10 Game of Thrones dads who give Father’s Day a bad name

Walder Frey

Like Robert Baratheon, Walder Frey’s children are not his top priority. He cares about whether other lords at laughing at him. He cares about nursing grudges great and small. But when it comes to his many, many children, he mostly sees them as nuisances to be sent away, not potential successors to nurture. “I needed to get rid of sons and daughters,” he tells Catelyn Stark when she visits the Twins in the first season. “You see how they pile up?”

If Walder didn’t want as many descendants, he was free to find other things to do with his time, but he kept himself occupied with a procession of much younger wives. By the time he dies in season 6, he’s on his ninth.

If any of Walder Frey’s children are leading happy, productive lives, we don’t see it. Lothar and Black Walder, the pair who liaise with Robb Stark ahead of the Red Wedding and besiege Riverrun when the Blackfish takes it over, are surly and sullen. The procession of daughters and granddaughters Walder trots out in front of Robb in “The Rains of Castamere” look like they’d rather be anywhere else. With a family this big, we’re guessing it was next to impossible to get any quality time with daddy, not that Walder would be likely to spare the time if he found it.

So we have yet another father who is, at best, indifferent to his children, only Walder has a whole lot more than Robert Baratheon ever did, and that’s including all of Robert’s bastards. Still, when it comes to bad parenting, neither of them can hold a candle to this next guy: