Who is faceless men

While there do not seem to be set rules for who may join this order of assassins, they do take the title of Faceless Men literally. It is said that having women part of their group is very rare. Even rarer is having children trained as assassins. The reason for these restrictions is unclear, but it is interesting to note considering how Arya Stark became involved with the Faceless Men.

Despite being a female child, the group has taken a major exception with her. To hire the Faceless Men to carry out an assassination is certainly costly. In the first novel, A Game of Thrones , Littlefinger shoots down the idea of using them to assassinate Daenerys Targaryen as the price is too high.

But while it might always be a high price, the services of the Faceless Men are available to anyone willing to pay. Even someone without a single coin can still hire the Faceless Men, so long as they are willing to give up something they value. The Faceless Men are not seeking to be rich, they just believe death has a price.

Aside from the extensive set of skills one needs to become a member of the Faceless Men, there are also strict rules to obey.

We saw in the show, that Arya was punished for killing someone whose name was not given, as well as refusing to kill someone whose name was given.

However, the most serious rule is that they cannot kill someone they know. A Faceless Man is meant to be a stranger and kills only to serve their god. Considering Arya has used her skills only for her own revenge kills , she may yet have to deal with the wrath of the Faceless Men.

Thankfully, the books offer some more insight into things. After drinking a special concoction, the Faceless Man cuts their own face and the blood allows the mask to fuse with their face. The masks come from people who have given their lives to the Many-Faced God. As we move into Game of Thrones Season 8 , we l ook back at when Arya Stark Maisie Williams was at the House of Black and White to remember a historic hitman willing to walk into his own sword.

His eyes usually shaded as he spoke in the most profoundly wide generalizations. A girl would do this and a boy would do that, and a man has duties. Death is certain. Time is something else. Arya rejected the tenets of the Faceless Men and reclaimed her identity, but Jaqen remains a man of mystery, suspense, and a deep spiritual tradition. Gods are not mocked, you say? Well, this is no joking thing.

Game of Thrones is littered with assassinations. The hunting party scattered, which suggests it was no accident. It allowed Henry I to ascend to the throne. We first met the Faceless man when Arya saved him from burning to death in season 2. He made good on his promise before the end of the season, freeing her and her friends at the mention of a name. Ad — content continues below. George R. The guild of the Faceless Men seems to be inspired by the Hashishins, a secret order formed by the enigmatic Hasan bin Sabbah during the Crusades.

Some see the Crusades as an early outbreak of Western racist imperialism. The group sometimes fought against the Crusaders and sometimes killed for them. They inspired such western secret societies as The Templars, the Society of Jesus, Priory de Sion, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucian Orders and, of course, the secret society to end all secret societies the Illuminati. The link between the Assassins and the European Illuminati originated from a flyer from the ever-reliable John Birch Society, which said the Knights Templar and the Freemasons were under Hashishin influence.

They theorize that the Bavarian Illuminati was a revised version of the Hashishin system. The Sunni Seljuq dynasty dismissed the Shia Nizaris as hash eaters or hashshashins. The assassins seized their mountain fort Alamut, in what is now north-western Iran. Cornered in their mountain hideaway, the Hashishism dope fiends proved no match for the clean-living Mongol warriors, their fortress was destroyed, and their dancing girls shipped to Mongolia for rehabilitation.

Wait, dope and dancing girls? Hasan bin Sabbah reputedly taught that if nothing is true then everything is permitted and he went straight to hell for it, according to Orthodox Muslim historian Juvaini.

Sabbah created a mountain paradise with the most beautiful harem girls in the world and kept his elite warriors high on hashish. He came to the conclusion that assassination was preferable to war in political maneuvering.

Jaqen gives her a coin and tells her that if she ever needs to see him again, she must show the coin to a Braavosi and say the words "Valar Morghulis. He turns his face away from Arya and when he turns back his face has changed. In the Riverlands , Sandor steals a hog farmer 's cart to gain access to the wedding at the Twins. After knocking him unconscious, the Hound is about to kill him but Arya intervenes.

She mentions Jaqen not by name as a "real killer" as opposed to Sandor, and that he could kill the Hound with very little effort. After he tells her that he is going to Braavos , their home port, Arya shows him the iron coin which Jaqen H'ghar gave her. As Terys looks in awe, she tells him " valar morghulis". He promptly nods his head and replies " valar dohaeris ", offering her a cabin aboard the Titan's Daughter. At Braavos , after being dropped off at the House of Black and White , Arya Stark calls to the door of the ancient building.

An old man answers her call and she asks for Jaqen H'ghar, only to be told that there is no one by that name inside. Some time later, Arya is saved by the same Faceless Man and follows him. However, he insists he's not Jaqen H'ghar, but "no one", as all Faceless Men are, and he tells Arya she must learn to be "no one" as well. A few days later, Jaqen helps a man commit suicide while Arya watches and sweeps the floor.

When she comes to him and tells him that she no longer wants to sweep the floor because she wants to train, he tells her that she is training: to serve, as all Faceless Men must. Jaqen later interrupts the Waif as she plays the 'game of faces' with Arya, claiming that she is not ready.

When he sees all her things in her room, including her sword Needle , he hints to her that she must dispose of all ties to her former life as Arya Stark in order to continue her training to be "no one.

Later, when Arya is asleep, Jaqen H'ghar comes to test Arya again. This time, when he asks Arya who she is, Arya tells him how she came to join the Faceless Men, trying to slip in a few lies into the story. However, Jaqen is able to tell when Arya is lying and hits her with a switch whenever she does.

Before he leaves, he tells her that she is lying not only to him, but to herself as well. When, eventually, Arya proves herself, Jaqen brings her to the Hall of Faces, a great underground chamber that houses thousands of faces. All the faces had been taken from the corpses that the acolytes wash in the temple.

The Faceless Man then asks Arya if she is ready to give up who she is to become "no one. Arya assumes the identity of Lanna, a clam-seller, and shows Jaqen H'ghar she can convincingly become a different person, developing an elaborate and very believable backstory.

The Faceless Man sends her, as Lanna, to the harbor where she observes someone referred to as "the thin man" refuse a contract to insure a man's boat, leaving the man in desperate circumstances.

Jaqen explains the thin man's business is a sort of gamble yet he does not honor his agreements; when a ship captain dies at sea, he is supposed to make good on his promise and pay the family, but he often doesn't. Jaqen instructs her to kill him, and hands her a "gift" for the thin man —a vial of poison.

The next day, Arya returns to the House of Black and White empty-handed, having abandoned her first mission for the Faceless Men. When Jaqen H'ghar asks what happened, she lies to him and says that the Thin Man simply wasn't hungry today and didn't order any over her oysters.

Jaqen quips that perhaps this is why he is a "thin man", and Arya promises that she will follow through on the assassination tomorrow.

She departs, and while Jaqen seems to suspect that she was lying, he makes no outward reaction to it. Arya will have a lot of work to do soon. After killing Meryn Trant, Arya returns to the House of Black and White and returns the face that she used to hide her identity.

However, Jaqen H'ghar and the Waif appear and say that Meryn's life was not hers to take, and that a debt must be paid.

The Waif grabs Arya as Jaqen pulls out a vial, presumably containing some kind of poison. He however drinks the poison himself and collapses, with Arya screaming for him to stay alive. Arya states that he was her friend, and hears Jaqen's voice behind her say 'he was no one'.

She turns around to see that the Waif now has Jaqen's face, and Arya asks who the person on the floor with Jaqen's face is.

Jaqen, in the Waif's body, says that he is no one, as Arya begins to remove multiple faces off the person on the floor, until she sees her own face. She then begins to lose her sight, as her eyes turn white and screams for help. Arya has been a blind beggar in the streets of Braavos since she lost her sight in the Hall of Faces.

The Waif shows up daily to torment her and beat her with a staff. One day, after being hit by the Waif, Arya tries to strike back with her rod, only to have it caught in mid-air by Jaqen H'ghar, who has been watching. He promises that if she says her name, he would provide her shelter, clothes and have her eyesight restored. However, Arya resisted the temptations and said that she has no name.

Satisfied, he tells Arya to follow him, and that she is a beggar no more. Back at the House of Black and White, Jaqen observes the Waif fighting with Arya and is pleased to see Arya successfully defend herself while still blind. He offers to give Arya her sight back if she says her name, and as before, she says "A girl has no name. Arya hesitates for a moment, knowing that the water is poisoned and meant for those seeking a quick and painless death.

Jaqen reminds her that as someone with no identity at all, she should be completely void of fears. Arya calmly drinks from the cup, and her sight is restored.

After explaining that the original Faceless Men were the founders of Braavos, previously slaves of the Valyrian Freehold , Jaqen gives Arya the task of assassinating Lady Crane , an actress in a troupe, and implies that she will be marked for death if she is not successful. Arya reconnoiters her target at a play caricaturing the War of the Five Kings , and notes that Lady Crane is the only one who drinks from a certain bottle of rum. The two agree that poisoning the rum will be the method of assassination, and Arya proceeds to poison Lady Crane's rum at another showing of the play.

When Arya prevents the assassination from occurring, Jaqen gives the Waif permission to hunt down Arya. While pacing the atrium of the House of Black and White, Jaqen notices blood on the ground.

He follows the trail to the Hall of Faces, where the trail stops at a new face on the wall, that of the Waif. Arya sneaks up behind him and points Needle at him. Jaqen does not offer resistance, and even walks into the sword's point. Though she rejects the tenets of the Faceless Men and reclaims her identity, Jaqen is pleased with her conduct by fully deeming her "no one", and allows her to leave.

The TV series gives Jaqen red hair that has white streaks interspersed throughout it.