My take on Qyburn's training leans hard on the Citadel, but not in the polite, chain-clinking way the order likes to be remembered.
He was once attached to the Citadel and earned some of its learning, but he paid a steep pr
Ice for chasing the kinds of experiments that made other maesters blanch — experiments on the living, surgical mutilations, and what the records politely call 'unethical practices.' The books in 'A Song of Ice and
Fire' make it clear he was stripped of his chain for those transgressions. From there he became a kind of self-taught, scavenging scholar: taking forbidden passages, obscure recipes, and
anatomy lessons from the Citadel's dusty shelves, then combining them with grisly trial and error on prisoners and bodies when he was free to do as he pleased.
In the TV version of '
game of thrones' that practical, ruthless methodology is dramatized — he uses a combination of surgical tinkering, chemical concoctions, and secrecy to restore the Mountain. To me, Qyburn feels like a
toxic blend of formal learning and brutal improvisation: equal parts scholar and butcher, and that's what makes him so fascinating and creepy to watch.