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

Image credit: HBO/Helen Sloan

Mance Rayder

Mance Rayder was no southern king, but the wildlings attributed him as their own monarch. Their customs were freer and their rules lacking in structure. He had no designs on the Iron Throne, only the safety of his people from the oncoming White Walkers. But Mance was called king all the same, and so Stannis Baratheon would have him dead.

Following the wildlings’ infiltration of Castle Black, Mance Rayder is taken prisoner and refuses to bend the knee to Stannis. The Free Folk, he says, are just as free as their name would suggest. They bow to no one, not even their own king. And Mance would pledge no loyalty to those who weren’t his own. Rather than sympathizing with the wildlings’ way of life, though, Stannis takes Mance’s refusal as insubordination bordering on treason. Whatever the case, it’s enough for him to sentence this false king to death. That’s sort of Stannis’ entire MO.

As is his custom, Stannis bids Mance burned alive. But Jon, who has lived and fought alongside the wildlings, understands Mance where Stannis does not. Jon is merciful, and shoots Mance through with an arrow before he can feel the slow agony the flames would have caused him. Jon proves his own insubordination here, but Stannis takes it for honor and admires him for it all the more.