Originally Posted by Joe Obenberger

The more that I think about it - especially in light of all of the writers who post above gnashing their teeth about plot issues, parsing the plot out like was taught in high school and looking for protaganists and the like - the more that I'm impelled to the conclusion that this series really isn't about plot at all and does not really have any protagonist. If you go searching for those things, you will be certainly disappointed.

If plot and protagonist mattered as much here as it usually does in literature, the story would have largely ended with the death of Ned Stark. It did not end. It marched on to other conflicts, other issues, and other players. Some of those have ended too, and some other key players have died, but the series keeps going on to tell other stories.

Game of Thrones is unlike an ordinary novel. The point of watching it or reading the series is to get immersed in this alternate world that operates with different laws and different realities. If you like those things, and the experience of being soaked in that world, you keep watching and you keep reading. What looks like plot is just a passing parade of ambient opportunities to more fully explain this alternate world and how it works. Game of Thrones is not a novel, it is a cycle - and no particular plotline is critical to the ultimate story it tells of a fantasy world.

IMHO the stage and the sets and the props are the story and the story has become a prop and settings to better enjoy the theater.