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Review: Game of Thrones: ‘The Lion and the Rose’ (season 4, episode 2) (Includes first-hand account)

“The Lion and the Rose” has bucked the trend of season placement of major deaths in the series, though arguably there could and probably will be many more deaths to come. Episode nine is always the key one: we lost Ned Stark in season one, a whole bunch of people in season two’s Battle of the Blackwater, and in season three, there was the Red Wedding.

The major event of last night’s episode was the wedding of Joffrey and Margaery, but first we check in on a few of the other characters.

The cold open takes a few seconds to click into place; a woman is running, but we don’t know why. Then we see Ramsay Snow, and everything makes sense; the twisted bastard son of Roose Bolton is hunting. Alongside him is Theon, now being called Reek, and is a nearly unrecognizable shell of his former self.

When Roose arrives at the Dreadfort, he shows that he’s quite angry with Ramsay’s treatment of Theon; the prolonged torture has broken the Greyjoy heir, who could have been a valuable hostage. Roose tries to remedy this situation by having Ramsay take Moat Cailin, which is his only obstacle to taking control of the north, as befitting of his Ward of the North title given to him by the Lannisters.

Meanwhile, beyond the Wall, Bran gets a hint as to what he’s supposed to be doing. After being woken out of his trance (he was his direwolf, Summer, for several hours, apparently), he finds a heart tree, which he touches. He’s given a vision of someone he’s supposed to look for, and he will be found beneath a tree.

We also get a brief jaunt to Dragonstone, starting with the ritualistic burning of several people as sacrifices, something Davos unsurprisingly isn’t okay with. Melisandre then visits Shireen in her bedroom, where we learn a little bit about the red priestess’ origins.

But the real action, of course, is all at King’s Landing. The royal wedding is finally happening, and it’s perhaps one of the best-acted scenes from a large ensemble cast.

Things go south before the ceremony even begins. When Tyrion presents Joffrey with a valuable book as a wedding gift, Joffrey pretends to be grateful for all of ten seconds, when he is presented with a Valyrian steel sword. He dashes Tyrion’s book into pieces, and the look on Peter Dinklage’s face is one the audience will see a lot of.

While the vows go off without a hitch, it’s the wedding reception where everything goes wrong. After some merriment, Joffrey decides to do possibly the worst thing a king could do as entertainment — he brings out five dwarves, dressed up as the five kings (some of whom are dead, like Renly and Robb) and has them enact a cringe-inducing battle.

As it goes on, several characters are shown to be at the very least uncomfortable, or downright insulted. As “Renly” is knocked over, Ser Loras leaves his table in disgust. When the head of “Robb” is knocked off, Sansa stares with a deadness in her eyes. It gets worse when Joffrey asks Tyrion to take part in the battle, which Tyrion rightfully refuses.

It’s then a few minutes of Joffrey being cruel to his uncle, as Margaery tries her best to lighten the mood. And then Joffrey takes a sip of a cup of wine, and he begins choking. Seconds later, he’s coughing up goo, and not much later, as Jaime and Cersei rush to his aid to no avail, he dies.

Cersei is naturally devastated, and cries out at the top of her lungs to arrest who she thinks is responsible — Tyrion, who looks as shocked as anyone when Joffrey beings choking.

Until last night’s episode, the Lannisters seemed firmly in control of Westeros with little opposition. But with Joffrey’s death, there will definitely be a change in the stature of King’s Landing.

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