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silverducks · 3 years

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Game of Thrones - Jaime Lannister

A rambling character study of Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones

Part 1b – Jaime’s Character Arc

So here’s my next rambling post where I finish off talking about how I see Jaime’s character arc in the show, and why I cannot make any sense of his ending.

Believe me, I keep on trying to just be at peace, but nope.

Spoilers below

Identity Arc

In my last post, I mainly focused on one part of Jaime’s character arc, the more common one we see in stories, redemption. But what I like most about Jaime’s story is that it’s not just about simple redemption. What's also important for Jaime is his identity. And by that I don't just mean agency, but how he sees himself, how he fits into the world around him, and his ability to think for himself and make his own decisions.

This is tied to his redemption arc, but it's also important enough for its own post. As Jaime's identity arc grows, so does his ability to make independent decisions. This allows him to become more honourable and choose to do the right thing.

By finding himself, as it were, he also finds his ability to be redeemed. In fact, I’d argue that it’s his identity arc that grows first, which in turn triggers his redemptive arc.

So, how do I see his identity arc? Well, remember in my last post about redemption I said we don't really like him at first? Yeah, he starts the show as pretty arrogant and cruel and not a nice person. But as I explained in that post, as the show goes on, especially in series three, we start to understand Jaime more. We find out the real reason he killed the Mad King. We discover that he's actually been suffering under the name Kingslayer for what was actually his most honourable act. We see that he's actually using the arrogant, cruel facade to hide how much he does care and how much what happened bothers him. It is through his interactions with Brienne that we see how his younger, naïve ideals of honourable knights he once held dear have become twisted and corrupted through what he’s seen of the world, and how they have turned him cold and bitter. And how all this mixed together has caused him to be pretty messed up. Does he really know who he is at this point? I’d argue no, not really. That he's come to believe all these bad things about himself - that in convincing others he doesn't care, he's convinced himself.

I've mentioned before how much I liked the oath verses oath scene in series two, with Catelyn Stark. For me as a viewer it was the first real inkling that there was more to Jaime than I first thought. We had seen the odd hint of it, but this is where it first struck a chord with me. And this then is where I will start my analysis of Jaime's identity arc. Beginning first with the idea of oaths and honour and how I see these all conflicting within Jaime and forming the basis of his initial identity crisis. And how, as the story unfolds, we see him discovering who he really is, what he really wants and becoming independent enough to make his own decisions.

What I liked most about that scene is we see the conflict of these oaths, how they battle together, so not matter what choices are made, one oath is broken to keep another. Jaime has sworn so many at this point that they are always at odds and so it seems like Jaime has just given up trying to keep them. He’s become self-serving – or thinks he has - because what is the point of serving others and oaths now? He stays loyal to his family, which caused him to get captured in the first place, but for Jaime, he seems to have given up on himself.

We find out later on that he broke his main oath, to serve the King, which was his main role and purpose and also identity at that point, for a higher, more important oath, his oath and role as a Knight. Basically he killed the king, breaking his oath as a Kings Guard (to protect the King), to serve his oath as a Knight (to protect the innocent.) This is a direct example of a conflict of these oaths and how he did do the right thing, obeyed the higher, more honourable oath. But all it caused him was to lose his place and identity – a Kings Guard who is now famous for killing his King – and be loathed by everyone. So for Jaime at this point, it's as if he thinks, what's the point? Why try so hard to keep to all these oaths when keeping one breaks another and people hate him anyway? So he's convinced himself of this up to now, to pretend to not care anymore. But we see it does bother him, especially when he faces contempt from very honourable people like Ned and Catelyn, and then Brienne. Part of him, although buried deep, does still care about those oaths and his honour…

And so we find him, in series two, desperate to get back to Cersei (yes more on her later) and doing his best to play the arrogant, conceited Kingslayer part. It's not hard to see why he accepts Catelyn's offer and swears one more oath - what is one more at this point?

(On an interesting side note, I do like the symmetry here - Catelyn in a way betrays her oath to her King and her son Robb, in order to help her daughters (honour versus loyalty). A move that sets Jaime on his own, positive character arc, but you could argue begins the start of Catelyn’s, and Robb's, downfall. After all, Robb never really trusts her again after this and it causes issues in his own army.)

And so, at the start of series three, we find Jaime and Brienne on their wonderful road trip. It’s not hard to see that Jaime is really just going along as a chance to escape, he isn't bothered about Catelyn or the oath he swore to save her daughters. His only aim is to get back to Cersei. But as I mentioned in the last post, there's something about Brienne that gets under his skin, makes his previous arrogant facade start to crack. She reminds him of who he used to be, before all these oaths and repercussions and seeing the real world for what it was made him hard and bitter.

For me, it was around the time he teamed up with Brienne that I started to properly rethink his character myself. It was only the beginning of his long path to self-betterment, but there was something a bit less cruel, a bit less arrogant in his behaviour with Brienne. When I watched them bickering on their road trip, I felt like he was poking her to try and get a reaction, to show him she wasn’t all she claimed to be, rather than just because he wanted to be cruel for cruelties sake (or as we later find, part of that mask he’d convinced himself of). Of course, it’s still not yet a good trait, but for me as a viewer, this Jaime was different, this Jaime seemed to have started to care about something other than Cersei. He wanted to bring down Brienne and to prove her wrong, because she challenged him. He cared about proving her wrong, and this then started him caring about what she thought of him. I love the line where he says, “Why do you hate me so much, have I ever harmed you?”

Other than the odd conversation with Ned in series one, this is the first time Jaime is actually shown to truly care what someone thinks of him outside his family. It bothers him that she hates him, when he pretty much just put up with it from everyone else. It bothers him that she’s automatically judged him and doesn’t believe him worthy of anything but a bargaining chip for Catelyn’ daughters. She doesn’t even believe he’s worthy of being called anything but Kingslayer. To be fair to Brienne, as Jaime is still playing the cocky, arrogant, careless façade, and he keeps on needling her, it’s not surprising. And for Brienne, he IS an oath breaker and without any honour, because he did break his oaths and kill the King he was sworn to protect. This is completely against everything Brienne believes is right and true and she answers, “You’ve harm other’s, those you’ve sworn to protect.”

As I explained in my last post, Brienne is basically the personification of a young, honourable Knight, not corrupted by the world or the many conflicting oaths she has sworn. The younger, more innocent Jaime before his own clashing oaths and what he had seen serving the Mad King made him bitter and corrupted. She gets under his skin because he hates that she is everything he didn’t think could be possible; what he wanted to be, and wasn’t able to be. And when she doesn’t let him get the better of her, continues to prove true to her ideals, not only does he start to care for her good opinion, but starts to respect her too. I think this aspect culminates in their fight scene, where Brienne once more proves herself. She can and does fight him, and is more than a match for Jaime in his current condition. To quote my last post,

Basically, she is a) an honourable person b) sticks to her oaths c) also able to fight (and therefore protect people) and d) refuses to let him get the better of her. A true Knight in all but name, whilst Jaime is now a Knight in nothing but name.

And the best thing? She’s not trying to prove herself, she’s simply being herself and she is, truly is, genuine.

And for Jaime, who had long given up, thinking what’s the point, starts to realise maybe it is possible, maybe even for him. The fact that she’s a woman – a great “beast” of a woman - makes it all the more impactful. Jaime might have idolised Knights like Arthur Dayne and Barristan Selmy when he was younger, but they were still Knights, still fit the role. She is at odds with the ideal, yet she is, to quote Catelyn Stark, “A truer Knight than you’ll ever be.” And this true Knight hates him and it’s not only starting to bother Jaime, but make him want to strive to better her opinion of him.

Now, I think this is mainly all subconscious from Jaime at this point, his reaction to Brienne and why he cared for her good opinion. But one of the best things about character analysis is inferring things from what we see in the show. Whilst you could call this just my opinion, the fact remains that we as a viewer start to see these changes in Jaime when Brienne shows up. And we continue to see positive changes in Jaime when Brienne is around.

And their interactions start to change now, after their sword fight, when they are both captured. They start to become allies, or at least Jaime tries to instigate this; Brienne is still having none of the Kingslayer. He tries to help and warn her about what Locke’s men will do to her, because he knows she would try to fight and die, and he doesn’t want that. He actively cares for her as an ally now, someone (considering she was his captor not too long ago) who he doesn’t want to be harmed. And then we see him making an actual effort to help her – he tricks Locke into leaving Brienne alone. This is the first time we see him actually do something for someone that isn’t his family. And he suffers for it – his trick to help Brienne ends up costing him his hand.

And yes, you could argue that it was ultimately Jaime’s arrogance that led to Locke cutting off his hand, but if he had stayed silent, let the men have their way with Brienne and possibly kill her, he never would have lost it in the first place. His first act of selflessness (outside his loyalty to his family) for a long time, and it costs him his hand… (More on that later).

But here Jaime did do the right thing, the honourable thing, and we now start to see Brienne’s opinion of Jaime changing too. Brienne now has started to see that perhaps there is some honour in Jaime after all, after he saved her from being raped. She’s starting to care about what happens to him now as well, and more than as just a bargaining chip. She tries to defend him when Locke’s men treat him terribly and talks him out of his worst, most self-destructive thoughts. These two characters no longer hate each other anymore – they are starting to care for the wellbeing of each other and, in Jaime’s case, Brienne’s good opinion and respect.

And this reaches its peak in the Harrenhal bath scene. Both are quite vulnerable here – after all Brienne is a Lady and she’s understandably shy and anxious about sharing a bath with Jaime. And Jaime has hit rock bottom, completely and utterly. He looks a mess, has lost his hand, feverish and in pain, weak and helpless and basically life couldn’t get much worse for him at this point. Look how the once proud Lion has fallen. Except then there’s also Brienne, judging him again. She hasn’t forgotten that just because he saved her, he’s still Kingslayer. And we actively see as an audience just how much he hates this now. We see clearly how much he’s always noticed and hated how people despise him for killing the King. And now he’s at his lowest point, a broken mess of the man he once was, he opens up to Brienne.

In my opinion, it’s more than that; he needs someone’s approval now, he needs someone to say he’s not that bad, that he’s ok. He needs someone to help put him back together. It starts with Jaime’s usual cocky, cruel humour, his shield, but he’s too broken to wield it properly and he goes too far and pushes Brienne to her breaking point. For the first time he’s gotten under her skin, he’s bothered her. But there’s no joy in this now, he’s too broken for that and instead he’s ashamed. What he wants now is not to bring someone else down, but to have someone pull him up.

So, he does something we’ve also never seen him do before (please correct me if I’m wrong here of course), he apologises. And this is where Brienne’s specific personality is important. It’s not just any shoulder to cry on, he wants Brienne’s forgiveness, wants her trust and respect, because he’s grown to trust and respect her. He cares greatly now for her good opinion. She is the Knight he now is acknowledging he wants to be again, and earning her good opinion is worth sharing his deepest secret. He wants her to see him for what he really is, because he needs to prove himself to her now. Prove he isn’t as bad as they all think, as she thinks, that he’s not that awful, hateful Kingslayer who everyone despises. Because if he is, what is there really left for him, for his identity that has completed shattered around him?

And then we have that amazing scene where we learn all about the real reason he killed the Mad King, to save those hundreds and thousands of innocence people. We see how far from not caring, it’s been eating Jaime alive for years. And Brienne sits there and listens – giving him exactly what he needs now, someone to hear his heartbroken story of what really happened and to no longer judge him. To show him, through her silent acceptance and understanding, that he isn’t that bad a person, after all.

I’ve read some people compare the bath scene to a rebirth, and whilst I didn’t see it when I watched the show, it does make sense. For a start there’s water and the idea of a bath and cleanliness. There’s the fact that Jaime faints (ie dies) in Brienne’s arms and there’s also the Christian idea of rebirth through Baptism in water. Then we get the next scene with Jaime all cleaned up and looking much better - the new reborn Jaime.

The more I think on it, the more I like this idea. That we started with the old, messed up Jaime, who’s haunted by his past mistakes, those conflicting oaths and those awful, cruel names for what was probably his most honourable deed, who doesn’t know himself anymore. That had to reach rock bottom and break so he could be made anew. And then he’s reborn as a new Jaime, who learns to care, that it’s ok to care, who’s won the trust and the respect of the honourable Knight in all but name, Lady Brienne.

It’s just automatic in their lunch scene with Bolton that she will come with him, and when she can’t and they say goodbye, we can see how much this is affecting Jaime. He doesn’t want to lose the first person for a long, long time who has seen there is good in him, who believes in him and makes him believe in himself. When she calls him Ser Jaime, no longer Kingslayer, you can see how much that means to him – she’s calling him by his name, accepting him for what he is and giving him back the title of a Knight. He’s become worthy now, in her eyes. And that means a lot to someone like Jaime, who had long ago given up on his own worthiness.

And this change in Jaime’s identity then triggers his most interesting good deed imho – saving Brienne from that bear. He risks his life to save her, without really thinking of the consequences, because he knows it’s the right thing to do. He cares for her now, as a person as well as for her good opinion, and he knows he can’t just leave her to Locke’s mercy. And so he makes Bolton’s men return him to Harrenhal so he can save her. The first person to see him for who he really is, who makes himself start to re-evaluate himself and want to do better.

Of course, the idea of honour and those clashing oaths don’t simply go away for Jaime, especially not when it comes to the concept of honour versus loyalty and family, but it’s his series three road trip with Brienne which triggers this change in Jaime’s identity arc. How he goes from seemingly not caring about any of his oaths, not caring what people think of him and effectively having given up on himself as anything other than a selfish, hateful person. To then become someone who starts to care again, starts to question his own ideas about himself and starts to want to do better. He wants to have someone’s good opinion, wants to trust someone and have someone trust and respect him. In series four, we see a different Jaime, one who is starting to think a little more for himself and taking those oaths a little more seriously...

Before we get to series four though, and what I think of as the next important chapter in Jaime’s identity arc, we need to talk about that hand. It’s bad enough that Jaime had his hand chopped off (I think that was one of biggest shocks of the show for me), but for Jaime, the implications are even more severe. As he tells Brienne, “I was that hand.” He’s a fighter, he livesfor sword fighting. He’s one of the best in the whole realm. He’s devoted most of his life to learning to fight, is naturally gifted as well and this defines him – it makes him what he is. He’s proud of his ability to fight and considering how much he thinks himself a hopeless cause in other ways, he can still, and does fight. It is basically the only thing (other than Cersei and his family) that he has.

And that gets taken away. His whole identity just gone, in one moment.

We can see instantly how this affects him – he becomes suicidal for a while, before Brienne talks some sense into him. We can see how easily he lets Locke and his men push him around. He’s weak, defenceless, he doesn’t even try – for a little while, he’s nothing. He is no longer who he always thought himself to be. So he can either give up, which Brienne isn’t going to let him do, or he can re-invent himself. And this is exactly what he does. He’s still rash (eg the bear pit), but he thinksmore now, he has to rely on his brains over his brawns and we see that actually, he isn’t so stupid after all. Now he can’t just fight himself out of situations, he comes up with other ideas, like his trick to get Bolton’s guard to take him back to Harranhal. Later on in the show, we see him coming up with good military strategies like at RiverRun and High Garden. We see him start to use reason more, like his negotiation with Tywin to save Tyrion and then actually rescuing Tyrion.

He’s also now more dependent on other people – he can’t be as arrogant and proud when he needs help to do more simple things. And this helps humble him as well, further helping to dispel that arrogant, careless person he thought was all he could be. It’s interesting because his last major good deed, when he killed the Mad King, led to him being despised and mocked by everyone, causing his own identity crisis. But this good deed, resulting in him losing his sword hand, has the opposite effect – it helps him become a better person. Luckily for Jaime, Brienne was around to help point him in the right direction this time.

The loss of his hand is a very physical, abrupt change in Jaime’s identity arc, and we see very early on how this also, through being forced to re-invent himself, helps him become a better person through his interconnected redemption arc.

There’s also a lot of symbolism in Jaime losing his hand – his sword hand that killed the King, that killed others in his many fights and battles. And whilst in the show it was technically his left hand that pushed Bran out of the window, we’ll still include it. The hand that caused these “bad things” is gone – as if on a more metaphorical level, Jaime’s past is wiped away, a clean slate, ready for him to start anew doing all those good deeds we now see.

And whilst it’s not stated what hand he grasped Cersei’s ankle with when they were born, the same symbolism can be applied here too – that his connection to Cersei, through the bond as twins, is also severed at a metaphorical level.

So, this not only completely changes Jaime and dramatically affects his identity arc, it helps lead in to him becoming a better person.

Now, on that mention of Cersei… Ok, I think Jaime’s relationship with his sister, and indeed all of his messed up family, will likely be far too long to include in this post, so I’ll save that for another post on Jaime and his relationships. That will carry on the idea of who Jaime is now from series 4 onwards, but with more focus on relationships and how they change now he’s starting to grow as a character.

But just as a quick summary here, Jaime has been in an incestuous relationship with his sister for a very, very long time. He’s never even been with anyone else but Cersei. Pretty much everything he does prior to series three and four are for Cersei, “The things we do for love.” She has defined him for a long, long time and so a large part of his identity arc revolves around her.

But as we see in the later series, series four especially, this also starts to fracture. Jaime’s identity starts to become less centralised on Cersei as he becomes a better person. And it is this breaking away from his unhealthy relationship with Cersei that helps a lot in both his redemption arc, but also allows Jaime to become his own person, and helps his identity arc to develop.

But more on Cersei in the next post.

#Sorry guys #I just keep on writing and it keeps on getting too long #I promise to wrap this up at some point #Thanks for reading #Hope you found it ok #Please feel free to correct or disagree with me

#Game of Thrones #Jaime Lannister #Brienne x Jaime

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hellsbellschime · 4 years

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1I feel for Jamie so much. Right now he resents himself, what he has become. It is not how others see him, I disagree. It is how he sees himself. He tried to kill Bran, but he saved a million people. His reckoning with what he did to Bran has not come yet; for all he knows so far Bran is dead, and not by his own hand. Meeting him again will be a great moment for him (arghhhh, the show took that away from us!) He has come to the realization that what he has become was because of Cersei. Therefore

2 he chose to leave her and not return yet in search of himself. He is going through an identity crisis, not exactly a redemption arc, because his crimes are frankly, at least as I see them, not that great (apart from what he did to Bran and his reasons for it that are seriously messed up). In this he is very similar to Jon, not Theon. I also do not see how Theon can redeem himself by saving Jeyne. Jamie did not actually kill Bran, but Theon killed those boys. What Theon did is hugely evil.

3 He destroyed WF and created a power vacuum in the North that allowed for the Bolton coup. Had Theon not attacked WF there would actually be no RW. Indirectly, Theon is responsible for the murder of the Northmen at the Twins, of Robb and Catelyn. So no matter if he regrets it or not, no matter if he feels remorse, his crimes are much more heinous than Jamie's. He might redeem himself by sacrificing for the Starks but it won't undo anything. So in my opinion there's a stark contrast here.

4 Jon and Jamie save lives; they are not perfect and have made mistakes, sometimes grave ones, and there's a lack of morality in Jamie highlighted by having sex with Cersei in the Sept. But is his lack of morality inherent in him, or is it acquired after so many years of addiction to his toxic sister? Theon by contrast chose to kill when time came to decide. He chose to do harm, unlike Jamie. Sorry for the rant, I just had to put this opinion out there and give another twist to the dialog.

I mean, I don’t think it’s fair to blame Cersei for who Jaime is. She is definitely a nightmare, but even she thought that Jaime’s reaction to Bran catching them was inappropriate and too much. So how can she be to blame for what Jaime did to him? And Jaime didn’t have sex with Cersei in the Sept, he raped her in the Sept. Not to mention, if Theon is indirectly responsible for everything that happened at the RW then Jaime is indirectly responsible for literally everything horrible that has happened in the series. He may not have successfully killed Bran, but that was his intention, and if indirect responsibility is in consideration then he’s responsible for the murders of thousands of innocent children and smallfolk in general now.

For me Theon has done hugely evil things, but the potential for his redemption is different because he has actually lost his sense of entitlement whereas Jaime has not. Theon’s only hope for redemption now is that people won’t see him solely as the man who did all of those terrible things, and that even though he’s done so many terrible things he can still do something good for someone. And that’s why his narrative arc means something for me. He’s saving Jeyne Poole who is essentially a nobody. She’s not anyone important to him, he has no emotional ties to her, and he’s not going to go down in the history books for coming to the rescue of Lady Jeyne Poole. She’s expendable and no one really cares about her for her, which is why the fact that Theon is risking his life to save her is actually so meaningful. There’s no glory in it but it’s the right thing to do, and it will mean literally everything to her. Theon began his journey in a similar state of mind to Jaime, he was arrogant and believed that he deserved a lot more than he got in general, and especially when it came to the respect of other highborn people. Now Theon has suffered enormously but has also genuinely changed. He’s not the person he was before because he doesn’t want to be that person, and he’s doing the right thing because he actually wants to do the right thing. He may be beyond the point of redemption, but that doesn’t mean that all of the choices he makes don’t matter anymore, and for me I think it’s more meaningful to have a character who is making choices that aren’t being made in exchange for something else, but are just simply their own choices. And it’s especially meaningful for Theon’s character arc that he’s making the much harder choice because it’s the right choice, even though there is a very strong possibility that he’ll just suffer horribly and die and ignominious death as a reviled asshole instead of gaining any favor with anyone else besides Jeyne.

Jaime on the other hand is still in the glory and respect phase of his emotional development. Contrast the fact that Theon is saving Jeyne with the fact that Jaime is trying to save Sansa. Saving Sansa WILL bring whoever does it glory, whoever does that likely will go down in the history books as saving the lost princess of Winterfell, and it will be especially memorable and attention getting if it’s a Lannister who does it. There are thousands of people he could save now, but he’s not saving them, likely because there’s nothing in it for him. Jaime wants to keep his promise to Catelyn but it’s because he wants to be known as someone who does keep promises, it’s not because he actually cares about keeping promises. Even now he’s broken his promises to people a hundred times, but because people don’t know that he’s made those promises and because it’s not something that will actually make him look better and he doesn’t care that much about something that won’t change his image in the eyes of others. Theon’s perspective on what matters and how people see him has evolved, but Jaime’s hasn’t yet.

That’s not to say that it’s impossible for Jaime to evolve in the future, but the problem is that all of his motivation to change is external. Even when it comes to his dream about his mother, he’s not doing that because it’s what he himself wants, he’s driven by the idea of other people seeing him in a different way than he wants to be seen. He’s still extremely invested in the perception of others but he’s not actually putting in the groundwork of just being a decent person to everyone and earning his reputation through that. And that is truly how all of the best characters have earned their reputations for being good people in Westeros. He and Theon are different because they’ve both done evil things, but Theon has an understanding that the things he’s done are evil while Jaime still excuses himself. Theon murdered two innocent children, but the brutal reality is that the world won’t care or even really remember them. But what’s different now is that Theon cares and remembers them, and it haunts him even though the smallfolk are seen as mostly dispensable by highborn people. Jaime tried to murder Bran and threatened the life of Edmure’s baby, but in his mind it’s still the ends justifying the means and these are things that he rationalizes and excuses by saying that he was somehow forced into these choices. That’s not to say that Jaime is incapable of change or finding some measure of decency, but his motivation for his own behaviors and decisions is entirely different than Theon’s, and he’s much further away from becoming a truly decent person than Theon is.

#theon grejoy #jaime lannister #asoiaf #Anonymous

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ginmo · 4 years

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on brienne being ymb what could brienne steal from cersei

Power. Cersei’s true love is power. Jaime is viewed as the male version of herself, and she resents that she wasn’t born a man. She believes she has to use men to do the deeds she’d like to carry out on her own, to gain power in the patriarchy.

“I should have been born a man. I would have no need of any of you then. - TYRION, ACOK

Within the tower, the smoke from the torches irritated her eyes, but Cersei did not weep, no more than her father would have. I am the only true son he ever had. - CERSEI, AFFC

"Your turn," she told him afterward. "Pull his mane, I dare you." He never did. I should have had the sword, not him. - CERSEI, ADWD

And she depends on Jaime the most

“As I was fucking her, Cersei cried, ‘I want.’ I thought that she meant me, but it was the Stark girl that she wanted, maimed or dead.” The things I do for love. “It was only by chance that Stark’s own men found the girl before me. If I had come on her first …” - JAIME, AFFC

Jaime, you’re my shining knight. You cannot abandon me when I need you most! He is stealing my son, sending me away … and unless you stop him, Father is going to force me to wed again! - JAIME, ASOS

Since she views them as the same, he is her sword, representing her warrior half that she was unable to be (until ASOS lmao which is why she starts getting angry). At one point, she gets irritated by Jaime rejecting her wishes, and she begins to think he’s just getting in the way. But then she realizes she needs him, not being able to trust the others. He will either save her or they die together.

Even in her exhausted, frightened state, the queen knew she dare not trust her fate to a court of sparrows. Nor could she count on Ser Kevan to intervene, after the words that had passed between them at their last meeting. It will have to be a trial by battle.

There is no other way. “Qyburn, for the love you bear me, I beg you, send a message for me. A raven if you can. A rider, if not. You must send to Riverrun, to my brother. Tell him what has happened, and write … write …”

“Yes, Your Grace?” She licked her lips, shivering. “Come at once. Help me. Save me. I need you now as I have never needed you before. I love you. I love you. I love you. Come at once.”

“As you command. ‘I love you’ thrice?”

“Thrice.” She had to reach him. “He will come. I know he will. He must. Jaime is my only hope.” - CERSEI, AFFC

But he burned her pleas for help and won’t be her champion because... he’ll be with Brienne, where ever the fuck that is (prayer circle for Quiet Isle), and has been for several weeks already. People believe the point of the prophecy is that it’s Cersei making it happen. This fits. Instead of loving Jaime for who he is while he started rediscovering his identity, Cersei pushed him away with her violent outbursts and nasty words, making it clear she was disgusted by his stump and who he was becoming. Therefore, when she sent her plea for help, he was like lmao no and then he ran off with Brienne to help her and Sansa instead. (The Sansa bit is a lie unless Brienne’s plan is to literally save him from LSH by having him help her find Sansa. Anyway, off topic haha).

I want to make it clear, though, that Brienne isn’t stealing Jaime. I know the prophecy says, “take all that you hold dear,” but that “take” is her sword, not Jaime as a person. He isn’t an object someone can take. Although, Cersei certainly views him as one, so she may perceive it as “take.”

There’s a misconception that Brienne changed Jaime, but that’s not what happened at all. After Jaime lost his swordhand he was essentially thrown into a path of self discovery.

And Jaime, losing a hand, losing the very thing he defined himself on is crucial to where I think I want to go with the character. And he questions what do you make of yourself if you’ve lost that.” - GRRM [x]

Brienne didn’t change him, and in the books she isn’t “driving his redemption arc.” (God don’t even get me started on that hot take). What she did do was convince him to keep on living and reminded him of the person he used to be. Like that’s kinda how life works... people inspire other people, but apparently in this fandom a female role model for a male character is problematic, and they aren’t allowed to fall in love lol. Anyway, all of that work came from Jaime himself, going back to who he truly is, for himself.

Crakehall. And me, that boy I was … when did he die, I wonder? When I donned the white cloak? When I opened Aerys’s throat? That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead. - JAIME, ASOS

Jaime didn't start out evil--that he actually was a very idealistic young man who was disillusioned by life, and that there was always much more to his killing of Arys than just "evil." [x]

So Brienne’s isn’t “taking” Jaime, he just would rather give his help to her than to Cersei, because she treats him with respect, and he made an oath. He could have said, “I know I made an oath, but I trust you to see it through. I have one hand, so I’d be of no use.” One-handed Jaime went, not just for the oath, but to give his help. He didn’t bother to help Cersei. If he truly cared about Cersei’s fate, he would have desperately tried to help in some form, even if he couldn’t be her champion. Trying to save her life would have been first priority. But... he’s tired of her bs. This is partly how Cersei pushed him right into Brienne’s arms, creating the YMB herself.

And honestly? Cersei does love Jaime (but loves him to the extent a narcissist can love). This bit in the prophecy is interesting.

Anger flashed across the child’s face. “If she tries I will have my brother kill her.” -CERSEI, AFFC

People argue that since she’s causing the prophecy to happen, then this quote points to Dany or Sansa, because Jaime’s allegiance has shifted due to her actions. Ignoring how I find it absolutely ridiculous that GRRM would have it be literal beauty when beauty is a theme for Cersei (and readers) to learn a lesson from, and that it would be basic as hell that he would want the readers (and Cersei) to go back and forth over “who’s the fairest of them all” (subversive BatB/Snow White hybrid), I’m... still not denying that possibility. I do believe Dany and Sansa are good candidates.

HOWEVER, I feel the irony is sweeter if the reason why Jaime won’t kill the YMB is because Jaime is in love with the woman she’d want to have killed lol. I’m not even sure Cersei would connect the dots if Brienne is YMB (because of the quote I’ll be addressing down the page a bit).

What’s also telling that Cersei holds Jaime dear (because... male her and therefore her perceived path to power), is that her friend states she wants to marry Jaime. Her friend expressing that she wants to marry Jaime became a threat, because she had just learned about the YMB, which can imply that Jaime is very much connected to what she holds dear, and possibly connected to the YMB through romance and marriage. So, she pushes her down the well to eliminate one candidate for YMB.

Cersei had not had a friend she so enjoyed since Melara Hetherspoon, and Melara had turned out to be a greedy little schemer with ideas above her station. - CERSEI, AFFC

Then, years later,

“He took Raventree and accepted Lord Blackwood’s surrender,” said her uncle, “but on his way back to Riverrun he left his tail and went off with a woman.”

“A woman?” Cersei stared at him, uncomprehending. “What woman? Why? Where did they go?”

“No one knows. We’ve had no further word of him. The woman may have been the Evenstar’s daughter, Lady Brienne.”

Her. The queen remembered the Maid of Tarth, a huge, ugly, shambling thing who dressed in man’s mail. Jaime would never abandon me for such a creature. My raven never reached him, elsewise he would have come.- CERSEI, ADWD

Ah yes. So it begins.

#brienne of tarth #jaime lannister #jaime x brienne #for the subversive Batb/Snow White bit I meant to say that I DO think he might be doing that but not the striaght forward Who is Prettier #..#cersei lannister #ymb

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secretlyatargaryen · 4 years

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Tyrion and Zuko: The Good Bad Guy, The Bad Good Guy

I’ve never seen anyone compare Tyrion Lannister and Zuko, but the parallels seem so obvious to me. I know there’s been a lot of comparisons in fandom to Zuko and his arc and a lot of discussion of what makes a good redemption arc and I’m not necessarily talking about this from that perspective, because I don’t really think Tyrion is on a redemption arc (and also reject the idea that I’ve seen bandied about that he is on a “villain” arc or that his arc is in opposition to his brother Jaime’s, with Jaime as the one who is usually seen by fandom as set up for redemption.) But I do think the parallels between the two characters are striking. I don’t think they’re 1:1 and even many of the parallels I make are not intended to be exact, as these two characters have narratives that are structured differently, and of course there are differences based on medium and target audience between the two series.

This is part one of a series of posts on these two characters, and this part will focus on how these characters are positioned structurally by the narrative.

Spoilers for both series to follow!

The biggest, most immediate difference between Tyrion and Zuko is that Zuko is positioned as an antagonist at the beginning of the story (although not necessarily a villain), while Tyrion is not antagonistic to the identifiable heroes at the beginning of AGOT, and is in fact the only Lannister not to be positioned that way by the narrative initially. In fact, part of this meta and part of my purposes for comparing them is to argue that Zuko’s narrative arc is not a straight line from villain to hero, which makes him very similar to Tyrion and his narrative positioning as the “good bad guy, the bad good guy” as Peter Dinklage says of his character on Game of Thrones. Even though Zuko’s mission at the beginning of the series is antagonistic to Team Avatar, he is still presented as a POV character with whom we are meant to sympathize, if at first only through sympathetic characters in his story like Iroh and characters who act as antagonistic in his own story, like Zhao and later Azula.

Tyrion also is presented to us as on the “bad side” of the narrative. He’s a Lannister, and many of the immediately sympathetic characters dislike and distrust him. Yet he is positioned sympathetically almost immediately as seen through characters like Jon Snow and Bran, and in contrast to his brother and sister.

Zuko and Tyrion also are positioned similarly in the narrative in relation to the way they are paired with and against the other characters in the story. Heroic narratives often make use of the Rule of Three, and one way in which this is shown is in presenting the main characters of the story as a triad. This type of narrative will have a protagonist, a deuteragonist, and a tritagonist. Usually the protagonist and the deuteragonist are male, and serve as foils and shadows of each other, and the third protagonist, or tritagonist, is a female character. You could argue about who takes the second and third position but it’s inarguable that in Avatar: The Last Airbender (further referred to as ATLA), these characters are Aang, Zuko, and Katara. In A Song of Ice and Fire (further referred to as ASOIAF) these characters are Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and Tyrion Lannister. This is also why it’s often theorized that Tyrion is the third head of the three-headed dragon that Dany and Jon are both part of, despite not having any Targaryen blood.

The other narrative structure that ASOIAF uses with regard to the characters that mirrors ATLA is what George R R Martin coins “the five key players” in his original manuscript of ASOIAF:

Five central characters will make it through all three volumes, however, growing from children to adults and changing the world and themselves in the process. In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women. The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow. (source)

I have theorized from what he says here that when Martin originally conceptualized his story, he intended for Tyrion to be younger than he is when we see him in the series, as Martin says that the five central characters will “grow from children to adults,” and Tyrion is already an adult as of his first chapter in A Game of Thrones. However, the fact that Tyrion is quite a bit older than the other four is thematically important. Tyrion is a character who, when we see him at the beginning of the story, has lost his innocence and become embittered by an abusive childhood and a lifetime of cruelty directed towards him because of his dwarfism. Yet Tyrion, thoughout the series, often relates to the child characters specifically because of that lost innocence. He offers help and advice to Jon, Bran, and Sansa throughout the series, and as of ADWD is on his way to join Daenerys.

Similarly, Zuko is positioned against the four main child characters of ATLA that make up Team Avatar, Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph, and has moments where he relates to them even before he seeks to join them. And although Zuko is only sixteen and very much a kid (which becomes even more apparent when he joins the gaang), and Tyrion is an adult, he is still a young man and his relationship to Jon is something like that of an older brother.

Zuko and Aang’s relationship could be compared with that of Jon and Tyrion. Jon and Aang offer friendship to someone who they should consider an enemy, and Tyrion and Zuko end up becoming unexpected mentors to the younger boys. In both stories, this serves to highlight the tragedy of how war pits people against each other and what each of these characters has lost.

Aang to Zuko: If we knew each other back then, do you think we could have been friends, too?

-S1E13

Even after ADWD and all the war and strife between Stark and Lannister, Jon still considers Tyrion his friend. Obviously, we do not have the ending of ASOIAF to compare to ATLA, but I find it an interesting parallel, nonetheless.

Another thing that makes the characters similar on a structural level is the use of visual symbolism to show the characters’ internal struggle and duality. This is a clever and immediate way for the audience to understand that this is a character who we are meant to see as morally complex. Visual symbolism is more obvious in a medium like animation, and the specific piece of visual symbolism is something that was downplayed in ASOIAF’s television adaptation, so it might be less apparent, but I’ve talked before about how Tyrion’s heterochromia is a visual symbol of his dual nature as a character and his struggle with his identity.

Similarly, Zuko’s scar functions as a symbol of his duality. And although Tyrion also has a dramatic facial mutilation to compare Zuko’s burn scar to, I am comparing Tyrion’s heterochromia to Zuko’s scar instead because of the symbolism associated with eyes and seeing.

It is often said that “the eyes are the windows to the soul,” and the reason for this is obvious. Often we look into another person’s eyes to get a glimpse of who they are, to understand and empathize, to connect and hope they connect with us. Therefore, in fiction, eyes can often tell you a lot about a character’s identity. Having a scar over one eye is an immediate signal of Zuko’s conflict from the moment he is introduced to the audience. His stated goal from episode one is to capture the Avatar, but as the series goes on we see what this goal really is: an impossible task given to him by his father because it is impossible. Therefore, Zuko’s desire to regain his identity as prince of the Fire Nation is put into question. And what better way to represent a conflict with Zuko’s identity towards the Fire Nation than with an injury caused by fire? I’ll talk much more about Zuko’s scar in part two because this is an extremely important part of his narrative.

Tyrion’s heterochromatic eyes function in a similar way, and mirror the way Martin uses color symbolism in ASOIAF. Tyrion is described in the books as having one green eye and one black one, a fact that was not included in the show save for one scene in the pilot, and was eventually discarded, as were Dany’s purple eyes, because of the difficulty colored contacts posed for the actors, and because, as I suspect, it was decided that it was not enough of a noticeable detail to be worth the trouble. It’s a lot easier to get away with things like this in animation (and Zuko’s scar doesn’t work in a live action series for similar practical reasons), but Tyrion’s “mismatched” eyes are a detail often mentioned in the books. Tyrion’s green eye is the eye color he shares with his brother and sister and father, and is known as a distinctive Lannister trait, representing their physical beauty and perfection. And like Tyrion’s disability, his heterochromia is an imperfection and so not tolerated in a House that prides itself on perfection. His black eye, in contrast, while often called his “evil” eye and is a cause, in addition to his dwarfism, for others to treat him like a pariah, brings him closer to who he is as a person separate from his family, as dark eyes represent earthiness and intelligence.

Zuko’s scar also marks him as other the way Tyrion’s heterochromia marks him. It is often called attention to by characters in the series. In the first season it is often used to make him look frightening. Yet it also marks him in the eyes of the audience and the eyes of other characters as a victim of the Fire Nation and a survivor. In this way, the meaning of Zuko’s scar becomes flipped and it is his unmarred side that links him to what appears on the surface to be the order and perfection and superiority of the Fire Nation, but which, just like Zuko’s face if we are only looking at it from one side, hides a warped horror.

In part two I talk about how these two characters have similar trauma and conflict with relationship to their families and how that shapes their narratives.

#tyrion lannister #valyrianscrolls #asoiaf meta #zuko #avatar the last airbender

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theydeservedasoftepilogue · 4 years

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Performativity and the Power of Collective Belief

Today marks the one-year anniversary that glorious, beautiful, triumphant, deeply human scene in which Jaime Lannister asks his beloved, Brienne of Tarth, to kneel so he can give her the one gift she truly covets – knighthood. A standout scene in what is overall a standout episode, it is inarguably the pinnacle of Game of Throne’s (otherwise abysmal) 8th season and arguably the pinnacle of the series as a whole. Certainly I was never as moved or captivated by anything this show has laid before me.

And I – and my fellow Braime shippers – were not alone. Multiple entertainment outlets wrote extended commentary on this episode, often praising this scene in particular. No real wonder. It is viscerally exhilarating, organic, beautifully acted, one of the few TV moments I could without hesitation describe as perfect.

But why?

On one level it seems obvious. It completes Brienne and Jaime’s unique character arcs – her pursuit of knighthood and his pursuit of redemption – while also overtly affirming the deep love they feel for one another. Granted, Jaime’s arc is a little more complex than Brienne’s, for he has always been a mixed bag of noble and misguided deeds. But regardless of his moral grey, Jaime has always found and heeded his better angels when Brienne was there to light the way. His total surrender of Cersei for the Lady of Tarth felt like the necessary end to his personal journey (the final two episodes notwithstanding).

However, I think this scene goes even deeper than these two characters and their particular arcs (both individual and shared). In addition to being a phenomenal consummation of their storylines, this scene also manages to be a perfect microcosm of what Game of Thrones was always trying to theorize and imagine, namely, how can social systems be made fairer, more just, more humane, more attentive and adaptable to the needs of those who must operate in and through them?

At the risk of stating what should be obvious, Game of Thrones is a story about power, and how power works. What made it better than a great many of its imitators was the far more varied and nuanced ways it took on its examination of power. It looked at how a huge range of social phenomenon overlap and intersect in the production and reproduction of power, including: • Wealth • Social networks • Kinship systems • Gender/sex/sexuality/reproduction • Name and reputation • Violence and militarism • Legal systems • Nationalism and tribalism • Tradition • Land and material resources • Religion/spirituality • Labor • Language • And more

Whatever else might be said of this show and its failings, it deeply understood that power is multi-faceted, diffuse, varied, complex, and tied to a huge range of interlocking socio-cultural systems that supersede all the individuals who operate within them.

Humans require social systems to function. They allow us to, as anthropologists would say, create shared meaning, make decisions, divide up labor, meet our collective and individual needs, and yes, even give us pleasure. We cannot just do without social systems, nor would we want to.

But social systems also have a tendency to become calcified and perverted, used by some to exploit and abuse others. Social systems often start out as tools but are frequently repurposed as weapons in the hands of those who find ways to use them to unfair advantage, often perpetuating that unfair advantage over time.

When Game of Thrones begins, we are dropped into a world where this is the core conflict at hand. Deeply unjust and dysfunctional manifestations of power have taken hold, leaving those in charge of running the world deeply inferior to the task. An issue that becomes all the more salient as it becomes clear that Westeros, and the world at large, is facing down an existential threat from the White Walkers.

And that’s part of the point. Humans can and do face problems that cannot be solved at the level of individual action. We need systems and structures for survival. After all, winter is coming.

The arcs of characters like Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, and Lord Varys, are about asking – can the systems themselves be made better, made more just, made to truly help more than they harm? Can we have the tool without allowing it to become a weapon? And if so, how?

Game of Thrones has never been a particularly optimistic show, and I would argue this is valid. Humans are good at corrupting power, and it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise. But I would also argue it does not behoove us to surrender to despair, because the belief that power is inherently unjust helps power stay unjust, the belief that it is unmovable is part of what keeps it unmovable.

Enter our heroes, facing down the Long Night, a seemingly hopeless battle in which there is likely no victory or survival. They sit by a fire, enjoying each other’s company as they contemplate their immanent doom. When Tormund – an outsider to the realms of men – asks why Brienne – an outsider to the realm of manhood – cannot be a knight, she explains, “Women can’t be knights.” The two social systems are in conflict, mutually exclusive. Why? Tradition.

In that moment, Jaime Lannister takes up the power he holds to make other knights, a power the social systems of Westeros have conferred to him by virtue of his wealth and name and kinship and gender and tradition, and he remakes the system with one performative* act. He re-renders the social systems of knighthood and gender by taking up the tools of which the act – the knighting ceremony – is composed and deploying them anew.

Power IS movable. Systems can be remade, and remade for the better.

The act is small, local, confined essentially to the people in the room. But it takes hold and confers nonetheless, partly because the other people in the room (symbolic of society as a whole) uphold and affirm it. They acknowledge it as real, which is what makes it ‘real,’ and therefore powerful – which is the fundamental secret of all social systems. They have the power they have because of collective belief, because we all ACT as if their power is real.

Gender and knighthood, like all social systems, are socially constructed, made by humans and able to be remade by them as we see fit. Part of the way unjust social systems perpetuate themselves is by generating the illusion that they are inevitable, natural, unchangeable, unmovable. When Jaime knights Brienne, the story affirms this fundamental, and fundamentally optimistic, truth about power – it can be remade.

What has always been does not always have to be.

Power can be reborn a female knight in shining armor because no social system is truly unmovable. Most of what is required is for us to acknowledge that the rules governing the systems that govern us are arbitrary, historically contingent, able to be rewritten through the ultimate tool of power we always carry with us – collective belief.

*This refers to the concept of performativity coined by linguist J.L. Austin in his work How to Do Things with Words, and popularized by gender theorist Judith Butler, most primarily in her work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. This essay is particularly indebted to Bulter’s work, as well as that of Foucault (whose theories of power are unparalled).

#Jaime Lannister #Brienne of Tarth #Game of Thrones #ASOFAI #A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms #meta

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jaimetheexplorer · 5 years

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Redemption and judgement

One thing D&D (and Cogman) seem to have always been very prickly about is the concept of themes and arcs, and, in particular, the idea that Jaime was on a redemption arc.

I always found it odd that they’d be so fussed whenever people brought up Jaime’s “redemption arc”. While on the one hand I can understand and agree that there’s nothing wrong with writing character in a more ‘human’, less linear way (life does not operate in linear arcs, and people often wobble and struggle back and forth, some navigating through life with more of a clear purpose than others, some succeeding and some failing, yada yada yada), on the other hand, fiction is still fiction and, generally speaking, directionless, all-over-the-place writing is not really enjoyable for most. Which is why people enjoy and talk about arcs and it’s the reason the vast majority of stories about real events or real people that are made into films or books involve a fairly clear progress from point A to point C via B, where the audience can follow the change and enjoy the unfolding of events, be they happy or tragic.

It’s also bizarre to me that they would be so irritated by it, given that themes and arcs are a massive component of the material they were working to adapt. When talking about Jaime in particular, GRRM explicitly said that what he wants to explore [the themes of] “redemption” and “identity”. He said that it isn’t his job to provide an answer, he just wants to ask the question of “how many good deeds are needed to make up for a bad one” and “is redemption possible?”, and understands both sides of the argument: Jaime can be redeemed in the eyes of some, while he can’t be redeemed in the eyes of others. Given that he says he wants there to be hope, or else, what is the answer, I’d wager that GRRM leans more towards the ‘ayes’ than the ‘nays’, but ultimately he does not want to hand out judgement.

D&D, for their part, never understood this. They wanted to judge and and they ended the story with a judgement - their judgement. They used the lines Jaime says to Brienne before leaving Winterfell as a massive “Fuck You” to anyone who saw him as redeemable. Brienne is essentially the embodiment of Jaime fans, the ones who saw and appreciated the good and the honour in him, and D&D want you to know she/we are wrong and they/Edmure/Olenna/Cersei are right: Jaime is not a “good guy” (these were words David himself once used to justify the horrific adaptation of the sept scene and shrug off any criticism), he is a hateful man, the stupidest Lannister, Cersei will be the end of him, and he needs to accept that he cannot change, no matter how much he tries, and therefore he deserves only a pointless death with his hateful sister (who they want you to feel sorry for, though - because poor mama bear, Cersei! She is just doing it all for her babies!).

It really seems to irk them when people like Jaime and want him to succeed, so I wonder if their choices in adapting his story weren’t partly borne out of their hatred of “arcs and themes”, and whether their ending wasn’t essentially borne out of a desire to stick it to everyone who, through the years, dared talking to them about Jaime’s redemption arc.

#got negativity #anti d&d #jaime lannister #jaime deserved better #still not over it

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bettsfic · 5 years

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tell me more about this fallen knight trope and how my loves jaime lannister and bellamy blake fall into it.

okay so it’s still something i’m thinking about. right now i’m referring to it as falling/standing knights (and queens), and it’s just a theory about character archetypes/dynamics, like red oni/blue oni.

fallen/standing knight dynamics:

jaime lannister/brienne of tarth

anakin skywalker/obi-wan kenobi

bucky barnes/steve rogers

kylo ren/rey

dean winchester/castiel

katniss everdeen/peeta mellark

draco malfoy/harry potter

knight/queen dynamics:

anakin skywalker/padme amidala

jaime lannister/cersei lannister

han solo/leia organa

aragorn/arwen

bellamy blake/clarke griffin*

will turner/elizabeth swan

henry winter/camilla macaulay (the secret history)

david budd/juliet montague (bodyguard)

i started finding this pattern in my shipping interests, the things that plucked my id the hardest, and it all seemed to center around the idea of a fallen knight, which wasn’t made apparent until jaime lannister literally embodied it.

characteristics of a fallen knight:

begin their “knighthood” with an intrinsic sense of goodness and honor but who by circumstance are forced into positions of moral grey and ultimately do atrocious things, sometimes against their will

may take on a new name/identity centered around their misdeeds

find themselves at some point in a position of leadership or infamy, are widely known/hated/feared in their community/society

is often punished with physical deformity/permanent injury, which distorts identity and may result in increased power if in a universe with cyborg capabilities; regardless, the idea of “object replacement for body part” influences their self-perception. object replacements are often given to them by the villain.

their central conflicts/arcs concern themselves with their fall and redemption

find redemption and acceptance in the insistent love/faith of a standing knight or queen

if paired with a queen, prioritizes the queen above all else, which may lead to their fall

are never the villain, but may work for/under the villain

characteristics of a standing knight:

possess the same intrinsic moral compass of a fallen knight, but are:

never forced into or commit acts of atrocity, or

stand up for their decisions and therefore are unaffected by them (and any act of atrocity they commit revolves around their fallen knight, therefore, if they fall, it’s at the end of the story, and involves the inability to redeem their knight)

their conflict may concern itself with the redemption of their fallen knight

provide a moral model and inspiration for their fallen knight; inspire their fallen knight to stand back up

may be in positions of leadership, but are perceived as fighters, not royalty

characteristics of a queen:

similar to standing knights, but their leadership positions do not involve the occupation of protecting others, rather being protected by their knights

can be paired with either a standing or fallen knight

act primarily with logic over emotion, mind over body

they are long-term leaders and well-known/regarded in their communities

like the fallen knight, they may have another name based on their royalty/fame, but associated with their status and not their wrongdoings

unlike the standing knight, who is a positive influence on fallen knights, a queen may be a bad or neutral influence on either a standing or fallen knight; they may be good-aligned, neutral, or evil

some examples:

game of thrones: jaime lannister (fallen knight) is a good man who kills the mad king (his fall) for righteous reasons, but that act is misunderstood and he obtains the title of “kingslayer.” this act distorts his self perception. he has an unhealthy attachment to cersei (his queen) which motivates him to act in ways against his innate moral compass. he meets brienne of tarth (standing knight), who inspires him to redeem himself. he loses his hand which further distorts his identity.

star wars, part i: anakin skywalker (fallen knight) is greatly feared among the jedi for being the most powerful and emotionally sketchy jedi. he falls in love with padme (queen), who he is so afraid of losing, it pushes him to the dark side and he is given the name darth vader. he loses arm, then later his other arm and legs, which are replaced by his vader suit, given to him by darth sidious. his obi-wan (standing knight) tries to bring him back to the light and fails. luke skywalker (standing knight), much later, redeems him.

mcu: bucky barnes (fallen knight) literally falls from a train. he’s found by hydra and given a cybernetic arm. hydra brain washes him and forces him to do assassination missions. he is given the name “the winter soldier.” steve rogers (standing knight) rescues him repeatedly, brings him back to goodness, and redeems him.

star wars, part ii: ben solo (fallen knight), like anakin, is greatly feared, which tarnishes his trust in the jedi and pushes him toward the dark side. he works for snoke. he’s given the name kylo ren. rey (standing knight) comes along and puts a wrench in his bad-boy persona and makes him rethink his identity. redemption still pending.

*bellarke is really tough because clarke begins as a queen but then becomes a fallen knight after s2. bellamy, however, is a fallen knight from s1-4, but is now a standing knight in s5-6 (tho 6x02 changes the game because of the eclipse psychosis). i think that’s why i ship it so much tbh. they’re so many different things to each other.

that’s all i have time for at the moment. i still have a lot of thinking to do. i’d like to turn this into a craft essay at some point, when i have time, because i also have archetypes like the wizard, the mercenary, etc, and how shipping dynamics shift when other such tropes are brought in.

#fallen knights #meta #Anonymous

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robertlewandwski · 5 years

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my final input on 8.05 (and 8.04)

the story is made in the timing and the details.

they had it all there and they could have done it, even in two episodes. here’s how:

8.04

a scene with jaime after he realised that cersei is going to die and there is no way for her to win this that made it clear he wasn’t ready to make the choice he has to - a conversation with tyrion or, even more effectively, brienne (ncw is so phenomal he could have pulled this off in just a few minutes)

missandei remaining captured (creds to the clever anon in my inbox)

8.05

a final, cataclysmic moment that pushed dany over the edge when she was perched on those walls staring down the city - like missandei being executed, or an attack on her dragon, euron showing back up or something. not the damn bells.

the conversation between tyrion and jaime in that tent with a mention of brienne and how, in the end, it has always been family, and in some twisted way tywin lannister was right.

absolute deletion of the line “i never cared much about the innocents” or a valid contra by tyrion because no matter how his story ended this was never true, not even for season 1, actual prince charming lookalike, peak narcisstic, pre-brienne jaime lannister.

and it would still have been rushed, but made the choices in this episode less elusive and been enough for me.

some more personal thoughts, that i have to get off my chest. not important.

i can get behind danaerys becoming the mad queen, because personally, i think this storyline had been laid out and they did it decently. but in the end the timing that really would have sold it was slightly amiss.

a downward spiral accelerates. within months or even weeks she lost jorah who was arguably her biggest stabilising force, he loved her fiercely and would have never ever seen this through like this - and westeros took him from her. westeros took also took viserion, her child, for a cause that she sacrificed herself and her armies to that wasn’t entirely in line with her own. then it took rhaegal. and i say westeros because that’s a deciding point here - the seven kingdoms fell spectacularly short of what she imagined, what she was promised and they cost her too much in a very short time.

and missandei, poor angel, was just the tip of the iceberg.

so much therefore.

as for jon, i do think kit harrington is being criminally underused he’s shown us how brilliant he can play stoic and fiercely loyal jon. but also jon is (literally) in a deep identity crisis and his so far passive actions are in line with that. he needed to be shown something to snap out of it, and i hope this is it.

*big sigh* jaime dieing with cersei in his arms in the rubble of the red keep seems, in the end, inevitable and perfect.

jaime’s could have been a story of redemption - much like theon, or a that of a tragic hero, equally beautiful but heartbreaking.

both would have been valid and in line with the the way his story was set up until midway through 8.04, but then path they tried to take of the tragic hero was executed very poorly, unfortunately.

my whole heart beat for jaime and brienne and i wanted them to have a happy ending so badly and i would have said it was beautiful without a second thought. but, i think ultimately (and much to my chagrin) the way he went and the choice he made to die as he did is more in line with what we have seen of him on the show.

jaime only left cersei, truly, a mere four episodes ago when he told her “i don’t believe you” i believe he did stop loving her as he had before and kind of wholly gave in to who he wanted to be.

and brienne was so important in that. their love story and all it made them into was a symbol of hope, and change, and better days. jaime learned respect, and kindness and brienne learned patience, companionship and to occasionally, give the benefit of the doubt. it showed them what life could be like, maybe eventually. for - and hear me out - as long as cersei was alive.

and that’s not because you can’t escape your past, your abusers, your addiction. because you can and he did. in the keep he showed compassion that, imo, he learned from brienne of tarth that we would not have seen of him otherwise. for the first time ever on the show he stood by cersei as only her brother. not at all as a lover that came running back.

because being with brienne allowed him to see he had to be here with cersei, despite what he could have had. in a twisted way it made him aware that, had he let cersei die alone in that moment, the memory would have haunted him forever. because there had never been a day he had lived that she hadn’t too. and you can’t sever a connection that intense, it takes time.

i’m saying maybe one day he wouldn’t have gone back.

so he was redeemed, without a doubt. i think it was a final act of kindness. the tragic hero knows redemption but also faces death, making a sacrifice that allows a better life for someone. i think that someone, cruelly, is brienne. had he let cersei die alone, or even killed her (though i was 100% for this) it would have cast a shadow over the fragile happiness they had found, and brienne doesn’t deserve that.

who hasn’t been put in a position to make a decision we weren’t ready for?

jaime lannister’s arc wasn’t complete and he wasn’t ready. he died in kindness and i really wish it had been made clear.

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janiedean · 6 years

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between jaime and theon, who do you think has the more well written redemption arc?

well, counting that imo both of them have arcs that are more identity than redemption in itself... if you want the short answer: theon, because while jaime’s deals with redemption... it’s more a reversed redemption arc, as in, it’s not about him redeeming himself, it’s about him realizing he’s always been a decent person all along. now, I had ranted about the subject already once so if you want the full version focused on jaime there’s the meta, but going into it again and comparing it with theon...

first thing we should probably take into account when comparing them: as someone else who sadly deleted since then, these books have exactly TWO instances of people doing a truly selfless heroic knightly grand gesture and those instances are a) theon saving jeynep, b) jaime going into the bear pit for brienne, which says a lot given that they’re perpetrated by two people that everyone in the narrative (and a lot of people outside) see as oathbreakers/assholes/people with no honor;

now, before we go back there... the thing is that while I think theon has an identity arc first and foremost (I mean he has chapter names corresponding to his identities let’s be real here), but it is more or less straight-up redemptive in the sense that it follows all the basic steps, ie theon does something wrong that he regrets more than just about anyone else at this point (betraying robb), realizes where he went wrong and what he wants from life and decides to be better than that. now mind that with theon it’s strongly interlinked with the identity arc, because he saves jeyne (his narrative redemptive moment) after realizing who he is and who he wants to be and what he wants from life, while his bad actions/betrayal were rooted in the fact that he had an identity crisis and was desperately trying to be what he thought his father wanted/didn’t want to deal with that situation/couldn’t admit to himself that he had with robb what he wanted from his family (acceptance/love/someone caring about him for himself/his personality, not his surname or his worth as a hostage or only surviving male son etc.). now, never mind the whole deal where (still imvho) theon and robb are foils in the sense that robb’s damning (narratively) moment was marrying jeynew while theon’s redemptive (narratively) was saving jeynep, he gains the narrative redemption the moment he does something selfless (ie saving jeyne as in someone no one gave a shit about) regardless of facing death because that’s what theon would have done (remember ‘theon greyjoy would have helped her but not reek?), when we can argue that his betrayal and previous fuck-ups weren’t exactly selfless but more desperate ways to assess who he thought he had to be. except that when he does that he fucks up, when he does what he really wanted to he does the heroic deed, therefore showing that he has the potential to be a more than decent person (which is most likely what robb saw in him), so his arc is both about finding his identity and redemption through accepting it;

so like... we can say that theon’s redemption arc, while tied to his identity arc, is pretty much straightforward;

now, the thing with jaime is: he doesn’t have a straight up redemption arc, because tbqh the only thing he’s done in these books that he should be redeemed from is pushing bran from the window (like guys the incest is nothing you need **redemption** from technically especially since it’s an abusive relationship where he’s not the abused part and I’ll die on that hill, killing aerys was just good sense and he wouldn’t have lied about tysha to tyrion if tywin hadn’t pushed him to do it by the way that’s abusive/manipulative as well and anything else is... about on par of what anyone else in these books has done). what jaime needs is to realize he’s his own person and not his sister and find his own way, and that realization comes through coming to terms with the fact that the person he is at the beginning of the books is not the person he wanted to be when he was young but he still has the potential to be that person and he actively strives for it and tries to do better, which.... isn’t exactly **redemption** clear-cut;

also the rest goes under the cut because this is long af sorry I have feelings on these two.

like, to make it extremely basic: jaime starts as a generally good person.

now, before anyone harps at me, I’ll take a break from the checklist to say that it’s the text specifying it - he’s the only one in the family who genuinely loves tyrion when no one else would, as genna lannister put it

"Jaime," she said, tugging on his ear, "sweetling, I have known you since you were a babe at Joanna's breast. You smile like Gerion and fight like Tyg, and there's some of Kevan in you, else you would not wear that cloak . . . but Tyrion is Tywin's son, not you. I said so once to your father's face, and he would not speak to me for half a year. Men are such thundering great fools. Even the sort who come along once in a thousand years."

he has the good qualities from all the other lannister uncles/relatives but nothing of his father (I mean she mentions his smile, his strive for honor and being a good fighter, that’s... positive qualities), he’s put at the opposite, or I mean, as tyrion once put it:

My brother, Jaime, thirsts for battle, not for power. He's run from every chance he's had to rule.

and this when it was made clear in book one from tyrion’s povs that his opinion of jaime and cersei was wildly different, which would be hard if they were the same person. also:

That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead.

like. that’s jaime thinking about what happened to him since he joined the kingsguard. seems to me like he has a clue that something went wrong there.

anyway, back to the point: jaime starts as a good person. and a good person who wants to do good things in life, as in, becoming arthur dayne, ie a knight without stain or honor, and we all know that technically knighthood = positive things;

what happens is that since he goes into the kingsguard his picture gets destroyed - he does it on cersei’s advice and that’s what kickstarts their relationship for good (because the first time they have sex is when she proposes it to him and he accepts both for that and because he wants that kingsguard place in his romanticized vision of it, and we could talk for an hour of the fact that cersei actually had hoped to marry rhaegar just before, so if it actually had happened he’d have ended up without his name/inheritance/position and without cersei but nvm that), then he takes his job and finds out the king is out of his mind, that he can’t protect anyone he should (rhaella), has to watch people get burned alive/strangled/raped in front of him, copes by dissociating (which is like, basic ptsd trauma symptom in war veterans and he was fifteen-seventeen at that point), his picture of honor/valor/knighthood gets destroyed apparently beyond repair, he kills aerys to save everyone else after being put in an impossible position (because he was the only kingsguard in the entire castle which was a fairly stupid decision if you ask me) and then everyone decides he has shit for honor and sees him as the worst without bothering to ask and at that point he says fuck it and embraces it;

as in: he turns into the smiling knight (as he put it) by giving in to cynicism/nihilism and only worries about cersei/his family and says fuck it to his romantic notions even if he desperately wants to believe it and actually if you read his povs, going beyond the part where he’s too world-weary for his own good..... like honestly jaime lannister has the emotional maturity of a seventeen-year old which is pretty much showing that he was so traumatized by what went on with aerys that he basically never moved on from that and coped with it by a) not thinking about it, b) being angry about it when he did, c) embracing what others thought of him like ‘well you think I’m that bad fine have it your way’, which is also... basically teenage angst level but again: he hasn’t moved on from that;

(this while being into a codependent toxic af relationship with cersei that about a) annihilates his sense of identity because he thinks he’s the same as her when he’s all the contrary and acts the contrary, b) is not sexually healthy because being like that with one person only and those premises is not healthy I mean guys fuck’s sake this guy is older than thirty and couldn’t process getting hard when seeing a naked woman, it’s a problem, c) doesn’t help him get out of his issues but actually makes them worse)

now, back to the matter: at his lowest narrative point he pushes bran from the window, except thatThe man looked over at the woman. “The things I do for love,” he said with loathing. He gave Bran a shove.now, everyone ignores that bran himself perceives that jaime said that with loathing, so he knows he’s doing something extremely shitty, but he’s embracing it as necessary in order to save his hide and cersei’s and also because he’s embraced this concept that whatever he does people will think him honorless so what’s the damned point?

then, after two other massive trauma episodes ie being imprisoned for an entire year and losing his sword hand ie his livelihood, he has to face what he wants and who he wants to be because the fact that he doesn’t have the hand a) takes his fighting skills away from him, b) takes what makes him cersei’s exact mirror, c) forces him to rely on other people in the immediate aftermath and the fact that throughout this whole thing he’s stuck with brienne ie someone who reminds him of the person he wanted to be and who actually manages to uphold those ideals and keeps on doing it regardless gives him a wake-up call and makes him realize that he actually... did still want to be the person he used to be;

so like..... the arc jaime is having right now isn’t 1) I’m a bad person, 2) I did something heinous, 3) I realized that and I repented, 4) I’m trying to atone for it, which is the technical redemption arc as it is and which is more true for theon than for him. the arc jaime is having is 1) I was a good person, 2) I turned into someone I didn’t want to be after traumatic events, 3) I did something awful also as the result of years spent not dealing with it and I regret it, 4) I lost a part of me that was to me 99% of what I thought I was good for, 5) I realized that I turned into someone I didn’t want to be, 6) I’m trying to do better and be that person;

btw, before the argument comes like BUT HE NEVER REPENTED:

If truth be told, Jaime had come to rue heaving Brandon Stark out that window. Cersei had given him no end of grief afterward, when the boy refused to die. "He was seven, Jaime," she'd berated him. "Even if he understood what he saw, we should have been able to frighten him into silence.""I didn't think you'd want—" (mind that here it’s even BEFORE the hand loss and his answer is that he acted based on what he thought she wanted, now I’m not saying she is to blame but that since he was acting thinking that he was doing what she wanted then he didn’t act doing what he would have done if it hadn’t factored into his decision)

"Well, he's beyond suspicion now." Robert's death still left a bitter taste in Jaime's mouth. It should have been me who killed him, not Cersei. "I only wished he'd died at my hands." When I still had two of them. "If I'd let kingslaying become a habit, as he liked to say, I could have taken you as my wife for all the world to see. I'm not ashamed of loving you, only of the things I've done to hide it. That boy at Winterfell . . .""Did I tell you to throw him out the window? If you'd gone hunting as I begged you, nothing would have happened. But no, you had to have me, you could not wait until we returned to the city."

I mean, he says he’s ashamed of it, not me. but like, that’s someone trying to do better than before and wanting to be a better person and going past his trauma (and actually he matures a lot in between asos and adwd so it’s obvious he’s somehow gotten unstuck from his aerys-related issues);

so like..... going back to the point: theon actually wants to actively do something to atone for his betrayal or wishes he could, and while saving jeyne is not what he probably thought as in ‘atoning for having betrayed robb’, it was narratively, because the pay-off is that he’s free of his abuser, knows who he is and who he wants to be and has solved his identity issues and can only go forward. on the other hand, jaime isn’t seeing his previous misdeeds as something he’s actively searching atonement for, and it’s less clear-cut because theon is moooreee or less a straight line, jaime’s having to deal with wanting to act in a certain way but circumstances throwing him back (ie he wants to try and have a relationship with tommen, cersei sends him away; he doesn’t want to break his vow to cat but has to go to riverrun anyway; he doesn’t want to raise arms against them so he bluffs with the trebuchet baby which makes everyone assume the worst of him and works because of that, but on the side he tries to do better see the deal with pia, sending brienne to look for sansa actively going against cersei’s orders, freeing tyrion AGAIN against cersei’s orders and telling him the truth about tysha and so on);

but at the end of it: 1. theon is a generally okay person who has postured a lot as a defense mechanism while being a hostage, starts with an identity crisis that leads to his wrong/bad actions that eventually contribute to causing robb’s death (admittedly I think that the red wedding was a go anyway bc it was tywin scheming it but theon fake killing robb’s brothers > robb sleeping with jeyne > perfect excuse for frey to defect) and to his own torture and abuse at ramsay’s hands, he has to work through his issues, deeply regrets his actions, realizes who he wants to be and eventually does something heroic the moment he comes to terms with it as his big narrative redemptive moment.2. jaime used to be a good person who after going through heavy trauma has stopped giving a fuck about his old dreams and embraced his worst sides also as a coping/defense mechanism [while being stuck in an abusive relationship that annihilates his sense of self], did something heinous at his lowest point, underwent even more trauma that forced him to reshape his entire life, met someone who showed him he could try to be the person he wanted to be/was before aerys, regrets his actions but doesn’t specifically look for redemption through them but actively searches it after (as in: he doesn’t want to be redeemed for trying to kill bran but he still upholds his vow to catelyn and tries to save at least her daughter by sending brienne ie the one true knight in the room after her, frees tyrion and comes clean with him etc) and tries to be a better person all along;

this also is symbolized by when they have their heroic moments as described above, because theon saving jeyne is at the end of his adwd arc, which works as a good bookend for his story and for his identity arc, while jaime jumping in the pit for brienne is in the middle of asos/in the middle of his asos arc, so while jeyne’s rescue is theon’s ending point/crowning achievement, jaime’s rescuing of brienne is his starting point. he doesn’t do it as the crowning achievement of his arc - hell, his arc isn’t even over within asos -, and while it’s not the first thing he does actively post-hand loss (he saves her from being raped and tells her about aerys), but it’s the first grand gesture he makes and he doesn’t even know why he does it but he feels like he has to and goes for it without even blinking twice, while theon does ponder it. like, theon’s redemption (narratively) has been earned and he knows he’s done that:

"Don't you call him that." Then the words came spilling out of Theon in a rush. He tried to tell her all of it, about Reek and the Dreadfort and Kyra and the keys, how Lord Ramsay never took anything but skin unless you begged for it. He told her how he'd saved the girl, leaping from the castle wall into the snow. "Weflew. Let Abel make a song of that, we flew." Then he had to say who Abel was, and talk about the washerwomen who weren't truly washerwomen. By then Theon knew how strange and incoherent all this sounded, yet somehow the words would not stop. He was cold and sick and tired... and weak, so weak, so very weak.

like.... theon says to let abel make a song of that. he knows he’s done something song-worthy. he’s 100% aware of it, post-fact. jaime really is not - he doesn’t think of his bear pit moment as a song-worthy moment (but brienne herself does:“Ser Jaime?” Even in soiled pink satin and torn lace, Brienne looked more like a man in a gown than a proper woman. “I am grateful, but … you were well away. Why come back?” vsthe griffins on his cloak rippled and blurred and changed to lions. Jaime! she wanted to cry, Jaime, come back for me!, but her tongue lay on the floor by the rose, drowned in blood.like, brienne ie the person he saved has definitely interiorized it as A Total Song-Worthy Moment)and the fact that he ended it with the whole I dreamed of you thing which is honestly not the least romantic thing he could have said doesn’t mean that he hasn’t... gone for it knowing what he was doing, differently from theon, and again: theon’s grand gesture is what seals his narrative redemption after he finds out who he really is, jaime’s is what kickstarts his own search for the person he used to be and that he wants to be again and that he actually forgot/thought he couldn’t be, which... is the exact contrary of male!cersei as he has thought until now.

so like... imo theon’s a straight-up redemption arc within an identity arc that deconstructs a bunch of tropes (traitor first and foremost), jaime is a reverse identity arc which includes redemptive themes but where the driving force isn’t his need for redemption, is the fact that he needs to reconcile the person he has the potential of being with a) growing the hell up, b) detaching himself from cersei, c) finding his sense of self, d) overcoming his trauma. and while theon has in common with him the part where he has to find himself and overcome trauma, I think that his arc is really more redemption-driven than jaime. theon wants to atone and finds out he can because of the person he actually is, jaime needs to realize he’s his own person and to do the things he wants to, not what others think of him.

so, to go back to my first point: for this whole heap of reasons, I think that as a redemption arc theon’s is better because it’s... a redemption arc in itself, while jaime’s is basically second coming of age with redemptive themes so I wouldn’t call it like that. I mean, I hate this whole discourse about IS HE ON A REDEMPTION ARC OR NOT bc to me he’s on a self-discovering arc that includes doing things that redeem his past actions, but he’s not actively looking for it in the usual terms. that said I need to specify a few things:

I personally think theon in himself is the best written and conceived character in these books but that jaime is right behind him and they’re technically martin’s greatest literary achievements as characters so it’s not like if I say that theon’s better written I think jaime’s is badly written, ALL THE CONTRARY;

I also think that theon beats jaime for originality and identity arc (not redemption bc jaime’s arc is not redemptive imo as stated), but jaime as a pov is tbqh really a gem when it comes to a) dealing with military-like ptsd symptoms, b) long-lasting emotional abuse, c) using sarcasm as a coping method/defense mechanism, d) lessons in How To Not Deal With Trauma (ie not thinking about it), because while ofc there are parts that are not realistic (ie: someone with jaime’s background should have had a nervous breakdown of horrid proportions a long time before the series started tbh) the fact that people tend to brush it off without realizing it just because he looks fine on the outside tbh says a lot about how people overlook trauma in men when they happen to not show it in the reader’s face/in someone’s face (no one can deny it with theon and sandor, because they show it physically, or tyrion because he talks about it and he’s aware of it, and whoever usually gives it to jaime only says ‘ah it starts after the hand loss). and it’s not george’s fault because imvho he wrote it perfectly given that jaime himself isn’t aware of it, but I just find it very telling;

I think both of them are really great narratives when it comes to exploring reaction to life-lasting trauma and abuse (except that for theon is straight-up physical, jaime is mental/emotional) and both arcs in that sense are written really well;

I also don’t know how fair it is to compare them for the same themes also because jaime’s a fairly reliable pov (sarcastic but reliable, he's not the lying to himself type) while theon’s wholly unreliable/has a journey towards reliable-ness more or less but idk if we’re there so that’s that to take into account too;

I also don’t think anyone in these books has a clear-cut anything arc because it’s all tropes deconstruction and nothing is ever played straight-up, so... again, that’s the opinion but I don’t think it says much as a whole because neither of them is a redemption arc that follows the tropes (I mean theon’s is straight-up but his kinda character - ie traitor who betrays the hero - is not usually given it, but I ranted about it in the above meta).

... this probably went way beyond your question, but here, have a rant.

#jaime lannister #theon greyjoy #asoiafmeta #janie writes meta #ch: jaime lannister #ch: theon greyjoy #abuse cw #trauma cw #ptsd cw #long post for ts #redemption arcs and whatnot #anti-lannincest #anti-jaime x cersei #hello I love these two assholes #Anonymous #ask post

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sublimetravelerpolice · 5 years

Text

Opinions Like Kittens: The End Of Thrones

By Grant Johnson

All roads reach their terminus.

It sucks that it’s over, but alas, all good things must come to an end. True that may be, but it’s still difficult to swallow, because reaching the end of any journey is bittersweet. You left home, and ended up somewhere else, the new place may be exciting, but it isn’t home.

Naturally, the Game of Thrones conclusion was met with the inevitable backlash, and it was inevitable. People are almost always dissatisfied with the ending of TV shows. Sure, there are exceptions, for every Breaking Bad, Veep, and Justified, there is LOST, Dexter, and How I Met Your Mother (I’ll also throw in the entire second season of True Detective, because people destested that also). Now the latest finale on the chopping block is Game of Thrones. Sure, not all finales are handled with as deft a touch as Six Feet Under or Avengers: Endgame, but I think it has more to do with audiences not wanting any ending, than the ending itself. Maybe some endings get caught under the weight of the audience expectations, maybe it’s just the burden of wanting more, which, to me, means the story is ending exactly where it should. Leave them wanting more.

She was The Mother of Dragons.

Does that mean the Iron Throne should belong to her? As strong and powerful a character as she was, Dany was so caught up in her quest for The Throne, believing it was her birthright, that she never stopped to think why she really wanted it, she only knew her brother wanted it. Compounded by the fact that she never seemed to come to terms with the man her father was, or what he did, or would’ve done (if not for Jaime). That being said, I was still ready to back Dany, even after the burning of King’s Landing. It made sense to me, in a Fight Club sort of way, you have to destroy what was there to build something new. I think she would’ve been a great ruler, but maybe that’s the problem, she was always a conqueror, not a leader. She never quite nailed down the political aspect of the job. She repeatedly wanted to take King’s Landing by fire, and repeatedly, she had to be talked down by Jorah, by Varys, by Tyrion, and by Jon. Not to mention, she never seemed able to separate vengeance from justice. Her hunger for power could never be slaked, that’s even more dangerous when you consider she has the dragons, the equivalent of several atom bombs, at her disposal. Still, I would’ve liked to see Dany recreate the world as she saw fit. There’s a whole other story there (that’s where those few more episodes would’ve come in handy). Ultimately, I think her story is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of wish fulfillment.

The Boy Who Would Be King.

Jon would’ve been a good King. However, he didn’t want it. If he had worn that crown, where would that lead? Would he have grown weary of it? Apathetic? Mayhaps. The idea of him being forced into the role of King doesn’t feel right. I want more for his character. Because he wanted one simple thing, to go back to that cave with Ygritte. After everything he’s been through, something resembling that end feels right for his journey.

Of Snow and Fire.

Dany and Jon are opposite sides of the same coin. One believed the Iron Throne was her birthright and was willing to take it by any means necessary. The other had the better claim to the Throne, but didn’t want it. Jon was willing to deny his claim for Dany, but Dany would, under no circumstances, reciprocate the gesture for Jon, or for Westeros. Because her entire ego had been built around the idea that she was the rightful heir to the Throne. Once her claim to the Throne was usurped, she completely lost sense of her identity. When everyone is celebrating after prevailing in the Battle of Winterfell, Tormund is applauding Jon for his valor, and for riding a dragon in battle. Dany looks over at Jon, her eyes filled with somber jealousy, and in that moment she becomes her brother, Viserys. Filled with anger for everyone giving Jon the adulation that she believes is owed to her.

Ultimately, no matter how much we should’ve been able to predict the trajectory of some characters, we didn’t, that, above all else, has been my favorite thing about this story. It’s hard to find a story that has been as consistently unpredictable as GoT. I’ll never forget my introduction to the TV series, a friend suggested that I watch the show because, “It has all the things that are great about the fantasy genre, but without the usual tropes.” I was sold from that pitch alone.

I didn’t read the books until somewhere between season 4 & 5, and fell in love with them, and George R. R. Martin’s sublime writing. On the Ink To Film podcast, Luke Elliot and James Bailey covered the first book and season of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones (they also did a great postmortem of the show for a Patreon bonus episode). They discussed one of GRRM’s brilliant literary talents, his ability to subvert expectation. Whether it’s the reader’s expectations or the expectations of the characters, Ned will make it out of this, right? It constantly keeps you off-kilter, the moment Ned’s head leaves his body, all bets are off. No one is safe. That moment, that feeling, permeates throughout the series, much to our indignation. This is why I could never compete in the fan theory debates. What do you think will happen? Who do you think will end up on the Iron Throne? I don’t f***ing know. There’s no way I could’ve guessed, and it’s a good thing I didn’t place any wagers on my predictions, because that money would be long gone now. I was prepared for the Night King to eradicate everyone. But, at the end of the day, I’ve been happy to nervously watch it all unfold from the edge of my seat. I’ve appreciated the times the TV show has cranked the story up to 11, for instance, Talisa (AKA Jeyne Westerling) being present at The Red Wedding. In the book she stays back at Riverrun, therefore, she wasn’t present at the massacre. In the books she is still alive and...well, no one in the ASOIAF universe is doing well.

I’m not saying the final season is without its flaws, it certainly has them, no work is perfect. But I think it gave as satisfying an ending as this story would allow. George R. R. Martin has been very vocal about his love for J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. He’s also stated he wants to emulate the ending of LOTR in Thrones. More specifically, its “bittersweet” ending. Although, even without that knowledge, if we thought Game of Thrones was going to have anything resembling a Disney-style happy ending, then we weren’t paying attention. Like Tyrion speaking of the corruption in King’s Landing, “If you’re looking for justice, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

There are still aspects that irk me, like Jaime pulling a full 180 (or a 360, depending on how you look at it), but I think Jaime is a self-punishing character, he doesn’t believe he deserves redemption, so he set about making sure to deny himself that redemption by returning to Cersei. The show runners could’ve given everything more time to breathe. Maybe they should’ve done a ten-episode season, especially since the writers wanted to pack so much into the season. Who knows, maybe if they had done a full ten, we’d all be sitting here talking about those four episodes where nothing happened. However, I think at least two more episodes of watching Dany unraveling, being a complete dictator would’ve solidified the arc. Some thought the Night King battle was pushed too far forward in the season, that he should be a final boss. The problem with that is, after dealing with the Night King, no matter what, the living still have to deal with each other. That being said, the final season did give us one of the most satisfying episodes (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), and arguably the most epic (The Long Night). Sure, the season felt rushed, but that’s because we didn’t want it to end.

All of this makes me more eager for GRRM to finish the books. I’m curious to see how he closes it out. So let’s all wish him good health. I’ll be very surprised if the books end like the TV show, but hopefully we will find out.

Ultimately, If you didn’t like the final season, I get that, we all have our issues with it, it’s part of being a fan. We all think it should’ve ended this way or that way. It doesn’t mean the way it ended was wrong, just different from what we expected. Was the second season of True Detective bad, or did we just want more Matt McConaughey and Woody Harrelson? Time will tell. I think the second season was fantastic and in some ways superior to the first. When Sopranos ended, its finale was met with venomous contempt. Now, more than a decade later, it’s revered as one of the best finales. One of the finales that “got it right.” Maybe, after the dust settles, the Thrones finale will be re-examined, and maybe the public will feel different about it. Just don’t let the ending mar the story as a whole, because, “A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good.”

#game of thrones #hbo

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