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This page covers tropes found in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire (Literature)|A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. See also [[A Song of Ice and Fire/Tropes A To I]] and [[A Song of Ice and Fire/Tropes J To R]]. Subjective tropes and audience reactions go to the [[A Song of Ice and Fire (Literature)/YMMV|YMMV page]].
 
== S-V ==
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* [[Samus Is a Girl]]: Brienne of Tarth wins a tournament before it's revealed that she's a woman (though an interesting case because everyone present ''other'' than Catelyn knows who she is and most disapprove of her winning because she's a woman). Also {{spoiler|[[The Archer]] Alleras is generally assumed to be Sarella Sand, one of Oberyn Martell's bastard daughters.}} Many fans also suspect that {{spoiler|Lyanna Stark was the mystery knight at the Harrenhal tournament.}}
* [[Sarcastic Confession]]: Littlefinger.
* [[Scars Are Forever]]: All over the place, from facial wounds and pox scars to [[An Arm and Aa Leg]]. See [[Facial Horror]], [[Fingore]] and [[Red Right Hand]].
* [[Science Destroys Magic]]: Possibly the goal of some of the Maesters at the Citadel.
* [[Screw Politeness I Am a Senior]]: Walder Frey, to the extreme. Olenna Tyrell has the nickname "The Queen of Thorns" for this very reason as well.
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** House Frey is sworn to House Tully, but frequently tries to throw its weight around, and during a past war withheld its support until Tully was sure to win.
** House Stark has engaged in a thousand-year struggle with House Bolton over control of the North. At the beginning of the series, Bolton is sworn to Stark, but they clearly don't want to stay that way. Ultimately {{spoiler|the Freys and Boltons betray their sworn overlords in a single gambit.}}
* [[Stay in Thethe Kitchen]]: The general opinion of people in Westeros outside of Dorne. Most people mock or criticize Brienne for her knightly aspirations. Cersei has a great deal of problems trying to throw her weight around like a male lord. The Night's Watch forbids women from joining, and {{spoiler|after a truce was established with the wildlings, the spearwives encountered so many problems that they were all given control of their own castle}}.
* [[Stealth Pun]]:
** Varys' "little birds" and the unusued phrase "a little bird told me".
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** Generally used instead of [[Funetik Aksent]], to a more or less subtle degree, to represent people from other cultures such as Sallador Saan and Syrio Forel (and all over the place in Essos).
** Jaqen H'ghar refers to everyone - first, second or third person - by indefinite descriptive phrases: "a man", "a girl", etc. Nobody else has been seen speaking like this, either in the House of Black and White or {{spoiler|"Jaqen" himself in other guises.}}
* [[Stranger in Aa Strange School]]: Sam by the end of ''A Feast for Crows.''
* [[Straw Misogynist]]: Randyll Tarly. And the The High Sparrow, in spades.
* [[Street Urchin]]: Arya in both King's Landing and Braavos.
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* [[Suspiciously Apropos Music]]: When the musicians at {{spoiler|Edmure Tully's wedding}} strike up ''[["The Villain Sucks" Song|The Rains of Castamere]]''. Justified in that this was preselected as a signal for its appropriateness.
* [[Switched At Birth]]: In ''A Feast for Crows'', Mance Rayder's son is switched with Gilly's son in order to prevent Melisandre from taking advantage of his "royal blood" as a sacrifice to R'hllor. As of ''A Dance with Dragons'', {{spoiler|it becomes apparent that the same thing happened in the backstory to save baby Aegon Targaryen.}}
* [[Switching POV]]: A textbook example of the advantages of this viewpoint. The first seven or eight chapters of ''A Game of Thrones'' are particularly instructive, as each chapter frequently introduces one character, only to have the next be narrated from that character's [[Point of View]], thus highlighting the [[Gray and Grey Morality]] of the series. There have been 31 narrators so far: Will, Bran, Catelyn, Daenerys, Eddard, Jon, Arya, Tyrion, Sansa, Maester Cressen, Davos Seaworth, Theon Greyjoy, Chett, Samwell Tarly, Jaime, Merrett Frey, Pate, Aeron "Damphair" Greyjoy, Areo Hotah, Cersei, Brienne, Asha, Ser Arys Oakheart, Victarion, Arianne Martell, Varamyr Sixskins, Quentyn Martell, "Griff," Melisandre, Ser Barristan Selmy, Kevan Lannister. [[Word of God]] is that no more POV characters will be added in the last two books, not counting [[A Death in Thethe Limelight|prologues and epilogues]].
* [[Sword Fight]]: Since this is fantasy after all, it happens in every book.
* [[Sympathetic POV]]:
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* [[Truce Zone]]: The Dothraki city of Vaes Dothrak; spilling blood within carries the death penalty (being strangled to death bloodlessly). Khal Drogo invokes [[Exact Words]] in order to kill {{spoiler|Viserys}}.
* [[Tsundere]]: What few glimpses we've had of Lyanna Stark's personality seem to lean toward this.
* [[Turbulent Priest]]: The [[Only Known Byby Their Nickname|High Sparrow]], a new High Septon imposed on King's Landing by the begging brothers in protest at the [[Corrupt Church]]. Could have stayed as merely a political thorn in Cersei's side had she not foolishly given him licence to reform the [[Church Militant]], making him a powerful military leader in his own right.
* [[Twincest]]: For a long time in the series, they're the ''only'' couple who are honestly in love with each other with no tragic end in sight.
* [[Twin Desynch]]: As long as Jaime and Cersei are together, they seem to form an utterly unflappable scheming machine to rival their father. However they really start to change once they're separated for a considerable time -- both of them suffer horrible traumas to which they respond in entirely different ways, and they each start to loathe the person they see their twin becoming.
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** Swearing occurs not only in dialogue, but in the narrative as well. This leads to some [[Sophisticated As Hell|strange dissonance]] if you're used to typical fantasy, on at least one occasion--one moment a character "screamed and soiled himself", and the next someone "wiped the piss off his boot". Many modern swear words, such as piss and shit, were once the proper names for such things.
** Euphemisms referencing the [[Big Bad]] "The Others take you!" and the [[Fantasy Pantheon]] "Seven Hells!" are fairly common.
* [[Used to Be Aa Sweet Kid]]: Catelyn has a number of flashbacks/reminiscences which suggest Littlefinger was this, although he was always pretty mischievous. Dany also recalls Viserys being a decent brother when she was very young, before he went insane from the pressure of his birth.
* [[Variant Chess]]: Cyvasse is a chess-variant with pieces like dragon, elephant, crossbow, trebuchet and mountain. The players align their pieces in a custom starting alignment before the beginning of the game, with a Battleships-style screen dividing the board so their opponent doesn't know their deployment until the game begins.
* [[Verbal Tic Name]]: Hodor.
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** ''A Feast For Crows'': {{spoiler|Doran Martell revealing his plans for vengeance}}.
** ''A Dance With Dragons'': {{spoiler|Dany mounting Drogon and flying out of Meereen, as well as Jon getting stabbed by his own men}}.
* [[What Happened to Thethe Mouse?]]: Several minor characters seem to appear and disappear for long periods of time, even for entire books. {{spoiler|Including Jeyne Poole, who is impersonating the Arya Stark that is to wed Ramsay Bolton.}}
* [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]]: Jon keeps a couple of wights chained up in the ice cells to be studied, as he suspects there might be more to them than shambling corpses. He notes that the one who tried to kill Mormont had obviously retained memories and some level of intention.
* [[When It All Began]]: Robert's Rebellion.
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* [[Why Couldn't You Be Different?]]: Randyll Tarly to his son, Sam. And Tywin to Tyrion.
* [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?]]: Sandor Clegane and fire.
* [[Wide -Eyed Idealist]]:
** Sansa. Boy, does she pay the price...
** Eddard Stark is wise to the ways of war, but is totally surprised by the amount of intrigue and corruption infecting capital politics.
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* [[Wizarding School]]: The Citadel has elements of this trope. Along with medicine, alchemy and other topics, some Maesters choose to study "magic," though the most they learn is that it doesn't work, effectively making the study of magic a Westerosi equivalent of [[A Degree in Useless]]. We later learn that {{spoiler|a faction of the Citadel is strongly ''against'' magic and is trying to eradicate it. They might have been partially responsible for the extinction of Targaryen dragons, which caused magic to fade from the world for a while}}.
* [[The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask]]: Daenerys after some development. She is also quite aware of the fact, referring to the necessity of her queenly vestments by tsaying that "The Queen of Rabbits cannot be seen without her floppy ears".
* [[The Women Are Safe Withwith Us]]: Averted by nearly every army, where even the "good" generals grudgingly accept that after a battle their men will want to [[Rape, Pillage and Burn]]. However;
** Averted by Stannis, who castrates rapists. It's presented as yet another way his principles lose him the good will of his followers.
** Heavily deconstructed with Daenerys. First, she tries to stop the Dothraki raping the women of defeated tribes. Since they view those women as spoils of war, she's seen as simply being ''greedy'' by claiming them for herself, so she only succeeds in protecting a handful. Later, one of those women complains that Dany sees herself as a hero for "saving" her, when she'd already seen her temple burned, her friends murdered, and indeed been raped several times already. For her next attempt at fulfilling the trope, she acquires an elite group of eunuch soldiers.
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