On Game of Thrones Finale, Neoconservativsm Is Scrutinized

(Spoilers for last night’s Game of
Thrones season finale to follow.)

“Do you remember where the heart is?”

This is what a dying Sandor Clegane asks Arya. He is not asking
her in the figurative sense. He is not asking, do you remember how
to love? Do you remember how to feel? He is asking her if she
remembers the precise location of the heart inside the chest. He is
asking her to kill him, and quickly. The closest thing to
compassion in the world of Game of Thrones is a speedy death.

Do you remember where the heart is? would be an apt
question to ask anyone who has watched Game of Thrones

through four seasons of brutal destruction. On the show, even
the corpses of the dead find occasion to claw at the boots of the
living, attempting murder. Losing oneself in Game of
Thrones each week means losing oneself in an orgy of human
misery.

It’s a realistic orgy, though (except for the fantastical
elements). And it is one with parallels to our own world and time
that are worth exploring.

Perhaps nothing in GOT resonates as well as Daenerys’s
conquest of Mereen, which invites obvious comparisons to the Wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this season, Daeny pledged to free
the slaves, rescue a downtrodden populace from an antiquated social
order, and rule the city as a wise and modern queen. Superior
firepower (dragons) is not her only weapon: She also wields the
weapon of rhetoric, couching her conquest in terms of liberation
and good vs. evil. Her slogan, “Breaker of Chains and Mother of
Dragons,” might as well be a giant MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
banner.

But killing is simple. Living is the hard part. In the season
for finale that aired last night, Daenerysfinds Mereen more easily
conquered than ruled. The displaced former rulers, the Wise
Masters, rightly feel mistreated. Many of the now former slaves
don’t know what to do, and some even wish to go back to their
chains. And most striking of all, Daeny encounters the Mereneese
equivalent of a drone warfare victim: a father whose child was
incinerated by death from above, an inadvertent casualty of Daeny’s
efforts to remake the city.

Daeny has no choice but to hedge on some of her fundamental
beliefs, and suddenly, the Breaker of Chains is reshackling her
freed slaves, as well as the dragons she claims as her
children.

At a time when
more and more people are questioning whether U.S. forces can
ever achieve their goals in Iraq, and a growing chorus of voices
believes the war was a mistake, it is hard not to see our foreign
policy foibles reflected in Daeny’s story. (Read

Lucy Steigerwald at Antiwar.com for more on this
viewpoint.)

The Mother of Dragons is not the only person whose children are
making trouble in the finale (indeed, it was
titled “The Children.“) In King’s
Landing, Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion all find ways to frustrate their
father. Jaime disobeys Tywin by siding with Tyrion and freeing him.
Cersei says she would sooner burn their family house to the ground
than play the part she has been asked to play. And Tyrion actually
walks up the steps to his father’s privy and kills the
man.

The murder will be hugely consequential for the political
reality of Westeros. Tywin Lannister, the man who won the war and
united the Seven Kingdoms under his grandson’s reign, is now dead.
This renews the hope that other political factions have to take the
throne, and likely serves to tear the realm further apart in its
immediate future—a future where an undead army, dragons, and a
change of seasons are likely to play significant destructive
roles.

Tywin’s death shows how political developments are divorced from
practical considerations. The people who rise to the top in
Westeros aren’t the ones most interested in defending the common
people. In fact, the leaders most dedicated to the general welfare
of the world are all gathered at the Wall, hundreds of miles from
the Iron Throne. In contrast, the people who hover around the
throne are the people interested in power for its own sake. And
these people keep feuding with each other, and keep dying, further
destabilizing the realm.

There was finally good news at the Wall, however, where
Stannis’s forces arrived to put an end to the wildling assault. The
wildlings want to cross the north’s giant border fence, but the
Night’s Watch has balked at the idea of allowing them into the
Seven Kingdoms. Would Jon Snow and Stannis be better served by a
more lenient immigration policy? It seems clear that the wildlings’
primary aim is not war with the people of Westeros, but rather
refuge from the hordes of zombies and ice demons. The Watch and the
wildlings will need to negotiate some mutua peace in order to
survive. Thankfully, Jon’s friendly relations with wildling leaders
Mance and Tormund will likely come in handy in that regard.

Speaking of immigration, Arya elects to vote with her feet—at
long last—and head for the Free City of Braavos. It’s a
surprisingly hopeful image to close out the fourth season. We don’t
know precisely what is in store for her, but we know it can’t be
worse than the world she is leaving behind.