No, Jaime and Bronn are on their way back to Kings Landing, with Doran's son as their hostage. Ellaria gets the war she wanted, assuming the Lannisters act as Lannisters can be predicted to act.

Doesn't he literally hang men in the books for suggesting human sacrifice while they're trapped in the ice? Isn't the origin myth (for lack of a better term) that introduced the character his unyielding defense under siege conditions, and similarly unyielding enforcement of moral law to the point of executing those…

I thought the apocalypse was pretty clearly nuclear in nature? I mean, there still wouldn't be any usable gasoline about three years out—because gasoline does go bad and the supply chain required to produce it is almost certainly unsustainable in the kind of anarchy envisioned in most post-apocalyptic stories—but I…

Sounds like he's either illiterate or functionally illiterate. He should be able to figure out how to listen to music on an iPhone though. I'm pretty sure you can get by with just pictures.

Any child under the age of 18 that asks you that is a lost cause. Unless they're talking about all your mid-'90s X-Men titles. Because, really, why did you do that?

Am I to understand that this Newswire does not meet the high standards of Swaggermuffin?

Barristan's death was particularly baffling to me, since in Book 5 he survives his encounter with a younger, faster man in part because he wears armor—precisely the kind of armor that would have saved him in the show.

He's smart enough to know that any chaos north of the Dornish marches is temporary, and the Reach and Stormlands will eventually return to some level of military power. Why set Dorne up for resumption of the interminable wars with the Reach, if it can be avoided?

Bombing a set is one thing, getting internet pilloried because of an off-color joke—or, distressingly commonly, a soundbite taken completely out of context—is another entirely. The Internet Outrage Machine is a real thing; anyone who thinks there isn't completely ridiculous shit getting blown out of proportion…

No, Rickon is Jon's cousin.

I had totally forgotten about that. I wish the show managed to work more of the world in. Even some throwaway background chatter about the Drowned God and Iron Islands and so on.

Ned is also a little ambivalent about him in the book. That said, Stark was a good judge of character, if a poor politician, and Book Stannis has shown himself to be the least awful choice in Westeros. Obviously, there's reason to believe that a Targaryen restoration would be better for the realm, but a Stannis-led…

Why did/does the show insist on having neither Barristan nor Jorah wear armor, when the fact that they wear armor is a repeated plot point in the books?

Presumably there was some benefit to them to allying with the rest of the 7 Kingdoms before, or they wouldn't have done it. They were, after all, unbent, unbowed and unbroken when they joined.

Franciso Delano Rosacampo '03 or '04 or whenever he gets around to it!

I kind of love your caveat, because it almost precisely mirror's Nixon's caveat that Presidents have to stand for re-election, and seek appropriations from Congress and so on.

Not to pile on Paper Tiger, but that is a pretty amazing reaction. "So, internet, let me tell you how my penis feels about this filicide."

Are we sure that Balon's still alive? That's a pretty major departure from the books. While I understand that they've pretty much got to write most of the Iron Islands stuff out now—hooray for that, in my opinion—it does screw the plot up in a number of non-trivial ways. For example, why the hell aren't the Iron…

Stannis appears to take a Nixonian view on executive authority: when the king does it, then it is not a crime.

It's just that C.C. or D.D. would be so much more appropriate. It's like a big guy called Tiny or a fat guy called Slim.