Lysa Arryn

Lysa grew up at Riverrun alongside her brother and sister, Edmure and Catelyn. As a girl she was shy, quick to blush. She shared her lessons and games there with Petyr Baelish, her father's ward and heir to a strip of coastline called the Fingers. She fell for him. He, in turn, only had eyes for Catelyn, whom Lysa loved as a sister rather than a rival.

The night the Blackwoods and Brackens came to Riverrun for Hoster Tully to arbitrate their feud, Catelyn danced with Petyr and then turned him down when he tried to kiss her. Petyr drank himself into a stupor, and it was Ser Brynden Tully who carried him to bed. Lysa followed. That night she lost her maidenhood to a man who, too drunk to know better, called her Cat. She stayed with him until dawn all the same, and would remember the night fondly for the rest of her life.

When Catelyn was betrothed to Brandon Stark, Petyr challenged him for her hand and lost the duel; Brandon spared his life. Before Hoster sent Petyr back to the Fingers, he and Lysa shared a bed again, and this time she fell pregnant. She told her father, hoping it would be enough to let her marry him. Hoster thought Petyr too lowborn for his daughter and forced her to drink moon tea brewed by Maester Kym. The abortion nearly killed her.

With her maidenhead gone, marrying Lysa to a man of proper rank grew complicated. The match Hoster and Tywin Lannister had been discussing with Jaime Lannister fell through once Aerys II named Jaime to his Kingsguard, and Tywin's offer of Tyrion in his place was turned down. In the end Hoster gave her to Jon Arryn, Lord of the Vale, twice widowed and heirless — a man who needed a fertile wife and Riverrun's support for the war ahead.

Lysa married Jon Arryn on the same day her sister married Eddard Stark, in a double ceremony that sealed the alliances Robert's Rebellion had been stitching together. She wept the morning of the wedding but arrived at the ceremony dry-eyed and radiant. Jon Arryn was proud and much older than her, and there was never much love between them.

Once the war ended, Robert Baratheon made Jon Arryn his Hand, which kept him in King's Landing for long stretches. There Lysa lost pregnancy after pregnancy — five miscarriages in all, plus two stillbirths — before finally giving birth to Robert, the only child who lived. The last birth changed her: she began seeing enemies everywhere, and poured into her sickly son a devotion that tipped into something closer to mania, nursing him still at six years old.

Jon Arryn brought Petyr Baelish to court, and whatever had once been between him and Lysa came back, hidden from her husband. Petyr's hold on her went past affection, and in time he talked her into two things: putting tears of Lys in her husband's wine, and writing to her sister Catelyn to lay the murder on the Lannisters. Lysa did both. After Jon Arryn died, she fled with Robert to the Vale, leaving behind the letter that would reach Winterfell and set much of what came next into motion.

In the Vale, Lysa ruled as regent for a six-year-old son and turned away every suitor who came calling — Ser Lyn Corbray among them, and a dozen other proper matches — determined to choose her own next husband. Word of the letter she'd sent her sister was already moving through the capital: Varys told Eddard Stark, the new Hand, that Jon Arryn had been poisoned with tears of Lys.

When Catelyn stumbled on Tyrion Lannister at the crossroads inn, she took him prisoner, and to throw off any pursuit announced she was taking him to Winterfell — in truth she rode for the Vale, to her younger sister's court. She hadn't seen Lysa in years, and what she found left her at a loss: a woman gone heavy and nervous, seeing danger in every shadow.

Lysa threw Tyrion into the sky cells and tried to wring a confession out of him that never came; he demanded trial by combat instead, and his champion — a sellsword named Bronn — beat the captain of the Eyrie's guard. She had no choice but to let him go. When Catelyn asked her to send an army to join their father and the North against the Lannisters, Lysa refused flat out, and threatened to throw her out the Moon Door when she pressed. Her uncle Brynden, disgusted by what he saw, resigned as Knight of the Gate and rode off with Catelyn to defend Riverrun.

For the next two years the Vale stayed out of the war entirely, sending no men to either side. When Lord Hoster finally died at Riverrun, he begged forgiveness in his delirium for having forced his daughter to drink moon tea years before; Catelyn, listening, had no idea what he meant. By then Lysa had a new favorite at the Eyrie, a singer named Marillion, whom she showered with gold and gifts.

Catelyn and her son Robb died at the Red Wedding. By then Petyr Baelish had risen high enough in the Lannister council to be named Lord Paramount of the Trident and Lord of Harrenhal, a rank that finally made him — in his own eyes if no one else's — fit to marry Lysa and gain a hold over her son. After Joffrey's death, Petyr brought Sansa Stark with him to the Vale, passed off as his bastard daughter under the name Alayne Stone, though he told Lysa the truth. Lysa married him before Marillion and his septon, at the Baelish family seat, hoping to conceive that same night.

Marriage did nothing for her loneliness — Petyr was often away tending to business, and many lords of the Vale, the Royces among them, still resented his appointment as Lord Protector and Lysa's refusal to back the Starks during the war. Sansa looked more like her late mother by the day, and one snowy morning Lysa caught the two of them kissing in the godswood.

Lysa summoned Sansa to the great hall and, screaming through tears, nearly threw her out the Moon Door; only Petyr's intervention stopped her. Beside herself, she then confessed what she'd done years before on his instruction: pouring tears of Lys into her first husband's wine, and writing to Catelyn to blame the Lannisters. Petyr talked her down, then told her the truth he'd been carrying since boyhood — that he had only ever loved one woman, and it wasn't her. He pushed her from the top of the Giant's Lance, through the same door she'd threatened so many others with, and let the blame fall on Marillion.