cahn

It seems like a lot of ordinary people were just keeping their heads down. Like, who cares who's on the throne, the Hanoverians haven't done much for me, but I'm not going to stick my head out for this Stuart either?

This is why it's hard for me to read about the Targaryens without thinking about the Stuarts. Because:

Dany rode close beside him. "Still," she said, "the common people are waiting for him. Magister Illyrio says they are sewing dragon banners and praying for Viserys to return from across the narrow sea to free them."

"The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends," Ser Jorah told her. "It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace." He gave a shrug. "They never have."

Re "from across the narrow sea," I will take this opportunity to tell cahn that the traditional way to toast the Stuart king if you were in Britain was to toast the "King Over the Water." If you didn't want to say it out loud, you could raise your glass of wine over a glass of water and toast "the King." (Though whether this was actually done during the Jacobite years or was one of those "traditions" invented in the romanticizing period later, I don't know; I didn't have access to much by way of primary sources back in the day.)