‘Game of Thrones’ The First of His Name Recap: The Climb Is All There Is

While all of Westeros moves around the board like checker pieces just trying to get from one jump to the next, Lord Petyr Baelish skirts around with knights, rooks, bishops and queens because he understands better than maybe anybody how to play this game….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

“Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”

It was during season three that Lord Petyr Baelish spoke these words when talking to Lord Varys while standing in the shadows of the Iron Throne. The pair were exchanging jabs at one another about fighting for the good of the realm, when Baelish unleashed this gem about chaos and how that’s really the game that’s always afoot. As we witnessed during Sunday night’s episode titled ‘The First of His Name’, Lord Baelish aka Littlefinger might just be the true master of chaos after learning that he’s responsible for setting in motion the chain of events that caused the War of the Five Kings, Ned Stark’s murder, and virtually every major occurrence since ‘Game of Thrones’ started.

We meet up with Baelish as he treks up the trail to the gate at the Vale, which sits at the center of the Eyrie — the mountainous and steep region we first saw in season one during Tyrion’s trial for supposedly tossing Bran Stark off a high wall, causing him to be paralyzed. He’s accompanied by Sansa Stark, disguised as his niece, because even in the Vale, no one can know she’s arrived due to King Joffrey’s murder.

Inside, Sansa meets her creepy aunt Lysa and cousin Robin for the first time. I’m not sure if it’s the seclusion of being in the Vale or if their brains are a bag full of cats and you can just smell the crazy on them. Robin talks about Sansa’s entire family being butchered as if it’s just a game, while Lysa can’t wait to get her out of the room so she can molest Lord Baelish. It’s here amidst her slobbering performance that we learn just how powerfuly and manipulative Baelish has been this entire time.

It seems Baelish had maintained a relationship with Lysa all these years (their first tryst came when she was a girl and they did marital things long before marriage) and he convinced her to poison Jon Arryn’s wine and once he was dead, she sent a letter to her sister Catelyn claiming the Lannisters were responsible. Lest we forget while Jon Arryn was a lord we never met during this series, it was his death that served as the catalyst to everything we’ve seen happen up till now. Jon Arryn’s death prompted Robert to call on his old friend Ned to serve as hand of the king, and blaming his poisoning on the Lannisters immediately set all of the Starks on the defensive from the first day they arrived in King’s Landing.

Lord Baelish has proven to be a formidable opponent for the greatest swordsmen and he’s never lifted a blade. He single handedly helped to start the War of the Five Kings, while beheading Ned Stark and then turning on yet another dime to get rid of King Joffrey. All of this while remaining a trusted confidant to the Lannisters and the Tyrells. Remember to a couple of seasons ago when Cersei taunted Baelish about how he craves power and attention. He wasn’t high born, but he created his own house sigil, and then quietly started to climb the ladder towards success. He has queens so wrapped around his littlefinger that they are willing to accuse their teenage nieces of treasonous fornications with the man. Baelish can bounce in and out of Renly Baratheon’s camp, make pacts with the Tyrells, take lands from the Lannisters, and all the while he’s the one that’s turning each faction against the other in the midst of a war. If Tywin Lannister is the master manipulator, Baelish is certainly the prince. He’s playing chess while everyone else in Westeros is playing checkers, and I’m starting to believe more and more that he may come awfully close to sitting on the Iron Throne before this story is finished.

Cersei Makes Her Play

The one person in Westeros that saw through Baelish in the early days before all hell broke loose was Cersei Lannister. The speech I referenced earlier is the same one where she has guards put a sword to his throat and reminds him that knowledge is not power — power is power. Now Cersei may look at anyone and everyone that attempts to get close to her as a snake in her bed, but to her credit, she certainly saw Baelish sliming his way up the covers long before anyone else did — including her son.

Following Joffrey’s death she now has to witness her second son Tommen receive the crown as he sits on the Iron Throne as the new King of Westeros. As all the lords bow and scrape at his feet, Cersei stands tall and it doesn’t take her long to lock eyes with Margaery Tyrell, who is standing nearby tossing infectious smiles at the new protector of the realm while he can’t help but giggle as he watches the most powerful men in the kingdom bow before him. Just when it looks as if Cersei’s eyes will tear through Margaery like daggers, a strange thing occurs — she offers up her son Tommen as the new husband for the eldest Tyrell daughter just like she married Joffrey. Of course Margaery already started angling for this outcome last week (the same time we met Ser Pounce), but she plays dumb and awestruck as the idea of giving up mourning the late King Joffrey in favor of marrying his younger (and far less sadistic) brother Tomment. She has to talk to her father, but in reality this is exactly what Margaery wanted, but why was Cersei suddenly on board?

Later, Cersei meets with Prince Oberyn Martell for a chit-chat where she learns about his eight daughters and gets an update on her own child, Myrcella, who has been living in Dorne for the past couple of years after she was promised to one of the princes in exchange for their loyalty to the crown during the War of Five Kings. Cersei goes on and on about her children, and even takes Oberyn down to the harbor where she hands him a boat to give to her daughter as a present from her loving mother.

Cersei also meets with her father, Lord Tywin, and he has a revelation of his own (although I’ll get to that in the next section) but she reveals the marriage plans for Tommen and Margaery while also committing to her own marriage to Loras Tyrell as per her father’s instructions. It’s here that we find out Cersei’s true motives behind all of these diametric changes to her normal vitriolic demeanor — Tywin Lannister, Prince Oberyn Martell and Lord Mace Tyrell all have one thing in common — they will be the judges at Tyrion’s upcoming trial for the murder of her son Joffrey. Quietly or otherwise, Cersei showed humanity to at least two people I’m fairly sure she despises for the sake of gaining the final judgment that will send her brother to the chopping block. Cersei may be blinded by grief and anger, but she reacts when bludgeoned with tragedy. She’s the type that guzzles wine as the city walls are being sacked while giving speeches to a potential daughter-in-law about using what’s between her legs to get a man to do her bidding. Cersei might not feel love or passion the way that most people do, but tragedy and mayhem serves to focus her, and now her magnifying glass of rage has all the sunlight in the world blaring through its lens with the targeted ant being none other than her dear, dwarf brother currently languishing away in a cell awaiting his day in court.

Money Runs Dry

Possibly the most famous phrase uttered during ‘Game of Thrones’ through four seasons has been ‘A Lannister always pays his debts’, but as we found out tonight, those bills may go unsettled before too much longer. The Lannisters — for those not in the know — earned their reputation and status as the richest house in Westeros because of the gold mines that sit beneath their lands in the Westerlands, most notably in Casterly Rock as well as Castamere (the famous place where the events of ‘The Rains of Castemere’ first originated). The Lannisters have mined this gold for decades and it’s made them the richest and some would say most powerful house in the seven kingdoms, but there’s only one problem — while they were out spending gold on building armies and loaning more money to win wars, the gold mines have dried up and there’s not a single drop of ore left anywhere in the Lannister lands.

No one knows that the Lannisters are broke except for a few key people, most notably Lord Tywin and now his daughter Cersei, but there’s one other key faction involved in this growing debt that could eventually strangle the lion, the stag and the rest of the kingdom. The Iron Bank of Braavos, who loaned the kingdom a sizable amount of money over the years to first fund King Robert’s spending and then the war against the Starks and the Baratheons, wants their money. As it was explained earlier this season, when the Iron Bank of Braavos doesn’t get paid, instead of sending scrolls via raven, they send an army. They send an army that they fund to install a new king, who will then pay them back the money owed plus whatever they spent to make sure the throne is taken.

Tywin knows that he’s held off the Braavosi bank as long as he can, and the only way to ensure that the kingdom won’t fall into ruin on his watch is to maintain the relationship he has with the Tyrells, the second wealthiest family in Westeros. Their money is made in farming, providing food and goods to the rest of the kingdom, which is not as profitable as gold mining but the thing is unless there’s a great drought, everyone always needs food and as long as those lands are producing the Tyrells will continue to grow in money and power. It may be an uneasy relationship and one he’d never let on that they may actually have the upper hand, but Tywin needs to Tyrells so he needs Cersei to marry Loras just as much as he needs Tommen to marry Margaery. A family in power is a loyal family, and Tywin will hand over as much as he can without ever actually giving up any of the true strength he holds.

A Queen’s Work is Never Done

To the east, Daenerys’ forces have captured the Meereen navy with 93 ships, which means she could sail her army of Unsullied across the sea and attack King’s Landing head on through Blackwater Bay. Chances are this time there aren’t pots full of wildfire awaiting their arrival, either, but Jorah doesn’t think she should attack without building her forces even more. While her 10,000 soldiers may be enough to take King’s Landing, what about all of the other kingdoms, kings and soldiers that could come calling for her head once she’s taken the capitol? Ser Barristan believes the people in Westeros would rally around their rightful queen, but for once I tend to agree with Lord Friendzone. He may have an eternal crush on Daenerys — one that will never, ever be returned — but ultimately I do believe he has her best interests at heart.

Jorah also has to inform his queen of the happenings in Astapor and Yunkai since she left to conquer Meereen. It appears the masters have recaptured both cities and started to enslave those left behind once again. Breaking chains is a gracious deed, but it’s keeping those collars unlatched that creates a truly great queen. Daenerys decides to forgo her brief mention of Westeros in favor of recapturing the cities she’s already conquered once. From the day she started this conquest, Daenerys’ mission has always been to retake the throne ruled by her family for generations. Now she seems to have the manpower, ships and means with which to inflict some serious damage on Westeros and considering what we now know about the Braavosi bank along with the Lannister grip on the crown slipping away with each gold coin dropping from their pockets, it would seem like the perfect time for Daenerys to march across the sea, unleash her Unsullied army and something tells me she’d be back on the Iron Throne by dinner time. Instead she’s committed to making these slave cities into free cities, and it’s an honorable quest, but this could be the ultimate distraction to take away from her long term goals. If she really wants the Iron Throne, it appears open for the taking, but now this latest distraction will certainly lessen her army’s strength, and may keep her from ever going back her rightful home and place as the true queen of Westeros.

How to Play the Game

The running theme of ‘Game of Thrones’ has really been the understanding of how this game works. Loyalty and honor are usually met with underhanded manipulation and betrayal. Lord Baelish understands how to play this game. Tywin Lannister’s been playing it for years. Unfortunately for a couple of the leftover Stark children, it’s still a lesson that has to be taught.

As cold as Arya appears to be at some points while jamming a needle through a soldier’s throat, the warm embrace of some rabbit stew can melt her heart back to the same sad sap that her father and brother were just moments before they were murdered. There are times when it looks like Arya is halfway to being the next Brienne of Tarth, but then something snaps and she forgets the world she lives in or how to survive in it. She wants to kill so many men, but at this tender age Arya doesn’t have the means to do it. So Arya practices her swordplay just like her instructor back in King’s Landing taught her to do, but when the Hound happens upon this self-inflicted lesson, she once again learns the hard way.

She bellows on and on about this great swordsman, and how the man that killed him is on her short list of guys who need to die, but when the Hound finds out the name of the knight who finished off Syrio Forel, he has a good laugh. When Arya is offered a shot to show him what this master teacher taught her, she tries to jam her sword into his belly. When the point doesn’t even come close penetrating his body armor, the Hound slaps her to the ground and reminds her why this moronic knight was able to kill the greatest swordsman who ever lived — he had armor and a big fucking sword. Sometimes even the best lose when their enemies are just better prepared.

Meanwhile north of the Wall, Jon and his band of brothers slice their way through Craster’s Keep, killing the insurgents who broke off from the Night’s Watch and have been raping and pillaging their way through Craster’s daughters and wives for the past few weeks.

While the brothers are battling other brothers, Locke finds Bran, kidnaps him but not before the kid goes warg and unleashes the Hodor-Hulk who proceeds to smash Roose Bolton’s pet rat and snaps his neck like a twig (and somewhere Jamie Lannister is doing a one-handed clap in appreciation of this moment). With his brother Jon just a few feet away, the Wonder twins convince Bran that he must continue his mission to find the three-eyed raven and if he reunites with his brother, he’ll undoubtedly force him to go back to Castle Black, thus ending the Goonies adventure north of the Wall. Now for those of you that haven’t read the books, I’ll let you in on one giant complaint just about everyone has about this storyline — it’s painfully fucking boring. There’s no way around it. I’d rather watch a contest between Lysa Arryn and Grand Maester Pycelle to see who’s creepier than witness another second of Bran’s grand adventure north of the wall that goes nowhere.

And in his final battle, Jon has to take on Karl, the killer’s killer from Gin Alley and King’s Landing. In perfect sword play, Jon wins this fight, but this isn’t a sport. This is the game where your life is truly on the line so when Karl stabs Jon in the leg and then spits in a face to gain the upper hand, the bastard boy should have known better than to think this was going to end honorably. Just like that, however, Karl forgot the cardinal rule himself and one of Craster’s wives plunged a knife into his back while he was turned, and a second later Jon rose from the ground and put a sword through the back of his head. The sad part about this sequence, especially when coupled with the reunion with his direwolf Ghost, is the fact that Jon narrowly escaped death, but he’ll likely look at this as a twist of fate and the gods looking out for him in that moment.

In reality, Jon was saved because one of Craster’s wives saw an opening to bury a blade into the back of the man that’s been torturing her for weeks. She gets how this works. How long until Jon gets a knife in his back for not understanding how to play the game?

Come back next Sunday night for our recap for the sixth episode of ‘Game of Thrones’ season four titled ‘The Laws and Gods of Men’.