I saw an ad for the upcoming House of the Dragon and I was thinking how there was a time when I would've been pumped for GOT related content but that was before one of the best shows ever crashed and burned. I also decided not to give them another dime till GRRM finishes the books (if he ever does). Luckily I read them all between seasons 5 and 6 so I feel really bad for people who read the first one back in the 90s. It is funny but to this day I won't start a fantasy series if it isn't complete. I remember when I read Wheel of Time it felt so good to read a completed series.
Do you blame GRRM or D&D more for how the show ended? I know the Night King isn't in the books like the show (but I bet the books will have a better resolution to the dead). I also have to wonder if wokeness had anything to do with the decline of the show. Arya is one of my favorite characters and I know they claim they had planned for her to kill the night king all along but I can't help but think if the show had been made 5 to 10 years prior that Jon Snow would have had a more substantial role. I get GRRM likes to subvert tropes (in a good way unlike hollywood) but I think at the very least he should've fought the Night King, or him and Arya together, although they seem to not like the idea of men and women working together.
I also wonder if the reaction to Sansa getting raped had anything to do with the direction of the show. To this day I don't understand all these screeching feminists who get so worked up over a fictional rape but can't seem to find any sympathy for victims of ACTUAL sex trafficking. The Song of Ice and Fire is a brutal world. Plenty of men get tortured and attacked but I will never understand why men can be killed left and right but if someone says a cross word to a woman then the screeching harpies show up on social media.
Eh... I don't regard that as a bad thing. Interest groups are a grave evil, and they would not exist in a medieval world to begin with. Interests would exist, but they are the grandees and magnates.
No ruler will survive if he is not feared. It is a lesson as old as Machiavelli. Robert Baratheon said so himself. It is not out of love for the ruler that they behave themselves, but for fear of consequences when they do not. When Daenerys attempted to be loved, then bad things happened.
That was not clear to me.
The mere fact that they were free meant that they were also free to refuse to do her bidding. They followed her voluntarily, which is what freedom is.
This part is true. One of the bad legacies of the French Revolution.
Yes, it was extremely boring. But he made sure to destroy Daenerys' state of mind by telling Jon of his true identity at the most inopportune moment, probably knowing what would happen as a result and that he would become king.