Why add more brutality to Westeros than there already is?

**CAUTION: There are spoilers for the books in here. Also, trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and rape.**

The world of Game of Thrones is not a nice place. We get that, DB Weiss and David Benioff, we really, really do. We understand that because in the very first episode of the series we saw: a village worth of Wildlings’ frozen butchered bodies strewn about in the forest; we saw two men savagely hunted and murdered by the White Walkers; we saw the one man to escape the White Walkers beheaded for desertion; we saw this last bit intentionally be done in front of four children, one of who was only ten years old; we saw a dead direwolf gored by a stag’s antler; we saw the funeral of a man poisoned for political gain; we saw a girl of only 16 be sexually assaulted by her brother who then sold her off to be a stranger’s wife; we saw a man die at their wedding for no good reason; and then we capped off the episode by watching a ten year old boy be pushed out of a window and fall to his presumed death.