Mirri Maz Duur

Mirri Maz Duur is a Lhazareen godswife with magical powers of blood magic. She is a maegi who meets Daenerys Targaryen after a calamity befalls her. Through her encounter with Daenerys, she destroys Khal Drogo for ruining her life. Said to possess supernatural powers, Mirri is a healer and worshipper of the Great Shepherd.

Personal Details

• Name: Mirri Maz Duur.
• Year of Birth: Sometime between 257 and 259 AC.
• Year of Death: 299 AC in the Red Waste.
• Culture: Lhazareen.
• Religion: The Great Shepherd.
• Titles: Maegi, Godswife.
• Hair Color: Black.

Appearance and Personality

Mirri Maz Duur is a knowledgeable woman with vast skills in healing and magic. She is almost middle-aged and has black hair with a flat nose. She is calm in many situations, acts wise, and does everything she wants with minutely planned steps. Her knowledge of healing and magic makes her villainous to many, including the Dothraki.

Biography

Mirri was born in either Lhazar or an unknown settlement in the Dothraki Sea. She grew up in the temple of the Great Shepherd, the deity of the Lhazareen people, and got taught by her mother, a godswife. She served in the temple for all of her childhood, and when she was of age, she traveled to Asshai, where she learned the art of casting spells and singing.

At Asshai, Mirri mastered shadowbinding and became a practitioner of blood magic. She also studied the birthing songs of the moonsingers of the Jogos Nhai and got knowledge of Westerosi medicine from Maester Marwyn, an archmaester at the Citadel. She went further and learned the herb lore of the Dothraki.

Relevance in A Song of Ice and Fire

A Game of Thrones

After Khal Drogo promises to make Daenerys’s unborn son Rhaego, King of the Seven Kingdoms, he begins warring in the Dothraki Sea to get slaves to exchange for ships to cross the Narrow Sea. He fights a rival, Khal Ogo, outside Lhazar. After he defeats Ogo and kills his son, Khal Fogo, he takes over Lhazar and captures everyone to sell them into slavery. After the battle, Daenerys comes across Mirri getting raped by one of Drogo’s warriors and orders him to end the act. Dany ends further rapes by Drogo’s warriors.

Though Drogo wins the battle, he gets wounded by an arrow and an arakh. Though his men get enraged that Daenerys prevented them from raping, Drogo stops them from seeing him as weak due to his wounds. However, his health begins deteriorating, and to save him, Daenerys asks Mirri if she has any knowledge of healing and learns that she studied Westerosi medicine and Asshai sorcery.

Daenerys convinces Drogo to let Mirri heal his wounds, and Mirri makes him a lambskin poultice of firepods and sting-me-not. However, it itches Drogo, and he rips it off before he gets healed; this causes his health to deteriorate further as his wounds get infected. He eventually falls off his horse, symbolizing that he can no longer lead his Khal.

With no hope of her husband recovering naturally, Daenerys convinces Mirri to use blood magic to restore him, a request that causes pandemonium in the Khalasar. Mirri tells Daenerys she must sacrifice something of value to perform a blood magic ritual. Daenerys gives her Drogo’s horse.

A fight breaks out, and Qotho, Haggo, and Cohollo get killed by Ser Jorah Mormont and Daenerys’s bloodriders, Jhogo, Aggo, and Rakharo. During the fight, Daenerys goes into labor and conceives a monstrosity which Jorah kills. Most of the Khalasar leave, and when Daenerys wakes up, she learns her husband can never recover. Feeling betrayed, Daenerys kills Drogo and ties Mirri to his funeral pyre. She places her eggs and walks into the fire as it burns Mirri alive.

A Clash of Kings

When Daenerys arrives in Qarth, she enters the House of the Undying and gets many visions. She gets told that she will get betrayed once for blood, once for gold, and once for love. She associates the first prophecy with the witch Mirri, her first betrayal. She later gets more hallucinations and sees Mirri’s birth and her dragon, Drogon’s birth.

Appearance in Adaptation

In HBO’s series, Mirri got portrayed by Mia Soteriou. She appeared in season 1 and starred in 3 episodes. After Drogo destroys Khal Ogo’s Khalasar, Daenerys stops his men from raping women, and Mago protests against her actions; this makes Drogo step in, and when a fight ensues, he kills Mago but suffers a wound. His health soon starts deteriorating, and Daenerys asks Mirri to help him treat it. However, he pulls the herbs off, and his condition gets worse.

Drogo’s condition gets worse, and in desperation, Daenerys tells Mirri to perform blood magic to save Drogo’s life. However, the ritual gets botched and leaves Drogo in a catatonic vegetative state.

Daenerys loses her son, and when she learns that Mirri intentionally failed to reveal the truth behind the ritual, she sentences her to death. Daenerys ends her husband’s suffering and places Mirri in Drogo’s funeral pyre. As the flames eat up the maegi, Dany walks into it with her dragon eggs. She survives the fire, and her eggs hatch into three dragons.

Mirri Maz Duur: The Unintentional Villain

In George R. R. Martin’s world, the line between good and evil gets blurred to the point where there is no clear separation between the opposite entities. 

Mirri is a character that rests in the grey area that sits between good and evil. Though some may classify her as a villain, she was a good person who acted in the most human way possible. Born in Lhazar, she studied fervently to become a helper and healer, and she used her skills for good until Drogo came to destroy everything.

Mirri became an unintentional villain by not revealing a minute detail about the cost of blood magic to her. Though some consider this an act of villainy, it is not. It makes Mirri a human with emotions who sought vengeance and a means to end future destruction by Drogo’s Dothraki Khalasar.

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