Mychel Redfort

Mychel Redfort is a young squire from an old and respected house of the Vale of Arryn, serving Ser Lyn Corbray. He is betrothed to Mya Stone, the bastard daughter of King Robert Baratheon, and their relationship, glimpsed only through Mya's hopeful words, serves as a quiet counterpoint to the grand political marriages that dominate the narrative, revealing the same harsh social laws operating at every level of society.

Identity and Position

Mychel Redfort is the squire to Ser Lyn Corbray, a knight of the Vale. The Redforts are an old house with the blood of the First Men in their veins, a detail that marks them as part of the region's ancient nobility. Mychel's position as a squire places him in training for knighthood, a path that would normally lead to a suitable marriage arranged by his family. His name is mentioned only by Mya Stone, the bastard daughter of King Robert Baratheon, who works as a guide in the service of Lord Nestor Royce at the Gates of the Moon. Mya speaks of him with the breathless certainty of young love, calling him "my love" and explaining that they are "to wed as soon as he becomes a knight, next year or the year after."

The Betrothal and Its Impossibility

The betrothal between Mychel Redfort and Mya Stone is presented entirely through Mya's perspective as she guides Catelyn Stark up the treacherous mountain path to the Eyrie. Mya's cheerful confidence in their future together—"Mychel's my love," she declares—stands in stark contrast to the social reality that Catelyn immediately recognizes. Catelyn reflects that "no Redfort would ever wed a bastard," understanding that Mychel's family would arrange a more suitable match for him, to a Corbray or a Waynwood or a Royce, or perhaps a daughter of some greater house outside the Vale. If Mychel Redfort lay with Mya at all, Catelyn thinks, it would be "on the wrong side of the sheet," meaning as a mistress rather than a wife. The narrative never shows Mychel himself, only Mya's hopeful description of him, and this absence is itself significant: he exists in the story as a symbol of a promise that the social order will not permit to be kept.

Thematic Significance

Mychel Redfort's offstage presence serves to dramatize the theme of class and legitimacy that runs throughout A Game of Thrones. His betrothal to Mya Stone mirrors, in miniature, the political marriages that drive the main plot—Sansa Stark's betrothal to Joffrey Baratheon, Robb Stark's pact with Walder Frey—but with the crucial difference that Mya has no family power to enforce her claim. Where Sansa's betrothal is a matter of state that can be broken only by violence, Mya's is a private dream that can be broken by a word from Mychel's father. The parallel between Mya and Jon Snow is also evident: both are highborn bastards whose romantic hopes are constrained by the accident of their birth. Mychel Redfort, though never appearing in person, thus becomes a representative of the system that denies bastards their desires, a system that Jon Snow himself confronts when he chooses the Night's Watch over the possibility of fathering bastards of his own.