Complete Monster/A Song of Ice and Fire

A Song of Ice and Fire has many complex antagonists with very understandable motives. For example, Queen Cersei acted to protect her children and twin brother Jaime. However, as in most works, there exist several people who are indeed monsters.


 * Joffrey Baratheon shows all the signs of a complete psychopath. As a young child, he cut open a pregnant cat because he was told she had kittens inside her, and while this could have been the act of a child who didn't really understand what he was doing, his later acts show an extreme sadistic streak. Joffrey revels in his total power over life and death and takes pleasure in tormenting his subjects. During the starvation, he would stand in a window with his crossbow and shoot the starving people outside for sport (this may be a Shout-Out to the scene in Schindler's List where concentration camp commandant Amon Goeth would do the same to the starving Jews, which tells you quite a bit about Joffrey). His first act as King is to, ignoring his advisors and their silly complaints that doing so would start a war or something. He then went on to inflict cruel and prolonged physical and mental abuse on young Sansa Stark, having his knights beat her and, on one occasion, having her publicly stripped naked and beaten with the flats of their swordblades. As if this wasn't enough, after  his younger brother (who is a genuinely sweet kid) starts to say he would "go away inside" when Joffrey would...but he's interrupted before we find out exactly what Joffrey would do to his little brother.
 * Joffrey's age should also be noted; he is only 12 when he starts doing most of these horrible things, and so many readers would say he's too young to be considered fully responsible for his actions. The fact that he not only provides the alternate name for the Royal Brat trope ("The Joffrey") but also manages to achieve Complete Monster-status in just about everyone's eyes is quite an achievement.
 * Joffrey's predecessor, the Mad King Aerys Targaryen, wasn't exactly a paragon of justice either: the people of Westeros had been living under the Targaryen dynasty for almost 300 years, even though it meant putting up with monarchs like Maegor the Cruel and Aegon the Unworthy, yet all it took was 20 years of Aerys' rule to cause five of the seven kingdoms to rise up against the Iron Throne in open revolt. He was really just that bad. Among his worst acts was his execution of Rickard Stark; after the former demanded a fair Trial by Combat, Aerys had him slowly roasted over an open flame, reasoning that fire was his personal champion. Just for kicks, he also had Rickard's son Brandon Forced to Watch while strapped to a torture device that slowly strangled him to death as he struggled to rescue his father. Aerys also made the Stupid Evil decision to replace all of his competent councillors with deranged alchemists who shared his "enthusiasm" for burning people alive. To top it all off, when Aerys finally realized he had lost his war against the rebels, he decided to go out with a bang by ordering his pyromancers to burn Westeros' capitol city to the ground - knowing that it would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people - purely out of spite. Thankfully, even his own sworn bodyguard realized that Aerys was going too far and took matters into his own hands before the plan could be enacted.
 * Roughly half of the Targaryens have the potential to be this due to their never-ending inbreeding. An in-universe saying puts it quite nicely: all Targaryens have the capacity for "madness" or "greatness", and whenever one is born, the gods flip a coin to determine which it is. Rhaegar and Daenerys apparently got "great", but poor Viserys got the other side of the coin, like his father the Mad King. His final scene is a good example, though several scenes -  - at least manage to slightly humanise him to the audience, averting this trope (although he is still a huge jerk).
 * Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain that Rides. Even Word of God said that he was the most despicable character in the series. A terrifying giant of a knight, Gregor is a monster fueled by migraine headaches that keep him in a constant state of anger. He is a sexual sadist who takes a sick pleasure in slaughter, torture, and especially rape. Inventing gruesome tortures of his own, Gregor has an extremely black sense of humor. His Moral Event Horizon was burning his little brother Sandor's face in a brazier just because the latter played with Gregor's discarded toy. Another shocking (and fateful) act was when he smashed apart a baby's head against a wall, then raped the mother with his hands still covered in her baby's brains.
 * It says something about Gregor that things which would and should normally make someone a Complete Monster are among some of his lesser, often forgotten crimes. Take a small bit from A Clash of Kings where each day, for ten days, Gregor picks one person from a group of villagers and has his Torture Technician question that person over and over, until they die from the torture. One of the villagers volunteers to be taken if they will spare her daughter. The next day, he has the daughter questioned too to make sure the mother didn't leave anything out.
 * Tywin Lannister crosses the line into this. He is the man who calculates how much of Gregor's cruelty and horror he needs and applies it, knowing the results perfectly well. Gregor is a monster, but almost animalistic. It is Tywin, by his orders or his indifference, who is responsible for Gregor's worst crimes. He is the one who ordered the deaths of Prince Rhaegar's baby son and toddler daughter and sends Gregor out with orders to rape, pillage, and burn. Tywin's care for his family only extends as far as he can control them: he coldly disowns Jaime when he rejects Tywin's plans and treats Cersei as a political bargaining chip-- but it is what he does to Tyrion that pushes him over the edge. When Tyrion, thirteen at the time, was married to a girl named Tysha, Tywin was so disgusted his son married such a common girl, he has his entire garrison brutally rape her...and made Tyrion watch. And have her last. The sheets were soaked in blood by the time Tyrion got to her. Tywin is a capable ruler and administrator, but his callous indifference completely removes any sympathy the readers could have for him.
 * Ramsay Bolton is possibly the worst of all Complete Monsters in the series -- and by the end of ADWD, he has arguably surpassed Gregor Clegane and Joffrey. How does he manage this? Well, he skins people alive for his own amusement, hunts down women on his father's feudal lands, and rapes them when he catches them. Once he’s finished, he kills them, then skins them - if they’ve given him good sport. If they haven't, he begins with the flaying. He also tortures captives into insane and broken shells of their former selves, eager to obey him. His signature method is to strip the skin off their fingers and let the exposed flesh fester until the victims beg him to cut their fingers off. And if they bite their own fingers off and rob him of that pleasure, he flays another as punishment. Before he rose high enough to enjoy his sports properly, he also had a penchant for raping girls, killing them, and forcing his servant to rape the corpses. Infuriatingly, he is, a Karma Houdini of the worst kind.
 * The Brave Companions (a.k.a. the Bloody Mummers) are an entire team of Psycho for Hire thugs, who perform sickening deeds throughout Westeros for nothing more than their own amusement. Their leader, Lord Vargo Hoat deserves mention. One of Tywin Lannister's mad dogs, his charming habits include: cutting off the feet of people who annoy him, raping people, killing anyone who dares to say he isn't a proper lord (he isn't), betraying his employers when it looks like he is about to lose, murdering, horribly, anyone who makes fun of his thpeecth impediment, whith makeths him thlobber and lithp hilariouthly, burning the Riverlands, and thieving. He gets a horrible Karmic Death when he tries to rape Brienne of Tarth, who bites off his ear. The wound drives him feverish and thus so mad that he doesn't notice Ser Gregor, who he betrayed, storming his castle. Ser Gregor, being Ser Gregor, feeds him his own limbs before eventually killing him. Despite his horrific passing, it is almost impossible to drum up any sympathy for him.
 * And he's not even the worst of the lot, too! That would be noseless paedophiliac serial rapist and serial killer Rorge, who is acknowledged in-universe as the worst. Freed from the Black Cells under King's Landing, along with his companion, Biter, Rorge signs on with the Brave Companions after Arya Stark saves him from certain death. He offers to repay her by anally raping her with her own wooden sword, only stopping when she threatens him with Jaqen H'ghar. He later goes against Hoat's own orders when he tries to rape Brienne of Tarth, and tortures the recently crippled Jaime Lannister by kicking him in his stump, when Jaime reminds him that Brienne is supposed to remain unharmed. It's after Hoat's death, though, that Rorge really comes into his own. Taking control of a gang of brigands, he burns down the town of Saltpans, in an act so savage that it shocks the sensibilities of a Westeros long inured to the atrocities of Gregor Clegane and Vargo Hoat. Killing twenty men himself, Rorge rapes every woman and child in town, most notably raping a six year old girl while wearing chainmail; he also rapes nuns before feeding them to Biter. Upon encountering Brienne again, he expresses a desire to "cut off her legs and set her on her stumps so she can watch me fuck the crossbow girl." The girl in question is under ten years old. Sidematerials would indicate that he is also the reason why Biter is the way he is—finding an orphan boy, Rorge removed his tongue, filed his teeth, and made him fight dogs with only his new fangs. A consummate Woman & Child Hater, and a serial predator in a world full of warriors, Rorge earns the enmity and disgust of everyone he meets.
 * Craster is a particularly loathsome wildling and ally of the Night's Watch (each of whom identifies him as belonging to the opposing organisation), who in his own words, kneels to no man, including Mance Rayder, King-Beyond-The-Wall. Living alone in a huge, ramshackle compound, Craster keeps a harem of women in line with brainwashing and violence, breaking their spirits until they cannot rise up against him, despite the fact that they vastly outnumber him. All of these women are his "wives"; many of them are also his daughters and granddaughters. When one of them becomes pregnant, Craster waits to see if it is a boy or a girl. If the child is female, he waits until she is old enough (read eleven or twelve) and does his best to impregnate her. If the child is a boy, Craster leaves him in the woods to be killed by the cold or devoured by the Others; this way they cannot challenge his control over the women. Obsessed with his own hedonism, and raising the next generation of wives, Craster uses his alleigance with the Night's Watch to make sure that nobody, not even the Watch, interferes with his business.
 * Karl Tanner in season 3 of the Game of Thrones TV series led a mutiny against his Lord Commander (and in the process becoming an oathbreaker (crossing an In-Universe Moral Event Horizon) by denouncing his vows to protect the wall. It's not until season 4's "Oathkeeper" that he reaches Complete Monster status, having taken up at Craster's Keep. Here he hurtles insults towards his men, encourages them to rape Craster's daughters/wives "to death, " and drinks wine from the skull of the very commander he betrayed. When one of the wives comes with a son who has been born, Karl's first reaction is to take a knife and kill it. He's only stopped when the rest of the wives point out they usually leave the sons out in the cold as a sacrifice for the White Walkers so he has that done instead. Once one of his men captures Bran and his group, he menaces Meera and threatens her to get Bran to speak. In the next episode, he intends to rape her in front of her brother, and then let his men do the same.
 * Walder Frey only narrowly avoids this status in the books, but he becomes one in the Game of Thrones TV series due to the removal of any positive qualities whatsoever. While he's somewhat repugnant in his first appearance, he seems to be a fairly competent ruler and willing to help the heroes, for a price. His next appearance even has him come across as a Cool Old Guy, forgiving Robb's slight against him. Then comes The Red Wedding, which opens with Robb's pregnant wife being stabbed repeatedly in the stomach, Robb, Catelyn, and the Stark Bannermen being murdered in a massive violation of guest right, laughing and eating the whole time. To top it off, when his wife is held hostage, he simply tells the hostage taker to kill her, she's expendable. To drive the point home, he begins the next episode by recounting the Red Wedding with glee, showing no remorse and celebrating the power his betrayal has brought him.