now that we've seen the last of baelor (rip king 😞), i keep thinking about his reputation in history and in dunk's own recollections, and obviously it's tinted with hindsight colored goggles and it's easy to idealize a dead man, but even as bertie carvel pointed out in an interview, by and large the rest of us react to him with the same awed admiration as dunk: he's a Good man. he does the right thing at great personal cost and he deserves to be remembered as the heart of chivalry and the soul of wisdom. but that's not how bertie carvel played him. people call him good, and he consistently talks about how, at every turn, he could choose differently. the capacity to act selfishly or to take the easy way out, or to give in to pettiness or anger, has to be on the table. otherwise, it isn't Goodness.
i think in an era when we've lost a lot of nuance and the ability to consider things holistically, preferring, for our own comfort and safety, to see them monochromatically, there's that safety and comfort in the idea of Goodness as an innate quality. once you have it, you have it; you're either Good or you're Bad - as if it were a trait allotted to you at birth as opposed to a dynamic series of choices that span an entire life. a life which, necessarily, must be full of foibles and misplaced passions and mistakes.
in the end, baelor managed to go out with a reputation for goodness, but it isn't for good men to think of themselves as Being Good. once you think you're done, that you have nothing else to learn, no potential for cruelty, error, or smallness of mind, you've lost the thread. because that's what goodness is - something you have to grasp for again and again. sometimes it finds you accidentally. sometimes the motives aren't wholly selfless. sometimes it isn't perfect. but there's merit in the action. action.
baelor breakspear isn't meant to be a static monolith of virtue, and that's why carvel pushes back on the idea of him being "a good man," why he reframes baelor's actions as being for egg's benefit as opposed to dunk's, why lyonel brings up the fact that the kingsguard would never have touched him.
we need Good characters, and maybe as children it's important to look up to them as we grow, but as adults we might be better served by looking at them - the parts, the whole, the context, the contradictions. maybe then Goodness would stop being this fragile mirage in the distance or ring final like the slam of a judge's gavel. he was simply human - as dunk was when he took in a boy he thought was an urchin and treated him kindly, as he was when he stood up for a woman being unfairly punished, as steely pate was when he gave dunk his armor, as tanselle was when she made a dreamer a beautiful shield, as maekar was when he fought to reach his battered son.
there was a way to play this as baelor being so far above everyone else, blessed with more wisdom, compassion, and a better disposition. a man made Good by Nature. instead, we are shown a prince capable of brutality and violence who enjoys the honors of his nobility. he's proud, wry, reserved, loyal to his dynasty, observant of customs, requiring fealty and obedience from others, and expecting much of them. he could have been an aerion. he could've been worse, because he has the pragmatism and political savvy of a tywin lannister. and that has to be there!! the faults, the constant choice, the free will and the possibility of falling short, the calculations, the pride, the monarchy of it all…
a lesser actor might have looked at what's on the page, read "heart of chivalry and soul of wisdom" and called it a day. what makes onscreen-baelor so inspiring is that he's not a one-dimensional caricature. you get the sense that he's deeply human, that he struggles to be Good but he thinks it's important to try. and i think that's grand. because none of us are perfect and you can't get through life without causing harm, either deliberately or by accident. purity and cancel culture will tell you that there is a way, that you just have to be perfect enough and believe in the right things and fight for these causes and against those, and you can hack it, you can hack it and you'll be Good! but you can't. you don't even know what people will say about you after you've died, how the choices you made will be interpreted in posterity. all you have is the way you treat people, how you make them feel, the steps you take and the words you speak when everyone else stands silent, the humility of admitting that you don't know everything, the grace of loving even when it's difficult. and you will fail. your motives will be questioned and you'll make mistakes, but that's okay. it matters. it all matters - the good, as well as the human.
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