Daenerys Targaryen’s royal fashion in Game of Thrones’ “Beyond the Wall” reveals more about her character than you might expect.
Note: At this point, even if you haven’t seen the episode, you’ve probably been on Twitter or social media enough to know what went down on Game of Thrones this week. Even so, this is going to discuss some major events.
As soon as yours truly saw the photos for “Beyond the Wall,” Game of Thrones fans, it seemed pretty obvious that Daenerys would head north to bail out Jon Snow and his not-so-merry band of travelers. As viewers, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing her all in black with other colors as her accent cape — most prominently red, but she’s sported a gray-white one this season as well. For her to go from black to white as her dominant color, however, is a significant shift.
Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister and Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen – Photo 10: HBO
Of course, it’s really more of a significant shift back. For most of Game of Thrones, Daenerys is a character who wears light colors, even as late as the start of season 6, where she’s been captured by the Dothraki and goes to Vaes Dothrak. Even though it’s dirty, you can tell she had white on originally:
Emilia Clarke.
photo: Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO
Once she arrives, she’s put in a darker outfit, and she keeps the palette through the season. In that way, choosing to show her in white in “Beyond the Wall” signals a shift to an earlier Daenerys. But what exactly does that mean?
The Daenerys who goes north of the Wall ends up being more vulnerable than she expected, as she is for much of the time on the show when she’s in those lighter colors. You could even go so far as to call her expecting to go North, face the undead, and come back unscathed an example of her naiveté. It’s like her complete and total failure to wear armor, except worse, because it’s also a complete and total failure to protect her dragons by also putting armor on them, and now they have an undead dragon to deal with.
On a secondary note, this fur dress also isn’t completely white. If you pay close attention, it’s striped with black. Of course, the easy interpretation is that she’s wearing the Westerosi equivalent of Siberian tiger fur, which would presumably be quite pricey and thus fit for a queen. But it also has black stripes for the queen whose house colors literally include black.
Interestingly enough, though, she’s back to that dark palette for her bonding session with Jon Snow:
Episode 66 (season 7, episode 6), debut 8/20/17: Emilia Clarke, Kit Harington.
photo: courtesy of HBO
Then again, even though it’s very definitely an emotional bonding session, it’s also a political session. “My queen,” indeed. What better way to make sure we all get that Daenerys is the queen than by dressing her in a similar outfit to the one we’ve seen all season?
Next: Game of Thrones season 7: 5 predictions for the finale
Game of Thrones hopefully will have plenty more fashion to discuss in next week’s season finale.