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| “ | Pretty Meris frightened him. A Westerosi woman, but taller than he was, just a thumb under six feet. After twenty years amongst the free companies, there was nothing pretty about her, inside or out. | „ |
| ~ Quentyn Martell's thoughts on Pretty Meris. |
| “ | You were told your scheme was madness, have you forgotten? Do what you came to do. | „ |
| ~ Meris to Quentyn Martell |
Meris, mockingly nicknamed Pretty Meris, is a minor character from the A Song of Ice and Fire novel series. She is a sellsword and the only woman in the Windblown company. She's now the company's torturer, commanding officer, and loyal enforcer for the Tattered Prince.
The company considers her untrustworthy and is feared for her dead looks and cold persona, though she has never caused any issues.
Appearance[]
| “ | She saw that one of them was a woman, big and blond and all in mail. “Pretty Meris,” her captain named her, though pretty was the last thing Dany would have called her. She was six feet tall and earless, with a slit nose, deep scars in both cheeks, and the coldest eyes the queen had ever seen. | „ |
| ~ Thoughts of Daenerys Targaryen |
Of Westerosi origins, Pretty Meris is a very tall woman, being a thumb under six feet. She is blonde and earless, with a slit nose and both cheeks being crossed with scars. Her cold dead eyes are described like two grey stones. Daenerys Targaryen thinks Meris has the coldest eyes she has ever seen.
Meris wears a full mail armor and uses a crossbow as her weapon. There is a rumor claiming that men cut off her breasts, and now underneath her shirt there are only scar, although this has never been truly confirmed.
Personality[]
Meris is usually emotionless, quiet and cold, although she also has a sarcastic sense of humor and is capable to participate in social interactions, as seen by the fact she joins her fellow sellswords in taking turns at making snarky and mocking comments about Quentyn Martell's failure to marry Daenerys Targaryen and that she makes up mocking nicknames with them for the Yunkish nobles. She is also ruthless, loyal to her commander, and cautious.
Meris frightens Quentyn. According to Old Bill Bone, Meris can stretch out a man's dying for a moon's turn with her torture techniques. Meris had sex with Dick Straw several times, but she appears displeased and unamused when this fact is brought up.
Biography[]
Background[]
Little is known about Meris's past and how she ended up in her current lifestyle. Born in Westeros, Meris lives in the Free Cities in western Essos. She has been with the free companies of mercenaries for twenty years. She was reportedly raped by half the members of an unidentified sellsword company. In Quentyn Martell's perspective, nothing pretty is left in the sarcastically-named Pretty Meris, neither inside or outside.
At some point during her twenty years with mercenaries, Meris joined the sellsword company called the Windblown, where she would become one of the closest enforcers of the company's Pentoshi commander and founder; a nobleman known as the Tattered Prince. She serves as the company's torturer.
A Dance with Dragons[]
During 300 AC, Pretty Meris and her comrades of the Windblown are hired from Volantis by the Wise Masters of Yunkai, to fight on the side of the Slaver Alliance against the Kingdom of Meereen, ruled by Queen Daenerys Targaryen, and the Kingdom of Astapor, ruled by King Cleon the Great. After sailing to Yunkai from Volantis, Meris and her comrades join the armies of Yunkai and New Ghis to lay siege on Astapor, devouring the city's crops and slaughtering their herds. They are also joined by two other sellsword companies: the Long Lances and the Company of the Cat, the latters having fought against the Windblown in the Disputed Lands the previous year, making things tense and uneasy between the two companies. One day at dawn, the Yunkish forces face a sudden sortie by the untrained Unsullied of Astapor, led by King Cleon. As the Unsullied are all still young boys, the Windblown easily defeat them, turning the battle into a one-sided massacre and with Caggo, who cuts down the already dead and rotten corpse of Cleon. Days later, the Windblown are part of the Yunkish forces invading Astapor, after a crazed mob opened the city's gates for them, resulting in Astapor being brutally sacked and burned in a second and worse massacre.
Following the siege and sack of Astapor, Meris, the Windblown and the rest of the slaver army marches north, back to Yunkai, to take provisions before continuing on to Meereen. All sellsword companies are ordered by the Yunkai'i to hunt down any Astapori survivors and drive them back to either their own ruined city or north to Meereen, to prevent the Astapori from going near Yunkai and spread their disease of bloody flux (called dysentery in real life).
During the march to Meereen, Meris and many of the Windblown's men of Westerosi origins are summoned by the Tattered Prince for a war council, including the recently-hired Frog (actually Prince Quentyn Martell). Meris is made part of a contingent consisting of a dozen sellswords, all Westerosi-born. Her comrades for the mission are Frog, Greenguts (actually Ser Archibald Yronwood), Dornish Gerrold (actually Ser Gerris Drinkwater), Dick Straw, Lewis Lanster, Ser Lucifer Long, Hugh Hungerford, Webber, Ginger Jack, Ser Orson Stone, and Will of the Woods. They are instructed by the Tattered Prince to pretend that they have betrayed him and go over to Queen Daenerys to join her forces. He does so as he does not have faith in the Yunkish commanders and wants to ensure the Windblown will be on the winning side of this war. To make this plan believable, Tatters gives the Westerosi party various personal grievances to give Daenerys as reasons for their "betraying" him, both real and false stories merged together. He tells Meris to claim she was raped by half the members of the Windblown, although in reality it was another sellsword company who had done so.
Meris is chosen by the Tattered Prince as the contingent's leader, expecting Daenerys to be more accepting of another woman, despite Meris' character being considered untrustworthy. Meris is displeased when Dick Straw mentions he has slept with her several times to the council. No one in the Winblown outside the gathered men in the council will know that the band's defection is a ruse. Meris and her band are told by the Prince to depart at once, reminding them to beware the Cats and the Long Lances, who will maim them as deserters or disembowel them as turncloaks if they catch them fleeing.
While the Tattered Prince and the rest of the Windblown keep marching to Meereen with the Yunkish host, Meris's band successfully contact Daario Naharis, the captain of the Stormcrows, and offer themselves as recruits for his his company, gaining an audience with Queen Daenerys just as the Prince wanted. However, in Meereen, Meris and most of her party are almost attacked by Daario in a rage and end up getting arrested by Grey Worm on Daenerys's orders, after Frog reveals his real identity as Prince Quentyn Martell, along with his companions Archibald and Gerris, and informs the queen of the Tattered Prince's plan.
After the Yunkish army arrives outside the walls of Meereen, as well as after the wedding between Queen Daenerys and King Hizdahr zo Loraq, Daenerys considers convincing either the sellsword captains Tattered Prince or Gylo Rhegan to defect to her side. Picking the former, she has Ser Barristan Selmy, the Lord Commander of the Queensguard, release Pretty Meris to send her back to the Tattered Prince as a gesture of her regard, and with a message for him, stating that if the Tattered Prince is a clever man he will understand her gesture. Meris tells Barristan that the Tattered Prince has wanted to betray Yunkai from the beginning, and wanted to join Daenerys in the hopes she will grant him Pentos, his native land. Meris is sent back to the Tattered Prince in the Yunkish war camp besieging Meereen, where she reports everything that happened with the Westerosi contingent to her commander, revealing the true identities of the three Dornish defectors to him, and how they were the reason why his plan failed.
The next day, Meris is sent by the Tattered Prince back to Ser Barristan to deliver his reply to Daenerys: the Windblown offer to fight on her side on the condition that she gives Pentos to the Tattered Prince as payment. After Daenerys' disappearance with her largest dragon, the Windblown remains in waiting while the Yunkish demand the slaughter of the dragons Rhaegal and Viserion, and Meereen is ruled by King Hizdahr. Along with Caggo, Denzo D'han, Ser Archibald Yronwood, and Ser Gerris Drinkwater, Pretty Meris is present at the clandestine meeting between the Tattered Prince and Quentyn Martell, which takes place in the undercellar of the Purple Lotus, a seedy winesink by Meereen's spice market, owned by the innkeeper Zahrina. When a displeased Gerris points out that the Tattered Prince brought three men with him, rather than two as previously agreed, the latter justifies his twisting of terms by reminding Gerris that Meris is a woman. When Meris is told to undo her shirt to give evidence, Quentyn promptly drops the argument by telling Tatters there is no need for it.
Quentyn apologizes to the Windblown for having previously misled them and explains that he had no choice but to join the company because the only ships sailing for Slaver's Bay were those that had been hired to bring the sellsword to the warzones. Unmoved, the Tattered Prince suggests he may kill Quentyn if he does not have any good proposition for him. When Quentyn insists that he only did his duty as a Dornish prince, Meris, the Prince, and Denzo take turns into mocking him over the fact that he failed to marry Daenerys, who instead went for Hizdahr zo Loraq. The group then discuss the recent events in Meereen and the death of Yurkhaz zo Yunzak, and how the Wise Master Yezzan zo Qaggaz, who had the most support to become the leader of the Yunkish army, also died recently of bloody flux. Now the title of Supreme Commander keeps being passed around daily, with each Yunkish noble having it, and the Winblown have been provided with a chart to keep track of them.
Quentyn tries to convince the sellswords to have the Windblown fight for Dorne, insisting that there will be no siege of Meereen, as Yunkai made peace with the city, and a treaty to disband the armies has been made. The Tattered Prince reminds him that he can always find a new contract anywhere and that Slaver's Bay is still far from peaceful, with the Yunkish killing hostages from Meereen, tensions between freedmen and slavers, the Sons of the Harpy, the bloody flux, more nations possibly forming a larger Slaver Alliance with Yunkai, with the possibility of Daenerys having died in the Dothraki Sea, where she was last spotted, and King Hizdahr being possibly unable to maintain peace and getting supplanted soon. Insisting to sign a contract with the Windblown, Quentyn offers to double the price paid by the Yunkishmen, promising to pay part of it once back to Volantis and the rest back in Sunspear, insisting that his father, Prince Doran Martell, is a man of honor. Meris and her company are hired by Quentyn, to help him in stealing one of Daenerys's two dragons locked in a pit, as well as to fight for Dorne in the future, during a planned restoration of House Targaryen in Westeros.
Making preparations for the infiltration in the Great Pyramid, Meris forces some Brazen Beasts (Daenerys's new city watch army of Meereen) to give her their daily code word. The Tattered Prince and Quentyn meet in secret a second time, with the Windblown providing the three Dornishmen with complete uniforms, weapons, hooded cloaks, and masks to disguise themselves as Brazen Beasts. When Tatters gives Quentyn the daily code word ("dog" in Ghiscari), he implies that Meris tortured some Brazen Beasts to gain the information. Upon being asked, he answers: "We chanced upon some Brazen Beasts and Meris asked them prettily. But a prince should know better than to pose such questions, Dornish. In Pentos, we have a saying. Never ask the baker what went into the pie. Just eat."
That night, the Windblown help Quentyn, Archibald and Gerris to elude Daenerys' guards and infiltrate the Great Pyramid of Meereen. Under the command of Caggo Corpsekiller, Meris and half a dozen sellswords assist Quentyn's ploy, while the Tattered Prince is posted not too far from the pyramid with fifty men, promising safe escape from Meereen. While the whole group disguised themselves as Brazen Beasts, Meris did not even bother and participates with her own armor and without mask. The Windblown have arranged for a ship on which to put one of Daenerys's dragons, with huge chains ready to restrain it, or both dragons if Quentyn manages to claim both, although he means to ride one of the two on the way back to Dorne. Quentyn believes he can tame the dragons with a whip like Daenerys did with Drogon, assuring the Windblown and his two companions that he has Targaryen blood inherited from past generations of House Martell through marriages.
The disguise plan immediately fails when Meris and Caggo's group ends up having to fight four Brazen Beasts, including a serjeant who nearly kills Quentyn. After Caggo kills a yielding Brazen Beast, Meris reminds a shaken Quentyn that he was told his plan was madness. Upon reaching the dragon pit, the group starts by feeding Viserion and Rhaegal with sheep, hoping the food will make them more docile and sluggish. However, Viserion immediately flies toward the intruders with a roar, inspecting both the Windblown and the three Dornishmen by sniffing them. Last and longest, the dragon stares and sniffs at Pretty Meris, realizing she is female, yet not his "mother" Daenerys. That moment, Meris and the whole group except Quentyn realize how dangerous Viserion and Rhaegal are and that they cannot be reliably controlled. Attempting to imitate Daenerys's taming of Drogon at Daznak's Pit, Quentyn fails to draw Viserion's attention to himself with a whip, and the dragon instead takes interest in the open door, possibly smelling the blood of the dead guards or the sheep's carcasses in the group's butcher's wagon. Meris immediately screams at one sellsword to step aside, but the man is too slow and ends up panicking and shooting Viserion with his crossbow, resulting in the dragon biting his neck and tearing off most of it, while burning him at the same time to eat part of him. This causes Meris and the rest of the Windblown to lose all courage an run away, leaving Quentyn, Gerris and Archibald behind.
After the Windblown retreated, Quentyn ended up getting immolated to death by Rhaegal, and then the two dragons escaped from the pit, as the entrance's door was left open by Meris and her fellow sellswords. The authorities of Meereen sound the alarm, while Meris, the Tattered Prince and the rest of the Windblown retreat back to the Yunkish siege camp outside the city. Their failed plan caused the two dragons to go in a rampage throughout the city, causing fires that do not spread only thanks to convenient heavy rains occurring at the same time. Many people are killed and Rhaegal attempts to make his lair atop the pyramid of Hazkar, only to destroy the building. Rhaegal makes his new lair in the pyramid of Yherizan, while Viserion does the same in the pyramid of Uhlez. To prevent the dragons from eating people, the fighting pits have been packed full of livestock to feed them. Quentyn dies of his injuries three days after the dragons' escape. Despite Meereen being secure, the Windblown and Quentyn's failed ploy, as well as Barristan's own arrest of Hizdahr, have caused an angry mob to gathered outside the Great Pyramid, demanding King Hizdahr's release and the killing of both dragons. Since Hizdahr's arrest, the Sons of the Harpy have resumed their nightly murders with a vengeance, killing more people than before, twenty nine victims in a single night, nine the previous night, and three the night before.
Ser Barristan, ruling Meereen as Hand of the Queen, sends Archibald, Gerris, and whole released Windblown Westerosi contingent (the one previously sent under Meris's command by Tatters) on a mission to negotiate with the Tattered Prince. Although Archibald and Gerris initially hesitate, fearing the Tattered Prince might hand them over to Meris, Barristan convinces them to do it, as he wants the Prince to help him release the Meereenese hostages held by the Yunkish Wise Masters, including Daario Naharis. The Tattered Prince is to protect the captives throughout the expected attack by the Yunkish, which is seen as inevitable, despite the attempted previous negotiations. As a reward, Barristan promises to give the captain Pentos. Soon after the Dornishmen and Windblown are sent outside to meet the Tattered Prince, Meereen is suddenly attacked by trebuchets from the Yunkish besiegers, launching corpses of bloody flux victims instead of rocks, with the intent of spreading the disease in the city.
The Winds of Winter[]
During the daily battles of the second siege of Meereen, Meris now presumably fights on the side of Meereen and House Targaryen, as it has been reported that the Winblown betrayed their Yunkish employers and the Slaver Alliance. During the battle, unexpected allies of the Iron Fleet and House Greyjoy join the battle on the side of Meereen's defenders, fighting Qarth's fleet.
Gallery[]
