10 ‘Game of Thrones’ Fathers, Ranked From Ned to Tywin

Spoiler Alert: This list contains spoilers for all eight seasons of ‘Game of Thrones’.Family is a big thing on Game of Thrones, given so much of the show’s conflict revolves around the various houses/noble families of Westeros fighting each other for control of the Iron Throne. There are also threats from elsewhere, including re-emerged dragons and White Walkers, but family doesn’t necessarily have as much of an impact on that side of the show. The Westeros conflict, though? Filled with family drama, there’s conflict both against and within houses.

Sometimes, poor parenting is the main thing that’s caused so much misery and general bad behavior for some characters. However, it should be stressed that Westeros also has a couple of decent dads (they don’t often last as long as the evil ones). So, here’s an assortment of prominent fathers who appear in at least several episodes of Game of Thrones, which means not including characters from back in the show’s history, and not counting House of the Dragon, either.

10

Ned Stark

Played by Sean Bean

Ned Stark (Sean Bean) is that quintessential good Game of Thrones character; the honorable guy whose death goes to show, before the first season’s conclusion, that being a more traditional fantasy hero will only get you so far in this kind of story. He’s the patriarch of the noble (and quotable) House Stark, and it’s fair to say he set a very good example by Westeros standards, considering his children – and his soldiers – are generally upstanding and well-behaved.

With Ned, the one big blemish on his record turns out not to be a blemish after all. Jon Snow (Kit Harington) was not, in fact, Ned’s bastard son, but was instead the son of his sister, Lyanna (Aisling Franciosi), with Ned swearing to protect Jon before her death, given that his other parent was Rhaegar Targaryen (Wilf Scolding) (and he could thereby be targeted). So, the one thing he purportedly did wrong was actually debatably the noblest thing he did. He’s a good dad. Maybe Ned’s commitment to integrity and honor above all else did him in, and suddenly deprived his kids of a father, but in a more just world, someone like Ned would’ve thrived. Westeros was flawed and broken, not him. He just refused to compromise or adjust to such flaws.

9

Oberyn Martell

Played by Pedro Pascal

So, Ned Stark was a good father who lasted less than a season, and similarly, Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) is one of the least flawed confirmed fathers in the entire show, and his episode count didn’t hit double digits either. Oberyn saunters confidently through the show’s fourth season, playing many of his cards close to his chest until that fateful trial by combat (a death sequence that was bad in the source material, and more gruesome in the show).

He’s cool, he has a bunch of children (the Sand Snakes), and he is in King’s Landing seeking justice, but perhaps loses control in the pursuit of that justice and ends up paying violently for it. Still, that kind of slip-up is no reason to hate him or call him a bad father. At least Pedro Pascal did get to appear in some other shows following Game of Thrones where he plays either a father or a father-figure, including The Mandalorian and The Last of Us.

8

Jaime Lannister

Played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) keeps his status as a father hidden, but you could also call it a poorly kept secret, at least as the show got closer to its (rather controversial) end. There’s no easy or polite way to say it: Jaime had three kids with his sister, Cersei (Lena Headey), who was an active/visible mother for them, while Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) was said to be their father; they took the Baratheon surname, too.

Because of all this, Jaime doesn’t do a lot of active parenting, but one does get the sense that he cares for his children nonetheless, certainly more than Robert did, and debatably more than Cersei (well, she did love them, but in a kind of unstable and unhinged way). Jaime’s a mostly great character, and a tragic one, since if things had gone a little differently for him, and he’d found someone to love who wasn’t related to him, he might’ve had a chance at being a genuinely good father/family man.

7

Robert Baratheon

Played by Mark Addy

This character is a bit complicated, as characters perhaps should be in a great drama series like Game of Thrones. Robert Baratheon initially seems like a very uninterested and lazy father, what with him generally being a bit lazy about all things in life. But then, once you learn the truth about Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), Myrcella (Nell Tiger Free), and Tommen’s (Dean-Charles Chapman) parentage, things make a bit more sense. Robert’s technically not their father, but he has fathered other children throughout Westeros, the most prominent of them, at least in terms of screen time, being Gendry (Joe Dempsie).

He’s not a good father to any of them, be they legally his kids or actually related by blood, but Robert being checked out of the whole fathering thing suggests a lack of malice, at least. He’s not someone who wants to make life actively worse; he just seems a bit like he’s given up on trying to fight against injustices – or even difficulties – in the world the same way Ned keeps battling. Slim pickings, but indifference is arguably less harmful than hate toward one’s children, for whatever that might be worth.

6

Balon Greyjoy

Played by Patrick Malahide

If you haven’t watched Game of Thrones for a while, you might be thinking, “Wait, who’s Balon Greyjoy (Patrick Malahide)?” He admittedly doesn’t play a huge role in the show, even though he’s the Lord of the Iron Islands and is thereby technically a major player in the War of the Five Kings; indeed, he counted as one of those five kings, and he ended up outliving the other four, too.

What glimpses that are seen of him reveal him to be a pretty terrible parent, though, and an all-around far-from-great guy. He’s genuinely abusive to Theon (Alfie Allen), and is hardly any better to Yara (Gemma Whelan), and his limited screen time might well contribute to this sense of him having no redeeming qualities, seeing as he’s never shown doing anything that could be called kind or caring. Balon Greyjoy is a monster, but he’s not as outwardly monstrous (at least concerning what the viewer sees) as some other fathers in the show.

5

Roose Bolton

Played by​​​​​​​ Michael McElhatton

So, if one is to judge Roose Bolton (Michael McElhatton) as a character, he’s one of the most evil in the show, what with the betrayal he committed as a key participant in the infamous Red Wedding. As a father, he’s still pretty bad, especially considering House Bolton – which he is lord of for a good chunk of the series – is one of the cruelest in the entire show.

And as someone who raised the even more villainous Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon), yeah, that makes it even fairer to call Roose a terrible father. Does he care for his bastard son, Ramsay, though? Perhaps a little, but also, the two are at odds in a deadly sort of way by Season 6, with Roose suggesting Ramsay is replaceable, and Ramsay then turning on Roose, killing him (dying a little later himself). So, at least there was some justice here; Roose’s bad parenting came around to eventually – and fatally – kick him in the ass.

4

Tywin Lannister

Played by​​​​​​​ Charles Dance

Well, to say something begrudgingly nice about Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance), he does seem to have his house’s best interests in mind constantly, perhaps overly so. He wants House Lannister to win no matter what, and he has the right combination of smarts and ruthlessness to keep House Lannister on top for about half the show’s duration. It could’ve gone on for longer, too, if he hadn’t pushed his least favorite child one step too far.

See, Tywin feels passion towards his house, but his attitude towards his own children and their children is uncaring at best, and spiteful at worst. Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), of course, gets hit worst of all, with Tywin blaming him for causing his mother’s death in childbirth. It’s poetic justice and all that, then, that Tyrion gets to actually cause his father’s death, shooting him with a crossbow (look, Tywin was a great character, and Dance brought a ton to the show, but Tywin had it coming).

3

Stannis Baratheon

Played by Stephen Dillane

In a show filled with fantasy, Game of Thrones was at its most shocking when it had brutal things happen that weren’t supernatural or magical; just raw, blunt, and realistically brutal. Such things are highlighted during the burning of Shireen Baratheon (Kerry Ingram), with her father, Stannis (Stephen Dillane), watching on, convinced that doing so is a sacrifice that needs to be made if he’s to succeed in the War of the Five Kings.

Before then, Stannis being a father wasn’t hugely important to Game of Thrones, especially since Shireen has more scenes – and more of a connection with – Davos (Liam Cunningham). But after Shireen’s death, Stannis kind of became almost as bad as Westeros dads get. It’s one of the show’s most infamous and difficult to watch scenes for hopefully obvious reasons, and it represented the point in the show at which Stannis was truly lost (similarly lost, at the same point, was anyone who still might’ve wanted his side to win the broader conflict).

2

Craster

Played by Robert Pugh

Thankfully, Craster (Robert Pugh) wasn’t in Game of Thrones very much, since he was right up there as one of the most terrible characters featured in the show. It feels weird to even call him a father, but he does technically have kids. And what he does with those kids is horrible, since he continually marries his daughters, making them into his wives, while offering his sons to the White Walkers.

And the cycle has just been going on, with Craster getting away with it because he lives north of the Wall, and because the Night’s Watch considered him an uneasy yet still significant ally. Put simply, Game of Thrones kind of becomes a horror show, rather than a fantasy/drama, whenever time is spent with Craster. Again, it’s thankfully not a lot, but it’s enough to make him stand out as one of the all-time worst dads in Westeros.

1

Walder Frey

Played by​​​​​​​ David Bradley

Deaths don’t get much more satisfying on TV than the one that eventually came Walder Frey’s (David Bradley) way. This was an almost comically vile man; the sort of monster who made a good many other monsters around him look not so monstrous after all. Walder helped orchestrate the Red Wedding (seemingly enjoying it), and also has multiple wives, not to mention enough kids that he can’t keep track of them all… same goes for not remembering the name of at least one granddaughter.

Walder Frey just doesn’t care. His response at the Red Wedding, when Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) threatens to cut his wife’s throat, is that he can find another; it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. He’s in it for himself, barely seems to care about his numerous descendants, is capable of great cruelty, is deceptive, and is also a pervert. Walder is everything bad a bad person in Westeros could be, making him the show’s worst father, and right up there as one of its overall most despicable individuals.

NEXT: Every Season of ‘Game of Thrones,’ Ranked According to Rotten Tomatoes