving birth I think?)

Or that was what we all thought anyway but there's less need now we have Bran the three-eyed mansplainer.

Lila Howland Reed is somewhat redundant now we have the Bran 9000 and Septon Maynard's marriage certificate.... Sigh...

I saw a great comment on Preston Jacob's latest review video "Can't Septon Maynard just annul season 7?"

I want to ask a question but not sure if it's a spoiler! How to phrase it......Is Jon a twin?

InDubiousBattle it's not really a spoiler, more of a theory that's been kicking around the book forums for years. One theory is that Jona Dan Meera are twins. Idea is that Ned took Jon back from ToJ and Howland took Meera back.

Another theory (Preston Jacobs supported this) is that Dany is Rhaegar and Lyanna's daughter. That would make twincest mk2.

I think both theories are largely irrelevant as far as the show is concerned from this point, but are interesting to discuss.

Have just finished re-reading Feast of Crows and Dance With Dragons. I can't see any indications that Aegon is false! Not yet, anyway. Varys at the end makes me think he is the real Aegon. (Beware the perfumed seneschal.)

However, I can see indications that Dany is actually the daughter of Adara Dayne - which would be a brilliant fake by Varys. Get the eyes of the world focussed on Danaerys while secretly raising Aegon, the true heir, in greater safety. Who would be her father in that scenario?

My explanation for Jon being called Aegon, fwiw: Rhaegar is convinced that Aegon is the PWWP. He thinks the name Aegon is important. So when Lyanna hears that both Rhaegar and Aegon are dead, she gives her baby Aegon's name in honour of Rhaegar's beliefs. (That is, IF Jon turns out to really be called Aegon in the books.)

If the marriage between Elia and Rhaegar was annulled, does that automatically de-legitimise their children? I don't think it does. Rhaegar believed there would be three heads of the dragon - i.e., that he needed a third child. He would have wanted to set Elia aside so that he could have a third legitimate child, but he wouldn't have wanted to de-legitimise his existing children, and especially not Aegon, believing him to be the PWWP. It would actually have made more sense to make it divorce, not annulment!

Should read "Jon and Meera"

TooExtra I don't think Varys is the perfumed sensechal, I think it's the ship that is bringing Tyrion, Jorah and Moqorro to Slaver's Bay on. Tyrion asks the name for the ship and the captain tells him that the name almost literally translates to 'stinky steward'.

Aegon being fake is indicated in the HOTU visions in ACoK. Dany sees a cloth dragon, or fake dragon, or mummer's dragon, being held aloft by a cheering crowd. Quaithe warns Dany that the mummer's dragon is on its way.

Ah ok, clearly I didn't go back far enough in my re-read! It would make sense that he's fake given that if he isn't he would be important enough to be in the show! I don't think Varys knows he is fake, though - would Griff/Jon Connington know?

The Stinky Steward bit - misdirection? That boat never gets near Dany, so why would she have to be wary? The three players on it are Jorah, Tyrion and Penny. Oh, and Moqorro. She might have to beware of him, but the ship didn't bring him to her. The trouble with ASOIAF is that there are so many red herrings!

I still think it's more likely to be Varys - might explain that weird scene where she questions his loyalty a few episodes back. A clumsy way of casting doubt which was done much better in the epilogue to ADWD.

Slightly weirder theory: the marriage to Lyanna/annulment with Elia may have been Rhaegar gearing up for a Henry VIII moment. There are a feck-load of religions in the books - maybe he was aiming to set up his own? Or overrule the High Septon to get his own way re the legitimacy of all his children?

Or was he ruthless enough to have decided that the prophecy fit Lyanna's child better and therefore decided to abandon the first Aegon?

There is that intriguing last conversation between Jaime and Rhaegar when Rhaegar hints that he wants to 'make changes' but he dies before Jaime ever finds out what the changes were. Certainly, there was no love lost between Aerys and Rhaegar at the end.

In the books I don't think we'll ever find out Rhaegar's views on the fulfilment of the prophecy and it's all a bit of a moot point. GRRM seems to be telling us over and over in all his books that fights over hereditary succession is something which creates nothing but crap for the vast majority.

One of Jorah's most important bits of advice to Dany when she's talking about the smallfolk cheering for her return is that 'the samllfolk pray for good harvests and heathy children and summers that never end' or something like that.

On the subject of the perfumed seneschal, I've actually read quite a compelling theory that it could refer to Satin and his complicity in the Pink Letter and the execution of Jon Snow.

Sorry for multiple posts, but I'm in a post- books re-read spiral! So at the end of ADWD Asha/Yara is a prisoner of Stannis, who is somewhere in the snow outside Winterfell. Selyse and Shireen are at the Wall with Melisandre. Theon and Jeyne Poole have just stumbled into camp.

Jon has just been stabbed. He was on the verge of sending Tormund to Hardhome to save wildlings from dead things in the water. Alys Karstark arrived and was married to a Thenn.

Davos has been sent to Skagos to find Rickon (I am dying to find out what happens there!) by Lord Manderly. Lord Manderly is in Winterfell with Roose and Ramsay Bolton and has been slashed across the throats but we don't know whether he's dead or not.

Jon sent Mance Rayder south to rescue 'Arya' but he has been captured by Ramsay, who sent him a letter saying he will kill Mance and Arya unless Jon stays at the Wall. Jon is about to ride south with wildlings as support, in defiance of his vows, when he is stabbed.

Sansa is in the Vale and Littlefinger has a plot to marry her to Harry the Heir, at which point he will probably kill off Sweetrobin and announce Sansa's heritage. Wondering whether the plan is for Sansa to be declared Queen of the Vale and of the North at that point (the Vale being one of the original Seven Kingdoms).

Arya is still learning to be a Faceless Man. She's not blind for half as long in the book as it seems in the show!

Bran is under the tree learning to be the Three Eyed Raven and warging into Hodor and Summer. Interestingly, it is set out clearly at the beginning of the book that warging into a person is an abomination. Is Bran unwittingly becoming an abomination?

Sam is en route to Oldtown with Gilly and Mance's baby.

Cersei has just done the walk of shame and everyone is assuming she's toast.

Brienne and Jaime were last seen heading off together - Brienne was captured at the end of AFOC by Lady Stoneheart and was about to be hanged when she shouted a word. I know the word is revealed in the show but I can't remember what it is! Then she appears to Jaime and says he has to leave his army and go with her and it's to do with her quest for finding Sansa/Arya.

Dany has just been discovered by the enemy Dothraki.

'she shouted a word.

The word is 'sword'. GRRM was asked a few years ago what the word was and he confirmed it. Stoneheart offere her the sword or the noose (go get Jaime or die) and she initially chose the noose. However, on seeing Pod hanging she changed her mind.

You forgot my personal favourite - the younger Clegane - who is in therapy and digging graves on the Quiet Isle.

Gregor may or may not be Robert Strong.

Euron is reaving up the Mander and Victarion is heading for Slaver's Bay.

TooExtra have you read any of the sample Winds chapters?

Tyrion is signing away lots of gold that he hasn't got to join the Second Sons with Brown Ben Plumm, who betrayed Dany. Jorah and Penny are with him. They are just outside Meereen.

Griff/Jon Connington and Aegon have retaken Griffin's Roost and are about to march on Storm's End. Griff has greyscale.

Victarion Greyjoy is sailing for Meereen to marry Dany. I suspect he will be the Greyjoy who brings Dany home. He is accompanied by a creepy Red Priest named Moqorro. He murdered his previous wife and is highly fucked up. He has the Dragonbinder horn with him. Euron sits the Seastone Chair and Victarion nominally works for him but is planning to betray him - he intends to marry Dany himself, not bring her back as Euron's bride.

The situation in Meereen is confused and irritating - Barristan Selmy is in charge atm. Hizdahr is imprisoned for trying to poison Dany and kill Drogon.

I read them when they came out but not for ages! They're next on my list.

X posted