Each of the main characters is struggling with identity. They need to figure out who they are, where they belong in the world and they absolutely must accomplish that in a way that does not neglect their history or heritage, but incorporates it.
Their history and heritage is their House, childhood, home castle and home town, their animal sigil, the color of the sigil, the house words, previous friendships, enemies, noble deeds and crimes.
Characters who deny their heritage and history are punished severely for it. They get lost in the wilderness. They’re captured and mutilated. They’re forced to live at court beneath the cruel thumb of a tyrant and, in some cases, they simply die. If you want to survive this story, embrace your heritage and find a way to make it work for you.
“He is part of you, Robb. To fear him is to fear you.”
”I am not a wolf, no matter what they call me.” Robb sounded cross. (ASOS Catelyn II)
Identity conflict can have an internal and external component.
Maybe the external portion looks like this: There is an internal me that is defined by my values, personality, memories, experiences and wants. Internal me is trying to manifest and actualize while struggling against an external world that wants me to actualize in a different way than I want. Example: Arya wants to do boy stuff but the world wants her to do girl stuff.
And maybe the internal portion looks like this: There is a degree to which I have a responsibility to conform myself to the unavoidable necessities of life and my environment. I have to sacrifice some portion of my values, personality and wants in order to meet my responsibilities in life. Exactly how much of internal me do I sacrifice? And which parts? For me this internal conflict might look like “analyzing asoiaf” versus “playing guitar.”
The characters are supposed to overcome the circumstances of their birth by incorporating them. The circumstances of your birth are part of your past and your past can’t be rejected or ignored because it’s permanent. Nobody can change the past and so they all have to pick up their suffering and march forward through life bravely.
I think “the circumstances of one’s birth” is a nearly complete description of what it is, exactly, that the characters have to overcome. It includes a sister. Sansa didn’t get to choose Arya as a sister nor Arya Sansa. They’re stuck with each other whether they like it or not. They’re related by blood whether they like it or not. And no matter how much they dislike each other or how far apart they become, that will never not be true.
The description includes one’s physical and biological traits. Tyrion didn’t choose to be a dwarf. That’s just the way he was born. He’s stuck with his dwarfism whether he likes it or not, and that will never not be true.
Where I think the description is lacking is that it doesn’t include the character’s past choices. But I think those are very much part of the classification of things that the characters need to overcome and incorporate. I tried to highlight this process going awry in Daenerys in this essay here. If I look back I am lost: The Corruption of a Conscience
So it seems to me that the most accurate description of what it is, exactly, that the characters need to overcome and incorporate is “their past,” where their past includes the circumstances into which they were born.
But the trouble with that description is that when people assess their own past, we don’t tend to hold ourselves responsible for the circumstances into which we were born. I had no choice in those, so how can I fairly be held responsible for them?
But somebody has to be responsible for them, because there they are. Causing problems for me. If nobody picks up those responsibilities, the consequences aren’t felt by anyone as intensely as they are felt by me. And as unfair as those circumstances may be for me, compared to yours for you, no single person is exempt from inheriting their own unique set of unfair circumstances. So that’s painfully fair.
Updated Feb 20, 2021 – Small corrections.
Apples and Dragons 