Welcome to r/ASOIAF!

Robb had between 20,000 and 40,000 men. Renly had between 80,000 and 100,000 men, and Stannis had a couple thousand men on Dragonstone. The Vale and Dorne were neutral, so the Lannisters didn’t really have any allies. If the Tyrells hadn’t joined them after Renly’s death, they would have been screwed.

For fans who read the books and AFFC when it came out, what was it like waiting for ADWD? Did you worry that George took 5-6 years to publish what should’ve been the other half of AFFC? Were there any discussions about the future of the series similar to what we see now, with Winds?

Obviously we know next to nothing about the war, from campaigns to major participants to alliances, is only from vague remembrances in the D&E stories. That Said I'm curious to know what are some of the small details that we do have from Sources ranging from the Sworn Sword to The World of Ice and Fire? Also was it a War of attrition or not?

Is there a reason that the members of the most powerful/magical house in Westeros had some of the strangest and most dull deaths?

• Daenerys - Shivers
• Baelon - Burst Belly
• Maegelle - Greyscale
• Viserra - Broken neck after being flung from a horse
• Viserys I - Disease
• Aegon III - Consumption/TB
• Viserys II - Sudden Illness (Poison)
• Daeron II - Great Spring Sickness
• Rhaegal - Chocked on a Lamprey Pie
• Valarr - Great Spring Sickness
• Matarys - Great Spring Sickness
• Aelor - ???
• Aerion - Drank Wildfire
• Daeron - Pox from a whore

For a family who is supposedly immune to sickness and are considered gods. Was this just a subtle was so humanise them?

Basically title. We have this guy whose origins are entirely mysterious, who appeared basically from nowhere and has a cartoonishly long list of disguises and aliases. How likely is it that 'Varys, the Spider' is also a just character, as far from the real him as Rugen the Jailer?

Do we ever get, um, conclusive proof that he's even actually a eunuch?

I suppose it's one of those things that basically has to be assumed true unless we're given some reason to doubt it.

Theory: LS is warriors of god againts Euron

Caty's body didn't smell because it was from the bottom of the water, her face was unrecognizable, and there were plenty of corpses around to eat. So the reason Nimeria pulled Caty's body out of the water could be because someone warged her. Warging is the magic of the old gods, and Caty's resurrection is the magic of the Rholler. It was a collaboration. We will see a similar collaboration in Jon's resurrection. Before Jon died, he transferred his will to Ghost, and Mel will resurrect Jon. He is the warrior of the gods in the war against the Others. The only person who is definitely connected to the Others is Bloodraven, and the other person who is almost definitely connected to Bloodraven is Euron. If Jon was resurrected to fight the White Walkers, it is very possible that Caty was resurrected to fight Euron. Euron's next target in range will most likely be Kingslanding or Westernlands. Jayne, Edmure, Tommen, Cersei: They're all on Euron's next target, so Jaime and LS will go together.

I personally think the relationship between Varys and Shae is suspect. Do you think he recruited her? Could it be that she and Bronn were Varys' pets from the start? Did Tywin know about this? He did know about Shae's existence as he told his son "don't bring the whore to court".

There's actually a GRRM interview where he seems to hint that there's more to Tywin's murder than we think.

https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/s/txFybDk1tx

Aegon's Conquest couldn't be done without his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys, which is known! But among them I noticed a huge difference regarding participation in the battles. While both sisters fought valiantly, while comparing their participation in books Visenya had fought more than Rhaenys.

Contribution of Visenya:-

• Fought in Stokeworth, Duskendale, Naval Battle of Gulltown, Secure Cracklaw Point and conquered Vale.

• Alongwith her siblings took part in Field of Fire and then put down Sister men's rebellions during 1 AC flying Vhagar to another sea battle.

• In 8 AC took part in Dornish wars and attacked Sunspear, Lemonwood, Ghost Hill & Tor.

• In 9 AC alongwith Aegon attacked Sandstone, Vaith & Hellholt.

• After Dornish attack on Nightsong, Aegon attacked Skyreach, Visenya burnt Starfall & Rhaenys attacked Hellholt but died.

• From 10 AC to 13 AC both Visenya & Aegon burnt every castle and village of Dorne.

Contribution of Rhaenys:-

• Rhaenys fought in Rosby and Storms End with Orys.

• At Field of Fire she fought alongside Visenya & Aegon.

• In 4 AC she attacked Planky Town & nearby cities. Together with Aegon she attacked Sunspear.

• After Dornish invasion on Nightsong in 10 AC, Aegon, Visenya & Rhaenys flew to burn Skyreach, Starfall & Hellholt respectively where Rhaenys was slained.

Contribution of all 3 is respected but I don't understand why despite riding second largest dragon Rhaenys took part in few battles? Is it possible that Aegon was trying to protect her more as she was his beloved wife? Or Visenya herself being a must accomplished warrior was taking much part? What's your opinion?

I have seen so many comments on Robb being a naive which is true in some ways and some truly hate comments, sure I have seen comments which love Robb but I want to ask the community why hold such a dislike towards Robb.

He is like a sixteen-year-old kid fighting a war leading men to die, I can not think how hard it is, I remember Myself when I was sixteen and I now when I look back, think that I could not do half of what it truly takes to lead men.

People say that Robb is a fool for trusting Theon but is he truly, he is a child who thinks theon is his friend and has saved his life (In whispering wood by facing Kingslayer) and life of bran by killing the deserter even if Robb shouted at theon. I do not believe that he is that much of a fool to believe that he could have saved bran without theon) from his Point of view he trusts theon and he is desperate for alliance, sure his mother warns him but we are forgetting that Robb has grown besides Theon and can not imagine him betraying and may also think his mothers warning as paranoia.

Now we come to next part of not exchanging Jamie for Sansa I think this is Robb messed up here but I think this might have influenced his views

He may feel that exchanging Jaime would be seen as weakness or that it could set a dangerous precedent in the conflict. Additionally, the Stark family is motivated by vengeance for the wrongs done to them, including the death of Ned Stark, which complicates any willingness to negotiate.

Now for the marriage of his to Talisa or Jeyne what ever you might think again a bad decision but please do not forget that he is sixteen, Let me emphasise on this HE IS SIXTEEN. We can expect better but can we truly blame him, from

Robb view he has heard that lord frey has like twenty children and most of them are ugly like hell, the reputation of Freys is off putting and then he sees this girl and sleeps with her, well he is bound by his sense of honour to marry her or in my eyes use it as a excuse of marrying her.

But anyways sure he made mistakes but does he deserves this

Btw I started reading the series eight months ago so I may have missed some things but Hope you can give me me your point of views

STRICTLY SPEAKING FOR BOOKS

Do we get any sense of the relative ranks here?

Lord Commander is obviously in charge of the whole organization, but where do First Ranger/Steward fit in? They're under the Lord Commander, but do they have power over the commanders of Eastwatch and Shadow Tower? And what about the positions like smith, maester, master at arms at Castle Black? Are they superior to anyone except their direct reports?

It's fascinating. Are all the Brothers technically considered equal once they swear vows? They all get the same vote for Lord Commander. But in the GOT Prologue the Royce seems to have more power over the other two because of his nobility.

Are there intermediary ranks like Sergeant and Lieutenant? I'm very curious

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the origin of the White Walkers given in the Show and it seems to me that in the community it has gone from being a theory to practically a consensus that they were created by the Children. This origin for me is a bit bland, they are basically "Frankenstein's monsters" that revolted. The most interesting quote from George RR Martin is that he characterizes them as "they are strange, beautiful... think, oh... the Sidhe made of ice, something like that... a different kind of life... inhuman, elegant, dangerous." I've always felt this air of a totally unknown world after the wall, an almost Lovecraftian element of beings beyond human comprehension, where they have their own society/have their own goals instead of "killing all humans". Man goes to war, a weapon is created to end the war, the weapon ends up harming humanity more, humanity has to unite to fight. It's just thematically boring and the zombie thing has been done so many times.
Martin has a broad anthropological and mythological knowledge as demonstrated in The World of Ice and Fire, the myth of various creatures, ancient gods and references to Celtic, Chinese and even Lovecraft mythology. To be honest, many stories of Essos seem more interesting than what is presented in the main plot, the city of K'dath for example in the far west is an obvious reference to "Kadath" from Lovecraft's "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", described as a city older than time itself, full of cosmic deities and lizard-men... etc.
Anyway, I would like to hear the opinion of my colleagues here in the community. As much as I would like to see these elements, I don't think Martin will work on them. It would be a very gross interruption to the narrative since there are only 2 books left to finish. While reading the books, I sometimes thought it could end up being similar to Berserk, where the barrier between the material world and the fantasy world (take into account that the world of Berserk seems to be more cruel and tragic than that of Asoiaf) is gradually broken, and fantasy becomes more naturally present in that world with fantastic creatures... As far as it has been shown, the theme has always been about the material causes of humans and their political conflicts among themselves and family tragedy on a Shakespearean level in themes. The plot of the White Walkers most likely won't go much further than what the community already believes, something like a consequence of "human action".

Myself, I want to read more about the time period just before Robert’s Rebellion.

Show the houses scheming behind the throne and setting up marriages of alliances. Show the tourney of Harrenhal. Show Duskendale and Aerys going from being a flighty manic man, to full blown mad.

Maybe have the main setting be Ned and Robert’s tutelage in the Vale

End it just before Lyanna and Rhaegar disappear.

I recall Mance in one of his scenes said that his army has X number of languages when talking about how hard it was to keep all the wildlings together. Yet I can't seem to find the exact quote. I've scoured A Search of Ice and Fire for all references to "language" "tongue" and "dialect", and I've skimmed his horn of winter scene but the actual quote isn't appearing to me. Maybe it's in his other scene near the start of the book? Or maybe it's only in the TV show? Also possible I entirely made it up and he never talks about the different languages in the army at all. Does this ring any bells for anyone else and can they source what he actually says?

I have been somewhat obsessing over this as I try to make sense of Doran's plans and of the ambiguity surrounding Mrycella's assassination attempt. I have heard so many conflicting theories that I no longer know what the consensus is among readers.

Also, if you can, please explain your vote in the comments. I wanted to add more options re: Rosamund-possibility but Reddit didn't allow for more poll options.

View Poll

TLDR: The history of GRRM writing Ice and Fire involves a decade of FAST writing followed by two decades of SLOW writing. For the last 20 years GRRM continued to think that he could write like he did from 1994-2004. This (2024) is the year GRRM acknowledged reality, that he’ll never again write as fast as he once did, at least not while his work is being adapted, and he was a fool for thinking he could.

A brief timeline of the writing of ASOIAF, involving a lot of commonly known facts and a few educated speculations. The are ROUND NUMBERS.

1991 - “Direwolves in the summer snows”

1993 - 50k words and original outline sent to editor

1995 - Game hits ~ 350k words and grows past original idea, splits 50k words into Clash

1997 - clash hits ~ 350k words and splits 50k words into Storm

1999 - Storm wraps at 400k words

2001 - GRRM begins writing “Dance”

2003 - “Dance” hits ~ 400k words with no end in sight and splits into Feast and Dance ~ 200k words each

2004 - Feast wraps at 300k words

2005 - GRRM thinks he can finish Dance with another 100k words (one year of writing)

2006 - D&D get the green like from GRRM to adapt GOT

2007 - GOT preproduction begins

2009 - lost GOT pilot

2010 - Dance hits ~ 450k words so GRRM moves the battles of Meereen and Winterfell to Winds, wraps Dance at ~ 400k words

2011 - GOT begins

2012 - GRRM begins activity writing F&B and Winds

2015 - GRRM has ~ 200k words of Winds and thinks he can finish within the year, he doesn’t

2016 - the last sample chapter is released, covering most of what was cut from Dance

2017 - GRRM wraps F&B 250k words

2019 - GOT ends horribly

2020 - COVID delays HotD production, GRRM goes back to writing Winds

2022 - GRRM says he has ~ 300k words (3/4 of Winds if Winds is the same length as Storm and Dance)

2024 - GRRM realizes he’s been a fool for years

This rough timeline produces the following writing rates, reflected in the chart.

1991-1993 17k/yr

1994-1997 150k/yr

1998-1999 175k/yr

2000 Break

2001-2003 200k/yr

2004 100k/yr

2005-2010 25k/yr

2011 Break

2012-2017 80k/yr (including F&B)

2018-2019 Break

2020-2021 50k/yr

2022-2024 Break

Note: GRRM also writes bits of the World of Ice and Fire here and there, but not a significant amount at any one time. GRRM also wrote the first two Dunk and Egg stories during the first decade, and the third story during the second decade, but they don’t amount to a significant enough word count to be listed on the chart.

“The first few months of 2024 had been... well, no fun, let us say. January, February, March... things just kept getting worse until we came to April Fool's Day, when it finally dawned on me that I was the fool, and had been for years.” ~GRRM, 2024

Many people talk about Ned's relationships with his long-dead siblings Brandon and Lyanna, but what about his father, Rickard Stark? Can anyone determine what their relationship was like?

In the Books, I think Jon snow's Resurrection will be different than the TV show version, one thing is that after Jon has died, his soul will have transferred to ghost, while his body will be placed in the ice cells to preserve it, Now, I believe that Jon won't be just a fire wight when he is brought back like Beric but during the Resurrection Process both Melisandre/Rhlor/Fire Magic and Bloodraven/Old Gods/Ice Magic will be used to bring Jon back from the dead, we might have a Jon POV chapter where he is in Ghost and Blood raven uses his GreenSeer Abilities to transfer it back to his body just as Melisandre Ressurects his physical body, his mind will be resurrected using ice magic and his body will be resurrected using fire magic, making him a wight of ice and fire, what benefits do you think this will give Jon, will he be completely resistant to extreme cold and fire?, will this make his skinchanging abilities far stronger and also his Targaryen dragon bonding ability? Maybe he will also be able to practice Fire Magic like Melisandre.

If George dies before he’s able to release it, will the unfinished copy of TWOW be released by somebody appointed by him? Does he even want the world to see an unfinished book, or would he rather it be destroyed?

I don’t have a big essay to write here. I’m looking to start of conversation about the theme of religion within the novels and the show as well. I’m not even a religious person myself.

It seems to me that the only “god” or “religion” that listens or answers within ASOIAF is The Lord of Light. This god seems to act through its priests/priestesses in visions and bringing people back from the dead. We have seen sorts of “proof” from this god in these ways.

The Seven on the other hand… people seem to be incredibly skeptical of the Seven. While it’s widely “practiced” in the Seven Kingdoms, many people seem to turn their nose up at it.

What say you people of Westeros? Is GRRM trying to say something through the themes of varying religions in his world? That The Lord of Light is the only true god? Or is the one true god the Many-Faced God? Interested in seeing your thoughts.

I've seen a lot of theories about both Houses' physical features. Many having to do with The Great Empire of The Dawn, and also the black oily stone at the base of the Hightower. But I was wondering if perhaps there was a simpler explanation for their features. Especially IF we're unsure how they looked like BEFORE the Dance or BEFORE Dorne's Integration into the Realm via Dual Marriages of Daeron II and Princess Daenerys.

We've been told they have some features that would typically be common in Valyrians. For example, Alerie Tyrell's hair color. Also Jorah said that Lynesse looked like Daenerys.

We also know that Daynes apparently sometimes have purple eyes, and Ned Dayne has "big blue eyes, do dark that they looked purple. And his hair a pale blonde, more ash than honey."

My main question is this: Do we know if these features were already there or did they start showing up after Valyrian blood got into their family?

What I mean regarding the Hightowers is that Rhaena Targaryen married Garmund Hightower, and had six daughters. We can assume some of those daughters probably married into the Hightowers again, probably some cousins and such. So their features could be explained that way AFTER the Dance. But BEFORE the Dance, Jaehaerys did confuse Alicent for his daughter, Saera...

With regards to the Daynes, have we ever been told how they may have looked like BEFORE Princess Daenerys married into House Martell? If not, then could her children, or grandchildren be the explanation for House Dayne's Valyrian-esque features?

Any thoughts? Or perhaps, any further reading that you might be able to point to that described any physical characteristics about either House before The Dance and Before Dornish Integration into the Realm?

Just finished A Clash of Kings. Maybe its my daddy issues, maybe its the fact he's her Florian and that's just really fucking cute. I don't care. These two should end up together somehow at the end. I know he's too old and she's too young, and he may have threatened to kill her a few times. But as far as knights in the Seven Kingdoms go, he is definitely the closest thing she has to one in shining armour. Don't judge me too harshly, this is a fantasy book after all and we've all fancied an older man in our youth. When she's the grown queen of the North I'd like to think she'll remember her Florian.

One of the fun things about rereading the series is that you can look back on a character’s actions and see what mistakes they made I.e. Ned warning Cersei. So this got me thinking which pov makes the least mistakes, imo it’s davos he mostly takes/suggests reasonable courses of action and usually comes on top.

I get this is a random question but recently Quinthegm posted a meme about how people in the (F)Aegon camp will react when Dany just burns him(I don’t think that will happen lol) and a lot of the comments are pretty anti Dany which I expected. One comment that caught my eye however was someone saying that Dany is a self righteous villain and when someone brought up her goal of smashing the slave trade they compared it to Stalin helping defeat the nazis. Now obviously I’ve read and heard all the “Dany mad and evil” takes that go around the fandom and the point of this post isn’t trying to insult those people or call them dumb but more to try to understand where they’re coming from. Obviously Dany isn’t some perfect person but my understanding of her is that not only is she constantly doubting, blaming, and just overall being hard on herself but shes also one of the few nobles in this story that has actually attempted to make a serious change that would better the life of the “small folk”. I get shes made some mistakes ruling but is she really meant to be written as a “Self righteous villain”?

Renly had around 20,000 cavalry, and Stannis had somewhere between 4,000 to 5,000 men. Was Stannis aware of the shadow baby? What was the plan here?