Game of Thrones Season One Ultimate Unofficial Guide: The Game of Thrones Season 1

the bridge spanning the river. A man with allegiance to a profit, Lord Frey will help whichever side is willing to pay the toll. He was a friend of Cat’s father and has been married several times and has many children, some already old men themselves. Unable to unburden himself of numerous offspring through marriage agreements, Cat Stark was forced to concede to marriage arrangements for Robb and Arya in order to barter passage over the bridge when their forces needed to keep moving.
Dothraki
    The nomadic Dothraki occupy the entire middle grasslands of Essos, which contain their ancient temple city Vaes Dothrak where widowed wives of past Khal live as priestesses. The Dothraki are a warrior tribe of horse lords with their own language, culture, and legends. They have never crossed the Narrow Sea and do not take interest in the politics of Westeros. The Dothraki frequently attack neighboring villages for sport, supplies, and slaves. Their leader and most powerful warrior, Drogo, takes Daenerys Targaryen as his queen. He falls ill from a wound suffered during a fight and because Daenerys allows forbidden black magic to be performed on him, the rest of the tribe choose a new king and abandon them. Daenerys kills Drogo in an act of mercy because he winds up comatose after the ritual. After hatching her dragon eggs in Drogo’s funeral pyre, a small group of slaves and loyal Khal remain and look to her as their leader. Despite receiving a royal pardon to carry out execution of Daenerys, Jorah Mormont chooses to continue serving her after the dragons hatch. The Targaryen threat is still present despite royal attempts to end it.

Symbolism
    The number three has a strong presence in the Targaryen family line. First, Aegon the Conqueror uses three dragons to gain dominion over the six (a multiple of three) of the seven kingdoms. Daenerys is given three dragon eggs, which hatch into baby dragons by season’s end. When Aegon and his two sister-wives built King’s Landing, they separated it into three different hills, one for each of them. The Targaryen reign lasts three hundred years and there ends up being three dragon rulers, Aegon, Aerys, and Daenerys. Aerys also had two sister-wives and had three children with one of them: Rhaegar, Viserys, and Daenerys. In addition, the house sigil is a three-headed dragon.
    The Stark House sigil is a direwolf, an animal that once flourished in The North. There are rumored to be only five remaining south of The Wall. When the Stark males found a mangled direwolf in the woods, she had left behind six pups, one for each of the Stark children, including the bastard Jon Snow. This finding foreshadowed Ned’s death and his children being left to fend for themselves. There was further connection implied between the Starks and the direwolves when Bran woke from his coma in Winterfell at the same moment that Sansa’s wolf was killed by Ned. Sansa was the only Stark child to lose her direwolf; an event mirroring her fate at King’s Landing, for arrangements had been made for her to give up her Stark name by marrying Joffrey. Arya forced her direwolf to run away after it injured Joffrey, an action that parallels Arya’s fate by season’s end when she is forced to don a disguise and escape to The Wall for safety. Jon Snow’s direwolf is all white, symbolizing his bastard surname. Also, he named his pet Ghost, a representation of having grown up as an outsider in the Stark family.

    Ravens are used in the kingdom to send news among the realms. Old Nan, the old nurse maid who tends to Bran, told him that ravens are not to be trusted. Bran and Rickon dream of following a three-eyed raven into the Stark family crypt, an ominous message foreshadowing Ned’s death. If ravens are not to be trusted, why are they used to share important news and why does the ominous dream come true?

    Throughout the series there are references made to long winters and summers spanning periods of consecutive years. It is said many times by various characters that “winter is coming,” a statement that implies trouble and hard times in the near future. Those Arya’s age and younger are referred to as summer children because they have yet to experience a true winter. Those in the older generations have had to endure periods of harsh weather and harsher predators referred to as “winter”. Now this young generation will experience what their elders already have in the upcoming winter.

    The shape in which the