Game of Thrones? More like a game of Risk

Risk, the classic strategy board game, involves the careless deployment of tiny figurines across the continents of the world, with the opportunity to move, strengthen and attack based on how you think it best to outmanoeuvre opponents watched by the clock of human patience. The writers of Game of Thrones appear to have caught something of that spirit, deciding that viewers no longer require plausible military movements, and are, instead, happy for the entire landscape of the board to be rearranged in the time it takes to roll some dice.

In the latest episode, ‘The Queen’s Justice’, Cersei is holed up in King’s Landing, but, militarily, she’s playing across the board. Her two Generals – sinister, impulsive Euron and increasingly weary Jaime – are doing the cross-country trooping on her behalf. Euron, who in the last episode was destroying his niece’s fleet off the east coast of Westeros, stops off in King’s Landing to deliver the prize of Ellaria Sand to his Queen, before making the huge circumnavigation of the continent to destroy the Unsullied’s fleet at Casterley Rock.