Jaqen H’ghar, The Faceless Man, is undoubtedly one of the most, if not the most, confusing characters in the world of Game of Thrones. Given his absence throughout the entire last season, many believe that it is the end of Jaqen in the show. However, it is hard to believe that because of how impactful he can be in the rest of the story. With tons of theories revolving around him, he surely can spring some surprises in the final season. With most theories revolving around his identity, we first need to understand who exactly The Faceless Men are.
The Faceless Men are a secret society of deadliest assassins in the whole Realm. It is expensive to hire them but sure are effective in completing their tasks without leaving any trails. One of the interesting facts about them is that they are not just assassins but priests as well. They worship Death and accepts the fact that different religions have different figures for Death and hence call their own God as the ‘Many-Faced God’. They do not see killing people as a wrong thing, as they believe that they are helping them get relief from the sufferings of this life. The Faceless Men use deception, manipulation, poison, sticks and disguise as others using different human faces to assassinate people. They do extensive training to become a weapon themselves, be emotionless and complete their tasks without any remorse. As they themselves say, they train to become ‘No One’ so that they can become any one.
The appearances of Jaqen H’ghar
You first see the mysterious character of Jaqen H’ghar for the first time when Arya Stark encounters three chained men in one of the carriages leaving for Night’s Watch. He introduces himself as a citizen of the Free City of Lorath and tries to befriend the little Arya. Later that night when the cavalry is attacked, Arya saves Jaqen H’ghar by giving him an axe to cut himself off from the chains. Jaqen, now a Lannister man meets Arya in the castle where she herself is working as a domestic help. The way Jaqen becomes a member of the King’s army so easily just shows his skills with deception and manipulation. Jaqen asks Arya to name three names so that he kills them to repay the Red God. While granting this wish he says, “The Red God takes what is his and only death can pay for life”. The Red God mentioned here might be the ‘God of Light’ and is one of the many Gods, The Faceless Men believe in. Jaqen kills the first two men but gets his own name as the third name. Aryan un-names him but asks him to help her escape from King’s Landing. He does help her by killing all the guards because of which Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie all escape the castle with ease.
Jaqen H’ghar is very important to the storyline as he is the one who changes the life of Arya forever. By killing the people effortlessly he was showing off in front of Arya to make her love his life. He manipulates her to join him and be one of them. He even gives her a Bravoosi coin to help her in any kind of emergency. He teaches her the words ‘Valar Morghulis’ to help her reach the city of Braavos. At this juncture, it does feel that Jaqen H’ghar’s purpose in the show is to recruit Arya Stark to be one of the Faceless Men.
The revelation of how Jaqen H’ghar changes his faces brings about a serious question. Multiple theories suggest that he could be Syrio Forel or the Alchemist who tries to steal a book from the Citadel or even the Late Rhaegar Targaryen. Well, these fascinating theories are for another time.
Coming back to Jaqen, Arya comes to know that Jaqen H’ghar is just a name that the assassin of The Faceless Men carried. Arya finally reaches the city of Braavos and knocks on the door of ‘House of Black and White’ for help. However, an old man who turns her down and says there is no Jaqen H’ghar in there meets her at the door. Arya leaves but is later met by the same person in the market. He takes her to the ‘House Black and White’ and reveals his true identity by taking off his mask of face. It turns out to be Jaqen himself but calls himself ‘No One’ and tells Arya that she too has to become the same.
This is where things start to change for Arya, as she undergoes rigorous training, as she is asked to be patient and first learn to serve as the saying goes ‘Valar Dohaeris’, which means ‘All men must serve’. Jaqen teaches her to let go of all the possessions of Arya Stark to start the journey of becoming No One. He shows her the rest of the House of Black and White and teaches other activities to like cleaning corpses, how to fight and use weapons and much more. He teaches her not to lie to him, as it is equal to lying to the many faced-gods and herself.
When he gives Arya a task to kill someone, she instead uses one of the faces to kill Meryn Trant, one of the people in her list. This does not go down well with Jaqen who drinks poison to compensate for the life Arya had spared. Arya bursts into tears for losing a friend but finds out the person who died in front of her eyes was not Jaqen at all. The Waif standing behind turns out to be Jaqen, leaving Arya startled. Arya removes faces from the dead body and finally sees herself before turning blind.
Later in the training, Jaqen asks Arya her to give her name in order to get her eyes back. However, Arya insists on calling herself No One. Impressed by Arya’s actions, Jaqen gives her eyesight back and assigns a new assignment of killing a stage actress. However, Arya’s conscience does not allow her to kill the actress. When Jaqen gets to know about this, he asks Waif to do what she always wanted, to kill Arya. Later, Jaqen finds the bloodied face of the Waif in the chamber of faces, leaving him puzzled. Arya questions him on why he had sent her to kill her but he simply answers by saying, “A girl has finally become No One”. To this, Arya responds by saying that she is Arya Stark of Winterfell and she is going home. Jaqen just acknowledges her with a smile and lets her leave.
This is where Jaqen H’ghar was last seen in the show but the question that still loom is that why did he let Arya go, when she finally completed the process of becoming No One. It maybe because becoming No One always meant finding your true self and hence not pretending to be someone else. It is hard to predict whether we can see him in the last season, given his absence from the entire last season. However, it will be cool to get some closure on one of the most important and confusing characters of ‘Game of Thrones’.
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