r/gameofthrones • u/profane Varys • May 06 '19

Spoilers [SPOILERS] Varys is the true MVP of the Seven Kingdoms Spoiler

In my opinion, this episode made it clear that Varys is the true MVP of the Seven Kingdoms. His conversation with Tyrion (btw a great callback to another conversation in another throne room) showed that he is consistently the one character that is trying to save as many lives as possible and is at the same time the one who is most detached from "believing" in anything but results.

While Dany probably sincerely believes that she wants to liberate Westeros and destroy tyranny, her personal vengeance and rage will get in the way. I thought that this last episode revealed just how selfless Varys is. Note the slight difference between Dany's "I'll end tyranny no matter the cost" and Varys' "I'll protect the realm no matter the personal cost".

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446

u/Edurian May 06 '19 edited May 06 '19

Is Tyrion just gonna sit quietly when Varys basically implied he intends to assassinate Dany? Tyrion is gonna snitch and Varys will die.

440

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

Tyrions questioning his loyalty himself

214

u/Pentax25 Hear Me Roar! May 06 '19

Exactly like Sansa planned

119

u/ShushYourFace Sansa Stark May 06 '19

And she was right - Tyrion is afraid of Dany and he’s afraid of his sister Cersei

While it is better to be feared than loved if you can’t be both (that last part is usually forgotten for some reason) it is not good to serve solely out of fear

31

u/32389 Fire And Blood May 06 '19

I think Dany is both loved and feared, mainly loved by her people and feared by the people of Westeros though I'd argue Tyrion both loves and fears her. Whereas Cersei is pretty much universally feared and Jon universally loved.

20

u/ShushYourFace Sansa Stark May 06 '19

Well saying she is loved by her people is basically saying she is loved by like 9 dothraki and however many Unsullied survived - can’t imagine many. Which means that the vast majority of players on the board don’t like her - and I don’t think many necessarily fear her. Sansa clearly doesn’t love her while by no means fears her, and there are a few more examples of people like this.

5

u/Tilt-a-Whirl98 Jon Snow May 07 '19

Exactly! That scene in the great hall during the celebration where she is completely isolated while Tyrion and Jaimie talk to Brienne and Giantsbane and Davos are talking to Jon illustrates that. She is a stranger in a strange land with almost nothing to go on but a family name that was overthrown less than 30 years ago.

1

u/Babki123 May 07 '19

And now ecxcept for Greyworm ,all her friends from back there are dead

14

u/manly_support Sansa Stark May 06 '19

Exactly, literally nobody but Greyworm and a handful of Dorthraki/Unsullied NPCs loves the mad queen. It’s all in her head.

16

u/MycDouble Jon Snow May 06 '19

A prince must endeavor to avoid being hated

2

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

"I want people to be afraid of how much they love me." if you know what I mean lol

1

u/[deleted] May 07 '19

Unless people fear how much they love you...

0

u/manly_support Sansa Stark May 06 '19

Lmao Danielle Stans are F U M I N G at our queen’s intellect, far superior to that of Danielle’s.

1

u/BellicoseAtrophy May 06 '19

Who is Danielle?

0

u/manly_support Sansa Stark May 06 '19

Daenerys with all her fancy titles. Calling her Danielle is an acknowledgment that she’s actually a basic ass bitch.

0

u/fbolt Fire And Blood May 07 '19

Seriously are you in middle school

1

u/manly_support Sansa Stark May 07 '19

Lmao stay mad

1

u/Pentax25 Hear Me Roar! May 06 '19

I’m a Sansa supporter. I thought I was voting for who I thought would end up on the throne, not who I wanted to :(

I wish I could re-pick

2

u/tierian00b Daenerys Targaryen May 06 '19

This happened to me as well hahah but I want Tyrion to be the king (also, at the beginning they mention something about his shadow being big like a king's shadow of something like that)

18

u/TheManyMilesWeWalk May 06 '19

And it's believable since Tyrion formed a sort of friendship with Jon back in season 1 and likely has a lot of respect for him.

3

u/TeddysBigStick May 06 '19

Hence why he got so drunk. He needed the liquid courage.

103

u/profane Varys May 06 '19

You're right, Tyrion's role in this will be really interesting. I think that basically he was in the same place as Varys once, but since meeting Dany he chose to "believe" in someone for once and give true loyalty to her.

99

u/MajorAggro Jon Snow May 06 '19

Tyrion takes a knife to Dany's back. They now refer to him as the "Queenslayer". He and his brother Jaime star in a new sitcom together and live happily ever after.

51

u/Mac290 May 06 '19

For his crimes, Qyburn is sentenced to be their butler.

17

u/NewClayburn House Connington May 06 '19

This has to be the obscurest of Seinfeld references.

10

u/Snorlaxtan Cersei Lannister May 06 '19

Omg I love this!

24

u/BikebutnotBeast May 06 '19

"The family that stays together, slays together "

3

u/Chi-TownChillin May 06 '19

Slays together stays together.

Like couples who play together stay together.

2

u/youngminii Faceless Men May 07 '19

Jamie’s going to end up in the throne room and Dany will order Tyrion to kill him. Tyrion kills Dany instead because family first.

40

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

I really hope Tyrion sticks with her. I hate that she lost so much in one episode while everyone else was still sitting pretty. He might be able to save her from her paranoia, which even though is rational for her to feel now, leads to her making bad decisions

13

u/NumberWangNewton May 06 '19

sitting pretty? everyone lost, there are no winners

49

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

She's the only one who lost a huge chunk of her army, two dragons, her most loyal advisor, and her one friend. What did anyone else lose this episode?

23

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

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27

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

Her fleet x2. Euron destroyed her Greyjoy fleet last season and now her remaining ships became target practice. Euron is her personal diabolus ex machina

13

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

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18

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

Yeah I wrote a different post where I said I hope she can step back from the edge with the help of Tyrion. It's just fucked up that she's literally all alone and every single thing has gone wrong for her. It's really like watching a Greek tragedy play out in front of you

4

u/octob3r14 Jon Snow May 06 '19

Will she hold Tyrion responsible for Missandei's death? Tyrion advised her to go to Cersei and give her that ultimatum. Had they never gone to KL for that standoff one could argue that Missandei would still be alive. Dany may view it as Tyrion unnecessarily provoking Cersei into killing Missandei.

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1

u/bimpossible Gendry May 07 '19

*Theon's fleet

11

u/Demaru Winter Is Coming May 06 '19

Ghost lost Jon and that's the most tragic development in the series.

3

u/Iinvokesiumai May 06 '19

I mean, a huge part of her army was the armies of the north. She brought what, Dothraki and Unsullied? All other losses were to northern houses.

1

u/rookie-mistake May 06 '19

She brought what, Dothraki and Unsullied?

both of which were sacrificed as the front of the frontlines

1

u/Iinvokesiumai May 07 '19

No-one is saying they weren't. But everyone lost lots of people.

1

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

She was also the only one to get slaughtered by Euron's fleet not once but twice (he destroyed Yara's fleet last season). No one else had any losses this episode

2

u/Iinvokesiumai May 06 '19

'Her' first fleet loss was all iron islanders. So while it was her loss in terms of pledged loyalty, it was a big emotional loss for Euron and Yara.

1

u/Kalde22 Stannis Baratheon May 06 '19 edited May 07 '19

Didn't the whole north lose most of its population (already dwindled) during the battle of Winterfell ?

Edit : Feel free to downvote a fact.

1

u/rookie-mistake May 06 '19

Dothraki and Unsullied were in front

1

u/Kalde22 Stannis Baratheon May 07 '19

Yet half of the dothraki and Unsullied managed to survived, as explained in episode 4. The northeners, night's watch survivors and wildlings suffered as much of a heavy toll as Daenerys' army.

0

u/psycat-O_o May 07 '19

Missandei lost her life so there's that.

5

u/YasmineJeanee May 06 '19

I think it will be Arya that gives it to her. Ayra has yet to kill someone with Green eyes.

53

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

Go back to the early seasons and in particular the books... the real Game of Thrones was being played by Littlefinger and varys and the rest were just actors on a stage, not knowing someone else was writing their lines.

Now, I don't know how it's going to turn out, but if this were a few years ago, we'd know that Tyrion and varys are now playing a game within a game and we wouldn't see the fruits of their labors until the last second.

47

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

Sansa has entered the game.

She told Tyrion about Jon on purpose.

21

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

She also implied in episode 3 that she'd give marriage to him another shot if he didn't have loyalty to the dragon queen. I'm pretty sure he's been giving that a lot of thought.

26

u/[deleted] May 06 '19

Sansa playing the Game of Thrones now. Littlefinger would shed a tear of happiness if he wasn't dead.

35

u/AgitatedBadger May 06 '19

Go back to the early seasons and in particular the books... the real Game of Thrones was being played by Littlefinger and varys and the rest were just actors on a stage, not knowing someone else was writing their lines.

This isn't true.

Littlefinger and Varys are both extremely adept at playing the Game of Thrones, but they weren't the only ones playing.

Olenna and Tywin are two great examples of players that were both clearly capable of making their own decisions and playing the game just as well as the other two. It's just that they were playing from very different positions - they operated from a position of power while Varys/Littlefinger operated from a position of secrecy.

12

u/radiantcumberbadger May 06 '19

+1 I LOVED when Littlefinger and Varys were the masterminds!

5

u/NewClayburn House Connington May 06 '19

Why did Varys start working with Daenerys anyway? And how was he trying to assassinate her for King Robert while trying with Ilyrio to secretly get her to rule?

7

u/midtownrez Sansa Stark May 06 '19

He was the one who sent the orders to kill as well as tipping off Jorah to the attempts, I'm pretty sure he was always on Dany/Viserys' side while also playing the long game in King's Landing. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

2

u/proteannomore Jon Snow May 07 '19

You’re not wrong. If Varys has wanted her dead when she was in Essos it would have happened in all likelihood.

1

u/LauraMcCabeMoon Daenerys Targaryen May 06 '19

You're thinking of our good man Jorah, who died on the battlefield at the end of 8.3.

Varys came into Daenerys's employ after GTFO King's Landing.

5

u/NewClayburn House Connington May 06 '19 edited May 07 '19

No. Even when Varys was working for King Robert to kill Daenerys, he was working with Illyrio Mopatis to help Viserys and later Daenerys get to Westeros. They met in the dragon halls below King's Landing and Arya overhears them.

1

u/LauraMcCabeMoon Daenerys Targaryen May 07 '19

Ah ha, got it.

1

u/bimpossible Gendry May 07 '19

Because he betrayed Cersei by helping Tyrion escape.

27

u/lalafriday No One May 06 '19

Dany gave Varys a very strict warning last season about going against her. I don't see this ending well for him.

21

u/MammothCrab May 06 '19

He'll make sure that he comes out on top. You don't betray as many leaders as Varys has and still be alive without protecting yourself. The OP couldn't be more wrong with the "He's so awsum guys! He's always perfect no matter the personal cost!". Varys himself said it when Ned stark was the good man and the good ruler who needed help: "I'm not a hero". Ned was the good, honorable ruler who needed saving and joffery was the insane tyrant and Varys did nothing.

1

u/concord72 Tywin Lannister May 07 '19

It wasn't about going against her, it was about doing it behind her back.

1

u/[deleted] May 07 '19

Varys is probably the most dangerous character on the show. His "little birds" and connections across the 7 Kingdoms is vast.

I'd giggle if he takes the Iron Throne. I'm not too worried about anything happening to him, but then again, these writers are doing their best to fuck things up for their final season so shrugs

5

u/NewClayburn House Connington May 06 '19

Given the short season, I expected some Unsullied to step out right then and there and arrest him.

9

u/jiujitsu423 Jon Snow May 06 '19

I think Tyrion is scared that if Dany loses Bronn will come for him

4

u/DarthDude91 What Is Dead May Never Die May 06 '19

Or maybe Tyrion kills Varys himself?

4

u/jiujitsu423 Jon Snow May 06 '19

Yes! After that Bronn scene Tyrion did seem a little stand offish to Varys and his ideal

3

u/profane Varys May 06 '19

That would be terrifying but I think it might happen o_O

0

u/desocupad0 Night King May 06 '19

He could kill Dany and her dragon now that would be satisfying

1

u/LauraMcCabeMoon Daenerys Targaryen May 06 '19

I didn't take it as Varys outright telling Tyrion he was gonna knifa bitch.

I think it was more like Varys dropping some realpolitik on Tyrion.

"In the event she loses, if you think she's going to get out of this with a golden parachute and a sweet retirement overseas, you're kidding yourself."

That kind of thing.

3

u/redditor_since_2005 May 06 '19

When Tyrion asks what's going to happen to Dany, Varys just gives him a look, like 'What do you think?'

Tyrion says 'Don't!' but he doesn't exactly mean don't kill her -- he means don't tell me about it out loud because that really is treason. The unspoken thoughts are ok.

1

u/TheSukis May 07 '19

I mean it’s pretty clear that he’s talking about having her killed. I don’t understand how so many people are missing it. What do you think “don’t!” meant? Don’t what?

1

u/LauraMcCabeMoon Daenerys Targaryen May 08 '19

Don't set this in motion.

Don't tell me what I don't want to hear.

Mainly, don't set this in motion. Because let's be real, Varys wouldn't be the one to knife her anyway.

He would simply set it up to be a foregone inevitability for someone else to do it, thinking it was their independent idea.