Why Everyone Is Missing The Point Of Game Of Thrones
Note: Contains spoilers for Game of Thrones.
As we head into the home straight on season eight, you may have seen a few hundred thousand headlines asking "Who will end up on the Iron Throne?", articles offering odds on the likely final incumbent, and endless Twitter debates about "winning" the game of thrones.
Counterpoint, courtesy of Ser Davos in season seven: "If we don't put aside our enmities and band together, we will die. And then it doesn't matter whose skeleton sits on the Iron Throne."
It's perhaps the most candid acknowledgment of the core principle at the very centre of the fantasy saga from day one: the Iron Throne doesn't matter.
Davos was speaking to Daenerys in an attempt to encourage her to join the North in their fight against the Night King and his army of the undead, which she does, but on the condition that she would rule while Jon Snow was to ditch his King in the North title to become the lesser Warden of the North, bending the knee to her.
Despite coming to understand that their world was (and still is) in jeopardy, Daenerys still felt the need to consolidate her position, and she has continued to do the same in season eight, which has made her look increasingly misguided.
Speaking to news.com.au, writer George RR Martin spoke about the toxicity of the desire to command, which above anything else forces characters to leave their reason and original moral intentions at the door.
"I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany has found that out as she tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there," he said. "She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities... We see the dragons wiping out entire armies... but that doesn't necessarily enable you to rule, it just enables you to destroy."
Cersei, too, is more concerned with ruling, her sights set on reigning supreme over the seven kingdoms rather than their impending doom.
But Daenerys and Cersei are not alone. We are guilty of the same blunder.
There are still vast swathes of viewers who continue to nitpick over who will sit on the throne when the last sword has been swung and the battlefield falls still. Who, we all ask, is going to win?
There are myriad thinkpieces and power rankings devoted to exploring the current contenders, but in agonising over that detail we are missing the point entirely.
GoT is so much more than that distraction. It extends far beyond the winner or winners, and who will be left as worm fodder (or something more sinister). That ongoing popular narrative fails to grasp, or do justice to, what George RR Martin has baked into the original source material and what the TV adaptation has also been telling us: that power is a corrupting force, and while leadership can be valuable, the Iron Throne will not save the day. The Iron Throne is the enemy.
In short, if there's anyone on the Iron Throne at the end of the "game" then all the players – the lords, knights, farmers, publicans, prostitutes and even Hot Pie – have lost.
During a Q&A with the New York Times, Martin was asked about the theory that GoT is a metaphor for climate change, and in his answer he once again encapsulated why the concept of one queen or king to rule them all is a total misreading of his work.
"The people in Westeros are fighting their individual battles over power and status and wealth," he said. "And those are so distracting them that they're ignoring the threat of 'winter is coming', which has the potential to destroy all of them and to destroy their world."
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The Iron Throne has become a powerful marketing tool, heavily employed by HBO, and the narrative of a winner and a loser is one that endures. But it's crude to boil our discussions of GoT down to just that. Many have come to expect one solitary figure sat on the Iron Throne at the end of it all, and it's entirely possible they'll be disappointed.
So ignore the bookies and chuck the "Who will win?" predictions in the bin. Don't spend a second longer weighing up the odds. There are only three episodes left before we wave goodbye. Consume the final drops of Game of Thrones as Martin intended.
Game of Thrones season 8 airs on HBO in the US and Sky Atlantic and NOW TV in the UK.
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