"People tell us who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be." It is a foundational line from Mad Men (uttered by Don Draper in the fourth season episode The Summer Man) but there was no better example of it than last night's Game of Thrones. Arya is an assassin, not a lady. Cersei is a monster, not a compassionate mother-to-be. Jaime is addicted to his sister's love, not a knight and a hero. Sansa is a clear-eyed leader, not a little bird.
These lessons are learned by those who tried to turn them. Naive Gendry, thinking a castle and lands will matter to a woman whose body count now includes Littlefinger, Walder Frey (and all his male heirs), and, of course, the Night King. Tyrion, perhaps the worst hand in history, continuing to give the <period> worst <period> advice ever, and yet, still alive somehow? And Brienne, noble and now knighted, the one person to whom Jaime let his guard down, experiencing heartbreak in a crushing scene.
For all the machinations that define the show, the human elements revealed last night were the toughest.
A few random notes:
- The show runners have moved a lot of pieces around the board, knee capping a putative queen who had a large army, ships, and three grown dragons into an underdog who has lost two dragons, most of her army, and her ships (not to mention several of her closest allies) and turning a weak queen besieged by her enemies standing atop the capital's gate ready to inflict a final blow.
- I really like the Arya/Hound cop-buddy decision. Some of the best parts of Seasons 3 and 4 were the scenes between these two and how that relationship morphed over time. The Hound, dishing out unemotional lessons about the horrors of the kingdom and Arya absorbing those lessons, perhaps a bit too much and the two now at peace with their own destinies.
- For all the complaints about a not-impressive body count last week, the out-of-nowhere killing of a second dragon and the savage beheading of Missandei should shut people up ... for at least an hour or two.
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Tbf, Gendry had little idea who Arya's killings even were, let alone that they could be credited to her (and, for being an effective assassin, she'd prefer it that way). It doesn't quite bode well for Gendry that he carries that naivete about understanding other people's motivations (unlike the Stark sisters who had that torn away from them as children).
ReplyDeleteI interpreted Jaime's leaving as less love for Cersei but self-loathing. The primary element behind his love for Cersei is in their mutual lifelong loathing of the world and family they seem to blame and despise for keeping them from having what they wanted. The primary element behind his love for Brienne is her being the honorable knight he'd wanted to be his entire life but felt he failed to be, thus the amoral shell we saw him as, from start of show to Brienne changing his mind.
So I've seen Jaime as a man who valued honor and chivalry and being a knight, but has simultaneously been so broken and still is he's convinced he can't have it for himself. I think he left Brienne not to return to Cersei but to go back to end her, and expecting to die in the process. Because he does this after hearing the reports of what happened to Dany's army, and they clearly show him pondering his decision before making it. I think his last words to Brienne were his way of telling her he's not worth saving and doesn't deserve to be with her, thus to find someone/something else better.
Re: Tyrion, whether this is the fault of Martin's writing, Weiss's and Benioff's, or the transition between long and well-planned-out-for-decades writing of the former to not-so-long planned out writing of the latter, Tyrion is apparently.. not a war-time consigliere, let's say..
Re: The final scene, I realized Missandei's death was coming (not early enough to be able to have done anything were I in the shoes of any principal character of the show), when I realized I knew something Tyrion didn't: Cersei believes in the witch's prophecy so, regardless of whatever happens, Cersei doesn't believe any child she is carrying will ever be born, let alone live. I think she's resigned to her fate that she'll never have children again, whether she is really pregnant or not, so just wants to watch the world and her perceived enemies burn, because she has nothing to lose other than taking as many people with her as possible, because that's her character and personality.
OTOH, I think Tyrion made the most rational overture and appeal based on the knowledge he had of Cersei's circumstances, 1) because he doesn't know about the prophecy, but also 2) he didn't have leeway to do much else since both queens made irreconcilable dealbreakers. Going around Qyburn was already about as intelligent a move he could've made.
(I do think Tyrion's big failure as Hand was earlier, either in not realizing Cersei only respects power and little else, as far back as her lesson to Littlefinger, or in how far she's leveled up her game in this respect. But I also think part of it was perhaps his naive hope he could find some way to avoid the collateral damage to the population.)