Poll: Winter Is Coming - HBO's A Game of Thrones [READ WARNING]

Who will rule Westeros?

  • Total voters
    471
  • Poll closed .
@EddScott

daver said:
In short. Westeros used to be 7 kingdoms (which is why its known as the 7 Kingdoms lol) but Aegon Targaryen (Aegon the Conquerer) came from Dragonstone and conquered all the seven kingdoms (with his dragons). They were then under Targaryen rule until Robert's rebellion against the mad king Aerys Targaryen (all the dragons were dead by this point), Daenerys and Viserys are his 2nd and 3rd children and the only ones known to have escaped (they are not twins just brother and sister).

Lannisters are blonde, Targaryens are silver haired. Due to great houses interbreeding they are all probably related way back in time but I think Robert the current king and Viserys and Dani share a great grandfather. The Lannisters are not closely related to either the Targaryens or Robert's house (Baratheon).

Lannister were not in power since their kingdom were conquered by Aegon, Jaime Lannister was part of the mad king's kingsguard (and is part of Robert's kingsguard).

Ned knows that the Targaryen's are alive because there is a discussion about it in the second/third episode with Robert.
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^THIS^ is the correct version of events, some of the other replies you got were even more confusing than trying to watch GOT on one screen, The Wire on another, and reading Genesis back to front, all while drunk. :)

It's kinda confusing that they made the Targaryen kids (ie. the girl who marries Drogo and her wussy spoiled brother) also blonde, but they're not related to the Lannisters at all. The father of the Targaryen twins was the Mad King everyone's referring to, the one Ned and Robert (the current king) rebelled against. I don't quite remember what for, it was in the book but I'm not sure if it was mentioned in the series yet.

The Lannisters were, as daver said, never in power, but they were always bigwigs: Jaime (the blonde smarmy one who's screwing his sister, the Queen) was in the last king's bodyguard, and also killed him. Somewhat controversially, as you might expect. You can see why Robert isn't too happy about the fact that he had to keep him on the job, but since he marries Jaime's sister he probably didn't have much choice. Their father was the last king's Hand, and apparently insanely rich. So they were always a step away from the throne but never quite on it. (Yet!;))

Anyway, I guess that does answer my question: for most people it's impossible to follow without having read the books! :p

And in answer to your other question, yeah, read them, they're a fun read and they'll help you figure out what's going on! I confess the first book had me fooled in the beginning. Because the first 40 pages or so are mostly told from the point of view of teenagers (either the Stark kids, or the Targaryen girl, who's about 14 or so I think), I thought "oh GOD it's going to be another feel-good Harry Potter-esque coming of age story about carefree little snots overcoming impossible odds to save the world without losing their morals and innocense runny excrement of a children's story!" But then the Targaryen girl is married off to a Cossack who rapes her every night, one of the Stark kids is shoved out a window and left paralysed, and another takes a vow of celibacy and gets shipped off to a frozen wasteland for his nuts to turn blue and fall off. It gets dark very quickly and suddenly, and caught me completely by surprise! :)

BTW, anyone else feel they missed a trick by not casting Brian Blessed or John Rhys-Davies as Robert?
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Why do the Starks hate the Lannisters? Where's the bad blood between them?
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Most of the bad blood is recent, the Lannisters would have liked one of them to be made hand of the king. They are power hungry to the extreme.

They feel threatened because of Ned and Roberts past - they were brought up together as wards of Jon Arryn, the guy who was the previous hand of the king and died.

When the rebellion happened, the Lannisters stayed out of the war until they knew who was going to win then they sacked Kings Landing(they tricked their way in pretending they were going to help the Targaryen side). When Ned arrived in King's Landing he found Jaime Lannister sat on the iron throne as if he were the new king.

Robert also was due to marry Ned's sister until she was killed during the war and he still mourns for her, which Cersei is obviously not chuffed about.

The Starks and the northerners in general are known as straightforward, honest people, (I think Sean Bean plays that quite well) so they obviously don't fit well with a bunch of scheming, power-hungry, egotists like the Lannisters.


PS: Trying to be careful and not post any spoilers.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Why do the Starks hate the Lannisters? Where's the bad blood between them?
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I think this has been sort of explained in the TV series as being due to the Lannisters fighting for Mad King Aerys in the civil war prior to the series, and then switching sides when it was clear they were going to be on the losing side. To someone with a sense of honour like Ned's that's not the way things should be done. In the books there's other tensions which I presume will be shown in the TV series in due course, so I won't spoil the story. As had been alluded to, the way Ned's father and brother were killed was particularly brutal - I think Tywin Lannister (Tyrion's Dad) may have been the King's Hand at the time.
 
scorza said:
I think Tywin Lannister (Tyrion's Dad) may have been the King's Hand at the time.
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Lord Rossart, the alchemist, was the Hand when Lord Rickard Stark was burned. Tywin Lannister had refused to wed Cersei to Rhaegar so Aerys slighted him by raising Tywin's male heir, Jaime, to the Kingsguard (so depriving him of his only 'suitable' male heir). Tywin immediately resigned as Hand and retreated to Casterly Rock.
 
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So far following it pretty well - I "get" most of the relationships and who is who's sister / brother / father / mother etc - really enjoying it as a result.

It's nice to watch a show and be able to figure out all the little ins and outs throughout - instead of having the facts stated to you!
 
manveruppd said:
BTW, anyone else feel they missed a trick by not casting Brian Blessed or John Rhys-Davies as Robert?
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I think that Brian Blessed was considered, and while I am sure that he would have done an admirable job of it, he is a bit too 'in your face' so to speak, for the subtlety that the part requires, Blessed is better suited to the over the top king roles
 
TheOtherOption said:
It's nice to watch a show and be able to figure out all the little ins and outs throughout - instead of having the facts stated to you!
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Oh, of course, wasn't saying it's a bad thing, was just curious whether people were indeed having trouble following because, having read the first book, I don't have that problem.

Also a sound business strategy as you need to rewatch it to get everything and end up buying the DVD! ;)
 
daver said:
When the rebellion happened, the Lannisters stayed out of the war until they knew who was going to win then they sacked Kings Landing(they tricked their way in pretending they were going to help the Targaryen side). When Ned arrived in King's Landing he found Jaime Lannister sat on the iron throne as if he were the new king.
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Jaime didn't trick his way in. He was part of the Kings Guard as he is now and served the Mad King during the war until the tide was turning then betrayed him. Thats why Robert keeps making the point to Jaime about stabbing him in the back rather than from the front
 
Malakite said:
Jaime didn't trick his way in. He was part of the Kings Guard as he is now and served the Mad King during the war until the tide was turning then betrayed him. Thats why Robert keeps making the point to Jaime about stabbing him in the back rather than from the front
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I didn't say that Jaime tricked his way in. I said the Lannisters did. Tywin marched his army to the gates and claimed loyalty to the mad king, got let in and proceeded to sack the city. The mad king told Jaime to kill his dad, instead he killed the king.
 
daver said:
I didn't say that Jaime tricked his way in. I said the Lannisters did. Tywin marched his army to the gates and claimed loyalty to the mad king, got let in and proceeded to sack the city. The mad king told Jaime to kill his dad, instead he killed the king.
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ah ye, apologies, misread the post.
 
Tyrion2 said:
i always thought they were Welsh....probably because Tyrion has a welsh accent in the audio book version :D
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Sorry, but I can't imagine a Welsh accent being associated with cunning :p

You do see a lot of medieval Britain in Westeros though don't you. Rat-infested sewer of King's Landing = London. Winterfell could easily be York of old. Highgarden is Bristol, the capital of the rural South-West. The Wall has similarities with Hadrian's Wall, built with lost technology keeping the savage peoples on the other side out. I always thought that Dorne was supposed to be Wales/Cornwall, a bit more autonomous than the rest of the Kingdoms - even have their own Prince, the only obvious difference is that Dorne is hot ;)
 
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