Game of Thrones, season 2

Robert's death leaves claimants everywhere: Joffrey on the throne, Robb winning every battle in the field, Renly holding court like a summer festival, Stannis - the actual heir by blood - grinding forward with a red priestess whose god delivers, and Balon Greyjoy reaching for old glories. Renly's candidacy ends in his tent, killed by something with no face that Melisandre gave birth to in a cave. The realm calls it rumour.

Tyrion runs King's Landing as acting Hand and is better at it than anyone wants him to be - managing Joffrey's cruelty, Cersei's suspicion and a starving city, and preparing for Stannis's fleet. The battle, when it comes, is the series' first great set piece: wildfire on the bay, the city holding by a margin of minutes, and Tywin arriving to take both the victory and the credit. Tyrion gets a scar and a demotion.

Theon Greyjoy, caught between the family that raised him and the one that owns him, takes Winterfell with twenty men and loses everything that mattered by holding it. Arya serves tea to Tywin at Harrenhal; Jon is taken by wildlings beyond the Wall; Daenerys loses her dragons to Qarth and takes them back in a house built for warlocks.

It ends far north, with a horn blowing three times, and an army of the dead walking past a hidden Sam toward the living.