Since the subject no longer appears to be verboeten... Little things in DWD:
- the village of Pennytree, located between Bracken & Blackwood lands is mentioned as “a royal fief for a hundred years.” Perhaps Aegon V took it to spare its destruction as the feuding Houses warred, out of respect for the memory of Ser Arlan, whose squire Aegon squired for? I also wonder what connection Dunk might have to the Tarth family. Brienne’s size and ugliness might be his genetic legacy and she seems to have seen one of his old shields in the armory of her father.

- Also from the Dunk and Egg books, it was good to see the Bloodraven stuff pay off in the real books. His personality with Bran, in the small glimpses we got, seems a lot more mellow and nicer than his appearance in The Mystery Knight. With his own great-nephew, no less. Speaking of which, I wonder how he went from being the Hand of one king to imprisonment during his successor’s reign? Hardly uncommon in this series, but Maekar’s succession from his brother doesn’t appear to have been of the hostile nature of the changeover from Robert to Joffrey. I got the impression that all of Daeron II’s sons were fairly decent fellows, with Maekar actually being the biggest jerk of the bunch. Since Aegon seems to have been portrayed as a generally decent and easy-going type (especially from the advice Aemon gave him when he took the throne), why would he continue his father’s grudge against Bloodraven to the extent of sending him to the Wall? That suggests something more than mere political disagreements at work there, but also that a certain degree of honor still remained to Bloodraven, since he was being sent to the same place as Aegon’s beloved brother. A guy as competent and as dangerous as Brynden Rivers is presented in the Dunk and Egg books, getting shipped off to the ends of nowhere with the relatively helpless son of the man who imprisoned him is not a recipe for happy endings, no matter how sincere the Watch is about a clean slate. Plainly the middle parts of his story will have some interesting details, because his fall seems to have not totally deprived him of honor or respect, but at the same time seems a bit more serious than political disagreements with a change of regimes or moral outrage over his kinslaying.

- Does the malady of Raventree Hall's eponymous weirwood affect Bloodraven at all? Is it a sort of cruel irony that due to its apparent lifelessness he can't see through it and thus is deprived of insight into his home castle of all places? Or perhaps it is the presence or association with another greenseer (possessing the tree after death or dwelling beneath its roots) that has precipitated this aberrant condition (and is the mysterious cause of the ravens associated with it), and maybe it was exposure to this entity that unlocked Brynden's third eye, as he did for Bran?

Bloodraven's appearance and revelation as the three-eyed crow also brings into question the rumors about him when he served his legitimate kinfolk. Did he then practice some sort of sorcery or other preternatural art, or was he simply a very capable individual who gained a reputation for sorcery thanks to a combination of jealousy, fear and ignorance of his true methods, in the manner of Varys, and only ironically discovering the truth of his abilities after coming to the Wall?

- I wonder which were the brothers he loved and hated, respectively? Daeron, Bittersteel & Blackfyre are the ones we know best, if at second or third hand. Given his leal service to Daeron & at least one of Daeron’s sons, and his role in the death of Blackfyre those answers would SEEM obvious. But this is exactly the sort of thing with which Martin likes to dick us around. It would be a fitting irony to the rather extraordinary life of Bloodraven if he found himself forced to fight his beloved brother on behalf of his despised weakling brother, because of his duty or loyalties or belief in the better claim or best interests of the realm. Another amusing irony would be if Bittersteel was the favored brother, reversing the conflicts from their being born to mothers from enemy houses and in circumstances all but guaranteed to make them into enemies (as alluded to in Jaime’s plotline). Given those circumstances, however, it seems more probable that he hated Bittersteel. The question of which brother he loved might still be interesting.
Or maybe he really was the sneaky manipulative, Varys-Pycelle-Richelieu-Talleyrand type that was his public reputation, who picked the side he believed he could best prosper in service, and had the self-serving weasel characteristics kicked out of him on Wall, kind of like Jon Snow going from a whiny emo tool to a guy you could respect somewhat by book 3, and a fitting kinsman of Ned & Robb in DWD.

- Other interesting stuff is the revelations that stretch backward in time even as the story moves forward, such as the origins of Tywin Lannister’s relationship with Aerys Targaryen and a possible seed of the enmity that eventually flowered between the two men. Also, if they were friends as young men or boys, it would explain both how Tywin was selected so young as the Hand of the King (before he had even succeeded to lordship of Casterly Rock), and why Aerys would be receptive to trusting him enough to open the gates of the city. It’s hard to imagine Pycelle’s exhortations being sufficient to convince anyone of anything so important, particularly when Varys was arguing otherwise (and especially given that he trusted Varys enough to be suspicious and hostile to his own son based on the Spider’s counsel). On the other hand, if there really was an old friendship, it’s easy to see how the Mad King might believe the man Aerys had slighted so harshly by rejecting his daughter, stealing his son, and mutilating his vassal might be willing to forgive those slights and come to Aerys’ aid in his hour of need. His rejection of the marriage of Cersei & Rhaegar makes much more sense in light of the wedding incident and in view of a growing estrangement between two long-time friends who were becoming divided by compounding jealousies.

- This also is the second book now where an agenda and conspiracy to enact it are attributed to the maesters. I wonder if the foreshadowing would have been better played if the book had not been split. So is Lady Barbrey right? Are her accusations merely blaming a scapegoat for the loss of her lover & husband? Do the criticisms of Marwyn’s faction lend support to her resentments, or are they simply two different groups with typically plausible hostile perspectives, Marwyn because of his academic issues with them, and Barbrey merely exhibiting the typical old-school fringe-culture disdain (the ironborn also scorn the maesters) for mainstream Westeros institutions?

- Another tidbit from Barbrey is her allegations about Rickard Stark’s southern ambitions. If his maester was, in fact, sent by the Citadel with an agenda in mind, it stands to reason that attempting to tie the North closer to the other realms would suit almost any agenda they could have, but what was Rickard's interest? I doubt he was induced to share their vision of a more-closely-knit Westeros. Rather Lady Dustin nee Ryswell suggests he had plans that ties to the South would facilitate. This fact is easily overlooked when the first Starks we see are married to, or sons of, a southern noble, but from what is said in the rest of the books, that would really seem to be a noteworthy exception. In the Dunk & Egg books, very little is said about the North, particularly as participants in any of the events or politics of the greater realm. The jests Ned's fellow councilors make upon his arrival in King’s Landing fit much better in a setting where a northman coming to court is an extremely rare thing, much less taking a seat on the Small Council or being named Hand of the King. Much of the backstory given for the Seven Kingdoms mostly shows interactions between the North and the rest as confined to driving out enemies or fighting over fringe territories like Moat Cailin & the Neck or Bear Island and the Sisters. The sept in Winterfell is known as Lady Catelyn’s Sept, suggesting that she is either the first worshipper of the Seven to be lady in Winterfell or else southron brides of prior Lords of Winterfell were not afforded the same affection or respect by their husbands (would that Ned & Robb maintained that custom…).
So with all this admittedly thin evidence, it would seem that Rickard was a bit of a cosmopolitan by northern standards and really did have plans in mind. His fostering of Ned with Jon Arryn, and betrothal of Lyanna to Robert Baratheon would probably be more in the same line, as well as the presence of his children at the Tournament at Harrenhal, when northmen seem to typically scorn such events. The northern lords love Ned so much that they’d fight through a blizzard to rescue his daughter from a bad marriage, yet few if any northmen were seen at the tourney Robert held in his honor. So how did all four Starks siblings end up at a tournament in which none of them seem to have fought or jousted (except maybe Lyanna, and of course her not openly), according to the Reeds? The best explanation seems to be their father sending them to participate in southron society and make connections. Being the sort of stubborn, contrary, SOBs Starks are, they mostly seem to have stuck together and squabbled with their southern peers over the courtesies due the least of their vassals.

Did Lord Rickard actually envision what Robb briefly brought to pass – namely, drawing the Riverlands into the orbit of the North and increasing the power/access of the Starks? Had Robb managed a quick victory over Tywin or gained over-lordship of the Trident in a more peaceful fashion, it might have come in handy to have a more temperate region with the onset of winter, as well as the more convenient access to the rest of Westeros.
As it is, however, if there is any truth to Barbrey’s accusations of feeding Lord Rickard’s ambitions, the maesters have a lot to answer for, and Lord Rickard might have been better advised to deal with maesters as the Greyjoys tend to do. Whatever their origin, those southern ambitions have all but destroyed his house and bloodline.
Letting Lyanna out of the North exposed her to Rhaegar Targaryen, which started the rebellion and caused the deaths of Rickard and Brandon.
Fostering Ned at the Eyrie did what it was supposed to do – formed a close connection with other nobles, namely Jon Arryn & Robert Baratheon, the latter of whom caused nothing but trouble for the Starks. Had Lyanna not been betrothed to him, there would have been less cause for conflict over her relationship with Rhaegar. Had he not become so enamored of her, his rage against the Targaryens might have been moderated and the extreme lengths to which he permitted the rebellion to go might not still be tearing the realm apart.
Later that friendship with Robert drew Ned back into the politics of the larger realm and painted a target on his back (and had the ghost of Lyanna not so outshone Cersei, perhaps a legitimate heir might have come from their marriage).
Just as bad as getting mixed up with Robert Baratheon was the betrothal to Catelyn Tully. Absolutely not one good thing has come to the Starks from their connection to the Tullys, unless you credit Lady Stoneheart’s genetic contributions with a positive effect.
It was Catelyn’s relationship with Lysa and reflexive support and endorsement of anything from her Riverrun days that pushed Ned into accepting the Handship and induced him to pursue his investigation, as well as leading him to accept Littlefinger’s company to the extent that he did. Without his wife’s trust of Petyr, there is no way Ned would have had a hair more to do with the man than was strictly necessary for council business, and without that supposed affection for his foster sister, Ned would have been far more suspicious of Baelish’s motives for inveigling himself into the Starks’ company.
Then there is the double-whammy the Tullys pull to kick off the War of the Five Kings. Catelyn arrests Tyrion on highly circumstantial evidence, because all she needs is the slightest suggestion from any child of Riverrun, foster or otherwise (Family, Duty, Honor – note which one comes first for the Tullys), and Lysa’s mistreatment provides a way out for the Imp, which would not have been possible had Catelyn not operated on that old Tully-blind-faith that caused her to make a near-suicidal trip into the mountains on the assumption of open-handed support from a woman she had not seen in over a decade.
So thanks to the Tullys, the good guys start out the war with all the drawbacks of the abduction (being the offending party and giving excuses to Tywin), and the advantages of starting the war already frittered away: she let the guilty Lannisters know of their hostility; by starting the fight when she was alone on the road and Ned limited in resources in King’s Landing, she sacrificed the initiative you get from being the one to pick the fight – Cat essentially picked the fight when she was too weak to take advantage of the surprise to hurt her prey; and by letting Tyrion escape, she further weakened their position relative to the Lannisters. It would not surprise me to learn that the seeds of the Red Wedding were planted when Roose Bolton heard that she lost the hostage whose capture initiated the hostilities.
On top of these handicaps, the Tullys’ alliance with the Starks gave the northmen a strategic vulnerability. Rather than holding Tyrion at the heart of their strategically impregnable realm, the Starks have to go out and expose themselves in foreign lands.
Edmure’s ineptitude in the early days of the war puts them in a deeper hole, making it all the more urgent for Robb to make the marriage pact with the Freys, and his later blunder at the Fords all but loses the fight.
Without the need to rescue the Tully screw-ups, Robb & friends could have thumbed their noses at the Lannisters from behind Moat Cailin, and Balon Greyjoy would never have dared attack the North, and thus doomed the causes of independence for both Direwolf and Kraken.
Later on, of course, we have Catelyn releasing Jaime, Littlefinger’s lust for revenge causing him to urge Joffrey to the execution of Ned, Sansa’s affection for entertainments and the court and all the rest of the trappings of the south (almost certainly coming from her southern-bred mother or septa) motivating her to betray Ned so as to stay in King’s Landing and last but not least, association with Hoster Tully cannot be seen as even remotely good. I don’t care how fondly his (generally wrong) daughter remembers him. Absolutely every known FACT about Lord Hoster makes him out to be a major creep.
- He doesn’t get along with Brynden Blackfish, the single most badass guy from the whole Riverlands, and the only good Tully
- He forced his daughter to have an abortion and then forced her on an old guy who was going to resent for the circumstance of their wedding
- He was responsible for the only known atrocity by the rebels in Robert’s Rebellion prior to the Lannisters signing up (the destruction of that village which stayed loyal to the king, where Arya & the bandits pass through in aSoS).
- He had to be bought in the Rebellion, which makes him a bad friend to the Starks, Arryns and Baratheons and a horrible vassal to his king. Either the murder of his future son-in-law was cause for rebellion or it was not. If it was, then he had no business squeezing Ned & Jon to marry those ginger albatrosses he called daughters in order to get his help. If it was not cause for blood, he is a treacherous scumbag for turning against his king to suck up to new guys who were willing to get his girls out of his hair.
- He raised Catelyn, Lysa & Edmure. How much better would things have been for the Starks if their situation had more closely paralleled their wolves and THEIR mother had choked on an antler back on day one as well?
The three most broadly contributing factors to Ned’s downfall were his affection for Jon Arryn, his loyalty to Robert Baratheon and his trust in Catelyn Tully. All of which were engendered by his father’s “southern ambitions.” That’s not to say that both he and his son did not make mistakes all of their own, but it was their unfortunate anchorage to inept & morally compromised southerners that made those errors into fatal blunders. They might have been able to survive their own missteps, had their relationships to Catelyn not placed both men on such precarious footing. Robb giving Roose Bolton command of his infantry might not have gone as badly as it did if Edmure had not sent them after Harrenhal and given Roose so many opportunities for mischief, as well as inadvertently enabling Tywin’s victory by not permitting him to pass into the west and away from King’s Landing, Stannis & the Tyrells. Ned’s own mistakes in King’s Landing might have been salvageable (or at least survivable) if he didn’t have Littlefinger actively working to get him into a fatal war with the Lannisters at every step, so as to be ‘avenged’ over Catelyn.

- Also, not really relevant to DWD, but since I’m on a Tully rant: For all her affectation of womanly wisdom and assumption of her superior female judgment, Catelyn starts a war based on Petyr Baelish’s word. Apparently she forgets RULE #1 of basic female common sense: When it comes to men “really wants to sleep with you” not only DOES NOT equal trustworthy, but for the most part means exactly the opposite! She might think of him as a brother, but his willingness to take on a northern warrior with a serious size and skill advantage (IIRC Martin said once that Brandon was the best fighter and swordsman of the Starks) for her “hand” rather STRONGLY suggests his reciprocal affection is NOT confined to the fraternal.

- Quite aside from her errant interpretations of prophecies and predictions, and willingness to cling a little too tightly to a particular interpretation, I think Melisande’s biggest bit of idiocy comes theologically. She’s actually lost her faith or else gotten it confused with her belief in her sorcery. I say this because of her approach to sacrifice. The key to the idea of divine sacrifice is not fuel, it is self-deprivation, either to please the object of your worship or for self-improvement, whether by sloughing off distractions to concentrate on the important thing(s) or by self-discipline through abjuring that which you care for. Absolutely none of these ends is being met by the “sacrifices” over which Melisande presides. She is NOT offering sacrifices for her faith on behalf of her cause and king, she is instead performing rituals and enhancing her magic works. How is it a “sacrifice” to get rid of something or someone you don’t want? If Stannis had gone over to R’hollor, then his burning of the statues of the Seven is not a sacrifice, since they are no longer precious to him. He is not giving anything up when he burns Lord Alester or Rattleshirt/Mance, because they are not people he cherishes or prizes, but whom he wishes to be rid off. Executing a man condemned for his own actions is not an act of sacrifice. In Saan’s story, Azor Ahai’s sacrifice was not the spilling of a quantity of blood or the shedding of important or significant blood (i.e. king’s blood). The lion would have sufficed for that; rather it was the heart’s blood of the person most dear to him in the world that tempered his sword into the weapon he needed. The functioning of her spells strongly suggests to me that Melisande’s powers do not stem from any divine assistance, but rather the new-found efficacy of magic, that has given the Starks warg powers and companions, made Thoros the real thing, roused the Others and the dead, enhanced the efficacy of the pyromancers of Westeros and the warlocks of Qarth and allowed Daenerys’ dragon eggs to hatch. Contrary to the general assumptions of readers who took the pryromancer’s words at face value, the cause of magic being restored cannot be the dragons, since it was making a comeback well before they were hatched. Melisande’s error is that she cannot see what is really happening and makes the all-too-classic error of confusing human works and divine power. Though she is making that mistake in the opposite direction from what is typical.