It was disrespectful to her, though, although the show didn't seem to recognize that. It made her look kind of silly to me, sitting there smirking the way she was. She's supposed to be the damn ruler of this place but I think we were supposed to enjoy seeing her being fought over. Gross.

I think of underage kids as like "happy endings" in massage places. Everyone knows a certain kind of client is going to want one. Either you have them on offer or you say "Not that kind of place, buddy." If you don't offer it you don't have one of your laundry women come in and oblige.

Exactly. So why did they look so shocked and disgusted and have to go get a kitchen worker for him?
PS We didn't need any more evidence that Trant is a dick.

Margaery who? Also, wasn't there kind of a cool old lady in King's Landing at one point, years ago?

I thought he would kill Melisandre instead as a last-minute fakeout. Which would have been cheesy as hell, but it really looked that way for a minute or two.

I did too. When I saw they were planning on burning her I thought "This is taking too long; she's gonna get saved and it's all about how Stannis WOULD have done it." Which is also what I thought about Mance, so — Show 2 - Me 0.

Abraham is the father of the Hebrew faith, the first Patriarch. It isn't like he was raised in the Hebrew religion and Yahweh told him to do this thing, etc. It's about how he THOUGHT Yahweh was telling him to do something and he was, just barely, willing to do it but Yahweh said "Dude. That is not what obedience to…

If her purpose is him winning the siege then she shouldn't have had to force his hand — either he would win on his own or he would need her help. So her purpose would have to be something different. Which could be the case but I think the show shouldn't have a) come so much out of the blue as this or b) cheesily…

I guess I can see that but at the time I thought it referred to Robert's real children being with different women from her, which would make her care more about her golden shroud Jaimie kids, if that makes sense.

If that's the case then I stand corrected.

I get the feeling GRRM doesn't know any more than we do.

I mean, Christianity has a bigger taboo against suicide than any other religion ever has.

Jesus's sacrifice was God sacrificing himself. Precisely because human sacrifice would be pointless and futile. Animal sacrifice is not human sacrifice.

Yes. Sorry. I took from the comment that GRRM is shifting the goalposts around. But I may have read wrong.

It's just occurred to me that if Shireen's death DOES act as a supernatural catalyst for another character that will be pretty morally fucked up. I mean, even in the Oresteia we're not supposed to cheer because Iphigenia's death caused a good outcome.

No, human sacrifice was never part of Judaism or Christianity.

So true.

If Melisandre can do that kind of thing why hasn't she just torched Stannis to the Iron Throne before now? I'm not saying it won't turn out to have been her but if it does I'll think it's supercheap.

I thought it was boring overall. The Dorne and Arya scenes were tedious and the Shireen and dragon moments were so heavily telegraphed that it was a matter of waiting for them to happen.

Sansa deals with her rape, the Night's Watch deals with an Ice Army armageddon battle — I definitely see Davos being torn up about, but dealing with, Shireen's torching.