Spoilers for this season of Game of Thrones ahead. If you haven't seen the finale you may want to check out one of our other stories.
The final two episodes of Game of Thrones were absolute chaos. While diehard Game fans are used to each season's ninth episode being crazy and full of character deaths, the showrunners threw us for a loop by giving us an even crazier finale. "The Winds of Winter" saw a whopping 11 named characters killed off, including basically all of the King's Landing cast, with the exception of Cersei and Jaime. One of these fatalities was King Tommen Baratheon, who threw himself out of his window after seeing the Sept of Baelor, and his wife Margaery, blown up at the hands of his ruthless mother. What a way to go.
Luckily, actor Dean-Charles Chapman, who played Tommen for the last few seasons of Game of Thrones recently opened up to Vulture regarding his character's motivations and missteps. After all, Tommen was the King and could have presumably made changes to prevent so many deaths by simply showing his power and strength, as well as stripping the Sparrows of their power.
That's the main fault of Tommen's, that he didn't even look at what was in front of him, really. And he didn't think things through. He didn't go, "Okay, this is the situation. My mom's in trouble, my wife's in trouble, so I need to get an army," or whatever he needed, "and I'm going to make a plan and I'm going to stick to it." Just grow a backbone! Force yourself to rule! Don't let people tell you what to do! Maybe even confront Jaime and Cersei about it, and go, "Look, let's talk about it, and make a decision together?" Maybe that way, they could have had some justice and made things better and be happy and whatnot. Well, maybe not happy. [Laughs.] The one time he tried, when he went to confront the High Sparrow, he kind of crapped his pants a little. [Laughs.] If he had just gone through with it, even if takes shedding blood, it's got to be done! I would have done that. But Tommen, he's anti-violence, anti-hatred, and unfortunately, that got everyone killed.
Well at least the actor who plays Tommen knows what it takes to be a good ruler, even if the character didn't. Of course, being a teenaged King is easier said than done. Tommen grew up as a very sheltered little Prince. Rather than being trained in politics and battle by Cersei, she attempted to keep him ignorant to the terrors of the world. This seems like a fine enough idea, but once Joffrey was killed in the Purple Wedding, the sheltered and inexperienced Tommen suddenly became the ruler of the seven kingdoms.
Dean-Charles Chapman goes on to assess that Westeros is doomed with Cersei on the Iron Throne, and that Dany needs to get there and save the day ASAP. This guy knows his shit.
Game of Thrones will return for a shorter Season 7 sometime next spring.
