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"Game of Thrones&amp;#039; exec producers have defended killing off major characters in the first season of the HBO fantasy drama. Fans of the show who had not read George RR Martin&amp;#039;s books were shocked by the death of Ned Stark (Sean Bean) in the penultimate episode and the departure of Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) in last night&amp;#039;s season finale. Execs David Benioff and DB Weiss described the exits of Stark and Drogo as crucial to the &amp;quot;experience&amp;quot; of the story, arguing that there was no &amp;quot;simplistic redemptive message&amp;quot; in the Ice and Fire novels. &amp;quot;If you&amp;#039;re just watching the show for Ned Stark, I&amp;#039;m not sure which show you&amp;#039;re watching,&amp;quot; Benioff told EW.  &amp;quot;Clearly there&amp;#039;s a huge number of characters and Ned and Drogo have been vital parts of the story. But it&amp;#039;s crucial for us we create a world where you&amp;#039;re constantly in fear for these characters - that was our experience reading the books. It creates a huge amount of suspense. You kind of cling to the characters when you know you can lose them at any moment.&amp;quot; Weiss commented: &amp;quot;Ned dying is telling a hard truth about the price of honor and the price of morality in a world where not everybody has the same values as you do. It&amp;#039;s not a simplistic redemptive message, where you sacrifice yourself and it saves the day. At lot of times sacrifice ends up being futile.&amp;quot; The pair claimed that the opening scenes of episode ten, which featured Ned Stark&amp;#039;s severed head and corpse, were used to emphasise that his character had genuinely died. &amp;quot;There was a bunch of viewers who had a denial reaction - that Ned can&amp;#039;t really be dead. But in episode ten we make it clear he&amp;#039;s dead. There was a lot of discussion over how many frames of sword-into-neck to include,&amp;quot; said Weiss. The finale of Game of Thrones airs in the UK tonight at 9pm on Sky Atlantic. &amp;gt; Sean Bean: &amp;#039;Game of Thrones twist is courageous&amp;#039; &amp;gt; Game of Thrones bigger than Sean Bean, says HBO "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/game-of-thrones/news/a325790/game-of-thrones-deaths-are-crucial-say-execs/>