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A certain man, also known as the Sorcerer, is a minor character in the A Song of Ice and Fire novel series and its television adaptation Game of Thrones. He is a Myrish magic practitioner who made Varys into a eunuch. His name was not given.
In the television series, he was portrayed by Harold James McMullan.
Biography[]
Background[]
Many years ago in the continent of Essos, a Lysene orphan slave boy named Varys was an apprentice to a traveling folly, a touring troupe of mummers. The folly's master owned a fat little cog and they sailed up and down the Narrow Sea performing in all the Free Cities and from time to time in Oldtown and King's Landing in Westeros. One day at the Free City of Myr, a certain man came to watch mummer's show of the folly, and after their performance, he approached the master and made a good offer to buy the child Varys that his master found too tempting to refuse. Varys was terrorized, as he feared the certain man meant to use him as he had heard men used small boys, but he soon found out the only body part of him that the man needed was his manhood.
The certain man soon turned out to be a sorcerer dabbling in the dark arts; he gave Varys a paralysis potion that made him completely powerless, unable to move or speak. Unfortunately, the potion had no painkiller effects, thus did nothing to dull Varys's senses, so he felt everything as the sorcerer was cutting off his manhood at the stem, with a long hooked blade. The sorcerer burnt Varys's penis and testicles in a brazier as part of a bloodmagic ritual. Still paralized and agonizing in pain, Varys watched the sorcerer chanting as he burned his manhood, until the brazier's flames suddenly turned blue. Frightened and filled with horror, the paralized Varys heard from the flames a disembodied voice answer the sorcerer's call, though he could not understand the words the two spoke.
As Varys had served his purpose and the ritual was complete, the sorcerer had no further use for Varys, so he tossed him out on the streets. The boy was no longer able to return to his mummer's folly, as by then they had already sailed from Myr. So Varys asked the sorcerer what he should do, to which the man callously replied he supposed that he should die. Varys, to spite him, resolved to live and started living at Myr, becoming a beggar, a thief, and even resorted to prostitution, selling his remaining useful body part to customers, until as time passed he would eventually make himself enemies among rival thieves in the city, who forced him to flee in Pentos after reporting him to the Myrish authorities.
In Pentos, Varys would meet the impoverished bravo Illyrio Mopatis, who would become his partner and protector, starting an unlikely friendship and the begin of their climb in the social ladder. Thus, Varys's revenge on the sorcerer who had traumatized him was fullfilled even more than he had imagined, after his and Illyrio's efforts would involve them with the governments of the Free Cities and eventually even with the government of the Seven Kingdoms in the continent of Westeros, where Varys would end up living and serving as the Small Council of King Aerys II Targaryen as the Master of Whisperers. However, to this day Varys remains traumatized by the sorcerer's actions, with his emasculation being the least of his torment; instead it is the disembodied voice from the man's ritual that still haunts Varys's nightmares. Ever since that day, Varys has hated all existing types of magic practitioners.
A Song of Ice and Fire[]
In the Red Keep in King's Landing, during the War of the Five Kings, Varys the Spider is asked by Tyrion Lannister how he was castrated, but Varys refuses to answer.
A long time later, Varys brings Tyrion Lannister, the acting Hand of the King, the bad news about the sudden and unexpected death of Ser Cortnay Penrose, the castellan of Storm's End. Tyrion is furious and distraught, as now the enemy claimant king Stannis Baratheon no longer faces any resistance in the Stormlands and can now march to the capital. The two discuss in private the death of Ser Cortnay, with Varys only knowing that it is said he commited suicide by throwing himself from a tower. As Tyrion absolutely refuses to believe it was suicide, he discusses with Varys whether how the killer might have managed to get to Cortnay. After some speculation, Tyrion notices that Varys is not adding his own theories about Cortnay's killers, and after a long silence Varys asks him if he believes in the old powers. When an impatient and snorting Tyrion begins to mock Varys's implication that Cortnay was murdered through sorcery, Varys explains that Cortnay challenged Stannis to single combat on the morning before he died in the night. He also goes back to the subject of Renly Baratheon's mysterious and even more unexpected death, which occured several weeks before Cortnay's, and Renly was also Stannis's enemy, as another claimant king.
Tyrion understands that Varys is suggesting that Stannis is a magic practitioner, serving himself with the dark arts. After multiple long pauses, as if he were undecided whether to confide or not, Varys begins sharing some personal background information with Tyrion, who notices how his voice tone seems to have changed somehow, like he is being himself as a person instead of behaving as "the Spider". Varys tells him the story of how he was sold to "a certain man" in Myr by his travelling folly's master, how this man made him a eunuch in order to perform a bloodmagic ritual and spoke with a disembodied scary voice, how the Myrish sorcerer afterwards tossed him out to the streets to die, and how he resolved to live to spite the man by starting to become a thief and a boy prostitute.
Varys tells Tyrion that even now he still dreams of the night the sorcerer's ritual, but not of the sorcerer himself, nor his blade, nor even the way his genitals shriveled as they burned, but of the voice from the man's flames. The voice that had a conversation with the sorcerer still haunts Varys, who still asks himself if it was a god, a demon, or merely a conjurer's trick. All Varys can say with certainty is that the man called the voice, and it answered, so ever since that day he always hated magic and all those who practice it, and if Stannis Baratheon is such, Varys wants him dead. While Tyrion gives him his sympathies, Varys says he knows he does not believe him, adding that he understands that since the sorcerer drugged Varys, who was also filled with pain, Tyrion surely assumes that the voice was just an hallucination or a dream. Varys admits that he told himself the same countless times.
Game of Thrones[]
When he was a young boy, Varys had sworn to live and one day to get his revenge on the sorcerer who castrated him and tossed him on the streets to die. Living as a criminal and a boy whore across the lands of the Free Cities, he ascended the social ladder until he was employed in Westeros and entered King Aerys II Targaryen's Small Council as the Master of Whisperers. Using his spy network and influence, Varys had his agents locate the sorcerer, who had him kidnapped, gagged and shipped to King's Landing in a crate for Varys.
In the Red Keep, prior to the Battle of the Blackwater, Varys and Tyrion Lannister talk about how could have Renly Baratheon died so suddenly and conveniently for his enemies' advantage. As they end up discussing the paranormal and the occult, Varys says that one day he will tell Tyrion about his emasculation. While Tyrion does not believe in the higher mysteries at all, Varys expresses deep fear for magic and tells him that the dark arts have provided Stannis Baratheon with his military strength, paving his path to the capital. Varys admits that he cannot imagine anything worse than a man using the dark arts such as Stannis sitting on the Iron Throne, and wants Tyrion to stop him.
After the Battle of the Blackwater, Tyrion visits Varys in the attempt to discover who ordered Ser Mandon Moore of the Kingsguard to try and kill him while they were fighting Stannis Baratheon's forces. As soon as he enters Varys's chambers he finds the Spider opening a crate. Varys tells Tyrion the story of how he came to be a eunuch, even telling him the part about the sorcerer's bloodmagic ritual. Varys says he is still haunted by the disembodied voice that spoke with the sorcerer and tells Tyrion that ever since he always hated magic and all those who practice it. When he finally opens his crate, Varys shows Tyrion the sorcerer, tied, gagged, and mutilated inside. Varys greets him and calls him "old friend", then advises Tyrion to be patient like he was, promising that someday Tyrion also will take his revenge against the person who sent Ser Mandon against him. Varys then closes the lid of the box again, with the sorcerer still inside.
Years later, in the city-state of Meereen, Kinvara, the High Priestess of the Red Temple of Volantis, tells Varys that the man who had emasculated him when he was a boy was little more than a "second-rate sorcerer", an amateur dabbling in the dark arts.
Trivia[]
- As the sorcerer is the cause of Varys's deep hatred for all kinds of magic, it is ironic that certain characters genuinely think Varys is a mage himself. Catelyn Stark genuinely believed that Varys uses the dark arts to gain his knowledge, as she found it impossible for him to know so many private affairs. When Arya Stark sees him in his disguise, talking to Illyrio in the Red Keep's dungeons, she mistakes him for a wizards and takes Illyrio's words literally when he calls Varys a true sorcerer and tells him to keep his "magic" going longer (referring to his good work as a spymaster and manipulator).
- In the TV show Game of Thrones, Varys was originally intended to give the speech about the sorcerer and his past to Tyrion on the eve of the Battle of the Blackwater. Due to time constraints, however, it was cut out, so in Season 2 episode "Blackwater" he only considered telling Tyrion, then stopped and said he would tell that another time. Once the scene was moved to a later episode "And Now His Watch Is Ended" and they had more time with it, the detail was added in the scene with the sorcerer.
- In the novels, Varys tells Tyrion his story with the sorcerer right after informing Tyrion that Storm's End's castellan, Ser Cortnay Penrose, suddenly and unexpectedly died, leading to the castle to surrender to Stannis, who was besieging it. While Tyrion is learning about Varys's story, Stannis and his forces are still at Storm's End, preparing for their invasion.
- In the TV show, the background suite of the god R'hllor that is often used for scenes about characters revolving around said god, is used throughout the scene of Varys telling Tyrion his background with the sorcerer and his ritual with the inhuman voice.
- In the sixth season of the TV show, the Volantene red priestess Kinvara calls the certain man an amateur "second-rate sorcerer". This is exclusive to the TV version, as in the novels it is never stated how much experience this man had, and could have possibly been a wizard of high level.
- Furthermore, the character criticizing the sorcerer, Kinvara, is established as the High Priestess of the Red Temple of Volantis. This is not the case in the novels, where the intimidating and odd Benerro is the High Priest of the Red Temple of Volantis, and there is no character named Kinvara, who in a single episode of the sixth season served a similar role as that of the red priest Moqorro in the novels.
