The 10 Best Players In Game Of Thrones

Throughout the 8 majestic seasons of the series, many characters have established themselves as the finest players the television world has ever seen and in an alternate statement of Olenna Tyrell, "the truly best do stand out".

This list ranks the characters on the basis of their skills in manipulation, their development and their level of determination to do what they deem necessary. We will not include war strategies and hence we will not be adding Ramsay Snow and Robb Stark in the list.

Here are, presumably the 10 best Game of Thrones players:

10. Daenerys Targaryen

The Mother of dragons might be impulsive and hot-tempered unlike a skilled manipulator but there is no argument in agreeing that she attaches people to her own cause with no difficulty at all. We might argue that she has great advisors but then again we all know what she did in Astapor going against her advisors. Whether she takes the entire unsullied army with her tactics or being the Myhsa of the people of Yunkai, she has proved time and again that she is not someone to be taken lightly. Her entire arc in Essos has shown us how skilled she is as a conqueror and how kind she is (or was) back then.

9. The High Sparrow

The follower of the Seven, the High Sparrow rose to power with Cersei's support. Her main motive was to remove the Tyrell family out of her way but her plan backfired. He quickly became the most powerful religious influencer in Westeros and was able to skillfully manipulate king Tommen to his own fanatic course. It was because of him that the audience had rooted for a character like Cersei for the first time in the series. Too bad, he underestimated Cersei's ruthlessness.

8. Tyrion Lannister

The imp would have been somewhere in the top 5 if we only considered the first 4 seasons of the series but due to persistent failures of his plots after becoming the Hand of the Queen, we might think otherwise. Regardless of all that, we can agree that Tyrion is one of the most intelligent characters on the show. He was among the very few people on the show who used the master players against each other to make his plots work efficiently in the earlier seasons.

7. Olenna Tyrell

The Queen of thorns is undoubtedly one of the most astounding characters ever to be on television. She truly had a tart tongue and she owned every single scene she was in. She brought about important changes in the course of the show by poisoning the tyrant, Joffrey at his own wedding and luring Sansa to marry Loras in order to gain the North. In the words of Randyll Tarly, house Tyrell is run by women and with Olenna and Margaery, we can see that he is indeed very much correct. Tyrell's ambitions are unparalleled against any other house.

6. Sansa Stark

She is a slow learner but she learns. The only Stark on this list has been through hell, personally dealing with the most sadistic villains in television history, namely, Ramsay and Joffrey. Sansa spent most of her childhood in the shade of the greatest players of the Game of Thrones. From being an annoying little bird to a master manipulator, she paved her way and surpassed the tactics of players like Cersei and even Littlefinger himself. Learning her skills from Cersei, Olenna, Margaery, Tyrion and Littlefinger, she stood out in the later seasons as 'the smartest person lurking around'. She now plays the game almost 10 steps ahead of the rest of the players and her strategies stand unmatched. Managing to see through the plans of Littlefinger without him being aware of it shows what she has become. Her resilience has cast her very high in the hearts of the fans.

5. Margaery Tyrell

"The queen we deserved' is a true title given to this character. Margaery was the only character in the entire show who had the capability of manipulating the vicious Joffrey. She paved her way to be "THE queen" using her skills in veneering and pleasing everyone around her. The only reasons for her downfall were someone else's mistakes, like the High Sparrow underestimating Cersei and Loras being indiscreet in the Crownlands, and never hers. She was one of the very few people who was actually loved by the common people too.

4. Cersei Lannister

The queen lioness has shown time and again that messing with her is an extremely bad idea. The ruthless queen regent wiped off the Sparrows and the Tyrells out of her way in a single blow. She has one of the most famous dialogues from the series, that is, "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There's no middle ground." Her 'plots and schemes' were examples of the flawlessness of a Lannister. She has learned a great deal from her father and is even crueler than him.

3. Tywin Lannister

The man who single-handedly made his family the richest in the entire continent was a master military planner and crossed any limits to keep his family name upright as it was evident from the infamous Red wedding and the plight of the Reynes which is immortalised by the song "Rains of Castamere". He could only be owned by Olenna Tyrell and the conversation between these two have stood out as the best conversations in the entire series. Although being so evil, Tywin commanded immense respect from everyone.

2. Varys

The servant of the realm could equal-foot Littlefinger only if they didn't differ in terms of audacity. Varys' main motive was to protect the common mass from being trampled by the games that the monarchs and the lords played. With his network of little birds from every known continent, he was the most knowledgeable man in the entire continent, as said by littlefinger. The spider was heavily dedicated in installing a good and just ruler on the iron throne. With his intelligence matching Littlefinger's, he was one of the most powerful persons in the entire continent of Westeros.

1. Littlefinger

There are players in Game of Thrones and then there is Littlefinger. He rose from nothing and crawled up his way into becoming the most dangerous man in Westeros. He was the main reason why the Game of Thrones even started in the first place. He turned houses against each other to give birth to immeasurable amounts of chaos which quoted by him- "is a ladder". The only reason for his downfall was that he underestimated Sansa while telling her all the mind games that he plays and his awkward love towards her. We can understand how difficult he was to defeat when magic and the three-eyed Raven had to be involved in order to expose him and his plans.

Valar morghulis.
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