I’m hoping against hope that I know nothing and that Jon Snow has survived multiple stabbing and severe loss of blood. According to rumors, the storyline of Season Six diverts significantly from George R. R. Martin’s (fifth?) novel. So everything’s possible.
“Valar Morghulis” — the author doesn’t miss to remind us every twenty pages or so, but I still want to shake him and ask him, “But why Jon Snow, you …?
Fortunately, authors don’t need to ask their readers for permission to kill.
Also fortunately, we have the right to our own opinion.
Take the kings, for example, that appeared and disappeared – so far – in “A Song of Ice and Fire”.
So, seven kingdoms and how many kings? King Robert, King Renly, King Stannis, King Balon, King Rob, King-Beyond-the-Wall … And that awful (but so refreshing!) little enfant terrible that we love to hate, King Joffrey. Eight kings–not to mention countless princes and princesses, queens, true and aspiring rulers–and only one throne. No wonder the kings of “A Game of Thrones” are dropping like flies.
Now we still have one throne but no kings. Maybe G. R. R. Martin has gone a bit overboard. Did he really plan to kill them all, or was it hard to stop once he’d started?
Someone put a marker in every page of the five Martin’s novels on which a death occurs.
Here are the stats:
A Game Of Thrones – 54.
A Clash Of Kings – 72.
A Storm Of Swords – 97.
A Feast For Crows – 23.
A Dance With Dragons – 38.
Total: 284 terminated characters, including Jon Snow.
Here is George R. R. Martin’s explanation of some of those 284 deaths. It’s quite entertaining.
JF Kaufmann, Author 
Me thinks George R.R. Martin is taking Faulkner’s “kill your darlings” advice a little too literally. 😦
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I like his ‘defense’ : You think I’m killing off my characters? Look what Shakespeare did!
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