Game of Thrones season 7: What does the reported episode 4 title mean?

Episode 4 of Game of Thrones season 7 appears to have its title, but what sorts of interpretations can we make on said title?

Let’s just get right to it, Game of Thrones fans. Winter is Coming, our sister site, reports that the fourth episode title for season 7 is none other than “The Spoils of War,” citing a page from HBO Asia.

(What is it with overseas networks offering up more information? This happened earlier this year with the Jon Snow-Daenerys Targaryen meeting.)

WiC offers up its own interpretation, noting both the Casterly Rock assault and Euron Greyjoy’s parade as “spoils” of the suddenly very real war happening in Westeros. Although we agree that those are probably fair meanings, they seem awfully literal, don’t they?

It’s time to think about a relatively common saying in English: “to the victor go the spoils.” It’s not outside the realm of possibility that whoever wrote this episode had that in mind. It might even be a key theme of the episode.

The question then becomes this: Who exactly could be winning? As WiC points out, it’s impossible to know exactly, because we haven’t seen “The Queen’s Justice” yet. That doesn’t mean that we can’t speculate a little, though.

It’s unlikely that the war for the Iron Throne is over in the span of two episodes. There’s a lot of complexity at work between the three rulers. It just doesn’t seem like it would all resolve itself that quickly, even with dragons involved. But we keep coming back to a speech that HBO used in one of its earliest promotions for this season:

Listen closely, and you’ll hear Daenerys talking about how the Houses trade positions constantly. (It’s an earlier part of her “break the wheel” speech.) It might just come back to haunt her. Right now, it’s safe to argue that even though she may have the weakest position overall, which “Stormborn” emphasized over and over again, Cersei’s on top because she (through Euron) made the first strike.

But, again, dragons and a possible alliance with Jon Snow could elevate Daenerys to a victor’s position, at least temporarily. The first two episode titles, “Dragonstone” and “Stormborn,”  have focused mostly on her, while “The Queen’s Justice” is slightly less obvious, as we noted in our initial analysis.

Next: Game of Thrones: 5 predictions for S7E3

Although “The Spoils of War” is also quite open to interpretation, it seems like it might be another Daenerys reference.