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New Girl Week: Day 3, Favorite Character → Jessica Day

I DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING! LOL!

Jaime has a dress made for brienne and she wears it

Catelyn didn’t have dresses made because she recognized that Brienne was a feminine person (which is no fault of hers since Brienne has those walls from childhood trauma), she had the dresses made because she believed that Brienne being a woman meant that she had to conform to society’s expectations of how women ought to dress. That was just how Catelyn was raised. She thinks about how she’s always done her duty as a highborn lady in her ACoK chapters a lot, too.

When the last of Edmure’s foot had shuffled under the portcullis, Brienne asked, “What shall we do now, my lady?”

“Our duty.” Catelyn’s face was drawn as she started across the yard. I have always done my duty, she thought. Perhaps that was why her lord father had always cherished her best of all his children. Her two older brothers had both died in infancy, so she had been son as well as daughter to Lord Hoster until Edmure was born. Then her mother had died and her father had told her that she must be the lady of Riverrun now, and she had done that too. And when Lord Hoster promised her to Brandon Stark, she had thanked him for making her such a splendid match.

I gave Brandon my favor to wear, and never comforted Petyr once after he was wounded, nor bid him farewell when Father sent him off. And when Brandon was murdered and Father told me I must wed his brother, I did so gladly, though I never saw Ned’s face until our wedding day. I gave my maidenhood to this solemn stranger and sent him off to his war and his king and the woman who bore him his bastard, because I always did my duty.

Catelyn’s version of duty and her conflict with his is both very different but also similar to Jaime’s, and even Brienne’s. Jaime’s conflict with duty is shown throughout his chapters in ASoS and AFFC as he struggles with being judged for doing what he deemed was his duty as a knight, and with how he’s ended up shirking those same duties all these years; he wants to be Goldenhand the Just, not the Kingslayer, which is inherently about duty. What is his duty? Is his duty to carry out Cersei’s orders? Is it to follow through with his vows as a knight? Is it to claim his inheritance, marry, and produce heirs?

Brienne’s struggles with duty are much closer to Jaime’s, because she’s grappling with who people expect her to be (either a polite, beautiful lady or a talented male warrior, of which she’s neither) versus who she actually is. Is her duty to her father, to marry and produce heirs? Is her duty to Lady Catelyn, to find Arya and Sansa and bring them to safety? (Is it to follow orders and be a pawn, as she was in the show?)

Jaime and Brienne intrinsically understand each other in this strange fashion.