So the same as all the other kings Westeros has ever had, then, and better than most of the ones Essos has had? That’s the big problem here with “OH NOES THE 3ER!”. It’s the like the worst case scenario is the same as the normal scenario - a king willing to expend the lives of his citizens for petty and shitty reasons. And I dunno, the show obviously doesn’t detail the last 300 years of Westeros, but I just read through it in the companion book to ASoIaF, and that was megashitshow that I literally cannot think of anything 3ER/Bran could realistically do to make it worse. Even if he got people killed in the name of a some sort of “grand plan”, I think that would probably still be better than getting them killed in the name of fucking your sister, which is, frankly, the cause of most of the strife of the last 300 years of Westeros.
Yeah, looking back, that slightly rando-seeming romance, which basically wasn’t covered by the books at all, as I remember it (like in the books Robb turns up and is like “MUM I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND AND SHES REAL NOT INTERNET!” and Catelyn is like “Fuck’s sake Robb…”), actually was quite well done. I don’t think anyone is going to disagree with the idea that 4-6 more episodes over the last two seasons would have helped us out a lot.
Potentially, yes. Electoral monarchies can go in a lot of directions, but it’s a very good basis for heading towards a parliamentary monarchy and then a parliamentary democracy. It’s a lot better than a pure monarchy for that. But really as people have said most of it depends on how well Bran stabilizes it before he dies.
Book-readers have been guessing that this will happen in the books for the last, what, 14 years? Something like that. So yeah I expect in the books we will see this. Whether GRRM told D&D in his “broad strokes” outline of what was to happen is another question. GRRM’s “broad strokes” can be extremely detailed, but they don’t have everything.
Oh definitely. Though I dunno if that’d actually be a bad thing per se. Reading the history of the Seven Kingdoms it’s totally unclear what Dorne contributes to the Seven Kingdoms except intrigue and poison. Having them part of the Seven Kingdoms stops them pissing off the lords of the Reach etc. but meh… it’s a lot of sand and asshole - it’s not Middle East bad but er… it ain’t great (they are more socially progressive than the rest of realm in terms of the rights of women (the Seven Kingdoms as a whole don’t seem to particularly object to homosexuality most of the time I note - it’s the source of gossip and “Well they won’t have any children, what a failure!”-type sneering, rather than criminal or religious trials or the like, for the most part, something quietly reflected in the books - the faith can get upset about it but it doesn’t seem to in the civil/criminal laws, as I recall).
Well, unless Grey Worm is genetically Naathi. Presumably Missandei was (damn typed “is”, RIP!), and was not in fact, a complete idiot (quite the opposite, a brainbox), so when she was suggesting that they go there, she presumably was aware of said butterflies and not thinking “lol u will b dead in day grey loser!!!111!!”. Though er yes unless the entire crew of Unsullied on Grey Worm’s ship are also Naathi, they better just be dropping him off. It is quite likely that he is Naathi, because they’re considered to make the best slaves, and he and Missandei very roughly meet the description for Naathi (except the eyes, but no-one in the show as the exotic eye colours from the books), and she definitely is from there.
I gotta wonder how much the Unsullied and Dothraki are getting paid. Like, it’s gotta be a fucking lot, to just leave like that. Though I suspect a lot of Unsullied have probably been hired by various Westerosi locals, if their leader is heading into retirement (there isn’t any tyranny on Naath to deal with).
EDIT - SPIN OFF UPDATE
A) There will definitely NOT be an Arya spin-off. This is confirmed. By implication of what was said any kind of spin-off involving the current characters in the near-term is also ruled out.
B) The weird-ass Age of Heroes one is shooting, as think has been mentioned, and two others of the original total five are still “in development”. Fingers crossed for the Brian “LA Confidential” Helgeland one I say!