YMMV / Of Gold and Iron

• Complete Monster:
  • Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish, despite claiming to be Catelyn's friend, is in truth the puppet master of the conspiracy against her family. Growing jealous of Ned Stark, Petyr murders a prostitute in order to blackmail Joffrey Baratheon into killing Ned for him. After then manipulating Arya Stark into seeking out the Faceless Men, resulting in three years of hellish training—including starvation and forced drug addictions—Petyr supplies another prostitute to be murdered to fake her death. Petyr later has Stannis murdered, with Joffrey being made his scapegoat before he's then hung in his prison cell. Having also threatened Lysa Arryn into killing her own husband, Petyr also employs Ramsay Snow, leading to Jaime being caught in an explosion and Sansa being forcibly addicted to Long Night. Even willing to murder Catelyn, the woman he claims to love, when he's on the verge of being caught, Petyr represents all of the evils of the modern business world.
  • The Night King is a sadistic drug lord who seeks to burn down all of King's Landing just because he can. Formerly a member of Mance Rayder's revolutionaries, he was kicked out of the group when Mance realized he wanted to destroy rather than save, leading to him creating Long Night, a drug which causes severe and mindless aggression in repeat users. After receiving a large shipment of supplies from the Faceless Men, the Night King converts the drug to a gas to force multiple people to ingest it at once, intending to release it across the entire city. After luring Bran Stark and the police into a trap before killing multiple cops with a bomb, the Night King forces Bran to be his "witness" as he deploys the gas in the crowded tournament, leading to dozens of people killing each other in a mindless rage.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Sansa is heavily implied to be suffering from depression, showing a discomforting disregard for her own safety, having next to no self-esteem, and knowingly entering relationships with terrible men out of a desire to feel something. She also states that she struggles to feel any kind of joy in anything.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Tywin Lannister, lacking his canon counterpart's unsavory acts, remains just as brilliant and ruthless. During his time as a soldier, Tywin engaged in shady tactics like burning crop fields to destabilize enemy supplies and crashing the economy of Braavos to prevent them from interfering. When Arya Stark arrives in his manor disguised as "Beth Rivers", Tywin sees through her within weeks and begins unraveling the Faceless Men's conspiracy, even allowing the Brotherhood Without Banners to attack his train to see what she's capable of. After defeating Petyr Baelish and torturing him for any information he can get, Tywin deduces the source of the conspiracy and arranges for his company to succeed when he resigns. When Jaqen then tries to kill him in spite of their deal, Tywin is able to negotiate with the Iron Bank for a lower price, ending the series in the best possible position even when the conspiracy killed all of his former allies.
  • The Spider is the name of a brilliant hacker who knows everything there is to know within King's Landing. Reaching out to Bran Stark following Joffrey's death, the Spider soon helps them find Sansa Stark in exchange for a way to contact the Faceless Men, keeping his identity secret all the while and even throwing in more information than he promised as a reward. Reappearing during the Long Night crisis, the Spider uses Oberyn Martell as a middle man to put Bran in contact with Mance Rayder, sending all of them into a battle with the Night King in order to kill the drug lord. When Bran demands a favor in return, the Spider concedes that he went above the call of duty and rewards him with Arya's true location, not only circumventing the Faceless Men but ensuring their final defeat before helping Bran and Oberyn guard the city for the foreseeable future.

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