The 60 Most Important Deaths on Game of Thrones

3. Ser Waymar Royce and Gared

While most of the deaths on this list are here because of the impact they had on the characters or the plot itself, the show’s very-first onscreen deaths — a pair of Night’s Watchmen traveling beyond the Wall — are important because of what they tell us, the viewers. The deaths of Ser Waymar Royce and Gared may not have kicked us in the heart, but they clued us in on the most powerful threat to the Seven Kingdoms, the White Walkers, long before most of the main characters caught on.

In fact, for most of Westeros, the deaths of Ser Waymar and Gared are something to forget. Even Waymar’s father, Bronze Yohn Royce, never once inquires about his son’s fate while on screen. As the action shifts to Ned’s attempts to navigate the viper’s pit that is King’s Landing and the origins of the War of the Five Kings, it’s easy for even us viewers to forget it. But we can’t quite shake it. We saw the White Walkers reanimate the dead, and we know that has to become a problem for the characters we’re falling in love with sooner or later. Just to make sure we don’t go complacent, the show gives us just enough peeks at the White Walkers over the next few seasons to keep us nervous, but not so many that we stop enjoying the other storylines.

As viewers, we have no emotional attachment to Waymar or Gared; indeed, based on what little we see of the arrogant Waymar, we don’t like him. But their deaths serve a higher purpose. Game of Thrones can have dozens of plotlines going at any one moment, but only one will eventually bring everyone together, and it starts with these two.

2. Daenerys Targaryen

We had no emotional attachment to Waymar Royce and Gared, but by the time Daenerys Targaryen of the Many Titles was killed in the series finale, she’d become iconic. Millions of fans had fallen in love with her, which is part of the reason why her death hit so hard.

Dany’s death comes after she flash-fries large sections of King’s Landing in “The Bells,” the penultimate episode of the series. The girl who wanted to come to Westeros and become a good and just queen went too far and became the tyrant many people thought her father was…except that she had a dragon. The Mad King could only dream.

But in her final scene, as Jon confronts Daenerys in the Iron Throne room about what she’s done, she comes back to herself, at least a little. Emilie Clarke gives one last heartbreaking performance before Jon grits his teeth and stabs his queen to death, and then watches as Drogon lifts her body away to parts unknown.

It’s a beautiful, melodramatic masterpiece of a scene…in the abstract. Much has been made of how the show bungled the end of Dany’s character arc, and how her actions in the last couple episodes didn’t seem to make much sense. We’ll leave these questions for another day (or another article). For now, we pay homage to the death that ends the series, the big one so much of the story had been leading to. Love it or hate it, deaths don’t come much more important than this. – Dan