Template:Season 5 plot

Plot
The War of the Five Kings, once thought to be drawing to a close, is instead entering a new and more chaotic phase. Westeros is on the brink of collapse, and many are seizing what they can while the realm implodes, like a corpse making a feast for crows. Tywin Lannister is dead, shot on the privy by his long-abused dwarf son Tyrion. The crazed boy-king Joffrey Baratheon, Tywin's grandson, is also dead after being poisoned at his own wedding, and succeeded by his younger and more pliable brother, Tommen. Queen Cersei Lannister succeeds her father as the head of House Lannister, and once again takes over as Queen Regent, as Tommen has yet to come of age. Cersei has been blocked by several powerful men over the years, including her husband King Robert Baratheon and his friend Eddard Stark, but due to her betrayals they are both dead. Now with even Tywin and Joffrey dead, and Tyrion fleeing the realm, there are no more checks on Cersei's power, and she is essentially the Ruling Queen of the Seven Kingdoms in all but name. However, Cersei is neither a master strategist nor a skilled diplomat (unlike her father and brother) and she faces mounting crises that would have strained even their abilities.

House Lannister and its allies have managed to crush House Stark, but in many ways it was a pyrrhic victory. The Iron Throne was already in massive debt to foreign banks before the war even began, and the Lannisters' immense wartime spending increased the crown's debts to crippling levels. The Lannisters must now desperately attempt to placate the Iron Bank of Braavos, by far the largest of the foreign banks, and the one which the crown owes most of its huge debts to. The game of thrones is, unfortunately, not a simple game of cyvasse in which the pieces can be quickly reassembled: vast swathes of Westeros have been devastated by civil war, and it may take a full generation for them to rebuild. The Riverlands, where most of the war was fought, have been reduced to a burned out husk. Nominally the Lannisters and their House Frey allies control the Riverlands, but it has been reduced to a lawless and corpse-filled devastation, hardly controlled by anyone. Winter is fast approaching, but instead of stockpiling harvests the past few years, the great lords have been busy destroying one of the main breadbasket regions of the Seven Kingdoms. Combined with the realm's massive debts to foreign banks, starvation level conditions are starting to set in for the smallfolk across the realm. Outraged by the willful indifference of their rulers to their well-being for so long, commoners are starting to fall back onto old cultural touchstones, channeling their frustration into religious fanaticism. A popular disgust movement spreads across Westeros, and makes its way to the capital. Adding to these woes is the increasing rivalry between the Lannisters and their Tyrell allies, specifically between Cersei and Margaery Tyrell. The Lannisters only managed to win on the battlefield with the armies and food resources won by their alliance with the House Tyrell of the Reach. Now that Tywin is dead, and Margaery is soon to be King Tommen's queen, the Tyrells are no longer pretending to be polite to the Lannisters, but openly demanding greater concessions and key positions of power. With half of the Lannister armies slaughtered by Robb Stark during the war, their financial resources depleted, and the Tyrells controlling the only major breadbasket region untouched by the war, the Lannisters are having to face the reality that the Tyrells hold numerous advantages over them. Just as Robert Baratheon became king only to become dependent on the support of the Lannisters, the Lannisters have now become dependant on the Tyrells. Without the political acumen of Tywin or Tyrion, Queen Regent Cersei struggles to address these major challenges. Adding even further to her woes is that the king's Small Council has been gutted, with Hand of the King Tywin dead, Master of Coin Petyr Baelish leaving for the Eyrie, and both Tyrion and Master of Whisperers Varys fleeing the capital city. Of the original Small Council when the Lannisters first seized power, only Grand Maester Pycelle remains.

Besides the Reach, only the regions which have remained neutral so far still have all of their armies and resources intact: the Vale, ruled by House Arryn, and Dorne, ruled by House Martell. With nearly all the other Great Houses defeated or half-exhausted, the fresh armies of the Vale and Dorne can drastically alter the political playing field, depending on which side they choose to join. The ultimate result of the war was to exhaust the Starks, Lannisters, and other Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms - exactly as Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish had planned. The secret architect of the conflict, it was Littlefinger who was responsible for poisoning Robert's Hand, Jon Arryn, by conspiring with his own wife Lysa Arryn. Littlefinger then engineered the betrayal of Eddard Stark, only to later assist Olenna Tyrell in assassinating King Joffrey at his own wedding. Baelish has now murdered Lysa, mere days after wedding her, and seized power over the Vale as regent for her young son. For the moment, Baelish remains in the Vale, consolidating his new hold over the Vale lords through his stepson Robin and his position as Lord Protector of the Vale. Alongside Baelish is the black-haired "Alayne", his ward and "niece" - secretly, Sansa Stark, who fell into Littlefinger's custody after he helped her escape her long imprisonment at Joffrey's royal court. In the deserts of the deep south of Westeros, the people of Dorne demand vengeance for the death of Prince Oberyn, who died in a trial by combat at the hands of Ser Gregor Clegane. Leading the call to enter the war against the Lannisters are Oberyn's paramour, Ellaria Sand, and the eldest of his eight daughters: Obara, Nymeria, and Tyene. But Doran Martell, the Prince of Dorne and Oberyn's older brother, may be of a different mind. Further complicating the matter is that early in the war, the Lannisters bribed the Martells into staying neutral by offering a marriage-alliance, sending Cersei's daughter Myrcella to Dorne to betroth her to Doran's son Trystane. Myrcella is still a ward living in Dorne's capital, Sunspear.

The most dire situation in Westeros, however, is in the North and at the Wall. The massive assault against Castle Black by the wildling army of Mance Rayder was defeated at the last moment by the surprise arrival of Stannis Baratheon and his remaining forces. Stannis withdrew from his island stronghold Dragonstone to reach the Wall by sea, to defend the realm of which he feels he is the only rightful king. With his home territories in the Stormlands overrun, Stannis needs to win the allegiance of Robb Stark's defeated bannermen, to rally the North again as a springboard against Lannister rule, as well as the support of Jon Snow, who therefore must walk a political tightrope between Stannis and his vows, since the Night's Watch is sworn to strict political neutrality. Though the battle against the wildlings is all but over, the Night's Watch is in its own dire conditions. With almost all of the Watch's top officers either killed or missing, among them Lord Commander Jeor Mormont and First Ranger Benjen Stark, the organization has been left leaderless during this time of crisis, and therefore will have to navigate a contentious election for a new Lord Commander. All the while, the White Walkers and their ever-growing army of the dead are bearing down on the Wall itself, intent on spilling over it to destroy the lands of men beyond, ignorant of the long-forgotten but all-too-real danger. The main armies of the Northern Houses, however, were slaughtered in the south at the Red Wedding, and the large main army of House Bolton has just returned to the North following the recapture of Moat Cailin. The Boltons switched to the Lannister side during the betrayal at the Red Wedding, during which their leader Lord Roose Bolton personally killed Robb Stark, and they have been installed as the new rulers of the North in the name of King Tommen and the Lannisters. With the other Northern Houses defeated and weakened, the Lannister-backed Bolton army can now suppress any feeble opposition to their rule. Meanwhile, Roose's psychotic bastard son Ramsay Snow - now legitimized as Ramsay Bolton - is the new Lord of Winterfell under his father, reoccupying the castle which he personally burned out previously. With the Boltons in power, Ramsay is now free to commit numerous atrocities throughout the North, such as flaying men alive and hunting and killing young women for sport.

However, the struggle for the North is not yet over. Various areas of the North's western coast are still held by ironborn invaders under Balon Greyjoy, who chose to crown himself as King of the Iron Islands and attack the North during Robb Stark's march south rather than ally with him against the Lannisters. Balon's son and heir, Theon, who himself was a ward of Lord Eddard Stark and one of Robb's closest advisors, turned on the Starks and led the assault himself but was betrayed by his own men and is now a prisoner of the Boltons, having been brutally flayed, tortured, and psychologically broken by Ramsay himself, who has reduced Theon to his personal slave, "Reek". East of Westeros, after murdering his own father, Tyrion Lannister has fled across the Narrow Sea to the Free Cities, his future intentions unknown even to himself. Accompanied by Varys, he arrives in the east, unaware that the erstwhile Master of Whisperers might yet have secrets to reveal. Further north, meanwhile, representatives from the Iron Throne travel to the Free City of Braavos to assuage the Iron Bank's frustrations about all of the money the Lannisters owe. Unbeknownst to all, Arya Stark has also fled to Braavos, due to a favor she was owed for saving the life of one of the mysterious guild of assassins in Braavos known as the Faceless Men. Further east in Slaver's Bay, Daenerys Targaryen's hold over Meereen has become very precarious, as ruling the city is becoming much more difficult than conquering it was. Sectarian violence is rampant between the former slaves and former slave-masters, revenge attacks are on the rise, and the resurgent slavers at Yunkai are rallying all those who oppose her. Daenerys's three dragons, now growing to dangerous size, have become uncontrollable and she can no longer rely upon them to defeat her enemies on the battlefield. Drogon burned a child to death while he was hunting and fled the city, forcing Daenerys to chain up the remaining two dragons in the caverns underneath the city. In addition, Daenerys is still distraught over the recent revelations concerning her once-trusted advisor Jorah Mormont, whom she exiled from the city as punishment. Her remaining advisors Ser Barristan Selmy, Missandei, and the sellsword Daario Naharis attempt to help hold her reign together. But unbeknownst to Daenerys, word has finally spread to Westeros that the last living Targaryen heir has hatched three live dragons. No longer a mere curiosity halfway across the world, several different factions in Westeros are now pondering how Daenerys and her dragons will factor into the already confusing and multi-sided civil war still tearing the Seven Kingdoms apart. Envoys are beginning to head east to court Daenerys's allegiance: but those who try to dance with dragons run the risk of being burned.