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Chapter 53: Bran
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Game of Thrones, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Politics and Power
Climate Change and Collective Action
Gender and Power
Honor and Integrity
Identity
Summary
Analysis
Khal Drogo says that Rhaego, Dany’s unborn son, has no need for iron chairs. There is plenty of land to rule in the east. Khal Drogo has no interest in crossing the sea to reach the realm of the Seven Kingdoms. The Dothraki people consider any water that a horse can’t drink suspicious. He then goes off to hunt, leaving Dany to go to the market with her servants and Ser Jorah. Dany implores Jorah to help her convince Khal Drogo to cross the narrow sea. She says that her son must rule the kingdom in the west. Jorah says to be patient.
Khal Drogo’s statement that Rhaego does not need iron chairs shows his ambivalence about entering the “game of thrones.” Daenerys, though, wants to enter into that game, no matter the cost. As the chapters following characters in Westeros show, the stakes of joining that game are life and death, suggesting the same will be true if Daenerys, Drogo, and Rhaego enter into the fray of political infighting in Westeros.
Themes
In the market, Dany eats sausage like she once did in Pentos. She laughs for the first time since her brother was killed. For a moment, she feels like a child again. Jorah leaves to attend to some business. He doesn’t tell Dany where he’s going, which Dany finds strange. A merchant offers Dany wine. When he finds out that she is a Targaryen, he finds a cask of a more expensive vintage and offers it to Dany as a gift. Just then, Jorah returns and tells Dany not to take it. He tells the merchant to sample the wine himself. Instead of doing that, the merchant throws the cask at Dany and tries to run, but he's caught. It becomes clear that the wine was poisoned.
The wine merchant appears to be an assassin trying to fulfill Robert’s previous order to assassinate Daenerys and her unborn child. That shows that Robert’s deathbed command to call off the assassination did in fact come too late, as Varys warned. Notably, the information that led Robert to issue that order came from Jorah. Jorah’s intervention to stop Daenerys from being poisoned suggests that he may have had a change of heart from the point when he began passing information on to the Crown in Westeros to now.
Themes
Jorah tells Dany that he just received a message saying that the Usurper, Robert, has promised land and lordship to anyone who kills Viserys, Dany, or her unborn child. He tells her that the merchant may have been the first assassin, but he certainly won’t be the last. When Khal Drogo returns, Dany tells him what happened. Drogo is silent for a long time. He then offers Jorah and the other men who caught the merchant any horse they choose. And he says he wants to give his unborn son a gift too. His son, he says, will one day have the Iron Throne. Drogo says he will cross the sea with his army to ensure that it happens.
The assassination attempt on Daenerys shows that she has already entered into the game of politics and power, and the stakes are life and death. Khal Drogo’s decision to support the quest to reclaim the Iron Throne for the Targaryens suggests the stakes will only be heightened in the future. Drogo’s decision also shows his support for Daenerys, as he decides to embrace her goals as his own after she comes under threat.
Themes
