As a sporadic book reviewer, reviewing books when I get time, I haven’t touched the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin yet - and there’s a pretty good reason why. It’s too hard to review without leaking spoilers about the series. Each book left me frustrated and wanting to throw it across the room, especially the last book, which made me happy, made me sad, made me angry - and if I wasn’t on a Nook and it had been a paperback book, I likely would have tossed it across the room in a fit of anger before going back the few pages to make sure I read it right then getting upset again.
The June 2 episode, titled the Rains of Castamere, would have been more aptly named The Red Wedding as that is what every fan and every enemy of the show will remember it as. Which prompts this quote from Twitter - because it’s true.
Amanda Rainey @vodkandlimeTwitter today has just basically been people announcing they’re about to watch game of thrones followed by an hour’s silence then a meltdown
So many people, who obviously didn’t read the books, were so upset about this scene - they didn’t see it coming? How could they? However, the hints were all there. Subtle, very subtle hints throughout the season. And it was just as subtle in the books - you don’t realize what is happening till it happens. I’ll go over that in a bit.
However, if for some reason you came into Season 3 of Game of Thrones on HBO and expected things to come out with a happy ending - where the fuck have you been the last 2.5 seasons? Seriously? How could you expect anything to go well?
As @KimD+Trinh posted on Twitter “If you’re watching game of thrones tonight and haven’t yet read the series...You know nothing of pain, sweet summer child.”
So very true, especially since I’ve been through all 5 books and am waiting till 2015 for the next damn book to come out.
So let’s get this out of the way here and now. No character, no matter how important or awesome they may be, is safe from horrible mass murders. No event is holy and sanctimonious. Remember the Godfather? And the scene where his daughter is killed after the opera? Yeah, it’s like that. Nothing is holy. If you think something is going to be a good event, you need to get checked. Plain and simple, if you like a character, they will likely be killed off at some point in the series - probably horribly and violently. There is no “fairness” in this. This is about the good vs. evil and good is losing because GOOD IS BEING STUPID (though evil characters get their day too, don’t fret).
That being said, stop now if you haven’t read the books or watched through Episode 9 of Season 3 as this will contain spoilers. If you continue reading and get upset, that’s your fault. I warned ya - that would make you qualify as “good being stupid” if you continue reading and haven’t seen the episodes or read the books.
Now, let’s go over a few things - the deaths in each season - and why they happened.
Almost all of the “good” characters have character flaws which results in their untimely demise.
The first death, the Night’s Watchman, died because of a character flaw - cowardice. However, he saw white walkers and knows them to be real and true. And from what we’ve seen so far, the White Walkers may end up being more fearsome than the Lannisters.
Then you have the near-death of Bran. He had a character flaw as well - curiosity. Curiosity does kill the cat and Bran was lucky to have survived.
There are a few other minor deaths, which I’m not going to go into detail on, but rather the two major ones - Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark.
Robert was a character flaw of drunkedness and lewdness. Had Robert been thinking, considering, he would have known that he was drinking too much and stopped hunting. Or that the drink might have been tampered with a bit to make him a bit more drunk than he should have been - something that was implied in the books and in the episodes as well. It was an accident waiting to happen. He was killed due to his drunken stupidity.
Of all the characters, Ned’s death probably bothered me the most - well out of books 1 - 4. A death in book 5 tops that, but I won’t spoil it. To be perfectly honest, I wanted Sansa to die, not her dad. She was a moron and continues to be moronic till sometime at the end of book 3, but she’s still a pawn no matter what. Ned’s death was due to his honor - plain and simple - and Joffrey’s lack of morality and ethics. It was the first show of Joffrey saying “I’m the king. Fuck all of my advisor’s advice, I’m going to behead him because he dared to speak treason (which was truth) against me.”
Ned should have never trusted any of the folks on the small council except for Sir Barristan. Instead he trusted everyone, including Littlefinger who said he shouldn’t trust him. Littlefinger had it right - of course he’s probably one of the biggest snakes in the books so far.
Of course, if we went back, Ned should have sat his happy ass on the throne, then none of this would happen - but it comes back to honor, he was fighting for Robert and Robert was his best friend and Robert was going to be on the throne, not him, but had it been different...well we’d never know.
Then we look at Daenerys, Drogo and Viserys. Other side of the world trying to make their way back across the ocean to the Seven Kingdoms.
Viserys dies from his greed and impatience. He wants his crown and throne and he wants it NOW. Who the hell would threaten a Dothraki lord? No one sane, that's for sure.
Drogo dies, ultimately, because Daenarys expected someone to help her when the woman really poisoned and cursed them all. Not a huge surprise there either - her village was just slaughtered and captured as slaves by the Dothraki. Once again, naivety at play.
Season 2, not as many characters die, but some still do die. I'm going to just gloss over the deaths. Sir Meryn got what he deserved, the followers of King Stannis "died" because the red witch wasn't with them and Renly died because his brother wanted him dead. The list there would go on quite a long time of people who wanted others dead or those who people expected to die (like Tyrion) and didn't.
Season 3...those of us that read the books knew The Red Wedding was coming. And even though we knew it was coming, most readers, if I had to guess, didn't really want to see it happen. And while some things changed from the book to the TV series, I think it was done to give a bigger impact and to create a smaller story than there currently is because if they did things exactly like the book, it wouldn’t have created as much impact.
No one wants to see Robb, who has won every battle thus far, die to a sniveling "Late Frey" because Frey is upset that he broke his vows. No one wants to see Catelyn, who thinks her boys are dead, see another of her sons killed then herself killed. Nor the hundreds of Stark bannermen that died because they followed their leader.
But then there were the "added" killings. In the books, Robb's wife was a distant relative of a Lannister and was left behind at Riverrun to protect her from Frey's tongue and behaviors - and in case she was pregnant with an heir (she wasn't). So the brutal stabbing of Robb's Valyrian wife in the womb and killing her wasn't in the book. Nor did Catelyn kill Frey's new wife, it was his mentally struggling child who was also a jester. So in many ways, the Red Wedding was worse in the TV series than in the books - not that the books weren't bad enough.
Now, after all of this, I want to talk about the twitter posts I’ve seen.
@BrieMedina “F___ YOU GAME OF THRONES IM CRYING SO HARD I”M NOT MOVING EVER AGAIN I’LL AVENGE THE STARK FAMILY MYSELF GODDAMIT”
@EvaKlarenbeek “I LOVE THIS SHOW AND I LOVE THE BOOKS BUT I HATE THEM AT THIS MOMENT AND I WANT TO BURN THEM AND PUKE ON THEIR ASHES.”
@e__music “A big huge eff you to the Games of Thrones author. Thanks. Thanks, jerk. I hate you. YOU ARE THE WORST!!! The Worst!!!”
And they go on and on. People cursing him for being a horrible writer. People cursing HBO for doing The Red Wedding (those obviously hadn’t read the books). People being upset because their favorite characters died - being very upset and having *gasp* an emotional reaction to characters they grew to love, who they hoped would go further and succeed in the name of whatever dying.
That’s not the sign of a horrible writer - that’s the sign of a GOOD writer. You love the characters. You don’t want them to be killed, not after three books (seasons with them) but here they are, brutally murdered at what should have been a happy little wedding where bygones were bygones. But that's not what happened. What should have been a sanctimonious event was ruined. The wedding isn't even consumated that night (wow has to suck for Edmure huh?)
There were hints of things to come, both in the books and in the series. They were subtle. You definitely don't catch them. Remember the letters that Tywin were writing and Tyrion asked about and was blown off with a vague phrase? Those letters were promising Frey backing if he did this one thing. The burning of the three leeches with each one named? Yes, only one has died from that so far....I won't spoil the rest.
Don't expect happy things, not from weddings, not from funerals, not from anything in the series. Game of Thrones isn't lilly white good winning over evil. It's not going to be that and if that's what you're expecting, you're reading/watching the wrong series.
And to finally sum up The Red Wedding and Episode 9...thanks to @nurberxo for putting it so eloquently. “You know why the end credits had no music? The sound of your sobbing and sniffling is the music.”
Pretty much.
