I'll go along with the "cringe" response. It seemed like a very junior-high sort of interaction.

Not sure who you're directing this question to. But FWIW, in my personal view, it's perfectly fair and accurate to call Jon honorable… he definitely has a clear and fairly selfless ethical code. It's just not accurate to call him a "hero" — he's a terrible leader and a pretty bad military strategist, and is only alive…

It's safe to say Tyrion traveled with Dany and the Dothraki — he was gone from Dragonstone just as she was when Theon arrived.

Alchemy is a precursor to chemistry in the same sense that astrology is a precursor to astronomy, but it doesn't necessarily lead to it by any direct route. (Indeed, in a world where magic exists and alchemy is at least theoretically *possible*, it may lead in very different directions indeed.)

Indeed, nobody in any of the (few remaining) noble houses appears to be in a position to produce any heirs. That's the sort of thing that leads to a crisis in the governing system… and I don't think that's an aspect of the story that's merely accidental.

I'm familiar with suspension of disbelief. That's what lets me enjoy a world with fictional geography, never mind dragons and giants and Faceless Men… or any fantasy or SF at all, really.

You're not the only viewer who apparently missed Tarly's remark about the gold reaching King's Landing. I'm not sure how or why it slipped past so many people, but clearly it did. FWIW, it was just before he mentioned that they'd soon be crossing the Blackwater Rush, and suggested flogging the slower marchers to speed…

Well, see, that's the thing. We have no particular reason to believe that the family was "their most precious support system," because we've never seen them experiencing it that way. What little time we did see them spend together mostly exposed the fault lines in the family, actually. Arya and Sansa had very…

Yeah, the Dothraki are definitely the Mongol equivalents here. Nobody in Westeros is going to be able to compete with them in terms of either speed or ferocity.

Fair point. Although in that case, you'd think Olenna would have been preparing for a siege (and would certainly have notified Dany) the moment she learned that Randyll Tarly had attended the meeting of Cersei's bannermen in King's Landing. Highgarden should have been preparing for a siege, and the attack should not…

Time away increases emotional drama? Why so? People grow apart, after all.

Well, it's hard to avoid the impression that Dany was burnishing her family's reputation a bit when she claimed the three centuries since the Targaryen conquest had been "peaceful." There were uprisings and civil wars and rebellions and the like on a fairly frequent basis. (In the real world the Roman Empire claimed a…

The scene where Jaime paid Bronn came much earlier in the episode, while they were still near Highgarden.

You're remembering the scenes out of order. The remark from Gattis's banker to Cersei came *before* Tarly's statement about the gold reaching the city, which led without interruption to the battle and through to the end of the episode.

Joffrey was a completely irredeemable little shit, no question. But that made him *stand out* from the characters around him in the early seasons… and his death after only three seasons made it clear that he was not actually a major focus of the show. Since his demise the showrunners seem unfortunately preoccupied…

Nobody should be on the Iron Throne. Hereditary monarchies are basically indefensible, not to mention that they lead to endless dynastic wars. This has been a key theme of the show since the very beginning.

I completely agree about the inadequate information. There were two different instances in this very episode where ambiguities left a lot of viewers confused: first the discussions with Jaime et al. at the beginning and end of the convoy's march, leaving people confused about where the gold was and how close the…

Well, the Blackwater Rush is technically a river that feeds into the bay, and we don't know how far upriver the army was planning to cross. Even if it was only a day or two's march from KL, though (which makes sense given Tarly's remark about the gold reaching the city), that's still enough of a distance to be outside…

More like 450 miles away, in fact (perhaps a bit more if you hug the coastline, as medieval ships were inclined to do). About three days of sailing, depending on the winds.

For speed-of-plot reasons I generally compromise and assume that as a rule of thumb armies in GoT can march up to 20 miles/day, and solitary riders can cover 30 miles/day. It's maybe not completely realistic, but it's plausible enough, and it usually lets the story hang together coherently. Even at that rate, though,…