Be Walder Frey

>Be Walder Frey
>Conspire to commit the ultimate atrocity by Westerosi standards
>Tell your army of like 4000 dudes to kill the feasting army they welcomed a few hours ago
>No one tells on you before it happens
Makes sense.

Fat people are bad at everything

...

>be Greeks
>build giant horse and stick a dozen tactical operatives inside with secret mission
>run away secretly
>no Greek decides to slip the boats or hide in camp somehow and tell the Trojans about the master plan

Makes sense.


Semiserious answer though, it’s not like the Frey army was a conglomerate of noble minded young soldiers motivated by national fervor. They’re paid mercenaries or levies. Probably real easy to get them to fake a party just to be let it on the secret.

Honestly there was so many sons hoping for him to die so that they could inherit his lands, is a surprise no one helped him leave the mortal world by betraying him and telling the starks the truth in exchange for political support.

The so called king in the north would probaly get his honor aching and refuse such a deal, but catelyn would be more pratical.

>Tell your army of like 4000 dudes
Do we actually know how many of Frey's men took part in the Red Wedding?

Robb didn't want to have a bastard because he thought Jon got the short end of the stick and he didn't want his kid to go through the same thing.

Well, 4000 counts for about half his kids/grandkids so it's probably a decent guess.

Because Martin is a not very good writer

Whats annoying about Robbs fate is the entire set up wasn't his fault, and was completely separate from the events of the story. He gets seduced while drugged out of his mind and accidentally knocks some girl up, Lancelot style. This event serves no other purpose in the plot than to set up his eventual death. So rather than have his death be the consequence of a logical series of events, the only real cause is George wanted to kill Robb in a shocking way and so set up the most tenuous string of affairs so he could do it.

You COULD argue the purpose of this in the story was to show that bad things happen randomly to good people, or that Westerosi politics are lethal and turn out poorly for the actually honorable, or just to show the wastefulness of war and the so called 'game of thrones'. The problem is, we've already been shown this with EDDARD'S death. So at this point it's just George jacking off and having poor editorial skill, as can be evidenced by the glacial pace of his production (though it's quite clear he's simply stalling till the show is over now so he can gauge the publics reaction and adjust the "real" ending accordingly)

That being said, devils advocate: they probably didn't or wouldn't have told the army ahead of time. Only the assassins in the party would have been told. Meanwhile the men outside would have been partying and drunk, and then suddenly their superiors would come to them and say TO ARMS MEN, THE BLOODY STARKS TRIED TO KILL LORD FREY, IT'S AN AMBUSH IT IS! and then led the enraged mob to kill the confused Stark Army.

I fully expected every frey to be hunted down and gutted for the red wedding.

Then the show just has Arya kill Walder and poison everyone else.
Fucking hate this series.

>set up in a situation that wasn't his fault
it was his fault. Because it was some random slag. He could have ignored her, paid off her dad and been done with it, but he destroyed a needed military alliance because he thought it was "honorable"

>be Robb Stark
>King in the North
>Value honor and the lives of my bannermen.
>shag some slag
>slag gets pregnant.
>decide to break marriage promise to my very valuable bannerman Walder Frey because don't want to dishonor some slag.
>All of my lords and soldiers get murdered by Freys.

Robb valued the honor of Jeyne poole more than the lives of all of his lords and soldiers. He was a stupid character. But what was bad writing was how not one person spelled this out to him like "hey, you are putting all of your men at risk for one woman. you know nothing jon snow/robb stark"

>But what was bad writing was how not one person spelled this out to him
People did think Walder won't stand for this, but nobody expected him to go this far.

Literally the very first thing Catlyn told Robb was he made a very stupid mistake.

The Starks being way more honourable than they are intelligent is a given thing, what I think is a bit bogus is that none of their allies (or Catelyn, who's not got the retarded levels of honour) didn't think it might be a good idea if Jayne suddenly came down with a case of not-being-here (or alive), freeing Robb from the obligation to her.
It'd still be a difficulty trying to get back the political alliance, and it might depress Robb - and he might be suspicious I suppose, but it'd be a clean way to do it. And all they have to do is send one girl packing (or kill her, because muh grimdark)

Robb didn't marry Jayne because of honor. He married her because he was in love with her. If he was actually hung up on honor he wouldn't have shacked up with her in the first place.

Also she wasn't pregnant in the books

>Also she wasn't pregnant in the books
I know that. Wasn't she also a minor noble?

Still though, Robbs allies should have seen the danger she represented and sent her off, love or no.

Remember though he was literally their king. A king who already proved he was willing to execute his own bannermen for disobedience. I can't imagine anyone was too keen on driving our or murdering his wife.

Plus IIRC very few people even knew about his agreement with Walder

>a minor noble
Not minor, but her family wasn't as powerful or wealthy as Freys.

But you know, a king has the authority to legitimize a bastard in Westeros, so that doesn't make much sense either.

There's a bit more to it than that. Robb and Jon were very close, probably closer than any of his full siblings. It must've broken Robb's heart to see how coldly Catlyn treated Jon. It likely would have destroy him to see his own son mistreated or ignored by whatever Frey wife he took.

Not saying this excuses his short-sighted actions, especially since he never knocked Jayne up anyways, but it should give a bit of insight into his character.

>Robbs fate is the entire set up wasn't his fault,
Yer wrong boy now go fuck up more alliances.

not all Frey Bannermen knew what was gonna happen.
Most of them were just held in reserve and ready for action, and then jumped on the feasting soldiers.

The Roose is loose!

Fuck off you dumb nigger
Roose was arranging things so that soldiers who weren't under his banner were taking the brunt of the casualties while his soldiers stood behind. He was looking to undermine Robb from the very start and he had his eye on the throne of the North the whole time.

>Implying we want this shit over there

Exactly. Keep Veeky Forums in Veeky Forums.

So what's up with this show? My ex loved it and so do some of my not-so-sophisticated friends.
When I watched six seasons of it, it felt like absolutely generic fantasy that tries too hard to be grim and dark, but instead goes full edgy (and latter full high epic bullshittery). Shallow characters, unreasonable motivations, asspulls, leftie agendas and marysueing included.
Am I missing something? If fa/tg/uys watching it, maybe I'm too harsh on the judgement.

She should have had a very tragic accident, falling up a flight of stairs. Very awful.

Robb could suspect all he like, he'd never be able to do anything against his own Mother. And don't tell me Caitlyn wouldn't have been ruthless enough to do it.

The show is lowest common denominator regurgitation of the books and the books are definitely fantasized versions of historical events with the serial numbers filed off but it’s enjoyable as far as if goes and I (personally) don’t mind its effort to make fantasy normal. I don’t see much of a point in making enjoyable fantasy a super sekref klubhouse, no normies allowed! and the books and shows serve to help make liking fantasy a normal thing.

Show skews hard from the book in several places but most prominently after the midget shoots his dad with the crossbow and flees. A lot of the characterization gets murdered/flanderized. A good example is Stannis, who in the books is muuuccch different from the figure in the show.

There's also the Dragon princess, whom the last we see of her in the books is drinking fetid water and shitting herself after she fucked everything up.

As for the books themselves, it's the war of the roses as written by a guro fetishist, but is otherwise pretty bog standard fantasy that's mostly remarkable for being detailed but accessible. It's the literary equivalent of a popcorn flick.

So you're mad because they died in a way that wasn't cruel enough for you?
Get out of here with that edge, son!

I think he's mad that he was killed by a Shadow the Hedgehog tier character. But you're obviously a redditor and love the show, so there's no point in discussing it with you.

I dunno how cannon the telltale games are but in those its pretty clear that Frey's army already knew the plan and were staying sober while getting robs men to drink so they'd be caught off guard

Now you're making a lot of assumptions there, but if you don't want to discuss, so be it

Did nothing wrong.

The books started off as accessible and engaging page turners, but turned into a bloated mess of characters and storylines nobody cared about.
Book four and five were barely readable trash.

The show started off as a really well done representation of the book series, but turned into shitty fanfic with Mary Sue-characters you just wanted to strangle. Though I suppose it was still a good representation of the books by that point.
Quality fell off a cliff by season 4 or 5, the last season in particular was on the same level as 90's saturday morning adventure shows (like Sinbad and Hercules), just with a bigger budget.

>fucking a girl while drunk with grief because your family is dead
How is this unrealistic and out of character? This seems like something that could happen to people and has happened to king in the past.

Why would the Freys give a fuck about some randomers who are made up of their most hated rivals and the Starks, some of the most seemingly haughty and dickish nobles in the setting? Plus, only the Freys are breaking guestright. The bannermen have way more to lose from telling than they would gain and who's to say some didn't try but were ignored or killed by their fellows/superiors?

It was mostly the honor thing desu and Robb only uses that as an excuse because, in truth, he doesn't want to make another bastard after seeing how shittily Jon is treated.

it makes more sense to let the twins become as powerful as possible. Why become lord of the twins when you can be lord of the twins AND riverrun and essentially all of the riverlands in general?

she gets pregnant later in the books, then gets fed tansy tea by her dear mother.

Greek society wasn't amenable to the sort of person who would betray their own, loyalty was to the citystate first and everything else second. Meanwhile, Westeros is built on the notion of "fuck you, I got mine".

Also, the Trojans did vaguely figure out something was up, but Laocoon, the guy who worked that out, got devoured by giant snakes from the temple of Athena, which dissuaded them from agreeing with his ideas.

Eh, that was just added in by Romans who liked to claim they were descended from Trojans and didn't want to admit that Troy got rused.

>Robb valued the honor of Jeyne poole more than the lives of all of his lords and soldiers
You're acting like a fairy told Robb that Frey would do what he did rather than grumble and not let him use his precious bridge like he does to everyone else.

>legitmizing your first-born bastard
i you don't kill him or send him to the wall before he procreates you'll have a civil war within 2 generations

This.

Frey/Bolton butchering the entire Stark retinue and most of the army was responding to a diplomatic insult with a nuke. Had it been hypothetically wargamed out before hand with the end result known, every tactician in Westeros would have said there’s no way Frey would have done what he did cause he’d reap the whirlwind eventually. But Frey, being the old bastard he is, thought he could get away with it and now Manderly is gonna eat him and his family alive. (I’m assuming the book will somewhat follow the show.)

I'm almost certain that Arya Stark won't kill him in the books nor she will kill most of the Freys. She's blames individuals over groups. Most likely, that role will belong to Lady Stoneheart,

That's one of my favourite parts of reading the Trojan War cycle - the gods are mostly spectators, sometimes showing up to champion certain heroes they like, and sometimes they feed people to snakes because they want to see how it plays out, and that priest with his spear is going to spoil the fun.

Legitimize all your bastards, take all your lovers as official concubines, raise all the kids to be family with strong family loyalty, impress upon them the responsibility and hard work and the potential for catastrophic fuck up and danger of kingship. When you single out one to succeed you it should not bring them joy and should bring the others relief. A king needs advisors and administrators, heaps of the benefits with limited risks and less work.

Start a tradition of solemn, serious and hard working rulers that will be past down the ages. Also large families, because you need people you can depend on and you should hold family close.

Because Roose wasn't a fucking retard. He waited patiently for the opportunity to present itself. Robb put way too much trust in him and was naive, Roose counted on that.

>Be Ramsay Bolton
>Ally with the major houses of the the North
>They send their bannermen to fight alongside Bolton soldiers
>Including many archers
>Tell the archers to fire on their own family members and friends
>Lords of the North are standing next to you when you do this
>Tell the lords you're about to fire on their subjects
>Lords of the North don't complain
>Lords of the North don't cut you down right there

Makes sense

Robbs fate serves to reinforce that honor and upstanding morals dont win wars

Robb did an unwise political move because he thought with his heart&dick rather than his brain, and he died for it

Robb died because he didn’t think Frey would respond to an insult with a nuclear option. There’s no “honor before reason” to it, the idea that Frey was so pissed and so sure of ultimate victory for the side he was choosing he would violate guest right in such a fashion would have been literally unthinkable. Cause it’s a tactic that can only work once, and if it fails you and all your kin are done forever and ever amen.

Yes Robb died, but there are still Starks and cadet-Starks galore. There will be no more Freys.

>Robb died because he didn’t think Frey would respond to an insult with a nuclear option.
yes, but he still chose to give that insult(and destroy the foundation of his alliance) rather than do something dishonorable on a more personal level

No one should contemplate that the response to an insult is a butchering of your family and friends. Unless you’re a inner city Chicago nigger that is.

Yes, he shouldn’t have dishonored is alliance and his promise. But he did, the response to that insult in no way should have been Frey’s actions and nothing should have made Robb contemplate that it could have been.

Arya in the books is also something of a poseur. Yeah she's violent but she's also short-sighted and impatient because she's, you know, 12. I doubt she'll ever get her murder spree

the red wedding was an extreme over-reaction caused in part by him being in a brutal war of secession

but something bad coming of it was a logical conclusion, he could have been simply left trapped on the other side of the bride or even had frey ally with the lannisters (which he did)

could rob have seen THIS bad thing coming? no, did he have A bad thing coming? yes

A broken alliance for a broken promise is a commensurate response. Yet the negotiations with the Freys after Robb’s insult between Cat and Walder to hammer out this alternate deal, along with Robb publicly eating humble pie at the Red Wedding (before it went wrong), made the Starks think the spat was over.

My point is that Robb had no reason to see that the response to his insult was going to be mass butchery and breaching of guest rights. There’s just no way it was foreseeable, his focus on honor had nothing to do with it. It was a pure sucker punch.

This. Robb's army can't get back to the North to deal with the Ironborn because the Freys have withdrawn from the alliance, and taken their levies with them. The Bad Thing HAD come, or so everyone thought, and the wedding is Robb trying to make amends and get past the Bad Thing.

But user, how else can we make the show GRIM and DARK if we don't strip all characters of their morals?

>Ramsay orders the archers to fire
>Allied houses threaten to withdraw their armies if he does so
>Ramsay gives the order anyway
>Lords of the North draw swords on Ramsay
>Allied lords are killed by Ramsay's guards
>Allied houses turn on the Boltons mid battle
>Bolton army collapses
>Boltons are massacred utterly
>Battle is over before Baelish even shows up

But user, I thought this show was all about "Actions have consequences"

>strip all characters of their morals?
>strip
>Ramsay Bolton
>Morals
Buddy, Ramsay was a bloodthirsty sadistic idiot from page 1 in both the books and show. The only thing he is good at is that he seems to have enough emotional intelligence to know how to break someone utterly.
As for fighting, tactics, or politics, he is utterly clueless because he never had any formal education.

>"Actions have consequences"
How about this one?
>Be Sansa Stark
>Be married off to Ramsay Bolton
>He is a known psychopath
>He really doesn't like being reminded he is a bastard
>Proceeds to constantly make snide remarks about him being a bastard
>Proceeds to insinuate his "true born" baby brother will usurp him
>Then act surprised when he beats you
Seriously, I had no sympathy for her.

Considering that during that arc she was seesawing wildly between “so depressed if I bait him hard enough he’ll just kill me and I’ll be done with it” and “maybe if I bait him hard enough he’ll get so angry he slips up” I don’t think we’re supposed to feel sorry for her.

>if I bait him hard enough he’ll just kill me and I’ll be done with it
That is what we call a "lose/lose" situation Alex
She should have pulled a Margery and appealed to his inner psycho.
If she had said to the psycho hunter chick "hey, you can fuck him all you want" she could have made an ally

Being suicidal does seem like a lose/lose to those who are not so depressed they’re suicidal.

i don't recall sophie showing that much cleavage before

Sansa marrying Ramsey is nonsensical in the first place, and you should not be looking for any logic in this arc, since the entire foundation is "we wanted Sansa to get raped".

He means the Lords that didn't coup him then and there.

>"we wanted Sansa to get raped".
there were easier ways to do that and ruin a character goddamn

I think user was talking about the freys being on the receiving end their own red wedding as riverlanders and Robb stark loyalists go on a purge compared to arya showing up and basically 1 shooting them all by herself in a way that just comes across as anticlimactic.

Save failing to protect public order and bringing disease and famine everywhere she goes because she is an idiot with no understanding of statecraft who ignores good advice because the person who said it wasn't attractive enough to bang.

>Westeros is built on Libertarianism
Suddenly all the grimdarkness makes sense.

It wasn't random you twit. Tywin orchestrated the whole thing.

I like how you think raising kids is similar to programming a computer.

That shit doesn't work user.

GRRM is a hack, news at 11

No, her mother was already giving her contraceptive from the moment their castle was captured.

>the bold young teenage conqueror falls for some slag and dooms his political alliance
>this is shitty writing because he didn't lose in battle or something
neck yourself

You're acting like it happened in a vacuum. By killing Robb in the way they did Frey and Bolton cemented an alliance with the Lannisters and the Royal family, and where instantly rewarded by becoming Wardens of their kingdoms.

Yeah, he violated tradition and killed his guests after promising not to. Boo fucking hoo. He didn't murder Robb for an insult. He murdered Robb to secure an alliance with the winning side.

And don't forgot Robb's little bride in the books was a member of a family that was loyal to Tywin, and they got over Robb's death and their daughter's abortion REAL quick. Almost like they knew it was coming...

The battle between Stannis and the Boltons hasn't happened just yet in the books, when they left off they are basically marching off to fight. It's shaping up to be VERY different then it was in the show. Like Stannis is going to beat the living shit out of Ramsey as half of Bolton's forces turn on him different. None of this "40 good men defeat him off screen" bullshit.

GRRM didn't write that, you brain-dead memelord. Sansa getting raped was a show thing. In the book the girl Ramsay molested was a literal Literally Who

>I never watched the show OR read the books, I'm just here to shitpost

How the fuck did Sansa not get knocked up in Ramsey was dicking her down every fucking night? Was he shooting blanks?

>Yeah, he violated tradition and killed his guests after promising not to. Boo fucking hoo. He didn't murder Robb for an insult. He murdered Robb to secure an alliance with the winning side.

And thus proved he couldn't be trusted to backstab people the moment you get a better offer. Doing that shit is a really bad idea long term, politically.

I don't understand what you're confused about, you're practically describing all the franchises that people eat up around here. If you read 40k and MtG novels you don't get to turn up your nose at this.

The difference is that the show happened but the books will never happen. :^)

>Like Stannis is going to beat the living shit out of Ramsey as half of Bolton's forces turn on him different
That would be fucking choice

The whole point was that it was his fault and he took the noble course of action. Look who's still alive, not too many 'noble hero' types left

Not to mention baiting Ramsey onto a frozen lake.

It's kinda inevitable because book Stannis isn't an absolute retard that burns his own child and got more experience under his belt. Ramsay's also more of a shithead in the books.

Nah the noble course of action would've been sticking to your agreement. Robb was stupid and horny and in love, and he died because the man he spited was a notoriously shifty and thin-skinned schemer.

Contrast with Jon Snow, who when faced with a similar choice between waifu and duty he chose duty. And he lasted much longer because of it.

Speaking of Jon. You think George is so salty over the show that he won't revive him?

Probably not. Despite what people on Veeky Forums like to say, Gurm is not some contrarian edgelord trying to deconstruct classic fantasy. Jon is obviously a centerpiece of this story. Secret Targaryen or not, he's important and I don't think Fatty would drop that big of a red herring on us.

So yeah, I do think Jon is coming back. And it'll probably be more interesting than how the show handled it.

Will George spite D&D and let Stannis and his family live in the next two books?

If you read Race for the Iron Throne, that blogger believes that Robb did most things right and that Walder Frey, Jeyne Westerling/her mom, and Roose Bolton were all planning on betraying Robb for Tywin by the beginning of A Clash of Kings. I tend to disagree with the blogger on most things, but it's a plausible if cynical theory.

Roose was probably working something out for himself, mostly because of all the bad blood between Starks and Boltons in the past.

I hope so. Stannis is the only righteous king.

You still mad, Veeky Forums?

But then Jon dies the same way Robb does - because he places his noble desires over his duty, what with his public support of Stannis, the Karstark issue and marching on Boltons.
Can I aay poetry?

I've heard this as well and I think there's some credibility to it. IIRC didn't the Westerlings get off pretty easy?

I will always be mad. From Dorne to Daenerys to Stannis to Sansa Bolton to muh racism at the Wall, season 5 was a fucking atrocity. NOTHING was redeemable about it.

Basically Sibyl Westerling, the mom, was in communication with Tywin about making sure her daughter wasn't pregnant, that her sons would be knighted and get gold, lands, and daughters, and that her uncle would get the old castle of Castamere as his own. They made out like bandits, which adds credence to the idea that she sent Jeyne to Robb as a honeypot.