This screenshot features Jon Snow and his lover, Daenerys standing in the Stark’s (Jon’s family name and a noble/powerful house) Crypt in front of Jon’s deceased aunt’s statue (see top image). Death of a noble-born person in the show is often perceived as a downward spiral resulting in loss of power, not necessarily always at the cost of the family experiencing the death. Most characters believe in ‘justice’ toward those guilty of wronging their families or leaders and choose to seek vengeance.

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My recreation of this image is two of my friends sitting in a graveyard at night holding hands (see bottom image). The bench they sit on has the words ‘forever loved’ engraved on the side of it and is a powerful representation of how death can bring the living closer together. With both images having a very dark yet warm tone as well as a sense of intimacy between two human subjects, the images both almost feel romantic despite their obvious morbid locations. Maybe burial grounds are less haunting and more beautiful than we realize.

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Thomas Bender explored this theory when he wrote about ‘Rural Cemeteries’, which became popular in the mid-nineteenth century. He commonly refers to these cemeteries as ‘romantic cemeteries’ for their focus on the pleasures of the living in the form of beauty.  He describes them as “A sanctuary within an urban industrial society… a symbol of the solitude, though now adorned and beautiful…”  (Bender, 1974).