Which Characters Will Lose The 'Game Of Thrones?': A Chronicle Of Many Deaths Foretold

"When you play the game of thrones," Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) told Ned Stark (Sean Bean) icily — but of course she says everything icily — "you win ... or you die."

Foreshadowing? To say the least. More like fiveshadowing.

Because she said that to him way back in the seventh episode of Game of Thrones' very first season. It was May 2011, years before the show would become the inescapable international phenomenon it has, and two episodes before it would set itself firmly down the path to becoming just that, by killing off its nominal main hero, Ned Stark.

Since that time, over the course of seven seasons, Cersei has been proven exactly right, again and again. There's been some small amount of winning, here and there, but just really a tremendous lot of dying — characters big and small, both the beloved and the benighted, have been poisoned, beheaded, slashed, gashed, stabbed, devoured by hounds, hurled from parapets, immolated, head-squished, pincushioned by arrows and — in one case — even died of old age, if you can imagine anything so grotesque.

Now that we're entering the home stretch — just six episodes left, which will clock in at an estimated seven hours and twenty minutes, total — all the series'