Game of Thrones doesn’t celebrate romantic love. Characters occasionally find each other, and they might enjoy some happiness, but often it ends in tears, or death, or disillusionment, or maybe the romance wasn’t all that healthy to start with. I like that. Popular fiction often puts romantic love in the spotlight, so it’s refreshing to watch a show that sees it as compromised and fleeting at best, and not the end goal for most of the characters.
Still, the show gives romantic love its due, and has featured it in all kinds of shapes and sizes. In honor of Valentine’s Day, let’s examine some of the romantic relationships on the show, and see if we can’t find anything out about the nature of love in Westeros.
