8 George R.R. Martin Tropes And What They Really Mean

6. The Alcoholic

What It Is: The Alcoholic trope is fairly loose, but it's basically when a character shows up who seems defined by their obsession with drinking. What It Really Means: On the surface, this one probably seems fairly simple. A character likes drinking, so that means...they like getting drunk? Throughout Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire series, there's a huge number of main characters who are basically alcoholics. These include but are not limited to Cersei Lannister, Tyrion Lannister, Dontos Hollard and Viserys Targaryen. Alcohol in Martin's books is used as a manifestation of emotional conflict. It's a way of implying complexity without spending pages and pages doing so €“ if someone is drinking to cope, they must have a fairly good reason. The Alcoholic trope can also be used to build suspense. Martin's books are so long that it's often effective to draw out emotional conflict over a long period of time, building suspense and making the resolution (whether good or bad) ultimately more powerful. Chuck in a few scenes of a character drinking (or reference their drinking more often) and the reader knows that things are getting much worse. This trope is often closely connected to another trope, which is the Drowning His Sorrows trope, a way for character's to mask their upset using some sort of vice.