HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

need new castles

dorne is geographically isolated (deserts, mountains) from the rest of westeros and that's the reason they weren't conquered. not sure that stands up to irl reason but that's the reason.

Right on the guerrilla warfare. I don't remember about killing dragons, tbh.

Anyway, relevant non-spoilerly stuff from AWOIAF:

Seven centuries after the Rhoynar invasion, Aegon the Conqueror invaded Westeros and in his War of Conquest subjugated all of the Andal kings one by one, except Dorne, which successfully resisted the Dragon King. Whereas other kings and lords had taken to the field against Aegon, or clustered in castles, the Dornish refused to give open battle and allow Aegon to deploy his dragons. Instead, they turned to ambush and raids, striking quickly and then slipping back into the desert or through the mountain passes, where even the dragons could not find them. In time, Aegon pulled away from Dorne.

A century and a half later King Daeron I Targaryen, the Young Dragon, managed to do what his ancestor could not and successfully subdued the kingdom. Unfortunately, Dorne almost immediately rose in rebellion. In the resulting conflict, forty thousand soldiers gave their lives, forcing the Targaryens to pull away from Dorne.

After Daeron's death, his brother and successor Baelor the Blessed made peace with Dorne instead, marrying off his cousin, another Daeron, to Myriah Martell. When this prince ruled as Daeron II, he made another marriage pact, offering his younger sister Daenerys to the ruling Prince of Dorne Maron Martell, finally joining Dorne to the rest of the Seven Kingdoms through a peaceful alliance. Before officially joining the realm, the Dornishmen fought alongside Daeron II's forces (being led by his half-Martell son Baelor Breakspear), helping to suppress the Blackfyre Rebellion. Even though they are no longer independent and now owe allegiance to the Iron Throne, the ruling Martells still use the title prince, unlike their lordly counterparts in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms.

The Dornish were loyalists who supported the Targaryens during the War of the Usurper, as Elia Martell was married to the crown prince, Rhaegar Targaryen.

That's a different Daenerys, obviously.

dorne is the coolest i support dorne

Yeah I hope we see some of Dorne this season.

I hope we see Thunderdorne.

dorne is basically sicily meets afghanistan

If they go to dorne I'm expecting copious amounts of spicy eggs with dragon peppers

Don't forget the olives.

That climate doesn't seem as conducive to world-famous wine as I thought it would

So at this point is bran basically just looking for a tree north of the wall?

plenty to choose from bran gosh

the end of the last episode torpedoes my theory that the majority of the planet's population is white walkers, and they just keep humans around in a little wildlife preserve to toy with and roll their eyes at.

lol i like it tho

how did the dornes do it?

― lag∞n, Thursday, May 1, 2014 12:46 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

Drones

dronish wine, delicious

are the dragons a metaphor for drones i have opinions to share

I sincerely doubt it but by all means proceed.

ok they definitely are

dragons more like b-52s

does that make Harrenhalll Dresden or Nagasaki

yes

So red wedding = wedding in Yemen or am I confused

going back a way just ruminating on how false this is -

for the largest part of human history, everyone agreed that a guy could be crucified and then come back to life three days later

I enjoyed this dumb article from a website I usually hate:

http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/4734-game-of-thrones-lands-as-sf-neighborhoods

lol i was so distracted by the knee-jerk lol-religion mockery that i missed the totally insane largest part of human history assertion

well it's only 6,000 years right

although how 2,000 would qualify as most well I dunno

Biblical math.

Resurection myths are quite common, eg. Orpheus and Eurydice. Or Balder. People not believing Jesus did it does not mean they didn't believe it could have been done.

leaving aside theological questions I don't think 50% of the world population have been christian at any point over the past 2000 years, which in turn is <1% of the time there have been modern humans. I would definitely agree that people have believed all sorts of crazy crap over this period though, I'm just quibbling B-)

Again, that is not what I'm claiming. I'm claiming people would have believed it to be possible. There's a pretty important 'could' in my post.

And it might seem as if I'm stubborn and nitpicking, but my point is, that religions and myths existed in a worldview that was a lot less sceptical. Which is the worldview GoT takes up. So saying that Dragons have turned to 'myths' doesn't mean that people wouldn't be afraid of them anymore, and be perfectly convinced that they could come back.

from my quoting I thought it was clear I was only picking at yr supporting assertion. an 8th century dane/lannister serf has no good reason for believing in rhinos and giant squid but not unicorns and dragons. don't think bringing up the crucifixion helps this argument at all though, especially as miracles are by definition exceptional & require a background of scepticism & ideas of regularity to have any potency

It's not earth. It's a fictional world. Anything goes.

http://i.imgur.com/gXc9762.gif

are you guys actually arguing about how scared of dragons fictional peasants in a fantasy world might be?

yes

the fuck else would we be doing?!

just checking, carry on

Bro we are all scared of dragons one way or another

they're more scared of us tbh

wrt the dragons i think, and maybe book readers have a better sense of this, that perhaps there's a good reason that the powers that be would like to keep the dragons from being general knowledge in westeros. aren't many people still sympathetic to the targaryens? and given the current chaos, i can imagine if a blond person riding dragons shows up, they are gonna be pretty psyched about it. lannisters, et al, have every reason to pooh-pooh the idea that there are dragons out there.

I just had an image flash of Winnie the Pooh riding a gigantic dragon and enjoying a pot of honey.

scale of 1 to 10 how scared of dragons are the peasants

aren't many people still sympathetic to the targaryens?

not really no

People still like Rheagar, but the last monarch of their line was horrible and insane.

i could see smallfolk yearning for the power and relative stability of the targs as things get worse the same way neo-fascist and neo-stalinist ideologies have resurged

Not really clear from the books iirc. You hear both sides of the argument at different times from different sources (i.e. Viserys and the Lannisters). Thought the general impression was that, given what a fucking mess the country has got into by this stage of the story as a result of the civil war, many of the "smallfolk" were feeling pretty uncharitable towards the powers that be and are pining for the days of yore when the Targaryens were in charge and the harvest was going unburned, you could sleep safely in your houses etc. I may be misremembering or exaggerating this to some extent though

interesting

Aerys II Targaryen, popularly called the Mad King, is an unseen character in Game of Thrones. He is deceased when the events of the series begin. Liam Burke was cast to play him in flashback in Season 1,[1] but the scene was cut for time and pacing