In a previous article written by my colleague Kevin Scott, he combed through the first episode in Game of Thrones history. This is our little series, where we go over three episodes per season and gush about them, until the anticipated final series of GoT. My choice for this piece was…episode two of season one, The Kingsroad. No, I didn’t take the easy road in choosing which one to talk about, this is just an episode I liked and wanted to speak about. As someone who goes to the Renaissance Fair once a summer, why wouldn’t I love everything about this seemingly festive era?
Looking back in the series, it’s hard to think of Daenerys as anything else, but the strong leader of her people and the proclaimed Mother of Dragons. In the early episodes, she was just the meek sister of her bratty and semi-incestuous brother Viserys. By now, she is wed to Khal Drogo, a ceremony that led to a very unsettling wedding night. Though she is thrown into her marriage by her brother in exchange for the Dothraki army, Daenerys looks to see how she can please her husband, and therefore earn his trust and respect. It’s an action we see pay off, as later in the season Drogo is seen praising his wife and respecting her voice. We could probably credit a lot to Drogo for awakening the leader Daenerys is today.
Even though this is the second episode, we can almost pinpoint everything that happened afterward in the series to this episode. Ned Stark departs from Winterfell with his two daughters, a trip that would eventually lead to his execution. This would be the last time Arya seems Jon Snow, before he heads to the Wall to take up the black. King Robert Baratheon voices concern over the union between Khal Drogo and Daenerys Targaryen; we’d eventually see that he had reason to worry, Daenerys is a fierce woman who for the whole series, has been making her way to claim her birthright – the Iron Throne.
I can most likely go on forever about the foundation this episode gave or about how we can reflect on Jaime Lannister’s character development since then or how much I enjoyed Tyrion even back then, but what I really like about this episode was that we start to see that Prince Joffrey is not the knight in shining armor Sansa previously thought him to be. When we first meet Joffrey, we know that Sansa is practically smitten with him. All she wants to do is marry him to hopefully one day be a queen. We know from later on in the series that Sansa has incredibly bad luck with men and that her marriage to Tyrion was the best she’s most likely going to have.
Already at this point, Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark have agreed to marry off their children to each other. After all, the two are great friends and joining the families together will sit well with the kingdom. Sansa has to be ecstatic – she’s getting all she’s ever wished for. That’s until she finds out that Joffrey is probably a little sociopath in the making. Not only does he have Arya’s friend killed for something that was a mistake, but he commits the mother of all unforgivable acts in television and movies. He ordered the death of a dog. Not just any dog, but Sansa’s. How could Joffrey be so scorned by something so minor that he’d have both a boy and a dog killed? The dog of his future-wife no less.
Alas, Joffrey is just a little shit. As we find out over and over again throughout the series. To make us all feel better, here’s five minutes of Tyrion slapping Joffrey, from this episode:
As an honorable mention, as I look back on this episode; I also love the comparison between the show and the book. While books are always very descriptive and live-adaptations rarely exceed the novel, I do enjoy seeing the scene where the Hound (one of my favorite characters in the show), walking through with the body of Arya’s friend draped over his horse. While that seems to be a very morbid thing, I love when Ned asks about “the butcher’s boy” and Hound responds “he ran. Not very fast”. Just the way Rory McCann delivered the line gives me chills and we see that Sandor Clegane is not one to mess around with and will do as he is told; which is a fantastic contrast to how he finally throws down his sword in the next season and tells Joffrey off.
Stay tuned for our next edition of “Talking Thrones”!
A girl with too many fandoms to count.
