Ahh! That feeling of watching a fresh GoT episode! It was so exciting to watch an episode completely unspoiled. Never had this experience before.
No, I won’t make the mistake of showing the “revealing” photo again!
The episode in itself being so good was a cherry on the cake. The show started explaining the very doubt that I had with Jon’s death- Why was Ghost not present when he was slayed? The major highlight was, of course, the last 2 minutes of the episode. The novels had always given the importance to the necklace that Melisandre wears. So it wasn’t so much of a shocker to me to see her being actually so aged.
Every subplot that featured were at high points. Mereen port being burnt, Daenerys meeting the Dothrakis, Arya’s adventures, Cersei’s emotional scene, Sansa-Brienne finally meeting together, the aforementioned Melisandre scene and the two crucial deaths. It will be tough to build each of them again from here and will now have us even more hooked for the coming episodes. Had wished to finally see Bran and Co. though.
The two deaths of House Martell were crucial, sure. But it has made the already clumsy Dorne plot even more clumsier. None of the characters have been established quite well, except for Oberyn (who was the first to die). It seems Ellaria and her Sand Snakes will be more on focus. More than the Prince Doran murder, it was Myrcella’s fiancee Trystane’s murder that looked unnecessary. And were we really shocked at that?
Killing off characters won’t help to improve on the story. Or will it?
Benioff and Weiss hadn’t planned to include much of Dorne at all, but they wanted more of Ellaria given Indira Varma’s performance. The sudden appearance and disappearance of these Dorne characters didn’t allow us to truly know the family and their tension. Much of their plot devices have fallen flat, most notably the Jaime-Sand Snake fight scene in S05E06 which was heavily criticized for the rushed production and numerous errors. These guys have to really up their game to come up with a completely different storyline. The way it has now deviated from the novels, it will be hard to draw any parallels in the future.
Given my increasing curiosity, I had to watch a Russian cut of this episode. There was an English audio, but the hard-coded subs for foreign languages like Dothraki and Valyrian were also Russian. Which got me to think more on the languages used in the show. Let’s just talk about the two languages used in the latest episode- Valyria and Dothraki.
A letter written in High Valyria
You must have noticed that Tyrion was struggling to speak and explain to the poor woman while Varys could speak to her easily. It is because the same language Valyria is spoken differently by the two sections of society- the rich and the poor. Tyrion can speak High Valyrian, the language for the noble men of the Essos. Low Valyria is a local dialect derived from High Valyria, but not exactly similar. Remember the story of Varys? His poor background is why he knows the local language. Low Valyria again differs in different parts of Westeros. There are almost as much Low Valyrian speakers as the speakers of Common Tongue.
The creator of all languages seen, heard in the TV series.
Dothraki is the language of the people of Vaes Dothrak and is completely different from Valyrian and Common Tongue. Very few apart from the Dothrakis themselves know it, given their reluctance to trading and hence spread the language. These languages are mentioned in the books, but only the TV series would give justice to them by actually inventing those languages. These, and all other languages you come across in the series are created by David J Peterson, the president of Language Creation Society. Every language has been started from scratch, though there are some of the real-world languages used as reference.
Hope to get a proper English print the next time. And can we please have the three-eyed raven back?
FAVOURITE SCENE
The story could have gone either way from this point. Brienne and Pod’s entry was a cheering moment for me. I also liked how Sansa had forgotten some of the courtesies when Brienne was swearing an oath as her protector and Podrik was quick to help! Hugely satisfying to see her finally coming out of that hell.
FAVOURITE QUOTE
“She was good. From her first breath she was so sweet. I don’t know where she came from. She was nothing like me. No meanness, no jealousy, just good. I thought if I could make something so good, so pure, maybe I’m not a monster.”
This scene finally showed the side of Cersei that I was dying to see.
THE VIKHYATH TIMES 