Season 5 Episode 10 Discussion "Mother's Mercy"

I think she expected when she met Stannis to see the same monster that killed Renly but really Brienne found a broken man who lost everything. Brienne would ease Stannis suffering by Killing him. So did anyone else assume she will spare Stannis to make him face his failure

 

Yep Yep. Brienne broke one oath to fulfill her other "oath" which at the end of the day did nothing, since killing Stannis does nothing for House Baratheon or Renly.

Defending yourself in a war is now considered a crime?

I don't think there are any laws againts magic in Westeros lol.

Self defense!

 

I kinda wish he'd have been like, "What? You're doing this for someone you knew for how many days, now?" Still, that resigned "Do your duty," was in character.

I was thinking Stannis would pay for his crime by...something bookreaders think will happen to another character for something. I don't want to leave spoilers here.

 

This made me giggle.

 

Yeah, I don't know where Brienne thinks she's coming from in a moral / legal way.

Renly is an usurper. He committed treason unapologetically.

In real life what Renly did is actually quite rare, because it's so flagrantly illegal. If you want the throne and you have an older sibling in the way, you either kill them, or force them to renounce any claim on the crown.

It would have been interesnting if Renly had denounced Stannis for adopting a new religion. That would actually be grounds for an usurpation. But that doesn't even come up as far as I recall.

 

Renly's forces also put a stranglehold on food heading into King's Landing during the War of Five Kings.

 

The Lena Heady nudity discussion reminds me of this for some reason:

 

Don't think this has been posted, but the body double gave an interview about the experience.
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/18/game-thrones-lena-headey-nude-double-van-cleave

 

Well the body double's body is gorgeous. And I disagree, the obvious CGI did take me out of the scene for a moment or two.

 

To be honest, I didn't know the walk of shame was technologically doubled until I read it here. I didn't notice the CGI, though admittedly I wasn't looking too closely.

But I wonder if Lena didn't want to do the scene, couldn't they have simply chosen to do a non-nude scene with obscured/implied nudity instead? I don't think it would have mattered that much.

 

Of all people, Renly seemed like one of the people Brienne would NOT follow. Her honor, dignity, courage, and valor fall in line with Stannis and his views so well. But I know the whole "he danced with me and didn't poke fun at me" exists... but still...

I just want to go on and say this: one reason I liked this season so much was the absence of Bran and his folks.

 

Oh I'm fine with her decision honestly. I was merely curious as to what her exact reasoning was that's all.

 

I have to say that the show managed to surprise me by still killing of Jon. I´d somehow convinced myself after episode 9 that it no longer made any sense that the crows would turn on him since he'd proven so spectacularly correct and there are now a whole lot more wildlings at the wall who are "loyal" to Jon than there are crows.

 

The NW had better have one hell of a plan for dealing with all the Wildlings south of the wall, at least the grown male ones. But they're clearly idiots so I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.

I sure hope Stannis told Ser Davos and Melisandre that dragonglass can kill a white walker because now that Jon's dead I doubt anyone else at the Wall has that info.

 

Tormund Giantsbane knows about it and the information originates from Samwell Tarly who's going to the city of Maesters.

 

**** you Olly.

 

It also didn't make sence for Shae to betray Tyrion in the show but they still went with it.

 

Something I heard mentioned on a podcast that I hadn't thought of:

Stannis thought he was destined/needed to save the realm from the usurpers and the White Walkers. In his mind if he didn't win at Winterfell the realm would fall and everyone would die.

Now of course this doesn't make burning Shireen morally right, but it does beg the question, "is a child's life too high a price for the lives of thousands and thousands of living people? So with that in mind and considering how spectacularly karma came round on Stannis and stomped a mudhole in his ass, I forgive him, and kind of pity him. He was led to believe that he was the one thing standing between the realm and darkness. And he made every decision based on that. And in the end it cost him everything including his soul. Now he is left with nothing but soul crushing guilt. I can't help but pity him some.

IF Brienne took pity on him and spared him or offers him the chance to take the Black and takes him back to the Wall next season I wouldn't mind it. Might give us a chance to see a Stannis that isn't suffering from a messiah complex. I mean the man has eaten a big ol' humble pie. Hopefully it changes him.

Plus I like the idea of Brienne, Pod, and Stannis getting to the Wall and finding Jon dead, and Thorne in charge. Talk about a tense situation.

 

ShowStannis did say he had a vision of a great battle in the snow and was triumphant. It would be interesting if he had misinterpreted it as the Battle of Winterfell when it was a battle at the Wall against the White Walkers. He's the perfect man to be Lord Commander. However, considering D&D have little love for the character, he's probably dead.

 

^ "He's Dead, Jim." (the 'he' in question being both Stannis and Jon, even though you only mentioned the former).

 

But only Stannis is staying dead.

 

I used to resist buying into some fan's complaints that the show writers actively disliked Stannis's character. But having scene this season play out, and listen to some of their behind the scenes comments about him, I cannot help but start to agree with those complaints.

They seemed to go out of his way to make Stannis look as horrible as possible (far more so than he's been in the books thus far). Heck they couldn't even let him be the skilled/experienced battlefield commander that BookStannis is. Instead ShowStannis is a rank amateur who makes rookie mistakes and falls before the might of Ramsay-Sue and his god-mode plot armor.

 

Same, I thought it was 100% Lena. The scene was so intense I hardly noticed either.

 

I´ll admit that scene puzzled me because I realized straight away that Cersies body didn't look anything like Lena Headey's but somehow it didn't occur to me that they used cgi to put her head on someone elses body. I was wondering if she could have changed that much from just a couple of years earlier when she was in "Dredd".