ASoIaF minor character prediction

[sunnyskywalker]

Feeling random today. So: ignoring major characters like Jon and Dany, what do I guess will happen to some of the others?



Samwell Tarly: Will get Jon's job as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch after Jon becomes King of Westeros. Then we will all want crossover crackfic where Sam and Neville Longbottom get to hang out.

Random trivia: Did you know there's a British newscaster Jon Snow?

Rickon Stark: Will be King Beyond the Wall someday. He'll be half-mad from being bonded to a direwolf too young and from all the trauma he went through as a toddler, and he will snap any time anyone tries to take something from him. Eventually, barely able to remember anything other than that something bad happened at Winterfell once, he and the aging Shaggydog will head back and find their way down to the crypts. Bran, Lord of Winterfell (known as Bran the Cripple, Bran the Warg, and Bran the Rebuilder for his work rebuilding the Wall after it got wrecked), will head down there with Summer one day. They will see eyes glowing in the darkness...

Jalabhar Xho: Will either turn out to be the most masterful schemer at court, or GRRM will forget about him because he really is just the token Summer Islander. Come one, everyone and their grandmother spends four books scheming except him? No way. I do not buy this "poor clueless exile" act. If it's true that he's just hapless window dressing... and if Alayaya and Chataya really are just Happy Whores who don't share the white heroes' sexual inhibitions and only exist to be useful to Tyrion... and if the Summer Islanders on Sam's ship only exist to help him with his sexual inhibitions... well. Then GRRM and I will have words.

Dragons: Will really and truly leave the world for good this time.

Redshirts: Will die or worse. Yeah, running out brainpower already. It was a long week.

Comments

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

There seemed to be an effort in aFFC to mention Xho a fair bit, and it seemed to me to be an effort to remind people of his existance in preperation for him to do... something. He's spending time with the Tyrells, isn't he? I suspect he's being set up to play some role...

Has it been established where the Summer Isles are in relation to the Free Cities?

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, I hope you're right. Back when GRRM thought the content of the first three books would fit into A Game of Thrones, whatever Jalabhar is up to would have been scheduled for the second or third book, too, which would make his role in 1-3 seem a lot less like furniture.

All I remember about the Summer Isles is that they're vaguely south-ish. Probably equatorial, or nearly, to get that name (summer all the time!)

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there also supposed to be a five or ten year gap between book three and four? I suspect there's a few characters that weren't supposed to do anything major in public until then... We're only just now getting a hint of how much the Maesters and the Church is up to.

(This is the point where I begin to worry that GRRM is falling prey to the Robert Jordan syndrome of dragging out less and less story across more and more books...)

Westeros has always struck me as too large for my tastes - I initially assumed it was about the size of Britain, considering how much of the setup is the War of the Roses with the serial numbers filed off... But the Wall has to be at or near arctic lattitude, while Dorne must be at least as far south as Spain, if not Morocco - tropical islands aren't actually that far south. Personally, I don't see why the story couldn't be set in a much smaller space; the Seven Kingdoms seem very sparsely populated if they're large enough to span that far!

[sunnyskywalker]

Yes, I'm definitely concerned. Especially since he can't even fit all the POV characters into one book anymore, and the next book won't be progressing so much as "meanwhile, back at the ranch Wall..."

I thought the same thing too, and was totally boggled once I realized how big it actually had to be. How exactly has this place been unified once the dragons died out, exactly? Though I suppose the degree of unification isn't all that high, actually. Still. And perhaps the constant warfare has artificially reduced the population. Maybe the original dragon conquest killed off so many people that the population still hasn't recovered. I dunno, just making things up at this point.

And as much as I enjoyed the Dornish scheming, I really started getting irked at the stereotype of "sensual, sexually available, and not-coincidentally-darker-skinned southerners" by this point. First the Summer Islanders and now the Dornish too? Then there's Dany the Great White Queen and her many brown servants. I'd like my fantasy tropes overturned a little more thoroughly, GRRM, and "I meant to get to that part in Book 2 but now it's going to be book 6" doesn't cut it.