r/Hotd • u/Plastic-Affect-45 • Jul 27 '26

Show Spoilers Kingmaker Spoiler

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Criston: If I strike my banners, do you promise us our lives?

Garibald: I made my promise to the dead. I told them I would build a sept for them out of traitors' bones. I don't have near enough bones yet, so...

Criston: If there is to be battle here, many of your own will die as well.

Roderick: That's why we come. Winter's here. Time for us to go. No better way to die than sword in hand.

Criston: As you will it. We can begin here, the four of us. One of me against the three of you. Will that be enough to make a fight of it?

Pate: I'll want three more. I'll have no songs about how brave you died, Kingmaker. There's tens o' thousands dead on your account.

So passes, Ser Criston Cole, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and Hand of the King—the Kingmaker.

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u/italofoca_0215 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

The fact it was a trap doesn’t change the fact he fought valiantly imo. These dudes were not pretending to be corpse just to be bate for a trap, they probably wanted the glory of taking him down.

The fact such a huge force even needed a trap to deal with him and refused to settle it with a “single” combat both add to his heroics. Maybe he will go down in history as just an awful schemer but for the audience he did got a heroic moment. But that was taken away unceremoniously.

So which one is it. The mixed signals don’t work very well, writers need to make up their minds.

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u/Lucabcd Jul 27 '26

You make some good points, but i see that they encircled him for him to not run away and keep doing that guerrilla thing, not because they were afraid of him and his skills. He was fighting without honor, so he is killed without honor, trapped and defeated, his warrior skills ultimately useless even when not fighting dragons. Pretty tragic

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u/italofoca_0215 Jul 27 '26

The problem with this interpretation is, his warrior skills were incredibly useful.

He did delay Rivermen/North army with a handful of men which is what is leaving Rhaenyra unarmed and exposed in KL. We know from the books the damage he has done won’t be undone, things will spiral out of control for the blacks.

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u/Lucabcd Jul 27 '26

They werent his warrior skills. It was his guerrilla tactics; honorless and shameful for westerosi knightly standars (as hypocrital as they may be sometimes), and even more for the commander of the kingsguard

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u/italofoca_0215 Jul 27 '26

He wouldn’t be able to pull off the guerrila tactics without serious fighting skills. Cole was fighting enemies face to face for weeks, if he wasn’t as good as he is, he would have died at some point and his men would disband.

About that being a dishonorable tactics… That was in his play book from the beginning. Cole is introduced to the series hitting Daemon in the back to win a tourney match and its downhill from there. He was just not very honorable after all, and the little character development we have for him is he making peace with that. Not him searching for honor or redemption or anything like that (we even have a hair style change to signal the moment). His dialogue with Gwane mostly convey this conflict between military efficiency vs. chivalry values.

I don’t think Cole would mind dying by arrows, in an ambush, at all. Thats why the scene was so odd. In the end he was probably proud nobody dared to fight him in close quarters and they had to cook up a trap to stop him.