Alex: One question I keep coming back to is, what does this all look like to the common people of Westeros? Dany comes in, slaughters hundreds of thousands of people, but does so promising to revolutionize the country, tearing down the insular, corrupt families that have fought war after war forever. She is then slaughtered by her nephew and replaced by ... those exact same families, who have now decided that they can rule in everyone’s best interest. The supposed point of this new system is to do away with the rot and corruption that undid the old one. But Tyrion’s first act as Hand of the King was to reward a mercenary who blackmailed him and his brother! It’s a bad look.

Jo: Ah, Alex but recall how deeply local the people’s political allegiances are. It was smart of the show to emphasize those differences and community borderlines that still exist, even after the Last War. You can see the grudges being formed that will spark the next war into flames.

Not much on Game of Thrones has tickled me the way that Sam Tarly’s failed attempt to invent democracy did. After that, I was so sure they were going to decide to rule by council. Oligarchy it is, and so be it: This was a warped kind of Act of Union for Westeros. And Sansa even invented Scotland.

Ryu: The politics have been all over the place this season, but they went off the rails last night. In the final episode, we find that Dany’s story all along has been a parable about the dangers of revolutionary politics, as if she’s a kind of Lenin whose attempts to free the people will invariably result in a totalitarian cult of personality and drench the world in a sea of blood. I’m fine with that! But how does that square with the other political allegories and storylines that have been left by the wayside? Just seems like this was shoehorned in at the last minute out of convenience, much like the council resembled Athena descending from Mt. Olympus to calm the Furies.