GOT

 - Caution: spoilers ahead! - 

Well, unless you've lived under a rock for the past few days, you know that the HBO series Game of Thrones has now finished. And although the finale season seems to be very contentious, I think that it stayed fairly true to its beginnings, complete with plenty of death scenes and representations of mourning. 

Whether you watched the show or not, and whether you agreed with how your favourite character completed his/her journey, I'm guessing you are aware that death plays a pretty prominent role in the series. Some of it is very much a fantasy, containing unhelpful death imagery of zombie "wights", but other portions of the show genuinely did a great job at portraying the complexity of grief. 

In my mind, no other character demonstrated the tortured path of grief like Peter Dinklage's character Tyrion. Tyrion grieved for family his whole life as his family viewed him as a monster, so when he shoots and kills his own father with a crossbow, he is caught in between guilt and satisfaction, sadness and relief. All very plausible emotions given the story arc of that character. 

But in this last season, the final goodbye between Tyrion and his brother Jaime, and then Tyrion's reaction to seeing his siblings dead under the ruble of the Red Keep... well, let's just say that in my mind this was one of the best grief portrayals I have ever seen. 

If you're personally uncomfortable with witnessing other people's pain, does fictional character portrayal of the same type of pain also make you uneasy? If so, I encourage practice... and though GOT may not be everyone's cup of tea, I suggest you start here.