And there we all sat, thinking nothing at all of it when the little royal prick began a quiet and feeble dry cough. The thought did not occur to any of us, even in that moment, that King Joffrey’s life may already be coming to a close in only the second episode of the season. Even as the faces of the wedding guests began to show concern and shock – all I could think was that this must be farce. He’s playing a game, he’s fallen ill, he’s setting someone up…Somehow, he MUST be manipulating the situation, the crowd, and the viewers. He vomited. For an instant, I thought, even that can be forced. It was only as he fell and blood started to trickle out of his nose and his hue began to go purple that the realization finally hit me – hit us. My husband, myself, and our two friends jaws began to drop, and you could feel a collective moment of “Holy shit…This is happening NOW. This is really happening in episode TWO.” And so it came to be. There lay the little shit in his mothers arms, dead and destroyed, a permanent look of absolute terror etched on his face. As my husband and friends celebrated with cheering and applause a moment that I have wished for for so long, all I could do was sit in silence with my bottom jaw in my lap.
There is so much to talk about with King Joffrey’s death that I really don’t have a clue where to begin. I wanted him dead so badly. He was so cruel to everyone and everything. I despised everything about him. I hated the things he’d done, his arrogance and cruelty, the way he wore his crown at the front of his head, the crooked way he sat on his throne and the way he writhed in it – twitching with rage and blood lust. I should have been cheering and laughing and enjoying that moment. I’m not sure why I wasn’t. I was more in shock than anything, even maybe a bit horrified.
There was something about how unceremonious his death was that made it difficult to enjoy. A simple poisoning for someone like Joffrey? And it wasn’t that it was an unsatisfying death either. It was certainly gruesome and (dare I say) tragic in a way. I think I expected him to go out in a fit of rage – a royal tantrum of screaming and yelling and just generally being a douche. I didn’t expect him to look so frail and so afraid. I didn’t expect someone to get the better of him by poisoning him. I suppose I expected something more along the lines of him being roasted alive by dragons, all the while yelling angrily and vowing vengeance, or perhaps taking a jab in a sword fight with little Miss Arya and spitting in her face as he bled out.
Hardly. In Joffrey’s final moments he looked the most human I have ever seen him. He looked terrified. He looked like the child that somewhere in our collective subconscious we all knew he was, but forgot.
And so The King is dead. Now what? Now we must move on from the utter shock and consider other things. The last moments of the episode made it clear that Tyrion will be taking the blame for the most recent of wedding fiascoes. Considering how our beloved Ser Martin so recklessly tosses characters to the wolves at a whim, I have serious concerns for him. He’s become a favorite of the show, and that in itself is trouble. George R. R. Martin has showed us that these characters belong to him, and he can damn well do anything he wants to do with them. Hmm…Remind you of anyone, folks? Perhaps the author has a bit of Joffrey in him. 😉
One thing that is really fun about this poisoning death of the king, is that Joffrey was so hated by so many people, and there are so many with possible motives to get rid of him, that it could quite literally have been anyone at all who orchestrated the purple wedding. During The Diecast’s podcast show last night, we went down the list of possible suspects. We named just about everyone in the show at some point or other, including even Cersei herself, who had several awkward moments showing her inability to relinquish the power of having been the standing queen. I would love to discover that Sansa had something to do with it, or planned it entirely on her own. She had possibly the greatest motive of all, and had mentioned that she was having trouble sleeping. It’s possible that she would have been taking small doses of something to help her sleep when she decided to try out a different dose of her sleep aid on Joffrey. Or perhaps it actually WAS Tyrion. Although he strikes me as a cunning and intelligent character with more sense than to so publicly poison his nephew, he did give a strange little glance out from under the table when he was retrieving Joffrey’s goblet. Maybe this was even a group effort. The possibilities are endless, and so much fun to think about.
One thing is certain, the balance of power has shifted in a major way. This is going to be complete chaos – perhaps even all out war. At this point, anything can happen.
~A~
Please be sure to check out the latest episode of The Diecast’s NERDGASM Podcast that will appear on our YouTube channel later today for LOTS more heated Game of Thrones talk. Don’t forget to like and subscribe!
Nerocast 