Ned Stark is beheaded – 2011

It couldn’t happen to the biggest star, could it? Yes, it could – if it is Sean Bean, who is killed off in pretty much everything he appears in. At the end of the very first series, Game of Thrones let us know that no character was safe from the chop – literally in this case – when Sean’s good guy character Ned Stark was beheaded by the baddies. To twist the knife just that little bit more, it was all witnessed by his screaming eldest daughter Sansa.

Ned had always insisted to his sons that “the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword” but, sadly, his accusers were not so honourable.

At that moment we all knew that winter really was coming.