There has been one question from the early seasons of Game of Thrones that is always asked: why didn’t Arya ask Jaqen H’ghar to Kill Tywin Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon (Lannister), Jaime Lannister, or basically anyone else vital to the war effort that could help her brother? Gendry even asks this after he, Arya, and Hot Pie make their escape from Harrenhal. It’s a fair question. She could have ended the war in basically a night. Instead, the war is prolonged, and her mom and brother are later killed in season 3.
So, yes, why didn’t Arya have a different kill list for Jaqen?
Think back to the character of Arya at the start of season 1. In the books, she’s nine years old. In the show, like many other characters, she’s aged up a bit, but still not even a teenager. She’s a child. At the start of the series, all she’s known is being a rebellious child, and hating sewing. There’s obviously more to it, but the point is that she wasn’t faced with horror and death on a daily basis outside of whatever happens in daily life during peacetime at Winterfell.
And then, the horrors. Let’s run through what she endures:
- Her older brother is pushed from a tower and becomes a cripple, but she has to leave him behind when she travels to King’s Landing with her father and sister. She leaves him before he’s even regained consciousness.
- She overhears a plot to kill her father whilst sneaking through the catacombs under the Red Keep. When she spills the beans to Ned, she can’t remember or articulate what she heard, and so her pleas are ignored.
- Arya gets the one thing she’s wanted more than anything else: the chance to train with a sword. In that world, little girls aren’t warriors. She is, though, and this is the start of that journey.
- A bunch of Stark men, including Jory, are killed and her father stabbed in the leg.
- Arya’s teacher is killed after her father is taken captive. She’s not only lost the only thing she wanted, but now she’s alone in a foreign city at the age of 11.
- She sees her father beheaded after he pleas for mercy, and after her warnings to him went unheeded. Her introduction to violence, really, is her father’s head being taken off his shoulders while hundreds (thousands?) cheer on the act. She’s standing in a crowd of people that are frothing at the mouth with a thirst for her father’s blood, unbeknownst to them.
- When Yoren takes her under his wing to get her out of the city, she has her identity stripped from her; she’s given the name Arry and her hair shorn. He then tells her she’s going to be traveling to the Wall with him. At this point, her brother has been crippled, her father killed (with people cheering it on in her presence), her dancing master also killed, and her identity taken from her. Reminder, this is still season 1, and she’s still 11 years old.
Think of what the other Stark family members have been through until now. Jon is at the Wall sulking (though, to be fair, he did kill a Wight), Robb has just entered the fray (pun completely intended) at the head of the Northern army, her mom Catelyn is on safari across Westeros, and Rickon is playing hide-and-seek in the crypts of Winterfell. The only other Stark with anywhere close to as bad a season as Arya is Sansa. Well, and Ned.
Now, we head to season 2…
- She gives up her secret to Gendry as they’re travelling to the Wall when the Lannister soldiers show up. Arya thinks they’re there for her, but regardless, she has to confide in Gendry, and imagine how hard that is after what she endured over the previous year.
- Yoren is later killed by the Lannister soldiers, right in front of her, and Lommy is as well (the kid who got stabbed in the neck with Arya’s sword). She’s then taken captive to and sent to Harrenhal. This was just after she started to bond with Yoren, the one person who’s shown affection for her besides Gendry.
- At Harrenhal, she sleeps in a literal pig pen, in the rain and mud, for days on end, waiting to be chosen to die. The Lannister army is torturing people to death in very inventive ways, and Gendry is on the chopping block as Tywin – her family’s mortal enemy – shows up and makes her his cup bearer. Reminder: she’s 12 years old still.
- She’s a servant of the Lannister family, and then given over to The Mountain when Tywin is set to leave.
- Arya escapes Harrenhal, with Jaqen’s help, fleeing a situation where she probably ends up dead.
Again, Arya has seen her father killed to the delight of thousands, her protector Yoren killed, her friend Lommy killed, men and women tortured in gruesome ways, waited to die, and was forced into the servitude of her family’s enemy before running away for her life. She’s still just 12.
Take all this together and Arya’s arc for the rest of the series makes sense. The threads between her and her aunt Lyanna are obvious when Ned’s sister is introduced later in the series, so that she would grow up to be a warrior was made to seem as if it was never in doubt. But it’s a certainty that she was forced into this life as well. It’s an interesting question to ponder: if Ned isn’t taken prisoner and killed at the end of season 1, leading to all the horror that would follow Arya for years, does she still end up the person she is at the end of the series? That is to say, was she always destined to be a warrior, did this simply speed up the timeline, or did everything that befell her make it inevitable?
Agency, destiny, and prophecy are prominent and recurring themes for many characters in the show. When we think about it, though, we usually think about Dany becoming the Stallion Who Mounts the World, Jon and Azor Ahai, or Maggy the Frog’s prophecy for Cersei. We don’t necessarily think of Arya when we think of Thrones characters and their destiny.
But those similarities between Lyanna and Arya are made for a reason. It’s the story telling us that yes, Arya may have a destiny as well. She won’t be the Queen of the North, or the Queen of Westeros, but she’ll become the person she was meant to become, and as we found out in season 8, she became somebody pretty important.
All those tragedies, all those shocks, and all those horrors happened for a reason. Arya had to endure unspeakable conditions for the vast majority of the time on the show, in all seasons. But that’s what makes what happens in season 8 so fascinating to think about. Last question: if Arya doesn’t endure all that pain and suffering throughout the show, particularly early in its run, does she become the person who can and does kill the Night King?
Maybe we shouldn’t ask why she didn’t ask Jaqen to kill Tywin. Maybe the characters should just be thankful she didn’t.
Cliffy's hell-hole 