No Plan for What Comes After

My elder sons got the first four seasons of Game of Thrones for their thirteenth birthday, so I get to watch the whole series again.  Season 2, Episode 4 is even more pacifistic than I remember.  Crucial scene: Talisa, the battle surgeon, handily exposes the shallowness of the honor of Robb Stark, King in the North.

Talisa: That boy lost his foot on your orders.

Robb: They killed my father.

Talisa: That boy did?

Robb: The family he fights for.

Talisa: Do you think he’s friends with King Joffrey? He’s a fisherman’s son that grew up near Lannisport. He probably never held a spear before they shoved one in his hands a few months ago.

Robb: I have no hatred for the lad.

Talisa: [sighs] That should help his foot grow back.

Robb: You’d have us surrender, end all this bloodshed. I understand. The country would be at peace and life would be just under the righteous hand of good King Joffrey.

Talisa: – You’re going to kill Joffrey?

Robb:  If the Gods give me strength.

Talisa: And then what?

Robb: I don’t know. We’ll go back to Winterfell. I have no desire to sit on the Iron Throne.

Talisa: So who will?

Robb: I don’t know.

Talisa: You’re fighting to overthrow a king, and yet you have no plan for what comes after?

Robb: First we have to win the war.

Only fiction?  Think again.  Robb’s a typical politician: too obsessed with winning to dwell on whether the game is morally permissible, much less worth playing.

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