Beheading Ned - Khal Drogo

Warning: This article may contain spoilers from any and all of the books.

We’re back once again with another super amazing article of Beheading Ned! Alright, I’ll level with you; it might not be super amazing. But it’s still better than whatever you’re procrastinating on to read this. This weeks’ question takes us north to the Wall for a little trivia. We all know Jon Snow becomes Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, but what number commander is he (e.g. 20^th, 100^th, etc.)?

Assuming you didn’t come here just to answer some silly trivia question, let’s go on to the focus of this article. After building the Nedly Dothraki deck some time ago, it dawned on me that one Khal Drogo in particular is extremely Nedly. He will be the focus of our article this time around. But before we explore the card, let’s take a look at the brief life of Khal Drogo.

We first met Khal Drogo when he was bartering with Illyrio. The deal was a new bride in exchange for an army to help Viserys Targaryen reclaim his throne in Westeros. Viserys pointed out to his starry-eyed sister how Khal Drogo had never known defeat.

The savage Khal led a massive Khalasar with nearly 40,000 horsed warriors. With his new bride by his side, his army moved across the Dothraki Sea, sacking any town they passed. During one of these battles, the mighty Khal was cut. The Khal was not worried, however his new found love insisted he be treated by a random f***ing woman they picked up after they just destroyed her town and raped her a bunch. Needless to say, this old crone decided to exact her revenge on the Khal and his bride by pretty much killing him and his unborn child. Seriously, who didn’t see this coming? Why the f*** would this lady help the guy who destroyed her home? Dany dropped the ball on this one. I may be just a bit too upset about this, but I really liked Khal Drogo. And then he gets nagged by his wife until he dies. He never lost a battle, but he dies from a paper cut. The end.

And there you have it! The tragically brief life of Khal Drogo. But enough about him as a person, let’s talk about him as a card. The version of Khal Drogo I found to be most Nedly is Khal Drogo (QoD) and there are several very important reasons why.

Let’s start off with the basics. What we have here is a Targaryen character with a Military and Power icon who also has a war crest. These all make perfect sense when we consider that the Khal was an amazing warrior who commanded a great army. He also led this army into many battles where he would war with different cities. War, war crest, get it? It’s like someone was thinking when they gave him that crest.

Next we can look at the more detailed parts of the card. We see he has two traits which are Lord and Dothraki. The Dothraki trait makes perfect sense because he is a Dothraki. I don’t think that needs any more explanation. The Lord part also makes sense when we look at what a Khal really is. A Khal is the leader of a Khalasar. He has many followers and supporters who will fight and die for him. In this regard, he is much like the lords of Westeros. He also has the deadly keyword. I don’t think there is a single person who could say that Khal Drogo is not deserving of that keyword. I’m going to say it for the tenth time, this dude never lost a battle. Ever! And he was doing a lot of battling. So the deadly keyword fits and is super Nedly to his character.

Now we can look at what makes this card so Nedly.This Khal states that after he is killed, you can search for X Dothraki characters and add them to your hand, where X is Khal Drogo’s strength. Wow. Let’s go back to the books and look at something I failed to mention when I was ranting. A Khal will always have warriors that are closer to him than any other member of his Khalasar. These are called his Bloodriders and there are traditionally three of them. Their job is to be by the Khal’s side and, should he fall, live only long enough to avenge his death. What does all this mean and why should we care? Now go back to the card. In most cases when Khal Drogo (QoD) dies, he will have three strength meaning that you can pull, you guessed it, three Dothraki into your hand. These represent the Bloodriders who will then go out into battle and avenge the Khal’s death! How crazy is that?! I know some of you are sitting there thinking, “Huh, I never it thought of it like that before.” And why should you? Don’t waste your precious time thinking about how every card is or isn’t Nedly. That’s my job!

I hope you have thoroughly enjoyed this article of Beheading Ned. And if you didn’t, please comment and tell me how I f***ed up. Before I go, I want to issue a challenge to my readers. Every time you lose while playing thrones, you must get your hair cut. The person with the longest hair at Worlds wins! Good luck!