Intro: I’m watching Game of Thrones for the first time. I don’t know anything about it more recent than this episode.
Meereen: Grey Worm is bathing in a river with some of the other Unsullied, when he spots a group of women bathing further up the stream, including Daenerys’s translator Missandei. She catches him staring at her naked body. Later she mentions this to Daenerys, and she is surprised because the Unsullied are castrated, so should have no interest in women. Missandei says he was definitely interested. Daenerys wonders just how much is removed in the castration. A bt later still, Grey Worm approaches Missandei to apologise for staring at her. She kind if says it’s okay, she likes him. He says he likes her too, then takes his leave and wanders off, leaving Missandei thoughtful.
This is a weird development. It doesn’t seem to be going anywhere unless it’s foreshadowing for some development of a relationship between these two later on. Just how that can happen if he’s been castrated is an interesting question. Maybe as Daenerys wonders, the castration wasn’t as complete as when they do it back in Westeros. This is an odd bit of plot, and I’m wondering where this is going.
A small boy approaches Ser Barristan with a sealed scroll. He asks where it came from but the boy runs off without answering. The wax is sealed with a hand sigil – the Hand of the King. Barristan reads it and approaches Jorah Mormont, who is peering at a strategic map, probably planning how to invade Westeros. He shows Jorah the letter, which is a royal pardon signed by Robert Baratheon, in exchange for spying on Daenerys (and her brother back when he was alive) and sending information back to King’s Landing. It’s not explained here why Jorah needed a pardon – presumably he committed some crime against Robert, but I don’t remember what that might have been.
Daenerys calls Jorah to account for himself. He admits he was sending information to Robert, but since then he’s been loyal and served well and… he loves her. Daenerys is disgusted and exiles him, because she doesn’t want his dead body around to pollute her presence. Jorah tries to reason with her, but shuts up and takes his medicine, riding away from Meereen.
I think this is a bad move by Daenerys. Okay, sure, she thinks he betrayed her, but given how he’s behaved recently I can’t see Jorah actually betraying her any more. He’s served her interests well, and it’s obvious that he has a sweet spot for her. By now, he is actually her loyal servant, but alas someone – who?? – has thrown a spanner in the works. Maybe it was Tywin. He’s the current Hand of the King, so has the seal necessary to forge the letter. And I recall that he said something an episode or two ago about fetching his quill and some parchment to write a letter to someone, but I can’t remember the details, and I didn’t think it was important enough at the time to write about it. If this is the case, the only real question is why did Tywin wait so long to sow discord in Daenerys’s retinue?
