Game of Thrones fans here?

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

They were traitors when they betrayed House Tyrell.

So if they bent the knee to her she would have still executed them for being traitors? Not buying it. She executed them because they refused to bend the knee.

[brewcity77]

So if they bent the knee to her she would have still executed them for being traitors? Not buying it. She executed them because they refused to bend the knee.

They were traitors. They didn't atone for their treason by bending the knee. This is pretty straight forward. Outside taking the black, which Randall Tarly also refused, there was no other appropriate sentence.

As I asked earlier, what other punishment should she have rendered?

[brewcity77]

It isn't treason alone. That was the whole surprise of the episode, everybody set it up so Ned could take the black after admitting treason (which he did) then Joffrey was supposed to say go north but he didn't.

This exactly. The agreed upon plan was that Ned would plead guilty to save his family, Joffrey would let him take the black. It led to an unexpected execution because Joffrey took the latter option away.

In the case of the Tarlys, Randall refused that latter option because he claimed Dany didn't have the authority to sentence him to the Wall.

Dany is operating as the rightful monarch. House Tyrell was sworn to her through Olenna, and thus House Tarly was sworn to her as well as standard bearers of the Tyrells. When Randall agreed to support Cersei in defiance of House Tyrell, he was committing treason both against the Tyrells and Targaryens to whom the Tyrells were sworn. Doesn't matter that Jamie promised him Highgarden & Warden of the South, he still broke his vows.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

They were traitors. They didn't atone for their treason by bending the knee. This is pretty straight forward. Outside taking the black, which Randall Tarly also refused, there was no other appropriate sentence.

As I asked earlier, what other punishment should she have rendered?

Again, I don't buy for a second that Dany would have still burned them alive if they had bent the knee. Ergo, the reason for the burning was refusal to bend the knee, not treason.

They were enemy combatants who had surrendered. The most just thing to do is to imprison them and treat them as prisoners of war.

You can forgive Dany for that if you want. To me, it was another moment in a long list of moments that hinted that she was another tyrant in the making. I forgave her a lot in the beginning, but right around the time she started crucifying hundreds of people I realized which side of the coin had landed face up.

[Pakuni]

It isn't treason alone. That was the whole surprise of the episode, everybody set it up so Ned could take the black after admitting treason (which he did) then Joffrey was supposed to say go north but he didn't.

Perhaps I'm not expressing my point clearly enough.
Ultimately, Ned and the Tarlys were executed for treason, a crime for which they both essentially confessed. This, you say, is the accepted and just punishment for that crime in Westeros.
Regardless of whether Joffrey could have/should have/or did agree to let Ned join the Nightswatch, don't you agree that he was well within his rights to have Ned's head lopped off and doing so was not villainy, but rather justice? - as you do for Dany for carrying out the same punishment for the same crime on the Tarlys?

[Galway Eagle]

Perhaps I'm not expressing my point clearly enough.
Ultimately, Ned and the Tarlys were executed for treason, a crime for which they both essentially confessed. This, you say, is the accepted and just punishment for that crime in Westeros.
Regardless of whether Joffrey could have/should have/or did agree to let Ned join the Nightswatch, don't you agree that he was well within his rights to have Ned's head lopped off and doing so was not villainy, but rather justice? - as you do for Dany for carrying out the same punishment for the same crime on the Tarlys?

Well since he should never have been king in the first place then no it was not treason and thus it was murder. Though if we go off the stance that Joffrey was king and any questioning of that is treason then yes I agree with you.

[forgetful]

Perhaps I'm not expressing my point clearly enough.
Ultimately, Ned and the Tarlys were executed for treason, a crime for which they both essentially confessed. This, you say, is the accepted and just punishment for that crime in Westeros.
Regardless of whether Joffrey could have/should have/or did agree to let Ned join the Nightswatch, don't you agree that he was well within his rights to have Ned's head lopped off and doing so was not villainy, but rather justice? - as you do for Dany for carrying out the same punishment for the same crime on the Tarlys?

Here is the difference. It was considered common practice to have people take the Black. Denying that opportunity defied all Westeros norms. So taking his head anyway was unjust.

Another key difference, Ned was carrying out the legal order of the King, that the head of the Kings guard agreed was the legal order of the King.

Dany carried out the sentence that the Tarly's accepted, and was the legally accepted outcome in Westeros. Not remotely acceptable.

Don't forget the season began with a beheading for breaking an oath.

I think anyone who views enemy combatants refusing to acknowledge her as their queen as treason has a touch of madness.

Are you trying to apply real-world norms to Westeros norms. Because in Westeros, it is definitely treason. The Tarly's were not the least bit surprised by their sentence, they expected it.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

Are you trying to apply real-world norms to Westeros norms

Not at all. In other situations where people surrendered I saw other houses take prisoners of war and those prisoners of war were treated with respect. When prisoners of war weren't treated with respect (like when the Lannister boys were murdered in Robb Stark's camp), those responsible were harshly punished.

Because in Westeros, it is definitely treason. The Tarly's were not the least bit surprised by their sentence, they expected it.

I would expect it too if I knew the decision was being made by a mad tyrant in the making. If it was the expected sentence, why did the Queen's advisors seem shocked by it and try to talk her out of it?

[brewcity77]

Again, I don't buy for a second that Dany would have still burned them alive if they had bent the knee. Ergo, the reason for the burning was refusal to bend the knee, not treason.

I never said the former. The crime was treason. They, and all their soldiers, were given a way out by bending the knee.

If everyone that didn't bend the knee was going to be summarily executed, Jon would've been a snack for Drogon 5 minutes after landing at Dragonstone.

They were enemy combatants who had surrendered. The most just thing to do is to imprison them and treat them as prisoners of war.

I'm not aware of the prison system Dany has access to, but the generally accepted alternative in Westeros is taking the black. They refused.

You can forgive Dany for that if you want. To me, it was another moment in a long list of moments that hinted that she was another tyrant in the making. I forgave her a lot in the beginning, but right around the time she started crucifying hundreds of people I realized which side of the coin had landed face up.

It's not a forgiving thing at all. The Tarlys knew the crime they stood accused of, knew the consequences, & refused the appeal process which was taking the black.

There is a fundamental difference between exacting punishments on those you perceive as criminals, like the Tarlys, the Masters of Mereen, or Xaro Xhoan Daxos, and massacring (conservatively) tens of thousands of innocents.

I'm not saying the narrative couldn't support it, but the producers did not paint that picture well enough for me. That's why we got an overblown "previously on" scene that didn't match anything actually seen in the show. And frankly, I think that's part of why they didn't show Dany's face during the massacre. Because they didn't know what it should look like. They'll say it was a narrative device to make her an abstract horror or some such, but I don't buy that. She's been a POV character in the books & show since day one. This was too important a moment not to at least give some whispers as to that point of view.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

If everyone that didn't bend the knee was going to be summarily executed, Jon would've been a snack for Drogon 5 minutes after landing at Dragonstone.

I don't think anyone has ever claimed that tyrants dole out justice equally. In fact, that's one of the signs of a tyrant.

There is a fundamental difference between exacting punishments on those you perceive as criminals, like the Tarlys, the Masters of Mereen, or Xaro Xhoan Daxos, and massacring (conservatively) tens of thousands of innocents.

There isn't though. She just expanded her view of who she perceived as criminals.

Dany brutally murdered and tortured her way to power across the narrow sea. It only made sense that she would continue and escalate that trend once she got to Westeros.

[brewcity77]

Dany brutally murdered and tortured her way to power across the narrow sea. It only made sense that she would continue and escalate that trend once she got to Westeros.

There is nothing consistent in her narrative with murdering commoners.

They could have done it differently and made it explicable. She could've murdered all of the Tarly soldiers along with their lord. They could've shown her allowing significant collateral damage at Winterfell. They could've showed her targeting Lannister soldiers, with less and less regard for the collateral damage. They could've built up to this over a number of episodes. They could've put the voices in her head in the show itself rather than ramming into the last few seconds of the "previously on" segment.

But they didn't. They didn't do any of those. They didn't do anything that indicated such a rapid turn was possible. They gave us one jealous look at Winterfell, one advisor's death, and one nuclear rampage. For 7-1/2 years, she was the one who would break the wheel. The breaker of chains. The freer of slaves. Everything she did was painted to benefit the common folk, then in an instant they flip it. This is why I want GRRM to finish the books. Because I am confident he will escalate the madness, make it believable, make it understandable, & deliver it enough from Dany's perspective so that the readers can relate and accept how she comes to where she came.

Everyone I mentioned was clearly her enemy. Someone who betrayed her or tried to stand against her. The Tarlys were traitors. The Masters were enemy overlords & slavers. Xaro Xhoan Daxos betrayed her. Sorry, but it's just not something that equates to what we saw last week. Not remotely. It's like the difference of killing an ant on your arm that just bit you and hunting down and pouring gasoline on every anthill you can find and lighting a match.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

For 7-1/2 years, she was the one who would break the wheel. The breaker of chains. The freer of slaves. Everything she did was painted to benefit the common folk, then in an instant they flip it.

This is the white savior lie that you bought in to. She broke chains and freed slaves because it was the easiest and quickest way to get herself into power. How often does she talk about her love for the common people? Not very. How often does she talk about how she is the rightful ruler? All the time. How often does she talk about her hate for those in power? All the time.

The only wheel Dany was interested in breaking was the wheel that kept her off the iron throne. She did a lot of the right things and said a lot of the right things but they were all only to serve her own self interest. She was at her most genuine not when she was freeing slaves but instead when she was butchering the slave owners.

Also, while I understand the desire for a longer drawn out descent, I don't think that's necessarily accurate. Those who fall into madness often show subtle signs but their "big moment" so to speak catches those around them by surprise.

[drewm88]

I liked this alternative path for Dany's descent laid out by Albert Burneko.
https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/a-better-way-game-of-thrones-could-have-arrived-at-this-1834720538

First of all, Euron does not shoot Rhaegal down in “The Last of the Starks.” He still wipes out Dany’s fleet and captures Missandei, and Missandei still gets executed atop the wall of King’s Landing in front of Dany and Grey Worm and Tyrion. (Since all of the characters’ battle plans and movements have been driven by narrative need rather than strategic goals this season, the show could have had Dany and Jon flying the dragons somewhere else at the moment of Euron’s ambush, to make an opening for him to wipe out her fleet and capture Missandei without the dragons roasting his boats.) Dany is still hollowed-out and pushed to the edge by the loss of Missandei and the final breakdown of her trust in the people around her, but she enters the battle of King’s Landing with two dragons, and with Jon riding Rhaegal.

This avoids the silly, temporary attribute buffs both Euron and the Big Crossbows needed in order to make Rhaegal’s death happen the way it did. This way, when Dany attacks King’s Landing and makes quick, short work of all the dozens and dozens of Big Crossbows along the outer walls of the city, it makes better sense: We saw a Big Crossbow wound Drogon, so we know they’re dangerous, but we never saw Big Crossbows make a frickin’ pincushion out of a flying, moving dragon a mile away, with shots fired from the rolling deck of a moving boat, so there’s no reason to think they’re capable of doing anything like that, which is good, since that ought to be completely impossible even with weapons much cooler and more sophisticated than Big Crossbows.

So, Dany’s got two dragons; her on one, and Jon on the other. And just like in “The Bells,” she trashes the Golden Company and the Iron Fleet; she and Jon circle King’s Landing, wiping out the wall-mounted Big Crossbows, and she blasts a huge hole in the wall of city for her army to pour through. It becomes shockingly apparent, right away, that for all of Cersei’s small-time victories in the lead-up to this final battle, there’s still nothing to match two full-grown dragons and she cannot possibly hold the capital.

The people of King’s Landing surrender, just like they did in “The Bells,” by ringing, uh, the bells. The Lannister soldiers drop their swords. Dany and Jon perch Drogon and Rhaegal on high points and look toward the Red Keep. Maybe they share a weary but guardedly affectionate glance. And then Euron skewers a stationary Rhaegal through the unnatural carnal knowledgein’ eyeball* with a Big Crossbow heretofore hidden on one of the rooftops of King’s Landing!!!!

*In his writing, George R. R. Martin has made clear that the only previous time in the history of this fictional world that a weapon that wasn’t a dragon itself has ever killed a dragon was when a Dornishman landed a million-to-one shot from a Big Crossbow straight through the eye of a dragon, one of the only places where it was not protected by scales as hard as steel. In fact no subsequent attempts to kill dragons with Big Crossbows ever yielded so much as a serious wound. So this would be both a good nod to the written text and a plausible way for Euron to kill a dragon.

Dany can only watch in brain-melting shock and grief as one of her two remaining children—the loves of her life, the sources of her identity—whom she’d nurtured back from the brink after the Battle of Winterfell, topples to the streets dead as hell, killed pointlessly and vindictively at what should have been the end of a battle she’d already won. His fall takes down and (as far as she can tell) kills the doofus she still kinda loves and relates to, the one dude in all of Westeros who still unquestioningly supported her claim to the throne. And—oh crap, there are still big arrows flying at her, from an untold number of Big Crossbows still out there on the rooftops of King’s Landing, camouflaged on the rooftops of civilian buildings; she can’t even really tell where the big arrows are coming from!

It’s where a wiser leader, one more suited to the awesome power she’s spent her life working to claim for herself, might withdraw, marshal her resources, and commit to some combination of a siege and a house-by-house clearing of the city by her infantry. But in her rage and pain and sorrow, and painfully out of reach of all the advisors who’ve helped her rein herself in over the years, Dany reacts—not making a conscious, deliberate decision to do genocide to innocent people, but lashing out as a wounded dragon, as the thing she always has had inside of her, at both the Big Crossbows and at the entire society that has taken so much from her—and just unnatural carnal knowledgein’ lays waste to King’s Landing.

Pushed beyond her breaking point and separated from the people who care about her, in the moment, Daenerys Targaryen fully becomes, finally and for all time, the Mother of Dragons—and in so doing not only categorically disqualifies herself from ever being accepted or loved as the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, but also forsakes her humanity and destroys her own soul. From there, “The Bells” plays out the way it did—only this way, it’s tragic! It reaches back farther than just the previous handful of episodes to fulfill and resonate with what’s been happening to Dany over the course of the whole run of the show! It changes what came across last night as a frankly evil and inexplicable conscious choice (Now I shall melt thousands and thousands of frightened children) into an uncontrollable firestorm of grief and fury! It leads to all the same breathtaking carnage “The Bells” delivered last night! Frankly, it rules!

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

I liked this alternative path for Dany's descent laid out by Albert Burneko.
https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/a-better-way-game-of-thrones-could-have-arrived-at-this-1834720538

The point of this last episode was to reveal who Dany truly was the whole time. This path would have just given people another excuse to look past the brutality of what Dany was doing and blame it on temporary insanity from watching her dragon and (as far as she knew) Jon dying.

[MUBBau]

https://entertainment.theonion.com/game-of-thrones-showrunners-disappointed-with-how-qua-1834843021

[forgetful]

https://entertainment.theonion.com/game-of-thrones-showrunners-disappointed-with-how-qua-1834843021

Watching the actors interviews on this season is hilarious. Essentially they think this season was not good.

[Pakuni]

Watching the actors interviews on this season is hilarious. Essentially they think this season was not good.

Have you actually watched the interviews, or just the YouTube mash up making rounds that takes sound bites out of context?

[forgetful]

Have you actually watched the interviews, or just the YouTube mash up making rounds that takes sound bites out of context?

I've watched the interviews.

[Cheeks]

Watching the actors interviews on this season is hilarious. Essentially they think this season was not good.

Went to a Game of Thrones party with HBO last night.  It's funny, that is essentially what most are saying. 

[muwarrior69]

I think the general practice in both Westeros and the real world is that you don't execute prisoners of war who have surrendered.

I mean, Dany crucified people. Literally crucified hundreds of people. I think anyone capable of ordering that has a touch of madness.

I find it interesting that all the Targaryens in the show are blonde, except Jon. I guess the mad gene that runs through the Targaryens is due to their inbreeding as Jon seems quite the opposite of all other Targaryens whose mother was a Stark. I will be greatly disappointed if Dany does not wind up being the mad queen of Westeros as the Game never seems to end. However, I don't feel that is how the show will end.

[forgetful]

I find it interesting that all the Targaryens in the show are blonde, except Jon. I guess the mad gene that runs through the Targaryens is due to their inbreeding as Jon seems quite the opposite of all other Targaryens whose mother was a Stark. I will be greatly disappointed if Dany does not wind up being the mad queen of Westeros as the Game never seems to end. However, I don't feel that is how the show will end.

Targaryen bastards often do not have the white/blond hair.  The entire Baratheon household are Targaryen bastards. They all have black hair.

[forgetful]

Curious what this final episode will bring. If they are able to bring home an amazing ending, it may allow some forgiveness for the forced trajectory to the end, and forced deviation from established characters.

If it has a crappy ending. It says the writers did not have a clear vision.

[tower912]

Tied up with a bow.   Neat, orderly.  A win for the Starks.

[Sir Lawrence]

Tied up with a bow.   Neat, orderly.  A win for the Starks.

From a Bears fan friend:

I feel the exact same way I did after the double doink

[forgetful]

Questions on the finale.

Why did the unsullied and Dothraki let Jon and Tyrion live for what appears to be months, before the lords and ladies of Westeros arrive? They killed their leader, so they just wait for the allies to show up? They would have executed both of them within minutes of realizing what happened.

Related. How did they know Jon killed Dany? Drogon ran off with the body.

Why did the other leaders just agree to let the North be its own kingdom? The Greyjoys and Dorne were fine with it, and didn't want independent Kingdoms for themselves? Yara goes from wanting Jon's head, because he killed Dany, to being ok following a Stark and letting the Starks have an independent Kingdom?

No one wants Jon to go to the Wall. But they can't just let him go wherever? The Unsullied and Dothraki left Westeros, why would Jon have to do anything?

The other big head-scratcher. Bran has repeatedly said, he doesn't want anything. He doesn't want any titles, nothing to do with the present or future. Then he says in this episode, he made the entire journey to be King. So everything he did was done to be King of the Seven Kingdoms? The only way to take that, is that Bran was the ultimate evil. Orchestrating all of this so that he could be King. After all, he and the other 3-eyed raven were the ones meddling with everything.