The problem, though, is that she lacks the technology to defeat either of her far stronger opponents. It’s why she says “good” when she’s informed that the Army of the Dead has broken through the Wall. It’s not even close to enough.Ĭersei’s strategy in season eight is to sit out the brewing conflict at Winterfell, let her enemies fight, and take on whoever wins after they’ve been bloodied.
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She crushed allies of her chief enemies (RIP Olenna Tyrell), acquired a massive military force (the Golden Company that shows up in the season eight premiere) and even got herself a navy (arrogant Euron Greyjoy’s fleet). 3) Cersei and House LannisterĬersei did a masterful job last season playing a weak hand. Let’s start with who’s least likely to win. So now that the final season has officially begun, here are our early rankings of where each faction stands in the Game of Thrones, based on my purely objective and indisputably correct reading of selected scholarship in international relations. A lot of this work applies just as well to Westeros, with a little bit of tweaking, as it does to Earth. The subfield of international relations has spent decades accumulating knowledge on what causes different countries to rise and fall, to succeed at getting what they want or to fail miserably.
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To try to answer that question, I consulted science - specifically, political science. The core issue, at least as the season begins, is which of these three warring factions is likely to remain standing after the inevitable battle to come? Most fundamentally, though, it put the pieces in place a for a season-defining three-way conflict between the good guy alliance led by Jon and Daenerys (or should I say Aegon and Daenerys?), Cersei Lannister, and the White Walkers. The episode showed us where things stood in Westeros after season seven, reunited some long-lost family members (Jon and Arya, aw), and set up some sources of tension between main characters like Sansa and Daenerys. Game of Thrones’ season eight premiere, “Winterfell,” was primarily setup for the inevitable war to come.