Game of Thrones | Song of Ice and Fire

Tommen has a new successor. Good luck getting anyone in King’s Landing to care, apparently. Caution! Spoilers immediately ahead for  Game of Thrones  Season 6, Episode 2, ‘Home.’ Go watch it, it’s a really good one.  The body count in Westeros is really starting to pile up — and the return of one resurrected Lord Commander  doesn’t begin to make a dent in the numbers. In Season 6’s first two episodes, three of the Seven Kingdoms’ most powerful leaders have been usurped and unceremoniously tossed on the scrap heap: Roose Bolton (along with his wife and hours-old heir), Balon Greyjoy (last of the participants in the War of the Five Kings and the last of the leeches burned in the fire by Melisandre) and Prince Doran Martell of Dorne (that guy in the bathrobe and wheelchair). But the most important death is the one that barely got any attention: the poisoning of Princess Myrcella Baratheon, sister to King Tommen and official heir to the Iron Throne. ...

Ellie Kendrick as Meera Reed in Game of Thrones season six, episode two   CREDIT: HBO What can we expect? Earlier this week, HBO delivered another tension-filled tease of what we can expect on Monday from TV’s bloodiest drama. The network has released a trailer for episode two of Thrones’s sixth season, which promises to move events on swiftly from the  fast-paced season opener  that aired in the UK earlier this week. R amsay Snow, who looked grim as he realised he had savaged ties with potential allies in the north in season six episode one, can be seen making a plan to storm Castle Black in an attempt to restore Sansa Stark, his reluctant wife, to Winterfell. Meanwhile,  Arya, still blind, is gaining strength against the Waif , and we see the long-awaited return of Bran, who was last seen on screen at the end of season four. Isaac Hampstead Wright as Bran Stark in Game of Thrones season six, episode ...

Last week,  Game of Thrones  hit the ground running with “The Red Woman,” the show’s sixth season premiere. Sansa finally got some allies, half the people in Dorne were shuffled off this mortal coil, and Melisandre let us all in on a little secret. Producers  and  cast members  have promised that Season 6 is a thrill-a-minute affair, so we can expect tonight’s episode—entitled “Home”—to keep the momentum going. Here’s HBO’s official synopsis: Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) trains with the Three-Eyed Raven (Max von Sydow). In King’s Landing, Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) advises Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman). Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) demands good news, but has to make his own. At Castle Black, the Night’s Watch stands behind Thorne (Owen Teale). Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) proposes a plan, and Balon Greyjoy (Patrick Malahide) entertains other proposals. From that description alone, we can extract some interesting things. Most obviously, t...

If there is one thing Machiavelli’s  The Prince  needed, it was more dragons. Alas, it would have been so easy! All he had to do was mention Saint George. Although the closest Machiavelli came to discussing these mythic beasts was a brief shout-out for Chiron the centaur , such omissions make HBO’s  Game of Thrones  and George R. R. Martin’s  A Song of Ice and Fire  all the more interesting in today’s classroom. After all, if Daenerys Targaryen were a Poli Sci major today, she’d have every reason to throw down her textbooks and demand: “Where are my dragons!” Where  are  her dragons? That’s a good question. I say they belong in her classes alongside Hannibal’s elephants. It may sound ridiculous to reference works of fantasy in order to better explain politics, but such a practice is as old as Plato’s dialogues on Atlantis. After all, what is a well-written fictional character other than a device for better understanding ourselves? One...

If you watched this past Sunday’s season premiere of  Game of Thrones , you were treated with a brief return to Dorne, that south-most region of Westeros where last season’s most boring storyline took place. And then,  after seeing one of the show’s greatest deviations from the books , you started wondering what the hell is happening here. Spoilers ahead… On a surface level, Ellaria Sand and the daughters of the late Oberyn Martell assassinated Prince Doran, tired of waiting for him to get around to taking revenge on the Lannisters for the many, many Martells killed at their commands. It’s almost as if the Sand Snakes had watched season five themselves, and got bored waiting for something interesting to happen in Dorne. Certainly now that Doran is dead, things are about to move a lot faster. But where, exactly, is this story moving faster towards? There’s no coup in George R.R. Martin’s books, and while the Sand Snakes are very much trying to pick a fight with King’s L...

There comes a moment in the fifth season of  Game of Thrones  (and I believe the third book of  A Song of Ice and Fire ) when Lord Varys, of all people, possibly reveals what the entire series is all about. In pleading with Tyrion Lannister to hold on to hope at the lowest point of his life, Varys asks him to imagine a world in which the strong do not prey on the weak, and where the neverending political intrigue and blood feuds are left behind. This being the shifty Varys, such lofty words are best taken with a grain of salt. Still, his suggestion makes one wonder: Is  A Song of Ice and Fire  ultimately the story of a long, bloody transition from a feudal, monarchical system to some kind of proto-democracy, in which all castes have a voice, and the nobles and the various religions must yield to the rule of law? In other words, can the game of thrones finally end, replaced by a civilization that actually works? This leads to another question, a f...

HBO Spoilers  for the season premiere of  Game of Thrones   are below. The sixth season premiere of  Game of Thrones , titled  “The Red Woman,”  ended with a major shocker for viewers, as the titular character — the Lady Melisandre — revealed that she’s been keeping a very big secret since she first appeared on the series. As unveiled in the episode’s final scene, Melisandre has been keeping her appearance magically disguised all along. Her true visage isn’t that of 39-year-old actress Carice van Houten — instead, she is immensely older. HBO Oh hai. It’s a revelation that certainly makes us look at some earlier scenes — like Melisandre’s seduction of Stannis Baratheon back in season two and  attempted seduction of Jon Snow  in season five — in a new light. And it’s another example of magic taking a more prominent role in  Game of Thrones  as the series moves toward its conclusion. (There will likely  only be two mor...