Game of Thrones Thread

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Do they let others ride their dragons or is it literally a three guy army that will somehow never gets betrayed and poisoned in a series all about betrayals?

They have conventional forces, it's not just three dragons vs everyone.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

They have conventional forces, it's not just three dragons vs everyone.

I assumed that, but even then, the one thing keeping the targs in power is something that can be completely vanquished by killing three normal people. Usually the reason why assassination isn't as useful is that you still have a chain of command.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Do they let others ride their dragons or is it literally a three guy army that will somehow never gets betrayed and poisoned in a series all about betrayals?

If you mean in general, nope. The rider dies and the dragon is then free, and others can claim it. Aemond claimed Visenya Targaryen's dragon and his father Viserys, Balerion until it died.

Aegon and his sisters didn't go all together at the same time to places all the time*. There was a lot of political shit happening too. The context is that Westeros before being one kingdom was a lot of regions always in war. Aegon looked for allies who hated others promising them lands and power, and some agreed.


*
"The forces of House Lannister and House Gardener combined and marched to meet Aegon's army in battle. At a field in the Reach that became known as the Field of Fire, Aegon unleashed all three dragons and decimated the enemy host within minutes. House Gardener was destroyed. Their stewards, the Tyrells, surrendered the Reach to Aegon and were named Lords Paramount of the Reach. The Lannisters also bent the knee and became Wardens of the West."

(you have to admire the balls of the people who tried to fight three dragons knowing what would happen, though.)

 

[DapperShark]

Wonder what they're going to do with the casting, they raceswapped the Velaryons in HoTD and Aegon's mother was canonically a Velaryon, are they going make the Targ siblings black now? Or are they just gonna do more retcons/ignore shit.

 

[God of Nothing]

hehehehe
niggaryons

 

[draggs]

It's hilarious that Aegon couldn't conquer Dorne for absolutely no reason. Dorne is the least or second least populous of the Seven Kingdoms, the closest thing it has to a city is Sunspear which in the rest of the Westeros would be a medium-sized town at best, it's probably the 50th largest settlement in Westeros something like that. One dragon and a small army would have destroyed Dorne's ability to wage war in a couple weeks. Oh wait I'm sure they had super dragon poison or some shit (RED VIPER WAS SO BADASS RITE? AND HE LIKED DONGS TOO, SO INCLUSIVE. DORNE POISON OP) so Aegon was scared lol

 

[God of Nothing]

It's hilarious that Aegon couldn't conquer Dorne for absolutely no reason. Dorne is the least or second least populous of the Seven Kingdoms, the closest thing it has to a city is Sunspear which in the rest of the Westeros would be a medium-sized town at best, it's probably the 50th largest settlement in Westeros something like that. One dragon and a small army would have destroyed Dorne's ability to wage war in a couple weeks. Oh wait I'm sure they had super dragon poison or some shit (RED VIPER WAS SO BADASS RITE? AND HE LIKED DONGS TOO, SO INCLUSIVE. DORNE POISON OP) so Aegon was scared lol

GRRM is bad at world building
astonishingly bad
realism too

My goto in AGOT CK2 is just raping the shit out of Westeros as the Ironborn.
somehow GRRM made cthulu vikings lame

 

[TheHarbinger]

Wonder what they're going to do with the casting, they raceswapped the Velaryons in HoTD and Aegon's mother was canonically a Velaryon, are they going make the Targ siblings black now? Or are they just gonna do more retcons/ignore shit.

They raceswap actual figures in history in moves and television shows. What is stopping them from shoveling niggers into fantasy worlds? They could make Aegon a full blown homosexual and GOT fans are so cucked and politically correct that they would embrace and accept anything this point. They were foaming at the mouth to defend the nigger Targs.

It's hilarious that Aegon couldn't conquer Dorne for absolutely no reason.

Military battles, history, and scale, are some of the worst aspects of GRRM's wold building. Armies of hundreds of thousands with no provisions. Winters that last a decade. Cities with population densities rivaling Chinese Walled Cities. No technological advancements for millennia. Zero exploration of places like Southros or beyond The Wall for millennia. Interest rates that would make the mafia salivate.

The day to day lives of most characters in ASOIAF make sense in a vacuum. But in the big picture nothing makes sense.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

It's hilarious that Aegon couldn't conquer Dorne for absolutely no reason. Dorne is the least or second least populous of the Seven Kingdoms, the closest thing it has to a city is Sunspear which in the rest of the Westeros would be a medium-sized town at best, it's probably the 50th largest settlement in Westeros something like that. One dragon and a small army would have destroyed Dorne's ability to wage war in a couple weeks. Oh wait I'm sure they had super dragon poison or some shit (RED VIPER WAS SO BADASS RITE? AND HE LIKED DONGS TOO, SO INCLUSIVE. DORNE POISON OP) so Aegon was scared lol

It should've been the North that the Targs couldn't conquer through force. With how Dorne is basically a desert, the few farmlands they have could easily be burned by dragons, leaving them to starve unless they bend the knee. Have the Lannister/Baratheon/Tyrell army march in and sack Sunspear, then burn the farmlands of Dorne, either by having armies burn them and sow the lands with salt, or by dragonback. Those hit and run Dornish forces would eventually starve to death in their caves. Then tempt them by having the Tyrells move in a convoy full of food, then when the Dornish come out to ransack it out of desperation, have the Lannisters and Tarlys slaughter them like pigs. Your average dipshit European/Chinese general from the Middle Ages or even the Ancient era could crush the Dornish in a fortnight.

Meanwhile, the North has Moat Cailin, which has held back every Southern attempt to conquer the North. The land is too large for the Southern armies to conquer effectively, especially when the weather turns against them. The North also has colder weather, which would affect the dragons negatively. It should've been the one place when Aegon would be forced to use his brain-have Aegon tell the Starks that he knows of the Long Night and the eventual return of the Others, then tell them that he's uniting the realm to prepare for the return of the Others. The Starks will get the picture and agree to join Aegon.

Instead, Dorne gets to resist the dragons because like many post-modern yahoos who love nonwestern cultures, GRRM has a boner for Moorish Spain, and so he created his own LGBTQ-friendly version of them that somehow gets to tell the Targs to get bent. Even though it logically doesn't make sense, military-wise. Your average baboon of a general who spent a few minutes reading Sun Tzu's Art of War would have no problems crushing the Dornish like the overrated pests that they are.

Military battles, history, and scale, are some of the worst aspects of GRRM's wold building. Armies of hundreds of thousands with no provisions. Winters that last a decade. Cities with population densities rivaling Chinese Walled Cities. No technological advancements for millennia. Zero exploration of places like Southros or beyond The Wall for millennia. Interest rates that would make the mafia salivate.

This is what happens when a left-leaning yahoo like GRRM makes a fantasy world. Unlike works like Three Kingdoms that take into account things like provisions or logistics, (literally, the late-game part of that work deals with Shu Chancellor Zhuge Liang having logistical problems because he has to go through a rocky road to invade his enemies in the Wei kingdom, which causes problems for his supply lines, since the Wei forces love attacking said lines to cut him off) GRRM makes up stories where the logistics and military strategies make no fucking sense. The fact that Dorne was able to resist the Targs and a unified Westeros for so long shows this.

 

[draggs]

Military battles, history, and scale, are some of the worst aspects of GRRM's wold building. Armies of hundreds of thousands with no provisions. Winters that last a decade. Cities with population densities rivaling Chinese Walled Cities. No technological advancements for millennia. Zero exploration of places like Southros or beyond The Wall for millennia. Interest rates that would make the mafia salivate.

The day to day lives of most characters in ASOIAF make sense in a vacuum. But in the big picture nothing makes sense.

George haphazardly makes a stab at some realism with the armies in the first two books. But eventually it don't matter none a this matters. Westerosi armies made up mostly of levied serfs remain in the field for over a year, no one gets sick of this shit and tries to go home because they didn't sign up to let their families starve for lack of manpower to do the planting and harvest, paying for these armies is not a concern unless you're hiring mercenaries, any mention of logistics almost completely disappears unless there's a siege going on...

 

[TheHarbinger]

no one gets sick of this shit and tries to go home because they didn't sign up to let their families starve for lack of manpower to do the planting and harvest

This is the biggest one. They haven't had a proper winter in a decade or more. The next winter could last for years. Instead of planning for this the entire continent is at war, no one is farming, and the lands are either stripped barren to feed the roaming armies, or simply burned to the ground by soldiers. Even more absurd is that the Wildlings are now going to need food including feeding some giants. And of course feeding Dany's three dragons should they ever arrive in Westeros. Plus her army and their horses. And Griff's army as well that has arrived.

There should be no food left. The Other just need to keep it cold and snowing and they could wipe out most of Westeros in a few years at most.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

(literally, the late-game part of that work deals with Shu Chancellor Zhuge Liang having logistical problems because he has to go through a rocky road to invade his enemies in the Wei kingdom, which causes problems for his supply lines, since the Wei forces love attacking said lines to cut him off)

"Borrowing 100,000 arrows " is more cunning than anything GRRM has ever come up with.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

"Borrowing 100,000 arrows " is more cunning than anything GRRM has ever come up with.

Hell, almost any major battle there was more interesting than most ASOIAF battles.

My favorite had Cao Ren and his army parking right outside Zhou Yu's camp while the latter was sick, after the latter's army got a sound thrashing by the former thanks to an ambush in the city of Nanjun. Cao Ren sits down, sips tea, and starts making fun of Zhou Yu. It got so bad that Zhou Yu charges out to face Cao Ren, only for the insults to really piss him off, so he got sick again and spat out blood. This was after Zhou Yu's doctors told him to avoid getting pissed off for the next 100 days, or else the poison from the arrow that hit him during Cao Ren's ambush would act up again.

I can just imagine ASOIAF if it had that much balls. Imagine HOTD S2 having Aemond lose a battle to Daemon via ambush, and Aemond gets hit by a poisoned crossbow bolt, forcing him to lie in bed as the maesters try in vain to fix him. The maesters advise Aemond to head home, as the poison will hurt him more if he gets pissed. Daemon does exactly what Cao Ren did, parking his dragon and his army outside Aemond's camp and making all sorts of jokes about Aemond, like how a Strong boy took his eye. Aemond gets so sick of it that he comes out in force with his army and Vhagar, but Daemon cracks a joke that cuts hard at Aemond's pride that the latter pukes blood and falls off Vhagar, causing his army to badly lose morale.

George haphazardly makes a stab at some realism with the armies in the first two books. But eventually it don't matter none a this matters. Westerosi armies made up mostly of levied serfs remain in the field for over a year, no one gets sick of this shit and tries to go home because they didn't sign up to let their families starve for lack of manpower to do the planting and harvest, paying for these armies is not a concern unless you're hiring mercenaries, any mention of logistics almost completely disappears unless there's a siege going on...

That's the problem. ASOIAF doesn't give a damn about realism outside of the surface level. GRRM's level of realism is just journalist-level; he doesn't take into account the fact that most soldiers are levies and that professional armies are few and far between, like the Tarly and Unsullied armies. Especially with how much manpower the Targaryens had during the height of their reign, conquering Dorne should've been a piss stop on a road to a larger war. The Free Cities should've been the bigger threat thanks to them being in another continent, so their navies could sink Westerosi ships transporting troops to invade.

This is the biggest one. They haven't had a proper winter in a decade or more. The next winter could last for years. Instead of planning for this the entire continent is at war, no one is farming, and the lands are either stripped barren to feed the roaming armies, or simply burned to the ground by soldiers. Even more absurd is that the Wildlings are now going to need food including feeding some giants. And of course feeding Dany's three dragons should they ever arrive in Westeros. Plus her army and their horses. And Griff's army as well that has arrived.

There should be no food left. The Other just need to keep it cold and snowing and they could wipe out most of Westeros in a few years at most.

The fact that the Wildlings have 100K soldiers means they should have a large store of food. Or lots of fertile farmlands to loot from. They have neither, and the fact that the army didn't disintegrate quickly as the men look for food is hilarious. Fucking Zhuge Liang starts retreating whenever Wei cuts off his food supply, because he knows his men will either desert or resort to banditry to feed themselves if they run out of food. And his army was just as large, if not larger than Mance Rayder's army of 100K.

Here's another thought-given how powerful the royal army was during Robert's Rebellion, with Rhaegar's army which was larger than Robert's and the Tyrell army besieging Robert's home of Storm's End, the rebels should've lost. The moment Rhaegar died, the royalists under the Mad King would've just moved the Tyrell army that was besieging Storm's End to face Robert, and place Randyll Tarly in command of them again. With Robert badly injured and Ned having to take command, the Tyrell van would soundly crush the rebels, especially since the Tyrells have an 80,000-strong army that's well-fed thanks to their lands being the breadbasket of Westeros. And Randyll Tarly already kicked Robert's ass before; whooping Ned's ass won't be that difficult.

Crushing the rebel army up-front would convince fence-sitters like Tywin Lannister and Walder Frey to join the royalist cause, and with Tywin and Randyll leading the royal armies, they'd just march north and burn down what's left of the rebel forces in the Riverlands, forcing the rebels to escape to the North and the Vale. The Redwyne and Lannister fleets can then transport soldiers past Moat Cailin and invade the North proper, and they'd be able to burn down Winterfell. The only place the rebels would be able to hide would be the Vale, and that would practically just constrict them to one kingdom out of seven. Eventually, they'll have to come to terms with the fact that the royalists have effectively won the war and surrender.

 

[FatR]

Fantasy in general tends to have armies of implausible sizes, that conjure provisions out of thin air. A writer with superficial knowledge of military matters can be excused for that. A lot of books or online references still replicate implausible army numbers for periods where we can only rely on historians who wanted to make events look more awesome. But Martin still deserves to be picked on for this aspect of his writing specifically because he thumped his chest about muh realism way too much. And then he was unable to even keep army numbers consistent within his own books.

 

[ShiftyBoi]

It's hilarious that Aegon couldn't conquer Dorne for absolutely no reason. Dorne is the least or second least populous of the Seven Kingdoms, the closest thing it has to a city is Sunspear which in the rest of the Westeros would be a medium-sized town at best, it's probably the 50th largest settlement in Westeros something like that. One dragon and a small army would have destroyed Dorne's ability to wage war in a couple weeks. Oh wait I'm sure they had super dragon poison or some shit (RED VIPER WAS SO BADASS RITE? AND HE LIKED DONGS TOO, SO INCLUSIVE. DORNE POISON OP) so Aegon was scared lol

Spoiler: Gosh Dorne it

You bring up Oberyn but I think him fighting the mountain is the precedent set for Dorne, the little guy that wins by death by a thousand cuts. (Even though Oberyn didn't win).
I think Dorne beating Aegon is explained by a few factors:

One, Dorne is separated from the rest of the kingdoms by Mountains, kind of like the Vale, and sort of similar to the neck. The mountains are treacherous and full of bandits, the only other way through them besides the Prince's Pass is the Boneway, which as the name implies is even more treacherous. So it's probably tough to get an army into Dorne, especially a brand new king's fledgeling army.

Two, Aegon has taken over a bunch of kingdoms that are probably all telling him that trying to take over Dorne is a waste of time because the Dornish are pricks. And at the same time, Dorne's rival the Stormlands has been distracted by Orys Baratheon's victory over house Durrandon. Dorne has had loads of time to gather its forces.

Three In Histories and Lore it's explained that it's Rhaenys who decided to fly into Sunspear first and not Aegon. Rhaenys is a dumb bimbo, Aegon and Visenya got all the real shit done. She lands in Dorne and expects them to shit their pants but Maria, the princess at the time, tells her to get fucked.
Rhaenys pussies out because she didn't bring any armies with her, and Aegon and Visenya come back with her and take over Sunspear. They're met with no resistance initially, but as soon as the dragons leave Aegon's men are killed and someone sends assassins after him. After that they come back and torch the place, and a dornish archer shoots Rhaenys out of the sky. This is the first dragon killed in Westeros and probably the first one Aegon's seen die since the doom. I'm just saying, you're Aegon, you've conquered the rest of the continent, and these weird cunty latino people have just killed one of your dragons even after you've burned all their cities and killed shitloads of them. They don't give up as long as the current Martell doesn't want to. As soon as Maria died the Dornish sued for peace.

I'm not even trying to be a Dorne-apologist here, I think their culture is hackneyed and especially in the show they're really annoying. I think they're only there to be a seventh kingdom even though the Iron Islands deserve it more. I'm just trying to say that the Dornish had a lot of advantages against Aegon who was probably tired from conquering the civilized world.

Fantasy in general tends to have armies of implausible sizes, that conjure provisions out of thin air. A writer with superficial knowledge of military matters can be excused for that. A lot of books or online references still replicate implausible army numbers for periods where we can only rely on historians who wanted to make events look more awesome. But Martin still deserves to be picked on for this aspect of his writing specifically because he thumped his chest about muh realism way too much. And then he was unable to even keep army numbers consistent within his own books.

I think the character that embodies this problem is Stannis. Don't get me wrong I love Stannis, but it's so hard for me to buy that a guy who's suffered one of the most crippling losses in the story, blatantly assassinated his brother, has no allies, and openly practices a foreign murder sex religion has somehow managed to convince a bunch of his men to go North with him and fight the most notoriously violent Northern house, and eventually the army of the fucking dead. All from Dragonstone, he doesn't even have his house's seat anymore. Same with Euron, the Iron Islands basically lost the war of the five kings, you'd need an entirely new generation of people to fight for you after that.

This one thing where Lord of the Rings will always have Game of Thrones beat. In Lord of the Rings you believe in your heart that 1000 men could take on 10,000 orcs, or that some 11th hour thing could turn an entire battle around like at Pelenor fields. Game of Thrones is much too bleak for that it seems.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Instead, Dorne gets to resist the dragons because like many post-modern yahoos who love nonwestern cultures, GRRM has a boner for Moorish Spain,

I though it was "Muh Desert Storm Iraq"

his is what happens when a left-leaning yahoo like GRRM makes a fantasy world. Unlike works like Three Kingdoms that take into account things like provisions or logistics, (literally, the late-game part of that work deals with Shu Chancellor Zhuge Liang having logistical problems because he has to go through a rocky road to invade his enemies in the Wei kingdom, which causes problems for his supply lines, since the Wei forces love attacking said lines to cut him off) GRRM makes up stories where the logistics and military strategies make no fucking sense. The fact that Dorne was able to resist the Targs and a unified Westeros for so long shows this.

I think the best way to summarise ASoIaF is "what would be medieval times if everyone was a nigger". Not even exaggerating. Food just pops up when it's needed until it doesn't. Everyone think only on the next month only few years forward. Talks on honor end immediately when it's convenient.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Instead, Dorne gets to resist the dragons because like many post-modern yahoos who love nonwestern cultures, GRRM has a boner for Moorish Spain, and so he created his own LGBTQ-friendly version of them that somehow gets to tell the Targs to get bent. Even though it logically doesn't make sense, military-wise. Your average baboon of a general who spent a few minutes reading Sun Tzu's Art of War would have no problems crushing the Dornish like the overrated pests that they are.

More than LGBT friendly, they're woman friendly. Women can rule there so they're better than the other realms for being more progressive.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I though it was "Muh Desert Storm Iraq"

More like Afghanistan, with the whole ''graveyard of empires'' thing, but yes, it's that and Moorish Spain.

Fantasy in general tends to have armies of implausible sizes, that conjure provisions out of thin air. A writer with superficial knowledge of military matters can be excused for that. A lot of books or online references still replicate implausible army numbers for periods where we can only rely on historians who wanted to make events look more awesome. But Martin still deserves to be picked on for this aspect of his writing specifically because he thumped his chest about muh realism way too much. And then he was unable to even keep army numbers consistent within his own books.

Exactly. We wouldn't be tanning his hide about things like this if it wasn't for the fact that he thumps his chest about realism and attacks better authors like Tolkien over their works not being ''realistic'' while not doing enough research.

He thinks the good guys might have to kill Orc babies in LOTR, when Orcs don't have babies, they were either corrupted elves and humans, or they were created artificially via magic cloning, popping up from the ground. That, and according to the Silmarillion, some Orcs did fight for good in the War of the Ring, and the evil Orcs just pissed off and hid underground.

I'm just trying to say that the Dornish had a lot of advantages against Aegon who was probably tired from conquering the civilized world.

That still makes no sense. Being a desert culture, invading armies or dragons could easily burn their crops and farmlands, sowing salt on the fields, leaving them to starve. That, and the Dornish have an enmity with the Reach and House Tyrell, since their Gardener predecessors fought Dornish armies that invaded the Reach before. So Aegon would already have one kingdom right next-door to Dorne that has a bone to pick with the Dornish, who would relish seeing dragons burn Dorne down, and that kingdom happens to be the most fertile kingdom in the region, with one of the highest army numbers.

I think the character that embodies this problem is Stannis. Don't get me wrong I love Stannis, but it's so hard for me to buy that a guy who's suffered one of the most crippling losses in the story, blatantly assassinated his brother, has no allies, and openly practices a foreign murder sex religion has somehow managed to convince a bunch of his men to go North with him and fight the most notoriously violent Northern house, and eventually the army of the fucking dead. All from Dragonstone, he doesn't even have his house's seat anymore.

Stannis defeating 100K wildlings with 1000 troops and it being excused as cavalry makes no fucking sense. They are not the fucking Dothraki, that should've ended with their loss, especially when giants were around. At least with the show, he already bolstered his army with a loan from the Iron Bank and some foreign sellswords, so his army numbers by then would've ballooned up to probably 10-20K, making a victory more plausible.

Also, even if this fucker seized the Iron Throne, the fact that he has little to no friends in the aristocracy means he'll probably be dead in a fortnight given all the backstabbing that goes on in the capital, unless he pulls a Maegor the Cruel and starts killing all the nobles that don't automatically bow, which would just cause the rest of the kingdom to hate his guts and riot.

Food just pops up when it's needed until it doesn't. Everyone think only on the next month only few years forward. Talks on honor end immediately when it's convenient.

Basically, yes. It's why the realism feels so paper-thin. It's there only when needed, and automatically gets dropped when the story doesn't need it.

Like say, why did Balon Greyjoy choose to attack the North? Robb's deal made perfect sense; Casterly Rock, especially in the books, is still filled with gold. Every pirate's dream is to sack that place. Even if Balon didn't want to help Robb, he'd want to get Tywin's gold while the man was off fighting. Attacking the North made no sense, since it's too big to conquer, and the material gain is not worth it.

More than LGBT friendly, they're woman friendly. Women can rule there so they're better than the other realms for being more progressive.

Exactly. Which is why George made the Dance of Dragons story as well; to bitch about how women can't rule a patriarchal society, even though at the time, kings were expected to fight wars, and men usually fought the wars since women were more valuable at home.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Exactly. Which is why George made the Dance of Dragons story as well; to bitch about how women can't rule a patriarchal society, even though at the time, kings were expected to fight wars, and men usually fought the wars since women were more valuable at home.

Martin is quite critical of modern feminism, or was when he wrote Cersei's Feast chapters.

The Dance wouldn't make sense if Rhaenyra was not a woman.

 

[God of Nothing]

. Same with Euron, the Iron Islands basically lost the war of the five kings, you'd need an entirely new generation of people to fight for you after that.

Euron winning would be cool because of the cthulu shit finally adding up to something