Counter-Currents
The Modern Prophecy in the Final Episode of Game of Thrones
Gregory Hood
2,085 words
The final episode of Game of Thrones had an important message about the nature of modern politics. It was almost surely unintended.
The writing of the final episode, of the final season in general, was atrocious. Balerion the Black Dread could fly through the plot holes showrunners David Beinoff and D.B. Weiss created. Armies we thought decimated are suddenly capable of world conquest, dragons once easily killed are suddenly invincible, and the other “kingdoms” comprising the realm are utterly indifferent to what’s happening in the capital. The script was worse than fan fiction.
The explanation is simple—it was rushed. HBO is apparently developing multiple spinoffs but it would have made far more sense to greenlight one more season of the main show so characters and plots could be properly developed.
The character of Daenerys Targaryen was destroyed as thoroughly as was Stannis’s in past seasons—and in much shorter time. She exterminated the population of King’s Landing from the air after the city had already surrendered. It made no sense given her character development thus far. It was the television equivalent to clickbait, shock for shock’s sake, an empty twist.
Still, it was amusing simply for the reaction it provoked. Many journalists are furious that Daenerys Targaryen, the “Breaker of Chains” sustained by foreign non-white armies, was portrayed as a fanatic. Of course, she was a fanatic, who believed she was chosen by destiny. The flaw was in how the show executed her arc, not in where it ended up.
From a conservative perspective, the final episode had a good message. The episode begins with Daenerys promising in a foreign tongue to “liberate” the entire world. King’s Landing smokes in the background, filled with burned corpses of men, women, and children. It’s reminiscent of Dresden.
Notably, she speaks in a foreign language to her two major forces, the Unsullied and the Dothraki — both foreigners. As characters in earlier episodes noted, Cersei, for all her faults, was at least native to Westeros. Daenerys was a foreign invader, using other foreigners to conquer the country. It was the equivalent of using Mongols to conquer England and restore the Stuarts. The “legitimate” ruler might be back on the throne, but the destruction wrought is enormous. Worse, Jon Snow is Aegon Targaryen, the truly legitimate heir to the throne. Daenerys wasn’t really “chosen” at all.
Tyrion ends up in jail after he is arrested for resigning as her main advisor. He converses with Jon Snow, eventually prompting Snow to regicide. Tyrion and Jon’s argument against Daenerys resembles a typical conservative critique of Communism and other messianic left-wing movements. On a smaller scale, it is a critique of antifa, Social Justice Warriors, and others who think ruining lives, using violence, and telling lies are justified in the cause of equality.
Daenerys wants to “break the wheel” of power struggles by conquering all in the name of the oppressed. “If you truly believed that, wouldn’t you kill everyone who stands between you and paradise?” Tyrion asks Jon rhetorically. “Don’t Immanentize The Eschaton,” as conservatives of the 1960s would say.
When Jon confronts Daenerys, she invites him to build the new world with her. He tries to prompt her to humility, but she maintains it is for the ruling couple to decide what is good for the world, not everyone else. It is only after this he stabs her.
(All credit to an anon on /pol)
Notably, Daenerys seems to have developed the silver hair of her family by the end of the series instead of the blonde hair she once possessed. She’s truly Targaryen. She is “super-white,” essentially Hyperborean, freeing and leading non-whites who can’t do it on their own. No wonder liberal white women with a savior complex identified with her. No wonder they were furious with the ending.
The political settlement that ends the series is even more implausible. “Bran the Broken” possesses magical powers of seeing events in the past, present, and future around the world. He has mostly sat around the past few seasons, occasionally making awkward comments. Nonetheless, the lords of Westeros make him king, based on a speech by Tyrion. Democracy is laughed off, but some form of elective monarchy is created. Bran’s sister Sansa declares the North should be an independent kingdom, and Bran agrees, thus ceding a huge part of his realm as his first act. Why other kingdoms don’t also immediately secede is left unexplained.
Obviously, Westeros is a world of fantasy, where magic, dragons, and giants can be found. Yet as George R. R. Martin repeatedly states, it contains a low amount of magic for a high fantasy series, and the focus is on political realism and cynical maneuvering. Naïve audiences who hadn’t read the books got the message when Ned Stark had his head chopped off. Supernatural beings only work in fiction if they operate in a context where they are comprehensible. Characters must respond in believable ways. The idea that lords with their own agendas and interests would agree to have an odd cripple with no blood connection to the ruling dynasty is absurd.
Yet this is just lazy writing and not important unless you are deeply committed to a television show. If we accept “King Bran,” what’s the real message? It’s that he represents the rule of Narrative, which is to say the rule of media, rather than the rule of tradition, heroism, or even intelligence.
Tyrion justifies the choice of Bran by saying he has the best story. “The boy who fell from a high tower and lived. He knew he’d never walk again, so he learned to fly,” he says. “He crossed beyond the Wall, a crippled boy, and became the Three-Eyed Raven.” Many online wits observed just about every other character (Jon, Arya, Sansa) had a better story.
Yet Tyrion says more than this. He argues that stories are ultimately what unite people more than armies, gold, or flags. “There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story,” he says. “Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it.” (He obviously hasn’t heard of online deplatforming).
Much earlier in the series, Varys posed Tyrion the question of what power really was. Varys said “power resides where men believe it resides.” Tyrion now goes further—power lies in the ability to shape belief.
If any one person has this power, it is Bran. “He is our memory, the keeper of all our stories,” says Tyrion. “The wars, weddings, births, massacres, famines. Our triumphs, our defeats, our past. Who better to lead us into the future?” This is an echo of Orwell—“Who controls the past controls the future.”
Indeed, Bran shows he doesn’t just know about events, he can shape them. Earlier in the series he said he could never be Lord of Winterfell, because he was now the Three-Eyed Raven. He wasn’t really Bran anymore.
Now however, he accepts the crown. “Why do you think I came all this way?” he says. Though he claims he doesn’t want to be king (indeed, earlier in the series he says he doesn’t really “want” anything anymore), he overrules Grey Worm’s objection to making Tyrion Hand of the King. “I’m king,” he says in justification. Bran also shows more emotion and personality after becoming king, though not much. There’s not really “one” person ruling the realm through the power of story (of narrative). However, there’s clearly something with an agenda of its own.
Bran can control information, secrets, history, narrative, and even identity. He proved that earlier in the series when he revealed that Jon Snow was not a bastard, but the true heir to the Iron Throne. That revelation set in motion Daenerys’s collapse.
Bran is not Machiavelli’s Lion, defined by bravery and power. (Queen Cersei, the Lannister “Lion” from the family of 1980s movie villain lookalikes we’ve been conditioned to hate, is literally crushed.) Yet Bran’s not really the Fox either, defined by cunning and trickery. He cuts through Littlefinger’s schemes by telling him “chaos is a ladder,” reciting a line Littlefinger said in a private conversation. Littlefinger is visibly shocked. Intrigue is impossible if some magical being can hear anything he wants.
With control of narrative and information neither strength nor intelligence are really needed. It is also the death of politics and personality. It’s probably no coincidence Bran reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress.
The lords of Westeros laugh off democracy, comparing the commoners to dogs and horses. Yet reframing power in terms of narrative control, instead of lineage, tradition, or military strength, critiques democracy in a different way. Bran is the Westerosi equivalent of Big Tech. If you control the story, you also control the choice, thus rendering “democracy” meaningless. This is the world we live in today, where traits like heroism, intelligence, or integrity are secondary to control over the Narrative. Do we have any more power over our current political or economic system than dogs or horses?
Such a system also makes real change impossible. It “breaks the wheel” in a different way. Instead of powerful personalities jockeying for power, a collective personality rules. No one could possibly be inspired by Bran. The final scenes of people calling him “Your Grace” look absurd. However, Bran can find out everything about everyone if he just knows where to look. It’s probably best to obey him.
The Dune series also confronts this idea and, intriguingly, ends on a different note. A “God-Emperor” with prescient powers understands that by knowing everything and being able to predict everything, he dooms the race to stagnation. His perfect reign is a tomb for humanity. He therefore implements a plan to eventually destroy his own power and scatter the race throughout the galaxy. He makes sure people will not be united by one story or one history.
Of course, there’s one exception in the former seven kingdoms. Sansa Stark becomes “Queen in the North.” The North, because of its horrific losses in the various civil wars of Westeros and against the Night King, feels totally apart from the rest of the realm. To some extent, it always has. Most people have a different religion than the rest of the realm. Bran’s narrative can’t incorporate them. They have their own more compelling story. They also have a strong leader, because the politically astute Sansa is unwilling to be controlled.
Yet even her victory is a step away from the idea of heroic leadership. Ned Stark, Robb Stark, and Jon Snow all operated by the stern northern code that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. Sansa obviously can not perform that role.
She’s not really in control the same way her father, brother, or cousin were. She can have men fight for her, but she can’t lead them the same way Robb Stark did. Though her ending appearance echoes Elizabeth I, unlike Elizabeth Sansa will have to marry and have an heir, otherwise there are no more Starks. The separation of sovereignty from an individual person has begun even in the North. It is a bit behind the other kingdoms but is on the same road to collective leadership.
An autocracy is freer than a mass-media democracy in one crucial aspect. To create change, you just replace the guy at the top. However, when what controls you is an entire System, you can’t identify who or what is sovereign. Left, right, and center, everyone today suspects the elected leadership isn’t really in charge. Everyone also disagrees on who or what is.
Daenerys tried to unite the world, but only through division can people be free. Yet Westeros is moving towards a different kind of slavery. Daenerys’s tyranny would at least have a sense of grandeur. But in the final episode of Game of Thrones, the dragon Drogon destroys the Iron Throne, the symbol of power and clearly identifiable sovereignty. He flies away with Daenerys, representing the flight of mystery, magic, and legend from the world.
Jon Snow, the true heir, goes into exile to father no children and end the mystical Targaryen family. Arya seeks adventure on the fringes of the world, because there is no more to be had in Westeros. The last small council meeting consists of dirty jokes, bickering over accounting, and talking about water supplies. “The age of economists,” as Burke might have said, has come. The glory of Westeros is extinguished forever. There are no more stories to tell—at least not any worth hearing.
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20 comments
Excellent analysis. I’d also like to take this moment to thank Gregory Hood for watching Gay Moff Thrones so that we don’t have to.
Amen to that!
I very much enjoy that pic of the little blond hoisted by the POCs. A lot of fun can be made of it!
You’re missing out. Totally and completely. My condolences.
Was that the real ending? I sort of like it. Love your explication too.
Say, do you guys understand the dialogue between Martin and dickens, apropos Tyrion and Quilp from Old Curiosity Shop? $50 donation to CC if someone can!
What I want to know is why Daenerys’ eyebrows did not match the color of her hair, you would think they could buy a little more bleach in Hollywood to make this happen? How many dragons are left, I want there to be a lot of dragon babies? What happened to the dwarf, is Tyrion the dwarf? I’ve never watched this show.
Daenerys is a foreign.
She’s not a Westeroson.
The actress was chosen because she’s actually an Anglo-Indian. The race she belongs to is from near slavers bay. She’s an interloping cousin marrying Valerian where the steel comes from. she’s an asiatic despot.
Bran otoh is part of Celtic mythology. He’s a Celtic seer King who’s head is buried under White Hill (where the Tower of London is). The ravens are kept there lest the kingdom falls.
The basic plot, though not the judeo-writing at the end, is basically sound mythopoetic.
Bran was obviously a candidate for King as a seer.
We can also look at the game of chess. The king is nearly immobile while the other pieces fly around.but when he makes the slightest move the game strategy changes radically. When castling the king you set in motion various scenarios…bran was defenistrated for seeing incest. Kind of a big deal.
Yes, I read the first book, I know Bran was defenistrated (thrown out the window). I forgot what the dwarf’s name was, is he Tyrion? I am glad you brought up the incestuous brother, and sister, do they survive to the end? I still think they could have bought another gallon of bleach to do Daenerys
eyebrows!
If they want to make a good series, they should do “Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever,” there are three chronicles to this character. I am presently rereading the second chronicles.
I really don’t want globohomo touching one ot my favorite series ever. Besides in this current Metoo culture, I doubt they could even do the rape of Lena in the books and Covenant’s character properly.
Have you read all ten books? A few years ago Stephen R. Donaldson wrote a third chronicles; I was surprised at how the Lord Foul was finally destroyed. I am glad there is someone else on this site that likes the Thomas Covenant Chronicles as I do.
Yes, read them all. I started with my dad’s collection then bought the newer ones. What was odd about Foul’s final defeat to you? it has been awhile since I have read them.
What was odd about Lord Foul’s final defeat to me was that Thomas Covenant talked him into merging with him at the end of the last battle so that they could both survive. Remember linden Avery The Chosen One escorted the spirit of Lord Foul’s spurned lover to the site of the battle, wherein the spirit shaped itself into a giant fist, and smashed Lord Foul into the ground. Thomas Covenant, and Linden Avery’s son (forgot his name) were both blasting the crap out of Lord Foul with all their power, and Foul was getting ready to make his escape due to “The worm at the world’s end” making ready to devour the quintessence of earth power under Melenkurien Skyware, and destroying the earth. Linden Avery’s son was using the lord’s staff of law (a raver had just imparted all the old lord’s lore to him), and Covenant was using his ring. Anyhow, Foul was just too strong, and getting ready to make his escape, when he got crushed. I thought that Linden’s son was going to make a doorway (that was his power) and Foul would be forced through it, and outside the arch of time where the creator would destroy Foul. Anyhow Foul missed his chance to escape, and had to merge with Covenant to survive, or be destroyed like everything else. Covenant used Foul’s knowledge (which was vast) of the earth, and the arch to save the world. It was still a good ending; it just wasn’t what I thought would happen. Stephen R. Donaldson is ten times the writer George R. R. Martin is.
Ah, yea, now I remember. I enjoyed that ending. Yea, Donaldson is an amazing writer. Your ending actually makes a lot of sense and I think that would have been an interesting finish. I do really like Covenant taking Foul inside him because throughout the books Foul beat previous heroes by breaking them mentally and winning against him had a lot to do with mastery of one’s self rather than just overwhelming power.
Also, the themes of self-hatred and self-destruction throughout the books go along nicely with Covenant’s final choice.
I didn’t realize it till now, but the books are very white in nature (I had read them before becoming red pilled). The emphasis on the environment and the extreme altruism turning into a destructive force like in the case of Kevin Landwaster.
You guys might also like Legend of the Seeker, based on the sword of truth series by terry goodkind. It ran for two seasons—very cheesy at times, and pozzed, but it gathers to a greatness. Also, Shanara Chronicles, streamable on Netflix right now, based on the terry brooks Sword of Shanara books, the first of the “Tolkclones”. Worst of the three and only for fantasy junkies(like me).
Good series about heroism, duty and destiny? Horus Heresy, probably at the very top. There are around 52 volumes, so not for everybody.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/204279-the-horus-heresy-reading-order
I finally watched the whole thing and finished last night. This analysis is much appreciated. Aside from all the graphic sex and violence, it was alright in the first couple of seasons but the last episode just left me stumped. The whole girl power/empowering girls thing that’s inevitably inserted, with girls taking down men several times larger than they are and screaming little 9 year old queens is quite tiresome and I take that with that “suspension of disbelief” that’s talked about in high school humanities classes to get through it. Like crows and people traveling a thousand miles from the north or south in either months or seeming days.
The idea of seasons lasting years long is interesting and I seem to remember some Doctor Who (Was it Doctor Who?) episode where he’s on a similar planet in winter.
Who knows, maybe it will be trannies in sports that finally bring women to their senses (or even destroy women’s sports) as they get their butts kicked and every champion and record holder in women’s athletics turns out to be “a woman”. I’m somewhat surprised that the TERF agenda didn’t prevail over MtF in the the mainstream feminist agenda.
Just imagine how ugly women’s beach volleyball is about to become.
This was a bad review, and as a White Nationalist who loves “Game of Thrones” for being the Implicitly Woke work of art that it is, and who leans slightly to the upper right quadrant of the four way Left-Right/Libertarian-Authoritarian political spectrum, I’m dismayed by most of the sentiments expressed here. Three things in particular stand out:
1. The dismissal of Daenerys Targaryen’s speech as nothing more than “typical conservative critique of Communism and other messianic left-wing movements.” Hood is making it sound like the portrayal of her speech was somehow generic, basic, or even cucky, when in fact, that portrayal of her speech is one of the most potent red pills we have against the Left. All the lofty, euphoric rhetoric from the French Revolution, the Abolitionists, the Bolshevik Revolution, etc. can be encapsulated in a simple sentiment:
Liberation=DEATH.
White Nationalists should use this show and this final episode in particular to show Normies what Liberation ACTUALLY means and what it ACTUALLY looks like. Liberals are in uproar over the final two episodes for a damn good reason, as Game of Thrones laid bare the evil intentions and evil sentiments that hide behind all attempts at “liberating the oppressed.” As the Antifa site Truth Out correctly observed:
“As people involved in liberation efforts the world over are well aware, the knee-jerk conservative depiction of those who would disrupt power in the face of injustice is that would-be change makers are either well-intentioned people who don’t understand the way the world works or glory-seeking, self-consumed disasters waiting to happen. Dany, a privileged self-promoter who charges into oppressive situations in order to further her own banner, solidly represents the conservative view of those who push for the overthrow, or even the large-scale reform, of oppressive systems. And while there is no doubt that the destabilization of governments can (and at times has) led to still more abuse and atrocity, the notion that such events justify the maintenance of the oppression that preceded such outcomes is a reactionary one that takes a dim view of liberation efforts in general.”
The best part of all this is that Benoiff and Weiss, despite being Chosenites, were either completely oblivious to this friendly Right Wing message or simply didn’t care that they wrote it in there. Better yet, with the exception of Emilia Clark, who plays Deanerys, every actress who has been asked their opinion about that petition demanding a remake of Season 8 – presumably because “Muh Dany Can’t Possibly Be Evil” – has correctly told those fans to pound sand, from Sophie Turner (Sansa) to Kit Herrington (Jon Snow) to Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran).
This final episode was an unmitigated cultural victory for the Right, and for Hood to dismiss it like this reminds me of why Arthur de Gobineau became so depressed in the 1830s and 1840s about the state of the Legitimist Movement that he was in, which never wound up accomplishing any of its goals because it failed to see the signs of the times. If the Alt Right’s best writers are going to dismiss positive moments and developments like this, then they deserve to lose to the Left, because at the end of the day, they are out of touch with the sentiments and tastes of normal White Americans.
2. I’m flabbergasted by Hood’s dismissal of the power of total knowledge. I hope he knows that between the fall of Rome in the 5th Century AD and the Renaissance Era in the 15th Century, numerous books, letters, manuscripts, and other sources of ancient knowledge were burned, destroyed, or otherwise irretrievably lost. The fact that enough documents survived to allow the Renaissance to happen in the first place is a testament to the overwhelming levels of knowledge that the ancients in Classical Times once possessed.
Those documents no doubt contained the exact origin stories of our race – not just the broad details that we are left to glean from dubious sources like Kemp and Pierce – and the exact origin stories of our ancient Enemy. If we had access to all that knowledge, we’d know exactly who we are, where we were, where we might be going, and what our purpose in life is. Instead, thanks to the destruction of that ancient knowledge, we either have to define our own meaning, which is arbitrary and lame, or we have to rely on a foreign source for our origin story of the meaning of life (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”).
A person with the powers of Bran Stark would be a national and racial treasure. People with that kind of power would be able to expose all lies, reveal all truths, and most importantly, bust the plans of conniving snakes like Petry “Littlefinger” Baelish, who cynically play decent people against each other in an attempt to destroy both and fill the power void.*
The power of total knowledge marks the triumph of Truth over Lies, and the triumph of Good over Evil, which is also why I liked the final episode: The Good Guys won. House Stark won. The Small Council is now composed of five individuals – Tyrion Lannister, Ser Davos Seaworth, Brienne of Tarth, Samwell Tarley, and Ser Bronn of the Blackwater – who, with one exception (Bronn), all have moral compasses pointed North. Sure, they may have disagreements over petty matters, but they are more qualified than almost anyone else in Westeros to run a government that will truly provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people, which is the whole point of any modern government, pro-White or otherwise.
*Screw intrigue. The best scene in Littlefinger’s story was when Sansa and Arya teamed up to take him down in the Season 7 finale. Evil people like Littlefinger, Meryn Trant, Walder Frey, and Cersi Lannister DESERVE their fate on account of their vile, treacherous actions. Intrigue is only a useful plot element insofar as it sets up how nasty the villains are, only for a Hero with integrity like Jon Snow and Arya Stark to finish them later.
3. Whether Hood or anyone else in the Alt Right likes it or not, the fact is that Narrative is stronger than tradition, stronger than heroism, and stronger than lineage. I won’t say it’s stronger than intelligence though, because the intelligent eventually figure out that Narrative is the superior way to wield power. I would have thought the last 70 years of anti-racist propaganda was enough to prove that, but hey, I’m sure the last 70 years are somehow just a fluke and aren’t in fact every White person’s Reality. I’m sure Whites are implicitly behind Alt Right principles even as they flock to shows like “Game of Thrones” that most of the Alt Right clearly disdains, and even as what keeps the United States together is the overarching Narrative that our history is defined by the overcoming of “evils” like slavery, segregation, and Nazis.
I believe the Alt Right can form an overarching Narrative of its own that challenges that, but not while we sit here obsessing over lost causes like Aristocratic Lineage that are gone and are never coming back, just like Gobineau eventually accepted that the House of Bourbon and the Ancien Regime were never coming back. Gobineau went on to became the Godfather of Racial Science, the cornerstone of White Nationalist/Pro-White ideology. We can and must create and formulate something similar in scope if we are to win, and along the way, that means using and embracing the random elements of pop culture when they clearly work to our advantage, like they do with Game of Thrones. The glory of Westeros was never extinguished. It was made whole again. It was made right again. Just like we want to make our own lands whole again and right again. The whole point of a great story is that it has a happy ending. A happily ever after. Game of Thrones succeeded at this even as it had its bittersweet moments. It was a Lord of the Rings like conclusion to the story of an author who set out to become the anti-Tolkien. How anyone on the Alt Right can see this as a bad thing is a clear indication that normal White people value different things and see life itself differently.
EXCELLENT takedown. I won’t go so far as to say that it was a capital B BAD review, as it made several good points. But I agree In general.
“The best part of all this is that Benoiff and Weiss, despite being Chosenites, were either completely oblivious to this friendly Right Wing message or simply didn’t care that they wrote it in there.”
OR…they were contractually handcuffed by the requirement to execute RR Martin’s vision as he prescribed. So no matter how hard *they* tried to subvert it, the greatness could not be destroyed.
” Game of Thrones succeeded at this even as it had its bittersweet moments. It was a Lord of the Rings like conclusion to the story of an author who set out to become the anti-Tolkien. ”
Is this verified fact?(Martin setting out to be the anti tolkien) I’ve heard this tossed around here and there, but it doesn’t fully pass the smell test with me due simply to the overarching themes, characters, and ending presented.
If true, maybe RR Martin, consciously or unconsciously, erred heavily on the side of telling a GOOD STORY (a magnificent one, IMHO) at the expense of a political agenda.
The only good stories come from the right. Always have always will.
To my knowledge, there are no good
I enjoyed the series. After all it was about fantasy – fiction, – perhaps the lines were blurred a bit between real and contemporary human behaviour in search of power and control!
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