Written 250817, will continue to be updated.

One of only a handful of characters to not get a POV chapter, Petyr Baelish is one of the more controversial and reviled characters in A Song of Ice and Fire. It's not surprising given his backstabbing and greed, his grooming of Sansa Stark simply because she looks like her mother and selling out the Starks for political gain. George R. R. Martin has stated he was inspired by Jay Gatsby from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby', a character whose intense and unrequited love lead to his and his paramour's deaths. Fans have even found parallels between Baelish and the unreliable narrator of 'Lolita', Humbert Humbert. His traits and story line have lead to a split with fans; is he a villainous mastermind, or simply insanely lucky? Both interpretations can be mixed to say this: he's a gambler with fantastic instincts, but this does not fully explain his motivations or what he desires.

Before one gets to his motivations, one should look at the characters that Martin took inspiration from when writing Petyr Baelish, as that influence will inform his character. While not a one-to-one, Petyr Baelish is a medieval image of Jay Gatsby: both are 'self-made' men in their societies, rising from self-described poverty to wealth and still considered outcasts, Gatsby because he's new money, Baelish because he comes from a lowly house with a minuscule amount of land. Both men are obsessed with the objects of their desire, which is what drove them to accumulate wealth. Where they split is how they deal with obstacles that prevent them from winning over their loves, with Gatsby managing due to Daisy's tumultuous marriage but later both being killed by Daisy’s husband Tom, while Baelish realizes he cannot marry Catelyn both due to her love of Eddard and later her death, so he pivots to Sansa, a younger and more malleable 'copy' of Catelyn. It can be extrapolated that Baelish never truly loved Catelyn, but merely lusted for her and is willing to take her daughter simply because she looks like her, much like Humbert Humbert in 'Lolita'.

In a roundabout way, love for Catelyn Stark is a motivation for Petyr, as the reason Hoster Tully did not allow him to marry Catelyn was due to his relatively low standing in Westerosi society. This rejection powered him to make something of himself besides a minor lord in a small castle, going as far as to become master of coin under Robert Baratheon, and his gambling and backstabbing allowing him to become both Lord of Harrenhal and Lord of the Vale, amassing more power than Hoster Tully could ever imagine. There is some speculation that Baelish could be a Westerosi proto-capitalist, with intent to undue the feudalism that has remained in Westeros for the last 300 years, but again, this is speculation. He could just be gaming the system to gain power in a bid to prove higher nobles wrong, that blood alone is not a prerequisite to access wealth. If this is true, this action would serve Martin's love of subverting traditional story lines (a popular subversion of his is 'the Beauty and the Beast' with Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth) in a genre that often relies on blood quantum to create a hero or one deserving of wealth and power.

Within the narrative, Baelish functions as a catalyst in getting the Starks and Lannisters to move against one another, choosing to support Eddard's investigation into Robert's bastards and concluding the Baratheon inheritors are actually the children of Jaime and Cersei while selling him out later during Eddard's confrontation leading to his arrest. He manipulated Lysa Arryn into his plot (though this is less proof of him being a mastermind and more of her love for him) to play two houses against one another, and in AsoS and ADwD, he is attempting to do manipulate both Sansa and Robert Arryn in his plots. Baelish's character is one of change, both good and bad, as it forces the many POV characters into their respective plotlines in Westeros, such as Sansa/Alayne losing her childhood innocence and idyllic view of Westerosi feudal society and beginning to grasp at the nuances and reality around her. (TBC)