Daenerys Targaryen Sits Upon the Iron Throne — Print & Oil Painting

The throne has been painted as a black corona. Dozens of blades fan up and outward behind the seated figure in a rough semicircle, longest at the top and shortest at the sides, all of them pointed, none of them parallel, and the effect is less a chair than a burst of dark rays with somebody sitting at the centre of it.

Against that, the gown is the largest area of light in the picture. It falls from the waist across the seat and spills down over the steps to the bottom edge in a single pale sheet, cool white with grey-blue in the folds, and it has been given more square inches than the figure wearing it. A black sash at the waist is the only interruption.

Two dragons close the composition at the base. One rests its head against her left hand in dark red and charcoal, horned and heavy-lidded; another curls in at the right with a low orange glow burning in its throat. They are painted at a scale that makes them furniture, which is the joke: the most dangerous things in the room are being used as armrests.

The books describe the Iron Throne as a monstrous thing, a barbed heap of a thousand surrendered swords welded together in dragonfire, far larger and crueller than the seat the television series built. This version leans towards the page. Part of our Game of Thrones collection, where Jaime Lannister slumped on the same throne shows what it looks like with the ceremony taken out.