ABSTRACT
One moment more than any other propelled Game of Thrones to the center of conversation in American culture: the execution of Eddard Stark. Shakespeare’s first tetralogy attached counselor in-fighting and the downfall of the honorable advisor to the ineptitude of the ruling power. Instead, in both Shakespeare’s Henry VI and Game of Thrones, the council exhibits discord, inefficiency, and downfall specifically because, in a governmental system where power is centralized in one person, a king who is weak—either morally or politically—and cannot wield power effectively creates competition, in-fighting, and backstabbing among the advisory council. In Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy, that role is played by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Unlike the ambitious Richard, Duke of York, both Gloucester and Eddard are honorable counselors in the good favor of their kings who are plotted against and killed through the “back-stabbing and scheming and arse-licking” of rival counselors.
