The Shakespearean Ending of Game of Thrones

THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE

Interestingly, fate manifests somewhat differently in Shakespeare’s histories. Rather than being coupled in conflict with free will, fate is presented as fortune. The meteoric rise and fall of kings and queens throughout Shakespeare’s history plays is a dramatic interpretation of the medieval “de casibus” tragedy or the “fall of princes”—the downfall of a monarch or illustrious person and the ascent of a successor as the wheel of fortune turns:

"[Fortune] is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation: and her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls: in good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of it: Fortune is an excellent moral."

— Henry V, III.vi

Likewise, Martin’s series sees the rise and fall of many powerful persons. Wheels are employed as imagery throughout the series. The opening credits sequence features a revolving astrolabe etched with scenes and animals representing the great houses, and Daenerys famously talks of “breaking the wheel.”

Perhaps there is also some symbolic touch in how the new king Bran the Broken uses a wheelchair. From a meta perspective, Bran could represent both the brokenness and wholeness of the realm, with Westeros as the emergent hero in Game of Thrones, much in the same way that England is identified as the true hero and champion of Shakespeare’s Henriad.

So while the bard’s tragedies spotlight a single tragic hero and his conflicts, his history plays shift focus to the collective. Humans work together, rolling the wheel of fortune forward so that peace tops violence and chaos once more. Martin’s series seems to adapt elements of both these Shakespearean genres; each character is the main protagonist in their own narrative (as in a tragedy) but also a small cog turning the greater wheel of an ensemble story (as in a history).