it couldn't have been Sansa: she was trying to leave with Tyrion after the dwarf battle reenactment. Joeffry made them stay, then made Tyrion pour his drinks.

if her plan had been to poison Joefrey's drink she wouldn't have been about to leave the wedding.

maybe it's too obvious, but that Prince Oberlin or w/e: shows up in Ep. 1 talking about wanting to kill a Lannister, Ep. 2 says "it would suck if some1 dies at a wedding", then a Lannister dies at a wedding.

it was probably smithers

subscribing after GOaT speculation ep

Argh why do I keep having to say that the groom/bride will ~always take the first bite? That's a standard tradition. Yeah, you risk others dying too. If you are assassinating the damm KING I doubt that matters much. The poison worked immediately too. Joffrey takes a drink of the allegedly poisoned wine WHICH WAS POURED FROM THE GLASS IN FRONT OF CERSEI. She and others clearly have been drinking from it. They don't die. It's not close to full when Tyrion pours Joff a drink. No one other than Joffrey takes a bite from the pie. There's a moment where Tywin picks it up and almost takes a bite but he recognizes Joff is choking and drops his fork. The pie is only served to the front tables. Margaery feeds Joffrey first. Everyone else at the front is served as well but no one eats because Joffrey is causing a distraction with Tyrion again. Then he dies. If it's the pie, and I believe this is a lock, then I think there's more than one target. BUT Joffrey is one almost certain to die first since there's an order in which people eat in formal settings.

OK, so maybe it wasn't Sansa, but it was definitely the pie.

Whether the pie was made poisoned or was poisoned after a king took a slice.... That's impossible to tell from this episode.

It's somebody IN this episode, especially one of the characters in the scene. Has to be. Whoever wanted him dead wanted to see him die.

I doubt it was sansa. She is attempted to murder the king and she has to rely on him kicking the goblet near her for it to happen?

Tyrells. In the Courtyard. With the pie.

None of this explains why he forges an alliance between the Lannisters and Tyeells only to kill Joffrey when it's formalized. Like that's so much ridiculous FPS that keeping it simple eliminates him. There's no falling out between he and the Lannisters - in fact the relationship immediately makes him one of the most powerful players in the kingdom. Doing all this just to get Sansa is fairly silly. I don't see it. I guess it isn't IMPOSSIBLE just meh.

Huh?

Bealish doesn't give a **** about the alliance beyond it securing victory for the side he tethered himself to and that he orchestrated the deal in the first place. His gains from the alliance are received. He stands to gain nothing else through the continued alliance-- however by tearing it down...

Also skimmed this thread since I dont watch it live. But I love the whole theon scene followed immediately with a cut to Tryion getting served a sausage and then using his knife to chop/pull the sausage of the fork.

Dude no, Littlefinger is the one who had her killed. She was a double agent working for Varys to glean information about Littlefingers operations as per s2e10+.He found out and got her killed. This was the major reveal of The Climb episode. Ros did not work for him, lol.

It has nothing to do with gratitude. He's got a powerful ally in the Lanniaters. Mind you, an ally that he won over through some elite diplomacy. There's no other "side" he can defect to, he has no army, etc. Joffrey dying does nothing to improve his position. It actively works against everything he's worked to build throughout THE ENTIRE SERIES. Like what's his next play, how did this make his position better? Why didn't he side with Stannis or Robb? LF is not a major player. He needs powerful allies, he doesn't want to make powerful enemies. Assassinating Joffrey doesn't help him in any fashion.

Okay so the idea is to create a distraction and smuggle Sansa out via the Fool. Then what? How does he defend against the Lannisters response without an army? This is what I mean that he's not a powerful player. He's far from being one. Doesn't have any bannermen. No nothing. All this takes time to create relationships. Until very recently he's been a minor player in King's Landing. He thinks he's hot **** because he's a smart guy but as Cersei demonstrated this is not power. LF is powerless aorn. He has the ability in the distant future to become a real player but absolutely not right now.

Late to the party but was legit shocked. Strong episode.

There's a screengrab out there of Pycell sitting next to Varys at the wedding, after Cersei already told him to go to the kitchens.

Okay I'm with Dudd that the most likely suspect is the iron bank. Lady Olenna's line implying the bank was not happy about the crown and that a debt would be exacted in the very scene preceding the assassination with Tywin dismissing it seems like a winner. An entire scene was devoted to how much debt the crown accumulated to the bank and how you have to pay it back. Bronn says "and what if I don't" and Tyrion says "this is why I don't loan you money." So this is something that's been established before. The only reason for the writers to bring it up again in this episode is as a red herring.

There's quite a lot of red herrings in this episode but I imagine that's because one of these links is the real one. The stuff with Pycelle sent to the kitchen, the Martel character out for Lannister blood, the Tyrells providing the pies, the Fool & Sansa, and probably others I'm forgetting.

Now I'll acknowledge a certain fact about Littlefinger where it makes more sense he can be involved. He is the former treasurer and a known masterful diplomat. A strong relationship with the iron bank could come in handy here. He does have the means to pull off this level of an assassination because he IS in with both the Tyrell's and Lannister's AND he would have connections on the ground in King's Landing who could pull this scheme off. The risk on his side is still huge here BUT if he has the most powerful bank in the world working with him, well, that would make the calculus different from my previous one itt. So I am no longer dismissing his involvement.

"I hate a good many things but I suffer them all the same," Stannis' line at his wife was pretty harsh haha.

Anyone else think Melisandra is going to kill Stannis?

Hmm, why?

I remember the line about slaughtering a lamb where at the time I kinda thought she was referring to Stannis himself while explaining to him what she was doing with Gendry. Didn't pick up anything in this episode foreshadowing that possibility so I'm curious what prompted you to bring it up.

Yeah, I do think this is possible at some point purely based on the scene last year.

You're completely misunderstanding Baelish's character if you think his goal the entire series has been to make friends with powerful people. That has been part of his plan, but his ultimate goal is to be a powerful person. Of course there is risk, but there's been risk in everything he's done, it just so happens that so far he's bet on the right horse.

You seem to be having a lot of trouble compartmentalizing the different possibilities and theories. I never said that the fool and Sansa had anything to do with his plot. They could, but I personally don't think the fool had anything to do with it, and the speculation that he must, since he recently got screen time, is really weak.

If Baelish is behind this, and he gets away with it (which he almost certainly will), then he still retains the Lannisters and the Tyrells as allies-- why would you think this changes?

As for why he didn't side with another camp during the war-- well he didn't really side with anyone until he felt he stood to gain the most from siding with the Lannisters. But he's already gained everything he's going to gain from that arrangement. The only way to juice more out of it would be to create more turmoil, where he can again climb another rung in the ladder.

I'm going to cosign the fool/Sansa theory. It's what makes the most sense to me given the information we have, especially since it's almost 100% the fool is involved and Sansa and the fool has a connection. Aside from that, there are three indications it's Sansa:

1. Sansa has some alone time with Joffrey's goblet.

2. After the cake has been cut and Joffrey returns to his table Sansa tells Tyrion she wants to leave with a worried look, which might imply that she knows what's about to happen.

3. When Joffrey is choking, the fool tells Sansa "Come with me now" and "If you want to live, we have to leave now". I just don't see how that makes any sense if Sansa isn't in on it to. If she isn't and the fool is, why would he go up to her at all, that would only implicate her.

Oberyn is obviously a prime suspect but I think that's a smoke screen, I don't see any connection between him and the fool or why he'd be working with him. Any theory involving Lannisters or Tyrells is silliness.

I'll eat a crow if I'm wrong but I'm not having any of that cake.

I'm also basing it on that scene. The Lord of Light has no allegiance so if someone purer, Gendry, appears, things can change. I only thought of it again because someone posted about it a few pages up.

lol

I'm not misunderstanding his character at all. You don't get to be a powerful person unless (1) you have the right last name, or (2) you forge and maintain deep alliances with powerful players who can graft you status. These aren't exclusively the ways but for Littlefinger the second one is his only option. The Lannisters didn't align with the Tyrell's to make friends either. It's all power politics. Littlefinger does not come from nobility. He doesn't have any power. Power is the ability to raise an army. Ned was powerful, Tywin is powerful, etc, LF is not. In order to acquire power he has to first acquire a position and he's done this through the Lannisters. The next step is to wed a powerful bride while maintaining powerful allies and forging new ones. That's what power is ffs. You can't just become powerful of your own accord unless you're a character in House of Cards. The world doesn't work this way and LF surely knows it doesn't. So specifically how does Joffrey dying benefit him? "It will cause chaos" is not an answer.