All Men Must Fall in Love: Top 23 couples from Game of Thrones

19. Joffrey Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell

Just thinking about Joffrey Baratheon — guy-beheading, sex worker-torturing Joffrey Baratheon — in a romantic relationship of any kind is enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. But his betrothal to Margaery Tyrell was probably the closest he ever came.

Joffrey did not have good relationship with women...I mean, he didn't have good relationships with anyone, really, but let's keep this focused. He tormented his first fiancé, Sansa Stark, whenever he had a chance. He abused a sex worker. Even his mother he treated with disdain and disrespect. But Margaery, who was nothing if not extremely intelligent, found a way to take rocks and make lemonade. In a great scene from season 3, she goes into a room alone with Joffrey — by itself something not many people could safely do — and pushes all the right buttons. She flatters his ego, but not so much as to make him think she’s sucking up. She hints at a budding psychopathy within herself that Joffrey can nurse to full bloom, allowing him the illusion that he’s in control even though he’s doing exactly what she wants him to do.

The result is that Joffrey actually develops something resembling respect and affection for Margaery, even allowing her to introduce to new ideas, such as not treating the smallfolk like absolute garbage. Who knows what wonders Margaery would have worked as queen if Joffrey had survived their wedding?

But it’s still probably best he didn’t. As capable as Margaery was, she deserved better than trying to keep a leash on a violent nutbag her entire life.