Quote:
Originally Posted by Anders
Or the man had consumed a little too much "liquid courage".
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He was sober in the scene, both in the books and the show. And he wasn't even trying to intimidate them for any purpose, he just did it to make the point that they weren't fit to fill his shoes, even in his old age.
The character isn't all that boastful. As far as one can judge from the books and show, he really could have posed a serious threat to the other knights of the Kingsguard,
even five against one.
A Song of Ice and Fire is usually fairly cynical in tone and a lone hero against several ordinary men generally loses.
The most 'cinematic' aspect of the books is that characters exist which are
very competent and many of those are point of view characters.
On the other hand, skill at arms isn't confined to point of view characters and some 'random' sellswords demonstrate what I'd estimate to be skill 18+ in GURPS terms. It's just that for every one that gets to that point, dozens, maybe hundreds, of levies and men-at-arms die of disease, wounds or other dangers of warfare.