A Dance With Dragons

Tyrion is the son of Tywin and Joanna Lannister and brother of Cersei Baratheon (née Lannister) and Jaime Lannister. He is the uncle of the current Baratheon king, young Tommen. Tyrion is missing part of his nose and is small in stature due to dwarfism. In all of the cultures he encounters, people believe his appearance is the mark of “evil” or “illegitimacy.” He uses humor and wit as a defense against these attitudes. In this novel, Tyrion is living out the consequences of killing his father, Tywin Lannister, to avenge himself. In a previous volume of the series, Tywin attempts to blame Tyrion for the killing of Tyrion’s nephew Joffrey; Tywin was also responsible for the loss of the commoner woman Tyrion loved. At the start of this novel, Tyrion struggles to live down being a kinslayer by assuming a series of new names, including Hugor Hill and Yollo. Without access to the fabulous wealth of the Lannisters, he has to rely on his intelligence when it comes to navigating what people like Illyrio Mopatis want from him, which is support for their chosen candidate to sit on the Iron Throne. Tyrion sees most relationships as transactional—he considers what he has to offer by engaging with someone and what he can get out of cooperating with them.

He prides himself on his pragmatism, but several decisions show that he is also driven by emotion. When he rescues Young Griff by coming between the young prince and a stone man, he risks his life, likely because he likes Griff or he believes Young Griff might be able to restore order in the kingdom. When he steps in to save Penny and forcefully makes her accept the reality of her situation as a captive, he is also acting out of a sense of responsibility for a person who has suffered harm because of his actions. Tyrion seems to be the same clever, scheming person he was at the start of the novel, especially since he leaves the narrative signing bad checks to secure his freedom. He does seem to have discovered a role for himself, which is to support Daenerys in her effort to overthrow the current generation of Baratheons, his niece and nephew.

Jon Snow is the lord commander of the Night’s Watch and is known as the son born out of wedlock to Eddard Stark and an unknown woman. Jon’s name, “Snow,” is the name given to the children born out of wedlock of the nobility in the North, and his enemies and even allies like Stannis call him a “bastard” to his face. He has the same dark coloring of the Starks and is a fighter who carries the blade Longclaw. He spends much of the book trying to overcome the idea that being born out of wedlock makes him unfit to exercise authority as the lord commander of the Night’s Watch.

Jon doggedly hews to what Eddard Stark taught him about leadership and power, which is that the leader’s most important responsibility is to look out for the good of his people. Eddard Stark also taught Jon the importance of being a man of his word, even when that is difficult. Being lord commander of the Night’s Watch requires cunning and subterfuge, something Jon struggles with because he dislikes lying, even for the greater good. When Jon does use subterfuge, he generally relies on lying by omission, as when he sends Val away beyond the Wall but doesn’t say outright that she isn’t around when Queen Selyse demands to see her. Jon also switches Gilly’s baby and the baby of Mance Rayder to protect the child from his apparent ally, Lady Melisandre.

Jon’s external challenges come from rivals for the leadership of the Night’s Watch and from real threats looming beyond the Wall, but he also contends with internal conflicts. He is both attracted to and distrustful of Melisandre because of her power and beauty. He feels torn between his duty to his family and his duty to the Night’s Watch and the realm. His men stab him to death because they believe he has betrayed his duty to the Night’s Watch. Jon dies because he is unable to balance his competing duties to the satisfaction of his subordinates.

Quentyn Martell is the heir of Doran Martell, the prince in Dorne. In appearance, Quentyn is unremarkable, especially in comparison to his handsome Dornish companions. Quentyn’s main motivation in the novel is to live up to his father’s expectation that he will save Dorne by convincing Daenerys to marry him and use her dragons in defense of Dorne. Going by the name “Frog” because of how quickly he responds to the man pretending to be the knight to Quentyn’s squire, Quentyn spends most of the narrative struggling to fulfill the role assigned to him. His ideas about what it means to be a man and a prince are shaped not only by the seasoned men who accompany him on his journey to Daenerys but also by his reading about heroic figures who came to power and used that power to accomplish great things. Because of his sense that he is not measuring up to expectations, especially after Daenerys fails to take his proposal seriously, Quentyn makes the fateful decision to call on his distant Targaryen blood and attempt to master Daenerys’s two remaining dragons after she disappears. He fails. What could have been a privileged, comfortable life as a Dornish prince ends because Quentyn bears the weight of history in the form of the old compact between Dorne and the exiled Targaryens.

Young Griff is the alter ego/name of Aegon Targaryen, putatively the surviving heir of Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Elia of Dorne. In appearance, Griff has dyed his hair blue to hide the fair hair and purple eyes that are typical of Targaryens. Griff is 15 or 16 during the events of the novel and is now aware that all the training and study Griff/Jon Connington required of him was to prepare him to be a king in Westeros. Martin mostly characterizes Young Griff/Aegon indirectly by relying on Tyrion’s point of view, and what Tyrion sees is a charismatic but cocky youth who is excited to discover his identity but also naive about the realities of getting and keeping power. His time with Tyrion, especially the time he spends playing cyvasse, teaches Young Griff to think more strategically and boldly than his childhood as a secret prince has allowed so far.

Young Griff’s travels toward Meereen and understanding of the miscalculation Daenerys has made in staying in Essos shape him into a young man who is ready for more responsibility. He gains confidence when Griff/Jon Connington and the Golden Company listen to his proposal that they go to Westeros. He finally claims his identity as a Targaryen of Westeros when he demands to lead the expedition to Storm’s End instead of his mentor. The last characterization of Young Griff/Aegon comes from Varys, who argues that Aegon is all that a king should be because he has not been raised to be entitled like Tommen Baratheon. Martin leaves Aegon’s character arc unfinished, so it is not clear if Varys’s faith in him is merited.

Stannis Baratheon is the dour and unlikeable brother of deceased King Robert Baratheon. He starts the volume as an inflexible man who believes the righteousness of his cause is self-evident because he is Robert’s only legitimate male relative. He also has a god on his side through Melisandre, a sorceress whose god allows her to create shadows that do his bidding. Stannis is a harsh, inflexible man who sees the world in black and white. People can either be followers of the old gods or they can be followers of R’hllor, but not both or neither. His intolerance of subtlety makes it difficult for him to gain the loyalty and trust of Jon and the free folk upon whom his ability to hold the Wall and the North will depend.

His inflexibility and lack of charisma are liabilities that cause him more and more trouble as the novel develops. He insists on taking Castle Winterfell even after Jon explains why this is a bad plan. He assumes that people like the Karstarks will genuinely support him because he has right on his side, and he underestimates the importance of local culture and religion in the region he hopes to conquer. His fate isn’t clear by the end of the novel. Ramsay Bolton claims Stannis is dead, and the last direct presentation of Stannis is of a beaten man burning his soldiers for cannibalism during his failed march. Stannis’s difficulties show that charisma and the ability to adapt to circumstances are necessary for getting and keeping power.

Brandon (Bran) Stark is the second son of deceased Lord Eddard Stark and Catelyn Tully. The first defining moment in his young life, losing the use of his limbs after Jaime Lannister pushes him from a tower, occurs earlier in the series. In the aftermath of that injury, he loses his home and parents in quick succession. In A Dance with Dragons, Bran is an adolescent who grieves the life he will not have as a result of these momentous events. Like many adolescents, Bran needs to figure out who he wants to be once he emerges from adolescence. He no longer sees being a lord as an option due to prejudice against people with disabilities in positions of authority. His other option is to embrace the powers he has as a warg (shapeshifter) and greenseer, a person who has the ability to travel through time and space as a result of the powers of the old gods of the North. In A Dance with Dragons, Bran is completing an apprenticeship in fits and starts, interspersed with moments of rebellion as he wargs into his direwolf Summer and an unwilling Hodor. Bran consumes less of the narrative than other point-of-view characters, but what there is of his story emphasizes how hard it is, especially for the young, to deal with the burden of history and prophecy.

Arya Stark is the youngest daughter of deceased Lord Eddard Stark and Catelyn Tully. Like Bran, she suffers traumas—the deaths of her parents, the violent deaths and disappearance of her siblings, and physical separation from her direwolf Nymeria. Arya is likely an older girl or younger adolescent. While the kindly man who trains her describes her as pretty, she has memories of her siblings and peers calling her names because of her long face. Arya’s character arc includes elements that are typical for coming of age. She begins to carve out an identity apart from her family, gets an education, and takes steps toward what she wants to be when she grows up. In the violent, magical world of A Dance with Dragons, the specific instances of those elements are unusual ones for a child.

At the start of the novel, Arya is a servant with blindness to the temple of the Many-Faced God in Braavos, where she hopes to convince the Faceless Men to train her to be a killer. They initially reject her because they see killing as a profession practiced by dispassionate assassins. Gaining her place as an acolyte requires Arya to learn discipline and humility that do not come easily to a daughter of nobility. She gets closer to her goal by being observant, learning to be invisible, and honing her senses. Because is a Stark, she also has magic of her own that allows her to warg into Nymeria as she sleeps but also into a stray cat she attracts during her wandering in Braavos. Martin presents the arts of the Faceless Men—their highly attuned senses and the ability to put on and take off faces—as a kind of magic as well. Arya undergoes a rite of passage—carrying her out her first killing—and finally achieves the first step to becoming a Faceless Man. Martin leaves unresolved the tension between killing as an impersonal art and killing as revenge. At the end of her arc in the novel, Arya tells the kindly man that she is “[n]o-one” (985), implying that she has accepted a new identity as a baby assassin. There is still an ego there that recites the names of the people she means to kill. Arya’s decision to apprentice herself to the Faceless Men shows the price of power—pain—and the weight of history in the life of one of the youngest characters.

“Reek” is the cruel name Ramsay Bolton gives Theon Greyjoy, a turncoat who betrayed the bonds of loyalty that should exist between a ward and his guardians. He took Castle Winterfell and killed two boys he claimed were Bran and Rickon Stark. In A Dance with Dragons, Theon is a ghost of his former self because of the torture he experiences and his guilt over his actions in prior books in the series. As is the case with other characters, Reek/Theon’s dual name represents the conflicts and challenges he has to overcome as he tries to figure out what his role is now that he is no longer a person with privilege. As Reek, Theon is an abject person who is forced to sexually assault Jeyne Poole at Ramsay’s behest and who calculates whether speaking will lead Ramsay to remove more of his fingers and toes. Most of his characterization comes through interior monologue, and the mind Martin reveals is a fractured one. Over the course of the novel, Reek shifts from beating down any hint that he is anything other than what the Boltons have made him to becoming a person who understands the power dynamics around him. Overcoming his fear long enough to take Jeyne Poole to Stannis restores his identity as Theon. Martin uses his arc to show the perils of seizing power.

Before Robert’s Rebellion, Jon Connington was the lord in Griffin’s Roost in the Stormlands and the Hand of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, despite his youth and inexperience. By A Dance with Dragons, he is the grizzled and hardened mentor of Young Griff and a man who has been chastened by his rapid rise and fall from power during the rebellion. He has spent his years of exile working as a mercenary. He understands that guile and strategic use of violence are just as important as boldness and brute force in getting and keeping power. His loyalty is to Young Griff/Aegon, and he has spent all the boy’s life preparing him to be a better leader than his father and grandfather. Jon Connington has greyscale by the end of the novel, and his impending mortality leads him to engage in risky moves to bring Aegon to the throne more quickly.

Asha and Victarion Greyjoy are minor point-of-view characters. Asha is the sister of Theon and niece of Victarion. In a prior volume, she attempts to become the ruler of her native Iron Islands but fails in part because people refuse to accept a woman as ruler. In the aftermath of that failure, she tries to live by the pirate ethos of Iron Islanders. In this novel, she is stuck in Winterfell and wondering whether returning to the Iron Islands to an arranged marriage or death with her Iron Islander lover in Westeros are the only two futures awaiting her. She engages in a life-and-death struggle with a Karstark, who uses misogynistic slurs as he nearly kills her. This encounter reflects the role that restrictive gender roles play in her life. She loses that fight but does so in the no-holds-barred style of a true raider of the Iron Islands. As a prisoner of Stannis, she faces threats of death and rape, but she flexes to survive, another trait that reflects her Iron Islander values. Her challenges are more evidence of the difficulties women encounter when they attempt to violate the gender norms of their cultures.

Victarion Greyjoy is also motivated by the desire for glory and loot; he strives for power he cannot have because there is only room for one ruler in the Iron Islands. Victarion readily embraces any person or any faith that promises him a path to securing more power. He sees life as a series of transactions and is willing to kill anyone who impedes that progress. He is one of several amoral characters who see no action as too extreme if it helps them become more powerful. He is a fickle ally and kills with impunity. Victarion is a stable character who enters and leaves the narrative as a violent and erratic person; the only difference in who he is over time is a matter of degree. Martin uses him to show the dangers of the pursuit of power by any means necessary.

From her humble beginnings as the enslaved girl Melony, Melisandre has risen to be the beautiful and powerful red priestess who supports Stannis Baratheon’s struggle to gain the Iron Throne. Melisandre is motivated by her faith in R’hllor, whose champion Azor Ahai reborn will save the world from the god of darkness, which she interprets as the source of the Others. She is willing to commit any action to support Stannis because she believes he is Azor Ahai. Martin describes Melisandre as having fair skin and red hair, and most of the men around her find the combination of beauty and power both intriguing and threatening. As a priestess, she has the power of prophecy, but her interpretation of what she sees in her fires frequently leads people—including herself—astray. She is one of just a few powerful women who get to set the terms of their lives in the book. She does so through careful attention to trappings of power.

Davos Seaworth is a self-made onion smuggler who becomes Hand to Stannis on the basis of merit. His origin is a source of internal and external conflict since lineage and family names mean everything to the nobility of Westeros. Because of his belief in the righteousness of Stannis’s fight for the throne, Davos overcomes his own lack of self-confidence and the snobbishness of Westerosi to create a chance for Stannis to win. He also brings his skills as a smuggler to bear on his work as Hand. His understanding of human nature and his ability to travel incognito are both skills that allow him to survive life in hostile territory. Davos is also motivated by his love for his family and his wife. His love for one of his sons, a squire in the court of Queen Selyse, causes him to redouble his efforts to get help for Stannis in Winterfell, while guilt over the loss of several of his sons in the fight for Stannis fuels his commitment to supporting Stannis. Davos is one of the few characters who remains loyal to the powerful person he serves, an exception that proves the rule that loneliness and betrayal are some of the perils of power.

Barristan Selmy is a disgraced Westerosi knight and the Queensguard of Daenerys Targaryen in Meereen. Selmy was the commander of the Kingsguard for Robert Baratheon. In A Dance with Dragons, Selmy is no longer the young, bold man he was. Instead, he is a seasoned protector and observer of power politics. He strives to restrain the worst of Daenerys’s impulses and encourages her to think more strategically, such as when he advises her to take the offer to go to Westeros with her dragons. He is a typical fish out of water—he prays to the Warrior of the Faith of the Seven at night for guidance in a culture that bewilders him. He isn’t the most agile in navigating the politics of Meereen, but he is completely loyal to Daenerys because she made a place for him after the Lannisters discarded him. The turn in his character comes after Daenerys disappears on Drogon after the assassination attempt. Without Daenerys, his guidestar, he organizes a ruling council and a coup against Hizdahr. He has always despised Kingsguards who take an active role in politics, but his love and loyalty for Daenerys convince him that he should lay aside the vows of service that form the core of who he is.

Cersei Baratheon (née Lannister) is the sister of Tyrion and the mother of King Tommen. Martin portrays her as a vain, scheming, dangerous woman who is motivated by revenge and the desire for power. In A Dance With Dragons, she loses the trappings of power when the Faith of the Seven forces her to undergo a walk of shame through King’s Landing while naked. This humbling experience fuels her desire for revenge. Cersei is one of several women who hold power, but Martin paints her as an undisciplined woman who only has power because of her family. Like most Lannisters, she believes power is hers by right. Her brother and lover Jaime Lannister plays only a small role in the novel. He proves adept at using what personal skills and capacity for violence he does have to secure rebellious lands for his son/nephew. He supports those in power in this volume of the series and does so both out of loyalty and love. His uncle Kevan Lannister is the regent of King Tommen and the family patriarch now that Tywin is dead. Kevan is a fussy, ineffective placeholder whom Varys kills to make way for Young Griff/Aegon.

Daenerys is just one of several Targaryens alive at the time of A Dance with Dragons. The Targaryen dynasty casts a long shadow because the last Targaryen ruler in Westeros was Aerys II, a man so given to violence and sadism that his nobles overthrew him during Robert’s Rebellion. Daenerys’s struggles stem from her fear that her heritage as a Targaryen is cruelty and a loss of reason. Aemon Targaryen is the maester of the Night’s Watch; he counsels Jon Snow on how to be a good leader. Membership in the Night’s Watch and living for more than a century lead most people to ignore him as a potential king. Melisandre has not forgotten that he has king’s blood that may be valuable for working magic, so he exits the narrative when Jon sends him away from the Wall. Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen died during Robert’s Rebellion. He is the putative father of Young Griff/Aegon and played a role in starting Robert’s Rebellion when he kidnapped Lyanna Stark, which led the Starks to support the Baratheon side in Robert’s Rebellion. His fighting skills and charisma reflect the best of the Targaryen traits, while his arrogance and entitlement reflect the worst. Jon Connington wonders if the young man he calls Aegon will show himself to be a true leader or another dangerous Targaryen.

The wildlings are people who live north of the Wall. They worship the old gods of the North, relying on weirwood trees as the site or objects of their worship. Their warrior ethos and religion have influenced the values of Winterfell, especially among the Starks. The wildlings are the traditional enemies of the men of the Night’s Watch, which was established mostly to keep their raids and encroachments in check. Warriors like King-Beyond-the-Wall Mance Rayder and enormous fighter Tormund Giantsbane believe worth comes from battle, so there is no basis for power or authority other than the respect of other wildlings who trust you in battle. That rough meritocracy extends to women, who may be warriors as well. The wildlings are important in the novel because they become part of Jon’s power base. Their straightforward approach to power and authority shapes his approach to leadership of the Night’s Watch. The wildlings grudgingly accept safe passage through the Wall because they fear winter as well as the Others and wights who seem more numerous as time goes by. They support Jon out of loyalty when he abandons the Night’s Watch to rescue the girl he believes is Arya. Their presence in the novel offers an alternative to the hierarchical and patriarchal power structure in Westeros.

The Night’s Watch is an old order of fighters sworn to hold the Wall, the northern defense of Westeros, against wildlings and uncanny beings, especially during the years-long winters that have threatened Westeros throughout its history. The Night’s Watch is supposed to be a meritocracy in which all differences of money, region, and lineage are forgotten when a man becomes a member of the Night’s Watch to serve and protect Westeros. In reality, the Night’s Watch is the last resort for nobles who are too connected to kill, and differences in status before one takes one’s vows have an impact in who can become lord commander. Jon runs afoul of these aspects of the Night’s Watch, leading to a mutiny. Beyond killing one of the point-of-view characters, the Night’s Watch becomes one of the first groups of people to understand the threat posed by the Others.

Ramsay Bolton, called the “Bastard of Bolton,” is the newly legitimized son of Roose Bolton. Ramsay is a cruel, sadistic man who takes pleasure in hurting others. His main role in the book is to serve as the terror of Reek/Theon. His cruelty also damages Roose Bolton’s efforts to accumulate power. Roose is a pale-eyed, emotionless man who relies on complete self-discipline and strategic use of violence to get and keep power. Martin includes these characters to show how violence can damage power and how cunning can help one keep power.