“Game of Thrones” has just proven that a new weapon can be a game changer when fighting a war, especially if it can give one an air of superiority in a medieval context. Also, family reunions can be poignant indeed.
Arya Stark has come home but can one ever go home again?
Thomas Wolfe once wrote an entire novel on the theme of you can’t ever go home again. Arya finds that out when she finally returns to Winterfell and finds her way barred by the guards who do not recognize her. When she finally gets through and embraces her sister Sansa, the viewer is struck at how much both of them have changed since they rode out of their ancestral castle all those years ago.
Arya has turned from a spunky tomboy to a stone cold killer, haunted as much by the people she has yet to deal with as she is those who have already been killed. Sansa is no longer enthralled by dreams of knights and romance. She is the Lady of Winterfell and has experienced such horrors that no one, not even in a place like Westeros, should ever have to live through.
It’s good to have dragons
Meanwhile, down around Highgarden, Jamie is looting the farms of their grain and livestock, and woe betide the farmer who objects. Bronn, the mercenary who had been in the service of Tyrion, is not the prince of the Lannister’s right-hand man. Jamie is not too pleased about the revelation he received after he conquered Highgarden.
His bad day is just beginning.
First, his army, spread out across the countryside, has to receive the sudden onset of the Dothraki horde, horse borne savages who enjoy killing infantry in mail more than they do their own lives. However, they are also targets of a fire breathing dragon flying top cover over the Dothraki.
If the famous British historian John Keagan was still alive, he could no doubt write an essay about what it was like to be a soldier in the Lannister army during that battle.
One moment you’re standing in a battle line, shield up, spear at ready, prepared to receive the best light cavalry on your planet. The next moment, you’re on fire, as surely as if napalm had been dropped on you, writhing in agony on the ground.
The super weapon that had been devised to deal with dragons, a scorpion, a giant crossbow, proved to have mixed effectiveness.
It brings down the dragon but does not kill it. At the end, Jamie picked up a spear and embarked on a heroic charge against the dragon and its rider, Daenerys. Only the last minute intervention of some as yet unknown hero prevented the prince of the House Lannister from dying by fire. However, Jamie may just die by drowning. In any case, the Lannister Army is destroyed, and the Fortunes Of War have just shifted.
