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Where most Game of Thrones fans were horrified by the beheading of beloved Ned Stark and blamed it on a ruthless king, Bruce Craven, professor of economics at the University of Columbia, gave a lesson in leadership.
The Stark Norther was simply too proud to adapt to the bitter nature of King's Landing, which was bogged down in a frantic race to the royal estate. Its execution has triggered battles, intrigues, novels and resurrections that will culminate this Sunday with the highly anticipated final season of the show.
In the weekly series "Wealth of Westeros" of the AP, we will explore the latest plot twists and badyze the economic and business forces at the base of history. We examine the central issue of the show in Part 1: who will win the iron throne? The judgment of Craven and other intellectuals might surprise you: Sansa Stark, the eldest daughter of Ned.
Sansa went from a once helpless princess who dreamed of lemon cakes to a clever strategist. She endured degrading and abusive marriages, finding ways to adapt and survive that her late father could never handle.
"She was probably the closest involvement of as many different leaders as possible," said Craven, who wrote a new commercial book titled "Win or Die: The Secrets of Game of Thrones Leadership."
Sansa learned of Littlefinger's manipulations. She saw the pitfalls of what Craven calls the "transactional" approach to Cersei's leadership. And she saw the idealism of her parent, Jon Snow, turning him from a fashionable teenager into a military commander able to challenge the Night King's zombie army.
This education could be the ultimate benefit, even if it does not have the firepower of Daenerys Targaryen's dragons or the Valyrian steel sword brandished by Jon Snow.
"She has no dragons. She did not learn to become a murderer, "added Craven, who admits that his prediction is only a hunch. "All that she has gone through, part of me wants her to take advantage of it in an unpredictable way."
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Sansa enjoys a major resource advantage, said Mark Wright, director of the research at the Federal Reserve Minneapolis.
From the American Civil War to the Second World War, victorious armies often gained a decisive advantage by having the best equipment, stable supply lines and multitudes of soldiers. His rivals perceived for the throne are almost empty, militarily and economically.
Thanks to his weak cousin Robin Arryn, the Knights of the Val are under his command. His troops are the freshest and probably the best stocked, given the Vale's rich soil that provides wheat, corn, barley and pumpkins of an enviable size.
Its rivals suffered the destruction of their farmland and the depletion of their armies after years of war and occasional attacks of dragoons from the burnt land.
"I think it's Napoleon who said that an army was walking on his stomach," Wright said.
However, not everyone is convinced that Sansa will reign.
The betting markets have chosen Bran Stark, his mystic and handicapped brother.
It might also seem like an unexpected choice. Bran has the ability to travel in time. This gives him oracular power, but it has extinguished his former emotional warmth for cold prophecies. He seems too detached from humanity to sit on the iron throne or to establish the personal relationships that a leader would need to rally a tired population.
But for economists, its popularity in the betting markets is very important.
The market is what the public has closer to a three-eyed crow. He can foresee the future by distilling the wisdom of the crowd. The stock and bond markets do it daily.
He has no charisma and can not fight, and the series suggested last season that he was not even a stark anymore. But Boyle Sports gives him 4/5 chances. He is also the first choice on Bovada. And about Oddschecker. And Gambling.com.
But, of course, markets may be wrong. So can the experts.
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Carolyne Larrington, professor of medieval European literature in Oxford and author of "Winter is Coming: The World Medieval Game of Thrones', do not think that Sansa wants to sit on the iron throne any more than his father.
She rather considers Daenerys as the most likely choice, with her dragons and hordes of Dothraki.
Larrington said that the series, formerly known for its moral shades of gray, has become more clearly a fight between good and evil as it approaches its end.
"I think that's the reason they will play it safe and give it to Daenerys," she said.
Craven recognizes that Daenerys has developed superior leadership skills: she inspires others by walking in flames and surviving. It frees slaves and tries to govern for the benefit of others. Besides, she has dragons.
She is "the queen we have chosen", to quote the words of her interpreter and counselor Missandei.
This is a surprisingly positive lesson from a series that has crushed so many adored characters.
"All leaders who succeed in thwarting Cersei's exception involve motivated leaders to help others," Craven says.
"Their leadership does not strictly concern their own achievement or their position at the top of the organization chart." Let's hope this style of leadership works against the King's Army of the Night.
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