Spoilers for the latest episode of Game of Thrones follow, obviously.
We’ve reached a fascinating point in Game of Thrones, where the show is both departing from the plot of George R. R. Martin’s books, but moving into the realm of books yet to be released. As I dissect the changes between the novels and the television series, I’ll do my best not to spoil any important plot points. But remember: We’re entering uncharted territory where we won’t always know what a spoiler, or the “real” story, actually is.
In this episode, Hizdahr poses an thematically important question: "What great thing has ever been accomplished without killing or cruelty?" Very few things on Game of Thrones, that's for sure. Ned Stark refused to embrace that mercenary attitude and died for his trouble, while Stannis wraps both arms around it, and finds it may be the only thing he has left to hold.
After a small cadre of Bolton soldiers infiltrates his camp at night, Stannis finds his food stores and siege weapons destroyed, hundreds of men and horses dead. Things are looking bleak for the would-be king: They can't head to Winterfell without a thaw, and they don't have enough food to make it back to Castle Black. The only person offering a way forward is Melisandre, who has once again become the hungry hungry hippo of king's blood. And this time, she wants to devour Shireen.
Shireen is reading Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling, a history of the Targaryen civil war that took place roughly 150 years earlier. She tells Davos the story of a knight named Ser Byron Swann, who tried to slay a dragon by hiding behind a mirrored shield, hoping the beast would be confused by his own reflection. In the novels, we learn that Swann was imitating a legend—Serwyn of the Mirror Shield—but things didn't work out for him quite the same way they did in the myth. Instead, all Swann's dragon saw was "a dumb man holding a mirrored shield," and burned him to a crisp.
That's Game of Thrones in a nutshell: A familiar fairy tale about valorous knights and happy endings that opens like a trap door into something much more brutal. And it's about to happen again.
Stannis sends Davos back to Castle Black for more food and horses, but refuses to let either his wife or daughter head with him to safety. It's hard to say exactly when he makes the decision to kill his daughter, but I do know this: the moment Stannis sends Davos away, Shireen is dead. In his last visit with his daughter, Stannis has his own discussion about history, and the difficult choices that leaders are forced to make. "If a man knows what he is and remains true to himself, the choice is no choice at all," he rationalizes. "He must fulfill his destiny, and become who is meant to be, however much he may hate it."
Before he leaves, Davos gives Shireen a carved stag as a gift. It is a sort of wishful thinking, in a sense, but we'll get to that. She's holding it when she sees Melisandre's pyre waiting for her, when she starts begging for her father. He and Selyse are both there to watch the ceremony and at first Selyse seems ready to channel her zealotry into all-new levels of denial: "It's what the Lord wants. It is a good thing. A great thing." Her conviction lasts until the flames start lapping and Shireen calls out, "Mother!" At the invocation of that word, she breaks, running toward the pyre as the soldiers hold her back. Shireen burns.
Let's talk for a moment about Greek mythology, specifically the Trojan War. There was a king named Agamemnon who wanted to lay siege to Troy, but the forces of nature seemed to be conspiring against him, the wind always blowing in the wrong direction against his ships. A seer revealed that in order for his military campaign to proceed, he had to make a very personal sacrifice to the goddess Artemis: his daughter, Iphigenia.
In some tellings of the story, Artemis mercifully spirits Iphigenia away at the last minute, sacrificing a deer instead—the sigil of House Baratheon, and the gift from Davos. In most versions, however, Iphigenia dies on the altar, which ultimately leads to her mother murdering both Agamemnon as well as his concubine Cassandra, who happens to have the gift of prophecy. Just some food for thought.
In the books: The last we hear from Stannis is that he's marching on Winterfell and running into snowstorms, and the sacrifice of Shireen is all new. It seems canonical, though, based on comments by the showrunners about how Martin told them about this scene. The name of Shireen's book, A Dance of the Dragons sounds awfully similar to A Dance With Dragons, the fifth and most recent book in the series this show is based upon. Much like Maester Munkun, however, George R. R. Martin has written a novella on the subject of the Targaryen civil war called The Princess and the Queen. He also plans to write an even more comprehensive account in Fire and Blood, the Targaryen history he intends to write after he finishes the novels.
Battered from the great zombie battle of Hardhome, Jon and the remaining Wildlings finally make their way back to the Wall. There's a tense moment as Ser Alliser Thorne looks down on the throng of Wildlings, and finally tells the men to open the gates. As they walk through to settle in the lands of the Gift, Jon sadfaces a bit that he wasn't able to save them all. But he has still saved a lot of them, earning him glares from many of his brothers, especially that kid whose parents got murdered by Wildlings, who seems certain to come up again. Oddly, it earns him the kindest words yet from Thorne: "You have a good heart, Jon Snow. It'll get us all killed."
In the books: After their defeat at the Battle of Castle Black, Wildlings make it south of the Wall at several different times. Quite a few head through after the defeat by swearing fealty to Stannis, and Jon returns with more (and the giant Wun Wun) when he discovers them near a weirwood. So far, no one's made it back from Hardhome, although Jon has received a letter about some dark goings-on in the city beyond the Wall.
Freed from his silken prison, Jaime is invited into the sitting room of Prince Doran, and asked to explain why one of the most famous, powerful men in the world just attempted a stealth kidnapping of his own niece. Frankly, I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the explanation for it either, but Jaime tells them about the weird necklace threat against Myrcella. Doran looks at Elliara with dark eyes, and they grow darker still when he raises a glass to King Tommen, aiming yet again for peace, and she pours the wine on the floor. Later, he takes her aside and gives her a choice: get over her shit and swear allegiance to him, or die. She cries, kisses his ring, and swears.
It could all be a lie, though she has an amicable conversation with Jaime afterward where she lets him know that she's totally cool with his twincest because sexual morality is just like, relative, man. In the end, Doran agrees to let Myrcella go back to King's Landing, so long as her fiancé Trystane goes with her, and receives Oberyn's old seat on the Small Council. Everyone agrees, and so this anticlimactic, time-wasting side quest is finally at an end.
In the books: None of this was in the books. Myrcella doesn't leave Dorne, though she ends up with a severed ear and an ugly facial scar as a result of a botched kidnapping attempt by Doran's daughter, Arienne.
A girl wheels her barrow down the streets of Braavos, selling her clams and cockles. The thin man asks for more oysters, and Arya has the poison ready. But then she rolls right past him, her eyes locked on someone else: Ser Meryn Trant, stepping off a boat with Mace Tyrell. Trant, you may remember, is on Arya's fabled hit list; he was the man who came to take her hostage after Ned was arrested, and was likely the killer of her Braavosi sword fighting teacher, Syrio Forel. (He also beat Sansa several times on Joffrey's orders, though Arya has no way of knowing that. Regardless, he sucks.)
We learn that there's a new crime to add to his rap sheet: pedophilia. He makes his way to a local brothel, where he asks for younger and younger girls until a madame finally brings in a girl who can't be more than ten, who looks like she was suddenly pulled out of a kitchen. As Arya watches, he drags her off and tells the madame to have a "fresh one" ready for him the next night. So...more rape, is what I'm saying. When Arya returns to the House of Black and White, she tells Jaqen that the thin man wasn't hungry today. "Tomorrow," she promises. Someone will die tomorrow. He lets her go without a slap or even a raised eyebrow. Perhaps she's simply a better liar now, or perhaps he just wants to see how this plays out.
In the books: We don't hear anything about Meryn Trant being a pedophile. Arya was indeed assigned to assassinate a fraudulent ship insurance salesman; she did reconnaissance in the guise of a young girl called Cat of the Canals, who also sold clams and oysters. But that storyline seems to be splicing in some much later events from a chapter in the unreleased book Winds of Winter that Martin previewed on his website last year. More on that next week, if it goes where I hope it's going.
The fighting pit of the Great Games is finally reopened, and boy is Meereen excited. As the crowds gather in a Roman-style coliseum, Tyrion Lannister sits at the side of Daenerys Targaryen, like Cersei Lannister's nightmare come to life. Hizdahr shows up late to his own party, claiming that he was "just making sure everything is in order." It's a suspect comment, especially when you find out what highly coordinated effort is in store for Dany.
As the games begin, Tyrion and Hizdahr get in a debate about "the necessary conditions for greatness," and whether or not cruelty is essential to achieve great things. "It's easy to confuse what is with what ought to be, especially when what is has worked out in your favor," responds Tyrion. The verbal sparring match between Hizdahr and Tyrion is highly entertaining, but also helps illustrate just how much Tyrion has in common with Daenerys when it comes to their values—how superb of a team they could be if they really do take over the world.
Their intellectual debate about the plebes dying in front of them gets so heated that it takes a second for Daenerys to notice the newest challenger: Jorah. There are several very close calls in the fight, and despite all her hard words, we see Daenerys cringing at every blow. She might not have been ready to forgive him, but she doesn't want him to die. When he triumphs, he quickly pulls out a spear, and launches it at Dany's head. Of course, it's aimed behind her, at the Son of the Harpy posed to strike.
Remember that plan Daario came up with earlier this season, about gathering all the nobles together for the Great Games and slaughtering them? Seems like they had the same idea. Soon dozens if not hundreds of other men in masks are pouring through the door and out of the stands, killing her soldiers. They end up circling Dany on every side in the pit, the ranks of her defenders dwindling as theirs grow.
Daeerys takes Missandei's hand and closes her eyes, ready for the worst, until she hears a familiar sound: Drogon, her great black dragon, screaming through the sky. He lands in the pit and starts tearing her foes limb from limb and bathing them in fire. A few spears land in his back, and Daenerys runs to his side, pulling them out. What's the difference between Daenerys and Stannis, the man who would claim the throne of her forefathers? She would never sacrifice one of her children. She crawls onto his back for the first time, and soars away into the sky.
For all of this show's cynicism, for all its dead Starks and foolish, burned knights, Daenerys is the one character who has the sort of thrilling, epic moments that we expect from legend. But unlike Serwyn of the Mirror Shield, she can walk into the fire of living myth, and emerge without being burned. Game of Thrones has worked very hard to make us doubt our instincts about who the heroes really are, which perhaps makes it more satisfying when we find the real thing. You can see it in Tyrion's eyes as he watches her, starstruck: He believes.
In the books: Many, many complicated events unfold in Meereen that we seem to be skipping here; this is for the best. The complications Martin encountered around Dany's story are sometimes known as the Meereneese knot, and they contributed significantly to the delays in his writing. We're all better off for the show finding a way to cut through that knot, but the short version is that she ends up in the midst of a lot of political turmoil, fending off the Sons of the Harpy, multiple sellsword armies, and yet another suitor.
She marries Hizdahr before the reopening of the fighting pits, though Jorah isn't one of the fighters; he and Tyrion have been sold into a circus act as indentured clowns. Someone attempts to kill Daenerys with poison—food her husband encourages her to eat—but there is no attack by the Sons of the Harpy and Hizdahr does not die. Instead, Drogon is drawn to the noise and blood of the gladiatorial fights, and Hizdahr orders his spearmen to kill the dragon. Worried for her "child," Daenerys leaps into the pit, climbs onto his back and takes flight.
