Dead Fictional Girlfriends Report: Special Westeros Edition

Dear Readers,

We must speak about the Game of Thrones finale. I recognize that I might be several months behind the story, on this one, but please see my previous post for what I've been doing instead.

Game of Thrones became our business when, after 8 seasons of murder, politics, and dragonfire, the epic saga culminated in a fictional character assassinating his girlfriend.

via GIPHY

via GIPHY - Video version here

Yes, the climax of the series finale involved Jon Snow (who is one of the last sympathetic protagonists alive at this point) killing Daenerys (who is his sworn queen, long-lost aunt, and intimate partner). Per the GIF above, they are passionately kissing when he stabs her, and she stares at him in shock and betrayal before collapsing.

This, of course, prompted me to launch a special investigation for my Dead Fictional Girlfriends Research Report (DFGRR).

Let us focus our attention on Jon Snow, his dead girlfriend[s], and their universe.

Why does Jon Snow kill his aunt/queen/girlfriend, Daenerys?

Because it was the right thing to do, apparently. No, seriously - this is presented as the morally correct choice for his character.

You see, Daenerys has spent 8 seasons doing some "Good Things" and some "Things Which Are Morally Questionable."

Good Things

Things That Are Morally Questionable

- Allowing her brother to be executed - Smothering her comatose husband - Promising her people “those who seek to harm you, will die screaming.” - Hatching dragons - Burning Mirri, the woman she blames for her husband’s death, alive - Burning down a house of worship - Entombing 2 traitors alive - Freeing slaves by burning slave-traders alive - Providing financial restitution when her dragons start eating sheep and small children - Burning all the Dothraki chiefs alive and seizing their goods and followers - Burning enemy ships by the dozens, thereby condemning thousands of sailors to burn alive - Using her dragons to help save Northern Westeros from ice-zombies

- Crucifying 163 surrendering slaveowners - Burning rebellious noblemen alive - Invading Westeros - Extinguishing the Tarly line because it wouldn’t welcome her conquest with open arms - Insisting that Northerners submit to her authority if she's going to save their asses from ice-zombies

Please note, this categorization of these events is not mine. The screenwriters and directors decided if and when to have anyone in-universe question Daenerys's decisions, and for most of the first 5-6 seasons their opinion was "nah, let's not." The result is a show that asks the audience cheer for Daenerys when she burns people alive, as long as they're the right people.

In the penultimate episode, however, this violent queen has finally done a Very Bad Thing. To wit, the city of King's Landing was surrendering to her, and she burned it down anyway. King's Landing was full of civilians - as capital cities are wont to be - as well as her allied troops, many of whom burned alive. Lots of her supporters are happy with her choice, and gleefully go along with executing POWs and raping bystanders. In Jon's eyes, however, she's become a monster.

As is subtly indicated by her seeming to sprout dragon wings.

So, after a lengthy moral debate with his frenemy Tyrion (who is in prison on Daenerys's orders, about to be executed), Jon decides she must die.

Is there a pattern of dead girlfriends in Jon Snow's life?

Yes, albeit a rather short one. Jon Snow's only previous intimate partner was Ygritte, a Wildling.

At the time, Jon was part of the Night's Watch, a fantasy border-patrol. His job was to keep all the human Wildlings, giants, and ice zombies on the north side of the 700' x 300 mile ice wall, so that everyone else could live their lives on the south side. On an undercover mission, however, he ended up having a relationship with Ygritte. They had some good times, including sex in a hot spring. But inevitably, when she revealed the Wildlings' plans to attack the wall, he had to leave her and warn the Night's Watch. She was killed in the ensuing battle.

With both Ygritte and Daenerys dead, Jon officially has a 100% girlfriend mortality rate. As you know from the other entries in this series, however, 2 dead girlfriends are not nearly enough for a serious numerical competitor in the DFGRR.

So, is Jon Snow's dead-girlfriends total higher than average for his universe?

Excellent question! GoT takes place in a notoriously violent world, and had 130 on-screen deaths. There aren't many instances of the Cartwright Curse, however, because very few characters live long enough to accrue large numbers of significant others.

In fact, the character with the most dead girlfriends, Ramsay Bolton, is a serial killer:


Of the 5 women he has been connected to, he hunted 3 of them for sport. A fourth got thrown off a rampart by a fellow victim of Ramsay's abuse.

And yet, even Ramsay had a lower percentage of dead girlfriends than Jon does, because that fifth girl fed him to his own hunting dogs and lived to tell the tale.


While Jon Snow's total number of dead partners is not the highest, therefore, he's definitely leading by percentage.

Are there any female characters with equivalent statistics?

Yes, actually. Unlike 007, Bonanza, or Star Trek, the world of Game of Thrones counts multiple women among the main cast.

(Good job, screenwriters, but no, you're not getting a cookie. It's 2019, fellas, we shouldn't have to beg for women to be in stories.)

This means that we have a rare opportunity to compare Dead Boyfriends to Dead Girlfriends within the same universe. Danaerys, for one, has had one owner/husband, two lovers, and one fiance. Of the 4, only 50% are still alive at the end of the series.

For comparison, the show's main antagonist, Cersei Lannister, had one husband, two boytoys, one fiance, and one brother/lover, 100% of  whom kicked the bucket on-screen.

She and Jon Snow thus have an equal percentage of deaths, and Cersei beats him by total numbers.

On the other hand, though, Cersei was not the cause of death for all 5 of her partners.

Although she arranged the murders of the first three (Robert, Loras, and Lancel), the other two were merely collateral damage. One died fighting the other, and then the last one died trying to rescue her. Totally not her fault!

Danaerys is similarly vindicated by the CoD's: she only murdered her first husband, and that was a mercy kill. The other dead guy merely got assassinated by her political enemies.

So, is Jon Snow an outlier vis a vis his habit of murdering his girlfriends?

Yes. He is the only character to bear personal responsibility for the deaths of 100% of his partners. Although he didn't shoot Ygritte himself*, he caused the battle and he trained the archer. And of course, he put a literal knife in Danaerys's literal heart.

Somehow, he's still supposed to be the good guy.

* On the show; he does in the book.

How did the audience react to Jon's murder of his 2nd girlfriend?

I am, of course, aware that the final season of GoT has broken the fanbase into multiple angry mobs, many of them armed with subreddits, none of them happy about the execution of the series finale. I will not delve into questions of quality in this analysis, because if I were going to exclude poorly-written or poorly-executed works from the DFGRR, then Bonanza would've been the first to go. 

I will, however, point out that most of the criticism has been directed at the writers' handling of Danaerys's turn to the dark side. "It was rushed!" cry the critics. "It was insufficiently foreshadowed by the text!" they shout. "We deserved at least 1 more episode of transition from wannabe liberator to wannabe conqueror!" they type.

To which I say: really? Would we have been 100% OK with this ending (in which, I remind you, our hero murders the lover to whom he'd sworn loyalty), if the writers had worked harder to make us think she had it coming?

Doesn't that seem like we're just a little bit too comfortable with onscreen intimate partner violence? Might it not imply that female fictional deaths are a-OK with us, as long as the women in fiction are unlikable? Or when they don't have any characterization at all?

Mind you, there was no similar outcry when another of our heroes, Tyrion, choked the life out of his kept woman, Shae.

"Of course he killed her!" you're probably thinking. "She testified against him in a murder trial, and he just found her in his father's bed!" Which is true. Up until this episode, however, she never showed any tendency towards false testimony or infidelity. She, like Danaerys, had years of morally-ambiguous behavior trumped by a Very Bad Thing. Where are the protests that her downfall was too rushed?

What does this mean for the DFGRR?

Jon Snow is getting an honorable mention on my list, that's for sure. He got away with killing two girlfriends - both of whom he still loved - and had the show present both actions as the morally correct choice. He can't compete with James Bond or even Jim Kirk for total numbers, but he certainly carries the chutzpah category.

As for us, the consumers of media where women routinely die, Game of Thrones presents a challenging question: Where exactly do we draw the line between a disposable female character, and one who should only be disposed of with good reason?