Oh hey, look! It’s a SPOILER ALERT! Which means this post is a bonafide minefield of potential Game of Thrones spoilers. So, y’know, maybe don’t comment about how mad you are about being spoiled about a thing from last season when we totally warned you in this here sentence. Mmkay?
Now that we’ve got all of that out of the way! Let’s talk about Stannis Baratheon, the cranky middle-aged brother of Renly and King Robert Baratheon. For those of you that saw last season of Thrones, you’re likely to remember the ending no one—apparently?—saw coming: Stannis’ death at the hands of Brienne of Tarth. After all, this went against everything we knew in the books up until that point (and in the chapters we’ve seen in The Winds of Winter thus far). But now we know, in-canon, the truth behind how Stannis met his bloody end: it was always going to be Brienne.
Looks like y’all should’ve believed that Beautiful Death poster when it came out, eh?
For many fans—because this is Game of Thrones—there was a wariness that came along with accepting Stannis’ death. We did not see his body after Brienne’s strike, nor did we see her blade actually meet the man’s flesh. But his death was indeed confirmed in the latest book about The Known Realm: Game of Thrones: The Noble Houses of Westeros. It directly mentions Stannis The Not-So-Mannis’ death as was depicted at the end of season five. Peep the below tweet from Sue Miller, the EIC over at Watchers on the Wall:
https://twitter.com/Thrones_Fury/status/657240209533218816
So that settles it: Stannis is dead, he’s not coming back (at least not alive), and we all have to accept it. This is the song of ice and fire—no one ever thought a stag would survive the battle. Right?
Of course there’s always the question of one potential undead return. For more on that, watch the video below:
What do you think of the latest development? Let us know in the comments below.
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HT: Sue Miller/Twitter
Image Credit: Beautiful Death/HBO; GIF Credit: Giphy
Alicia Lutes is the Managing Editor of The Nerdist. Find her livin’ her best Khaleesi life on Twitter (@alicialutes).
