The Winter of Your Discontent: Game Of Thrones Season 7: The Queen's Justice
Rolling, long waves. Seagulls, screeching. A boat, mooring into ample, puffy mounds of amber sand. Safely washed ashore, Jon “I'm slow and it shows” Snow, his companion and their men stand face to face with Peter Dinklage's party which is comprised by plenty of menacing looking soldiers and the consultant girl which harks when men without dicks strip naked beside her.
"Do you have anything to declare?"
The “Bastard of Winterfell” and the “Dwarf of Castle Rock” shaking hands, soldiers grunting at each other, a long walk across an embankment leading up to a towering castle. The screeching of dragons performing low altitude fly-bys (hereby called “The Maverick”) resulting in Snow and his fellow dude shitting their chain-mailed pants. Peter Dinklage offering his hand as leverage despite himself being almost two feet (sixty centimetres for the rationalists) shorter than Jon “D-dragons” Snow.
Motion blur is a surrealistic bitch
The Red Priestess watching the procession from atop a high cliff. Rotundal coming over to offer insults disguised as pleasantries which Red accepts with grace but not silence. A hollow ominous threat later and she is gone, while he alone remains, watching the waves evaporate over the horizon while a lone dark ship solemnly drifts along the shoreline.
Better red than dead
Jon Snow and his aide Sir Davos Seaworth walk into the throne room, where Daenerys Stormborn, House of Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains (otherwise known as Goldilocks), sits like a rightful bitch, smirking under her breath because she knows that with a name like that nobody in their right mind will ever doubt that they are in the presence of a royal asshole. Jon and Co. are looking way out of their waters and she knows, that's why we hereby treated to an eight-minute scene where Goldilocks, hell-bent on making Snow bend the knee to her (you can see the bastard puffing to himself when he first listens to this!) because of her royal prerogative granted by no other, her royal bloodline, spews a bunch of nonsense while looking adamantly serious and pissed off about it. Snow does not relent because he is a fucking yokel full of pride and instead offers his repudiation by loudly exclaiming “The dead are coming ova, bitch!” thus creating a stalemate which is only broken by Rotundal's harsh appearance and ear whispering to Goldilocks's jovial ear. Jonny boy is sent to his room, to contemplate on the things he said and done that afternoon, while Rotundal informs Goldi that her fleet of allies has been jumped over by their enemies and that the result is that shit is fucked up for them.
Welcome to our knee-bending seminar
Cut to Black-clad lady's bodyguard, the one that jumped into the sea, being pulled up on a ship while looking beat and dishevelled. Theon Greyjoy as we learn that he is called is now treated as a traitor to his family (Black-clad lady is his sister – see). Cut to a scene of a city were Iron Man, riding a horse strolls through a sea of people greeting him with shouts of joy, as he pulls a chained and bloodied Black-clad lady behind his horse, with her semi-lesbian friend and her daughter in tow. All of the ladies look like shit, except Iron Man who apparently is on top of his horse and seemingly on top of the world. Iron Man and his horse pile-drive through the crowd and enter (presumably) the palace and there into the throne room where Queen Bitch Cercei is sitting, surrounded by Farmer Joe, her brother/lover and an assortment of ironclad soldiers. Iron Man delivers Semi-lesbian and her daughter to Cercei's feet, as she squirms in delight and from this scene we learn that Semi-lesbian might have had something to do with Cercei's daughter being murdered. Iron Man, who admittedly might be a grand asshole but he is also a great entertainer, asks Cercei for a piece of her ass, to which she agrees only “after the war is won” and simultaneously taunts her brother/lover because, what else is a grand asshole going to do?
Y'all a fucking joke
The next scene transports us down a dungeon where Semi-lesbian and her daughter are chained to the walls of a cell. Cercei is kind enough to give us a little background: she is responsible for the death of Semi-lesbian's lover, and for that Semi-lesbian hated her so much that she poisoned her daughter. Now Cercei hates Semi-lesbian even more and for that, she infects Semi-lesbian's daughter with a poison that will take days or weeks to totally wreak havoc on its victim, exactly what happened to her daughter, and makes sure that Semi-lesbian will be alive and well to witness the deterioration and eventually painful demise of her daughter. We don't call Queen Bitch Cercei like that for nothing.
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Moving on to lighter subjects, as soon as Cercei exits the dungeons, she swiftly moves up to her quarters, where her brother/lover Farmer Jamie is sitting around slowly getting drunk. She jumps on him immediately disregarding his initial objection and they begin to kiss with her quickly moving down his private parts.
Sticky fingers
The scene cuts after that to them sleeping, side by side, hand in hand in the same bed but it doesn't take a long stretch of the imagination to understand that, hey, they fucked! (and that part, if not all, of Cercei's allure over her brother/lover must be sexual). The door knocks, we get to see Queen Bitch's boobs and bottom as she exits the bed and a servant informs her that a visitor has arrived.
I see your royal prerogative and raise you two
This visitor appears to be sent by the “Iron Bank”, a monetary fund we presume but one can never be quite sure. This smooth-talking banker (aren't they all?) alludes to the fact that Cercei's kingdom owes the bank money, and the bank is worried, especially now that a prolonged and costly war has begun, if Queen Bitch will be able to pay her debts back. Being as assertive as a true Queen Bitch can be, Cercei implies that she has an ace in her sleeve and that the debt will be paid in full sooner than later, a statement that securely plants a sly smile on the bankers face.
Even monarchs have rulers and their ruler is money
Switch to Jon “Army of the Dead” Snow's face, which appears as if it was previously munching on a worm-infested apple. Jon is standing atop a cliff, gloating over the ocean beneath him, when Peter Dinklage transgresses over this idyllic scene and promptly engages him in conversation pertaining the “What’s going on with you, mate?”. Jon as a true yokel seems perplexed that nobody believes him and Peter is equally perplexed by his insistence that everybody should do so, but lastly offers to help Jon because of their former camaraderie and because he is a decent human being, to begin with.
"Am I a fucking joke to you?"
Peter “I might be short but you are dumb” Dinklage takes his promise to Goldilocks and in his own way persuades her to allow Jon Snow to mine the dreaded dragonglass so they can keep him happy, off their back and possibly on their side.
Goldilocks standing atop the embankment watching her dragons perform their “Mavericks” over the countryside is in turn interrupted by an interloping Jon Snow. In their short and barely warm exchange, she relays to him that she will allow and help on the mining of dragonglass to which Jon responds with a simple “Thank you”, the best a yokel of his constitution could muster on such occasion.
"Thank you"
Back in Winterfell, Red Sub-Queen, now fully Queen, is hastily making arrangements for the winter that already is and that which is bound to come. Accompanied by an alarmingly sly Lord Baelish, she tries to keep her cool while he is adamant in planting seeds of disparity in her head. Their chat is interrupted by a guard which leads her to the gate where the mummified boy bound on a sledge, ferried by the mute girl is waiting for her. After a moment of hesitation, Sansa rushes to hug him in an outburst of emotion which leads us to think that if nothing flimsy exists between the two then something else substantial does.
Is that a crown on your head or are you just happy to see me?
Our suspicions are quickly vindicated when in the next scene fully Queen Sansa and Mummy Boy (or Bran as we learn) are sitting under a large red leaved oak tree, while persistently soothing snowflakes eerily, like emancipated fireflies float around them. Bran, who calls himself “The Three-Eyed Raven” and talks and acts like a true catatonic, informs Sansa that somehow can see past, present and we presume future superimposed on top of each other. When Sansa is equally confused as we are, he proceeds to lavish her with an intimate description of her wedding day which promptly drives her to strand his paralysed ass alone under the tree while she hastily returns to the castle.
"I like the scenery, really i do, but to hell with you boy"
Beyond the frozen tundras of Winterfell and into the warm and cosy climate of the Citadel, the ever knowing Arch-Meister is examining the previously Grayscale infected man, finding him, if not miraculously then surreptitiously healed. Samwell who is also present plays deaf, dumb and blind and as the Arch-Meister walks away greets the man with a farewell he enthusiastically reciprocates. Back in the Arch-Meister's chambers, Samwell is handed his ass back in a sandwich for disobeying orders, but he is spared expulsion from the Citadel because his disobedience resulted in the saving of a man's life, instead as a punishment he has to copy a boatload of old scrolls, a fact that he isn't very happy about, but as he and we guess is better than being handed one's deportation papers.
"You did what??"
So it continues. Goldilocks, Peter Dinklage, the eunuch loving girl and Rotundal are sitting around the map-table counting their losses. Goldi wants to fly over the seas with her three dragons and burn Iron Man's fleet to the ground (or unto the sea) but her entourage talks her out of it “because she is too precious”. Without wiping a tear of joy, because there is none, she asks what the plan then is. Peter “I'm so low” Dinklage, outlines the plan of engagement and at the same time, we get to see it happening in nifty and well-detailed battle scenes. Pete Low is of the opinion that a head to head collision on Casterly Rock will cost their forces a leg and a foot (both of which he is short of) but he reveals that, as Casterly Rock was built from the ground up by his father, he was entrusted of building the sewers, bottom down and as he liked sneaking in whores for his amusement he left a little “back door” to the castle which Goldilocks's forces could utilise in order to sneak in and slaughter the defenders of Casterly Rock – which as the nifty and well-detailed battle scenes reveal us, they do.
"Give me ten good men and I'll impregnate the bitch!"
During his voice-over, we get to see Eunuch No1 commandeering the castle only to watch at his dismay from the castle's balcony, Iron Man's fleet trumping over their own ships. In return he vehemently demands from a fallen foe, bleeding from the mouth to tell him “where the rest of the Lannisters are” and when that foe becomes an ex-foe, we are treated to a scene which details the adventures of “the rest of the Lannisters” advancing towards a castle and purging it, which we swiftly get to learn belongs to Olenna Tyrell.
Just a walk in the park
Farmer Jamie who is commander of the Lannister land forces triumphantly stomps all over Tyrell castle only to finally arrive at the private quarters of Olenna where she is sitting, draped in her usual chador-like clothing, calmly awaiting her imminent destruction. They engage themselves in a short but caustic dialogue, in which Olenna attempts to dissuade Farmer Jamie from being obedient towards Queen Bitch Cercei, or in other words attempts to persuade him to think himself as an idiot and a fool for loving, trusting and following her. Although Farmer Jamie does appear to be thick headed, we do get to witness a slight pang of retraction coming from him, because a fool is a fool every day but on some days a fool is not enough of a fool not to recognise the shit he is in. Olenna is obviously anxious to get things over with because she asks, not in one occasion “how will it end”, to which Farmer Joe replies by pouring her a glass of wine, into which he empties a liquid from a small vial he handily kept in his belt and has miraculously escaped damage from the preceding battle.
"It's simply amazing we both made it this far"
Olenna solemnly asks “Will it hurt?” to which Farmer Jamie responds negatively. Satisfied with his answer she empties the glass and as soon as she sets glass on table she venomously reveals to a now flabbergasted and probably angry Farmer Jamie that she was the one responsible for poisoning his son. Quite politely, it seems under the circumstances, Farmer Jamie allows for her spiteful speech to conclude without drawing his longsword and merrily hacking Olenna to pieces. Instead, he performs a very steady about face and exits the room, leaving Olenna alone with her herself to contemplate the horrors of her actions and the apparent futility of her tumultuous life.
There she goes, there she goes again
So it ends.
Onto credits. Violin strings. Yawn.
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