Who is Patchface, and what is his purpose? If you’re a show-only fan, you may not have even heard of Patchface, Stannis Baratheon’s court jester, but if you’re a fan of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, you might noticed that he’s…not quite right. At first glance, Patchface (or Patches, as Shireen Baratheon calls him) seems harmless, but pay close attention to his japes and foolery, and he looks a lot more nefarious.
Game of Thrones theorist extraordinaire Alt Shift X take a long look at this mysterious character, exploring his past, dissecting his ramblings, and ultimately concluding that he’s an emissary for the Drowned God of the Ironborn, biding his time until he can unleash chaos and death on the citizens of Westeros. It’s heavy. Have a watch:
The most obvious sign that there’s something otherworldly about Patchface is his rhymes. When read without context, they seem like the harmless mutterings of a man who has literally gone mad, but upon closer inspection, some of them seem more like prophecies. Like this one, which seemed to describe the events of the Red Wedding many pages before it happened:
"Fool’s blood, king’s blood, blood on the maiden’s thigh, but chains for the guests and chains for the bridegroom, aye aye aye."
In the books, Catelyn kills Jinglebell, the Frey fool. Fool’s blood. Robb provides the king’s blood, and Roslyn Frey spills blood on her wedding night. The Northerners and Edmure Tully are the guests and the bridegroom. Weird.
How does he get the power of prophecy? Alt Shift X theorizes that the Drowned God revived Patchface after the fool drowned in the waters off Dragonstone in a shipwreck that killed 100 Baratheon men, plus the parents of Robert, Stannis, and Renly. All that death could have been a sacrifice to the Drowned God (“Only death can pay for life”), with Patchface’s constant talk about life under the sea, which sounds suspiciously like the Ironborn’s idea of the afterlife, as follow-through.
Ultimately, Alt Shift X concludes that Patchface is on the side of the dead, the Drowned God being himself a servant of the Great Other. Remember that Melisandre, a servant of the Lord of Light, has dark premonitions about Patchface, seeing him circled with skulls and red lips. Sure, she misinterpreted her visions before, but some things are hard to miss.
As usual, Alt Shift X expertly weaves and connects his theory, this time with the Drowned God being a servant of the Great Other (the god of the White Walkers and nemesis of R’hllor), and Patchface ultimately being a servant of death. Melisandre fears him and claims to see him in the flames with skulls and red lips, but she has misinterpreted her visions before.
What do you think? Is Patchface a harmless fool or a nefarious prophet of the Great Other?
Next: Season 8 filming: Blood-red structure shows up on the King’s Landing set
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