My Thoughts on "Game of Thrones" S7 Episode 1: "Dragonstone"

Just got back from watching the first episode of Game of Thrones Season 7, "Dragonstone." Here are some thoughts. Beware, here there be lots of spoilers...

This episode was really funny, both things that are obviously intended to be comic and things that really aren't. For example, the scene at the beginning where Arya Stark disguises herself as Walder Frey and poisons all of the male Freys (or at least the ones involved in the Red Wedding) was funny to me. It's not because watching people getting poisoned is innately funny, but because it's so masterfully done (including how Arya-as-Walder avoids drinking the poisoned wine and keeps "his"wife from doing so) and because Arya-as-Walder's speech is so cutting.

In terms of things that actually are supposed to be funny, Euron Greyjoy rocked the house this episode. I particularly liked his comment on how he's got "one thousand ships and two good hands," which is obviously a jab at Jaime Lannister. I also liked how Jaime reacted to it, as well as his less-than-flattering assessment of the Ironborn in general.

In case you're wondering what's going on, Euron arrives at King's Landing with the Iron Fleet to offer himself as a husband to Cersei Lannister, who has at this point usurped the Iron Throne but in the process has made a lot of enemies. Cersei displays what could be common sense in rejecting Euron (a known backstabber), at least until he can prove himself. But that could also be unnecessary arrogance, since the Iron Throne is in such a perilous state that something as drastic as a royal marriage might be necessary to get the Ironborn back on board. One wonders if there are any suitable women to push Jaime on? Oleanna Tyrell is too old and based on the events of the last season, any member of the Sand Snake junta in Dorne is out of the question.

And of course we see Tormund Giantsbane lusting after Brienne of Tarth again. That's pretty funny, especially his comments to Podrick Payne.

Moving on from the comedy, a lot of really important stuff story-wise happens in this episode. At long last, Danaerys returns to Westeros, taking control of Stannis's former stronghold of Dragonstone and dramatically touching the ground of her long-lost homeland. The "next week on Game of Thrones" preview shows all of Danaerys' allies gathering around Aegon's table and Yara Greyjoy offering to attack King's Landing right away, so that plot looks to be moving at a rapid clip.

I did like seeing some of the drama between Jon and Sansa. Sansa has clearly learned how to play the game and be ruthless as needed from Cersei and Littlefinger. She points out that Ned and Robb made some bad decisions and paid for it with their lives. However, publicly arguing with her brother is not the way to get what she wants. As Jon points out to him, that undermines his authority as King in the North, and he can't have that. And Littlefinger is clearly trying to manipulate Sansa into doing something.

(With Bran back in the game, we have a possible succession issue in Winterfell--Jon is a blooded warrior but he's a bastard, Sansa is the oldest remaining true-born child but she's a girl, and Bran is the oldest remaining true-born son but he's disabled. Depending on whether the break in his spine is he might not be able to father children, and he certainly can't lead men in battle.)

It was also interesting to see the Lannister soldiers who are friendly to Arya, one of whom was singer Ed Sheeran. I honestly thought they had bad intentions at first, with the way they were trying to offer her food and wine, but it seems they were honestly trying to be friendly. Maybe all the previous criticism about the violence toward women on the show has been taken to heart? Or perhaps the producers were making the point, like the books do, that when the nobles play their games of thrones, it's the commoners who suffer. None of those men seem like bad guys at all, but if Cersei and Jon go to war, Arya's people will kill them or they'll kill Arya's people. All very sad.

Although the episode was overall pretty good, I didn't like what I called the "extended poo montage," much to my friends' amusement. They could have made the point that Sam's life as a Citadel novice sucks in half the time, freeing up a few minutes to elaborate on some of the other subplots.

Also, what about Edmure Tully? Is Arya aware he's a captive in the Twins? It could be that she is and desire for revenge has consumed her to the point she doesn't care about her uncle. With most if not all of the male Freys dead, that might leave Edmure in an unexpectedly strong position to reacquire the Riverlands, assuming they don't just forget about him in the dungeon.

Still, definitely looking forward to next week.

Two New ASOIAF AU Stories for You

The alternate-history discussion forum has spawned two more interesting alternate-universe stories set in the realm of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. One of them is a do-over story with an interesting twist, while the other is a more conventional what-if.

"The Northern Giant"-In this story, Sansa Stark poisons Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish with the strangler poison she had in her hairnet at the lethal wedding of Joffrey "Baratheon" to Margarey Tyrell sometime after he says her father was a good man but a poor player in the game of thrones. This is something I've seen in fan-fic and in predictions for the next book before (the remaining poison is a Chekhov's Gun waiting to be fired), but not what happens next...

The dying Littlefinger wakes up nearly two decades earlier...in the body of Eddard "Ned" Stark the morning of his wedding to Catelyn Tully during Robert's Rebellion.

Now Littlefinger has everyone and everything he's ever wanted--power, respect, and Catelyn as his wife. He's also got all of Ned's experiences and memories, which could have some interesting consequences. He might find himself with honor and a conscience not deadened by years of bitterness and scheming, something that could make his evil-masterminding more complicated.

Plus the Battle of the Trident is looming. Hopefully his knowledge about what's to come will come in handy...

The Falcon's Last Cry-This diverges from canon when the dying Jon Arryn manages to warn King Robert Baratheon that "his" children are really bastards produced by incest between his wife Cersei Lannister and her twin brother Jaime. Robert is fortunately intelligent enough not to immediately warhammer them both, but this is something that needs to be dealt with quickly. Shenanigans and bloodshed within the Red Keep will be coming soon.

I like what the author does with Littlefinger in this story. Littlefinger's master plan is to sow strife in order to advance his own position (in addition to whatever it is he's been doing with the kingdom's money), not simply "keep Stannis off the throne" (his reason for betraying Ned in canon) or supporting the Lannister regime that has given him honors and power. Who knows the slippery little twerp will be up to this time around?

For Want of a Nail: Another ASOIAF Fan-Fic

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

This rhyme has been repeated for centuries as a lesson in the possible consequences of even the slightest bit of carelessness. And the writer on AH.com whose handle is TheScottishMongol has applied to the world of A Song of Ice and Fire with a fan-fic of the same name. 

Basically Catelyn Stark's horse loses a shoe on her way back to Winterfell from her visit to King's Landing and the resulting delay means she never encounters Tyrion Lannister at the inn. She never arrests him on suspicion of his involvement with the near-death of her son Bran and he makes his way to King's Landing, where he meets the new Hand of the King Ned Stark and discovers that Littlefinger has slyly accused him of involvement in the attack on Bran.

Now a man who's a great warrior but has little political savvy and a small man who casts a very large shadow are thrown together and some very interesting things result. These include a wonderful Crowning Moment of Awesome that I'll sum up in a few words--"Trial of Seven." Although the story misses some steps, it's a lot of fun and certainly worth a read.

If you liked this story, the second one is posted here.

The Consequences of a Westerosi Kingsmoot...

In early December, I blogged about an interesting fan-fiction written by a fellow member of my alternate history forum entitled A Parliament of Fowls: The First Kingsmoot of Westeros. Catelyn Stark persuading Renly and Stannis Baratheon to put their feud aside and join forces with her son to fight the Lannisters has led to an entirely new political order in the continent, a full-blown elective monarchy. That had some very interesting consequences...

These consequences are being explored in the sequel, The Glory of Ice: Reign of the Mockingbird. As those of you who are into the series know, the mockingbird is the personal insignia of one Petyr Baelish, more commonly known as "Littlefinger." As one of the most devious political operators in Westeros, he managed to finagle his way to the Iron Throne by doling out all sorts of political favors and manipulating everybody. All is peaceful for the moment, with the notable exception of the Iron Islands falling into civil war while the united Westerosi army--led by the lords of the Vale Littlefinger had promised lands to--gathers to curb-stomp them. However, A Parliament of Fowls ended with Stannis Baratheon seeing the following vision in his sorceress Melisandre's flames:

Stannis stared deeper into the flames as they kept dancing. And little by little, they morphed and changed. Stannis saw things he never thought he would. He saw himself being paraded through the Seven Kingdoms as a hero. He saw the Wall and the war. That great second god the red woman kept harping about approaching the North with all his icy might. He saw death knocking at the gates of Castle Black and approaching the doors of Winterfell. Stannis saw steel clash on steel and the Iron Throne shake from the quake of the Seven Kingdoms breaking apart once more. He saw the four directions of the earth clash in an eruption not seen since the doom came to Valyria. He saw a field of flowers burn and the sun darken. He saw a wolf and a stag go east, a lion roar, and a kraken tangle with a titan sitting on a throne of blood and bone. And finally he saw himself in a cloak of crows.

The kraken is the symbol of House Greyjoy and the Titan of Braavos is Littlefinger's family crest, so I imagine the war for the Iron Islands is going to be nasty and Littlefinger is going to get thoroughly unpleasant. Silver Phantom 2 holds the theory that he's a full-blown psychopath, as elucidated in Matt Staggs' essay. I am generally skeptical of branding prominent evil people as psychopaths--I view the idea of "ponerology" as essentially a eugenicist conspiracy theory held by extreme leftists, and evil people like Hitler and Stalin have demonstrated the capacity for emotional attachment that would disqualify them from being true psychopaths--but Littlefinger doesn't have to be essentially a highly-functional brain-damage case to be a real scumbag.

(I hold that Littlefinger is psychologically normal but is essentially a much, much more powerful male version of Sansa Stark who learned that life was not a song and ended up embittered and generally nasty as a result. Psychopath or evil neurotypical, either way he's a highly dangerous man.)

Looks like it's the calm before the storm...

The Revolution and the Levee-En-Masse--In Westeros

On my alternate-history site, the board member whose handle is Faeelin asked why there isn't enough left-wing fantasy.  He said a common trope is a lone hero with an aristocratic bloodline (even if he's raised by peasants or something that makes him more down-to-earth) who defeats evil and establishes a more benign  but still-feudal order.  He quoted the British author Charles Stross:

My problem with high fantasy is this: I come from a nation that has a real, no-shit monarchy and aristocracy. Consequently you get to learn about this stuff in high school, and see its stilted echoes on the TV news every week. Monarchism, the default political stance of high fantasy, sucks. We have a term for its latter-day incarnation: we call it "hereditary dictatorship", and point to North Korea for an example. From the point of view of most of the population, your typical fantasyland is not a utopia. Anything but! And to make matters worse, the traditional format of a high fantasy novel is that some source of disruption threatens to destabilize the land; it is up to the hero (usually it is a 'he') to set things right and restore the order of benign tyranny to the world. Fantasy, in short, is frequently consolatory, and I don't get on with it.

Faeelin asked why there's not a lot of high fantasy depicting peasant pikemen butchering mounted knights and the like.  There are the novels 1632 and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court that feature a strong denuniciation of feudalism, but those are time-travel and more science-fiction than fantasy.

We got into a big discussion covering various topics, including how exactly one could organize a more democratic order in a feudal society like Westeros, the realm of A Song of Ice and Fire, and the possibility of a successful peasant revolt there.  The board member whose handle is Thande (whom I actually met in person when I studied abroad in Great Britain) said the peasants wouldn't have sufficient armor and weaponry and even if they outnumbered the nobles' armies ten to one, they'd still get massacred.

In response, I cited the Battle of Mello, which I first read about in A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.  Here's the the Wikipedia article on the battle, although I would really recommend people read the book anyway.

At the battle, the peasants formed a real battle line with archers behind the infantry and reserve cavalry instead of simply being a big mob that would break and run before the nobles' cavalry and get exterminated.  The nobles refused to attack the peasants at first and instead captured the rebel leader via treachery.  They attacked the demoralized, leaderless peasants then and massacred them.  Had the peasant chief not fallen for the nobles' lies, the peasants would have had a real chance at winning.

So I theorized a successful Westerosi peasant revolt would either utilize guerrilla tactics or would have assistance from sympathetic nobles, as the peasants at Mello likely did.  I then devised a scenario that would take place later in the storyline, perhaps after the main events of the series are included.  Here goes...

Basically Rickon Stark, who was taken away by the wilding woman Osha for his own safety, ends up inheriting the North since Robb is dead, Jon has joined the Night's Watch (and is a bastard besides), Bran is crippled, and the other Stark kids are girls.  The Starks are less high-and-mighty over the peasantry, since nobody seems to care that Arya Stark rough-houses with commoners' sons, and if Rickon spends a lot of time among the wildings, he might develop a much greater connection with the lower classes and outsiders of Westeros.

When Rickon becomes Lord of the North (or King in the North, although the Northern cause is in really bad shape at this point), he is more willing to lend a sympathetic ear to lower-class elements who want more rights or representation in governance.  Bonus points if these elements played a significant role in fending off attacks by the Others or the Ironborn and feel they've earned it.

Rickon Stark agrees to these reforms and the other nobles attempt to intervene, seeing this as a threat to the entire social order.  Rickon responds by calling up a full-blown levee-en-masse in the style of the French Revolution, not just a feudal levy of knights, men-at-arms, and whatever peasants they can dragoon.  The northern population, thanks to generally tougher conditions and having to fend off Others, the Ironborn, etc. during the events of the prior novels, makes better soldier material anyway and Rickon Stark would have professional soldiers to train them.  The North is also naturally defensible thanks to the Neck and Moat Cailin, so it would be easier to hold off any invasion from the south.

Rickon Stark becoming the Westerosi version of Simon de Montfort, who rebelled against the king in the name of barons' rights, agreed with lower-class people who used the same arguments against the nobles, and established an elected parliament for both the nobles and commoners, would be kind of cool.  Heck, if we really want to risk Mary Sue-dom for Rickon, perhaps he not only defeats the nobles' attempt to restore feudalism in the North, but becomes a Napoleon figure and invades the south to impose his more enlightened regime beyond the Neck.

(It might be more realistic if Littlefinger, who doesn't have the class pretensions of the other nobles, rose to his position largely on merit, and thinned out the ranks of the Great Houses something fierce with all his shenanigans, took advantage of the destruction of the nobles' armies in the north to pull some kind of coup in King's Landing.  He could then come to some kind of arrangement with Rickon, perhaps via his apprentice/creepy-Catelyn-substitute Sansa Stark.)

Feel free to use this as a fan-fiction idea.