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

Image credit: HBO/Helen Sloan

Janos Slynt

Once commander of the City Watch in King’s Landing, Janos Slynt had quite the fall from grace. Where he had approximately two thousand men at his beck and call, in the end he was unable to handle his own life on its own. That’s what happens when you run your mouth at Jon Snow. The guy may know nothing, but that doesn’t mean he’ll stand for insubordination.

At Petyr Baelish’s order, Janos Slynt feigns loyalty to Ned Stark in Season 1. But when it comes down to the line, the City Watch turns on Ned and kills his men. Slynt is richly rewarded by Joffrey, but it’s all downhill from there. In Season 2, acting as Hand of the King, Tyrion banishes Slynt to the Night’s Watch because he doesn’t trust him. After all, Slynt had betrayed the former Hand. He had also recently headed a witch hunt for Robert’s bastards, which led to the murders of several children. His reputation doesn’t exactly scream “good faith.”

In light of Slynt’s crimes, it is enormously fitting that Jon is the one to behead him. While Jon remains ignorant of the specifics, he avenges his assumed father as well as the bastards slaughtered in King’s Landing. Regardless of his true parentage, Jon is a bastard himself, so there is a nice narrative correlation there. It’s something like poetic justice. And it just goes to show that the bad guys really do get theirs in the end.