Iron Throne

The Iron Throne, beneath the seven-pointed star of the Faith of the Seven comissioned by King Joffrey

"The breath of the greatest dragon forged the Iron Throne...the swords of the vanquished, a thousand of them, melted together like so many candles..."

―Viserys Targaryen

The Iron Throne is the throne upon which the King of the Andals and the First Men sits, located in the Great Hall of the Red Keep in the city of King's Landing. Besides the King himself (or Lord Regent) only the Hand of the King may sit on the Iron Throne. The term is also used colloquially to refer to the monarchy that rules the Seven Kingdoms and the authority of the King (e.g. "Rebellion against the Iron Throne").

History

Background

The Iron Throne was forged at the order of Aegon the Conqueror, the first of the Targaryen Kings, who conquered six of the seven independent kingdoms of Westeros and unified them under his rule - the seventh kingdom of Dorne was later joined through a marriage alliance. The throne was allegedly forged from the 1,000 swords that had been surrendered to Aegon in the War of Conquest by the lords who had offered their fealty, though the actual number of the swords is less than two hundred. These were subsequently melted down by the fiery breath of Aegon's dragon, Balerion the Black Dread, then beaten and bent into a throne of imposing appearance.

At the end of Robert's Rebellion, during the Sack of King's Landing, as the Lannister army overran the city outside of the Red Keep, King Aerys II Targaryen - the Mad King - refused to surrender, and secretly ordered the city to be burned to the ground with hidden caches of wildfire. To prevent this, his own Kingsguard Ser Jaime Lannister killed the Mad King in front of the Iron Throne itself. Greatly disturbed at having killed the king he had taken the most sacred oaths to defend, Jaime then sat down on the Iron Throne and gave no thought to the carnage going on outside. Hours later, the main rebel army arrived in the city, and Ned Stark came to the throneroom, where he found Jaime sitting on the throne, and Eddard made Jaime get off of the Iron Throne. Years later, Jaime's sister Cersei chided Eddard that he could have tried to seize the throne then and there, instead of letting Robert take it, but he did nothing. Stark never knew why Jaime really killed King Aerys, and seeing him seated on the Iron Throne like that (apparently, out of arrogance) gave Eddard the incorrect belief that Jaime hoped to seize the throne himself some day.

Season 1

Septa Mordane quizzes Sansa Stark on her history lessons while walking through the throneroom, asking her who built the Iron Throne. Sansa correctly answers that it was Aegon the Conqueror.

Because the king is out hunting, Eddard Stark sits on the Iron Throne while listening to royal petitioners, in his capacity as Hand of the King. He hears a report from a peasant refugee that Ser Gregor Clegane has been raiding villages in the Riverlands.

Following the death of King Robert Baratheon, his alleged son Joffrey Baratheon takes his place on the Iron Throne.

Far away on the eastern continent in Vaes Dothrak, Daenerys Targaryen urges her husband Khal Drogo to help her win back the Iron Throne that her own father once sat upon, for her and Drogo's unborn son that she carries inside her. At first, Drogo is not very interested: Westeros is very far away, across the ocean, and to the Dothraki it seems just like a literal chair (without all of the connotations of authority over the Seven Kingdoms associated with it). After a failed assassination attempt on Daenerys by one of Robert's agents, however, Drogo is deeply offended, and vows to attack Westeros and take the Iron Throne for Daenerys and their son, Rhaego.

Season 2

Joffrey continues to jauntily sit on the Iron Throne as the War of the Five Kings tears apart the realm. He gets up from the throne to menace the captive Sansa Stark with a crossbow, idly considering shooting her, before relenting that his mother insists she remain alive - so he simply orders his Kingsguard to beat and strip her in front of the entire court. Meanwhile, in the Stormlands to the south, Robert's younger brother Stannis Baratheon declares that the Iron Throne is his by right, and all who deny that are his foes.

Season 3

Olenna Tyrell, in typical fashion, has a low opinion of the throne itself, blithely referring to it as "that ugly iron chair."

Petyr Baelish remarks to Varys that the Iron Throne doesn't literally have thousands of swords in it, he has counted and the real number is under two hundred. He says that this is another inflated legend, part of the pageantry and propaganda that supports kings and dynasties but which is in fact illusory.

Season 4

Following Joffrey's assassination with poison at his own wedding, his younger brother Tommen Baratheon is crowned as the new king in a ceremony while sitting on the Iron Throne. Because Tommen is still underaged, however, his grandfather, Hand of the King, and regent Tywin Lannister later sits on the Iron Throne, while overseeing the Trial of Tyrion Lannister for the (false) charge of poisoning Joffrey.

In the books

Promotional image of the Iron Throne

In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the Iron Throne is reportedly uncomfortable to sit upon due to the blades that radiate out from it, occasionally cutting the incumbent. The moral lesson Aegon intended for his heirs was that no ruler should ever sit upon the throne carelessly, just as they must not rule carelessly. The Iron Throne specifically contains the swords of those Aegon defeated in battle, but not of those who had surrendered honorably (such as House Stark and House Arryn) rather than give battle.

King Aerys II Targaryen's increasing insanity over the years led him to absent-mindedly sit upon the throne with his full weight, frequently cutting and injuring himself. Ultimately he cut and scraped himself so much upon the Iron Throne that his personal enemies derisively referred to him as "King Scab", besides of his more common epithet, "the Mad King". This was seen by some as a sign of his unworthiness to rule.

At the end of Robert's Rebellion, King Aerys was slain by Jaime Lannister at the foot of the Iron Throne itself. Jaime proceeded to wait out the rest of the sack of the city by Lannister soldiers, and waited in the throne room for the late arrival of Eddard Stark and the main rebel army. Eddard's most powerful memory of the event was arriving in the throne room to find Jaime sitting on the Iron Throne, his sword at his side still covered in Aerys' blood, with the Mad King's corpse lying in a pool of his own blood in front of the throne. On seeing Eddard, Jaime got off the Iron Throne, joking that he was just keeping it warm for Robert.

Behind the Scenes

George R. R. Martin expressed in his blog  that the appearance of the Iron Throne in the TV series is "not the Iron Throne I want my readers to see". Specifically, he noted that he imagined the Iron Throne to be asymmetrical and to tower well beyond the height of a man, as opposed to being relatively symmetrical and only somewhat bigger than a normal throne.

See also

• Iron Throne on A Wiki of Ice and Fire