#and b) she was doomed from the beginning by virtue of her narrative role

[fellhellion]

One of my favourite aspects to Mytho’s character arc is that he has to contend with the fact that he does desire emotional connection? That being a distant marble statue and the pinnacle of self sacrifice is actually kinda miserable and he wants to love other people are more than a figurehead?

[him-e]

anon asks:

Hi! I really enjoy your asoiaf m/eta - I was wondering, do you think that Jaime is on his best way to become Tywins "true heir", a scenario in which Brienne has a role similar to Joanna's? I.e. Jaime's genuine affection for her becomes his only sympathetic quality in the end, much like Tywin's genuine love for his wife appears to have been is only truly likable trait? Not to reduce Brienne (or Joanna) to that alone, but it would emphasize Jaime's doom and her rise nicely.

Hi, thank you! A couple things first, before I sink my teeth into the rest:

a) this is in no way an objective statement, but no matter how his arc ends, even if it goes the darkest way possible, Jaime has plenty of sympathetic traits (not necessarily qualities, mind) that allow me to find him relatable, and this makes him ALREADY incomparable with Tywin;

b) I don’t believe in love being a sympathetic quality or a mitigating factor per se, and I don’t think people who love are necessarily one step closer to *goodness* than people who don’t. For example, while I don’t see Stannis as necessarily incapable of love—I quite like the idea that under his stern facade there’s a lot of feelings, for his child, for Jon, for Davos, and maybe even for Melisandre, on top of his complex issues with his own brothers—even if we stick to the interpretation of Stannis as a loveless character, I don’t think this diminishes his fundamental goodness. On the other hand, there are the Lannisters, who are fifty shades of questionable, but they ALLL love so much!

The truth is that anyone can feel love. It’s not that special, you know? It’s just a human emotion—powerful, but not inherently moral. Not intrinsically a virtue, an end to be pursued at all costs, in itself and for itself, as traditional romantic narratives would want you to believe.

This is particularly true for a character like Jaime, who has been established as a lover since his first notable appearance in the books.

“The things I do for love (he said with loathing)” is probably his most iconic line, and it’s no coincidence that it’s associated to the TERRIBLEST, EVILEST THING he’s ever done (no irony). Jaime's debut in asoiaf is tied to the concept that lovers aren’t ALWAYS right just because they love, and to some extent the character himself is aware of it ("loathing” refers not to Bran, whom Jaime has really no reason to loathe lol, but to “the things I do”, aka the repulsive action he’s about to commit in the name of his love for Cersei). So the idea that Jaime’s ~one and only~ sympathetic quality can be his love for Brienne, when loving is both his original sin and virtually the only thing he’s done in his life, doesn’t work for me. (you might argue: but Jaime’s love for Cersei is incestuous and Badwrong, and Cersei herself is Bad whereas Brienne is Good! yeah, I think that line of reasoning is a slippery slope, because it places all the emphasis and the responsibility on who you love rather than how you love, as if the moral fiber and ~appropriateness~ of the object of your love is what makes your love noble. Mind, this is a very courtly-romance logic, so it’s nothing especially offensive, but I still don’t like its implications. It runs a bit too close to “bad people don’t deserve to be loved” to suit me).

with that said…

denying the centrality of love in these novels would be a terrible mistake. George is a romantic, and his attitude towards some romantic tropes isn’t deconstructionist at all, but rather a vibrant (albeit complex) celebration of them. Yet not all fictional depictions of romantic love are equal: I think Jaime/Brienne and Tywin/Joanna belong to two different genres. 

Jaime/Brienne is essentially a fairytale. It’s, of course, Beauty and the Beast. A tale about transformative love—love as acceptance of the other, love as understanding of the other, love as healing, love as the driving force for a radical viewpoint shift, a change of attitude and lifestyle (symbolized in the original tale by the physical metamorphosis of the Beast), love as having an actual positive impact on the world. As everyone knows, Martin loves the trope and makes it integral, more or less subtly, to several dynamics throughout the books. It has been stated repeatedly, even by the author himself, that Jaime and Brienne is one of those; the only question is whether there will be a subversion, and to which degree. Personally I’ve always seen as subversive the way GRRM gets rid of the problematic goodness = beauty equation (that exists in the original because fairytales are highly archetypal and symbolic and they rely heavily on simple visual associations, but they’re also inevitably intertwined with societal/cultural biases and the primordial fear of the imperfect and the deviant) and throws in the mix a Beauty who is actually Super Ugly! and a Beast who is a splendid, glorious, golden lion. When the Beauty is the Beast and the Beast is the Beauty, and the gender stereotypes inherent to the trope are repeatedly broken, the metamorphosis is necessarily mutual.

Can this fairytale have a tragic ending? Absolutely. Martin is a master at this—it’s actually what his deconstruction is about, taking fantasy/fairytale tropes and adapting them to completely different genres, causing that sort of cognitive dissonance in the reader, who isn’t used to see THAT trope take THAT form (see: “Martin kills all the heroes!”). However, whatever the deconstruction at work is in JB’s case, i doubt it will end up completely negating the transformative nature of the trope itself. But let’s set this aside for now, because it’s not relevant to the discussion.

Tywin/Joanna is different in genre, scope, meaning, basic tropes. To begin with, I don’t see Joanna as the Beauty to Tywin’s Beast. There’s no clash between two conflicting worldviews here; their love isn’t of the transformative kind, it’s a love that cemented their established identity, rather than challenge it. I think this pairing is written around a completely different cluster of tropes—the power couple, the “behind a powerful man there’s always a powerful woman”, and the dead mother/wife. I like to think of Joanna’s death as transformative in the sense that it represents the loss of the feminine---it creates an unbalance in an already awfully masculine-coded family, whose aftershocks still affect the lives of all her children even decades later. In short, Tywin/Joanna is a tragedy.

(seriously: if you’re looking for a parallel to Tywin/Joanna in Jaime’s narrative, a “humanizing the monster” kind of love, look no further than Jaime/Cersei. Jaime’s love for Cersei humanizes him, and Cersei’s love for Jaime (and her children) humanizes her. Unfortunately, the narrative makes it clear that theirs is a (figuratively) sterile, doomed kind of love. Like in a greek tragedy, we feel sympathy as we clutch our chests in anticipation for its inevitable collapse. Fate did to Tywin/Joanna what a downward spiral of irreconcilable differences, deep-seated grudges and destructive actions did to Jaime/Cersei, but the end point is equally tragic.)

Also: Jaime’s BATB dynamic with Brienne is not a “sympathetic” footnote squeezed in between his villain arc A and villain arc B, nor something that can be reduced to “his only likable trait” and waved off. It’s a crucial aspect of his arc (and Brienne’s, who is—let’s not forget—a major player from AFFC on) and has ramifications on the overall plot (Oathkeeper, sending Brienne after Sansa, Lady Stoneheart, not to mention the discussion around honor and oaths that is a central theme in asoiaf). It’s not a coincidence that Jaime is introduced as a pov only after he meets Brienne. This dynamic is integral to the story George is telling.

In comparison, Joanna (and by extension Tywin/Joanna) is something that belongs to the past, and only affects our story indirectly. It’s a dead character and a dead relationship. And that’s what marks the biggest differences, not only with Jaime/Brienne but also with Jaime/Cersei. Joanna, in the context of the narrative, is remarkable for her ABSENCE. It’s her death, the void that she created much more than her life, that has an impact on the characters. It doesn’t help that Tywin, the one person who’s able to remember her as a fully fledged human being, isn’t a pov either. GRRM gives us only scraps, and it’s up to those of us who care to put together the pieces of the puzzle of who Joanna used to be. This is, of course, a despicably convenient treatment of a female character on the author’s part, even more despicable since it’s not an isolate case in asoiaf. There’s no easier way than a dead mother to fabricate a sad background for your protagonist, and it also solves the problem of making her fit within the narrative, giving her an actual personality and things to do, etc. We expect better from a writer of Martin’s calibre, and that’s where the criticism comes from.

But lazy sexist writing aside, why does George give us so little?

I think it’s (in no small part) because he understands the power of certain romantic tropes, how they seduce the reader’s imagination—how humanizing they are. Tywin’s love for Joanna and Joanna’s love for Tywin, if explored in depth, would humanize Tywin to the nth degree.

But Tywin isn’t supposed to be given the sympathetic treatment. Of course, GRRM knows better than make him a cardboard villain, so he gives him nuance, he gives him contradictions, among which there’s a dead wife he loved fiercely. But he doesn’t flesh it out. He doesn’t give us a detailed story, only scattered bits and pieces, generally second and third hand information. This relationship isn’t made for the stage but for behind the curtains, because Tywin’s ~feelings~ need to remain veiled and largely inaccessible to us, just as his inner monologue is: we aren’t supposed to sympathize.

Jaime, on the other hand? Jaime gets a pov and TWO romantic relationships fleshed out in depth, one of which is a BATB dynamic with a heroine. His heart is on stage for everyone to see in a way Tywin’s heart isn’t—cannot be. I think it’s essential to recognize that Jaime and Tywin occupy different spaces in the narrative, and their potential to be seen as sympathetic characters is largely different. It’s hard for me not to see authorial intent in the way Jaime is perceived VS how Tywin is perceived.

This brings me to the other question you raised, if Jaime is on his way to become Tywin’s true heir. I can only try to answer this is by looking at what motivates him, at what could be a significant and satisfying resolution of the issues his character raises. 

Jaime never cared for power but, like every Lannister, he strives for greatness. Now that that greatness is unachievable through his swordfighting skills, he’s looking in other directions, other possible fields to excel in. One of those is certainly Tywin: family. The other is knighthood: his other family. Both failed him, and he failed them both. The way Jaime failed knighthood is obvious to everyone, but the way he failed his ~responsibility~ towards house Lannister is subtler: by trading his birthright for a place at Cersei’s side, he basically washed his hands clean, giving Tywin free rein to further hate and abuse Tyrion in an escalation of desperate and delusional attempts to avert the latter’s ascension as heir to Casterly Rock, that climaxed with Tyrion being accused of regicide and Tywin’s death. There’s a great image in Jaime’s narrative, of the crimson and gold Lannister sigil VS the white shield of the kingsguard, but the real question isn’t which one Jaime will eventually /choose/... it’s whether he’ll ever realize he can be NEITHER. 

The great lion of Lannister? That’s Tyrion. Every attempt to turn the clock back is futile. The Rock is Tyrion’s by right since the moment Jaime chose to step back and join the Kingsguard for life.

And the white shield… is Brienne. It’s always been her.

a scenario in which Brienne has a role similar to Joanna’s […] would emphasize Jaime’s doom and her rise nicely

But is Jaime Tywin in this scenario, or is he Joanna?

Because Joanna died so that Tywin could rise as the character we all know (once again, I side-eye the idea of Joanna being Tywin’s “conscience” or her death being his ~villain origin story~, but it certainly made him more unbalanced). For the parallel to work, Brienne has to die for Jaime to rise (as a true villain, as his father’s heir, as Cersei’s valonqar, whatever), which has been speculated, and which I’m aggressively AGAINST. Because Brienne is the next generation, Brienne is a character who can have a REAL positive impact on the world, while Jaime… let’s be real, Jaime is a relic. He’s a relic of Robert’s rebellion, of a time that doesn’t exist anymore. The “Greatness” ship has sailed for him long ago: 

he’s never going to do anything as remarkable and controversial as murdering Aerys (oh sure, there’s Cersei, but I wouldn’t consider killing her an accomplishment. A mediocre rehash of his one and only teenage hit, at best)

he’s never going to be Arthur Dayne, either. Who the fuck wants to be Arthur Dayne anyway? That guy kept a pregnant girl prisoner. Being THAT guy would be only a regression for Jaime. He understood that there are orders you can’t follow at seventeen, why should he revert to performing his duty uncritically at thirty-five?

oh, and of course, he’s not going to outmatch Tywin. DUH, he’s TRYING, but it isn’t a primary concern or a central motivation for him the way it is for Cersei, for example. Everything he accomplishes in his military campaign in the Riverlands, he does only because people fear Tywin’s shadow, not his own. We can talk until next week about whether the trebuchet threat crowns him as Tywin’s true successor, or is actually a strategy more similar to the way Jon and Dany (and Ned) use their enemies’ children to maintain THEIR peace terms (which are fair and righteous whereas Jaime’s aren’t, and that makes all the difference of the world, or not, ymmv!), but what really matters is how his military campaign ends: he dumps garrison, orders and all without a note as soon as girlfriend shows up with a missing cheek and a quest to fulfill. It’s not that he lacks the intelligence or the ferocity to follow Tywin’s steps—he lacks the resolve. He lacks the commitment, because he’s always, perpetually, split in two.

I think it’s that split, and his ultimately futile attempts to become great at one thing or the other when BOTH are no longer available for him, that is the central obstacle that Jaime needs to overcome. Because Jaime wants Honor and Glory, but you know what Honor and Glory are?

Two horses.

Enter the valonqar impasse, and a lot of speculation on Jaime focuses on how he will ~choose violence~. He’ll drop all pretenses of honor, forget about Goldenhand the Just, (optionally) embrace his role as a Lannister commander and dig his own grave in a pointless, doomed last stand to hold Casterly Rock from Tyrion’s attack, and when it falls, kill Cersei and himself. And to be honest, a lot of this sounds plausible enough—I think it’s almost a given that at some point he goes back to Casterly Rock, has a last confrontation with Tyrion, and yeah, likely kills Cersei. 

But it’s a tad too close to Tywin’s wishes to suit me: sure, Tywin would never want Jaime to kill Cersei and commit suicide, but would he want him to defend Casterly Rock against Tyrion? Fuck yes. He’d be DELIGHTED to see Jaime step up as his ~heir~ and fight against his own paranoia of Tyrion the monster child eating the Rock from the inside just like he devoured Joanna’s life. The greatest irony about Tywin is that the kid he wanted to be his heir couldn’t be more ill-suited for the role, whereas it’s the other two—the girl and the dwarf—who deserve to claim that role for themselves. Why change that in the end? More to the point, how does Brienne factor in this? What kind of impact does she leave? Jaime’s resolve to embrace his role as the heir to Lannister does not, in any shape or form, need Brienne to happen. Nor does his choice to fight against Tyrion, or to murder Cersei. Tyrion confessed Joffrey’s murder, and the relationship with Cersei was meant to go to shit since the moment Jaime lost his hand and stopped being her perfect mirror, possibly even earlier. Remove Brienne from Jaime’s entire timeline, and you still have basically the same arc. OF COURSE, Brienne’s importance on the story doesn’t hinge on her impact on Jaime’s narrative. But I wonder what’s the point---like, structurally---of writing a BATB dynamic where transformative love is a crucial aspect, and end it with “and so they parted ways and each one continued to do the shit THEY WERE GOING TO DO ANYWAY, Brienne as the knight who believes in vows and Jaime as... whatever Jaime’s up to”. Bruh, what a waste of narrative space.

And this is where I switch to purely speculative/wish fulfillment mode, so, HANDLE WITH CAUTION, lol. I think Jaime will reject both Honor and Glory and die as the Kingslayer, as nobody’s heir, as the Lannister who lost the Rock, unredeemed… in the eyes of everyone but us, and whoever will be holding his hand in the last moment.

A few weeks ago, I went to see Logan. As I watched Wolverine sacrifice himself so that his daughter and the new generation of heroes could, well, inherit the world, so that they could have a chance for redemption when it’s too late for him, I thought, THIS, this is I want from Jaime. To die, but not before he’s pushed HIS heir forward, the person who will save the world, who will be the hero he cannot be. To “plant seeds in a garden you never get to see”. Unlike Joanna, who had no choice in this nor any idea of how important Tyrion was going to be for the world, I want it to be Jaime’s decision. This is the only way we can go back to “the things I do for love” and redeem that statement.

Because it’s that statement, even more than Jaime himself, that needs redemption. What matters isn’t the “for love” part, it’s the “do”. See, Jaime has already done something unequivocally good for love. He jumped in a bearpit and saved Brienne. So why are we still having this debate? Because, well, the scope of that action was limited to him and Brienne, to that particular circumstance, and to the relationship between them. There’s still something egotistical in saving the life of someone you care for—it’s still a “I’m doing this because you are important to ME” logic. Me, me, me. The real heroism, the real sacrifice, is renouncing to the person you love—renouncing to your “dream of spring”, so that others can have it. It’s what Brienne does, when asked “sword or noose”. It DESTROYS her, but she INSTANTLY gets that her feelings of loyalty, devotion and, yes, love for Jaime are no justification for letting two innocent people die.

AND THIS IS WHAT MAKES HER THE REAL DEAL, FOLKS.

We still have to see how Jaime receives the choice she made. Badly, some argue, he’ll be pissed and she’ll fall from grace in his eyes, because what else can the Lady Stoneheart ordeal be if not a plot device to make Jaime go finally berserk, a set up for the valonqar? But I think the whole incident is going to leave Jaime genuinely Shook (TM). Not only because he’s suddenly getting all the receipts of why he’s a bad person in his face, not only because he’ll see what his father’s brilliant military logic has done to a formerly admirable woman like Catelyn, but also because Brienne’s lesson will HURT the way TRUTH hurts. He’s a person who’s sacrificed a lot for love, thinking it was worthwhile; Brienne’s choice will prove that it’s not. That he should have sacrificed his love to do the right thing, instead.

You need to serve something greater than your own emotions. This is the most important of Brienne’s lessons, and I think there’s a possibility that Jaime actually UNDERSTANDS it, because that would be the ULTIMATE change, for him. (so powerful that it could potentially break that thrice damned prophecy, even.) To see that his feelings, desires, hopes and dreams aren’t important. It’s neither Honor nor Glory, and in the end, it’s not even Love. It’s about doing the right thing, full stop.

I realize this is very fanficcy, but boy, do I love Jaime Lannister and want his arc to end in a not completely nihilistic way. :)

(sorry it took me so long!)