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

Image credit: HBO/Helen Sloan

Joffrey Baratheon

Joffrey’s long and storied history of humiliation pays him back in kind in his own death. He publicly shamed anyone he wished, from lowly nobles like Ser Dontos to his uncle Tyrion to his betrothed-turned-aunt Sansa. People were his playthings, and he enjoyed nothing more than to parade them about like sad, broken fools.

It all turned on him at his own wedding in Season 4. His union with Margaery Tyrell was a large-scale affair, attended by everyone of circumstance. Joffrey used the celebration to wreak more havoc on anyone who crossed him, or simply because he was in the mood. And, at the end of it, these crowds of people were all witness to Joffrey’s death by poison. Their great and noble king clutches his throat, unable to breathe, and makes a spectacle of himself as he flounders for air. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, he truly would have been mocked as a fool.

The kicker is that poison is often described as a “woman’s weapon,” a term that is meant as an insult, but is in fact a clever way to go about it. After all, no one suspected that the Lady Olenna was involved, and yet she orchestrated much of the details along with Littlefinger. Joffrey would probably be rolling in his grave if he’d learned that a woman had outsmarted him into the ground. Yet another shining example of poetic justice. I’ll drink to that—so long as my own cup’s not poisoned, that is.