No way he knows. How would anyone find out, when the only people who know the secret are dead Ned Stark and notably loyal Howland Reed?

I don't think she "let" him become King in the North so much as she was blindsided by the lords of the North suddenly declaring him King in the North. I think we're supposed to read that look she shared with Littlefinger as a sudden crack in Stark solidarity, though I hope to hell that's not what actually happens.

It's true, I demand that the only people who call out racist, nativist, demagogic, fascist assholes be the ones who must do so at great personal expense and peril. Other citizens—and especially those whose words will reach large numbers of people due to the speaker's fame—should just quietly tut tut to themselves…

It has to be kind of embarrassing to spend $745 million to make a trilogy that's only the second best cinematic version of an old fantasy book, behind an NBC cartoon made in 1977 for $3 million.

The problem started when someone decided that The Hobbit should be a trilogy of equal length to the Lord of the Rings. It baffles me to this day that no one pointed out that The Hobbit was both shorter and, in many ways, simpler than the Lord of the Rings. Even a cursory understanding of the source material should…

Tough but fair.

Dimwitted damsel in distress does not very well describe the Mary Jane I remember. She'd had a kind of tough life (including an alcoholic, abusive father) and was a change of pace from Gwen Stacey, who was a pretty classic "damsel." I think Banks would have hit the tone better than Dunst, actually.

Toby never could just love Toby.

I can see where people are coming from on it—Maguire really does look very young, while Banks is not notably baby-faced—but our perception is driven by the roles she takes/has had to take. Here she is in 2002 at the Catch Me If You Can premiere: http://ia.media-imdb.com/im…

Is there still an active online scene for the original R:TW? I did a quick search for the guy's games and the first couple I found of him beating hoplites, he used hoplite-like units (e.g. Seleucid pikemen), albeit in combination with cavalry and/or ranged units.

If only the greeks had more words for "theater" so that they could have a level 4 happiness building. Could have ruled from Domus Dulce Domus to the Sahara desert.

Someone who seemed knowledgeable in the experts comments said that there were accounts of medieval battles with similar piles of dead (albeit stacked only three or four deep, rather than six or ten or whatever). But my first thought seeing them was WWI, as well, followed closely by the American Civil War.

The Greek City States were so overpowered in Rome: Total War. Even with Rome's ridiculously versatile legions, the sheer dominance of the Greek Hoplites (especially the Spartans) turned the whole thing into a cakewalk. The only barrier to conquering the entire world was the happiness mechanics.

Not really fair. Grant was fighting an offensive war in enemy territory when he was racking up his lopsided totals. He accepted higher casualties in the short term as a cost of ending the war sooner and so avoiding higher casualties in the long term. History proved the wisdom of the strategy, as he did successfully…

Leeroy charged for the same reason Jon did: because it was scripted.

I meant cavalry eliminating itself via cavalry on cavalry charges, as was shown in the episode. Bolton's superior mounted force is bearing down on Snow, then Snow's horseman sweep in from behind him, and within short order there are no living horses left in evidence on the battlefield until the Vale rides onto the…

Okay, point taken about the pushing/scrum aspect (though most of the battle, pre-shield wall, looks much more like a general melee to me) and the suffocation scene. The cavalry point I think we just agree to disagree. I can't think of many instance in military history where whole units are destroyed even in lengthy…

This is interesting, but you've got to admit that it does largely rely on Snow (and his lieutenants) being idiots, and also the supposed imbalance in cavalry strength to essentially disappear.

This looks correct to me, but I didn't see any of that. Only the Boltons managed anything approaching a shield wall, and I saw few or no polearms on the Snow side at all. The battle proceeded as a charge of cavalry into cavalry (which makes no sense) followed by infantry (armed largely with swords) into other…

Sources? To my eyes, the battle was generally fairly ahistorical, high fantasy pulp. Why were there so many swords and so few pole-arms? Where were pickaxes and other anti-armor weapons for the armored knights? Why was there virtually no movement or maneuver, no attempt at unit cohesion, no regrouping by either…