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

Image credit: HBO/Helen Sloan

Qhorin, Orell, Jeor Mormont, Craster, Karl Tanner, and Rast

For all the character death on Game of Thrones, Jon Snow has a rather fine collection of names. Sometimes, his duty supersedes his honor in these executions. Such is the case with Qhorin Halfhand, a fellow Night’s Watchman with whom Jon is captured by wildlings in Season 2. For Jon to successfully infiltrate and spy on the wildlings, he has to kill Qhorin, which Qhorin himself convinces Jon to do.

But even then, when Jon breaks one of his sworn vows, there are wildlings who remain suspicious. Orell takes a grudge to Jon, and is right to do so when Jon later stabs him. Orell’s body dies, but he wargs into his eagle before his consciousness is lost to him as well. It is, however, said that if a human wargs into an animal for too long, they’ll forget their human self. So it would seem that Orell is as good as dead by now.

This narrative lends further evidence to the vendetta between the wildlings and the Night’s Watch. It continues with the Night Watch’s mutiny at Craster’s keep. Craster, the notorious wildling who marries his daughters and kills his sons, opens his home to the rangers, but the hospitality ends there. Karl Tanner is tired of being denied a decent breakfast sandwich, and so he kills Craster. Monkey see, monkey do, and fellow Night’s Watchman Rast kills Lord Commander Jeor Mormont when he attempts to restore order to his men. We see the feud between the wildlings and the crows overlap so that the Night’s Watch turns on their own.

Of course, as Thrones villains are wont to do, Karl and Rast both get their comeuppance. Those brothers still loyal to the Night’s Watch invade the mutineers at Craster’s keep. In all the kerfuffle, Jon stabs Karl, and his direwolf, Ghost, apprehends and kills runaway Rast. These men are no great losses to fans, and the Night’s Watch is quite clearly better off without anyone who would betray them. Jon himself is later a fine example of why that is. Clearly, the Night’s Watch needs to work to improve their rehabilitation success rate.