The Longest Night — Game of Thrones: ‘A Man Without Honor (2x07)’
“Do you know what legacy means? It’s what you pass down to your children, and your children’s children.”
Writer(s): David Benioff & D.B. Weiss
Director: David Nutter
Events: After Bran and Rickon escape Winterfell with Osha and Hodor, Theon hunts after them — finding nothing, he burns two orphaned farm boys their place; after ordering the Mountain to destroy villages in the Riverlands, Tywin begins to suspect that Arya is highborn; in King’s Landing, Sansa “flowers” for the first time and gets advice from Cersei, who begins to wonder whether Joffrey is punishment for her sins; Jaime Lannister murders his cousin Alton, and Torrhen Karstark, in a bid to escape Robb Stark’s camp in the south, but is found and beaten; beyond the Wall, Ygritte continues to tease Jon, eventually leading him into a wildling trap; as Daenerys finds out where her dragons are, the Thirteen of Qarth are murdered by Pyat Pree.
IF YOU’RE NOT CAUGHT UP, DON’T CARRY ON.
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The themes present in ‘A Man Without Honor’ bring us back around to the very beginning, at least in some ways. As my coverage of season one displayed, the notion of honour was ultimately a performative one, and that it was a shaky pillar upon which to build a reputation. Over the course of the episodes since then, we’ve been first-hand witnesses to the reality that honour and an upstanding reputation are unlikely to serve you well if an apparent friend is willing to double cross you, or if you happen to encounter someone who’s quicker with a sword in their hand.
‘A Man Without Honor’, however, as it’s clear from the title, concerns itself almost exclusively with these matters once again. Reputation, honour, and legacy, “what remains of you when you’re gone”, as Tywin says to Arya. Despite everything that’s happened in this world since we first stepped foot into it, the people left behind after the events of the first season are still preoccupied with writing a legendary story that’s worth preserving. It doesn’t matter whether it’s elderly generals planning their final conflicts (Tywin), or naïve, insecure idiots who are too young and headstrong to fully understand the gravity of legacy itself (Theon), everyone’s obsessed with seizing power and holding it long enough for future generations to sing songs about them. Do they ever learn?
Staying with Theon, as we seem to have done quite a fair bit in recent weeks, his brief reign at Winterfell has already descended into something of a time-bomb. His own stupidity allowed Bran and Rickon, his most prized captives, to escape the castle, and he’s now briefly left the castle to hunt after them. When he can’t find them, he burns two orphan boys in their place. As the camera pans back to Theon following the reveal of these two charred bodies, his inability to control the situation dawns on him immediately. He passed the point of no return quite a while ago, and even if he were to surrender the castle now he’d have to face the wrath of the Northern houses, but still he won’t exercise restraint.
He’s wanted to prove himself to his father and his followers ever since he returned to the Iron Islands and found that his years in captivity were held against him. In a revealing exchange with Maester Luwin during their hunt for the Stark boys, he explains: “I’m looking at spending the rest of my life being treated like a fool and a eunuch by my own people. Ask yourself, is there anything I wouldn’t do to stop that from happening?” He rationalises that it’s better to be cruel than weak. As we know, his punishment for this behaviour is a season of physical torture, two seasons of psychological torment, and something of a redemption after two gruelling seasons of serving the family he betrayed. But his incredibly touching scene with Jon in the Dragonstone throne room is a long time coming yet.
In King’s Landing, there are two moments for Cersei which are touching and surprisingly out of character. The first arrives as Sansa menstruates for the first time. Panicked and completely beside herself that she’s now able to provide Joffrey with children, Cersei takes her under her wing a little further (“Little dove”). After years of cherishing him and raising him to power, Joffrey’s true colours have shown since he became king. Realising that Joffrey and her late husband Robert share more parallels than she’d hoped, Cersei reaches a level of understanding with Sansa and offers her the grim truth: “Joffrey will show you no such devotion. You may never love the king, but you will love his children.” Her conversation with Sansa leads her into the touching heart-to-heart she shares with Tyrion, as she questions whether Joffrey’s nature is her punishment for having him with Jaime, that what she’s brought into the world and left behind is dangerous for all who come into contact with him. Tyrion attempts tries to talk her round, reminding her that the Targaryens wed brothers and sisters for centuries, but as much as she adores Joffrey, she’s beginning to get used to living in fear of him. What has she left behind?
At Harrenhal, though, it’s Tywin and Arya’s exchange that really gets to the heart of what this episode is trying to communicate. There’s a pause in a conversation of theirs as Tywin stares out of a small opening in the ruined castle wall, and remarks that this is to be his last war — the one he’ll be remembered for, the war which will define his legacy. They’re recounting the tale of how Harrenhal was originally destroyed by Aegon Targaryen and his two sisters, Rhaenys and Visenya, before it became a prison. As Tywin states, Harren and his five sons built the castle and considered it to be their legacy, only for dragons to swoop in and destroy it, and for their legacy to be crushed. Tywin understands legacy and the strength of a powerful family better than anybody else in the show’s ginormous roster (“It’s the family name that lives on, it’s all that lives on”) and the words he speaks to Arya while explaining the meaning of legacy not only reflect the values he revealed in his very first scene on the show, but go some way to giving us insight into Cersei and Theon’s behaviour this week: “Do you know what legacy means? It’s what you pass down to your children, and your children’s children. It’s what remains of you when you’re gone.”
8.5
Lost ravens:
— Whilst walking in the “real north”, Jon and Ygritte discuss the age-long war between the Night’s Watch and the wildlings, and Ygritte manages to talk him down. If the Night’s Watch are free, why do they live by oaths? And if the free folk aren’t so different from those south of the Wall, why is there a war between them in the first place? Jon has no answer to Ygritte’s prodding and poking, giving her a chance to coin her catchphrase and utter her eventual final words: “You know nothing, Jon Snow.” Despite his best intentions, he is a bastard boy who wants to play at war. Right now, he has no idea of the finer points of conflict, how decades of miscommunication from before his lifetime can lead to the wars he’s currently prolonging, even on a small scale. He’ll learn eventually, but not a moment before, it seems. Ygritte teases him for long enough before leading him into a trap she’s devised. Jon’s about to learn the ways of the free folk, and even become one of them for a short time.
— Daenerys is currently dragon-less in Qarth, and, thanks to the slow wheels of her plot, without much in the way of other things to occupy her time. Xaro Xhoan Doxos is on her coattails, assuring Daenerys that he hasn’t stolen her children, that he would be exposed as something of a liar if he had done, and that a man is only what other people say he is. A meeting of the Thirteen is staged, and Pyat Pree murders eleven of them. It turns out, Pyat Pree and Xaro have devised a scheme, which isn’t totally clear — but Xaro is now king of Qarth, and Pyat Pree reveals that he’s taken Daenerys’ dragons to the House of the Undying. I guess they want to steal her dragons for themselves so they can take over the world? Or just Essos? Who knows.
— There’s a superb scene in the south between Alton and Jaime Lannister. While in prison pens at Robb’s camp in the south, they bond over being young squires and share a touching moment. Obviously, the entire thing is a ruse, and Jaime murders him to try and escape, killing Torrhen Karstark in the process. Lord Karstark demands vengeance for his murdered son, but Catelyn Stark reminds him that Jaime’s the only leverage they possess to keep Sansa and Arya alive. Next, she’ll decide to free him and escort him back to King’s Landing with Brienne. We await the fallout of that decision in the coming episodes when Robb returns from the Crag.
