For the record, I'm not spoiler tagging anything because the final season of GOT came out 6 fucking years ago. If you haven't seen it AND haven't had it spoiled for you yet, then I don't know what to tell ya'.
There's a big difference between being a George Bush-esque war criminal and being a loony tune. As Jake said, her over-the-top use of force was long established. Convincing me that she went off the deep end would've taken several more seasons.
I think we're saying the same thing. I'm saying they laid the foundation for the idea that fully half of all Targaryens are batshit insane. Then they set us up with three Targaryens in the series; Danny, her brother Viserys, and Jon. In the beginning we don't know about Jon, but the implications are clear that Danny is the sane one and Vis is the insane one. Then we're introduced to Jon, and are clearly meant to wonder if actually Danny is insane or if they are somehow both the 'good' Targaryen.
That is to say, we are primed to understand that any given Targaryen might be insane and all they had to do was give us more time with Danny GOING insane for it to make perfect sense. But they decided on 'she hears a bell and her brain breaks.'
That's the only way he'll finish them. If he's still working on 6 and hasn't started on 7, no chance.
That was my understanding. Both books were in a stage to be called 'pretty close' but that George didn't like something that happened in six, so that necessitates a re-write of both 6 AND 7 to fix it. And he has, if rumours are to be believed, been doing that for like 5 years.
I remain skeptical. I'll admit that Bran had a bigger role in the books (to the point that I wasn't totally surprised that he wound up "winning"), but making the boy who lives in the tree the president rather than the bastard with legitimate claims to the throne—a classic fantasy trope—is a tough sell.
Imagine it with way more time to breathe instead of a clumsy 20-minute exposition dump of why this totally actually makes sense y'all.
If the idea in the end is -actually- to establish a non-monarchal government, then actually the worst person to hand it to is 'the legitimate claim to the throne' guy. To actually change the government requires them to actively choose not to give it to the 'rightful' person.
Instead, you choose someone with no legitimate claim to the throne, who actively stayed out of the political schemes, actively fought the -real- threat the entire time, and has magic brain powers and crazy amounts of empathy. It makes tons of sense. Just not in the show where almost none of this is actually explored and the entire explanation for why this is supposed to make sense takes less time to say on screen than it took me to write this post. Also, D&D got way up their own ass with Tyrion's "it's about stories!" monologue that moved precisely no one.
I think that's the most gut-wrenching part of being a GOT fan; if they'd committed to it, cared about the project, and stuck with it for a few more seasons, almost every complaint - at least about the story itself - would likely evaporate. Even if we ended up largely in the same place, because those places would have made SENSE to get to instead of just a hand-wave "this is where we need to be so this can be over, so here we are.'
Y'know I was thinking about it and a better way to go, if you wanted the flavor, but not the bullshit, is Jaime does go back to her at the end, not to actually join her, but to do the Kingslayer role a second time because he believes it's the only way to get to her. And have it play mostly the same but instead of them getting trapped, he intercepts her before she can escape. And right there at the end they both kill each other, and rather than it being him actually going back, it's what the people *assume* about him. So Jaime tries to redeem himself, but history is capricious, and the tales about him will always be sister-lover and kingslayer. And Brienne is maybe the only one who knows why he really went back, but also knows nobody will ever believe her.
Absolutely terrific idea.
I'd even add to that if one wants to present Jaime as still being conflicted; have him be unable to actively kill Cersei, and with his last moments he holds her -- not just out of love, but forcing her to stay in place as the building collapses around them. He can't kill her, but he can't let her leave here alive either. Jaime could have escaped if he'd just killed her and left, but he just couldn't do it, even now. Even knowing that she needed to die.
And again, history will never know. He'll remain the kingslayer coward that ran back to his sister at the end of the world. Or maybe Brienne puts all the truth into the White Book for someone, someday, to find.
