Like a shimmering of the dark air

Game of Thrones season eight, episode two: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

The episode is written by Bryan Cogman and directed by David Nutter. This is widely considered the last good ep. of GoT, but I don't necessarily agree. Anyway, this chapter covers Jaime pleading his case to Dany, whose father he famously murdered bringing an end to the reign of the Targ dynasty, and with the aid of Brienne vouching for him he is allowed a place at Winterfell. Dany and company learn that the Lannister army will not be coming to reenforce the North because Cersei, famous deceiver, in a shocking twist lied to everyone. Amidst Winterfell being made ready to withstand the army of the dead, Dany struggles with her councilors and makes overtures to Sansa, while Jon becomes aloof and incommunicative. Battle plans are drawn up and everyone settles in to await the arrival of the White Walkers, as below the castle Jon finally confesses his parentage to Dany, who does not take it well but is given no time to process as in that moment the army of the dead finally arrives.

There's a lot going on here, but I want to take this moment to pause and talk about one particular thing that is very near and dear to my cold, dead little heart.

Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand, wer ist die schoenste im ganzen Land?

The scene in this episode between Sansa and Dany is of great interest to me. With foreknowledge of the ending, S8 is trying very hard to position Sansa as The Good Queen, as a positive representation of female leadership, to counterbalance the way the narrative is turning against Dany. The entire episode, actually, is working double time to try to show that, see, look at all these women who have been (allowed) into traditionally male roles, what progress we've made. Look at all these exceptions so that we may not change the rules. It isn't that Dany's claim to the throne is being rejected because she's a woman, certainly not, no, it's because she's secretly an evil bad queen and only someone as smart and decerning and Good(TM) as Sansa can see that.

But, of course, this assertion requires scrutiny and interrogation.

So. Let's talk about Sansa.

Sansa's arc, especially in the last few seasons, is a fascinating one.

When Jon is crowned King in the North, Sansa's resentment is palpable. Despite his legal status as a bastard at the time, Jon is crowned ahead of Sansa who has the better claim based on birthright as the eldest surviving trueborn sibling of the last King in the North, Robb Stark. But Jon is crowned instead of her, chosen by the north men to be their leader despite the fact that technically Sansa won the battle to reclaim Winterfell as it was only due to the arrival of the reinforcements she secured from the Vale that the tide was turned. Yet Jon is given the credit for winning the "Battle of the Bastards" anyway, and is crowned regardless of what actually happened. No one even seems to consider giving Sansa a crown, and what she feels is rightfully hers is given away to a man because he is a man. She is skipped over as a woman.

Jon, as King in the North, departs to treat with the newly arrived Dragon Queen, Daenerys. In his absence, Sansa begins gathering power and loyalty to herself. When Arya returns to Winterfell, she correctly recognizes that Sansa is preparing a contingency plan at best and something of a soft coup against Jon at worst, which makes Arya rightly furious. But through the events of S7, Arya's loyalty shifts to Sansa (whether or not that makes sense is a rant for another day) rather than Jon.

Then, Jon returns to the North. No longer a king, he has bent the knee, giving up his crown to Dany, and effectively ending the northern quest for independence, reunifying the north with the rest of the Seven Kingdoms the ruling of which Dany claims birthright over. Jon, who only had his crown because Sansa was skipped over as a woman, gives that crown away to a woman. But it's the wrong woman. A Targaryen woman. A Targaryen woman who shows up with a massive army of foreigners and two fully grown, extremely large, and scary dragons, presumably promised to help reenforce the North against the Night King in exchange for Jon bending the knee.

And worst of all? Dany is beautiful, wields tremendous power, the kind of power denied Sansa, and Jon is obviously smitten with her. Jon recognizes Dany's sovereignty, but not Sansa's. What a nightmare for the Lady of Winterfell.

The cold fury that wafts off of Sansa like dry ice when she first greets Dany can be understood very well in this context. When she confronts Jon about Dany, snarling the words "a Targaryen queen," Jon responds that Dany isn't her father ("The Mad King"). To which Sansa sneers, "No, she's much prettier."

This all reads as very clear and poisonous levels of envy. Dany has everything that has been denied to Sansa, including Jon's respect but possibly more importantly the northern crown. And I am reminded of a trope of which I am exceedingly fond: The Evil Fairytale Queen.

I happen to be reading the final book of the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer right now, which adapts Snow White to a science fiction setting, so evil fairytale queens are on my mind (Levana <3). I also happen to be rewatching House of the Dragon at the same time that I'm doing this revisiting of GoT S8, and the episode I watched recently was We Light the Way, a.k.a Alicent's transformation into--I don't care about authorial intent or fan interpretation, I care about what's actually there in the text--the archetypal Evil Stepmother Queen. Folklore and fairytales also happen to be a hobby of mine, more generally, and I just read the original German Brothers Grimm version of Snow White, so let's get into it:

Bring Me Her Heart in a Box (or her lungs and liver, I ain't too picky)

First of all, I love me an evil queen. And in GoT we have several candidates for Evil Queen. Cersei is the most obvious for most of the show, and the final season also posits Dany as The Mad Queen, but I shall put forward Sansa as fitting the trope. I'm not particularly interested in whether any of these women are Objectively Bad or Objectively Good, but I am concerned with who the narrative puts forward as Suddenly Evil (Dany), vs. who seems to escape the condemnation of the narrative (Sansa), vs. who gets exonerated at the last moment (Cersei).

This is where the tension between what the viewer is clearly meant to think and what is actually narratively viable come into conflict. We're meant to understand Sansa's dislike of Dany as prescience; Sansa, The Good One, was able to see through to Dany's true nature before everyone else (especially the men). The previous episode begins this motif with Sansa calling attention to Dany's beauty and implying that Jon has been bewitched by that beauty into ignoring the warning signs. This motif will continue through the season of characters calling attention to Dany's beauty and juxtaposing it to her waging of violent war; as if the two things have something innately, and sinisterly, to do with each other. As if the two things are linked somehow. Dany's violence is only possible because of her beauty/her violence is especially bad because she's beautiful.

But within the context of Sansa's arc, does this hold water? Is she just smarter than everyone and, being "immune" to Dany's charms, can see the truth? Or can we see how Sansa's life has set her up to be uniquely resentful of Dany for other reasons, reasons better supported by the narrative? Because up to this point, Dany's behavior has fallen within the normal range of men in her position, and she hasn't been especially antagonistic to the North. Quite the opposite; she has pledged her not inconsiderable resources to helping the North. She's also been in the North for maybe a day, so what could Sansa have possibly observed in that time to make her this pathologically determined to dislike and mistrust Dany? All we've got is what Sansa herself has said and directly implied: that she thinks Jon bent the knee to Dany because Dany is pretty and because Jon is in love with her. In Sansa's view, Jon loves Dany enough to give up his crown for her, but it never occurred to him to give up that crown for Sansa.

Envy: Noun - a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck. Verb - desire to have a quality, possession, or other desirable attribute belonging to (someone else).

What is the attribute of Dany's that Sansa blames for Jon's behavior, that she believes has further robbed her of what she's entitled to? Beauty.

Jon gave away what Sansa sees as rightfully hers to another woman. A beautiful and powerful woman. And Sansa is furiously envious. This makes more sense to me as motivation and it tracks with what is presented on screen. Dany has everything that Sansa wants and, eventually, Sansa will devise a plan to use Jon against Dany in a way which mirrors what's happened to Sansa. Sansa is going to betray Jon's secrets, utilizing the very patriarchy which has so severely harmed her to bring Dany down by making Jon an obstacle to the legitimacy of Dany's claim on her birthright.

This echoes in some ways the story of Alicent Hightower, who, rather than try to bring the patriarchy down, instead weaponizes it against Rhaenyra to try to usurp the throne for her son. Princess Rhaenys aptly describes this behavior as follows: "You wish not to be free, but to make a window in the wall of your prison." The key difference between Sansa and Alicent is perhaps that Alicent "toils in the service of men," and Sansa has absolutely no respect for men by this point in the narrative and instead ruthlessly seeks her own personal advancement over anyone else, man or woman. But she is also most certainly not interested in advancing women who are not her. She seeks only to free herself.

So, let's return to this scene between Sansa and Dany. In particular, the fact that Sansa treats Northern independence as an open question that needs an answer. What gets my goat about this is that the King in the North already bent the knee and pledged fealty. The question is closed, and Dany has every right to treat it as closed. But Sansa, who hasn't respected a single decision Jon has made up until this point and has publicly disagreed with him in front of his subjects, is openly refusing to acknowledge Jon's final act as king as having any validity. She didn't sign off on it, so it isn't valid. Rather than hold another woman up, Sansa can only seek to tear her down, because Sansa wants what Dany has.

The thing about evil stepmothers and evil queens (and evil stepmother queens) in fairytales is how they always seem to have other women/girls as their objects of envy. The trope is inherently about women harming other women and why that may occur. As an uncomplicated heroine whose ascension to the northern throne I am meant to feel uncomplicated happiness about, Sansa is problematic for me. I bounce off of that story. But Sansa as a darkly ascendant queen, whose goodness has been beat out of her by the patriarchy, who has twisted and warped into the image of her first nemesis (Cersei), a bitter and envious woman who will destroy other powerful women, put her male family members in the line of fire, to get what's "hers"? I will gobble that shit right up. That's compelling as fuck.

So, I shall blithely ignore the authorial intent/popular fan interpretation, supplanting it for my own meaning, my own interpretation, thank you very much.

Waiting for a furniture delivery, so have some off the cuff Targaryen feelings.

[HOTD SPOILERS UP TO AND INCLUDING S1X08]

I said at the outset of House of the Dragon that one of my primary focuses is the Targaryens (and by extension the Velaryons) as fundementally a people of diaspora. And although flaws have crept their way into HotD, it remains true that the show is consistently nailing this (for me) most important aspect.

Daemon and Rhaenyra returning to King's Landing to find the Red Keep stripped of Targaryen (Valyrian) heraldry, erasing that ancient history with the religion of the Andals. Literally painting over the last remnants of Old Valyria with the Faith of the Seven. The feeling of loss and erasure of something more than just this one family's ancestry, but a whole culture. The lack of appreciation or understanding on the part of the Hightowers because it isn't their history, it's not important to them.

This drives at the heart of an element of Game of Thrones that went largely unexplored; that non-Targ kings and queens will happily appropriate Targaryen symbols of power (not least of the which the Iron Throne itself) in order to bolster the perception of legitimacy for their own claims, or believing these symbols will protect them, but without true understanding or reverence for what any of these things mean (Cersei thinking the Red Keep will protect her from Dany, never clocking that she's cowering inside the house Dany's family built).

Perhaps the most poignant example is Aegon the Conqueror's dagger. A prophecy of the utmost importance for Westeros' survival hidden within the blade using the last of the Valyrian pyromancers' magic, held sacred and passed from king to heir, until (through the Dance of the Dragons) its significance is lost. Eventually, this dagger ends up disused, discarded, thrown into the corner of some armory somewhere to be plucked up at random to be used as a murder weapon, starting yet another war. The prophecy in the blade is never uncovered despite its use by a Stark who does not understand its meaning to end the Long Night.

There is a deep and soulful sadness embedded at the core of the story of House Targaryen. At rock bottom, they are a lost and homeless people trying desperately to rebuild their home on stranger shores. They conquer, they build, they destroy, they burn for home, but home is forever denied them. I am perpetually uninterested in the question of whether this Targaryen or that Targaryen was right/wrong, good/evil. I don't find moral absolutism to be at all the most compelling thing about them (which is not me excusing any particular Targ for any particular actions). What I am interested in, is the many ways that the Valyrian diaspora expresses itself through them; all the failed attempts at returning to a lost home.

Anyway. The Targaryens make me very sad.

So, House of the Dragon.

[Spoilers and such]

I am just...a little bit obsessed with the Targaryens as essentially a people of diaspora.

The Houses Targaryen and Velaryon as the last survivors of a culture (and, honestly, a race) that has been lost to the wider world. But the Targs in particular, since House Velaryon has been in Westeros longer. The Targs who foresaw and fled the Doom of Valyria but who are constantly trying to go home. Building shrines to their dragons when they die, dragons they continue to name for gods and goddesses of Valyria that no one worships anymore including themselves as necessity called for them to convert to the Faith of the Seven to appease this land they've "conquered." They all speak the Common Tongue but studiously preserve their own mother tongue that almost no one else in Westeros speaks. Rhaenyra and Daemon in particular speaking to each other in High Valyrian like they're trying to rebuild the home between them that they can never return to.

The deep longing and sadness at the core of this family, conquering but never belonging, ruling but never resting. Forever outsiders, forever foreigners, forever just a little bit other. They are of no one and no place, always looking to the skies with a longing that aches, borne aloft on dragonback with wings that can take them anywhere except for home. And the tragedy that they cannot even find peace amongst themselves, and are doomed, like Valyria, to destroy themselves.

And all of that is so clear in House of the Dragon, and I'm absolutely living for it. This was always my favorite aspect of Daenerys' story in ASoIaF/GoT, what was always the most resonant for me. It just so happens as I write this that in my GoT rewatch I've started S5, which is the season with the most Sehnsucht re: Dany as a Targ, which is perhaps why I am pining so hard myself.

Anyway...

I've often said about Game of Thrones that you can have all the gorgeous sets and locations in the world, beautiful costume design, a (mostly) good cast, but none of it matters if the writing is bad. HotD proves that in spades, because the only functional difference between it and GoT is the quality of the writing. It's the same world, drawing from source material from the same author, with the same production value and resources at its disposal, but even just this first episode is miles better than its predecessor. And that's because, frankly, it has entirely different writing staff and showrunners.

Ryan Condal was the biggest unknown quantity to me going into the premiere, having seen none of his previous work, and he's the headwriter and showrunner, so I was RATHER ANXIOUS. But that anxiety seems to have been misplaced. The writing of this first episode is superb and better than anything GoT ever made me suffer through.

The opening sentence of the Fire & Blood chapter that this first episode is named for, The Heirs of the Dragon, is as follows: "The seeds of war are oft planted during times of peace." Which is a great way to describe the episode, to be honest. It does a beautiful job establishing the state of the world during the height of the Targaryen dynasty just before its self-inflicted decline and showing in loving detail exactly what is about to be lost. I still question the decision to begin with the Dance of the Dragons, which starts halfway through the first volume of Fire & Blood, rather than the Conquest which begins the dynasty. But if you are going to begin a story here, this is how to do it.

I just. I'm out of poetry. I've been working on this post off and on for days. So just know: I'm a tiny bit taken with this show. And relieved beyond measure. Maybe finally, finally, we're going to get an adaptation of this source material that isn't embarrassing to admit to liking.