"Game of Thrones" Finale

Perhaps like millions of others, you've been watching Game of Thrones, HBO'S epic story that unfolded over eight seasons, beginning in 2011.

Hopefully, you know that it's fantasy, not history. 

Many of the settings, however, are very real, and you would enjoy visiting them regardless of whether you've watched the show.  

In Seville, for example, you can visit the Alcazar, which includes the "Water Gardens of Dorne" from GOT.

Built in the 12th Century, the Alcazar is still used by the royal family when in Seville.  Seville is a dramatically gorgeous city in a country rich with its own very-real intrigues.

I believe the first time I heard of the show was five and a half years ago in Northern Ireland, when our local guide Alistair, whom we'd engaged to take us to historical sites of direct interest to us personally, asked if we wanted to see the famous canopied road used in the show.

By then, there already were Game of Thrones tours popping up in the ever-adaptive, customer-oriented excursion industry.

When Alistair asked if we were fans of Game of Thrones, Jay and Amy both said they were. Julie asked them if we'd like it, and Amy said, "Dad might, but you wouldn't." Jay smiled and nodded knowingly, adding that it contained a lot of graphic sex and violence.

Between that caveat and the fact that I'm not generally a fan of fantasy, preferring more history-based stories, we didn't think about it too much until we went to Seville last year, where another guide brought up the show.

We repeated our guide's story about Jamie Lannister to the kids and learned Jay and Amy were both independently still watching the show on opposite coasts.  As the eighth and final season unfolded, they each began attending Game of Thrones viewing parties with friends in the cities where they live, like fans in other cities around the world. 

Leading up to the first episode of the final season, HBO ran a marathon of the first seven seasons.  With the miracle of modern technology, Julie set our DVR to record the whole series.

We started with episode one and knew early that warnings of sex and violence were justified, but it definitely had more to the show than simply that, so we carried on.  After episode three, we had a technical glitch, or more correctly probably conflicting recordings, that resulted in a gap of three missing shows, but we just skipped ahead and relied on our minds to fill in the story holes.

Binge-watching two or three episodes a night, we moved rapidly through the seasons, though we still wouldn't catch up in time to watch the series finale live.

After season seven, episode six, we had another gap of two shows before the final season.  By this point, we were definitely into the details of the characters and plotlines, so we signed up for a trial version of Prime HBO so that we could fill in the holes prior to beginning the final season.

We decided to go all the way back to the beginning and watch the first seven episodes, repeating a few, to lay a solid foundation for the show that didn't rely on our best guesses to watch the last two of season seven followed by the final season.

At this point, I will provide a spoiler alert, because I am going to give you my opinion of how the series should have ended.  Yes, put me on the side of people who think HBO blew the ending.

As with most epic movies, this was a hero's journey, but there were many character arcs that needed to tie together and many heroes in their own storylines.

I'd guess Amy was pulling for the Mother of Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen, to win it all  Daenerys certainly had a great character arc and became very heroic from a controlled, timid start.  If she hadn't killed a million citizens who didn't need to die for her to win, then I could live with an ending of her marrying Jon Snow and living happily ever-after in the typical Disney fashion, sans the whole ick factor of marrying her own nephew even after learning who he is.

By the way, while that seems sick, keep in mind that marrying cousins wasn't that unusual in royal families.  In the case of the last Habsburg King of Spain, Charles II, his eight grandparents were all descendants of Philip the Handsome and Joanna the Mad.  As the old joke song goes, he was his own grandpa.

The joint rule of Daenerys and Jon Snow nonetheless wouldn't have been the most satisfactory possible ending for me as a screenwriter.

Because Daenerys had peaked so early as the Breaker of Chains, her most interesting hero's journey concluded early on.  Once she had wantonly destroyed everything in King's Landing, she had no place interesting to go but down from a story perspective. As a history buff, it is a similar story to what we've seen play out frequently with leaders who build popular followings but are never satisfied to rest on their laurels, taking it a step too far, like Alexander the Great or Fidel Castro.  It's the reason we have elections and term limits in the United States.

Jon Snow, for me, is the greatest hero of the story.  He never wants the role of leader, but keeps getting thrust into it.  He always makes the hard, unpopular choice to do the right thing.  He would gladly just be a free man, but the call to action always seeks him out, leading him on to another hero's journey from which he returns with new skills needed to face the next crisis.

It turns out that in the books, there actually is a separate character, Aegon Targaryen, whose claim to the throne is known early on, so the series has a very cool twist having Jon Snow unaware that he is Aegon until the end.  There are lots of other changes from the books, including other characters omitted, combined or changed considerably in other ways.

Anyway, back to the HBO ending, Jon stabbing Daenerys after proclaiming her to be his queen seems very far out of character for him, to me, though I guess that surprise is what the show wanted in the ending.  I liked that unlike politicians, he refused to tell people what they wanted to hear, instead being compelled to tell the truth, even though most times it put him in a bad light initially.

I think Jon Snow being torn between his love for what Daenerys might have been with his disdain with what she had just done in killing innocents of King's Landing should have gone unresolved for him, leaving the viewer to wonder which way he would go.  Would he moderate her through marriage or would he wage war against her as his new enemy?

At that point of his greatest angst, Jon Snow would see a group of wayward waifs, representing all the surviving downtrodden citizens of King's Landing who he perceives to be, counter to his original premise, actually grateful to have been freed by their new Queen. Yes, we've seen many die, including Jamie and his twin sister Cersei, who were buried in different falling rubble than the tons that covered the Hound and Arya, but some who had been oppressed their whole lives had survived, much like the slaves in Meereen. As they get closer, Jon can see that they carry brightly-colored bouquets of wildflowers, a stark contrast to the ash covered gray of almost everything else.

How had such beauty survived the terrible destruction?

Daenerys barely notices their approach as she accepts the acclaim of the surviving Unsullied and Dothrakis, who all respect her need for revenge against Queen Cersei and her forces for beheading Daenerys's only female friend, killing one of her "children" and slaughtering so many of their friends in battles for the benefit of ungrateful Northerners, both here and at the battle against the dead which Cersei had avoided (costing Daenerys another of her dragons).

One particularly sweet-looking child hands Daenerys the most beautiful flowers of all, and as the new Queen accepts them, the child pushes a knife hidden amid the flowers into her heart.  The child runs off, with Jon Snow, Dothrakis, the Unsullied and the dragon all in hot pursuit.  She's almost caught, but somehow makes her way to a ship, where she takes off what is actually a perfect mask, revealing her true identity is Arya Stark, who had somehow survived a collapsing city and climbed out of the rubble, as she sails into the sunset.  FADE OUT.

Seville, Spain

Seeing the port of Huelva, Spain, may not inspire many to choose a cruise, despite the ancient port's historic links "on the trail of Columbus."

What excites more travelers is the opportunity to visit gorgeous Seville, a city rich in culture, history and romance.

We opted for Oceania's "Seville on Your Own" primarily because it cost $110 per person less than their "Highlights of Seville" guided tour.

If we had opted for Oceania's "Unlimited Passport Collection," which for about $100 per day cruisers can take as many shore excursions as they want (for excursions $199 per person or less), we probably would have taken the guided tour, that usually costs $169.95 per person.

While not guided, we did have a local expert on the bus with us, sharing a bit of local color on the trip.  This young lady was from Huelva, and she praised her home as being a great destination in its own right, but most of her narration was about Seville.

So, even though it wasn't a guided tour, there is a bit of guidance, including a warning that the streets of Seville can become a maze with dead ends and result in coming out of a neighborhood far from your intended destination.

We drove past the bull ring and stopped near Torre del Oro (Tower of Gold), from which she led us along pristine streets past majestic architecture to a plaza near the Cathedral of Seville and the Alcazar.

There were lines for both, but we opted for the Alcazar, a fortress built in the Moorish style. Anything in Iberia that starts with "Al" has its origins in the Arabic language.   In this case, al-qaṣr means castle, so we might easily assume this was built during the long era of Muslim rule.

While a tower built around the year 800 remains, most of the fortress was built after the Reconquista.

One explanation for why Christians chose this style is simply because it is beautiful, which it is.  Just as logically, by the time the area had been under Muslim rule for 400 years, the best architects in the area were often Moors or others had grown up around that style, so that was what they understood.

It didn't take long to realize the line wasn't moving at all, and about that time, a young lady walked past saying "skip-the-line" guided tours were available for just 10 Euro per person more than the cost of admission.  Admission was 12 Euro, with discounts available for seniors over 65 or students with ID.  This took us out of the general line and gave us an appointment to enter about 15 minutes later.

Our guide, Carmen, turned out to be a jewel, sharing wonderful information about everything from the art to the history to notes about filming "Game of Thrones" there.

One of the "Game of Thrones" anecdotes was about actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister.  He went outside of the Alcazar for lunch and was forced to stand in line like the tourists to get back in.  When after waiting in line for two hours he finally reached the gate, the guard insisted he pay for admission.

Nikolaj said, "You don't understand, I am one of the actors.  I play Jamie Lannister."

The seasoned old guard looked  him up and down and said, "You're the third man claiming to be Jamie Lannister today."

Nikolaj paid the entrance fee so he could get back to the set without further delay.

The beauty and historical grandeur of the buildings and the grounds the Alcazar of Seville is reason enough to go.  Those qualities make it a perfect movie setting, as it was for "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Kingdom of Heaven" before "Game of Thrones" brought it to TV screens.

Recognizing a straight line from Lisbon to Seville would be about 200 miles, it is interesting to note that in that same Earthquake of 1755 that destroyed Lisbon, the Alcazar sustained substantial damage.

According to Carmen, ceramic tiles were rattled from the walls, and while they had been re-assembled later, it seems whoever put them back wasn't perfect at jigsaw puzzles.  Keep in mind this was in an age before photos could have been used provide guidance.

After our thorough tour ended with time on our own to explore the gardens, Julie and I walked along an elevated corridor overlooking the gardens but decided to use our limited time by continuing on to the Cathedral of Seville.

Fortunately, the line had thinned down to almost nothing, so it only took five minutes to get tickets (9 Euro), adding one audio guide (3 Euro) that we shared.

The highlight for me in this truly magnificent Cathedral was the Tomb of Christopher Columbus.

In a brilliantly conceived and crafted work of art by Arturo Melida, the tomb itself is hoisted by pallbearers --- and I still say one of them looks like Elvis Presley --- illustrating the way his bones were carried around Europe on the way to this final resting place in the Cathedral of Seville in 1899.

The highly venerated explorer's body had originally been brought to Seville in 1506 shortly after his death by congestive heart failure at the age of 55.  He died in the Castilian city of Valladolid, about 350 miles northeast of Seville.  His bones began traveling the world again 36 years later.  The explorer's daughter-in-law re-located his remains and those of her late husband (former Governor of the Indies) to a new family tomb in Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola, one of his first stops in the New World.

The bones of Columbus were moved to Havana, Cuba, in 1795, when they ceded Dominican Republic to France, which over the years had assumed control of the neglected western part of Hispaniola (essentially Haiti).  The bones of Columbus stayed in Cuba a hundred years, when perhaps anticipating the Spanish-American War, Spain brought them back to Europe.  Before resting in Seville, they made one last triumphant tour of the Continent.

It would be easy to spend a full day at either the Alcazar or the Cathedral of Seville, but the city itself is so enchanting, we wanted to go outside to roam the streets.

We stopped at a sidewalk cafe where I enjoyed a pint of Cruzcampo, an Andalucian Pilzner lager.  Julie and I shared patatas fritas (essentially kettle potato chips). The prices here and throughout Spain were very modest.

Rather than re-tracing our steps back to the meeting place, we followed another couple who looked like they knew where they were going down an inviting, shady street.  Wandering along, we found ourselves in the maze we'd been cautioned against entering.

As usual, we'd allowed extra time in case we got lost, and asking for directions occasionally, we emerged by the river which we knew would lead back to the Golden Tower, from which we could find our appointed meeting place at the plaza.

That we had gone well beyond the bull ring was surprising, but it gave us a chance to snap a few photos there.

On the ship that afternoon, Terry Bishop had made a presentation about the Spanish Civil War, which I'm sure would have been interesting, but despite having the replay available on our TV, we never got around to watching it.  We did, however, find time every evening to watch the lovely string quartet play classical selections before enjoying delicious meals.