If Jaime had revealed about the Wildfire underneath City for his reason killings Aerys and with him being celebrated as a hero for saving the city, do you think the game would go to his head?
IMO if Jaime were inclined to be susceptible to the game, he would never have given up Casterly Rock to join the kingsguard, Cersei or no Cersei.
Also, I think the game is in his head more because he feels like he’s losing it. And I’m not actually sure that he would be applauded for saving the city, as unfair as that sounds. The approbation and scorn for the Kingslayer is, in part, really feeding on everyone else’s guilt for failing to put a stop to Aerys.
Men with families can join the kingsguard, but they need to put their wives aside, so he certainly could. I actually don’t think Aerys would offer (well, “offer”) if Jaime had a son, though, since a big part of his motivation was the satisfaction of stealing Tywin’s heir.
(Cont.) Which, to me, is vital. Yes compare him to Eddard who fucked over Catelyn and Jon but Jaime is immensely selfish and half a million people will burn for his vainglory. Whether Varys knows has puzzled me as well, however. I too have wondered how he could not have known for all his ability and resource. Still, Jaime`s ego is what he is preserving by letting these bombs sit, the awful, evil, selfish man.
I’m not making an argument either way as to whether Jaime is overall a horrible, selfish person. I’m saying that this particular decision of his is more complicated.
Nope, don't think anyone knows about the qualities of aged wildfire except alchemists and Tyrion. Some posts on Varys & Jaime and that fact, if you're interested: http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.tumblr.com/post/137215104288 & http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.tumblr.com/post/137274070973/thefinknottle-reblogged-your-post-i-absolutely
Glad I’m not totally out in left field on this! I mean, there’s definitely an argument that he’s not allowing himself to consider the possible risks to this approach. But if it’s also possible that someone has to proactively choose to set it off, then revealing its existence to anyone is also a risk. And how could he find out, without involving the pyromancers, who are responsible for the stuff even existing in the first place?
Jaime overhead Aerys talk about burning the entire city and its population. He knows the magnitude of threat. And it is not about the fact of whether or not he knows it grows more volatile... remember how anxious he was about Cersei burning the tower of the hand, and I believe mentioned she just might burn the whole castle down? He knows that wildfire is dangerous enough as it is. But he just conveniently lets the city sit on it to fit his "poor misunderstood ME" narrative.
How a fire spreads is different from how a fire starts. He heard Aerys deliberately plan to burn down the entire city and its population. He’s worried about what will happen after Cersei has the pyromancers light up the Tower of the Hand. Those situations include someone around to pull the trigger.
Like I said, I don’t think just leaving it was the best idea, but he is working with limited information.
Seeing how Varys was part of Aery's court and knows every inch of the Red Keep and King's Landing by heart, do you think is possible he doesn't know about the hidden wildfire? And if he does know, why hasn't he told anyone or taken care of the problem himself? Is hard to believe that someone with such a great information network wouldn't find out about the wildfire for fifteen years or more, or that he would let stay that way when that any accident could destroy the whole city and his plans...
…Of course, Jaime will be the main responsible if King’s Landing blows up because he knows for sure and didn’t do anything about because of his arrogance and pride and because he enjoys the “poor me, people hate me for saving a whole city” act way too much. Just wondering how can Varys not know about the wildfire, and if he knows, why hasn’t he done anything about it when that could end all his careful planning in just a few seconds.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Varys didn’t know about the wildfire, especially after the Battle of the Blackwater. And you’d expect Varys more than anyone to understand the magnitude of the threat, because wildfire is made and stored with magic. Maybe not much magic, because it was possible before the dragons came back, but enough. He and his little birds know all the tunnels, and even if they can’t walk through the passages where the wildfire is stored, he must have figured out by now that the only people who do go in and out of those areas are the pyromancers. It’s safe to assume he knows that the alchemists were willing and able to defuse the cache that was found more recently underneath the Great Sept, and it wouldn’t have been hard to get Hallyne to spill about why that was so urgent.
Personally, I think Varys will be even more culpable than Jaime, because it’s not quite true that Jaime didn’t do anything about it. He did hunt down and kill the pyromancers. Granted, what he did actually made things worse, because there was nobody around who knew how to disarm it, but he did try to do something. And, to be somewhat fair to Jaime, it’s not clear that he had the information to realize how insufficient that was. The pyromancers are incredibly proprietary. Until the Battle of the Blackwater, I don’t think wildfire had ever even been used by someone who wasn’t a pyromancer (and even then there was one overseeing it), except for Thoros of Myr’s party trick. It wouldn’t have been totally unreasonable for Jaime to think that the wildfire caches couldn’t be set off without the alchemists, or for him not to realize that a) the wildfire would grow more potent with time, rather than less, and b) the pyromancers were, in fact, willing and able to destroy it. The reader knows as much as we do about wildfire because of Tyrion’s behind-the-scenes tour with Hallyne in ACOK, which Jaime didn’t get. The more recent excavation from the sept happened “last year” as of ACOK, presumably during Robert’s progress to Winterfell, since Tyrion had to be told about it as well. From Jaime’s perspective, if there is a public safety hazard posed by Aerys’ wildfire, then the only people he could tell to do something about it were the alchemists, who are the people who purposefully created it.
(Am I searching the wrong keywords or something? Because this seems to be the prevailing view, but I can’t find evidence in the text that Jaime knows the wildfire caches can be set off by accident.)
Varys shouldn’t be sitting on this, but this in some ways is how he thinks. He’s playing at least as dangerous a game with Aegon, his hidden dragon, and he’s aided by a lot of often unwitting people like Jaime. “Keep quiet and hope for the best” clearly isn’t a good plan, but it wasn’t totally crazy, given that it did work for 10+ years. And if, as seems likely, the wildfire is sparked by Dany’s dragons, that’s hardly a foreseeable risk until well into the time frame of the series, even to Varys. That doesn’t totally let Jaime off the hook, because the alternative which could be apparent to him - evacuating Kings Landing indefinitely - was the right thing to do. But evacuating Kings Landing because of the wildfire requires telling everyone about the wildfire. That’s not without risk, as it effectively guarantees at least some of it will be found and stolen, but it’s also just a degree of upheaval that he couldn’t bring himself to cause.
And it also is Jaime experiencing the tragic psychology that a lot of characters do. He hits this crisis when he’s young, and he hides it because he’s understandably afraid of the fallout. But then the cover-up becomes this all-consuming commitment which eats up his entire identity and makes a future disaster all but inevitable. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before...
Hi! I hope you're doing OK. I was wondering if, when you feel like coming back from hiatus, you'd mind sharing your thoughts on Jon Snow during season six of "Game of Thrones". I find your analysis of the show quite fascinating, especially in contrast to book fans that just think everything sucks in the TV series and that everything is absolutely 100% nonsensical and without a reason inside the show universe.
Iam saving some of this for a deeper dissection of the Northern storyline in S6,which I hope will be finished relatively soon.
+I’mgenerally supportive of the show sometimes smoothing the rougher edges of thecharacters, but I was a little bit surprised and impressed that the show didn’tshy away from Jon’s ruthless streak. He really did go too far when he executedOlly. The officers are one thing, they can’t be allowed to get away with whatthey did. But Olly isn’t any more culpable than the dozens of men he let off thehook – significantly less so, both because he’s a kid and because he hasn’ttaken the oath. Thorne, Marsh, and Yarwyck died because they killed Jon; Ollydied because he hurt Jon.
I hanged a boy! Younger than Bran.
Hey,you know who else was younger than Bran?
Rickon’sdeath implicates Jon in a really dark loop. Rickon dies of an arrow through theback – the same way Olly killed Ygritte.
Theshow actually goes further than the books have so far. ADWD shows Jonthreatening children, but he hasn’t actually been pushed to follow through onthose threats.
“You will make a crow of him.” Shewiped at her tears with the back of a small pale hand. “I won’t. Iwon’t.”
Killthe boy,thought Jon. “You will. Else I promise you, the day that they burn Dalla’s boy, yourswill die as well.”
“I insisted upon hostages.“ I am not the trusting fool you take me for …nor am I half wildling, no matter what you believe. "One hundred boysbetween the ages of eight and sixteen. A son from each of their chiefs andcaptains, the rest chosen by lot. The boys will serve as pages and squires,freeing our own men for other duties. Some may choose to take the black oneday. Queerer things have happened. The rest will stand hostage for the loyaltyof their sires.”
The northmen glanced at one another. “Hostages,” mused The Norrey.“Tormund has agreed to this?”
It was that, or watch his people die. “Myblood price, he called it,” said Jon Snow, “but he will pay.”
“Aye, and why not?” Old Flint stompedhis cane against the ice. “Wards, we always called them, when Winterfelldemanded boys of us, but they were hostages,and none the worse for it.”
“None but them whose sires displeased theKings o’ Winter,” said The Norrey. “Those came home shorter by ahead. So you tell me, boy … if these wildling friends o’ yours prove false, doyou have the belly to do what needs be done?”
Ask JanosSlynt. “Tormund Giantsbane knows better than to try me. I may seem agreen boy in your eyes, Lord Norrey, but I am still a son of EddardStark.”
Andthat call and response of Olly and Rickon is one of the harsher aspects ofNed’s legacy. Look at what Ned did for Sansa and Jon, and then look at what hedid to Theon. Jon doesn’t know Ned as well as he thought, but he learned evenmore from Ned than he realized.
It’salways been odd to me that Jaime seems to get more flak for threateningEdmure’s child, who does not even technically exist yet, despite his innerreservation, than Jon does for his threats to Gilly’s baby or to his hundredwildling hostages. These are children. He sees their faces, he learns theirnames, and he doesn’t flinch. Sure, Jon comes out ahead of Jaime on an overallmoral comparison, but…fair’s fair, you know? This is scary stuff, and what Jon does is literally 100x scarier.
+Andoh, speaking of!
JONSNOW, TRAITOR AND OATHBREAKER: There’s no need for a battle. Thousands of mendon’t need to die. Only one of us. Let’s end this the old way, you against me.
RAMSAYBOLTON, LORD OF WINTERFELL AND WARDEN OF THE NORTH: I keep hearing storiesabout you, bastard. The way people in the North talk about you, you’re thegreatest swordsman who ever lived. Maybe you are that good. Maybe not. I don’tknow if I’d beat you. But I know my army will beat yours.
Wherehave we heard that one before?
JAIMELANNISTER, TRAITOR AND OATHBREAKER: We could end this war right now, boy, savethousands of lives. You fight for the Starks, I fight for the Lannisters.Swords or lances, teeth, nails, choose your weapons, and let’s end this hereand now.
ROBBSTARK, LORD OF WINTERFELL AND WARDEN OF THE NORTH: If we did it your way,Kingslayer, you’d win. We’re not doing it your way.
….Imean.
+Ona less morbid note, I really enjoyed the relationship between Jon and Davos.There’s this mutual unfinished business angle between them. Davos has a lot ofNed’s better qualities – loyal almost to a fault, though not to a point wherehe won’t step in when he thinks the people he cares about are wrong – but heisn’t blinkered by aristocratic privilege and personal trauma in the ways thatcomplicated Jon’s life so much. And Davos knows that Jon is someone Stannisliked, and I think he sees a lot of what he admired about Stannis in Jon.They’re waging a war together, but they’re also making peace with their pasts.
+Grumpylittle Baby Jon was so cute I can hardly stand it. MOTHER, WHO IS THISINTERLOPER? HE HAS DISTURBED OUR NAPTIME. AND THAT’S YOUR GRACE TO YOU, WEIRDSHAGGY MAN!
+With regards to the Pink Letter, I don’t really have aposition on which version is better storytelling,but the show’s presentation worked for me. The tensions that were the explicitmotivation behind Ramsay’s letter in the show were also the driving force oftensions at the Wall in ADWD. What changed was the precipitating cause ofMance’s mission to the PL, and the PL as precipitating cause for Jon’sassassination. We’re measuring out last straws here. The core issue behind the murder of a political authority daysafter they finalize a major peace agreement is not the dramatic resonanceof the perpetrators’ pretext for their actions. ADWD (though still my favoritebook in the series) leans far too hard for my liking on the idea that it is,and it was interesting to see a version of the story without that caveat.
+Kind of a late-game turnaround of Jon’s usual “no gooddeed goes unpunished” lifestyle, no? Vital deep-cover cover op? Dragged beforetribunal. Kill white walker? No one cares. Challenge xenophobia? Get stabbed.Beat nemesis half to death? KINGINNANORF! I’m sorry, that’s hilarious.
Jon: the white walkers are the real problem here
Jon to Jon: fucking Ramsay let’s get him
+I also really wasn’t expecting that last scene. JonSnow, King of Winter: long may he reign may the odds be ever in hisfavor.
(Andthank you, it’s nice to hear thatyou enjoy the show posts. I really have no argument about whether people “should” like something ornot, but….I’m still glad theGodfather books were adapted before this Era of the Hot Take. CAN YOU IMAGINE.)
in the Lysa/Jaime hypothetical is there any chance of Lysa bullying Jaime into getting Littlefinger a job in the Westerlands and setting up something similar to what goes on in the Vale?
It’s not impossible, though I doubt it. It’s different for Baelish to get the patronage of his liege lord than it is for him to be given a position from someone in another legion. And that kind of thing isn’t up to Jaime at Casterly Rock as long as Tywin is around, even if he were the type to challenge his father over something so apparently small. Lysa might also have been less dependent on her dreams of Petyr at first, and thus less likely to push for it, if she was looking at a life with someone her own age rather than an old man who was taking her on sufferance. Unfortunately, I think she’s pretty likely to become unhappy and might start feeling that way again eventually, but it’s going to be harder for Petyr to take advantage of it.
My first instinct is ooof, train wreck. They have a similar set of liabilities, which sets up a bad feedback loop. Massive boundary problems, middle child issues, a history of fixating on inappropriate formative relationships - yikes. Lysa wouldn’t be able to let Cersei be out of sight and out of mind, she would dwell on Jaime’s relationship with his twin even if she doesn’t know the extent of it, which would just be gasoline on the fire, and she’d react by clinging to her own past. Lysa is unguarded and impetuous; she’d be eaten alive in that hornets’ nest.
But that is based on what we know of Lysa in the time frame of the books, and Catelyn tells us that the last ten years have really changed her sister. She wasn’t always so desperately unhappy. In a different marriage, she might have avoided the toll that her difficulty having children took on her. Jon’s personal history and advanced age are probably the cause of those difficulties or at least a significant contributing factor. If she’s separated from Petyr then he can’t keep exacerbating her vulnerabilities. (LBR, putting a continent between oneself and Littlefinger is good for anybody’s mental health, but Lysa even more so than most.) Overall, though, there are still a lot of underlying issues pulling against this working out well.
Why do you think Catelyn would have been the best match for Jaime?
Because Jaime is shaped around Cersei. Even in the hypothetical where there’s enough space between them that they can’t continue that unhealthy relationship, their personal development was complimentary in irreversible ways. Catelyn, while relatively well-adjusted overall and with some specific differences due to their respective environments, is a lot like Cersei, enough that he would feel compatible with her. Even in formative family dynamics, right - they’re the oldest of three and lost their mothers at young ages. Catelyn is more adaptable where Cersei is aggressive, still waters running deep rather than “all wildfire,” but it comes from a similarly strong will.
Likewise, I think Catelyn would be quite happy with him, which is of course just as important. She’d have started out on the right foot with him, and Jaime would respond to that. Jaime has the outward qualities that attracted a teenage Catelyn to Brandon Stark. Cat’s affection for Brandon was in part because they were engaged and she was optimistic about their life together, but he was also physically skilled, handsome, hot-headed, and charming. Jaime is totally that type. But, unbeknownst to everyone but eagle-eyed Aunt Genna, Jaime also has some of the inner personality traits that allowed her to build that really solid bond with Ned. (So much great mirroring in that generation of characters, even if it doesn’t come out while they’re all alive at the same time.)
And as much as I wouldn’t want to inflict the Lannisters as in-laws on anyone, let alone a character I like, I think Catelyn is the kind of person who would be most equipped to handle life at Casterly Rock. She is impeccably trained at her social duties, and has that touch for reading power dynamics and knowing how to handle people, when to charm them and when to duck and cover. Unfortunately, she’d probably fall in line with the Tyrion scapegoating - I mean, she got in on the Tyrion scapegoating when it wasn’t a way to stay off of Tywin’s bad worse side, and her habitual behavior toward Jon didn’t do her any favors with anyone - but Jaime at least can afford to be straight with her if he tells her to knock it off, so it’d at least be possible to address.
Also Jaime tends not to throw his own kids out of windows! So that’s just better for everyone.
Loved your Oberyn and Cersei post, on the converse would Elia and Jaime work out well? She was older and delicate but kind, lovely, and witty ( and could rule the Rock, no Dornish daughter is just a pretty broodmare). Firstborn son and Tywin would like her!
Thank you! I’m glad that post made sense, I was kind of convincing myself as I was writing it out.
My instinct is also to agree that Elia and Jaime would be a good fit. Granted, Elia as a character is as enigmatic as Lyanna, a long-lost sister only remembered by extremely biased sources. But they’re more or less consistent enough in the way she was ~too good for this sinful world~ and Dany’s glimpse of her in the House of the Undying fits what we hear.
IMO if Jaime had been forced to break off the toxic relationship with Cersei and married to someone rather than joining the Kingsguard (thus avoiding infamy as the Kingslayer), he would have been a good and loving husband just in general.* And Elia was, from all accounts, gracious and kind and able to bring out the best in people. I think they could have a strong bond.
It would be a difficult adjustment for Elia to go from Dorne to the ruthlessly patriarchal Casterly Rock, though. I don’t have any doubt that she would have the intellectual and social capacity to do her job as the head of even such a massive household, but that is a pretty horrendous adjustment. I don’t think she’d take it out on Jaime or their kids, but I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone.
What we hear about her also gives the vague sense that she would be good to Tyrion. I think that would go a long way to forming a bond with Jaime, who despite his having gone along with Tywin’s and Cersei’s behavior also does love his brother and would feel good about having a positive example to follow in that regard. IMO that actually has ripple effects on the family dynamics in the Rock overall. She’s ~10 years older than Jaime and ~16 years older than Tyrion, so while she can’t replace Joanna, there’s a good chance that Tyrion wouldn’t be so starved for love. And showing care for Tyrion is a challenge to Tywin, albeit a covert one. Genna getting the silent treatment for six months for having said something nice about Tyrion doesn’t mean she showed affection to Tyrion - on the contrary, it means that even mild recognition of Tyrion’s potential was rare and something that Tywin could and did squash. But he doesn’t have the control over Elia, a princess in her own right and a person he can’t control by threatening to withhold her inheritance.
Tyrion notwithstanding, I think things would have to be tense with her horrible in-laws. You can’t graciously love a group of people out of being dysfunctional, and lbr Tywin doesn’t like anyone, nor does he have any tolerance for people who withhold abject obedience to him. Though, being Oberyn’s sister, Elia might at least have the good sense to poison Tywin and put everyone else out of his misery once Jaime was old enough to take over the Rock. Who’s the real winner here? EVERYONE.
*Come to think of it, the best match for Jaime in that generation was probably Catelyn. ahaha.
What are other ways that Jaime and Ned are foils of each other?
They occupy similar positions in their respective families. Most consequentially, they both have weird closeted Uncle Dad relationships with their sisters’ kids. They’re also middle children. Much as Jaime gets legal precedence as Tywin’s first son, he is Cersei’s little brother.
More abstractly, I think Ned and Jaime are at contrasting ends of the same wavelength when it comes to inhabiting personas. It’s not that either of their reputations are unearned: Ned is more or less a stand-up guy, and Jaime really is a treacherous piece of work who’s willing to undermine the king by breaking every one of his vows. But those reputations are more complex than they appear; at best, they’re right for the wrong reasons. Ned isn’t a good guy because of his publicly rigorous rule-following, but because he is capable of putting other people’s well-being before his own image. Jaime killing Aerys wasn’t a coup, though his affair with Cersei very much is. And they’re both really practical about using those reputations, particularly in the interests of conflict avoidance.
“Aleena? No. You told me once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard’s mother?“
“Her name was Wylla,” Ned replied with cool courtesy, “and I would sooner not speak of her.”
“Wylla. Yes.” The king grinned. “She must have been a rare wench if she could make Lord Eddard Stark forget his honor, even for an hour. You never told me what she looked like …”
Ned’s mouth tightened in anger. “Nor will I. Leave it be, Robert, for the love you say you bear me. I dishonored myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and men.”
“Gods have mercy, you scarcely knew Catelyn.”
"I had taken her to wife. She was carrying my child.“
Must you make me say the words? Pia was standing by the flap of the tent with her arms full of clothes. His squires were listening as well, and the singer. Let them hear, Jaime thought. Let the world hear. It makes no matter. He forced himself to smile, “You’ve seen our numbers, Edmure. You’ve seen the ladders, the towers, the trebuchets, the rams. If I speak the command, my coz will bridge your moat and break your gate. Hundreds will die, most of them your own. Your former bannermen will make up the first wave of attackers, so you’ll start your day by killing the fathers and brothers of men who died for you at the Twins. The second wave will be Freys, I have no lack of those. My westermen will follow when your archers are short of arrows and your knights so weary they can hardly lift their blades. When the castle falls, all those inside will be put to the sword. Your herds will be butchered, your godswood will be felled, your keeps and towers will burn. I’ll pull your walls down, and divert the Tumblestone over the ruins. By the time I’m done no man will ever know that a castle once stood here.” Jaime got to his feet. “Your wife may whelp before that. You’ll want your child, I expect. I’ll send him to you when he’s born. With a trebuchet.”
Silence followed his speech. Edmure sat in his bath. Pia clutched the clothing to her breasts. The singer tightened a string on his harp. Little Lew hollowed out a loaf of stale bread to make a trencher, pretending that he had not heard. With a trebuchet, Jaime thought. If his aunt had been there, would she still say Tyrion was Tywin’s son?
The two characters are retreating to different personas in these passages. Ned performs as Mr. Stuffy No-Sex Honor-Man while Robert of all people keeps pressing; Jaime’s all GRRR I AM THE KINGSLAYER QUAIL BEFORE MEEEEEE. (He’s so proud of that trebuchet flourish.) But they’re both leaning into what other people think of them, using dishonorable methods to honor a promise made to a dead woman, a promise that, if known, would undercut the reputations they use to carry it out.
Those similarities make them a pretty solid nature/nurture comparison. Ned was born in Winterfell, to a family that at least seems to have been somewhat functional, and then given to Jon Arryn in his boyhood. Jaime was born to one psychopathic supervillain, and then drafted by another in his boyhood. Would Jaime have been what he is if he’d had half of what Ned did in that regard? Look at how – in a few short months, as a fully-baked adult, with a lifetime of sunk costs into his many transgressions – he takes to the combination of Brienne’s good example and some professional and psychological autonomy once Tyrion does the world the favor of punching Tywin’s ticket. That’s not entirely down to Brienne being some kind of moral moral muse who ~makes him wanna be a better man or even to Tywin’s iron grip on his children’s world. It’s about Jaime being not only responsive to outside influence, but being disproportionately receptive to good influences after a lifetime of being dominated by bad ones.
And all of that kind of winds around to that pivotal moment in the throne room at the end of the Rebellion.
He was seated on the Iron Throne, high above his knights……I was still mounted. I rode the length of the hall in silence, between the long rows of dragon skulls. It felt as though they were watching me, somehow. I stopped in front of the throne, looking up at him. His golden sword was across his legs, its edge red with a king’s blood. My men were filling the room behind me. Lannister’s men drew back. I never said a word. I looked at him seated there on the throne, and I waited. At last Jaime laughed and got up. He took off his helm, and he said to me, ‘Have no fear, Stark. I was only keeping it warm for our friend Robert. It’s not a very comfortable seat, I’m afraid.’
Ned’s belief that he “forced” Jaime off of the Iron Throne with his Power of Heart™ is rather charming to me. As if Jaime stopped mid-coup and had his men stand down while Ned made his dramatic entrance. Less charming, of course, is what stuck with Jaime:
Bolton’s silence was a hundred times more threatening than Vargo Hoat’s slobbering malevolence. Pale as morning mist, his eyes concealed more than they told. Jaime misliked those eyes. They reminded him of the day at King’s Landing when Ned Stark had found him seated on the Iron Throne.
This is kind of a startling comparison the first read through, but it really pops the second time around. At this point in the narrative, Roose is actively plotting against Ned’s son. Like Jaime, Roose will kill his king. Unlike Jaime, Roose will violate an oath he swore as an adult and of his own free will, and will do so strictly for his own benefit. Jaime’s comparison of Roose to Ned is deeply unsettling.
More than anything else in Jaime’s POV recollections, it’s this comparison that clarifies why Jaime chose the course he did at that moment and didn’t tell anyone why he’d killed Aerys. In terms of keeping his head on his shoulders, it was probably his best possible option. Trying to justify himself would have been submitting to Ned’s judgment. Trying to justify himself without proof, which he did not have at the moment, could easily have backfired. Ned, right then, was in sore need of someone to blame for all of the horrible things he’s experienced and seen. I wouldn’t trust him with the truth either, this stranger with Roose Bolton’s eyes. Jaime, disillusioned and damaged as he was, was at a critical juncture where he could have pulled out of the dysfunctional Lannister spiral. But when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, it bounces back just as hard, in the opposite direction.
How do you think Robert's reign/peace would change if Jaime had saved Elia and her children and got them out of King's Landing?
Well, Tywin’s head probably explodes, so I’m going to go ahead and say that’s a net positive.
Other than that, I suppose it depends on where they go. If they melt away into Essos, I’m not sure Arryn would handle it differently than he did Viserys and Dany’s escape. If Elia takes the children home to Dorne, then there’s no way they’d be allowed to keep custody of Aegon, he’s almost certainly taken hostage and given to the Faith when he’s old enough. Unless Oberyn makes off to Essos with the baby first….there are a lot of variables with this one.
But I don’t think it has the same effect on the political narrative as I was talking about with Jon. In this case, the rebels come off looking better, because they aren’t baby-killers. (Not as far as the official story is concerned, at least, though it’s worth noting that the sack of the city would still have had civilian casualties among the smallfolk.) It’s also not one of the rebels sabotaging the takeover, it’s Jaime having done his duty as a knight of the Kingsguard in protecting the most vulnerable members of the royal family.
So I suppose the big one is actually that Jaime doesn’t become the stunningly callous person that he is by AGOT. Being admired for a genuinely heroic act would make him invested in his reputation, his job, his relationships with people who aren’t Cersei, which IMO would decrease his recklessness and might even inspire him to clean up his act entirely. At that point, we’re completely through the looking glass.
About Jon's voice... My dream is that one day someone will mention "the iron tones of Jon Snow's voice", and we will know he sounds just like Rhaegar.
Oh, I like that, it would be a neat way to let us know without spelling it out. It’s an intriguing turn of phrase, that Jaime of all people remembers Rhaegar not as silver but as iron.
Jaime raping his sister was a complete perversion of the book for HBO to have Cersei's grabbing to fuck Jaime then push away as if disgusted BS and Jaime acting like he had some moral right to her body 'cuz he luv her'. But the producers had them directed like that possessive controlling manipulative since the first season. where Jaime grabs Cersei forcefully holds her to him while he professes to kill all for her/them and she submits after initially raging Jaime kill for her then berates him.
It’s not a perversion of the book, is exactly my point. It is completely in line with the text, most notably the scene in the sept. Benioff and Weiss apparently saw the same problems I did. Would I have preferred it if they'd changed the nature of the relationship? Probably, though how they could have made it not-horrible but still recognizable is beyond me. But fans shouldn't no-true-Scotsman ourselves into thinking that these aspects of the character came out of nowhere.
This is a bit of a dated controversy, but I’ve just reread ASOS and want to unpack a very common argument about the scene in the sept during Breaker of Chains. Much criticism* of the scene includes the assertion that the show represents a serious departure from the book,** changing a consensual sex scene into a rape. This is not true. Neither encounter is consensual. The difference between book and show is that the lack of consent is much clearer in the show than it is in the books. In order to explain why, and to examine how this misapprehension has gained steam, I believe it is worth deconstructing the scene in the book.
Wow, this has me looking at that scene in a whole new way actually.
It brings up so many questions of what GRRM’s authorial intent was: Was he actually intending that Cersei say “no” when she meant “yes” (or even the other way around?- given the whole dialogue, which is gross both ways)
Is GRRM trying to insert a glaring, unexpected but fitting hypocrisy in Jaime’s character and the hollowness of the chivalry he’s trying to achieve by having him rape his lifelong lover, but execute the man that raped a servant, just because it’s more apparently violent?
I have so many questions.
It's a really interesting set of questions, and something I've gone back and forth on a few times since seeing this reblog. (Just to be clear, I'm not conceding that authorial intent matters in terms of what happened in the scene itself. When discussing in-universe events, I strongly favor Watsonian analysis, for a lot of reasons that are probably about to become clear. When discussing storytelling from a meta level, though, authorial intent can be a valuable line of thought.)
Relative to other creators, I think Martin leans toward being pretty comfortable acknowledging that there are aspects of his storytelling that go beyond his own conscious intent. Part of this is in his own concept of being a gardener rather than an architect while he's creating a story, and then another part of it is in his willingness to acknowledge this:
An author is not necessarily infallible when discussing his own work because so much takes place in the subconscious. (x)
And I think this is a great way for writers and readers/viewers to approach fiction, but it is especially important in this context, because that socialization to consider abusive behavior to be not only acceptable but romantic runs very deep. So while it is disappointing that he doesn't quite seem to have a conscious, academic kind of understanding on the issues he touched on with this incident, there's a lot about it that I don't want to disregard. Because this kind of "forbidden passion! no means yes!" line of thinking that Jaime espouses throughout the chapter is, you know, a horrifyingly conventional romance novel trope, something that we're socialized to accept uncritically. But Martin, apparently on instinct rather than conscious analysis, associated it with this incident that stands out to readers as being incredibly fucked up. So, while I personally could've done without this incident playing out this way for a lot of reasons, I do think he does better than many in that he seems to get that this trope is emphatically disturbing.
And all of that, in turn, carries over to your point about the flaws in Jaime's construct of chivalry. It seems to me that Martin, however consciously or unconsciously, gardened his way into a consistent pattern with the character. Jaime has a very Jaime-specific variant of a virgin-whore complex: he has protective impulses toward women who strike him in one way or another as needing and/or deserving his protection, but his behavior toward Cersei, who he feels has power over him, can become shockingly awful.
They are Twins and they are in love and in a relation since forever. They feel each other. They can almost read each other mind. Because they are Twins. This is scientifically proven. Twins have a connection closer than any other. They are "one person in two bodies". Jaime knew Cersei wanted him. Knew it, felt it, because of their connection. Jaime is the most anti-rape and pro-woman man in the novels.
Wow, there’s a lot to unpack in this comment:
(1) “They/we have a special relationship that other people just don’t understand!!” is a really common way of rationalizing all kinds of partner abuse. It is a rationalization, not an objectively valid defense.
(2) In this case specifically, we have a lot of evidence that this isn’t so. Even Jaime himself comments numerous times on how much he really doesn’t know about Cersei (AND MOON BOY, FOR ALL HE KNOWS).
(3) Making this whole thing about what Jaime “knew” is a little beside the point, because again, this isn’t about a misunderstanding. The fact that he bothers to rationalize to himself that “he never heard her” when we know that he hears her just fine tells me that he knows he’s not paying attention to her wishes.
(4) I’m tempted to just dismiss out of hand that there’s some hierarchy of pro-woman-ness where one character can win first place. But I think you’re touching on a very important issue, which is that people can be appalled by a violent act when it’s committed in one way or at a particular group of targets, but support or even engage in that violent act committed a different way or at another group of targets. How many people IRL are loud in their opposition to “legitimate rape” but are eager to blame rape victims who’d had a couple of drinks before being assaulted? Jaime can be (very much is, IMO) disgusted by rape which includes other kinds of violence; unfortunately, it doesn’t follow that he is above other methods of coercion, as we see in the scene in the sept.
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