I thought Stan used it as collateral to get the money for the army. When they walked up to it I couldn't wait to see who was inside. But it was just empty. Bwah bwah
shareI doubt the Ironbank could find a repo man with balls big enough to walk up to an army of thousands of Unsullied, Dothraki, and 3 dragons and try and stake a claim.
shareI don't understand why it was empty. I know Stannis left with his army but wouldn't there still be some peasants or SOMEbody left? Squatters even? I mean the gates were not even locked. How is it not looted and pillaged?
Damn cool looking castle though. It might be my favorite of the castles.
I do like the Dornish palaces too.
I don't understand why Dany needed to go there. It seems to me that with her fleet along with three Dragons she could easily pimp her way into the iron throne. Waiting only gives Cersei time to fortify her position.
shareTrue. I guess it's just the closest harbor on the east coast, and they can resupply their men and horses, and plan the invasion.
But it is a loss of momentum. It is only a day or two's sail from dragonstone to kings landing, innit?
I think Euron will go to Dragonstone to get a dragon's head as a proposal gift for Cersei.
I don't know how far it is from KL. I'll be disappointed if Euron ends up taking down a dragon. He comes across as a psychopathic, opportunist prick. More like Ramsey and Joffrey. Not really worthy of that kind of trophy
shareI don't think any of the dragons will be taken down by a Greyjoy fleet. I think it might happen with the Night King and perhaps an unknown device he might have at his disposal.
shareWhat has Cersei got to "fortify" her position? She's got no real power. There are the Northerners under Jon who are against her. To the South and to the West there's the combined Tyrell/Martell houses who have joined forces with Dany in the East. Like Jaime said the Tyrells still hold the power of grain and flood, and the Martells livestock. We know that the Tarleys join up along with Euron's fleet but against how many Unsullied, a Dothraki horde and three dragons...... As for why she went to Dragonstone, that was her home, where she was born. She also needed a place to plan her attack. The best place considering its placement was Dragonstone. Also another thing she's got three dragons. No one knows about them yet. Keep them secret until it's time to strike. Then watch the soiling of trousers begin.
shareI didn't really think Cersei had much to work with true, I was just thinking that they are obviously hinting that Euron was going to somehow be her secret weapon or at least make it more of a fight.
So Cersei and Jaime don't know about the dragons? I thought everyone knew. I seem to remember Twyin being told about it in an earlier season but he wasn't worried then because they were still infants.
I think the horn Dragonbinder will be in the hands of the Night King. From what I remember no one outside of Dany's retinue know of the dragons. You'd think that in one of the conversations about Tyrion and Dany either Cersei or Jaime would have mentioned the dragons.
shareYeah they don't seem worried enough
shareI think they know about the dragons, but they also know the dragons before these had been getting smaller and smaller due to being raised in captivity. The wise masters also knew about her dragons, but found out the hard way that they are more than pets.
shareCersei has no money either, right? There's been no gold mined in years and the Lannisters were borrowing money from everywhere. I guess they don't have to pay back the Tyrells but the Iron Bank will want their money.
shareAnd when the Iron Bank comes calling, Cersei will have nothing to give them.
shareGood point. Even Tywin Lannister himself was concerned about the Iron Bank. Now I wonder if the Faceless Men training Arya and allowing her to leave was part of a hit contract from the Bank, since they knew her kill list included Cersei.
shareI don't think so. I think Jaquen had no choice but to let her go. She wasn't going to be brainwashed quite the way the Waif was. Jaquen didn't allow Arya to leave, she reclaimed her identity and left of her own volition.
shareAlso, a question, what happens when one doesn't make payments to the iron bank? I don't remember any consequences being mentioned in the book or the show. I mean, there's a war going on, isn't the iron bank's existence itself threatened?
share"One stone crumbles and another takes its place and the temple holds its form for a thousand years or more. And that's what the Iron Bank is, a temple. We all live in its shadow and almost none of us know it. You can't run from them, you can't cheat them, you can't sway them with excuses. If you owe them money and you don't want to crumble yourself, you pay it back."
―Tywin Lannister
I don't know that it ever got more specific than that, but this quote from the most powerful man in Westeros gives some idea of the power they wield. Given that they are such a hugely powerful institution operating in the city founded by the Faceless Men, it seems logical that they would work together from time to time.
I don't remember if the show covered this, but in the books Cersei blew off the Iron Bank representative when he called on her.
It is where Aegon launched his conquest of Westeros, and her ancestral home, so a bit of repeating history. I don't think she is waiting around, next week's promo has her in the war room with all her allies making plans. Also I don't think it is as simple as capturing King's Landing. If she sends everyone there, the Lannister army and Euron's fleet would put them under siege. So she needs ground forces who can attack from the west to prevent something like that from happening, and to do that, she also needs to be able to use the sea to transport them to multiple locations. It's possible that Euron has already set up a blockade, which is why he was so confident when he went to see Cersei. The major sea battle from the trailers happens either episode 2 or 3, which does not look good for Theon and Yara, but the other battles they have shown are in Casterly Rock and near Highgarden, so they do get through somehow.
shareI didn't get that either. Why would the castle be completely abandoned? Especially since Jaime thought that would be where Dany would strike first.
It would have been better if they just had a skeleton force keeping the castle, then they surrender to Dany once they see the dragons and fleet.
I was wondering that too, doesn't seem like the island would be entirely abandoned. Maybe they'll touch on that in the next episode. A problem with that is predictability. Whoever is left on Dragonstone will undoubtedly not have enough power to stand against Daenerys, if they'd even want to, so they'll just join her. A predictable scene that will take half a minute. Would've felt shoehorned into this episode anyway.
shareNo one would leave a place like that entirely abandoned except for maybe Stannis.
shareWhy wouldn’t he leave it empty?
He obviously didn’t plan to return, at least not before winter has arrived (and surely not during winter).
Then, wo would want to take the castle? The Lannisters? With winter at the doorstep, they’d have better things to do, too.
Looters? Well, it didn’t look as if there was anything left worth looting. Or maybe it was this empty because it already has been looted… but I guess Stannis just didn’t care. I seem to remember that he more or less hated Dragonstone (although I don’t remember where and when he said something that makes me think so, so maybe I’m remembering it wrong), and he probably would have burned it down (scorched earth policy), but then again, burning castles down is a hard thing to do (as long as you have no drangos whose fire can melt stone) so it wasn’t even worth the effort.
So basically, my interpretation is that Stannis didn’t give a sh*t about Dragonstone, which also would be, in my opinion, absolutely in character. (I hope that’s the right expression – English isn’t my native language…)
Hm. You do have a point, but it still seems strange that it would be completely abandoned. Like someone else said, what happened to all the servants and other non-combatants? Did they all just evacuate their homes?
I think I do remember him hating Dragonstone, but I don't think it would be practical/logical to just leave your castle empty.
Well, I imagine that Stannis just said: »I’ll take the north or die trying« – and either way, he didn’t have any use for Dragonstone anymore. And if he had taken the north, his next move probably would’ve been to go straightly for King’s Landing. After winter.
As for the servants and other non-combatants… Hmmm, to me, Dragonstone seemed nothing than just a bare rock with a castle. That’s not a good place to survive winter – probably, without supply ships arriving, there’s not even enough wood to burn. So sending away all the servants etc. to find a new life on the main land would actually be (or at least, offering them the chance to move away instead of ordering them to remain) actually seems the decent thing to do.
On the other hand, it seems logical (to me) that at least a few of them would’ve stayed anyway to at least try to survive there…