The anger of 'Game of Thrones' fans is part of the game

Spoiler alert: This column contains details about the fifth episode of Season 8 of "Game of Thrones."

As the outraged multitudes blasted social media with their feelings about what should and should not have happened during the penultimate episode of "Game of Thrones," my thoughts turned, strangely enough, to Little Nell.

"The Old Curiosity Shop," like many of Charles Dickens' works, was published in installments, and as those installments evolved into a novel, readers began to have very strong feelings about the fate of its homeless, poverty-stricken protagonist Nell Trent, and many wrote to Dickens begging him to spare her.

Spoiler alert: He did not.

Many people objected, for many reasons (Oscar Wilde famously observed that "one must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing") but "The Old Curiosity Shop" was a hit even so. And as far as I know