The 30 most iconic moments from Game of Thrones, ranked

30. Littlefinger lays out his philosophy

Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish finally, blessedly died at the end of Game of Thrones season 7, but before that, this guy was making all manner of vicious trouble for everyone for years. It’s thanks to Littlefinger that Lysa Arryn first raised her sister Catelyn’s suspicions of the Lannisters, it’s Littlefinger who fed Catelyn false information that led to her arresting Tyrion, and Littlefinger who betrayed Ned Stark and ensured he would be in front of the Sept of Baelor the day Joffrey decided he wanted himself a wolf head. There’s a good argument to be made that Littlefinger, more than anyone else, is behind all the political instability our characters have been dealing with for the past seven seasons.

Why did he do it? The closest he comes to revealing what makes him tick is at the end of “The Climb” in season 3. “Chaos is a ladder,” he tells Varys, his rival and counterpart. “Many who try to claim it fail, and never get to try again…Some are given a chance to claim, but they refuse. They cling to the realm, or the gods, or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”

What we have here is a man so obsessed with ambition that he will start a war knowing full well that hundreds of thousands of people will lose their lives purely for the opportunity — not even the certainly — to rise in the world. And rise he does, until the last human emotion he can’t quite seem to shake — affection for Sansa Stark — blinds him to seeing how much she’s learned from him.

Ambition and power are key themes in Game of Thrones. No one exemplifies those themes better than Littlefinger, and no scene exemplifies Littlefinger better than this one.