Beheading Ned - The Hound

Beheading Ned: The Hound


Warning: This article may contain spoilers from any and all of the books.


Welcome back, dear readers, to another exciting article of Beheading Ned. I hope your holidays were full of bounty and your winters were none too long. For this week’s question, I wanted to test your knowledge of popular characters and the pseudonyms they use. Give the real name of each of these characters: The Blackfish, The Mountain that Rides, The Hound, The Knight of Flowers, The Bastard of Bolton, and The Red Viper.

This week we will be looking at another particularly thematic card. This guy is a ruthless killer and former member of the Kingsguard. His name is known and feared throughout much of Westeros. He is an amazing fighter, but turns tail at the sight of fire. I’m talking, of course, about The Hound!

The Hound was first introduced in the story to us as Joffrey Baratheon’s personal bodyguard. His quick temper and burned face made him an easy person to fear. As readers, we quickly started to hate The Hound when we saw his ruthlessness. In one chapter, The Hound killed a baker’s son who was friends with Arya, simply stating, “He ran. But not fast enough.”

But just as quickly as we hated him, we saw him save The Knight of Flowers at the Tourney for the Hand. It was then we realized he might not be as bad as we once thought. I mean, it’s not like he pushed a little boy out of a window or anything. After Ned was imprisoned, The Hound was raised to the position of Kingsguard at the request of Joffrey. The Hound took this title, but not without showing his disdain for knights and their vows.

Late into book two, we see just how afraid of fire The Hound truly is, during the Battle of Blackwater Bay. With wildfire everywhere, he leaves the battle due to fear. He pays a visit to Sansa before leaving the city and displays an odd attraction to the Stark girl. Whether these were his true feelings or just drunken ramblings remain unclear.

When next we see The Hound, he is being apprehended by the infamous Brotherhood Without Banners. Here he fights for his life against Beric Dondarrion in a trail by combat. The Hound comes out victorious and is released from his captivity. However, he doesn’t stray far from the Brotherhood. He soon captures Arya running away and plans to ransom her back to Robb. Unfortunately when they arrive at her uncle’s wedding, they see a scene of death and betrayal.

Forced to flee from the Freys, Arya and The Hound move towards Riverrun. Along the way, they stop in a tavern where they end up fighting three outlaws. Although the two win the fight, The Hound is fatally wounded. Arya leaves him for dead lying against a tree. He is presumed to have died and been buried.

So that is the life and times of The Hound. Is he truly dead? Maybe, I don’t know. In these crazy books it seems like a character isn’t truly dead until you see them get their heads chopped off. But I digress. Let’s look at what version of The Hound is most Nedly. The one I chose to go with is The Hound (PotS). Now let’s see why this is the most thematic Hound out there.

To start things off as always, we will look at the basics. This includes name, traits, icons, etc. If you notice, this is the only version of The Hound that has two house affiliations. These two are Stark and Lannister. This represents, not necessarily his loyalty, but his entanglement with the two houses. Lannister is fairly obvious because of his role guarding Joffrey. The allegiance to Stark most likely comes from his affinity for wolf girls. Well that and he spends a lot of time with Arya going on crazy adventures and learning about life.

Next we can look at his traits. He is only sporting the one on this version and it is the ally trait. This makes sense when we consider that The Hound was never solely loyal to just one house or person. Most of the time he only thought of himself, but that did not stop him helping out different people along the way.

Finally for the basics are his icons, or rather just icon. This guy has only a military icon but he has a whopping four strength to accompany it. This is thematic when we consider that The Hound was known mostly for his skill with a sword. He never sought out power and he never cared to be a part of any schemes or plots. This solo military icon suits this Nedly card just fine.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, we can look at what makes this card truly Nedly. Like most extremely cost efficient characters in the thrones card game, this guy has a negative effect. However, this negative effect is perfectly thematic for this character. The Hound (PotS) states that after a character’s strength is lowered, return The Hound to his owner’s hand. So let’s think for a second, what is commonly associated with strength being lowered? Oh right, burn effects! Burns are caused by fire and The Hound is afraid of fire so he runs away to his owner’s hand when he sees it! It all makes so much sense! If your socks are still on after reading this, then nothing is going to knock them off.

Well there you have it; a fine Nedly breakdown of the misunderstood dog. Though his life is a tragic story of woe and despair, don’t feel too bad. I like to believe that maybe the wolf and The Hound grew fond of each other. Am I completely off base? Probably, but who knows. Comment so I can feel like I actually have friends. As I sign off keep this in mind, even an old dog can learn new tricks.