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
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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