Hello, friends!
As you may or may not know, Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire has its own Tumblr page (as well as its own Twitter and Facebook pages). Even more excitingly, a little while back we here at the blog partnered with ASOIAF University to answer questions about A Song of Ice and Fire. We – that is, myself and NFriel – take the text-based questions submitted to us, write up thoughtful text-based answers, and publish these answers on the Tumblr.
So every Monday we present to you The Ravenry. We collect the questions we’ve answered during the previous week over on the Tumblr in post form, with a brief description of each, and publish it here, and link that post on Twitter and Facebook as well. We’ve got a lot of hypotheticals, as well as a few political and setting questions.
A word about hypotheticals, the more we have to theorize, the less we can give an accurate answer. So, for example, “What if Aemond never attacked Lucerys Velaryon outside of Storm’s End, how does that impact the Dance of the Dragons” is tough, because there’s probably no Blood and Cheese, and so on. While we’re happy to answer your questions, the further we have to reach for straws, the less likely we’ll be able to give an answer that we feel confident enough in sharing with the fandom. The more limited in scope, the more reliable and sound any book-based answer will be. Certainly, ask all the questions you desire, but please be aware that we have no special insight or access to secret material.
So, without further ado, here’s The Ravenry for the week of 14 September:
- NFriel theorizes whether or not Margaery knew of the plan to assassinate Joffrey.
- NFriel posits why Aenys and Maegor were born so long after Aegon’s wedding day.
- NFriel answers why Visenya had such a dark reputation.
- SomethingLikeALawyer denies that Joffrey being a decent person would have stopped Stannis and Jon Arryn from investigating their legitimacy.
- NFriel discusses the limitations Ser Willem Darry had in his court-in-exile in Braavos.
- NFriel lays out the peculiar family name dynamic for married noble women in Westeros.
- SomethingLikeALawyer stresses Tywin’s next moves following a Stannis victory at the Blackwater.
- SomethingLikeALawyer outlines how Jon Arryn would have handled Elia and her kids.
- SomethingLikeALawyer speculates that any Strong Bastard would have difficulty securing the Throne if a trueborn Targaryen lived.
- SomethingLikeALawyer highlights the problems with trials by seven that prevent them from being more commonplace.
- SomethingLikeALawyer demonstrates why few Westerosi were willing to follow Willem Darry in Braavos.
- NFriel compares a Lyanna-Robert marriage to the destructive Cersei-Robert one.
- NFriel notes the dangers of marrying Rhaenys to Renly in terms of succession.
- NFriel acknowledges Lyanna was a naive teenager and a bit of a hypocrite if she left with Rhaegar willingly.
- SomethingLikeALawyer gives a gameplan for Tywin and Varys if Renly lays siege to Kings Landing.
- NFriel scopes out a Westeros where Aerys died at Summerhall and Rhaegar was a toddler king after the Ninepenny Kings.
As always, we love to hear your text-based questions, so if you have a burning question about ASOIAF, click this link to send us a raven. The more specific the question, the better text-based answer we can write, although we do our best to answer them all.
SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King
