In addition to being a presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is also a huge “Game of Thrones” fan. And not surprisingly, her reasons why echo her campaign.
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, wrote an opinion piece published Sunday for New York Magazine’s lifestyle site, The Cut, in which she nerded out over her favorite character, Daenerys Targaryen, the upstart challenger to the Iron Throne, and laid out why Westeros’s current queen, Cersei Lannister, is just the worst. The hugely popular fantasy series just started its eighth and final season on AT&T’s T, +0.25% HBO, and the season’s second episode airs Sunday night.
“Dany believes fiercely in her right to rule, but she despises what ruling means in the world she’s grown up in,” Warren wrote. “She doesn’t want to be a slave owner or a dictator.”
Warren even quoted the khaleesi from Season 7, when she said: “I’m not here to murder. All I want to destroy is the wheel that has rolled over everyone both rich and poor, to the benefit of no one but the Cersei Lannisters of the world.”
“A queen who declares that she doesn’t serve the interests of the rich and powerful? A ruler who doesn’t want to control the political system but to break the system as it is known? It’s no wonder that the people she meets in Westeros are skeptical.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren
It just so happens that Warren’s own campaign centers around fighting economic and political inequality.
Meanwhile, Warren paints the evil queen as a dishonest leader who follows her “worst impulses” and who has used her family’s wealth to grant herself every advantage, which some would say sounds a bit like a certain president who shall go unnamed.
“Unlike Dany, Cersei doesn’t expect to win with the people — she expects to win in spite of them,” Warren continued. “Rather than earn her army, Cersei’s pays for it. . . .Cersei’s betting on the strength of the bank to get her through the biggest fight of her life.”
It all comes down to a pair of powerful women, Warren wrote, with a diverse mix of common people (and a couple of dragons) facing an army of the dead to the north and a bunch of bank-funded mercenaries to the south.
“We’ve got five episodes to find out if the people can truly break their chains, destroy the wheel, and rise up together to win,” Warren said.
