Tywin Lannister

Tywin was born at Casterly Rock, the eldest son of Lord Tytos Lannister and Jeyne Marbrand, and grew up watching his father empty the family's coffers. Tytos was affable and unable to refuse anyone; his own bannermen, the Reynes and the Tarbecks, went so far as to defy him openly, and other lords borrowed gold they never repaid. When Tywin's mother died, his father took as a mistress a candlemaker's daughter, a low-born woman who ended up running the household and wearing the late lady's jewels. Tywin learned early to distrust any laughter he heard near Casterly Rock.

Tytos sent him to King's Landing as cupbearer to King Aegon V. There he befriended the young prince Aerys and Steffon Baratheon, heir to Storm's End, while his cousin Joanna served as a lady companion to Princess Rhaella.

During the War of the Ninepenny Kings he marched with the western host his uncle, Ser Jason Lannister, led to the Stepstones — Aerys served there as a squire, and it was Tywin himself who knighted him once the war was won. He came home to find his house's name in the mud, and demanded every coin of Lannister gold be repaid, taking hostages from those who could not pay at once: 'the lion has woken,' Ser Harys Swyft said. Against House Reyne of Castamere and the Tarbecks of Tarbeck Hall, who had dared to defy the Lannisters, he did not settle for victory — he burned their castles to ruins. Out of that slaughter came a song, 'The Rains of Castamere,' still sung across the Seven Kingdoms.

When King Jaehaerys II died in 262 AC, his newly crowned son Aerys named Tywin his Hand. Tytos remained lord of the west until his own death in 267 AC; Tywin returned as its new lord and banished his father's mistress, first parading her naked through Lannisport. He married his cousin Joanna — one of the few happy marriages among the great lords of Westeros — and, by his sister Genna's account, even smiled on his wedding day. Outside Casterly Rock he ruled the realm as Hand; inside it, Joanna ruled him.

Joanna died giving birth to their last child, and Tywin never remarried. He served nineteen years as Hand, until Aerys's growing distrust — the king, it was said, desired Joanna himself — became unbearable. When Aerys refused to wed his heir, Prince Rhaegar, to Tywin's daughter, and named Jaime to the Kingsguard without asking him, Tywin resigned and returned to his own lands.

During the war that put Robert Baratheon on the Iron Throne, Tywin did not move a single man from Casterly Rock. Only once the Battle of the Trident decided the war in Robert's favor did he gather his army and march on King's Landing. Grand Maester Pycelle convinced Aerys that Tywin had come to pledge loyalty, and the king ordered the gates opened.

His troops sacked the city. While Jaime killed King Aerys inside the Red Keep, Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch, on Tywin's orders, killed Prince Rhaegar's wife, Elia Martell, and their two children. Wrapped in Lannister cloaks to hide the blood, the bodies were delivered to Robert as proof of loyalty.

Years later, when Tyrion asked him why he hadn't left that killing for Robert to order, Tywin answered plainly: 'We were the last to join Robert's cause. We had to prove our loyalty [...] But he considered himself a hero, and heroes don't kill children.'

The throne stood firmer still once his daughter Cersei married the newly crowned Robert.

Back at Casterly Rock as its lord and Warden of the West, Tywin would not tolerate his youngest son having secretly married, for love, the daughter of one of his tenants. To teach him a lesson, he let the boy believe the girl was a hired prostitute, handed her to his guardsmen in front of him, and then made Tyrion do the same. He never let him travel as his older brother and sister had; for his sixteenth name day, his only gift was an order to clean out Casterly Rock's sewers.

In 289 AC, Lord Balon Greyjoy rose against King Robert by burning the Lannister fleet anchored at Lannisport. Once the Greyjoys were defeated, Tywin rebuilt the fleet and held a new tourney in the city.

His brother Gerion vanished around that time, and the men sent to find him never did. Robert's spendthrift reign left the crown owing the Lannisters more than three million gold dragons, yet even with that leverage Tywin failed three times to buy any of the Valyrian steel swords he offered to purchase from the lesser houses that held them.

He held another tourney in 295 AC, and in 298 AC brought his retinue to King's Landing for Prince Joffrey's name day tourney.

When Catelyn Stark seized his son Tyrion, accusing him of paying an assassin to kill her son Bran, Tywin lost no sleep over Tyrion's fate, but he read the arrest as a blow to his house's honor. He sent Gregor Clegane to pillage the riverlands, lighting one of the fuses of the war to come.

His plan was to draw Eddard Stark out of King's Landing and trade him for Tyrion, but Eddard had been wounded in a street fight with Jaime, so he sent Lord Beric Dondarrion in his place.

He sent Jaime against Riverrun and led a second army south himself, blocking the Kingsroad and burning everything in his path. With Gregor Clegane's help he destroyed the Pipers and the Brackens, and believed the riverlands war was already won. When he learned Lord Stark's son had crossed the Neck with his bannermen, he marched north to meet him, certain Robb Stark was still a boy with no stomach for war. At the Battle of the Green Fork he defeated the northern army, actually commanded by Roose Bolton; meanwhile Robb freed Riverrun and captured Jaime.

Shortly before that battle, Tyrion had won his freedom in a trial by combat and arrived leading the mountain clans. Tywin placed them on the left flank, certain their indiscipline would end in disaster. When Robert died, his grandson Joffrey named him Hand of the King; Tywin sent Tyrion to King's Landing to serve in his place and prepare the city's defenses against Stannis and Renly Baratheon, who had already proclaimed themselves kings.

Tywin settled at Harrenhal to wait for his moment. When Robb Stark marched out of Riverrun and invaded the westerlands, wiping out the army Stafford Lannister had raised at Oxcross, Tywin set his own men marching back toward his lands.

Robb's plan was to lead that army on a long chase, burning everything that might feed it. He hadn't counted on Edmure Tully, in charge of Riverrun's defense, halting the Lannister advance at Stone Mill. Tywin's army was worn down and forced to retreat, but the delay brought him news: Stannis Baratheon had killed his brother Renly and was sailing his fleet toward King's Landing.

Tywin turned southeast, arrived in time to join his army to Mace Tyrell's, and fell on the rear of Stannis's forces at the Battle of the Blackwater.

After the battle, he took back the office of Hand of the King, which he had left to Tyrion while his son recovered from wounds suffered defending the city.

With his authority as Hand no longer checked, Tywin also ruled inside his own family. He gave Tyrion the title of Master of Coin, which his son took as an insult, and forced him to marry Sansa Stark, shutting off any claim Tyrion had to Casterly Rock.

He also looked for a new husband for Cersei, offering her to Willas Tyrell, but Mace Tyrell, pressed by his mother, turned the offer down.

When he learned Robb Stark had married Jeyne Westerling instead of the Frey bride he'd promised, and that her house had gone over to the northern side, Tywin opened correspondence with Jeyne's mother, Sybell Spicer; with Roose Bolton, who had already switched sides after taking Harrenhal; and with Lord Walder Frey, who took Robb's broken promise as an insult to his house. Those letters produced the Red Wedding, which handed the war to the Lannisters.

Around the same time he had Ice, House Stark's Valyrian steel greatsword, melted down and reforged into two new blades: one for Joffrey's wedding day, the other for Jaime.

When Joffrey died poisoned at his own wedding, the accusation fell on Tyrion. Tywin was one of the trial's three judges, alongside Mace Tyrell and Prince Oberyn Martell, and offered him a way out: confess and take the black of the Night's Watch.

Tyrion refused to confess and demanded a trial by combat. His champion, Prince Oberyn, died at Gregor Clegane's hands, and the guilty verdict stood.

When Jaime returned, his father proposed he leave the Kingsguard and take up the inheritance of Casterly Rock; Jaime refused.

Jaime and Varys helped Tyrion escape the black cells. Before fleeing the castle, Tyrion came across his father in the Tower of the Hand and asked what had become of Tysha; Tywin answered that he'd sent her 'to the place where whores belong.' Tyrion killed him right there, with a crossbow.

When the body was found, Cersei had the Kettleblack brothers remove the corpse of the prostitute Shae as well, and swore to cut out the tongue of any man who spoke of her presence in her father's chambers. A state funeral was prepared for Tywin.

His remains lay in state for seven days at the Great Sept of Baelor before heading west, escorted by much of the western army, to be buried at Casterly Rock. The body gave off such a stench that many who came to pay their respects were afraid to get too close.

Grand Maester Pycelle sent him off with a line that summed up how the court would remember him: 'I have served six kings, but here before us stands the greatest man I've known. Lord Tywin wore no crown, but he was what a king should be.'