History YMMV / GameofThrones

** Talisa Maegr. Arguably one of the series scrappies. What happens to her? Well, she gets stabbed in the belly repeatedly by a Frey during The Red Wedding while she's pregnant.
** Amazingly enough Joffery got this reaction from some fans. Though considering how he [[CruelAndUnusualDeath died]] it's not hard to see why.

** ''Literature/AStormOfSwords'' is a bit too long for one season, but not quite long enough for two, so Seasons 3 and 4 have a number of scenes and subplots created for the show to pad out the length, like everything concerning Podrick as a SexGod, Daenerys spending most of Season 4 lounging around in Meereen, Stannis, after deciding to go to the Wall at the end of Season 3, spending most of his time brooding in Season 4, while Arya and the Hound become a buddy cop duo trudging across the war-torn Riverlands. The writers also had to even bring several subplots from the next two books, like Brienne searching for the Sansa and Arya, and Theon and the Boltons trying to take Moat Caitlin.

* PresumedFlop: The second half of the series suffered an infamous case of SeasonalRot and AudienceAlienatingEnding that largely killed off its vocal, devoted fanbase. It is sometimes assumed that interest in the show disappeared completely as a result, but the Season 8 DVD still sold well, and ''Thrones'' is still one of the most watched shows on HBO as of 2022.

** Littlefinger is a creep, a murderer, and the orchestrator of one of the biggest wars Westeros has ever seen, but he's incredibly clever, his FreudianExcuse is just sympathetic enough, and the success of all his power grabs made people genuinely root for him to make it to the top of that ladder to the Iron Throne.

** Varys suffers a bad case of this in Season 8. He is often justifiably described as one of the smartest characters on the show and the best player of the game, rivaled only by Littlefinger. Through sheer cunning and manipulation, he's managed to survive the reigns of three different monarchs, two of which were highly tumultuous and had a...shall we say, [[DeadlyEuphemism 'high job turnover rate']]. He rarely ever gives more than hints as to what his true motives and plans are, beyond 'the good of the realm'. However, in Season 8 he suddenly throws caution out the window and rather blatantly starts plotting against [[spoiler: Daenerys and trying to put Jon Snow on the throne, after he suspects the former is going to go postal and finds out the latter has a stronger claim]]. He is very upfront about his plans to several characters even though he never usually does this, he knows some of them are loyal to [[spoiler: Dany]] and that [[spoiler: Dany herself]] is wary of him, nor did he appear to have a back-up plan in case things went south, which directly leads to him [[spoiler: being executed when Tyrion sells him out]].
** Jon Snow as well. Early seasons established him as one of the most capable leaders of Westeros, successfully infiltrating the Wildlings to spy upon Mance Rayder, as well as gain information about the White Walker invasion. After that, he successfully rallies the Night's Watch to fight against the wildlings once they attack Castle Black, and becomes the Lord Commander by merit alone. After that, he falls for Ramsay's obvious trap and almost gets killed by the charging army, and gets saved only because of his own army. Then he spends a season trying to make Daenerys support them for the upcoming White Walker invasion, goes off on a SuicideMission to get a wight for Cersei [[spoiler: who then reneges anyway]]. When the Army of the Dead invades, [[spoiler: Jon didn't get to fight a ''single'' White Walker, only watching as the Night's King raise his army and spends rest of the time screaming at an undead dragon, whereas the day was saved by Arya. Jon ignores Dany's SanitySlippage and then helps it by pushing her away crudely, which leads to Daenerys torching King's Landing the next day. It goes to a limit as Jon refuses to kill Daenerys even when she has established herself as the BigBad and planning a tyrannical regime to the known world. It takes Tyrion's coaxing to do it.]]

** Another CentralTheme of the show is that "deceit and ruthlessness only net you short-term gains, while virtues like honour and compassion will pay off in the long run", the former of which will only earn you people's hatred while the latter will win you their UndyingLoyalty. Yet the show also unintentionally reinforces the idea that BeingGoodSucks and that VirtueIsAWeakness, which is best reflected in the show's handling of the Northern storyline. Most of the Northern Lords in the show lack their book counterparts' loyalty towards the honourable Starks by refusing to side with Jon and Sansa against the tyrannical Boltons, instead disparaging Ned and Robb as fools who got themselves killed because of their mistakes. On the other end of the spectrum, Ramsay has been able to get away with a lot of stuff that he shouldn't have been able to (such as killing his family and being a reprehensible person in general), but also gained powerful allies such as the Karstarks and Umbers.

** Lancel. There is this gem in the Season 2 DVD commentary:

** Season 6 is largely regarded as better than what came before or after, but it still contained plenty of the elements that afflicted those seasons, such as the increasingly blatant PlotArmor for major characters[[note]]Arya surviving multiple stab wounds and still managing to engage in a footrace and eventually kill the Waif, Jon surviving the Battle of the Bastards through enormous amounts of luck[[/note]], while minor characters [[DroppedABridgeOnHim get perfunctorily killed off, sometimes in ways that make little sense]], coming BackForTheDead and having little emotional impact[[note]]The Martells, Roose and Walda Bolton, Balon Greyjoy, Shaggydog, Osha, Summer, the Blackfish, Rickon[[/note]]; Ramsay continuing his unrealistic effectiveness[[note]]notably managing to recruit more Northern houses to his side than Jon and Sansa do, despite having murdered his more pragmatic father who constantly warned him that his AxCrazy tendencies would hurt their status with said Northern houses, his abuse of Sansa Stark, and his eventual [[WouldHurtAChild murder of Rickon Stark in broad daylight]] and his [[BadBoss willingness to kill his own men with arrow fire in battle]]. Sure seems like the North did not actually remember.[[/note]]; and several plotlines being retreads of plots from the previous season[[note]]Arya and Margaery spend much of the season in the same positions in which they spent the previous season, while Jon and Sansa's storyline echoes Stannis's[[/note]]. All that said, [[WhamEpisode "The Door"]] was largely considered to be an effective TearJerker in the first half of the season, and "Battle of the Bastards" and ''especially'' "The Winds of Winter" are often considered season highlights, so most at least agree that [[WinBackTheCrowd the season ended strong, unlike the other three seasons mentioned here.]]
** Season 7, while still praised for SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome, was criticized for careless pacing that exploits OffScreenTeleportation and EasyLogistics, more conventional TV-like plotting, characters making illogical decisions[[note]]Sansa allowing Littlefinger to hang around and scheme while it was obvious that he didn't have her family's best interests at heart and nobody supports him anymore, Littlefinger himself [[VillainDecay hanging around even though it's blatantly obvious that everyone is just biding their time until they can have him killed]], Jon Snow insisting on doing everything by himself out of HonorBeforeReason[[/note]], and the loss of lives having little emotional impact[[note]]Littlefinger's death is drowned out by the audience's WhyDontYouJustShootHim for Sansa, and Viserion was "one of the other two dragons that aren't Drogon"[[/note]], while several characters got {{Plot Armor}}s[[note]]Jaime and Bronn survive when the latter is drowning with armor, the wights are incredibly efficient killing the {{Red Shirt}}s while taking their sweet time to kill Tormund and Jon, for example[[/note]]. Overall, the season appears to be the reverse of the overarching theme from Season 1: No matter how much you believe in your ideals, if no one supports you, you die. A lot of the strategic situations, which had previously been handled fairly seriously, are now painfully contrived just to rush through it[[note]]Euron destroys Dany's fleets with impossible ambushes on opposite sides of the continent in what's apparently a matter of days. The Rock is simply abandoned as worthless thanks to the mines running dry, even though it's such a strong defensive position that the token force left behind almost wins anyway despite infiltrators opening the gates. The Lannister army takes out Highgarden effortlessly in a frontal assault entirely off-screen, when they had previously been depicted as at about the same level of strength. The death of the Sand Snakes removes Dorne from the equation entirely, even though their armies never even took the field[[/note]].

** Conleth Hill's calm but relentless [[SnarkToSnarkCombat back-and-forth]] dynamic with other prominent actors and his ability to underscore any scene with body language alone have been largely ignored by the awards.

** Many would agree with the final message of Daenerys' character arc, which amounts to, "people who [[PayEvilUntoEvil do bad things to people who you both think deserve it]] will eventually disagree with you on who deserves it and start [[KnightTemplar doing bad things to people who you consider innocents]], so think carefully before you praise a WellIntentionedExtremist." It's therefore especially annoying for them that that message, instead of emerging organically and over time, seemed in many viewers' opinions to have been crammed into ''two and a half episode'' at the very tail end of the show by script writers who seemed to just want to get the whole thing over with. That said, other commentators have argued that the message was, in fact, there all along, but Dany's fanbase were engaging in DracoInLeatherPants and missed the subtler implications early in the series that she wasn't supposed to be the heroine. On the other hand, said subtleties can be easy to miss considering majority of Daenerys's victims [[spoiler:prior to the burning of King's Landing]] are shown to be terrible people who many found hard to argue deserved their fates.

** Many would agree with the final message of Daenerys' character arc, which amounts to, "people who [[PayEvilUntoEvil do bad things to people who you both think deserve it]] will eventually disagree with you on who deserves it and start [[KnightTemplar doing bad things to people who you consider innocents]], so think carefully before you praise a WellIntentionedExtremist." It's therefore especially annoying for them that that message, instead of emerging organically and over time, seemed in many viewers' opinions to have been crammed into ''two and a half episode'' at the very tail end of the show by script writers who seemed to just want to get the whole thing over with. That said, other commentators have argued that the message was, in fact, there all along, but Dany's fanbase were engaging in DracoInLeatherPants and missed the subtler implications early in the series that she wasn't supposed to be the heroine.

** Many would agree with the final message of Daenerys' character arc, which amounts to, "people who [[PayEvilUntoEvil do bad things to people who you both think deserve it]] will eventually disagree with you on who deserves it and start [[KnightTemplar doing bad things to people who you consider innocents]], so think carefully before you praise a WellIntentionedExtremist." It's therefore especially annoying for them that that message, instead of emerging organically and over time, got crammed into ''two and a half episode'' at the very tail end of the show by script writers who seemed to just want to get the whole thing over with.

* DontShootTheMessage: Many would agree with the final message of Daenerys' character arc, which amounts to, "people who [[PayEvilUntoEvil do bad things to people who you both think deserve it]] will eventually disagree with you on who deserves it and start [[KnightTemplar doing bad things to people who you consider innocents]], so think carefully before you praise a WellIntentionedExtremist." It's therefore especially annoying for them that that message, instead of emerging organically and over time, got crammed into ''two and a half episode'' at the very tail end of the show by script writers who seemed to just want to get the whole thing over with.

** The series' first four seasons, universally considered to be stronger than its second half, didn't win a single "Outstanding Drama Emmy". In addition to the technical awards, the only artistic UsefulNotes/EmmyAward went to Creator/PeterDinklage for the first season. It wasn't until the controversial fifth season that it won, and it would continue to do so up through the even more divisive final seasons (although the general consensus is that Season 6 is considerably better than Seasons 5, 7, and 8).

* EvilIsSexy:
** The Lannisters are renowned for their physical attractiveness as well as ruthlessness. Even Tywin Lannister has his fangirls who find him a SilverFox.
** While Sansa isn't evil, she makes an EvilCostumeSwitch in an attempt to take charge of her life and embraces this trope to its fullest.
** [[SoftspokenSadist Roose Bolton]] has quite a few fangirls. His son Ramsay isn't too far behind in that department either since he's shown in a shirtless fight and two sex scenes.
** Ramsay's DarkMistress, Myranda, definitely has her moments too.
** [[ManipulativeBastard Littlefinger]] is a very attractive man, which is only helped by his silver tongue.
** Melisandre's crimson long hair, sexy red dress and [[ForeignFanservice accent]] firmly place her in this department.
** [[spoiler: An AxCrazy, delusional [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen tyrant]] she may be, Season 8 Daenerys is still...well ''[[MsFanservice Daenerys]]'']].