Game of Thrones, season 5

Cersei arms the Faith to spite the Tyrells, and the weapon turns in her hand within half a season: the High Sparrow imprisons Loras, then Margaery, then Cersei herself. Her walk from the sept - shorn, naked, the length of the city, one word repeated - is the price of the only confession she is willing to make, and the season leaves her rage banked but very much alive.

Daenerys tries governance by compromise: reopening the fighting pits, marrying a noble she does not want. It buys her an arena full of Sons of the Harpy and a rescue no one plans - Drogon, at last, at scale - that ends with her alone in the Dothraki sea, surrounded by forty thousand riders.

Stannis, marching on Winterfell through the snow, is offered victory by his priestess at a price that costs him his daughter, his wife, half his army and then the battle anyway. Ramsay Bolton holds the North; Sansa, married into that house, jumps from its walls with Theon rather than remain.

At Hardhome, Jon watches the Night King raise the freshly dead with a gesture, and comes home certain of the only war that matters. The men of the Watch, certain instead that he has betrayed them for wildlings, meet him at night with a sign that says traitor, and take turns. He bleeds out in the snow, and the season ends there.