Mance Rayder is a wildling, and a former brother of the Night's Watch, who later claimed the title King-Beyond-the-Wall.
Appearances and Character[]
see also; Images of Mance Rayder.
Mance is of middling height, slender, sharp faced, with shrewd brown eyes and long brown hair that had gone mostly to grey. He wears no crown in his head, no gold rings on his arm, no jewels at his throat; his only garment of note is his ragged black wool cloak, its long tears patched with faded red silk.
Mance is known for his passion of music, when Jon Snow first met him, he mistook him for a singer and thought Styr to have been the king.
History[]
Mance was a sworn brother of the Night's Watch. One day in a ranging with his Brothers, they brought down an elk, but the smell of blood drew a Shadow-Cat. It shredded Mance's arm, back and his cloak, and he was bleeding so badly that his brothers feared he might die before they get him to Maester Mullin at the Shadow Tower, so they carried him to a Wildling village where they knew an old woman who could do some healing. The woman was dead, but her daughter cleaned his wounds and fed him potions until he was strong enough to ride again.
The daughter sewed the rents in his cloak with some scarlet silk from Asshai that her grandmother pulled from the wreck of a cog washed up on the Frozen Shore. It was her greatest treasure and her gift to Mance.
At the Shadow Tower, he was given the usual black in black cloak of the Night's Watch, and Ser Denys Mallister told him that his old cloak was fit for burning. Mance Rayder left the next morning; "... For a place where a kiss was not a crime, and a man could wear any cloak he choose." according to him.
Books[]
After serving as a noted ranger in the Watch for some time, he deserted for the freedom to wear a cloak of whatever color he wanted. In A Storm of Swords, he takes Jon Snow into his camp of wildlings who are marching south to the Wall. He has found the Horn of Winter, which, according to myth, can bring down the Wall for good.