Recently a good friend linked me this picture.
http://imgur.com/7sS0D


Initially I laughed and thought it was quite a clever statement but soon a feeling started to creep up on me, a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. That maybe there was an element of elitism to the attitude displayed in the picture and despite the massive success of the Harry Potter series it is still in many people’s minds a children’s or at best a teenagers book while so called epic fantasy is more grown up because it’s “gritty” and “realistic”. Yeah well so is Grand Theft Auto IV but I’d still rather play Liberty City or the original 2D GTA. At least they had some colour and visual flair and weren’t all shades of grey and brown. But I digress.

I put it to you like this. Harry Potter is at least as well written as A Song of Ice and Fire. Let’s start with the big points raised by the original image, death and in particular the death of Ned Stark and the death of Dumbledore. Ned Stark’s death is perhaps one of the biggest moments in the series. His death is the point in the first book and arguably the series that really sets off the chain reaction that is the main focus of the first few books. If he hadn’t went sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong then he would have never been killed – although I admit there’s a bit more to it than that but I’m not here to summarise the entire series – and his son Robb would have never gone to war and possibly Cersei would never have killed Robert. She only does so out of fear for her children’s safety which Ned threatened by promising to expose her infidelity and incest (one of the few taboos which survives as much in Westeros as it does in our world). As much of a hate figure as she is her actions are justifiable. She’s just an admittedly deranged mother defending her children.

Contrast this to the death of Dumbledore. While inevitable much like Ned’s death it comes as a bigger shock than his because it comes out of left field and from an unexpected source. However much like Ned’s death it is the final point in a long series of events that finally forces Harry to accept his destiny and become a man much like Ned’s death did for Robb.

Arguably Dumbledore’s death is even more important because while Harry has friends when Dumbledore dies he loses the closest thing he ever had to a father figure and a mentor. Robb on the other hand while the eldest child still has his family to support him while Harry now doesn’t even have that. When Dumbledore dies he virtually loses everything because the only real family he had left died in Order of the Phoenix (citation needed). While he still has The Weasleys as a surrogate family they are no substitute for a real family. Yeah yeah yeah he still has his auntie, uncle and cousin but be honest they’re about as far from a real family as you can get to the point of being that slightly bigoted uncle that always gets invited to Christmas dinner but you feel vaguely ashamed to talk to.

Anyway that’s it for today. Coming up in part 2 – Khal Drogo and why character death in A Song of Ice and Fire is a total MacGuffin.