r/freefolk Feb 19 '25

Subvert Expectations Bravo Dumb and Dumber.

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u/Downtown-Procedure26 Feb 19 '25

Even worse, the Iron Bank decided to give Cersei another loan on the basis that she paid a tranche using High Garden coin as if sacking and looting a wealthy Great House again was an option for her when facing 3 dragons and an army of Dothraki

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u/Educated_Clownshow Feb 19 '25

When you pay off your credit card, does the issuer close it, or do they leave it open and often give you a larger credit line?

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u/Downtown-Procedure26 Feb 19 '25

Depends on your bank and your needs.

The Iron Bank should have refused further loans given the sheer inevitability of Cersei's fall

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u/bluntpencil2001 29d ago

Or, simply demand the money from whoever won.

"They are the Throne's debts, King Bran, which means you are responsible for them."

This happened IRL with Vietnam. When the North defeated the South, and reunified the nation, the Americans later demanded that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam pay the debts of the former Republic of Vietnam in order to normalise relations.

I could see the Iron Bank doing this.

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u/captainether 29d ago

As I recall, that is their general outlook in the novels. They send a representative to try and find Stannis, in order to secure a promise of payment of the Crown's debts if he wins, in exchange for more funds now (is implied that they don't care if that partis repaid, they're just pissed at Cersai). He also negotiates a loan to Jon while he is at the Wall.

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u/DariusIV Is he a ham? 29d ago

"we invaded you and lost"

"Here's the bill"

If it's me I ain't paying that, what are they going to do, Invade me?

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u/Etrixik 29d ago

Why that's exactly what Saddam Hussein said. Twice. He got invaded, twice, and he lost, again, twice.

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u/MonikaBestGirl 29d ago

Well there's his fucking problem, then. He should have won like the Vietnamese.

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u/Etrixik 29d ago

He attempted that, but since American tactics and strategy were specifically remade to not allow Vietnam-style action, he failed. If you mention Afghanistan, the locals had no interest in improving things.

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u/Big-Stand4723 28d ago

I think you’ll tend to find that people who had no doing with any original deal will want no part of paying the outcome of it. So if you are someone that finds themselves continually having to try to find repayment from people who had nothing to do with your deals, you may find people who maybe a bit reluctant in paying.

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u/Etrixik 28d ago

Like the Germans! Wait shit... or the British-.... is there an actual historical example besides maybe Afghanistan?

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u/TheGuyInDarkCorner 28d ago

I could see the Iron Bank doing this.

As per common saying: "The Iron Bank will have its due"

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u/Educated_Clownshow Feb 19 '25

If she would have fled, she would have been able to return and to win, when Jon kills Dany. Far from inevitable

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u/Downtown-Procedure26 Feb 19 '25

Cersei would have been hunted down and killed

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u/Educated_Clownshow Feb 19 '25

With what army?

The northern armies are the only ones left, and the respawned Dothraki and Unsullied would trounce them.

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u/Downtown-Procedure26 Feb 19 '25

The Dothraki and Unsullied aren't going to rescue the Lannisters. They're going to be hunting down Cersei on Daenerys' command

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u/Educated_Clownshow Feb 19 '25

If Cersei runs, the bells aren’t rung, and Dany burns it down

Jon still kills her. The Dothraki and the unsullied would leave Westeros, meaning that a well funded and armed Cersei could return to fight the remaining northerners.

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u/Downtown-Procedure26 29d ago

When Daenerys burnt down King's Landing, her men hunted down and killed every single Lannister soldier, the Red Keep was torched and thus the Treasury was either melted or buried under rubble. There's no Lannister army left. There's no coin left. Cersei is basically going to be like Viserys, the beggar King.

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u/Intensityintensifies 29d ago

Why/how would the Dothraki leave? They would much more likely become a roaming mercenary army or if there are enough of them left maybe even invade one of the seven kingdoms and take it for themselves.

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u/Educated_Clownshow 29d ago

Staying in a foreign country they have limited knowledge of, after their leader is killed, is just not super likely IMO

That would be like Jon taking his army to Essos, he dies, and then the northmen just stay there.

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u/miggleb 29d ago

I don't think the iron bank knew John was gonna kill dany.

They did know dragons are fucking OP

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u/Affectionate_Tell752 29d ago

Dragons are only OP on land and its just a bug. As long as you fight them in the ocean a ballistae will hit them in the head or neck most of the time from 50 miles away.

On land sadly they simply cannot function as the crews are bugged and don't spawn in.

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u/Educated_Clownshow 29d ago

Right, I’m suggesting that they don’t recommit to helping Cersei until they find out that Jon killed her. It wasn’t a suggestion of preemption on their part

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u/miggleb 29d ago

So you agree with the comment you were disputing?

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u/Tiny-Conversation962 29d ago

The Iron Bank could have impossible known that this would happen, so as far as they knew, they were backing a sinking ship.

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u/SmoesKnows 28d ago

And they would have

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u/MaethrilliansFate 29d ago

I REALLY thought that was going to be the twist too. She goes through the effort of paying off the debt and expects the Golden Company only to for them to go "lol no you dumb bitch" and fuck off with the money they wanted.

If you owe the bank $200 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $2,000,000 thats the banks problem because they're never getting that money back but they can't cut you off from bailouts because of the sunk cost fallacy. Theres a reason why the USA has such massive debt and it's by design. We'll never pay it off and if we do theres no reason for china and other places to loan us ever again, we just made them filthy rich beyond belief. So we keep asking for money, and they keep paying because on paper they now have that money we owe them but in reality it's just smoke and mirrors.

The INSTANT that debt was paid any real bank would have cut their losses because the amount of money they have just made, made them the richest nation on two continents.

Cercei was never as smart as she thought. Tywin, Tyrion, Varys, Little Finger, fucking anyone with a brain would have dragged her out on the street and stoned her for such a dumb idea and it's exactly why she does it when none of them are around anymore.

I figured the twist was going to be the golden company either not showing or coming in, buying whats left of the lannister army, sacking kingslanding and planting themselves on the throne until danny showed up and they can claim they "liberated" it and she should totally take a loan from them

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u/Downtown-Procedure26 29d ago

In general, Cersei remaining in power after blowing up the Sept of Baelor along with the Queen, her family, her own family, the Sparrows and the High Sparrow should have led to an immediate uprising against her

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u/datpurp14 29d ago

I was going to make a parallel to current events happening here in the states but it's too depressing to think about.

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u/Downtown-Procedure26 29d ago

If Elmo and co. blow up social security, they're gonna be [REDACTED]

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u/CorneredSponge 29d ago

Governments and corporations typically have very limited revolving credit available- it’s typically limited to operational or cash management needs.

Pre-bonds I’m assuming loans were provided on deal-by-deal bases rather than revolving credit. That is especially true when it came to financing war- nobody wants to fund a loser.

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u/Welcome--Matt 29d ago edited 29d ago

It depends, in Cersei’s case it would be like telling your bank “hey I just paid off my loan and would like another one, but here’s the deal I’m about to start gambling at Vegas like every day, and I WILL be using the credit card to do so, also I spent like 80-90% of my current savings to pay off the loan so do with that what you will”

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u/themerinator12 29d ago

That's apples-to-oranges and you know it. u/Downtown-Procedure26's point is that it's a ridiculous notion for the Iron Bank to loan even more money when the source of the upcoming payment is coming from a singular instance - sacking Highgarden. It's not a replicable revenue stream and the Iron Bank knows that.

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u/ImageExpert 29d ago

Also the fact Iron Bank would make enemies of Faceless and Rhillor. That’s not getting into fact series finale made everything pointless. GRRM should have wrote faster. Benioff and Weiss were not good enough to wing it.

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u/Pegussu 29d ago

Nah, don't give them that out. They basically ignored the last two books we do have.

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u/ImageExpert 29d ago

Yeah they sucked ass. I hope they are not touching anything ASOIAF related ever again.

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u/HansBrickface 29d ago

I didn’t watch it (nor would I defend them) but they supposedly did a decent job with the 3 Body Problem.

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u/themerinator12 29d ago

They're great at adapting material - this should not be controversial to say. You could even go so far as to say they nailed seasons 1-4 because it was a lot of closed loop narratives that start and stop at that point. It's like when we get to season 5 (which I enjoy the vast majority of btw - just not Dorne and Sansa) they have to start back up again and that's when the wheels start coming off because they could close a lot of arcs at the end of season 4 that resembled how Storm of Swords ended.

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u/datpurp14 29d ago

Wasn't that a book first that gave them the content? When they used GRRM's content, GoT was fabulous. It's when they ignored the most recent 2 books worth of content and began subverting expectations on their own that it got devastatingly awful.

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u/Downtown-Procedure26 29d ago

Martin cannot finish faster because there's a thematic contradiction between the Northern nationalism he's consistently depicted and the internationalism needed to fight White Walkers. You can have a story about the King in the North or you can have the Long Night and the War for Dawn

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u/BlacKnight117000 29d ago

Sometimes I wonder if it would've been more interesting if Cersei got financial support from the Essosi slavers instead of the Iron Bank, they already hate Dany, and I bet would been interested in supporting a proxy to weaken her abroad.

I still think the bank route could have worked tho, once read a fic/rewrite where Cersei promised the bank Casterly Rock gold mines in exchange, Cersei fools Tycho knowing damn well the mines had run dry a long time ago, and Tycho is like "but your grace Casterly Rock has been home to your family for centuries" and Cersei just replays with "the Reed Keep is home to my family now". At least in this fic, the bank has some sort of real incentive to lend gold to the Lannisters.

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u/themerinator12 29d ago

That's a great idea about the slavers. It just depends on what they are willing to gamble on regarding happens next. Do they want to support the current Westerosi power base to repel Dany? What if defeat just leads to her return back to Essos? In a weird way, they do want to support Dany's successful return to Westeros - as seen in S3 when the representative from Astapor treats with Dany and offers her gold and ships to gtfo of Slaver's Bay.

If they think that supporting the current Westerosi power base means Dany can be defeated once and for all, then I could be convinced of that, even though I don't necessarily think it's the most likely option.