Songfacts®:

• Ed Sheeran made a brief appearance in the first episode of the seventh series of Game of Thrones, which premiered on HBO on July 16, 2017. He plays a soldier, leading a singalong with his fellow troops. Maisie Williams' character Arya Stark turns up on a horse and makes the comment that it's" a pretty song" that she hasn't heard it before. Sheeran then delivers his one line: "It's a new one."
  
  Williams is a big fan of the singer, and the producers wanted to have Sheeran appear on the show to surprise the actress.
• This ballad about a secret relationship is the song that Sheeran sings. "Hands of Gold" is taken from A Storm of Swords, George R.R. Martin's third book in his "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. The first half of the novel was adapted for television as the third season of Game of Thrones, while the second half became the basis for the series' fourth season.
  
  "Hands of Gold" is sung in the novel by a bard named Symon Silver Tongue, and it's meant to be a warning to Tyrion Lannister about his secret relationship with the prostitute Shae. Symon threatens to sing it for all of King's Landing and expose their affair.