The Burning of King’s Landing

I would say Spoiler Alert, but who the frick cares at this point? Everyone I know of (including myself) would tell someone either to never watch the show no matter how good the first 4 seasons are or to stop watching at the end of Season 6 and just imagine what happens afterwards, because whatever it is it is better than Seasons 7 and 8. Also to be honest the show was completely dead to me the moment Arya killed the Night King destroying all the years of foreshadowing of Azor Ahai and all the other prophesies, but hey Melisandre mentioned blue eyes one time despite mentioning Azor Ahai 600 times in the show, so I guess that makes it all good.

But onto the thread point, I kind of like that Dany burns down King’s Landing. Granted within the context of the show at that point it’s dumb as all frick since King’s Landing actually surrenders to her without much of a struggle, and they did some dumb bullshite with the bells which makes no sense given what Martin himself directly wrote in the Blackwater episode.



I think it could have been a brilliant Scouring of the Shire moment if they built it up more than an episode and a half in advance, and the books seem to be building up to something like that. Dany in the House of the Undying doesn’t really count since it’s been fricking 6 seasons since that scene was even thought of or discussed. She just turned on a dime for no reason. Westeros had submitted so why burn the city to the ground? Even Aerys wouldn’t have done that.

Here’s the big problem with that scene save for how sudden and stupid it was in the context of the show: you don’t care about a single character dying there. You’ve got the Mad Queen, a ridiculous homicidal Jack Sparrow, a mass raping Frankenstein’s monster, and Josef Mengele as the victims of it. These are all awful, awful people where we celebrate their deaths, so by default the tragedy of the situation doesn’t work. I guess Jaime was there too, but he just got finished throwing Brienne under the bus and saying that he never cared for the commoners, so frick him too.

Dany needs to have a reason to burn down King’s Landing, like say the people won’t surrender to her no matter what thinking she’s another Mad King/Queen come for them and they’d rather die and want the actual Heir of Rhaegar as their King. Also you have to have people die you care about. The show blew it on both fronts, and if that fat piece of shite hands it off to a ghost writer to finish the books (another spoiler alert, he won’t), then I do think that could be a powerfully effective and emotionally moving ending to the books.

Granted I’m still not buying the very end. Sir Too Fat to Write a Book better have a better excuse of blowing himself as a writer and saying “Who has a better story than Bran the Broken?” That part has to change drastically. Not buying that for one fricking second.