Warning: Contains Spoilers
The Battle of King’s Landing is here, Daenerys has flown around on her dragon and scorched up a whole load of stuff, and Arya still has names to tick off her list.
It should go without saying but – warning! – spoilers are coming at you like a hungry Dothraki.
Last night we finally witnessed the fall of King’s Landing. Cersei Lannister ended up under a pile of rubble in the Red Keep next to her beloved twin brother/lover Jaime, and Daenerys succumbed to her family name and pretty much became the mad queen.
Two other major characters returned to King’s Landing to settle their scores too. Arya Stark and Sandor ‘The Hound’ Clegane.
Arya, naturally, wanted to get to Cersei and tick her name of her kill list once and for all. And though he didn’t have such a literal list as Arya, the Hound had a massive score to settle with his big brother Gregor ‘The Mountain’ Clegane.
We’ve been waiting to these two massive bros to go head to head pretty much since season one, when they came to a few brief blows before being separated.
Fans dubbed it Cleganebowl – the much-lauded final fight between the two brothers.
Cleganebowl was dreamt up by hopeful GoT fans who wanted to see the two brothers pitted against one another. Both Cleganes have made it clear in the past they would happily kill the other, as they’re not exactly the best of bros.
As long as we’ve known Sandor ‘The Hound’, his face hasn’t really been the most chiselled visage – though he more than makes up for it in other ways. Also he’s notoriously afraid of fire. This is thanks to his brother Gregor who, when they were kids, grabbed his baby brother and shoved his face into a fire after catching him playing with one of his toys. Ah, good old fashioned sibling rivalry.
Though the pair did have some interactions in season one, which could’ve ended differently had Robert Baratheon not stopped them, they didn’t see each other again until season seven.
In the meantime, Gregor’s reputation as one of the most evil people to walk in Westoros spread, thanks to his murdering of children, raping of women, possible killing his own father and sister, caving Oberyn’s skull in with his bare hands, and general pillaging of innumerable villages.
However, after his gruesome fight with Oberyn, Gregor never recovered from his wounds – thanks to a clever trick by Oberyn of coating his weapons in manticore venom. Desperate to let him live, Cersei allowed Maester Qyburn to use some ‘unorthodox methods’ to save him. The result was still The Mountain’s size and strength as we knew it, but a zombie-like creature under his armour.
Last night, however, during the legendary Cleganebowl, we finally saw what was underneath the armour, and just what Qyburn had done to Gregor.
Check it out:
Woof.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.