**SPOILER WARNING**
To say many fans of the HBO series Game of Thrones were not happy with Sunday’s series finale is probably an understatement. Plenty of people were upset about who ended up ruling Westeros, this author included, but none of the complaints were as ridiculous as those from the woke intersectional bean counters that it was a straight, white, cis male.
Identity politics grievance mongers howled that Bran the Broken (at least they weren’t ableist) being anointed king was too painfully close to their real life political disappointments.
One article in Vogue began:
Disappointment is running high after Sunday’s Game of Thrones finale and chief among fan grievances is the fact that a sniveling young white boy who often did the least—that would be Bran—ascended to the (now-defunct) Iron Throne. It’s a plot twist that, for many, felt like peak white male privilege, especially in light of the righteous female warriors—such as Arya and Sansa Stark—who were more deserving.
As with all things, Bran’s victory was especially chafing in light of the deeply patriarchal Trump-era political climate (is there no reprieve?) and the prevalent argument that white male politicians remain the most “electable.”
Estelle Tang wrote for Elle magazine that some aspects of the finale “felt even more depressing because they were recognizable even to us real-life, non-Westerosi viewers. Twitter took note of these similarities between the Thrones power struggle and how white men always seem to succeed IRL, no matter what.” – READ MORE