When your favourite characters are impaled or burnt alive on a regular basis, you learn to expect the unexpected on Game of Thrones.
Most fans were not expecting Ed Sheeran to show up, however.
The mild-mannered singer, 26, made a cameo as the fantasy series returned last night, singing halfway through the gruesome curtain-raiser to series seven. Dressed as a soldier, he was singing at a campfire when he caught the attention of Arya Stark, played by Maisie Williams, as she rode through a forest on horseback.
Stark tells Sheeran’s unnamed character: “It’s a pretty song, I’ve never heard it before.”
He replies: “It’s a new one.”
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According to People magazine, the lyrics would not sound out of place on Sheeran’s new album: “He rode through the streets of the city / Down from his hill on high / O’er the winds and the steps and the cobbles / He rode to a woman’s sigh / For she was his secret treasure / She was his shame and his bliss / And a chain and a keep are nothing / Compared to a woman’s kiss / For hands of gold are always cold / But a woman’s hands are warm.”
The musician celebrated his appearance by posting a still on Instagram. “Throwback to the time I was a Lannister,” he wrote.
Reaction was largely positive on Twitter, though one user, Brandy Jensen, wrote: “Ed Sheeran appearing on Game of Thrones but not being brutally disemboweled was very disappointing.”
The show frequently plucks extras from the world of music. During the most notorious death scene in the series, the so-called Red Wedding, Coldplay fans were briefly removed from the drama when the band’s drummer was seen playing on a balcony. The Icelandic group Sigur Rós performed as a wedding band in series four and the metal act Mastodon, suitably bearded, appeared as “wildlings” in a gruesome battle scene in 2015.