Game of Thrones is a whirlwind of a ride.
You can't watch the show without getting caught up in the storm, but in between all the characters
with scruffy brown beards and greasy brown locks, there are a lot of things people get
wrong about Game of Thrones.
Here are some of the worst ones.
At the end of Season 1, we watched Daenerys Targaryen walk into her husband's funeral
pyre and emerge as the Unburnt Mother of Dragons.
Then, a few seasons later, she did it again, emerging naked from the fiery remains of a
temple, thus confirming what we already knew: Targaryens are immune to fire.
However, author George R.R. Martin himself has a bone to pick with that depiction, as
he wrote during a fan chat in 1999:
"Targaryens are not immune to fire!
The birth of Dany's dragons was unique, magical, wondrous, a miracle.
She is called The Unburnt because she walked into the flames and lived.
But her brother sure as hell wasn't immune to that molten gold."
On the other hand, Daenerys herself, at least on the show, does appear to have some tolerance
to heat; we saw this early on when her maid warned her against getting into a too-hot
bathtub and she did it anyway.
But that's hardly the same thing as walking into a fire and emerging unscathed.
We have yet to actually learn what's behind her apparent immunity to the flames; whether
it's some kind of magic, a bond with her dragons, or something else.
Regardless, it's certainly not an immunity that applies to all Targaryens.
Melisandre's relationship with Stannis was nothing if not irritating.
She was constantly whispering in his ear, winning him over with flattery, and being
a complete witch to his lawfully wedded wife.
But how much control did Melisandre really have over Stannis?
Which one of them was really in charge?
Stannis believed that Melisandre could help him win the Iron Throne, but he wasn't playing
the game because Melisandre wanted him to.
Remember, this is a man who believed so completely in his right to be king that he agreed to
burn his own daughter to death in the hope that his act of sacrifice would help secure
his throne.
In a way, Melisandre was his puppet, not the other way around.
After all, she genuinely believed he was the prophesied Prince who was Promised, and she'd
have done just about anything to help him fulfill the prophecy.
But every choice Stannis made was meant to further his own interests, not Melisandre's.
He might have let her think she was pulling the strings, but that's a small price to pay
for having someone on your side who can throw fireballs and produce murderous shadow babies
from her nether bits.
Okay, so Melisandre burned a child at the stake and gave birth to a creepy shadow demon
that had Stannis' face on it.
Does that mean she's evil?
Well, just because Melisandre sometimes does evil things doesn't necessarily mean she's
evil.
She's a complicated character doing evil things, but she believes that she's doing them for
the right reasons.
Some have even called Melisandre "the real hero in Game of Thrones."
When she burns a young child to death, it's because she genuinely believes her actions
will help save Westeros from the army of the dead and the White Walkers.
Melisandre is scary and powerful, ruthless and cruel, but she's also ancient, and she
probably loses a little bit of her humanity with every passing century.
But under all that, what she really wants is to save Westeros, and in order to do that
she's willing to make terrible sacrifices.
We might not ever agree with her methods, but we at least have to agree with her motives.
Okay, take a couple of deep breaths and sit down.
This one is going to make you question everything you've ever seen, heard, or believed about
life, the universe, and your place in it.
Daenarys' title is actually not pronounced "ka-LEE-see".
You might be wondering how that's possible, when the show seems to have plenty of examples
proving otherwise: Well, they've all been getting it wrong.
The Dothraki language was created by a linguist named David Peterson, so he would sure know
what his own language sounds like.
He says the correct pronunciation of Khaleesi is:
"The native Dothraki pronunciation is Khaleesi."
Peterson says that his pronunciation is the only way that Martin's original spelling makes
sense while also abiding by linguistic principles.
Unfortunately, the constant mispronouncing of the name on the show and in pop culture
has led Peterson to regret some things.
He says that, if he could do it again, he would've changed it to avoid the possibility
of mispronunciation.
"So I should have just should have just respelled it on my own and just said that the word is
pronounced 'khalisi'."
After all those years of The Walking Dead, every time we hear the phrase "White Walkers,"
we expect the characters in Game of Thrones to stumble out of Westeros and into Georgia.
Which would be a fun crossover, except the White Walkers aren't technically zombies.
They're an ancient race of ice creatures, created by the Children of the Forest during
a violent ritual.
As for their more undead servants, wights, they actually are raised from the dead by
White Walkers.
However, only the Night King seems to have the ability to turn humans into White Walkers,
and seemingly only with infants.
The seventh season of Game of Thrones featured more than a few characters making seemingly
instantaneous trips around Westeros.
So you might be tempted to think that Westeros just isn't very big, but that's not actually
true.
Westeros is huge.
Granted, it's easier for Daenerys to get around because she's got dragons to ride, but for
everyone else, not so much.
There are 1,500 miles between Winterfell and King's Landing, and the journey takes more
than one month by horse.
That means that the distance between Winterfell and King's Landing is just a little further
than the distance between Vancouver, B.C., and San Diego, and you can add another 600
miles on top of that to get to the wall.
So we're not talking about a small nation, we're talking about something that's comparable
to a good chunk of the United States.
And unless you're lucky enough to have a dragon, there is an awful lot of distance between
you and pretty much every one of the Seven Kingdoms.
If the "Red Wedding" did anything for us, it provided us with some hard truths.
No one is safe on Game of Thrones.
Except, if you did any frantic Googling after the Red Wedding, you probably learned that
there are five characters in particular that George R.R. Martin plans to not eventually
murder.
Those characters are Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, Arya Stark, Jon Snow, and Bran
Stark.
If you read that list, it's probably helped stop you from dying of anxiety every time
you watch a new episode.
Well unfortunately, those days of comfort and security have finally come to an end.
Now that the show is wrapping up, even those five "safe" characters aren't really safe
anymore.
Feel free to hold onto the last strands of hope, though, if it's the only thing that
will keep you from sinking into a vast chasm of despair.
Jaime Lannister started Game of Thrones with the push heard round the world:
"The things I do for love."
Pushing a ten-year-old out the window was enough to make us all hate him, and our hate
lingered as he continued to generally be a smarmy jerk to our favorite characters.
But Jaime Lannister isn't really a villain.
He's just… complicated.
On the gray scale of human nature, he's closer to an anti-hero.
Sure, he might have pushed Bran out a window, but he also saved Brienne from a gladiator-style
death-by-bear.
He's certainly selfish and arrogant, but underneath it all he has empathy and a moral code.
Even his moniker as the Kingslayer isn't reflective of a man without honor.
He betrayed and murdered his liege because the Mad King ordered the deaths of nearly
everyone in King's Landing.
Jaime had to do something to stop him.
"I slit his throat to make sure that didn't happen."
Sacrificing personal glory to save thousands of lives sure doesn't sound like the action
of a villain.
There are plenty of characters in Game of Thrones, and we're sure not going to count
all of them.
As of 2016, there were 553 cast members; that includes speaking parts and minor parts like
"Woman in King's Landing" and "Giant Wight #2" but not any of the thousands of extras.
But the real problem is that there are so many core characters that even a mega fan
would be hard-pressed to name every single one of them.
So no one really gets that much screen time, and that's led a lot of people to conclude
that Game of Thrones doesn't really have a protagonist.
However, mathematicians took that assumption to be a challenge.
In 2016, a couple of mathematicians used "network science" to study the connections between
characters.
They concluded that Game of Thrones does have a protagonist, and it's Tyrion Lannister.
And their weird mathematical map isn't the only analytical tool that came to that conclusion.
In 2017, someone went through the first six seasons of Game of Thrones and figured out
that Tyrion gets the most screen time, too; by the last episode of Season 6 he'd racked
up 4 hours and 53 minutes, about a half hour more than Jon Snow.
There's also the part where pretty much everything that's ever happened on Game of Thrones can
somehow be traced back to Tyrion.
And finally, Tyrion is George R.R. Martin's favorite character, so that's proof enough.
Some of the costumes on Game of Thrones are works of art.
According to The New Yorker, the principal embroiderer spends six days a week, 12 hours
a day just working on the embellishments for the gowns, robes, and tunics that appear on
the show.
Some of the other costumes, though, like the robes worn by the Night's Watch, look just
a little bit worse for wear.
In fact, as befits the Night's Watch in general, they look a little shabby.
Wondering why?
In a 2016 talk at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, costume designer Michele Clapton
revealed the true origins of Jon Snow's cloak and some of the other fur robes worn on the
show:
"These capes are actually IKEA rugs…
We cut and we shaved them and we added strong leather straps."
She doesn't mention which IKEA rugs she used, in case you wanted to build your own Jon Snow
cosplay.
However, popular guesses include the $15 TEJN, the $30 RENS, and the $79 SKOLD, which you
can only get from Ikea Australia.
Happy shopping!
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