The debt.
The crown's debt to the Iron Bank.
I'm gonna try to replicate the journey I went on.
So I was watching season seven, and there's this really short scene where Randyll Tarly
rides back to Jaime Lannister and says we got the gold to King's Landing safely.
It's through the gate.
[-All the gold's safely through the gates of King's Landing. -Good.]
-Later, we get this scene transition where you can hear somebody talking
before you can see them.
Scene transitions like this are a great place to hide details that you don't want the viewer
to think about too hard.
There's about five seconds where you're not really paying attention
because you're still thinking about the last scene.
But pay attention to the delivery of this line.
[-I must say I don't think the Iron Bank has ever had a debt of this magnitude]
[repaid in a single installment.]
[I always considered your father a very effective and efficient man, ]
[but you appear to be redefining those terms entirely.]
[-You're too kind, my lord.]
-Now, for those who don't speak sarcasm, that was venom.
Here it is again.
[-I must say I don't think the Iron Bank has ever had a debt of this magnitude]
[repaid in a single installment.]
[I always considered your father a very effective and efficient man, ]
[but you appear to be redefining those terms entirely.]
-If you're not convinced, humor me.
Supposing that this is sarcasm, the thing that makes it sarcasm is that Cersei is redefining
the terms effective and efficient in a bad way rather than a good way.
And if she's redefining them in a bad way, then his comparison of Cersei and Tywin
takes on a new meaning, which is, you're not nearly as good at this game as your father.
Which paints Cersei's flattery in a funny light because she missed the sarcasm.
[-You're too kind, my lord.]
So what is so ineffective and inefficient about Cersei paying back the crown's debt
in full to the Iron Bank?
We've been told all along, and by Tywin Lannister himself, that the Iron Bank is a serious threat.
[-The crown owes the Iron Bank of Braavos a tremendous amount of money.]
[-How much?]
[-A tremendous amount.]
[That's what the Iron Bank is, a temple.]
[We all live in its shadow and almost none of us know it.]
[You can't run from them, you can't cheat them, you can't sway them with excuses.]
[If you owe them money you don't want to crumble yourself.]
[You pay it back.]
Tywin makes the Iron Bank out to be this big scary entity that you can't escape,
you can't reason with, you can't sway, and that's just wrong.
Because we see in the very next episode that Ser Davos can sway the Iron Bank
to support Stannis.
But it sounds like Tywin intends to pay back the debt.
And I believe that he does. Just not all of it at once.
[-People who spend their money on this sort of nonsense tend not to have it for long.]
[-You ought to try enjoying something before you die.]
[You might find it suits you.]
[Your heartfelt thank you is its own reward.]
[I would imagine I'll be hearing it again before long.]
[Wars are rather expensive. The Iron Bank will have its due.]
[How they love to remind everyone!]
[Almost as much as you Lannisters with your debts.]
[-I'm not worried about the Iron Bank.]
[-We both know you're smarter than that.]
-Wait, what? He isn't worried about the Iron Bank?
But he gives the pay-em-back speech three episodes after this.
There's something fishy.
Maybe Tywin is just trying to act like a tough guy in front of Olenna,
but that doesn't make a lot of sense.
I've never seen Tywin try to act like a tough guy
and I'm not sure that he's the bluffing type either.
And what purpose would this bluff serve anyway?
So let's entertain the idea that he's telling the truth.
Maybe he isn't worried about the Iron Bank. Why not?
[-Can the treasury bear such expense?]
[-I'll have to borrow it. The Lannisters will accommodate, I expect.]
[We already owe Lord Tywin three million gold. What's another eighty thousand?]
[-Are you telling me the crown is three million in debt?]
[-I'm telling you the crown is six million in debt.]
[-How could you let this happen?]
[-The Master of Coin finds the money. The King and the Hand spend it.]
-In season one, Ned finds out about the crown's enormous debt.
Six million in total. Three million to Tywin Lannister.
[-The royal wedding may end up being the most expensive event in living memory.]
[Summer has ended, hard days lie ahead.]
-Tyrion is concerned about the cost of the wedding,
and Cersei is just annoyed every time somebody brings up money.
She doesn't think money is a big deal.
She has always had an unlimited supply of it.
And so she doesn't consider being in charge of the money to be an important job.
[-Not a good time to leave the crown's finances unattended.]
[-Fully agreed.] -Eye roll.
[-Which is why I'm naming you new Master of Coin.] -Laugh.
[-Master of Coin?]
[-It would appear to be a position that best suits your talents.]
[-I'm quite good at spending money but a lifetime of outrageous wealth ]
[hasn't taught me much about managing it.]
[-I have no doubt you will prove equal to this challenge.]
-Sarcasm. This is a family of sarcasm.
Tyrion is going through the finances that Littlefinger had before him, and he's shocked.
[-He stealing it?]
[-Worse, he's borrowing it.]
[-What's wrong with that?]
[-We can't afford to pay it back, that's what's wrong with it.]
[The crown owes millions to my father.]
[-Seeing as it's his grandson's ass on the throne, I imagine he'll forgive that debt.]
[-Forgive a debt? My father?]
[For a man of the world you're strangely naive.]
-Tyrion alludes to the Lannister words A Lannister Always Pays His Debts.
And he sort of makes fun of Bronn.
But Bronn's actually right.
This is why I love Bronn, he points out the obvious.
Since House Lannister has the crown, Tywin Lannister lending money to the crown is
a lot like Tywin Lannister lending money to Tywin Lannister.
He's invested in keeping the crown for his family, but there are no consequences for
not paying himself back.
As long as his family has the crown, his family will continue to inherit the crown
because of divine right.
So even if he has to invest all of his personal money into keeping the crown, it's worth it.
Because if his family were to lose the crown, whoever they lost it to would have to annihilate
his bloodline in order to establish a new claim.
[-I've never borrowed money before.]
[I'm not clear on the rules.]
[-Well... the basic principle is...]
[I lend you money, and after an agreed upon period of time, you return it.]
[With interest.]
[-And what if I don't?]
[-Well you have to.]
[-But what if I don't?]
[-This is why I don't lend you money.]
[Anyway, it's not my father I'm worried about.]
[It's the Iron Bank of Braavos. We owe them tens of millions.]
[If we fail to repay these loans, the bank will fund our enemies.]
[One way or another, they always get their gold back.]
-There's an old saying that goes something like this.
If I owe the bank one hundred dollars, I have a problem.
If I owe the bank one hundred million dollars, the bank has a problem.
The meaning being that the bank will never get that much money back from me
because I'll never have that much money.
And they probably shouldn't have lent it to me in the first place.
They have a lending problem.
Especially if I haven't paid back what I already owe them.
It creates a situation where the bank has to protect the borrower because the borrower
owes them too much money for the bank to let them fail.
So the bank is thinking, he's asking for another loan.
But I have to loan it to him because I can't afford to let him fail.
He owes me too much money, and if he fails I'll never get that money back.
Because whoever defeats him isn't going to inherit his debt.
Unless!
I think this is the point Davos made that ultimately convinced the bank to support Stannis.
[-He's an honest man and he's your best chance to get back the money you've sunk into Westeros,]
[which is a lot, I imagine.]
-Because if Stannis wins, not only do they get to replace an unreliable borrower in Tywin,
but they get to replace him with a Baratheon.
Someone who's going to inherit the debt that's already owed.
[-When Tywin's gone, who do you back?]
[-That is a problem for another time.]
[-Begging your pardon, I think it's a problem for now.]
[And he doesn't just talk about paying people back, he does it!]
-So that's why I think Tywin did intend to eventually pay back the debt.
[-If you owe them money, you don't want to crumble yourself.]
[You pay it back.]
-Because he knows there's gonna come a point where the bank says okay this motherfucker
clearly has no intention of paying us back. Let's cut our losses.
Let's replace him by funding his enemies.
So Tyrion was right about that too.
[-If we fail to repay these loans, the bank will fund our enemies.]
-Tywin is racing the threat of his lenders funding his enemies.
And the fact that the bank decided to support Stannis shows me that they already want to
cut their losses and they're looking for enemies to fund.
[-Daenerys Targaryen has three full grown dragons.]
[How well do wooden ships fare against fire-breathing dragons?]
-The bank wants to switch sides to Daenerys because three dragons are likely to win,
but they're conflicted because they want to protect the debt they have tied up in Cersei
and the Baratheon-Lannister line.
If Daenerys wins, the debt will disappear because Daenerys isn't a Baratheon
and she won't inherit the debt.
The bank will never see that money again.
[-The slave trade has entered a downturn, it's true.]
[-From what I gather she considers herself more of a revolutionary than a monarch.]
[In your experience, how do bankers usually fare with revolutionaries?]
[The Lannisters owe the Iron Bank quite a lot of money but Lannisters always pay their debts.]
[Do former slaves? Or Dothraki or dragons?]
[-Your father's daughter indeed.]
-Imagine this scene. Daenerys has just won the war.
She's sitting up on her throne and the banker comes in and he says
'Excuse me miss dragon Queen. Do you see that big pile of gold over there?
That's supposed to be mine.'
And Daenerys is gonna say 'You mean you've been funding my enemies with all of this gold
while I was in exile? Dracarys!'
So I don't think the banker is that stupid or suicidal. That scene will never happen.
He'll have to take the ten million gold loss in silence.
And I think maybe Tywin knew that.
[-Give me a fortnight. Stay in King's Landing as my honored guest]
[and when you return to Braavos I swear to you, my debt will be paid in full.]
-So rather than paying back the debt in full, maybe what Tywin would have done was to tell
the banker 'Look you see this big pile of gold over here?
That's all gonna be yours paid back in full, right after you help me win the war.'
I think that's why the banker keeps mockingly comparing Cersei to Tywin.
[-The Iron Bank wants its gold back.]
[-Your father never minced words either.]
[Your father's daughter indeed.]
-Because he knows that Tywin never would have made this mistake.
And Cersei eats it right up.
[-Give me a fortnight. Stay in King's Landing as my honored guest.]
-Because she has always wanted to be like Tywin.
[-Did it ever occur to you that I might be the one who deserves your confidence ]
[and your trust? Not your sons?]
[-I don't distrust you because you're a woman.]
[I distrust you because you're not as smart as you think you are.]
-Look how happy the banker is now that he knows he's getting his money back
and he'll be free to switch to the side that has dragons.
[-Its well-being is a matter of arithmetic not sentiment.]
[And the current arithmetic is outstanding!]
[Yes, perhaps we could be of assistance in some current venture.]
-Now he's doing spy work.
He's digging to find out Cersei's plans so that he can help Daenerys beat her.
And Cersei spills them.
[-My Hand, Qyburn, has made overtures to the Golden Company in Essos.]
[-I know them well.]
[They've helped us recover significant sums from parties who had fallen into deeper ears.]
[-That's good to hear.]
-Oh that's your plan! The Golden Company.
Biggest, most powerful mercenary group in the world.
I've heard of them!
I've done some deals with them once or twice.
[-I, too, would like them to recover some things that belong to me.]
[-Rest assured, Your Grace, you can count on the Iron Bank's support.]
[Uh, as soon as the gold arrives.]
-Thanks for the cash, Tywin.
Oh, sorry. Slip of the tongue!