'Game of Thrones': A catch-up guide for newbies to the TV show

Never seen an episode but hoping to catch up? Here's what you need to know to start watching 'Game of Thrones' now.

4. Robb Stark

Helen Sloan/HBO

Robb is Ned Stark's oldest son. He went to war with the Lannister family after his father was executed. Robb's main goal is rescuing his sisters, Arya and Sansa, whom he believes are being held captive by the Lannisters. (Sansa is, but Arya has actually escaped.) Robb's advisers advocated that the North become its own country, independent of the Lannisters, so he now holds the title of the King of the North. He recently married a battlefield nurse, Talisa, despite the fact that he had already agreed to marry the daughter of a lord – an alliance that would have given him permission to cross through the lord's territory.

In season one, Robb's forces captured Jaime Lannister and held him as a captive. In season two, however, Robb's mother, Catelyn, released Jaime and sent him – in the custody of a female knight named Brienne – to the capital, hoping that he could be traded for her daughters. She did so without telling Robb and Robb, furious, has since ordered that she be kept under guard at all times.

4 of 9

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.