Dragons, hounds and ladies

Some people attribute the pop-cultural success of “Game of Thrones” to its willingness to kill any character, while others attribute it to the setting of the fantastic world of Westeros.

As illustrated in Sunday’s season finale, “The Children,” the truth behind this show’s popularity is a bit of both. These are all attributes of good storytelling, which “Game of Thrones” provides in Valyrian spades.

This past episode provided us with characters to relate to and to hate, plot twists that delighted and disheartened and the nagging question of what is next that keeps us on the edges of our seats.

In the East, the exiled princess Daernerys (Emilia Clarke) is faced with some of the most challenging decisions of her campaign to retake her ancestral throne, decisions that threaten her dragons and her rule in the Free Cities.

In the North, Jon Snow (Kit Harington, doing his finest work on the show) meets with wildling king Mance Rayder (Ciaran Hinds) to either broker a truce with him or assassinate him.

At great personal cost, Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) finally reaches the seer north of the Wall who has promised to train him.

Down near the capital, warrior woman Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) faces off against the Hound (Rory McCann) over who has the right to protect the fugitive Arya Stark (Maisie Williams).

This leads to one of the most brutal fight scenes of the series and makes this season noteworthy for its sheer number of duels.

Lastly, the most anticipated scene of the episode involved wrongly condemned Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) make good his escape, but not before coming to bloody terms with his former lover Shae (Sibel Kekilli) and father, Lord Tywin (Charles Dance).

It would be more unusual at this point in the series to be disappointed with the performances or the writing.

HBO continues to hire top-notch talent and give the show the budget they need to tell the story.

On top of all of this, the music for the episode, composed by Ramin Djawadi, proves that the score of “Game of Thrones” should not be known for just its theme. The notes are by turns haunting, rousing and mournful.

The various themes manage to ground the characters and this fictional world and somehow make it feel real. Perhaps this is the real trick that makes “Game of Thrones” so popular.

The characters feel authentic even though most of them are engaged in alien pursuits like chivalry or commanding garrisons.

While most of us will never be able to empathize with these pursuits, we can understand the hurt of lost love or the pain of being rejected by a person you are trying to help.

It may not matter why exactly the show is striking a chord with so many people. So long as it keeps telling a story as good as the one it tells in this season finale, “Game of Thrones” will continue to make lots of money and will satisfy its growing fan base.