“A Golden Crown”: WiC Remembers Season 1, episode 6

“You’re talking about war.” “I’m talking about justice.” Theon Greyjoy and Robb Stark sit and talk about what Robb should do after Ned was attacked and Jory killed last episode. Theon is rash, Robb, careful. But Robb seems at least partially swayed by Theon’s advice. Something has to be done, right? Jory Cassell and others were murdered, and Ned assaulted.

The issue of escalation dominates “A Golden Crown” and really, the entire first season of Game Of Thrones. The story’s entire premise is that the Seven Kingdoms are on a knife edge, with a weak king and a network of fraying internal alliances barely holding things together in the face of increasingly powerful local lords and growing factional rivalries—not to mention a rightful heir attempting to raise an army. Something was going to happen to trigger a war. But what, and between whom? What were the human decisions and errors that led to Game Of Thrones’ own Guns Of August?

Ironically, the two people working against escalation of hostilities at this point in the story are, short of Jaime Lannister, the two most apparently responsible for things getting out of hand in the first place. First, there’s Catelyn Stark, whose quick decision to capture Tyrion Lannister and take him to her sister’s castle is demonstrated to be increasingly unwise, thanks to her sister’s instability and Tyrion’s intelligence. “I made the bald man cry…into the turtle stew! Which I do believe my sister ate, at least, I hope she did.” Cat can only watch in horror, realizing that she’s been outplayed. She barely says a word—but Michelle Fairley’s face does a marvelous job of showing the increasing horror at how the situation has gotten out of control for her.

On the other side of that story, Tyrion Lannister demonstrates his gift for controlled escalation of a tense political situation. More than perhaps any other character across the entire series, The Imp can take a situation that he has no a chance in, and raise the stakes until he does. If only other characters had the same ability–but then there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell.

The other major character more actively working to de-escalate the situation is that aforementioned weak king, Robert Baratheon. King Robert, famed hammer wielder, attempts to pound the situation back into a peaceful setting. He orders Ned to have his wife free Tyrion and to avoid seeking vengeance against Jaime Lannister. While this isn’t just, Robert’s demonstrated and monologued that it’s not justice he’s ruling for, it’s peace. And it’s entirely possible that this is the only possible way a king could keep the peace at this point.

Yet taking Robert’s orderseriously is impossible, as they arrive during his weakest moment: raising his hand to his wife. She, too, wishes to escalate the situation, verbally and viciously going after Ned Stark before Robert resorts to physical violence. At this point, Robert seems his weakest, still angry, realizing it was the wrong thing to do, and then running away from it all. He may have the right ideas—and it’s possible he’s a better king than he’s given credit for—but he doesn’t have the temperament to sustain any kind of wisdom. “I should not have hit her. That was not…that was not kingly.”

Theoretically Ned Stark does, and his response to the possibility of escalation is the most intriguing part of the episode. One of the hallmarks of the “Quality TV” era is the moral and motivational ambiguity from the main character centering the show. Recall Tony Soprano, painstakingly hunting and killing a snitch; it’s about what he does and how James Gandolfini portrays him, not about what he says he does. Or sometimes it’s about what characters don’t do, like Bryan Cranston’s face as he watches someone important in his world die in front of him. Why do they do the things they do? Ambiguity of intent, the interpretable action, and quality of performance are critical to all these shows.

And it’s important to remember that for HBO, Game Of Thrones was initially positioned as the successor to The Sopranos, and an attempt to do a fantasy variation on “Quality TV.” (I recall the exceedingly unfortunate phrase “The Sopranos in Middle-Earth” used to describe GOT.) Sean Bean’s Eddard Stark seems to fit in that position, and never does so more than in his scene sitting on the throne as The Hand, deciding what to do about the “bandits” attacking Riverlands peasants.

Ned receives word of The Mountain That Rides attacking and murdering peasants, and he takes action. He’s been paralyzed in terms of getting revenge by Robert’s orders, but Robert isn’t here. So Ned acts aggressively, sending Beric Dondarrion to defeat Gregor Clegane, and escalating the situation with the Lannisters. “Inform Tywin Lannister that he has been summoned to court, to answer for the crimes of his bannermen.” But Ned’s motives here are unclear. Is he the strong and just Hand, doing what’s right for the realm? Is he attempting to claim justice for Jory and the others? Is it personal, petty vengeance? Or is Ned deliberately trying to escalate the conflict against the Lannisters for political gain while he’s directly aligned with the king?

We don’t know. We can only guess at Ned’s motivations, because we’re not in his head. (His attempts to send his daughters to safety allow us to still consider him a good person, in that TV suggests that men taking care of their families can be perceived that way—again, parallels to Walt and Tony.) Here, perhaps more than at any other point in the entire series, Game Of Thrones fits the Quality TV model. Ned’s escalation may be just, may be idiotic, may be genius. But we don’t know which, and we don’t directly know why. Small wonder, then, that this episode was the one that critics tended to agree was the turning point in the series. With “A Golden Crown” Game Of Thrones looked most like what an HBO viewer might expect from a great HBO series.

The episode also has the first great shocking death of the series, which has, to put it mildly, become a calling card for Game Of Thrones. Viserys Targaryen, finding himself powerless in an increasingly untenable situation for his ambitions, decides that his ambitions are more important than anything else. First, he attempts to steal Dany’s dragon eggs, and change the terms of his role in the game. He’s stopped by a nearly-purring Jorah Mormont. “And yet here I stannnddd.” Then he goes all-in with Drogo…and loses badly.

Viserys’ death isn’t just shocking for being a shocking death. It’s shocking because of who he is. Part of that Quality TV model I mentioned is that it’s the story of dangerous, powerful men doing battle with one another, and Viserys, as the rightful heir to the throne, seems like one of those powerful men. Yet he’s killed easily and quickly, primogeniture be damned. Meanwhile, Daenerys, a wide-eyed child only a few episodes prior, has quickly found her way into power. With the action rising across the next few episodes, we’ll see patriarch after patriarch die, and the Quality TV model morph into something very different. It’s not only the characters who are escalating their own situations, but the show as a whole, becoming something new within its medium.

Notes and Quotes:

• “I should wear the armor. And you the gown.” “I shall wear this like a badge of honor.” Compared to the books, the show doesn’t go into Cersei’s belief that she should have the power of being a man. This scene changes that.
• “There is only one god, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death. ‘Not today.’” Quietly, another great episode for Arya.
• “If I sell one egg, I’ll have enough to buy a ship. Two, a ship and an army.” “And you have all three.” “I need a large army.” Harry Lloyd doesn’t get enough credit for given a one-dimensional character like Viserys two, even two-and-a-half dimensions.
• “You don’t fight with honor.” “No. ‘e did.” Meanwhile, Jerome Flynn begins his star turn.

• “Where do you come from, the North or the South?” “I come from a very small village in…” “Oh wait. I just realized I don’t care.” There’s some oddly modern-sounding dialogue sprinkled through the episode. Tyrion’s scene with Mort joins this one with Sansa in that category.
• “I’ll never disrespect you again. I’ll never be cruel to you again.” TWU WUV.
• “I don’t want someone brave and gentle and strong, I want him!”
• Regardless of anything else, I think it’s fair to say that the decision to name Ned Stark as Hand was almost inevitably going to lead to confrontation between Starks and Lannisters. So even if Robert’s attempts to defuse the situation in this episode may have been good, he deserves some blame for not finding a politically tolerable Hand. But what options does he have? Going through the powerful lords, the Arryns and Tullys don’t have a good candidate. The Martells are still largely detached from the Iron Throne, otherwise Doran or Oberyn could have been a candidate.
• So we’re left with Tywin, who it appears Robert doesn’t trust or like (wisely), one of his brothers (there doesn’t appear to be a convention against making a family member Hand, but it also doesn’t appear to be common), a minor lord although none in particular springs to mind, or…Mace Tyrell. It’s possible that Robert would never have named someone who fought for the Mad King his Hand, and he doesn’t seem to like his brothers, but I can’t help but feel that he might have saved himself a lot of grief by picking Mace or Renly instead of Ned.
• Then again, it’s likely that Littlefinger knew this all along—and that’s why he had Jon Arryn killed.

• Published on 10/01/2014 at 11:36 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 12:40 PM CDT