Talk:List of A Song of Ice and Fire characters

Catch-all page

I have created a page as a catch-all page for those characters from A Song of Ice and Fire that do not naturally belong to any of the great houses. The number of individual character pages for this series has exploded during the past few weeks, most of them leading to VfDs. (And rightly so, I think.) This page exists to encourage people to add "Houseless" characters to it, rather than creating new pages.

If and when there are obvious ways of splitting these individuals into separate pages (House Clegane, for example), then we can do that.

Until then, let's work on cleaning up this article, and the other character descriptions that currently reside under the main houses. Almost all of the related pages are in very, very poor shape and would benefit greatly from our attention. So, dear potential contributer: before you add a stub for Cotter Pyke or Chataya, please edit Robert Baratheon (on House Baratheon) first.

For more discussion, please read what I wrote on Talk: List of characters in A Song of Ice and Fire.

I've made a proposal for all aSoIaF character organization that I'm starting soon, also in Talk: List of characters in A Song of Ice and Fire. NeoFreak 21:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Howland Reed and Sandor Clegane

While editing redirect links (great fun, that) for the House Stark page, I came across a stub on Howland Reed, which I've merged with this page, since a separate article doesn't seem warranted for a (so far) very minor character. Brendan 02:53, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I've done the same for Sandor Clegane, who is more important but still doesn't deserve a separate page.

AFFC Spoilers

I've gone ahead and added some information on events in AFFC. While most of this is simply speculation, all of this speculation is so heavily accepted by the fan community and so strongly implied by the text that I think it's worth adding at this point. If R+L=J is worth mentioning in Wikipedia, then so is all the rest of this stuff, I think.

• Do we really need spoiler warnings in each entry? Can't we just have one main one at the top of the page? Lisiate 21:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Fan speculation is Original Research (WP:OR and is not permissible for inclusion unless you can find a Reliable Source to attest to it. That includes R+L=J. Wellspring (talk) 02:37, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Brienne's Last Name

I realize this is nit-picky, but Brienne's family name is Tarth. However, like many other Westeros noble families, the Tarths' holding shares their name: Tarth. Thus, Brienne Tarth can also be called "Brienne of Tarth", since she does in fact come from a place called Tarth. Why people usually refer to her this way is never addressed. I kept the title of her section "Brienne of Tarth" since that's her most common style, but included mention of her full name.Captain Crawdad 07:40, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Vargo Hoat

I may be mistaken but shouldn't this say Lannister instead of Stark. "The Mummers slaughter the Stark bannermen and hand the castle over to Roose Bolton. "Sazabirules 23:48, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that was my brain fart. Captain Crawdad 17:05, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

The Alchemist

Spoiler warnings are all very well, but I am most upset that the premature revelation of the Alchemist's true identity has spoiled a plot twist that was coming up in a future book. Could we perhaps have a separate warning template for facts that have not yet been revealed in the published series – or leave them off the page altogether? 84.69.155.136 14:54, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, the revelation of the Alchemist's new identity was right at the end of A Feast for Crows, so the article isn't spoiling anything that hasn't already been published. If the article started guessing what was going to happen next, it might be a future book spoiler, but as it is, it just notes details that some readers might have missed.Captain Crawdad 17:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Erk, no, I meant the revelation of his previous identity (i.e. that he is the same person as Jaqen). That wasn't revealed in the book – it's presumably something that's going to be revealed later on and is meant to be a surprise when it comes. 213.249.135.36 18:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, well, I didn't consider that a spoiler, since the article only notes that they have the same face, which is verifiable in the currently published books. Though it has not been explicitly stated whether or not they are the same person (even though it's pretty clear), they are still associated with each other due to that shared face, so the Alchemist is relevant to Jaqen's character.Captain Crawdad 21:13, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh well, the damage is done now. It's still the sort of thing I would rather have been surprised by – the face description is there for clever readers to spot, but a lot of readers won't have spotted it. 84.70.213.75 12:48, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Some Ideas

I don't think either Nymeria or Ronnet Connington are important enough to be mentioned on this page. Also why is Arys on this page when none of the other Kingsguard besides The Hound are on it? If we don't remove his two sentences, we should at least expand it. What does everybody think of this Sazabirules 01:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I believe the only reason they're here was because someone made separate pages for them and they got merged here. I've been tempted to remove them. I think Nymeria Sand should be in the Martell section, if anything, and the historical figure should be in Westeros, if anything.Captain Crawdad 17:11, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, a lot of characters are here just based on merges from individual pages, from a time when there were no other pages for non great house characters. I'd certainly move Nymeria, Connington, Oakheart, and maybe even a couple of others.

Another thing is that this page is getting a bit long; it's at 39 kilobytes. If there's any prospect of its getting significantly longer, we may want to consider various methods of dividing the content up- either moving some of the descriptions to other articles (Kingsguard? Night's Watch?) or dividing this into A-M and N-Z. But that's all a ways off in any case. Brendan Moody 19:40, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Barristan Selmy

I added something to the bit on Selmy- it said he was the last of the Kingsguard from before the Rebellion, but Jaime Lannister, though he betrayed his king, also remains from that Kingsguard.

True. I just changed that section again to remove both the assertion and the contradiction. The point of the sentence was just to note that he comes from the Kingsguard's older tradition. -Captain Crawdad 02:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Petyr Baelish

Just a minor note: it is not merely 'unlikely' that Petyr deflowered Catelyn, it is definitely false. In one of Catelyn's POV chapters in Storm of Swords, she distinctly remembers how she felt when she gave Ned her maidenhood (it had more of a sense of duty than one of passion, or something of that nature). Also in an earlier chapter she muses on how she 'gave her maidenhood to a stranger' out of duty to her father and her house. I've made the appropriate changes. --Alex

When did Petyr say that he was looking for the welfare of the realm? The one that did that is Varys. Is the article mistaken?

Pages for minor houses?

This is probably rocking the boat too much, and I'm coming to the game kind of late here, but I think it would be a lot better if we created separate pages for minor houses rather than put all the characters who aren't members of the great houses here. For example, if I look up Samwell Tarly, I might also be interested in the details regarding his House, however slight they may be, such as what role his father played in the war (he fought for the Lannisters I believe, and there's even info on which battles he fought). Of course, characters who seem to be the only representatives of their houses should stay as they are. But some of the minor houses grouped here have almost as many representatives in the story as some of the major ones (for example House Arryn has very few). So I would propose that a separate list of known minor houses be made underneath the current list of major houses, with pages for any that has two or more prominent members. House Reed and House Clegane come to mind. Also, instead of putting Khal Drogo here, one could make a separate page for all Dothraki in the books, which would include both Drogo's and Dany's bloodriders, etc. Just throwing out some ideas.

Redirects

Sandor Clegane redirects to this page, but there is no reference to him here. Should it instead redirect to Minor houses in A Song of Ice and Fire or someplace else? 69.95.239.90 21:57, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Gregor Clegane also redirects here.-Anonymous GRRM fan

...as does Jorah Mormont - both the wiki entry (Jorah Mormont) and interior page-links (to a now-bogus anchor: Characters_from_A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire#Jorah_Mormont) ...and Howland Reed, and (presumably) others. Looks like a lot of this resulted from a helpful cleanup in '05 (see above - #Howland_Reed_and_Sandor_Clegane) 71.198.100.237 01:17, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Syrio Forel

I just want to make clear my reasons for stating Syrio's death as possible as opposed to probable, as people keep changing it back. Probability, as I'm using the word here is subjective; GRRM has never stated that Syrio is probably dead (or if he has please provide a reference :)) and I don't find it at all unlikely that Syrio could take on Meryn Trant, even with a wooden sword. So if you have a reason to change it to probable please do tell. Pyreforge 01:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I've come up with alternate wording that doesn't even mention death at all, since in the absence of hard evidence either way there's no particular reason to. Let me know if you object to it. Brendan Moody 05:00, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a better way to do it. Pyreforge 08:05, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Qyburn...

Okay, I'm not at all sure about this thing here, BUT... I do recall that on the back of one of the books (and I know how unreliable they are), the word Necromancer was mentioned... Or something, anyways, to that effect. Pure speculation here, but could Qyburn be a necromancer, then? Point 1- He was banished from the Maester's sect, right? So clearly he was doing nasty stuff, possibly other than his torture experiments/fetishes. Point 2- He's a good healer, so he knows a lot about anatomy. This might be important. Point 3- The already mentioned stuff about the giant armor suit, probably for Gregor Clegane, who I THINK has expired. Point 4- Unbeatable champion, right? Well, a huge undead monster man that can shake off wounds like Dondarrion, or even like a Wight? Sounds pretty unbeatable.

I'm not going to edit anything personally, this is just a little thought about him. If anyone has any other bits of evidence or suggestive facts, you can post them if you want. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.183.111 (talk) 01:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

ADWD Spoilers

Under Barristan the Bold there are spoilers from an ADWD preview chapter. I think they should be removed. Views? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.10.80.131 (talk) 17:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate Articles ?

What is the difference between this article and the following one:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire

I am putting this question in both articles' talk pages. 66.97.213.202 (talk) 23:09, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

This one and Major houses in A Song of Ice and Fire lists important characters with a description. List of characters in A Song of Ice and Fire is a list of every single character that is named in the books, with minimal description. Yoenit (talk) 07:50, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I have officially proposed merging List of characters in A Song of Ice and Fire here, although I really want to make the page a wp:DAB. My reasons for doing so are outlined here. Please provide comments/opinions on this requested merge. Yoenit (talk) 11:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

This entire wiki is incredibly helpful. Thanks to anyone and everyone who contributed to it. :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nonniemb (talk • contribs) 01:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Varys

In the section on Varys, the character page states:

"...planting a tyrell coin which was found by Qyburn in the dungeon cell where Tyrion Lannister was being held before his escape."

Said coin was found in a (secret) storage area under the living quarters of the under-jailer Rugin. Can someone look into this and verify/edit the section? It is discussed in the 2nd Cersei chapter of A Feast For Crows. Tacticus (talk) 23:19, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Entirely too much information/speculation/cruft

I've recently had to reinstate a removal of information in the article, wherein Joffrey/Cersei was noted as being the party guilty of hiring the assassin to kill Bran. Stepping aside from the actual text of the book (a matter I'll address in a moment), we need secondary sources - reliable sources, and not "unofficial" blogs and wikis and the like - to make statements like that in the first place. One of the editors pointed out that in the summary of the third book, written by the invisible staff at the unofficial wiki-ish blog, "Tower of the Hand" notes that the accusation is leveled at Joffrey. Even if we could use the source (which we cannot, as it is itself completely unusable as a source, having no editorial oversight, etc.), this would be an inaccurate statement. From the aforementioned source:

"Tyrion looks on as the High Septon marries Joffrey and Margaery. He reflects on the attempt on Bran's life and how Joffrey had to be the one to order the killing. He still does not know why, but figures it was probably to impress Robert.1"

So Tyrion guesses that Joffrey might have done it, but at no point states that Joffrey actually did do it. Entirely different animals altogether.
We need unimpeachable sources for any evaluative statements, not Sherlocking as to the fates, motivations or sexual mores of the different characters. I am strongly inclined to go through this article with a hatchet, cutting pout everything missing explicit sourcing for its evaluative statements. I am inclined to wait, but I won't be waiting long. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 14:49, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree the article needs a hatchet to remove cruft and speculation, but challenging this little tidbit is ridiculous. I suggest you read the book in question, which you obviously haven't done. Yoenit (talk) 17:09, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Respectfully, I have read all of the books in the series to date, and I think it is clear that while Tyrion surmised that Joffrey had been the culprit, it has little more than that. With Martin being less than explicit (unlike his description of Gregor Clegane killing Oberon Martell, for instance, or how Arianne Martell had been secretly betrothed to Viserys Targaryen), we cannot presume to fill in the blanks. Were we to have explicit commentary via a cited, reliable source, we'd be copacetic. Without it, we are out of luck. We cannot synthesize any of the plot ourselves. the readers do not come to us for our pearls of wisdom and insight. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 17:30, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Really, than you should know Jaime reaches the same conclusion independently and discusses it with Cersei. I decided to just quote the relevant sections from A Storm of Swords to help you remember. Now, I challenge whether King Robert died, as we did not see it happen first hand. Oh, and Loras Tyrell getting hit with burning oil is obviously speculation as well, we only have second hand accounts of that. Yoenit (talk) 17:40, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

excerpt from Tyrion 63 from ASOS

I am no stranger to Valyrian steel, the boy had boasted. The septons were always going on about how the Father Above judges us all. If the Father would be so good as to topple over and crush Joff like a dung beetle, I might even believe it. He ought to have seen it long ago. Jaime would never send another man to do his killing, and Cersei was too cunning to use a knife that could be traced back to her, but Joff, arrogant vicious stupid little wretch that he was… He remembered a cold morning when he’d climbed down the steep exterior steps from Winterfell’s library to find Prince Joffrey jesting with the Hound about killing wolves. Send a dog to kill a wolf, he said. Even Joffrey was not so foolish as to command Sandor Clegane to slay a son of Eddard Stark, however; the Hound would have gone to Cersei. Instead the boy found his catspaw among the unsavory lot of freeriders, merchants, and camp followers who’d attached themselves to the king’s party as they made their way north. Some poxy lackwit willing to risk his life for a prince’s favor and a little coin. Tyrion wondered whose idea it had been to wait until Robert left Winterfell before opening Bran’s throat. Joff’s, most like. No doubt he thought it was the height of cunning. The prince’s own dagger had a jeweled pommel and inlaid goldwork on the blade, Tyrion seemed to recall. At least Joff had not been stupid enough to use that. Instead he went poking among his father’s weapons. Robert Baratheon was a man of careless generosity, and would have given his son any dagger he wanted… but Tyrion guessed that the boy had just taken it. Robert had come to Winterfell with a long tail of knights and retainers, a huge wheelhouse, and a baggage train. No doubt some diligent servant had made certain that the king’s weapons went with him, in case he should desire any of them. The blade Joff chose was nice and plain. No goldwork, no jewels in the hilt, no silver inlay on the blade. King Robert never wore it, had likely forgotten he owned it. Yet the Valyrian steel was deadly sharp… sharp enough to slice through skin, flesh, and muscle in one quick stroke. I am no stranger to Valyrian steel. But he had been, hadn’t he? Else he would never have been so foolish as to pick Littlefinger’s knife. The why of it still eluded him. Simple cruelty, perhaps? His nephew had that in abundance. It was all Tyrion could do not to retch up all the wine he’d drunk, piss in his breeches, or both. He squirmed uncomfortably. He ought to have held his tongue at breakfast. The boy knows I know now. My big mouth will be the death of me, I swear it.

excerpt from Jaime 73 from ASOS

I’m not ashamed of loving you, only of the things I’ve done to hide it. That boy at Winterfell…” “Did I tell you to throw him out the window? If you’d gone hunting as I begged you, nothing would have happened. But no, you had to have me, you could not wait until we returned to the city.” “I’d waited long enough. I hated watching Robert stumble to your bed every night, always wondering if maybe this night he’d decide to claim his rights as husband.” Jaime suddenly remembered something else that troubled him about Winterfell. “At Riverrun, Catelyn Stark seemed convinced I’d sent some footpad to slit her son’s throat. That I’d given him a dagger.” “That,” she said scornfully. “Tyrion asked me about that.” “There was a dagger. The scars on Lady Catelyn’s hands were real enough, she showed them to me. Did you…?” “Oh, don’t be absurd.” Cersei closed the window. “Yes, I hoped the boy would die. So did you. Even Robert thought that would have been for the best. ‘We kill our horses when they break a leg, and our dogs when they go blind, but we are too weak to give the same mercy to crippled children,’ he told me. He was blind himself at the time, from drink.” Robert? Jaime had guarded the king long enough to know that Robert Baratheon said things in his cups that he would have denied angrily the next day. “Were you alone when Robert said this?” “You don’t think he said it to Ned Stark, I hope? Of course we were alone. Us and the children.” Cersei removed her hairnet and draped it over a bedpost, then shook out her golden curls. “Perhaps Myrcella sent this man with the dagger, do you think so?” It was meant as mockery, but she’d cut right to the heart of it, Jaime saw at once. “Not Myrcella. Joffrey.” Cersei frowned. “Joffrey had no love for Robb Stark, but the younger boy was nothing to him. He was only a child himself . “ “A child hungry for a pat on the head from that sot you let him believe was his father.” He had an uncomfortable thought. “Tyrion almost died because of this bloody dagger. If he knew the whole thing was Joffrey’s work, that might be why…”

Really, than you should know Jaime reaches the same conclusion independently and discusses it with Cersei. I decided to just quote the relevant sections from A Storm of Swords to help you remember. Now, I challenge whether King Robert died, as we did not see it happen first hand. Oh, and Loras Tyrell getting hit with burning oil is obviously speculation as well, we only have second hand accounts of that. Yoenit (talk) 17:40, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I was aware of the dialogue, and we could get into minutiae, but that would swiftly turn into a pissing contest, Yoenit - solving nothing. The main point is that a few of the characters think he did it. It is not the same thing as him actually having done it. Two separate animals. Let's focus instead on finding explicit citations that do all the dot-connecting that we as Wikipedia editors are not allowed to do. If it is indeed as important as all that, then I am sure there must be scads of information about it somewhere where explicit citation can be found. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 22:42, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, have fun looking for it. This is a major plot spoiler and no book reviewer would be stupid enough to include it in his review, nor would the author reveal it in an interview. As a solution I would be willing to accept something along the lines of "Tyrion and Jaime deducted independently in ASOS that Joffrey must have been responsible for the assasination attempt". Yoenit (talk) 07:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, there is no hurry to include it - we are not a 'one-stop shop' for all things Game of Thrones; there are numerous wikis and fansites out there that fill that capacity. I would suggest we say nothing as to the matter until someone notable enough turns their attention to it. "Deducted independently" and "must have been" suggests facts not in evendence (and even if it did, we are not allowed to Sherlock the answer for ourselves), and Martin has made no such explicit claim as to that fact. There is no hurry to include it. Things just happen in Martin novels, or are so 'butterfly flapping it's wings' tertiarily connected that it might as well be unconnected. I don't think we need it, and stating it gives undue weight to the conspiracy that it is important. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 17:55, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I had not considered leaving it out entirely, excellent solution. Yoenit (talk) 18:51, 7 June 2011 (UTC)