My Favourite Characters - Arya Stark

I know that when it comes to Game of Thrones a lot of people would go for someone like Tyrion or Daenerys, and although I do love those two as well, Arya is my favourite, and I know she’s a lot of other people’s favourite character as well, and there are very good reasons why she is not only my favourite Game of Thrones character, but one of my favourite characters in general. The first one being her age, in the world of Westeros, it is made pretty clear pretty quickly that if you wanna survive, you have to be both smart and willing to do bad things, and Arya has mastered both of these techniques. While she’s obviously not the only one in the show to do this, again, Tyrion; it’s a lot more impressive for her because she’s a kid, she doesn’t have the life experience that someone like Tyrion or Daenerys or Tywin. So the fact that she can do all this at such a young age when probably none of the other characters could when they were that old, is really impressive and it shows just how much she’s had to go through in such a short amount of time.

Especially considering that she doesn’t slowly change into the situation she’s thrown in, it happens almost instantly, and she only has a short amount of time to adapt; constantly changing her name and identity in order to survive in the chaos that she’s in. But her skills of manipulation only make her an interesting character, what makes her my favourite is her reasoning to manipulate, and her reason to live; while most people fight in this world for greedy reasons, for power, for money, for revenge or even just to survive; what she’s fighting for, is her family, and that’s it, all she wants is to get back to her family and so that they can all live in peace. Really she’s one of the few characters who would fight for something that in this world seems so small, and every time when she gets close to being reunited with her family, she gets thrown ten steps back. But it doesn’t stop her, every time the situation seems to get worse and worse, she just fights harder and harder, never losing faith that she can still protect what few remain that she loves; this is a quality that I really respect, and again, it’s not just what she’s fighting for, but for how good at it she is at fighting for it.

But on top of that, she still has morals, which in a world like this, showing even the smallest sign of kindness is enough to get you killed, she still knows that she has to have boundaries or else she becomes just like those that she hates. But it’s balanced out so well that it never goes to the point where she’d end up dead, she’s able to balance that fine line of what would be ethically pleasing and straight up suicide. Also the fact that she’s a badass fighter along with her wits is just a great extra, all of these reasons and more is what makes her one of my all-time favourite characters.

-Danny