Like a lot of people, I'm watching Game of Thrones. Here's my take on how it should end.
Should, mind you. Not will. Not what I think will happen.
But, this is what should happen.
THE END OF GAME OF THRONES
Daenerys: I am Daenerys
Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and
the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the
Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains.
Jon Snow: You cannot
claim the Iron Throne! I am Aegon of Houses Targaryen and Stark, Sixth of His
Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and
Protector of the Realm!
Daenerys: What is in a
name, Aegon who used to be Jon Snow? I have vanquished the other Khals of the
Dothraki and claimed their khalasars. I freed the soldiers of the Unsullied,
and they joined me of their own free will. I woke dragons out of stone and led
the armies that destroyed the Night King and the Long Night.
Jon Snow: But I was born
to be the King of Westeros and sit on the Iron Throne! Rhaegar Targaryen, your
older brother and heir to the Iron Throne, was my father, and I am trueborn,
not a bastard because he lawfully married my mother, Lyanna Stark. I claim my
birthright as the heir to the Iron Throne and King of the Seven Kingdoms!
Daenerys: Birthright?
What is birthright? You are no king, Jon Snow. You have been given everything,
mostly by women, and you have failed at every point in your life.
You sulk and make poor,
long-ranging decisions when your pride is hurt. At your birth home, they did
not heap unearned honors upon you due to your supposed parentage, you left them
all and joined the Night’s Watch.
You are haughty, prideful, and
rash. At the Wall, instead of making allies, you shamed your brothers with your
swordfighting skills that they had never had a chance to learn, and somehow you
were rewarded for it and fast-tracked for leadership by the Lord Commander,
Jeor Mormont. When you tried to break your vows and desert, a crime with a
death sentence, you were dissuaded from committing insubordination and
desertion by Mormont again, but someone had to tell you not to, and then you
sulked.
You have neither honor nor
intelligence. When you went to spy on those north of the Wall, they almost
immediately discovered you were a spy.
A woman, Ygritte the Wildling,
saved you, and you broke your Night’s Watch vows with her. Then you betrayed
her, and she, your Night’s Watch brothers, and many wildlings died for your
betrayal.
Somehow after your betrayals and
inadequacies, you ended up the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, where you
were so unable to lead your men or earn their respect that they actually killed
you, mainly because you could not communicate your leadership goals and
decisions or conduct any kind of diplomacy with your own people, but led like a
mad Targaryen monarch.
At that point, another woman
saved you, Melisandre, when she brought you back to life as a fire wight.
Then, you broke your Night’s
Watch vows again, though no one stopped you. You tried to retake your childhood
home from Ramsey Bolton. You did make some alliances, but you did not have the
diplomacy to make the important alliances with the larger houses. You did not
listen to your most valuable advisor, Sansa Stark, who on the night before the
battle, explained to you every one of Bolton’s tactics that he would use. Even
forewarned, you had neither the discipline nor the wits to avoid Bolton’s
simplistic trap. As you were losing the battle and your meagre armies were
being massacred by an obvious pincer movement, Sansa Stark had negotiated an
alliance with Littlefinger and rescued you and your few surviving soldiers with
the Knights of the Vale.
Somehow, despite your total inability to lead tactically or strategically, you were named King of the North. On your first diplomatic mission, you discarded that honor by bending the knee to me, thus abusing the trust of every leader in the North. When you returned, both Sansa Stark and Lyanna Mormont asked you to explain your leadership and reasoning, and you could give them no more than the rhetorical equivalent of a shrug.
When you, the supposed commander of the troops, went north of the Wall personally to obtain a wight to convince Cersei of the dire threat, I had to rescue you, losing one of my dragons in the process, which led to the destruction of one of the Living's most valuable fortifications, the Wall.
When we went to negotiate with Cersei, you could not conduct diplomacy and ally the Lannister army with ours in this fight, allowing us to be tricked.
Despite your failings, I gave you
a dragon, one of two of the most powerful weapons in the world.
During the battle with the Night
King during the Long Night, your tactical and strategic plans for the battle
were asinine and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of thousands of our
soldiers. You did not establish an engagement area to disrupt the enemy forces.
The Dothraki light cavalry rode out in an unsupported frontal attack. Light
cavalry should be used to screen the allied lines from view and to gather
intelligence on the enemy. Our heavy-fire artillery weapons like the batteries
of trebuchets should have been positioned to be protected and mutually
supported. Instead, you placed them between the cavalry and infantry units.
After a single barrage, you gave them up because your poor strategic planning
of the charge had rendered them useless. Placing the anti-personnel ditch with
chevaux de frise between the infantry and Winterfell produced a choke point
during the inevitable retreat and cost many lives.
During this time, you squandered
our most obvious and powerful weapon, the close air support of the dragons. We
maintained two dragons for direct support of the ground defense and for air
interdiction against the Night King’s single, ice-zombie dragon. We had
two-to-one air superiority, an enormous advantage. We needed to use these
weapons as multirole platforms. I flew sorties and conducted reconnaissance
over enemy lines and even located the Night King, the objective of the battle,
though our first attempt to kill him with dragonfire failed. Failure to
properly establish friendly dragon-marking measures before the battle resulted
in a green-on-green incident that nearly destroyed our air capabilities.
Your one duty during the battle
was to watch for the signal from Ser Davos and use Rhaegal to light the
anti-personnel trench after the retreat. You weren’t paying attention, and
Melisandre lit the trench. Yet again, a woman bailed you out after your failure
due to your inadequacy.
During the battle, you did doing
nothing of value–no strafing runs on wights early in the melee, no attempts to
attack the line of commanding White Walkers waiting in the rearguard, or even
any dragonfire attacks from Rhaegal at all. Instead, you got lost in a storm
for a while and then crashed your dragon. When faced with the Night King, you
charged blindly toward him, thinking you could end the war with a single swing
of your sword. You had failure after failure after failure. No wonder you ended
up shouting at an undead dragon.
Finally, at the end of the
battle, Arya Stark used the assassin skills she has been honing for years
instead of swanning about Westeros worrying about your insulted pride and
killed the Night King, thus ending the battle and saving you yet again.
Jon Snow: But . . . but
. . . I’m Aegon Targaryen. I get the Iron Throne. Because bloodlines, and my
parents were married.
Daenerys: You have not
listened to me, Jon Snow. I come not to claim the Iron Throne, but to break it.
The Iron Throne has ruled Westeros with dissent and bloodshed. It has
established an oligarchy that crushes the people of Westeros under its wheel.
It is time to break the wheel. It is time to establish a new order that does
not crush its citizens.
Sansa Stark is the Queen in the North. Yara Greyjoy rules the Iron Islands and Riverlands as queen. Cersei Lannister rules the Rock and the Reach. Ellaria Sand, now released from the dungeons, will rule Dorne because weak men never will rule Dorne or Westeros again.
And I am one queen to rule them
all.
We form a queens’ council, a new
order in Westeros, and we will break the wheel.
#breakthewheel #breakthehouse
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