Qyburn appreciation post: Machiavelli and Avicenna had a baby and he became Hand. On paper, Qyburn serves at Cersei’s direction, but I’m working from the assumption that Qyburn is the brains of the operation (he is the “cleverest man I know” after all). This is mainly because plans hatched solely by Cersei seem to focus on spite and/or turn to disaster (see: empowering the High Sparrow). Moreover, Tywin, who is if nothing else is good at assessing leadership skills pegs Cersei as being an overrated schemer at best

That said, let’s look at the scoreboard: Probably the best healer in the realm (saved Jamie’s arm and essentially reanimated The Mountain while also giving him monstrous powers), reverse engineers both a poison AND its antidote, invents the only effective weapon that can be used against dragons, and engineers the complete demolition of the Sept without being discovered and without burning the rest of the city down. Meanwhile, he also seamlessly takes over Varys’ entire spy operation with zero struggle along with the task list of the other half of the small council, and later as Hand of the Queen apparently conceives the plan to one-shot the Dornish-Greyjoy-Tyrell alliance while stranding the core parts of Daenerys’ army on the far side of the continent (although I’m sure this was a collab with Jamie)

On top of all that he’s not even cruel - he expresses regret that Pycelle will die being stabbed to death in a dingy basement; he rewards his little birds with fancy treats and makes their abusive parents disappear. Fiercely loyal too, never a hint of backstabbing or treachery to the people he serves. Questionable research ethics of course, but unlike the other people who have committed crimes against humanity in Westeros he’s not motivated by malice or sadism

Now in fairness, in the end he lost and it cost him his life. But the odds were monumentally against his side. His enemies had the luxury of being able win while committing multiple catastrophic fuckups and could always fall back on advantages like dragons or having an omniscient demi-god on their side. Qyburn had zero margin for error - he had to defeat the whole world and he almost did

So tip of the hat to possibly the most GOATed figure in Westeros

The geniusmaxxer who schememogged all the beta monarchlets