“Game of Thrones,” Season 8, Ep. 4: Daenerys Increasingly Isolated

Season 8, Episode 4, “The Last of the Starks,” shows an increasingly isolated Daenerys as she prepares to take King’s Landing. With the death of Jorah, her most loyal subject and sworn protector has been taken from her.

In celebrating their victory over the Night King, Daenerys attempts to play the Mistress of Ceremonies. She proclaims Gendry Baratheon the Lord of Storm’s End, but her declarations ring awkward and false, fraught as they are with unearned authority. As the revels commence, her outsider-status grows bleaker, as men rally around Jon Snow, as Tyrion carouses with a band of his King’s Landing bretheren. Daenerys, without Jorah, sits alone.

Throughout the episode, Daenerys’ isolation only deepens, as she loses more of those solely loyal to her. To compensate, her megalomania expands. Without supporters, what claim does a monarch have? They must rely notions of “right” and “destiny,” and, in so doing, Daenerys shows herself no different than monarchs of the past — monarchs who become rulers, rulers who become despots.

The truth of Jon Snow’s parentage is a currency increasing in value every minute. Game of Thrones has few staunch ethics, but the ones it does have are embodied in Jon Snow, and Daenerys commits the most grievous of trespasses against those ethics when she…