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1This page covers tropes found in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''.
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3ASongOfIceAndFire/TropesAToD | ASongOfIceAndFire/TropesEToI | ASongOfIceAndFire/TropesJToR | '''Tropes S To Z''' | [[YMMV/ASongOfIceAndFire YMMV]]
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6[[foldercontrol]]
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9* SacredFlames: Sacred flames are par for the course for priests of R'hllor, an in-universe diety associated with fire and life. Allegedly with R'hllor's help, the Red Priests shown in the series have been able to perform supernatural feats yet unmatched by any septon or septa[[note]]priests of the Seven, the major religion in Westeros[[/note]], such as seeing into the future and bringing people BackFromTheDead.
10* SacredHospitality: The laws of hospitality are considered very important in Westeros. The legend of the Rat King suggests that the gods will take vengeance on those who break them. Several characters specifically plan their aggressive actions so as not to break the laws of hospitality. Catelyn urges Robb to request bread and salt from a hostile host as soon as possible to ensure that his stay is safe. [[spoiler:The fact that guests were slaughtered in the Red Wedding makes the betrayal doubly outrageous in the eyes of Westeros.]] The idea is apparently [[UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar extended to prisoners of war]], as Robb worries that [[spoiler:Rickard Karstark's murder of two Lannister squires under Robb's protection]] will look like a betrayal of guest right.
11* SacrificialLamb: Thus far [[spoiler:the POV character in the prologue or epilogue]] will, without exception, die. [[spoiler:Though Varamyr's spirit lives on in his wolf One-Eye.]] Most of them are minor characters.
12* SadClown: Tyrion Lannister is a deeply unhappy man who copes with sharp humor even when it's unwise. Dolorous Edd embraces the trope literally with morbid, deadpan wisecracks.
13* {{Sadist}}: The Seven help us, you can't throw a rock in Westeros without hitting a sadist who happens to be in a position to make you dearly regret throwing that rock. [[TokenEvilTeammate Roose]] [[FlayingAlive Bolton]], [[AxCrazy Ramsay]] [[BastardBastard Bolton]], [[BloodKnight Gregor]] [[TheDreaded Clegane]], [[TheCaligula Joffery]] [[StupidEvil Baratheon]], the list goes on and on...
14* SadisticChoice:
15** King Joffrey letting a minstrel caught singing a disrespectful song about Joffrey's parents choose between having his tongue cut out or losing a hand.
16** In "The Princess and the Queen," two assassins tell Queen Helaena they've been sent to kill one of her sons in RevengeByProxy for the death of Queen Rhaenyra's son in the CivilWar. They make her choose which son is to die, then kill the one she ''didn't'' choose. Helaena is DrivenToMadness as a result.
17** Jaime in A Feast For Crows. He's lost [[spoiler: his fighting hand]] and believes he has lost the worth he was valued for; he is abandoned by [[spoiler: his Lord Commander]]; he is forced to chose between his siblings and eventually chooses based on a long-standing feeling of guilt over something that happened in his teens; he inadvertently [[spoiler:helps cause his own father's death]], and has been shunned and betrayed by the only woman he ever loved.
18** Brienne watches the first man she loved die in her arms and is forced to betray the second, or watch a boy no older than twelve die under her protection. All this after being attacked by the Brave Companions and spending days in a horrible delirium.
19* SameSurnameMeansRelated:
20** Justified, where only the feudal nobility have surnames, and two identical surnames means at least some kind of relation. There are distant cadet branches which are no one remembers exactly how related to the main House (such as the Lannisters of Lannisport), but they still are distant relatives and not just guys with the same last name.
21** Averted with any nobleborn bastards, who are given a surname based on the region they're born in rather than inheriting their parent's name. For example, [[HeroicBastard Jon]] Snow and [[BastardBastard Ramsay]] Snow are unrelated; they just happen to both have grown up in the North.
22* SamusIsAGirl:
23** Brienne of Tarth wins a tournament before it's revealed that she's a woman (though an interesting case because everyone present ''other'' than Catelyn knows who she is and most disapprove of her winning because she's a woman).
24** [[spoiler:Alleras]] is generally assumed to be [[spoiler: Sarella Sand, one of Oberyn Martell's bastard daughters.]]
25* SandBridgeAtLowTide: A number of them, such as the monastery at the Trident delta and the castle that Bran hides in.
26* SaneBossPsychoHenchmen: A pretty common occurrence in this series. Tywin being willing to sic people like the Clegane brothers and the Brave Companions loose on the lands to [[RapePillageAndBurn do their thing]] for his benefit is just one example.
27%%* SarcasticConfession: Littlefinger.
28* ScarsAreForever: All over the place, from facial wounds and pox scars to AnArmAndALeg. See FacialHorror, {{Fingore}} and RedRightHand.
29* SchizoTech: It's subtle, but while most of the technology of Westeros is roughly 14th to 15th Century, the Ironborn still use longboats (Vikings, 8th to 11th century) and the standard warship of the crown is a drummond (Byzantine, 9th to 12th century).
30* SchoolForcedUsTogether: While Westeros doesn't have an organized school system, it does have the Citadel that is responsible for training [[OmnidisciplinaryScientist Maesters]]. As the Citadel is an egalitarian institution, at least on paper, the Lowborn trainees are allowed to study alongside noble trainees. Once their training is done, the Citadel sends Maesters across Westeros to serve the nobility. This placement is supposed to be random and impartial. This is why an [[ProudWarriorRace Ironborn]] will [[Literature/TalesOfDunkAndEgg serve in the Reach]], or a [[FeudingFamilies Lannister will serve in the North]].
31* ScienceDestroysMagic: Possibly the goal of some of the [[spoiler:Maesters at the Citadel.]]
32* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale:
33** While this ''is'' a fantasy world, we're dealing with a wall stretching the length of a South America sized continent, while also standing at 700 feet tall. There's a castle built into a mountain the size of San Francisco while also being taller than the Empire State Building. Also, two characters are capable of sailing the length of the continent in two months, with medieval technology.
34** A character is described as having family 10,000 leagues away. That's 30,000 miles, or more than twice the possible distance of two points on Earth.
35* ScrewPolitenessImASenior: Walder Frey, to the extreme. Olenna Tyrell has the nickname "The Queen of Thorns" for this very reason as well.
36* ScrewTheRulesTheyreNotReal:
37** In ''Literature/AGameOfThrones'', Ned Stark attempts to use King Robert's last will and testament to take regency of Westeros so that he can prevent Prince Joffrey from being coronated, having realized that he and his siblings were conceived by BrotherSisterIncest. To Ned's shock, Queen Mother Cersei simply rips the will up right in front of him. [[TooDumbToLive Ned probably should have realized]] that the fact Cersei didn't care overmuch that she'd been caught when he confronted her about the incest earlier (before Robert was reported wounded) meant that [[AppealToForce she had no intention of playing by the usual rules of Westerosi aristocracy]].
38** In ''Literature/AStormOfSwords'', Catelyn Stark strongly insists that Robb specifically ask Walder Frey for bread and salt, to invoke the Westerosi tradition of [[SacredHospitality guest-right]] against Frey's known grudge over Robb having broken his engagement to one of his daughters. [[spoiler:Walder, however, has conspired with Roose Bolton and Tywin Lannister to kill Robb and decapitate the Northern rebellion, and simply ignores guest-right and attacks anyway.]]
39* SdrawkcabAlias:
40** [[spoiler:Alleras,]] who is most likely [[spoiler:Sarella Sand]] in disguise.
41** In ''A Dance With Dragons'', [[spoiler: Mance Rayder]] goes undercover as "Abel", alluding to a famous undercover wildling named Bael.
42* SecondLove: [[spoiler:Brienne and Jaime]], coming on the heels of [[spoiler:Renly]]'s death and [[spoiler:Cersei]]'s cheating, respectively. Tyrion starts to feel this way about Shae, [[spoiler:until she falsely testifies against him for plotting to murder Joffrey, and then when he finds her in his father's bed, he kills her]]. Mostly, though, [[TheMourningAfter nobody ever moves on]].
43* TheSecretOfLongPorkPies:
44** [[spoiler:Wyman Manderly]] ''loves'' a nice hot [[spoiler:Frey Pie]].
45** "Brown", the cheap stew served at pot shops in King's Landing, is made of anything the cooks can find or catch. There are rumors that this includes the occasional human corpse. When Tyrion sends Bronn to kill a blackmailer, Bronn says he'll [[DisposingOfABody dump the guy's body]] into a stewpot with no one the wiser. Tyrion is slightly disturbed when he meets a mercenary who ''enjoys'' brown.
46* SecretLegacy: Where should we start?
47** Gendry, Arya's companion in early books [[spoiler: is King Robert's bastard son]].
48** Young Griff hasn't any Tyroshi mother and blue hair as well, [[spoiler: he dyes his hair to hide his natural silver-blond hair because he's Aegon VI Targaryen... Or maybe not, it depends on the fans' opinions.]]
49** Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen are [[spoiler:not of royal Baratheon blood, but are Lannisters from both parents' side as they were all conceived as a result of {{Twincest}} between Queen Cersei Lannister and her brother, Jaime Lannister.]]
50** In the "Bael the Bard" song, the Stark grandson of Brandon the Daughterless had no idea that Bael the Bard was his father and kills him.
51** If certain fan theories are correct, there's also [[spoiler: Jon Snow, Lyanna Stark's son with Rhaegar Targaryen.]]
52* SecretRelationship:
53** [[spoiler:Jaime and Cersei, since incestuous adultery and treason doesn't go over well.]] Tyrion knows from the beginning, the reader discovers this during one of Bran's early POV chapters and much of the book is about Ned [[DramaticIrony gradually uncovering the secret]].
54** Likewise, Tyrion keeps his relation with [[spoiler:Shae]] a secret to protect himself and her during his time at court.
55** There's another between [[spoiler:Renly and Loras]] -- aside from a few pointed comments by other characters (e.g., Jaime Lannister threatening to stick Loras' sword "somewhere even Renly couldn't find"), the only confirmation has been from WordOfGod.
56* SecretlyDying: [[spoiler:Jon Connington, of greyscale.]]
57* SecretTestOfCharacter: After Jon and his fellow Night's Watch members capture a wildling woman in a battle, there is a debate about whether to kill her. Jon wants to free her but the other Watch members want her dead to ensure her silence. Jon's superior Qhorin Halfhand leaves him behind with the captive and tells him to "do what needs to be done". Jon frees her and defends this decision on the grounds that she wasn't a threat. As befits the moral ambiguity of the novels, the goal was to learn whether Jon could make a decision on his own, and what sort of decision he would make -- Qhorin Halfhand didn't care if the girl died or not, he just wanted to see what Jon would do. It ends up saving Jon's life once the roles are reversed.
58* SeductionProofMarriage: Assuming, as is ''heavily'' implied, that Jon Snow isn't actually Ned's son, then Ned and Caitlyn would be one of the few couples that qualify.
59* SelfProclaimedKnight: Jaime suspects Ser Osmund Kettleblack of being one after examining the White Book, the registry of Kingsguard knights. Kettleblack claims to have been knighted by one "Ser Robert Stone" (deceased). Jaime notes the ConvenientlyUnverifiableCoverStory.
60* SelkiesAndWereseals: It's mentioned in ''A Feast for Crows'' that members of House Farwynd are skinchangers who can change into seals and walruses, but so far this remains an InformedAbility.
61* SergeantRock: Lord Commander Jeor Mormont is a quite gruff man who doesn't sugar-coat his words, but is shown to be a good leader who has all the qualities that a member of the Night's Watch is supposed to have.
62* SexInASharedRoom: During Daenerys' wedding celebration, many of the Dothraki simply grab women and start mounting them during the party.
63* SexIsViolence: In ''A Storm of Swords'', Jaime and Brienne have a fight that Jaime's POV describes in very sexual terms, particularly afterward where he focuses on her clothing being disarranged and heavy breathing and "looking like they had been fucking, not fighting".
64* ShadowArchetype: Qyburn, a defrocked maester who sits on Cersei's small council, is one for the generally kindly and dutiful (if occasionally cowardly and ineffectual) court maesters. Where they work as doctors and messengers, he works as a TortureTechnician and Master of Whisperers.
65* ShadyLadyOfTheNight: In ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'', the [[spoiler: [[NotQuiteDead thought-to-be dead Mance Rayder]]]] is tasked by Melisandre to save [[spoiler: Arya Stark]] from her marriage with [[spoiler: Ramsay Bolton]] in Winterfell. To do this, he takes six spearwives with him, who [[DirtyHarriet go undercover as camp followers (that is, prostitutes serving soldiers)]]. The spearwives kill several men in Winterfell, and later help [[spoiler: Theon]] to save [[spoiler: "Arya"]], who is actually [[spoiler: Jeyne Poole]].
66* ShaggyDogStory: Quentyn Martell's odyssey. He seeks out Danaerys to secure a marriage with her in exchange for Dorne supporting her claim to the Iron Throne. He suffers many difficulties on the journey, resulting in the death of several of his companions. When he finally arrives, it is on the eve of Danaery's marriage to Hizdahr zo Loraq. She declines his proposal, advises that he return home, and refuses to see him before flying off on Drogon. Unwilling to go home empty handed he attempts to tame one of the remaining dragons, believing he will be protected due to his Targaryen ancestry. He is instead burned by dragonfire, and lingers in agony for three days before finally dying.
67* ShamefulStrip: The Faith demands [[spoiler:Cersei]] perform a walk of penance, [[TraumaticHaircut shorn]] and naked, through the streets of King's Landing before her trial by champion. King Joffrey orders Sansa Stark stripped and beaten in public in petty revenge for her brother's victory over the Lannister forces, only for Tyrion to intervene and stop things.
68* ShedTheFamilyName: Maesters put aside their House name when they [[SwornInByOath take their vows]] to serve as {{Honest Advisor}}s, [[TheMedic healers]], and scholars without political bias. This leaves Jon Snow shocked to learn that the kindly old Maester Aemon is, in fact, Aemon [[RoyalBlood Targaryen]].
69* ShellShockedVeteran: Several characters suffer from PTSD, Sandor Clegane most prominently. In ''A Feast for Crows'', Septon Meribald gives a long, emotional speech about "broken men" and how war ruins people's lives.
70-->'''Septon Meribald:''' War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle. For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first.
71* ShipTease: With Sandor/Sansa and Jaime/Brienne shippers being teased the most. Jon/Val is teased at almost every opportunity as well, with [[LargeHam Tormund Giantsbane]] as a ShipperOnDeck. Arya/Gendry are also hinted at despite their younger ages.
72* ShoutOut: Now there's its own [[ShoutOut/ASongOfIceAndFire page]].
73* ShowDontTell: One reason the books tend towards being {{Doorstopper}}s. Martin could just tell us that the Drowned Men live (almost) exclusively off stuff from the sea, for example. Instead, he endlessly shows them running around in sealskins and cooking seafood over driftwood fires.
74* SiblingYinYang:
75** Arya and Sansa -- TomboyAndGirlyGirl.
76** Cersei and Tyrion. Once the most beautiful woman of the seven kingdoms and a deformed dwarf.
77** Renly and Stannis -- RedOniBlueOni.
78** Gregory and Sandor -- future-legendary monster-Terminator on legs; cynical dickhead. This is way more divergent than it sounds.
79** Robb and Jon -- while they are close as brothers and share many traits inherited from their father, as well as lessons he taught them together, [[RedOniBlueOni Robb is the fire to Jon's ice]]. Robb is more gregarious where Jon is quiet; Robb is extraverted while Jon is introverted; Robb has the fiery Tully look while Jon has the icier Stark look.
80--->Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast.
81** ExploitedTrope in the case of Doran and Oberyn Martell. After [[spoiler:his brother's death,]] Doran tells his nieces that he used his pensive, somewhat ineffectual reputation to shield Oberyn "the Red Viper" from the enemies he would make if he were in power, leaving Oberyn free to [[PsychoSidekick do the family's dirty work]]. He compares the double act to long grass that looks harmless but hides a snake.
82* SiblingsShareTheThrone: The historical rulers of the free folk, brothers Gendel and Gorne.
83* TheSiege:
84** Historically, the Siege of Storm's End lasted two years until the besieging army surrendered.
85** Lannister forces besiege Riverrun, but are foiled by TheCavalry. [[spoiler:They succeed in forcing a surrender on their second attempt.]]
86** The Eyrie is blockaded by the Lords of the Vale after [[spoiler:Lysa Arryn's death, and Littlefinger talks them out of it.]]
87** The wildlings under Mance Rayder attack Castle Black from both sides of the Wall. [[spoiler:Only the unexpected arrival of King Stannis' army stops them.]]
88* SigilSpam: The Great Houses. The Faith of The Seven also marks everything with the 7 pointed star.
89* SignatureInstrument:
90** Rhaegar Targaryen, the deceased crown prince of the deposed Targaryen dynasty, was by all accounts an extremely handsome and accomplished man. Nearly every time the subject of Rhaegar is discussed at length, the harp will be mentioned. Ser Barristan Selmy, Cersei Lannister, and Jon Connington, disparate characters who all romanticize him to various degrees, all explicitly remember Rhaegar as a very skilled harpist who would play his signature silver-stringed harp at various tourneys and halls, which adds to the character's mystery and melancholia.
91--->'''Barristan:''' ''(about Rhaegar)'' When you heard him play his high harp with the silver strings and sing of twilights and tears and the death of kings, you could not but feel that he was singing of himself and those he loved.
92** ''Literature/TalesOfDunkAndEgg'' introduces Lord Pearse Caron. House Caron is already strongly associated with music, as their seat is Nightsong, their sigil is the nightingale, and their house words are ''No Song so Sweet''. Lord Pearse, however, goes above and beyond this by being a renowned harpist, to the point that his personal coat of arms is a silver harp on yellow.
93** Mance Rayder is rarely seen without his lute, which also helps him masquerade as a harmless bard when he undertakes lone spying missions south of the Wall.
94* SignificantNameShift: Jaime and Brienne initially they refer to each other with derogatory nicknames ("wench"/"Kingslayer"), but as they travel together they begin to develop respect for each other as knights and begin to use formal honorifics ("ser"/"my lady") and eventually actual names, though Jaime reserves "wench" as an InsultOfEndearment when Brienne is being particularly [[HonorBeforeReason honourable]].
95* SilenceYouFool: Vargo Hoat says, "[[FangThpeak Thilenth, fool]]," when Shagwell proposes dropping the captured Jaime Lannister into a [[BearsAreBadNews bear pit]] in ''A Storm of Swords''. The MonsterClown Shagwell is, in fact, a literal fool.
96* SilentSnarker:
97** Ser Ilyn Payne comes across this way to Jaime (and once openly laughs at him). This makes sense since the reason Ilyn got his tongue cut out was for [[BullyingADragon snarking about King Aerys]].
98** Theon's squire Wex, a mute who frequently smirks at Theon's misfortunes.
99* SilverFox: A long-dead Targaryen princess, Elaena, was said to have been more beautiful at seventy than she was at seventeen.
100* SingleLineOfDescent: Justified with the Targaryens, as their tradition of marrying brothers to sisters reduced the number of branches of the family tree. This is part of the reason they were so vulnerable to SuccessionCrisis, both in the recent past and historically.
101* SinkOrSwimMentor: Before he actively threatened to kill Sam, Randyll Tarly had this attitude when trying to get Sam to "man up". This extended to a literal case, as Sam almost drowned to death during a disastrous attempt at teaching him to swim -- Randyll has a grudge against Hyle Hunt for saving Sam's life, which suggests that he already didn't really care whether Sam survived or not.
102* SirSwearsALot:
103** One of Gregor's men, known as "Shitmouth", has that nickname because of his constant cursing, though his bark is worse than his bite.
104** Rorge, whose bite is just about as bad as his bark.
105* SituationalHandSwitch: Qhorin Halfhand and Jaime Lannister both lost their right hands (Qhorin lost several fingers, Jaime the entire hand) and were forced to learn to fight left-handed. Jaime's struggles to regain his swordsmanship post-amputation take on the flavor of TrainingFromHell.
106* SlaveMarket: These exist in the cities of [[CaptainObvious Slaver's Bay]] (which arguably serve as the Slave Market for the whole world).
107* SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil:
108** Despite being a pretty brutal place, ''everyone'' in Westeros agrees that chattel slavery is bad, and it's outlawed in all Seven Kingdoms. Notably, selling slaves gets Jorah Mormont an instant death sentence from Ned Stark. Even the Ironborn, who take prisoners of war as "thralls," are disgusted by outright slavery, pointing to the fact that thralls are not property and their children are born free. In Essos, Braavos, a city founded by runaway slaves and since become a major player after the Doom of Valyria, actively uses its political and economic power to curtail slavery; even a corrupt magister like Illyrio Mopatis has to hide his involvement from the Sealord.
109** The slave trade is thriving throughout various nations and city-states of Essos, which is always used as a way to portray their governments and culture as corrupt and evil. Dany specifically fights against slavery but runs into difficulty with how deeply it's ingrained into the culture. Many slaves prefer the safety of slavery to the chaos that comes with Dany's freedom. Interestingly, Dany never seems to hold Jorah's one-time crime of slave trading against him.
110** This is played with, when [[spoiler:Tyrion]] gets captured and sold in a slave auction to Yezzan, alongside [[spoiler:Jorah and Penny]], he notes that slaves are treated a little better than smallfolk are by their liege lord in Westeros, suggesting that the class-subjugation in a feudal society and serfdom is not any better or morally superior than enforced chattel slavery.
111* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: The series is noted for its cynical take on many tropes popular in HighFantasy, such as the DamselInDistress and the KnightInShiningArmor. Characters with overly idealistic worldviews tend to fare poorly. However, characters who indulge in too much cynicism, especially to the point of StupidEvil, don't last long either.
112** However idealism does win out very occasionally. Take the case of Ned Stark (idealist) vs. Tywin Lannister (deeply cynical): Ned [[spoiler:will be remembered as a wise and fair ruler, and his reputation ensured many of the lords fought for and protected his children in the years after his murder]]; meanwhile Tywin, for all his talk of "legacy", [[spoiler:is remembered as the king's hand who was [[UndignifiedDeath shot on the privy by his crossbow-toting dwarf son]].]]
113* SmartPeoplePlayChess: No world so overflowing with [[TheChessmaster Chessmasters]] would be complete without its own VariantChess, after all. In this case, it's ''cyvasse'', a kind of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games Tafl game]], with opponents setting up their pieces in a custom starting arrangement out of sight of each other. Myrcella picks it up pretty well, and Tyrion is particularly good at it, eventually mentoring [[spoiler:Young Griff]]. Martin himself played in and directed chess tournaments when he was younger, and while he hasn't played competitively since the 80s, he does have a solid USCF rating of 1905, just short of Expert.
114* SmugSnake:
115** Cersei Lannister is constantly gloating to herself about what a good job she's doing as a ruler. Her success does not match her smugness.
116%%** Theon Greyjoy
117** Janos Slynt, who seems to feel that his powerful "friends" will see to it that he's never harmed. [[spoiler:Even if they were inclined to save him (which they aren't, Lord Tywin dismisses him as "the son of a butcher"), they're leagues away, and the commanding officer who learned how to deal with oathbreakers from the father Janos had a hand in betraying is very close.]]
118%%** House Frey is so filled with Smug Snakes that listing them all here would be impossible. But Ryman and Rhaegar stand out.
119* SnipeHunt:
120** Robert sends Lancel, squiring for him, for a "breastplate stretcher".
121** Catelyn sends Rolph Spicer on a distant mission, motivated by [[EvilDetectingDog Grey Wind's distrust]] for him. The task isn't pointless, but its importance is secondary to keeping him far away.
122* SnowMeansDeath:
123** If the Others don't catch you, the cold will do the job nicely.
124** Lampshaded when Ygritte first meets Jon Snow and comments on his 'evil' name.
125* TheSoCalledCoward: Played ambiguously with Samwell "The Slayer" Tarly, who is a self-confessed "craven" who [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu manages to kill an Other]], although mostly by luck. Over the course of the series, he shows more initiative and bravery but is still far from a badass. Of course, every time he does do something brave, he just beats himself up for being scared in the first place -- he'd have benefited from hearing Ned's advice to Bran that "the only time a man can be brave" is when he's afraid.
126* SociopathicSoldier: The idea of regular men turning into killers and rapists before returning home and being good husbands and fathers again is openly discussed a few times. The soldiers in Gregor Clegane's war band are a perfect example of this, since at least Raff the Sweetling is a PunchClockVillain and a likeable guy when Gregor is not around, and Shitmouth is funny and not at all mean even when Gregor is around. Of course, [[AxCrazy Gregor]] is just like that ''all the time''.
127* SockPuppet: In the Vale, [[spoiler:Littlefinger]] has [[spoiler:Lyn Corbray]] working as an anti-sockpuppet, opposing his rule at every turn while behaving in such a vile and dishonorable way that he makes the Lord Protector look like a saint for tolerating him, and embarrasses the opposition by association. In his first appearance on-page, he [[SacredHospitality draws his sword at a parley and makes death threats]], buying [[spoiler:Littlefinger]] a year of unopposed rule in return for generously overlooking the grievous insult.
128* SoftSpokenSadist: Roose Bolton is mild-mannered, courteous, and speaks so softly that others have to listen closely to hear anything he says. House Bolton also has a flayed man as their sigil and a legendary reputation for torture.
129* SoulJar: Wargs treat their BondCreatures this way; they can only be killed when their last host body is killed, so they collect "skins" partly as a status symbol and partly as a way to cheat death.
130* SoupOfPoverty:
131** A low-quality stew called the "bowl o' brown" is the staple food of peasants living in Flea Bottom, simmering for years inside huge tubs and always getting new ingredients added to it. Any edible ingredient can be tossed into a bowl o' brown: barley, carrot, turnip, apple, fish, rat, cat, pigeon, horse, and... well, when a bard named Symon Silver-Tongue tries to blackmail Tyrion Lannister for better career prospects, let's just say a certain pot-shop ends up getting a surprise donation of "long pork".
132** In ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'', when House Bolton's forces and allies are snowed in at Winterfell by a massive blizzard, the common men and soldiers are served watery grey porridge and plain bread while the lords and knights eat the good food like ham, bacon, and butter, which causes some grumbles of discontent among the former.
133* SpannerInTheWorks:
134** Joffrey manages to be one to himself. His mother had it all planned out that [[spoiler:Ned Stark]] would confess to betrayal, Joffrey would show mercy and send him into a relatively honorable exile, and it'd be smooth sailing from there. Instead, Joffrey, FauxAffablyEvil psychopath that he is, orders [[spoiler:Ned]] executed anyway in public, sparking off the War of the Five Kings when the executed's son raises an army.
135** The survival of Bran and Rickon, unbeknownst to Tywin, means that having [[spoiler:Robb and Catelyn]] killed isn't quite the death knell for the Starks that he expected it to be.
136* SpartanSibling: Inter-sibling bullying seems common and probably encouraged by the Greyjoys.
137* TheSpartanWay: The Unsullied are trained in this manner, but the methods used are much worse than anything in real life. For instance, the Good Masters give each of the would-be Unsullied a puppy to take care of after they are castrated at the age of five. At the age of six, the would-be Unsullied [[KickTheDog must strangle their puppy]] to demonstrate their willingness to follow orders. Any trainee unable to do so is put to death. Before becoming full-fledged Unsullied, each recruit must go to the slave market and murder a slave child in front of its mother.
138* SpectatorCasualty: When the Red Viper is fighting the Mountain That Rides, a stableboy gets between them and gets his arm severed. Annoyed by his screaming, the Mountain finishes him off with a backslash [[KickTheDog purely to shut him up]]
139* SpeechImpediment: Vargo Hoat's slobbery lisp. This is the main reason why he is LaughablyEvil.
140* SpellMyNameWithAThe:
141** The mountain clans in the North refer to their clan chiefs as "The [surname]" (The Wull, The Norrey, etc), and call Eddard Stark "The Ned".
142** The wildlings refer to Mance Rayder as "The Mance".
143** Also, the Greatjon and the Smalljon (two Jon Umbers, father and son)
144* SpiesAreDespicable: Tends to be the default view in Westeros. Varys is a particular target for this during the main series, but in various books about the history of Westeros, nearly any time someone is a [[TheSpymaster Master of Whispers]] or carrying out the task of spying, the InUniverse view of them is dim at best, and prone to condemning them for little to no reason. Goes along with Westeros having a warrior culture that overemphasizes the respect for battlefield deeds.
145* SpiritualSuccessor: Martin has acknowledged two major inspirations in writing the books were ''Literature/MemorySorrowAndThorn'' by Creator/TadWilliams and Maurice Druon's HistoricalFiction series ''Literature/TheAccursedKings.''
146* SpySchool: The temple of the Many-Faced God.
147* StandardRoyalCourt: Much of the story revolves around the goings-on at the Red Keep and the royal court comprises some of the most memorable characters in the books.
148* StarCrossedLovers: About half of all romantic relationships.
149** A notable example, since they're the basis of InUniverse folktales and love songs, are the Prince of Dragonflies and Jenny of Oldstones. Prince Duncan Targaryen abdicates the throne for the common girl he falls in love with, leaving his less worthy younger brother and [[TheCaligula far less worthy nephew]] to run the dynasty into the ground within two generations.
150** Ser Barristan Selmy, hoping to put Daenerys off the idea of carrying on with the sellsword Daario and commit to her [[ArrangedMarriage political marriage]], tells her the story of her mother Rhaella and a knight she was in love with. They had broken up in order for her to marry the king, and the knight turned to religion. Though Barristan is careful not to reveal his name, [[AllThereInTheManual other sources]] say it was Ser Bonifer Hasty, now the leader of a hundred-strong company of devout knights who are holding the great fortress of Harrenhal.
151** During the Age of the Heroes, Elenei, the daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. She gave her maidenhead to Durran Godsgrief, [[VirginPower committing herself to a mortal life]]. [[ParentalMarriageVeto Her divine parents forbade their love]], but Durran and Elenei wed despite them. The gods' wrath destroyed Durran's keep on his wedding night, [[TearJerker killing all his family and guests]]. Durran declared war on the gods, who replied by hammering his kingdom with massive storms;
152** The legend of Bael the Bard has Bael [[AbductionIsLove kidnapping Lord Stark's daughter]], spent a year hidden with her and fathered her son, but then she comes back to Winterfell without him. When Lord Stark dies the boy - despite being a bastard - is his only [[HeirClubForMen male heir]] and becomes the next Lord Stark. Unfortunately, this Lord declares war to Bael and kills him [[LukeIAmYourFather not knowing he was his father]], and as a result his mother [[DrivenToSuicide commits suicide]].
153** According to SecondHandStoryTelling, [[WarriorPrince Rhaegar Targaryen]] and [[TomboyPrincess Lyanna Stark]] may have been this trope. [[LoveRuinsTheRealm It's safe to say that it bring an insane amount of grief to an entire kingdom]].
154* TheStarscream: Every Great House in Westeros has a house sworn to them that tries to undermine them:
155** Houses Reyne and Tarbeck were this to the Lannisters until Tywin wiped them out.
156** House Blackfyre was this to the Targaryens, though they were a branch of legitimized bastards.
157** House Florent is this to the Tyrells. The Tyrells, in a way, was this to their previous overlords, the Gardeners, though didn't betray them so much as surrender the castle when the Gardners were wiped out.
158** House Yronwood was this in the past to the Martells, but Doran Martell was able to resolve the feud between the two houses by fostering Quentyn at their castle. Now the Yronwoods are among Doran's most trusted servants, as evidenced by the fact that [[spoiler: two Yronwoods were sent to protect Quentyn on his secret mission to marry Dany, including the Yronwood heir, who was Quentyn's best friend.]]
159** House Frey is sworn to House Tully, but frequently tries to throw its weight around, and during a past war withheld its support until Tully was sure to win.
160** House Stark has engaged in a thousand-year struggle with House Bolton over control of the North. At the beginning of the series, Bolton is sworn to Stark, but they clearly don't want to stay that way. Ultimately [[spoiler:the Freys and Boltons betray their sworn overlords in a single gambit and are given the ancestral castles of the Houses they betrayed. However, it means many of the Northern Houses want to play this role to the Boltons.]]
161** The Blackwoods and Brackens each claim to have ruled as kings until they rebelled against each other.
162* StateVisit: The first book begins as King Robert travels to the North with his entourage to offer the position of Hand of the King to Eddard Stark, Warden of the North and his most trusted friend. The Starks give them a royal welcome at the gate of Winterfell and hold a feast in their honor.
163* StayInTheKitchen: The general opinion of people in Westeros outside of Dorne. Most people mock or criticize Brienne for her knightly aspirations. Cersei has a great deal of problems trying to throw her weight around like a male lord. The Night's Watch forbids women from joining, and [[spoiler: after a truce was established with the wildlings, the spearwives encountered so many problems that they were all given control of their own castle]].
164* StealthInsult: When Janos Slynt insists Jon [[DudeWheresMyRespect address him as m'lord,]] Jon responds by punctuating every sentence with ''my lord''. It's been established that only uneducated commoners use the term "m'lord," while the educated nobility use "my lord," so Jon gets a pretty solid dig in at how, regardless of their statuses, he comes from a much grander background than [[NouveauRiche Janos.]]
165* StealthPun:
166** One may be suggested with the Freys. Their famous two towers and identification as Lords of the Crossing suggests an unstated (and accurate) pun that they are "double crossing".
167** Stannis [[spoiler:using the Fiery Heart as his sigil]], considering a Hart is another word for Stag...
168** Some foreshadowing that [[spoiler:the Mance Rayder who dies was not who he appeared to be: when Jon has his archers Mercy Kill the man before he burns alive, he is described as falling ''bonelessly'' to the floor. We later find out that he was actually Rattleshirt, the Lord o' Bones, who had his signature boney outfit swapped out with Mance's to strengthen Melisandre's glamor.]].
169** Jon Snow, tied to House Stark by blood and part of the Stark family, whose sigil is the direwolf and identifies with his direwolf, as do each of the other Stark kids with their direwolves. Then he [[spoiler:pretends to join Mance Rayder's wildlings, and gives up his black Night's Watch cloak in favor of sheepskins]], making him [[spoiler: A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing]].
170** Greywater Watch is the seat of House Reed, and it sits upon a man-made island in a swamp. It moves around, making it difficult to locate. The current lord of House Reed is Howland Reed, making Greywater Watch [[Literature/HowlsMovingCastle Howland's Moving Castle]].
171* StepServant: Set in a pseudo-medieval world where highborn men having acknowledged bastard children is a normal, if rocky, part of their society. If these children are brought into their fathers' homes after any fashion, it's usually in a servant role -- particularly for bastard ''daughters''.
172** Falia Flowers, the bastard daughter of Lord Humfrey Hewett, was raised in her father's castle but was made a servant while her legitimate half-sisters lived in luxury. When the Ironborn pirates conquer the Shield Islands, Falia sides with them and [[TheDogBitesBack gets revenge on her stepmother and half-sisters]] by making them [[ShamefulStrip strip off their gowns]] and serve the pirates while naked.
173** Alys Rivers is the bastard daughter of House Strong, and she serves at their castle as a wet nurse for decades. In their world, wet nurses aren't just for orphans -- highborn women sometimes elect to have lowborn women nurse their babies for them. This means there's a particularly acute class angle to Alys's role.
174* UsefulNotes/StockholmSyndrome: [[spoiler:Ramsay Bolton]] has perfected the art of instilling this in his captives. [[spoiler:Theon and Jeyne Poole both]] have classic cases of it after coming into his clutches.
175* StockYuck:
176** Bran sends guests at the harvest feast choice dishes of meat, seafood, and sweets, and then passive-aggressively sends the Walders beets and turnips.
177** When [[spoiler:Tommen]] is king in his own right, he's going to ''[[ThereShouldBeALaw outlaw]]'' beets!
178* AStormIsComing:
179** "Winter is coming" are the Stark house words.
180** The religion of the Ironborn prophesies the coming of a literal storm (the storm god being their GodOfEvil, rival of the Drowned God they worship). Similarly, the faith of R'hllor prophesies the coming of a "long night".
181* StraightEdgeEvil
182** Tywin Lannister is a proud, dignified, and humorless man who is characterized by his aura of cold perfection and total ruthlessness in pursuit of his family's well-being. The in-universe meme that he shits gold relates both to his wealth, as well as the fact that he comes across as too perfect to be capable of normal excretion.
183** Roose Bolton has a similar dignified and deadpan personality as Tywin and is extremely sadistic in a detached way. He frequently has himself leeched, eats prunes to stay regular, and favors the medicinal wine hippocras- basically, he's a medieval health nut.
184* StraightForTheCommander: A lot of battle strategies among the warring claimants to the throne involve capturing or killing important commanders on the other side(s) as well as taking a side "out of the race" by killing their leader
185* StrangeSyntaxSpeaker
186** Generally used instead of FunetikAksent, to a more or less subtle degree, to represent people from other cultures such as Sallador Saan and Syrio Forel (and all over the place in Essos).
187** Jaqen H'ghar refers to everyone -- first, second or third person -- by indefinite descriptive phrases: "a man", "a girl", etc. Nobody else has been seen speaking like this, either in the House of Black and White or [[spoiler:"Jaqen" himself in other guises.]] The official guide ''World of Ice and Fire'' explains that this is an accent typical for Lorathi nobles and it comes from a religious sect that used to be popular in that city.
188* StrangerInAFamiliarLand: This is Theon's experience when he returns to the Iron Islands after a decade as a hostage in the North. He expects to be welcomed as a hero and heir apparent for the treaty he has arranged. Instead, his father mocks his northern clothes and ways, and gives Theon a very minor role in his own plans.
189* StrangerInAStrangeSchool: Sam by the end of ''A Feast for Crows.''
190* StrawMisogynist: Randyll Tarly. And The High Sparrow, in spades.
191* StreetUrchin: Arya in both King's Landing and Braavos.
192* StreisandEffect: Invoked and played with. When Stannis distributes a letter accusing Cersei and Jaime of fathering incestuous children, Tyrion and Littlefinger both advise Cersei to ignore it. Littlefinger also attempts to sidestep the trope by trying a tit-for-tat strategy: inventing an equally lurid tale of the paternity of Stannis' daughter Shireen.
193-->“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
194* StupidEvil: Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsay Bolton stand out as being incapable of restraining their sadistic impulses no matter how much it hurts their cause. Roose Bolton calls out his son on this.
195* SuccessionCrisis:
196** Starts the War of the Five Kings. Joffrey is disputed as if he is really King Robert's son, Stannis considers himself the rightful heir, Daenerys wants the throne Robert stole when he killed her father, Robb wants revenge for [[spoiler:his father's death]] and independence for the North, Renly just wants power and glory and thinks he'd make a better ruler than Stannis, and Balon decides this is the perfect time to attempt another rebellion. [[spoiler:Later Aegon VI claims he is the son of the Mad King's heir so is the rightful king.]]
197** Prior to the events of the books, Aegon IV Targaryen caused one when he bestowed the AncestralWeapon Blackfyre on his bastard son Daemon, rather than his legitimate son and heir Daeron. Since some believed the monarchy to be linked to the sword, this led to several rebellions.
198* SunkCostFallacy: One of Quentyn Martell's motives for [[spoiler: trying to steal a dragon instead of just going home to his father after Dany's disappearance]] is that he can't stand the thought of his friends' deaths having been for nothing.
199* SurvivalMantra: A running theme for Arya. She frequently remembers the sayings of her old fencing instructor in times of crisis, and makes a habit of listing the people she wants dead before going to sleep each night.
200* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: [[spoiler:After Melisandre sends a shadowy Stannis-like spirit to kill Renly, Stannis has a vivid dream of the murder and repeatedly states that he had no involvement in his brother's death as he was asleep at the time.]]
201* SweetsOfTemptation: Sweetsleep is a medicine that can be used as a sleep aid and seizure treatment in tiny doses, but it's so strong that as little as three pinches is enough to kill a grown man. Because it smells and tastes sweet, an assassin can easily hide it in a sweet food like a cake, pie, or glass of honeyed wine.
202* SwitchedAtBirth:
203** In ''A Feast for Crows'', Mance Rayder's son is switched with Gilly's son in order to prevent Melisandre from taking advantage of his "royal blood" as a sacrifice to R'hllor.
204** As of ''A Dance with Dragons'', [[spoiler:it is claimed that the same thing happened in the backstory to save baby Aegon Targaryen. Mind you, the claims come from characters with a vested interest in securing the throne for 'Aegon', and should not necessarily be trusted.]]
205* SwitchingPOV: A textbook example of the advantages of this viewpoint. The first seven or eight chapters of ''A Game of Thrones'' are particularly instructive, as each chapter frequently introduces one character, only to have the next be narrated from that character's PointOfView, thus highlighting the GrayAndGreyMorality of the series. There have been 31 narrators so far: Will, Bran, Catelyn, Daenerys, Eddard, Jon, Arya, Tyrion, Sansa, Maester Cressen, Davos Seaworth, Theon Greyjoy, Chett, Jaime Lannister, Samwell Tarly, Merrett Frey, Pate, Aeron "Damphair" Greyjoy, Areo Hotah, Cersei, Brienne, Asha, Ser Arys Oakheart, Victarion, Arianne Martell, Varamyr Sixskins, Quentyn Martell, "Griff," Melisandre, Ser Barristan Selmy, Kevan Lannister. WordOfGod is that no more POV characters will be added in the last two books, not counting [[ADeathInTheLimelight prologues and epilogues]].
206* SwordFight: Since this is fantasy after all, it happens in every book.
207* SymbolicBaptism: Happens a few times:
208** Theon's uncle Aeron goes from a hedonistic party animal to a grim priest after almost drowning. Of course, drowning followed by resuscitation ''is'' baptism in his religion, but Aeron's drowning was accidental.
209** The Elder Brother Brienne meets on the Quiet Isle claims he was reborn from his previous criminal life after almost drowning in the Trident. [[spoiler:It's implied the Hound underwent a similar spiritual transformation, and is the limping man digging graves for the monastery]].
210* SympatheticPOV:
211** Jaime Lannister becomes a lot more sympathetic once he becomes a POV character. Reactions are mixed whether Cersei receives the same benefit -- you certainly understand her better, regardless of if you like her character or not. This can also happen in reverse, like with Jon, who is easy to like in his own chapters and has a kind-hearted, caring nature, but when we get an outside perspective on him, we realize he's seen as reserved and guarded by those who don't know him -- giving him a SugarAndIcePersonality (another trait [[LikeFatherLikeSon inherited from Ned]]).
212** The sympathy one feels for Tyrion during his own chapters is such that we see the people of King's Landing as a bunch of prejudiced, short-sighted ingrates. As a result, it is very easy to forget that he unleashed a load of thieving, raping barbarians and mercenaries on the various civilians of the city while securing his position and is willingly helping a monster with no right to the Iron Throne remain King because his family supports them.
213** Also consciously averted. The War of Five Kings is never told from the perspective of any of the Kings, but the people around them. While the POV characters may see their relevant King in a positive light (particularly Davos and Catelyn), avoiding giving the Kings POV chapters creates a level of distance between them and the readers, meaning the characters are more likely to be judged on their decisions and the consequences of their actions rather than on their emotions, intentions or inner thoughts.
214* SympathyForTheHero: Varys expresses this to both Ned Stark and [[spoiler:Kevan Lannister]].
215* SympatheticVillainDespicableVillain: A majority of the characters written to oppose the main characters the Stark family are given nuanced characterization and sympathetic traits, [[spoiler:some of whom later become POV characters themselves (the Lannisters, Stannis and Renly Baratheon, Theon Greyjoy, etc).]] The only exception to this is [[BastardBastard Ramsay Snow]] (later legitimized as Ramsay Bolton), who [[KickTheDog kicks the dog]] in every single chapter he appeared in.
216[[/folder]]
217
218[[folder:T]]
219* TabletopGames: ''A Game of Thrones d20'', which is now discontinued, ''A Song of Ice and Fire RPG'', released in 2009 and a ''Game of Thrones'' board game, released in 2003. "A Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures" released in 2018, with "A Song of Ice and Fire Tactics" (a Skirmish miniatures game) anticipated in 2024.
220* TactfulTranslation: Seen in the hilarious discussion between Dany and the Good Masters of Astapor when she goes to buy an Unsullied army. Subverted because Dany actually [[CompletelyUnnecessaryTranslator understands everything she's been told]] and is struggling to keep a straight face at times.
221* TakeThat: One of the laughable and ineffective slave armies in ''A Dance With Dragons'' was described as [[Film/ThreeHundred young men rippling with muscles, dressed in nothing but breechclouts, yellow cloaks, and carrying large bronze shields]].
222* TakingTheVeil: Men have the option to "take the black" and join the Night's Watch. Women can become Silent Sisters. Both genders can become either septons or septas.
223* TakingYouWithMe: When Stannis attacks King's Landing, Cersei offhandedly reveals to Sansa that [[TheSpeechless Ilyn Payne]] isn't just attending them for their protection, but also because Cersei does not intend to let Sansa live in the event Stannis wins the battle.
224%%* TallDarkAndSnarky: Oberyn Martell. Jaime Lannister, in spite of being blonde.
225* TalkingAnimal: Ravens will often be able to parrot a few phrases, and tend to say creepily significant words at dramatically appropriate moments. It's implied that in the old days of magic, ravens were used to verbally relay messages, as opposed to the modern practice of having them deliver letters. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFXU7o0fYII Ravens are, incidentally, actually capable of parroting words in real life]].
226* TangledFamilyTree: The medievalesque setting means that people often start having children very young and continue to have children very old; add in all the {{Arranged Marriage}}s between vastly age-differenced people and the general theme of incest and keeping track of relationships becomes... interesting. There are also the Freys, who manage to be this trope all on their own.
227* ATasteOfDefeat: Several characters in the books suffer major defeats in battle and the consequences haunt them years later and define aspects of their character, making them humbler, more cautious and introspective:
228** Victarion Greyjoy is a fierce and proud admiral and captain of the Iron Fleet whose defeat at the hands of Stannis Baratheon at Fair Isle haunts him for years afterwards.
229** Griff or [[spoiler:Jon Connington is haunted by the memory of the Battle of the Bells at Stony Sept during Robert's Rebellion, a defeat which in his mind ensured Rhaegar's defeat and death. Kevan Lannister himself {{Lampshades}} this trope, noting that while young Jon Connington may have been a glory-hound, defeat and years of exile would have made him cautious and more dangerous than ever]].
230** Stannis Baratheon's defeat at the Battle of Blackwater Bay has likewise [[spoiler:made him re-prioritize his course, made him realize that rather than taking the throne to protect the realm, he must protect the realm to take the throne because a true king protects his people]].
231** Jaime Lannister, the brash young swordsman ended up getting OutGambitted by the Blackfish and Robb Stark at the Battle of Whispering Woods, becoming a captive for most of the war. After his release and the loss of his hand, he has become OlderAndWiser and more cautious as a commander as seen in ''Literature/AFeastForCrows''.
232** On the other hand Robb Stark never lost a battle, [[spoiler:but lost his war at a wedding, his and his uncle's]] and Tywin Lannister never truly suffered a defeat. In both cases, [[spoiler:their complacency proved to be their undoing]]
233* TastyGold: Comes up regularly, including one instance in which [[spoiler:Arya murders a man by poisoning a gold coin]]. It's also {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''A Feast for Crows'' by someone who doesn't actually know how to tell whether the gold coin he's handed is real or fake, but bites it anyway so he doesn't seem naive. [[spoiler:It's implied that he dies the same way as Arya's victim]].
234* TeaserOnlyCharacter: if you narrate a prologue or epilogue in ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', you will be dead by the end of it. (Though two of them nominally "survived" their chapters despite being killed -- [[spoiler:Chett]] as a wight and [[spoiler:Varamyr in the skin of his wolf]].)
235* TeenPregnancy: Jon needs a wet nurse to look after [[spoiler:Gilly]]'s baby at the Wall. One of the ones who turns up is fourteen. Of course this is practically the norm for Westerosi society, as highborn girls are usually married off the moment they have their period.
236%%* TeensAreMonsters: Joffrey.
237* TenLittleMurderVictims: The "Ghost of Winterfell", apparently attempting to invoke CabinFever amongst the fractious forces supporting Roose Bolton while they wait for Stannis to attack them. [[spoiler:It works, as the tension comes to blood and Roose sends most of his forces out into the snow to seek out the enemy.]]
238* TextileWorkIsFeminine: Sansa is good at embroidery; Arya avoids it, but names her sword Needle as an ironic reference to this trope (in that she can honestly say that she is practicing her needlework).
239* ThanatosGambit: Tyrion, although subverted [[spoiler:since he doesn't actually die. Tywin arranged for House Tyrell and House Martell to be his chief allies despite the fact that they'd been at war for centuries. The way Tyrion arranged it, Tyrell and Martell would be at war again regardless, and either Tyrion would live (and piss off House Tyrell) or he would die (and piss off House Martell). Either way, he shoots a hole through Tywin's alliance.]]
240* ThatManIsDead:
241** {{Invoked|Trope}} by Aemon (in backstory) towards his younger brother who became the UnexpectedSuccessor; he tells Aegon he must "kill the boy and become the man", and thus stop going by his cutesy childhood nickname "Egg" and become "Aegon".
242** [[spoiler:Sandor Clegane, who is implied to be living anonymously as a monk on Quiet Isle. The Elder Brother states that the Hound is dead, and later that Sandor Clegane is "[[MetaphoricallyTrue at rest]]". This serves both as a cover and a reference to the man's new life]].
243* ThatOldTimePrescription: Maesters (essentially doctors, though they have other scholarly duties) commonly prescribe "milk of the poppy" (that is, opium) to anyone suffering from a particularly painful injury. They realise it's not a drug to throw around willy-nilly, though, and have lesser prescriptions for minor painkillers and sleeping draughts.
244* TheFarmerAndTheViper:
245** A young Catelyn Tully saved her friend and admirer Petyr Baelish from being killed by Brandon Stark in a duel for her hand. Years later, he would repay her by betraying her husband Ned Stark and cause his death as well as her own.
246** House Hollard was all but wiped out by The Mad King had it not been for Ser Barristan Selmy's plea to spare a young Dontos. Years later, Dontos would help Sansa Stark escape to The Vale, only to be killed by Paetyr Baelish who said he was going to sell her out to the Lannisters once he used up the money that he had been paid to help Sansa.
247** The Mad King ordered Jaime Lannister to kill his father Lord Tywin. Instead he killed his king.[[spoiler: Tywin then had Rhaegar's family murdered, an act which still haunts Jaime]].
248* TheGiant: GRRM seems to be rather fond of this trope considering how many unusually tall characters (around 2m and taller) rise to fame in Westeros (even if we disregard the fact that in medieval times, 6' was already considered really tall). Besides Gregor Clegane (close to 8'), there are also Greatjon Umber, Hodor, Andrik, Victarion Greyjoy, Duncan the Tall, Sandor Clegane, Robert Baratheon and Brienne of Tarth who all measure between six and a half and seven feet.
249* ThemeNaming: The ruling elites of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen are known as, respectively, the Good Masters, the Wise Masters and the Great Masters.
250* ThermalDissident: The Targaryens, a family who share a magic bond with dragons, enjoy hotter temperatures.
251-->[[invoked]]'''WordOfGod:''' The Targaryans can tolerate a bit more heat than most ordinary people, they like really hot baths and things like that, but that doesn't mean they're totally immune to fire, no.
252* ThenLetMeBeEvil:
253** At the beginning of the series, this is Jaime's reaction to his unfairly tarnished reputation, though he eventually comes to realise that he's better off changing people's minds by ''not'' fulfilling their expectations.
254** Later on, his brother Tyrion has a similar reaction to his own family's ill treatment of him. [[spoiler: Accuse me of killing your son, will you? How about I kill our dad?]]
255* ThereCanBeOnlyOne: A frequently repeated theme.
256-->'''Stannis Baratheon:''' One King means peace.
257* TheyCalledMeMad: Although he says it in a more rational-sounding way than usual, Qyburn has a comment like this on the (as he sees it) close-minded Maesters of Oldtown, who didn't appreciate him vivisecting people and teaching himself necromancy.
258* ThickerThanWater: Often [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder the only thing one can rely on]], and when it breaks down things tend to go horribly wrong.
259** It's enforced by the ancient rules against kinslaying, which many people see as the ultimate sin -- even in cases where the victim thoroughly deserved to die, a blood-relative who orders or perpetrates that death is damned. The Karstarks even invoke this rule in regards to their extremely distant familial links to the Starks, [[spoiler:but Robb doesn't buy it.]]
260** The Lannister clan's loss of power is a direct result of their blood ties dissolving into infighting and jealousy.
261* AThicketOfSpears: The Unsullied of Essos are SlaveMooks trained to fight in Greek-style phalanges with spear and shield, and are the most feared soldiers on the continent due to their robotic loyalty and immunity to pain and fear. The story of the Battle of Qohor describes an army of Unsullied defeating a Dothraki raiding force seven times their size, though they took grievous losses doing so. However, the Unsullied are wasted off the battlefield, as Daenerys discovers when she tries assigning them to guard duty in captured cities: lone Unsullied are easily overwhelmed and killed.
262* ThirdLineSomeWaiting: Daenerys's chapters take place on another continent in the east. Not until the fifth book does she start getting a steady flow of visitors from Westeros.
263* ThirdPersonPerson: Strong Belwas and Syrio Forel speak like this. Slaves in Astapor speak in the third person; Unsullied use their names, at least after they're free, while other slaves call themselves "this one." Jaqen, [[spoiler:at least as ''Jaqen'',]] refers to ''everyone'' [[StrangeSyntaxSpeaker not only in the third person, but with indefinite articles]] -- he is always "a man," Arya "a girl," et cetera.
264* ThirteenIsUnlucky:
265** The thirteenth commander of the Night's Watch was the "Night King" who married a "pale, unholy woman" (probably an Other) and enslaved his brothers with sorcery, making them commit atrocities for thirteen years before finally being destroyed by one of the Starks.
266** The trade guild Xaro Xhoan Daxos belongs to is known as The Thirteen, our first hint that maybe they're not to be trusted. Dany's handmaids tell her that thirteen is a bad omen (it is known) when [[spoiler:Xaro shows up with thirteen ships, trying to shoo Dany out of Meereen. ]]
267* ThoseTwoGuys: Irri and Jhiqui.
268* ThunderboltIron: Dawn, the ancestral sword of House Dayne, is made from meteoric iron.
269* ThwartedCoupDeGrace: Oberyn's [[spoiler:apparent victory over Gregor Clegane]], and Biter's attack on Brienne.
270* TigerByTheTail: Cersei cynically reinstates the Faith Militant in the hopes that they will find some reason to destroy the Tyrells, whose daughter Margaery is about to marry Cersei's son Tommen and become Queen. The Faith Militant lock up Margaery, but during the course of their investigation, they decide that Cersei is also guilty of various sins, and she is locked up as well, only being released after effectively agreeing to be their puppet.
271* TinyGuyHugeGirl: Lord Emmon Frey and his wife, Genna Lannister
272* TitleDrop:
273** Daenerys has a dream in which she sees her brother Rhaegar say of his son, "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." The phrase "ice and fire" is also used in the Reeds' loyalty oath to Bran.
274** The title of ''A Game of Thrones'' is dropped most famously by Cersei talking to Ned Stark (''"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die"'') and is used repeatedly throughout the series by other characters. Notably though, the very first instance of a TitleDrop rubbishes the idea of the game.
275--->'''Jorah Mormont:''' The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are.
276** The title of ''A Feast for Crows'' is dropped by Ironborn discussing how the war of the five kings has dramatically weakened every army in the land, and a cunning opportunist could amass immeasurable spoils.
277--->'''Euron "Crow's Eye" Greyjoy:''' After every battle the crows come in their hundreds and thousands to feast upon the fallen. A crow can espy death from afar. And I say that all of Westeros is dying. Those who follow me will feast until the end of their days.
278** The title of ''A Dance with Dragons'' is dropped in by Barristan Selmy [[spoiler: when referring to Quentyn's failed attempt to capture a dragon, which ended in his excruciating death]].
279--->'''Barristan Selmy:''' Not all men are meant to dance with dragons.
280* TooDumbToLive:
281** [[spoiler:Quentyn Martell. In ''A Dance With Dragons'', he walks into a room with two dragons and tries to tame them with a whip. What did he expect to happen?]].
282** [[spoiler:The slave masters of Astapor not only sell their entire army to the leader of a group known for sacking cities, they even suggest using it against a few neighboring cities in her path to get them bloodied.]]
283** [[spoiler:Eddard Stark]], for putting [[HonorBeforeReason honor before reason]] and trusting an admitted backstabber.
284** [[spoiler:Lysa Arryn]], for trusting and even loving the same admitted backstabber.
285** [[spoiler:Viserys Targaryen]], having a short temper and a tendency to petty spiteful acts of violence towards Dany, and act like a prick to a tribe of warriors who consider killing as easy as eating and breathing.
286** [[spoiler:Robb]], who was completely blind to the impending backlash of his marriage.
287** [[spoiler:Oberyn Martell]] for trying to give a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome in the middle of combat]].
288** Sansa Stark to a lesser degree, if only because she manages to stay alive and becomes less naive over the course of the books, but [[LethallyStupid her initial naivety cost the lives of several people]], [[spoiler:including her father, Eddard, by unintentionally aiding the queen's plot against him.]]
289** [[spoiler:Cersei]], for beggaring the realm and driving away any possible allies that might be able to help.
290** [[spoiler:Arys Oakheart]]. Yes, charge full tilt at a battalion of crossbowmen. This was such a bad idea, [[spoiler:Arianne Martell]] wonders if he wasn't committing SuicideByCop.
291** [[spoiler:Jon Snow. In ''A Dance with Dragons'', while he makes every effort to save everyone from [[GreaterScopeVillain the Others]], including trying to build peace and rescue the wildlings -- whom Jon views as men, women and children who deserve to be safe, which contrasts the (albeit prejudiced) views of many in the Night's Watch -- he primarily uses these humanitarian reasons to save aforementioned human lives on members who do not view the wildlings this way and only see them as enemies. Yet, the ''one'' argument that may win opponents to Jon's efforts -- the argument that any dead north of the Wall will rise as wights and join the [[ZombieApocalypse oncoming army of the dead]], so they have to save the wildlings from becoming wights -- is the argument Jon uses only twice. At the end of the book, it looks to the Watch that he is getting involved in the realm by intending to bring the fight to Ramsey Bolton after receiving a series of threats from Ramsay, thereby breaking the Watch's stance on neutrality. Sealing the deal, he neglects to keep his protective direwolf with him in the interest of avoiding bloodshed, despite Melisandre's warnings. He is blindsided when he is stabbed in a mutiny staged by some members of the Night's Watch.]].
292* TookALevelInBadass: A few people over the course of various plotlines.
293** Rhaegar did this according to legend. An artist and scholar in his youth, he one day realized that he had to become a warrior, so he went on to became one of the strongest knights in Westeros.
294** Arya is slowly leveling up throughout the series. She is currently [[spoiler:in training to became a magical assassin, and is beginning to realize her skinchanging abilities]].
295** Dunk is an extremely mediocre swordsman in the first two short stories, in spite of his size. Before the beginning of "The Mystery Knight," however, he gets into a few battles and fights off an ironman boarding party. By the time he arrives in Whitehall, few men are his equal with an axe or mace. He's still a piss-poor jouster, though.
296** Samwell Tarly after joining the Night's Watch, culminating in him [[spoiler:killing an Other with an obsidian blade, then killing a wight by shoving a hot coal in its mouth]].
297** [[spoiler:Daenerys Targaryen]] by the end of the first book. And again [[spoiler:by the end of the third]].
298* TookALevelInJerkass: Lord Wyman Manderly in ''A Dance With Dragons'', owing to the deaths of his family. [[spoiler:His change in personality is actually the first clue for readers that Manderly is just putting on a facade of loyalty in front of the Freys, and has no intention of killing Davos after all.]]
299* TopWife:
300** Aegon "The Conqueror" Targaryen [[BrotherSisterIncest married both his sisters]], Rhaenys and Visenya; however, he loves the former more than the latter. Of course, both of them compete for Aegon's affection. Later on, Visenya puts her son, [[TheCaligula Maegor the Cruel]], into the Iron Throne ahead of Rhaenys' grandsons who are lawful heirs of Aenys I, Aegon and Rhaenys' son. Ironically, the majority of the Targaryen descendants came from Rhaenys' bloodline.
301** Though he was never married, Prince Oberyn Martell is very promiscuous and had eight bastard daughters from five women. Among the five women who bore his daughters, Ellaria Sand is his closest and most favorite lover and is also the mother of his four younger daughters. If ever Oberyn marries someone else for political reasons, Ellaria would be considered to be his mistress.
302* TornApartByTheMob:
303** In the second book, the High Septon is torn apart by the angry mob that is rioting over the lack of food. Preston Greenfield attempts to rescue him, but gets hacked to pieces and his body was barely identifiable.
304** One [[RashomonStyle possible cause]] of Maelor Targaryen's death is that he was torn apart by a mob at Bitterbridge.
305** Ser Glendon Goode was torn apart by a angry mob while trying to retrieve the body of Joffrey Velaryon for his bereaved mother.
306* TortureAlwaysWorks: Averted. Sometimes, torture does work, but just as often it's used to extract false confessions. Sometimes, torture is even performed to purposefully get a false confession, as when the Blue Bard is tortured into "admitting" he [[spoiler: had an extramarital affair with Margaery]]. Hizdahr zo Loraq points out that torturing him for a confession is pointless, since he'd obviously confess to whatever the torturer asks, no matter how untrue.
307* TortureTechnician: Several throughout the series, including:
308** The Tickler, Gregor Clegane's designated torturer. He uses a variety of horrible methods to inflict pain while asking the same litany of questions over and over until the prisoner dies. When he is not torturing, he is a perfectly mundane soldier.
309** Qyburn, a former maester who was thrown out of the organization for conducting [[EvilutionaryBiologist experiments]] on living creatures, including vivisections. Cersei puts his knowledge to use as a torturer, among other things.
310** Ramsay Bolton is well-versed in the cruel old Bolton tradition of flaying prisoners alive. He spends the time between the end of ''A Storm of Swords'' and ''A Dance With Dragons'' putting his skills to work [[spoiler:flaying Theon Greyjoy piece by piece while breaking his sanity]].
311** The Shavepate either serves this function for Dany in Meereen or directly oversees those who do.
312** Garth in White Harbor. He tortures by burning his victims with a heated iron rod called "the Whore."
313** Pretty Meris is designated torturer for the Windblown mercenary company; she can make a victim last for a month.
314
315* ToughLeaderFacade: Daenerys after some development. She is also quite aware of the fact, referring to the necessity of her queenly vestments by saying that "The Queen of Rabbits cannot be seen without her floppy ears".
316
317* TheTower: Harrenhal is a BigFancyCastle with a number of towers, but as a whole it serves as a symbol of the {{hubris}} typically associated with this trope. King Harren intended to build an enormous, impregnable castle as a representation of his power. Unfortunately, it became obsolete on the day of its completion, when Aegon arrived in Westeros with dragons that made castle walls moot. It's now a blasted-out wreck that is rumored to be {{haunted|castle}}.
318* TrademarkFavoriteFood:
319** Strong Belwas -- liver and onions.
320** Sansa -- lemon cakes.
321** Roose Bolton -- hippocras.
322** Littlefinger -- mint.
323** Wyman Manderly -- lamprey pies. [[spoiler: He also really enjoys that pie which is suspected by fans to contain [[ImAHumanitarian three Freys]], although that was presumably (hopefully) due to the revenge aspect, rather than the taste -- otherwise, yikes.]]
324** Westerosi ravens seem to like corn.
325* TragicDream: Take your pick:
326** Ned Stark wanting to go back to Winterfell.
327** King Robert wanting to marry Lyanna.
328** Jaime wanting to be a true knight.
329** Lysa wanting Paetyr Baelish to love her.
330** Robb Stark wanting to save his father and sisters.
331** Jon Snow wanting to join his brother Robb, save their father, and help his sisters.
332* TragicHero: [[spoiler:Eddard Stark, Robb Stark, Rhaegar Targaryen and many more]], all of whom are now deceased.
333* TragicMistake: While the story is not a classic tragedy, we can trace some characters' downfalls to a single action caused by some character defect.
334** [[spoiler:Eddard Stark refusing to preemptively strike at the Lannisters, leading to his downfall and the destruction of his House]].
335** [[spoiler:Theon refusing to abandon Winterfell after he has sacked it, causing him to be captured by the Boltons and broken]].
336** [[spoiler:Robb Stark breaking his marriage pact with Walder Frey to instead marry Jeyne Westerling, leading directly to the Red Wedding]].
337* TrainingFromHell: The Unsullied, who are broken into selfless, robotic, and utterly loyal killing machines.
338* TrappedBehindEnemyLines: Jon Snow. He's smart enough to know how to deal with it.
339* TrappedInTheHost: A legitimate danger for skinchangers/wargs is that they lose themselves in the animal they're controlling until the animal's mind regains control and they're lost forever. They can also kinda keep their consciousness from death by shifting into the body of an animal that they control while they're dying, although inevitably the animal will mostly take over again and they fade into a tiny bit of consciousness in the back of the animal's mind. [[spoiler:Varamyr Sixskins]] still considers it preferably to death, and apparently it's fairly common for Wildling skinchangers to do.
340* TraumaticHaircut: Cersei is forcibly shaved ([[ExaggeratedTrope all over]]) before her ShamefulStrip and procession through King's Landing.
341* TreacheryIsASpecialKindOfEvil: This viewpoint is common in Westeros.
342** Among many nasty feudal overlords, the houses Frey and Bolton stand out as the least likeable, because they are traitorous. The mercenary captain Vargo Hoat lost his chance of a political career in Westeros because of DeliberateValuesDissonance: as a native of Essos, he thought switching sides is okay for him. It wasn't, and his former allies the Lannisters were particularly intolerant to this.
343** One particular form of treachery is especially reviled in Westeros, namely violating SacredHospitality. The aforementioned House Frey became hated by all of Westeros because of that transgression (the victim was not just anyone but their king, making it also high treason for a double whammy).
344** Jaime Lannister, a knight of the Kingsguard, became famous for slaying [[TheCaligula King Aerys the Mad]]. From our perspective, that was a noble deed, especially considering the fact that the king planned to burn his capital down with all its citizens. However, as a member of the Kingsguard, Jaime swore to serve and protect his king, and, by killing him and saving countless lives, he committed a traitorous act. This made Jaime infamous and gave him the ignoble moniker of "The Kingslayer", even among former enemies of King Aerys.
345** In the legend of the Rat Cook, a cook of the Night's Watch killed the king's son and served him to the king as dinner. He was then punished by the gods by being turned into a rat. This is explicitly punishment for the violation of SacredHospitality and not the murder and cannibalism.
346* TheTreesHaveFaces: Weirwood trees, rare plants usually only found in sacred woods and in the Haunted Forest, do not naturally have faces, but followers of the Old Gods traditionally carve them into their trunks. These are usually snarling, scowling or otherwise meant to be frightening or unsettling. In addition, the weirwoods' naturally bone-white bark and red leaves naturally make for an otherworldly appearance even absent the faces, and the trees' dried, blood-red sap gathered around the roughly carved features further adds to their unsettling effect.
347* TrilogyCreep: Originally envisioned as three books, then six, now up to seven, [[ArcNumber which is somewhat appropriate]].
348* TheTrickster:
349** Littlefinger is a classic Trickster -- he seems to be actively working to destabilise Westeros simply in order to make it easier for him to manipulate people and facilitate his own RagsToRiches progression.
350** Tyrion and Varys are both prime candidates as well, using tricks, manipulation and ambiguous loyalty to, respectively, keep the Lannisters on top and [[spoiler: keep the Houses at each others' throats until the Targaryens return]].
351** Lann the Clever, the [[TimeOfMyths semi-legendary]] ancestor of the Lannisters was one of these, and is basically a Trickster FolkHero.
352* TryToFitThatOnABusinessCard: Long and fancy titles are a way of life in Westeros, showing various duties, powers and traditions. Some of the more extravagant are:
353** Daenerys is [[MemeticMutation infamous]] for her sheer number of titles: Daenerys of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, called Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Shackles and Mother of Dragons.
354** Joffrey of the Houses Baratheon and Lannister, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.
355** Lord Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, Shield of Lannisport, Warden of the West, Savior of the City and Hand of the King.
356** Balon Greyjoy the Ninth of his Name since the Grey King, King of the Iron Islands and the North, King of Salt and Rock, Son of the Sea Wind, Lord Reaper of Pyke.
357** Lord Petyr Baelish, Lord of Harrenhal, Lord Paramount of the Trident, Lord Protector of the Vale and former Master of Coin.
358** Tormund Giantsbane/Thunderfist, Tall-Talker, Horn-Blower, Breaker of Ice, Husband to Bears, Mead-King of Ruddy Hall, Speaker to Gods, and Father to Hosts.
359** Lord Wyman Manderly, Lord of White Harbor, Warden of the White Knife, Shield of the Faith, Defender of the Dispossessed, Lord Marshal of the Mander, and Knight of the Order of the Green Hand. What makes this one notable is that his two last titles no longer mean anything; his family doesn't have any land or armies near the Mander any more, and the Order of the Green Hand is long-defunct.
360** Essos eventually gets in on the action with His Magnificence Hizdahr zo Loraq, Fourteenth of That Noble Name, King of Meereen, Scion of Ghis, Octarch of the Old Empire, Master of the Skahazadhan, Consort to Dragons and Blood of the Harpy.
361* TruceZone: The Dothraki city of Vaes Dothrak; spilling blood within carries the death penalty (being strangled to death bloodlessly). Khal Drogo invokes ExactWords in order to kill [[spoiler:Viserys]].
362* {{Tsundere}}: What few glimpses we've had of Lyanna Stark's personality seem to lean toward this.
363* TurbulentPriest: The [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname High Sparrow]], a new High Septon imposed on King's Landing by the begging brothers in protest at the CorruptChurch. Could have stayed as merely a political thorn in Cersei's side had she not foolishly given him licence to reform the ChurchMilitant, making him a powerful military leader in his own right.
364* {{Twincest}}: [[spoiler:Twins Jaime and Cersei have had a long-term romantic relationship]].
365* TwinDesynch: As long as Jaime and Cersei are together, they seem to form an utterly unflappable scheming machine to rival their father. However they really start to change once they're separated for a considerable time -- both of them suffer horrible traumas to which they respond in entirely different ways, and they each start to loathe the person they see their twin becoming.
366* TwoAliasesOneCharacter: Barristan Selmy as [[spoiler:Arstan Whitebeard]]; More than likely Jaqen H'ghar as/The Alchemist/Pate (after killing the real one); Likely Sarella Sand and Alleras.
367* {{Tykebomb}}:
368** The Unsullied are eunuch slaves trained from birth to be perfect warriors. Their horrific training is meant to strip them of all self-worth and individuality, turning them into soulless weapons. It doesn't quite work.
369** Sandor frequently asserts that knights are just living weapons, trained from boyhood to kill at their master's command.
370* {{Tyrannicide}}:
371** Jaime Lannister a.k.a. "TheKingslayer". In the backstory, he killed an evil, mad king, [[InTheBack through the back]]. It did a lot of good for the realm, [[spoiler: saving over half a million lives that the Mad King was just about to end]] and putting an end to a destructive civil war. [[OnceDoneNeverForgotten No one will let him forget it, though]], because he was the King's own [[BodyguardBetrayal personal bodyguard]] and [[TheOathbreaker oathbound to protect him]], and he's also the son of the arriviste Lannister family that the rebels saw as "Johnny come latelies" who parlay their opportunistic actions to grab royal favor. He is seen by many as a disagreeable KarmaHoudini who should at the very least been ReassignedToAntarctica rather than continue as bodyguard. The fact that [[spoiler:he saved the city from wildfire annihilation is unknown to everyone in Westeros save Brienne and the reader]].
372** Brienne undergoes similar prejudice when she is thought to have killed Renly Baratheon, having been found in his tent with him just after he dies. In reality he was murdered by a shadow assassin conjured by a witch who was in league with Renly's brother Stannis Baratheon, though as Stannis had more right to the Iron Throne, and [[TheEvilPrince Renly]] was clearly TheUsurper and intended to kill Stannis that day this doesn't seem so great a crime. Later Renly's secret lover Ser Loras Tyrell meets Brienne and demanded she be punished for Renly's death, even though the Tyrells are currently allied with the Lannister regime Renly intended to overthrow.
373[[/folder]]
374
375[[folder:U]]
376* UglyCute: An in-universe example, Brienne elicits sympathy from Catelyn (and from many readers) for the combination of her brutish looks and resolutely romantic outlook.
377* UglyGuyHotWife: Robert and Cersei, after he lets himself go fat and bloated. Plain-faced Jorah and Lynesse, which fails because of his money rather than his looks. Plain-faced Ned and Catelyn, who manage to become HappilyMarried. Deformed Tyrion and [[spoiler:Sansa]], which is a possible subversion of GiveGeeksAChance. Lysa felt this way about the old and onion-breathed Jon Arryn, though she ultimately lets herself go. Partly a reflection of the woes of women in this society. May explain the popularity of the rare reversal, [[spoiler:the Jaime/Brienne pairing]].
378* TheUnchosenOne: [[PosthumousCharacter Rhaegar Targaryen]] read once a prophecy that convinced him he was TheChosenOne. Later in his life he changed his mind and thought the Prince That Was Promised was his son Aegon, or rather [[TheChosenMany his children]], since he claimed that "the dragon must have three heads". [[spoiler: It could have been a huge plot point since it's revealed that his wife couldn't get pregnant again after the second child, ''so'' it could have been the reason of his abduction of Lyanna Stark. It's rather ironic that he could have been cheated by prophecies once more if TheChosenOne was his child with Lyanna all along, or his yet-to-be-born ''sister''.]]
379* UnderdogsNeverLose: Of the viewpoint characters who've survived the first four books in spite of constantly being placed in dangerous and potentially fatal situations, one is a bastard, one is a fat black sheep of the family, one is a child cripple, one is the [[LastOfHisKind hunted last heir of a toppled dynasty]]. Tyrion the dwarf, however, never seems to get any credit for his successes, and is constantly pushed back down. Also, a large part of the remainder of this series is spent averting this trope in some of the most horrific ways imaginable.
380* UndignifiedDeath: Happens regularly in the series, and often to characters like TheAce who would otherwise enjoy a serious amount of PlotArmor or at least get the opportunity to die with dignity. Not here, though.
381** Historic character Daemon Blackfyre was unceremoniously killed off by a hail of arrows in order to cut a battle short.
382** DecoyProtagonist Ned Stark gets branded as a traitor and publicly beheaded.
383** His son and heir, Robb Stark, gets betrayed by one of his bannermen - shot with bolts, stabbed through the heart, beheaded, and ultimately gets his pet's head sewn to his neck.
384** The nemesis of the Starks, Tywin Lannister, gets shot by his own son while taking a dump.
385* UndyingLoyalty:
386** Dany's Unsullied. [[spoiler:Although she's been told that they have absolute loyalty to whoever holds their master's scepter, she sets them free, earning their loyalty even beyond their Unsullied conditioning. After she's believed dead and her husband tries to assume control of them, they remain in their barracks and refuse to follow any orders]].
387** The job description of a Dothraki bloodrider. If their khal dies, they are to avenge his death, escort the khaleesi to Vaes Dothrak and then join their khal in death.
388** Davos to Stannis. Davos saved Stannis's life, in return Stannis made him into a lord and cut tops of his fingers on his left hand himself with a cleaver. Which was a mercy, because by the letter of the law Stannis should have either hanged him or cut off Davos's hand or head. Afterwards, Davos is this to Stannis
389* UnfinishedBusiness: Both the characters we've met who have been restored to life by the fires of R'hllor have been single-mindedly obsessed with fulfilling the last goal they had had before they died; Beric with [[spoiler:harrying the Lannister forces in the Riverlands]] and [[spoiler:Catelyn with getting vengeance against the Freys]]. It's not clear whether this is a supernatural effect, or if dying and coming back just gives one a stubborn streak.
390* UnfitForGreatness: Robert Baratheon, who leads a rebellion to remove a [[TheCaligula truly awful king]]. However, once he takes the throne he finds himself ill-suited to rule and spends his time drinking and whoring, while leaving the actual ruling of the kingdom to various advisors who are more interested in their own agendas than the good of the realm.
391* UnfortunateNames: Tyrion remarks that Podrick Payne has a rather unfortunate name.
392* TheUnfought: Daenerys never got to fight the TerribleTrio that were King Robert, Eddard Stark and Tywin Lannister.
393%%* The Unifier: - Rogue launched trope; restore once properly relaunched
394%%** Queen Nymeria, the legendary warrior queen who united the Rhoynar people during the Valyrian conquests and led them across the sea to Dorne. Upon arriving, she married Mors Martell and they conquered the rest of Dorne, unifying it as one of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.
395%%** Aegon I Targaryen, known as Aegon the Conqueror, was this for the Seven Kingdoms. While the current administration has [[WrittenByTheWinners attempted to downplay his accomplishment a bit]], he is still commonly held by the people of Westeros to have unified the kingdoms on the back of his dragon. Despite conventional wisdom, however, he never actually conquered all seven kingdoms; Dorne remained independent for generations after his death, and the North and the Vale both submitted to his rule willingly.
396%%** Mance Rayder, the King Beyond the Wall, has managed to unify the many different tribes of the Free Folk in the Land of Always Winter, and this has the Night's Watch terrified, due to being their enemy for hundreds of years. After a ranging party north goes awry, Jon Snow finds himself with an opportunity to infiltrate and find out exactly why the Free Folk all decided to follow Mance, and when Jon eventually meets Mance, he discovers that the answer is quite simple: [[ArcWords Winter is coming]], and with it, the Others. Mance united the Free Folk entirely with diplomacy, because he wanted to get them all south of the wall so they could survive, and they proclaimed him the King Beyond the Wall. Later on,
397%%** Following Mance's apparent death, Jon fills this role, having been elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and having seen the threat posed by the Others. While there is some initial distrust, the Free Folk are more than willing to serve faithfully if it means fighting the Others and saving themselves, and Jon sends emissaries to Free Folk faction leaders such as Tormund Giantsbane offering safe passage south of the Wall. The Night's Watch, however, do not take kindly to this and there are several small clashes between the former enemies.
398* UnnecessarilyLargeInterior: The Alchemists' Guild has a grand hall filled with green [[GreekFire wildfire]] torches. Tyrion notes that the hall is only used to impress visitors and all the torches will be extinguished as soon as he leaves.
399* UnnervinglyHeartwarming: Petyr Baelish's interactions with Sansa. Outwardly, it's a relief to see her treated with kindness after her life in King's Landing, and the author has mentioned that Baelish does genuinely care for Sansa a lot. However, Baelish is one of the main reasons she ended up tormented and humiliated in King's Landing in the first place; plus, he makes her pose as his daughter while at the same time forcing kisses on her - even iffy considering he was in love with her mother.
400* UnreliableNarrator: A few examples:
401** In ''A Storm of Swords'', Sansa thinks back on Sandor kissing her when he hid in her room during the Battle of the Blackwater, a detail that never appeared in the actual text of ''A Clash of Kings''. WordOfGod confirms it as Sansa misremembering the night due to her psychological trauma.
402** Other damaged narrators, such as Reek, are not particularly trustworthy. His chapters often suddenly skip forward in time.
403** Arya misremembers Joffrey's sword Lion's Tooth as Lion's Paw in ''A Storm of Swords''. [[WordOfGod GRRM]] has stated that this is a deliberate minor example of narrators misremembering details.
404** Tyrion thinks of himself in a very flattering light, but analysis of his actions in King's Landing (such as his use of the Mountain Clans, and quite petty use of power) suggests he has an overstated view of his own morality.
405** "The Princess and the Queen” shows this in-universe, as Archmaester Gyldayn expresses numerous doubts about the veracity of his sources when writing a history of the Dance of the Dragons.
406** Propaganda songs are written after the Battle of Blackwater praising the gallantry of King Joffrey and the Queen Regent -- in truth their efforts did more harm than good. The true hero, Tyrion, is [[NoRespectGuy written out of events altogether]].
407** In just about every narration, the characters' mindset colours their narration with bias or mistakes, forcing the reader to divine the more objective truth. This is particularly noticable with the younger and so less experienced narrators, such as Bran, Arya and Sansa. An early example is when Bran describes Cersei and Jaime was wrestling in the tower when he sees them, not understanding that he is witnessing sex. Arya similarly blames Sansa for attracting Septa Mordane's attention in one book, when in fact it was her shouting which did it just a few paragraphs before.
408* UnspokenPlanGuarantee:
409** The fact that we're privy to Varys and Ned's plan for him to confess and take exile to the Wall is one hint that that ain't gonna happen.
410** Most of the best schemes are kept obscure until they come to fruition in a [[WhamEpisode Wham Chapter]]. This is presumably part of the reason that very few of the series' chessmasters are POV characters. Cersei only becomes one after she starts going off the rails.
411** [[DeconstructedTrope Backfires]] in-universe for Doran Martell; not telling his daughter what he was cooking up led to her turning into a RebelliousPrincess and throwing a SpannerInTheWorks.
412* UnspokenRetort: Davos Seaworth is a former smuggler and Hand of the King to Stannis Baratheon. When he goes to entreat with the immensely fat Lord Wyman Manderly, he is asked, "You have visited our city before, I think, taking coin from our pockets and food off our table. How much did you steal from me, I wonder?" Davos thinks, "Not enough that you ever missed a meal."
413* UntranslatedCatchPhrase: After Arya learns the Valyrian phrase ''Valar morghulis'' from an assassin, she adds it to her "prayer list" of people she intends to kill and says it when she kills a guard escaping from Harrenhal. It's not until she goes to Braavos that she learns that it means "All men must die."
414* UnusualEuphemism: Mostly averted, actually--characters from the Seven Kingdoms swear using modern English curses.
415** The Braavosi tend to include odd adjectives for their swearwords, possibly to add to their foreign flavor. "Camel's cunt" is the first that springs to mind, and is even funnier because ten-year old Arya says it.
416** Swearing occurs not only in dialogue, but in the narrative as well. This leads to some [[SophisticatedAsHell strange dissonance]] if you're used to typical fantasy, on at least one occasion--one moment a character "screamed and soiled himself", and the next someone "wiped the piss off his boot". Many modern swear words, such as piss and shit, were once the proper names for such things.
417** Euphemisms referencing the BigBad ("The Others take you!") and the FantasyPantheon ("Seven Hells!") are fairly common.
418** Night's Watchmen who go to Mole Town for paid sex refer to it as "Digging for buried treasure", due to the town's network of tunnels, which includes the brothel.
419** "Song" usually refers to the power of words. "Dance" often has violent connotations.
420* UnwantedSpouse:
421** Cersei and Robert, who would have both preferred to marry people who were by that point dead (Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, respectively) but Cersei at least tried to make it work until [[WrongNameOutburst Robert mistakenly called her Lyanna on their wedding night]], to the point that later she [[spoiler:conceived her children via her twin brother instead of him and had a hand in his death]].
422** Later, [[spoiler:Sansa and Tyrion]]. ''Neither'' want it, although [[spoiler:Tyrion]] is willing to try and make it work while [[spoiler:Sansa]] just retreats behind her StepfordSmiler mask.
423** In the backstory Aerys and Rhaella Targaryen were also this in addition to being [[BrotherSisterIncest brother and sister]] forced to marry to keep their bloodline pure. They both would have vastly preferred to marry Joanna Lannister (the wife of Aerys' hand Tywin, whom he coveted) and Bonifer Hasty, respectively, and they resented the arrangement since their own father and grandfather had instead been able to MarryForLove. While there was no love lost between them on their wedding day the birth of [[TheWisePrince Rhaegar]] seems to have improved it somewhat, but then Aerys went insane and pushed it into DomesticAbuse territory, and Jaime Lannister recounts how Aerys would viciously rape her after he had [[PyroManiac burned someone]] and poor Rhaella looked like she'd been savaged by an animal afterwards.
424** While the relationship was by all accounts far better than his parents', Rhaegar himself is hinted to have felt this way about his wife Elia, since Daenerys thinks it says a lot when Barristan Selmy says Rhaegar was only "fond" of her. If so it might help explain why Rhaegar took such an uncharacteristically reckless action as [[UnreliableNarrator allegedly]] kidnapping Lyanna Stark while still married to Elia and in the process kickstarted the civil war that ultimately brought down the dynasty.
425* TheUpperCrass:
426** Nearly every Northern noble exemplify various sides of this trope. The Starks are exemplars of old-school values of honor, the Umbers and Mormonts are the champions in being crude and rustic, and the Boltons exemplify the dark side of the trope by practicing many quaint local traditions, among which droit de seigneur is the least horrifying.
427** The Clegane family are very minor and recent nobility (it was founded when a houndsmaster saved a member of the Lannister family), and it shows. Ser Gregor Clegane is a PsychoForHire with gigantism who takes great joy in murdering and raping defenseless victims. His brother Sandor Clegane (also a violent brute, but with actual morals somewhere deep down) hates being called "Ser" even though he's entitled to it, precisely because he sees knights as thugs with swords (as exemplified by his brother).
428* UriahGambit: In ''A Feast For Crows''. Cersei, having lost trust in [[spoiler:the Tyrells in general and Ser Loras in particular]], assigns him the command of a force sent to take Dragonstone. She's counting on his [[LeeroyJenkins recklessness and arrogance]] to [[XanatosGambit either take the castle quickly (thus freeing up her navy to go west) or get himself killed]]; in the event, he takes the castle and gets himself horribly wounded, but survives.
429* UsedToBeASweetKid: Catelyn has a number of flashbacks/reminiscences which suggest Littlefinger was this, although he was always pretty mischievous. Dany also recalls Viserys being a decent brother when she was very young, before he went insane from the pressure of his birth.
430[[/folder]]
431
432
433[[folder:V]]
434* VariantChess: Cyvasse is a chess-variant with pieces like dragon, elephant, crossbow, trebuchet and mountain. The players align their pieces in a custom starting alignment before the beginning of the game, with a Battleships-style screen dividing the board so their opponent doesn't know their deployment until the game begins.
435* VengeanceFeelsEmpty
436** "Rhaegar won, damn him. I killed him, Ned, I drove the spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at my feet. They made up songs about it. Yet somehow he still won. [[TogetherInDeath He has Lyanna now]], and I have ''[[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen her]]''."
437** On hearing of King Joffrey's death, Arya feels it doesn't mean anything [[spoiler:if her own family isn't alive too.]]
438* VerbalTicName: Hodor.
439* VestigialEmpire: The Ghiscari Empire, most of which was destroyed by Valyria 5000 years ago. New Ghis and the city-states of Slaver's Bay consider themselves descended from the old empire.
440* VicariouslyAmbitious: The nature of politics in Westeros means that there are two main means of doing some social climbing: accomplish great deeds on the field of battle, or arrange an advantageous marriage so that your children and their children will move up to the next social rung rather than you. Many people throughout the series plan not for themselves to move up the social hierarchy, but their children and grandchildren.
441* VikingFuneral: A tradition of the Tullys. [[spoiler: Also performed by Victarion to sacrifice some captured slaves.]]
442* VillainDecay: Cersei seems like a ruthless and capable {{chessmaster}} early on, but it later becomes apparent that her ruthlessness is [[SmallNameBigEgo not matched by her competence]]. She only seemed better at the game than she actually was because [[CurbStompBattle her early opponents were honorable men with no mind for intrigues]].
443* VillainousIncest:
444** Jaime and Cersei. Although "villainous" is [[GreyAndGrayMorality not so straightforward]] in this series and both characters are revealed to be greyer than they first appear (and to genuinely love each other, in their own ways), they both play purely villainous roles in the first book, with the reveal of their incest being the first hint of this. Their affair also directly causes much of the series' conflict, although given their relationship this is also a case of LoveRuinsTheRealm.
445** ZigZagged with the Targaryens: the family tradition of in-breeding is embraced by some and rejected by others, but seems to have no direct correlation with how individually evil they are. How villainous the regime is as a whole is highly subjective.
446* VillainousMotherSonDuo: [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Queen Cersei Lannister]] is a very ambitious and cunning woman [[MamaBear who holds her children very dearly]] particularly with her eldest son, Joffrey, who has shown signs of being a narcissist and sociopath. After [[TheCaligula Joffrey]] becomes King of Westeros, Cersei doesn't care about the abuses that her son made during his reign as long as he holds in the Iron Throne regardless what their opponents say about his parentage and her incestuous affair with her twin brother, Jaime.[[spoiler: When Joffrey was poisoned during his wedding, she becomes very paranoid of the people around her to the point of attempting to control her youngest son, Tommen, after he becomes king only to be very disappointed that he's nothing like his abusive older brother]].
447* VillainsNeverLie: The Lannisters... well they ''lie'' all the time, but they take their motto seriously, and if they outright promise you something (whether it's gold or [[DisproportionateRetribution revenge]]) you can count on getting it. It's often [[MetaphoricallyTrue from a certain point of view]], though. Jaime, for instance, was pretty disappointed when the Brave Companion he was trying to bribe refused his offer. He was really looking forward to filling the man's pockets with gold before he hanged him.
448* TheVillainSucksSong: "The Rains of Castamere." Though Tywin Lannister actually likes the song (insofar as he's capable of liking ''anything''); he considers it good PR, as it details exactly what he'll do to you if you cross him. Whenever it's played, something bad's about to go down.
449* VirginityMakesYouStupid
450* VirginTension:
451** When [[spoiler:Jaime rescues Brienne from the Bloody Mummers]], there's some concern that she may have been gang raped, so [[spoiler:Jaime]] checks on the status of her maidenhood by joking about how he only rescues maidens. Possibly subverted, as it had been demonstrated that his concern was less about her virginity and more about her wellbeing.
452** For political reasons Margaery Tyrell is regarded as a virgin when she's married to King Renly, [[spoiler:then King Joffrey and finally King Tommen]]. While it's ''plausible'' (Renly is known to be homosexual, [[spoiler:and Joffrey was poisoned before the wedding could be consummated]]) there's some skepticism.
453* VirileStallion: The Dothraki are horse-worshipping nomads with a very macho culture and a prophecy about a "stallion who mounts the world". "Mounting" in this case meaning "have sex with".
454* VirtueIsWeakness: The people who are portrayed to be "villains" all believe in this. The Lannisters and Littlefinger in particular all consider "honor" only to be a flaw to be exploited in others.
455* TheVirus: The disease greyscale, while treatable to an extent, spreads with physical contact and can cause insanity if untreated. [[spoiler: Advanced greyscale victims apparently gather together and attack the uninfected. It's also telling that the wildlings consider greyscale to be akin to becoming a wight.]]
456* VisualPun: Longclaw, the ancestral blade that Jeor Mormont gives to Jon Snow, is a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_sword "bastard sword"]].
457* VoluntaryShapeshifting: [[spoiler:The Faceless Men can change their faces. They apparently do this with skin masks. Although the kindly man claims that it is not a glamour, Arya still feels her real face after he puts one on her, so it's ambiguous as to whether her face actually changes shape. Jaqen H'ghar also changes his facial appearance simply by passing a hand over his face]].
458* VorpalPillow: Several examples:
459** Daenerys Targaryen kills [[spoiler: Khal Drogo]] this way as a act of mercy.
460** The High Septon is killed by Osney Kettleblack on the orders of [[spoiler: Queen Cersei]]
461* VowOfCelibacy: Vows of celibacy are required by several religious and military orders, including the Night's Watch, the Kingsguard, the septons and septas of the Faith of the Seven, and the maesters of the Citadel. Some take their vows more seriously than others; in the Night's Watch, it's an open secret that more brothers than not make regular visits to a nearby brothel. While the Faith's vows to include a specifically religious element, the primary drive behind the others isn't so much an avoidance of sex ''per se'' as it is one of marriage and children. All three orders serve specific and very important purposes -- the Night's Watch guard the realm's norther border against the barbarians and monsters of the GrimUpNorth, the Kingsguard are the bodyguards of the king and his family, and the maesters act as advisors for noble families and as the realm's main collectors and scholars of knowledge -- which at least in theory require them to be completely above and removed from conflicts of interest and involvement in the Seven Kingdom's endless petty quarrels. In a setting where loyalty and power are derived chiefly from nuptial and kinship ties, this means forsaking all existing familial links alongside swearing to never marry or beget children.
462[[/folder]]
463
464[[folder:W]]
465* WaifFu: Subverted -- Arya's father arranges for her to be trained in a Braavosi fencing style that's suited to her small frame and slim blade, but any attempts to take on experienced and armoured male combatants in the real world would end with Arya being readily disarmed. Fortunately, Arya is still able to kill using skill and trickery, mainly by exploiting the fact that no one thinks a scrawny girl child is dangerous.
466* WalkOfShame:
467** It is mentioned that when Tywin Lannister became Lord of the Westerlands, he had his late father's mistress exiled, forcing her to walk through the streets naked and announce she's a whore on her way out of Lannisport.
468** In ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'', Cersei is imprisoned by the Faith on suspicion of adultery, incest, and murdering the previous High Septon. Cersei [[ConfessToALesserCrime only confesses to adultery]], allowing her to avoid execution, but is forced to do a "walk of atonement," where she has her head shaved, her clothes stripped, and is forced to walk through King's Landing while a septa rings a bell and yells "SHAME!" with every step.
469* TheWallAroundTheWorld: The Wall serves double trope duty, both as the edge of the world to the North for the Westerosi, and the edge of the world to the South for the Wildlings.
470* WanderingMinstrel:
471** It seems almost a RunningGag for bards to come to sticky ends: A nameless singer is mutilated on the orders of King Joffrey for a subversive song about Queen Cersei and the late King Robert, [[spoiler:Littlefinger has Marillion imprisioned and tortured into falsely confessing to Lysa Arryn's murder, Symon Silvertongue ends up in a pot of stew after trying to blackmail Tyrion, Dareon is murdered by Arya Stark after he deserts from the Nights Watch, and Cersei falsely imprisons the Blue Bard and tortures him into implicating Queen Margaery for fornication]].
472** Tom o' Sevens was a minstrel before becoming a rebel with the brotherhood without banners. Now he carries his harp alongside an axe.
473** Bael the Bard is a legendary hero who was a raider, trickster and wandering minstrel.
474** Mance Rayder reveals that he disguised himself as a minstrel to infiltrate Winterfell when Robert Baratheon visited Winterfell. He plays a lute during the feast, unbeknownst to anyone. Also [[spoiler:under the identity of a bard named "Abel," (an anagram of "Bael"), he infiltrates Winterfell again during the wedding of Ramsay Bolton]].
475* WarHawk:
476** Feelings in the Vale are mixed. Some of their Lords want to ally with the Starks and others want to ally with the Baratheons. Lysa chooses to stay neutral.
477** Obara and Tyene Sand both want war with the Lannisters after [[spoiler:their father dies in a duel with Ser Gregor Clegane]]. Their proposed wars differ significantly, though; Obara wants to invade the Reach and burn Oldtown as a start, while Tyene prefers starting a defensive war by crowning Myrcella Baratheon queen and forcing the Lannisters to try invading Dorne. They stir up discontent among the commonfolk and nobility to try to force their uncle Prince Doran to go along with one of their plans.
478* WarHero: There are several characters who are commended for their prowess in battle:
479** Barristan the Bold became a LivingLegend for defeating Maelys the Monstrous in single combat during the War of the Ninepenny Kings. He was rewarded with a position on the Kingsguard.
480** Jorah Mormont was knighted by King Robert on the battlefield for being one of the first men through the breach during the Siege of Pyke, a decisive battle in the Greyjoy Rebellion. He was later anointed by the High Septon during a formal ceremony.
481** After the Battle of the Blackwater, King Joffrey hosts a ceremony to honor the soldiers who fought on his side. More than six hundred men are knighted and some are even given land, castles, or valuable items. Tywin Lannister, the king's grandfather and leader of TheCavalry, is proclaimed the "Savior of the City".
482* WarIsHell: Enough to make you root for the return of the dynasty that used to hold the whole continent in thrall, because they at least kept the peace; even Aerys' rule seems preferable to the bloody civil war it was replaced with.
483-->'''Theon:''' The bards will sing of their valor.\
484'''Robb:''' But the dead will not hear them.
485** In ''A Feast For Crows'', Septon Meribald delivers a speech on "broken men", peasants driven to become outlaws by the horrors of war. How he describes the plight of these desperate men really drives home the "WarIsHell" message of the story.
486---> '''Meribald:''' War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them [peasants] will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle.
487* TheWarlord:
488** The Free Folk of the far north refuse to answer to anything resembling organized government, and scornfully refer to those who do as "kneelers"; to them, the only men worth following are those who prove their worth through individual accomplishment, which to a tribal Iron Age culture means primarily warchiefs who can secure or promise glory and plunder to their followers. As a result, the most common form of organization above the individual tribe and village level consists of famous warchiefs who have managed to secure the loyalty of large numbers of tribes and raiders through a combination of fame, force of personality, and absorbing defeated enemy groups, which they then use to feud with one another and pursue personal aims. Six times in history, some of these chiefs managed to assemble the majority or entirety of the northern tribes into a single, more or less united fighting force, thus claiming the title of King-Beyond-the-Wall.
489** The Dothraki are a nomadic warrior culture who, similarly to the Free Folk, respect little outside of martial strength. They live in large hordes ruled by khals, whose continued rule hinges on their ability to defend their position against both rival hordes and their own followers -- a khal who cannot ride or fight ceases to be a khal. In the normal course of things, a khalasar roams across the grasslands where the Dothraki live, growing its strength by fighting and absorbing other hordes and periodically ranging out to strike against neighboring peoples. Since all authority and leadership rests on the khal's person, his death usually leads to chaos as his sons and lieutenants compete for his position. Sometimes, one emerges as the clear victor and takes command of the whole group. More often, the horde fragments as each claimant gathers the men most loyal to him and heads out into the plains.
490* WarriorMonk: Thoros of Myr is a red priest of R'hllor. Before his religious reawakening, he was known almost exclusively as a BoisterousBruiser and melee champion.
491* WarriorPoet: Denzo D'han, Rhaegar Targaryen, Mance Rayder.
492* WarriorPrince: Stannis Baratheon, Oberyn Martell and Robb Stark. Before them, Rhaegar Targaryen, Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen, Aemon Targaryen, Daemon "The Rogue Prince" Targaryen and Aemond "One-Eye" Targaryen.
493* WastefulWishing: In payment for saving his life and his two fellow prisoners, the assassin Jaqen H'ghar offers to kill any [[ThreeWishes three people]] that Arya names. She starts with two vile but low-ranking soldiers in the Lannister army, only to kick herself when Lord Tywin marches out to fight her brother's army and [[DecapitatedArmy Arya realises she should have named him]]. [[spoiler:Jaqen then offers to kill King Joffrey for her, but Arya opts for a ploy that will free herself and some captured Northmen in the process, not realizing that the prisoners were using a Trojan Prisoner gambit and would have been freed anyway. However, Arya's cunning and ruthlessness impress Jaqen all the same.]]
494* WeAllDieSomeday: As a counterpart to the latin ''Memento mori'', there is the Valyrian saying ''"Valar morghulis"'', meaning "All men must die". The traditional reply, by the way, is ''"Valar dohaeris"'' ("All men must serve").
495* WeAreStrugglingTogether: Quite common, given the number of factions and the various shifting alliances.
496** One of the main factors in the War of Five Kings. Firstly, the Baratheon brothers are too busy fighting each other to present the united front with which they could have quickly seized victory. By the time that conflict ends, the North and Riverlands have dissolved into a tug-o-war between the Ironborn, Stark loyalists, the Boltons and the Freys. The Lannisters end up on top just by consistently backing the winning horse -- and then, they succumb to infighting of their own.
497** Daenerys's two closest supporters are enemies. Once she settles in Meereen, there is quite a lot of mistrust between her courtiers.
498** The wildlings used to fight among themselves until Mance Rayder united them under his banner. [[spoiler: When Jon Snow tries to forge an alliance between the wildlings and the Night's Watch in an attempt to save ''everyone'' from oncoming threat of the Others, the wildlings are more willing to comply than the Night's Watch, though still not 100% happy. The fact that many black brothers resist efforts to compromise with the wildlings impedes Jon's efforts for unity.]]
499** In "The Princess and the Queen" the nobles decide to assassinate a DragonRider [[BastardBastard who's got ideas above his station]] (e.g. [[AppealToForce crowning himself king]]). Before they can act, an enemy dragonrider launches a surprise attack. They go ahead and kill him ''even though their army is being roasted and he's the only dragonrider left standing''.
500* WeaponSpecialization:
501** Dany's bloodriders receive one each as a gift: "Jhogo, the whip; Aggo, the bow; Rakharo, [[CoolSword the arakh]]".
502** The Sand Snakes each have a favored weapon: spear (Obara), [[BladeEnthusiast knives]] (Nymeria), bow and arrow (Sarella) and [[MasterPoisoner poison]] (Tyene).
503** Robert Baratheon favored [[BrutishCharacterBrutishWeapon warhammers]]. Gendry, who doesn't know he's Robert's bastard son, coincidentally favours hammers as well, as he starts the series as an apprentice blacksmith.
504** Areo Hotah, like all the boys trained by the Bearded Monks, is ceremonially ''[[CompanionCube wedded]]'' to his six-foot longaxe; part military oath, part vow of chastity.
505** Gregor Clegane favours a two-handed greatsword that he wields [[OneHandedZweihander like a longsword]] because he's the WorldsStrongestMan.
506** [[DashingHispanic Dornishmen]] prefer spears and javelins, as befits their desert nomad culture.
507** The [[HornyVikings Ironborn]] prefer battle-axes, both in melee and for throwing.
508** The Unsullied specialize in war spears and short swords, which they wield in phalanx formation.
509* WeaponsOfMassDestruction:
510** Dragons are both mythical, fantastic and beautiful creatures strongly associated with the growing presence of magic but they serve the function of tactical nukes in medieval society. The famous "Field of Fire" where all three dragons were unleashed at one time and killed 5000 soldiers in a single day, successfully intimidated Kings Lannister and Stark to kneel and submit. When Daenerys starts her campaign, her dragon are initially greeted as rare wonders in Qarth and brings her fame as "Mother of Dragons", later when her dragons grow stronger and get unrulier, and lay waste to Astapor, her former host in Qarth tells Daenerys that while he had formerly hoped to harness her dragons, he now no longer sees them as anything but monsters. [[spoiler:The Yunkish and some Meereenese like Galazza Galare likewise regard the dragons as dangerous and uncontrollable and call for their death]] while Daenerys eventually comes to terms with the fact that "Dragons plant no trees" but seems to have accepted it all the same.
511** Wildfire is even more obvious a parallel, more so than the smaller-scale GreekFire of the Byzantine Empire, regarded by the Pyromancers as a dangerous, uncontrollable substance which is a closely guarded secret and created by alchemists who take the precaution of keeping ceiling sandbars to quickly douse out-of-control flames. Wisdom Hallyne also tells Tyrion that Wildfire is so dangerous that if its handled carelessly its just as likely to destroy its defenders via spillage and carelessness as their enemies. As such Tyrion spends considerably time adjusting the training of the city's archers to handle pots of wildfire. Later we find out that Aerys II Targaryen was obsessed with Wildfire [[spoiler:and planned to explode humongous quantities underneath King's Landing, a plan that led Jaime Lannister to kill him and the remaining pyromancers]].
512* WeatherOfWar:
513** The North's bitter winters make it particularly hard to invade. [[spoiler:Stannis's army is bogged down and suffers heavy casualties over the course of ''A Dance With Dragons'' from cold, snow and hunger]].
514** Dorne has also used this in the backstory, defeating the armies of the Kingdoms by retreating into the desert. "It is said that the Dornish have two weapons, sun and spear; and of them, the sun is by far the deadlier." Their capital is called Sunspear.
515* WeHaveReserves: During the [[spoiler: Siege of Riverrun]] in ''A Feast for Crows'' [[spoiler:Jaime]] boasts that his army has no lack of Freys. Especially true when you realize how much he despises the Freys.
516* WeddingSmashers: weddings seem to have a habit of turning nasty.
517-->'''Stannis:''' Weddings have become more perilous than battles, it would seem.
518** "The Red Wedding" ([[spoiler:Edmure Tully to Roslin Frey]]) is definitely the [[BloodSplatteredWeddingDress Blood Splattered]] version, as [[spoiler:the Freys used it to stage an ambush on Robb Stark and the collected top brass of the Northern army.]]
519** [[spoiler:King Joffrey]]'s wedding leads to his own death, seemingly [[spoiler:at the hands of the bride's family]].
520** Whatever you do, don't touch [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies Lord Manderly's pies]]; [[spoiler:in revenge for the Red Wedding, Ramsay Snow's marriage to an impostor of Arya Stark is sabotaged by Manderly and some other lords still loyal to the Starks.]]
521** An interesting play on the trope is the wedding of Daenerys to Khal Drogo, where some wedding guests start fighting with each other. According to Illyrio this is normal for the Dothraki.
522--->"A Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is deemed a dull affair."
523* WellDoneSonGuy:
524** Tywin Lannister plays this role; the desire to please him pushes Tyrion and Jaime, though neither would admit it. As is typical of the series, Tywin never provides validation, especially for Tyrion. Well, not the ''typical'' form of validation. [[spoiler:Of course, this leads to him contracting an unfortunate fatal case of crossbow-bolt-through-bowels at the hands of, naturally, his son Tyrion.]] Even after that, it serves to motivate Jaime, to the point that one aunt has to point out to him that Tyrion is much more Tywin-esque than Jaime. It seems to drive [[SmugSnake Cersei]] (to a lesser extent) as well, although she flip flops between [[DaddysGirl wanting to make him proud]] and wanting to become so much greater than him that he would only be remembered as her father, [[NeverASelfMadeWoman instead of the other way around.]]
525** Theon Greyjoy seems to have a case of this towards his father Balon. His feelings toward surrogate father Ned Stark are even more conflicted, which is unsurprising given Theon's dual role of hostage/ward. He at times finds himself wondering what Stark would say to some particular deed and then becomes angry with himself for caring. Thus far, the net result is that he's managed to totally alienate himself from the Greyjoys ''and'' the Starks -- his {{jerkass}} tendencies and willingness to cross the MoralEventHorizon haven't helped, either.
526** In a ''very'' twisted sense, Joffrey Baratheon is like this towards Robert, irritating Tywin immensely as he had been given to understand Joffrey did not care for Robert and is pissed the little brat shows some pride at being a Baratheon rather than a Lannister.
527** [[KnightInSourArmor Jon Snow]] seems to greatly desire [[TheStoic Eddard Stark's]] approval, to the point that he has a few dreams about being [[SoProudOfYou accepted as a true Stark]] and given the rights to Winterfell. He suffers a lot of guilt over that last part though, given [[HeroicBastard his status]]. While Ned did love and respect Jon and wanted to tell him so, [[spoiler:Joffrey's interference meant he would never get the chance. Made more complex by recent hints that Ned might not actually be Jon's biological father at all, but his maternal uncle.]]
528* WhamEpisode: Most of the books have at least one toward the end.
529** ''A Game Of Thrones'': [[spoiler: Ned Stark's execution.]]
530** ''A Storm Of Swords'': [[spoiler: The Red Wedding.]]
531** ''A Feast For Crows'': [[spoiler: Doran Martell revealing his plans for vengeance. Euron revealing his plan to steal Dany's dragons. Jamie refuses Cersei's pleas for help.]]
532** ''A Dance With Dragons'': [[spoiler: Dany mounting Drogon and flying out of Meereen, as well as Jon getting stabbed by his own men.]]
533* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Several minor characters seem to appear and disappear for long periods of time, even for entire books.
534** Beric Dondarrion is sent to bring Gregor Clegane to justice shortly before Eddard is executed. [[spoiler:He turns up later as the leader of an outlaw band, the remnants of his destroyed army.]]
535** Jeyne Poole disappears after the Lannisters neutralize the Stark forces in King's Landing. [[spoiler: She reappears impersonating Arya Stark to wed Ramsay Bolton, having been forced to work in Littlefinger's brothels the whole time.]]
536** Rickon Stark isn't heard from after he and Bran split up, which is particularly striking given the amount of focus on the other Stark children. [[spoiler:Davos has gone to look for him on Skagos, but we still haven't seen him.]]
537* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Jon keeps a couple of corpses chained up in the ice cells in the hopes that they rise as wights, as he suspects there might be more to them than shambling corpses. He notes that the one who tried to kill Mormont had obviously retained memories and some level of intention.
538-->'''Jon:''' My lord father used to tell me that a man must know his enemies. We understand little of the wights and less about the Others. We need to learn.
539* WhatTheHellHero: Gendry in response to Arya's BlackAndWhiteMorality, specifically when she helps Bolton and the Bloody Mummers take over Harrenhall, as they're even worse than Lord Tywin's thugs.
540* WhenItAllBegan: Robert's Rebellion.
541* WhileYouWereInDiapers:
542** In a [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness rare outburst of temper]], Kevan Lannister tells Jaime "I was hanging outlaws when you were shitting in your smallclothes." While it's in apparent response to his nephew patronizing him, Kevan quickly reveals that it's because he knows about Jaime's incest with his sister.
543** Janos Slynt reacts the same way [[spoiler:to the new Lord Commander of the Night Watch ordering him around. He realizes a little too late that no matter how young "Lord Snow" is, he still has the power to cut off your head for refusing to obey orders.]]
544** Dany runs into the CulturalPosturing version. "Old Ghis ruled an empire while the Valyrians were still fucking sheep."
545* WhiteAndRedAndEerieAllOver: The weirwoods are strange trees considered sacred by followers of the old gods, whose coloration is compared to that of blood and bone: white bark, red leaves, and sap that greatly resembles blood. Several characters find them unsettling or frightening to look at for this reason, especially when it comes to weirwoods with faces carved onto them, the latter which often appear to [[TearsOfBlood weep blood]] due to sap leaking from their grooves.
546* {{Whodunnit}}: The first book is driven in large part by Ned and Catelyn Stark's investigations of, respectively, the death of Jon Arryn and the attempted murder of their son Bran. Subverted when [[spoiler:Ned's death, Tyrion's farce of a trial, and the onset of war put an end to the investigations]], making it something of a ([[ShaggyDogStory deliberately]]) AbortedArc. The reader does eventually find out the truth behind both crimes in later books; [[spoiler:the apparent motive of covering up Cersei's incest with Jaime turns out to have nothing to do with either of them, they were committed by Lysa Tully, and Joffrey Baratheon, with Lysa, and possibly Joffrey too, being directed by Littlefinger.]]
547* WhyCouldntYouBeDifferent: Randyll Tarly to his {{Bookworm}} son Sam. And Tywin Lannister to his son Tyrion, who is a dwarf.
548* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Sandor Clegane and fire.
549* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: Inverted. Joffrey kills [[spoiler: Ned]] for no reason and just ends up starting a war, making it more of a "Why ''did'' you just shoot him?"
550* WideEyedIdealist:
551** Sansa believes in marrying a charming prince and living a wonderful life as his queen. She knows nothing about the horrors of war, the intrigue of the court, or how abusive powerful men can be. As the story progresses, she gets to know it all.
552** Eddard Stark is wise to the ways of war but is totally surprised by the amount of intrigue and corruption infecting capital politics.
553** Quentyn Martell on the surface, but ultimately averted. As his mission faces complications, he begins viewing himself as a hero on a quest, destined to succeed... but only to cope with the increasingly-dangerous risks he's forcing himself to take. In reality, he is completely aware of and terrified by the likelihood of failure and painful death.
554** As a child, Littlefinger was one of these. After all, the small and lowborn yet exceptionally intelligent hero always gets the girl, right?
555* WidowMistreatment: Ramsay Snow kidnapped, forcibly married, and imprisoned the recently widowed Donella Hornwood to take over her lands. She later died of starvation. However, her allies and her husband's family are absolutely furious at Ramsay for his treatment of her and the Hornwood family started a war with the Boltons.
556* WifeHusbandry:
557** Before she's wed to Khal Drogo, it's implied that Daenerys was always meant to marry [[BrotherSisterIncest her older brother Viserys]], who raised her, as soon as she matured.
558** Done in the most direct possible fashion by Craster, who weds his own daughters.
559** Littlefinger seems to be taking this approach to [[spoiler:Sansa]], who is now a 13-year-old girl. With nowhere else to go and no one else to depend on, [[spoiler:Sansa]] is "adopted" by him and is forced to endure Littlefinger grabbing her into his lap and being trained on how he likes his "fatherly" kisses -- long and passionate. It's also worth noting that when she was even younger, he was already creeping her out by looking at her as though she were naked. In ''A Dance With Dragons'', Cersei recalls Littlefinger asking to marry [[spoiler:Sansa]] (who, at the time, was 11-12 years old), although Cersei determined it impossible, since Littlefinger was of too low in status.
560* WilliamFakespeare: While Arya Stark is in the CityOfCanals, Braavos, she hears of Shakespeare-like plays being performed (unlike the medieval Westeros, which only has bards and mummers, Braavos is based off of Renaissance Venice and has playwrights), and later performs in one herself, titled "The Blood Hand", written by Phario Forel, known as the "bloodiest quill of all of Braavos" and performed by the troop of a guy named Izembaro. The play gives an in-universe HistoricalVillainUpgrade to Tyrion Lannister, who is framed as a Richard III-style EvilCripple murderous schemer.
561* WinterOfStarvation: ExaggeratedTrope -- Planetos has BizarreSeasons which vacillate greatly in length, usually somewhere between one and ten years. (What is a "year" if not a cycle of 4 seasons? [[PlotHole Don't ask.]]) Several years of summer is great; several years of winter is devastating. And if year-long winters aren't bad enough, there's also the "Long Night" -- a [[LegendFadesToMyth legendary and probably historical]] generation-long winter -- which some people say will someday happen again.
562** In the [[GrimUpNorth North]] where winters are long and brutal, old men will sometimes announce that they are "going hunting." This is a euphemism for them willingly going off to die so there is more food for the younger members of their family.
563--->[Arya] remembered a tale she had heard from Old Nan, about how sometimes during a long winter, men who'd lived beyond their years would announce that they were going hunting. ''And their daughters would weep and their sons would turn their faces to the fire'', she could hear Old Nan saying, ''but no one would stop them, or ask what game they meant to hunt, with the snows so deep and the cold wind howling.''
564* WiseBeyondTheirYears: Jojen Reed, the "little grandfather".
565* WiseSerpent: Prince Oberyn Martell, aka "[[RedBaron The Red Viper]]", is a skilled warrior of much acclaim (to the point of even founding and leading his own Sellsword company until he grew bored) as well as likewise renown as a poet and scholar. He travels the world gaining much knowledge and appreciation of other cultures, trains at the citadel to the point of managing to forge six rings on his chain and nearly qualified to be Maester, and boasts to [[MasterPoisoner know more about poisons]] than anyone alive.
566* WithMyHandsTied: Brienne is amazed at how well [[spoiler:Jaime Lannister]] fights after a lengthy imprisonment, with his hands still chained together. Also, Strong Belwas intentionally allows his opponents to slash his belly before he kills them, a bit of showmanship he picked up as an arena champion.
567* AWizardDidIt: The author has stated the irregular length of the seasons is a result of as-yet unexplained magic.
568* WizardingSchool: The Citadel has elements of this trope. Along with medicine, alchemy, and other topics, some Maesters choose to study "magic," though the most they learn is that it doesn't work, effectively making the study of magic a Westerosi equivalent of ADegreeInUseless. We later learn that [[spoiler:a faction of the Citadel is strongly ''against'' magic and is trying to eradicate it. They might have been partially responsible for the extinction of Targaryen dragons, which caused magic to fade from the world for a while]].
569* TheWomenAreSafeWithUs: Averted by nearly every army, where even the "good" generals grudgingly accept that after a battle their men will want to RapePillageAndBurn. However;
570** Stannis castrates rapists. It's presented as yet another way his principles lose him the good will of his followers.
571** While we never find out Jaime's policy on war rape before his HeelFaceTurn, this trope is used as a sign of his newfound devotion to proper knightly behaviour in ''A Feast For Crows'', when he has a rapist in his ranks beheaded.
572** Heavily deconstructed with Daenerys. First, she tries to stop the Dothraki raping the women of defeated tribes. Since they view those women as spoils of war, she's seen as simply being ''greedy'' by claiming them for herself, so she only succeeds in protecting a handful. Later, one of those women complains that Dany sees herself as a hero for "saving" her, when she'd already seen her temple burned, her friends murdered, and indeed been raped several times already. For her next attempt at fulfilling the trope, she acquires an elite group of eunuch soldiers.
573** Partially inverted with Night's Watch, what with lords sending their worst criminals there for decades, including rapists and murderers. Iron Emmet (as the castle commander) and Dolorous Edd (as his deputy and second in command) are the only two members out of the whole Night's Watch sent with spearwives and their children to castle Long Barrow by Jon Snow. Because he deemed them honorable enough and without prejudice against women fighters that plagues other potential commanders.
574** Played with Bonnifer Hasty and his one hundred strong company. The women are safe with them, Jaime Lannister mentions there are no reports of them ever raping anyone, unlike the rest of Lannister army, but it is implied that is because Hasty and his boys either took the vow of chastity, some of them are homosexual and Hasty is doing everything in his power to prevent or minimize their contact with women, pretty or otherwise. Such as kicking Pia, the only surviving woman in Harrenhall, out after he takes command.
575* WonTheWarLostThePeace: Victory in war may mean peace in the martial sense, but the political machinations never cease.
576** Though his reign was an overtly peaceful one, King Robert still loses on both a political and personal level. An insatiable warrior, Robert grows fat and bored after winning his crown, plunging the realm into debt as he entertains himself with lavish feasts and other distractions. Meanwhile, his total disinterest in ruling allows more ambitious players to destabilize the government, resulting in several untimely deaths (including his own) and eventually another war.
577--->'''Robert:''' I swear to you, I never felt so alive as when I was winning this throne, nor so dead as now that I have.
578** Young Robb Stark defies expectations when he fights brilliantly on the battlefield, defeating even seasoned strategists many times his age. None of it ends up mattering, however, when his poor political decisions, motivated by the [[HonorBeforeReason commitment to honor]] he inherited from his father, undo all of his successes.
579** [[spoiler:The Lannisters]] won The War Of Five Kings, but it's a PyrrhicVictory as they: 1) won it with extremely dishonorable methods, so everyone has more reason to hate them; 2) lost some important members of their family; 3) devolved into infighting; 4) alienated their allies; 5) have to deal with [[LaResistance a resistance]] of loyalist bannermen, and; 6) destabilized the realm to the detriment of everyone, themselves included.
580* WorldOfSnark: [[OhGreatASnarkIndex You name it]], you'll find it. And, it'll very likely be being delivered by a Lannister, one of their supporters, some random bard... or Littlefinger and Varys. Amongst others.
581* WorldSundering: No one's quite sure what caused the Doom of Valyria, but whatever it was, it was quite dramatic, accompanied by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and massive tidal waves. It's also implied that the affected region is still quite dangerous, with local folklore proclaiming that "The Doom still rules in Valyria" and few who venture there ever return.
582* WorthyOpponent: An interesting portayal of this, with Jaime and Brienne. When Jaime attempts to escape Brienne in one of his ''Storm of Swords'' chapters and she stops him, he's genuinely impressed with her skill--but almost shocked at her strength and seemingly bottomless stamina. In ''A Feast for Crows'', Brienne reflects on their duel and her own shock that he was so good despite being manacled and rotting in a cell with no way to exercise or train for the better part of a year.
583* WoundedGazelleGambit: When Littlefinger is mired in a difficult diplomatic negotiation with the lords of the Vale, one of them pulls a sword on him, and Littlefinger leverages the breach of SacredHospitality to push the terms into his favour. Sansa works out that the man was [[spoiler:in his pocket, and had been instructed to do]] exactly that.
584* WringEveryLastDropOutOfHim: Hoster Tully lasts more than two books before succumbing --and he spends all of his appearances delirious from painkillers. In a possible acknowledgment of this, by the time he dies, his daughter has become inured enough to death that she barely reacts either.
585* WrittenByTheWinners: A frequent theme in the series is the unreliability of official records and history books by maesters serving some long-dead political bias or the other.
586** Tyrion is especially forthright and suspicious about this, noting how some kings like Baelor the Blessed are loved for their piety while ignoring the burdens he inflicted on the realm, while hard-working behind-the-scenes political figures like Viserys II are unjustly ignored.
587** Seen in the naming of King Robert's overthrow of the Targaryen. In Westeros, it's popularly known as Robert's Rebellion, a neutral term, but the defeated Targaryen loyalists call it the Usurper's War.
588* WrongGenreSavvy:
589** Sansa. At the start of the series, she's very naive about people and thinks that the world behaves as it does in songs and stories. Littlefinger tells her straight out, "Life is not a song, sweetling. You'll learn that someday, to your cost." She starts to get more savvy as the series progresses.
590** Littlefinger, when he was younger, challenged a seasoned knight because he believed that UnderDogsNeverLose, and that he'd win the maiden's hand from the evil knight. He lost and almost died, and the maiden he wanted had to beg for the knight to spare ''his'' life.
591[[/folder]]
592
593
594[[folder:X]]
595* TheXOfY: The series title and the titles of each book follow the basic format, with minor variations.
596* XanatosGambit:
597** The Red Wedding, for Tywin. Essentially all he does is provoke a civil war among the major houses of the North and the Riverlands, and arrange an assassination of the King in the North, while ensuring that all the [[SacredHospitality moral outrage]] caused by the way it was done falls on the Freys. He's moderately better off if his horses (Frey and Bolton) come in first, as they've promised to end the war and swear fealty to the Iron Throne... but if they lose, the crippling of the North's military power would end the war in practice anyway, and the ([[SpannerInTheWorks apparent]]) male-line extinction of the Starks would mire the loyalist North in a SuccessionCrisis whatever happens.
598** Cersei's UriahGambit with [[spoiler:Loras Tyrell]], designed to either take Dragonstone quickly and free up the ships currently blockading it, or get rid of a personal enemy.
599** Jaime suggests sending Mace Tyrell to beseige Storms End. Either he'll muck it up and look a fool, succeed and remove a threat to Cersei's reign, or lose patience and get himself killed StormingTheCastle. Cersei notes with approval that it's right out of father's book.
600* XanatosSpeedChess: Part of Littlefinger's strategy is simply fomenting chaos and reacting to opportunities as they present themselves.
601* XtremeKoolLetterz: Several of the houses' names (e.g. Blackfyre and Blacktyde) have a 'y' where an 'i' would normally be. This is somewhat reminiscent of real-life examples in names, such as "Smyth," which could either be linguistic offshoots of common words/names or deliberate affectations.
602[[/folder]]
603
604
605[[folder:Y]]
606* {{Yandere}}: Lysa Arryn for Littlefinger who is yandere for Catelyn. Heck, Littlefinger just takes Yandere to a whole new [[DisproportionateRetribution level]] of crazy.
607* YankTheDogsChain: ''Any'' time things are [[HopeSpot looking up]] for any faction or character the readers sympathize with, catastrophe strikes:
608** [[spoiler:Jon Snow's assassination]]
609** If the contents of Ramsay Bolton's letter were true, [[spoiler:the promise of an alliance with the Manderlys, the arrival of the Braavosi banker and the exposure of Arnolf Karstark's impending betrayal are all this for Stannis]].
610** Sansa is set up to be betrothed to Willas Tyrell, become Lady of Highgarden, and finally escape King's Landing... Only for the Lannisters to move in at once and forcefully marry her to Tyrion Lannister.
611** [[spoiler: At the end of ''A Feast For Crows'', Littlefinger reveals his plan to Sansa: he will keep her hidden for a while longer, then reveal her to her parents' former allies and have them rise up in her name. But then he introduces her to the hedge knights he has hired, and the reader realizes ([[DramaticIrony even if Littlefinger doesn't]]) that one of them is the same guy they saw hunting for Sansa earlier, and the plans aren't likely to go too well...]]
612* YesMan: Some of the men [[spoiler: Cersei names to the small council following Joffrey and Tywin's deaths:]] Ser Harys Swyft, Orton Merryweather and Gyles Rosby. Averted when she tries to recruit her uncle Kevan in the belief that he was this trope for Tywin Lannister -- it turns out Kevan is loyal, not sycophantic, and refuses because he thinks Cersei is a bad leader.
613* YouAreInCommandNow: [[spoiler:[[YoungAndInCharge Jon]], when everyone of rank on the Wall is either dead, absent or incapacitated.]]
614* YouCantFightFate: Cersei's prophecy, from the looks of things.
615* YouCantGoHomeAgain: A running theme in the series is characters who have been exiled or sworn to never return home, or their home is simply no longer there.
616** The Targaryens are refugees from the Doom of Valyria. More recently, Dany and Viserys are exiled from the Seven Kingdoms after their dynasty was overthrown.
617** The Golden Company and various other soldiers on the wrong side of civil wars are exiled from the Seven Kingdoms.
618** The Night's Watch are sworn to never break their vows and return home, on penalty of death.
619** Jorah Mormont is a fugitive from justice after fleeing a beheading. He joins the Targaryens in the hope of earning a pardon.
620** Theon Greyjoy finds himself treated like an outsider by his own family when he returns home to the Iron Islands.
621** [[spoiler:The Starks cannot return home once Winterfell is razed. Foreshadowed by Rickon, who whines when his father leaves for King's Landing, that [[PartyScattering everybody's leaving]] -- Catelyn, Robb, Sansa, Arya, and Jon -- and they'll never come back.]]
622** [[spoiler:Tyrion Lannister becomes an exile after escaping from captivity]].
623** Background character Jalabar Xho is an exiled prince of the Summer Isles.
624* YouJustToldMe: Jon Snow and Qhorin Halfhand manage to pull this trope off [[TerseTalker in an impressive three syllables]], regarding Ygritte's fate:
625-->'''Jon:''' You know?\
626'''Qhorin:''' Now.
627* YoungFutureFamousPeople: In-universe example in ''The Mystery Knight'', in which Lord Frey appears with his four-years old son... the future Lord Walder Frey.
628* YourDaysAreNumbered: While this happens to a handful of characters, it's actually a plot point for [[spoiler:Jojen Reed]], who knows when he will die, and [[spoiler:Jon Connington,]] who is SecretlyDying.
629* YouHaveFailedMe: Once Cersei starts going off the rails, she becomes very prone to this. She has few enough allies at court as the Tyrells gain power (and only ambitious sycophants are able to gain her trust), and they get fewer and fewer the more she insists on punishing them horribly for honest failures. Most horrifically, [[spoiler:Falyse Stokeworth is tortured into insanity and an eventual painful death by Qyburn. Her crime? Her ''husband'' failed to kill Bronn and died in the attempt, and she came to Cersei for protection.]]
630* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Littlefinger kills [[spoiler:Dontos Hollard]] when he has no further use for him and [[HeKnowsTooMuch couldn't risk him leaking any information.]]
631* YouWouldntShootMe: In ''A Dance With Dragons'', [[spoiler: Theon]] gets the successful variant. A spearwife becomes angry with him and threatens his life. For the first time in about a year, he outright grins and tells her that she needs him to get past the guards. She disgustedly lets him go.
632* {{Yubitsume}}: When the smuggler Davos breaks the siege of Storm's End he gets a knighthood, but has the fingertips of one hand cut off. Stannis believes that good deeds don't make up for bad; if you do him a favour he'll reward your for it ''and'' punish you for your previous sins. Paradoxically, Davos sees his severed fingers as a token of Stannis' ''mercy'' and of his own loyalty which strictly speaking is correct by the Westerosi law because thieves and smugglers usually either have their hands cut off, their heads cut off or sent to the Wall.
633[[/folder]]
634
635[[folder:Z]]
636* ZergRush: During the Dance of Dragons, a mob high on drink and religious fervor assaults the Dragonpit killing all the dragons chained up inside despite massive casualties.
637* ZeroPercentApprovalRating:
638** The Boltons are also hated by everyone in the North for their betrayal and usurpation of the Northern leadership, and the Northern Houses ally themselves with Stannis to bring them down.
639** When Cersei and Joffrey take the Iron Throne, both of them become extremely unpopular. Joffrey is hated due to his petty cruelty and lack of concern for his subjects, and Cersei quickly alienates herself due to her inability to consolidate her power. Nevertheless, Joffrey gets a little sympathy and people believe he has ''evil counselors'': the eunuch Varys and the ''evil monkey demon'' Tyrion.
640** Queen Rhaenyra during the Dance of Dragons. With her determination to root out and execute traitors, she alienates both the smallfolk (who eventually riot, killing her dragons) and her own consort Daemon (who defies her order to kill fellow DragonRider Nettles). [[spoiler:When King Aegon II feeds Rhaenyra to his dragon, no-one objects at the kinslaying.]]
641* ZombieApocalypse: The Others and their reanimated wights are trying to bring this south of the Wall.
642[[/folder]]

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