Episode 29 – The Rains of Castamere – Analysis

Losing the Crutch: Red Weddings and Narrative Expectations in Thrones

By Tyler Davis

“My honored guests. Be welcome in my walls and at my table. I extend to you my hospitality and protection in the light of the seven.” – Walder Frey

During the initial airing of “The Rains of Castamere,” I found myself robotically refreshing my browser, SomaFM’s Groove Salad providing a distant and unobtrusive backdrop to my exploration of the emotional outpouring being distilled in Twitterspeak. I had a vague idea of what viewers around the world were experiencing, but my own participation was delayed. As someone who watches Thrones on Mondays, I normally make a point of waiting until I’ve digested an episode before seeking fan reactions. The third season’s ninth episode was a notable exception. I wanted to vicariously confront the pain while it was at its most immediate.

Because I’m a book reader, I’ve been armed with foreknowledge of the Red Wedding for some time. So while I expected the litany of obvious responses ranging from variants on “I can’t believe this is happening” to “I’m never watching this show again,” I was surprised by the explosive and sustained degree of the reaction. Days later, with the Red Wedding still being discussed around water coolers, across social media platforms, in articles, and on talk television, I think the significance of the event has begun to dawn on us all.

Suffice it to say that the Red Wedding is on my mind. Where I normally attempt an analysis of how meaning is created inside and between a large selection of scenes from the constellation which comprises a given episode (usually while situating the episode in the context of the season, or within the overall scope of the show itself), I confess to being less interested in discussing Dany’s conquest of Yunkai than I might otherwise be. I’m also turning away from such major events as Jon’s betrayal of Ygritte or the revelation of the depth of Bran’s powers (finally a truly satisfying moment for Bran, and one which confirms my hunch that the more his power is used to provide a window into the world and what’s possible within it, the more effective his scenes are). This week, my consideration centers on how audiences relate to the story of the Starks – and to Thrones more broadly – through the prism of what went down in episode nine’s final minutes.

Human beings often conceptualize their lives as narratives. This tendency is prevalent, and runs deep whenever its found. Some of the most ancient examples of verbal communication relied on story and song to memetically package valuable information for maximum transmissibility. Evidence suggests that many cave paintings were actually primitive animations, the flickering of life-sustaining fires conferring the appearance of movement in the interplay of light and shadow on stone walls. These images weren’t mere abstractions of mammoths and wolves, but mammoths and wolves that moved, ran, and came alive–entities in the fireside imagination which occupied stable, recurring roles in relation to the artists rendering them. Many years later, African talking drums mimicked the pitch patterns of speech while eschewing the need for consonants and vowels, using the phraseology of fiction, song, and poetry to encode meaning as a way of getting around tonal redundancy. Narratives are central to our communicatory experience, and since we began to understand the world as a matrix of cause-effect relationships, they’ve also been central to our self-understanding.

So we sing, we speak, we write, we live stories. The same pattern recognition we use to privilege and elevate selected details from our lives in order to construct and emphasize meaningful arcs can also be used to isolate repeating narrative structures in oral and literary tradition. Consider Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, the Bildungsroman, or any of the countless iterations of genre writing we enjoy today: from the oldest creation myths to the most recent examples of near-future science fiction, countless tales share a common blueprint.

The Red Wedding shreds this blueprint, and causes our narrative sensitivities to flare.

I was struck by the accuracy of Todd VanDerWerff’s observation that, unlike the way one might modulate the consumption of a written story by slowing down to process or speeding up to avoid the written word, you cannot watch an episode of television by controlling the speed of your encounter. Unpleasant truths explode on their own technicolor accord. While cinematography helps determine the limited perspectives through which action is revealed, and editing establishes the relationships between these perspectives (sometimes dramatically reshaping the sensation of time within the internal confines of the narrative itself), images are nonetheless processed at a steady rate by the viewer. As such, the tragedy of the Red Wedding feels unavoidable, intense, and shocking, presented with all the suddenness of real deaths occurring in real time, unglorified and ugly. As an example, take Robb’s stunned reaction and notable lack of heroics in the moments after his beloved Talisa is stabbed. In this moment, I imagine many viewers had a similar response–a momentary beat of disbelief–before their understanding caught up with what the visual data they were taking in.

When reflecting upon how I first felt after reading the chapter in which the Red Wedding takes place, I’m surprised to note that I was no less affected by the adaptation of the scene in Thrones. The chapter shook me up, yet as a viewer I was even more shocked and disturbed when considering the addition of Talisa’s death, and the show’s more robust characterization of Robb. These show changes made me more emotionally invested from an empathic perspective; I felt Robb’s loss for Robb’s sake more in Thrones than in the books precisely because there’s more Robb in Thrones than in the books. In other cases, the advantages of the medium conferred an added level of pathos; my heart broke for Catelyn when I heard her wail.

But there’s something else which explains the gamut of visceral reactions to this scene–something deeper than mere love for Martin’s characters, or the strengths of cinema. The massacre at the Twins isn’t merely the loss of friendly figures we’ve come to know, or even the symbolic endpoint of a vanquished war effort within the geopolitical arena of Westeros. The deaths at The Twins represent the death of a way we interact with stories–the destruction of an idea about how tales are meant to unfold–and the forced abandonment of a pervasive assumption which underpins the typically redemptive arcs we expect from our narratives, and from genre fiction like Thrones in particular.

By killing off Eddard Stark, Martin signals to his audience that nobody in Westeros is safe.Even someone like Ned–someone whose personal virtues and public position scream “this is the role of traditional protagonist!”–is left wholly unprotected by plot armor. As such, the valuation of moral positions isn’t conveyed from an authorial perspective; honor isn’t signalled as an intrinsically superior quality, even if the audience responds to its presence in a beloved character because the audience shares the value. Patterns of theme and value are present only in the characters themselves, and emerge through character interaction and decision-making. So while Martin, Benioff and Weiss avoid making judgments about disparate players of the game, they do remain committed to the realism of the unexpected, and to the logical consequences of decisions made within the game: Ned dies with business unfinished. He’s never sent to the Wall, and Jon never gets the truth he was promised. Despite our longings, loose ends aren’t magically tied up.

Yet many of the same readers and viewers who reluctantly came to accept Ned’s death as a necessary warning about the perils of the game also saw it as a plot catalyst which initiated an even more redemptive arc for the Stark family. When Ned dies, the conflict between Stark and Lannister magnifies, and Robb fully commits to a prolonged war campaign in his role as King of the North. This means that there’s a tendency to see Ned’s death as justified not because it ultimately defies the narrative conventions we’ve come to depend on, but because it sets in motion an entirely new stage of the conflict–one that is quickly burdened with equally conventional narrative expectations! Ned becomes a sacrificial patriarch whose death clears room for the ascendancy of a new generation of heroes.

The illusion of this ascendancy is especially effective in the show, where Robb’s presence is less peripheral than in the novels, and his character more developed. Here’s a young man who wins every battle, who embodies a version of his father’s honor while still appealing to our emotions with his self-righteous personal agency, who is poised to nobly avenge his father’s death. For all intents and purposes, Robb assumes the hero’s mantle. This reading of the story holds that Ned died so that Robb might live, and in living reclaim glory for his father, family, and for the North. At worst he will die beautifully, as all heroes are destined to do.

And then there’s that Thrones-reality to contend with. Robb dies suddenly and brutally, his mission left unaccomplished. The show takes our expectations and weaponizes them at the last possible moment, severing the safety rope which has kept us comfortably suspended above the chaos of the unknown–above the maw of an unreliable and unexpected story. As we fall, struggling for purchase, there are fewer tropes to cling to than ever before. And while there’s the chance that the story will ultimately conform to yet another assemblage of unspoken assumptions about how narratives work (maybe the story’s end game conforms to traditional patterns we can’t yet see), our faith is sufficiently shattered by the end of Edmure’s wedding celebration. The death of Robb and his supporters does not signal the rise of a tertiary, kindred champion who will fight in his wake the way he fought in his father’s, but rather the ultimate loss of our capacity for faith in traditional arcs of the kind Robb seemed to embody.

The red herring that was Robb’s final strategy for conquering Casterly Rock worked effectively in distracting us from the very real danger of his gambit with Walder Frey. The plan seemed so righteous when spoken about passionately above a war table, and it even served to reunify the Young Wolf with his mother. In retrospect, all the portents of disaster were present, but selectively ignored; many of us were lulled into a false confidence, once again using those old, calcified tropes as crutches, our pattern recognition helping us nimbly evade uncomfortable signs in favor of wish fulfillment sought headlong.

The qualities which give viewers such a limitless ability to anchor their hopes to the Starks – the emblematic Stark defense of love, family, loyalty, honor – are the same qualities which make the Starks suffer. By extension, viewers suffer for seeking these qualities in their selected heroes. And it seems to me that the characters themselves are often suckered in by a blind adherence to the patterns of behavior which naively serve these valued qualities, much in the same way that audience members reflexively default to an appreciation of these traits in favored characters in the first place. In this way, Thrones forces us to question what we bring with us into the show.

When Robb beheads Rickard Karstark for reasons of honor, he does so against the advice of everyone who loves him. And as Robb clenches his fist while walking through the rain away from the bloody chopping block, I observed what can only be described as the tragedy of compulsion in Madden’s performance. There’s a real sense in which Robb cannot bring himself to let Karstark’s transgressions slide; Rickard was responsible for the murder of two innocent squires, and that’s all there is to it–he must die. And in this compulsive model of virtue endorsement–something also exhibited by Ned when he warns Cersei of his intentions, or refuses Renly’s help on grounds that Renly’s plan would ignore the line of succession–there’s the assumption that the values being upheld have innate, decontextualized worth, and that this worth isn’t just more important than whatever consequences will come–it’s also necessarily worth fighting for own its own terms.

Of course, a prudent person knows that upholding these values shouldn’t always be necessary, but prudence is a less glamorous virtue than honor. An attentive viewer will see that in many cases, as with Ned’s refusal of Renly’s help, the choices made in the interests of social convention are especially arbitrary and damaging, seemingly less justified than even the lopping off of a powerful ally’s head.

In Westeros, the rigidity of moral absolutism is almost always penalized no matter how seductive the moral absolute, whereas adaptability is so often rewarded. This is apparent even in the events at The Twins, where the Starks shield themselves in the custom of guest right–a social practice so ironclad that they presume it’ll protect them once they secure it. And so it comes to pass that Roose Bolton, Walder Frey and Tywin Lannister get what they want precisely because they’re capable of strategically utilizing the false sense of security afforded by the pretense of “doing the right thing” against their chosen enemy. This is adaptability at its most dangerous.

In the same way that people envision their lives as narratives, they also seek protection in these narratives. The story goes that if you share bread and salt, you’ll be safe. Play your part, and feel protected. The story goes that if you’re in love, your love will conquer all. Play the role, and enjoy your happy life. The story goes that if you watch this show, the good guys will win. Play the role, and enjoy the illusion of danger. But life isn’t nearly so predictable, and honor or goodness offer no real protection against crossbow bolts and daggers; a strategically donned coat of mail is preferable to goodwill.

In the single-minded pursuit of these ideals, there’s an almost divine nature being ascribed to virtues–virtues which are then worshipped heedlessly. In this, I think the story does justice to the idea of death anxiety and the hero project. Ernest Becker argued that people often attempt to transcend their quietly recognized and ceaselessly impending mortality by grasping at conceptions of heroism via their allegiance to external forces and projects. You give your life meaning through your religion, your family, your work, your army, your sports team. Our physical bodies are subject to death and decay while our imaginations are capable of grasping the concept of infinity, so we crush the resultant tension by convincing ourselves that we’ve joined with something eternal and everlasting whenever we meet the criteria of our hero projects.

The problem is that the project of being honorable is a relative – not absolute – endeavor. At the very least, the consequences of being honorable are relative and context-dependent. So the question becomes: if you are being honorable in the woods with nobody around to care, does it matter? I believe that Ned – and Robb – would say yes. And while Ned demonstrates a more arbitrary acceptance of social obligations (as defined by Westerosi institutions) than the younger and more impetuous Robb, Robb is no less driven by the compulsion to enforce his own idea of what honor means.

What’s especially sad about the downfall of the Stark family is that beyond the loftier ideas of honor and justice which compel them toward ill-considered decisions, their love is sincere. Ned was willing to sacrifice the guise of his honor–indeed, the only thing that would secure that honor’s legacy in the eyes of history–on behalf of his family; it didn’t save him, and it brought them no less pain. Catelyn freed Jaime in the name of her love for her daughters; her choice played a role in her family’s demise, and she died thinking that all the horror she had just witnessed stemmed like unbroken black vines from her poor decisions. Robb legitimately chose to embrace a true and sincere love as a way of securing hope and personal meaning in the midst of a war he wished he didn’t have to fight; Robb paid dearly for this choice, everything he created crumbling to ash in his hands.

And it’s here, I think, that Talisa is especially important in understanding the show’s version of the Red Wedding. Fan reactions have been mixed regarding her overall presence in the story, to say nothing of her function in the last episode. In the novels, Robb marries Jeyne Westerling, a minor character he sleeps with after a battle when she plays nurse. This relationship develops out of sight, as Robb lacks viewpoint chapters, and the only hint of personal motivation for the union – beyond his sense of propriety after having deflowered her – is Robb’s grief at the news of the tragedy at Winterfell, making the entire relationship something altogether thinner, more circumstantial, and less resonant than the Talisa-Robb union on screen.

I’ve always found Talisa to be an economical and effective character who singlehandedly swept away the difficult and rather unrewarding complexity of the Westerling plot. Further, Talisa served to better emphasize Robb as a young man driven not just by a momentary lapse in judgment, but by the determination to carve out a space for love to grow in the geography of his seemingly endless obligations to family and kingdom. Robb pursues Talisa, and Talisa comes to represent his hope made real. And while her development was a bit on the nose in her earliest appearances–sometimes falling into the trope of “surprisingly wise healer woman who admirably sees through the bullshit of war with wit and poise”–she felt more motivated and fleshed out than Jeyne Westerling ever did. Oona Chaplin brought a vibrancy to the performance, and her insistence that Robb “attack! attack!” her instead of his war plans takes on the tone of bittersweet tragedy upon reflection, further justifying an intimate and necessary scene about love and temptation when many saw it as a trite opportunity for nudity. Talisa meant something to Robb–something real, and something motivated.

So why, then, was she killed first, and in such a brutal manner? The recent editorial written by Marc Kleinhenz (published on this very site–check it out) suggests that Talisa’s death was perhaps less necessary than some actors have claimed, though he admits that the death was, at the very least, effectively shocking. But if the depiction of an innocent pregnant woman being murdered via repeated stab wounds to the womb exists purely to shock and raise the gore quotient of a scene, we might all agree that the depiction is gratuitous. But I don’t think that’s the primary function this moment serves, and I hardly think her death is gratuitous.

First, I’ll accede that the death is shocking, and shocking in a way that went the extra mile to horrify book readers who already anticipated the scene’s content. This isn’t an unimportant function, since the relentless brutality of the massacre at The Twins is meant to unsettle our faith in happy endings in an absolute way, and book readers need a good jolt on occasion; the show is a cat of a different coat, and it’s easy to become complacent if you assume it cannot surprise you.

Furthermore, I’m fine with extreme violence if I can isolate plausible motivations for it, and I don’t believe that pregnant women are to be shielded from this kind of representation in art. To suggest otherwise is a kind of sexism I don’t subscribe to; you might call me a proponent of equal-opportunity violence, provided the aforementioned stipulation about sufficient motivation is met.

Particularly revealing of Marc’s perspective is his assertion that “there is no narrative, thematic, or even character drive behind [Talisa’s] pregnancy; showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss could have just as easily left her without child, as she seems to be in the novels.” This attitude bespeaks either a preference for book fundamentalism, or an inability to accept that Talisa’s pregnancy might actually be powerfully motivated for reasons the author hasn’t considered.

(As an aside: I’ve long been a defender of adaptation choices others have seen little point in whenever I consider them purposeful (brothel scenes, I’m looking at you)). After three years of the show, I’ve little doubt in D&D’s capacity to elevate the story in their own way, albeit within the constraints of televisual adaptation, so the question is always whether or not they hit the mark and not whether their intentions are good or not. I contend that the show’s degree of strict fidelity to the details of Martin’s plot is the wrong measurement of its success in almost every case, even when the show benefits from this fidelity. This is all a way of saying that the question of why we value the show’s success, from scene to scene, is important. If there’s an effective scene that happens to mirror the book material closely, it’s not great simply because it was great on the page–it’s great because it’s working independently, on its own terms, in the context of a television adaptation.

It’s altogether possible that some direct adaptation choices wouldn’t work well. In this episode, Catelyn not clawing at her face in a final act of madness was a smart choice, as the lasting image of her broken, vacant expression is one of the most haunting visuals I’ve ever seen on television. Similarly, the decision to have competent musician-slash-crossbowmen at the wedding feast exchanged what amounts to just one more wrench in a dread-building toolbox for the choice to cleanly and clearly capitalize on ‘The Rains of Castamere’–a song the show has been shaping into a kind of currency meant for to be spent precisely in this moment. A muddled or confusing rendition of the tune would have been more difficult for audience members to grasp, whereas Martin’s telling works perfectly well in the soundless pages of a novel. In this way, whenever we’re struck by changes, it’s worth asking what end they might be serving. Of course we can more generally praise the show for hewing closely to the source material in the broader sense; for instance, the fact that Thrones knows where it’s going is precisely what allows it to take risks like the elimination of its principal actors, stunning the entire television community in the process. Okay, that was long enough–back to Talisa.)

Talisa’s child was conceived in love. As such, the murder Robb witnesses isn’t just the loss of a potential heir, but the eradication of a woman and child whose innate value rendered his sufferings worthwhile. The show frequently underscores the cost of love in a feudal society. One characteristic that made Ned and Catelyn unique isn’t that they felt love for one another, but that they managed to cultivate that love after a loveless and perfunctory beginning. The story suggests that such a development is rare in this world; being wedded to someone you don’t loathe is a lucky enough thing for most. Rebuking this game of chance altogether, Robb’s decision to marry Talisa is an endorsement of love’s importance to him. Her loss is a statement of that love’s cost–a cost echoed elsewhere, albeit less violently, in Jon and Ygritte, Tyrion and Shae, and others.

More importantly, Talisa’s child is given a suggested name in the moments before she dies: Eddard. The death of Eddard Stark in season one and the death of unborn Eddard in season three bookend the downfall of Robb’s endeavor. This endeavor is really a tale charting the downfall of the Stark family’s power as a contending household in Westeros. And what this suggests is that on an absolutely fundamental level, hope is not to be found in the very old or the very new. Unborn children as a link to the future–as a way of continuing the line, as a way of securing Robb some semblance of hope even as he confronts death–are not given a chance. Consider Dany’s pregnancy with Drogo, or Sansa’s fear of pregnancy with Tyrion. Few characters are seeking to create life, even when they’re being commanded to. We’ve seen two successful birthings on the show: a shadowy assassin which killed the youngest of a line, and Gilly’s son–a child of incestuous rape, unimportant to most, and constantly under threat of being snatched away by the White Walkers. There are young children crucially involved in the story, but they were born before the tale began. They’re players in the game already. From this starting point, few seeds are being sown.

This all suggests that investing in a new generation is not a possible “way out” of the misery befalling the world. Nor is faith in the old, as season one does away with two major patriarchal figures who have much experience navigating war–one of them honorable, the other fallen. This feels like a kind of boxing in, where the characters most associated with the past, and the conceptual children most linked to hopes for the future are eliminated. Ned dies, as Robb dies, as Ned dies. The “childish” decision to choose love gives rise to Robb the Father, and his fatherhood gives rise to the possibility of Ned the Child. It’s as if the arrival of tragedy is exponentially speeding up as it cascades across patrilineal stages; in this, neither old nor young Ned is given justice. And in his final moment, Robb’s struggle toward manhood–toward the fathering of a son, and of a new kingdom–is effectively reversed. Robb’s tragic, hopeless final utterance–“mother”–conveyed as if to say “let go, there is nothing more,” represents a heartbreaking return to the fundamental truth of the only relationship he has left in these final moments: the bond between parent and child. This is a boy dying–not the King of the North.

From this perspective, Robb’s story is a stunted version of Ned’s, where his war was never a success, and he never saw his family realized. It’s a cyclical pattern that degrades with each generational iteration. This upsetting of the natural order–like Dany’s child twisted into an aberration by Mirri Maz Duur’s dark magic, the abomination Melisandre gives birth to, or the sacrifice of Craster’s sons–signifies the increasingly disturbed mechanics of the world, where a foundational problem is insistently revealing itself in the deranged choices of men and women, the omnipresent threat of a long winter, the arrival of long-forgotten dangers, and the destruction of social order. The show declares “hope is to be found elsewhere” as we turn away from players yet born, and focus on those already in the game.

And let it be made clear: Frey et al. are sending a direct message with the method of Talisa’s execution. Each penetration of blade into body is a vicious, symbolic assault on the Stark line in specific. Frey’s assessment of what Talisa looks like beneath her clothes isn’t just an opportunity for the raunchy humor of an awkward lecher. Revisit the scene and note how chillingly it foreshadows Talisa’s fate, with Frey indicating his awareness of her actual – or potential – pregnancy hidden just behind her dress. Whether or not the Freys are assured of the pregnancy is unimportant, because their knife makes its intentions clear. Furthermore, the myopically violent focus on Talisa’s unborn child has implications for any of the Stark children who currently survive, Sansa excepted (and then only because she has become another cog in Tywin’s plan). Innocence is unimportant; that Talisa and her child were comparatively much less culpable than either Robb or Catelyn makes Talisa’s death all the more tragic, and the array of force marshalled against Stark survival all the more oppressive.

In this way, Talisa’s death is a crucial signifier in one of the episode’s central statements: the conflict we’ve heretofore defined the show by is gone. It’s not over in the sense that the possibility of revenge is foreclosed to the surviving Stark children, but in the broader sense where we recognize the Starks as a major force capable of enacting change within the martial and geopolitical scope of Westeros. The Stark family–as an autonomous household with an army of its own–can no longer be an agent of reform in the persistent struggle for the Iron Throne. With children like Bran and Arya walking increasingly dark paths, it’s possible that they’ll find ways to influence the game from external vantages, but for all intents and purposes, the Lannisters have won.

Few shows have ever dared to abandon their central conflict in such a way, especially without a pleasing (as opposed to compelling) resolution first being offered to fans. While it has been the case that productions have mutated over time (always subject to the shifting demands of actors, writers, production teams, studio pressure, ratings and so forth), these changes have always felt emergent, unearned, accidental, opportunistic, or experimental; these aren’t shows which are heavily planned in advance.

Yet the revocation of the primary Stark vs. Lannister conflict represents a tectonic shift in how Thrones structures itself, and given the show’s position as an adapted work, we know that this shift is absolutely deliberate. We’re entering a new stage of Thrones storytelling, and the price is the murder of every precious idea we’ve ever held about how heroes must win, about how good sons deserve better fates than their suffering fathers, about how kind mothers with smart eyes and strong wills should be saved from the clutches of disdainful old men. The Red Wedding demolishes the average viewer’s understanding of what the show is about, leaving them shipwrecked.

Shipwrecked–lost–is how I’d describe Catelyn’s final expression. Talisa matters here, too, because a few minutes prior, Catelyn’s expression was suffused with acceptance and warmth; looking upon her first son’s happiness as he held his young bride, Catelyn appeared overcome with the possibility of hope, even while burdened by the grief of her losses. In his direction of the final scene, David Nutter conveyed Catelyn’s perspective even in the absence of the novel’s private interiority. Through performance alone, Michelle Fairley was able to ground the sequence first via her dance on the brink of acceptance, and then in her steady, mounting dread which finally gives way to defiance, and disbelieving horror.

In Catelyn’s threat to slit Walder’s wife’s throat, her desperation and determination were breathtaking. The ferocity of the threat brought Arya to mind. The palpable anxiety Arya expressed earlier in the episode was essential. Thoughtfully pinpointed by the Hound when he wasn’t busy gnawing at a pig’s foot, this fear foreshadowed the episode’s recurring “so close, yet so far” motif. There’s a miasma of dread permeating the scene, and as Arya stares at The Twins, what she’s most afraid of is the idea that her dream of being reunited with her family will be proven impossible. When a hope is embryonic, it’s easy to contain. It’s how our hopes are tested by reality which determines their longevity, and this is what we fear.

This dread is how the episode functions: it turns a dream into a nightmare. Prior to “The Rains of Castamere,” the promise of a Stark family reunion felt possible simply because it hadn’t been tested. After the episode, any hope is gone, and gone for good. Nowhere is this dynamic better captured than on the face of Maisie Williams as she watches the Stark troops get slaughtered in the courtyard, her uneasy excitement melting into confused despondency. Grey Wind’s death–a proud wolf trapped in a cage he entered voluntarily–seals the fate of Arya’s dream. That the Hound–a man Arya vowed to kill–is the one person capable of and willing to protect her serves to emphasize the tragedy of her renewed isolation, and the show’s continuing commitment to complicating its darker characters. The dog has little to gain, yet he risks himself on the wolf.

Other repeating elements can be found in the episode: Arya and Jon’s clemency toward old men paired with Robb’s request for forgiveness from an old man, the misogyny of men like Roose and Walder, or the Stark children coming into close proximity with one another. The latter theme is the more significant one, and I think it can be applied to the family as a whole: what is the opening scene if not Robb’s formal readmission of his mother to his life? Robb effectively puts the past behind him in order to move forward, acknowledging his need for Catelyn’s perspective. And Catelyn’s solidarity–her faith in her son, and her faith in his plan–is actually one of the reasons the plan moves forward, ultimately ending the family.

The ugliness of the consequences which stem from these natural decisions is testament to the harrowing nature of life in Westeros, and not a fundamental problem with Catelyn, for instance. Again, what many people love about the Starks is exactly what gets them killed. In a way, the audience roots for their deaths by being unwilling to face up to raw truth of Westerosi circumstances. The crowd might manage moments of applicable insight: Catelyn, don’t let the Kingslayer go! Robb, don’t marry Talisa! But these insights are sometimes discarded precisely because we understand why these characters do what they do: for love, for honor, for all the things we want to endorse. And yet how many of us can honestly claim that we didn’t want Ned to defiantly refuse to label himself a traitor in “Baelor”? Of course, he chose to denigrate himself, lying to protect his family–it was his only chance. And this was understood by the audience, though so many would have preferred his defiance, even if it secured his doom. So when even Ned’s lie changed nothing, the lesson was learned.

When announcing the guest right being offered to Robb and company, Walder Frey calls his visitors “honored guests” and welcomes them within his walls. He extends to them his hospitality and his protection. The story structures we unconsciously anticipate work much the same way; when we enter the world of a show, we assume the protagonists–and our relationships to them–are protected by a kind of guest right, an armor that eases our anxiety over their fates. Thrones offers no such protection, no real recourse from the tragedy when it appears. The Red Wedding wasn’t an ambiguous cut to black or a moment which existed outside the terms of the game: it was the manifestation of every lesson the show has taught us, and every lesson we’d like to forget. This is why it’ll continue being talked about.

We loved these characters, but more than losing them, we lose a way of understanding stories or anticipating patterns in the show. The conflict we almost found comforting fades before our eyes, and the future of the narrative opens up–a terrifying gate through which we must pass, and this time lonelier than before. If we were expecting a happy ending, we weren’t paying attention. And perhaps there’s some fear that this this extends to our own lives–that the narratives we craft from the raw materials of our own experience are subject to the same dangerous vicissitudes, the same violent upheaval. Perhaps we so often cling to these easily anticipated structures and tropes in art because they comfort us in our own dark.

Thrones discards safety in favor of honesty. If we’re also honest, we see that there are a hundred other ways these characters might’ve met their ends. These Starks tried, finding and failing their way through the night, struggling to stand even in the end. And they lost the game. We can resent their conclusion for being a nightmare–something which unsettles our sense of order and, for some of us, disturbs in a way we won’t soon forget. But with the possibility of this nightmare having always loomed, isn’t it all the more understandable that they risked the dream, or dared to love, or continued to fight for one another in the first place? Every mistake looks different in reverse.
A question we’re left with is this: if you die for honor and you die for love and you die for family, and there’s nobody around to see or remember the truth of your tale, do your intentions matter? Thrones offers little in the way of help, but how you answer means everything.

• Published on 06/07/2013 at 9:34 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 12:01 PM CDT