Sullied on Unsullied: What will Daenerys do with Tyrion?

In “The Gift,” two of Game of Thrones’ most important characters met for the first time—east met west, dragon met lion, queen met drunk-turned-king’s-hand-turned-drunk. The meeting of Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister was a watershed moment for the series, and one that puts it ahead of the books, where the two characters have laid eyes on each other but have yet to exchange a word. The question now becomes: what next? That’s one of the issues Adam Rady, Alison Haislip, and Xavier Brinkman grappled with on this week’s edition of WiC Live.

I think Adam gave voice to what a lot of fans are hoping will happen: that Daenerys will take Tyrion into her confidence and make him her Queen’s Hand. Together, so some fans hope, the two of them will invade Westeros and smite their enemies in time to massacre the army of White Walkers slowly descending from the north.

This is definitely a crowd-pleasing scenario, but Game of Thrones has often gone out of its way to avoid giving the crowd what it wants. This is the show that set up Ned Stark as a main character only to behead him, the show that shifted focus to Robb Stark only to kill him at a wedding reception, and the show that pulled Sansa out of the frying pan only to throw her into the fire.

There are a lot of reasons a Daenerys-Tyrion pairing would work. He could use his political savvy to reorient her occasionally misguided decision-making, and her idealism could give him a new purpose in life. At the same time, Tyrion’s family was responsible for slaughtering the Targaryens and chasing Dany across the Narrow Sea. Dany can be forgiving, but she’s not above flash-frying a few enemies when the mood takes her. For all we know, Tyrion will be dragon food by the end of the next episode.

[BEGIN SPOILERS FOR A DANCE WITH DRAGONS]

But somehow I doubt it. Daenerys is too smart not to realize the opportunity Tyrion presents: the chance to learn the ins and outs of Westeros’ political system from someone who was deeply involved in it, and who has plenty of reason to hate the people currently running it.

More practically, I can make a pretty good guess at what Tyrion’s going to be doing based on my knowledge of the books, something the WiC Live team is forbidden from discussing. Book-readers know that Daenerys will soon be leaving Meereen on the back of Drogon the dragon. In A Dance with Dragons, Barristan Selmy steps in to fill the resulting power vacuum. In this version of the story, I think Tyrion will step into that vacuum.

If true, this provides a clue as to why Game of Thrones executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss killed off Barristan Selmy prematurely back in “Sons of the Harpy.” Benioff and Weiss have shown a penchant for combining storylines from the books in ways that allow them to prominently feature their main players—witness how, this season, they’ve maneuvered Sansa into the role filled by Jeyne Poole in the books (see also: Ellaria Sand stepping into the role of Arianne Martell and Jorah taking over terminal disease duties for Jon Connington). Barristan is a more important character than Poole, but Tyrion is arguably the closest thing to a main character the show has, and it wouldn’t do to have him hanging around outside the walls of Meereen as he does in A Dance of Dragons. Benioff and Weiss likely wanted him close to the main action, but having him split the role with Barristan would have been too messy. Therefore, Barristan had to go.

It seems a little heartless to reduce the death of a wonderful character like Barristan to a matter of plot logistics, but in the long run I think this will be for the best. It would have been boring to watch Tyrion dithering outside the walls of Meereen, whereas seeing him back in a position of power should be quite satisfying.

How Jorah and his greyscale factors into all of this, I’m not even going to touch.

• Published on 05/27/2015 at 4:30 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT