Gorefest, on 28 June 2016 - 12:45 PM, said:
Nor necessarily correct either. Point out a blatant flaw in overall timeline to me that cannot be reasoned away by consecutive events in different locations not necessarily taking place in chronological order and I will hold my hands up in deflated acceptance. Until then, just sit back and enjoy the story.
Its not about whether you can explain it. Lack of chronological order should not be a get out of jail free card for the story. These things stand out because the show has long set standards for how the passage of time feels and is marked, and they are now breaking them willy nilly to serve whatever story they want to tell each episode.
But if you really want to go down this road:
In Episode 4 "Book of the Stranger", Littlefinger is in the Vale and convinces Robin to rally the knights to come to Sansa's aid. We know that this is after Sansa escapes Winterfell, because Littlefinger says as much.
Sansa escapes during the fight with Stannis. She and Theon would not have lived long on their own, so the rescue by Brienne is shortly thereafter (a day or two at the outside). After that, Brienne and Sansa have horses and head straight for the wall. Shortly after they get there, they have a secret meeting with Littlefinger in a nearby town, and Littlefinger advises the knights of the vale are waiting at Moat Cailin.
Now all of this presents any number of problems. First, Littlefinger would need to muster all the Knights. Then he would need to lead them to Moat Cailin, I guess via the Kingsroad and not the Twins, since I doubt the Freys would let him through. That is already a longer journey than Winterfell to the Wall. Then Littlefinger needs to ride on past his army nearly all the way to the wall (which also would take him pretty close past Winterfell if he was riding for speed. If you like, you can assume that he somehow commandeered a boat to take him to Eastwatch by the Sea, but then that boat takes an even longer route through stormy seas, and somehow is noted by no one.
After they meet, Littlefinger heads back to Moat Cailin until he gets a raven from Sansa (after she has taken a tour of the North), and the knights ride North, arriving more or less just in time.
Now, in order to explain that by chronological gaps (since it is synchronized at the start), you have to presume Sansa and Brienne and resurrected Jon spent weeks/months together at Castle Black before Littlefinger showed up, which doesn't seem likely since the wildlings are all still there, and Jon has dramatically quit yet is still there.
It also means that the knights of the vale likely occupied Moat Cailin for as much as 6 months to a year while Littlefinger went back and forth, and then Sansa recruited, then finally asked for help. And in that time, no one in the North noticed their presence, nor their approach on Winterfell thereafter.
We can play the same game with Varys's jetpack early next season once we have some markers of how soon after the burning of the Sept Cersei hears of Dany's landing. We have good markers for when Varys was in Dorne, and the situation in KL is not likely to be stable, so we should get a good sense of whether it can be reasonably explained.
This post has been edited by Nevyn: 28 June 2016 - 02:21 PM