Game Of Thrones: 7 Dumbest Mistakes Made By Characters (And What They Cost)

A single decision on Game Of Thrones can mean the difference between living and dying, between climbing another rung on the power ladder or being thrown to the very bottom through a Moon Door.

With stakes like that, you'd think that every decision was precisely and carefully plotted, every ramification considered and each chess piece moved three steps ahead. You would be wrong, because that wouldn't make for much dramatic tension, now would it?

In the Great Game - as in real life - even the most capable and intelligent characters make decisions that have devastating shockwaves, costing not just their own life, but the lives of multiple others. While they may have seemed correct at the time, ultimately each fundamentally and irrevocably disrupted the delicate balance of power.

Were it not for these blunders, Westeros and the entire world of George RR Martin's creation may be entirely different now. But which were the most devastatingly foolish and the most costly?

The Mistake: Ned admitting to Cersei Lannister that he knew her children were born of an incestuous relationship with Jaime.

What It Cost: His life (and incidentally the War of the Five Kings). Though Ned attempted to gain an upper hand over Cersei by threatening her with her secret, it not only prompted Cersei to destroy the letter proclaiming him as Protector of the Realm, but it also pressured her into plying Robert Baratheon with alcohol before the hunt that killed him.

If Ned had chosen to tell Robert instead, there's no way that Cersei would have lived (and there's a high chance that Joffrey and the rest of the children would have been killed, too).

Ned wouldn't have been executed and Westeros wouldn't have exploded into political chaos. That's a fairly big blunder,