He really has been chopped! New Game Of Thrones book reveals Stannis Baratheon WAS killed off at end of last season
His dedicated band of fans had hoped he was being given a shock reprieve.
But Stannis Baratheon really was hacked to death at the end of the last season of Game Of Thrones according to new companion book released about the series.
The camera cut away just as vengeful Brienne Of Tarth was about to deliver a killing blow to Stephen Dillane's character, who was badly wounded while trying to capture Winterfell from the forces of Ramsay Bolton.
Chopped: Stannis Baratheon really was killed following his disastrous battle at Winterfell last season according to a new Game Of Thrones companion book
Many hoped, especially as his character in the A Song Of Ice And Fire book series on which the show is based is still very much alive and kicking, that the fact he was not shown explicitly being killed meant he may have been spared.
But the new book Game of Thrones: The Noble House of Westeros Seasons 1-5 appears to definitively dash any chance of him reappearing on the show.
According to Yahoo, a paragraph in the tome states: 'Stannis was killed outside of Winterfell by Brienne of Tarth, who wished to avenge Renly’s death.'
Good knight: Brienne of Tarth killed the pretender to the throne to avenge his murdered brother Renly
And Brienne’s entry confirms this, saying, 'Brienne killed Stannis.'
Of course, it hardly looked good for the pretender to the Iron Throne, as he had told the warrior maiden to 'do your duty,' as he bled while sitting propped against a tree following his disastrous battle.
It also confirms that Myrcella Baratheon died after being posioned just before she sailed back to King's Landing at the end of the last series.
She died in her father Jaime Lannister's arms just as he told her for the first time he was her real father.
Only women bleed: School is definitely out for Myrcella Baratheon who died just after learning Jaime Lannister was her true father
He's going to have some explaining to do: Queen mother Cersei sent Jaime to take care of their daughter
The book states; 'Betrothed to Trystane Martell, son of Prince Doran, she was poisoned by Ellaria Sand, who wished to avenge the death of her lover Oberyn Martell.
'Myrcella died in the arms of Jamie Lannister, who she acknowledged as her father before her death.'
Meanwhile, as if it will be a surprise to many of the readers of his blood-spattered pages, George RR Martin has just confirmed his book series will not have a happy ending.
According to The Wrap he told Northwestern's journalism school students: 'Myself, I’m attracted to the bittersweet ending.
Throne them a bone: George RR Martin would not say how the series would end except it will be 'bittersweet'
'People ask me how Game of Thrones is gonna end, and I’m not gonna tell them, but I always say to expect something bittersweet in the end.'
And he said it is an approach he is borrowing from the grand maester of fantasy fiction, Lord Of The Rings scribe JRR Tolkien.
George said: 'I think he did this brilliantly. I didn’t understand that when I was a kid, when I read Return of the King.
'You can’t just fulfill a quest and then pretend life is perfect. Life doesn’t work that way.'
Put that in your pipe and smoke it: George said he learned about good endings from the work of Oxford fantasy don JRR Tolkien
He also poked fun at the glacial pace with which he writes, which has seen the television show actally overtake the book series on which it is based on
The handsome author said: 'I’ve been hearing them come up behind me for years, and the question is, ‘How can I make myself write faster?
'I think by now the answer is, ‘I can’t.' I write at the pace I write and what the show is doing is not going to change what the books are.'
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