What that means for our heroes: Anyone holding out for Yara's triumphant deus ex machina from the sea might be out of luck. If you were going to put a magnificent sea battle in your penultimate episode, after all, you'd probably make sure the harbor was better and more accurately emphasized in the opening credits' map. While the harbor hasn't actually vanished entirely - the Blackwater can be seen right where it belongs in screenshots from the episode five teaser - it does suggest that perhaps Euron's armada and the water element will be secondary to the main assault. gZiZRSBgdxДЄs has been astutely pointed out on Twitter, the Game of Thrones opening credits appear to have done away with the 'landing' part of King's Landing. Now if there is going to be some sort of cleverness, the only option is to use actual magic - say, from a certain shapeshifting nobody.ДЄccording to the intro credits, Cersei managed to move KingвЂ™s Landing so that it no longer has a harbor. Why else would the showrunners remake the entire look of King's Landing just to insert the space for sprawling flatlands? Cersei might have cut down trees but she certainly didn't bulldoze those gigantic hills. That's bad news: The razed region around King's Landing likely means that even though Jon has the disadvantage, there is going to be a big battle outside the castle walls. Worryingly, in the episode five preview we actually see Tyrion, Jon, and Ser Davos assembled outside the walls, as if waiting to make a brute-force attack: Now tunneling or some other sneak-attack have been ruled out. Cersei is clearly using the same technique trees and brush would give the usurper armies an advantage of cover and stealth, which they frankly need - battered and tired after the Battle of Winterfell, Jon and Daenerys' troops are going to be at a disadvantage on an open field. The technique of clear-cutting is borrowed from the men of the Night's Watch, who kept a cleared strip of land between the Haunted Forest and the Wall as both a warning track and for protection, so wildlings couldn't sneak up on Castle Black. Let's start with the deforestation around the walls of King's Landing, because it's actually the most realistic part of the retconned castle. The hills and trees are gone - that means there's no chance of a sneak attack. This reveals several things about how the showdown between Jon, Daenerys, and Cersei might go.ДЎ. Those changes alone, though, would be just another case of harmless retconning if it weren't for the fact that Game of Thrones' showrunners transformed King's Landing right on the eve of battle.

The hilly, lush coastal town of earlier seasons is no more, replaced by a city in a sprawling, arid flatland, where the harbor is no longer the defining geographical trait and the locations outside the walls might be more important than those within. This season's continued remodeling of King's Landing isn't the first instance of retroactive continuity in Game of Thrones, but it is quite drastic. Oh, silly me, of course you would put your army in that giant flat swath of land that had never made an appearance before the very end of last season.

Uh, but hold up, how? Isn't King's Landing built on a small peninsula, and protected from the flank by hilly forests? Where is there room to assemble an army? Game of Thrones fans are still catching their breath after the Battle of Winterfell, but Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen are already assembling their armies outside the gates of King's Landing, ready for the final battle against Cersei to take the Iron Throne.

Game of thrones kings