No Happy Choices and No Happy Endings: A Monstrous Sacrifice in TWOW

Intro

Artwork by Fantasy Flight Games

“There is power in a king’s blood,” the old maester had warned, “and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this.” The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast? Only a monster would give a living child to the flames. (ADWD, Jon I)

“Sacrifice is never easy or it is not true sacrifice” underpins the central struggle between Stannis, Melisandre and Davos in A Storm of Swords. Where Stannis wonders aloud, “what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom”, Davos responds with “everything.” The context of this conversation is the fate of Edric Storm, bastard nephew to Stannis. And while readers find resolution in the survival of Edric Storm in A Storm of Swords, the question that Stannis poses and Davos answers doesn’t conclude with Edric Storm.

While Game of Thrones showed us a version of that conclusion with the burning of Shireen Baratheon, this will likely not be the extent of the dynamic of human sacrifice in A Song of Ice and Fire. Instead, George RR Martin has laid down significant groundwork in the extant material for a similar conflict to erupt early in The Winds of Winter — with Melisandre, a Davos archetype and the life of a bastard boy set against the fate of a kingdom.

The Ravenry: Week of 3/7/2016

Hello, everyone!

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,  we here at the blog have partnered with ASOIAF University to answer questions about A Song of Ice and Fire.  We – that is, SomethingLikeaLawyer and I – take the text-based questions submitted to us, write up thoughtful, text-based answers, and publish these answers on the Tumblr.

Another productive week for us in the Tumblr-verse. The Hand always has the best answers to meta questions because he is all kinds of brilliant, and his answer to favorite aspects of ASOIAF warfare is no exception.  Just as well, the Hand tackled the false assertion that the Freys were justified in enacting the Red Wedding, and dreamed up some excellent alternate histories about Aegon IV dying before the follies of his reign and Jaime Lannister protecting Elia Martell. As for me, I wrote another essay – The Windblown Grass, all about terrible strategist Doran Martell – thought up some Blackfyre words, and added a defining character moment for Theon to Tumblr friend Poor Quentyn’s excellent post to the same.

Without further ado, here’s The Ravenry for the week of March 7:

The Ravenry: Week of 12/7/2015

Welcome back one again!

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,  we here at the blog have partnered with ASOIAF University to answer questions about A Song of Ice and Fire.  We – that is, NFriel and I – 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. Lot of at-length questions and responses, with some lengthy meta on Barristan Selmy, Euron Greyjoy, Dragonstone as a holding, three certain pies, a new theory on why Jaehaerys bypassed Rhaenys the Queen-Who-Never-Was, and a 1,500 word piece on why Robert’s Rebellion and Renly’s Rebellion were different beasts.

Without further ado, here’s The Ravenry for the week of December 7:

The Ravenry: Week of 11/23/2015

Hello seekers. If you’re an American, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. If not, well, I still hope you have something to be thankful for,

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,  we here at the blog have partnered with ASOIAF University to answer questions about A Song of Ice and Fire.  We – that is, NFriel and I – 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. So, if you’ve got a lot of questions about actual or potential marraiges, or you want to see a few theories have their glaring errors exposed to the world, this is the week for you.

Without further ado, here’s The Ravenry for the week of November 23:

The Ravenry: Week of 10/19/2015

Hello, lovelies!

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,  we here at the blog have partnered with ASOIAF University to answer questions about A Song of Ice and Fire.  We – that is, SomethingLikeaLawyer and I – 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. This was another productive week for the Lord Hand and me, including several long analysis pieces on Renly, Rhaenyra, and Robert’s Rebellion (alliteration is amazingly addictive). There were also a few meta questions, from answering questions to modernizing the series.

Before we start, I want to speak a little about question-asking. This is something the Hand talked about last week, but I wanted to bring it up again. “What if” questions are very difficult for us to answer, particularly the broader these questions get. We only have access to the same materials as the rest of the fandom; some of the hypothetical questions we get involve rewriting entire storylines, including a great many jumps and guesses. As much as we can, we like to stick to what we can pull out of the materials, so as much as you can, we ask that you narrow your hypos as much as possible. Asking who Robb might have betrothed Sansa to had she been returned according to his terms is fine. Asking how a living Laena Velaryon would have affected the entire Dance of the Dragons is too difficult to us for answer without essentially writing an entirely new story.

So, without further ado, here’s The Ravenry for the week of October 19:

The Ravenry: Week of 10/5/2015

Good morning (or afternoon, or evening, or whenever you are in the time-space continuum), lovelies!

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,  we here at the blog have partnered with ASOIAF University to answer questions about A Song of Ice and Fire.  We – that is, SomethingLikeaLawyer and I – 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. This week was a busy time for the Ravenry (especially for the Lord Hand), with 48 questions answered (the most we’ve ever done here). We traveled all around Westeros and Essos, forward and back in wibbly wobbly spacetime, from individual characters to meta-thematic questions.

A note about question answering. We here at the Ravenry do our best to answer every question we get, but it’s a, well, Sisyphean task. We do, however, reserve the right not to answer rude comments. Demanding to have a question answered will not get the questioned answered more quickly. This is not usually a problem, of course; the vast majority of the questions we get are well-meaning and respectful.

Without further ado, here’s The Ravenry for the week of October 5:

The Ravenry: Week of 9/28/2015

Hello seekers,

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,  we here at the blog have partnered with ASOIAF University to answer questions about A Song of Ice and Fire.  We – that is, NFriel and myself – 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. The Queen Regent and the Lord Hand had their most productive week yet, discussing everything from books in Westeros to marriages and beddings. Plenty of hypotheticals and theorycraft, there’s certainly something for everyone this week.

Here’s The Ravenry for the week of September 28th:

The Ravenry: Week of 9/7/2015

Salutations, lovelies!

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 SomethingLikeaLawyer – 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’re like the ASOIAF version of Navi, guiding you through the world, except without berating you to “Hey, listen!” every 2 minutes.

So, without further ado, here’s The Ravenry for the week of 7 September:

The Ravenry: Week of 8/24/2015

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,  we here at the blog have partnered with ASOIAF University to answer questions about A Song of Ice and Fire.  We – that is, myself and SomethingLikeaLawyer – 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 were both busy answering a whole bunch of different questions this week, from explaining the Conqueror’s Dornish letter to looking at a Stark victory on the Green Fork to – ugh, R+L=J&M. Look, we here at Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire love to asnwer your questions. We strive to provide thoughtful, researched answers to your FOR THE LOVE OF R’HLLOR THAT THEORY NEEDS TO DIE AND THEN GET REVIVED BY BLOOD MAGIC JUST SO I CAN KILL IT AGAIN.

It’s fine. I’m fine.

Here’s The Ravenry for the week of August 24:

What if Game of Thrones, Season 5 was Good, Like Really Good? Part 1: King’s Landing, Braavos and Castle Black

Game of Thrones Season 5 is the most controversial season of the show so far. Many factors went into this. Whether it was the show perhaps passing the books in some storylines, the show’s deviation from the source material or the way that the show adapted scenes from the books, fans had mixed reactions to the season. In this podcast episode, we delve into Season 5. But instead of simply hating on the show, we talk about the parts of the season that we liked. And we liked some of it quite a lot. But there was some that we didn’t like.

In this 1st of 2 parts, we talk about 3 locations, the 3 locations that we thought had the best plot-points from Season 5:

• King’s Landing: Cersei & the Tyrells, the Faith Militant, Tommen and Qyburn
• Braavos: The Faceless Men, the House of Black and White, Meryn Trant and Mace Tyrell
• Castle Black: Jon & Stannis, Samwell, Jon’s Election, Jon as the Lord Commander of he Night’s Watch, Hardhome, “For the Watch”

We also mentioned the 2016 ASOIAF calendar during our intro which can be purchased here!

So, listen to us here or at the following spots:

• itunes
• Podbean
• Our notes were not as thorough this time around due to it being much more discussion-oriented, but here’s our google doc with our notes

Thanks so much for listening, and let us know what you think! Were our criticisms fair, accurate? Did our changes make sense? What changes might you make?

Final note: We’re coming up to our 10th(!!!) episode, and we all thought it might be fun if in our 10th episode, we answered any questions or addressed any theories that you all might have for us on the blog. So, if you have questions about ASOIAF (or really anything, within some reason) or a theory that you’d like to get our opinion on, leave a comment below to this post or send us an e mail at warsandpoliticsoficeandfire@gmail.com, and we’ll answer or discuss anything you all want to hear analyzed or discussed!

I invite you to follow us on twitter, facebook, tumblr or itunes to stay up-to-date with every last thing that we are getting into!