Arts & Entertainment // TV

Game of Thrones finale: Who's on the throne?


Some 70-plus hours, eight seasons, and very many dead people later, TV's "Game of Thrones" concluded Sunday night in a manner that will likely further divide the show's tireless enthusiasts and those who felt the TV's showrunners betrayed its narrative by rushing it toward a conclusion.

To answer the question: Who sits on the Iron Throne and rules the Seven Kingdoms? The answer is technically nobody.

For one, Jon Snow dispatched with his aunt, Daenerys Targaryen, in an assassination he believed to be best for the realm after she torched thousands of innocent people in sacking King's Landing last week. And then her last remaining dragon, Drogon, incinerated the Iron Throne, ensuring nobody would ever again sit upon it.

How about ruler of the Seven Kingdoms? Well, that one is complicated, too. A council involving prominent lords from Westeros met and discussed the best way to rule the kingdom, with Tyrion Lannister throwing his support behind Bran Stark, Bran the Broken, even though he's not really Bran Stark, but rather a mysterious Three-Eyed Raven entity inhabiting the body of Bran Stark. And his sister (ex-sister) Sansa Stark opted out of the Seven Kingdoms becoming Queen of the North, leaving Six Kingdoms.

So there.

Jon Snow, who had a formidable stake to the throne as a Targaryen heir, was exiled to The Wall.

And there ends an epic that roared into being in 2011 and went out with something of a weird wimper. More about the episode and the series tomorrow.

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Andrew Dansby covers music and other entertainment, both local and national, for the Houston Chronicle, and He previously assisted the editor for George R.R. Martin, author of "Game of Thrones" and later worked on three "major" motion pictures you've never seen. That short spell in the film business nudged him into writing, first as a freelancer and later with Rolling Stone. He came to the Chronicle in 2004 as an entertainment editor and has since moved to writing full time.

Andrew dislikes monkeys, dolphins and the outdoors. He has no pets.

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