Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has definitely come up with some of the most shocking ways to kill people, from gasp-inducing beheadings to blood-spattered Red Weddings. But in an interview with Rolling Stone, Martin says the way we engage in modern warfare is far more brutal. When speaking about the remorse that some of his characters feel after they kill, Martin talks about the age of Medieval-era violence which required warriors to confront and acknowledge their victims.
On a cold night in January, George R.R. Martin sits inside the Jean Cocteau Cinema, a revival theater that he owns in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he has lived since 1979. The Cinema had been showing the first three seasons of HBO’s megahit series Game of Thrones, which is based on Martin’s still-in-the-works sagaA Song of Ice and Fire. After viewing the ninth episode, “Baelor,” in which the story’s apparent hero, Ned Stark, is unexpectedly beheaded, with the screen falling to black, Martin sits quietly for several moments, then says, “As many times as I’ve watched this, it still has great effect. Of course for me, there’s so much more to the books.”
