Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish

History

Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish grew up the son of a minor nobleman on a dismal stretch of rocky shore known as the Fingers. Early in life, he was fostered at Riverrun, where he fell in love with a young Catelyn Tully. Unfortunately for him, Catelyn was promised to Brandon Stark. Littlefinger challenged Brandon to a duel, was soundly defeated, and has carried a massive chip on his shoulder ever since.

Resolving to make something of himself, Littlefinger worked hard, leveraged his contacts, and eventually secured a seat for himself on Robert Baratheon’s Small Council. After Robert’s death, he stopped Ned Stark’s coup attempt and secured Joffrey’s place on the throne. Later, he secured an alliance with the Tyrells of Highgarden. For these services, the Lannisters gave him dominion over the castle of Harrenhal, and an assignment: marry the Lady Lysa Arryn and convince her to bring the Knights of the Vale into the war on the Lannister side.

Marry Lysa he did, but instead of working her on behalf of the Lannisters, Littlefinger pushed her out a reverse skylight and took control of the Vale for himself. For Littlefinger is, above all else, ambitious, and will undermine those who have helped him if it means getting ahead. He does have one weakness, though: Sansa Stark, the daughter of his beloved Catelyn. He helped smuggle Sansa out of King’s Landing in season 4 and hatched a plan to marry her to Ramsay Bolton in the hopes that she would help him exert control over the North. Unfortunately, Ramsay was more of a psycho than he anticipated, and Sansa fled. She resolved to defeat the Boltons herself, and when she called on Littlefinger in her hour of need, he and his Knights of the Vale answered.

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Status

With Littlefinger’s help, Sansa and Jon Snow defeated the Boltons and took back their home. Now, Jon Snow is the King in the North and Sansa is Lady Winterfell. And that makes Littlefinger…probably less than he’d like to be.

Littlefinger claims to want the Iron Throne above all else, and he likely won’t be content to help other people rule the North. He may try to manipulate Sansa to help him achieve his ends.

Littlefinger is extremely adaptable, and that makes him hard to predict. But with a kingdom’s worth of soldiers under his command and chaos on the horizon, we can bet he’ll make trouble.