Jorah Mormont

Son of Lord Commander Jeor Mormont of the Night's Watch, Jorah inherited Bear Island and a second wife, Lynesse Hightower, whose taste for southern luxury a northern island's revenues could never keep pace with. To fund it he sold captured poachers into slavery across the narrow sea — a hanging offense in the Seven Kingdoms — and fled into exile ahead of Eddard Stark's justice rather than answer for it. Lynesse left him for a wealthier man not long after; Bear Island passed in disgrace to his cousins.

In exile he attached himself to Daenerys Targaryen's household in Pentos, and later among the Dothraki, initially reporting on her movements to King Robert's court through Varys's network in exchange for a royal pardon he never collected. Somewhere in her service the informant's arrangement became genuine devotion, and when his old letters surfaced and exposed him, Daenerys exiled him a second time despite everything he had done for her since.

He wandered, enslaved and then freed, before making his way back to her service at Meereen, still hoping to earn a forgiveness the text has not, as of its last published chapter, granted him.