THIS WEEK on Game of Thrones: “Valar Dohaeris”
Welcome back to one of the most exciting and visually-astounding shows on television. The third season of Game of Thrones, based (mostly) on Martin’s third novel in the Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, A Storm of Swords, began last night on HBO.
The cinematographers on the show have a lot of fun with framing, shot direction and imagery; why shouldn’t we as well? The film student in me from a decade ago still likes to assert itself, and Thrones is a show worth recapping through its powerful imagery. There are enough recaps on the net doing blow-by-blows, so hopefully, we can dig a little deeper here and tackle things from a different angle.
Let’s do it.
A cold open, like Season 1’s, opened things up last night. Samwell Tarly evidently survived being spied by a White Walker at the end of Season 2. Running through a blinding storm, he happens upon this. The White Walkers’ kills are never less-than-ornate. The bodies of the first kills we saw during the series premiere two years ago were laid out to be discovered. The body Sam finds of a black brother is equally…illustrative. The White Walkers don’t appear to be mindless zombies like the army of wights they’re leading toward the Wall. The display above is almost cruel, filled with malice.
Another lumbering wight attacks Sam. Who saves him? Ghost (who isn’t with Jon, evidently), and the surviving members of the Night’s Watch expedition, led by Commander Mormont.
The show’s opening adds a new location to the map; the free city of Astapor, in place of Qarth. This has to be Dany’s new destination, far in the east.
Jon is in the heart of the Free Folk’s big camp, a veritable city (if a makeshift one). He spies a giant for the first time. Maybe the rest of Old Nan’s bedtime stories are true too.
Finally, the last King we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. Mance Rayder, the King-Beyond-the-Wall, greets Jon. When Mance presses Jon for his reasons for coming north, Jon tells him, perhaps truthfully, that he has no trust for how the Night’s Watch officially handles the White Walkers; Mormont knew about Craster handing over his boys and did nothing. Jon wants to ‘fight for the living’. If it wasn’t established clearly already, the Free Peoples under Mance Rayder are not allied with the Walkers and their undead army.
How many wars are being fought in Westeros?
Blackwater was a very important event, a huge turning point in the war. Last year’s finale barely had time to address it while it was busy sending us off on our way for the summer. Here now, we get to see what’s happened since and where some of these characters are.
Bronn, still a knight, is no longer the captain of the city Goldcloaks. He doesn’t seem to care much, still having his pick of the whores in Littlefinger’s brothel. Unfortunately, the sellsword still needs cash. “I’m a sellsword. I sell my sword.”
It may be purely incidental, but I’d like to think Bronn intentionally turns his back to Tyrion, to show him that he was ready to draw his weapons on the Goldcloaks, even in the Queen’s presence. As if to say, ‘look what I’m still prepared to do, as long as you continue forking over the coin.’
As we leave the pair, a ruined tower being rebuilt in the background takes center stage. Blackwater just happened. It bears repeating.
Queen-to-be Margaery Tyrell and King Joffrey are carted through the streets, when Marg pulls a Princess Di and goes off the beaten path in Fleabottom – a notoriously rough part of town where the royal party was assaulted last year – to visit with orphans, freshly made from the battle in Blackwater Bay. Again, it just happened; the world is still recovering from it.
Margaery isn’t as naive and doe-eyed as she makes herself out to be; we remember how cunning and devious she was last year. This Marg wants the thrown, and a look cast between her and her brother Loras at dinner with the Lannisters tells us she’s happy there’s a division between Joff and his mother.
At dinner, Cersei wears a sort of armored dress, which everyone cares to point out for a moment. Cersei is keenly aware of her vulnerability with the Tyrells in the house, and she’s annoyed that Marg’s humanitarian charade is winning Joff over. She’s lost control of Joff before – when he maniacally defied her and took off Ned Stark’s head – and you can see how annoyed she is that it might be happening again.
Joff himself is…what’s the word, mesmerized, puzzled, annoyed…startled? by his new bride. Look how he stares at her from ‘behind bars’ in his travelling cart:
It’s a shot that gets revisited a few times in the episode:
Maybe all the Lannisters are feeling trapped. Don’t let that smile on Cersei’s face fool you.
Suffering most of all is our favorite, the former Hand of the King, Tyrion. Cersei remarks that she’d heard his nose was cut off in battle, but that the truth isn’t so gruesome as that – a nod to book readers, as Tyrion did lose most of his nose when attacked during Blackwater in the source text.
To attend to Cersei at the door, Tyrion, once the leader of the Lannister defense, has to pull a stool over just to use the peephole. It’s a cruel reminder of just how physically incapable he is and a very humbling reminder of how vulnerable he is without support.
Who’s better at dressing down the imp than his own father? In one of the show-stealers of the night, Tywin completely takes his son apart, calling him out for defying his orders not to bring Shae to court, and denying Tyrion’s bid for Casterly Rock, the Lannister stronghold in the west.
Before Tyrion leaves, he begins listening to Tywin’s final command, not to bring another whore to the capital. Before Tywin can get two words out, Tyrion spins around with a nod and heads straight out, as if that final, insulting command was enough to seal the deal for some kind of decision. Tyrion is not happy.
And let’s not forget what Tywin was penning when the scene began. The camera lingered there for some time:
Something is ‘ripe for the taking’. An enemy position? A new ally?
Cue the chief enemy of the Lannisters, Robb, King in the North. Here he is with a main military advisor, Roose Bolton.
Robb can’t know that his lost sister Arya was here just a few days ago, at Harrenhaal. This is the ruined city just granted to Petyr ‘Littlefinger’ Baelish by the King, although he isn’t in attendance just yet. Who is?
The bodies of 200 Northmen. Robb is faced simultaneously with seeing these bodies to graves, and with finding a fresh prison for his mother, still in custody for freeing the Kingslayer, Jaime Lannister. Something that Bolton, and especially, Karstark aren’t happy about:
Karstark’s son was Jaime’s last victim before being entrusted to Brienne and the road to King’s Landing. Karstark still hasn’t gotten over that, by the look of it.
Robb and Talisa, his new bride, in open violation of the oath he took to marry a Frey girl, discover a Northman who’s still alive. His name is Qyburn, and he isn’t sure if he’s “lucky”, as Talisa puts it, surviving the horror of a massacre only to live on in a veritable horror house of bodies, blood and death. Harrenhal is a grim place to wake up to.
Before heading east, we have one more Stark to check in with this week, also in a prison, if one not so illustratively painted with bars:
Sansa Stark, with her handmaiden Shae are playing a game. Find a ship on the horizon, invent a story and a destination for it, and have fun. Shae isn’t amused and breaks a rule.
Sansa: “That’s not how the game works.”
Shae: “Why should I make up a story when I know the truth?”
Sansa: “Because the truth is always terrible or boring.”
There’s always a larger metaphor at play with this show’s dialogue; sometimes it just needs illuminating. Every king vying for the throne and for power has his own truth to tell, his own story with his own destination. The truth right now, is that one is dead – Renly – one is misguided and huddled back at home in defeat – Stannis – one is juggling angry subordinates and a mother who won’t listen – Robb – and one can’t seem to find a way to even build an army and join the fight – ‘Queen’ Daenerys. ‘King’ Mance Rayder and ‘King’ Balon Greyjoy? Most don’t even know they’re in contention. There are plenty of fun, conflicting truths on the table. Which one should we believe?
The truth is, no one, not even people who’ve read the books know what’s to come from this character. Ros, Littlefinger’s master of whores, evidently, is an invention of the show. While many take a furious dump on her, calling her an annoyance and a subversion of the original story and vision of Martin, I prefer to think of her as a useful addition to the show, uniting the various, disparate parts of Westeros into a whole.
Ros reminds us here that she was once a whore of the North. She was there the day Sansa was born. She’s come a long way, arm in arm with us to the capital as a matter of fact. Now, if we’re to believe what we saw at the end of Season 2, she’s in some kind of alliance with Varys. And who is Varys always tangoing with?:
Littlefinger. Now Lord of Harrenhal, and apparently, Sansa’s only hope of getting out of the capital alive. But should Sansa trust the man who betrayed her father, ultimately to his death?
We can’t know yet. But this simple cinematography was direct enough to remind me just how alone Sansa is. Repetition and variation are powerful tools for telling a story visually.
Follow Sansa’s gaze across the sea to two more stories featured in this dense, packed premiere:
Davos survived the battle of Blackwater Bay, a battle we’re reminded again, basically just happened. Marooned on a rock, he in turn reminds us just how honorable and loyal he is, boldly declaring allegiance to Stannis when asked by a ship flying no flag. It could mean death, but that’s just who Davos is; the loyal man, even if it means death.
Back to the room with the elegant painted table, where Renly’s assassin was conceived. Dragonstone. Stannis and Melisandre.
Mel plays the perfect hand against Davos’ pleas to Stannis. ‘I would have stopped the wildfire if you’d permitted me to be there’, she insists. All at once, she makes Davos look the fool, and backhandedly chastises Stannis for listening to him, forsaking her company for the battle last season.
Davos can’t win, and is locked away.
And finally, we leave Westeros for the Narrow Sea and waters beyond it. Dany’s growing up fast. Her dragons are growing up even faster. Gander at the animated GIF topping this article; now they can hunt for themselves.
This is Astapor, a free city like Qarth, and one where the rules of the west – particularly where slavery is concerned – aren’t a concern.
Cue Kraznyz, a slaver. An insulting slaver, hiding behind a language it would seem no one else can understand, calling Dany a whore at every opportunity. Dude’s pulled off the unlikeability of Joffrey in one scene.
He has 8,000 “Unsullied” to sell. Slicing off the nipple of one of these veritably inhuman troops, Kraznyz demonstrates what these eunuchs consider fearful and painful: absolutely nothing. Jorah Mormont, still and always by Dany’s side, pushes for Dany to begin building her army by purchasing these troops with the gold and treasure she took from Qarth.
The tale of how each of these soldiers was hardened – each and every one had to snatch and slaughter a baby in front of its mother – is a troubling concern for Dany.
She’s still young and innocent enough to fall prey to an obvious assassination attempt, believing that a young girl playing in the market could only be an innocent.
Not so. The girl parts her lips to reveal a signature blue, the look Pyat Pree bore, the warlock Dany and her dragons incinerated last season. The warlocks aren’t forgetting that ‘incident’, evidently.
Fortunately for Dany, new enemies bring out new allies:
This is Barristan Selmy, the former member of the Kingsguard who Joffrey and Cersei unceremoniously dismissed two seasons ago. Bringing legacy and lineage to the table, this accomplished knight has been built up as a near-unstoppable man by the series. He was once kingsguard to Dany’s father, and now pledges himself to her as a member of her Queensguard.
Better still, he’s a more current voice from Westeros, and no doubt has tales to tell that even Jorah can’t know of. Dany now has two senior knights in her service, two of the best. Two plus a potential 8,000 Unsullied, with three growing dragons on the side? That’s an exciting future for the last of the Targaryens.
Sound off below in the comments; let’s talk about this exciting return to Martin’s saga. It’s been a long wait, and this season is going to be something television will talk about for a long, long time if it holds true to the text.
Budrickton, First of His Name, Warden of the Actual North (Canada)