House Targaryen

Grey Worm

House: Unsullied of Astapor; commander in Daenerys Targaryen's service

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.

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to risk her Unsullied's official commander on a duel — a small mercy that leaves him alive for whatever the still-unpublished chapters of this war intend for him.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

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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.