Complete Monster/A Song of Ice and Fire

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*A Song of Ice and Fire* and it's TV adaptation *Game of Thrones* have many complex antagonists with very understandable motives. For example, Queen Cersei acted to protect her children and twin brother Jaime. However, as in most works, there exist some true villains who are indeed monsters.

## The Books

* Joffrey Baratheon shows all the signs of a complete psychopath. As a young child, he cut open a pregnant cat because he was told she had kittens inside her, and while this could have been the act of a child who didn't really understand what he was doing, his later acts show an extreme sadistic streak. His first act as King is to Template:Spoiler, ignoring his advisors and their silly complaints that doing so would start a war or something. He then went on to inflict cruel and prolonged physical and mental abuse on young Sansa Stark, having his knights beat her and, on one occasion, having her publicly stripped naked and beaten with the flats of their swordblades. As king, Joffrey revels in his total power over life and death and takes pleasure in tormenting his subjects, which includes having a minstrel whose song offended him choose between losing his hands or his tongue, attempting to have a drunken knight drowned in a cask of wine, ordering his bodyguard to cut through a crowd of peasants to get at one of them who threw manure at him, nailing antlers to the heads of Stannis sympathizers and firing them from trebuchets as entertainment during the Battle of the Blackwater, and attempting to have everyone who was against him executed. During the starvation, he would stand in a window with his crossbow and shoot the starving people outside for sport (this may be a Shout-Out to the scene in *Schindler's List* where concentration camp commandant Amon Goeth would do the same to the starving Jews, which tells you quite a bit about Joffrey). As if all this wasn't enough, after the little bastard is killed, his younger brother Tommen (who is a genuinely sweet kid) starts to say he would "go away inside" when Joffrey would...but he's interrupted before we find out exactly what Joffrey would do to him.
	+ Joffrey's age should also be noted; he is only 12 when he starts doing most of these horrible things, and so many readers would say he's too young to be considered fully responsible for his actions. The fact that he not only provides the alternate name for the Royal Brat trope ("The Joffrey") but also manages to achieve Complete Monster-status in just about everyone's eyes is quite an achievement.
* Joffrey's predecessor, the Mad King Aerys Targaryen, wasn't exactly a paragon of justice either: the people of Westeros had been living under the Targaryen dynasty for almost 300 years, even though it meant putting up with monarchs like Maegor the Cruel and Aegon the Unworthy, yet all it took was 20 years of Aerys' rule to cause five of the seven kingdoms to rise up against the Iron Throne in open revolt. He was really just that bad. Among his worst acts was his execution of Rickard Stark; after the former demanded a fair Trial by Combat, Aerys had him slowly roasted over an open flame, reasoning that fire was his personal champion. Just for kicks, he also had Rickard's son Brandon Forced to Watch while strapped to a torture device that slowly strangled him to death as he struggled to rescue his father. Aerys also made the Stupid Evil decision to replace all of his competent councillors with deranged alchemists who shared his "enthusiasm" for burning people alive. To top it all off, when Aerys finally realized he had lost his war against the rebels, he decided to go out with a bang by ordering his pyromancers to burn Westeros' capitol city to the ground - knowing that it would result in the deaths of *hundreds of thousands* of people - *purely out of spite*. Thankfully, even his own sworn bodyguard realized that Aerys was going too far and took matters into his own hands before the plan could be enacted.
	+ Roughly half of the Targaryens have the potential to be this due to their never-ending inbreeding. An in-universe saying puts it quite nicely: all Targaryens have the capacity for "madness" or "greatness", and whenever one is born, the gods flip a coin to determine which it is. Rhaegar and Daenerys apparently got "great", but poor Viserys got the other side of the coin, like his father the Mad King. His final scene is a good example, though several scenes - his truly horrifying Karmic Death - at least manage to slightly humanise him to the audience, averting this trope (though he's still a huge jerk).
* Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain that Rides. Even Word of God said that he was the most despicable character in the series. A terrifying giant of a knight, Gregor is a monster fueled by migraine headaches that keep him in a constant state of anger. He is a sexual sadist who takes a sick pleasure in slaughter, torture, and *especially* rape. Inventing gruesome tortures of his own, Gregor has an extremely black sense of humor. His Moral Event Horizon was burning his little brother Sandor's face in a brazier just because the latter played with Gregor's discarded toy. Another shocking (and fateful) act was when he smashed apart a baby's head against a wall, then raped the mother with the baby's blood still on his hands before disposing of the mother as well. His victim's brother, prince Oberyn Martell, tried to avenge her death by challenging Gregor to combat in order to kill him and expose Tywin Lannister's culpability in the crime, only to have Gregor crush his skull, stick his fingers through his eyes, and blow his head open. Thankfully, his Karmic Death is a particularly nasty one that involves being stabbed with Oberyn's poisoned spear and dying by agonizing inches, pissing blood and pus. Unfortunately, it may be that he's Not Quite Dead after all due to Qyburn's creepy experiments...
	+ It says something about Gregor that things which would and should normally make someone a Complete Monster are among some of his lesser, often forgotten crimes. Take a small bit from *A Clash of Kings* where each day, for ten days, Gregor picks one person from a group of villagers and has his Torture Technician question that person over and over, until they die from the torture. One of the villagers volunteers to be taken if they will spare her daughter. The next day, he has the daughter questioned too to make sure the mother didn't leave anything out.
* Ramsay Bolton, the Bastard of Bolton, stands out as one of the most savage and depraved men in all of Westeros, surpassing even Gregor. How does he manage this? Well, he skins people alive for his own amusement, hunts down women on his father's feudal lands, and rapes them when he catches them. Once he’s finished, he kills them, *then* skins them - if they’ve given him good sport. If they haven't, he begins with the flaying. He also tortures captives into insane and broken shells of their former selves, eager to obey him (Theon Greyjoy, or "Reek" as he's made to be called, being his latest victim, and his torture even included a castration!) His signature method is to strip the skin off their fingers and let the exposed flesh fester until the victims beg him to cut their fingers off. And if they bite their own fingers off and rob him of that pleasure, he flays another as punishment. Before he rose high enough to enjoy his sports properly, he also had a penchant for raping girls, killing them, and forcing his servant to rape the corpses. His worst rape was done to Jeyne Poole, a girl of Winterfell whom he assaulted, violated, and raped repeatedly while forcing his dogs and Reek to get in on it as well. And women and men aren't his only victims - he played a part in the deaths of two innocent children (actually carried out by Theon) as well, and during this time he'd also switched places with the previous Reek, leaving him to be killed for his crimes instead. Infuriatingly, he was, prior to the sixth book at least, a Karma Houdini of the worst kind.
* The Brave Companions (a.k.a. the Bloody Mummers) are an entire team of Psycho for Hire thugs, who perform sickening deeds throughout Westeros for nothing more than their own amusement. Their leader, Lord Vargo Hoat deserves mention. One of Tywin Lannister's mad dogs, his charming habits include: cutting off the feet of people who annoy him, raping people, killing anyone who dares to say he isn't a proper lord (he isn't), betraying his employers when it looks like he is about to lose, murdering, horribly, anyone who makes fun of his thpeecth impediment, whith makeths him thlobber and lithp hilariouthly, burning the Riverlands, and thieving. He gets a horrible Karmic Death when he tries to rape Brienne of Tarth, who bites off his ear. The wound drives him feverish and thus so mad that he doesn't notice Ser Gregor, who he betrayed, storming his castle. Ser Gregor, being Ser Gregor, feeds him his own limbs before eventually killing him. Despite his horrific passing, it's impossible to drum up any sympathy for him.
* Vargo's not even the worst of the lo - that would be noseless paedophiliac serial rapist and Serial Killer Rorge, who is acknowledged in-universe as such. Freed from the Black Cells under King's Landing, along with his companion, Biter, Rorge signs on with the Brave Companions after Arya Stark saves him from certain death. He offers to repay her by anally raping her with her own wooden sword, only stopping when she threatens him with Jaqen H'ghar. He later goes against Hoat's own orders when he tries to rape Brienne of Tarth, and tortures the recently crippled Jaime Lannister by kicking him in his stump, when Jaime reminds him that Brienne is supposed to remain unharmed. It's after Hoat's death, though, that Rorge really comes into his own. Taking control of a gang of brigands, he burns down the town of Saltpans, in an act so savage that it shocks the sensibilities of a Westeros long inured to the atrocities of Gregor Clegane and Vargo. Killing twenty men himself, Rorge rapes every woman and child in town, most notably raping a six year old girl while wearing chainmail; he also rapes nuns before feeding them to Biter. Upon encountering Brienne again, he expresses a desire to "cut off her legs and set her on her stumps so she can watch me fuck the crossbow girl." The girl in question is under ten years old. Sidematerials would indicate that he is also the reason why Biter is the way he is—finding an orphan boy, Rorge removed his tongue, filed his teeth, and made him fight dogs with only his new fangs. A consummate Woman & Child Hater, and a serial predator in a world full of warriors, Rorge earns the enmity and disgust of everyone he meets.
* Craster is a particularly loathsome wildling and ally of the Night's Watch (each of whom identifies him as belonging to the opposing organisation), who in his own words, kneels to no man, including Mance Rayder, King-Beyond-The-Wall. Living alone in a huge, ramshackle compound, Craster keeps a harem of women in line with brainwashing and violence, breaking their spirits until they cannot rise up against him, despite the fact that they vastly outnumber him. All of these women are his "wives"; many of them are also his daughters and granddaughters. When one of them becomes pregnant, Craster waits to see if it is a boy or a girl. If the child is female, he waits until she is old enough (read eleven or twelve) and does his best to impregnate her. If the child is a boy, Craster leaves him in the woods to be killed by the cold or devoured by the Others; this way they cannot challenge his control over the women. Obsessed with his own hedonism, and raising the next generation of wives, Craster uses his allegiance with the Night's Watch to make sure that nobody, not even the Watch, interferes with his business.
* Euron Greyjoy, captain of the *Silence* and a lord of House Greyjoy, may very well top the bar for Westeros' most despicably immoral, cruel, and heinous individual. Euron was exiled from the Iron Islands by his brother, Lord Balon Greyjoy, as punishment for raping Victarion's salt wife, and he was warned never to return while Balon still lived. Since then he has pillaged and raped all over the known world on a ship crewed entirely by mutes whose tongues Euron ripped out. Euron is known for his sadism in how he delights in playing vicious mind games and waging psychological warfare on anyone around him, has mistreated his kin worse than even Tywin Lannister, and while he has fathered several bastard children, he has zero regard for any of them. He's also a practitioner of Black Magic who likes torturing priests until they renounce their gods and swear loyalty to him - he keeps many of them prisoner for just such a purpose. He used his dark powers to drown his brother Balon so that he could return to the Iron Islands as per Balon's Exact Words, where he began his crusade to conquer all of Westeros for the ironborn using dragons, which he hopes to bind to his will with the dragon horn and use their power to dominate all the seven kingdoms as a Dark Lord. Euron has Lord Baelor Blacktyde killed when Baelor refuses to accept him as his king, taking his sable cloak as a trophy. After conducting mostly successful raids upon the Reach, Euron sends Victarion and the Iron Fleet to find Daenerys Targaryen and bring her and her dragons to Westeros so that he can court her and take the power her dragons give her from her. As of late, we learn that Euron raped both Aeron and Urrigon, and killed their brothers Harlon and Robin when they were children, and he even cuts out the tongue of his pregnant girlfriend and ties her to the front of his ship. Eventually, Euron allies himself with the mad Cersei Lannister in order to face down Dany and her allies to prevent them from taking King's Landing so that he finally take control of her dragons, but when the Others break down the Wall and begin to invade Westeros, Euron attempts to save himself and abandon even his own crewmen to perish, and when the opportunity arises, Euron makes a final bid for power hoping to become The Antichrist and bend both the dragons *and* the Others to his will. A cold-blooded psychopath, Euron Greyjoy will not relent until all of Westeros was drenched in blood.

## *Game of Thrones*

* Just as he was in the source material, Joffrey Baratheon is a dyed-in-the-wool sadist who seems to take pleasure only in fear and suffering. At first putting on a charming face, his true colors are hinted at when he begins carving up the face of Arya Stark's lowborn friend for fun, before trying to kill Arya herself for hitting him, despite the fact she's the younger sister of his fiancée, Sansa. After becoming king, however, Joffrey really comes into his own as a vicious bastard, ordering Ned Stark's execution even though it ensures a civil war with the North. Viewing Sansa as his toy, he frequently has her humiliated, beaten and threatened with death and rape. Among his many cruel acts, Joffrey has a bard choose between losing his hands or his tongue, tries to drown Ser Dontos with wine, orders a crowd of peasants executed because one threw some dung at him, forces one prostitute to beat another, possibly to death, at crossbow point, and eventually shoots poor Ros full of crossbow bolts just to experience what it's like to personally kill someone. The taboo of kin killing means little to Joffrey either, as he threatened to execute his mother for slapping him, tried to have his uncle Tyrion assassinated, and had his bastard siblings (including children and babies) butchered so no one would notice how little Joffrey resembled his supposed father, Robert Baratheon. In the end, Joffrey was merely a vicious idiot king who believed that ruling meant he was above the moral standards of others and everyone was his to torment as he pleased.
* Ser Gregor Clegane, The Mountain, is the most feared knight in Westeros and works for Tywin Lannister and his family. A violent sadist who had once burned his brother's face for playing with one of his toys, Gregor is introduced in the Hand's tournament where he murders another contender via splintered lance; when Loras Tyrell manages to unhorse him, Gregor slaughters his own horse for failing him and attempts to murder Loras. When Gregor's own brother interferes, Gregor tries to kill him as well. When next seen, Gregor is head of the occupying Lannister forces at Harrenhal where he selects prisoners to be tortured to death by one of his men known as The Tickler. When Harrenhal is lost, Gregor has every prisoner put to the sword, leaving hundreds of corpses for the next arrivals to find. In Season 4, Gregor is seen practicing his sword skills by butchering prisoners in wholly one-sided duels before he enters into a Trial by Combat representing the Crown against Prince Oberyn Martell who wishes to force Gregor to confess to the murder of Oberyn's sister Elia and her children. When Gregor gets his hands on Oberyn, he shoves his thumbs through the prince's eyes before squeezing his head until it *explodes*, wanting to hurt the man as much as possible while he roars out his guilt in killing the children before he raped and murdered Elia in a similarly gruesome manner. Thankfully, he meets his own gruesome demise afterwards, having been poisoned by Oberyn's spear during their fight and becoming a headless, mindless shell of his former self thanks to Qyburn's experiments on him. The only thing about him that remained, however, is the enjoyment of violence and violation of others.
* Craster is a particularly nasty Wildling who resides beyond the Wall, making his living as an ally to the Night's Watch by providing them with supplies, shelter and info. Craster delights in antagonizing them, however, hiding behind the fact he's necessary to them to avoid reprisal. What makes Craster sickening is how he rules his self-given kingdom: Craster routinely marries any daughters he has when they come of age, beating and raping his many wives and daughter-wives. If they bear him sons, Craster sacrifices them by leaving them out for the White Walkers. Craster threatens violence on those he can't simply cow into submission and relishes the lack of law beyond the Wall to simply do whatever he wants, even having the audacity to claim he is a "Godly man" when criticized.
* Karl Tanner in season 3 of the *Game of Thrones* TV series led a mutiny against his Lord Commander (and in the process becoming an oathbreaker (crossing an In-Universe Moral Event Horizon) by denouncing his vows to protect the wall. It's not until season 4's "Oathkeeper" that he reaches Complete Monster status, having taken up at Craster's Keep. Here he hurtles insults towards his men, encourages them to rape Craster's daughters/wives "to death, " and drinks wine from the skull of the very commander he betrayed. When one of the wives comes with a son who has been born, Karl's first reaction is to take a knife and kill it. He's only stopped when the rest of the wives point out they usually leave the sons out in the cold as a sacrifice for the White Walkers so he has that done instead. Once one of his men captures Bran and his group, he menaces Meera and threatens her to get Bran to speak. In the next episode, he intends to rape her in front of her brother, and then let his men do the same.
* Lord Walder Frey only narrowly avoids this status in the books, but he becomes one in the *Game of Thrones* TV series due to the removal of any positive qualities whatsoever. While he's somewhat repugnant in his first appearance, being a Dirty Old Man who's taken many fertile women to be his wives and forcibly impregnated them to have multiple children, all of who he abuses horribly, he seems to be a fairly competent ruler and at least willing to help the heroes, albeit for a price. His next appearance even has him come across as a Cool Old Guy, forgiving Robb's slight against him. Then comes The Red Wedding, which opens with Robb's pregnant wife being stabbed repeatedly in the stomach, Robb, Catelyn, and the Stark Bannermen being murdered in a massive violation of guest right, all as Walder is laughing, drinking and eating the whole time. To top it off, when his current wife is held hostage, he simply tells the hostage taker to kill her: she's expendable since he can always find another one. To drive the point home, he begins the next episode by recounting the Red Wedding with glee, showing no remorse and celebrating the power his betrayal has brought him.
* Ramsay Snow, the Bastard of Bolton, lives up to every negative stereotype about bastards in Westeros by being quite possibly the most thoroughly repulsive person to ever live. After capturing Winterfell and flaying the Ironborn who had held it, Ramsay engages in twisted games with the captive prince Theon Greyjoy. First he pretends to be an Ironborn agent who frees Theon, even killing his own men to keep up the illusion before he leads Theon back to the Dreadfort where he takes over the torture personally. Said torture consists of flaying bits of Theon's skin until he begs for the finger to be cut off, and even castrating him once his cock was enlarged enough before sending the result to Theon's father in a box. All that remains of Theon is a beaten shell of a man Ramsay dubs “Reek” who serves without question. In his spare time, Ramsay and his equally psychotic lover Myranda release girls into the woods to hunt them with bows and arrows and Ramsay's monstrous hounds who maul the girls to death. When Ramsay makes Theon negotiate a surrender with other Ironborn, Ramsay promises them safe passage only to have them immediately Flayed Alive and displayed as gruesome trophies. When married off to Sansa Stark of Winterfell, the first thing Ramsay does with her after their wedding night is take her to his bed chamber and rape her while he has Theon stand in a corner and watch. And he decides to do this *ritually*, stopping only to pick up where he left off next night! Ramsay then leads a 20 man army against Stannis Baratheon's forces, raiding their camps, burning all their supplies, and killing anyone they could find. When he comes back to Winterfell to find Sansa and Theon escaped and his lover Myranda is dead, Ramsay bemoans the loss of the girl he'd admired and who'd loved him...only to then prevent his men from giving her a proper burial and instead having her corpse fed to his hounds because they "needed fresh meat." Some time after, Ramsay learns of his father's wife Walda's pregnancy, fearing that his father would then have a new heir and he, his bastard, would be de-legitimized. So he brutally murders his father and has both Walda *and her newborn infant child* mauled to death and eaten by his dogs. After killing the wildling Osha and capturing young Rickon Stark to use as a hostage in order to get Jon Snow and his Northern allies to come battle him, Ramsay gathers an army of his own and meets with them, promising to set Rickon free if Jon agreed to his terms of battle. But the moment he lets Rickon go, Ramsay fires arrows at the child and kills him just before he can reach safety in his brother's arms. An utterly irredeemable and gleefully sadistic psychopath, Ramsay's reasoning for inflicting as much suffering as possible upon others was simply because he enjoyed doing so, making the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown given to him by a furious Jon, and his execution of being ripped apart by his own starving dogs set upon him by Sansa, entirely deserved.

## *Spinoffs*

* *The World of Ice & Fire*: King Maegor I Targaryen, the third King of Westeros, was better known as Maegor The Cruel, and was the ancestor to both Aerys II and Joffrey. He usurped the throne from his nephew and promptly decapitated the one Archmaester who protested. As king, Maegor turned to brutal tactics to suppress the Faith of the Seven, even riding on his dragon Balerion to burn down a Sept with all worshippers inside, using archers to pick off stragglers. Maegor proceeded to commit massacre after massacre, even passing off the skulls of poor smallfolk in the wrong place at the wrong time as members of the Faith's warriors. Worse still was Maegor's attitudes towards family: Maegor killed his own nephew in combat, and then had his second nephew captured and tortured to death. When one of his wives gave birth to a "stillborn monstrosity," Maegor had her, everyone at the birth, and her entire family executed. When his favorite wife revealed she'd poisoned said wife from jealousy, causing the monstrosity, Maegor cut her heart out and gave it to the dogs. Obsessed with having an heir, Maegor forcibly married three women, including his own niece. After having the Red Keep constructed, Maegor also had the builders massacred to keep its secrets to himself. Monstrous, brutal, violent and cruel, Maegor's excesses drove all Westeros to unite against him behind his only surviving nephew, Jaerhaerys, and Maegor is remembered to the present day as one of the greatest examples of an evil King.
* *The Princess and the Queen*: "Hard" Hugh Hammer and Ser Ulf the White, known as "The Betrayers", are "Dragonseeds," descendants of Targaryen bastards, who successfully tame dragons and are recruited into the forces of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen. During the battle of Tumbleton, however, they reveal their true colors: defecting to Aegon II's side, the two attack Tumbleton with their dragons, scorching the town from end to end with their flames and killing all those caught up in the conflagration, with thousands of refugees burning or drowning in the river Mander. The soldier who surrender are promptly beheaded and the two brutally sack the town, with people killed and women raped, including girls as young as eight and ten years old. Setting themselves up as tyrants over Tumbleton, any who displease them are fed to their dragons. Ulf demands the rulership of Highgarden for his service while Hugh demands his own crown. When one knight is so incensed he knocks Hugh's self-made crown off, Hugh has three horseshoes nailed to his head. The two are so vile that a secret conspiracy between the two sides is formed for the sole purpose of eliminating them during the war. Even in the brutal Dance of the Dragons, these two exemplify why bastards are often seen as villains in Westeros.
* *Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series*: Ramsay Snow acts as The Heavy for the as-yet unseen Roose Bolton, orchestrating the conflict between the Forresters and Whitehills for profit and enjoyment. Ramsay is introduced flaying a man alive for recreation, lamenting that the result is "not [his] best work". After entering the Forresters' estate by force, he tries to take Talia hostage with clear lascivious intent before pragmatically (he was afraid taking Talia might be dangerous for him) settling on her brother instead, and murders the teenage Ethan on a whim. He later returns to "break" Rodrik by forcing him to witness his Cold-Blooded Torture and murder of Rodrik's friend Arthur. He later pits the Forresters and Whitehills against each other in a war of annihilation, passing up potential profit for the sake of a bloody spectacle. A sadist who lives only to relish the suffering he inflicts on others, Ramsay is feared and loathed throughout the North.

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1. ↑ "He's no fucking lord, just some jumped-up sellsword, but you better *call* him lord if you want to keep all your parts."