Spoiler alert: Don’t read on unless you have watched the fourth episode of Game of Thrones season two. For the purposes of this blog we are also going to (hopefully) avoid book spoilers.

Sarah Hughes’s episode three blog

“I have no desire to sit on the Iron Throne”

We’ve heard a great deal about war in the past three weeks. Now, in some of the most brutal scenes this dark-hearted show has screened, we were finally shown its cost – and not just at the charnel house of Harrenhal where Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie tried to keep their sanity amid torture and executions. It transpires that you can tell a great deal about a person from their attitude to war.

This week we learned that Robb, like the Robert he was named for, can fight a battle but has no grasp on what happens when the last fight has been won. By contrast Littlefinger fights his war with words, playing all sides againsthe other, owing loyalty to none. For Renly war is still a joke, a game played among friends, in which the best man wins because he’s the most charming. His brother Stannis sees war as a weapon, deployed solely to bring him to the throne he believes is his by divine right.

To Tyrion war is strategy – you move your pieces, slowly, placing your pawns, knowing when to sacrifice a bishop (or a Maester) – and for Joffrey it’s a blunt instrument of fear. The Mountain, like Joffrey, rules through brute force; Lord Tywin has more wit, and understands that the war is won by the man who makes best use of his resources. For both Arya and Dany war is vengeance. Neither of them yet have the power to fully realise their desires but Dany’s invocation of her dragons and Arya’s solemnly whispered prayer serve as a comfort and a belief that their day too might come.

“When my dragons are grown we take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who have wronged me”

One of the most interesting things about this show is the way in which our sympathies can change. Dany is particularly interesting in this respect. On one hand her speech to the Qartheen lords was enjoyably rabble-rousing; on the other she essentially threatened to destroy civilisations without much thought.

Robb was criticised for his lack of planning by the sexy doctor from Volantis he conveniently bumped into on the battlefield.

However, it doesn’t seem that Dany has much more of a plan –or not one beyond burning everyone, flying dragons, burning more people, sitting on the Iron Throne, and being hailed as rightful Queen. Hurrah. I love Emilia Clarke’s performance and it’s hard not to root for Dany given that she started last season with nothing. But it’s also true that hers is power untempered by advice – Ser Jorah is seemingly too in awe of/ in lust with her to be effective. Brutality remains brutality even when uttered by a character you like.

“A man without friends is a man without power”

Oh, Renly. If only that was actually true. It was hinted last week that the youngest Baratheon might be dangerously out of his depth – and so it proved. Renly is charming, likeable and charismatic – a man with many friends – yet he underestimated his unloved brother’s greater desire for power with what may prove to be fatal results. By the time Stannis told the uncomfortable Davos that “cleaner ways don’t win wars” it was clear that the older Baratheon was prepared to use any art, no matter how dark, in his quest for the Iron Throne. Small wonder, then, that the exasperated Catelyn, all too aware of war’s real cost, earlier threatened to bang both their heads together.

Additional thoughts

• The jury is no longer out (if it ever really was): Joffrey Baratheon is the most loathsome character in Game of Thrones and Jack Gleeson deserves praise for a finely tuned performance. The sick delight with which he asked “Can you hit her?” was queasily compelling – and we’re surely counting down the weeks until he and Tyrion have the mother of all confrontations.

• He might not be much of a strategist but top marks to Renly for seeing through Littlefinger. His “I don’t like you” speech had me off my sofa and cheering.

• In an unremittingly gloomy episode it was good to learn that Lannister guards spend as much time as commentators on this blog talking about who’s the hardest man in the seven kingdoms. I still say Tywin for sheer ruthlessness but their discussion about Jaime v Loras v The Mountain made me laugh.

• My cold, hard subeditor’s heart was delighted when Stannis outed himself as grammar pedant, rebuking Davos for using less when he meant fewer. Stannis, there’s surely a job waiting for you here if only you renounce the whole “Red Woman, shadow babies, belief that all ends justify your means” thing.

Violence count

The tendrils of war spreading across the Seven Kingdoms meant that this was an exceptionally violent episode. It featured: one death by Direwolf; one graphic foot amputation; two separate uses of a crossbow as a weapon of intimidation; the continued humiliation of Sansa, stripped and beaten on Joffrey’s orders; the brutal whipping of a whore again at Joffrey’s command; two torture scenes (one of which was interrupted); a couple of backhanders; several dead bodies and one (slightly camp) Qartheen blood oath.

Nudity count

A low week by Game of Thrones standards – albeit it with two unpleasant, unforgettable scenes. Continuing last week’s admirable policy of sex scenes that provide insight into a character, this week saw an almost unwatchable moment where Tyrion’s attempt to tame Joffrey by sending him two whores backfired spectacularly. It might have been hard to watch but – all credit to episode writer Vanessa Taylor – it felt absolutely true to Joffrey’s sadistic nature. Similarly the scene where Melisandre birthed her shadow baby was as creepy as it reads on the page – a reminder that George R R Martin is as much a writer of horror as of epic fantasy.

Random Brit of the week

Yet another Irishman as the wonderful stage actor Michael McElhatton (who stole the show in the National Theatre production of The Seafarer) made a brief, unsettling appearance as Roose Bolton delivering the line: “In my family they say a naked man has few secrets, a flayed man has none” with just the right amount of chilly distain.