Rewatching Game of Thrones at the moment, it's interesting watching three episodes a night instead of waiting a week between episodes and a year between seasons, watching the characters develop knowing where they'll end up, whilst only half remembering what happened. The Red Wedding, Tywin's fate and poor Theon's emasculation were indelibly printed on our memories, but other details feel as fresh as the day we watched them.
There's also the fun of spotting film locations. When Khaleesi is held aloft outside Yunkai to shouts of Mhysa (mother), we realised we'd since visited Aït Benhaddou, the fortified mud-brick village near Ouarzazate in Morocco where it was filmed.
So much of the show is concerned with legacy. Tywin Lannister is profoundly obsessed with how the family name will be remembered - to the detriment of his family, which ultimately causes a downfall he never would have liked to be remembered for - being shot by his son on the toilet.
Ned Stark leaves a different kind of legacy — one the North remembers. His decency survives him in his children, temporarily - Jon's firm sense of duty, Robb's honour, Sansa's strong understanding of the Stark Name.
Daenerys begins with the inherited legacy of being the last Targaryen heir (how poignant, and lonely), but also wonders what people will say about her. She wants to define herself as a freer of slaves and a just Queen rather than simply inherit someone else's history.
Yet the show constantly reminds us how little control we have over what survives us. Is it your name, your children, something a scribe writes in a book of kings, the stories people tell about you — or simply how your actions affect people after you're gone?
Castles fall, after all - I love the scene where Bronn and Tyrion past through the ruins of the once great Valyria. All men (and women) must die, after all, and so do entire kingdoms and the people who fought and fucked within them.
I was thinking about this this week when I went to a great aunt's memorial. Not the fighting and fucking so much, but what is remembered, and how quickly time passes.
I hadn't seen her for years, nor her family. We went on behalf of my late Nana, her much older sister, and my father, her nephew. I resisted going and really only went to keep Mum company, who I think was likely clinging to those last connections with my father.
My great aunt had worked on a farm outside Munich and migrated after the Second World War. Her German husband Hans had been a Russian P.O.W., something that affected him forever; even with dementia he hoarded food, having never forgotten abject starvation. There's many stories to remember, for a while, though they'll fade soon enough.
She was quite the character. I remember her being a bit of a nutcase, though to her family she was endearingly quaint. She died at 92, of dementia. My Nana had died at 79 of heart failure back in 2001, and I remember Anni falling over her coffin and wailing, despite having been quite mean to her older sister and not having had much to do with her.
As her daughter read about her escapades and exploits, I thought about the tiny cogs in the big machine of history.
So many little family dramas receding in time.
Nothing will be remembered. As a family, we haven't split atoms, written celebrated novels or discovered continents. Certainly none have been kings nor queens (that we know of - perhaps one of us in the annals was a bastard, who knows?) Yet somehow we stand here in 2026, survivors of plagues and wars and famines and any number of disasters across thousands of years.
I do not give a fuck how I'll be remembered when I'm dead (much like Jaime Lannister declares to Bronn) perhaps because I'll be dead and it will be no concern of mine.
Yet there's something in me that remembers, surely, something built on the legacy of relatives across time. Perhaps a sense of adventure, humour, resilience, strong womanhood.
Or perhaps it's just because I'm a human doing human things, good human things, and that's enough. We all should have a sense of honour and duty here, to pass such things on to those who survive us, whether we are related or not. To pass on kindness and love, compassion and care. They're the characters who admire most in Game of Thrones, even if we remember the horrible ones who flay and scheme and betray.
You pass some of the good on, and you've done alright, even if no one remembers you.
With Love,
