Lysa Arryn
| House / Order | House Arryn (by marriage); House Tully (by birth) |
|---|---|
| Race / Culture | |
| Status | Deceased |
| Origin | The Vale of Arryn; originally Riverrun |
| Born | 266 AC (approx.) |
| Died | 300 AC, at the Eyrie |
| Weapon | |
| Fate | Pushed through the Moon Door of the Eyrie to her death by Petyr Baelish |
| Portrayed by |
Lysa Arryn, born Lysa Tully, was the second daughter of Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun and the younger sister of Catelyn Stark. Widow of Jon Arryn and mother to the sickly young lord Robert Arryn, Lysa ruled the Vale of Arryn as a paranoid and unstable regent. Her lifelong, obsessive love for Petyr Baelish made her his pawn and eventually his victim, and her secret crimes lie at the root of the war that engulfs the realm.
Background
Lysa grew up at Riverrun alongside her elder sister Catelyn and their fostered companion Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish. From girlhood Lysa loved Petyr deeply, and in their youth she lay with him, becoming pregnant. Her father Hoster Tully forced her to drink moon tea to abort the child, a trauma that scarred her and deepened her fixation on Petyr.
She was married off to the aged Lord Jon Arryn as part of the alliance that won Robert's Rebellion. The marriage was loveless, and Lysa suffered repeated miscarriages and stillbirths before finally bearing a single frail son, Robert, on whom she lavished a smothering, unhealthy devotion, nursing him long past infancy.
Crimes
Manipulated by Petyr Baelish, with whom she had resumed a secret affair, Lysa poisoned her own husband Jon Arryn with the Tears of Lys. At Petyr's prompting she then wrote to her sister Catelyn Stark falsely blaming House Lannister for the murder, the letter that first set Stark against Lannister and helped touch off the War of the Five Kings. Thus the unraveling of the realm's peace began, in large part, with Lysa's hidden act.
The Vale
After her husband's death, Lysa retreated with her son to the impregnable Eyrie, refusing to commit the Vale's strength to any side in the war and growing ever more reclusive and erratic. She received her sister Catelyn coldly and imprisoned Tyrion Lannister when Catelyn brought him there as a captive, subjecting him to a trial that ended in his escape by combat.
Eventually Petyr Baelish came to the Vale, and Lysa, overjoyed, married him at last. Her happiness was short-lived. Made jealous and unhinged by Petyr's attentions to her niece Sansa Stark, who had come to the Eyrie in disguise, Lysa confronted the girl at the Moon Door, the high opening in the floor of the great hall that drops into the abyss below. In her fury she confessed aloud to poisoning Jon Arryn. Petyr calmed her, then coldly pushed her through the Moon Door to her death, afterward blaming a singer for the deed.
Character
Lysa is a portrait of love twisted into ruin, a woman whose devotion to one man led her to murder her husband, betray her family, and abandon her judgment. Fearful, jealous, and emotionally arrested, she is at once a perpetrator of terrible crimes and a victim of the man she loved, discarded by Petyr the moment she ceased to be useful.
In the television series
In HBO's Game of Thrones, Lysa is portrayed by Kate Dickie, and her storyline, including her murder of Jon Arryn, her smothering of her son, and her death through the Moon Door, follows the novels closely.