UNDER KING BRAN, THE FUTURE OF GAME OF THRONES COULD BE A TERRIFYING SURVEILLANCE STATE
The all-seeing Three Eyed Raven is a frightening choice for a ruler.
It’s bizarre that the first thing King Bran says when he rolls into the Small Council meeting is to complain about the lack of a Master of Whisperers because that position is now completely redundant. The entire point of Varys’ job was to gather information via a vast network of spies, many of them children, and pass it along to the king. This king, however, already knows more than any spymaster could gather. He’s the Three-Eyed Raven.
With Bran the Broken installed as king of Westeros, the seven/six kingdoms are now effectively a terrifying surveillance state. As demonstrated when he used his powers to reveal Littlefinger’s past deceptions, which led to his execution, Bran’s omniscient power to see anything and everything anyone does makes him the ultimate Big Brother – or Little Brother, in this case. And given that the previous Three-Eyed Raven lived for a thousand years, Bran’s totalitarian regime could last for a very long time (which makes the question of succession rather moot).
Bran’s power is like Batman’s cell phone sonar device from The Dark Knight turned up to 11. That system, which Lucius Fox described as “beautiful, unethical, dangerous” and “too much power for one person” could only see things as they happen, and only within Gotham; Bran can see everything that happens and everything that ever has happened, in all of Westeros and perhaps beyond. Between his ability to warg into animals and even people and to use the weirwoods to view any past event, no one will ever get away with scheming against the crown again. Depending on how aggressively he chooses to use those powers, Westerosis may not be able to get away with literally anything else, either.
It’s fair to say that Bran is a benevolent king who will use his power for the good of the realm. But the entire point of Daenerys’ madness was believing she knew what was right for everyone. Everybody thought she was on the up-and-up until her ends-justifies-the-means philosophy took things too far. Bran is the opposite extreme: where Dany was hotheaded, since becoming the Three-Eyed Raven Bran has been cold and emotionless, which could just as easily lead him to make decisions that might turn out well for future generations but not so hot for the people in the present. He was also willing to do ethically questionable things like warging into Hodor and controlling him without his consent, then sacrificing him to ensure his own escape, so he’s certainly capable using his power in less than perfect ways.
And what could anyone do about it? Unlike Dany, he’d see any assassination attempt coming a mile away – and the fact that
Bran says he’s looking for Drogon is a little scary considering we never got an answer as to whether Bran can warg into a dragon and control it directly. If he can, you’d have a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a ruler who knows everyone’s every move, making him all but unstoppable. So maybe things will go well for Westeros under King Bran the Broken, or maybe it’s headed for a future where thought crime is punishable by death from above. Since
Game of Thrones ended before exploring this and many other post-war developments in depth, only the
potential sequel/spin-off will tell.
