While most fans of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series are concerned with the fate of Jon Snow right now, it looks like George R. R. Martin might be planning some even more dramatic developments for the next installment in the series, “Winds of Winter”. The book has been anticipated for a long time by fans already, and it’s surrounded by a lot of speculation and discussions among the community. It’s expected to bring various dramatic development, and lately we’ve been starting to hear rumors about various characters getting killed off in the new installment.
Which, to anyone who’s been following the books from the start, should be absolutely no surprise – it’s no secret that Martin doesn’t spare his characters and he regularly likes to use their deaths to advance the plot when it’s convenient for him. Most recently, we’ve heard that King Tommen and Myrcella are going to be among the characters to die in the next book, but the exact details about their deaths are still not really known.
Fans have been suspecting that this was coming for a while now – especially those watching the show “Game of Thrones”, as Myrcella as already killed off there – both deaths were already foreshadowed earlier in the story. It’s actually not that common for Martin to give his fans time to prepare emotionally for letting go of yet another character, but we don’t know what the implications might be if he has suddenly decided to make these deaths less unexpected and more predictable.
Of course, as we said above, the fact that the plot of the show managed to get ahead of the books in some regards and already showed the death of Myrcella makes this development even less surprising and it’s kind of a moot point to talk about Martin wanting to help his fans prepare. But still, it would be interesting to see if the book is going to give any extra details about her demise and the whole sub-plot behind that.
Because in the end, there’s only so much that the TV series can show in its limited format, and the books are generally a better tool for telling the more expansive sides of the story. Some critics have actually noted the good synergy between the show and the books, claiming that they work very well in tandem and they allow fans who’re truly curious about their favorite characters to really dig into their stories in detail.
On the other hand, the death of King Tommen might come a bit less expectedly for most fans, and many were actually expecting him to be in a safe position right now, but as we all know, nobody is ever truly safe in the worlds of George R. R. Martin and any character is subject to getting killed off when the author feels that it’s convenient for his current storytelling purposes. Which, as it turns out, is quite often.
It’s worth noting that Martin has managed to tone down the killings a bit lately, and he’s started to use them more wisely as an instrument for truly moving his plot forward instead of relying on those deaths for the sheer shock value that they bring. Sure, fans enjoyed that for a while in the beginning, but the writer quickly realized that he can’t really go on doing it forever and he had to reevaluate the way he was killing those characters.