Reviewed: GOT: The Lion and the Rose

There will be spoilers ahead, so read on at your own risk...

With this episode being so heavily focused on the royal wedding, we did not get to see many of the other main characters like Daenerys, Arya or Jon Snow. However, we did a small look at some of the other characters who were absent in the premiere of season 4 last week and I'll dive into them first before focusing on the wedding.

The most noteworthy of the other appearances in this episode was Theon's I felt. The episode starts off with him, he's changed a lot since we last saw him and he now appears to be loyal to Ramsay Snow, Roose Bolton's bastard son. Is he actually loyal or is he just acting like it because it's the best and maybe only for him to stay alive is the question that his segment brings up.

Ramsay made Theon (or Reek as he is known by now) shave him in front of Roose Bolton after Roose expressed his anger at Ramsay's decision to cut off Theon's manhood, as he lost Theon's value as a trade asset, to prove that Reek is truly loyal and he even chooses this as the time to inform Reek of Robb Stark's death. Reek does his best to not react and continues shaving. He even informs Bolton that Bran and Rickon Stark are still alive and that they may be at Castle Black with Jon Snow. Reek is now just a shade of the person he once was and Roose was fairly accurate when labelling him as a "creature".

One of my favourite moments from the episode was a hilarious cut from Theon's disturbed face as he watches Ramsay's dogs kill a poor girl they were hunting to Podrick placing a sausage on Tyrion's plate as he has dinner with Jaime. Tyrion can obviously sympathise with Jaime and he does so by helping Jaime train to fight with his left hand by offering Bronn as his training partner. Jamie was seeking someone who would not tell all of King's Landing if the Kingslayer was unable to battle now that he had lost his right hand.

We also got to see one of the forgotten characters of the show, Stannis Boratheon. Presumably under the encouragement of the Lady Melisandre was making sacrifices to the Lord of Light, including his own brother in law. Stannis' story intrigues me, I'm not sure where it is heading, I expected it to fizzle out after suffering defeat in his siege of King's Landing but he is sticking around. I'm sure his future will become clearer in the upcoming weeks.

Someone elses future that is becoming clearer is Bran, in his extremely limited screen time he touched a weirwood tree and had a vision. Many things were in this vision but the one that stood out most was a giant Dragon shadow flying over King's Landing, was it Daenerys's dragons in the future or possibly one of the Targaryen dragons from the past? I suppose we can only wait and find out. Bran's segment was very promising and is hopefully a sign of things to come, because I felt his and Rickon's moments in season 3 were a bit dull comparative to the rest of the show.

Okay, now we've looked at some of the other goings-on from Westeros we can focus on the royal wedding, as King Joffrey marries Margaery of house Tyrell. The wedding itself was marvellous and was just as extravagant as you would expect a royal wedding with the Lannisters to be. Joffrey knew it was his day and wanted plenty of attention, Joffrey put on a comedy act of sort, a mock battle of the five kings played out by dwarves which seemed to offend just about everyone in attendance apart from the boy-king himself who was spitting out his food in laughter, Loras, Brienne and Sansa were far from pleased with how Renly and Robb were depicted and Tyrion was not impressed by how dwarves were being used for amusement.

Joffrey's cruelty would reach new heights with his need to humiliate his uncle Tyrion. Joffrey wanted Tyrion to join in with the actors and when Tyrion refused and spoke back, the King showed his power by pouring wine on to Tyrion's head and then making his uncle be his cup bearer. Tyrion had already been forced to say goodbye to Shae earlier in the episode so he was far from in the mood for Joffrey's games. Joffrey dropped and kicked away his goblet when Tyrion tried to pick it up in an attempt to prolong Tyrion's embarrassment. It was extremely awkward and tense for those in attendance, it's not like any of them had the power to tell Joffrey to stop, they had to sit there and endure it just like the rest of us watching.

The humiliation ends momentarily when the pie arrives and Joffrey cuts it open with his new valyrian steel sword, a gift from Tywin, killing a couple of the birds inside the pie as most of them fly away when he strikes it open. Joffrey was digging in to his pie when he decides it is too dry and he wants Tyrion to serve him wine to go with it. Tyrion hands Joffrey the goblet and he drinks, he begins to cough, Margaery believed he was choking and he ends up falling down and suffers a very brutal and justified death in the arms of his mother and father. His last action was pointing at Tyrion and placing the blame, Cersei orders that Tyrion is arrested and a brilliant rendition of 'The Rains of Castemere' in the credits brings the episode to a close.

Tyrion seemed just as shocked as everyone else with the Joffrey's death, so who are the major suspects for Joffrey's murder? I suppose everyone is because there isn't anyone in the seven kingdoms who didn't want him dead but some are more likely than others. Prince Oberyn would appear as the most obvious candidate, especially after he said "The Lannisters aren't the only ones who pay their debts" in the premiere of this season and he did want revenge for his fallen sister, niece and nephew after all. How about Tywin, Joffrey's grandfather has been far from thrilled with how Joffrey has been performing as king and he might have seen an opportunity to replace Joffrey with Tommen, who would be easier to control. Tyrion clearly had reason to kill the King but he is clearly far too smart to incriminate himself like that.

Margaery and Lady Olenna also both despised Joffrey but I doubt they would do anything that would prevent Margaery from being the Queen. There is however someone who would do anything to stop Margaery from being Queen, Cersei. The goblet of wine that may have poisoned Joffrey was placed on Margery's side of the table before he took the deadly sip. Maybe Cersei saw an opportunity to get rid of Margaery and free herself of her upcoming nuptials with Loras. After all they do say poison is a women's weapon.

Similar to Cersei, Loras Tyrell also had motive, he stormed out during Joff's mock battle because of how Renly was depicted and if the King was dead, he would no longer have to marry Cersei and Jaime had already told Loras that Cersei would kill him in his sleep if they were to be married. Is it possible that he would ruin his sister's chances at being Queen to get revenge for Renly and to prevent his marriage to Cersei? It's plausible. The truth is that we have no idea as George and the writers did such a good job of making so many people who attended the wedding have motive. There actually haven't been many mysteries since the show debuted besides the identity of Jon Snow's mother but this is a great one and I hope they have decided to drag it out so fans of the show can continue to have their theories of who the guilty party is.

But who did or did not kill Joffrey isn't the most important thing about this brilliant episode though; the most significant thing is simply that Joffrey is gone. We all hated Joffrey and probably wanted to see him killed in dramatic fashion, but there was no doubting that he was an incredible character and he will be sorely missed. Having such powerful evil was one of the things that makes The Game of Thrones so good; it wouldn't be interesting if everyone was a good guy. His presence will be very difficult to replace as such an important character but there are no shortage of candidates to step up to the plate. Joffrey's death may open up a larger role for Tywin, who is equally despicable or possibly Ramsay Snow, who is expected to see more screen time this season.

The episode itself was definitely on par with the incredible The Rains of Castamere that featured the 'Red Wedding' in season 3 despite playing out so differently, so much so that it didn't even hurt the quality of the episode by not featuring Daenerys or Arya. We will miss Joffrey who was expertly depicted on our screens over the last few years by Jack Gleeson, making a boy one of the most hated characters in television history is not easy but he did it.

Game of Thrones returns to our screens without a King on Sunday on HBO in the US and one day later on Sky Atlantic in the UK.