HBO responds to 'Game of Thrones' cup drama: 'Daenerys ordered herbal tea'

A very modern prop snuck into shot in the latest 'Game of Thrones' episode - and HBO has now admitted its mistake

A stray coffee cup that sat front and centre at The Feast of Winterfell has been outed as the wayward intruder the internet believed it to be.

Eagle-eyed Game of Thrones fans set the internet alight after the airing of the latest season eight episode, The Last of the Starks, seemed to introduce a new and wholly unexpected character: a takeaway coffee cup, probably of the Starbucks variety.

The National even did its own sleuthing on Monday, where our own dedicated team of pundits spent many minutes of arduous pausing and rewinding to identify the intruder in question. Our conclusion?  It certainly did look like a takeaway coffee cup, but we couldn't commit to one chain. (Sorry, Starbucks.)

The most compelling piece of evidence was the fact that the white, lidded cup in question was conspicuously missing from this still from the same scene, but the rest of the set remains exactly intact:

Now, finally, the show's creators HBO have weighed in on the latest controversy in Westeros, admitting the brief cameo was, in fact, a faux pas.

But at the same time, they did attempt to take the oversight in stride, suggesting Emilia Clarke's character, Daenerys Targaryen, had simply been craving a healthy beverage.

"The latte that appeared in the episode was a mistake," the company said in a statement.

"Daenerys had ordered a herbal tea."

But while HBO may have laid the blame at the Mother of Dragons' feet, the internet has since identified another more likely culprit.

A Reddit theory later circulated that outed actress Sophie Turner, aka Sansa Stark, as being perhaps involved in an elaborate scheme to sabotage her arch-rival Daenerys.

The thread reasoned that fellow Thrones actress Bella Ramsey posted a photo of her and Turner together late last month, where Turner was clasping a takeaway cup very similar to the offending vessel in question.

Others simply mused incredulously over the fact that a show that reportedly costs $15 million (Dh55m) per episode to make could have glossed over such a jarring mistake.