Game of Thrones has once again returned to filming at Shane’s Castle for season six. The show filmed on the estate in late August, and our exclusive photos at the time confirmed that the location’s cellars were standing in for the High Sparrow’s sparse sept. Now Game of Thrones has resumed filming at the castle in County Antrim, and details are emerging.
We can tell you that our sources have revealed that the scene being filmed this week at Shane’s Castle involves Qyburn (Anton Lesser) and Grand Maester Pycelle (Julian Glover) along with some others in minor parts.
In addition to the source info, a fan on Twitter has offered up this tidbit as well:
@IrishThrones @WiCnet Filming taking place today at Shanes Castle. A friends daughter is a child extra. #GoT
— Gio DiStefano (@giooconloni) December 1, 2015
At least one of the extras involved in the scene appears to be a child.
Shane’s Castle is a diverse location, with several areas that could potentially be used for shooting. The atmospheric cellars have been the center of filming in season 5 and in earlier season 6 filming, but in previous years, other parts of the property were used as well.
I have to say, the thought of Qyburn being anywhere near a child is terrifying. (Qyburn doing anything is creepy. He’d probably make your skin crawl while opening his mail.) But Pycelle is present, so hopefully the scene is not overly alarming. Too optimistic? Probably.
What do you think is going on out at Shane’s Castle, readers?
Update 6PM: We’ve heard back from our sources that the scene being filmed at the site takes place in Qyburn’s laboratory. Part of the castle’s cellars are being used for this. We also can confirm, since some fans are wondering- there is no child molestation involved.
Hodor, baby!
Second time!
Yes! Qyburn and Pycelle. Two of my favourite characters. Their rivalry in Season 5 was hilarious
Your parents must be very proud 😛
Lol
I find Pycelle creepier than Qyburn, and it doesn’t mean that I like the latter!
Pycelle near a child is creepy too. Said child should probably just run.
Pycelle confronting Qyburn over experimentation on children, maybe? They held back a bit on the full horror of Qyburn’s shit last season, so they may be looking to delve into that more now, and maybe employ Pycelle as a bit of a foil for him. Plus, since they cut the season 3 Pycelle/Tywin scene, Pycelle hasn’t really had any good opportunities to drop character. Maybe he could do that a bit if he’s ever alone with Qyburn.
Pycelle may like prostitutes but I’ve never seen him molest a child. Whereas I think Qyburn would have no problem using a child in one of his experiments. But hey, you never know what season 6 will bring.
Agreed with others, Pycelle is much creepier than Qyburn in the show imo. As far as this scene is concerned, I absolutely have no clue what it could be. It’s strange to me that Pycelle will be alive for a good amount of Season 6 in the first place.
Dr. Mengele feels, yikes.
Pycelle and Qyburn ( Them give me chills)
New week, new news, great!
What if it’s
in the show – hence a secluded location and child (or children) being present.
Its chilling to know that the history of medical research and discovery is littered with Qyburns tbh
The fallout of Kings Landing is absolutely for me the most exciting part of season 6.
I find them both creepy. I just hope the child will not be harmed.
Eww – it couldn’t have anything to do with maybe reanimating Myrcella, could it?
Thronetender,
Seven Heavens, I hope not! I felt sorry for Jaime to lose his daughter after such an emotional scene, but that woundn’t be the answer not even for the mourning mother I imagine Cersei will be!
Reanimating Myrcella would be creepy, ESPECIALLY if he used the organs of other children. Hope that’s not the case, lol.
I don’t see why Pycelle would be there though.
Are we sure the Qyburn + Pycelle scene/plot is from same scene/plot as with the child?
aurane waters,
Beremir,
Why would children be present if that happened? 🙂
I don’t see how people can say Pycelle is creepier that Qyburn. Pycelle simply puts up a false facade, pretending to be old and doddering and slower in wits than he truly is. And yes, he’s overly “attached” to the Lannisters and their cause, and willing to go out on a limb for them. But I don’t think he would even entertain the notion of doing nasty experiments on people, much less re-animating corpses and/or performing vivisection. That shit puts Qyburn on his own low level. Comparative to Dr. Mengele indeed…. Very good reasons he was stripped of his chain and expelled from the Citadel.
Fienix,
Totally agree!
What if the Children aren´t there for a Qyburn-Pycelle Scene but represent
Anyway,
I kinda like both of them.
Well, maybe “like” isn´t the right word…
Ok – confused. Is it guaranteed that the child is in the scene with Q and P? Could the child be shooting something different in the same locale?
I like the Qyburn-takes-Varys-place-for-that-instance theory.
Did the show give any indication that Meryn Trant was a child molester prior to his death scene? I don’t remember any (and I still think that was a mistake by the show; no need to try to further up the stakes for Arya there). So there’s certainly precedent for Pycelle to suddenly become one.
Little birds…..little birds.
Cersei’s Brain,
It’s not very likely. This isn’t a studio like in Banbridge where they can handle multiple scenes and units around the same time. This is just one site.
Fez,
The show gave us a few scenes with Meryn being happy to beat on Sansa, so I do think they established it. We haven’t had any hints like that with Pycelle.
Qyburn over Pycelle every day for me. I find Pycelle completely horrible. Qyburn is using rats and corpses for research purposes. 😉
Maybe they analize the corpse of the dead Myrcella to find what poison killed her and who did it..
Qyburn told Cersei when she was imprisoned that Pycelle refused to come visit her (or help her out in some important respect). I’m guessing that when Cersei claws her way back to power that Pycelle will be persona non grata with Cersei. Maybe Pycelle seeks out Qyburn, Cersei’s trusted confidant, to intercede on his behalf with Cersei.
Anton Lesser is awesome, by the way. Loved his Thomas More in Wolf Hall.
On the child molester thing, while TV Meryn being a child molester is an invention of the show, Book Pycelle molested Sansa. She recalls in AGOT that he “made her undress and touched her all over” (when she’s all of 11 years old). So it’s not as if it would be out of the blue in relation to book canon, at least.
I’m pretty sure sure that Qyburn is taking on Varys’ role and will take out Pycelle (and possibly Kevan) using his little birds. Perhaps even under Cerseis orders- I’ve suspected this might happen for a while.
M,
That’s a hell of a leap of logic- he’s a doctor performing an examination. The complete quote, with the context you removed:
“The serving girls tried to talk to her when they brought her meals, but she never answered them. Once Grand Maester Pycelle came with a box of flasks and bottles, to ask if she was ill. He felt her brow, made her undress, and touched her all over while her bedmaid held her down. When he left he gave her a potion of honeywater and herbs and told her to drink a swallow every night. She drank it all right then and went back to sleep.”
Given that we know Varys is headed back to Westeros, and probably making a stop to
I expect him to finish the season with his book 5 plot, with KL pulling from books 4, 5, and 6, and hopefully Cersei doing some more batshit crazy and stupid shit, with Kevan/HS/Margaery trying to hold her off.
I think Varys will still do his thing, just after a season of
instead of a chapter. It seems like they’re really moving 4, 5, and 6 stuff around and fitting it freely, but I have to say it really seems to be working out well, better than the books in some cases.
And for fuck sake, make Julian Glover and Finn Jones opening credit regulars, they’ve been around since Season 1 dammit!!!
It seems most likely that, if there is a child involved, it would be Pycelle’s death scene. I could see Qyburn taking Varys’ role in eliminating him, especially taking into account how firmly their rivalry has been established. Pycelle could start asking too many questions about Ser Robert Strong, for instance.
Varys’s little birds taking out Pycelle and Qyburn would seem to me to be most in keeping with the epilogue to ADWD.
Sue the Fury,
That is absolutely molestation. Pycelle took advantage of his position. There was no reason to touch sansa all over, that was unnecessary.
Every time I try and comment on this post it’s being marked as spam and rejected – anyone else getting that problem?
Of course, Murphy’s law means this comment gets posted with no problem AAARRGH!
Qyburn is mostly definitely creepy… but Pycelle is just despicable and slimy. A face off with those two would be pretty amusing to watch.
thremnir,
Because you posted something different. When you hit Submit on the same post over and over, it gets tossed to Spam. You must’ve double-posted, and then the subsequent same posts of course read the same. I’ll release one. 🙂
aurane waters,
That’s generally how a physical examination is performed, doctors touch all over when they do a check-up. Never had to turn your head and cough, I take it? I suppose you could interpret it that way if you wanted to, but I don’t think that was the intention of the text.
Fez,
Sue the Fury,
Actually Merlyn beating Sansa was only evidence that he was a sadist. Sadists take pleasure from hurting other people–regardless of age, gender, etc. However, it wasn’t until we saw him beating other young girls that a pattern is established showing he is not only a sadist but a pedaphile, in that he prefers to beat young girls. So definite prior evidence of sadism but not of pedophilia.
In regards to Pycelle, I think his “ewww” factor has to do with his advanced age and the fact that he was using prostitutes–who seemed, in comparison to him, very young. But we had no way of knowing just how young that prositute he was with was. And in all fairness, just about everyone seems too young for him. We do have statements by Cersei that she’s seen Pycelle looking at the young women at court. And again, in all fairness, we don’t know the age of the women he’s looking at and most men, of all ages, will look at pretty young women. So there’s no real evidence that Pycelle is pedaphile. Does it gross us out that he’s still a “sexual” creature? Yes.
Dame Pasty,
If a sadist is deriving sexual pleasure from beating on young girls in particular, that it is a form of pedophilia. But my point is that it was hinted at a little, since we saw Trant have zero problem with hurting Sansa and actually seem to enjoy it. Not quite the same thing as a knight begrudgingly doing his job on orders. No one is saying it was very obviously established that he was pedo pre-finale. Just hinted at that he likes hurting girls- which we literally saw several times.
And yeah, I think Pycelle’s age is why people are grossed out. It’s an ageism thing.
Sue the Fury,
Well, like Joffrey, Trant seemed to enjoy being a dick to lots of people. I didn’t take his malice as being specifically targeting young girls. But I see your point.
Dame Pasty,
Pycelle also enjoyed being a dick with those who were not the rulers. And, even if I know that being at court means being a liar, I find Pycelle’s flaterry disgusting: remember when he said that Joffrey had been the noblest young man alive – or something like that. The Hound, working as a bodyguard, was considered a servant by some, but he never behaved like one. There must be a way to serve your masters and also preserve your dignity.
Actually, I’ve just rewatched both scenes (the one with Sansa looking at Ned’s head and the one with the beating at the court).
Meryn seems to have his usual angry face, and his face is hardly seen in the second (I even sense a bit of horror in the first one).
Anyway, I prefer that they changed it in the series. Arya killing a random guy for a random reason seemed stupid, as much as Joffrey killing Ned. But in the series it’s actually an important moral dilemma. If she kills him she could be expeled from the FM and lose everything she’s achieved so far. But if she lets him live Meryn could traumatise dozens of little girls more. In the end, it makes for a more interesting story.
Maybe Pycelle and Qyburn are finally acknowledging their feelings for one another. The High Sparrow decides that Love Wins and performs the marriage ceremony while the little girl puts flower crowns on their heads. Cersei drinks through the whole thing.
Shy Lady Dragon,
I totally agree. Pycelle’s obsequious behavior and disingenuous personality is very disgusting and is definitely part of why he is so disliked. It, however, has nothing to do with his sexuality, which is what I was specifically addressing.
Well, he’d be dissecting the raven or the courier boy while doing it, so, yeah, he would.
😉
Varys
Has Pycelle ever been seen in the same room as Jimmy Saville? Stick a cigar in the mouth of one and shave the beard off the other, and I reckon they’d be hard to tell apart.
It would be even more true for “primitive” medicine than with modern modern medicine: physicians had little more than their hands for instruments for examining what might be right or wrong. (They also had some damn goofy ideas about how probing affected and/or revealed “humors” and “balances”: but that was just ignorance; of course, they thought that it was “knowledge” over “curses,” so there you go….)
Indeed, if he is looking at the young women, then it is not pedophilia: that would be looking at girls or boys as defined by biology, not arbitrary legal ages.
We tend to forget it now, but until fairly recently it was very common for old men of stature to have wives (usually 3rd or 4th) who were young enough to be their granddaughters. After all, although male fertility decreases, it does not go away: and men are programmed (like all male animals) to try to breed until they are dead. And if you are a 75 year old man, then you have to be aiming at women much, much younger than yourself. We have invented cultural taboos about this in the last century or so, at least in the West: but those ideals are pretty anachronistic. We all play Chucky D’s game, after all.
(Indeed, I might be misremembering, but weren’t Trant’s victims all biologically very young women rather than girls? They seemed like teenagers: but as teenage pregnancy stats show, teenagers are girls or boys in legal definition only. Still, I might be misremembering: I haven’t seen that episode since it aired, and we don’t start our annual binge until January.)
Is there confirmation that this extra is a young child? Based off of the twitter post someone’s “daughter” is an extra, isn’t there a chance this person’s daughter is an adult?
Mark,
The tweet says “A friends daughter is a child extra.” This is their friend’s offspring, I think they probably know generally how old the kid is.
Wimsey,
IIRC they were pre-pubescent girls. Here’s a pic: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q4O9IWLoABU/maxresdefault.jpg
I think it is more of a power struggle. Between the old Pycelle and the new Qyburn. With Cersei in charge. I wouldn’t trust Pycelle, he is use to being the one needed and in charge, and could be willing to take out anyone blocking his power.
Qyburn’s one of my favorite characters. He’s trying to advance society and the ways of surgery and medicine. Can any of you guys tell me why Qyburn obeys Cersei though? Why in the world did he place his loyalty in her?
I’d love some more Qycelle action. Pyburn?
Matt,
Because she’s dellusional enough to let him do his thing, and with his help she has enough power to allow him to do it
Lannister gold…
EDIT : Oh, and discretion, her moral values and easy acess to bodies.
Sue the Fury,
Thanks Sue, must’ve forgotten that by the time I read all the comments.
I hope that at least one of Pycelle/Qyburn does not survive the season. Preferably both.
…I think I’m recently somewhat obsessed with downsizing the cast. But darn, it’s season 6! They can’t leave all the interesting deaths for the final two seasons!
Dame Pasty,
“You’re a grub in fancy armor who’s better at beating little girls than fighting men.” -Bronn to Meryn. It’s not the only similar quote about Meryn’s fetish either. Tyrion comments on it as well, both use the plural “girls”.
It seems like whether it is known to most of the viewers, there are at least rumors amongst Trant’s peers.
Sue the Fury,
i just don’t see how you can think its a simply physical examination with the way its written.IMO its pretty clear that sansa is very uncomfortable and making herself as numb as possible and just mentioning it very quickly to get through it (she does that pretty often). The tone is very creepy, the words “make her undress and touched her all over” do not just imply just a completely innocent physical examination. pycelle is a creep imo. but whatever, you do you i guess.
jentario,
There is some Qycelle fanfic out there. I mean…if your needs are strong.
I think you need to keep in mind point-of-view and the unreliable narrator. There are all kinds of entailments to GRRM writing in the first person(s).
LOL CSI Kings Landing
Off-Topic Otto,
GRRM is not the type to do ~unreliable narrator~ in regards to molestation jfc. There’s nothing unreliable about Sansa feeling uncomfortable in this scenario, these are her feelings.
aurane waters,
Oh yeah,just like that time she remembered how the Hound kissed her……oh wait !
Goodness, it’s now another Sansa thread. Perhaps WOTW could have a sister site called ‘Sansa Sansa Sansa’ and all the Sansanatics could go there so these threads could be used for the characters they are actually about!
aurane waters,
And the fact that she had to be held down tells you she resisted, and/or it was pretty painful. So my vote is for this to be more than a simple physical exam.
aurane waters,
I agree. It’s the bit where the text says her bedmaid held her down whilst he touched her all over, after having made her undress. That does not sound like a medical examination to me. I read it as Sansa being not ok with it, otherwise she would not need to be held down.
I seem to have a recollection in one of Cersei’s chapters that she mentions Pycelle and how she will not let him perform medical examinations on her because of his ickyness, possibly I’m mis-remembering this though.
It’s from the chapter when Sansa is flipping out and is seriously suicidal. She almost jumps out a window. Her having to be restrained for a medical examination isn’t that surprising- and it doesn’t seem weird to me that Pycelle might be abrupt about it. He certainly is a weaselly asshole, we know this.
We also know from GRRM himself that Sansa is an unreliable narrator on at least one occasion- she remembers Sandor kissing her when it never happened.
You also have to look at this from a narrative standpoint. Sansa is haunted by people who have terrorized her, for a long time to come. Pycelle is not remembered as one of those people. And never in the books is it implied or said that he has a track record for kiddies- and it seems like the kind of thing that would be brought up sometime in the next four books. Especially with Littlefinger and Varys holding information over people’s heads.
I Dream of Spring,
I remember she says something about him not putting his hands on her in the show. I don’t remember if she ever said anything like it in the books.
Precisely! As a non-reader, I always found Qyburn to be quite a nice person that his colleagues hated due to his superior skills. I am surprised to find out he is a much darker character. On my perception based on just the show, I would rather trust a child with him that with an old goat like Pycelle.
Ha! So you’re using “these are her feelings” to make your point that her account is objective?! Note that Sue, if I can speak for her, was not saying that with certainty nothing untowards was happening. The fact that the account is from a point-of-view, and that it’s presumably the only account of the event, means that we can’t know with certainty.
Sue The Fury…. sorry but to me Pycelle could be as much a kiddie molester as Qyburn… do you really think that those girls were ALL over the age of 18 AND consented to his disgusting ways? I think NOT. He was trying to get a “young maid” to do nasty things and THANKFULLY Cersei stopped him in his tracks . Sorry but me-thinks he would molest a young girl if given the chance… just HOW YOUNG is to be determined.
Off-Topic Otto,
oh so you’re the type who says stuff like “we can’t know if its actually rape until we get the rapist’s POV”. ok then.
didn’t he just beat them? I don’t remember him having sex with them.
aurane waters,
Or, maybe, just maybe, different people interpret that particular passage differently.
My theory: Qyburn transforms Cersei into an adorable baby, which he presents to the High Sparrow as some sort of gift. As the latter is oohing and aahing over the wee bairn as it crawls around on the sanctuary floor, baby Cersei proceeds to get her revenge, starting with the High Sparrows ankles. It’s bound to be the most controversial episode yet.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I probably should consult a psychologist asap.
I Dream of Spring,
There are other reason than sexual why Sansa would not like to be examined. She was almost catatonic with depression and refused to do anything and trusted nobody so obviously she would find any examination unpleasant. It does not say that Sansa fond the examination horrible, and she could have been held down as a precaution.
Chinoiserie,
Not to mention, as a female, it can be rather uncomfortable being examined by a male, even if there’s absolutely nothing inappropriate about it.
Sou,
In season 3 Qyburn told Jaime how he performs vivisections.
So…I wish Finn Jones had been spotted during this scene as well. I could be Loras repenting his ways and going full Sparrow.
Was that the scene when Jaime asked Qyburn where his chain was, and Qyburn replied that the Citadel stripped him of it because they found some of his experiments “too bold”?
That was super creepy.
I’m still hoping to see Qyburn and Frankenmountain do their own lil version of Puttin’ on the Ritz.
Could be the child
this time?
And for the other subject, any men touching Sansa is creepy. Excepting his own family and
there’s always a second intention. She’s the character to be sexually threatened, always. :/
Personally, I want give him the benefit of doubt this time.
aurane waters,
I’m not invalidating her feelings. They’re your feelings, and you are not Sansa. I’m disagreeing with your interpretation of the text.
And I just remembered that you’re the commenter who once said, “What even is the point of these comment sections if not to create drama?” Knock it off.
PS Everyone else: I just updated the post with the latest news.
lalla,
He received pleasure from beating them. For some sadists that pleasure is sexual but not always. Either way he is a sadist. Since he got them at a brothel, I suppose we all assumed that he intended to have sex with them. I think that’s a fair assumption.
SlayerNina,
Evidently their society does not share those norms: Maesters are, among other things, the physicians, and physicians have to touch people. Now, would Sansa be more comfortable with a female Maester? Maybe not: a woman trying to be a Maester would be viewed as unladylike, and the young Sansa found such things disturbing.
Here is the other thing: any Maester would be doing this with every man, woman, boy and girl in a keep. Any “thrill” would be long gone: anyone would be just another case to a veteran Maester. Remember, Sansa is important to the Lannisters: she is the key to Winterfell for them. It would be paramount that any maladies be discovered. Of course, Pycelle’s “erudition” is today’s superstition: but they did not know that.
Sue the Fury,
that was a sarcastic/jokey comment. lol you’re allowed to have your interpretation, but sansa’s feelings of uncomfort are just a fact. If you think that’s no big deal, then fine. but just saying that i should shut it for stating facts is a bit much. but whatever i guess, there’s probably no point in discussing this any further now with the updated info
Nymeria Warrior Queen,
Oh GOD YES. I’m also pulling for Qyburn and Pycelle to do a Diana Rigg/Maggie Smith, Evil Under the Sun-style duet of ‘You’re the Top.’
I am concerned for that child.
Just like when Qyburn was checking up on Tommen last season. For now on, Uncle Kevan should be checking up on Tommen. Qyburn is on Team Cersei…….for now.
Also, Pycelle is an old creep.
I don’t find Pycelle creepy, he just has the great audacity to be old and still interested in women. *gasp*
You, sir/ma’am, are a troll. Reading your comments and responses to people make that clear. Perhaps you shouldn’t discuss anything further if you feel the need to attack other posters and even the site admin.
Qyburn is THE scariest character in ASOIAF.
Pigeon,
If old men being interested in sex was socially acceptable, then my viagara stocks would be…. Holy crap, I am effin’ rich! Game over losers!
😀
HotPinkLipstick,
I think you’ve figured it out! It’d be the happiest wedding on the whole damn show.
Sue the Fury,
Thanks Sue. If my browser hangs so that I inadvertently double post again – I’ll reword the content! 😀
Fez,
“Beating little girls” is what the Hound said to him when referring to beating Sansa though….correct?
Same here. It isn’t the fact that he’s a dirty old man that makes Pycelle so repellent to me; it’s the fact that he’s such a slimy sycophant to the Lannisters. By contrast, Qyburn just seems like a sort of overenthusiastic science geek.
Absolutely. When my mother took me for my first gynecological exam at the age of 12 or 13, she gave me no warning whatsoever of what to expect. Afterwards I wept with humiliation. And it was just a doctor doing his job.
Firannion,
Had my first exam around the same age. They wanted to find out if I was still, um, intact after discovering I was seeing a man twice my age. (A friend ratted me out to them when they called looking, God bless her in hindsight) So the humiliation started even before we got to the doctor’s office. Strangely enough, as an adult I’ve been more comfortable with a male ob-gyne. They are, at least the two I’ve had, more gentle when performing the exams than the female doctors I’ve seen.
This is slightly different from anyone’s personal experiences (we all have tiny, tiny sample sizes!), but historically (and it’s pretty recent history, too), a real problem for women doctors was not just that men were uncomfortable being “probed” by a woman (or, perhaps I should write “even more uncomfortable being probed by women than by men”: the old “bend over and cough” would be uncomfortable if done by a robot): it was also that both men and women were raised to think that being a doctor was man’s job and that being a nurse was a woman’s job. I mean, if the gods had intended women to think, then he/she/it/they would not have given them ovaries, right?
And one upshot of that is that Sansa might have been nearly equally freaked out to have a woman examine her: Sansa did not (and in many ways still does not) approve of “unladylike” behavior.
Of course, Sansa’s biggest problem at that time would have been abject misery: and that was almost certainly her real problem. However, I don’t think they were supposed to “get” that in this sort of world.
(As a counter-anecdote, I have found that women doctors are more apt to actually listen when I tell them what symptoms I have rather than telling me what symptoms I should and shoudl not have….)
Yes, it did. Trant spent the end of series 1 and most of series 2 beating up Sansa, whilst the Hound disapproves. After the Hound flees (post Blackwater) and encounters Arya, he informs her rather darkly that he “know[s] men who beat little girls… [he] know[s] men who rape little girls”. He then immediately goes on to talk about the mob trying to assault Sansa and how he protected her. This is way too much of a coincidence, especially since he didn’t personally know any of the local thugs who tried that. Either Sandor Clegane has some really shitty friends or this was a direct reference to Trant.
Dude. How the hell do you even know that exists?
*shudders*
No, I don’t want to google, by the way; I trust your word. It sounds like Lemonparty but with a necromancer involved. All of my no.