Iconography: the study of images and how they are used in a culture; from the roots “ikonos” (image) and “graphos” (writing)…so, writing with images. When art historians analyze how an image of Athena, Jesus Christ, or George Washington is constructed, utilized, and modified over time within a given culture, they are practicing iconographic analysis. Iconography involves identifying an image, investigating why it appears a certain way, when and where it appears within a culture, who makes the images, and what meanings such images hold in their culture. In other words, iconography is the science of imagery.
Images are everywhere, never more so than in our present age of Internet and digital media. I doubt anyone alive today in the U.S. and much of the rest of the world could go 24 hours without seeing some sort of image, unless they lived in a box. (And even that box might have images on it, come to think of it.) Any superhero/sci-fi film or show, being in a visual medium, is of course going to be full of very iconic images: Captain America’s shield; Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir; the Doctor’s TARDIS; the Starfleet crest in Star Trek; the demon-trapping pentacle in Supernatural; Excalibur in Merlin; and on and on and on…
A very coherent set of images and symbols appears in Game of Thrones (GOT), both in the “Song of Ice and Fire” novels and the HBO series based on them, making GOT an ideal subject for analyzing the role of iconography in contemporary sci-fi and fantasy media.
Specifically, today I’ll examine the GOT title/opening credits sequence in the HBO series; the role of House sigils, colors, and words; and specific instances of symbolic storytelling such as those surrounding the Stark children and their direwolves, as well as Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons.
The title sequence alone utilizes imagery extraordinarily well to tell the backstory of GOT before each episode begins. (New viewers may miss out on this at first, but pay close attention to the title sequence once you’re a few episodes in, and you’ll understand what the astrolabe’s markings represent.) The title sequence – which won an Emmy award in 2011 and is honestly one of the most beautiful opening credits I’ve ever seen – focuses on a mechanized map of the GOT world, with gear-driven buildings rising out of the map at each key location in the story: King’s Landing, Winterfell, The Wall, Vaes Dothrak, and others as the series progresses. (Yes, the map even changes with the story, often from episode to episode!)
King’s Landing, capital city of the Seven Kingdoms.
Meanwhile, an astrolabe-sun burns above the map, its bands encoded with the history of Westeros. First, a dragon (House Targaryen) reigns supreme over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Then, there is war as the lion (House Lannister) attacks the dragon from behind, and the stag (House Baratheon) and wolf (House Stark) join in the fray. At last, the stag emerges victorious and crowned, with the other animals of the kingdoms paying homage and the dragon dead and gone.
The “Doom of Valyria” – first scene on the astrolabe.
“Robert’s Rebellion” – second scene on the astrolabe.
“Baratheon Victory” – third scene on the astrolabe.
What an elegant way to tell the history of the Seven Kingdoms – and no words required! Forget the Leonardo da Vinci-inspired mechanical map (just kidding – that’s gorgeous, too). The astrolabe tells a generation’s worth of Westerosi history in just three images!
Such is the power of image and symbol when they are aptly chosen and widely known. The astrolabe works because, whether you already know the history from reading the novels or are learning it just from watching the show, you understand what each GOT creature represents and the significance of what they are doing in each of the astrolabe scenes. This is far easier a method of reminding viewers of the backstory than repeating it through character or narrator dialogue, and it’s also more elegant than sticking a “long ago…/last time in Westeros” recap onto the beginning of each episode, which would disrupt the High Fantasy, epic atmosphere of GOT.
The title sequence is really only a preview, though, of how deeply iconography functions within GOT. Each great family, or “House,” in Westeros has its own sigil, colors, and words (motto). Here are some examples from the most prominent families in GOT:
– House Stark: direwolf, grey and light green, “Winter is coming”
– Targaryen: 3-headed dragon, red and black, “Fire and blood”
– Baratheon: crowned stag, black and gold, “Ours is the fury”
– Lannister: lion, red and gold, “Hear me roar”
– Tully: leaping fish, blue and red, “Family, duty, honor”
– Greyjoy: kraken, gold and black, “We do not sow”
– Tyrell: rose, gold and green, “Growing strong”
Author George R.R. Martin obviously knows his imagery and did a fantastic job of crafting the iconography for each House. The direwolf of House Stark, for instance, draws on both the more modern connotations of the wolf as a predatory, cunning, and evil creature and the more ancient connotations of the wolf as a symbol of intelligence, warriors and battle, and ghosts/spirits and the afterlife (Dictionary of Symbols, Tresidder 229-230). In Norse and Celtic myth, the wolf is often depicted as “swallowing the sun at the end of the world” (29). This goes along nicely with the Stark words, “Winter is coming,” and their reputation as fierce and stern Lords of the North. Their ancestral home is even called Winterfell. At the same time, though, the Starks are reputed for their honor and their skill and courage in battle, which the older connotations of the wolf represent.
House Lannister, too, is well-suited to their sigil, the lion that connotes royalty, authority, and strength as well as cruelty, ferocity, and death (123-125). The ambitious Lannisters, with their close ties to and designs on the throne, are true lions indeed!
The Baratheon stag, in contrast, traditionally represents qualities such as purity, regeneration and longevity, creativity and spirituality, swiftness, grace, and beauty (62-63) – not the ideal leader for the violence-prone Seven Kingdoms! (Especially the longevity part!) When GOT begins, the current king, Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), is indeed not a very effective ruler; the stag sigil is nearly ironic, as King Robert is not exactly the GOT character you’d think of as the embodiment of purity, spirituality, and grace. (Perhaps that’s why House Baratheon falls so soon in the series – they didn’t live up to their iconography!)
Targaryen’s dragon is a really interesting case: In Western tradition, dragons are often malevolent, sinister, and even outright evil figures, while in traditions of the Far East they are beneficent symbols of power and wisdom (67-68). This is so interesting because the Targaryens are hated and feared in Westeros (the West), while Daenerys’s journey with her dragons throughout Essos (the East) proves her to be a very positive and charismatic leader, for which Eastern peoples come to respect her. Again, Martin really seems to know his iconography!
Even for the wily Freys, whose sigil is the twin towers of their river crossing home, the tower connotes ambition, watchfulness, and inaccessibility (207-208). The Freys, particularly their leader Lord Walder (David Bradley), wait and watch for that perfect chance to make the best alliance for themselves. (Two words: “Red Wedding” or “episode 309.” You have been forewarned!) Make it a double serving of “towering” ambition for the Freys, whose ancestral home is called The Twins.
One intriguing point where GOT diverges from traditional iconography is the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms, forged from one hundred (or a thousand, depending on whom you ask) swords. Thrones usually represent power, stability, splendour, and royal authority (203-204). In religious settings, thrones may stand in for an absent deity or for divine power in general. The Iron Throne, however, is instead a very poignant reminder of the kingdoms’ lack of stability, their history of war and violence, the edges of the half-melted swords poking into the current ruler’s back to remind him or her that power in Westeros is a very precarious thing. While the Iron Throne is a symbol of authority, I think most viewers (and characters, too!) would agree that the throne’s ominous history overshadows any sense of regal glory attached to it.
The House attributes represent mostly static sets of qualities associated with the various families, while living symbols fulfill a different purpose within the GOT story. One of the first “living symbols” we encounter appears in the first episode of GOT, when the Starks discover a litter of orphaned direwolves not far from Winterfell. Although Eddard “Ned” Stark (Sean Bean) proposes killing the pups to put them out of their misery, his son Jon Snow (Kit Harington) convinces him that the wolves must be a sign from the Old Gods – there is one for each of the Stark children. (Little did Jon know how terribly right he would prove to be about the wolves’ symbolic connection to the Stark children!) Even Jon himself, though a bastard son (hence the surname “Snow” rather than Stark), finds the “runt of the litter,” an all-white dire wolf with red eyes.
As the series progresses, what happens to the wolves reflects what happens to the Stark children. Grey Wind, largest and strongest of the wolves, represents Robb Stark’s (Richard Madden) prowess as a warrior and his rise to the position of King in the North. Ghost, Jon Snow’s wolf, in his very name suggests Jon’s peripheral status within the Stark family as a bastard son, self-exiled to The Wall to join the Nightswatch. Lady, a prim and proper, well-trained direwolf – just like her master, Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) – is killed out of malice and false justice. Sansa, too, will soon lose her connection to the Stark family and become symbolically dead to the Stark name.
Nymeria, Arya Stark’s (Maisie Williams) wolf, runs wild in the forests of Westeros after attacking Prince Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) – the crime for which Lady is killed instead of Nymeria. Arya also “runs wild,” having many adventures in Westeros and eventually across the Narrow Sea in Bravos. Summer and Shaggy Dog accompany their masters, Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) and Rickon (Art Parkinson), away from Winterfell after its destruction. Shaggy Dog and Rickon wander together, while Summer is Bran’s avatar in psychic dreams. (Bran has the gift of being a warg, a seer who can travel through the minds of animals.)
Like the Starks’ direwolves, the three dragon “children” of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) symbolize the growing strength and power of the last Targaryen, Khaleesi of the Dothraki and Mother of Dragons. The dragons are at first apparently fossilized eggs, seemingly incapable of living up to the Targaryen legends. In a blazing fire, however, they hatch, and as Daenerys journeys farther east, her dragons grow bigger and stronger. Simultaneously, the “Queen Across the Sea” becomes an increasingly wiser and stronger leader, more confident in her ability to one day reclaim the Iron Throne of Westeros.
Iconography is definitely cool and elegant, but why use such highly developed images to help tell the GOT story at all? Sure, everything looks pretty, and you can tell that the series’ designers put a lot of effort into everything, but what other purposes does the GOT iconography serve? For one thing, as the opening title sequence demonstrates, images can tell stories much more succinctly than words. You know that saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”? It’s not so far from the truth as you might think. Once you’ve established a set of symbols with widely known and accepted meanings, it’s much easier and quicker to offer a few key images to tell a story than reading or writing every detail in words. Back in the centuries when a majority of the populace was illiterate, telling stories with images was necessary, since everyone who can see can understand images, but reading requires literacy. Hence the highly symbolic decorations of medieval churches and cathedrals, whose sculptures, mosaics, stained glass, and other decorative elements were visual reminders of religious stories and church dogma.
Even today, when a majority of the populace is literate, images retain their ability to tell stories more quickly and efficiently than words. Especially in a story as complex and as densely populated as GOT, effective imagery helps a lot in keeping who’s who and what’s what clear. If you forget the characters’ names (easy to do at first!), all you really need to remember is their family and family alliances – enter the House sigils and colors. If you forget what each family’s motives and House personality is like, look to their words and they will remind you.
On the creative level, the detailed and well thought-out iconography lends the world of GOT validity, since everything appears as detailed as we would realistically expect from a land with a long and colorful history. The rich visual design of the HBO series, in particular, aids viewers’ immersion in GOT because everything looks so believable. One can buy into the history of Westeros because it really does look and sound like actual history. For stories like this, the beauty and believability are in the details – much of which belong to GOT’s unique iconography.
**A little extra something to lighten your day, especially funny if you already know the first and second seasons of GOT fairly well: GOT bad lip reading. (If you haven’t seen GOT, this is NOT the actual dialogue, just to be clear!)
On Monday: Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001) is one of the readily-identified sources of the 21st-century female superhero. Xena helped begin the process of translating the female hero into a more active, tough, and skilled warrior in modern film and television. The show’s title sequence – those things really are important, aren’t they? – embodies the combination of masculine-coded warrior and feminine-coded princess that makes Xena a key forerunner of current gender fluidity trends in superhero media.
Time Lords, Superheroes, and Brave New Worlds 