Kaiser - 100 Things Game of Thrones Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

For Game of Thrones fans

Contents

1. Game of Thrones

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.Cersei Lannister

In April of 2011, HBO aired the premiere episode of Game of Thrones. It was watched by over 2 million peoplesolid ratings, but nothing to indicate that it was a major event according to simple numbers. But for fans of the book series it was based on, A Song of Ice and Fire , it was a huge deal. It also had the full attention of TV critics, whod seen HBO redefine television through the 2000s but which found itself without a major hit heading into the 2010s.

The critics generally liked it, and the fans certainly supported Game of Thrones , but the shows meteoric rise over the next few years, to the point where its regularly called the biggest TV show on Earth, with individual episodes earning record-breaking numbers of Emmy awards, has still been an incredible surprise.

There arent any unicorns in Game of Thrones , but Game of Thrones itself may be a unicorn. A unique set of circumstances led to its creation and it hit television at exactly the right time as television was ready for it. Theres no next Game of Thrones , it is entirely unique, and when its done, its done for good.

So what is Game of Thrones ? Its an adaptation, and an increasingly different one, of one of the most popular fantasy book series of all time, A Song of Ice and Fire , by George R.R. Martin. The changes between the books and the show have been one of the most interesting parts of seeing Game of Thrones air. But its also become increasingly controversial, as the changes from page to screen became increasingly notable before the shows story passed the books in the sixth season.

Game of Thrones is also now the pinnacle of the entire fantasy genre. From the publication of Lord of the Rings in the mid-20 th century, through Star Wars and The Sword of Shannara in the 1970s, and on to Robert Jordans The Wheel of Time in the 1990s, heroic fantasy was heading in a certain straightforward direction. Then A Game of Thrones was published and changed that direction entirely. Amazingly, the same thing happened with movies and television. After the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, once again Game of Thrones came along and dominated the genre.

Daenerys Targaryen and Drogon, the most useful pet of all time. (Photo courtesy of HBO / Photofest)

But Game of Thrones is also a television series on HBO. There, George R.R. Martins Westeros has been reimagined by showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. It may be a unique show in many ways, but it also comes from a tradition of the best network on television producing the most ambitious shows on television. Without The Sopranos and The Wire, Game of Thrones couldnt exist, and it fits in with them, as well as shows like Breaking Bad and Vikings and Shannara Chronicles .

Perhaps most importantly, though, Game of Thrones is a story. Its a fascinating, complicated story, with hundreds of characters in dozens of locations. All of them have their own histories and motivations, trying to do the best they can in the wars over the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms. While Game of Thrones seems to start small, focusing on the Stark family and a handful of other people, its traveled around the world to tell the stories of the woman-warrior Brienne of Tarth; the Greyjoy siblings, Yara and Theon; the Martells of Dorne; and former slaves in Slavers Bay like Missandei and Grey Worm.

Theres also a huge, complicated history behind the story of Game of Thrones. From the Targaryen invasion 300 years before the show begins to Roberts Rebellion just 15 before, history permeates Game of Thrones . Characters like Rhaegar Targaryen, Ser Duncan the Tall, and Queen Nymeria pass their influence through the series. Some of this is on-screen or in the books, and some is shown in supplemental sources, like the shows special features and books like The World of Ice and Fire . Its a huge world, which is one of its strengths and a source of consistent confusion.

Game of Thrones is all of these things at once. Thats what makes it special. Thats what made it the biggest television series on the planet. This is the magic that makes Game of Thrones great.

2. Season 1: The They Cant Do That! Season

Ser Ilyn! Bring me his head!Joffrey Lannister-Baratheon

The first season of Game of Thrones is one of the great deceptions in television history. It is, like the novels its based on, a remarkable shell game, a piece of sleight-of-hand that presents itself as one kind of story, only to reveal that its something entirely different at the end. For much of the season, the setup is straightforward: Ned Stark tries to keep the capital stable, Dany and the Dothraki prepare to invade, and the White Walkers threaten from Beyond the Wall. Then Game of Thrones takes your conceptions of how stories should work and beheads them on the steps of the Sept of Baelor, then burns them at the stake for good measure.

Thats not how stories are supposed to work! Sure, heroes can dieespecially middle-aged ones, like Nedbut they die gloriously, not begging for their lives from a sadistic enemy. But Game of Thrones goes thereand TV storytelling would apparently never be the same.

The clever thing is that Game of Thrones worked to prepare viewers for eventualities like this long before Ser Ilyn Payne swung Neds sword at the Sept of Baelor. The very first episode of Game of Thrones works similarly. It sets up grand conflicts: between the living and the dead, and between the Starks and the Lannisters. It says its a fairly traditional fantasy story with clearly delineated good and evil, but then Bran Stark peers through a window he shouldnt have and Jaime Lannister shoves himto his probable deathsaying, The things I do for love.

This created the model that Game of Thrones would consistently use for the next several years: set up a story you think is going in one direction and, with a shocking act of violence, upend it and take it in a different direction. TV doesnt just casually kill kids like that! (Bran, as we found out the next week, didnt actually die, but was permanently disabled.) What happened to Bran eventually happened to Ned, and far more permanently.

In 1996, this model of storytelling was a revelation in fantasy literature, and within five years and three books, firmly established A Song of Ice and Fire as the premiere (nonYoung Adult) fantasy series around. Game of Thrones used a similar model: its initial seasons ratings were fine, but a few seasons later, it was arguably the most popular show on television. In both cases, timing was essential. Fantasy novels in the 1990s were primed for a shift toward moral ambiguity and shocking violence, as discussed in the next chapter. Television was equally primed, but in a different way: Game of Thrones arrived at a perfect time to take advantage of the shock twist and hyperserialization (discussed in chapter 5).

It would be easy to credit Game of Thrones with popularizing the shock twist, but it was really a rising trend for TV when the show premiered in 2011. Its parallel genre-show-with-violence, The Walking Dead , premiered about six months before, while a teen soap like The Vampire Diaries had risen to prominence as televisions it show based largely on its application of surprise stabbings. The timing was perfect: HBO was in the process of adapting a novel series built on TVs hottest new trend.