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29th August 2017
09:59am BST

Any hero is only as good as the villain that they're facing and while it's easy to portray certain people in the simplistic terms of good and evil, that's not exactly true in Game of Thrones.
The real chaos is found in the grey area where right and wrong, good and evil, friend and enemy collide. Nobody understood this better than Petyr Baelish and very few characters were as good as Littlefinger when it came to playing the Game of Thrones.
As he was sentenced to death by Sansa, his list of crimes illustrated just how much influence the Machiavellian schemer had over the show.
Not only did Lord Baelish conspire with his sister to start the War of the Five Kings but he also betrayed Ned Stark, murdered Lysa Arryn to take control of the Vale, manipulated Sansa into marrying Ramsay Bolton and attempted to divide the Stark sisters in Winterfell.
He also conspired to have Joffrey murdered and was instrumental in House Stark winning the Battle of the Bastards. See, shades of grey.
Certain characters like Joffrey and Ramsay have the ability to get under your skin, but the creepy, deceitful and elusive quality that Aidan Gillen brought to his character was superb.
Master of Coin, manipulator, schemer, brothel owner, spy, Lord Protector of the Vale, powerful, deceitful, treacherous, charismatic, wise, treasonous, elusive, saviour and sinner - he's somehow managed to encapsulate of those things.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos) said the that Gillen's scenes were some of his favourites on the show "Listen, I was always so jealous of those beautiful scenes of Varys (Conleth Hill) and Littlefinger, when they're just strolling around the throne room, playing tennis with the beautiful words that the guys gave them."
Speaking about the death of his character, Gillen told EW that he knew the exact moment when his time was up.
"It’s better to go out at the end of [the season] with a good arc then at the start of episode 2. Even if I’m only in a few episodes — like last season I probably had less than any season — once your character is established as part of the world people feel like you’re there all the time. I did an interview with a publication [in 2015] and they asked me how I thought I would go. I said I thought Arya would deliver the blow. So it was as promised. And even within the scene, as soon as he walks in that room and Arya produces the dagger he knows the game is up. He at least suspected the game was up back in episode four when Bran told him, “Chaos is a ladder.” For Bran to come up with that is beyond coincidental," he said.
In the immortal words of Lord Baelish, "always keep your foes confused, if they don't know who you are or what you want, they don't know what you plan to do next," and it appears that Thrones fans are feeling the exact same way after his death.
They're delighted that the character is dead but they're also very happy to have seen Gillen's work over the past seven seasons.
https://twitter.com/l_favaro/status/901988562677227520
https://twitter.com/GoTthings_/status/901989736868454401
https://twitter.com/Jorahahi/status/902028192344670208
https://twitter.com/carlylane/status/901994180452474883
https://twitter.com/chris_kapitol/status/902039791432290304
https://twitter.com/GameOfThroneGuy/status/902276793377316864
https://twitter.com/GofThronesReact/status/902118497060356096
Chaos is a ladder and very few people climbed it better than Littlefinger.
Aidan Gillen's performance kept everyone guessing.
https://twitter.com/NightQueenCate/status/901991402791477248
https://twitter.com/MrFilmkritik/status/901989848759853057
https://twitter.com/FMiiir/status/902025112148484096
https://twitter.com/AquariusOnFire/status/902009630980792321
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