Who’s Winning So Far In Game Of Thrones?

“Power resides where men believe it resides,” goes Varys’ oft-quoted mantra. “A very small man can cast a very large shadow.” But this season was no shadow-puppet show; it was pure, brutal exposé, with more back-stabbing (and front-stabbing) than a Behind The Music special. Barely a machination machinated without Tywin, Olenna Tyrell, Varys and/or Littlefinger having a long and involved conversation about it before or afterwards, and everything beyond the wall served to underscore how faintly ludicrous the southern machinating is, as it was every man, woman, baby and ice zombie for themselves. Winter is coming — apparently in the form of something that makes the soul-crushing extravaganza of blood and betrayal we’ve enjoyed so far look like a weekend in bed with Podrick Payne — so let’s see who’s holding the cards.

The Boltons

With House Stark razed to the ground and scattered to the wind, the Boltons are ascendant in the North. We know now that Roose Bolton is smart, venal, and has a nose for when an unhappy ending is on the cards; he’s Tywin Lannister minus the piles of gold and the concern for his reputation. He’s aligned himself with the Lannisters, who seem poised to end the war not with a bang but with a whimper, but there’s nothing to suggest that he wouldn’t ally his house and bannermen with Frosty Grandpa from last year’s season finale if he thought it was a better deal. As Stannis plans to move north and Bolton tries to keep hold of his home region after the Lannisters’ undeniable, dishonourable victory, we’ll be seeing more of the Flayed Man, and hopefully fewer men being flayed.

Penises

Yara gets one delivered and immediately takes charge! Also, consider how much power resided in that sausage when we (and Theon) thought it might be a penis. Nothing smeared in mustard has ever been so chilling.

Not Joffrey

Not Joffrey at all. So evil even his mum admits it, and so weak his grandfather can send him to bed in the middle of a small council meeting and all he’ll do is grumble about how he’s not sleepy at all. The pretense that he can do anything he wants extends only to murdering informants that Littlefinger wants murdered, and it’s a poor king indeed that Petyr Baelish can manipulate. Jaime’s speech about how Aerys’ dangerous whims forced him to kill the king echoes down to this, another terrible king whose parents were too closely related and whose temper and cruelty made him a really shitty boss. What happens when Joffrey comes of age? Will he just serve anybody’s head to any of their relatives when the mood takes him, or will he continue to be a snivelling little shitrag with no interest in using his power to do anything but torture people?

R’hllor

Robb’s death was planned and conducted by Boltons and Lannisters, who need search for no inspiration from deities to wreak vengeance and havoc and all wreakable forms of bloody chaos on their enemies. Melisandre could be lying about what she sees in the fire; Stannis is certainly rather suggestible. Flaming swords can probably be explained by science. But shadow beasts with corporeal substance enough to open a throat, and now resurrection? Real magic is starting to fuel the plot; the dragons, ice zombies, wargs and wildfire could be natural phenomena, but this is directed magic that bends to the will of men. Beric Dondarrion is alive, Robb is dead, and if Thoros and Mellie are to be believed, both of those facts are true because R’hllor willed it. We have been shown his power in the same way Varys was, when his poor decommissioned man-tackle carried a voice out of the sorceror’s flames. The Red Woman’s red god, we now know, must be taken seriously, and he moves in mysterious ways. Which is a nice change from all the transparent plotting and obvious intentions we’re so sick of.

White People

While my hopes are still strong for an eventual Salladhor Saan coup, Danaerys ‘Moses Luther Khaleesi’ Targaryen over here is still the great white hope of all those poor enslaved brown people. The Targaryen family, at least, are equal-opportunity conquerors; her dragon-wielding ancestors flew their fancy technology down from Valyria and decided Westeros and all her people — including the Anglos Andals — were theirs now. And the slave trade of Essos has, generally speaking, been based more around enslaving peoples conquered in war than invasion of less-developed civilisations, and the slavers themselves are not white, so there isn’t quite as much awkward post-colonial subtext as in other White Folks Save Brown Folks From Oppression stories. There is an awkward post-colonial subtext in all the desert-barbarians-keep-slaves-so-more-civilised-white-lady-must-punish-them-for-their-barbaric-ways that I don’t think is quite mitigated by Dany’s barbarian gap year eating horse jerky; the visual of her helping all those worshipful slaves to simultaneously claim their own freedom and also invent crowd-surfing was certainly a leetle bit uncomfortable.

Dany

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Caitlin Welsh is a freelance writer. She has written for The BRAG, Mess + Noise, FasterLouder, Cosmopolitan, TheVine, Beat, dB, X-Press, and Moshcam.

You can follow Game Of Thrones with her here.