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8. Beggar Queen, Horse Queen, Dragon Queen (Season 1)

Key points: After a childhood of poverty, Daenerys Targaryen is married to Khal Drogo by her brother Viserys, in a deal to leverage the Dothraki to retake Westeros. Viserys quickly loses favor among the Dothraki and is eventually executed by Drogo. Daenerys becomes pregnant and suffers an assassination attempt from King Robert, which sets off Drogo's rage. Before he can muster his khalasar onto boats, however, Drogo is crippled by infection and rendered comatose by Mirri Maz Duur. His khalasar dissolves and Daenerys's son is slain in the womb. Daenerys creates a funeral pyre and enters it with her favorite wedding gift - and exits with newly hatched dragons.

There is so much going on in Dany's Season 1 storyline. For one thing, it's visually so unique. The North and the Vale are characterized by beautiful greenery, the castles by their stony coldness, King's Landing by its urban hustle and bustle. We're surrounded by varying British accents and grime and generally a sense of 'this is where the story is centered.'

And then we've got Dany's storyline, which takes place almost entirely upon an exotic desert land with strange brown people speaking a foreign language. Dany and Viserys are already visually distinctive with their silver-blond hair. Their link to the action is tenuous until you start really learning the last names, and they're notable for Dany's ethereal sexuality and Viserys's unmatched creeptitude. The Dothraki are an impenetrable lot with impenetrable customs - a Dothraki wedding with fewer than three deaths, of course, is considered a disappointment. Khal Drogo himself is the most magnificently impassive, a feral force that rapes and pillages and scowls and generally intimidates those around him into submission. It's a land of tongues being ripped out, warriors fighting shirtless, and horse hearts being eaten. It's crazy, and it's different, .

This story develops at its own pace, mostly separate from Season 1 in the Seven Kingdoms, yet it strikes beautiful parallels. Things begin to stir as Robert Baratheon's Hand of the King is killed - and shortly thereafter, Dany is wed to Khal Drogo. Lord Eddard moves to the South, and Dany becomes stronger as the bride of the Horse-Lord. The 'Usurper' Robert is assassinated, just as the 'rightful' prince Viserys is executed. As the Starks and Lannisters move into all-out war, Khal Drogo vows to slay sweep Westeros with his Dothraki horde.

The most enduring plot development of the arc, seasons later, of course, comes at the end. Ned Stark and Khal Drogo lie dead. In Westeros, Robb is crowned King in the North - and meanwhile, Dany becomes the Dragon Queen. It's a bittersweet ending marked by rebirth. And it's absolutely thrilling.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness