It borders on cliché that writers tend to metadiscursively tout the importance of storytelling at critical moments. Tyrion’s speech about the importance of a good story in choosing a king in the final episode of Game of Thrones may as well be Benioff and Weiss’ winking plea that the audience trust their judgement. Many are disinclined to do so after a season that was poorly paced and often gave viewers whiplash with the rapid introduction and dissolution of major plots within the course of an episode.
But I will cut to the chase and say that in the end, I loved the finale of Game of Thrones. It took its time and did its best to pull out of the nosedive that many viewers assumed it was in, and—whether or not you feel that Benioff and Weiss earned the trust they solicited in Tyrion’s speech (I myself am very skeptical)—the point they make about the importance of storytelling stands, not just as a pat on the back that privileges writers as the ultimate power-brokers of the human experience, but within the actual narrative: what kind of stories matter and what kind of stories ought to matter in a world like Westeros where power structures are built on the post-hoc justification of conquest? As it turns out, Game of Thrones values, as it always has, stories about the futility of justification.
We get a hint of this moral early in the episode. After coming across the Boticelli-esque tableau of his siblings’ final moments, Tyrion slams a brick on the ground in fury and frustration and grief. It is a motion reminiscent of Orson Lannister, a so-called “simple cousin” with a propensity for smashing beetles. In season four episode eight, Tyrion lays out his childhood obsession with divining Orson’s purpose:
Father droned on about the family legacy and I thought about Orson’s beetles. I read the histories of Targaryen conquests. Did I hear dragon wings? No. I heard ‘khuu, khuu, khuu’ and I still couldn’t figure out why he was doing it. And I had to know, because it was horrible that all these beetles should be dying for no reason.1
The much-memed speech became a meditation within the fanbase on the pointlessness of war, death, and genocide. Tyrion’s words explicitly pair the mindless slaughter of insects with both the Lannister family legacy and Targaryen history. In the bowels of the Red Keep, Tyrion apes cousin Orson over the bodies of the last of his family having, hours previously, betrayed the last of his friends, and finally accepts that there was no higher purpose. For Tyrion, the Game of Thrones ceases to be the only game worth playing and becomes an endless parade of unjustifiable atrocity.
But it is only legible as unjustifiable when simultaneously writ absurdly large and made intensely personal. Tyrion, in seeing a city of half a million people burn and his siblings murdered in the same span of a day, is in a unique position to understand that what the show and characters within it refer to as a “game” is, in realpolitik terms, a needless, costly capitulation to the status quo, or, as Daenerys referred to it: “the wheel.” Martin loves stories filled with cruel ironies, and the cruelest one seems to be that Daenerys did succeed in breaking the wheel only by going so much farther to further its preservation than any previous monarch, so as to make the other lords of Westeros recoil. The lesson that Martin, Benioff, and Weiss seem to be pushing is that only catastrophic system failure makes people see the insufficiency of the system—and as any good Leninist will tell you, those who break the system can’t effectively rule afterwards.
Jon Snow seems content to share Tyrion’s despair at Daenerys’ scorched-earth tactics, finally bucking the prickly Stark commitment to staying the course one has pledged oneself to at all costs by acknowledging “I can’t justify what happened. I won’t try.”2 He means that he won’t try and rationalize the razing of King’s Landing as a necessary act of war, but Tyrion goes a step farther–moving beyond simple, trapped despair to provide a justification–though not the exoneration that Jon Snow seems to be hoping for. He tells the elder Targaryen: “She liberated the people of Slaver’s Bay. She liberated the people of King’s Landing. […] Everywhere she goes, evil men die and we cheer her for it. And she grows more powerful and more sure that she is good and right.” Tyrion explains what Varys had previously posited: that ideology is an echo chamber and the story you tell about what you did previously limits the story you tell about what you will do.
The core of this story—everywhere she goes, evil men die and we cheer her for it—is the story that Daenerys has told herself since the moment she emerged from Drogo’s funeral pyre; the story that viewers have bought into; it’s the story that Elizabeth Warren (perhaps unwisely) penned an essay in praise of; the story that led “Khaleesi” to become a more popular baby name than “Brittany,”3 the story that seemed to be at the core of this television show for eight years and the novels for twenty six. It’s a bad one. It is not bad because it doesn’t make sense or provide adequate justification. It’s bad because it does. It’s bad because it preys so precisely on our deep desire to believe in the infallibility of heroes.
Buy the Book
Fate of the Fallen
And the finale of Game of Thrones is very, very good at turning the story on its head, pointing a finger back at the viewer for believing that Daenerys’ vision was one she had the power to enact. After seven seasons of making the dragons into beloved icons of badass justice when flying over Daenerys, or supporting her as she commands them, Benioff and Weiss give a chilling, bravura shot of Daenerys and Drogon combined, his wings unfolding behind her, rendering all of our beloved associations suddenly demonic in the chimerical fusion of the two. Her moustache-twirling speech on the ruined steps of the Red Keep is not so different in content from her speech to the Unsullied at the gates of Astapor, or her speech to the freed slaves of Meereen after having funded their rebellion against the Great Masters. All are more chilling for the uncanny—dare I say Gothic?—resonance they take on for being so very close to the images and speeches we spent years cheering.
Even in her final scene, viewers are not free from the heroic power of Daenerys’ story. As she fulfills the prophecy she was shown in the House of the Undying, her long walk to the Iron Throne is scored with a solemn, children’s chorus rendition of the series’ theme song. It is neither in a minor key, nor underscored with new notes that might make us feel sick at the prospect of her ascendancy. Even when she speaks to Jon, the icy stare of Daenerys-the-conqueror melts away as she reflects on her childish fantasies of a throne so large you could not climb it. The scene is framed on her terms—it is filmed to be a tear-jerking moment of fulfillment. The show knows that, just like Jon and Tyrion, we cannot completely square the worthy, idealistic liberator with the megalomaniacal war criminal, even though we understand exactly how the two are one and the same.
Many reviews (especially deeply critical ones) have pointed out that the most powerful moment of empathy and identification in the episode may very well be Drogon’s lamenting cry upon finding his mother’s corpse. When the great beast melts the Iron Throne, they are, in fact, taking revenge on Daenerys’ murderer. Not Jon, who was merely the proximal cause of her death, but the unchecked ambition and lust for power that the titular chair has always represented.
So what do we do, asks the second half of the episode, with a story that has worked hard to problematize the narrative it made paramount? How do we tell stories when we are unable to trust them?
Tyrion argues for the power of inventing a new one: a tale where perseverance and suffering are more important than conquest and strength. It’s a value that Martin has argued for from the beginning. Early in the first novel, when Tyrion helps Bran design a saddle that will let him ride after his spinal injury, he confesses that he has “a tender spot in [his] heart for cripples, bastards and broken things.”4 On one level, crowning Bran, sparing Jon, and making peace with Grey Worm represents the ultimate apotheosis of that thesis: one pariah chooses another to be king while two bereaved men saddled with pasts shaped by bastardy and slavery agree to let the other live despite the enmity they bear for one another.
But on another level—one that feels equally, if not more important—the coronation of Brandon the Broken is as close as Westeros can come to a complete system overhaul. Perhaps because of Isaac Hempstead Wright’s somewhat muted performance, the (as it turns out, pointless) aura of mystery with which the writers have surrounded Bran, and his static nature over the last three seasons, many were perplexed or outraged by Bran being granted the highest office in the land. It seems clear to me, however, that the choice is one to be ruled by committee. Bran, utterly devoid of ambition and desire, and utterly replete with first-hand knowledge of the history of Westeros, becomes a vague, guiding force—more akin to Asimov’s psychohistory than an actual monarch. Sam’s suggestion of representative democracy is comedically shot down—Westeros just isn’t there yet—but we get a vague analog to the signing of the Magna Carta. The wheel is broken insofar as the hereditary right of kings is abolished. The allure of power, the fantasy of a perfect, heroic, legendary monarch is ended, the Iron Throne is unmade and control of Westeros is no longer a game, but a discussion.
The show’s loremaster, Bryan Cogman, described the final season as “emotional haunting [and] bittersweet.”5 That sentiment seems to be one borne out by the final beats of every character arc. There are no clean endings, though there are the suggestions of happy ones. Sam becomes Grand Maester, but still has no ability to alter anything but the title of Archmaester Ebrose’s history of the Baratheon-Lannister-Targaryen-Stark interregnum. Bronn gets everything he has ever wanted, perhaps to the dismay of viewers who wanted to see Highgarden in safe hands. Davos gets to be Master of Ships and finally serve a king worthy of his loyalty, though not one he loves as dearly as he did Stannis and Jon. Grey Worm finally gets to protect the people of Naath, but it is a tragic purpose without Missandei by his side. Brienne becomes, not just a knight, but the knight as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. She is perhaps the most interesting example, as she is given the chance at historical revisionism that Samwell was denied in the form of the White Book. She does get to tell the story people want about the honorable Ser Jaime Lannister, but it cannot change the fact that the man she loved is dead. Tyrion gets to be the real power in Westeros but only in atonement for his many mistakes, bereft of the friends, the family, and the lover he betrayed. The episode is surprisingly gentle—but it is not happy.
At the very end, Benioff and Weiss (and, perhaps, Martin, if elements of this ending match his books) take on the father of fantasy stories himself: J.R.R. Tolkien. Many of the final scenes of Game of Thrones seem like homages to Tolkien’s Return of the King (and, specifically, Peter Jackson’s adaptation of it). Arya’s sudden decision to sail West off the edge of the map is so close to the departure from the Grey Havens that it elicited a chuckle at my finale party. But where Frodo, Bilbo, and Gandalf sail off because magic has died in Middle-earth, Arya sails off in spite of magic surviving in Westeros. After all, though she may have no place in the new kinder, gentler kingdoms, six of them are led by a sorcerer king, the wildlings are commanded by a man who came back from the dead, and a dragon in mourning is still out there in the world, flying free.
Jon is overdetermined as a Tolkienesque, fantasy savior: he is a child of both Stark and Targaryen, both Ice and Fire; he rose from the dead to combat injustice and extinction, he helped defend Westeros from the army of the dead, and slew his beloved pretender to the throne when her rule turned to fire and blood. But, unlike a fantasy savior, Jon does not get to be king (thank the Old Gods and the New). He goes into (affable) exile, leading the Free Folk to a new home and inheriting the legacy of Mance Rayder, whom he fought and killed, and forsaking the legacy that his adopted, biological, and chosen fathers—Ned, Rhaegar, and Jeor Mormont—laid out for him.
And in place of the savior King in Jon or the savior Queen in Daenerys, we get hope for the future in Sansa. The series has (seemingly deliberately) held off on calling her Queen in the North until her final moment in the series. Where Lord of the Rings has Aragorn end the line of Stewards so that the line of Kings can return, Game of Thrones ends the line of kings so that a Queen who has proven, above all else, a good steward of her kingdom can reign.
I have seen numerous arguments that the series waited to the end to play its most misogynistic card and reduce Daenerys to the sexist trope of the “emotional female ruler.” It is true that those who counted on Daenerys to be the female future that would put an end to Westeros’ patriarchal rape culture were disappointed. The show is far from fair to women in general, and the background noise of sexposition, and dubious preoccupation with hysterical women who become abominably cruel when they experience loss is certainly undeniable.
But to that argument, I would retort that Sansa Stark has had the most remarkable arc of the series. She begins the narrative as a pawn of patriarchy, obsessed with stories where women are rescued by men and determined—like Margaery Tyrell and, to an extent, Cersei—to become queen only by marrying a handsome prince. She wants a perfect fairytale where she is passive, pretty, and powerless. By the end of the show, without undermining or eschewing the femininity she has always embraced, she learns enough to become the single most competent leader in the Seven Kingdoms: a resourceful survivor who outsmarts her captors, earns the loyalty of her retainers, and puts the needs of her people first. Her coronation dress is lined not with direwolf motifs but with weirwood leaves, signaling that one does not have to be a vicious beast to be a good ruler.
If fantasy is meant to show us how the stories of our childhood and the myths of our past might be reassembled to tell us something prescient about the present moment, then Game of Thrones, contrary to its explicit messaging by Tyrion, is not about a good story making for a good ruler—after all, Daenerys had the best story on the series; the one that seemed to track the rise of a fantasy heroine with hubristic highs, tragic depths and peripatetic reversals. Rather, it is about how patriarchal power can’t be toppled by a female patriarch. Daenerys ultimately embodied the very system of patronizing, patriarchal oppression she desired to dismantle; Sansa, on the other hand, quietly forged a new path for herself, a new understanding of gentle power. At the beginning of the series, Robert Baratheon was proof that good soldiers make for bad kings. In Sansa Stark, Westeros gets a better Queen than it deserves, and we get a better ending than we could have hoped for.
Tyler Dean is a professor of Victorian Gothic Literature. He holds a doctorate from the University of California Irvine and teaches at a handful of Southern California colleges. He is one half of the Lincoln & Welles podcast available on itunes or through your favorite podcatcher. More of his writing can be found at his website and his fantastical bestiary can be found on Facebook at @presumptivebestiary.
[1]“The Mountain and the Viper.” Game of Thrones, created by David Benioff and DB Weiss, performance by Peter Dinklage, season 4, episode 8, Bighead Littlehead Productions and HBO, 2014.
[2]“The Iron Throne.” Game of Thrones, created by David Benioff and DB Weiss, performance by Kit Harington, season 4, episode 8, Bighead Littlehead Productions and HBO, 2019.
[3]Marcoux, Heather. Baby Names: ‘Khaleesi’ is now more popular than ‘Brittany.’ Motherly, May 19, 2019. https://www.mother.ly/news/game-of-thrones-baby-girl-names, accessed May 20, 2019.
[4]Martin, George. A Game of Thrones. Bantam paperback edition, 1997, p. 244.
[5]Hibberd, James. “EW's new Game of Thrones cover reveals first photo of season 8.” Entertainment Weekly. November 1, 2018.
Really excellent and thoughtful post, as usual. I completely missed the connection between the ‘thunk thunk thunk’ of Tryion banging the brick on the floor.
I don’t disagree with your points although like others I feel like the writers didn’t quite ‘sell’ it enough.
I think you may be seeking meaning where there is none.
“patriarchal power can’t be toppled by a female patriarch”–This is the best explanation of what happened that I’ve seen. I think the writers didn’t set this ending up enough, I think they sold her goodness and justice a little too hard, and I think her turn to madness could also have been less extreme and still served to break the wheel. What if instead of burning a city full of innocents she had initiated a witch hunt for those who had given Cersei the strongest support? If over a span of time she had expanded the witch hunt to include those who she suspected of being less than loyal to her? What if her animosity toward Sansa and the recalcitrant North came to a head? It might have taken another episode or two to talk Jon into ending her rule, but it could have been done and seemed much more believable than burning a whole city full of downtrodden people to the ground.
Excellent article, however, very well said and after reading it I’m much more at ease with the ending than I was. Thank you.
The trouble I have, I think, is in squaring this brilliant analysis of the conclusion with how the series paved the way to that conclusion. While I think you’re fundamentally right about how it ends, I think this also requires a pretty generous interpretation of how that ending was delivered. All in all, though, this allowed me to see the final episode from a very different angle than the ones from which I’ve been gnashing my teeth. I’m not entirely satisfied, but I’m certainly less annoyed than I have been since Sunday. Thanks for your insight. These articles have been a joy to read.
There seems to be a lot of wishful thinking in this article. If they are setting up a rule by committee, they could have just set up a rule by committee instead of making Bran king. If they wanted to say that Sansa’s story was the best, they could have just had Tyrion say that.
Well thought-out and beautifully articulated as always. I can’t wait to see what you write about next.
I’d like to accept this theory, but the more I think about it, I can’t. The biggest issue is the claim that Sansa has “the most remarkable story”. As #5 points out, if this is true then she should be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms rather than Bran.
Then too, I’m dubious of trying to rank the various remarkable stories that could be told by those left at the end. Jon’s story is remarkable. So is Arya’s. So is Tyrion’s. So too Brienne, Davos, and Sam. I wouldn’t put Bran or Sansa “ahead” of any of them. And that’s leaving aside Dany, whose own story might top them all.
Nor did Sansa end up ruling Winterfell because of her remarkable story (though that certainly helped). No, she got Winterfell because she was the only Stark left there. The choice wasn’t meritocratic in any way, she would have ended up as the Lady of Winterfell because of the same rules of heredity that Westeros has followed all along.
Thank you for another fantastic article on this. I have so enjoyed reading them.
The only storyline I wasn’t convinced by, in the end, was Arya’s. I know she made mention of wanting to know what was west of Westeros a few seasons ago, but that exploratory drive was not developed in the intervening seasons. As it was written, the audience is left having to fill in a clear motivation. Does she, as a killer, feel surplus to requirement in the new Westeros? Is she running towards a place where she can genuinely be no one? (Unlikely, given the sails of her ship.) Is she a coloniser? Is she just taking the opportunity to pick up the curiosity that was so strong in her but was ultimately replaced by revenge? Having failed to become a faceless assassin or a saviour, is she going on the Westerosi equivalent of a gap year to find herself? I wish I knew.
We get a theoretical end to primogeniture, but we do not get Magna Carta, or the pacta conventa of the elected kings of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. That is, a constitutional limitation of executive authority. Unless the inheritor of the Three-eyed Raven mantle will forever be king, the game will be played. Changing the system will only change the minor rules and playstyle, because a concentration of power will always attract the ambitious, the unself aware sanctimonious, and the corrupt.
The game goes on, always.
In the absence of democracy, the show-runners went for the Socratic alternative: not rule by committee (Athens had enough of that with the Thirty Tyrants) but the philosopher King, the man who doesn’t want power and is therefore the only one fit to rule.
I’m in the minority in that I wanted Game of Thrones to end like King Lear, with every possible claimant mad, strangled, burned to death or bent upon suicide, and a bare handful of survivors sitting in the wreckage wondering what the hell to do next. The rounding off is always the most unsatisfactory part, for me: Jon Snow burnt to charcoal by Drogon would have been far better than Jon riding off Beyond the Wall with the theme tune swelling. But I accept this would have been even more unpopular than what we actually got.
I really enjoyed this article. I agree with most commenters who qualify the effectiveness of the ending: It is a good ending, perhaps even a very good ending, but badly executed. As I wrote somewhere else, the final chapter does feel like the final episodes of Lord of the Rings on the bittersweet, ptsd-tinted reconstruction of the Shire, like an acknowledgement that the world didn’t end after all and we all have to get up and go to work, but somehow colour bled out of this world and an element of boredom creeped in… But what I’m missing is a climax as powerful as the destruction of the Ring in Mount Doom. I mean it’s right there, in Jon’s assassination of Daenerys, but to me it didn’t convey the emotional weight it should have. Its location in the episode probably didn’t help…
Following Sophist’s comment’s line of thinking, I notice with dismay that Davos aside, (and Grey Worm? Oh but what a problematic character he is, in the end. Wonder what GRRM will do with him in the books) no other character of humble origin came to wield any power in the brave new world, or deserve any particular attention from the narration, too busy reviewing the fates of the First Family Stark. It’s kinda depressing (to me t least) how aristocratic GoT remains to the bitter end.
And I really should be writing, so I’ll stop now.
I knew I was missing someone from my list. I should have included Grey Worm.
I thought that the ending was fitting for a series that went way off the map written by Martin. Weak show propelled by sex and violence ends unbelievably poorly. With so many changes made from the novels, I found the show all but unwatchable yet still, like a rubber necking driver at a 40 car pileup, still I could not look away.
I was unsurprised that season 8 was so bad, because, quite frankly, I thought every season was pretty bad. I could drivel on about some of the (imho) bizarre casting choices, seemingly purposeless character/plot/story alterations and don’t even get me started on the beyond stupid battle strategies (I beg you!). Or the incredible time shifts that allowed for characters like Arya to basically teleport all across the 7 Kingdoms and beyond. Or how Euron, upon having the vast bulk of the existing Iron Fleet spirited away by his niece and nephew somehow creates a bigger badder Iron Fleet 2.0 not only in a stretch of time that totally cheapened the complicated and lengthy process of ship building, but he did so on an archipelago that (in the books, at least) has no more native timber suitable for ship building. And even worse, he did it in the late fall to early winter, a time where the seas of Westeros (at least in the frigid North) are wracked by vicious storms and weather than even seen through rose hued goggles most would consider brutal.
Reaving can be done all through the seasons, but I highly doubt ship building would be anything but slower than sewage going uphill.
Bran as King? I thought one of the big issues with Dany was the succession. Kind of hard to believe a man crippled from the waist down would be able to sire heirs, as the 3 eyed raven told Bran in the books. I don’t remember the exact quote but it was to the effect of, ‘…Bran would never be able to become a knight, run and play, or hold his own child in his arms…’ . His injuries clearly wouldn’t render him unable to hold a baby in his arms, so that would mean he is unable to have children.
So…a King who cannot produce an heir. A Grand Maester who left the Citadel without a single link on his chain. A Lord Commander of the Kingsguard who is constantly angered at behind her back, a knight in fact that most men would never follow regardless of skill (at least not in GRR’s world, or our world during the time of armored knights and beyond. And even worse, the so-called True Heir in Jon aka Rhaegar gets sent to the Wall to perhaps rejoin the Night’s Watch despite the fact that he slew the now evil Dragon Queen and the fact that he is eminently most suitable to be King of all the surviving characters. Despite the fact that the Watch has no real purpose now the Night King and his armies have been destroyed. Or King beyond the Wall. Ridiculous.
Phew! I’d better stop before I burst a few blood vessels in my head! LOL!
Look, clearly, by this and your other comments, you hate the show (so I don’t know why you insist on commenting on all the GoT threads, other than to make sure everybody knows how much you hate the show. It’s one thing to want to engage in criticism, but by your own admission you don’t like any of it), but the whole thing with siring heirs was pretty clearly spelled out int the episode, and in fact was one of the REASONS Bran was picked – it’s an attempt to do away with heriditary monarchy. Whether or not this will actually work, or just introduce new, different problems, is of course another story ;)
@13 I have to wonder if you actually watched the episode. Like Lisamarie said, Bran was picked because he can’t produce heirs, and sending Jon to the NW was a ruse to placate Grey Worm, because once at the Wall, he went north to live with the wildlings (which by this point, is clearly what he wanted.)
Great post. It’s always nice to hear a dissonant tone from the incessant din that has become so loud after the finale.
I’ll admit that I didn’t love the ending. Everything after Dany’s death felt a bit off, Especially that committee to choose the next king. Conversely, I’m dying to see the alternate endings.
But it’s easy to focus on the negatives. Jon’s fate was appropriate, though I would’ve preferred it if he had been the one to choose exile. He never wanted to rule, and the guilt would’ve crushed him. Arya was and always will be a lone wolf, regardless of what the shippers believed.
And Sansa really did have a great season. In fact, I was surprised that she wasn’t crowned queen of the whole shebang. Bran was an odd choice. You’d have to imagine that came from GRRM, since it was so weird.
As a Dany fan, it was painful to see what happened to her. So I can understand some of the outrage. However, that’s the danger of investing your emotions into a single character. Or a single TV show, to be honest. Diversification isn’t only useful in the stock market
This is some of the most sexist allegedly feminist writing I’ve ever seen outside of actual TERFs. I find it darkly hilarious that the author is intent on defining Sansa’s femininity in terms of gendered, stereotypical harsh/gentle dichotomies, implicitly associating masculinity with violence and oppression and femininity with kindness and soft power. It’s even more hilarious that the author simultaneously attempts to delegitimize and deny Daenerys’s femininity, attempting to cast her as masculine by association. Come on, man, think about what you write before you post it.
Overall, I was generally satisfied by the ending, but felt that King Bran was cliched and sent a mixed message by putting a monarch with Orwellian powers of omniscience in charge of everything. Essentially you put a guy who can see everything including the past and future and has become extremely emotionally disconnected from humanity in charge of a whole lot of humans; effectively making a freaking god-king. And the Westerosi oligarchy freely chose this god-king, making the decision on behalf of the very subjects they consider subhuman.
Screw that.
I also was legitimately expecting Arya to assassinate Dany while saying something like “this isn’t revenge, this is protecting my family and my people. Sorry, Daenerys.” Having Jon do it is alright though. I also like that he came around to reject his rapist biodad, but he hasn’t grown a bit. They should not have had him embrace his Targ blood and DEFINITELY shouldn’t have had him reject his Stark heritage by rejecting Ghost. He is a weak-willed coward who doesn’t deserve that good boy. (And Ghost is a very, very good boy)
I was also kind of hoping for a spinoff series with Brienne, Tormund, and Ghost as friends who travel around righting wrongs, and Brienne and Tormund bicker about Tormund’s girls of the week as he complains that he can’t find the right woman because they’re not Brienne or something, because Tormund is the kind of class act who Brienne is worthy of and vice versa (seriously, my lady can do SO much better than that weak-willed Lannister brat!). IDK, I just think those two human characters work really well together, and Ghost is a good dog who needs a good home. I believe that Brienne and Tormund would both be good people for Ghost, and he would be a good dog for them both.
‘Arya’s sudden decision’
IMHO, it was in her mind when the question was first asked in her hearing. She’s had a remarkable training. I predicted correctly that she would sail to see what was west of Westeros (if she survived).
There seems to be a lot of interpretation that Tyrion’s words about stories mean the person with the best story should be monarch. That’s not what he said at all. He said stories hold the people together. The stories we tell each other. Bran is not the ideal king because he has the best personal story, but because he can tell every story (at least in Tyrion’s argument). He’s also the least contentious, to be honest. And I’d be willing to bet that Tyrion suspects—as do many in the audience—that Bran’s reign will be very long indeed.
(edited for grammar)
@19 Couldn’t have said it better myself. Tyrion’s opening line to his argument was that “Bran has the best story” but that’s not what his all-around argument was at all.
I would add a single point to the description of Queen Sansa. While the coronation gown may have had weirwood leaves, the crown, styled much like Cercei’s, is a pair of direwolves. Never doubt the wolf is still there.
My favourite part of the finale was Sansa saying to Edmure:
Uncle, sit down.
I really can’t understand why people find Aryas decision to go west so strange. She has no place in this new peaceful Westeros and she knows it. She has spent most of her grown up life in a murder sect, rambling and killing. She is not part of the society and like the poor lonesome Cowboy leaving the town after killing the bandits, she rides off into the sunset. It is an old but effective trope that I think works perfect in this case.
Now the season was very rushed and it could have been better anchored but they can’t be expected to write you on your noses the reasoning behind every decision the characters does.
And an excellent analysis by Tyler. Thank you! Even if it doesn’t reflect the reasoning of the script writers I whish it does.
@7 Sophist; “The biggest issue is the claim that Sansa has “the most remarkable story”. As #5 points out, if this is true then she should be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms rather than Bran.”
Aren’t you mixing apples and pears here.
In this series Sansa has really made a remarkable journey. Something that especially those accusing the scriptwriters for beeing misogynic should note. That is a story for us viewers though.
Bran on the other hand has got next to nothing in the series after the first season. That made Tyrions speech about him feel somewhat uncomfortable to me. The guy had no story at all! But of course his speech is not about what we have seen in the show, but about the people in Westeros may feel about a magic being that holds the story of all humankind (if we are to believe what they say – they really failed in making that believable though).
@5 Bookworm…
They made Sansas journey great for us viewers (in the eyes of Tyler and me among others). That is nothing anybody in the story has to point out.
And it was pretty clearly pointed out that Bran would be a disengaged leader, leaving the committee for the daily work. If that is a good or bad thing for Westeros … I guess we will never get to know. Looking back into the history it seems like a mixed blessing. And that is ok because GoT is not about justice and happy endings. :-)
@25: I like the explanation in 19 better, though I need to re-watch the scene to see if I agree on what Tyrion said.
Khaleesi was more popular than Brittany for a time? I didn’t know that. Wonder what the headlines will be when one of those Khaleesies participate in an armed robbery in 20 years time.
@@@@@ 9
I agree that we saw was not the Magna Carta or the end of the Baron’s war. It was not even the Golden Bull of 1356 in the Holy Roman Empire. What we saw was the first election of the HRE, the election of 1273. An interregnum, a very long and bloody civil war, and then the nobles of the land forming a 7 member council to elect a king. Lots of future conflicts will be probable in the future. The Faith will probably try to take a part in the election, as the Pope tried in the HRE. Rival councils could be formed at certain times. It’s a proccess.
@29 Yeah! That’s it.
OK, was anyone else as grossed out by Arya’s proposal to Jon as I was? I heard echoes of the incestuous relationship of Cerci and her brother in it and thought, oh no, here we go again with just a different queen with a firebreathing dragon. Having Jon kill her at that point seemed to break the cycle leaving history open to a different story.
@31: I think you meant “Daenerys’ proposal to Jon”, there :) For a second I had to rethink everything I thought I knew about Jon and Arya’s relationship, and I DID NOT LIKE IT ONE BIT :)
Ok, I re-watched the scene with Tyrion. The best I can say is that it’s ambiguous. I still think the most natural way to interpret it is that Bran’s story is the best. But he may also mean that Bran can tell the best stories. If the latter is what he meant, then I’m still dubious about choosing a king on that basis, but I don’t hate the idea.
My professor of ancient history in college submitted to his students that Myth is the medium by which a society passes its Truth (i.e., values) to the next generation. That axiom has stuck with me for decades since. It is what I mean and I think Tyrion meant by stories holding society together. (I also think that “myth” has come to mean almost the opposite in common English—that is, something quaint and false—which is why the writers didn’t put that word in Tyrion’s mouth.)
In this way, Bran is a prophet king at the very least. Is he the best choice? We can’t know without a longer epilogue or sequel. I also don’t think he’ll quite be as detached from humanity as he had seemed throughout the later seasons of the show. But that may just be me.
I assumed Tyrion meant the latter with Bran – it seemed to call back to Sam’s speech about him earlier this season, as well as Tyrion wanting to hear his story. He doesn’t necessarly mean ‘Bran Stark’s story, but the fact that Bran holds all of humanity’s story.
Wonderful article. Thank you.
I’m basically ok with the ending, but I agree with so many that character arcs and details were lost this year in the rush to finish up the story.
I also wish that at the end when Jon arrives at the Wall, he and Tormand could’ve had a few lines of dialogue, where he verbally, out loud, shows agency in his situation, and that it his Choice to leave Westeros behind and join the Free People north of the Wall.
Jon is the Hero of this tale. He saved Westeros from the Night King and his army of the dead, and he liberated the Realm from the tyrannical rule of Daenerys, while breaking his own heart. He gave up his inheritance, and his family, and he did indeed, break the wheel.
“Where Lord of the Rings has Aragorn end the line of Stewards so that the line of Kings can return, Game of Thrones ends the line of kings so that a Queen who has proven, above all else, a good steward of her kingdom can reign.”
Are you speaking of the Lord of the Rings movies or the books? Aragorn did not end the line of Stewards. He did not kill Boromir, or force Denethor to immolate himself. He saved the life of Faramir, the last ruling (if only for a few weeks) Steward of Gondor and made him the second most powerful man in Gondor by confirming him as Steward of Gondor (ruling in the King’s absence and advising him at other times) and ennobling him as Prince of Ithilien, and making both hereditary for all of Faramir’s heirs.
I agree that Sansa’s ending in the TV show was thrilling; she was one of my favorite characters in the books. I just wish the show had been fleshed out a bit more, with a few extra episodes in seasons 7 and 8 to make Sansa’s final trajectory a bit more plausible.
The problem with Tyrion’s “evil men speech” is that it’s a piece of sophistry.
D & D are here breaking the fourth wall in order to give us their political views. That when you use violence to fight injustice, you become as bad as the people you fight against. Inaction in the face of injustice is the correct course of action. That’s a piece of selective pacifism that is very useful for people who commit injustice.
We weren’t cheering for Dany because she killed “evil men.” We supported her because she was doing the right thing. Fighting to free slaves at Astapor and Meereen was the right thing to do. It’s sad that slavers died during the course of this, but that doesn’t make it immoral. Nobody was “murdered” at Astapor (apart from one white horse) . None of the Dothraki Khals was “murdered”. They took Daenerys as prisoner, and paid the price (after she had offered a huge ransom to Khal Moro). It’s simply not true that there is any continuum between acts taken in self-defence and to prevent injustice and the immolation of hundreds of thousands of non-combatants. It’s a deeply reactionary argument.
Peter Dinklage delivered the speech with gusto, and it seems plausible at first, but the argument is one that is morally bankrupt.