Arya Stark

Arya Stark is a fictional character created by American author George R. R. Martin. She is a prominent point of view character in Martin's award-winning A Song of Ice and Fire series, and also a main character in HBO's adaptation of the series, Game of Thrones. She is the only character to have POV chapters in every published book of the series.

Introduced in 1996's A Game of Thrones, Arya is the younger daughter of Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Lady Catelyn Stark. She is headstrong, fiercely independent, disdains traditional female pursuits, and is often mistaken for a boy. She wields a sword named Needle, a gift from her half-brother, Jon Snow, and is trained in the Braavosi style of swordfighting.

Arya is portrayed by Maisie Williams on the HBO series Game of Thrones. Her performance has garnered positive acclaim, particularly in the second season for her work opposite veteran actor Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister) when she served as his cupbearer. She is widely regarded as among the most popular characters in either version of the story.

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones is an American fantasy drama television series created by showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. It is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin's series of fantasy novels, the first of which is titled A Game of Thrones. It is filmed in a Belfast studio and on location elsewhere in Croatia, Iceland, Malta, Morocco, Northern Ireland, Spain, Scotland, and the United States, and premiered on HBO in the United States on April 17, 2011. The series has been renewed for a sixth season, which will premiere on April 24, 2016.

The series is set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos, and interweaves several plot lines with a large ensemble cast. The first narrative arc follows a civil war among several noble houses for the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms; the second covers the attempts to reclaim the throne by the exiled last scion of the realm's deposed ruling dynasty; the third chronicles the rising threat of the impending winter and the legendary creatures and fierce peoples of the North.

Aryan

"Aryan" (/ˈɛəriən, ˈɛərjən, ˈær-/) is a term meaning "noble" which was used as a self-designation by ancient Indo-Iranian people. The word was used by the Indic people of the Vedic period in India to refer to the noble class and geographic location known as Āryāvarta where Indo-Aryan culture was based. The closely related Iranian people used the term as an ethnic label for themselves in the Avesta scriptures, and the word forms the etymological source of the country Iran. It was believed in the 19th century that it was also a self-designation used by all Proto-Indo-Europeans, a theory that has now been abandoned. Scholars point out that, even in ancient times, the idea of being an "Aryan" was religious, cultural and linguistic, not racial.

Drawing on misinterpreted references in the Rig Veda by Western Scholars in the 19th century, the term "Aryan" was adopted as a racial category through the work of Arthur de Gobineau, whose ideology of race was based on an idea of blonde northern European "Aryans" who had migrated across the world and founded all major civilizations, before being degraded through racial mixture with local populations. Through Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Gobineau's ideas later influenced the Nazi racial ideology, which also saw "Aryan peoples" as innately superior to other putative racial groups. The atrocities committed in the name of this racial aryanism caused the term to be abandoned by most academics; and, in present-day academia, the term "Aryan" has been replaced in most cases by the terms "Indo-Iranian" and "Indo-European", and "Aryan" is now mostly limited to its appearance in the term of the "Indo-Aryan languages".

The Adventures

The Adventures were a Northern Irish rock band, formed in Belfast in 1984.

The band later moved to London where they signed to Chrysalis Records and released their first single in 1984. Following their debut album released a year later the group moved to Elektra Records and scored their biggest hit, "Broken Land". The song was written by guitarist Pat Gribben and reached number 20 in the UK Singles Chart, and was also the most played song on BBC Radio 1 in 1988.

The band were actively recording and touring from 1984 up until 1993, but despite the backing of Simon Fuller, the Adventures never achieved a significant commercial breakthrough. In recent years, the band have reformed to play low key live gigs and festivals in Belfast, although no further studio recordings have been made.

Background

Lead vocalist Terry Sharpe and guitarist Pat Gribben first worked together when in 1978 they joined punk band The Starjets. The band experienced limited success and disbanded in the early 1980s. Sharpe and Gribben then formed The Adventures in early 1984 with Gribben's wife, Eileen, Gerard Murphy, Tony Ayre and Paul Crowder, performing their first show in February 1984 in North London. They signed to Chrysalis Records and were taken on by upcoming manager, Simon Fuller, who saw them achieve much publicity and promotion in the music press, including an appearance on BBC's Crackerjack. Despite this promising start, their debut single, "Another Silent Day", released in the summer of 1984, barely scraped into the chart. Further singles were released, "Send My Heart", "Feel the Raindrops", and "Two Rivers", all of which were minor hits in the UK Chart, but no major breakthrough was achieved. Their debut album, Theodore and Friends, was released in 1985 while the group were on a world tour supporting Tears for Fears. It received much critical acclaim, but again no significant sales.

Maisie Williams

Maisie Williams (born 15 April 1997) is an English actress. She made her professional acting debut as Arya Stark in the HBO fantasy television series Game of Thrones, for which she won the EWwy Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama, the Portal Award for Best Supporting Actress – Television and Best Young Actor, and the Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor.

Williams has also had a recurring role in Doctor Who as Ashildr since 2015. In addition to television, she made her feature film debut in the mystery The Falling, for which she won the London Film Critics' Circle Award for Young Performer of the Year.

Early life

Williams was born in Bristol, England, and christened "Margaret", but has always been known as "Maisie" after the character from the comic strip The Perishers. She is the youngest of four children born to Hilary Pitt (now Frances), a former university course administrator. She grew up in Clutton, Somerset. Williams attended Clutton Primary School and Norton Hill School in Midsomer Norton, before moving to Bath Dance College to study Performing Arts.