Thirteen years ago, what is described as 'The Greatest Show in TV History' premiered on pay channel HBO. This would have been April 2011, and I admit, I didn't pay much attention at first because a. I was 1 month from university graduation; b. working 2 full-time jobs; and c. I couldn't afford HBO. It wasn't until 3 or 4 years later a friend 'lent' me his HBO watch password so I could see what all the fuss was about.
And what a show it was. It's massive, in scope and cast. Each episode and season follows a dozen main characters and dozens of minor ones. There's epic screenshots of the 'kingdoms' which range from: the frozen North with the main castle Winterfell and The Wall, a man-made structure to keep Westeros 'safe' from the tribes of 'wildlings' who live 'further north'; to the warm South where the capital King's Landing is; the East lands where Essos, Slavers Bay and wide, seemingly endless desert lies; the flower-rich HighGarden in the west; the Twins Riverlands; the mountainous Vale; and the Iron Islands. DragonStone, where dragons once lived and hatched, is an island not far from King's Landing. There's also Valerian, a mysterious, supposedly abandoned place where 'The Doom' caused the destruction and death of anyone there.
Ruling each section are lords and some ladies who are 'heads of their house' (not unlike US taxes today) and set the tone of the main families. The Starks rule the North; the Lannisters (yeah, yeah, I know technically it's the Baratheons but King Robert doesn't last long, and the heirs are Lannisters) have the Iron Throne in the South, and we meet the various Lords of each of the other mini kingdoms as they all come in to play for control of the Iron Throne (and hence the name of the show). Also, Daenerys 'Dany' Targaryen, the last (we think) living member of the once great family who rode and 'mastered' the dragons and ruled the whole 7 kingdoms is introduced to us. Each family has their own motto, banner, etc. very much like the medieval nobles (and some still around today). We also meet their friends, bodyguards, servants, etc. with names like SpyMaster, The Hound, The Mountain, No One, The Priestess, etc. We see jousting in the first season, epic battles, sword fights, taverns, horses, travels, amour, plus lots and lots of sex, wine, and power play games.
Still with me? I did say it was massive.
There are 8 seasons in total, and people live, die, scheme, fall in love, scheme more, torment each other, and all the other things humans do. The ultimate goal is to be 'head' of a house or be King/Queen, and for Dany, regain the Iron Throne that was stolen from her family. So in other words, again not so different from US politics today, where the Dems and Repubs scheme and fight and lie and cheat to be 'head' of the country, where money is power, and most of the people simply live to scrape by and try to survive while the rich sit around drinking wine.
I'll go more into the systems in other posts. I did like this series. Once. I detested the last season, as do 100% of the people I have talked to, read, listened to, or seen. The main reasons for the utter destruction of the 'greatest show in TV history', ultimately come down to the extremely poor writing, lack of 'wrap up', and the assassination of the characters.
And THIS, more than anything, is what I mean when I say Stay True to Your Characters or your story falls apart. Completely. In a book, we can throw it or delete it if an author does this. In a TV show, especially one that has so steadfast, and strongly built a character up, it's like a deep betrayal that strikes at the heart.
The TV series is based on the series of books of the same name, (yes, I have read, and actually prefer them) but since the book writer quit the series and has promised for 15 some years the next book is 'coming soon', the TV series writers had to write their own after around season 3. They do well until it's rumored, they were offered 'better' projects and just wanted to wrap up Game of Thrones so they condensed the last 2 seasons into a mess of 'tying up loose ends'. And what I call character assassination.
I'll take one character: Dany. We meet her as a young (15? maybe) girl, who has been on the run from assassins her whole life, as the daughter of the 'Mad King' who was killed by his personal guard. Her brother is a power-mad abuser who likes to slap, punch, and hit her and has seemingly pounded into her head they deserve the Iron Throne and have a duty to reclaim it. She's very submissive, friendless, and just "wants a home". She's told how her mother was murdered by those who killed her father and then slaughtered all the living Targaryens, including innocent children because they were 'threats' to the throne. She & her brother are the last (it's later revealed they have a very old uncle & a nephew). She's sold off to fierce warlord Drogo, and gradually they fall in love. She even finds friends in her bodyguard Jorah and a servant girl. She also has dragon eggs, and dreams of them hatching, though they are supposedly stone. She seems happy, safe, and secure--then Drogo suffers a horrible death, she loses their baby, and has to try to make a living in the desert after most of the tribe leaves her with her servant and Jorah. She steps into Drogo's funeral fire with her dragon eggs, and the next morning emerges from the ashes with 3 very alive baby dragons.
Eventually, after a long trek through the desert, she comes to a town where she is seemingly patronized by a rich lord, who kills everyone (including we think, her servant friend) to take her dragons. She reclaims them after a battle and show of fire from said dragons and strives to free the slave kingdoms from slavery. She is a 'good' person, a heroine who wants only to free people from being abused (as she was), release them from the fear of powerful people (as she was with her brother), and gain ships so she can sail to reclaim the Iron Throne. She meets a translator friend, who becomes her best friend. Her advisors are close friends; she even takes a lover. She gets rid of the slave masters all right, but a radical group takes their place, and Dany finds ruling is not easy, nor are people who have only known slavery always happy to be 'free'. She needs a new system to replace the old and begins working on this, even delaying her long-awaited trip to reclaim her family's rightful throne, the one consistent thing in her whole life.
Heroine motives, yes? She kills only the 'evil' people and stands for the little guys. She has pure motives, perhaps the purest of any of the multiple characters in this entire series. She wants a better world, a good world, where people live free and not in fear. It's a dream, of course, that we all say we want, even as we know, deep down, it's impossible. But she is determined to help, to make lives better, especially for the children. She is a good person, definitely not flawless, and makes lots of mistakes since she's inexperienced, and having fled Westeros, has no real connection there except she's been told from birth that she must reclaim the Iron Throne to avenge her family. Her army, advisors, and friends adore, fight for, and follow her.
Yet Jon Snow/Stark comes and asks her to help him rid the biggest threat ever to humans: the Night Walkers & Army of the Dead, led by the Night King, who is determined to see all humankind die. After losing one of her beloved dragon children to this Night King, and seeing the army in action, Dany again postpones her reclaiming of the Iron Throne to help Jon rid the world of the Walking Dead. Honorable. Good. Make a better world. Rid the world of evil.
Dany even endures the hostile glares of the other northerners, including Jon's own sisters (I detest Sansa, she's a bitch to begin with and a bitch to the end) and stays to help fight. She loses most of her army and her beloved Jorah, who dies protecting her. When the battle ends, and they just barely win, she asks for armies to defeat the evil Cerci in the south, the north more or less says, "We're tired, you aren't one of us, fight your own battle." Jon goes with her, though-- even after he learns the 'father' he thought was his isn't...and he's actually the last male heir Targaryen, the true heir to the Iron Throne, Dany's nephew.
Oh boy.
So Dany had given up a lot to help others, even as they are hostile and don't appreciate all she has done for them. But again pure motives: she put aside her own wants and a lifelong dream to aid those less powerful, the helpless, and especially the children. She doesn't try to claim credit for being the reason the North survives and defeats the Night King. Yeah, a northerner killed him, but without her dragons & army, the North never would have gotten close to the King or survived the battle. Yet not one northerner, following Sansa's lead, thanks her-- even after Dany deflects attention away from herself by toasting Aria, who killed the Night King.
That has to sting. But Dany never shows it. She just wants to regain her family's throne, the dream she thinks she must have. She really needs what she had with Drogo: love, acceptance, happiness, and a simple life. That's what she really wants. All she really wants.
So when the writers have her burn alive hundreds of innocent men, women, and especially children in King's Landing, it's so against everything we have seen and known of Dany. It's character assassination that makes no sense except to wrap up the storyline and make her a 'mad queen' as her father was a 'mad king' (he said, "Burn them all!" which Jamie Lannister takes to mean burn all people and why Jamie killed him, but *I* think means burn all white walkers/army of the dead, which is only one of 3 ways to kill them and the only way to ensure they never return-the 'mad king' had this vision and was trying to save everyone). They kill off 2 of her dragons, her children, her best friends, and her advisors. Even Jon turns against her. She's all alone again, an older version of the frightened girl who has no one to turn to for help, love, or guidance.
I can't bear what happened to Dany. She has grown, made mistakes, and owns them. She has learned and genuinely tries to be a better person trying to create a better, fair, just world. The sole good powerful person who didn't plot against other characters to kill them off and take the throne for power. I'm not sure, after the Slavers Bay incidents, Dany even realizes what it means to be the King/Queen: she just wants her family's honor, and especially their deaths, to mean something. She MUST fulfill the mission instilled in her since birth, regardless of the cost. But is it what she truly wants?
We never get to see because the writers lazily and wrongly write her off as a 'mad' killer of innocents when she never was before. And sorry, but women for centuries have been called 'mad' for their actions, especially by jealous men who feel threatened by them. Not to get all feminist here, but writing Dany seemingly being 'mad' and killing thousands is just so, so WRONG. It's NOT her character. It's NOT her.
Cerci is the true mad queen, driven by rage and hate, who killed thousands of innocents to rid her of 'enemies' (she blew up a CHURCH, for lord's sake) but no one rebels or turns against her even when she beheads Dany's best friend in front of her and pulls even more innocent people into the walls of the capital to use as shields between her and the coming battle (sounds like what's going on in our world now, doesn't it?) instead of evacuating the capital because of the coming war. A good ruler, a just ruler, would send his/her people away from danger, not draw them in closer. Yet Dany is supposedly 'mad' in minutes. No. No, no, no, no.
It's lazy writing. Period.
The writers assassinate other characters, notably Jamie Lannister (more of him in a separate post) but none so greatly as they do to Dany. The sole good person who just wants a better world.
As a different example of lazy writing: Sansa in season 1 is a spoiled, selfish brat who wants to be a princess & wear pretty dresses. Sansa in season 8 is a spoiled, selfish bitch who wants (and gets) to be queen & wear pretty dresses. She doesn't grow or change through the 8 seasons. Yes, she is bullied, raped (99% of female characters on this show are raped-- Dany has gone through the exact same things until she takes control of her own life & learns the tribe's ways--Sansa just sits around and whines), and threatened, but 'suffer'? Heck no! Especially when compared to the other characters and even members of her own family. Sansa got to sit around eating and drinking whatever she wanted. She's never in true danger, never goes to battle, never has to fight to survive nor does she fight for or defend her family or friends. She's a useless character, a stereotypical 'lady' who represents all the worst of powerful, rich people. (Side note: How the heck is Sansa 'married' to Ramsey when she is STILL married to Ty?)
It's lazy writing.
This could have been the 'Greatest Show in TV History'. If only we had writers who cared in the last seasons as much as they did in the first.
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