The third of the recently released teasers for Game of Thrones Season 6 focuses on the fate of House Lannister, and it’s not looking rosy. Take a look:
That’s Jonathan Pryce, who plays the High Sparrow, speaking over an image of a tattered Lannister flag waving against a bloody King’s Landing sunrise. Right now, a Lannister king sits on the Iron Throne, so I can only assume that when the High Sparrow talks about “overthrow an empire,” he’s talking about the Lannisters.
Of course, Tommen, Cersei, and the rest of their family aren’t the only ones who would stand to lose out if their rule was overthrown. For better or worse, the Tyrells are closely allied with the Lannisters. If one goes down, so does the other.
I’m betting that’s something Margaery Tyrell has been thinking about a lot lately. After all, she’s been rotting in a cell beneath the Sept of Baelor since Episode 6 of Season 5, when the High Sparrow imprisoned her for committing perjury. She wants to have upper hand in the Tyrell-Lannister partnership, sure, but her immediate concern has to be getting out of holy jail—at this point, teaming up with the Lannisters may seems like a more attractive prospect than squabbling with them.
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I bring up Margaery because, if I had to guess, I’d say that she’s who the High Sparrow is talking to here. Natalie Dormer, who plays Margaery, has mentioned that she’ll have a new scene partner in Season 6, and given that she’ll spend over half the year stuck in her cell, odds are good that it’ll be the High Sparrow. I can easily imagine him taking an opportunity to school her on his collectivist philosophy. If she plays it smart, she’ll listen attentively and start thinking of ways to use the High Sparrow’s beliefs against him and his followers.
And make no mistake: the Sparrows need to be neutralized if the powers-that-be in King’s Landing—Lannister and Tyrell alike—hope to stay powers-that-be. The Sparrows are a lax ruler’s worst nightmare: zealots who aren’t interested in anything those in charge have to offer them. They have the religious conviction of Protestant Reformers and the disregard for authority of French revolutionaries. The conversation Olenna and the High Sparrow have in “The Gift” says it all:
"High Sparrow: “Your grandchildren will be punished in the same manner as anyone who breaks the sacred laws.”Olenna: “Half the men, women, and children in this foul city break the sacred laws. You live among murderers, thieves, and rapists, and yet you punish Loras for shagging some perfumed ponce and Margaery for defending her brother.”High Sparrow: “Yes. The gods’ laws must be applied to all, equally.”"
There’s little Olenna can do to placate a true believer, although the High Sparrow would be wise not to ignore her subsequent threat about cutting off the supply of food to the capitol—when push comes to shove, even the faithful may abandon their principles if starvation is in the offing.
Still, the threat of the Sparrows shouldn’t be underestimated. They don’t so much represent a new player as they do someone who wants to get rid of the game entirely. Followed to its natural endpoint, this suggests some frightening scenarios. Might Sparrows storm the Red Keep like the French masses stormed Varsailles and usher in a period of violent lawlessness? No matter their good intentions, power vacuums want filling, and ambitious, brutal people have a way of stepping into them. Or maybe Cersei or someone else will decide to destroy the city before anyone else has the chance. (I suppose the Sparrows could topple the Lannisters and install a benevolent theocracy that results in socioeconomic paradise, but c’mon—what show do you think you’re watching?)
Whatever happens, I have hope that the show will find a compelling way to depict it. I thought the Sparrow plotline struggled to take off in the early part of Season 5, but the story found its footing around “The Gift,” and it has an excellent frontman in Jonathan Pryce. Will the Sparrows succeed in overthrowing the Lannister empire? We can’t be sure, but it’ll take everything the Lannisters and Tyrells have to stop them.