Hello, and welcome to the Not aCast, podcast, the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through a song of ice and fire.

I'm one of your hosts Emmett, also known as Poor Quentin.

And I'm your other host, Manu, also known as Manucleur Bomb.

And welcome to the 246 episode of the N Nauticast, titled The Smallest Council,

an analysis of a Feast for Crows, Circe 4, in which Circe rolls out Westrose's newest ruling class.

Sir Birdbrain, Lord Cough's a lot, and let's not forget the Master of Torturers.

If her goal was to build a small council

where somehow Paisel was the most respectable of the bunch, well, mission accomplished.

That's what I'm going throughout this chapter. Paisel. Pysel figured it out. He's the quickest one.

So our spoiler warning is always prepared to be spold for the five Asong of Ice and Fire novels,

the three Duncan Egg novellas, any histories, any interviews, any winds of winter sample

chapters, as well as Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, the television shows. Anything

and everything. Our question this episode, actually a comment from our patron, Sir Eric,

the guilty undertaker, great name. And this is a response to our recent patron-only episode, Burn Baby Burn, on the fate of the Stanis storyline on all those characters. So go definitely check that out. Sign up for the Patreon if you haven't already to get access to that episode. But Sir Eric was responding to that with this comment. Ultimately, I think we'll see Stanis go to a very Denethor-like place. The film, and that's a Return of the King, the Third Lord of the Rings film, talking about that character, played by John Noble, the film made Denethor a secondary antagonist. And to be fair, that's what he was by the end in the book, too. But in the book, before his collapse into despair, Denethor was a man who had done all he could

to stand against the darkness. It was the realization, with some help from the Palantir,

that his best was nowhere near enough, that breaks him. I think we'll see Stanis in a similar

position, hold up in the night fort or some other location with a small group of followers,

surrounded by the army of the dead, slowly starving and freezing to death, and seeing, slash, being related by Melisandra, visions of even worse things to come. In the end, he may even be in a place where he thinks that, even if sacrificing Shereen doesn't work, at least she'll be in a better place. Great comment from Eric there. I definitely think about Denethor with regards to the whole Stanis storyline I've talked before about that bit. That kind of awesome kind of ridiculous shot in the return of the king where you see Denethor's flaming body falling off the city and then pull back to see the gigantic battle happening outside. That's how I kind of see Stanis' storyline happening in the context of the climax of a song of laced in fire, kind of this intimate, horrible thing in the midst of the large scale chaos and carnage. But I think that's a good comparison also because it's a great example of how secondary characters don't always make it through adaptation, just by necessity of the amount of story to tell. Of course, Den of Thor kind of became more of a quivering, obvious bad guy in the movie because the kind of richness that's there for that kind of character in the book, maybe just didn't have room for it in the movie or the emotional dynamic wasn't going to come through clearly. And same thing with Stannis in the show. I totally get why you lean more into him being pure villain character because you are, you know, with characters whose job is to be whist off screen so the main characters can take over, that's something you do.

It makes sense.

Yeah, no, I love this comparison.

I know we both on separate podcasts have talked about the adaptation of Denethor, how he's a much

rich or more complex character than depicted.

...