Pearson Moore gives his thoughts and analysis on the fourth episode of season two, “Garden of Bones.”

The List: A Discussion of Game of Thrones 2.04

by Pearson Moore

This is no summertime drama.

Every minute of tonight’s episode was dark with fear and hatred and torture and death. Victories on the battlefield only led to suffering for both sides. A king who might have concentrated on spreading good cheer was instead the most heinous source of unspeakable evil, a man who found greatest pleasure in causing pain and mutilation. A grand oasis in the unforgiving desolation of the Red Waste turned out instead to be as inhospitable as the Garden of Bones surrounding it. Girls and boys who might have enjoyed courtship and family life and an apprenticeship instead waited in the rain and mud, waited in their own urine and filth, for their turn to be tortured and eaten alive by rats. What little light might have shown through was instead engulfed in shadow.

The only relief from misery was hope. Everyone tonight had hope, and hope centred around a plan of action, an agenda to be activated at the first possible opportunity. That hope was not a mere sentiment, though. It was grounded in each character’s sense of personal justice, and it allowed each of the oppressed, in her own way, to overcome every present obstacle of thought and emotion.

Each character this evening carried in her mind a reason for hope: A list that would allow her to regain the personal justice others had stolen with malice, hatred, and spite. Last week we learned the intricacies of loyalty in Westeros. Tonight we saw the value—and the danger—in holding onto hope by creating an action plan for revenge—a list of mortal enemies—to be killed at the first opportunity.

Yoren’s Prayer

We never learned last week the name of Yoren’s brother. Our ignorance does not affect the meaning of Yoren’s prayer, though, because as we learned from Yoren’s own lips, the qualities attaching to his brother were of no importance to him. “Here’s the funny part: I can’t picture my brother’s face anymore.” The importance of Yoren’s brother was not the blood relation or even the brother’s life itself, but the actions that Yoren took after a young man named Willem decided to end Yoren’s brother’s life.

“But Willem—oh, he was a nice looking boy. He had good white teeth, blue eyes, one of those dimpled chins all the girls like. I would think about him when I was working, when I was drinking, when I was having a shit. It got to the point where I would say his name every night before I went to bed: Willem, Willem, Willem. A prayer almost.”

Yoren’s prayer gave him hope. By putting Willem’s name on a list, Yoren had a reason to live, a plan extending into the future. In the end, personal justice was served, and Yoren put an axe through Willem’s head.

But Willem’s death did not bring an end to Yoren’s suffering. We don’t know the circumstances of either execution. Perhaps Yoren’s brother died because of his own criminal activity; Willem may have been the kingdom’s official executioner. Perhaps Yoren’s brother was innocent and Willem just wanted to know what it was like to kill a man. Regardless of the greater meaning of the deaths, Yoren did not feel at ease. Revenge may have tasted sweet for an instant, but Yoren’s life remained out of kilter. He was threatened by external powers, or tortured by his own demons. Whatever the source of angst, he fled. He stole Willem’s horse and rode north to the only place that would have him: the Wall.

Yoren didn’t have time to complete the lesson he was conveying to Arya. Perhaps if the invasion of the Lannister bannermen had not interrupted him he could have impressed upon Arya the emptiness of revenge, that it had forced him into a lifetime of penance, that it taken away memories of his brother and supplanted them with daily recollections of the fair young man who had ended his brother’s life. Perhaps he might have told her that revenge only made his life darker, not brighter. But the Cleganes and Lorches and Lannisters came before he could impart the final bit of the lesson, and Arya was left clinging … to a prayer.

The Thirteen Protectors

Qarth was the only city for hundreds of kilometres. With the Dothraki Sea weeks away by horse, Daenerys had to get her people through the gates of the walled fortress, or perish in the Garden of Bones. But the price of admission was a test of raw strength. “Might we see the dragons?” the “humble merchant”, one of the Thirteen, asked her.

He did not ask out of curiosity or as a courtesy to a visiting dignitary. His inquiry had the single objective of identifying the nature and the depth of the threat she might pose to the city. Daenerys knew if she revealed her half-metre-high dragons—who posed no more threat than a duck or a goose—she would have revealed her weakness and she would have become the immediate focus of a campaign aimed at separating her from the dragons—or leaving her to dessicate in the Garden of Bones. When she refused, she was denied entry to the city.

She took the same action everyone else took this evening: She compiled a list, a source for her future extraction of revenge for the Qarthian lack of hospitality. Every one of the Thirteen appeared on Daenerys’ list. “When my dragons are grown, we’ll take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who wronged me. We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground. Turn us away, and we will burn you first.”

Twelve Angry Men

Something about the situation didn’t add up. It’s not that the information was incomplete, it’s that those with the responsibility of evaluating the testimony and sensory data did not understood the meaning of that information. A jury of twelve might give testimony a cursory hearing, but unless at least one of those twelve angry men goes beyond a superficial reconstruction of the crime, an innocent person may suffer unjust imprisonment or execution.

Xaro Xhoan Daxos might have taken the socially acceptable route of not breaking ranks with the “humble merchant” and the sheep-like eleven who followed his lead. But something didn’t add up. If Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, was weak, she would not long remain in that condition. If she was strong, the Protectors of Qarth would be obliged to kneel before her. Either way, the evidence before the Thirteen indicated that their best course of action could not include any signs of antipathy or inhospitality toward her. If they instead took actions to befriend her, they might well call upon this potentially powerful ally in a future time of need. Hasty action could doom Qarth to a long and very uncomfortable winter.

We do not yet know Xaro Xhoan Daxos’ true intentions. It may be he is simply a pragmatic leader. But he may be more of a “proactive” pragmatist, too. In a city in which he can call upon hundreds of soldiers and guards, he could easily exercise opportunistic desire and strip Daenerys of her beloved dragons, or in some other way compromise Daenerys or remove her from a position of leadership. Perhaps he has entirely personal ambitions. Perhaps he carries his own list, left over from a time of dragons and the brave men who rode them.

At the very least, though, we know Xaro is an unusual man. Like Juror #8 in Twelve Angry Men, Xaro was willing to stand up to ridicule to express a view others found distasteful or even unacceptable, possibly with an eye toward not only his own desires, but toward justice for Daenerys and her group. We will want to pay close attention to this “savage from the Summer Isles” in coming episodes.

Six Lannisters

Joffrey.
Cersei.
Ilyn Payne.
The Hound.
Polliver.
The Mountain.

Joffrey, obviously, because he gave the order to execute Ned Stark. Cersei, because it was the queen whose minions were even now searching for Arya to drag her back to face whatever tortures the deranged Lannister woman had planned for the Starks. Ilyn Payne, because he was the man who severed Ned Stark’s head. The Hound, because he took pleasure in running down and murdering an innocent butcher’s boy, Mycah. Polliver, because he was the Clegane man who had stolen Needle, and then used it to kill Lommy—for sport. The Mountain, because he found the best expression of his humanity in the starvation, suffering, and lethal torture of innocents.

Joffrey.
Cersei.
Ilyn Payne.
The Hound.
Polliver.
The Mountain.

Arya’s list was at the heart of tonight’s episode, and it formed the natural progression from Yoren’s prayer to become Arya’s response to the inhuman privations of the Clegane tyranny at Harrenhal.
Six names, six numbers upon which to build battles of personal justice, a war of vengeance and vendetta. But the names cannot represent just a single dimension of truth, else they could become mere numbers on a list, and any war of vengeance would be a matter of counting live targets and subtracting dead bodies. But as Lord Baelish noted, “If war were arithmetic, mathematicians would rule the world.” There is more to the conduct of war than a simple head count, and there is more to a campaign of revenge than a simple cataloguing of sins.

There are at least four reasons to question the utility of any such list of enemies.

Probably there is not one among those reading these words who can claim to have led an exemplary life. We all perform deeds we wish at a later time we could undo, hurtful actions for which we have no means of making amends. Perhaps Cersei or Gregor Clegane will come to regret their actions and seek penance for their inhumanity. Perhaps when Arya is in a position to thrust her sword through Cersei’s intestines she would be cutting down not a mortal enemy, but the woman in the best position to ensure Arya’s future comfort and safety.

Even if people do not change, even if they continue with whatever actions we consider beneath the dignity of a human being, our perceptions can warp reality. Ilyn Payne, for instance may have taken no pleasure at all in obeying the order to end Ned Stark’s life. In fact, Ser Ilyn may be precisely the kind of person any of us would cherish as a friend, confidant, or even soulmate. But because he was the person charged with the duty of ending Ned Stark’s life, Arya will endure any level of sacrifice or pain to see that personal justice is served and Ilyn Payne is put into a pine box.

Even if the individuals on the list are far from perfect, some of them may carry in their hearts qualities that Arya would find redemptive, or might at least give her occasion to doubt the value of ending their lives. The Hound ran down Arya’s friend, Mycah. However, he was almost certainly under orders to find and kill the boy. Mycah insulted Prince Joffrey, and we know from frequent experience over the last several episodes that Joffrey brooks not even the smallest slight or sign of contempt. He was ready to execute a knight for showing up drunk to a melee; he certainly suffered no second thoughts about ordering a boy’s death.

But Sandor Clegane likely is much more than the king’s dutiful protector. He has shown signs of affection, honour, and regard for Sansa Stark, even when Joffrey would have preferred he demonstrate an attitude of contempt and disdain toward her.

In protecting Ser Loras from the deranged Gregor Clegane at last season’s jousting competition, Sandor showed the kind of bravery and honour possessed by few, even those bestowed with the honorific Ser. As I wrote last year in my analysis of Episode 1.05:

Sandor Clegane, the Hound, bears the wounds of a broken family relationship. We might interpret his noble defence of Ser Loras Tyrell as the predictable result of the hatred he carries for his brother, Ser Gregor Clegane, “The Mountain That Rides”. We might also find some justification in the Mountain’s attack on Ser Loras, whose choice of a mare in heat was aimed at unnerving Ser Gregor’s stallion. I don’t believe either of these mitigating factors can survive a balanced scrutiny of this scene, however. Sandor Clegane’s defence of a dishonourable knight was motivated by empathy, not by any call to retribution or revenge.

Ser Gregor had enough sense to realise his horse’s behaviour was the result of Ser Loras’ despicable provocation. But the knowledge unhinged him, causing him to decapitate his mount and attack the man who had defiled the tournament with his trickery. The Hound’s intervention was the act of a man whose brokenness was rendered whole by the situation. It was as if the wounds of Ser Gregor’s childhood attack had been inflicted specifically so that Sandor might prevent Ser Gregor from attacking other defenceless people in a similar manner.

We saw proof of the Hound’s true motivation when the King commanded the men to stop. Sandor immediately fell to one knee, genuflecting to His Grace. He did this even though he knew his brother was well past the point of reason. He risked his life out of duty to his king, just as he had risked his life seconds before out of honour.

If Sandor can move past vengeance, as I believe he has, is this non-vengeful state of mind something that might not benefit Arya? If the Hound is not evil at heart, but is attempting, even at great cost to himself, to show good will, is he not someone Arya could enjoy calling a friend? Is her decision to end his life a rash choice, or does it truly represent the best intention she could place in her mind’s eye?

I think the strongest argument we could make in our attempt to dissuade Arya from the care and feeding of vendettas is the obvious toll such a determined focussing of energies took on the life of Yoren. He came to believe that the only course open to him was the life-long penance of service at the Wall. It seems to me quite likely that a nightly devotion to prayers of retribution could trap her in a life of misery rather than freeing her to enjoy her connections to family and friends. Yoren long ago forgot what his brother looked like, but remembered every contour of Willem’s face. If Arya follows Yoren’s example of vengeance, isn’t it likely she will forget everything she once knew of her father?

Five Enemies

House Lannister has at least five major enemies: The King in the North, who is winning every battle he engages, killing five Lannister men for every soldier he loses; King Stannis, who has marshalled men and the shadows of men to fight and die for him; King Renly, who leads the largest armies on the continent; Balon Greyjoy, who has found the times conducive to an attack on Winterfell but could just as easily attack Casterly Rock; and House Frey, whose bridge opens only for King Robb and his loyal men and direwolves. The only other house we’re familiar with from the story thus far is House Arryn, but Lysa has said she will not commit any forces to fighting the Lannisters.

But just as one free-thinking angry man among a dozen can change his mind and change the course a jury will take, so too a single free-thinking enemy could become a friend, and change the course of history. “When you march on King’s Landing,” Littlefinger said, “you may find yourself facing a protracted siege or—open gates.” Renly detested the idea of purchasing anyone’s loyalty, but Lord Baelish’s sympathies have always been a matter of financial commitment and not emotional attachment.

I was most concerned, though, about the appearance of Juror #8 on the field of the dead and dying, in the aftermath of battle. She wore the dress one might associate with a World War I battlefield nurse, a kind of Westerosi Red Cross good samaritan, even though she was from Volantis, one of the nine Free Cities of Essos. I didn’t catch her name, but I understand from press releases that she goes by the name of Jeyne. The name does not bear any necessary significance; Jeyne is probably the most common name in all of ASoIaF. Though she could be a particular Jeyne, carrying tremendous significance to the story, I am going to proceed as if I have not read ACoK and ASoS. The interaction Robb and Jeyne shared was dangerous enough in itself that supplementing with knowledge from the novels is not necessary.

I call her Juror #8 because she was clearly a free thinker, not impeded in thought or action by cultural convention or political reality. She saved lives, regardless of their allegiance, and she was not afraid to tell Robb what she thought of his battles and his complete lack of preparation for post-Lannister governance of Westeros.

The problem is that King Robb was smitten. He enjoys the support of many northern houses, among them the powerful House Frey, which ensures free passage between north and south. He has demonstrated an admirable attention to the prosecution of the war, and by now must be considered a master tactician. He has prevented his mother from disrupting his plans, as painful as this must be not only to her, but to him, too. For months he has evinced a single-mindedness that few among us could sustain so long, over the course of thousands of major decisions affecting the lives of tens of thousands. He endangers all of this with a single longing glance.

King Robb needs to be single-minded not only on the battlefield, but in every aspect of life. He is not free to ignore, disavow, or renege on the contract his mother negotiated with Lord Walder of House Frey, and that contract requires that he betroth and marry one of Walder’s innumerable daughters. If Robb has a fling with an alluring young nurse and forgets his solemn responsibilities to House Frey, he is courting political and military difficulties the likes of which he has not even had to contemplate. What would happen, for instance, if House Frey declared for the Lannisters? It is not difficult to foresee a scenario in which the steady stream of supplies from north of the Neck suddenly stopped, and King Robb’s war machine came to a halt. Logistics and supply trains, not soldiers, win wars. Starved of food and materiel, Robb’s ability to fight would be not curtailed, but ended.

So Juror #8, this Jeyne of Volantis, speaks compelling truth, lives by attractive virtue, and carries herself with bewitching poise. Even if she carries in her heart only the purest of intentions, she may be, for Robb Stark, the most dangerous enemy he will ever have to face. Five Lannister enemies are arrayed on the battlefield. One of these enemies has already declared intentions to attack not the lion, but the wolf. With two enemies pledged to destroy him, Robb cannot afford to demonstrate anything less than complete adherence to every contract, no matter how repulsive the particulars of the agreement. If he alienates even one major supporter, he would become the most vulnerable general on the field.

Four Fingers

What is the value of four fingers? Why keep them as trinkets? Are they Ser Davos Seaworth’s good luck charms? Prayer beads?

Whatever those four severed fingers are for Ser Davos, they are not insignificant to him. He carries them in a pouch around his neck, symbolising their essentiality to him, rising to an importance greater even than his knighthood.

Davos Seaworth is the kind of man I suppose many of us wish we could be. He is devoted, even to the same man who cut off his fingers, but his devotion is not unexamined. From my reading of the novels and from my take on Season Two so far, it seems to me Davos is above all a man of steady conviction, deep morals, and engaged thought.

I don’t believe those fingers represent Ser Davos’ enchantment with the romance of piracy and smuggling. King Stannis asked if he had remembered his “smuggler’s tricks”. He responded immediately, “Any shore, any night.” But I think his willingness to resort to smuggling is in service of his loyalty to the king. If the question had come from anyone else, I believe he would have responded truthfully that he was not a smuggler at heart.

I believe he is a man of respect. That he chose to refer to the Priestess Melisandre as the “Red Woman” seemed uncharacteristic of him, but certainly shows the less than high regard in which he holds this seductive enchantress. King Stannis immediately corrected him. “She has a name,” Stannis said. The king was saying, essentially, “Be respectful, use her proper name.”

The more important question to me was the significance of the four fingers to King Stannis. He recognised Davos’ unusual abilities and gave him a knighthood, but at the same time he insisted that everyone, even an onion smuggler, be held accountable to the letter of the law, and he chopped off his saviour’s fingers.

For Stannis, the fingers represented the supremacy of law. No one, not even a friend to the prince second in line to the Iron Throne, was above the law, and everyone in the realm was equally subject to the consequences of the law. Expediency was not a valid defence—not even an act that saved Stannis’ life and the lives of all who had been under siege for so many months could serve as reparation for even a single instance of illegal smuggling. Davos violated the law, there was no appeal, and he lost his fingers, and that was that.

Review with me, then, the inexplicable course of events at the end of the episode:

Stannis: I want you to be a smuggler this time.
Davos: Any shore, any night. What am I bringing ashore?
Stannis: The Red Woman.
Davos: Surely there are other ways, cleaner ways.
Stannis: Cleaner ways don’t win wars.

The exchange was the most spectacular of the episode. Not three minutes earlier, Stannis had chastised Davos for referring to Melisandre as “the Red Woman”; now he himself was using this appellation. Much worse, though, Stannis was asking Davos, at least in spirit, to violate the law for which he had many years earlier demanded Davos’ fingers.

“I want you to be a smuggler this time.”

What he was saying, in other words, was that he wished Davos to violate everything their relationship had been based on. He wished Davos to violate that which had been held inviolate, and he wished him to perform this act for the sake of expediency, to gain the upper hand in battle, to “win wars”.

Something important has occurred in Stannis that is now allowing him to forsake the morality that prevented him even from forgetting to add “Ser” to Jaime Lannister’s name—in a document that asserted Jaime was the incestuous father of the illegitimate king, Joffrey. Stannis was respectful even to the worse scoundrel, to the dregs of society, but now he would violate a major law (at least in spirit) to accomplish an immediate objective.

Stannis’ hypocrisy is mind-numbing. But even these depths of hypocrisy are exceeded by the ends to which he is willing to go in service of his single-minded obsession with the Iron Throne.

Ser Davos knew there was something unwholesome about “the Red Woman”. To bring her ashore could only mean she would be unleashing some foul magic or concocting some vile plan that would go far beyond the mere violation of laws. She had about her the air not of a common criminal, but a most uncommon and unholy sorceress. Stannis knew there was something unwholesome in her, too. But “Cleaner ways don’t win wars,” Stannis said. Even though he recognised his involvement in a noxious alliance, he was willing to perpetrate whatever evil Melisandre had in mind in order to advance his plans to take the Red Keep.

Three Powers

“Three great men sit in a room: A king, a priest, and a rich man. Between them stands a common sellsword. Each great man bids the sellsword kill the other two. Who lives? Who dies?”

In many cultures, to kill a priest is unthinkable. The priest is not only a human being, but the immediate representative of God. A king, likewise, is often immune to the sellsword’s blade, for the simple reason that the authority vested in the king’s office prevents the mercenary from violating the king’s person. It was not too long ago that high-ranking officers on the field of battle were immune to attack, simply because enemy soldiers held them in such high regard. The rich man, of course, is immune to attack because he can shower financial benefit on any who would aid his cause.

What Lord Varys argued last week is that there are at least three sources of political and military power: Political authority, religious authority, and financial authority. People can be coerced into accepting, obeying, and even dying for leaders backed by any of these three authorities. Varys’ argument is immediately relevant to us tonight, because the main participants in this game of thrones are forgetting the truth that there is more than one source of power.

Renly: You see all those banners?
Stannis: You think a few bolts of cloth will make you king?
Renly: No. The men holding those bolts of cloth will make me king.
…..
Melisandre: Look to your sins, Lord Renly. The night is dark and full of terrors.

Renly is so enamoured of his undeniably charismatic persona that he has forgotten the other sources of power. He is certainly a king, and he has amassed an army unmatched in size. But Stannis’ subjects are willing to forsake their millennia-old religious beliefs, embracing their new “Lord of Light”, the “One True God”, and they’re willing to die for this god on the battlefield. What Stannis lacks in numbers he may make up for in devotion and religious fervor.

Beyond that, there is the truth that the night is dark and full of terrors—and even the light can be full of shadows—and shadow babies—that are no less dark and full of terror. That is, there are powers deriving neither of women nor men that may far exceed the types of power Varys offered in his riddle. I discussed this notion in last week’s essay, describing the parallel track we are seeing between the human powers in the game of thrones and the primal powers in the greater Song of Ice and Fire. Melisandre’s shadow baby could be tapping into some kind of primal power, thus “crossing the streams”, as Venkman and Spengler might say. It might not lead to dogs and cats living together, but it surely could bring about the kind of complexity that will render standard armies useless to their leaders.

Two Daughters

Catelyn Stark’s daughters are not on her list, but those who have it within their power—or claim to enjoy the power—to return her daughters safely to her have long been on this grieving widow’s list of people who would be better off dead.

We have been hearing since the first days of the series about Lord Petyr Baelish’s undying love for Catelyn Tully, but like Stannis Baratheon, Littlefinger tonight said things to Catelyn that seem inconsistent with his character, and entirely incompatible with any claim of emotional attachment.

“I’ve loved you since I was a boy. It seems to me that fate has given us this chance to—”

Only Catelyn’s quickly-drawn dagger prevented Lord Baelish from completing his declaration of love. But it is just as well that he was stopped mid-thought. What he said was more than sufficient to prove the shallowness of his words.

“Both girls are healthy, safe for now.”

The truth is that no one, not Varys’ spiders or Littlefinger’s little birds, has any idea where Arya Stark is. Lord Tywin Lannister recognised her as a girl, but didn’t know she was the daughter of Eddard Stark.

We need to ask, though, if Petyr Baelish truly loved Catelyn, why did he lie to her? Why was it so easy for him to lie to her?

I believe Littlefinger has real affection for Catelyn, that in fact if he cannot have her for himself, he might even be willing to sacrifice so that she can find happiness. This makes his deception all the more interesting. Does he believe by lying to her he can secure for himself or for her some greater good that would be unavailable were he to tell the truth? Does his selfishness and his desire to curry favour with the Lannisters outweigh his love for Catelyn? The situation in Littlefinger’s mind is complex, and at this point we lack sufficient information to understand his true priorities.

One Shadow

“Shadows cannot live in the dark, Ser Davos. They are servants of the light, the children of fire. And the brighter the flame, the darker they are.”

The idea that darkness and shadow can serve the ideals of goodness and truth occupies an honoured position in hallowed tradition, but the intentions of “Shadow Baby” have not yet been revealed. It is too early for me to make any judgments about the shadowy, slimy monster that exited Melisandre’s loins. I will have much more to say about this next week, and in my essay on Melisandre, which will appear in Direwolves and Dragons Volume 2.01, due to be published in early May.

Tonight’s episode was one of the most visually compelling presentations I have ever seen on television. Somehow the actors and production staff are continually outdoing themselves, providing us with the richest tale we are ever likely to see play out in our living rooms. This is no summertime drama. I look forward to next week!

• Published on 04/25/2012 at 9:28 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/20/2016 at 6:29 PM CDT