HBO - Game of Thrones SPOILERS INSIDE. you have been warned

[Chain]

You guys are judging the characters all wrong.

You can't judge good and evil of medieval moral decisions on current western morality. You can only judge them based on the setting that Martin put them in.

Basically they have to be considered evil by the morality in Martin's world and they have to be sane.

That pretty much leaves only a few characters that are actually evil.

Major Characters,

Cersei, Joffrey, Reek, The Mountain, The Walkers/Wights, The Red Sorceress,

Their are other minor's like the Bolton Bastard, Ilyne Payne etc.

Based on the above you could certainly put Theon in that class but because Martin and HBO pulled a George Lucas on that character it is certainly debateable. Theon was written so poorly that you can argue things just got away from him. I chose to assume he always coveted and hated Starks and therefore was evil. The way HBO took will just make him seem crazy.

Other then the few above no one is "evil" in the Martin books. HBO may change that.


Vllad

I disagree with just about everything you've said.
Why shouldn't we judge them through a modern, western lens? We're modern westerners and so is George RR Martin. If these were real people I might concede this point, but these characters were tailor made for our consumption and we're meant to be able to relate to them.

Secondly, I would argue that neither Cerci, Ilyne Payne nor the Red Sorceress are evil as such (with the disclaimer that I am currently only about 3/4ths of the way through the third book). Even Joffery seems more stupid and arrogant than actively malicious. The Walkers aren't really characters, and The Mountain isn't really a main character so I'd group him with minor characters like Reek and Biter (again, at least as far as I've read).

And you forget that Theon is only 18 years old and torn between two "fathers" without a reliable moral compass. Things do get away from him, but that's because he was trying to do things he was not ready to do not because he was poorly written.