Jaqen H'ghar is probably the most confusing Game of Thrones character.
Like, first he’s in a cage, then he’s a soldier, and he kills people for Arya, then
gives her a coin, and changes his face, and goes away.
Then three seasons later, in Braavos, there's this old guy who’s actually Jaqen, but he
says he’s not Jaqen , then he dies, then he's still alive, then he's like you are now
no one . In the books, things are different again – Jaqen isn't at the House of Black
and White in Braavos, but he does turn up at the Citadel at Oldtown, disguised as an
“alchemist”.
And there’re all these theories, all these connections Jaqen and the Faceless Men have
with Euron Greyjoy, dragons and Valyria.
Some people even think that Jaqen may be Syrio Forel.
So let’s work this stuff out – what’s going on with Jaqen H'ghar?
In Book and Season 2, Arya joins a group of Night’s Watch recruits led by Yoren.
Most of them are prisoners from the dungeons of King’s Landing, and three of these are
considered so dangerous that they’re kept chained up “in the back of a wagon” – there’s
Biter, a monstrous man with pointed teeth, Rorge, a brute with no nose, and then there’s
Jaqen H’ghar , a “handsome” , “smiling”, “polite” man who says he’s from the
city of Lorath . Jaqen is nice to Arya, asks her for beer, tells her she could make a friend
. Later, when the group is attacked, Jaqen, Rorge and Biter’s wagon catches fire, and
Arya saves them from the flames by bringing an axe to break their chains.
When Arya is taken to Harrenhal, Jaqen turns up again – apparently having joined under
the Lannisters as a mercenary . Jaqen tells Arya that since she saved him and Rorge and
Biter from the fire, the “Red God” is owed three lives – so Jaqen offers to kill
three people for her . Once this death debt is paid, Jaqen says his time is done.
He magically changes his face into another man’s, taking on a whole new identity . The
name Jaqen, the face, his manner of speech, the whole personality, is revealed to be “a
lie” – the truth is that this person is an assassin of the Faceless Men.
The Faceless Men are a “secretive society of assassins” – you pay them, and they’ll
kill someone for you.
They’re said to be very “expensive” , but very effective . When Arya joins the
Faceless Men at their base at the House of Black and White, in Braavos, we learn that
the Faceless Men aren’t just assassins, they’re also priests who worship death . They
believe that every different religion has some figure that represents death, and so
they call death the Many-Faced God.
When Jaqen was talking about the Red God before, he was talking about the Lord of Light as
a face of the Many-Faced God – one of many aspects of death.
The Faceless often speak of death as a gift, a mercy, a release from the suffering of life,
so the assassinations they carry out seem sacred to them.
As assassins, Faceless Men are trained to use deception, perception, poisons and–
sticks to kill their targets.
They use human faces to magically disguise themselves as other people.
And they’re trained to give up their identities – their “hopes and dreams”, “loves
and hates”, everything that makes them who they are.
To become a Faceless Man, you must become “no one” . Which makes things confusing
– it means that when we talk about Jaqen H’ghar, we’re actually talking about a
Faceless Man who happens to wear “Jaqen”’s face, but apparently any Faceless Man can
wear that face – there’s this stuff in the show where a Man who appears to be Jaqen
drinks poison and dies, and “the waif” wears Jaqen’s face, and another Man turns
up as Jaqen later – so the Faceless Men seem interchangeable, almost like a hive mind,
any of them can be any one because they’re all “no one” – so it’s probably best
to think of Jaqen as just an extension of the Faceless Men, a servant of the Many-Faced
God.
But what’s he actually up to?
Jaqen makes a big effort to recruit Arya to the Faceless Men.
He turns up just when she’s feeling weak and afraid , and shows her that killing can
make her feel strong and brave . By letting her pick three of her enemies to kill, Jaqen
gives her a taste of the power of being a Faceless assassin – never mind that a real
Faceless assassin doesn’t get to pick their own targets . He shows off by changing his
face in front of her, and that’s when he tells her to come with him to Braavos to learn
the same magic , as though the House of Black and White was more Hogwarts than death cult.
He fails to mention all the downsides of being with the Faceless – living in a dark stone
temple, scrubbing corpses, daily beatings, and, y’know, completely giving up your identity
to become “no one”.
Jaqen’s like some slimy army recruiter, he manipulates Arya into joining the Faceless
Men, and some fans believe this was his mission all along, maybe that the manipulation begins
with Syrio Forel.
Syrio Forel is the Braavosi swordsman who trains Arya in King’s Landing, and he teaches
her many of the same things that Jaqen and the Faceless Men teach.
How to be sneaky . How to stand very still . To see things as they truly are . And that
violence can make her feel strong.
Syrio’s training is like the perfect introduction to her later training with the Faceless Men,
like, a How To Be A Badass 101, before the more Advanced Badassery at the House of Black
and White.
In the show, Syrio tells Arya “There is only one god.
And his name is death” , which lines up with what Jaqen says later – “There is
only one god.
A girl knows his name” . So the theory here is that the reason for these connections and
similarities between Syrio and Jaqen is that Syrio is Jaqen, another false face of a Faceless
Man who came to King’s Landing specifically to train Arya and recruit her as a Faceless
assassin.
Which could maybe be possible – the last time we see Syrio, it looks like he’s about
to be killed by Meryn Trant, but maybe he actually escapes, and somehow ends up in the
black cells with the face of Jaqen H’ghar, in time to be recruited to the Night’s Watch
in the group with Arya.
But why would Syrio-slash-Jaqen deliberately get himself locked up in the black cells,
and in that cage – that almost got him killed.
Surely he could have found another way to stick with Arya.
And if it wasn’t deliberate, and he got locked up by mistake, it’s a pretty crazy
coincidence that he just happened to be recruited into the same group Arya was travelling with.
So either way, this doesn’t make much sense.
And what about Syrio himself, like, did the Faceless Men seriously secretly kill and replace
the First Sword of Braavos just so they could train a random Westerosi nine-year old?
Is Arya really such an amazing potential assassin to be worth all this hassle?
And how would the Faceless Men even know about her, do they have spies at Winterfell?
The more you think about it, the less sense it makes for Syrio to be Jaqen.
The more likely explanation is that the reason why that Syrio’s training fits well with
Jaqen’s is cause this is a story, and it needs to fit, it needs to have a flow to it.
Arya’s arc explores themes of violence and loss of identity, so naturally she meets mentors
who gradually guide her down that path.
Not every character has a secret identity – but some of them do.
“the alchemist” is a mysterious character we see in Feast, at Oldtown.
He makes a deal with a guy named Pate – a novice at the Citadel, where maesters are
trained.
“the alchemist” gives Pate a gold piece in return for a certain key, a key said to
be able to unlock every door in the Citadel.
We’re told almost nothing about “the alchemist”, but we do get a description of his face – a
description that happens to perfectly match the new face that Jaqen wears after he leaves
Harrenhal – full cheeks, a hooked nose, a scar on the right cheek, and curly black
hair . This “alchemist” is another a false identity of the Faceless Men, probably the
same Man as Jaqen.
So in Feast, this “alchemist” gets his key, and then he appears to kill Pate.
But later, when Sam arrives in Oldtown, he meets Pate alive and well – but there are
some weird things about him . The clues suggest that this Pate is actually “the alchemist”
in disguise, who is probably actually Jaqen in disguise, who is actually a Faceless Man
in disguise.
And now this babushka assassin is bunking with Sam Tarly in Oldtown, holding a key said
to be able to unlock every door in the Citadel.
But why?
What do the Faceless Men want in the Citadel?
We’re given one clue.
In Dance, Tyrion mentions a book, a “fragmentary, anonymous, blood-soaked tome” called Blood
and Fire or The Death of Dragons, “the only surviving copy of which [is] supposedly hidden
away in a locked vault beneath the Citadel” . When Pate gives “the alchemist” the
key, he specifically wonders if “the alchemist” might want a book locked down in the vaults
of the Citadel . So the clues suggest that the Faceless Man wants this book.
But what have the Faceless Men got to do with dragons?
In Feast, “the kindly man” tells Arya how the Faceless Men began.
His story goes back thousands of years, to the Valyrian Freehold, the empire of the original
“dragonlords”, who ruled most of the known world through the power of their dragons and
their slaves.
“the kindly man” tells of the slaves who worked in the mines beneath volcanic mountains
called the Fourteen Flames.
These mines were so hot and the work so hard that slaves would pray for “an end to [their]
pain” , and the first Faceless Man was someone who gave them that gift, who killed the slaves
who suffered the most . Arya says they should have killed the slave masters, not the slaves,
and “the kindly man” says “He would bring the gift to them as well … but that
is a tale for another day” . So “the kindly man” is suggesting that the Faceless Men
brought the gift of death to the slave masters of Valyria, and some readers believe this
refers to the Doom of Valyria, the massive fiery catastrophe that suddenly destroyed
the Empire four hundred years ago . The Doom is mysterious, no one really knows what caused
it, but maybe the Faceless Men were behind it, killing all the slave masters, their slaves,
and the entire empire in one huge terrible sacrament to the Many-Faced God of death.
There’s no strong evidence for this, but it totally could fit and it could maybe explain
why the Faceless Men now want this book about dragons, because of course, there were survivors
of the Doom – the Targaryen family and their dragons escaped Valyria and went on to conquer
Westeros, ruling the Seven Kingdoms for centuries until their overthrow by Robert, eventually
leaving Daenerys the last of the dragonlords.
And she’s rising as a queen, conquering cities across Slaver’s Bay, and unlike the
Targaryens of the last hundred or so years, Dany has dragons.
Given their history with Valyria, the Faceless Men are probably not too keen for a new dragon
queen with “the blood of old Valyria” , so maybe they want to stop her, maybe they
want to kill her dragons, and maybe that’s why Jaqen is stealing a book called The Death
of Dragons.
There are a lot of maybes here, and there are problems with the idea – for one thing,
Dany is ending slavery in the cities she captures, and it seems like slavery is kinda the main
problem the Faceless Men had with Valyria.
Also, if the Faceless are so against Valyrians, and Targaryens, you’d think they would have
moved against them sometime in the last three hundred years of Targaryen rule in Westeros?
Maybe they did, somehow.
At this point, we just don’t know, but this history with Valyria seems important either
way.
Another big thing is that in Book 3, we hear that Balon Greyjoy, father of Theon and Asha,
has died, fallen from a bridge at Pyke during a storm.
In the show, we see Balon’s brother Euron is the one to kill him, attacking him, and
pushing him off the bridge – but in the books, it’s different.
In a sample chapter of Winds, Euron admits to killing Balon, but says he didn’t do
the deed himself , so who did?
Well, earlier in Book 3, “the ghost of High Heart” has a “dream” “of a man without
a face, waiting on a bridge that [sways] and [swings].
On his shoulder perche[s] a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings” . The “drowned
crow” sounds like Euron “Crow’s Eye”, and the “man without a face” sounds like
a Faceless Man.
So it sounds like Euron hired a Faceless Man to kill Balon.
Maybe Jaqen was the one to do it, after Harrenhal.
But there’s another complication, because, remember, “The Faceless Men are expensive”
, and George Martin says that the cost of hiring a Faceless assassin depends on how
important and hard to kill the target is . So if Euron hired a Faceless Man to kill King
Balon Greyjoy, it must have cost a lot, what could he have paid them?
Well, in Feast, Euron says that he once had a dragon egg, but he couldn’t make it hatch,
so he “threw it in the sea”.
If Euron did have a dragon egg, would he really be stupid enough to throw away something so
valuable ? Maybe he actually used it as payment for a Faceless assassin to kill Balon.
And maybe the Faceless have plans for this egg.
Because dragon eggs seem to be powerful magical fiery objects.
They were involved in the mysterious Tragedy of Summerhall, where a fire got out of control
and killed a bunch of Targaryens forty years ago . Fans speculate they may have been involved
in other fiery catastrophes, like the destruction of Hardhome , and maybe the Doom of Valyria.
We don’t know how this would work, and there’s no strong evidence, but the point is that
there definitely are connections between the Faceless Men and Valyria, and dragons, and
Euron, especially when you look at the most recent sample chapter of Winds, the Forsaken.
In this chapter, which was a reading by George Martin transcribed by fans, we learn that
Euron Greyjoy is even more evil than he seemed, in the books he was always creepy and cruel
and manipulative, but in this chapter, we see an even darker side to the Crow’s Eye.
Euron has imprisoned his brother Aeron, along with a bunch of other priests from different
religions on his ship, and he’s torturing them, physically and psychologically in horrifically
creative ways involving fire and dismemberment and talk of past childhood abuse, and Euron
drugs Aeron and he has these nightmares of dragons and krakens and skulls and dead gods,
and we learn Euron’s planning something, some kind of sacrifice, he’s using the blood
of priests and warlocks and pregnant women, on the eve of a naval battle , to cause something
terrible , there’s imagery of a boiling bloody sea , of a monstrous Cthulu-like Euron,
we’re told that “blood is power”, and that “These are the last days, when the
world shall be broken and remade.
A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits” . So this is vague but terrifying
and it could possibly connect to the Faceless Men, who are after all, a literal death-cult,
killing and blood is kind of their jam, and there some real connections here, like the
use of priests from all different religions is kinda like the Many-Faced God, and also
this is all happening just off the coast near Oldtown, which is where the Faceless “alchemist”
is.
We already know the Faceless Men worked for Euron to kill Balon.
So maybe they’re also conspiring with him to create this great sacrifice, this terrible
orgy of death and blood which, may, like the Doom of Valyria, have cataclysmic consequences.
There could be dragon eggs involved, The Death of Dragons may be related, or maybe the Faceless
Men have nothing to do with it.
We can’t say for sure.
But here’s what we do know.
Jaqen H’ghar is the false identity of a Faceless Man.
He somehow ended up in the black cells of King’s Landing, and then met Arya and led
her to join the Faceless Men.
It’s possible that he was working with Arya all along as Syrio Forel, but that doesn’t
seem likely.
We do know “the alchemist”, now Pate, is a Faceless Man, probably the same one as
Jaqen, and he seems to be planning to steal a book about dragons from the Citadel.
We know the Faceless Men have bad blood with Valyria, which might explain their interest
in The Death of Dragons.
And it seems likely, that a Faceless Man killed Balon Greyjoy for Euron, which may have involved
a dragon egg that may relate back to the Doom.
Lastly we know that Euron’s planning a terrible sacrifice, which could also somehow relate
to Jaqen, the Faceless Men, and their Many-Faced God.
So that probably raised more questions than it answered, but that’s kind of the fun
of the character – comment below what you think Jaqen H’ghar and the Faceless are
up to, and make sure to subscribe if you haven’t already.
Thanks for watching.
This video draws a lot from the ideas of the Song of Ice and Fire fan community, so there
are links in the description to some really great essays and forum posts if you’d like
to have a look.
Thanks to all supporters on Patreon, including Katie Murphy, Jeremy Cashen, Amy McCracken,
Thomas McIlroy, Elijah Roseberry, Cybill Starr, Elyse Harpur, Gregory Folk, Decoy Octopod,
Teddy, Ronjan, and Spike.
Cheers.