Nah, Varys does not have the cred to be King (he's not even a Lord. What a loser! and a weinerless one at that. Winners have weiners). My take on it was that he wanted Prince Oberyn to take over. I'm fine with this, he's very likeable, and an ENTP ta boot!
Interesting.
So he was rather making a not-so-veiled pitch to Oberyn and testing his response?
The actor playing Oberyn reminds me of Antonio Banderas in some ways.
That reminded me of the archetypal scene in a movie where a man or boy must threaten his dog to run away into the wild for whatever reason, like in White Fang, when Jack scares off his bestest wolf buddy by yelling "GO!" and threatening him with a stick, because he can't take Fang back to San Francisco. Pretty sad, and not that much different than the way Tyrion treated Shae. Maybe he could have handled it another way, but she was pretty fucking stubborn.
She's crafty, yes, but not abstractly smart -- she kind of takes things at face value, including his final rejection of her. A big picture thinker would have stepped back, looked at all the pieces, and conjectured he was probably trying to spare her life, but all she hears is his words and all she sees is his rejection of her.
It was just very sad. And leaves you wondering where Bronn is, since he had put her on the boat.
I'd go a little farther than blunt. We've never seen Tyrion so enraged. He's always been so calm, cool, cunning, and witty, even in life threatening situations. But this was brand new, raw and ferocious anger (and rightly so. and very much like a lion, I might add).
Great point, that last bit.
... which leads me into another great big double-fingered FU to Tywin. No matter how much you hate Tyrion, old man (apparently Tywin's 67 years old?), he's as much a Lannister as anyone in the family. How ironic.
Also, Littlefinger a creeper? Never caught that. When did this happen? Did I miss him eying Sansa or something? I suppose if that's so, I could see it, some twisted projection of Catelyn. He's obviously amoral, but I've never seen or detected sexual depravity.
Aside from running the kinky brothel. But his fixation on Caitlyn + his interactions with Sansa (body language, tone of voice, etc.) all come across as the creepy ex-non-boyfriend of your mother who could never get her in the sack in high school and is now hanging around her younger daughters for.... whatever reason. It's not like Petyr hasn't sunk to some pretty low levels already.
And my thoughts on Sansa: She's tall!
Too bad she's not Arya, or she'd kick his ass.
Anyway, during the trial, we now see why Olenna
I read a little about the writing of the episode, and the writer was told to focus on accusations based on things Tyrion actually said and did throughout the series so far. It was great advice. yes, there was some wholesale lying going on as well, at the end, but in general pretty much everything that got dragged out was stuff Tyrion said, just taken out of context and misrepresented... often in the best interests of the kingdom. It made it hurt even worse.
Now, as far as foreshadowing:
End result of all this, if everyone lives:
Jaime and Tyrion are still a family.
Cersei is all alone, because she turned on family.
Tywin is left holding the pieces, trying to salvage something.
And Tommen lays in bed holding Ser Pounce dreaming sweet dreams of Margaery.