In the first season of "Game of Thrones" I think the most exciting is the seventh episode, "You win or you die".
At the beginning, Tywin Lannister made his first appearance in the Lannister army tent. He was sharpening his knife to skin a dead deer, and Jaime behind him read Ned's instructions to summon Tywin. Tywin laughed at Jaime's reluctance to let go of the injured Ned in the duel. In Tywin's eyes, honor is insignificant.
Tyrion was hijacked by Catelyn. In order to distract the enemy, Tywin ordered Jaime to attack Catelyn’s home, Riverrun. He is not worried about Tyrion's safety, but to protect the family's reputation and prestige-the establishment of family hegemony is Tywin's only purpose.
"Your mother is dead. Before long I'll be dead. And you. And your brother. And your sister. And all of her children. All of us dead. All of us rotting in the ground. It's the family name that lives on. It's all that lives on. Not your personal glory, not you honor, but family."
The second act took place in the garden of King's landing. Ned was sitting on a stone bench with his leg injury unhealed. Cersei walked over and stopped in front of Ned, covering his body from the sun. Ned stated that he knew that Joffrey was the illegitimate child of Cersei and Jaime. But there was neither fear nor regret on Cersei's face. She recalled that when she was young, she dreamed of marrying Robert. Unexpectedly, Robert, who was drunk on the wedding night, mistakenly regarded her as Lyanna Stark when he was with Cersei. Cersei never thought of Robert ever since. Ned asked Cersei to flee with his children before telling Robert the truth.
For Cersei, who is determined to help his eldest son ascend to the throne, legal principles are meaningless. The so-called Game of Thrones is that the winner is king.
"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."
The third act is in Littlefinger's brothel. Two new girls are performing how to pick up guests. Littlefinger was instructing him, and inadvertently talked about his beloved Catelyn. The two used to be intimate, but Catelyn told Littlefinger that he was going to marry Brandon Stark. Littlefinger and Brandon had a duel, and the result was a terrible defeat. Thanks to Catelyn's intercession, his life was saved. After Brandon died tragically under Mad King, Catelyn married his brother Ned.
That blow made Littlefinger recognize himself: he has neither a celebrity pedigree nor extraordinary force. To satisfy his desire for power, he can only rely on deception and disguise, just as his prostitutes use fake orgasms to deceive customers.
"Do you know what I learned, losing that duel? I learned that I'll never win, not that way. That's their game, their rules. I'm not going to fight them. I'm going to fuck them."
If you look at these three acts together, Tywin, Cersei, and Littlefinger all desire power, but their starting points are different: Tywin is for the family, Cersei is for the son, and Littlefinger is for himself. Therefore, the three of them are more selfish and cruel than the other. Tywin can give up honor for the family, Cersei can ignore the law for his son, and Littlefinger can put aside all the rules of the game in order to satisfy his ambition. The sequence of these three acts implies a progressive relationship.
Back to King's Landing, the situation suddenly changed. Renly hurried to tell Ned that Robert was seriously injured in the hunt. Ned rushed to Robert's bed, Robert drove everyone around him away, and ordered Ned to write a will according to his own decree: Before Joffrey became an adult, Ned would act as the government agent. Knowing that Joffrey is not Robert's biological son, Ned deliberately replaced Joffrey's name in the will with the "legal heir".
Renly finds Ned and proposes to join forces to hijack Joffrey. Ned decided that the throne must be passed to Stannis. Renly retorted that Stannis only knew how to lead soldiers to fight, and that he was the ideal candidate to succeed to the throne, and he was strictly rejected by Ned.
Ned summoned Littlefinger and told Joffrey's life experience. Littlefinger suggested that Ned reconcile with the Lannister family, support Joffrey in the upper position, and secretly join hands with himself to be in power behind the scenes. Ned flatly refused. He knew that his forces were far inferior to Cersei, so he asked Littlefinger to buy Gold Cloak and help him fight the Lannister family. Littlefinger readily agreed.
Ned was suddenly summoned by the "king" Joffrey. Robert had just died, and Joffrey had established himself as king. The group entered the hall, Joffrey sat on the throne, and ordered Ned to bow his head and become a courtier. Ned handed Robert's will to Ser Barristan to read. Cersei tore the will to pieces after he had received it. At the very moment, Gold Cloak suddenly turned back. Littlefinger took advantage of the chaos and hijacked Ned. Ned realized that he was betrayed by Littlefinger, but it was too late.
This is a turning point. If Ned didn't meet with Cersei, she could have been detained preemptively. But he couldn't bear it, and after a showdown with Cersei, he persuaded him to escape. After getting Robert's will, Ned can join forces with Renly to hold Joffrey under the guise of political instability. But Ned decided that Stannis was the heir to the throne and refused to help Renly usurp the throne. In the end, he knew that his troops were not enough to fight Cersei, and wanted to use Gold Cloak. But he was ashamed of offering bribes and asked Littlefinger to handle it, which resulted in extra problems. In the final analysis, Ned's tragedy is that when Cersei, Renly and Littlefinger are unscrupulous for power, he is the only one trying to maintain legality and justice through legal and legitimate channels, and even misses opportunities again and again. The scene of Cersei tearing up Robert's will has a great symbolic meaning: in Cersei's eyes, the will that represents the legitimacy is just a piece of waste paper, which can be easily torn apart. The justice that Ned insisted so hard on was as fragile as paper in the face of Cersei and Littlefinger's ambitions.
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