The Red Wedding hurts because it’s real.

We know what should happen.  The Hero’s Journey archetypes have conditioned us into comfort and expectation.

Yet our lives have shown us, too many times, what will happen.

We see the evil in men’s hearts.

We learn that ‘good guys’ rarely win.  That honour no longer holds sway in the world at large.

We face the heavy truth that Love is ill-equipped to ‘conquer all’.

And yet..?

We endure.  We accept.  We transform.

Bad things happen every day.  Terrible things.  And all that we hold dear is eventually taken from us.  Parents.  Lovers.  Friends.  Children.  Beloved pets.  Each are destroyed by the selfish, frightened, power-mad hands of another.  Or the ravages of Time.

It’s how we react to these tragedies that defines us.  How we are shaped by them.  Bettered by them.  Like I’ve said a thousand times, if I’ve said it once:

We are taken to the forge, battered and burned and beaten some more…thrust in the flames to the point of dissolution…

…until we become a Sword.

Do not weep for the Starks on this day.

Do not curse the gods, or abandon all hope in the unseen engines of Fate.

Instead?  Say a prayer for the survivors.  Send them strength, so that they may emerge from their pits of suffering and sadness. With fire in their bellies, courage in their hearts, and minds sharpened like unholy razors.

Winter is coming.

And, may the Seven have mercy on any soul who has been marked for Her wrath.