did arya carry, like, a satchel of faces with her when she left? or can she just draw on the stash in braavos at will? last year she literally took one down and put it back, and she added the waif last episode. but in season 1, jaqen h'gar pulled one out of thin air after he gave arya the braavosi coin.

Thanks for the recaps, I enjoyed them.

Yes, the armada was coming from Dorne. Or at least a Westerosi fleet met Dany and the Greyjoys at sea - there were Highgarden and Sunspear sigils on some of those sails.

Obviously the storytelling in not linear, so Varys popping up doesn't bother me, but I do wish the show did a better job of acknowledging it.

@3: no, the armada was going TO Dorne. it makes sense that time passed between the meeting at Sunspear and the crossing, allowing Varys to go back to Mereen with the Westerosi fleet.

@3: You're right, a Tyrell sail can be seen on a ship behind Grey Worm, and Drogon swoops down next to a ship with a Sunspear sigil on its sail. Good eye, I was too busy studying everything in the foreground to notice those details.

As for the White Walkers, Benjen said they can't pass while the Wall is standing.

"The Wall is not just ice and stone. Ancient spells were carved into its foundations. Strong magic, to protect men from what lies beyond. And while it stands, the dead cannot pass. I cannot pass."

I assume the Night King will attempt to tear it down to allow his army to pass. (Or send an advance force walking along the bottom of the sea to get around it, who knows.)

Crowned, not coronated.

Sick of this "teleportation" nonsense. Nobody teleported. You see all this evidence that LOTS of time has passed, like they painted up the sails of all those ships, and Arya traveled all the way to the Twins, while Jamie traveled all the way form there back to King's Landing, and Varys went to Dorn and then got on the ships.

Theory A: This all took a long time.
Theory B: Teleportation!

It all took a long time.

What is so mad about Cersei? They said they thought she was going to burn the whole city. That's pretty mad. But she didn't. She waited until all her enemies crowded together in a small space, and then blew them up. That can't have been much more collateral damage than we've seen in past fell swoops. By Game of Thrones standards, it's practically a surgical strike.

Was she mad to take the throne? She tried hanging back and being cool and all it got her was all her kids killed. It's obvious after being queen and queen mother the only good option left is for her to take charge. They backed her into a wall and left her no other choice. More of a Sad Queen than a Mad Queen.

Sure, next she could *start* doing some mad shit. But what? Does she even have time to goof around? It's time to get ready to fight off that horde and those dragons. Which are invincible.

I guess when you're facing off against invincible dragons and your back's against the wall it's time to make some hard choices and maybe cut a deal with the only supernatural force badass enough to stand against three dragons, like the White W--

Oh. That would be some Mad Queen shit.

@7: If you think it was Cersei "hanging back" and doing nothing that got her children killed, you have not been paying any attention to anything that has happened in King's Landing.

And blowing up an entire building full of people, including the surrounding blocks, in addition to the many surrounding areas the resulting fire would have destroyed in order to murder people putting you on trial for actual crimes you committed (in her world) is mad.

Indiscriminate killing with no regard for any consequences is completely mad, and basically the hallmark for madness, considering how the Mad King earned that moniker.

Cersei is not the next Ramsay Bolton. Ramsay tortured for pleasure. Cersei tortures for revenge. Both are/were insane, but in different ways. And it's not surprising at all that Cersei's insane. All three of her kids died in horrible ways within the last few years. Plenty of other shit's happened to her as well, but that alone could drive anyone mad.

I don't get the drooling over Lyanna Mormont's character. Yeah, she's a decent actor, especially given her age, but she's been in what, two short scenes? And she does a fine job but "the best character ever?" What are you smoking? She's fine but plenty of other characters (e.g., Tyrion, Varys, Littlefinger, Jaime, Cersei, etc.) blow her out of the water, acting-wise and interesting-wise.

It'd be real nice to be able to wait till the whole thing's over and watch it all at once. Nice but impossible since every motherfucker on the planet can't fucking wait to spoil every plot point and surprise and twist not 2 minutes after it happens. Attention whores can't keep their mouths shut and let others enjoy in their own time. I tried doing it with Battlestar Galactica and no matter how hard I tried people just couldn't. fucking. resist. spoiling things.

Cersei's not crazy. She's pissed off. In fact, I'm starting to root for her as the Antiheroine, because Dany is so boring. Did she even bone Daario once this year? No.

Bah! You know Nothing Ned.

Cersi is my Queen, and is the only one cunning enough to rid the realm of shit before the storm,...or winter.

Yes all the pieces appear to be set for the victory of "Good," = Stark/Daenarys, over "Bad," = Lannister; is that really the predictable end to such a so far great series? I am counting on Ole GRRM to throw a few more curve balls then that. What makes S/D so "Good?" Honor? Moodiness? They are just as smug and entitled as Cersi and Jamie; our projections to love aristocracy is a disease of our British Empire origins. At least with the Lannisters you always know what they are and what to expect from them, the point end of a sword, and to me this makes them more honest and interesting as characters.

I'm fed up with the noble Daenarys plot line, she is an inbred dictator with a false sense of entitlement to rule the world; why is she fit to rule the world? Because she was born to it; because she has nukes=dragons; or is it so convenient that she hates slavery so much? The truth is the world is a hot, bitter, and unfair place and thee only time that the people win and the "Good Guys" are victorious is in fiction; but i thought GRRM had set out to rewrite the fantasy fiction cliches. Our own history is a long read of dictators and oligarchs ruling and fooling, if I want to see the good guys win and a fairyland ending I'll read Harry potter.

BAH, you know nothing.

@1 I think we're meant to assume that she killed the maid and took her face, not that no one noticed a brand new maid that wasn't there before. Arya is cold!

Cersei had Tommen's body burned because the body of Joffrey and Myrcella were buried in the Sept of Baelor like every other member of the royal family and when she set that explosion off, all of their bodies were incinerated.

She was hanging back and letting some dude, her husband or one of her sons be king. Letting her father be Hand. Letting her brother run around trying to rescue their daughter, while Cersei waited. All these dudes fucked it up for her, again and again and again. Being the power behind the throne is useless as a football bat.

So she engineered a coup, and it was nearly bloodless. Nobody who packed the gallery of that trial was her friend. Anybody who loved her would have stayed away. They came to watch her be humiliated, and probably mutilated and even killed. That's who was in that building.

She was out of options. She could have fled, perhaps, but they'd have found her, and she would be abandoning her son. Though of course it turned out she couldn't save him. That's the tragic part.

King's Landing is not made of wood. We know that because, one, look with your eyes, and two, it obviously didn't start a fire beyond the explosion. It wouldn't have. Kings Landing didn't burn down any of those other times it was under sage either. Cersei knew that.

When Tyrion set off a huge ass wild fire bomb to win a fight, all the fans swooned. How come he isn't "Mad Tyrion" for all the collateral damage he caused? At least as many people died in that explosion. Let's not even start counting how many avoidable deaths were caused by Rob Stark's battles. None of these guys are called "Mad" for breaking a few eggs.

And that's not even counting the *real* Mad Queen, crucifying all those hundreds and hundreds of people out of pure spite. After she'd won. Not a tactic to win a battle, just terrorism to inflame her enemies. And she apparently thinks there should be more of the same to come, if somebody doesn't hold her back. At least Ramsay Bolton tortured people to death as an intimidation tactic *before* the battle, to increase his odds. Daenerys just commits atrocities -- on a genocidal scale unlike the Boltons who choose a handful of victims -- for kicks.

The reason the Mad King was mad was because he wanted to nuke his own city purely out of spite. It wasn't a tactic to win, it was sour grapes for when he'd already lost. The deaths caused by people like Tyrion or Cersei were a means to victory, not pointless slaughter. It's brutal but not particularly brutal by Game of Thrones standards.

Cersei is also the first person we've seen on the throne who actually gives a shit about how the kingdom is run and has any skill and experience with doing so. She showed up at all those damn meetings. She's a policy wonk who is *into* governing. She doesn't piss away her life going hunting and getting drunk, or torturing girls. Aside from the ones who, you know, dragged her through the streets to be spat on, naked with her head shorn. Anybody who did that to Cersei might be in for some revenge. Is that "mad"? Apparently Arya gets to mow down fools who done her wrong and the fans don't hold it against her. What's up with that?

She will be a great queen, if the haters don't get her down.

@15: I am unsure if I have ever seen someone miss so many points and get so much wrong about a text. Enumerating it all in a huge block of text like you did would take way too much time that I do not have.

My god. What show have you been watching? Whose dumbass flailing so you think put the high sparrow in power? Just to name one of her most recent and obvious blunders.

Cersei has a habit of offering people like the High Sparrow, or Olenna, a pretty good deal when they have common interests. When they turn the alliance against her and stab her in the back, she nukes them. At least she tries to work with people before taking them out.

I can't believe you think the "sane" choice would be to go let those assholes put her on trial for bitchery and sluttyhood. Burning those lunatics to the ground was the sanest thing she could have done.

Cercei gave the Faith their own militia so they'd put a crown on Tommen's head (or for no conceivable reason at all, in the show). It was a stupid move that had very obvious repercussions to anyone who had any knowledge of history or a drop of sense.

Tyrion exploded a ship full of napalm in the middle of a river, against ships, against an invading naval force in war time. He also invested in building that chain to maximize its effectiveness and minimize collateral damage. Cercei blew up a building full of political enemies. Blowing up the largest religious building on the continent, full of powerful lords and members of court, and their equivalent of the Pope, is far from "bloodless."

Cercei seemed to be giving a lot of credence to Maggie the Frog's vision of her future, so when Tommen was on a slab, she didn't seem to be surprised. Though if her first act is not to immediately put Jaime in irons, she's an idiot. She can't still possibly believe that Tyrion is the valonqar at this point, right? Jaime killed Aerys II Targaryen for threatening to do the thing that Cercei just did (if only to a single building).

Equivalent of the Pope? Are you shitting me?

I guess anyone who thinks blowing up one building (as a means to advance in the Game) is equivalent to blowing up an entire city (as a spiteful fuck you after having lost) would think that a guy leading a gang of dudes with spikey bats was the same as the ruler of a small country that could field whole armies. Or the leader of a religion with a billion followers.

All those powerful lords and member of court were people who would not hesitate to put a dagger in Cersei's back. Of course she would want them dead, and would have taken the chance to kill any one of them, one at a time, if it were convenient. In this case it was convenient to kill them all at once.

I'm not saying she's not a murderer. But how does being a murderer get you labeled as "mad" on this show? Seems like murder is the minimum job qualification to even be listed in the title credits.

I did of course see that talking head producer dude saying Cercei is "going full on Mad Queen now". If that talking head is the producer then obviously he knows what the writers are going to write, and so they must have plans for her to start doing some mad shit. More mad than the mass crucifixions of the slave masters, which is I guess the standard the producer dude is going by.

She hasn't done much mad shit yet. Producer Guy is mixed up about what she's done before and what he knows she's about to do.

Producer guy is telling us what they plan to do with the show, but he's not paying much attention to what he has actually put on the screen. Cersei's brutality on the screen is just not that brutal, if the other kings and queens and pretenders around her are anything to go by.

So people watch what Producer Guy tells them and they re-frame what they've seen on the screen. He says she's "mad" so they take what is basically run of the mill GOT murdern' and start believing it's some kind of genocide because Producer Guy said she is "mad".

Yeah, using the Sparrows was a fuck up. Obviously Cersei makes mistakes, but making massive dumbass mistakes is also one of the minimum job requirements. Cersei's fuckups are certainly not dumber than what Ned or John did to get themselves killed, and they certainly could have seen that coming at least as much as Cersei could have. Is she dumber than Ragar Targarian's Dumbest Affair on the Down Low Ever? That was pretty fucking dumb.

She's about as dumb, or smart, as the rest of them, but she's at least interested in the job of ruler. That puts her way ahead of most everyone else who could be in charge right now.

@19: I'm in total agreement with you on those last two paragraphs. I don't know what "Producer Guy" you're referring to, so I can't respond to any of that.

I wouldn't say Cercei deserves the title of "Mad Queen" even if she blew up Maegor's. I wasn't intending to make that argument. It was monstrous, but it wasn't the entire city, like Aerys wanted to do. When you see potential poisoners and assassins in every member of your court (like Aerys did), the title of "mad" applies. So far, Cercei's distrusts have been pretty reasonable.

And yeah, the High Sparrow was named such because he was the High Septon. That makes him the leader of that particular sect of believers, probably the largest in Westeros. Thus, Pope.

The Pope is not appointed by the king. The fact that he got his position from Tommen and got away with all his shenanigans precisely because he wrested the young king away from his mother's influence is proof that High Septon is not a strong power base. Like the Hand or other ministers, a clever person could do much with a weak King if they outfoxed the other ministers, but a strong King (or in this case Queen) can put the Septon back in his place.

There's nothing in the TV series that says the followers of the new gods are a special threat now, as if they held some special love for the high sparrow.

There's unease and a power vacuum that someone could exploit like the sparrows did, but the next demagogue could come from anywhere.