The New Republic of Westeros
A few weeks later, the surviving main characters get together to decide who should rule Westeros. This includes the author’s mouthpiece Tyrion, despite the fact that he’s supposed to be in prison for high treason and as a co-conspirator in a regicide.
The story starts preaching to us about republicanism as it uses just about every character except for the Samwise rip-off/Martin’s second mouthpiece Samwell as a strawman. Samwell suggests a democratic vote and everyone else laughs at him. Finally a realistic reaction from a group of characters!
Tyrion’s Suggestion
Now that one of the author’s mouthpieces has failed to convince anyone that they should hold an election, Tyrion steps in and makes a big speech about how stories are powerful.
This comes across as a pathetic attempt to convince the viewer of just how “amazing” this train-wreck of a story was.
Eventually Tyrion gets to the point and suggests that they turn Westeros into a republic with Chosen One Bran as the president:
“From now on rulers will not be born. They will be chosen on this spot by the lords and ladies of Westeros, to serve the realm.”
Tyrion, rich guy extraordinaire
Sons of Kings
Everyone almost immediately agrees to Tyrion’s suggestion, destroying any sense that these people grew up in a Medieval kingdom or hold Medieval values. One-by-one they vote “aye!,” and the Chosen One is made President of Westeros. Tyrion even explains why republicanism is supposedly better:
“Sons of kings can be cruel and stupid, as you well know. His will never torment us.
Tyrion Lannister
Since when have any of these main characters given a crap about the general populous?
Daenerys perhaps came the closest with her anti-slavery campaign, but the story’s always been more interested in the Breaker of Chains than in the slaves she freed.
Indeed, she was entirely willing to use these “freed” slaves as her personal army and even as human shields for other white characters. These other characters have tended to be even worse.
It’s hard to imagine how such people could be better than the lottery of birth order when it comes to choosing a new ruler. Now, it’s completely realistic for the republic to be founded by rich people for rich people. But Game of Thrones treats this outcome as a triumphant first step towards democracy.
Many of the problems that plague Westeros are also clearly rooted in misogyny and toxic masculinity. Throughout history—and arguably still today—republics have been more patriarchal than monarchies, not less. How is this new republic supposed to make anything better?
Breaking the Wheel
“That is the wheel our queen wanted to break.”
Tyrion Lannister
Oh, of course—the wheel your queen wanted to break! Hang on… You mean the same queen who just burned down a city filled with innocent men, women, and children? The queen who then ordered her eunuch army to execute the survivors en masse?
Game of Thrones treats the atrocities its characters commit not as failings on the part of the characters, but as an inevitable consequence of hereditary leadership. This is why the main characters can do no wrong in the story’s eyes: because as far as Game of Thrones is concerned, Daenerys ordering the indiscriminate slaughter of an entire city “isn’t her fault.”
Game of Thrones names monarchy as the sole cause of every injustice in the history of Westeros, but we’re never shown just how monarchy is supposedly responsible or how republicanism is supposed to fix these injustices—especially when the republic is ruled by an absolute dictator chosen by a bunch of rich arseholes.
Bran the Broken
Now that the Republic of Westeros has its new president, all that’s left is for all Game of Thrones’ fan-favourite characters to get their own happy endings. But first, let’s reflect on who just got the job. Forget for a moment that the whole “let’s decide who’ll rule” plot point is completely stupid and feels like it was written by a six-year-old. There are other things wrong with it.
Although Game of Thrones tries to pass this off as an elective monarchy, the republican ideals are unmistakeable. Had it not been obvious that this story came from the mind of an American, it certainly is now. This wouldn’t be a problem were it not for George R.R. Martin’s claim that his goal is “realism.”
I’ve even heard fans use that word as an excuse for the story’s terrible morals, but it’s not about realism. Indeed, now that the story’s reached its conclusion, I think it’s fair to say it was never about realism. It was always about pushing this inane message.
Now on to Bran himself. Bran Stark the Three-Eyed Raven is the same Bran who treated his mentally-challenged servant as a puppet to be discarded whenever convenient. Indeed, Hodor’s disability was Bran’s fault in the first place!
Add to that Bran’s rather Randian lack of any emotion, and you’ve got the equivalent of a sociopath in office. But far from being a problem, Tyrion suggests that Bran’s being the Three-Eyed Raven means he’ll rule for the good of the people.
It almost seems like Martin is saying Bran would make the best president because he’s an unfeeling husk. This is troubling, to say the least—particularly given Bran’s history of abusing poor Hodor for his own personal gain, up to and including Bran causing his victim’s brain injury to begin with.
This is the man the story thinks will make a good leader. Does everyone see the problem now?
False Progress: How Game of Thrones Accomplishes Nothing
It’s not necessarily even a problem for there to be little or no improvement in the fictional society by the end of a story, or even for things to get worse if it’s a tragedy. However, for that to work, the story has to be aware that everything still sucks.
The problem is that Game of Thrones frames its ending as some huge step forward in the road to democracy when it’s really a step further away from democracy.
Through its ludicrous ending, Game of Thrones posits that having a hereditary monarch is bad, but that having a dictator elected exclusively by hereditary aristocrats is somehow better. Here in reality, the latter is substantially worse.
Even assuming that a hereditary monarch holds the power of both head of state and head of government, that is still infinitely preferable to an elected dictator chosen by a hereditary ruling class.
A Song of Ice and Fire
I’ll sum up the ending as quickly as I can. A part of me kind of thought Game of Thrones would end partway through a rape scene like the 2005 horror abomination The Cavern. The other part expected Martin to shoehorn in a happy ending with a bizarrely stupid message about republicanism.
It turns out the latter guess was spot-on. Most of the surviving characters have their little positions in the Ministry of Magic Small Council, all with a little bow on top.
Samwell Tarly shows President Bran the book he’s written about all their adventures, and it’s called… ugh… “A Song of Ice and Fire,” just like the books Game of Thrones is based on, you see.
This is a feeble attempt to rip off the ending of The Lord of the Rings, where Frodo records the Fellowship’s quest in the Red Book of Westmarch.
Of course, Frodo called his writings The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King, a mouthful of a title that—and this is really important—isn’t the same as the title of the book we just read. The title of Frodo’s book also sounds similar to many chronicles written in the Middle Ages, such as The History of the Kings of Britain.
Game of Thrones has a Happy Ending
Sansa becomes queen of an independent kingdom, whereas Arya decides to become an explorer and find out what’s “west of Westeros.” How she’s able to convince a crew of sailors to follow her into the unknown is, well, unknown.
Tyrion wants to know what Samwell’s book says about him, but it turns out he’s not even mentioned, and everyone laughs.
Is the story trying to demonstrate the unfairness of historical records by showing that Tyrion isn’t even mentioned in the histories? Because the exchange was set up like a joke. Whatever… I really don’t care.
The heir apparent Jon Snow is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the Night’s Watch, with his true identity known only to a few.
I get that having the heir apparent take the throne is what most stories would do, but maybe that’s because—nine times out of ten—that’s what makes the most sense.
Instead the Chosen One becomes president of a new republic, and I’ve already explained why that was a bad idea on so many levels. Jon reunites with his pet wolf, and all is right with the world… somehow. And look! There’s grass growing from beneath the snow, meaning winter is over now that the White Walkers are gone. Isn’t that nice?
Nihilism
The irony is that with its insistence that we shouldn’t want to make the world better, the ending of Game of Thrones is arguably more nihilistic than the preceding story.
The character whose story began with her being molested by her brother and sold into what amounts to sex slavery gets murdered by her lover during a make-out session, and it’s treated as a good thing specifically because her desire to improve the world inexplicably turned her evil.
To be clear, Game of Thrones posits that regardless of the content of Daenerys’ beliefs, the fact that a woman has strongly held convictions at all inherently makes her dangerous to the status quo that the show thinks is worth defending.
The story pretty much concludes with the message that aristocratic oligarchy is not only somehow an improvement over monarchy, but the absolute best system humans can hope to achieve. On that topic, Bran is the best choice to rule because he’s a man with no emotions at all.
It’s utterly nihilistic and ugly, but I’m not convinced that the story knows it’s nihilistic. It feels like it wants to be a happy ending, and that’s what makes it so troubling.
The Real Ending?
Ironically, though the ending tries its hardest to be at least somewhat bittersweet, it feels entirely like the sort of mega-happy ending that the show’s fans love to mock in other stories (whether or not those endings really are as happy as they think).
Despite George R.R. Martin’s annoying habit of criticizing Tolkien to build himself up, Season 8 reeks of a desire to reproduce the ending of The Lord of the Rings, and yet Game of Thrones fails utterly to execute this ending with any degree of skill. It winds up feeling more like Harry Potter than The Lord of the Rings.
Somehow I doubt that this was anything but Martin’s vision. I don’t think anyone trying to imitate his style would make the ending so clean, so happy, so idealistic. They’d make something dark and cynical, if only so people wouldn’t know it wasn’t he.
This, on the other hand, bears the marks of an author who’s too attached to his beloved creations to kill any more of them off.
I shouldn’t be surprised if Martin forsakes this—his vision—to write a different ending and get another chance at it. But this feels like his handiwork all the same, and I’m sure any second attempt will have a feeling of insincerity about it.
Game of Thrones and Historical Realism
Whenever critics bring up the issue of how Game of Thrones goes to considerable lengths to excuse just about every injustice it portrays, fans invariably insist that the Middle Ages really were like that. George R.R. Martin, they say, is just being “realistic.”
Whether that’s true or not is immaterial. Even if Game of Thrones were realistic, it wouldn’t matter. Game of Thrones is fiction, not history, and fiction exists to shape our ideas about the world we live in.
Game of Thrones and The Power of Fiction
Fiction not only exposes readers to new ideas; it can also reinforce preexisting biases that readers may not even know they had. Worse, no matter how depraved an idea, statistically there will always be someone somewhere who actually believes it.
If you write a story that presents, say, slavery as a moral good, you risk normalizing it in the minds of some readers. Given the fact that right-wing movements like the alt-right exist, this should be cause for alarm.
The horrifying extent to which rape is common in our own world doesn’t justify the way Game of Thrones portrays rape. In fact, it only damns the text further. Portraying rape as inevitable makes it harder to combat rape culture in the real world.
When an author writes a story where the cruelest person in the room is constantly proven right, it can convey the idea that cruelty is a sign of one’s rational intellect. That idea is very appealing to cruel people, particularly those on the alt-right.
Books like The Turner Diaries have inspired horrific acts of violence. Atlas Shrugged inspired an ultraconservative movement of zealots who believe genetically superior supermen deserve to lord it over the rest—and in 2016 they got their man in the White House!
Fiction conveys ideas, and those who argue otherwise usually do so in bad faith. Game of Thrones is not apolitical, not only because its plot revolves entirely around politics, but because all fiction—and everything else in human society—is inherently political.
Historical Inaccuracy in Game of Thrones
With regard to historical accuracy, however, Game of Thrones picks and chooses according to the author’s tastes. This, in itself, is okay and even inevitable. Every author does this, and it’s usually only a problem if ignoring history results in a story perpetuating harmful ideas.
In the case of Game of Thrones, the harmful ideas come down to narrative framing. The parts of history he chooses to remain true to are presented in such a way as to make the injustices seem inevitable.
Historical inaccuracies in a Medieval fantasy world aren’t inherently a problem. But George R.R. Martin consistently uses “historical realism” to justify his framing of rape as “no big deal,” rapists as sympathetic, women in power as overemotional, and patriarchy as something inevitable that we shouldn’t bother trying to dismantle.
This framing becomes rather suspect when the story is also filled with considerable departures from history, of which there are many.
Why does historical accuracy justify eroticized scenes of children being molested when the author ignores aspects of Medieval society that would compromise the story he wants to tell? Why doesn’t Arya kill the Night King only for the authorities to burn her at the stake for the crime of wearing trousers?
Whenever we write fiction, we all make choices about where we feel it’s important to maintain realism and where we can suspend it to tell a better story. As such, we can and should judge a story by what its author saw fit to include, what that means in the context of our own society, and what real-world ideas those narrative choices endorse.
Nuclear Dragons
Whenever he’s criticized for the way he portrays rape—including pedophilia—George R.R. Martin’s go-to excuse is that he’s only being “historically accurate” to his Medieval setting. He also likes to deride other authors for neglecting to include sufficient amounts of sex, violence, and sexual violence in their own books.
Martin thus asserts that he has “no choice” but to present rape without authorial judgement, or at least that it would be somehow wrong to do otherwise. His argument rests on the idea that, since Game of Thrones takes place in a world based on Medieval Europe, giving its characters any twenty-first century values would be unrealistic.
Ignoring everything else wrong with that line of reasoning, an obvious problem is immediately apparent. If Martin is obligated to include fetishized child rape scenes as part of some no-holds-barred panorama of Medieval society, then why did he employ dragons as a metaphor for nuclear weapons of mass destruction?
Originally, his plan was for Daenerys to use smoke and mirrors to convince people she had dragons. George R.R. Martin only swapped out the illusions for actual dragons because he wanted them to act as “nuclear deterrent.”
In case you didn’t know, intercontinental ballistic missiles didn’t exist in the Middle Ages any more than feminism did. Why is it okay to include metaphorical nukes in your Medieval setting if it’s not okay to frame rape as an evil act?
Excusing the atrocities your characters commit on the grounds that your story takes place in the Middle Ages, only to then turn around and use that same story to attempt commentary on our own society, is disingenuous. Worse, it inadvertently condones those same atrocities in the real world.
When historical realism is your excuse for eroticizing rape and inviting readers to sympathize with rapists, you can’t have it both ways!
Game of Thrones is Garbage
Even something conventional with Jon Snow taking his rightful place as king would have been far superior. At least then it would have felt more like a real ending.
Not to mention it would have been at least slightly more similar to how the Wars of the Roses really ended.
When I first watched Game of Thrones, I thought it was the worst fantasy story I’d ever seen. Now that I’ve examined it more thoroughly, I can say with absolute conviction that it’s not the worst. On a scale of The Lord of the Rings to The Sword of Truth, Game of Thrones wouldn’t even be on my radar if it weren’t for the toxic portion of its fanbase.
The Opposite of Tolkien
I’ve read far worse books that embody this concept even more, but A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin is in many ways the opposite of The Lord of the Rings.
Perhaps the most striking example of this is that A Song of Ice and Fire was clearly written with intent to write a bestseller above all else. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings seemingly without concern for market trends, and against all odds it was wildly successful amidst massive criticism.
A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as Game of Thrones, appears to have been written with nothing but commercial success in mind.
It has since gained a fanbase that’s unusually hostile to any form of criticism, even for a modern internet fandom, which makes many critics hesitant to say anything negative about it.
This lack of criticism would be a problem for any story, good or bad, but particularly so when a modern series can be so easily summarized like this:
A white girl becomes queen of the savage natives, teaches them right from wrong, and then uses them as her own private army to save the world from zombies. During her campaign she gets most of them killed, and the story is more worried about giving its white protagonists the perfect happy ending.
Game of Thrones on Its Own Merits
Taken on its own merits, I consider Game of Thrones a failure in most respects. The characters are inconsistent, bland, reprehensible, and often bafflingly dim-witted.
Little in the story holds up to scrutiny, with characters hopping from one continent to another in a matter of hours, for example.
The morals range from stupid to repulsive. And it ends with the most putrid feel-good ending this side of Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters. If you’re lucky enough not to have experienced Game of Thrones, I suggest you keep it that way.
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