Game of Thrones and the Real Threat

Generally, Game of Thrones, and the Song of Ice and Fire books series it's based on - but that it's rapidly deviating from this season - can largely be described as about medieval politics in a fantasy landscape. Yes, it's fantasy, but there's a lot of work to make it clear that these people are expected to live real lives, with the real problems that come with it. It's a hard, hard life in Westeros (and Essos, for that matter. Westeros is the easiest shorthand to describe the world-setting of the series, despite the fact that one of the three most central characters has never even set foot on the continent. As far as I know, there's no name for the world itself like we get with Tolkien's Middle Earth (which in fairness describes only one continent in the larger "Arda," though all the events of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings take place there) or Pratchett's Discworld.) If you're a nobleman, you constantly have to be considering your allies and trying to keep yourself from getting swept up in dangerous plots with assassinations and wars and the like.

Two of the important noble houses have been able to stay out of these conflicts, but even they have their scars. The Arryns of the Vale were kind of the first shot fired in the recent problems, as Jon Arryn was killed after he discovered the truth about Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen's parentage. Lysa, in a move that might have been wise despite of herself, basically put the Vale on lockdown and decided that they were going to go full-Switzerland, not getting involved in the ensuing war and taking advantage of their geographical defensive advantage. But even that wasn't enough to keep Lysa safe, as Littlefinger took advantage of his childhood relationship with her to insinuate himself into her family and then effortlessly murder her when her instability became too inconvenient. The Martells have likewise tried to stay out of it, but their history with the Lannisters led to the death of Oberyn, and the presence of Myrcella as their guest/hostage (more of a guest though) draws them in as well.

And that's before you even get to the plight of people who aren't nobility. Most of the people we deal with in Game of Thrones are practically royalty - indeed, two hundred years before the series begins, the Starks, Lannisters, and the other Great Houses were actually royalty, meaning that the bannermen to each of these houses are already on the level of Dukes, with the reigning king (who was historically a Targaryen) more of an Emperor.

But all that social hierarchy is built on the backs of millions of common people. And if you thought things were bad when a wrong word could get a war started, imagine how it feels when it's not even you who has an opportunity to say the word. This season, as in book four, Cersei attempts to undercut the ambitious Tyrell family by giving power to a sect of religious fanatics. It works fantastically, as she sees her rival thrown in jail, but it's a foolish move, as the Queen Mother - who has hardly been living a holy life herself - finds herself imprisoned by the very people she has empowered.

Indeed, as horrifying as the Sparrows are for their fundamentalist take on the Church of the Seven, there's something oddly exciting about them as well. Unlike all these Great Houses vying for control, this is a populist organization. The people have been treated like shit for so long, and through religion, they can take power. Essentially, religion puts us in service to god or gods, and those in power are actually subordinate to something larger. It gives you an idea of why powerful people try to become part of the religious hierarchy using ideas like the divine right of kings. Yet ultimately, that can't always be maintained, especially when you have a religion that has been adapted to support a monarchy, despite its overall message implying a universality to the human condition, and thus a universality to the sovereignty of individual humans (namely, a lack thereof, with sovereignty resting with the divine instead.)

Essentially, religion supposes that there's a larger world than the one we can see with our mundane senses. It shrinks our own concerns by putting them in the larger context of a supernatural universe. And it's there that we get to the meat of what made this week's episode of Game of Throne so thrilling.

The Night's Watch is an incredibly ancient order that guards the northern border of the North - the half-ish of the Seven Kingdoms (area-wise) that is historically governed by the Starks. The Night's Watch is almost monastic, with members swearing away family property and marriage for a life of difficult armed service, and has a rich history guarding an absurdly large wall made of ice (though it has a core of stone, if I recall correctly.) But no one takes the Night's Watch seriously, because they effectively just fight Wildlings - people indigenous to the lands north of the Wall.

The Wildlings are certainly a threat - if they do get over the wall, they tend to raid villages, murdering and stealing as they do - but they hardly seem like the kind of threat that would need a 700-foot wall of ice lined with castles and an order of soldiers who dedicate their entire lives to fighting them off.

And it's for that reason that the Night's Watch is in its current state. Only three of the nineteen castles are even manned, and there's only about a thousand members to guard the 300-mile-long Wall. And joining the Night's Watch is generally more of a punishment than an honor. While the Starks send members of their family to serve there, more often "Taking the Black" is a way for convicted criminals to avoid a death sentence.

One would wonder - why the hell have something so elaborate to handle a threat that seems far better dealt with by the various houses on the northern border?

But of course, one does not need to wonder - the very first scene in show, and the prologue of the first book, shows us that the Wall and the Night's Watch was never designed to fight Wildlings. It was meant to fight the Others (White Walkers on the show, so as to avoid confusion with Lost.)

And that's been the big tease of the entire series so far. We've spent five books and now about five seasons worrying about Lannisters and Baratheons, but in the background, there has always been this much, much, much, much larger threat - a full-on zombie apocalypse is heading toward Westeros, and holy shit is it not prepared to deal with one. There are only a handful of people who are equipped to even understand the threat that the White Walkers pose, and even those equipped to deal with them (I'd think Daenerys' dragons could be really, really useful against them) are too scattered and perhaps uninformed to help.

The intrigue, even among the masters like Varys and Littlefinger, now proves itself to be pure pettiness, as a serious threat to human life on the continent (and that's assuming the Others won't turn to Essos when they're done) reveals itself to the viewers as the Wildling town of Hardhome is conquered with lightning speed, and all its dead (even that Wildling lady who seemed really cool) raised as part of the White Walkers' army.

The show has outpaced the books to a great degree in certain plotlines, but I think no event has really made that apparent more than this. We've been waiting for a full-fledged war against the undead for several years now. And well, here's the war.