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 Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
Stolen from reddit. No spoilers.
This isn't a story that ends with "happily ever after". That's where we started. This whole series is the sequel to a book never written. A classic fantasy, about heroes who fought against an unambiguous evil, about people who took their lives and their honor into their own hands and stormed the gates of the mad king. The brave hero became king and married a beautiful woman, his friend and comrade returned home to raise his family in happiness in the keep of his forefathers, and they all lived happily ever after.
But the brave hero doesn't know how to rule, and the beautiful woman he married isn't just a trophy for being a legendary hero, but a real person with her own flaws and needs that he doesn't know how to handle. He only ever felt at home on the battlefield, and deep down he knows that that makes him a monster. He can't forget the smell of blood in his nostrils any more than he can forget the touch of a woman who is not his wife. Neither whores nor wine nor food will fill that hole. And far to the north, his loyal vassal, his comrade in arms, does what he can to raise a family, but his wife cannot rest easy either, not while another woman's child lives in her home, fathered on some stranger by her lord husband.
Last time "Happily ever after" happened, it fell apart. Because in reality, there is no end of the story. There's just a point where the author stops writing. And if he writes long enough, everyone ends up dead. Happily ever after is something that has never happened in real life. This isn't a story, it's a snapshot. There were things that happened in this world before GRRM put pen to paper in book one, and things will continue to happen after he puts his closes the book forever. We just won't get to see them.
Well, my idea about the history was never that it was "happily ever after". Both Robert and Rhaegar were heroes of their own stories. I'll be very surprised if GoT gives us anything equally as compelling as the two main heroes hating each other and fighting to the death, neither of whom was totally right or totally wrong. Maybe if eventually we get like Arya vs Dany, but that won't happen
It seems to me that the GoT storytelling avoids some of what is obviously great for stories, and I think what compelled me about the history is it doesn't do that.
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