Unaligned

Jaqen H'ghar

a man of Braavos

House: sworn to no house; a Faceless Man of Braavos

Last confirmed vanishing from Harrenhal after granting Arya Stark three deaths in payment for her own — his current whereabouts, and his true face, are, appropriately for a Faceless Man, not a matter the chronicle can settle.

Chained among common criminals bound for the Night's Watch, a prisoner introducing himself as Jaqen H'ghar hardly looked like anything more than one more desperate man buying goodwill from a child with a stolen wagon key. What Arya Stark actually freed at the crossroads inn, when the Lannister ambush that killed Yoren's party gave her the chance, was a Faceless Man of Braavos on some private business of his own — an assassin-priest who repays his rescue with an offer no one else in the story makes her: three deaths, any three she names, owed as a debt of a life for a life.

The arc of Jaqen H'ghar

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

Arya's three names — Chiswyck, Weese, and finally Jaqen himself, spoken half in desperation to force him to stop the killing rather than as a true wish for his death — culminate in a demonstration of the Faceless Men's art she does not fully understand until years later: Jaqen changes his face before her eyes, engineers an escape from Harrenhal's dungeons for her and Gendry besides, and presses an iron coin into her hand with instructions to find him in Braavos, using the words valar morghulis. Whether the 'kindly man' who later trains her at the House of Black and White wears Jaqen's true face beneath one of his many others is a question the published books decline, with evident deliberateness, to answer.

Where the books leave Jaqen H'ghar: Having vanished from Harrenhal by changing his face in front of two witnesses who barely understood what they had seen, Jaqen's iron coin sends Arya Stark toward Braavos and the House of Black and White years later — where a mysterious 'kindly man' teaches her the same order's arts, and never confirms, and never denies, that he is the same man at all.

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.

SourcesACOK · AryaAFFC · AryaADWD · The Ugly Little GirlTWOIAF · The Free Cities

Why does Jaqen H'ghar owe Arya Stark three deaths?

Arya freed him and two other prisoners from a burning wagon during a Lannister ambush; Jaqen, a Faceless Man honoring a life-debt, offers to kill any three people she names in return.

Is Jaqen H'ghar the same person as the 'kindly man' at the House of Black and White?

The books never confirm it outright — deliberately so, given the Faceless Men's art of changing faces — though the parallels invite the reader to wonder.