They're awfully far from Mother Rhoyne anyway

Even just saying "the Seven Kingdoms" is a nod to their perceived right to claim Dorne as part of the realm, yeah? I've always taken it as such.

Not being a book reader of this series, myself, I am curious: How exactly does GRRM phrase the following?

“Larys jerks off to Alicent’s bare feet”

He didn’t put that into any book yet.

I’m feeling that last night’s episode was unnecessarily drawn out and it was almost like the last season of GoT.

HotD is kinda taking agency away from some characters. Alicent crowns Aegon over a mistake and not her own ambition? Aemond mistakenly starts a war because of a disobedient Vhagar?

I was thinking about this last night, too. The best explanation for this that I can think of is to soften the characters. Alicent isn't hell-bent on power, she simply misunderstood and reluctantly supports her son's ascension. Aemond didn't want his dragon to chomp on his nephew, the dragon did it on his own. Similar thing happened with Leanor--by revealing that it was a ruse, Daemon isn't a cold-blooded murderer who killed his neice's nephew so that he could finally have her, it was a a way of "freeing" Laenor.

This can all be hand-waved away by the fact that the source text is a history, so none of the fictional authors really knew what was inside these characters' minds. But it also seems critical for a 5-ish season show that all these characters don't come across as absolute monsters.

Is Cole the most monstrous character in the show so far?

It’s Larys the Cumfoot in a walk

No man is so accursed as the kinslayer...

As I wrote that, I realized there were worse candidates. Larys for sure. Aegon the Elder is also an unrepentant rapist, so there's that.

I was thinking this too. Too much whitewashing going on for some of these people.

I also found it annoying that everyone on Dragonstone referred to the greens as "the greens". To me it sounds like something people outside the family would use but not themselves.

Right. "The usurpers" or something, which I think Daemon says at some point.

I feel like the Starks are going to play a bigger role in the show than the book. They don't make it down to KL until the war is basically over and then they do clean-up work, right?

Although since the Usurper is already a person, they could call Aegon "The False King" or something like that.

Yeah I think in the books they give their support to the Greens and then tell them to hold tight while they bring in another harvest.

I think they send a small force to the Riverlands of the oldest fighting men first and then Cregan marched south after the harvest with his main host. They support Rhaenyra

Also, if they’re gonna whitewash the Greens, why is Daemon getting darker by choking Rhaenyra?

Reading Dunk and Egg again. I remember the first story but not the others. So good.

Hedge Knight series ordered for HBO

Nice.