Such is my investment in Game of Thrones that this trailer, which gives us brief looks at the characters looking…basically like themselves without much context, can still get me pretty excited:

[SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE NOVELS TO FOLLOW]

I think the biggest question for me will be how the second season of the show handles the themes of governance that are so important to A Clash of Kings. Other than Jon Snow’s attempts to reform the Wall, the struggle between Joffrey and Cersei on one side and Tyrion on the other over how to run King’s Landing — and by extension, the realm — is one of the few experiments in and debates over governing philosophies we ever see in action. Cersei’s devoted all of her efforts to bolstering the hard power of King’s Landing, recruiting new men into the City Watch, spending coin on wildfire, displaying heads on walls, and paying for it all with a tax that’s throttled already constricted trade. Tyrion comes in and shifts the balance, opening up trade, making a deal with the city’s armorers that both bolsters their trade and lets him prepare to wage unconventional warfare, and takes the heads off the walls in an effort to make the regime less savage. He institutes actual diplomatic relations with Dorne, which you think someone else might have considered at some point earlier, given their utterly badass reputation.

He’s not perfect, of course. The riot that sweeps the city is an augury that neither Tyrion or Cersei read fully (much to the latter’s dismay later) — it always surprises me that Cersei and her advisers are caught off-guard by an upswing in religious fervor during times of insecurity. The fact that even the Lannister who loves learning, who actually has the intellectual curiosity to want to see the end of the world, can’t accept what Ser Allister Thorne is telling him about the White Walkers on the border suggests something powerful about the limitations of our collective ability to grapple with the monstrous and unthinkable. And Tyrion is too personal when it comes to reforming the Small Council, failing to appreciate Maester Pycelle’s abilities and connections (and given the scene the show gave us of his secret vigor, I wonder if he might not resist Tyrion more strongly than in the novels).

All in all, it’s a parable for the dangers of allowing your governance to become personal. Tyrion is doomed to failure when his rule becomes as much about discipling Joffrey and proving his father wrong about his abilities. Both are futile tasks. Joffrey’s already a hopeless sadist with an elevated sense of his own wisdom by the time Tyrion gets anywhere close to him. Tywin ultimately turns out to be flexible, but not in ways that lend him strength or reason. King’s Landing might have turned out to be genuinely salvageable, the unbreakable link in a chain of Lannister defenses. But disciplining these three generations of Lannisters or restoring them to decency isn’t a project worth Tyrion’s considerable talents.

Back in June, I put Hilary Mantel’s masterful novel about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII, Wolf Hall, on my Introductory Guide to Women-Centered Culture For Guys syllabus. Now, HBO’s making a miniseries out of it.

This is great news for a couple of reasons. First, if it’s done right, the adaptation will be a great look at — in addition to the birth of the Church of England — European trade, the consolidation of church properties that led to the founding of Cardinal College at Oxford, and the allegations that Thomas More actively promoted the torture of Protestants during the lead-up to England’s split with the Catholic Church. Wolf Hall is a phenomenal novel about personal investment in politics. Watching Thomas Cromwell escape his father’s vicious abuse through the kindness of Amsterdam’s cloth merchants and the mercenary armies of the continent; Cardinal Wolsey fret over the future of the college he wanted to make a jewel; or the cold home More builds to prop up the edifice of his righteousness, the show builds a complicated definition of the means and costs of being a genuinely world-historical figure.

And for all that it’s big, it’s a strikingly personal novel. We see what it means to be sold off for your chastity, the cost of being an object of obsessive pursuit in a way that makes a mockery of Twilight. It’s a shame that Natalie Dormer already played Anne Boelyn in The Tudors so she can’t take on a more nuanced version of the role here. Cromwell’s relationship with his late wife, and later, with her sister, who is married to another man, are infinitely tender. The loss of his daughter, the disappointment of his son, sting like whips. And it’s a marvelous novel of friendship, whether it’s Cromwell and Wolsey or Cromwell and Imperial diplomat Eustace Chapuys. I don’t really know how a miniseries will capture the Cabinet of Wonders-like effect of the novel, which is one of the most effective evocations of a historic worldview I’ve ever read. But I’m glad it’s not getting reduced to a movie, and that some serious writerly fire-power will be behind it. HBO’s movie team has been wildly on their game lately, so I can’t wait to see what they do with this.