Unaligned

Illyrio Mopatis

Magister of Pentos

House: no house; a magister of the Free City of Pentos

Last confirmed at his manse in Pentos, hosting travelers of considerably more consequence than his cheese-and-spice fortune would suggest he has any business entertaining.

A magister of Pentos grows fat on trade — spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and less savory cargo besides — and Illyrio Mopatis has grown fatter than most, a mountain of a man in cloth-of-gold with a beard oiled and forked and dyed a bright, improbable yellow. He was, in his leaner and more violent youth, a sellsword and the close friend of a eunuch named Varys, and the two of them have spent the decades since quietly funding an ambition most of Westeros assumes died with House Targaryen at the Trident. Illyrio married twice; his first match, to a cousin of Pentos's reigning prince, bought him standing and little else, but his second wife, Serra — a former pillow-house girl of Lys whom he loved without apparent embarrassment at the mismatch, and whose match cost him the prince's palace forever — seems to have mattered to him. Her death in a plague left him keeping her portrait and her embalmed hands rather than remarrying again.

The arc of Illyrio Mopatis

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

Illyrio's decades-long partnership with Varys reaches toward a single object — a Targaryen restoration — pursued along two tracks at once: the Dothraki marriage he brokered for Daenerys years ago, sweetened with three petrified dragon eggs whose true nature even Illyrio may not have fully credited, and a second, quieter claimant raised under his own roof in Pentos, whose existence complicates every assumption the realm holds about who is left of House Targaryen at all.

Where the books leave Illyrio Mopatis: Illyrio hosts Tyrion Lannister on his flight from Westeros and sends him east down the Rhoyne toward Daenerys with Griff's company, a courtesy the magister dresses as hospitality and the chronicle reads as one more move in an investment he has been quietly funding for years. His own household in Pentos, in the meantime, has been sheltering a claimant to the Iron Throne whose existence most of Westeros still believes 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.

SourcesAGOT · DaenerysADWD · TyrionTWOIAF · The Free Cities

What is Illyrio Mopatis's role in Daenerys Targaryen's story?

He hosted her and her brother Viserys in exile, brokered her marriage to Khal Drogo in exchange for Dothraki support, and gave her the three dragon eggs that later hatched into her dragons.

Is Illyrio Mopatis connected to Varys?

Yes — the two have been close friends since youth and appear, across the published books, to be running a long, coordinated plan neither man has fully explained on the page.