Rich
Saucin'
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- Jul 5, 2010
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I think you have to assume that, at some point around season four or five, the showrunners got burnt out and realized they didn’t want to take the series the distance it would need to go to be properly adapted and started cutting corners (or entire characters and subplots) to give them the opportunity to speed things up a bit.
The problem, of course, is that most of those characters and subplots they cut will likely play key roles in what happens toward the end of the series. Like, I highly doubt that fAegon’s plot will amount to absolutely nothing in the books to the point where it could be cut entirely. I expect him to not survive but I am sure he’ll do some important things that have significant repercussions, much like Quentyn’s death is obviously going to spur Dorne to side with Aegon instead of Dany and probably doom them in the process.
Quentyn on the whole wasn’t an amazingly important character, but his death is a stone dropped in a pond. The ripples will carry on after him.
I mean they didn't care for Dorne at all, which is too bad.
Because there's a very interesting plot developing there wherein they are being set up to side with Aegon. You can see this from Arianne's TWOW chapters where she starts wondering why Daenerys killed Viserys when she (Arianne) was promised to him. And obviously that's only going to get far worse when they learn of what happened to Quentyn.
So then it's highly likely that Dorne, in fact, stands against Daenerys so now you've got this whole "Never Been Conquered by the Targaryens" angle with Dorne.
And even w/o that, you see instead the scenario where Daenerys will look FAR, FAR more like a foreign invader in the books with no Westerosi allies because they'll all be with Aegon. And those who aren't, look like they're about to wiped out by the Ironborn before she even gets there.
But in the show, she comes to Westeros with the Tyrells on her side, the Dornish on her side, and a decent chunk of the Iron Islands on her side, and somehow we are then supposed to believe she's hated in Westeros and all alone and blah blah blah and the only way they can even get you to kinda believe that is to literally wipe those houses out in just a couple of 5 minute scenes here and there and then to pretend that's it. They're gone.
To me it feels fairly clear where the story is headed. Cersei has misplayed her hand entirely. She thinks the Tyrells have been trying to backstab her when in fact they've been her only allies and she's alienating them at every turn. Aegon will have the Dornish on his side when he lands, and I'd say, at minimum, the Tarly's will join him as well. And slowly but surely, he'll win the countryside to his banner and he'll largely be seen as a liberator and uniter before Daenerys ever gets there.
But instead of that, we got what we got, which made very little sense at any point.