Let's get something out of the way first, I am no neutral spectator. I am a fan. I have read the books. I loved Game of Thrones the series. And I did not think that the ending was as bad as many garment rending drama queens would make out.
I was, however, watching with my husband who although he is
a Game of Thrones series fan has never read the books.
There are going to be many, many reviews written about this
first episode in the coming days. So I only have a faint hope of adding
something original to what better people have may have to say.
The first thing that struck me was the colour blind casting
of one of the nobles who sits on the small council. Of course, it is not
actually colour blind. He is Black and the rest of the cast are varying shades
of white.
But how appropriate was it that opening the first Council
discussion scene he is very learnedly reviewing a matter of international politics.
And no one is paying him the faintest bit of notice. Thus Westeros is a great
reflection of our current society. If you are female or if you are Black the
white dudes are going to be deaf to what you have to say, however important it
may be.
Lord Corlys of the Driftmark to give him his full title, is
something like the Lord Admiral of the fleet. It seems no one is interested in
what he has to say because everybody is very busy looking at their own Westerosi
bellybuttons, the Queen is pregnant, and everyone is hoping for a boy that will
clearly mark the line of succession.
Not that the king doesn't already have successors. He, in
fact, has two. A beautiful daughter and dragon rider, , and a mercurial
brother, who is also a dragon rider, Daemon.
In the episode’s intro we clearly see how the current king
secured the iron throne, he was chosen to sit on it in preference to his older
sister because he is male. Said older sister, Princess Rhaena, the queen who
never was, is now married to Lord Corlys, so this middle-aged couple, the thwarted
queen and her Black husband are the clear outsiders in the upper echelon of this
society.
Prince Daemon, on the other hand, takes charge of the city
watch and carries out a clearance of the slum areas with hideous brutality. When
he is reprimanded for this he claims it is to ensure that Kings Landing will be
safe for the great tournament his brother is about to hold to celebrate the
birth of his supposedly male child. I did like this because I was reminded off
how certain regimes do exactly the same thing when they are about to hold some
international event. I like seeing the resonance in Martin’s writing to our
current day society, look no further than the organisation behind the Football World
Cup to be held in Qatar later this year, or the slum clearances in Brazil for
the 2016 Olympics.
Yes, good King Viserys is counting his heirs before they
are birthed, and we all know that does not go well.
Queen Aema in the final throes of a trying pregnancy warns
her daughter that birthing children is the female equivalent of waging war. This
is not a new theme in literature (“I would rather stand three times with a
shield in battle than give birth once,” says Medea in Euripedes’ play of
the same name), but again I enjoy it when these points which I think are valid
are emphasised in fantasy writing. So scenes of a very bloody tournament which
takes place in a venue which we see from above is shaped very much like a woman’s
genitalia (reminiscent of the architecture of Zaha Hadid?) are intercut with those
of the queen attempting to give birth. At this point my partner had to get up
and leave his chair because the birth scene is one of the most disturbing in
this episode and so it should be.
The king leaves the tournament to be at her bedside he is
portrayed throughout as a good and sensitive man who loves his wife and is
attentive to her, but the moment he gives his permission for a caesarean he
doesn't stop them treating her with extreme brutality. As soon as he gives his
consent her ankles are tugged, she is pulled off the pillows down the bed and
the physician cuts open her belly, suddenly she ceases to be a queen and a
person and becomes a mere receptacle for a Prince. Obstetric violence Westerosi
style. As predicted by the physicians she dies, and the Prince she births dies
a day later.
Meanwhile shortly afterwards Daemon disgraces himself and
is called to order by the king and sent back to the wife he cannot stand in
another part of the country. Daemon's relationship with his niece is very
manipulative and they solely seemed to address each other in private in High Valyrian.
I love these scenes; it is like those scenes in The Americans where the
characters start talking Russian, it gives you a flavour of a people living
apart from the people surrounding them, from another culture and with another
mindset… plus of course the dragons only respond to orders delivered in High Valyrian.
Yes, Prince Daemon seems to be a bad ‘un but Matt Smith is an
able actor and there are a few glimpses that seemed to signal that he actually
loves his niece and his brother, and it is almost certain he would do anything
to prop up his house. Before being sent into exile he tells Viserys he should
have been given a chance to be his hand, i.e. his second in command, because he
would have been able to do the things that Viserys, who is essentially kind, is
unable to do in order to govern, for once we feel he is telling the truth and
he may have a point.
In the last scene still suffering from the death of his
wife and child, King Viserys makes a decision Princess Rhaenyra will be his
heir and the final scene is of all the Lords of the kingdom being compelled to
get down on their knees and swear their fealty to her, we are clearly shown how
many of them are unwilling to do this.
The costumes, the scenery, the actors the writing, are all
excellent, as is, of course, the music.
What I liked most though was the sense of underlying
tension. The sense that a society that treats women as vastly inferior to men,
as objects to be moved out of the way, ignored, and treated like receptacles,
is always going to be a sick one and one which will pay dearly for that choice.
