Direwolf hall

Game of Thrones, the televised adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s series of novels A Song of Ice and Fire, is now into its seventh and penultimate season – in fact, with only seven episodes, and another six promised next year, it feels more like one final season with the now-traditional, oxymoronic “mid-season finale”, but stretched out to an unusual and painful length. A combination of Wolf Hall-style politicking, as the remnants of numerous ancient dynasties scrap for the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, and Tolkienesque fantasy (dragons, wights, prophecies), it has been hugely successful – epic battles, remarkable special effects, shocking plot twists, eye- watering violence, controversial amounts of equally eye-watering nudity and sex.

It is also a phenomenon in terms of its composition. Initially the show was remarkably faithful to the early books, with only small and pragmatic deviations. As the series continued, George R. R. Martin stalled in his production. When the first season came out in 2011, Martin had written five books (Game of Thrones, 1996, A Clash of Kings, 1999, A Storm of Swords, 2000, A Feast for Crows, 2005, A Dance with Dragons, 2011). Since then, we have had a season each year, but the long-awaited The Winds of Winter is now trailed for 2018 at the earliest. Martin’s fans have for some time now been noisily restless concerning the author’s productivity.

The possibly unprecedented result of that literary delay has been that the television show has increasingly gone its own way. There has been consultation between the show’s creators, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, and Martin, so we can believe that the overall trajectory is keeping faith with Martin’s still unexecuted vision: but the complex interplay now between book, series, generic and commercial imperatives and fan responses – not to mention audience and cast responses, which have arguably begun to affect the show’s sometime exploitative treatment of sex and gender – is going to provide fodder for cultural critics for decades to come.

Readers, who used to wait to see which parts of the books would be excluded from the televised version, are now left wondering which of the series’ developments will be written back into the novels. And that’s just at the level of plot. Martin has spoken of how some actors’ interpretations have impressed him so much that he writes those interpretations into the characters. And Martin’s dialogue, often colourful and witty, could be lifted wholesale in the early episodes, but must now effectively be pastiched. Presumably, he has been writing his own in the meantime.

Film and television adaptations are subject to certain pressures and constraints that books can refuse (David Lean’s film of A Passage to India is a striking example; E. M. Forster’s novel ostentatiously refuses a climax which the film was obliged to deliver). As Game of Thrones has floated free of its sprawling, epic origins, it has also tightened – characters have been conflated or suppressed, plot lines abbreviated, and a neater, tidier narrative arc is in evidence. The most significant characters have not been despatched with such callous ease lately, and several have instead experienced resurrection in one way or another; though second-tier characters have become concomitantly more vulnerable. The destruction of the Sept of Baelor in a mighty explosion managed to destroy the Tyrell family and the religious fanatics of the Faith Militant simultaneously, and indirectly also caused the death of the last of the Lannister children; the sea battle at the end of one of the latest episodes, “Stormborn”, has done for two of the unpopular and inadequately developed Sand Snakes; the Houses of Bolton and Frey have joined a host of extinguished family lines.

The first episode of this new season, “Dragonstone”, spent some time marshalling its major players and setting up the conflict ahead (the Robert Frost reference in Martin’s title – “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice” – suggests the final stage of the saga is going to be apocalyptic). It also offered plenty of unusually clumsy exposition, perhaps to bring new viewers up to speed: as when Cersei says to Jaime, “Daenerys Targaryen has chosen Tyrion . . . . Our little brother . . . the one you love so much. The one you set free. The one who murdered our father, and our firstborn son”, as if Jaime might have forgotten.

Game of Thrones has risen above the level of posh soap opera mainly because of its literary qualities; mirroring, irony, juxtaposition and the subversion of genre expectations. Attention to small details, with echoes dispersed across several hundred pages or several series, delights the heavily invested viewers and readers. “Dragonstone” begins where the previous season left off: a vengeful Arya Stark, having fed Walder Frey his own sons before cutting his throat, continues her long-awaited payback for the “Red Wedding”, one of the most shocking scenes in the earlier books and seasons, when Frey conspired with the Lannisters and Boltons to butcher the Starks, his invited guests. Arya’s revenge – children served in a pie – echoes a fable, “The Rat Cook”, introduced much earlier in the series, which Bran Stark recounted to companions around a fire: “he killed a guest beneath his roof . . . that’s something the gods can’t forgive”.

Later in “Dragonstone”, the Hound, an increasingly endearing figure, finds himself revisiting a farmhouse where, in the company of Arya, several seasons earlier, he had robbed and abandoned a man and his daughter who had fed and housed them (“Sally here makes rabbit stew just like her mum used to do”). The family are now dead, having committed suicide to end the pain of starvation; an indirect result of his abuse of hospitality. A mortified Hound, now capable of shame and penitence, digs their graves and tries to pray for them. And finally (in a much-derided scene in which the musician Ed Sheeran plays a cameo), Arya cannot avoid accepting hospitality from some unwitting enemy soldiers, and (we are invited to infer) therefore cannot kill them, despite their vulnerability. The food they give her is rabbit.

Another reason for Game of Thrones’s enormous popularity is that, Tolkienish aspects aside, it paints what feels like a realistic portrait of ancient and medieval life. Winter Is Coming by Carolyne Larrington and You Win or Die by Ayelet Haimson Lushkov are engaging accounts of the sources for many parts of Martin’s fictional universe. Larrington’s was written before the advent of season six, and relates the fable of the Rat Cook to Philomela and Procne; Lushkov, published afterwards, also mentions Tantalus, Thyestes, and Titus Andronicus. Both books, which could well introduce general readers to medieval and classical history and literature via the show, or simply enhance the audience’s pleasure, are entertaining and engaged. Larrington is able to make more specific connections because so much of the myth and the realpolitik of Game of Thrones is overtly drawn from medieval sources, with the classical background mostly implied in fictional prehistories – such as Old Valyria, now fallen, but whose high-status language has a residual power like Latin – but Lushkov makes a smart point about the echo of Helen of Troy in the backstory of Rhaegar and Lyanna, whose elopement or abduction destroys the Targaryen dynasty and ushers in the events of A Song of Ice and Fire.

As the show approaches its climax, it has to honour the tacit promises of the plotlines it has laid down; audiences are fiercely unforgiving of a show that loses control over its storylines (as was the case with Lost, 2004–10; after six years of investment, a shoddy and inelegant finale felt like a betrayal). Season five of Game of Thrones had some longueurs (perhaps hesitating while waiting for Martin’s next book?), especially with reference to the kingdom of Dorne – there are signs already that those trailing, unmotivated strands will be ruthlessly cut. Equally, the fleeting reappearance of Arya’s direwolf after six seasons, a much-loved cub now the size of a horse, will not be for nothing; all the unfinished business must come together now.

At the same time, Game of Thrones needs to retain its unusual ability to pull off huge and shocking surprises. It will be interesting to see whether subtlety triumphs over self-regard (the celebrity cameo is often a sign of a once-successful show sliding into decadence); either way, it will be quite a spectacle.