Best villain of the show?

The High Sparrow was never, never a good guy. Without being as Sadistic as Ramsey or Joffrey or as machiavellic and selfish as Sansa, the way the High Sparrow gained control over King's Landing was scary. The way he brainwashed people and controlled the idiot King was magnificent. What he did to Cersei, I think now one could have done it, not even Danny with all his power. He almost destroyed the noble and power houses in the capital, he had all of them on his knees and he had no real "power" behind him...

Oh, he was a villain all right, but he was also a brilliant man and did an almost entirely excellent job of running the government of Westeros. He was, in GRRM's words, "everything a king should be, but was not a king", and as such he was personally as impressive as all hell.

But he used his powers for evil ends, rather than good. He made war on the Starks because his son had tried to kill an innocent child. His end game was to put his grandchildren on the throne and create a Lannister dynasty (even more literally than he realized), and to that end he supported the rule of psychopathic King Joffrey. He treated Tyrion like dirt for being a dwarf, and looked him in the eye and sentenced him to death when he as framed. He used horrible tactics in an unjust war, he sent the Mountain out to slaughter and terrorize the innocent population of the Riverlands, to weaken opposition. He arranged "the Red Wedding", which broke all the social rules and mores of Westeros in one go.


And I adored watching him anyway. Dance was THAT good.

He wasn't blatantly sadistic like Joffrey or Ramsey, but that doesn't make him any less of a villain. In fact, I think it makes him MORE of a villain, because he's so calculating and careful. When you first see him, you don't realize just how horrible a person he is -- we just don't like him because at that point in the story, we're rooting against the Lannisters.

And then you get to know him more, and you start to see the man who ordered the rape and murder of Elia Martel and her children. Who orders the burning of the Riverlands and orchestrates the Red Wedding and who knows Tyrion was innocent of Joffrey's murder but sentences him to die anyway. He's so Machiavellian and efficient in everything he does, but because of all the times he puts Joffrey and Cersei into their places, you don't necessarily see that he's a psychopath until you're totally drawn into trusting that he knows what's good for the realm. That's how good of a villain he is.

And Dance played him SO WELL.

Both Ramsay and Euron were essentially the same character: two-dimensional psychos who were covered in plot armour and ridiculously competent (Ramsay outwitting Roose Bolton and Littlefinger, defeating the Ironborn and Stannis, killing a giant; Euron defeating the Sandsnakes and killing a dragon) because the storyline necessitated it, before becoming conveniently stupid enough to kill.

They also hung around way on the show way too long.