The battle for the Iron Throne is full of seemingly countless claims of royal bloodlines. Game of Thrones plunges us into a fictional past, where the dogmatic obsession with monarchy is still very real.
Except that for a cast of characters all so obsessed with ruling a monarchy, there is surprisingly little thought going toward making that actually work. All of our Game of Thrones favourites who we would like to see end up on the Iron Throne are missing a crucial thing: babies.
Understandably, they have been busy with the whole battle against the undead and the ongoing war against Cersei Lannister. But no one seems too concerned with the business of courtship, marriage and making heirs, which is a problem.
These bloodlines can be obliterated with a single life, and that makes ruling a monarchy fragile as f**k.
While Cersei is apparently with child, the contenders in the North are otherwise occupied. Daenerys recently expressed that she thinks she can’t have a healthy baby because her last pregnancy ended in tragedy and that witch told her she couldn’t. Trusting the witch seems odd so we can assume that Dany actually could have children if she gave it another crack.
The problem is she just found out her love interest is actually her nephew and a threat to her claim to the throne. So it doesn’t seem like Dany and Jon Snow will be settling down to have kids any time soon, and if they do, that leaves us with two incest babies as the only options to carry on the monarch. Fun!
Gendry has Baratheon blood, though he is a bastard – and do we still care about people being bastard sons? It’s hard to keep track. He did have sex with Arya so who knows, maybe we have a third generation Baratheon bastard to work with if that counts for anything. Probably not.
Sansa has suffered too much marriage-related trauma to be expected to have a baby with anyone any time soon, and she also doesn’t have any claim to the throne.
The calculated marriage plots that existed earlier in the series for characters like Rob Stark and Sansa have been latent, and our faves are clearly not prepared for the reality of being monarchs.
So where does that leave us?
Democracy!
Yes! Democracy! Westeros needs it! Westeros wants it!
The North elected Jon Snow as their leader when they had the chance to bring choice into the mix. Based off the loyalty that those people have shown to their elected official, it seems that the people of Westeros are capable and ready to evolve their political system.
What the people of Game of Thrones really need is to put aside their arbitrary obsession with blood line, and choose a leader based on competence.
I for one vote Sansa Stark as the Queen on the Iron Throne, seeing as how (SPOILER AHEAD) Little Lyanna Mormont is no longer an option.
In the Game of Thrones you either win or you die, but if they brought some democratic structure into play it wouldn’t have to be this way! Just something to think about.