History AlternativeCharacterInterpretation / ASongOfIceAndFire

** There is a fan theory that Tywin has spent all the books he was alive in trying to rid himself of Gregor Cleganne, Amory Lorch and other psychopaths in his bad guy squad. Amory Lorch is a guy under Tywin's command who killed a toddler by stabbing her over 50 times during the fall of King's Landing. His removal is easy to explain, he outlived his usefulness, a political alliance with Dorne is more important and so he is the one left in command of the Bloody Mummers at Harrenhall for the "fake prisoner" gambit with Bolton. Removal of the Mountain is harder to explain, but if you pay attention, Tywin keeps putting Gregor in vanguard or sends him out to scout, burn and pillage with small parties which would get him killed if he ever faces the enemy army unawares (Gregor even gets pissed that none of Lannister scouts have seen anything at one point). One noticeable example is putting The Mountain in vanguard near the river with Tyrion and his Hill Clans, while fully expecting that part of the battlefield to collapse and rout, most of them to die before he jumps in with reinforcement and thus he gets rid of both Tyrion and Mountain. Tywin is pragmatic about it though, and uses Gregor for dirty jobs first, like taking over Harrenhall from Vargo Hoat (and keeping The Mountain and his PsychoForHire squad there for months with nothing to do) and fight as champion in trial with combat against a person notorious to use poisonous blades.

** There is a fan theory that Tywin has spent all the books he was alive in trying to rid himself of Gregor Cleganne, Amory Lorch and other psychopaths in his bad guy squad. Amory Lorch is a guy under Tywin's command who killed a toddler by stabbing her over 50 times during the fall of King's Landing. His removal is easy to explain, he outlived his usefulness, a political alliance with Dorne is more important and so he is the one left in command of the Bloody Mummers at Harrenhall for the "fake prisoner" gambit with Bolton. Removal of the Mountain is harder to explain, but if you pay attention, Tywin keeps putting Gregor in vanguard or sends him out to scout, burn and pillage with small parties which would get him killed if he ever faces the enemy army unawares (Gregor even gets pissed that none of Lannister scouts have seen anything at one point). One noticeable example is putting The Mountain in vanguard near the river with Tyrion and his Hill Clans, while fully expecting that part of the battlefield to collapse and rout, most of them to die before he jumps in with reinforcement and thus he gets rid of both Tyrion and Mountain. Tywin is pragmatic about it though, and uses Gregor for dirty jobs first, like taking over Harrenhall from Vargo Hoat (and keeping The Mountain and his PsychoSquad there for months with nothing to do) and fight as champion in trial with combat against a person notorious to use poisonous blades.

** Let's not forget that even though Jaime has apparently [[TookALevelInKindness become a better person]] he is still willing to let the Freys and Boltons be rewarded for [[MoralEventHorizon the Red Wedding]] even though he personally despises them.

* Elia Martell, long dead, runs into about three general takes by the fandom. She's either a victim of Rhaegar, abandoned to her fate so he can chase Lyanna Stark in which she is characterized by pain, sadness, anger, and betrayal. In another she's a female version of her brother [[ReallyGetsAround Oberyn]] who, while not indulging in constant sexual liasons in the same way as Oberyn had no problem with Rhaegar going after another woman and might even have encouraged it or been involved in the relationship in anyway from actively corresponding to Lyanna like a good sister to seeing Lyanna as a potential replacement for her should she die without leaving her own two children without a mother, or even actively seducing Lyanna herself. The third is a middle ground between the two where, knowing Rhaegar wanted a third child and she could not have any others due to her poor health, was fine with it as long as Rhaegar kept to certain lines (not marrying Lyanna, her children being his heirs, etc) but otherwise did not actively engage in the event, being neither betrayed nor actively involved in the affair.

** Some readers have [[https://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/148655-robert-was-the-best-king-westeros-ever-had/ proposed]] that, contrary to the view expressed by POV characters that Robert was a worthless drunkard of a king, he was actually a progressive and competent monarch with revolutionary and pragmatic economic policies.

* Robert Baratheon, especially InUniverse. Is he a HeartbrokenBadass still mourning the loss of his [[TheLostLenore Lost Lenore]], a fat, drunken lech who drove the kingdom into debt, or just a soldier who never adjusted well to being a king? Definitely some combination of all of the above. While some believe that Robert raped Cersei after reading the latter's POV chapters, there is still a sizable number of other readers who consider Cersei too much of an UnreliableNarrator to trust her word alone or who believe that her chapter merely describes something more akin [[LieBackAndThinkOfEngland unenjoyable yet still consensual sex]].

* Daenerys gets a lot of sympathy points for her SympatheticPOV chapters, but the fact remains she is still willing to start a war with "her" people to reclaim her "birthright", even though it has been repeatedly explained to her that the common people she believes are her subjects ''don't care'' who rules them, just as long as they can get on with their lives in peace. It has also been explained to her that her father really was a lunatic, and that some of the "Usurper's dogs" truly were good people, yet she still plans on obliterating them all for revenge. She seems to be acting like her brother in calling herself the Queen of Westeros, and though more likeable has still done some quite horrible things. She even claims the famously honorable Ned Stark had no honor for rebelling against her father, even though Aerys murdered Ned's father and brother without a trial then tried to have Ned and Robert killed, showing how out of touch she is with the truth. She could even be seen as a slightly nicer Foil of her very unsympathetic brother Viserys, yet still sharing his flaws and still thinking of themselves as the rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. She also runs on an incredibly egocentric view of herself, committing atrocities like the torture of a wineseller and his children not because of an insurgency, but because a singer she liked was among one of the slain.
** Actually a lot of the various lords, even the sympathetic ones, get this, because they are still prioritising their personal honour and rights over those of the people they are meant to be ruling and protecting. Possibly excusable by the DeliberateValuesDissonance of the MedievalStasis CrapsackWorld, but still jarring for the readers. Some of the only ones to not display this are people like Ned Stark, who ruled the North justly and is still fondly remembered, and Stannis Baratheon, who actually grows out of this mentality and acknowledges him only caring about his rights instead of the people of Westeros was "putting the cart before the horse."

* Was Cleon the Second's murder and usurpation at the hands of [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname "King Cutthroat"]] a naked grab for power like the two coups that preceded it? Or was it a reaction to the Cleons reinstuting slavery, and an attempt to restore something resembling the original abolitionist regime Daenerys left in charge of Astapor? The knockoff Unsullied created by the Cleons were still around after "King Cutthroat"'s coup, but its possible they belonged to his rival for the throne, Cleon II's former concubine, not him.
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As a consequence of having complex characters and many {{Unreliable Narrator}}s, pinning down someone's true character is very difficult to do. Opinions differ regarding the characters' motives, personalities, and moral alignments.

* Elia Martell, long dead, runs into about three general takes by the fandom. She's either a victim of Rhaegar, abandoned to her fate so he can chase Lyanna Stark, she's a female version of her brother [[ReallyGetsAround Oberyn]], who, while not indulging in the same way had no problem with Rhaegar going after another woman and might even have encouraged or been involved in the relationship, or a middle ground where, knowing Rhaegar wanted a third child and she could not have any others due to her poor health, was fine with it as long as Rhaegar kept to certain lines (not marrying Lyanna, her children being his heirs, etc).

* The Three Kingsguards at The Tower of Joy: Arthur Dayne, Oswell Whent, and Gerold Hightower. While they are seen In-Universe as paragons of chivalry, there are fans who see them as [[JustFollowingOrders stooges]] [[MyMasterRightorWrong for following the Mad King Aerys and the maybe-rapist Prince Rhaegar]]. Others take the perspective that the trio were BotheringByTheBook as a protest to Jaime, using their duty to Rhaegar to get out of following the orders of a tyrant without breaking their vows, mixing their paragon status with a pragmatism that lets them be perceived better than their brother Jaime who broke his oath publicly and openly.

** There's also the theories that Stannis may be autistic, such as his ability to be very good in some areas (military, law) but lacking in social skills, his obsession with duty, and his uncomfortableness around women, though it has been theorized he's asexual. It is implied that even before his parents' deaths Stannis was a dour figure who had trouble lightening up, since his parents had brought the jester Patchface to teach Stannis how to laugh.

* Was Oberyn's choice to fight the Mountain, and be a bit reckless about it, fueled by the Mountain's death being, at the time, the ''last'' person he needed vengeance from over his sister and her children? Per this thoery, did he poison Tywin Lannister already (specifically with a poison called Widow's blood that messed up a man's bowels') which would have killed Tywin even without Tyrion's crossbolt?

* The Three Kingsguards at The Tower of Joy: Arthur Dayne, Oswell Whent, and Gerold Hightower. While they are seen In-Universe as paragons of chivalry, there are fans who see them as [[JustFollowingOrders stooges]] [[MyMasterRightorWrong for following the Mad King Aerys and the maybe-rapist Prince Rhaegar]].

* In ''A Dance with Dragons'', while wandering in the Dothraki sea, Daenerys has a vision in which Viserys appears to her and berates her for letting her husband kill him. It is possible that, even though Daenerys left him to his fate for threatening to rip out her unborn child, she may still harbor some guilt over what happened to him. Even if he was horrible to her, he was still the only family she had in the world after their parents were overthrown.

* Although there is no denying that Aerys II was a dysfunctional mess of a king whose violent actions contributed ''massively'' to the fall of House Targaryen, calling him Evil with a great, big E comes with problems. Because it's also very clear that his SanitySlippage was openly visible ''for at least a decade'', if not longer. He often gets the blame, but for him to get to his ''"Burn them all!"'' levels of clearly deluded took many people at Court either sitting on their hands or actively enabling/hiding his decline without planning ways to counter the damage he could do or even to ''properly'' help him. By the time Rhaegar was both old enough and politically secure enough to start making his own moves to maybe fix things, it was at least five years too late. And, Jaime, well: young bodyguards don't generally major in psychiatry, even were that possible... Yet those supposedly qualified in the rough equivalents within the Faith, the Maesters and the Kingsguard held to their misdirected neutrality (and inability to keep the Alchemists far away from him) over years and thereby helped create The Mad King, while letting Aerys the man, his family and, ultimately, the entire Kingdom down. Oh, and let a very helpful Varys establish himself without proper vetting, too. Ser Barristan finally gets it, but it's unclear if other characters besides Jaime do.

* Is Ser Barristan Selmy one of the most moral and honorable characters in the series and the closest to a "true knight" the series has or a moral coward who hides behind duty? He knew King Aerys was having innocent people burned alive and still served him. He vowed to protect Aerys and his family yet he willingly served Robert instead of either dying trying to avenge Aerys or protect the surviving Targaryens. He was willing to disregard Robert's will and serve Joffrey only deciding to seek out Daenerys after he was humiliatingly dismissed. He served as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard for fifteen years, but it fell apart under his watch. He only regrets some of his decisions years after the damage has been done. Yet everyone still speaks of him as one of the best knights to have ever lived.

* Although there is no denying that Aerys II was a dysfunctional mess of a king whose violent actions contributed ''massively'' to the fall of House Targaryen, calling him Evil with a great, big E comes with problems. Because it's also very clear that his SanitySlippage was openly visible ''for at least a decade'', if not longer. He often gets the blame, but for him to get to his ''"Burn them all!"'' levels of clearly deluded took many people at Court either sitting on their hands or actively enabling/hiding his decline without planning ways to counter the damage he could do or even to ''properly'' help him. By the time Raegar was both old enough and politically secure enough to start making his own moves to maybe fix things, it was at least five years too late. And, Jaime, well: young bodyguards don't generally major in psychiatry, even were that possible... Yet those supposedly qualified in the rough equivalents within the Faith, the Maesters and the Kingsguard held to their misdirected neutrality (and inability to keep the Alchemists far away from him) over years and thereby helped create The Mad King, while letting Aerys the man, his family and, ultimately, the entire Kingdom down. Oh, and let a very helpful Varys establish himself without proper vetting, too. Ser Barristan finally gets it, but it's unclear if other characters besides Jaime do.

* Robert Baratheon, especially InUniverse. Is he a HeartbrokenBadass still mourning the loss of his [[TheLostLenore Lost Lenore]], a fat, drunken lech who drove the kingdom into debt, or just a soldier who never adjusted well to being a king? Definitely some combination of all of the above. While some believe that Robert raped Cersei after reading the latter's POV chapters, there is still a sizable number of other readers who consider Cersei too much of an UnreliableNarrator to trust her word alone or who believe that her chapter merely describes something more akin [[LieBackAndThinkOfEngland unenjoyable yet still consensual sex]]; [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment the topic is hotly debated with differing interpretations over the subject]]. It depends on who you ask (and often which character the person you are asking holds more sympathy for).

* Was Oberyn's choice to fight the Mountain, and be a bit reckless about it, fueled by the Mountain's death being, at the time, the ''last'' person he needed vengeance from over his sister and her children? Did he poison Tywin Lannister already (specifically with a poison called Widow's blood that messed up a man's bowels') which would have killed Tywin even without Tyrion's crossbolt?

* Tywin Lannister is a big one for the series and the fandom. Is he a megalomaniacal EvilOverlord who will crush any and everyone in his obsessive quest for unrivaled superiority as his enemies believe? A complex BrokenAce forced into PragmaticVillainy because of [[BumblingDad his father's mismanagement]] and [[TheLostLenore wife's death]], as per Pycelle and Kevan Lannister? A corrupt hypocrite who justifies his atrocities as being "good for the realm" when they are merely self-serving and spiteful (and criticises the son most like him for flaws he possesses)? Were his cruel actions DisproportionateRetribution and EvilIsPetty or a case of BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork as he justifies to Tyrion?