Sprawling is too confining a word to apply to the character mélange of Game of Thrones. Wikipedia lists 32 “Main Characters” and nearly twice that many other named players, and this is just in the first 20 shows. Lord knows what the five books would reveal, if I had the stomach to read them. And, of course, it doesn’t count other key groups, such as the dragons and zombies, without whom there really is no reason to be interested in this mess.
Tyrion Lannister and his scheming sister Cersei (mother of the insipid yet sadistic King Joffery) are probably considered the leads. And they do occupy the central space in the capital city of Kings’ Landing, where all those who aspire to play the game of thrones wish to sit on the Iron Throne. Joffery slouches there now, far too short and reedy to fully cover the hundreds of swords which were melted (by dragon fire?) to make this charming seat, which looks a lot like an Adirondack chair, the kind you see crafted from old style skis. You can buy one online, or at least see it, here. (Isn’t HBO rich enough already?)
Scheming to get into power, or at least seeking revenge for someone’s death, are Robb Stark (of Winterfell, self-proclaimed “King in the North”) and Stannis Baratheon, of Dragonstone, and pretender to the Iron Throne. Robb’s dad Ned was, for a short time, Hand of King Robert Baratheon (wed to Cersei, presumptive father of Joffery). But lusty Robert, who loved drink and fathering bastards, but was too dumb to see that Cersei’s blond haired children weren’t his (after all, no blonds in his family for generations) was gored by a boar while out on a hunt (having been fed too much wine by a Lannister cousin), and passed away. Ned, who was honest and naïve to a fault, got wind of the true nature of Joffery’s parentage. The Lannisters, naturally, didn’t want this to come out, and schemed to have him repent, bend a knee, and vow fealty to Joffery. But the little runt would have none of it, and, going against his mother’s express wishes, had Ned’s head summarily chopped off. Which was a tragedy, as Sean Bean was billed as the lead character for the first season.
While all this silliness is going on in the capital, real worries are brewing elsewhere. North of Winterfell (Stark country) is The Wall. Not something dreamed up on the dark side of the moon, rather, it spans the continental isthmus, protecting the thriving Seven Kingdoms from the unspeakable horrors beyond. Something about White Walkers, Wildings, and worse. The only line of defense between civilization and its total destruction, apparently, are the Night’s Watch. This rag tag group reminds me of a bunch of original Aussies. They are basically the dregs of society, criminals, orphans, and bastards, press ganged into lifelong service and celibacy in defense of Westeros. But since The Wall hasn’t been breached for thousands of years, no one gives them much respect, or funding. Sort of like Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf.
Here it’s important to talk a bit about the climatology of this fantasyland. Apparently, summers last for a constantly changing number of years, followed by prolonged times of Winter. Living in the North, the Stark’s motto actually is “Winter is Coming”. As we start the story, it’s been summer for more than a decade, and many have forgotten the privations they may face once the seasons turn. But harbingers arrive with alarming regularity to tell us to be wary. My theory: they just have very fast ice ages in this world.
Ned Stark strayed just once in his marriage, but got a son (and a very good looking one at that) out of the deal – Jon Snow. Whenever he introduces himself to strangers, they immediately somehow know from that moniker that he’s a bastard, and so he gets little to no respect. But he has learned how to handle a sword, and be polite at a dinner table, so when he gets shuttled off to the Night’s Watch, he’s placed on a fast track to leadership, serving first as steward to the Commander of the Watch.
He learns fast, and swiftly becomes a double agent in the company of the King Beyond the Wall, a renegade Watchman who is organizing the Wildings, and not a few Giants, in preparation for an assault under cover of the oncoming blizzard. He’s called Mance Rayder, played by the menacingly crusty Cieran Hinds. As season three opens, Jon Snow is in the ideal position to begin pincher movements when needed to aid in toppling Joffery and securing the Stark revenge we all so desparately want after losing the gruff, but naïve and charming Ned Stark to the chopping block.
Besides, Ned’s daughter Arya is also very cool, a tween who wants only to be a swordswoman, and who lives best by her wits, surviving not only a journey North with the latest Night’s Watch “recruits”, but also service as Tywin Lannister’s cup bearer. Tywin, btw, is the patriarch of that family, the most devious, richest, and successful man in the entire kingdom. As the current Hand of the King, he basically is running the whole show at this point, and deserves every bit of blame for the mess his children and their heirs have become, as well as the hatred they encounter from the populace in general. In short, the perfect villain. And Arya is spying, right under his nose!
So Jon Snow and Arya seem destined to link up in the North, sometime in the future, and merge their powers to wrest back control of their lands, if not the entire kingdom.
But overseas, another savior is building her forces. Daenerys Targaryen (let’s just call her Dany) is the daughter of Aerys, the “Mad King”. Twenty years earlier, when she and brother Viserys (get the naming protocol in this family?) were still quite young, the Mad King finally went off the deep end, and started channeling the Red Queen – saying “Off with ‘is head” left and right one day in court. A member of his guard, Jaime Lannister (yep, the twin brother of Cersei, and the real father of Bad King Joffery) sliced him from behind, earning the nickname “Kingslayer”. Not a bad sobriquet to be known by. Because everyone was pleased to still be alive, and because he was a Lannister, he kept his job on the King’s Guard, after Robert Baratheon was installed as the new King. The reasons for this are obscure, but the upshot is that Viserys feels his crown was stolen, and he’s bound and determined to get his rightful place back on the Iron Throne.
GoT opens with Viserys basically selling Dany to the king (or Khal) of the Dothraki Horde (think: Genghis Khan and the Mongols), Kahl Drogo. Drogo and Dany appear mismatched from the start: they don’t share a common language, he’s a giant Samoan-appearing due and she’s a diminutive Viking type, but they hit it off almost from the start. She gets pregnant, learns the language and the ways of her new people, and comes to see she doesn’t really need her brother anymore. Maybe it’s time to point out that Viserys is the one person in this whole collection who’s even more unlikeable than Joffery. So when he persists in insulting Drogo, insisting he be given the purchase price for his sister – his “crown of gold” by right – well, Drogo simply takes his belt made up of gold medallions, melts them in a pot over a blazing fire, and pours the soup onto Viserys’ head. The gold solidifies, and V. drops over, literally stone dead.
Dany discovers the dragon eggs which she and her brother snuck out of Kings’ Landing, and finds that she can tolerate the fire in which they are kept without getting burnt. Hmm. Dragons have been extinct in this world for “hundreds of years”, but her family has kept the presumably petrified eggs as heirlooms all that time. After Drogo dies (that simple phrase actually takes a couple of GoT episodes to play out, involving an unsuccessful challenge to his leadership which leaves him with a small chest wound, a witch, the sacrifice of Dany’s unborn child, and finally a smothering by pillow) Dany determines she will follow Dothraki tradition, and follow her husband onto the funeral pyre. But, remember she is fireproof? So, the next morning, among the embers, she arises (naked, this IS HBO after all), from the embers, along with three cute little baby dragons, all cuddly and clinging to her like a litter of kittens. Watch out for this woman.
Next season, she leads the remaining loyal rump of her horde (about two dozen strong) across the Red Waste, to the City of Qarth, where she outwits an entire Council of Thirteen, including the devilish Warlocks, who have captured her babies. But she taught them to breath fire on command, and apparently their breath simply turns iron chains to dust, and melts the shape shifting warlocks to butter. So at the end of season two, all she needs is a ship and an army, and she’s ready to aim for King’s Landing from the South.
Jon Snow (a bastard traitor), Arya Stark (a pre-pubertal girl), Tyrion Lannister (a dwarf with a disfiguring facial scar), and Daenerys Targaryen (the product of three hundred years of inbreeding to keep the bloodline pure) are without question the coolest people in this show, and had damn well better join forces and dump the scheming Lannisters into the sea, and then hold off the mysterious White Walkers with their Zombies up North, later rather than sooner, as I’d like this show to go on for about five more years.