Game of Thrones

“A Golden Crown”

May 22, 2011

And you thought Jory getting eye-stabbed and Ned getting hamstrung (calfstrung?) was upping the stakes on GOT. Nah, that was merely a little snack before war, which is getting pretty close after this episode’s gasp-inducing second half.

Nuts and bolts summary

Ned comes out of a poppy-induced grog with Cersei (ack!) and King Robert (phew!) standing over him. Robert’s King Voice orders him to make peace with Jaime, which seems like a big ask since Jaime ordered the killing of Ned’s guards, eyedaggered Jory to death and then rode off after one of his lackeys speared Ned’s leg.

Cersei tries some history rewriting conniving stuff about Ned the brothel-visiting aggressor. She also goes at Robert:

“I took you for a king.” (Rhymes with zing!)

“I should wear the armor and you the gown.” (Rhymes with zown!)

Robert takes about all he can and then he gets slaphappy. He regrets it later claiming, “that was not kingly.”

Ned suggests war is coming. Robert tells him to have his wife return the Imp. Robert’s going hunting. Ned’s been redeputized as Hand of the King.

Cut to Dany who puts a dragon egg in a fire for a few minutes and then picks it up. It doesn’t burn her hands. Hmm…. this seems dragony.

Bran has another raven dream. He awakes and his saddle is ready. He’s riding along with Theon and Robb who are talking about the nastiness that went down in King’s Landing. They’re arguing about war and other things that teens argue about when they notice Bran’s gone missing.

Is that Barber’s Adagio for Strings (op. 11!) being piped into the forest? If so, that’s bad news. Also bad news: When a moving camera is pointed up through the trees. Nothing good happens after that, whether it’s a Coen Bros. film or an episode of The Sopranos.

Three ragamuffins (Wildlings is the official name) creep up on Bran and they threaten to cut off his doodle and shove it in his mouth, which seems like a mean thing to say to a 10 year old, even a lippy one, which Bran can be. There’s talk of using him as a hostage and the name Mance Rayder is dropped. He’ll mean much more later. But a bit of background that doesn’t spoil anything to come: Rayder was once a member of the Night’s Watch who broke his oath and has had some organizational sway among the Wildlings north of The Wall. I’ll leave it at that.

Anyway the Wildlings nick Bran’s leg cutting him down and they have a little discussion that reveals they deserted Rayder’s crew to go south where there are “no White Walkers.” (Them again.)

Robb finally finds his brother and offers to let the Wildlings live if they let Bran go, and they refuse with emphasis in the form of a guy charging with an ax. He and Robb dance a bit but fairly quickly Robb opens his throat with a sound that resembles that of an upended watering can.

Robb grabs a Wildling (her name is Osha), a Wildling grabs Bran. Theon puts an arrow through the guy’s chest and then he and Robb argue about whether doing so put Bran’s life in danger. I’m with Theon. They spare Osha’s life.

Cut to Tyrion who nearly rolls off the ledge of his Sky Cell. He offers gold to the guard who whacks on him with a little club.

Cut to Arya who doesn’t want to practice with the sword as Jory’s death is weighing heavy on her.

“How can you be as quick as a snake or as quiet as a shadow when you are somewhere else?” Syrio tells her, the exact same thing my old man told me when I talked about dropping out of sword school. “There is only one god and his name is death. And there’s only one thing we say to death: ‘Not today.'” Guess that’s what happened with the rapture Saturday.

Cut to Dany in a Dothraki ceremony. Her challenge, if she chooses to accept it, is to eat a horse’s heart. If you’ve ever watched the Kentucky Derby, there’s lots of pre-show commentary about how certain horses have big hearts. The organ that Dany devours is bigger. It’s about the size of a dodgeball only if the dodgeball is bloodydrippy and glistening. Khal Drogo likes this, but as wedding rituals go, I don’t see this one taking hold in 2011. Dany gags once but honks the whole thing down.

Viserys, referring to her unborn son: “He won’t be a true Targaryen. He won’t be a dragon.”

What a sniveling runt.

Dany declares in her new native tongue that “a prince rides inside me,” which sounds unpleasant. He’ll be named Rhaego, a sweet tip to her dead older brother, who was dragonier by far than dimwit sib she’s stuck with.

Viserys tries to steal Dany’s dragon eggs, thinking he can sell them to buy a ship and an army. THIS is a plotline I’d like GRRM to have followed. It would’ve been like the Children’s Crusade only with worse leadership. Ser Jorah puts the kibosh on the theft.

Cut to Tyrion, who again negotiates with the guard to get a moment before Lysa. He says he wishes to confess his crimes.

What follows is a delivery of eloquence and lewdness delivered wondrously: “I’m a vile man, I confess it,” Tyrion says. “I’ve lied and cheated, gambled and whored. I’m not particularly good at violence but I’m good at convincing others to do violence for me. You want specifics I suppose . . .”

The list is great. It starts modestly enough with stealing the robe of a woman bathing outside. He stuffed feces into his uncle’s boot and blamed a squire who was flogged. And then things get dirty. When Tyrion was 12, “I milked my eel into a pot of turtle stew.” His sister ate it, which is the best indignity put upon Cersei thus far in the series.

The crowd loves it. Lysa shuts down his act, though. Tyrion demands a trial. Lysa says her child (that’d be the breast-fed 8-or-so-year-old) will listen and give judgment. I can say that such a system applied today would unclog our court systems instantly. But Tyrion demands trial by combat, which would just slow them back down again. (Or would it?)

Lysa has her guy, who is armored like a tank. Bronn, who very recently helped Cat and her entourage fight off an attack, steps up for the little guy. He’s armored like a dude who’s just a little chilly. Bronn, clearly, isn’t about allegiance.

Cut to King Robert hunting. More Barber/Adagio, more upward shots through the trees. More Robert drinking, though that’s hardly ominous in and of itself.

Cut to Ned, still looking achy, sitting on the Iron Throne. A guy is describing carnage in his village: death, rape, burned children, even by GOT standards, it seems pretty severe. People were cut in half, a horse was beheaded.

Knowing glances around the room!

No need to type that modus operandi into a criminal database. It’s Lannister’s “mad dog” bannerman. The Mountain That Rides. The Mountain. He has more names than a boxer. Ser Gregor Clegane. The Horse Head Cutter Offer.

And maybe here, dear friends, is where the feces and the fan meet like chocolate and peanut butter. Sure, Ned’s investigation has yielded some leads. Sure, one might argue that a guy tossing a 10-year-old boy out a window is really where it all starts. But for our purposes, the second half of this series begins with this moment.

Ned orders a group of 100 men “to bring justice to the disgraced knight Gregor Clegane and all those who share in his crimes. I denounce him and strip him of all ranks and titles of all lands and holdings and sentence him to death.”

Whoa, right? Just getting started, actually. This is just a bacon-wrapped scallop before the steak.

Grand Maester Pycelle suggests Ned wait for Robert before handing down such sentences. Grand Maester Pycelle didn’t get stabbed in the leg after his buddy took a dirk through his peeper.

OK, we had the “ka” here comes the “boom.”

Ned orders a raven be sent to Tywin Lannister. “He has been summoned to court to answer for the crimes of his bannerman.” He must “arrive in a fortnight or be labeled an enemy of the crown and a traitor.”

Had credits rolled, this would’ve been a monster episode. But this is Game of Thrones where just the threat of violence is like tofurkey and sprouts.

Cut to the trial by combat where the unarmored Bronn snips and slices at Lysa’s rep, nicking his midsection, hamstringing him and tripping him. It seems kind of mean. He wears the guy down, holds up his arm for a cruel moment and sends his sword down through the poor sap’s chest so far as to nearly give him an iron doink. There’s blood. And then the loser gets chunked into a pit and down to the clouds below.

Son Robert is slow as ever on the uptake. “Is it over?”

Tyrion is free.

Cut to Sansa being awful to Septa Mordane when her soulmate, the excessively awful Joffrey comes in with a necklace as an apology for being a jacknut. “You’ll be a queen some day, blah blah blah. . . . I’ll never disrespect you, you’re my lady, blah blah blah.”

Cut to Roz, everybody’s favorite whore, who is headed to King’s Landing. We learned early on that the trip from King’s Landing to Winterfell takes some number of months. That she’s chosen to do so in the back of a turnip cart is curious. Unless she likes turnips. Theon asks her to see “it” one more time and tosses her a coin. She pulls up her dress and he gets a flash of turnip.

Cut to Ned telling the girls they’re getting shipped back to Winterfell. They’re not happy.

Sansa: “I’m supposed to marry Prince Joffrey and be his queen and have his babies!”

Me: “I’m supposed to watch TV and write about it and not have to mop up vomit from between the keys on my laptop!”

Arya: “Seven hells.”

Me: “Well put, little sis.”

But jest aside, what comes next from Sansa’s stupid mouth prompts Revelation Time, though hardly a super big surprise to the sleuthier viewers.

Sansa: “He’ll be the greatest king there ever was. A golden lion. And I’ll give him sons with beautiful blonde hair.”

Me: “Say one more thing like involving you and Joffrey and implied intercourse and I swear I’ll neuter myself with a battle ax.”

Arya informs her nitwit sister that Jawfulry is a Baratheon. Their sigil is not a lion, it’s a stag. Sansa replies Jawfulry is nothing like “that old drunk king.” True. For starters, even puberty couldn’t give that twerd a King Voice.

Ned hobbles to the big boring book. One Baratheon after another: black hair, black hair, black hair. Then Aaron Carter. You can see how this would complicate matters greatly since it seems Robert’s true heir was the dead kid that Cersei told Cat about in episode 2 after Bran took his header. Jawfulry, it seems, might have a future picking the banjo since we’re led to believe it is the sisterschtupper Jaime, who can now answer to ‘pop’ or ‘uncle’ or, if you’re feeling plucky, “puncle.”

AND STILL this is not the end of this very meaty rib of an episode titled A Golden Crown. Mayhaps it’s a reference to Jawfulry’s crusted blonde hair? Better than that!

Cut to a drunk Viserys staggering into a Dothraki celebration. Ser Jorah tries to cut him off and gets a “Don’t touch me. No one touches the dragon.”

Khal Drogo informs him that his place in the celebration is sort of in the back.

Viserys: “That is no place for a king.”

Khal Drogo: “You are no king.” (Rhymes with sting!)

Viserys wants a crown or so he says. He makes like he’s going to cut out Dany’s fetus, which has been living large on the nutrient-rich horse heart while kicking around the womb.

Drogo promises him a crown that “men shall tremble to behold.”

Viserys, with SUCH tragic wussiness: “That was all I wanted . . . what I was promised.”

Drogo’s guys grab hold of him (“You can’t touch me! I am the dragon!”) and Drogo melts what appears to be a gold belt. Viserys appeals to his sister, but having had him 1. arrange a marriage for her, 2. say horrible things about letting horses rape her, 3. smack her around and threaten her time and again, and 4. repeatedly reference himself as “the dragon”, well, she’s kind of post-dragon. Oh and he’s not a dragon. Wanna know why? . . .

Because Khal Drogo pours the molten gold over Viserys’ head and the whiny violent twit screeches and convulses a moment before finally getting his crown only without the kingdom. If you’d asked me two days ago if I thought molten gold poured over a head caused near instant death I might’ve answered, “Ummmm, maybe?” The answer now is an assertive, YES. And as Ser Jorah Dany (thanks for the catch, Cynthia) points out, “He was no dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon.”

Now, finally — after threats galore, after a death sentence, after an accusation of treason, after a fight with Wildlings and a reference to the White Walkers, after a monster revelation about an incestbaby and after one head melting — credits roll.

The Scorecard (rated 1 to 10)



Holy fudge political decisions: 10+; Ned has been a figure of quiet endurance through most of this series. Turns out his breaking point is having his right-hand guy stabbed in the eye and having some Lannister lackey spear his leg. He’s used his moment keeping Robert’s throne warm to declare war against the Lannisters AND to serve up a death sentence to boot. This decision will have heavy implications.

Molten gold poured over a head: 10; and you’d be hard pressed to find a more deserving king for such a crown than Viserys. Nice thing about molden crowns? They come fitted.

Earplug-inducing Sansa dialog: 9; can’t comment further without mutilating myself.

Throat slittings: 5; One Wildling hardly counts.

Creepy shots of trees set to Barber’s Adagio for Strings: 9; but I suspect we’re not done with that construct. I don’t know why anybody would wander into the woods. Bad shizz goes down there.

Conniving/conspiracy: 3; mostly conniving and conspiracy has brought us to this gauntlet-tossing episode. But more to come.

Knight skewering: 8; Bronn’s weathered face says “Don’t trifle with me.”

One last word (or, really, words)



So much good stuff left to come. But I’ve admired the way the show’s creators, with the help of the author, have maintained the integrity of the book while still disassembling it and reassembling it in a way that makes for good TV. The nuances are all there for the taking should one want something more than just the cutting and conniving. Much as I frame Jaime (who was only in this episode in spirit, though it was a big spirit) as a despicable character there’s still something dense and chewy about the character. The look of disgust on his face after one of his guards wounds Ned last ep was telling. His character from the getgo has had his dignity challenged by Ned as having been a dirty warrior, a man with no nicks in his armor because he lacks the spine for proper honorable fighting.

Similarly it’s been rewarding (if difficult) to see Sean Bean’s Ned consumed by conspiracy. He’s a character so keen to avoid the quibbling nonsense in what some might call “the fray.” The longer he is away from Winterfell the further he is from its isolated security. Whether this is meant as allegory for any sort of isolationism, well, theorize away. It all goes back to his sigil, the direwolf, a creature one could imagine becoming snappy when removed from its environs. The longer Ned (so two-toned with his pale complexion and his black attire) stays in the heat the more he acts aggressively when confronted with slights to what he views as a white/black world, where people are either honorable or dishonorable.

And I’m a week late with a midterm A+ to Peter Dinklage for finding all the gray that George Martin put on the black and white pages for Tyrion.

I’ll refrain from any further teasing as to what’s to come for those unfamiliar with the books other than to say the show has thus far captured the source material’s fundamental aversion to sentimentality. That sums it up to me.

Game of Thrones airs on Sundays at 8 p.m. on HBO.