This season of Game of Thrones, like all the others before it, saw a great deal of carnage, with a few prominent to prominent-ish characters meeting their demise. Unlike previous seasons, however, where the deaths were relatively obvious and final due to heads rolling around on the ground or eyeballs bulging out of punchable purple poisoned faces, there were some that were a little less clear. Like, to the point that they might not have been “deaths” at all. The big one here is clearly Jon Snow, whose lifeless eyes stared at the audience as the season ended, but who might still be alive because (a) Kit Harington has been seen flying to and from the set in Belfast, and (b) come onnnnnnn, you can’t kill Jon Snow, geez.
But another character met an open-ended and vague fate in the finale: Stannis Baratheon, last seen staring down the business end of Brienne’s sword. He “died” off-camera, which is always suspicious, and in a recent chat on his LiveJournal, George R.R. Martin ended all doubt about Stannis’ fate. Sort of.
See, the tricky thing here is that “In my books?” part, not only because the television series took some notable diversions from the source material this season, but also because the “my” in their just, like, sticks out a bit. Like he’s saying “He’s dead in their show, but not in my books.” Or maybe he just said it that way to protect a future plot point on the show. Or maybe he meant nothing at all by it and I’ve become the type of feverish lunatic who parses individual words of tossed off short answers to LiveJournal Q&As looking for clues about television shows about dragons. All legitimate possibilities.
So, to recap. Stannis Baratheon: Alive some places, probably not dead in others! All any of us can ask for, really.
(Via BuzzFeed)
