18QUEENS RULES
Last promo ‘Throne’ found in Fort Totten
Move over Cersei, a new queen sits on the Iron Throne.
The last of six Iron Throne replicas hidden by HBO to promote the upcoming eighth and final season of “Game of Thrones” was fittingly found by a Queens woman in the borough’s Fort Totten on Thursday. It’s the only one to be discovered on U.S. soil.
Melanie Joaquin, 22, had a feeling the final throne would be hidden at the fort before HBO even posted its hint Thursday morning on the show’s Twitter account. “If you just look at it, it looks like ‘Game of Thrones’ should be shot there,” Joaquin told the Daily News. “Movies and TV shows film there all the time. Once you see it, you don’t really forget it. I was just surprised that I got there first.”
Once she saw the video of the throne setting that HBO posted, she sprinted for Fort Totten, located in the Bay Terrace neighborhood of northern Queens. “I knew exactly where it was because every year the park has a haunted house and it’s in that battery,” Joaquin, a shared office space manager, said. “The battery is basically where all the cannons were held and it’s really creepy and it’s one of those places in New York City that you never forget. You can see sports in the wall that have cannon ball dents.”
The fort is now run by the Parks Department. It was built by the U.S. Army in 1862 during the Civil War. The Iron Throne will remain on display through Monday at 7 p.m. in the basement of Fort Totten, and yes, fans can come by and get pictures sitting on the seat made of swords during regular operating hours.
Called Quest For The Throne, the promotion’s previous thrones were found in England, Sweden, Brazil, Spain and Canada. Like the global scavenger hunt’s other five winners, Joaquin was proclaimed the queen of this throne by actors in “Game of Thones” garb and had a crown bestowed on her.
“Oh my God, it’s awesome,” Joaquin said of the crown. "It’s heavy, and plated to make it look like gold and it has jewels on it. And it came with this really cool stand to put it on but I broke it already because I’m clumsy.”
“Quest For The Throne honors the distances traveled by characters in the show, and as the host of the world premiere, we felt it was only fitting to end this epic quest in New York,” HBO said in a statement. “Fort Totten Torpedo Battery in Queens was selected because of its dark and ominous setting, reminiscent of the basement of King’s Landing, where the Mad King stored his destructive wildfire, and where Queen Cersei waged to destroy the Great Sept of Baelor.”
Thursday’s clue on where to find the throne read, “A new city flying a starry banner seeks protection from the Great War.”
Some had immediately speculated in the comments section that the last throne was somewhere in the Big Apple because of the word “new.”
“Game of Thrones” returns April 14 for just six final episodes. The person who sits on the Iron Throne rules over the Seven Kingdoms in the fictional Westeros, the continent where the series is set.