Game of Thrones Retrospective: “The Kingsroad”

Directed by: Tim Van Patten
Distributed by: HBO

Written by Anna Harrison

Overview

In these retrospectives, I will be looking back on “Game of Thrones” through my viewpoint as a fanatical fan of George R. R. Martin’s original book series, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Mostly, I suspect this will be an exercise in venting my frustration about the adaptation of the books and pointing out where things went wrong in my mind—and I have a lot to work out.

For ease of reference, the show “Game of Thrones” can be abbreviated as “GOT” or “Thrones,” and the books in “A Song of Ice and Fire” can be abbreviated as “ASOIAF.” 

The books in the series are “A Game of Thrones,” “A Clash of Kings,” “A Storm of Swords,” “A Feast for Crows,” “A Dance With Dragons,” and the as-yet unpublished “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream of Spring.” These can be abbreviated as “AGOT,” “ACOK,” “ASOS,” “AFFC,” “ADWD,” “TWOW,” and “ADOS.” 

Chapters within the book will be referred to by their point-of-view character and a Roman numeral indicating what chapter within the POV it is (ex., Catelyn I, Jaime II, Arya III, and so on), as Martin does not number his chapters nor name them besides indicating whose POV we are about to enter.

75/100

Season One, Episode Two: “The Kingsroad”

“Winter Is Coming” functioned as a solid, if not superb, opening episode for “Game of Thrones.” It introduced multiple plotlines cleanly, established the main houses of Westeros, and ended on such a shocking note (twincest!) that viewers simply had to tune into the next episode, thus setting us up for the rest of the season. With all that exposition out of the way, “The Kingsroad” gets room to breathe and explore the psyches of the characters; if “Winter Is Coming” draws you into the mysteries of Westeros, “The Kingsroad” convinces you to stick around for love of the people populating it.

On the surface, not much happens in “The Kingsroad,” for as its name implies, much of the episode is spent on that titular road: Ned (Sean Bean), Arya (Maisie Williams), and Sansa (Sophie Turner) travel to King’s Landing; Jon (Kit Harington) and Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) head north towards the Wall; across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) learns to navigate her marriage to Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) as she, her brother Viserys (Harry Lloyd), and advisor Jorah (Iain Glen) cross the Dothraki Sea (which is not an actual sea, but nonetheless a path to travel like the Kingsroad). Writers and showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss wisely don’t rush this downtime—something they will forget how to do later on when they opt for big explosions instead of a coherent narrative—and instead focus on unfurling these characters bit by bit for us, deepening our sympathies and thus our investment in the show. And, after sticking to the book nearly verbatim in the first episode, Benioff and Weiss foray into original scenes; for now, at least, they succeed—rather well, I might add. 

Take Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), for instance. In “Winter Is Coming,” Cersei is the typical evil queen: cold, cunning, and callous. In “The Kingsroad,” Cersei is still cold, cunning, and callous, but not without feeling. She may prefer that Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), who spied Cersei’s rendezvous with her twin brother, Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), stay unconscious and thus unable to tattle, but she shares a real moment of sympathy with Bran’s mother, Catelyn (Michelle Fairley). Cersei tells the story of her firstborn, a boy with black hair—which likely means, as we will later learn from Ned’s Gregor Mendel sleuthing, that the child was the trueborn son of King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), and not a bastard born of incest like the rest of Cersei’s children—who died of an illness soon after birth. Headey gives a masterclass performance here, balancing Cersei’s desire for self-preservation with genuine sorrow at the loss of a child. In one scene, Cersei goes from archetype to real person.

In the books, Cersei and Cat share no scenes after the feast at Winterfell, and as Cersei does not become a point of view character until “A Feast For Crows,” we cannot know her direct thoughts on the situation with Bran. But good adaptations should not be beholden to their source material (in fact, book-Cersei would have likely strangled any child of hers with Robert in the crib), and this additional scene reveals an unexpected side to Cersei that otherwise might not be found until much, much later.

Her twin, too, gets a quick moment of character work, though Jaime’s original scene is far less sympathetic: He finds Jon in the yard and immediately begins to disparage Jon and the Night’s Watch, mocking Jon’s good intentions. “I’m sure it will be thrilling to serve with such an elite force,” he says dryly. “And if not… it’s only for life.” Then Jaime walks away like the smug little bastard he is, leaving Jon to gape after him (Kit Harington spends most of this scene with nary a facial expression to be found and his mouth hanging open rather like a carp). While this is not as revelatory as Cersei’s scene with Cat, Jaime’s jibes to Jon are a perfect encapsulation of his character. Jaime was once in Jon’s shoes, believing in chivalry and the goodness of institutions—though for Jaime it was the Kingsguard rather than the Night’s Watch—but when reality and corruption soured that dream, Jaime turned to taunts and insults to cope with his disillusionment. When Jaime mocks Jon, he really mocks his younger self, the idiot who trusted the romantic stories of knights on horseback and maidens in towers. But don’t worry, Jaime! Soon enough you’ll meet Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) and realize that the stories can still come true… but that’s not for a couple of seasons.

Other characters also have their moment in the sun, though most of these come straight from Martin’s books. Jon gives Arya a sword, which she christens Needle; Tyrion slaps little snot Prince Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) around; we get our first glimpse of Sandor Clegane, aka the Hound (Rory McCann); Robert and Ned reminisce about the war whilst on the road, and Ned deflects questions of Jon’s parentage. 

Ned claims that Jon’s mother is a woman named Wylla, which gets no further explanation in the show. In the books, however, Wylla gets mentioned again as the old wet nurse of Edric Dayne, whom Arya will meet on the road. Edric—indeed, most of the Daynes—does not appear in “Thrones,” but mysteries surrounding the Daynes still abound in “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Better theorists than I have speculated about the family, but Ashara and Arthur Dayne in particular haunt the narrative in death (unless you believe that Ashara is actually Jyana Reed, safe at Greywater Watch); in fact, both Cat and Cersei believe Ashara to be the mother of Jon Snow. As we now know, Lyanna Stark is Jon’s mother, but good red herrings are a must in any mystery. It’s a shame that the Daynes get so little focus in the show, but Ned’s mention of Wylla should be enough to assuage viewers for now.

Daenerys, meanwhile, spends this episode getting raped.

Dany and Drogo’s relationship is a tricky one, both in “Thrones” and “ASOIAF.” In the former, Dany is seventeen, and neither her wedding night nor what comes afterwards is consensual. In the latter, Dany is merely thirteen when married off to Drogo, and while she consents that first time they have sex—consents as much as a thirteen-year-old can, which is to say that what happens is rape by our modern definition and still appalling no matter the Dothraki legality—Drogo consistently commits marital rape during their first weeks of marriage. I do not fault the showrunners for changing that wedding night scene to be nonconsensual as that “consent” in the books is dubious at best, and it makes for a cleaner arc for Dany.

I do, however, fault them for how they shoot sexual violence and, indeed, sex in general.

Across eight seasons and seventy-three episodes, “Thrones” only featured one female director: Michelle MacLaren, who directed two episodes in season three and two in season four. This is not to say that “Thrones” would have miraculously handled sex with more tact if a woman was at the helm, but it feels like important context when the male-directed camera leers at Emilia Clarke’s breasts as she gets assaulted by her brother or raped by her husband. While Martin does not shy away from sexual violence (and there is nothing inherently wrong with including sexual violence in a story), he prefers to linger on the brutality of the act rather than the victim’s legs, stomach, or breasts. This is not to say that he is “perfect” on that front, and there are plenty of women in his stories who exist only for brutalization, but imagine—for you book readers out there—if we had an on-page scene of Jeyne Poole getting raped that described her breasts in intricate, arousing detail. That is what this scene is like. In fact, Clarke has discussed how uncomfortable she felt on set during her plethora of nude scenes in early seasons, and while that seems more emblematic of an industry-wide problem than a Benioff-and-Weiss-set problem, this is merely a taste of what’s to come. That Dany ends the episode by taking charge of Drogo in bed and having consensual sex, thus claiming some of her agency, does not make what comes before it any better.

The issue of sexual violence in “Thrones” will only worsen as the show goes on and become more apparent as the quality lessens and its flaws become more obvious. While the problem is no less egregious in “The Kingsroad” than later on, it is at least sandwiched between the good character beats described earlier and the two major plot developments that occur in this episode: one, someone tries and fails to murder Bran Stark; two, Joffrey tries and succeeds in getting a peasant boy and Sansa’s direwolf, Lady, both killed. 

The first incident introduces another abiding mystery to the early seasons of “Thrones”: what are the White Walkers, who killed Jon Arryn, who is Jon Snow’s mother, and now, who sent the catspaw to kill Bran? It’s clumsily done—someone sets fire to the barn as a distraction and then sends a man to Bran’s room with a dagger—but still might have succeeded if not for Cat refusing to leave Bran’s side and the intervention of Summer, Bran’s direwolf. This catspaw sets off a chain of events that kickstarts the war already brewing between the Lannisters, Starks, and Baratheons. By the time the mastermind (if he can be called that) is revealed, said mastermind is already dead, and the ripple effects of his impulsive actions after this incident prove more interesting than the deed itself. The most important thing the catspaw does in “The Kingsroad” is to remind Catelyn Stark of her own agency and political prowess, as she guesses correctly that the Lannisters were involved in Bran’s tumble and decides to take matters into her own hands. After last episode’s embarrassing show, this is very welcome. 

The Lannister’s bad deeds are not only confined to Winterfell, however. As the King’s entourage makes its way to King’s Landing, Arya befriends a butcher’s son named Mycah (Rhodri Hosking); she thinks nothing of their class differences and the two practice swordfighting with wooden sticks. Naturally, Joffrey and Sansa stumble upon this scene and Joffrey, being the classist dipshit that he is, intimidates Mycah and threatens him with his actual sword before Arya’s direwolf, Nymeria, attacks Joffrey, and Arya promptly tosses the Prince’s sword into the river before running away.

Throughout “ASOIAF” and “Thrones,” Arya often finds herself in the company of commoners, serving as our point of view on how the eventual War of the Five Kings affects the smallfolk of Westeros. She stands in stark (ha) contrast to Sansa, who has absorbed the stories told to her about noble lords and ladies and does not think to disobey the Westerosi feudal system—to Sansa’s mind, if someone is a prince, a princess, or some other title, they must be good, and therefore Prince Joffrey must be right. In the books, our direct glimpse into Sansa’s mind via her POV chapters helps ease the dissonance between how she sees Joffrey and how he behaves, whereas show-Joffrey is so abjectly horrible that it makes Sansa seem like an idiot rather than a naïve child whose only crime is to believe in the chivalric romances told to her. 

Regardless. When Cersei demands “justice” for her son, Sansa—believing that the Queen must have her best interests at heart but still trying to remain loyal to her family—claims she doesn’t remember what happened, and so Cersei orders Arya’s direwolf killed. Since Nymeria has vanished, Sansa’s poor direwolf, Lady, gets the knife instead.

As Ned kills Lady on the Kingsroad, Bran wakes up in Winterfell.

In this single cut from the condemned direwolf to Bran’s opened eyes, we see the benefits of a filmed adaptation. Within Martin’s limited POV structure in “ASOIAF,” this moment cannot exist; while he positions these chapters (Eddard III and Bran III) side-by-side, the juxtaposition is not nearly as strong. In “Thrones,” it’s a gut punch: only death may pay for life, as Mirri Maz Duur (Mia Soteriou in a few episodes) will teach Daenerys by the end of the season. This has been shown over and over in “ASOIAF,” from the tragedy at Summerhall to the resurrection of Lady Stoneheart (much, much more on that show omission later). By using the visual medium to its fullest extent, “Thrones” conveys this in mere seconds and does what Martin, bound by the written word, cannot. 

It is a moment that exemplifies everything that can be good about adaptations—and, unfortunately, everything that can go wrong. 

The first season of “Game of Thrones” had a tiny budget, at least relative to what the cost would balloon to in later seasons. Sacrifices had to be made, and book-Bran’s dream before waking up gets slaughtered upon the altar of the HBO accounting team. This is not to say that what they came up with in its place—the simple but effective cut between Lady’s death and Bran’s awakening—is bad; in fact, as stated above, it’s quite clever. 

But take Bran III in the book: 

It seemed as though he had been falling for years.

Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness, but Bran did not know how to fly, so all he could do was fall.

Maester Luwin made a little boy of clay, baked him till he was hard and brittle, dressed him in Bran’s clothes, and flung him off a roof. Bran remembered the way he shattered. “But I never fall,” he said, falling.

The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there. Even in dreams, you could not fall forever. He would wake up in the instant before he hit the ground, he knew. You always woke up in the instant before you hit the ground.

And if you don’t? the voice asked.

The ground was closer now, still far far away, a thousand miles away, but closer than it had been. It was cold here in the darkness. There was no sun, no stars, only the ground below coming up to smash him, and the grey mists, and the whispering voice. He wanted to cry.

Not cry. Fly.

“I can’t fly,” Bran said. “I can’t, I can’t…”

How do you know? Have you ever tried? (Bran III, “AGOT”)

This dream continues, with the three-eyed crow (aka Brynden Rivers, aka Bloodraven, but that’s not important right now) urging Bran to fly. Through this dream, Bran sees his family, gazing upon Robb (Richard Madden), Catelyn, Ned, Arya, Sansa, and finally Jon:

Bran’s chapters in “ASOIAF” are soaked in this kind of imagery, calling to mind a bad, mad trip: images of death and life wrapped up in one, visions of the past echoed by visions of the future, and all the while the three-eyed crow whispering in his ear. Martin’s world, contrary to what “Thrones” might have you believe, is one of bright colors and vibrant magic; in erasing this vision—no matter how legitimate the reason—the show sets a precedent. It’s still a fantasy show, but one that prides itself in being grounded or gritty or realistic, and as time goes on, and as that idea grows to form the backbone of the show’s identity, we lose out on the magic. By losing out on the magic, we erase pivotal moments from multiple plotlines, but most especially Bran’s; hell, he even gets written out of season five entirely. Thus, when Bran becomes King of Westeros in the endgame, it comes out of nowhere and the writers have to rely on the most dogshit reasoning in the history of television. “Who has a better story than Bran the Broken?” Tyrion will infamously ask in season eight. Judging by the show’s handling of Bran, literally anyone else has a better story. 

And so, in removing Bran’s dream here, “Thrones” sets into motion a domino effect that will nearly topple the whole thing.

Stray Observations:

• Famous last words from Jaime Lannister: “Even if the boy lives, he’ll be a cripple, a grotesque. Give me a good clean death any day.”
• Famous last words from Jon Snow to Robb Stark: “You Starks are hard to kill.”
• Famous last words from Ned Stark to Jon Snow: “The next time we see each other, we’ll talk about your mother.”
• Famous last words from Theon Greyjoy to Robb Stark: “If it comes to [war], you know I’ll stand behind you.”
• Tyrion’s breakfast order in this episode is practically word-for-word from the books. That breakfast scene also introduces Joffrey’s siblings, Myrcella (Aimee Richardson) and Tommen (Callum Wharry), though both will be recast later.
• That scene between Cat and Jon—where Jon goes to say goodbye to a comatose Bran and Cat does her best to chase him away—is worse in the books. She even says, “It should have been you,” which some fans take to mean that Cat is the reincarnation of Satan himself (Jon II, “AGOT”). This is false and, in my opinion, a lot of this hate is rooted in misogyny, but the intricate dynamics of the “ASOIAF”/“GOT” fandoms would warrant its own separate series.
• Unrelated to the show, but man, Martin does such a masterful job with Ned’s chapters in “AGOT.” Ned must avoid thinking about Jon’s parentage without making it obvious, discuss both Wylla and Ashara without betraying their relationship to Jon, and Martin makes it seem so effortless that we never stop to wonder why Ned never directly addresses the thing.
• I really can’t defend the brief, sexy scene between Dany and her handmaiden Doreah (Roxanne McKee) as Doreah teaches Dany how to pleasure a man. That is straight from the books, though in general the show has far more “lesbians-only-because-it’s-hot-to-the-guys-watching” moments than “ASOIAF.”
• Nymeria doesn’t appear again in the show until much, much later, but makes occasional appearances in the books via Arya’s dreams. She even pulls Catelyn’s body out of the Trident river post-Red Wedding, which becomes an important plot point later. Lady Stoneheart, I mourn your loss every day.
• Renly, Robert’s youngest brother, does not make an appearance in the show until next episode, where he’s played by Gethin Anthony; in the books, he joins Robert’s entourage on the Kingsroad and laughs himself out of the room when he realizes that Joffrey got bested by a nine-year-old girl. I just think it’s funny.
• Why did no one tell Kit Harington that pumping his shoulders will not make his horse move any faster? Could they not have hired me as a horse consultant? (I was twelve at the time.)

Episode Ranking:

• “The Kingsroad”
• “Winter Is Coming”

“Game of Thrones” Season One Trailer

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