Varys

Varys was born a slave in Lys and apprenticed as an orphan to a troupe of traveling mummers who worked the Free Cities and occasionally Westeros. In Myr, a sorcerer paid his master a price too large to refuse, drugged him helpless without dulling a single sense, and cut his manhood away to burn in a blood ritual whose purpose Varys has never fully explained to anyone; he recalls a voice answering from the flames in a language he did not know. Cast into the street afterward, he survived by begging, thieving, and worse, and swore — out of pure spite for the man who had used him — to live regardless.

He became the finest thief in Myr before a rival forced him out, and remade himself in Pentos into something new: a broker of information rather than goods, patient enough to let a secret ripen for years before spending it.

He served as Master of Whisperers to Aerys II, then to Robert Baratheon after the dynasty that made him fell, surviving two changes of regime by making himself indispensable to men who trusted no one, least of all each other. Through the War of the Five Kings he played every faction against the others with an even hand and an unreadable motive, insisting always that his loyalty was to 'the realm' rather than to any single claimant to it.

Late in the war he revealed a hand few had suspected: a long-nursed plan to restore what he holds to be the last legitimate scion of the Targaryen dynasty to the Iron Throne, a young man traveling under the name 'Young Griff' whose true identity the text leaves carefully unconfirmed. Varys fled King's Landing after killing Grand Maester Pycelle and Ser Kevan Lannister with poisoned darts, vanishing from the capital on an agenda entirely his own.