Spoiler alert…Alot of them.
HBOEpisode three of Game Of Thrones delivered another stellar offering but among the chaos of bloody castle raids, long-awaited reunions and a reminder that incest is still gross, you may have missed some things.
The title of this week’s episode ‘Queen’s Justice’ was aptly named don’t you think as it had both Daenerys Stormborn (so forth and so forth) and Cersei Lannister who dish out some royal servings on opposite ends of the spectrum.
On Dragonstone, the ancestral home of the Targaryen dynasty, Daenerys has her long anticipated first encounter with the King in The North, and Man-bun enthusiast, Jon Snow. While the meeting did make excellent TV for us viewers – Missandei listing of her Queen’s various titles like a rapper and their various ‘aka’s’ and Ser Davos Seaworth just not bothering with the Bastard of Winterfell’s prestigious regency – things didn’t go quite as planned for The Mother of Dragons.
HBOJon Snow refused to bend the knee and give up the North, so instead she struck a deal with him, she allowed the Northerners to mine the Dragonglass.
Of course this being GoT nothing comes without a price, what price Jon has to pay is yet to be seen, for now it looks like he’s Daenerys’ esteemed prisoner guest.
Back in Kings Landing, Cersei dishes out her own breed of ‘judgement’ on the Ellaria and her last remaining daughter. It’s always said that you reap what you sow and that could be no truer than in this episode, when Ellaria gave Cersei’s daughter, Myrcella, the kiss of death back in season five she pretty much sealed her fate.
Show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were always quick to remind us that despite Cersei being a vindictive B-word, her one redeeming quality was the love for her children – so who is she when she doesn’t have them? Turns out she’s a Queen on a rampage who does not forget the slights dealt to her.
It’s quite fitting then that Cersei’s judgement ‘for’ Ellaria is to ‘repay the affection’ that she showed Mayrcella by giving her daughter the same kiss of death. However she took it one step further, she wanted Ellaria to watch her only living daughter die and rot in front of her eyes.
HBOAs cruel and as heart breaking as that is you can’t say that Cersei’s actions are not without merit, after all Tyrion pointed out in the previous episode that Myrcella was innocent… so therefore ‘Queen’s Justice’ indeed.
However the coup de grâce could be saved for Lady Olenna Tyrell, the Queen of Thorns. Jaime Lannister may of given her a dignified and painless death but as always she made sure she got the last word. Cersei wiped out Tyrell future when she blew up the Sept of Baelor, so for Olenna all she had was justice.
She may have not got the brand of justice that she wanted but she made damn well sure that Jaime, and in-turn hopefully Cersei, knew she was responsible for the death of her first born Joffrey. So with that her death, and justice, was quite cathartic.
HBOSo yeah, in the end ‘Queen’s Justice’ was exactly that, ‘justice served’ – in a number of ways.
Next week on Game of Thrones: a dragon flies in the air…
