The most Useless character in ASoIaF

[cheatinchuck]

I know people love the little guy but - Podrick Payne. I just never felt bad for him so he always annoyed me. I don't understood how some random person didn't lop his head off during the battle of the blackwater.

[Chelly]

Now, as for Quentyn: he was a useless POV, and a useless person, but as per being (or having been) heir to Dorne, of course his death is going to have some consequences, so not totally wasted. And I actually did like the irony of the huge buildup and Doran all like "Oh hey Arianne, sry i locked u up, but hey, i have this awesome plan, let's marry Quentyn to the Dragon Queen half a world away" and then Quentyn being like the biggest noob basically, perhaps the only person in this series with even worse judgment than Cersei ("stealing a dragon" rofl). But still, maybe one chapter would have been enough to tell his story, there was no need to make it 3. (Or actually, we could have gotten the whole thing from a Barristan chapter, while he was talking to Drink and the other guy)

I did figure there will be some sort of fall out since he is Doran's son, yeah, but like you said, all that focus was unnessecary if his purpose was to just die and set off another event. One chapter would have been enough and those chapters could have been given to other more important characters to help move the story. Oh well, I guess GRRM has his reasons.

I also gotta agree with everyone else who mentioned Penny. I don't hate her but she can definitely fit into this category.

[Sand Snake No. 9]

_{Howland Reed anyone? If he doesn't show up in the next book, I'm going to start sending GRRM hatemail.}

I'll second that emotion.

Damphair. What use is Damphair?

[HyacinthGirl]

Lollys.

[Fryie]

Damphair. What use is Damphair?

- Drowned God.

- Backstory of the Greyjoy Family

- We learn a lot about the Iron Islands and especially how Aeron (or probably Greyjoys in general) rejects anything non-Old-Way-y (like Maesters and horses and the like), while other lords do not share this fervent distaste

I find Victarion to be the much less interesting brother, tbh.

[Great Dayne]

Merret Frey was pretty useless. He was a failed knight and a Frey. Mercifully GRRM took care of him.

[The Mother of The Others]

Wouldn't keep Varys around. What value is he providing? When he does have info it's best to cover your ears and not listen cuz you'll just get in trouble if you act on his intel anyway. And then he smiles as you float on down the river. Yet everyone's buying what he's selling. Which is? Shady poopins.

[Thendel]

Arys Oakheart seemed pretty redundant to me. What did he do, aside from being used by Arianne in one chapter and go on get himself killed for no cause whatsoever (besides inadvertently setting the stage for the confusion wherein Dayne slices parts off Myrcella) in the next? Oh, and he was kind to Sansa and objected whenever Joffrey wanted to see Sansa hurt.

One would say Quentin appears to be a useless character, as he fails pretty badly in his quest, but I very much doubt that there won't be severe repercussions after his death. For one, Doran might not want to root for Dany when he hears how she figuratively pissed on his marriage proposal and how his son died while under her hospitality - the son he spoke highly of for doing his duty for a father he hardly knew.

And for all the disdain he's given for just sitting there in his chair, I suspect Doran has a few more aces up his sleeve that can potentially destroy the Lannisters and Tyrells alike. Not bad for a man with gout.

[Buckwheat]

Areo Hotah. The only thing he did was killing Arys, which could as well have been done by a random Dornish soldier without a strange axe obsession.

I find Victarion to be the much less interesting brother, tbh.

Agree. His chapters in ADWD were useless (and boring besides that). We knew that he set sail to Dany at the end of AFFC, so we expect him to appear in one of her chapters sooner or later, no need to tell us everything that happened in between.

About Quentyn: I found the theory that he is "the sun that rises in the West and sets in the East", which makes him an important character, fulfilling a part of the prophecy about Drogo.

And I like Penny, so I may not be objective in this, but she did provide some character development for Tyrion. I agree that the manner of their meeting each other was kind of unbelievable, though.

[Val the Wildling Princess]

Val, i only say that because i don't like her :dunce:

I'm not gonna argue since you have already admitted you don't like her and I absolutely respect that, but she's proven to be pretty useful since she succeeded in the only task Jon assigned to her when a couple of Night's Watch men failed.

Uhm, useless as of now, Robert Arryn? :dunno:

[The Marquis de Leech]

Darkstar.

[RobertOfTheHouseBaratheon]

Penny gets my vote, so glad she's dying (she better be dying!). Tysha is the most annoying non-character though and I hope so much that she doesn't appear in the series.

[Erinne]

Only one? I gotta go with Quentyn. I don't mind him being in the story, but he should not have been a PoV character, his chapters were a complete waste of space.

[LuisDantas]

The early suggestions for this thread at least had some plot impact. Do you want useless? I give you Boros Blount. His whole point is never making a difference.

[iraen]

What's the definition of "useless" exactly? And, more importantly, what then makes a character "useful"?

Martin has a soft spot for going very very deeply into details, often stuff that doesn't on first glance seem important ... and sometimes becomes important much later. But most of it doesn't. But you still need that stuff, as said red herrings, to keep the readers guessing.

For example, there are so many characters that we have never yet seen, but heard about a thousand times, but to no obvious purpose. And then there are even more characters that get mentioned only once, and then we never hear about them again, until tadaa, they actually become pov-characters. But many of them are just "useless" in the sense that the plot could move on without them. But I think if you're reading Martin's book because of the "plot moving forward" alone, you wouldn't last long.

Take Lollys for example. She is mentioned in Game of Thrones already, I think, more as "comic relief" than anything else. And she keeps getting mentioned, mainly as an example for all the absurdities you find at the court. The only thing where you could say she really serves a clear "purpose" is when she gets married off to Bronn, and that's the reason he's not available as Tyrion's sidekick anymore, and therefore Tyrion must turn to the red viper, red viper gets killed, etc etc. So, you could say that Lollys became "useful" after all. But then again, Martin could have just chosen Cersei to give Bronn "some petty lord's daughter" to marry, and the same things would have followed.

But that's just not how he does it. And that's the main reason to keep reading, isn't it? Because everytime Lollys, or Dolorous Ed turn up, you chuckle a little, because you recognize them, which makes you feel all the more "part of the story". Therefore, these characters might be useless by themselves, but all taken together are actually the heart of the story, in my opinion.

I

And then there's the more central characters, that get more than just an "off camera"-story arc, whether POV or not (e.g. whatshisname Martell, who is actually the central character in Areo Hotah's chapter, even though he's not the POV) and especially with those that turned up later in the books, sometimes you really have to wonder why they're getting so much screen time. Because, frankly, there are some that I just think aren't that well written. I'm not asking for them to move the plot forward, but they should be entertaining to watch, or they should teach you something new about some inner struggle etc.

And personnally, I feel like this quality (every character feels like he should be there, you might just not know the reason yet) has dwindled somewhat with a feast for crows.

I also dislike Penny somewhat, because she is neither really moving the plot forward (Tyrion could have gone through the whole self-deprecating-self-doubt-everything-sucks-phase and ending up where he is at the end of the book without her, too), she's not really funny, there is no "twist" to her so far (she's just a dwarf girl with no self-esteem and not really much to offer, anyway. her brother kinda died on her, and she does kinda care, but duh, nothing intriguing about that for me). I see her mainly "confronting" Tyrion with what it means really to be a dwarf if you're not a Lannister, too, but I didn't really feel like Tyrion (or we, the readers) didn't know that all along, anyway.

And there are others like her, starting with affc, imho. Like all those Greyjoy brothers. You really could have concentrated their whole relations and problems and interactions with fewer characters, and made those all the more interesting. Like, have only one character by the name of Victaeron or something, who has Victarion's dislike for Euron and the whole wife-banging backstory and have him turn into a crazed watergod priest drowning men and braiding seaweed into his hair. Would serve just as well, and condense the whole story a bit.

Just the same with the sand snakes. There's just too many of them, so you can't really bother to start caring about any of them, because it feels like they're all just the same character with different haircolor.

But then, Martin's the author and that's what he chose to do. And we don't know what's going to happen in the next 2 books, really (although I doubt he will be able to finish the thing in just 2 books). And because Martin has had the tendency to make really unexpected twists when you least expect them, I am reserving my judgement. But there are quite a few characters where I can say that they WOULD be useless if nothing more interesting happens to them until the end of the last book. But until then, I keep hoping, even for the sand snakes and all those Essos guys whose only character traits are crazy hair and unspeakable names, so far.

And maybe, like Lollys, those Essos guys will eventually become entertaining, even though they will never do anything of any consequence, when their uselessness or their crazy hair has been mentioned often enough, like Lollys's dimwittedness or Ed Tollets nickname. We're not quite there yet.

[TeamDanyArya]

Rickon. He shouldn't have even been included in book 1 and unless there had been some Osha chapters thrown in so we know what's going on with him, he should have either never been added as a Stark or should have truly died by now.

[Horza]

The early suggestions for this thread at least had some plot impact. Do you want useless? I give you Boros Blount. His whole point is never making a difference.

You speak of him thus? You? :P

[ledlevee]

I sort of saw Penny as being important to Tyrion's character arch. He was this important member of a royal family who's destroyed that family and is now a slave jousting on the back of a pig. I love Tyrion, but that's his arch up to this point, though I see another upswing coming soon.

As far as useless goes, I'm with the people who picked Quentin. Though that could change if there's some animosity between the Martells and Dany now. Perhaps that could come into play later, though we didn't need a Quentin POV with all the other POVs in or near Mereen.

My pick for useless character is Areo Hotah. I really don't see how he could possibly become important later, and so far he hasn't done anything that some other more intersting character could have done. I guess he's a window on the mind of Doran, but still, he seems the most useless character to me.

[Arkash]

Rickon, Penny, they only ones I can think of.

[Roose Seal]

I wouldn't nominate Rickon as a useless character because he's hardly a character at all.

In my opinion, for a character to be considered useless, the effect of their actions and plotline on the general story has to be irrelevant compared to the amount of time and words spent on them. For example, I wouldn't consider Rickon to be useless as he's barely even mentionned and/or developed. Lollys is there mostly for "comic relief" (although I'm not sure what's funny about a seemingly mentally challenged girl being gang-raped by a mob of angry peasants). Darkstar is also mentionned in passing only.

In that sense, Dany is by far the most useless character to me. I know[ her storyline is going to connect with the rest eventually, but let's be honest, her arcs have been completely inconsequential so far, to the point that you can read all first four books skipping every single one of Dany's chapters altogether and the general story is exactly the same, and I daresay, it improves the series as a whole.