Blood of the Conqueror, Part 11: An Alliance With God

Introduction

Artwork by Marc Fishman

From Visenya’s Hill, the call went out to the faithful that Maegor’s Laws were undone; the Faith of the Militant had been reborn. Granted extraordinary powers by the crown, knights flocked the banner of the Warrior’s Sons while smallfolk men and women gathered under the Poor Fellows. Meanwhile on Aegon’s High Hill, Cersei Lannister began her preparations to undercut the growing power of Highgarden and bring about the downfall of Margaery Tyrell. None of these parallel political movements and conspiracies accounted for the wildcard of Aegon’s coming.

Across the Narrow Sea, Prince Aegon and his party made their final preparations for their invasion of Westeros. Prince Aegon had a strong force in the Golden Company, but he also had another weapon in his arsenal: ideology. Aegon had been shaped for rule since his youth, and part of his royal instruction included a strong religious education. When the young dragon landed in Westeros, he would bring his army of sellswords to bear against the might of Highgarden and Casterly Rock, but he would also present a striking ideological alternative to the ruling elite of King’s Landing. To the High Sparrow, this would present a difficult choice on whether to back Aegon, but to the young dragon, if he were to stand a chance at taking King’s Landing, he would need the support of the High Sparrow.

Meanwhile, with the Tyrells and Lannisters in near open conflict with each other, the High Sparrow and the Faith Militant were quickly becoming power players in Westeros, and their growing power in the capital itself made the them the most powerful political actors within the city itself in advance of Aegon’s final approach to the city.

The Ravenry: Week of 2/22/2016

Happy Leap Day, readers!

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.

A very busy week at Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire Headquarters. I can’t say enough times how legitimately amazing at military discussions the Hand is, and it’s proven true this week, with considerations on Dornish spear and curved sword usage. He also did a wonderful job talking about Robert’s Rebellion, and why it really benefited no noble house to support Aerys II in Robert’s Rebellion. Also very excitingly, the Hand published his first essay of 2016 – a military analysis of Euron Greyjoy! I also published an essay this week – the next piece in Heirs in the Shadows, The Plowman at the Gates, and talked a little about possible words for House Ryswell and Maekar’s comparatively large family against his dynastic unimportance.

Without further ado, here’s The Ravenry for the Week of February 22:

The Ravenry: Week of 9/14/2015

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:

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!