That’s What Ygritte SaidWeekly Game of Thrones Musings by Sam Ryu

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“What makes a good king?” asks Tywin Lannister. Well Tywin, I’m not sure because I don’t think we’ve seen one in Game of Thrones yet. Joffrey, the most recently deceased king, might have been the worst ever. Or as Tyrion put it in S2E6: “We’ve had vicious kings and we’ve had idiot kings. But I don’t know if we’ve ever been cursed with a vicious idiot for a king!” The king before Joffrey, Robert Baratheon, is like the Michael Jordan of Westeros—great player (warrior), terrible owner (king). Then what about the king Robert usurped? Aerys II Targaryen. How bad was he? Well he was called the Mad King and tried to burn down King’s Landing and all its people, rather than lose the war to Robert Baratheon. And because conflict is the fuel of narrative, the chances of Joffrey’s younger brother (Tommen “Baratheon”) becoming a good king are slim—as nice a boy as he seems now. Now, let me rephrase Tywin’s question: What makes a good television show? What makes this show good? The obvious thing to do is point to the spectacular “event” episodes. The episodes that require spoiler warnings. The episodes you immediately text friends about as the credits roll and the first thing that comes up with coworkers when you see them on Monday. These are the episodes that shake Westeros like an Etch A Sketch and allows its players to reset and find a new direction in a landscape that has just drastically changed. (Such episodes thus far: S1E9, S2E9, S3E4, S3E9, S4E2.) But just as compelling as those episodes (for me, at least) are episodes like last week’s, in which nothing big happens—we just jump around the different locales to people talking.

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How much better can “people talking” get when the people doing the talking are Littlefinger (making an enthusiastic reentry), Grandma Olenna (breaking down why the Tyrells are now in a better situation), Tywin (giving his youngest grandson a crash course in Good Kings 101, over the dead body of his other grandson), the Hound/Arya (bantering), young Shireen Baratheon (giving Davos crap for going full Monty Python on his pronunciation of “k-nig-its”), Tyrion (bidding adieu to his loyal squire, Podrick), and Daenerys (giving another emancipation proclamation)?

April 27, 2014

Welcome back, Littlefinger! We missed your slimy words and creepy facial hair. It’s been six episodes, so here is run through of what he’s been up to: He betrayed Ned Stark in S1, after promising both Ned and Catelyn that he would help. He brokered the alliance of the Lannisters and Tyrells in S2 and was made Lord of Harrenhal as a reward. After being rejected by his lifelong love (Catelyn) yet again, he tried running away with Catelyn’s daughter (Sansa) as

consolation in S3. He is then sent to the Vale to marry Catelyn’s sister (Lysa Arryn) on the orders of Tywin. And of course he had something to do with Joffrey’s murder! He infamously called chaos a ladder—and what better chaos than the mysterious death of a king to start his climb? Well that and he really just wants Sansa, apparently. I’m assuming for both strategic (she’s a living Stark, the North is leaderless) and personal reasons. But even he couldn’t have pulled it off by just himself and the fool Dantos. It looks like Grandma Olenna and maybe even Tywin had a hand in it.

After seeing the deep pleasure Arya got from killing Polliver in S4E1, I worried that she would turn bad. But we see her Stark morals (though I’m not sure that’s a good thing to have these days) when calling out the Hound for being a thief. It looks like his claim that “a man’s got to have a code” came with an asterisk. Arya has always been a good liar (see: her time with Tywin in Harrenhal, S2), but her diplomacy indirectly put the farmer in the position of being robbed by the Hound. She’s getting a hard lesson in real-world pragmatism from him (“How many Starks they’ve got to behead before you figure things out?”) and she’s all the better for it. The Hound also considers joining the Second Sons—the sellsword company in Essos introduced in the eponymous episode in Season 3, in which Daario Naharis kills his fellow Second Sons officers to join Daenerys. Arya mentions she has friends in Braavos (a Free City in Essos)—referring to her assassin friend (Jaqen H’ghar) and her possibly-alive dancing teacher (Syrio Forel, the First Sword of Braavos).

Quick Hits: We learn the Dornish were the only people to resist the Targaryen’s dragon attack way back when. It looks like we’ll be getting a Red Viper (Oberyn Martell) vs. the Mountain (Gregor Clegane) showdown soon. And yes, that was Jaime raping Cersei. Not cool. May be the end of twincest. Also, Daenerys? Total drama queen. In all the best ways.

Davos suggests that Stannis hire the Golden Company (another Essos-based sellsword company) to fight, but they don’t have money. In his lightbulb moment, Davos realizes they can borrow from the Iron Bank of Braavos. Or maybe he doesn’t even need to borrow. In S3E3, Tyrion takes over as Master of Coin after Littlefinger is sent to marry Lysa Arryn. While going through Littlefinger’s financial records, Tyrion learns that the Iron Throne is “tens of millions” in debt to the Iron Bank of Braavos. When Bronn asks what the big deal is, Tyrion responds, “If we fail to repay these loans, the bank will fund our enemies. One way or another, they always get their gold back.” Uh oh.

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April 27, 2014