Warning: This article contains Game of Thrones spoilers of epic proportions.
In the latest episode of Game of Thrones, Jaime Lannister faces the Mad King's daughter and her army of Dothraki in a fiery battle that ends in the total annihilation of the Lannister troops. Sitting astride the mighty Drogon, Daenerys destroys the long line of loot trains the Lannisters stole from Highgarden and blazes through her enemies with startling ease.
Jaime feels utterly helpless as his army turns to ash before his eyes -- a sight all too familiar to the knight who once served as Head of the King's Guard for Dany's father, Aerys Targaryen.
In Season 3, Jaime described the circumstances and events that led to him killing the Mad King to Brienne.
"You heard of wildfire? The Mad King was obsessed with it. He loved to watch people burn — the way their skin blackened and blistered melted off their bones. He burned lords he didn’t like. He burned Hands who disobeyed him. He burned anyone who was against him."
When the Mad King grew paranoid of the traitors among him, he ordered his pyromance to place jars of wildfire around the city. No citizen was immune -- lords, septons, farmers, the poor people of Flea Bottom. Aerys gave the order to set the wildfire alight, saying, "Burn them all. Burn them in their homes. Burn them in their beds."
Jaime Lannister killed the pyromance before he could follow through with the king's order. He then set his sights on Aerys, stabbing him in the back as the crazed man attempted to escape the throne room. For what he did, the knight became known as the Kingslayer and the Oathbreaker -- a title he arguably doesn't deserve.
The knight sacrificed his honor to prevent the city and all of its inhabitants from burning under the Mad King's rule and as he gazes around the battlefield during the Loot Train Attack, his past actions seem to come undone. To Jaime, the atrocious sight of his army on fire is a case of "like mad father, like mad daughter" -- making the similarities between his last encounter with King Aerys and his first with Queen Daenerys all the more haunting.
In the midst of the fiery chaos, Jaime sees Dany trying to pull the Scorpion arrow from Drogon's shoulder. In that moment, possessed with the same anger he felt while serving under the Mad King, Jaime picks up a spear and charges at the unsuspecting queen. Before he can drive the spear through her back, Drogon blasts a barrel of fire in his direction. Thankfully, Bronn saves the knight's life by knocking him into a river before the flames consume him.
Thanks to Bronn, the knight will live to see another battle against the Mad King's daughter. Unless of course, Dany rounds up the remaining Lannister and Tarly army men and kills them.
When Jaime looks at Daenerys, he sees flashes of a king that nearly decimated all he held dear. Memories of the Mad King's bloody rulership and the recent loss he's endured at the hands of his daughter will certainly fuel Jaime to see that history doesn't repeat itself. Honor and fairness aren't factors in Jaime's fight to prevent another mad ruler on the Iron Throne.
Topics Game Of Thrones HBO Celebrities
