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Costel.

So, Occasional Exister, Hodor 2, Sophia Lonesoul and I were discussing ASOIAF, and we think that we may need to cut someone, specifically Vargo Hoat. Now, I know this may not be the most popular suggestion ever, but the four of us have discussed it and we think there's cause, so please hear me out here.

Now, Vargo absolutely meets two out of three requirements. He's void of redeeming feature and has no Freudian Excuse that we are aware of. He's also an immensely memorable character, with his lisp, his unique appearance, and his over the top personality. Indeed, the Brave Companions/Bloody Mummers are among the most colourful of the series' villains, and I've always thought it was a damn shame that they got cut from the television series. Vargo's actually one of my favourite bad guys in the series, and when he was first put up I was all for it. However, here's the problem—I don't think he meets the heinous bar. I've been going back through the books, and I've gone through all his crimes, and I don't think the qualifications are there. Let me go through them here.

1) Taking part in the destruction of the Riverlands. The Brave Companions robbed, raped, looted, and burned their way through the Riverlands, of that there can be no doubt. However, so too did Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch. So for that matter did elements of the regular Lannister forces, and all of them were acting on orders from Tywin who instructed them to reduce the Riverlands to a smoking ruin. There's a lot of blame to go around here and it's shared among Vargo, Gregor, Lorch, and Tywin himself.

2) Regularly crippling his victims. Vargo earned himself the nicknames "the Crippler" and "the Footman" for his habit of removing the hands and feet of those who irritate him. We are told Vargo does this a lot, and we see him do it to Jaime as part of his plan to send a message to Tywin. We don't see it happen very frequently however—certainly not with anything like the frequency we hear about Gregor or Rorge raping people, and with nothing like the detail that's dedicated to Ramsay Snow's torture of Theon Greyjoy. Also, I'd note that if Vargo tends towards crippling people and then letting them live he's going to have a lower bodycount than the likes of Gregor or Lorch who usually kill you.

3) Feeding Amory Lorch to a bear. This is a bad one, certainly, but at the same time, it's Amory Lorch. The guy who cut a four year old girl into fifty pieces. The guy who threw a three year old down a well to win favour with Tywin. The guy who attacked a Night's Watch column and murdered neutral men and children all so he could capture and murder a teenager for Cersei. His death is treated as Pay Evil unto Evil and thought about as such by Arya, who watches him get eaten alive and is totally cool with it. He later tries to feed Brienne to the bear, which is treated as bad, certainly, but it's one crime, and Gregor, Ramsay, etc have all done as bad or worse.

4) Trying to rape Brienne. This is bad, yes, but everybody tries to rape Brienne, or so it seems. Rorge, Zollo the Fat, and Shagwell the Jester tried to rape her at the Brave Companions' camp. Timeon, Pyg, and Shagwell (again) tried to rape her when they ran into her a few months later. Rorge not only tried to rape her again when he met her at the Crossroads Inn, but bragged about how he was going to cut off her legs, then make her watch while he raped a nine year old.

5) Is said to regularly rape other women. In fact he even has Qyburn kept on hand to inspect women for STDs before he rapes them. He's not shown doing it though, and in all honesty, rape lost any punch as a crime in ASOIAF a long, long time ago. Tywin had his son's wife gang-raped. Gregor Clegane and Ramsay Snow are both Serial Rapists. Septon Utt and Rorge are both paedophiles. The Arshole Pirates of the Dickhead Islands—excuse me, the Iron Born—have an entire culture built around raping and bringing women home to serve as sex slaves. So do the Dothraki for that matter. Vargo is nothing special in this regard.

Ultimately there are other problems with Vargo qualifying as well. For one thing, while the Brave Companions are bad men, they were all bad men before they joined up. Unlike the Mountain's Men, who are implied to be what they are because they ride with Gregor Clegane, the Brave Companions were monsters before they joined up with Vargo, and are monsters long after Vargo is dead—especially Rorge, who we will get to in a moment. Vargo doesn't make them any worse than they already were, and given his very loose control over the company, is at times overshadowed by his own men. The Brave Companions are a gang of serial rapists. They include a Pedophile Priest, a Monster Clown, a cannibal and Rorge who is possibly the most disgusting person in the series. Among them Vargo doesn't especially stand out from the crowd, and after he's killed by Gregor they all go on doing exactly what they were doing when they served with him.

When it comes to tiers, Vargo is the commander of a mercenary company and answers directly to first Tywin Lannister and then Roose Bolton. This puts him on par with the likes of Gregor Clegane, Amory Lorch, and Ramsay Snow when it comes to the power at his disposal. And yet he's behind Gregor and Ramsay alike when it comes to the number of onscreen victims. He also lacks any of the signature atrocities common to many of his ilk. He doesn't have what Ramsay did to Lady Hornwood or everything that happens in Theon's POV in Book 5. He doesn't have Amory Lorch's pattern of child killing, or his attack on the Night's Watch. He doesn't have Gregor's laundry list of lovingly detailed crimes, be it burning Sandor, the rape and murder of Elia and her children, the rape of the innkeep's daughter that Chiswyck describes, etc. He doesn't even have Rorge's massacre at Saltpans, a crime that's acknowledged in-universe as one of the most heinous atrocities of the war, and this is important because Rorge has only a fraction of the Brave Companions under his command when he does that. He has a lot less power than Vargo does, yet commits a far worse crime than anything we're shown Vargo doing (Rorge killed twenty men personally, raped a nine year old while wearing armour, led his men in the gangrape of nuns and girls as young as six, and fed the survivors to Biter, all in the space of one attack; Vargo has nothing like this to his name).

Vargo Hoat is a horrendous human being, of that there is little doubt. But he's not Gregor Clegane or Ramsay Snow. He's not even Rorge, who does far more damage with far fewer men than Vargo has. When it comes to bodycount he's about en par with Ser Amory Lorch, his fellow Lannister thug, and Lorch isn't listed.

Again, I like Vargo a lot. He's one of my favourite villains from the series. He's colourful and entertaining in a way that the dull brutality of Gregor Clegane or the relenteless (and frankly boring) gorn of Ramsay Snow are not. I'd love to have seen more of him because he was a genuinely fun villain. And in a different series he might count. But he's not over the ASOIAF heinous bar.

edited 29th Jun '16 9:17:14 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I actually don't think that's a far-fetched suggestion. Many other characters don't seem to take him as seriously as they do other monster and non-monster villains in the same setting, and while that's partially down to his ridiculous persona, it's kind of telling. As is the point that he's just one of a group of psychos who he just happens to be the (somewhat nominal) leader of.

Really good summary. But yeah, I think the issue comes down to Hoat's competition, coupled with more of his crimes being off-screen as compared to the on-screen and/or described in detail crimes of the competition.

And as we were discussing, the Bloody Mummers are a pretty loose group of colorful psychos, almost all of whom do plenty of independent evil. Rorge is the worst of the worst, but when Hoat was alive, the murderous jester Shagwell is equally or even more so actively evil than Hoat. If anything, Hoat slightly moderates their behavior, if only for pragmatic reasons.

In contrast, Gregor's group do bad things on his order or through his influence.

edited 29th Jun '16 9:19:21 PM by Hodor2

As we were discussing I think it's rather telling that the Mountain's Men almost always wait for Gregor to commit the first crime before they join in. It's a pattern we repeatedly see with them, which means that Gregor can be held responsible for a lot more of what they do than I think Vargo can be held responsible for what the Brave Companions do.

And of course none of Gregor's men outdo him in heinousness the way that Rorge does Vargo. Despite all the love that Ramsay Snow gets from parts of the fanbase as "the most evil character ever", I'd actually argue that Rorge is in many, many ways worse, not least because he's a genuine case of From Nobody to Nightmare, a King's Landing street thug turned into one of the most notable war criminals of a war that had already seen a lot of them.

The only objection I'd have is, overall, Vargo is the one enabling the crimes of the Bloody Mummers. While all are bad on their own, Vargo has essentially made them into a PMC of horror. On their own, most of them would've gotten themselves killed or sent to the Wall long ago (And this essentially happened to Rorge and Biter before they met him).,,Vargo not only allows them to indulge their impulses, he makes it part of a military model and strategy. A self-hating pedophile like Septon Utt would've been long dead if not for Vargo keeping him around because...he's funny.

With Rorge's exception, most of the Mummers are nowhere near as able to extend a reach as far after Vargo died. The ones we see are limited to just scrounging as bandits or trying to get out of dodge.

The Brave Companions didn't break up because of Vargo's death though—they broke up because Gregor Clegane was coming to Harrenhal with orders to exterminate them.

While I certainly agree that they are able to do more damage together than they could do separately, that's from being together in a group, not necessarily because of Vargo himself or his leadership. It's stated that he's not the first leader of the Brave Companions, and their collapse after his descent into madness (he actually dies after the group falls apart; I'd forgotten that) has less to do with the loss of Vargo himself and more to do with Rorge, Urswyck, Septon Utt, and the others, being unable to agree on who the new leader should be. If Rorge or any of the others had managed to take over the group they'd no doubt be just as bad as they were under Vargo—in fact, as Rorge demonstrates at Saltpans, he's able to be as bad or worse than Vargo with only a fraction of the men.

Don't forget Vargo was good as dead. his wound went bad and had driven him nearly insane, and with Gregor coming...Well, my main point is, when they broke up, Rorge ends up the leader of a remnant, but the others mostly go their separate ways, and are nowhere near as able to do as much damage. While it's been commented in semi-canon sources the group existed before Hoat, we know Hoat has personally recruited a number of the worst elements and we have no idea what the previous leaders were like. It's indicated Hoat has led them a long time, and his bad rep is synonymous with the group's.

Also, wasn't Septon Utt hanged at that point?

edited 29th Jun '16 9:41:46 PM by Lightysnake

I can't remember when Utt was hanged. It was in A Storm of Swords but I don't recall if it was before or after Jaime saves Brienne from the bear pit. If it was after than that's after Vargo's wound has started to fester and the Mountain is already on his way.

And again, we just don't see a lot of the Brave Companion's crimes when compared to the crimes of the Mountain's Men, or the remnant that was working for Rorge, or even Amory Lorch and his band of thugs. I think the single worst atrocity we actually see the Brave Companions commit is the massacre at Saltpans and that's done by Rorge after Vargo Hoat is long, long dead. I was going back through the books, and I just can't find a standout crime the way I can for Gregor, for Ramsay, for Rorge, and even for Lorch.

edited 29th Jun '16 9:50:06 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Ambar's post pretty much covered everything I wanted to say. I'm not sure I buy into the argument that Hoat becomes a more heinous figure just because he's the leader since even when he has the entire group of colorful psychos under his control, he still never gets an atrocity as detailed as the Rape of the Saltpans to his name. There's also palpable tension shown when Jamie comes to free Brienne that shows Hoat's hold on the group isn't that secure. If say, Shagwell, took control of the group, I honestly can't say I'd see them operating any differently than they do under Hoat, with the likely exception of less missing limbs and more terrible jokes.

Besides Rorge, who is a "special case" in evilness, I'd say that while Hoat certainly enables the evilness of his men, they are still independently evil. Like as I mention, Shagwell is pretty active in their antics, especially against Brienne.

As far as Utt goes, Hoat is culpable for keeping him around, but it's Utt's own thing to rape and murder boys. What Hoat and the others found funny specifically is the aspect of Utt asking to be whipped for his sins (which they were glad to do) and I think also the fact that he invariably committed his sins again and again. Incidentally, I'm not quite sure how seriously we are to take him as a straight example of a Reluctant Psycho as opposed to a parody of one.

edited 29th Jun '16 9:52:49 PM by Hodor2

Well, I'll concede this one. Yeah, no issue cutting Vargo

And if Rorge took control of the group I honestly think they'd be worse, given what he does with only a few of them at his command. Which more than anything else is why I'm for cutting Vargo.

edited 29th Jun '16 9:54:48 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Yeah, I don't think I'll shed any tears seeing Vargo go. There's no mistaking that he's godawful, but I think Ambar's neatly summarized why Vargo fails the cut.

Costel

Vargo

Vargo.

So I'm curious, does anyone have a least favorite CM? And whom? Here are mine so far:

Lotso-Huggin-Bear: Boring in character, lets his henchmen do too much of his work, and the only thing I honestly remember about him is when he betrayed the toys. That's it.

The Horned King-Does NOTHING as a villain and just looks creepy. No performance and nothing about him ever really struck me as "oooo that's sick" as far as C Ms go.

Sauron- As you can probably see, I have Melkor for my profile pic instead of Sauron. Why? Because I find him to a more interesting and active villain than Sauron! All the guy does is stand around when the ring is controlling everyone, and he has no real character or personality. And his back story sounds a bit generic to me. Still have to get farther into the Simarlion or whatever it's called, but yeah.

edited 29th Jun '16 10:59:21 PM by zcooper95

I'm going to agree with you on the Horned King; John Hurt's performance aside, his design is utterly generic, his character is bland and forgettable, he's one of the worst examples of a Non-Action Big Bad I've ever seen, and his death is pathetically anti-climactic.

Actually, this is another issue that's been bothering me. I haven't seen The Black Cauldron in a good while, but from everything I remember, the Horned King being an Omnicidal Maniac is something that relies on vague, vague implications alone. The opening narration states that those who utilize the powers seek to "rule" the world, not destroy it, and the Horned King's pretty open about wanting to become a god, but I never remember him explicitly stating he wants to actually, as the writeup claims, kill everything and rule a graveyard. Without the omnicidal undertones, the Horned King's left with fairly standard villainy (ordering his minions to "destroy all in their path" not withstanding, and I don't think this line on its own constitutes omnicide). I'll probably give the film a rewatch to see this in a little more detail, unless someone can point out where what the writeup claims is stated.

edited 29th Jun '16 10:54:15 PM by Scraggle

Ramsay Snow/Bolton. The character bores me in the book, and his Villain Sue status in the show annoys the hell out of me. That's without getting into his entirely undeserved reputation, be it among TV and literary critics, fanboys, and even some of the people in this thread as "the most evil character ever".

edited 29th Jun '16 10:53:34 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I agree with you, but I do think the cauldron born kill people and they become cauldron born. But yeah I recommend re-watching it.

We've discussed him like three times...I don't think that needs another retread and I'm getting really weary of them. There's nothing so terrible about him being up on the list that requires another large argument about it.

another thing...Zcooper, if you're going to participate here, you're going to need to respect standing decisions. After the Hopper/Syndrome thing, I'm a mite cautious of commentary on old examples. Furthermore, we're not going to start watching or rewatching things to determine their status to your satisfaction.

edited 29th Jun '16 11:02:38 PM by Lightysnake

That aimed at me? Because I'm not arguing to cut Ramsay I'm saying I dislike him as a character. Or were you talking about the Horned King?

That was meant for Scraggle. You know I know you weren't arguing for a Ramsay cut.

What the heck are you even talking about? I was saying Horned King does qualify and was actually debunking Scraggle's points. But I just don't like him as a villain. He may be a CM, but he just doesn't strike me as memorable. Can't we just let that Hopper/Syndrome thing go? I will never propose a Never Again villain EVER again I can assure you!

edited 29th Jun '16 11:08:58 PM by zcooper95