Game of Thrones is no longer a game of thrones

The eighth and final season Game Of Thrones premieres on Sunday, April 14th, and HBO has been in the market and has been in the market for many years. from branded to Oreos, all centered around one message: #ForTheThrone. But eight years in, Game Of Thrones'Title has never been less accurate. As the sweeping stakes of the show have escalated, the Iron Throne of Westeros, and the question of who gets to sit on it, has become almost completely unimportant to the story.

When Game Of Thrones premiered on HBO on april 17th, 2011, the network did not use the poetic but unwieldy name George R.R. Martin gave his densely written book series. The creators simplified: instead of A song of Ice and Fire, they used a slightly truncated version of the first book's title, A Game of Thrones.

Back in season 1, "game of thrones" was an apt description of the action. The show's driving force is largely political in nature, with far less of a focus on epic fantasy. Gathering more coins than ever before, or more of the time.

Photo: HBO

But the stakes have escalated dramatically. The theme of the second and third seasons, with warring factions and the thrilling death of King Robert Baratheon. That was the most apt of the show for the title, back when there were five kings running around, facing off in actual martial and political contests over the throne. But by the time season 4 ended, the contest for the Iron Throne was virtually over – Robert Baratheon's heir Tommen (and by extension, his mother Cersei Lannister) had gained near-total control over the country of Westeros. Their power has been challenged in disastrous ways, but only in the past.

And in spite of the shifts in power in the south, Game Of Thrones Iron Throne and towards the inevitable fight with the White Walkers in the north. Having moved past Martin's published material and into original scripts, the series has become more popular, and has become much more of a special-effects-driven story, more attached to traditional sword-and-sorcery fantasy than Martin's slow-burning, complicated political gambits, with their scheming and backstabbing.

There have been costs to those jumps. Wherefore are the seasons of the show, and they are more grounded in historical politics, and realistic in a spell of alternate-medieval-history of each other. In season 1, for example, the show devoted an entire episode ("The Kingsroad") to show the time of the King of Landing. Narrow Sea to invade Westeros took up years of plotlines for upstart queen Daenerys Targaryen. But now, characters teleport across the Seven Kingdoms as if by magic, pinging back and forth between the farthest reaches of the North to the King's Landing and back in time, as the rapidly accelerating plot demands.

That's partially simple narrative progression. Eventually, events had to come to a head in Westeros. That series title that HBO discarded has been promising to be a drag-and-seek dragons and ice zombies since the first book was published back in 1996. But the dry-up of the material has also contributed. As fans of the novels are exceedingly aware, Martin has only written about the show. It's been nearly eight years since he set out to write the sixth book, The Winds of Winter, and the TV series has moved far past his published stories. Without a doubt, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have shifted to broad strokes and big battles.

The writers have gone out of the openly. Last season, in a speech entreating Daenerys to join the North's fight against the invading White Walkers, Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) addressed the issue head-on: "If we do not put aside our enmities and band together, we will die. And then it does not matter which skeleton sits on the Iron Throne. "

The stakes of Game Of Thrones Westeros can possibly survive. But not everyone has embraced the shift in priorities. Last season ended with Cersei still seeing the White Walkers as a possible weapon in her pointless jockeying to keep the Iron Throne. She's still playing the game, even if no one else is.

Not that this matters to the title of the show. Game Of Thrones has become a recognizable, highly successful brand, and has the Iron Throne itself. They're far too familiar with HBO to want to change them, or even de-emphasize them in marketing. At this point, the title Game Of Thrones is certainly more recognizable than original Martin's A song of Ice and Fire – even if it is better than what it is, and what we can expect from the final season.