Do you think that King Qhored Hoare of the Iron Islands is one of the most evil characters from the world of ASOIAF?

[boltons are sick]

TV Tropes thinks that he is and he was added to the list of ASOIAF characters who were approved as Complete Monsters (you can read more about this trope here). Here is his Complete Monster entry on TV Tropes:

• House Hoare: King Qhored I Hoare, aka "Qhored the Cruel", was a vicious Ironborn ruler who had thousands of women captured and raped. Brutally killing one subject's sons for his being late in paying him tribute, Qhored also ordered the sacking of Oldtown, his warring and raiding plaguing the continent for three-quarters of a century.

Qhored was approved because he was one of the most brutal Ironborn rulers to have ever lived. He ordered the sacking of Oldtown which is one of the biggests cities in the Seven Kingdoms and kidnapped thousands of women and girls to be turned into "salt wives" (aka sex slaves). He reaved and pillaged the shores of the Seven Kingdoms for 70 years which makes him responsible for a lot of death, destruction and sexual slavery. He defeated the river king Bernarr II and forced him to pay tribute and give him his three sons as hostages. Three years later, Qhored killed the three boys with his own hands just because their father was late on paying tribute and when Bernarr went to war to avenge them, Qhored destroyed his host and sacrificed the captured Bernarr as an offering to the Drowned God which threw the Riverlands into bloody anarchy.

 So, reading the discription for the trope and knowing about Qhored's character, do you agree that he is a Complete Monster or not?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Might I ask why you're interested in exploring who is and who is not a "complete monster," particularly as labeled by TV Tropes?

It's hard to talk about any legendary character with real confidence, as what we get may be flattened or otherwise distorted by historical distance and/or self-serving biases. But as presented, sure, he sounds plenty monstrous.

What I find notable is the name "Hoare," which means frosted/icy. Despite the nautical context, the Iron Born lore has a lot of symbolism that fits well with the Others. A name like "Hoare" or the Grey King described as grey as a winter sea perhaps hint that the similarities are not merely convenient ways for GRRM to symbolically convey how the Others operate without putting them onstage too often. Perhaps Ironborn traditions can be traced back to an old, cold god, one similar if not the same as the one in the heart of winter.

[Alester Florent]

5 hours ago, boltons are sick said:

TV Tropes thinks that he is and he was added to the list of ASOIAF characters who were approved as Complete Monsters (you can read more about this trope here). Here is his Complete Monster entry on TV Tropes:

 

You talk about him being "approved" as a "complete monster" but so far as I'm aware TVTropes is a wiki that anyone can edit and with no real quality control procedures: that someone's on the list just means that someone thought to add thme and nobody has objected yet.

With that said, from what we know about Qhored Hoare, obviously he was a terrible person and one of the worst we know of in Westerosi history. I would however second the comments above that what we know about him is essentially legendary - and the Ironborn history in AWoIaF is the least reliable and consistent of any of the sections.

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Adelstein said:

TVTropes is a wiki that anyone can edit and with no real quality control procedures

Yes, I used to enjoy reading it but my opinion of the site has decreased substantially. It presents itself as being relatively objective but it really is quite subjective. For example, Renly was described as being 'Fiercely Anti-Intellectual' which I think is a real stretch on Loras' comment about him thinking books were for maesters, and not at all how I interpreted the line when reading.

[King_Tristifer_IV_Mudd]

If we are just going off legends he is pretty bad but I’d still put Euron and the Bloodstone Emperor over him

[Floki of the Ironborn]

12 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Yes, I used to enjoy reading it but my opinion of the site has decreased substantially. It presents itself as being relatively objective but it really is quite subjective. For example, Renly was described as being 'Fiercely Anti-Intellectual' which I think is a real stretch on Loras' comment about him thinking books were for maesters, and not at all how I interpreted the line when reading.

I dunno, if the shoe fits…

what else would you imagine that line to be about though? Renly clearly has no time for reading, even though his job should presumably involve being a studied man who knows how the law works. But we never see him actually doing anything that a Master of Laws might feasibly do.

[Craving Peaches]

Just now, Floki of the Ironborn said:

what else would you imagine that line to be about though? Renly clearly has no time for reading, even though his job should presumably involve being a studied man who knows how the law works. But we never see him actually doing anything that a Master of Laws might feasibly do.

To me, describing Renly that way goes beyond implying that he himself has no interest in books, and implies he has some sort of anti-book agenda he wants to force on others.

We don't see Stannis perform his duties as maester of ships, doesn't mean he wasn't doing them before he left. Also it is not clear what the master of laws is even meant to do. For what it's worth we see Renly attend all the small council meetings. It's also hard to say he's doing nothing when we don't know what he's doing outside of when we see him, which is at greeting the party at Darryl, Small Council meetings, the Tourney, and on Robert's deathbed. None of these except the meeting provide an opportunity for Renly to do the work of master of laws, and no legal issues are raised in the meetings, aside from a brief discussion about law and order in King's Landing during which Renly suggests Janos be replaced if he can't keep the peace. Of course he won't be replaced, but that is the fault of Robert.

[boltons are sick]

1 hour ago, Adelstein said:

You talk about him being "approved" as a "complete monster" but so far as I'm aware TVTropes is a wiki that anyone can edit and with no real quality control procedures: that someone's on the list just means that someone thought to add thme and nobody has objected yet.

Actually, while most of TV Tropes works like that, the Complete Monster trope and a few others are a bit different, due to how much people used to abuse the category and place characters who obviosly don't qualify on it (I know that at some point, over 10 years ago, Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob was placed as a Complete Monster).

 This is why all the Complete Monster pages are locked and no one can edit them to prevent further abuse of the trope. Instead, there is a proposal thread where users propose candidates and they have to explain the work they come from, what crimes they have commited and if they have any mitigating factors (redeeming qualities, Freudian Excuses, moral agency issues or some other issues). Then, the other users vote on the candidate and they can also ask questions if they feel that something needs further explanation. If the candidate gets approved (the candidate is considered to be downvoted if the margin between the upvotes and downvotes is less than 5 votes, but usually the votes are very identical), then the person who proposed him/her, writes their entry and at the end of the week, the curator of the Complete Monster proposal thread requests for the old pages to be swapped with newer pages that contain the new entries.

 There is also a cleanup thread where users propose bad examples of the trope for removal and explain why they want them to be removed and also suggest edits on different entries.

[boltons are sick]

5 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Might I ask why you're interested in exploring who is and who is not a "complete monster," particularly as labeled by TV Tropes?

I just find the criteria for the trope interesting.

[James Steller]

3 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

To me, describing Renly that way goes beyond implying that he himself has no interest in books, and implies he has some sort of anti-book agenda he wants to force on others.

We don't see Stannis perform his duties as maester of ships, doesn't mean he wasn't doing them before he left. Also it is not clear what the master of laws is even meant to do. For what it's worth we see Renly attend all the small council meetings. It's also hard to say he's doing nothing when we don't know what he's doing outside of when we see him, which is at greeting the party at Darryl, Small Council meetings, the Tourney, and on Robert's deathbed. None of these except the meeting provide an opportunity for Renly to do the work of master of laws, and no legal issues are raised in the meetings, aside from a brief discussion about law and order in King's Landing during which Renly suggests Janos be replaced if he can't keep the peace. Of course he won't be replaced, but that is the fault of Robert.

Stannis does perform his duty. He leads the Royal Fleet against the Iron Islands during the Greyjoy Rebellion. And he clearly has tight control over those ships, since they're almost all docked at Dragonstone during AGOT. I can't remember if they were already there before he fled King's Landing, or if he took the ships with him, but either way, they're loyal to him. He couldn't just command them like that against King Joffrey if they weren't loyal to him.