Game of Thrones Characters Who Change, and the Version a Quiz Picks

Spoilers for all eight seasons of HBO's Game of Thrones.

In the first episode, Jaime Lannister pushes Bran Stark out of a tower window to hide his affair with Cersei, with the line "The things I do for love" ("Winter Is Coming," season 1, episode 1; the line is on Wikiquote's season 1 page). Seven seasons later Jaime stands before Daenerys at Winterfell, having come north alone, and says he intends to keep his promise to fight for the living. Sansa reminds the room that he attacked her father in the streets, and Jaime refuses to apologize: "Do you want me to apologize? I won't. We were at war! Everything I did, I did for my House and my family. I'd do it all again!" Bran answers him with his own line, one word different: "The things we do for love" ("A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," season 8, episode 2, on Wikiquote's season 8 page).

In the same episode Jaime does apologize to Bran for trying to kill him, and Bran holds no anger, since the fall led both of them to become who they are. So one episode carries two Jaimes: the man who stands by everything he did for his house, and the man who says sorry for it. A character quiz that offers every character on every question has to write one answer per character each time, and a character who changes over eight seasons has more than one honest answer to give. Somebody has to choose which one is talking.

Why a quiz has to pick a version

A quiz that matches you to a character is built by writing, for each question, the answer each character on it would give. For a character who stays much the same, the job is mostly getting the voice right. Ned Stark comes close to that case. He is executed on Joffrey's order in "Baelor," season 1, episode 9, before the story gives him much room to become anyone else. A character who changes is harder, because each question has several true answers, one for each stretch of the story, and there are only a few ways to settle it.

• The ending. Write each answer for the character as the story leaves them. The last version has the authority of being last, but endings are where the arguments start, and Daenerys (below) is the clearest case.
• The middle. Write for the character in the thick of the arc, after the setup and before the resolution, where most of the conflict sits.
• The change itself. Write answers about becoming someone else, so the arc is the trait. That suits a character whose whole story is a turn, and it describes a direction rather than a person standing still.
• A split. Give one character two results, an early one and a late one. On a quiz where every question has an answer for every character, each split adds an answer to every question, and two versions of the same person end up competing for your answers.

The character quiz on this site splits nobody. Every question offers each character exactly one answer, every answer is worth one point to its character, and the result names the character with the most points (or every character tied for the most), with the count for every character beside it. So each character speaks once per question, in one voice, and the quiz page says its character sketches are written for this site, not summaries of the show's plot. Which voice each character got was decided one answer at a time, and reading the answers side by side shows the choices. The sections below take characters who change, scene by scene, and for those on the quiz, read their answers for the version it settled on.

Jaime Lannister: three verdicts on one man

Between the window and Winterfell, Jaime's turn runs mostly through Brienne of Tarth. In the baths at Harrenhal he tells her why he killed the Mad King: Aerys planned to burn King's Landing and ordered Jaime to bring him his own father's head, and Jaime broke his oath to save the city, its people and his father ("Kissed by Fire," season 3, episode 5). Two episodes later he goes back to Harrenhal and leaps into a bear pit to protect her ("The Bear and the Maiden Fair," season 3, episode 7). At the end of season 7, when Cersei reveals that she lied and won't join Daenerys and Jon against the dead, he leaves King's Landing alone and rides north as snow starts to fall on the city ("The Dragon and the Wolf," season 7, episode 7).

Then the show argues with that climb out loud. After the battle against the dead, when Jaime learns that Cersei has captured Missandei, he decides to go back to her, and Brienne, in tears, begs him to stay. He asks her, "You think I'm a good man?" and answers the question himself. He pushed a boy out of a tower window and crippled him for life, he says, "for Cersei." He strangled his own cousin "just to get back to Cersei," and he would have murdered every man, woman and child in Riverrun. "She's hateful," he tells Brienne. "But so am I." ("The Last of the Starks," season 8, episode 4; the speech is quoted by Capital FM.) He leaves that night. In the next episode he dies with Cersei, comforting her as the Red Keep collapses on them ("The Bells," season 8, episode 5). In the finale Brienne, now Lord Commander, completes his entry in the Book of Brothers and expands the record of what he did ("The Iron Throne," season 8, episode 6).

So the show leaves three verdicts on the same man. His own, given to Brienne on his way out, puts the worst acts first. Hers, written into the book after he is gone, fills in what he accomplished. And Bran's, given when Jaime apologizes to him at Winterfell, refuses to separate them: the fall made both of them who they are.

The quiz's Jaime is closest to Bran's verdict, written as the change itself, and how much of that you see depends on the length you take. On the short version his answers are about nerve, guilt and reputation. A catastrophic mistake is carried "With something close to guilt you've never quite resolved," and what keeps him awake is "Whether you are, at bottom, the person everyone assumed you were," which is close to the question he puts to Brienne, without the answer he gives it. The full version adds the questions where his answers name the turn outright. The song about his life is "The knight who was made of more than his worst moment," his legacy is "The distance between who you started as and who you became," and he has survived because "You changed, really changed." Those answers read like Brienne's entry in the book. Jaime's own verdict comes nearest in that worry and, on the full version, in an enemy's offer he would "Consider it seriously, and despise yourself for considering it." No answer says what he tells Brienne, that he is hateful too.

One Jaime answer manages to hold more than one Jaime. Asked how you show love, his answer is "By doing something that costs you something real." It fits the bear pit and the ride back to Cersei equally well, and it leaves out the tower window, where the cost fell on someone else. The Jaime result page groups his answers and sets them beside Jon's and Cersei's.

Sansa Stark: who gets the credit

Sansa starts the show wanting a prince. When Ned tells his daughters he wants them back in Winterfell for their own safety, she protests: "I can't go! I'm supposed to marry Prince Joffrey! I love him! And I'm meant to be his queen and have his babies!" ("A Golden Crown," season 1, episode 6, on Wikiquote's season 1 page). She ends it crowned Queen in the North, after Bran accepts her request that the North be independent ("The Iron Throne").

In the final season the show gave Sansa her own account of what had made the difference, and that account was disputed. The Hound tells her "you've changed, little bird," and says none of it would have happened if she had left King's Landing with him: "No Littlefinger. No Ramsay. None of it." She answers, "Without Littlefinger and Ramsay and the rest, I would have stayed a little bird all my life" ("The Last of the Starks," season 8, episode 4, as quoted by TheWrap). TheWrap reported the actor Jessica Chastain's objection that the scene presented Sansa's past trauma, rape included, as part of her development. "Rape is not a tool to make a character stronger," Chastain wrote, adding that the little bird had always been a phoenix.

That leaves two accounts of the later Sansa: the show's, in which what she survived made her, and Chastain's, in which the strength was hers from the start. The quiz writes only the later Sansa, and its answers follow the outline of the show's account. They keep coming back to lessons learned. A catastrophic mistake is carried "With great patience, having learned to use past pain as a precise instrument," and on the full version a room full of performers is handled "skillfully, having learned to speak both languages," her legacy is "The wisdom you earned the hard way," and the song about her life is "The long lesson of learning to play the game you were born into." None of it credits the people who hurt her, but the shape is a lesson learned by going through something. A quiz that took Chastain's side would look for that strength in the girl of season 1 as well, and this one writes no answer for her. The Sansa result page sets her answers beside Tyrion's and Arya's.

Arya Stark: the list, from both ends

Arya's list carries her through the middle of the show. In season 4, traveling with the Hound, she tells him she can't sleep until she says the names, "Only the ones I'm going to kill," and his own is among them. His reply: "Hate's as good a thing as any to keep a man going, better than most" ("First of His Name," season 4, episode 5; the exchange is on Wikiquote's season 4 page). In Braavos, after her fight with the Waif in the dark, Jaqen finds the Waif's face in the Hall of Faces and congratulates Arya on becoming no one. She rejects the title. She is Arya Stark of Winterfell, she tells him, and she is going home ("No One," season 6, episode 8).

Then the man whose name was on the list talks her out of it. In King's Landing, with Arya still set on killing Cersei, the Hound tells her, "You think you've wanted revenge for a long time? I've been after it all my life." He convinces her to give up her vengeance, they part as friends, and she thanks him by name: "Sandor. Thank you" ("The Bells"; both lines are on Wikiquote's season 8 page). In the finale she sets out to explore the uncharted sea west of Westeros ("The Iron Throne").

The quiz's Arya lives between those scenes. What keeps her awake is "The list. The names. What still needs to be done." Her last night before everything changes goes to "Sharpening your sword. Literally or otherwise." On the full version the song about her life is "The girl who refused to become what the story expected of her," which is the girl in the Hall of Faces, and the lesson she wants a child to take from her is "That you belong to yourself first. No one else gets to write your story." That is Arya in the middle of her story, with her name kept and her list still open. The Arya who thanks the Hound and sails west has put the list down, and the question about what keeps you awake has no answer written for her. The Arya result page sets her answers beside Sansa's and Jon's.

Daenerys Targaryen: stopping before the bells

At the end of the first season Daenerys steps into Khal Drogo's lit funeral pyre. At daybreak her remaining followers find her unharmed in the ashes, carrying three dragon hatchlings, and bow to her ("Fire and Blood," season 1, episode 10). In the final season, after the Lannister forces drop their weapons and King's Landing rings its bells in surrender, she burns the city from Drogon's back anyway ("The Bells," season 8, episode 5). Whether the second scene is where the first was heading is the argument the final season left behind.

Wikipedia's article on "The Bells" collects both sides, and two of them come from the same outlet. Zack Beauchamp of Vox granted that the show had been "building toward Daenerys becoming the Mad Queen," but called the execution "sloppy and rushed": to him it felt as if Daenerys had become a monster "simply because the show needed her to become a monster." Vox's Andrew Prokop argued that the turn had likely been planned by George R. R. Martin from the beginning: "This is the ending it was headed toward all along." The site's article on four leadership styles follows the advisers she lost on the way there.

Anyone writing Daenerys answers has to decide what "The Bells" means: the place the earlier scenes were heading, or a turn the show didn't earn. The quiz avoids deciding by stopping short of it. Her answers carry the warning signs without the outcome. Told something unwelcome, she hears it out, "though you feel the resistance after being so certain for so long." On the full version her legacy is "What you built and what you broke in order to build it," and her song is "The fire that wouldn't go out, even when the world tried to extinguish it," which reads like the pyre in season 1. And a Daenerys result names the risk without naming the city: "Certainty is the strength here, and also the thing that can stop you listening." A reader on Prokop's side will see the ending in those lines, and a reader on Beauchamp's side will see a queen who hadn't got there yet. Either way, the quiz's Daenerys is drawn at a point where King's Landing is still a risk and not yet a fact. The Daenerys result page sets her answers beside Cersei's and Jon's.

Theon Greyjoy: the ward, Reek and the man in the godswood

Theon shows the problem at its sharpest. He starts the show at Winterfell as Ned Stark's ward and hostage, the price of the failed Greyjoy Rebellion (Wikipedia's article on the character). In season 2, having taken Winterfell, he beheads Ser Rodrik Cassel while Bran and others urge him not to, and Bran and Rickon escape in the same episode ("The Old Gods and the New," season 2, episode 6). In the next, he hunts them with dogs and comes back with the burned bodies of two boys, which he puts on show as a warning ("A Man Without Honor," season 2, episode 7). The character article says they were farm boys he killed to pass off as the Stark boys.

His torturer turns out to be Ramsay Snow, who renames him "Reek" ("Mhysa," season 3, episode 10). Two seasons later, when Myranda threatens Sansa with an arrow, Theon throws Myranda from the catwalk, and he and Sansa jump from the castle walls into the snow ("Mother's Mercy," season 5, episode 10). Then he slips back. When Euron's fleet attacks his sister Yara's, he jumps overboard and abandons her ("Stormborn," season 7, episode 2). He returns to Winterfell wanting to fight for the Starks and volunteers to defend Bran ("A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms"). On the night of the battle, in the godswood, he begins to apologize, and Bran stops him: "Everything you did brought you where you are now. Where you belong. Home." Theon defends Bran to the last man, and Bran tells him, "Theon. You're a good man. Thank you." Theon charges the Night King, who kills him with his own spear ("The Long Night," season 8, episode 3; Bran's lines are on Wikiquote's season 8 page).

The man who beheads Ser Rodrik, the man called Reek and the man in the godswood would not describe themselves the same way. A quiz could pick one of them, write answers about the change itself, or split him in two, and each choice leaves most of him out. Through Bran, the show leans toward the change itself. Twice in two episodes, Bran tells a man who wronged him that what he did is part of how he got where he is: Jaime, about the fall, and Theon, about coming home. One episode after Bran calls Theon a good man, Jaime asks Brienne, "You think I'm a good man?" and argues against himself.

Theon isn't one of the characters on this site's quiz, so it never had to make that choice for him. The characters it does carry each needed the choice made, one question at a time.

What a result is a match for

Put side by side, the quiz's choices aren't one rule applied evenly. Sansa is the later seasons. Arya is the middle, with the list still open. Daenerys is the queen before King's Landing, with the warning written in. Jaime is the change itself, more so on the full version than on the short one. None of these is the version a character "really" is. Each is a reading, and the show leaves several standing.

That matters for how to read a result. A match says your answers sit closest to the version of a character the quiz wrote, not to the character across all eight seasons. If you recognized yourself in the Sansa who wanted to marry Joffrey, or the Arya who let the list go, the quiz has no answers for them, and the answers you picked instead count for someone else. The count beside every character is worth a look, since a close second can be where a missing version of someone went. Each result page goes through its character's answers, and the notes under every question on the quiz page say which answer counts for whom and why.