Small Council: Who played the game best in Game of Thrones Season 6?

Every year on Game of Thrones, various players jockey for power. Who played the game best in Season 6? Who put one over on the other guy most effectively? Who came out ahead, or should have, based on the moves they made? The Small Council is in session.

SARAH: For me, the true MVP of Season 6 was Cersei of House Lannister, first of her name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men (long may she obliterate her enemies). Following her crushing defeat and traumatizing walk of atonement at the hands of the High Sparrow in Season 5, those who knew Cersei dismissed her as dead in the water, as did many viewers. They should have known better. The lioness of Lannister never bites harder than when she’s put under pressure.

She started the season by playing it cool. Tommen was her priority, and it was for him that she tried to forge a truce with the Tyrells and her uncle Kevan. This proved that Cersei is capable of learning from her mistakes. In prior years, every decision she made was clouded by hatred for the Tyrells, and it ultimately led her into trouble. This season, she tried her hand at diplomacy. It even worked, for a time. The Lannisters and Tyrells banded together to spare Margaery a walk of atonement. When the plan failed, it was due to the High Sparrow’s scheming, not Cersei’s incompetence.

We don’t know what Cersei may have done if the High Sparrow hadn’t committed the unforgivable sin of bringing her son into the fold. Perhaps she might have continued playing nice until the time was ripe to screw the Tyrells again. It doesn’t matter. Left out in the cold again, and facing a trial that was designed to convict her (let’s face it, the High Sparrow was never going to play fair), she made the bold choice to sweep the rug out from beneath everyone who had dismissed, humiliated or infuriated her. Whether they deserved it or not is immaterial. It was an act that took cunning, planning and nerves of steel. Boom went the sept, and out came the wine.

Ned Stark once underestimated Cersei, and died for it. The High Sparrow and Kevan Lannister both underestimated Cersei, and they’re dead too. There’s a clear pattern here. Now that Daenerys Targaryen approaches Westeros, Cersei is once again being written off as an inevitable casualty. While there’s a darkly amused part of my soul that would be totally happy if Cersei killed everyone and emerged as the victor, I’m a realist, and I know she doesn’t have the numbers to make that happen. However, there’s not a chance in hell that she’ll make for an easy target. As Tyrion told us, sooner or later, Cersei always gets what she wants. Don’t count her out yet.

DAN: Cersei did indeed surprise a lot of people with her wildfire plot. My first instinct after seeing Sarah’s pick was to say that while Cersei triumphed over her enemies in Season 6, she did it at the cost of her allies and set herself up for failure in the future. But you have a good point about that pattern, Sarah—people have been underestimating Cersei for years, but in the end she always seems to get what she wants.

Now isn’t that a terrifying thought?

Someone else people are always underestimating: Tyrion Lannister. Now, I know that his big political gambit of the season—striking a deal with the Masters to keep slavery in effect for another seven years in exchange for an end to violence in Meereen—ended with the Masters nuking Meereen before Daenerys returned to save the day. But I think Tyrion was right in “Battle of the Bastards” when he told Daenerys he was the only reason she had a city to come back to. The Masters may always have intended to betray Tyrion, but the deal bought Daenerys the time she needed to raise her army and return. Not for the first time, I note that the two of them make a good team.

Also, I dug the deal itself. It was classic Tyrion, a pragmatic compromise that left none of the parties completely satisfied, but gave both something they could work with. I maintain that his quip to Missandei in “Book of the Stranger” is the best line of the season. “Slavery is a horror that should be ended at once. War is a horror that should be ended at once. I can’t do both today.”

That sort of realpolitik approach should (and has) go over well in Westeros, especially with a charismatic leader like Daenerys giving voice to his ideas. Fans make a lot of the coming battle between Cersei and Daenerys, but the real conflict may be between Tyrion and Cersei, who know each other too well to underestimate each other.

RICHARD: Cersei and Tyrion, huh? Both are excellent candidates for the Season 6 MVP award, I agree. Yet, as noted above, Cersei’s actions cost her Tommen, and Tyrion ended up getting Meereen pummeled. But nobody survives a season of Game of Thrones unscathed, of course.

I’d like to nominate Sansa Stark for Season 6 MVP, because she played the game well enough to save Jon Snow and Winterfell, and thus may well have saved everybody else who isn’t a White Walker in the process.

Sansa isn’t a master of the great game (not yet, anyway), but her years-long transformation from delicate princess to hardened veteran has taught her some harsh lessons. The Stark family members were wiped out largely due to their adherence to a strict code of honor—expecting royals to respect a dead king’s proclamation, expecting an allied dinner host to keep you safe, etc. Jon expected the members of the Night’s Watch would respect his decisions as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and that got him stabbed to death at Castle Black. Sansa is taking a different approach.

Knowing that Jon’s northern army had little chance against Ramsay Bolton and his bannermen, Sansa overcame her dislike of Littlefinger to bring the Knights of the Vale into the battle on her side. Two things here: first, Sansa has the intuition to know that Littlefinger will always act in his own self-interest. Second, she has become suspicious enough to know that hiding her actions, even from Jon Snow, is a way to protect herself from deception and manipulation. In the Battle of the Bastards, Sansa proved both what influence she might wield and how to wield it, and appears to now be more a student of the Littlefinger and Varys school of thought, rather than her father’s. And with those concessions to something less than absolute honor, Sansa makes sure the Stark survivors continue to survive.

I’ll admit that Sansa has yet to prove she possesses the skills of Tyrion or Cersei, but with her willingness to watch her nemesis Ramsay Bolton ripped to pieces in front of her, she is displaying the mettle necessary to do whatever distasteful things need to be done, as monumental choices loom in the near future. I think she already had a great accomplishment: she rescued Jon Snow, and if he proves to be the great Azor Ahai who will protect the world from the Great Other, then her deal with Littlefinger may well prove to be the most important single move of the game.

It should, at the very least, qualify her for Greatest Newcomer to the Game, if not MVP.

KATIE: I have to hand the crown to Sansa as well. She’d been a bystander to the game for several years, which makes her participation in Season 6 all the more compelling.

Sansa played an integral role this year by gaining justice for the Stark family (with the help of Arya, of course, who disposed of Walder Frey). The Northmen can declare Jon their king all they like, but point of fact is that Jon wouldn’t have rallied the Northern houses if it weren’t for Sansa. He was prepared to leave everything behind in light of the Night’s Watch treason—a perfectly justifiable pursuit, but Sansa gave him something to fight for again. She restored within him the sense of honor that becomes a Stark hero, and in doing so she became one herself.

Rather than fulfilling her former role as the demure damsel, Sansa finally gained control of herself and her enemies alike. Now fully aware of Littlefinger’s desires and intentions, she enlisted him into lending her the Knights of the Vale, the weight that tipped the Battle of the Bastards toward a Stark victory. Littlefinger owed her big time for abandoning her with Ramsay, and made his wish for redemption known. While it would have granted Sansa personal justice to have Brienne execute him during their meeting in “The Door,” she saw the bigger picture. Littlefinger is useful to her, no matter how he betrayed her (intentionally or otherwise). Sansa is no longer the selfish little girl she once was—she denied herself personal justice for the moment in favor of getting justice for her entire family.

In Season 6, Sansa lays the groundwork necessary to restore the Starks to wholeness and glory. Even if you don’t think, as I do, that Game of Thrones focuses largely on this family, we can all agree that they are a central cog in the machine. As the eldest surviving (and legitimate) child, Sansa is the most fit to reestablish her family’s place in the Seven Kingdoms. Jon, Bran, and Arya have all begun to don their major responsibilities—Jon as the warrior hero, Bran as the Three-Eyed Raven, and Arya as a trained assassin—and Sansa’s is to hold down their homefront, to give her family something worth fighting for. This year, she was able to pin down her purpose. Because after her youthful, naive desire to travel South, Sansa has found her heart where she belongs: in the North, with her family.

Everything Sansa has done was to win back Winterfell, to give her siblings a place to come home to. What she may have wanted for herself—like justice for Littlefinger’s betrayal—took a backseat to what was best for the Starks as a unit. There is a bigger picture beyond all the war and vengeance, one that the lady of Winterfell is at least beginning to see. Regardless of the possible pitfalls ahead, this year Sansa has proven herself a shrewd politician and a resilient queen. And thus far, that’s what the game’s been all about.

COREY: Interesting that a few of you have chosen Sansa, as I wouldn’t even put her in my top five as far as this prompt goes. Sansa bumbled from one decision to the next in Season 6, unable to take a firm line. Whether it was lying to Jon, allowing the snake that is Littlefinger into Winterfell, or being unable to contribute anything of substance to the battle plans for Winterfell, Sansa didn’t accomplish much in my eyes. I will give her credit for getting Jon off the bench and back into the game, but I’m not holding out hope that she’ll come out on top in the great game, but rather will be led to her doom thinking she belonged in the game in the first place.

Cersei is a solid choice for MVP, but like the others, I think her gains came at a terrible cost. Losing the Tyrells is a huge blow, financially and militarily, and of course losing Tommen was a huge blow. Most importantly, Cersei’s actions will likely cost her Jaime’s support as well. Time will tell on that one, but like Sansa, Cersei’s ultimate score is relatively zero to me.

For MVP of Season 6, I think Jon Snow Stark Targaryen is the clear winner. Consider for a moment, that Jon went from lying on a slab at the end of the world, to King in the North in just one season. That’s an MVP caliber season if I ever heard of one. Jon was essentially elected King in the North for his bravery and valor by a large group of people he had likely only just met. That’s pretty impressive to me. The other players all had strong starting positions, way ahead of Jon’s, so to me, Jon’s season was by far the most impressive.

ANI: Well, with all the obvious candidates taken and Olenna in a reactive role this season, rather than in her usual silent-spider-in-the-center-of-the-web position, I’m going to go with a slightly offbeat choice: Lyanna Mormont.

No, hear me out. We talk about how actress Bella Ramsey walked in and stole every scene she was in. But that’s because her character walked in and stole a major player slot. She’s a canny leader of her people who took a hard look at Jon and decided to lay her 62 chips on Snow. Some might have said she was mad—larger houses were turning Jon and company down right and left. Houses that were bigger still were lining up against them. But Lyanna judges that Jon might just be House Mormont’s ticket to the top of the pile, and she’s now sitting pretty. She played Kingmaker, a role that Tyrion is also betting will take him far. And with this savvy choice, she’s positioned Bear Island and House Mormont as a family that Jon Snow is deeply in debt to. Let’s hope she uses this power wisely in the coming season.