The scene in King’s Landing at the end of Game of Thrones season 5 and A Dance With Dragons isn’t looking very bright, if you’re a Lannister loyalist. The family’s once-iron grip on the Iron Throne is not just weakening, it’s nearly broken. And I wonder how much longer it can last in Winds of Winter. The Lannisters are on a precipice—and I’m not sure Daenerys will be the one to push them over it.

Game of Thrones Season 6: The Fall of the House of Lannister

Spoilers for Dance follow. By the end of the latest Game of Thrones book, Cersei Lannister is about to go on trial for her life, a fight that is by no means a sure thing in her favor. Kevan Lannister, the Hand of the King and regent after Cersei’s arrest, is dead, killed by Varys precisely because he is more competent than his niece. Tommen, the only other prominent Lannister in the court, is, of course, a child… and not an assertive one.

Kevan’s death and Cersei’s continuous imprisonment leaves something of a power vacuum in King’s Landing. For now, Tommen will be ever more firmly in the hands of his wife’s family, and that’s fine—they’re more competent (and better people) than Cersei anyway. But Varys’s plan is for Kevan’s death to put a wedge in the Tyrell-Lannister alliance. If that works, then the power vacuum will be complete. The Tyrell-Lannister alliance won not just the Battle of Blackwater but the entire War of the Five Kings, and if it fractures, all bets for the future are off.

Varys wants Aegon to take over King’s Landing; he’s said as much. But I’m not sure the Lannisters will even last that long. If Cersei remains under the High Sparrow’s control, she’s useless; if she somehow escapes justice, the capital will probably be in even worse shape. Maybe the Tyrells with Tommen can hold the city on their own… but it may turn into a frothing heap of unrest. If Aegon wins at Storm’s End, he may find a King’s Landing without a king, or at least without a useful one. I’m not sure that Targaryens will be the ones to topple Lannister rule. I think it may well fall apart entirely on its own before they even get there, and then the dragons pick up the pieces, just as they did three hundred years before.