The first time we see a Free City of Essos, far from the territories subject to the Iron Throne, we learn that the area surrounding its gates is called the ‘Garden of Bones’, so named for all those denied access to Qarth, left to die outside its walls.

More grim still, is that Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones  takes that title for its name as well.   Viewers everywhere seemed to agree, the episode proved this world is becoming almost unbearably dark.   The name ‘garden of bones’ juxtaposes an implied beauty or serenity — life — with the reality of death, the physicality of death; all that remains after life is gone, and Sunday was all about coming to terms with death.

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“What is Dead May Never Die” is the pledge of the men of the Iron Islands.   When they undergo this ‘baptism’ by saltwater in their adolescence, they are ‘drowned’ in the waters in homage to the old tradition — Ironmen were literally drowned, then resuscitated, and having suffered that little ‘death’, they style themselves as dead men, unable to be killed on the battlefield.

Theon Greyjoy bathed in saltwaters at the climax of Sunday’s episode of  Game of Thrones, and made the choice to betray the North, and his foster brother, Robb Stark.

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King Robert Baratheon, ruler of the Seven Kingdoms and resident of the Iron Throne of Westeros, is dead.

His son – in name only – reigns as Boy-King, strings tugged by the villainous family he unknowingly owes the entirety of his incestuous bloodline to; Robert’s brothers lay dormant, yet assuredly plotting in city-states half a continent away; his old enemies conspire across a northern sea in a country forgotten by the current, imperiled kingdoms; a young man commands a kingdom at war in the north newly receded from the governance of the Iron Throne; and a new queen rises across a second sea in the east, mother to a rediscovered power that tore Westeros apart a century before.

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