If you didn’t know what #GameOfThrones was before, you know it now: the death of the fairy tale.

When the show first began, it seemed obvious what were watching: the story about the honorable knight who saves the kingdom. The death of Ned Stark shocked us by subverting all our expectations not just about this story but about this type of story. Ned was the hero, and the hero can’t die. When he did, we resolved our mental dissonance by immediately defaulting to the next most obvious trope: the one about Robb, the handsome prince destined to avenge his father (and have his own fairy tale romance, to boot).

That didn’t turn out the way we expected either. The Red Wedding wasn’t just a betrayal of the Starks, but a betrayal of the story we thought we were hearing. In its fourth season, "Game of Thrones" has become about what happens when the fairy tale ends, or rather when we finally realize that it was never really that story at all.

Although their numbers are dwindling, it’s easier than ever to identify with the Stark children. After all, they got the same raw deal we did. When Ned taught them the story of the world he taught them about chivalry and honor, rather than power and blood. In a sense, he taught them a fairy tale about how the world was supposed to be rather than the way it actually is, and just like us, they believed it.

We may have grown up on the sanitized Disney versions, but the Grimm fairy tales were often as brutal (and instructive about the brutality of the world) as "Game of Thrones." Perhaps it’s better to think of this show as that sort of fairy tale instead—the kind where Sleeping Beauty got raped and the Little Mermaid died in the end. Maybe if he really wanted them to survive, Ned should have read those to his children instead.

When the story changes, you learn to tell a new one or more likely than not, you die telling the old ones. Whether or not you can keep watching (or enjoying) "Game of Thrones" depends entirely on your ability to do the same. Many people thought this was supposed to be Robb’s story, and Ned’s before that. So whose story is it now? It’s nobody’s, and that’s kind of the point. While plenty of people walk around believing that the story of the world is about them, it isn’t, of course. There are no main characters in "Game of Thrones" just like there are no main characters in life. People succeed or fail based on how strong, smart and lucky they are, but no one is saved or protected by the cloak of the protagonist because there’s no such thing.

Although the journey has been heartbreaking, "Game of Thrones" has finally arrived at a place that is far more exciting than the one where it started out: a world where no one is safe, where nothing is sacred, and where what’s “supposed” to happen has very little bearing on what actually does. It’s a fantasy story, yes, but one with a relentlessly realistic view of human nature that frees it from some many of the tired tropes of fantasy. It might ask you to believe in dragons, but it’ll never ask you to believe that the good guys always win.

So what does "Game of Thrones" have left now that the fairy tale is dead? Something different and far more interesting, if we have the stomach for it.

~ Laura Hudson, @WIRED

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