House Targaryen

Grey Worm

House: Unsullied of Astapor; commander in Daenerys Targaryen's service
Titles: Commander of the Unsullied
Allegiance: Daenerys Targaryen's household
Culture: Unsullied of Astapor
Notable for: Chosen by his fellow soldiers to command the Unsullied after Astapor's fall; kept his slave name by choice

Last confirmed commanding the Unsullied garrison at Meereen on Daenerys Targaryen's behalf, a post he has held with unbroken discipline since the city's fall.

The Unsullied of Astapor are stripped of their names along with everything else that might make a soldier flinch — castrated as children, drilled past the point most armies would call cruelty, and issued a fresh slave-name at the end of it, usually something the masters find amusing. Grey Worm keeps the name he was given rather than choosing a freedman's name when Daenerys offers the Unsullied that choice, calling it lucky, and the chronicle treats this small refusal as more revealing of the man than anything else recorded about him: a soldier built by his masters to want nothing, quietly deciding what he wants to keep.

Appearances

In the novels

A Storm of Swords
A Dance with Dragons

On screen

HBO's Game of Thrones — Seasons 3–8

Key events

unspecifiedTaken and castrated as a child, trained into the Unsullied under Astapor's slave-masters
unspecifiedGiven the name Grey Worm by his masters, one of the deliberately unflattering names issued to Unsullied recruits
299 ACIs purchased and freed alongside the rest of the Unsullied by Daenerys Targaryen at Astapor
299 ACChooses to keep his slave name rather than take a freedman's name, calling it lucky
299 ACIs chosen by his fellow Unsullied to command them after Astapor's fall
300 ACAsks Daenerys for the honor of personally killing Meereen's champion before the city's siege, and is refused
300 ACHolds command of the Unsullied garrison through Meereen's plague, insurgency, and siege

Reading the character

Grey Worm's small refusal — keeping a name built to be a daily humiliation and reframing it as luck instead — is the story's most economical illustration of how a person can reclaim agency inside a system explicitly engineered to deny it. The text doesn't dwell on the choice, which makes it land harder: no one else in the scene treats it as remarkable, which is itself the point about what the Unsullied are trained to see as unremarkable.

His command of the Unsullied also puts him at the center of one of the series' more sustained arguments about what an army built to feel nothing does once its soldiers start, however quietly, wanting things — loyalty to a person rather than an order, a name worth keeping, eventually something the text is careful to describe as more than duty.

The arc of Grey Worm

This carries the character’s road through the published novels. Read on only if you do not fear to know.

Chosen by his own company to command them after Astapor's fall, Grey Worm asks Daenerys for the honor of personally killing Meereen's champion before the city's siege begins; she refuses him, unwilling to risk her Unsullied's official commander on a duel — a small mercy that leaves him alive for whatever the still-unpublished chapters of this war intend for him.

Where the books leave Grey Worm: Grey Worm holds command of the Unsullied garrison through Meereen's long unraveling — plague, insurgency, and a war camped outside the walls — with the same flat discipline the Astapori slave-masters trained into him, though he has, by the text's quieter suggestions, begun to want things for himself that his training was meant to make impossible.

These partings name deaths, endings, and roads not yet ridden in the books. Unveil them only if both roads are known to you — or if you do not fear to know.

SourcesASOS · DaenerysADWD · DaenerysTWOIAF · Beyond the Free Cities

Explore further

House

Why does Grey Worm keep his slave name after being freed?

He tells Daenerys he considers it lucky — the name he wore when she freed him and won his first battles under her banner — and declines the freedman's name she offers instead.

What role does Grey Worm hold in Daenerys's army?

He commands the Unsullied, chosen by his fellow soldiers themselves after the fall of Astapor, and has held the post through the siege and occupation of Meereen.