The Night King’s Battleplan – How he can royally

wreck Westeros
By
Walt Ranbot
-
April 25, 2019
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1840

The Night King’s battleplan – How that spells doom for King’s Landing and Cersei?

Game of Thrones is nothing without the thousands of fan theories surrounding Jon Snow, Daenerys and the
Night King. We are two episodes into the 8th and final season and there are plenty of such theories doing the
rounds. Like ‘How the Night King could be a first generation Targaryen?’ for example. But this new theory,
kind of has the weight behind it and maybe we should give it a thought before the 3rd episode airs.

The dead are almost knocking on the doors of Winterfell and Jon is preparing an army that is grossly
outnumbered by a foe that fights with soulless abandon. Even though they have two dragons more, 100,000
Dothraki riders, the unsullied and the Three-Eyed Raven on their side and that should definitely count for
something.

As we closed out episode two, we saw the white walkers approaching Winterfell’s horizon on their undead
horses. Even though Jon and Dany’s preparations might be inadequate against a massive undead army, they are
still in a strong position to defend Winterfell against the Night King and his wights. With Winterfell hinging on
battling the frost baddie himself, what if the Night King has other plans?

Back in February 2018 this theory was doing the rounds on the internet; where it was discussed that rather than
meeting the Northerners head on, the Night King would lure them into battle with his White Walkers and
wights, while he heads further south into Westeros. A classic example of misdirection over confrontation in
battle and we all know that the Night King is smarter than he looks.

The theory gains even more traction when you realise that the Night King wasn’t seen among the ranks outside
Winterfell because he’s taken his ice dragon to King’s Landing, where Cersei is holed up with 20,000 soldiers
from the Golden Company and a million citizens.
“When the army of the undead line up for the battle of Winterfell, the Night King and his zombie dragon will
not be there,” the theory goes. “Instead he will already be near to his next target … King’s Landing. If you play
out what the battle of Winterfell would be like in your head if the Night King + Viserion would be there – it
would be easy for Drogon and Rhaegal to take out the zombie dragon; it’s 2v1 and all other wight’s can be
killed by fire…including Viserion.

“It would not be difficult to simply fly up to Viserion and breathe fire on him, and that would be that. The Night
King is not stupid to commit that mistake so early on in the season, he won’t kamikaze his most powerful asset
– If you have a superweapon that you can’t use against a particular target, then you find a different target a
weaker target.”

The theory uses Bran’s vision in season 4 as evidence: “During season 4 while Bran is being ushered north to
meet Bloodraven, he touches a wierwood and has a set of visions which we see. All of those visions have since
come to pass, except the ones where he sees a destroyed throne room & a dragon shadow pass over King’s
Landing. I believe the reason we are only shown a shadow was to not give away that it is actually the Night
King and Viserion, not Dany and her dragons.”

We haven’t seen a lick of the Night King since season eight premiered. The closing scene of episode two only
shows a few White Walkers on horseback, watching Winterfell from afar. One scene in the preview for episode
three shows a dragon emerging from the shadows, but a long look reveals Daenerys’s silver hair riding on
Drogon. To be honest, we don’t even know if it was the Night King who left the spiral sigil at Last Hearth;
since he could have had his White Walker grunts make that sign. So the question stands: is the Night King
actually leading his army, or he is making his way further south? Season seven proved that Daenerys can cross
a whole continent to reach the Wall while riding Drogon in mere days, so if the Night King is in the South and
using his wight army as a distraction, it makes sense that they would attack Winterfell so quickly.

If the Night King is indeed coming to King’s Landing, it spells out death for Cersei, her 20,000 Golden
Company troops, and the million citizens living in the capital. It’s kind of a cruel karma for Cersei, considering
how she smirked when Qyburn told her that the dead had breached the Wall and, of course, since she decided to
let the North deal with the Night King without any assistance.

We have no doubt that her forces will put up a fight, but they lack the main resource that the North now has in
spades: dragonglass. The only thing they do have is fire, which I have no doubt Cersei will use aplenty. We
might even see another use of King’s Landing’s seemingly endless supply of wildfire, though it still won’t save
them in the end.
Initially, it was assumed that Bran’s visions were foreshadowing Daenerys’s attack on the city, but she has
repeatedly cast down the idea of attacking King’s Landing, and she’s pretty busy up North right now. Plus,
Daenerys had her own vision of the Iron Throne, and it showed the seat covered in ash (or snow) — which
could link up with Bran’s vision of the destroyed throne room. And it all circles back to the Night King messing
up King’s Landing and adding over a million people to his army.