Game of Thrones - 'The Wars to Come' and 'The House of Black and White'

"We'll call the company 'Westerosi Widows'..."

Season 5 of HBO's juggernaut adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire (as a note, I'm not familiar with the books, although I'm told that is an increasing non-issue) kicks off with the aftermath of the assassination of Tywin Lannister by his son. Tyrion has fled the capital with Varys, leaving Cersei to feel pretty damned self-righteous for hating him all these years. She's also turning on Jaime again, since he did kind of let Tyrion go, although the idea that blindly pursuing his death for the sin of being born and encouraging her eldest to be a sociopathic tyrant has any role in what happened is far from her mind. It makes a certain sense; to have come as far as she has, Cersei has basically had to be monumentally resilient to the merest hint of self-analysis.

Petyr Balish is kind of the opposite, in that he knows and accepts exactly what he is, while still being a vicious, self-serving shit. He comes off as a little more magnificent than Cersei precisely because there is no undernote of nobility to him. Of course, his diametric opposite is Jon Snow, who would defy a king to grant a merciful death to his enemies. Snow is of course an aberration in the Seven Kingdoms, relentlessly honourable and principled, and yet not dead; indeed, moderately successful, almost despite himself.

"At least the weather beats the hell out of Dubrovnik."

My, this is more rambly than I had planned.

Yeah, so; Varys wants to take Tyrion to meet Danaerys Targarean, because he believes that he can help the restoration. They're hanging at Ilyrio's house, but their host doesn't show, probably busy recording Sarah & Duck. Danaerys could use a hand, as her domain is crumbling under the weight of her attempts to make everyone happy. In many ways, the increasing defiance of her dragons is as much symbolic of her faltering control over the increasingly disparate and unwieldy mass of her followers as it is of them being thirty foot long engines of destruction. Notably, she has now been faced with the same dilemma which broke Robb Stark's army, and made the same call.

"I'm just dropping in to establish that I am fucking huge now."

My girlfriend, who has read the books, noted that she finds it odd that Danaerys, who gained her dragons by being fearless, is now so paralysed with fear. I speculate that this is because she has found something to lose now that she is a queen. Danaerys is also a bit like Jon (and Robb) in her insistence on sticking to her guns, even when it provokes more trouble that it solves.

Speaking of, Brienne is still around and being all sorts of awkwardly badass - I love the way that she's all stiff and formal and looks like she'd trip over her own feet whenever she's doing social stuff, then turns into a lethal blend of agility and raw power when she's stabbing a dude in the neck, like the Westerosi Sameen Shaw - despite a run in with Baelish and Sansa which has led to the former basically ordering his bodyguards to 'take care of' her. I really want to see her start training Pod to take a few levels in badass to go with his courage and loyalty before they get him killed. The clash between his devotion to her as his 'knight' and hers to her word to Catelyn Stark makes for some lovely scenes between them. I'm really loving their cross-gender bromance and thus fully expect them to die horribly.

"Now hiring: Murder Hobos."

Arya Stark meanwhile has found her way to the House of Black and White, an engimatic fortress in Braavos where 'a man is not Jaqen Hagar' told her to go, and where some further part of her destiny as a creepy-awesome murder-waif will be realised. Most of the characters in Game of Thrones are in their way a deconstruction of the literary genre of heroic fantasy, but Arya feels more like a deconstruction of a heroic fantasy RPG protagonist, with her disconnect from politics and utterly personal approach to.., everything - everyone else has angles, Arya is much more direct; if it fucks with her, she's going to murder it up - as well as the murder hobo lifestyle that the Hound introduced her to.

Finally - I think; Game of Thrones makes keeping track of The 100 seem easy - there's the Dornish question. The very messily late Oberyn Martell's lover Ellaria is pushing his brother, Prince Doran - Alexander Siddig, which is possibly why King Midas bought the farm in Atlantis - to seek vengeance; because that worked so well for Oberyn. In particular, she wants to cut up Myrcella Baratheon and Fed Ex the pieces to Cersei, but like his brother, Doran is pretty insistent that in Dorn they don't torture girls to death, a philosophy I can really get behind. I like Prince Doran already, and I really hope he doesn't get his head squashed.

"I'll stay in the series, but only as part of a Lannister bronnmance. I need to
get at least three epic snarks and five swears for the season, and copyright on
'bronnmance'."

Cersei of course is absolutely convinced that Myrcella is about to be raped to death. This is not helped by Ellaria and 'the Sand Snakes' (Oberyn's coven of illegitimate daughters) sending death threats to King's Landing, but is mostly because that's what she'd do in this situation. Consequently Jaime - who is ever-more sympathetic, if we take that scene to have been poorly-executed, and that seems to be what it was - decides to head off to Dorn to bring Myrcella home, accompanied by Ser Bronn of the Blackwater. I'm really not sure if that's because it's in the books or just because Bron has emerged as the ensemble darkhorse of the series.