Pieces

Do you think there's something wrong with me?

Raffaella Cerullo and Otherness

Then came a voice. “I will take Ser Duncan’s side.” A black stallion emerged from out of the river mists, a black knight on his back. Dunk saw the dragon shield, and the red enamel crest upon his helm with its three roaring heads. The Young Prince. Gods be good, is it truly him? Lord Ashford made the same mistake. “Prince Valarr?” “No.” The black knight lifted the visor of his helm. “I did not think to enter the lists at Ashford, my lord, so I brought no armor. My son was good enough to lend me his.” Prince Baelor smiled almost sadly.

So they decide to be better. Despite losing everything, their ego and self crumbling to ash, they do not turn bitter or hopeless or vengeful. They know they will never truly make it up to the people they hurt or get back what they lost. Even when it's easier to give up or just not bear the guilt and regret, they decide I will make something good of what remains of me.

The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are.

Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.

The land is one.

"What is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?" "Everything."

Men's lives have meaning, not their deaths.

We were king’s men, knights, and heroes...but some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all.

"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" "That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him.

"What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

It all goes back and back, to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.

How much can a crown be worth, when a crow can dine upon a king?

There's much I don't understand. I have never pretended elsewise. I know the seas and rivers, the shapes of the coasts, where the rocks and shoals lie. I know hidden coves where a boat can land unseen. And I know that a king protects his people, or he is no king at all.

All men must die. But first we’ll live.

Steven Attewell wasn’t just a great writer and analyst (though he obviously was), nor just a great podcaster (though he was that too), nor just a great academic mind (though he was that as well). Attewell was a supremely kind, thoughtful, funny, and upstanding human being, someone I was very fortunate to call my dear friend. Hardly a day or two went by without one of us bouncing ideas for an essay or post off the other, or swapping some historical trivia, or sharing thoughts about the latest MCU project. When I got engaged, he was one of the first people I told, and whenever I, say, read a book about New York’s gilded age, or listened to a podcast episode about Reginald Pole, or learned that some Americans were still using hand crank phones into the 80s (no, really), I often thought “Attewell would appreciate that”. 

Even now, it seems utterly surreal to think of him as passed. Just a week before he died, I had been telling him how much my fiancé adored his X-Men ‘97 podcast. A few days before, he and I had been joking about the recent east coast earthquake. I knew how excited he was about his “Tyrion IX” ASOS CBC essay, since he and I had been discussing it in the weeks before he died, and his Tumblr posts right to the end displayed that same high quality you could always expect from him. I keep waiting for my messenger app to pop up with his name again, or his familiar avatar to appear at the top of my Tumblr feed with another ask from him. 

I don't think so. If we're talking deadly sins:

"And [Cersei] is greedy. Greedy for power, for honor, for love." Tyrion on Cersei, Tyrion VI, ADWD

The quote above there is as true of Tyrion as it is of Cersei. Who have far more in common with each other than either does with Jaime. Jaime, who could have any of these things if he put the slightest bit of effort into obtaining them, instead comes to realise it's a different sort of honour he craves - the knightly sort, not mere recognition. (Which is not mere at all to Cersei and Tyrion, who struggle to get shit because of assigned sex and disability respectively.)

ron is typing 💬

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In terms of what this comparison does for Daemon and Viserys (this analysis is focused on them), I think it shows how the brothers are alike and how they're different. Calling one 'better' than the other is, I think, a call for the viewers to make.

Aemma's murder (I'm not calling it death in childbirth when she so clearly did not consent to the medical procedure that killed her) took place at the very start of the season. It's the inciting incident for everything that follows. Viserys made a decision there. He decided that the prospect of a son was more important than Aemma and followed through on that - then regretted it.

Then he spends the rest of his life, frankly, dithering. Most of his following decisions are about not trying to recreate the emotional dilemma he was in. He will not come decisively down on one side or another. He will not make those choices any more. That first one went so horribly wrong.

And that dithering that Viserys comes to in the first episode is something he has in common with Daemon. Daemon is the man who couldn't finish.

That's also a thing that was introduced in the first episode, but the sex scene is a metaphor for Daemon's actions more generally. He just doesn't want things enough. He wants the throne, but can't commit to taking one. He wants Viserys' attention and love, but can't commit to the sort of compromises and discipline that would build a productive relationship. He wants Rhaenyra and can't follow through on that for a very long time.

My bet would be that Joffrey gave some sort of order off page, or made a comment about this moment from Sansa VI AGoT:

"Here, girl." Sandor Clegane knelt before her, between her and Joffrey. With a delicacy surprising in such a big man, he dabbed at the blood welling from her broken lip.

AN ABC OF ASOIAF WOMEN: C FOR CERSEI LANNISTER

Oh yeah, both those PoVs and their "woe is me, my ego was injured so I just had to kill that woman" bullshit is an immediate fuck off from me.

But it's worth examining more generally why Kevan Lannister's not on that list. (Nor grouped with other, similar lists I've seen through the years.) He's been busily setting fire to the Riverlands and he does his own share of "woe is me, I just had to suggest my niece was marched naked through the streets" bullshit. That's some bad stuff. But he's not bricks-for-brains like Victarion is and he's a far more sophisticated PoV than the uneducated Chett. Kevan's self-justification is a lot more eloquent.

This is a very good question, and one which I think is at least for now unanswerable. There is still a considerable amount of mystery - to some extent intentionally so, of course - surrounding the relationship between Daynes and Starks immediately before and during Robert's Rebellion, and that level of mystery naturally obfuscates the details of the timeline around and immediately after the final fight at the tower of joy. We know that Ned buried Arthur, as well as the other Kingsguard and his own slain companions, using the stones of the tower; we know he took Dawn back to Starfall to return Dawn to Ashara (who was specifically alive at that point), we know that Ned obviously left and that Ashara obviously died ... but that's it.

I think the answer, to the extent we will ever get one, probably depends on how Ashara felt about the situation, especially after Ned returned with Dawn. What did Ashara know at that point, what did Ned tell her, and how might any of that knowledge have impacted her feelings - did she know by then, for example, that Brandon Stark had been murdered, or that Rhaegar had been killed in battle, or that Elia and her children had been murdered, or that the Targaryens had definitively lost the war, and which if any of these informed her emotional state (and how)? How did she react to the outcome of the fight at the tower of joy, to the news of her brother's death, to the revelation of baby Jon? To what extent if any did Ashara and Ned had a romantic attraction/relationship, and if there were one, to what extent did Ned's return with Dawn post-tower of joy affect Ashara's feelings? Was Ned coming to Starfall - to give back the sword, to bring her news of her brother's death, to inform her of whatever else he might have told her about - the last tragedy in a likely very painful last few years for Ashara, or was it only Ned's departure from Starfall - permanently leaving Ashara's life to become Lord of Winterfell, Catelyn's husband, and (though he might not have known it yet) Robb's father - that added a final layer of grief to Ashara's life?

In sum, to understand Ashara's death we have to understand Ashara and her mindset at that moment. Accordingly, so long as Ashara is left an enigma, her death will be so as well.

But, speaking of Oberyn, there is something to be said for how he wields the horrors inflicted on his family as a political weapon, even though the very fact that he does so speaks poorly of him and The System in which he’s embedded. It’s always driven me nuts when people wag their fingers at Oberyn for holding out for a confession from Gregor instead of finishing him off; this is one of very few moments where I feel like D&D has a handle on what a scene is supposed to mean, above and beyond how it’s supposed to look. Because in the middle of Oberyn’s Princess Bride mantra, the show adds this:

“Who gave you the order?”

And he turns his back on Gregor, like he doesn’t care if the Mountain grabs him and smashes his face in, because he doesn’t, because he came to King’s Landing to roar that question and then point his finger at Tywin Lannister. And he does so, and Tywin’s expression is a remarkable thing to behold: the smugness falls away, and a deep understanding of what Oberyn is doing settles on his face. This scene also features a cutaway of Jaime glancing at Tyrion with a goofy grin on his face, as if Jaime can’t hide how bemused-but-thrilled he is by Oberyn’s flamboyant badassery. That expression represents the superficial takeaway from Oberyn’s self-sacrifice; Tywin’s expression reflects Oberyn’s true mission.

That mission is the eradication of all plausible deniability on Tywin’s part, the destruction of his sacred reputation. Tywin Lannister is not, first and foremost, a political schemer for the ages. He is a violent murderer; as far as King’s Landing (during the Sack), the Riverlands, Houses Reyne and Tarbeck, and Elia and her children are concerned, he is the moral equivalent of the Mad King he served for so long. (Similarly, never let Roose Bolton fool you into thinking he’s any less sadistic than Ramsay. He wants you to think that. Roose Bolton knows you’re there, reader. He can see you.) Tywin’s political machinations are surface maneuvers, the means by which he murders. He uses Gregor Clegane to act out his violent power fantasies, and Gregor in turn uses the legitimacy Tywin grants him to act out his own.