Game of Thrones: Everyone in Westeros is Gonna Die

Game of Thrones (HBO, Warner Bros Television

Winter is retreating into the rearview mirror round these parts, I’m pleased to report. The sun is out, the chickens are laying eggs again, and I’m growing some cute little baby onions on my windowsill. I’ve even started contemplating writing about something other than Game of Thrones.

It’s got me thinking though. How exactly are the people of Westeros are going to survive the winter? Because in Westeros, winters don’t last months. They last years. Years of snow and cold and darkness where the hens don’t lay and there are no scallions at all.

What have our heroes done to prepare for this terrible set of circumstances they’re about to find themselves in? Well, they had a war where a bunch of stuff got destroyed. I didn’t see anyone harvest anything, I didn’t see anyone making jam, I didn’t see a single solitary person preparing for what was supposed to be a very long and hard winter.

I know, I know, that all took place off screen…but did it, really? And even if it did, didn’t it just all get wrecked when the granaries were burned by dragon fire and the silo was knocked over by an army of disgruntled wights?

People talk a lot about how the ending of Game of Thrones sucked, talk about Daenerys turning bad (even though that was totally set up in advance) and how rushed everything was, but in my opinion the most inexcusable element of the last episode of GoT was the peculiar sort of happy ending in the face of sure peril approaching. All the loose threads were neatly tied, except for the 90% of them that the writers just kinda forgot about and let slip away into the ether without mentioning.

Not only was Winterfell relatively unscathed all things considered, but the Red Keep was so undestroyed that King Bran and his retainers were able to totally have meetings in it. Brienne was even able to write Jaime’s adventures in a book, in a completely undamaged room, by an open window that seems to me to have been an outstanding vector for dragon fire to enter in through. Also, she’s just lounging around writing in a full set of armor for some reason.

Guess Drogon missed that room. If only Arya and the Hound had known of this safe space!

Hound: Arya, kiddo, you gotta haul balls out of here, everything is totally gonna get roasted.

Arya: Nu-uh, I’m just gonna go into that room where the book of the knight’s adventures is!

Hound: Huh good idea, help me kill my brother because you’re a total badass, and then we’ll hang there til the coast is clear.

Arya: K!

There, I fixed it for ya.

Anyhoo, I find the biggest problem with the uncharacteristically jolly and optimistic end of Game of Thrones that it has no basis in fictional reality. You know, that whole pesky “Winter is Coming” thing??? Yeahhh.

Here’s the Decembrists with an urgent dispatch from Westeros:

By any objective measure, Westeros is spectacularly fucked. Winter…remember WINTER? It’s not just coming, it’s here bros, and everyone spent the whole entire fall fighting with each other instead of stocking up on supplies. Not to mention that whatever supplies there were probably destroyed in the fighting, smooshed into the snow by the walking feet of a hell of a lot of wights or pillaged by the Mountain, who looks like he could eat a whole side of auroch in one sitting.

Hunting is not an option, because the men of the Wildlings and the Northerners – and even the ANIMALS in these areas – have been completely decimated by the army of the Night King, leaving mostly women and children on their own to survive the winter. The Southerners aren’t much better off due to the Civil War (the Riverlands in particular are a shambles), not to mention having squandered gobs of financial resources on waging war. Even if it was, human beings can’t survive on meat alone (don’t @ me keto fans, Google “rabbit starvation” instead) during a long winter that is expected to last for years.

As for shipping in supplies from the Reach (which also experienced a lot of fighting, so their allegedly ample food supplies were also probably destroyed) fugetabout it. Westeros is both huge and highly populated, and the logistics of shipping enough food to feed millions of people overland using the technology of the Middle Ages would be impossible.

It would take an effort not unlike the Berlin Airlift to feed these poor undeserving people, and the Berlin Airlift served just ONE CITY and took the combined efforts of two of the most powerful nations in the world and 20th century technology to pull it off. Westeros is huge and has several Berlin-size cities in it, not to mention no allies whatsoever (anyone in Essos who didn’t hate the Westerosi to start with is probably pretty soured on them by now, thanks Daenerys!) and their technology consists of horses and swords.

Or, as some clever person once said, civilization is like a Faberge egg, delicate, intricate, easy to destroy, and not so easy to remake it again, at least without killing a heck of a lot of people along the way. Fictional civilizations are not immune to the phenomenon – or at least they shouldn’t be.

What Westeros needs desperately is skilled and knowledgeable leaders, in whom the public has a good deal of trust. But the North is in the hands of a totally inexperienced young woman (yes, Sansa Stark’s gender is important since Westeros is not exactly known for believing in women’s rights, and both Daenerys and Cersei were not exactly stellar representatives of the leadership abilities of the female sex) who has been traveling around learning the Game of Thrones from a series of twisted mentors, none of whom seemed to explain a whole lot about how to actually BE a queen once you got there¹.

And the South is being led by Bran Stark, who isn’t exactly human. The Starks a) were not crazy popular to begin with and b) were deeply involved in the civil wars and made their fair share of enemies along the way. Putting Tweedledee and Tweedledum here in charge of a deeply divided nation on the brink of implosion is the equivalent of the election of Donald Trump – even if you support the Stark kids, there’s a huge part of you that’s saying, “welllll, I guess, but golly gee, I really would rather have seen just about anyone else in this situation”.

The Queen of the North seems to have no trusted counselors at all, and as for King Bran, they’ve made a shady sell sword master of coin, a woman is the head of the Kingsguard (again, Westeros is not known for gender equality so it is likely at least some people will take umbrage at this development), one of the Lannisters – THE LANNISTERS, WHO JUST CAUSED ALL THIS TROUBLE – is the Hand of the King, and a guy who betrayed his vows as a member of the Night’s Watch and didn’t even receive proper training at the Citadel is the Grand Maester. What kind of clown show are these people running here? What’s next, assigning Anthony Scaramucci ambassador to Braavos?

Fun fact – people don’t like change, especially after enduring a lot of change rapidly, and there is NO WAY that the lesser nobles and the common folk would take these things lying down, without any pushback at all.

Not only does it strain belief, it’s also completely un-Martinian, in that in the world of GRRM actions always, always have consequences. Politics beget politics and so ending the show by pretending that politics just up and walked away in the face of Tyrion’s genius is ridick.

All those grudges that people had before? Not going anywhere, and what’s more there’s a whole new set of grudges created by the war. It’s canon (and brilliant, BTW) that the sole reason why Westeros was able to set aside old grudges and have a brief time of peace after Robert’s Rebellion was because Robert Baratheon was such a likeable guy, not given to pettiness and holding grudges. Bobby B was basically the Land of Ice and Fire’s equivalent of Lincoln. He was able to bring the country together again, publicly forgiving, even embracing Targaryan Loyalists like Barristan Selmy, rather than fanning the flames of resentment and turning Westeros into the Reconstruction Era South, or more likely the Weimar Republic, and we all know how that came out.

Who’s gonna bring people together this time?? Tyrion?? Even the kinder, gentler Show Tyrion is the definition of pettiness and holding grudges! And Bran, as already established, is a pretty hard fella to relate to, certainly not the type of beloved figurehead a whole nation can rally around. He may be a religious figure to those who follow the Old Gods, but not that many people follow the Old Gods in the South² The crowning of King Bran will likely not sit too well with those who follow the Seven or the Lord of Light – both of whom, according to both books and show, have recently experienced a massive revival in religious fervor. Cersei may have blown up the Sept of Baelor, and Melisandre is blowin’ in the wind, but the many people who followed these religions would not up and disappear so easily.

Trouble’s a-brewin.

Oh yeah and that’s not even taking into consideration the many, many surely totally pissed off people in Essos who are wondering “hmmm what ever became of that Daenerys Targaryan girl who completely destroyed our livelihoods?”

Against this insanely awesome backdrop of narrative complexity what do Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss provide but a terrible “Kirk and Bones laugh at the expense of Mr. Spock” fadeaway ending, totally ignoring all this intriguing stuff. Dudes, these people may have lived till the credits rolled, but they’re freakin’ doomed. Straight talk, the Westerosi are either going to be attacked or starve or both. The Night King may be gone, the war may be over, but the forces of death have only just begun to stalk Westeros.

So. Is there a solution?

Something I found really cringeworthy was when our heroes were choosing the next king and they neglected several interesting candidates, just dismissed them out of hand with no consideration, including Yara Greyjoy, Sam Tarly (I 1000% thought that’s where they were gonna go with it) and whoever-he-is from Dorne.

Then, poor, longsuffering Edmure Tully – pretty much the only non-psychotic adult person left standing – stood up to throw his hat in the ring, and did a damn fine job of making his case. But Sansa chastised him for it, cutting him off at the knees. And then they picked BRAN instead – a teenager who has literally no experience at all ruling over anything?

The truth is, given the available options, Edmure Tully was an extremely reasonable candidate to be king, much more so than Bran. He is related by marriage to the Lannisters and the Starks, but he’s not directly descended from either of them. He suffered hugely in the war, and as a result he understood having to make terrible compromises, and he isn’t an arrogant rockstar. The Tullys have never been kings of Westeros so they don’t have the negative connotations that both Lannisters and Starks do. The Riverlands is positioned halfway between North and South. With all the Freys dead at Arya’s hand, he’s likely lord of the Twins as well as Riverrun, making him the most powerful lord in the country save Bronn (who I think most of us would agree is not king material). And he’s known to be a caring leader concerned for the fate of his people, not just the nobles but the smallfolk.

Yet this viable and completely not ridiculous claim to the throne is treated as laughable by Sansa of all people, who literally does not know the first thing about what she’s doing and doesn’t even keep Tyrion available to help her?

Um, ok, what? I know he couldn’t shoot an arrow that one time, Sansa, but damn girl.

IDK I’m just saying if I’d been invited to that kingsmoot I would totally have been #TeamEdmure.

I’m worried about Sansa, to be honest. Sansa’s arc in GoT is an arc of expectations not meshing with reality, and I think she’s going to get a huge wakeup call when she realizes that being a queen takes a lot more than just getting a crown and a fancy chair, particularly when your people are starving, and you have no food to give to them. I don’t think she’ll go the way of Dany or Cersei, but I do think she’s going to be unpleasantly surprised by how hard actually being a queen is. She may yet rue the day she gave her uncle Ye Olde Kiss Off.

Brief aside – no, this is not antifeminist to point out Sansa has some challenges laying ahead on the horizon. It is antifeminist to assume that women have some sort of magical pixie dust in our genomes that enables us to rule over countries on the brink of war and starvation when we’ve basically spent the past ten years of our lives fleeing in terror, because it reduces women to “You Go Girl” tropes instead of three-dimensional characters. If y’all wanted me to buy Good Queen Sansa, for starters she should have declined to travel all across the Seven Hells’ Half-Acre going to kingsmoots and stuff while she should have stayed the hell at home and rebuilt Winterfell after the attack of the Night King. Sansa should have stayed the hell at home and figured out how she was going to feed her people rather than traveling 1500 miles to insult her uncle, who according to all reports was a pretty decent and kind guy who had a couple of unlucky breaks, even though he was rather less swashbuckling than Loras Tyrell.

That’s what someone who intended to be an effective leader would have done – indeed, what Sansa would have HAD to do, because her people wouldn’t’ve tolerated it otherwise. The North remembers, and they remember ineptitude and arrogance just as much as they remember the Old Ways. Sansa, you know I love you, girl, but if you’re gonna be the Queen of the North, you gotta start by letting go of the affairs of the South. Arya could have pled Sansa’s case for her, leading to a satisfactory resolution of the contentious relationship between the two Stark girls. And then Sansa could rule the North with Bran’s help instead of alone, devoid of all other important characters. That would have been quite nice, I think.

Edmure and the Stark Sibs for the win! A divided nation rejoices!

One of the things I truly do love about Game of Thrones, the books anyway, is how there is an underlying tension between the nobles and the commoners – not even the commoners but the lower level bannermen. You get to see it when GoT is at its best – how the little people hate the noblemen for the suffering they inflict, and you can totally see their point. Yet we’re expected to believe that in this world of chaos and upheaval, that people would just be shrugging and saying “whatevs, sure, let’s have a couple of Starks be our king and our queen, and we’ll just accept this decision that was made in a smoke-filled room, probably.”

No. It’s just not gonna work that way, and even if it did it’s only a matter of time before the inhabitants of Slaver’s Bay come to call. The Game of Thrones doesn’t end. That’s the entire point of the Game of Thrones. You can come halfway around the world and say you’re going to break some imaginary wheel and the game still doesn’t end. It simply takes another form.

Not even democracy is a panacea that cures Gameofthronesitis. GRRM brilliantly, brutally pointed out the flaws of democratic elections in Volantis in A Dance With Dragons. Suffice it to say, if you hate late-stage capitalism, you gotta admit it has a lot in common with a dysfunctional democracy. (and boy, that cut deep reading that here in 2021).

This cheeseball “happily ever after, suddenly, even though it was never happily ever after before, and the people in charge are totally clueless teens” ending David Benioff and DB Weiss gave us is ludicrous. It’s ludicrous using the logic of the fictional universe, it’s ludicrous using the logic of human beings in which happy endings are not really a thing, exactly, and it’s ludicrous in terms of telling a moving story. Ludicrous!

I could actually forgive the first two, but not the last one. A story that ends up undermining the narrative itself – making all this suffering and pain for basically nothing, because we all just shrug and laugh and say “hmm, why DID Bran come all this way LOLLLLZ” completely removes the emotional punch from everything that came before. Game of Thrones was replete with moments that were moving, upsetting, enraging, horrifying, and all of it was undone, diminished into “it’s just a TV show, silly” in the span of a single episode.

If all any of this was ever going to come down to was a wink to the audience while everyone on the bridge of the Enterprise has a good chortle, rendering this moving narrative to an eight season practical joke utterly devoid of meaning or message, then all the suffering that came before was nothing more than pulling wings off a butterfly. Ned Stark getting beheaded? HILARIOUS! Burning Shireen Baratheon at the stake? Good for a laugh! Brave little Lyanna Mormont getting killed by a giant? It’s JUST a TV show!

But personally I find torturing human beings – even fictional ones – for no better reason than the passionless amusement of a horde of jaded onlookers is a pretty sick thing to do. Fiction is supposed to move you, like, emotionally, because it is making you reflect upon the human condition. Fiction should make you empathize with your fellow human, not shrug and wait for the next shocking thing to occur. And you cannot be so moved if the endgame entails the creators snickering at you forever giving a shit cos none of it made a lick of difference anyhow.

Everyone in Westeros is going to die, and that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing because human life matters. If you’ve set up a fictional world in which life MEANS something and losing life means something, you had damn well better see that theme through to the bitter end. We are all born into this world to suffer and die but it’s what we do while we’re here that matters, and when it comes to portraying that reality in art, if a creator does the equivalent of winking and saying “JK themes are for eighth grade English papers” then it undoes everything that came before. It not only takes the audience right out of what they’re watching, but it cheapens human life itself by holding up suffering and sacrifice as nothing more than entertainment, as if we’re all Roman emperors watching a series of gladiator fights interspersed with standup comedians to take our minds off our empire crumbling.

Art is supposed to be more than that. Game of Thrones, the books ARE more than that.

So what would I do differently? Obviously, I cannot expect a show to be centered around Sansa Stark hunting down sacks of grain and King Bran attempting to rise above his limitations to make alliances with reluctant lords (I guess, though I would watch the heck out of that. :/)

Well, as they say in the song, the road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Much has been made of the ending of The Sopranos, where it ends on an ambiguous note. Love it or hate it, it seems to me that inconclusive ambiguity is the ONLY way to end a show set in a complicated universe full of ongoing threats.

The ending of Angel as a good example. Fast forward this to 3:30, you’ll get the gist. Even though I loathe Angel, it’s a great ending.

You may not like an ambiguous ending. I get it. You want to know what happens. I do too. I certainly do hope GRRM has a nice juicy surprise planned for us all. I agree fully that when used cheaply, for shock value, ambiguous endings are little more than a gimmick. But you gotta admit, the end of GoT was trash. A slightly unsatisfying gimmick could not possibly have been as painfully bad as turning everything into a big ol’ joke.

When I started writing this essay, I wasn’t sure where the ambiguous ending should come. But as I sit here, one moment in particular comes to me. Why not, when Dany hears the bells, the bells that are supposed to herald the surrender of King’s Landing, but instead trigger her rampage, we end there? Maybe we don’t find out what happens. Maybe she destroys King’s Landing. Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe Cersei and Jaime get away. Maybe they don’t. Maybe we don’t ever find out who wins the Game of Thrones. Maybe that’s ok. I’ll just go on thinking it was the competent if not terribly exciting Edmure, and you can think it was whoever you prefer.

I’m not gonna lie, I probably would have been disappointed in this ending, at least the way Benioff and Weiss would surely have written it, which is terribly. But nowhere near as disappointed as I am, and ending it sooner would have freed up much needed time to at least acknowledge the many, many problems our heroes see upon the horizon. The imminent famine, the enemies both within and without, the rise of the religious zealots, dissatisfied commoners – all these things needed to be addressed. And perhaps most important, it would have given enough time to flesh out the things that desperately needed to be fleshed out – Sansa maturing into a leadership position, Arya and the Hound’s journey South, Jaime and Cersei’s reunion, Tyrion and Jon’s growing apprehension regarding Daenerys’ declining mental state – these things needed to be addressed in a much deeper and more thought-provoking way.

Over the course of this series I’ve come to believe that while it would have been great to have more Game of Thrones episodes, what we really needed was BETTER Game of Thrones episodes. I hate giving Benioff and Weiss a pass by saying “oh if only they’d taken HBO up on the offer of more episodes” because I think it excuses too many of their writing flaws. I actually think that a great show could have been created in precisely the number of episodes they had³ if only they hadn’t chosen to indulge their worst instincts as writers while flushing all the excellent narrative work that GRRM had done.

1. A scene in which Dany discusses the difficulties of leading a nation with Sansa could have gone a very, very long way to demonstrating that at the least, she’s THINKING about this stuff. Because otherwise Sansa Stark is about to go from the pink sparkly princess frying pan into the queenly fire with no skillset that will enable her to deal with hundreds of thousands of starving Northerners and dozens of dissatisfied bannermen, many of whom imagine they’d make an excellent king.
2. It actually makes far more narrative sense for the Old Gods’ avatar Bran to be King of the North and Sansa, who is well known to the people of King’s Landing, has already made political allegiances (the Vale in particular), has the physical appearance of her Southern mother, and worships the Seven, to sit the Iron Throne. Religion and politics go together like a lit match and a crate of TNT.
3. If I had nothing but time, I would rewrite the entire show from S5 onward to prove how easily it could be done. Please don’t encourage me because it’s already very tempting and it’s just another rabbit hole of self-destruction I want to run down to keep from actually finishing my own writing.