Game of Thrones: The one where King Donald meets the Queen again

Here’s a quick recap for those of you who haven’t been watching this season of A Game of Thrones…

King of the Western Lands, Donald of Trumpington, travels to the United Kingdom, which isn’t much united, where his arrival is presaged by ominous signs. Despairing tailors gnash their teeth, the Mayor of London feels a painful throbbing around his temples, and a strange enchantment descends across the land causing young boys everywhere to discover an interest in mowing their back lawns.

The King lands and immediately flies another three miles across London to avoid protests which weren’t there and is greeted by Prince Charles who believes in everything that King Donald has spent the past two years denying but the Prince can’t possibly mention lest the King say something he will later have to deny saying despite the audio recordings.

The Prince is later heard asking the groundskeeper for the keys to the hover mower…

In Buckingham Palace, which isn’t a palace and just a large house with bad central heating and requiring copious restoration that nobody is willing to pay for, the Queen gives a valuable book to a man who notoriously doesn’t read.

Later, at the state banquet, she explains the meaning of sacrifice for a greater cause to a man whose dodged the draft because of bone spurs, watched by Prince Edward, four months a Royal Marine, sitting with a chest full of medals, while Prince Harry, who served with distinction in Afghanistan, is absent because the man they are there to honour has previously called the mother of his new born son “nasty”.

Yet this wouldn’t be a George R. R. Martin story if some grand narrative wasn’t unravelling beneath the gratuitous cruelty. The isolationist President is here to commemorate a war that was prolonged and perhaps even provoked by American isolationism. He’s also here to talk trade deals, which he says are easy to make despite being the King of Protectionism, the High Sheriff of High Tariffs, and the President who has only struck a single trade deal in his time in office… with North Korea, which he called “a horrible deal” before he signed a largely unrevised version of it and called it “a great day for the United States and a great day for South Korea”.

I know it’s hard to follow but, in case you’ve missed it, this is the crucial plot point: King Donald is as quick to show his largesse as he is to wield a big sword or, in his case, a carrier group. When he doesn’t get what he wants, look for his navy parked off your coast. Just don’t expect to see the USS John S. McCain, though. That ghost ship is rumoured to sail the seas but never within sight of land.

Meanwhile, the lame duck Prime Minister prepares to meet the lame duck King, while pretending that neither of them are really lame ducks…

And so, as the episode reaches its conclusion, the Prime Minister meets America’s Monarch-in-Chief. And in a dramatic twist, the King tells her to change her mind about quitting as Prime Minister, because he wants her to finalise a “very, very substantial” trade deal. Everybody believes him and nobody mentions that getting any such trade deal through Congress will require its own spin-off series. Certainly, nobody mentions the chlorinated chicken in the room. Instead, excited by the King’s words, the Conservative Party extends its leadership contest, so it now runs four years…

Queue credits.

But just as you reach for the remote control, there’s a coda to the episode; a hint as to what’s to come next.

The peasants have heard the King is in town and are ready to protest in the only way they know how: they erect a giant King Donald sitting on his golden toilet, while a man walks around in front of the American news cameras holding a placard that reads “They’re all owned by the Rothschilds”. And such is the power of the King’s magic, nobody is willing to discuss if anti-Semitism is a problem in UK politics. They are too busy laughing as a giant blimp baby takes to the air.

Fade to black.

And perhaps weep a little…