About twenty years ago now, I found a book in my best friend's bedroom. My friend, Luke, told me he'd been reading it and it was really interesting. I picked it up and hardly put it down the whole time I was there - much to Luke's chagrin, I'm sure.
That book was Game of Thrones and I've been hooked ever since.
For all of us fans, the adaptation of ASoIaF by HBO has been a giant rollercoaster. I've introduced two girlfriends to it, liveTweeted episodes, made a few friends over it, and even started roleplaying as Tormund Giantsbane. Yes, I have my quarrels with how the adaptation worked out, but I think it's only right to sit back and admire the ambition of the whole project. Thousands of pages, adapted to the small screen and brought to life over ten years. It's amazing and ten years ago, in the early years of "peak TV," it was hardly imaginable. But it really happened and I'm in awe.
Spoilers below, in which I talk about what worked and didn't in the last two episodes.
I think where a lot of fans got thrown off was when Daenerys became the villain. I do believe that this is ultimately where GRRM was going - this was not HBO going off the rails. Game of Thrones has always been about subverting and deconstructing the fantasy genre. One keystone of the genre - the Chosen One whose Destiny it is to Save The World and become the One True King - has been subverted over and over again in the books and the show. Look at Melisandre and Stannis. Yet here, in the wings, we had Jon Snow, the boy with the secret royal heritage and Daenerys, the rightful, disinherited queen of Westeros. Wouldn't it have been just a little too pat if they had come in to their birthright, either of them?
Let's really deconstruct the trope. What would it be like, to be the Chosen One? To be Neo or Aragorn? To have all signs pointing to you being the one who would right all the wrongs? Wouldn't it be kind of like being the crown prince in an absolute monarchy? Wouldn't it all go to your head? What does that do to you, psychologically? Can you really stay sane?
Daenerys isn't just the rightful heir to the throne, in her head. She's the righter of wrongs, the breaker of chains, the one who will break the wheel - she's a revolutionary. She's Lenin and Mao and Robespierre - and like every revolutionary, she is in immediate peril of becoming as much an oppressor as everyone else. One thing GRRM has been very clear on is that every villain is a hero in their own mind. What happens when you have a hero with absolute power who believes she can do nothing wrong? It would be more surprising if she didn't go mad.
Where I quibble with the show as how abrupt the transition felt. There should have been more groundwork laid earlier in the show and more consistency. I also feel like the change in Daenerys should have happened much sooner, so they could have spent a few episodes or a season dealing with it, instead of cramming it in to an episode and a half.
Ironically, the one arc I felt the show did handle mostly right was for the other Chosen One - Jon Snow. He's heroic not because he was handsome and good with a sword, but because he sacrificed for the greater good. He had the opportunity to take everything he wanted - he could have ruled beside the most beautiful woman in the world - but he chose instead to do the right thing. For duty, he slew love. And finally, when he was no longer needed, he faded off into the North. He's George Washington being offered a crown in all but name, but retiring after two terms. He's Cincinnatus returning to his farm. What George RR Martin is saying here is that self-sacrifice, not entitlement, is the real route to heroism.
My quibble with Jon's finale is that, because of the intransigence of the Unsullied, he never really had the option to take the throne for himself. If taking the throne isn't an option, it's not really a sacrifice to turn aside. But the basic framework of the sacrifice is there.
In future posts, I'll probably be going back and commenting on the earlier parts of the show and books, but I figured this is as good a time as any to get my thoughts down on paper.
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