Goals and the Journey to Them on Game of Thrones

Oh hell, there's only one more episode this season. Might as well just write about each of them.

Game of Thrones has used its episode nines for big events, and actually in a pretty consistent pattern. Odd numbered seasons, you get a "pulled-the-rug-out-from-under-you" character death. Probably most shocking was the death of Ned Stark - who until that point had been the protagonist of the show - which, before I read on in the books, had me wondering who would be taking over that position (the answer being no one, or maybe a split between Tyrion, Jon, and Daenerys.) Season three had the infamous Red Wedding, which was perhaps not so much shocking because we didn't expect it, but because it was surprising that George R. R. Martin would pull that shit again.

Seasons two and four had enormous battles that took spanned their entire penultimate episodes, but as we're in season five, it would seem that "major character death" was what was to be expected.

All in all, that's not what we got, but it was still a hell of a moment. Like the end of A Dance with Dragons, tonight's episode ended with the assassination attempt at the Great Pit, and Daenerys' exit by dragon from Mereen, leaving her followers behind to pick up the pieces.

We did lose two characters this episode, though they aren't nearly as central as Ned, Robb, or Catelyn. Interestingly, both characters are still alive in the books, but we're so close to the border on what has been printed that changes are bound to happen.

First, most heartbreakingly, Shireen, possibly the most kind and innocent girl we've seen in the entire show, is burned at the stake as a sacrifice to allow Stannis' army to march south to Winterfell. This entire sequence called to mind the story of Agamemnon and his sacrifice of Iphigenia. For those who are less well-versed in Greek Mythology (which is pretty foundational for fantasy as a genre, so, you know, you should check it out,) the story of Iphigenia is set during the advance on Troy before the Trojan War. Agamemnon is the most powerful Greek king, and he has raised an army to fight Troy on behalf of his brother Menelaus - whose wife Helen was stolen by Paris, a prince of Troy. The Greek fleet is becalmed, and they have been forced to camp out on a desert island. The men are dying of diseases brought on my starvation and thirst, and Agamemnon knows that his army will crumble if they do not set sail soon.

So Agamemnon ultimately sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia in order to placate Zeus and get the winds to blow again.

It's the same story with the details rearranged.

However, what Stannis might want to know is that things don't end well for Agamemnon. Upon his return to Argos, his wife Clytemnestra slaughters him with an axe. Afterward, the remaining children of the couple, Orestes and Elektra, kill their mother to avenge their father, but in so doing become kinslayers and bring the wrath of the Kindly Ones (aka the Furies,) though ultimately they are exonerated of the crime by a trial in which Apollo himself serves as their defense attorney (Greek Mythology is awesome.)

Anyway, the point is that while Stannis might achieve victory through this sacrifice, there's a good chance that he'll ultimately pay with his life for it, and with his wife Selyse clearly moved by her daughter's screams (perhaps the most haunting sonic events in the series,) there's a good Clytemnestra ready to do the deed.

The sacrifice of Shireen does raise a fundamental question for Stannis though - what the hell is the point in all of this? Stannis has always fallen on the Lawful Neutral/Lawful Evil area of the D&D grid. I've never even really thought that he truly wanted to be king - he just believes that because he legally should be the king, he therefore must act to ensure that he is recognized as such (Daenerys would reasonably argue this point.) But even if this sacrifice ultimately secures his place as king - he kills the Boltons and marches again on King's Landing and sits on the Iron Throne. Then what? If he dies, who is there to replace him? Shireen is dead, Renly is dead. You'd have to start jogging up the family tree a generation, and at that point the field opens up to other families (including the Targaryens - fun fact: Stannis and Daenerys are second cousins.) Perhaps, like a lot of religious fanatics, the far future isn't so important, because he has a role to play, possibly to fight against the White Walkers - but he's not a longterm solution to the government of the Seven Kingdoms, even if he does win.

The other important figure who needs to step back and check their goals is Daenerys. Dany is great - we like her, and she does want to be a good ruler and a good person. It was very exciting to see her stampede over the city-states of Old Ghis and free the slaves there as she went, but actually governing Mereen (and sadly leaving Astapor and Yunkai to fall back into their old patterns) has been messy at best. She has tried a lot of way to theoretically rule justly, but her theories haven't been enough to put down the Sons of the Harpy insurgency. She wants revolutionary changes to happen, but she also wants to avoid the bloodshed of revolution. And ultimately, her attempts to appease the disparate factions of the city have ultimately ended in chaos, with a massive assassination attempt and unholy slaughter within the Great Pit (like, more than it's designed for.) Her possible ally, Hizdahr zo Loraq, is one of the ones to fall in the chaos - despite the strong hints that he was, in fact, behind the Sons of the Harpy (or perhaps even more terrifying a possibility - that he was, and they've just grown so far out of control that even he isn't safe from them.)

But Mereen and Slaver's Bay has always been kind of a problem for Daenerys. She wants to ultimately conquer the Seven Kingdoms, and Mereen has been her kind of dry-run at ruling. But that's not how the world works. You don't take an entire civilization and rule it as a dry run. Ultimately, the best she could have done for Mereen was try to establish a government that could keep the peace and maintain some of the values she wanted to imbue it with (like not having slavery,) but she has been ruling as a monarch. What was her plan, anyway? To leave Mereen as a very distant Westerosi colony?

Yet just leaving isn't exactly a simple process. It's liberating when she hops on Drogon and flies out of the city, but notably, Jorah, Missandei, Daario, and Tyrion (and Grey Worm if he ever recovers from his wounds) are all left behind with one big fucking mess to deal with.

Story-wise, we want Daenerys to fly her dragons to Westeros (and torch some ice-zombies with dragonfire while she's at it,) but she has embedded herself so deeply in Mereen that pulling herself out of it will likely cause a gushing wound. We're about one chapter away from as much as we have of her story in the book, so I honestly don't know how that story is going to turn out.

But ultimately, what we have been dealing with here is a group of people who have a sense of the motions they should be going through, but they lack a longterm strategy - what is it that they ultimately actually want to achieve?

Arya's story touches on this theme as well. She has been going through the process to become a Faceless Woman - to become one of the world's greatest assassins. Yet in her training, she is expected to purge herself of everything that made her Arya Stark in the first place. Does she want to become a Faceless Woman simply to serve the Many-Faced God? Or does she want it as a means to and end to cross names off of her list? Can she actually become a Faceless Woman and still retain the thirst for vengeance that made her seek out that life in the first place?

Finally, we come to the beginning of the episode, where Jon Snow returns to Castle Black traumatized by the victory of the White Walkers at Hardhome. Unlike the others here, Jon does actually have a clear goal in mind - but it's a simpler goal because unlike the others, he ultimately has a goal of stasis - he wishes to protect the world of men from the unholy abominations coming for them from north of the wall. The Night's Watch takes no part in the politics of the Seven Kingdoms, because their entire purpose is to make sure that the White Walkers don't cross the Wall. Their goal is not to achieve something, but to prevent the Others (the name for the White Walkers in the books) from achieving their goal - which we can assume is the destruction of the living.

For Jon, there's a simple short-term goal to accomplishing that greater one, which is to ensure that as many Wildlings as possible get behind the Wall safely and help the Night's Watch defend it. He's trying to build an army that can withstand that assault.

But Jon's not in the clear either, because while that short-term goal should help with the long-term one, he doesn't have the trust of his men behind him. They're following him for now, but he's packing Castle Black like a powderkeg full of people who absolutely detest one another. Will the short-term accomplishment help the long-term one by reinforcing the Wall? Or will the resentment nullify all that Jon has worked for? I'm eager to see what the show has to say.