Lord Varys ("Spider")

• Individual Picture Notes
  • Conleth Hill as Varys in HBO Game of Thrones

• General Notes
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    Lord Varys was born in the Free City of Lys, across the Narrow Sea.  He was brought to court by King Aerys, and it is said that Aerys’s growing paranoia began when Varys began to ferret out every disloyalty against the Mad King.  Despite his machinations, Varys survived Aerys’s downfall and came to serve King Robert as the enigmatic Master of Whisperers, or spymaster.  He is known derisively as "Spider", even if he sits on the King’s small council and holds the style of Lord Varys.
    
    Lord Varyis is called "the Spider"; he is is a bald, fat eunuch of stylish dress.  Plump, perfumed, powdered, hairless as an egg, and wearing garments such as they wear in his native Lys, Varys cuts an exotic figure in the court of the Red Keep.  He has soft, moist hands and often titters as he speaks obliquely and sometimes mincingly about his spies, the “little birds”, and the whispered secrets they bring them.  He usually affects a fawning, effeminate personality to hide his true feelings and motives. 
    
    Many nobles he associates with find Lord Varys distasteful and untrustworthy. He is a master of disguise, and knows many secret passages within the Red Keep.  Lord Varys disappeared after he was forced to help Tyrion escape the  execution and murder of his father, Lord Tywin Lannister.