When Game of Thrones debuted on HBO in 2011, it was strictly understood to be an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, a suburban sprawl of a fantasy series by a permanently deadline-haunted writer named George R. R. Martin who looked vaguely like the sea captain on a cereal box and whose previous ventures into television included the 80s Twilight Zone revival and star-crossed, sewer-world romance Beauty and the Beast.
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Now, in 2016, he is the last surviving George Martin of note and an unlikely bulwark against prestige television's usurpation of the novel as our culture's dominant storytelling form. That's because, as the show grew increasingly distinct from its source material, Game of Thrones begat a Quadrophenia-like rivalry between those content to consume the saga at a rate of ten episodes a year and devout book-readers, who had some thousands of pages of spoilers to parcel out to the show's 18.6 million fans while kvetching about seemingly every composite character, casting choice, and departure from the text.Even during its controversial fifth season, during which showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss became particularly cavalier about killing off characters thought to be under the protection of Martin's written record and speeding up some subplots and character arcs while writing out others, the series was, at least nominally, still based on the books.But that's all over now. When the sixth season of GoT premieres this Sunday, April 24, it will be as its own creature, one that has finally outpaced the material covered in the five-book-so-far cycle and, in a Borgesian twist, wrested the most profitable and politically astute epic of our time from the grasp of its author. What happens next is anyone's guess, as the fate of the seven kingdoms is no longer the provenance of any but the old gods and the new. Still, some review of the recent history of the great houses may be in order, both because it may contain some clues as to who will walk away from Game of Thrones with control of the board, and because those who do not learn from the past are, if past seasons are any indication, doomed to pay the iron price for their ignorance.
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Needless to say: Unless you're caught up through Season 5, many, many spoilers are ahead. There's also a healthy amount of speculation about Season 6.
House Stark
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What to Expect: Bran will return from his Jedi training with the Three-Eyed Raven; Rickon seems a likely hostage and potential casualty to the Stark/Bolton battle for the North, and a now-sightless Arya will go deep cover with an actor's troupe in order to get right with the Many-Faced God, live up to her assassin aspirations, and assume her ultimate destiny as a plot device. But Sansa is the Starkling of the hour. In a series full of strong female characters, Sansa's power comes from her nuanced understanding of herself as valuable property in the eyes of the patriarchy, a conception she could be in a good position to exploit as she completes her transformation into a queen who has been the object of enough cruelty and power games to have taken copious notes on how to divide political foes and capitalize on a valuable bloodline.Season 6 will also give us flashbacks—reportedly in the form of visions from Bran—to the salad days of Lyanna and Ned during Robert's Rebellion, meaning that the Stark's signature man-bun will back in all its manly bunliness. Of course, the big return will be that of Ned Stark's bastard, Jon Snow, the boy who died so that the man—Jon Stark—may live…
House Lannister
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The Dead: Tywin Lannister, Joanna Lannister, Martyn Lannister, Willem Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon (illegitimate), Myrcella Baratheon (illegitimate)Season 5: After dispatching patriarch Tywin, Tyrion fled the continent, outfoxed a cabal of penis-thieves, and landed an interview with Daenerys Targaryen, the Diana-like people's princess, though his true foe remained a crippling case of dipsomania. Jaime was dispatched to Dorne to save Myrcella, the daughter of his incestuous relationship with Cersei, from a superfluous Scooby-Doo plot and failed. Unwilling to compete with Margaery Tyrell for control of sweet-tempered Tommen, queen mother Cersei embarked on a foolhardy gambit to use the fundamentalist Faith Militant to enforce her will and wound up naked and ashamed and in the arms of a reanimated 400-pound monsterman with his own brand of bottled water.What to Expect: The swift and terrible revenge of Cersei spells maximum pwnage for old-guard establishment figure Kevan and born-again evangelical Lancel, totally plausible as early casualties in Mountain-stein's tenure as Facecrusher General. Returning home with their slain daughter, Jaime will be charged with rounding up the remaining Stark-Tully rabble in the Riverlands (where one hopes he'll be reunited with the side-questing Brienne of Tarth, as the unsexualized, mutual respect between the Kingslayer and "I'm no Lady" Brienne is unheard-of in most gendered television pairings). Tyrion will take over for the missing Daenerys in Meereen, which means a lot of talking, usually Peter Dinklage's strong suit. King "Butters" Tommen has proven incapable of acting outside the authority of his mother or child-husband booty call Margaery and will live or die depending on their machinations and whether it's convenient to have a vacant seat of power at this stage of the story, before there's any obvious candidate on hand to seize it.
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House Targaryen
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House Baratheon
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House Bolton
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House Frey
House Greyjoy
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The Dead: Rodrik Greyjoy, Maron GreyjoySeason 5: The usual response to Theon is contempt, pity, or a mixture of both, but the showrunners seem to have recognized in the once-and-future hostage a poignantly tragic figure who mistakes his own nature and winds up hated by everybody he ever sought to impress. True, last season mostly saw him sniveling in a kennel, but his single act of heroism in rescuing Sansa goes a long way toward reconstructing our faith in the living disappointment that is Theon. At this point, a redemptive death would be too clean and trite, but he won't be welcomed by either his adoptive Stark family nor his kin at Pyke, making his arc the potentially fascinating journey of someone who has burnt every bridge that might have received him and finds himself with nowhere to run.What to Expect: If there's anything you've been meaning to say to crusty old Balon Greyjoy, now's the time: His death was prophesied back in Season 3 and his survival seems an oversight that new character Euron seems to have been cast to correct, as well as stencil the long-dormant Ironborn back onto the plot.
House Tyrell
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The Dead: None.Season 5: The looks the Queen of Thorns gave Cersei after the latter's transparent attempts at skullduggery made the season, as did Mace's cheerful obliviousness to the fact that everyone else considers him a complete tool. Loras, the Knight of the Flowers, was arrested by the Faith Militant on, like, sodomy charges and Margaery went from boning down with the adolescent king to telling Cersei to "Get out, you hateful bitch!" after being imprisoned beneath the Sept of Baelor.What to Expect: A reversal of fortune. Fetching woodland creature Margaery will charm the High Sparrow just as she has every other citizen of King's Landing, even if it means (I fear) throwing Loras under the bus. The Tyrells will have some choice words for Cersei, but she won't be listening, and we'll meet Tyrell loyalists the Tarlys (Sam's folks), who would lead the charge in the event of an insurgency against the crown. We're sure to get more from Diana Rigg's Olenna, as hers is one of the choicest performances on the show and has a lot of audience goodwill built up from being the architect of Joffrey's demise. It's really hard to imagine anything bad happening to Margaery after being wed three times to three kings, but plebes said the same about Anne Boleyn.
House Martell
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The Dead: Oberyn Martell, Elia MartellSeason 5: Nothing about the Dornish plot even made the most basic empirical sense. Why does Ellaria hold the Lannisters responsible for her lover Oberyn's death on his own terms during a trial by combat he volunteered for? Why did the Sand Snakes try to abduct/kill Myrcella in the castle garden, in full view of Princess Doran and Trystane, in broad daylight? Why did the treasonous schemes of House Martell culminate in an awkward family dinner (and that's leaving out Myrcella and Jaime talking about her incestuous origin in offensively reductionist "you love who you love" cant)?What to Expect: Well, now that they're here, they're here, I guess; might as well make the most of that castle in Seville they've booked. Trystane was promised a seat on the small council, but that was before Myrcella succumbed to Ellaria's poison lipstick. Now he could be a hostage, a corpse, or a foothold for the Dornishmen in the event of full-on war with the crown. Whatever comes to pass, the Martells' existing role in the story will likely be as occasional diplomatic allies to whoever seems likely to prevail over the hamstrung Lannisters.