You Win Or You Die: Ranking the 99 Game of Thrones Deaths

Image credit: HBO/Helen Sloan

Myrcella Baratheon

Season 5 kicks off with a flashback to Cersei’s childhood, when the witch Maggy the Frog looks into her future. She determines of Cersei’s children, “Gold will be their crowns. Gold, their shrouds.” With this at the forefront of the audience’s minds, it wasn’t looking good for the remaining Lannister (ahem, Baratheon) children, Tommen and Myrcella.

Indeed, Myrcella was far too happy in Dorne, so that had to be nipped in the bud. She and her betrothed, Trystane Martell, were too unproblematic for Game of Thrones. Apparently, if your romantic relationship isn’t dysfunctional enough to land you on Springer, it’s not for Thrones, either. Them’s the breaks.

Myrcella is another innocent whose death suited the plot better than her life would have. If Cersei had even one child left to her, she might not have gone on her downward spiral. Then again, her Walk of Punishment had so unraveled her that not even Tommen was her first priority following the Sept of Baelor’s destruction in Season 6. In that vein, perhaps Myrcella’s life wouldn’t have been enough to keep Cersei afloat.

Regardless, Myrcella was caught up in a political game, and died because of it. She was more of a pawn than anything. Ellaria used her to exact her revenge upon the Lannisters following Oberyn’s death. However legal it was—and a trial by combat is just that—Ellaria’s vendetta could not be quashed. Princess she may be, but in the end Myrcella was little more than collateral damage in a civil war.