Game of Thrones it is, without a doubt, a cornerstone of the mass culture of the XNUMXst century. What began as literature for nerds it became an international phenomenon that brought the western world to a standstill. Throughout this extensive post we will talk about how the series came about, its importance and impact on our culture, and we will also talk a bit about its convoluted plot, in case you need or want to refresh your memory a bit for the premiere of the house of the dragon.
Game of Thrones, the TV series that marked an era
The number of cars that traveled the streets was reduced when a new season was released. Friends would congregate to watch the episode of the week even though they could watch it comfortably at home. It became normal to stay up all night in order to see the premiere in American time, without subtitles and sometimes with a streaming of dubious quality. All in order to avoid spoilers who broke more than one friendship.
While there has been more than one cult series in recent years, the drawing power of Game of Thrones was comparable to Seinfeld o Friends, despite not being for all audiences. Perhaps the population that had grown up with Harry Potter was still eager to see magic, although this time from a more adult level.
Whatever it was, Game of Thrones reigned in our hearts for years. From its first broadcast on April 17, 2011 to its controversial final on May 19, 2019, Game of Thrones it was at the head of the television series of the 2010s.
Origin of the story: the books of George RR Martin
The first volume of Song of ice and fire was published in 1996, under the name of Game of Thrones. And it is that the title of this first book would give its name to the entire television adaptation of the saga. What began as a trilogy soon became a series with five published volumes and another two still in the pipeline.
The following novels were Clash of Kings, 1998; Storm of swords, the 2000; Feast for Crows, 2005; and dragon dance, published in 2011. The following publications, Winter winds y Spring dream are in development and announced respectively. This heroic fantasy series has sold more than 90 million copies worldwide.
When George Martin began writing Game of Thrones, he set out to create a universe so rich and complex that it was not possible to adapt it to the (big or small) screen. HBO changed all that. It took the advancement of CGI technology and a Hollywood movie budget ($60 million) to create the first season. What was a cult book among niche readers became an international mass phenomenon overnight. The rest is history. Although we will talk about that a little later.
Why is it so special Game of Thrones?
Game of Thrones has been described by some as what happens after "they were happy and ate partridges": the best warrior of Westeros has dethroned the despot and tyrant king, taking his place and marrying a beautiful princess. But... what happens when a warrior is not made for palace life? Can a marriage of convenience really be happy? Game of Thrones deal with the consequences of a war 15 years after it occurred.
While Tolkien's work makes us fantasize about something higher, George RR Martin gives us a violent vision of his world of epic fantasy. In his work we can see human nature in all its splendor: honor, sacrifice, but also greed and cruelty. the prose of Game of Thrones captivates because it is realistic: the chronicles are full of poisonings, betrayals and regicides. Its convoluted plot is based on real events and characters in the history of mankind. If you thought that Cersei's or Daenerys' ways of burning cities was exaggerated, take a look at Saint Olga of kyiv's Wikipedia, for example.
The prose is woven with a detailed description that immerses us fully in his world. Even the most minor character has a story and depth character rarely seen in a saga of such magnitude. To this must be added the writing of realistic female characters, with thoughts and aspirations that break the one-dimensional schemes that writers of this genre resort to too often. George RR Martin has graced us with icons like Arya, Daenerys, Cersei or Sansa, and has shown us their evolution and development as people. The faithful portrayal of human nature makes his work more epic than ever.
Where to watch Game of Thrones
The series of Game of Thrones has a total of 8 seasons and some 73 episodes. All were broadcast on the HBO channel and on its digital content platform. Currently, the entire series can be seen on HBO Max.
The first season of the television series began broadcasting in the middle of 2011. The final chapter could be seen on May 19, 2019.
seasons and synopsis
We have already made a first approximation to the universe of Game of Thrones. However, it is impossible to delve a little deeper into the work without going further into the matter.
Spoilers below. Who Forewarned is forearmed.
1 Season
Westeros maintains a tenuous balance with the reign of Robert Baratheon. After the mysterious death of Lord Jon Arryn, the king's (right) Hand, he and his court move with a great display to Winterfell, territory of the house Stark. There Robert Baratheon asks Eddard (Ned) Stark, a former friend and ally during the war against Aerys II, to be his new Hand of the King. After admitting that he wouldn't trust anyone in King's Landing, he gets Ned Stark to agree to accompany him back to the capital.
Before embarking on the journey south, one of the youngest sons of House Stark, Bran, surprises Queen Cersei and the knight Jaime Lannister, both twins, having incestuous relations in an abandoned keep. Faced with the possibility that he will return to the castle and tell what he has seen, Jaime throws the 8-year-old boy out of the window. Bran survives the fall, but is left in a deep coma and unable to ever walk again. After this, Jon Snow, supposed bastard of Ned Stark, goes to the Wall to become a night guard.
Crossing the sea, in the kingdom of Essos, the only survivors of the house targaryens they live avoiding the fine line between oblivion and revenge. Vyserys, heir to the Mad King, offers his little sister's hand Daenerys to the chief of the Dothraki tribe. His goal is to gain control over this group of warrior riders and command them to retake the Iron Throne.
Meanwhile, life in King's Landing it becomes heavy for Ned Stark. Her daughters Sansa and Arya, who have accompanied him, acclimatize differently to the capital. Ned discovers that Robert Baratheon has brought all of Westeros to economic ruin with his excesses and indifference to anything but wine, hunting, and women. A little later, the king dies from the goring of a wild boar during a hunt in which he was too drunk.
House Lannister accuses Ned Stark of having plotted the assassination of Robert Baratheon, since in his last will he has left him as regent until his son Joffrey Baratheon reaches the age of majority. Joffrey has Ned Stark publicly executed. sparking the War of the Five Kings.
2 Season
In the 7 Kingdoms, doubts are fueled that the children of the Baratheon-Lannister marriage are really Robert Baratheon's, since the relationship between Cersei and her brother Jaime is a open secret. This causes the Baratheon brothers, Renly and Stannis, to fight for the throne as true successors.
Sansa Stark is held hostage by the court and is harassed and tortured by Joffrey. Meanwhile, her little sister Arya manages to escape the city with her Needle sword.
Robb Stark, Ned's successor, confronts House Lannister and self-proclaimed king in the north as an attempt to gain independence from the rest of Westeros.
At the end of the season, Stannis Baratheon attacks King's Landing by sea in what is known as 'Battle of the Blackwater'. Thanks to the foresight of Tyrion Lannister, acting Hand of the King, the city withstood the attack.
3 Season
Jon Snow ventures into the land beyond the Wall and establishes a relationship with the Free People, considered savages by the people of the South. Among them he meets Ygritte, a woman of steel warrior.
Joffrey breaks off his engagement to Sansa Stark to handcuff himself to Margaery Tyrell. In return, she has his uncle Tywin Lannister marry the Stark girl. The marriage happens, but it is not consummated. Also, he treats her with the utmost respect, unlike her nephew of hers.
Daenerys earns the name 'Breaker of Chains' by freeing the slaves of the cities she passes through and organizing an army of Unsullied. Little by little she prepares to travel to Westeros.
Robb Stark had promised to marry a daughter of House Frey in exchange for a strategic alliance to secure the secession of the northern territories. However, he soon meets another woman and breaks his promise. Lord Walder Frey, enraged at this offense, convinces Robb Stark to come to his castle to offer his personal apology and sign another marriage pact between House Tully and the Freys. Backed by the Lannisters, Walder Frey flouts hospitality laws and massacres all Stark attendees and his allies over dinner. These events will later be known as the red wedding.
4 Season
The nuptials of King Joffrey Baratheon and Margaery of House Tyrell take place. At the party, Joffrey dies from a glass of wine poisoned with a substance that causes a kind of suffocation by internal strangulation, which causes him to die a bruise holding his neck. The event will be remembered as the purple wedding.
Cercei, enraged by pain and hugging the limp body of her firstborn, accuses his brother Tyrion of the murder, because he was the last person who served him wine. With the turmoil of events, Sansa Stark manages to escape from King's Landing with Littlefinger's help.
Bran Stark manages to escape the Greyjoy attack on Winterfell thanks to Hodor and a couple of friends. Later they arrive at the cave of the Three-Eyed Raven.
Later, Tyrion, who was under arrest, also escapes from the capital thanks to the help of his brother Jaime Lannister. Before fleeing, he finds his father Tywin in the palace latrines and mortally wounds him with a crossbow, in repayment for all the contempt he has shown her since childhood.
5 Season
Joffrey's younger brother, Tommen, ascends the throne and marries Margaery Tyrell. She is she does not hesitate to use her seduction skills to gain the full trust of the new king and unseat the Queen Mother in power.
Cersei, resentful of her descent in the palace hierarchy, turns to an emerging religious sect known as the Sparrows. She gets Queen Margaery arrested. However, they soon turn on her and force her to parade naked and shaved head through King's Landing as public punishment for her sins.
Jaime travels to Dorne to pick up his daughter Myrcella—ahem, niece—who was betrothed to Trystane Martell. Ellaria Sand, lover of the deceased Oberyn, manages to poison the girl with a kiss before leaving as revenge against Cersei. Myrcella dies during the journey in Jaime's arms, but not before confessing that she knows that she is her real father.
Meanwhile, Arya lives in Bravos, learning the arts of the Faceless Man, although with many difficulties, because it resists losing her identity as Arya Stark.
Sansa is given in marriage to ramsay bolton, legitimized bastard of House Bolton with sadistic tendencies. After suffering rape and torture at his hand, Sansa manages to escape with the help of Theon Greyjoy -who has been turned into Stink- during the battle against Stannis Baratheon.
Daenerys deals with an organization of mercenaries who wage guerilla warfare against her newly established abolitionist order. The uprising of her government causes her to flee on one of her dragons, though she ends up in the hands of a Dothrak tribe.
Jon Snow does a deal with the Free People. Being in one of their settlements beyond the Wall, they are attacked by a wave of White Walkers. With great difficulty a few escaped alive by boat. As they move away from the shore, they witness how the Lord of the Night He resurrects fallen freemen, turning them into minions for his ice army.
Once they return to the Wall, Jon Snow is accused of treason and fatally stabbed by the Night's Watch.
6 Season
Melisandre, the red priestess, gets resurrect jon snow. As he has been honored with the oath to be the Night's Watch until the day of his death, he is considered a free man upon revival.
Sansa arrives at Castle Black, where she is reunited with Jon Snow, the first Stark relative she has seen in years. She is she wants to retake Winterfell from the clutches of Ramsay Bolton and asks Jon for help.
The Starks face off against bolton house in what is known as the Battle of the Bastards. Ramsay kills Rickon Stark with an arrow from behind, after letting him run handcuffed towards his supposed freedom. After a bloody feud, the Starks win. Ramsay Bolton is killed by his own hounds, starving for days, while Sansa watches impassively.
Arya passes the final tests to become a Faceless Woman, but he prefers to embark again to Westeros.
Cersei is under house arrest awaiting her trial before the High Sparrow. When the day comes, those gathered in the Sept of Baelor realize that the Queen Mother is not among them. Before they can escape, the building explodes with a large charge of wildfire that was under the structure. Much of the court, the High Sparrow and Queen Margaery pass away. King Tommen, overcome with grief at what he witnesses from his window, throws himself out of it to kill himself.
Daenerys incinerates the Dothraki chieftains who have captured her. When she emerges alive from the burning hut she found herself in, the Dothraki people kneel before her as their new leader.
7 Season
Daenerys arrives at Rocadragón, the ancient fortress of the House of Targaryens, to plan its reconquest. After several battles in which she loses almost all of her allies, Jon Snow comes to her to join forces against the White Walkers. Winter will soon come and the army of Night will attack the Wall. Daenerys agrees to join her cause, on the condition that Jon Snow kneel and accept her as the true and rightful queen of Westeros. He does not accept and withdraws, but later gives in.
Sansa is in command of Winterfell as the last living daughter of House Stark. Bran and Arya return home and the three brothers meet again. Meanwhile, in King's Landing, Cersei has taken the iron throne.
Jon Snow and Daenerys lead a expedition beyond the wall to capture a 'living' white walker, for only then can they convince the other royal houses to put aside the fight for the throne and join forces against the spectral enemy. They manage to capture one, but not before losing one of Daenerys' dragons, which is resurrected by the Night Lord for his own army.
They set up a conference with Cersei, to which they show her the runaway white walker. This her, impressed by the consequences that an invasion of these creatures can bring, she agrees to help in the cause.
Daenerys and Jon Snow become lovers. The season ends with Lord of the Night destroying the wall, and beginning his invasion of Westeros.
8 Season
Several of the surviving Royal Houses gather at Winterfell to fight against the Army of the Night. During the night battle, Bran attracts the Night Lord and Arya manages to get close to him to kill him thanks to his years of training. Immediately after dying, the white walkers he controlled fall to dust.
Meanwhile, Cersei Lannister is in King's Landing planning against Daenerys' weakened troops. The second continues to suffer military losses until she manages to besiege the capital on the back of Drogon, the last living dragon of hers. She defeats the Lannister troops, while massacring and burning the entire city with the civilian population inside. Cersei and her brother Jaime die in each other's arms as part of the palace structure collapses on them.
Jon Snow, shocked by the cruelty of Daenerys, who promises to liberate the rest of the world just as she has liberated the capital of Westeros, mortally wounds her while promising that she will always be his only queen.
Drogon finds his mother's lifeless body. In her pain, cast the iron throne with the fire of his breath before flying off with the body of Daenerys Targaryen.
The surviving leaders of Westeros gather to elect a new king. Bran Stark is crowned, and immediately grants the independence to the northern kingdoms. Sansa Stark is crowned Queen in the North. Tyrion Lannister is named Hand of the king. Arya embarks on a journey to discover new overseas territories. Jon Snow returns to the Free People north of the Wall.
Has changed Game of Thrones our way of watching television series?
There is a before and after Game of Thrones. Until the irruption of the work of George RR Martin, the leading series without discussions was The Sopranos, which was broadcast between 1999 and 2007. The series created by David Chase —also for HBO— set new standards in terms of production values.
However, television series have evolved since then, setting new standards. Lost It was not a series as ambitious as The Sopranos, but he did manage to hook people episode by episode, setting the foundations for what he would later achieve Game of Thrones. Breaking Bad. it also marked an era, and was considered by many to be the best television series in history.
The case of Game of Thrones it is also special. On average, his episodes had a budget of 15 million dollars per chapter. His filmography, his intricate stories and his infinite cast have defined quality standards that are the envy of his competitors. His spin off, the house of the dragon, has a higher budget per episode. However, the series that really wants to unseat Game of Thrones is The Rings of Power.. Amazon has put up a whopping 58 million dollars per episode.
Will someone get beat Game of Thrones? It is still early to say, but there will be no shortage of producers trying to unseat the great adaptation of George RR Martin's work.