A Song of Wolves and Dragons
Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t seen all of season six and read all of A Dance with Dragons, you’ll probably want to turn back now.
George R. R. Martin has often said that naming things is hard. I think this is because he cares so much about his characters and his stories that he wants to give them the perfect name — a name that takes on more meaning as the character and the story develops. And that’s one of the most awesome things about A Song of Ice and Fire. As the saga progresses, we learn more and more that the harmony of those that represent Ice (The Starks, The North, Jon Snow, The Wall, Dire Wolves) with those that represent Fire (The Targaryens, Valyrian Steel, Daenerys Stormborn, Melisandre, Dragons) is where this world will ultimately settle its conflicts.
So perhaps it’s telling that D. B. Weiss and David Benioff did not name their television series A Song of Ice and Fire, but rather opted for the title and theme of the first novel: Game of Thrones. The show seems far more interested in the pursuit of The Iron Throne than the symbiosis of all things hot and cold.
And that line of thinking has led to some mixed results. There have been positives like the conversation between Robert and Cersei in season one. But there have also been negatives; the chief of which is my major beef with the show: Game of Thrones has completely and totally fucked up the dire wolves.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Jeez, Pat, aren’t you being little sentimental? Did you skip the Red Wedding? Of course you’re going to be pissed if you get attached to cuddly animals on this show!”
And to that, I say, of course I’m being overly sentimental. I mean, look at them:
Originally posted by shallowsprings
But my reason for rooting for the dire wolves is irrelevant. I can feel pain when Robb Stark dies because of his dedication to justice. I can feel pain when Talisa Stark dies because of her dedication to altruism. And I can feel pain when Grey Wind dies because of his dedication to being a world class cuddle buddy.
But I’m not particularly bothered that some of the dire wolves have died — that’s not the core of my beef. In fact, as a fan of storytelling, I’m quite pleased that Grey Wind was a victim at the Red Wedding. It shows that my connection to him wasn’t an accident. It shows that my heart’s reaction to the relationship between Robb and Grey Wind was intentionally drawn out of me by the storytelling. Grey Wind’s death at the Red Wedding shows that he was as important to the story as Robb and Talisa and Catelyn. When we see the Freys parading the mutilated corpse of Robb and Grey Wind, we’re horrified for both Robb and Grey Wind, and we hate the Freys even more. In season 1 when Cersei demands the pelt of Sansa’s dire wolf, Lady, we’re horrified for Lady and we hate the Lannisters even more. That’s how deaths should be used in storytelling — they should draw an emotional response from the audience while simultaneously raising the stakes. As members of the audience, we should both mourn our loss and rage for vengeance.
And dire wolves are uniquely suited for this utility. In addition to being grade-A spooning partners, they’re also pretty bad ass. We see this in season one when the then unnamed Summer rips the throat from Bran’s assassin. In the novels, we see it again as Robb continually uses Grey Wind in his war against the Lannisters:
And Grey Wind threw back his head and howled. The sound seemed to go right through Catelyn Stark, and she found herself shivering. It was a terrible sound, a frightening sound, yet there was music in it too. For a second she felt something like pity for the Lannisters below. So this is what death sounds like, she thought.
[…]
Once she heard Robb’s voice, as clear as if he’d been standing at her side, calling, “To me! To me!” And she heard his direwolf, snarling and growling, heard the snap of those long teeth, the tearing of flesh, shrieks of fear and pain from man and horse alike. Was there only one wolf? It was hard to be certain.
Little by little, the sounds dwindled and died, until at last there was only the wolf. As a red dawn broke in the east, Grey Wind began to howl again.
A Game of Thrones, Chapter 63
When the beast padded forward and sniffed at the captive knight, every man in that hall could smell the scent of fear. Ser Cleos had been taken during the battle in the Whispering Wood, where Grey Wind had ripped out the throats of half a dozen men.
A Clash of Kings, Chapter 7
“Your brother had his direwolf with him, but I suspect that’s as far as it went. The northmen crept into my uncle’s camp and cut his horse lines, and Lord Stark sent his wolf among them. Even war-trained destrier’s went mad.”
A Clash of Kings, Chapter 32
“How did the king ever take the Tooth?” Ser Perwyn Frey asked his bastard brother. “That’s a hard strong keep, and it commands the hill road.”
“He never took it. He slipped around it in the night. It’s said the direwolf showed him the way, that Grey Wind of his. The beast sniffed out a goat track that wound down a defile and up along beneath a ridge, a crooked and stony way, yet wide enough for men riding single file. The Lannisters in their watchtowers got not so much a glimpse of them.”
A Clash of Kings, Chapter 39
And while the dire wolves play their small part in the game of thrones, a dichotomy emerges. Daenerys, representing the Targaryens and fire, is raising her dragons to be beastly weapons in their own right. A Song of Ice and Fire is about winter and summer, it’s about war and peace, it’s about Starks and Targaryens, and by proxy it’s about dragons and dire wolves. The wolves are as important to the fates of the Starks as the dragons are to the fates of the Targaryens. Dragons are obviously a more practical use on the battlefield, but the connection between pet and owner goes much deeper than that. Targaryens are conquerors. They’re hot tempered and they prefer fighting to governing. Starks, on the other hand, are committed to justice and governing their lands with loyalty. What could espouse conquest more than a dragon? What could denote loyalty more than a wolf pack?
And this is where Game of Thrones fails to be faithful to A Song of Ice and Fire. Particularly in season six, when the wolves are spent with impunity.
First, we lose Shaggy Dog off-screen, when the wolf both fails to protect Rickon and itself:
Next, we lost Summer in a clumsy, horrific sort of way, and his death is largely overshadowed by death of Hodor.
And most egregiously, when Jon Snow leads a wildling army onto the field to take back Winterfell, Ghost is nowhere to be found.
Now, I’m not the first one to ask why Ghost was playing hookie while his man is re-taking the North from Ramsay Bolton. Liam Cunningham, who plays Davos, offered his reasoning:
“[O]bviously a big battle like that is no place for a direwolf,” he said. “They’re not gonna last very long — I mean look at what happened to Wun Wun, the last of the giants.”
Which serves only to prove that Liam hasn’t read the books, as it’s pretty clear from Grey Wind’s exploits that dire wolves are extremely useful in a battle. I don’t fault the guy. He’s got a time consuming job, Shireen couldn’t finish teaching him to read, and the books are fookin’ long!
But there was another reason, and the director of the episode, Michael Sapochnik, offers a more practical explanation:
[Ghost] was in there in spades originally, but it’s also an incredibly time consuming and expensive character to bring to life. Ultimately we had to choose between Wun-Wun and the direwolf, so the dog bit the dust.
So let me get this straight: Ghost, Jon Snow’s constant companion since the very first episode, of the litter of dire wolves who inspired the entire saga, who serves as the thematic balance to Drogon, was less important than Wun-Wun? Is he aware that giants are largely a novelty in A Song of Ice and Fire? Is he aware that Martin started writing the saga when he was inspired by the vision of a family of dire wolves? In the pivotal moment when the Stark family retakes their ancestral seat, he felt it was unnecessary to include the living embodiment of Winterfell’s sigil?
Ok, fine.
This is obviously better than Cunningham’s hand-wavy excuse, and it really highlights the separation between the books and the show that I’ve been hitting on.
The Starks and the dire wolves are ice. Dany and her dragons are fire. A Song of Ice and Fire balances the use of both sets of relationships. Sometimes Grey Wind is helping Robb win battles, sometimes Drogon is helping Dany free slaves. Sometimes Ghost is far from Jon, hunting alone. Sometimes Drogon is far from Dany, hunting alone.
But Game of Thrones doesn’t care about such harmonies. It’s telling a story about how a kingdom is won. The machinations of family pets are irrelevant to its purpose. Dragons are bigger and scarier and more practically useful for taking a kingdom, so they’re more important to the story the show is trying to tell — which, in my mind, makes it an inferior story.
That’s why, when Daenerys is leading the Dothraki back to Meereen after taking control of their entire civilization, she stands up and gives this speech to her converted followers, fully mounted on the back of a beautiful CGI dragon.
The speech and the presence of Drogon has a small relationship to the rest of the story, but mostly this scene makes it into the show because it’s damn cool.
But I can’t help but think that particular use of the CGI budget might have been useful elsewhere.
So I ask, how damn cool would it have been if Ghost had killed the Bolton horse that nearly trampled Jon Snow? How cool would it have been to watch Ghost dodging arrows and ripping out throats as Jon Snow swings Long Claw around his fighting dire wolf? How cool would it have been to watch Ghost, covered in patches of Bolton blood, trotting through the gates of Winterfell, rear back his head, and howl?
Cool enough to justify it in the CGI budget over a useless Targaryen speech? I should think so.
But the dire wolves don’t get the same treatment that the dragons get, because they’re largely irrelevant to the game of thrones. They’re hugely important to the balance George R. R. Martin creates in A Song of Ice and Fire, but not to the dynamics of Weiss and Benioff’s creation.
As such, you can fully expect Ghost (or maybe Nymeria?) to be sitting at the foot of the Iron Throne in George R. R. Martin’s A Dream of Spring, but it’s even money whether we’ll ever see a dire wolf in the Red Keep in D. B. Weiss and David Benioff’s version of the story.
At least we know this much — the coolest thing we’ll see in both stories is dragon fire lighting up the skies of King’s Landing.
