1) Yes, I know - the whole point of all the Citadel stuff is to show that the maesters are a big part of why their society is stagnant. Dany wants to sweep away the old political organization, Sam could play a part in modernizing the maesters.

I doubt it. If he believes the threat he's wasting time hoping Sam will understand and do what's required - instead of just telling him. There's no reason to keep this from the other maesters, except to spare himself ridicule, but that's solved by telling Sam to keep it under his hat.

Standard procedure is to ransom them back. She didn't need to kill them, and she didn't "swing the sword" herself - the dragon killed them. That's equivalent to using an executioner instead of, as Ned did, doing the dirty deed yourself. And she didn't defeat him honestly - the dragon won that battle. The Dothraki…

He wouldn't have liked it, but he might have seen it as a chance to get out of being king. He was still a rich noble, and could have spent his days jousting, hunting, drinking, and fucking - which he did anyway, but he could have done it with a clear conscience.

Well, Dickon, obviously, duh. Next you'll be telling me the sky is blue! ;-)

In medieval libraries they were chained to the shelf, that's the whole point of the chain. If the purpose in the Citadel library is to ensure they're not lost…well, that just wouldn't work.

There were chains on the books in the restricted section too, although I agree with you that having access should mean you're trusted enough to not steal them. It seems like the chains on the regular books should be unnecessary, too, as only maesters or maesters-in-training are allowed in there in the first place.

For it to have value it has to be put to use, and clearly this society isn't doing that - otherwise it wouldn't have been technologically stagnant for thousands of years.

Makes sense.

The difference is, Dany had other options. Maybe the point of the Varys-Tyrion scene is that Tyrion's learned something along the way and needs to give her the benefit of his experience.

I did. Medieval historians, I guess, don't know what they're talking about. I guess, too, that all the giant warhammers were lost and only the puny ones survived. That's weird.

If they'd done it once, several episodes ago, say, they wouldn't have to show it again. If we saw him with the books in his bag, leaving the restricted section, most of us could probably put it together. It just makes me wonder why they bothered at all with the chains - I guess they thought they looked cool.

Don't you judge him! :-)

Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but it bugged me, again, when Sam was just pulling those books off the shelves like that - what's the point of those chains? I looked it up and in medieval libraries those chained books were very difficult to remove, which was the point…

Tyrion was defending his city when he did that out of desperation - they had no hope otherwise. Using a dragon is a bit like dropping an atomic bomb.

Medieval arms too - real warhammers were nowhere near that size.

Yeah, it might have mentioned it to her. Maybe he was too much of a square and no one ever told him about it.

That's a little something called showmanship! :-)

It's not useful when you do nothing else with it. Compiling data is a part of science but isn't itself science.

Must be.