32. King’s Landing and the Crownlands

Beyond just being the capital and second-largest city of the Seven Kingdoms, King’s Landing is crucial to Game of Thrones as the home of the show’s political story. A high fantasy like Thrones usually starts with the story of young people going on adventures and finding themselves. The show certainly has that with Jon and Dany, arguably its two most important characters, as well as Arya, Robb, Theon, and, later, Sansa and Tyrion. But the plot’s increasing focus on the political machinations of its adult characters are what set it apart from most other fantasy stories, and that’s centered on King’s Landing, where Cersei and Littlefinger and Tywin and Margaery and Varys have played their games.

King’s Landing is a relatively new city in the Seven Kingdoms. It was founded by Aegon Targaryen after he landed his armies (and his dragons) there in the first step of Aegon’s Conquest and, due to being the new seat of power for the Seven Kingdoms, quickly grew to become the second-largest city in Westeros (Oldtown, in the Reach, is the largest).

Although the city itself is most important, King’s Landing sits in a region of Westeros known as the Crownlands. It’s not one of the Seven Kingdoms, which is kind of a misnomer—the Crownlands, along with the Iron Islands and Beyond-the-Wall, are one of the ten most important regions of Westeros. The Crownlands sit in the center-east part of the southern half of the continent, with the Vale to the north, the Stormlands to the south, and the Reach to the southwest.

The Crownlands’ main border, however, is with the Riverlands, the center of the continent and focus of the War of the Five Kings. There’s no major geographical barrier between the two regions, which is what made Robb’s victories so threatening to the capital. Without Tywin’s armies in Harrenhal, Robb could easily have struck the capital—like King Robert did fifteen years before when he took King’s Landing after winning the Battle of the Trident not far from the border. It also meant that refugees fleeing the war tended to turn to King’s Landing, leading to both the riots in Season 2 and the rise of the Sparrows in Season 5.

The mainland part of the Crownlands hasn’t been shown on Game of Thrones often, except for bits and pieces of the Kingsroad, which heads north from King’s Landing into the Riverlands, and south into the Stormlands. On the water is a different story: King’s Landing lies at the end of the huge Blackwater Bay, which became famous on the show in the episode “Blackwater,” when Stannis attacks King’s Landing and Lannister forces barely push him back.

Stannis attacked from the other major feature of the Crownlands, the island of Dragonstone, which sits on the eastern edge of Blackwater Bay, with the Narrow Sea on the other side. Dragonstone was the former home of the Targaryens, where they landed after fleeing the impending Doom of Valyria, bringing their dragons to Westeros. There they stayed for over a century before launching Aegon’s Conquest, and turned the island into the home of the dragons, covering it in statues.

After the Conquest, Dragonstone became the traditional seat of the Targaryen heir. This didn’t always have advantages. First, they had to live on Dragonstone, and second, if there was a disputed succession, the heir may not have been present. That was the case with the civil war called the Dance of the Dragons, when Rhaenyra Targaryen was on Dragonstone when her father died, allowing her younger brother Aegon II’s allies in the capital to crown him. Much like the civil war between Stannis and his supposed nephew Joffrey on the show, this set up a civil war of Dragonstone versus King’s Landing. More recently, Dragonstone was where the Mad King sent his family during that civil war, and where Daenerys “Stormborn” acquired her very first nickname before the Targaryens fled across the Narrow Sea.

There are several minor houses in the Crownlands, although the television show has ignored the bulk of them thus far. These include Houses Rosby, Kettleblack, Velaryon, Blount, Bywater, Stokeworth, and Massey. Most of the mainland houses remained loyal to the Lannisters, while those on the islands in Blackwater Bay tended to remain loyal to Stannis. The bastard name in the Crownlands is “Waters,” hence Robert’s son Gendry’s legal name is Gendry Waters.

As the Targaryen capital, and the city that was their home for almost all of its existence, King’s Landing itself is dominated by Targaryen monuments. The city itself is framed between two of them in particular: the Red Keep, started by Aegon Targaryen and finished by his son King Maegor the Cruel; and the Sept of Baelor, named after the mid-period Targaryen king, Baelor the Blessed. The importance of the two was shown in the climax of Cersei’s story in Season 5, when she is forced to walk naked in front of the jeering crowds from the Sept to the Keep.

Most of Game of Thrones’ King’s Landing scenes have taken place in or around the Red Keep, for the simple reason that that’s where the king and his court reside. The Sept of Baelor has, however, housed two of the most memorable scenes of the show: the execution of Ned Stark in Season 1, and Cersei’s destruction of the entire Sept with wildfire in Season 6.

There are a few other consistently used, if relatively minor, locations in King’s Landing. There are the docks, of course, a key part of any port city. Littlefinger’s brothel has shown up regularly, in part to deliver consistent sexuality, and also to stand in for the upscale seediness of the city. And the neighborhood of “Flea Bottom” seems to serve as a stand-in for every slum in Westeros. The show has explicitly visited it a few times, but it also serves as the origin of some of its non-aristocratic characters, like Davos Seaworth, Gendry Waters, and Karl Tanner.

If you want to travel to the locations used for King’s Landing, it’s arguably the most straightforward location of any in the show: every season after the first has filmed the goings-on of the capital in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Many of the sites are open to the public when filming isn’t going on, which has allowed a cottage industry of Game of Thrones tours to grow in the city. (The first season of Game of Thrones filmed its King’s Landing scenes in Malta, which is noticeable when you’re looking for it: Dubrovnik has much crisper whites and greys, while the Maltese locations are warmer oranges and browns.)

King’s Landing has been by far the most important location in Game of Thrones almost from the beginning of the series. The pilot includes a hushed conversation between Jaime and Cersei by Jon Arryn’s body, but it’s the arrival of Ned Stark in the capital in the third episode that kicks the first season into gear. From then on, there’s a King’s Landing scene in virtually every episode, with the exceptions being the climactic ninth event episodes of seasons three through six (and, oddly, the mid-fifth season episode “Kill the Boy”). Not only can no major location match that, but most everywhere else disappears almost entirely for full seasons: the Wall in Season 2, Winterfell in Seasons 3–4, and the Riverlands in Season 5.

The story of King’s Landing is centered on the Lannisters, who’ve had control of the Iron Throne for essentially the entire run of the series. Specifically Cersei Lannister, who, apart from the journey to Winterfell at the very start of the series, hasn’t left the city. Tywin, Tyrion, Joffrey, Tommen, and Jaime have all come and gone, as have Littlefinger, Varys, Margaery, Renly, and Sansa—but Cersei is always present. And now she’s running the joint!

How did we get there? King’s Landing started under the ostensible control of King Robert Baratheon, but his Hand, Jon Arryn, and brother Stannis largely ruled in his stead. When Jon died due to poison at the start of the series, Stannis fled the capital, leaving a power vacuum. The new Hand, Ned Stark, attempts to fill it, but his push to give Robert a spine helps lead the Lannisters to have Robert killed. As Robert lays dying, Ned is given several choices. Robert’s youngest brother, Renly, offers to help him seize the city if Ned supports Renly as king over his elder brother Stannis, which Ned declines. But Ned also makes the unfortunate decision to trust the Master of Coin, Petyr Baelish, and his plan of bribing King’s Landing’s police—the Gold Cloaks—turns to disaster, as Baelish reveals his true alliance with the Lannisters. The newly crowned King Joffrey executes Ned, establishing total Lannister control over the capital.

Joffrey names his grandfather Tywin his new Hand, but as Tywin is directing the war against the Starks, he instead sends his son Tyrion to rule as Acting Hand for the second season. Tyrion is determined to not make the same mistakes Ned did. But before Tyrion can take control, King Joffrey attempts petty revenge against his (legal) father, King Robert, by ordering the Gold Cloaks to kill all of Robert’s known bastards—even infants. Having the police kill babies, it turns out, is a bad way to get the people on your good side, and Tyrion is forced to clean up the mess.

Tyrion aligns with Lord Varys instead of Littlefinger, and also immediately has Janos Slynt, leader of the Gold Cloaks, sent to the Wall. It’s not enough—the pressure of the war on the city, plus Joffrey’s missteps, trigger a riot that threatens the entire royal family. They survive, but King’s Landing as a city is treated as dangerous ground by the Lannisters from this point on. Tyrion leads the city’s defenses against the armies of Stannis Baratheon at the end of the second season, holding them off long enough to allow the battle to be won, but his father Tywin and his new allies, the Tyrells, take all the credit for the victory.

Lord Tywin and the Tyrells become the new dominant forces in King’s Landing in the third and fourth seasons, pushing Tyrion to the side and jockeying for influence over the king. Margaery’s ability to gain the love of the common folk of King’s Landing through charitable works impresses King Joffrey—which scares Cersei. She escalates the rivalry by revealing to Tywin that they plan to wed Sansa Stark to Loras Tyrell, thus aligning two powerful houses. Tywin’s response is to have Sansa wed Tyrion (which happens) and Loras wed Cersei (which really, really doesn’t). After the Red Wedding ends the third season, the Lannister forces seem to have consolidated the Seven Kingdoms under their rule, making King’s Landing safe—although Stannis still lurks at Dragonstone (he soon departs for the North).

In the fourth season, the focus of King’s Landing turns even more to the expensive and extravagant royal wedding, where the differences between Margaery and Cersei are made clear by the former wanting the leftover food given to the poor, and the latter trying to stop that. The wedding ends in disaster when Joffrey is poisoned, and the entire focus of the King’s Landing story turns to the question of who did it—with Littlefinger and Olenna Tyrell revealing that it was them, even as Tyrion takes the fall for it.

Tyrion is found guilty after his champion, Oberyn Martell, loses a trial by combat, but his brother Jaime and Lord Varys set him free. He exacts revenge against his father Tywin, murdering him and fleeing the city alongside Varys, leaving a power vacuum in the capital as the fifth season begins.

The new king, Tommen, is weak and easily manipulable. Another royal wedding—less ostentatious, and also less murdery—gives the new Queen, Margaery, more power than the now–Queen Mother Cersei. Seeking allies, Cersei turns to a rising power in the city: a religious movement called the Sparrows. In the novels, the rise of the Sparrows is given more detail: refugees from the war have been streaming into King’s Landing, and flocking to a militant preacher called the High Sparrow. Their numbers intimidate the voters for the next High Septon, and the High Sparrow is chosen, who then negotiates with Cersei. On the show it’s simpler: Cersei gives him the power to become High Septon, and then allows him to reinstate a private army for the Faith of the Seven, called the Faith Militant.

The newly empowered fundamentalists are turned against sexual deviance in King’s Landing, arresting the gay Ser Loras Tyrell and smashing Littlefinger’s brothel. Cersei’s plan initially seems to work when Loras’ arrest causes Margaery to perjure herself and join him in the dungeons. But it backfires spectacularly when Cersei finds herself arrested for her crimes of incest, adultery, and regicide. She’s beaten and starved, but is given the opportunity to do a Walk of Penance, nude through the near-riotous streets of King’s Landing, as her bail. She agrees, and returns to the Red Keep only to discover that the Small Council has been taken over by her familial rival, Ser Kevan Lannister, leaving her seemingly powerless.

In the sixth season, the High Sparrow is the dominant power in King’s Landing. His private army controls the streets, and holding Queen Margaery hostage paralyzes King Tommen. The Lannisters and Tyrells outside of his grasp—Jaime and Olenna, primarily—make an alliance to bully him into releasing the queen. But they arrive to find that Margaery has sidestepped them, apparently converting to the Sparrows’ form of fundamentalism, and bringing Tommen into the fold with her. Tommen immediately bans trial by combat, eliminating Cersei’s best opportunity to get out of her trial, and seeming to lead toward doom for Cersei and Loras (though perhaps not Margaery, whose supposed crimes were far lesser).

The peak of the High Sparrow’s power in King’s Landing is the three-part trial of Loras, Margaery, and Cersei in the Sept of Baelor. The entire court attends and witnesses Loras’ disinheritance and swearing in to the Faith Militant, apparently ending the Tyrell line. But when Cersei’s trial begins, she isn’t there (nor is her son, King Tommen). Only Margaery realizes that this is because Cersei has something planned: a massive wildfire attack that incinerates the entire Sept, killing her, the High Sparrow, Loras and Mace Tyrell, Ser Kevan, and anyone who could possibly challenge her. The season ends with Cersei finally taking the throne for herself. And although four of her seven kingdoms are in open rebellion against her, Queen Cersei finally has full control over King’s Landing.