Rob was a huge fan of Game of Thrones and I’m sure is very pissed that he’s going to miss the final season, which begins on Sunday night (or–who knows?– maybe he’s already seen it wherever he is). We’d talk about the show pretty much whenever we got together, mainly him untangling for me who everyone was and what their relationships were to each other.

“Okay, Dad, listen up. Jon Snow is actually the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, who was Aery’s heir and Daenerys’s eldest brother,” he’d explain to me as if I had the IQ of Hodor. “So he’s really the legitimate heir to the Iron Throne.”

I surprised him last summer with a box set of all five novels in the epic fantasy series. He loved reading them on the bus late at night when he went to work and early in the morning on his way home. Sometimes he’d get so caught up in one of the books that he’d take it to the back of his apartment building, sit on the patio facing the ocean, and share the sunrise with the Starks and the Lannisters.

We both loved Tyrion and Arya and hoped that they’d be the last two standing. Of course, neither of us could’ve imagined that by the time the final season rolled around, Rob would’ve become the Night King.

But as much as we loved the show and the books, it was Rob—not George R.R. Martin—who was the author of my favorite Game of Thrones story.

Zach summed it up best with this tweet from last July:

Shout out to my brother who last night thought he was seeing some Game of Thrones screening only to arrive to a group of ravenous KPOP fans seeing @GOT7.

Here’s their text exchange from that night:

Yeo

Yo yo

Made a huge mistake. I just wound up at Korean boy band concert at The Forum. They r called GOT7. The ad said free tickets for GOT7 premiere.

Hahahahahahahahahaha. That crowd is probably so funny. Did you think it was like a Thrones screening?

Exactly. They r going nuts. 

Hahahaha. That’s absurd

Yeah. Trying to enjoy it.

***

I was just looking up some memorable quote from GOT that I could use as a button on this little story and there were a bunch of them (You know nothing, Rob Carlat!), but I settled on this more appropriate line by Ramsay Bolton, from Season 3, Episode 6:

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”