Definitely no issue with blind bandwagoning in this thread, no siree.
I voted for Talon first because I read his plan as "pull a PR stunt" and I like that.
I voted for Goldfish because he had a different purpose which appealed to a different part of me, one which thinks that being understated and quietly competent will achieve more results than using the Northmen as props in a grand play.
We used Lyseni as mere pawns and stage pieces because there is little worth to their works that we will not overwrite with the weight of our cultural hegemony, and its place as a component to our direct oversight (Dorne being a vanity project, and the Three Daughters being money generators).
The North ultimately will see perhaps the most upheaval of all the Seven Kingdoms with us playing our
lightest and
kindest hand against them, simply by virtue of funding its settlement to better exploit its vast natural resources. The kind of friction this will produce will need to be countered by good will, every last scrap that we can afford, with a light weight in the back of each northern Lord's mind whispering "the Dragon hasn't steered me wrong or done me slight yet".
We have even treated Eddard with perhaps undue courtesy on a political level, but for personal reasons. And that if anything is just another component to our grand strategy--thinking ahead a generation, two or even three.
When the North refuses to march, it will be the North that falls out from the Starks, not the perfidious Targaryens who gave them no other option with underhanded, brazen ploys.
Our hands will be clean, because they will set the order of the day with only the lightest prompting.
And it will only add to our legend.
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