Olenna Tyrell

Born Olenna Redwyne of the Arbor, she was betrothed as a girl to Prince Daeron Targaryen and spent years making sure the match never happened. Instead she married Luthor Tyrell, heir to Highgarden — an honest man who rode off a cliff one day while hawking, because he was looking at the sky.

Widowed early, she ran House Tyrell through her son Mace like a ship through a tiller, and steered Margaery through three royal marriages — to Renly, to Joffrey, to Tommen — and to the idea of the Iron Throne itself. In King's Landing she matched wits with Littlefinger and Tywin Lannister, the two men who never lost, and lost to neither.

She paid the Lannisters back for Joffrey's death with a cup of the strangler at his own wedding feast, and took the poison herself when the guards came — a Queen of Thorns to the last, smiling because she had finally made them listen.