Game of Thrones: A Geopolitical Episode Guide to the Complete TV Series

"Game of Thrones" is an HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin's fantasy fiction book series "A Song of Fire and Ice". One of the most appealing factors of this show is the epic scale of its geographic and political elements, including two dozen major locales and around the same number of major characters. When first experiencing this series it can be very disorienting to have so many names and factions all whirling about at different speeds, all in their own orbits. In fact, some arcs are not resolved for many years past their initial introductions, and some plot mysteries may be answered by only as subtle a measure as a raised eyebrow or a faint curl on the side of character's mouth. For this reason, it may be useful to have a historical (ie - semi-academic) timeline describing the events that occur from episode to episode.

Obviously it's recommended that a reader has seen the entire series (or at least one or two seasons past the season being studied), since events presented as a "mystery" in a particular episode are laid bare here as factual events (spoiled). A good example is the question of who poisoned King Joffrey: in the episode in which that occurs, below I simply name which characters were responsible.

Reading the Chart:
The main goal of these analyses was to situate historical events (well, fictional, I have to keep reminding myself) in time, by place and by character. To facilitate the 4-dimensional aspect of this matrix I first placed time (episode) in descending rows and location in columns (north to south listed left to right, generally). Then, characters were color-coded (see guide below), with character colors blended when two major characters were equally featured in the same event. Finally, the events themselves were captioned in the boxes as succinctly as possible. In each chart there is also a "banner" box summarizing the main events which occur in that season.

Jump to Season
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5	6	7	8