Okay, I've finally decided what I think about it.

It's gratuitous. It took me a bit to come up with the word I was looking for, but that just rang true as hell when it came to me.

Look, Martin's philosophy through this series has been to keep you on your toes. I understand killing Ned, I really do. It made perfect sense from a character development standpoint (can't keep the same core characters through 6k pages). It made sense from a 'hook' standpoint - readers truly have no idea what's going to happen. It was a masterstroke, IMO.

But killing Robb and his direworlf, especially in the manner he did it, was just taking out Starks for the sake of doing so. It seemed to me that he was just giving his readers the finger there just to prove he could. He spent so long developing and maturing Robb as a character and his character arc was by no means at a dead end.

He wanted to end the war; I get that. But he could've done that without giving a character that has truly come into his own an unceremonious and ignominious end. Let him walk out of the Twins to a butchered army. Hell, have him captured and endup on Bailon's sept if need be. Hell, give him to Ser Elyan but have him go out with his head high and calling for the armys of the north to rally.

But to have him butchered and stabbed in the back is just being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole.

There's a fine line between questioning a characters motives and questioning the author's. I think the former is good, the latter is a problem, IMO.

I see where you're coming from, on the other hand, in hindsight, it was perfectly predictable given what an ass Lord Frey was from the start. It shows that Robb was not mature enough or ready enough to be king and to lead a war. How he let himself get sucked into the Jeyne deal is beyond me, and it was his undoing. It's a stark (heh) contrast to his father. Ned died because of his honor, Robb dies because he forsakes his honor and ignores the promise he made to wed Frey's daughter.

Even if it was gratuitous, it makes for some of the most compelling reading I've ever experienced and set off more emotions from a book than any other I can recall. So it was effective, if also cruel. Even more cruel to pretend Arya dies too in the very next chapter. Robb and Catelyn were not my favorite characters, so it was bad, but I could live with it. When I thought he also killed off Arya, I almost went ballistic!

I see where you're coming from, on the other hand, in hindsight, it was perfectly predictable given what an ass Lord Frey was from the start. It shows that Robb was not mature enough or ready enough to be king and to lead a war. How he let himself get sucked into the Jeyne deal is beyond me, and it was his undoing. It's a stark (heh) contrast to his father. Ned died because of his honor, Robb dies because he forsakes his honor and ignores the promise he made to wed Frey's daughter.

Even if it was gratuitous, it makes for some of the most compelling reading I've ever experienced and set off more emotions from a book than any other I can recall. So it was effective, if also cruel. Even more cruel to pretend Arya dies too in the very next chapter. Robb and Catelyn were not my favorite characters, so it was bad, but I could live with it. When I thought he also killed off Arya, I almost went ballistic!

It's funny how killing off Ned in book 1 makes all his death feints that much more effective because you truly believe the sick bastard might have killed the next one off too! I fell for it with Bran and Rickon, but on Arya I couldn't wait and had to skip ahead to be sure she lived (so far anyway)!