Jeor Mormont

Jeor Mormont surrendered Bear Island's lordship to his own son rather than his own honor to a court that had grown to disgust him, and took the black in his later years to lead the Night's Watch as its Lord Commander with a bluntness the order badly needed. He is old enough to remember the Watch when it still meant something to most of the realm, and blunt enough to say, plainly and often, that it has been let waste away since. His raven, a foul-mouthed bird that echoes his own irritable phrases, has become nearly as well known among his rangers as the man himself. A maester notes that few Lord Commanders in living memory have taken the Watch's dwindling purpose more seriously, or fought harder against a realm content to let it die.