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In season 7 episode 5, Jaime and Bronn emerge from a river, with their armor still on, and with no enemies around.
How did they not drown? At the end of episode 4, we see Jaime sinking in very deep water with his armor still on. It must be impossible to swim with so much armor, particularly if one is tired from a fight.
How did they avoid capture? Many people must've seen Jaime trying to kill Daenerys, yet no one seems to have noticed them swimming (what must've been) less than a minute later.
Jaime and Bronn emerge from a river, with their armor still on, and with no enemies around.
How did they not drown? At the end of episode 4, we see Jaime sinking in very deep water with his armor still on. It must be impossible to swim with so much armor, particularly if one is tired from a fight.
Only Jaime is wearing armor and only on the top half of his body. Bronn is not wearing armor..he's wearing leather.
It's not clear that Jaime is wearing actual plate armour. Certainly there is metal in places but it does appear that in many places what he is wearing is leather with metal decorations. This may reduce the overall weight.
We must assume that Bronn brought Jaime to the surface to prevent him drowning. He says that he won't let Jaime die until he gets what he's been promised.
How did they avoid capture? Many people must've seen Jaime trying to kill Daenerys, yet no one seems to have noticed them swimming (what must've been) less than a minute later.
There's no indication of the actual amount of time between episodes although it is right after the battle.
Jaime & Bronn surface some way from the battle...
Again, we must assume, in the absence of any other information, that they swam, perhaps under cover of the smoke and occasionally underwater from the site of the battle to somewhere downstream.
Since, as you say, Jaime is wearing armor, it's quite likely that he kept sinking and Bronn had to keep bringing him back up.
In TV land of course, what they have is plot armor which prevents them from dying until they are no longer needed.
It is a common misconception that armour makes you unable to swim for two reasons:
it majorly restricts your range of movements
it weighs too much
Those are both wrong. It is very much possible to swim even in the heaviest armour, especially only when wearing just a breastplate (like Jaime). It is more tiring, but it certainly is not as restricting or as heavy as modern fiction portrays it. It is for example, much lighter than a modern soldier's gear. Also, if it restricted your movement heavily, it would seriously impact your ability to fight. It is true that you do not have full freedom, but that's mostly with armour that covers the whole arm and leg. Jaime's is much lighter, and protects mostly his torso and shoulders.
You can check a video here of someone swimming in heavy armour, and you should know it should weigh a bit over 20kgs.
The only thing that would impact Jaime is that he is missing half an arm, but I don't know how that would affect him.
As for the empty battlefield, I would just call it "convenient".
As for the empty battlefield I would say they emerged a way away from it.
Aug 14, 2017 at 12:43
A couple of points to consider -
Only Jaime is wearing armor.
Most humans are naturally buoyant. SCUBA divers have to wear weights to allow them to sink, so while Jaime clearly sinks from the weight and density of his armor, it's not the same as just dropping a rock. He can move and wouldn't necessarily just be pinned to the bottom of the river.
Bronn is clearly assisting Jaime.
We see them emerge down-river.
If Jaime is dragged to the bottom, initially, why do we assume that they fought their way to the surface and swam from there? Wouldn't it be easier, assuming they could hold their breath for a couple minutes, so head directly to shore moving along the bottom of the riverbed, until they got to shallow enough water to catch gulps of air or finally stand?
Anecdotally - As a former lifeguard, we used to compete in a competition each year where, in one of the events, we had to retrieve a diving brick from the bottom of the deep end, and swim it back to the shallow end of the pool. The other competitors always tried to drag it to the surface, where they could breath, and swim it back. I always just used the weight of the brick to allow me to push off the bottom and essentially leap-frog along the bottom until I got to shallow water. It was much faster than trying to fight and swim at the surface while carrying additional non-buoyant weight. I don't think my competition ever even covered half the distance when I hit the finish line.
If I was Jaime or Bronn and I could see the shoreline within potential reach, I'd gather my legs under me and "dive" horizontally and repeatedly to cover that distance as fast as possible. With Bronn treating Jaime as a "weight" and also leaping at the same time, they cover the distance that much faster.
The added benefit of bottom-level locomotion would be that you would be less likely to be seen swimming and thrashing at the surface for an extended period of time. Remember, when Jaime was last seen he was about to be enveloped in a ball of fire that reduced other humans to ash, literally. From Daenerys's perspective, all she saw was the giant expanding fireball between Drogon and Jaime. That might additionally help them not be noticed if no one considered the idea that there might still be a Jaime (though Tyrion seems to make that assumption, so what do I know?).
SCUBA divers have to wear weights to allow them to sink, so while Jamie clearly sinks from the weight and density of his armor, it's not the same as just dropping a rock. Just a tangential note you may or may not know, but the body's buoyancy is not the sole reason SCUBA divers need a weight belt. Wet suits are very buoyant.
Everyone believed that the two were incinerated. The dragon wiped out the horses and everything is ash afterwards. Dany never saw him coming and apparently no one else close except Drogon did, either. So, when Drogon lit up the horses, Dany didn't think anything of two roasted horses, as she wouldn't have seen the or heard Jaime or Bronn through the commotion. Anyone who did see Jaime, must have assumed he was roasted and didn't bother to investigate.
However, Jaime's armor should have remained in the ash to note he was killed. So, Tyrion knew Jaime survived, but not until he made his way down to the site where they entered the water. By that time, Jaime and Bronn had emerged and everyone had already moved on.
Jamie then appears in King's landing, though. We are to believe that he and Bronn found a couple of stray horses and went undetected back to King's Landing, which shouldn't have been a problem, as Dany stuck around the battle site to perform the knee-bend ceremony and once Jamie is out of view, he's in Lannister country.
