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The Golden Company is supposed to be some 20,000 soldiers and 2,000 horses. In S08E01 the commander of The Golden Company confirms these numbers when speaking with Cersei.

But when we see them marching out of Kings Landing's gates in S08E05, there seem to only be hundreds of them and there were no horses.

What happened to the rest of them?

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    Also no horses. They had like 2k of them
    – KharoBangdo
    May 13, 2019 at 15:53
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    Perhaps you should define terms. Where is it stated that the Golden Company has 20,000 warriors? Where was it stated that the entire Golden Company marched out of kings Landing's gate in that episode? Where were their numbers stated in that episode, or did you count them? For example, I think that it would be possible for someone to say that the United States Army marched down the road when actually only a company, or regiment, or division of soldiers marched there, and not the entire US army..
    – M. A. Golding
    May 13, 2019 at 16:59
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    @M.A.Golding youtube.com/watch?v=SAd5lzMeXJU
    – Gustavo Gabriel
    May 13, 2019 at 17:12
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    @M.A.Golding When the Golden company first arrives in Kings Landing, the commander of the Golden company says to Cerci that there are 20,000 men and 2,000 horses. The Golden company was not seen fighting anywhere else. Only Lanister soldiers were fighting inside the cities. I didn't say all of the golden company marched out the gate. I am asking where is the rest?
    – Kolappan N
    May 13, 2019 at 17:32
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    But they had 1 horse!
    – XtremeBaumer
    May 14, 2019 at 9:46

4 Answers 4

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No explanation for the horses, for the men, well, consider this screen cap: enter image description here

We see about 12 rows standing in front of the walls, 20,000/12 = 1666. They also seem to stand no more than 1m apart, so this would mean at most 1.6km of forces spread in front of the wall, if you look at for example the following map of King's landing this does not seem at all an unrealistic spread.

enter image description here

I couldn't find a map with (estimated) scale, but the total length of land-facing walls seems to be far over 1.6km. Since it's not a siege Daenerys' force will probably focus on a specific part of the wall but it's certainly not far-fetched they do need to cover a big piece of the wall and they need to cover every gate, even if the army is (not yet) to be seen at the other gates. We focus mostly on the single gate Jon is facing, but that doesn't mean the army is limited to that.

Though This does not at all explain the lack of cavalry, since we don't see any in the show it's not really possible to give any explanation for that.

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Out of universe the answer is budget. The episode had effect in almost every shot once the battle got started. They tried to frame the two armies facing off in a way that implied they were bigger than we were seeing, but it didn't work very well. In particular the timing was way off - Dany destroyed a supposedly large fleet in under a minute and then most of the Golden Company in a few seconds, before moving on to the ramparts.

The main focus of the episode was Dany's turn to heel and trying to resolve some personal story lines. So they spent more of the budget on those scenes, which resulted in undersized armies.

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  • Also explosions. Lots of explosions.
    – zibadawa timmy
    May 14, 2019 at 15:15
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Maybe they were inside King's Landing to hold the ground once Dany's army marches inside it. In this episode, we mostly witness innocents burning, but it could also be the fact that the Golden company and Lannister's army were also being targeted along with innocents.

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  • Not a great idea. People will hold the enemies outside the castle walls not inside it. We see both the civilians and the Lannister army inside the city. But we don't see any men of the Golden Company. Is there any proof that the Golden Company was indeed inside the city?
    – Kolappan N
    May 14, 2019 at 5:49
  • @KolappanNathan As I said, we were only shown innocents burning, made to realize that Dany was not such a good leader after all. But while burning the whole city she might have burned the whole Golden company with it.
    – FaizanHussainRabbani
    May 14, 2019 at 6:01
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The rest of them don't exist. The writing of the show has been inconsistent throughout, so it doesn't matter that it was said there were 20.000 of them. The show isn't beholden to past promises anymore, that much is clear. The writers are making shit up as they go along.

But if you are desperate for an in-universe explanation: the other 18.000 fleed King's Landing after realizing how pointless their arc were going to be anyways.

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    please read How to Answer and take the tour to learn how the site works. Try to answer with concrete information from the show, not speculations, ranting or opinions.
    – Luciano
    May 15, 2019 at 10:10

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