Which character are you in Game of Thrones? For me it’s got to be the imp, Tyrion Lannister. As Ed West suggested in his erudite Speccie article a few weeks ago, Tyrion is about the only character with a vaguely sympathetic 21st-century mindset as opposed to a ruthlessly pragmatic medieval one. Persecuted since childhood because he’s a dwarf, he understands — as his fellow members of the ruling class generally do not — what it is to be marginalised, downtrodden and thus empathetic.
And the other reason to identify with him is that he’s not going to die. I say this without any knowledge of what happens in George R.R. Martin’s books. It just strikes me that Thrones without the Imp would be like Hamlet without the Dane. Tyrion is our touchstone of humanity in a world otherwise characterised by savage cruelty, incest, torture, severed heads, heaving breasts, lust, betrayal and — praise the Lord! — more heaving breasts.
This week on Thrones found our hero facing his greatest challenge yet: how on earth was he going to escape being executed — on trumped-up charges, of course, for life in Thrones is relentlessly unfair — for the murder of his revolting nephew King Joffrey?
At first — plot spoilers ahoy! — it seemed as if he would get off with a pardon in return for ‘taking the black’ — i.e.,
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