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attonitos-gloria · 2 years

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If he wanted to hold back the darkness in her life even longer, he could have simply refused to marry her. All that it says to me about Tyrion is that he thinks not raping young girls makes him very noble.

about tyrion refusing to marry sansa: it sounds like you are asking the character to remove himself from his own world and look above it, with the panoramic point of view we have as readers. but worse, you are asking this of a *lannister* child of tywin.

it's impossible, at that point in the books, for tyrion not to do what tywin demands of him. impossible. if i have to explain to you the reasons why, i am afraid you simply do not understand the inner dynamics of house lannister as a whole. this is not a tyrion issue. this is a feudal issue and, in particular, a lannister issue. yes, every house needs to be ready to defend themselves, but tywin has taught jaime, cersei and tyrion, in very pragmatic, horrible ways, that there is no sacrifice too great to be made in the name of house lannister. that includes sacrificing his own children. also other people. (though it is debatable if tywin considers not-lannister people as human beings at all.)

tyrion tries, within these limitations, to offer sansa some sort of way out:

"My lady, this is no way to bring you to your wedding. I am sorry for that. And for making this so sudden, and so secret. My lord father felt it necessary, for reasons of state. Else I would have come to you sooner, as I wished." He waddled closer. "You did not ask for this marriage, I know. No more than I did. If I had refused you, however, they would have wed you to my cousin Lancel. Perhaps you would prefer that. He is nearer your age, and fairer to look upon. If that is your wish, say so, and I will end this farce."

sansa refuses his offer because it's not, actually, a choice: she is still a hostage, she is still bound to marry any lannister because of her claim, and, in her own words, tyrion was "kind to her." she remembers.

and about tyrion being noble for not raping a young girl: you know very well what that scene means. tywin is, in direct words, commanding a rape. the ethics of consent in westeros are tricky because high-borns very often have to marry for other reasons than love, freely chosen. you can't separate marriage from politics in a monarchy. but in this case, grrm makes it clear in every way possible that it is abuse: sansa is a child. sansa is a hostage. sansa struggles physically to be taken to her wedding. it's not your usual political alliance. behind the curtains it is abuse and everyone knows it.

including tyrion. it's a familiar situation for him, anon. not the political alliance, but receiving the order from his father to rape a girl he actually cares about in order to protect lannister glory and name. or did you forget about tysha entirely? he actually tells the story to sansa in the moment, not of the rape, but of the wedding. why is that so? because he simply misses his first wife? or because the situation is eerily similar?

even sansa (sansa, who has no reason whatsoever to empathize with tyrion in that moment, being another victim of tywin's machinations; sansa stark, who owes the lannisters absolutely nothing, who rightfully refused to kneel to them) can notice tyrion is afraid. sansa is not an empath by nature, but she learned, through abuse, to read people’s emotions when they represent a threat to her well being, and in that moment, the moment where tyrion IS objectively a threat to her, she looks at him and sees he is afraid:

He is as frightened as I am, Sansa realized. Perhaps that should have made her feel more kindly toward him, but it did not. All she felt was pity, and pity was death to desire. He was looking at her, waiting for her to say something, but all her words had withered. She could only stand there trembling.

isn’t that off, anon? why is tyrion afraid? afraid of what? or worse: afraid of whom? who is in the room that could harm him?

could it be, maybe, that tyrion is frightened because this wedding night is a perfect replica of the cruelest, most abusive, traumatic thing tyrion lannister has ever been through in his life?

"You're a child," he said.

She covered her breasts with her hands. "I've flowered."

"A child," he repeated, "but I want you. Does that frighten you, Sansa?"

extremely creepy of him to say that, right? we all agree the whole thing is horrible. why does he actually say that out loud? is it because he is simply just a creep, is it because he is trying to scare her? or because he has already been in a situation much like this one in which he was, himself, a child, the same age as Sansa, in which his body betrayed him before, in which he was coerced to participate in a sexual intercourse he didn’t want but he had to perform against his will and wish, and he is being forced to relive it by the orders of the same man who commanded it the first time?

"My lady," Tyrion said, "you are lovely, make no mistake, but... I cannot do this. My father be damned. We will wait. The turn of a moon, a year, a season, however long it takes. Until you have come to know me better, and perhaps to trust me a little." His smile might have been meant to be reassuring, but without a nose it only made him look more grotesque and sinister.

why does he refuse to rape her in the end, anon??? is it because he suddenly decides to be a noble, honorable, pure hero, is it because he decides to be the good lannister right there and then, because people are always 100% good or 100% terrible (this is exactly the kind of character george raymond richard martin writes after all)????

or is it MAYBE because he cannot do this to himself and someone he cares about again, not again, not again, please, goddamnit, NOT AGAIN???

It took all the courage that was in her to look in those mismatched eyes and say, "And if I never want you to, my lord?"

His mouth jerked as if she had slapped him. "Never?"

"Why," he said, "that is why the gods made whores for imps like me." He closed his short blunt fingers into a fist, and climbed down off the bed.

why is tyrion frustrated with sansa's refusal, anon?? is it because tyrion is just another entitled man who thinks sansa owes him affection or love or whatever??? OR is it maybe because that precise moment, that refusal is again echoing back to him what tywin tried to prove to him years ago with tysha: that no one would ever love him, that he is inherently unlovable, undesirable, because he is a disabled man, that the only good thing about him is his last name, the very thing sansa hates the most????

is there ANY possibility that this wedding night is a scene about TWO TRAUMATIZED PEOPLE???? not tyrion saving the day, not we, as readers, owing him cookies and pats on his back for not raping a young girl!!! not Sansa being a bitch for not saying yes to the poor little meow meow tyrion either!!!

but two characters being profoundly, deeply hurt by the same system, trying to save the SCRAPS OF THEIR DIGNITY by saying "no, I'm not going to do this, this is cruel to me, I am a human being, I'm not going to be part of this": tyrion, by letting sansa decide; sansa, by deciding, BRAVELY, to say NO when given the choice, even though she is DEADLY TERRIFIED of what might happen to her?

and in doing this, being alienated FROM EACH OTHER because even though neither of them want to be there, the situation doesn't allow for them to bond over it? OH MY GOD!!! WHEN DID THIS TRAGIC PREDICAMENT HAPPENED BEFORE IN CANON, I WONDER???

could it be. that maybe. the wedding night scene is not gratuitously glorification of abuse. but. a BRILLIANT writing device from GRRM part of showing, but not telling, what happened to tysha, but this time, the second time::::: from sansa’s point of view:

her point of view of house lannister in all its ugly cruelty behind the pretty faces and all the golden surface, and the way EVERYONE!!! in the end is sacrificed in the altar of ~tywin’s legacy~,

her point of view of tyrion as the one perpetrating the abuse against her at the same time he is caught up suffering the same abuse in some extent,

her point of view of her own vulnerable position in this game as a hostage crushing beneath all this mighty power,

… with a slightly hopeful twist in the end? being given a chance that tysha, a common girl with no great name, and tyrion, too young then - a CHILD, he was!!! sansa’s age!! - to understand what was happening at all, never had?

DO I HAVE YOUR PERMISSION, DEAR ANON, GIVEN THESE EVIDENT, CANONICAL TEXTUAL REASONS, TO HAVE A LITTLE EMPATHY FOR BOTH THESE CHARACTERS AT ONCE? OR DO YOU STILL WANT ME TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THEM??? HAVE I CONVINCED YOU OF THE REASONS WHY I FIND THIS SCENE AND MOMENT COMPELLING FROM A *NARRATIVE* POINT OF VIEW AND WHY I THINK THAT YES, IT WAS BRAVE AND KIND, ACTUALLY, TO OVERCOME ALL THOSE LAYERS OF DEEPLY INGRAINED TRAUMA, YES, I THINK THIS MOMENT MATTERS A LOT???

*screams into the void*

please let me out of this conversation. i want out. grrm ruined my life

#tw mention of rape #tw mention of abuse #i am sure you can find similar meta #written more eloquently #about this scene #sorry to lose it for a moment #please stop bothering me about this #i am not trying to excuse the fictional man of his horrible deeds #i am however asking you for a little more of reading comprehension #we can collectively acknowledge that it is a horrible scene #without erasing tyrion's entire arc and trauma in the process #i swear to you we can do this #and you don't even have to like him to do it!#you can just. read the text.#ask me stuff

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