It’s not easy being a Game of Thrones fan, continuously watching a cycle of heroes you’ve come to know and love being sliced, diced and graphically butchered – and now you can blame all the agonising moments from the fantasy epic on Lord of The Rings’ Gandalf.
Yup, the grey wizard is behind the deaths of Ned Stark, Robb Stark, and whichever Stark still standing gets bumped off in season eight – because you know at least one of them is a goner, right?
To celebrate Game of Thrones being added to The Great American Read Collection, George R.R. Martin opened up about his greatest influences, with, J.R.R. Tolkein obviously coming out on top, hailing Lord of the Rings as ‘the greatest book I’ve ever read’.
However, his world crumbled when Gandalf, one of the greatest literary heroes of all time, got his own painful demise.
‘I can’t explain the impact that had on me at 13,’ Martin revealed in a special video for PBS. ‘You can’t kill Gandalf.
‘I mean, Conan didn’t die in the Conan books, you know? Tolkien just broke that rule, and I’ll love him forever for it.’
Martin elaborated: ‘The minute you kill Gandalf, the suspense of everything that follows is a thousand times greater, because now anybody could die. Of course, that’s had a profound on my own willingness to kill characters off at the drop of a hat.’
And Martin has taken the teachings of Tolkein to spawn the goriest and most prolific bloodbath of all time, with 174,373 deaths in Game of Thrones so far – and season eight has already promised to be the ‘bloodiest’ yet.
Game of Thrones returns to HBO and Sky Atlantic next year.
MORE: Game of Thrones fans think Jaime Lannister is the Azor Ahai after turning latest theory on its head
