‘Two Swords’ is the fourth season premiere episode of HBO’s fantasy television series Game of Thrones, and the 31st overall. The episode was written by series co-creators and showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, and directed by Weiss. It premiered on April 6, 2014.
The season begins by introducing new characters. Prince Oberyn Martell, who comes from the desert kingdom of Dorne, arrives at King’s Landing for King Joffrey’s wedding. However, Oberyn’s real plans are to inquire about the death of his sister, and take revenge on the Lannisters for the brutal murder of her and her children. Prince Oberyn, whom we see to the left of the photo, is travelling with his lover Ellaria Sand, another non-white, who appears on her back and lying on the bed:
The fourth season is just beginning and the showrunners send us a bad message. After this stunning nude specimen of Aryan beauty in Littlefinger’s brothel, Oberyn and Ellaria have homoerotic approaches with other prostitutes of the brothel. Since the culture of Dorne is inspired by Islam, this homoeroticism is gratuitous excess: a projection of the current degeneration of the West on the characters of an exotic culture. The people of Dorne even resemble the Arabs under Islam.
Ellaria chooses one of the prostitutes in the photo, not the naked one because she is shy, and Oberyn picks the guy who appears in the shadows, barely visible at the extreme right of the photo. From my point of view, it was an outrage to have rejected a sculptural woman like the one we see naked above (I would kill to have such a woman in my house, as property).
Tyrion’s scenes with Shae are tiresome, and are not worth describing until in subsequent episodes we see how Shae betrays him. But the argument between Cersei and Jaime—and let’s remember that they hadn’t argued since Jaime left King’s Landing and after that Locke cut off Jaime’s sword hand when he was a prisoner—, reminds me of how we enslave ourselves before a woman. Gradually I see it more and more clearly:
Women have no powers to ‘get into men’s heads’, Ser Davos Seaworth’s words about the witch Melisandre in the previous season. It is us, our impulses—think about what I said in parentheses above—that enslave us.
One reply on “Two swords”
Your rewrite challenge from a few weeks ago-
‘And on that background of soot and coal, her delicate and smooth shoulders were naked bringing out her beautiful lily colour, with an almost impenetrable golden hue’
…..And against that background of soot and coal, was the beautiful lily colour, with an almost impenetrable golden hue of her naked and delicate smooth shoulders…..