Samwell Tarly

Randyll Tarly, Lord of Horn Hill and one of the finest military commanders in the Seven Kingdoms, tried to shape his firstborn in his own image and met nothing but quiet resistance. A dozen arms masters couldn't toughen him up, nor could dressing him in his mother's clothes or making him sleep in mail; when two warlocks from Qarth bathed him in aurochs blood to give him courage, all Sam did was cry over a slaughtered chicken.

A trip to Highgarden showed him Mace Tyrell's court, and another to the Arbor, when he was still a boy, ended with the Redwyne twins mocking him until his father dragged him home. His mother later told him Randyll had meant to leave him there, as a page and squire to Lord Paxter Redwyne, with marriage to Desmera Redwyne as the prize if he pleased his host.

The birth of his brother Dickon shifted the household's affections: the boy had all the strength Sam lacked, and Randyll poured into him the hope he'd given up on his firstborn. For a while Sam was left to his music and his books, though his father refused to let him even dream of studying at the Citadel, and once chained him to a wall for three days to beat the idea out of him.

At fifteen, Randyll told him flatly he wasn't fit to carry Heartsbane, the house's Valyrian steel greatsword, and gave him a choice: take the black or die in a hunting "accident" the next day. Sam chose the Night's Watch.

Escorted north by his father's men, Sam sees snow for the first time on the road and reaches Castle Black shortly after Jon Snow. His size and timidity make him an instant target, and Ser Alliser Thorne, meant to train him, brands him Ser Piggy and looks away while the other recruits beat him during drills.

Jon is the first to treat him with any decency, standing between Sam and his tormentors until they stop. Since Sam remains hopeless with a sword, Jon talks Maester Aemon into taking him on instead, arguing that his letters and his mind are worth more than any spear, and Aemon puts him in charge of the library and the ravens. The two say their vows together before a weirwood in the haunted forest, even though Sam was raised in the Faith of the Seven.

When word comes of Eddard Stark's arrest in King's Landing, Sam comforts Jon, and later steps between him and Ser Alliser to stop Jon from drawing steel over an insult. It's Sam who tells him Robb Stark has marched south from Winterfell. Months later, when Jon slips away at night to join the Starks' war, Sam can't stop him, but he raises the alarm in time for their friends to catch him and bring him back.

As the Watch prepares for the Great Ranging beyond the Wall, Aemon sets Sam loose in the library vaults to hunt for old maps, and he loses hours among scrolls nobody has touched in years. When other black brothers invite him along to Mole's Town, Sam turns them down — whores frighten him as much as swords do.

He rides out with the expedition as Lord Commander Mormont's personal steward, put in charge of the ravens, and finds a confidence he never had at Horn Hill. At Craster's Keep he draws Mormont a map from Craster's own account of where Mance Rayder might be, and befriends Gilly, one of Craster's pregnant wife-daughters, terrified of what her father does to the boys born in his house.

Near the Fist of the First Men, Jon's wolf turns up a cache of dragonglass weapons. Jon hands Sam part of the find — a cracked warhorn, a spearhead, a handful of arrowheads and an obsidian dagger — with no idea the gift will save his life.

In the rout after the Others attack the Fist of the First Men, Sam barely survives. Trailing behind with Grenn and Small Paul, he's cornered by one of the Others and kills it with the dragonglass dagger Jon had given him; Grenn starts calling him Sam the Slayer, and the name sticks.

The survivors take shelter at Craster's Keep, where Gilly gives birth to a boy. Soon after, a mutiny breaks out against Mormont, accused of letting Craster hoard food while the Watch starves; in the chaos, Sam stays by the dying Lord Commander until he dies in his arms, his last wish that his son Jorah join the Watch someday. Sam flees with Gilly and her newborn before the mutineers turn on them too.

Heading back toward the Wall, Sam and Gilly hole up in an abandoned wildling village; she manages to light a fire he can't, until a wight attacks and Sam has to burn it with the embers because the obsidian awl does nothing to it. Soon after, a pack of wights corners them beneath a weirwood, and only the ravens nesting in its branches — tearing hungrily into the dead — save them.

A rider called Coldhands rescues them and brings them to the Nightfort, telling them someone on the other side needs to be brought through. Sam swears to keep silent about what he sees, crosses the Black Gate under the Wall with Gilly, and keeps that promise.

By the time they finally reach Castle Black, Mance Rayder has already been defeated, and Stannis Baratheon is pushing the black brothers to elect a new Lord Commander quickly, threatening to name one himself if they can't reach the required two-thirds. With Janos Slynt gaining ground against Denys Mallister and Cotter Pyke, Sam talks to each of them privately and gets both to throw their votes behind Jon Snow.

Now Lord Commander, Jon sends Sam to Oldtown to train as Castle Black's new maester, sending Maester Aemon, Gilly and her son along with him to put them beyond Melisandre's reach and any royal blood she might want to burn. Dareon travels with them too, meant to sing the Watch's glories along the way and win new recruits.

On the voyage, Aemon sickens, and Sam learns the baby Gilly carries isn't Craster's son at all, but Mance Rayder's. In Braavos, Dareon abandons them, the maester rambles feverishly about dragons, and a desperate Sam gets thrown out of a brothel after confronting him; a sailor named Xhondo, who claims to have seen real dragons in Qarth, fishes him out of a canal.

Xhondo gets them passage on the Cinnamon Wind in exchange for almost everything they own. Aemon dies during the crossing to Oldtown, and Sam and Gilly become lovers. They agree that once the boy turns two, they'll call him Aemon Steelsong and take him to Horn Hill, passing him off as Sam's bastard son.

Once at the Citadel, Sam reports Aemon's death. Alleras brings him before Archmaester Marwyn, and he tells him everything Aemon knew and everything he himself has seen of the Others. Marwyn hears him out, orders him to train as a maester, and to get back to Castle Black as soon as he can.