History Characters / ASongOfIceAndFireTheFreeFolk

* GenderIsNoObject: Unlike Westeros where highborn girls are expected to be proper ladies and dutiful wives, wildling women are expected to fight as well as any man. A wildling woman will only marry a man who can successfully kidnap her.

* EveryoneHasStandards: The wildlings may have no formal laws, but even they are disgusted by Craster, who marries his daughters and sacrifices his sons. Ygritte considers him to be closer to a crow than a wildling.

* EveryoneHasStandards: The wildlings have no laws, but even they are disgusted by Craster, who marries his daughters and sacrifices his sons. Ygritte considers him to be closer to a crow than a wildling.

* HillbillyHorrors: Craster would fit perfectly in a horror movie set in the DeepSouth. He lives in a run-down shack in the middle of a haunted forest, forces all of his daughters and granddaughters to marry him, and sacrifices his infant sons as a religious rite.

* {{Hypocrite}}: He refuses both Mance Rayder's offer to join his army and Lord Commander Mormont's offer of sancutuary south of the wall, boasting he's a free man, yet he's bound to what amounts to a protection racket with the Others. The "freedom" he so boasts is nothing more than that to keep the women in his keep under his boot.

* ArcherArchetype: Her preferred weapon is a bow.

** Though he also fits the WanderingMinstrel trope too; as with other minstrels in ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' he has an eye for the women, is often up to mischief, and is under the constant threat of coming to a sticky end. [[spoiler:And George R. R. Martin may have delivered on the by-now-traditional horrible fate, given it's very highly likely that he's spent quality time around a Reek-less Ramsay Bolton needing a new stress ball.]]

* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: A Wildling raised as a member of the Night's Watch, only to defect back to his people by blood and unite them in an attack against the people who raised and trained him? Mance is quite a dead ringer for Arminius. Also Arminius' wife and son were kidnapped by his enemies, and he couldn't reunite with them.

** The Pictish tribes north of Hadrian's Wall. Th Hadrian Wall was built for keeping those tribes far from the already assimilated England.

* AttackAttackAttack: Wildlings are big on valor and low on discipline. They're too big on freedom to submit to anyone's orders and charge into battle to win glory for themselves rather than working together as a unit to achieve victory. Their way of fighting is described as "a shout, a slash, and a fine brave death." This is why even the [[ArmyOfThievesAndWhores Night's Watch]] can routinely beat them, even when outnumbered.

** The Free Folk seem to fit rather well with various Celtic or Germanic tribes that fought against Rome. Their current state in the story - threatened because of a climate change (supernatural in this case) and their aggressive migration across the Wall - echoes all the tribes that migrated to the Roman Empire, attacking its borders but also trying to assimilate into it.
*** The kings beyond the wall seem very similar to the various "barbarian" leaders who revolted against the Roman Empire, like Viriathus, Boudicca, Vercingetorix and Arminius, the later a dead ringer for Mance.
** Also their ElectiveMonarchy resembles to the above Germanic tribes, who had a similar system where the strongest warrior was the fittest to be a leader, nevermind his birth and lineage.

* MysteriousPast: It's not entirely clear how the Free Folk ended up living north of The Wall in the first place when it was erected eight millennia before the events of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'' or when and why the Night's Watch started keeping them away from the other side. It has been so long that all documentation of how these events took place became LostInTranslation.

* TheUnreveal: In some aspects:

* WeAreStrugglingTogether: Many of the Wildling groups can hardly stand each other, and only work together due to Mance's influence. [[spoiler:When they get crushed by Stannis at the Wall and Mance is captured, many of them turn on each other or flee]].
** This same argument is later used by [[spoiler:[[HeroicBastard Jon Snow]] to declare a truce between the Night's Watch and the Free Folk to fight against [[ZombieApocalypse the Others]]. Most of the Free Folk get it, most of the Watch does not.]]

* ParentalIncest: She is forced to become one of her father's wives.