?

"You are al­ways stick­ing up for the un­der­dog,'' my class­mate Su­san, who lat­er stud­ied psy­chol­o­gy, said to me once when we were in high school. She said it out of frus­tra­tion, not ad­mi­ra­tion be­cause I could al­ways come up with a "sup­pose'' or "maybe'' to ex­plain the er­rant be­hav­iour of an out­cast, de­viant or trou­ble­mak­er.

Hav­ing been an un­der­dog my­self, I can tell you it is a whole lot more fun than show­ing up with a fist­ful of cre­den­tials and wav­ing a ban­ner. Peo­ple nev­er see the un­der­dog com­ing. And be­cause no one pays at­ten­tion to us in the be­gin­ning, we get to see peo­ple's true char­ac­ter be­cause we are not im­por­tant enough for them to try to im­press us.

Is it any won­der, then, that Tyri­on Lan­nis­ter is my favourite Game of Thrones char­ac­ter?

Called Half Man and the Imp, the dwarf son of the mighty Ty­win Lan­nis­ter is de­spised by his fa­ther and evil sis­ter Cer­sei. Sen­tenced to death for a mur­der he did not com­mit (King Jof­frey, first and last creep of his name, was poi­soned at his own wed­ding), he fi­nal­ly got in­to a mess he could not talk his way out of.