Jaime Lannister is not a wholesome person. He’s just not. He’s sharp-tongued, impulsive, reckless with himself and others, prone to dramatic gestures that prioritize the emotional moment over any kind of long-term thinking, and he has spent his entire adult life inside an abusive, codependent relationship, which means he has essentially no model for what healthy love looks like. And I think people assume that because Brienne is different (because she’s “good), that Jaime will just naturally become a different person in response to her, like she’s some kind of corrective influence that will smooth out his edges by proximity. And that’s not how it works imo.

If we ever get to explore their relationship in the books, i don’t think all of Jaime’s intensity would simply disappear just because he’s with Brienne. It would just be redirected, because all of that intensity isn’t a Cersei-specific trait. It’s a Jaime trait. It’s who he is. He’s not a measured person. He doesn’t do things by half. And the idea that he’d suddenly become temperate and gentle just because he’s finally with someone who is “good” is a fantasy.

And headcanoning away (as I don’t think we’ll ever get time to actually go deep into this even if the book gives us time to see a glimpse of their relationship and dynamics), the way I read their relationship, I think Jaime in a relationship with Brienne would be a lot. I think he’d be devoted to the point of recklessness; we already have evidence of this, given what he had done for Brienne or where Brienne is concerned. I think he’d be protective in ways that would occasionally veer into possessiveness, and we have a preview of that too, because a man who punches Red Ronnet Connington in the face over a secondhand insult about a woman he isn’t even “with” yet is not a man who’s going to handle threats to her (real or perceived) with grace and restraint. I think he’d be overwhelming sometimes. Too present, too intense, too much in ways that would require Brienne to actively push back, which she would, and that friction is actually part of what makes them work. But it would still be friction.

I think his humor (which is one of his primary defense mechanisms) would still cut sometimes. Not because he’d want to hurt her, but because Jaime defaults to deflection when he’s vulnerable, and being genuinely, fully known by someone for the first time in his life would make him very vulnerable. Brienne would see through it with time, but seeing through it and not being affected by it are different things.

I think he’d throw himself in front of danger for her without hesitation, and while I do think that is very romantic, it’s also a form of not valuing his own life very highly, which is its own kind of problem that Brienne would have to confront. I think he’d struggle with letting her fight her own battles for example, and not because he thinks she’s incapable but because the idea of her being hurt would be intolerable to him in a way that overrides his respect for her competence. I think that tension between knowing she can handle herself and being physically unable to stand by and let her would be a real, ongoing negotiation between them, not something that resolves neatly.

Brienne also has her own set of deeply ingrained patterns that would be genuinely difficult to navigate in a relationship, and I don’t think people engage with them enough because she’s the “good” one. But Brienne bottles things up. That’s not a minor character trait either. She has been mocked, rejected, humiliated for the better part of her life, and she learned how to absorb that (more or less), but she has also built a wall, and walls don’t come down just because the person on the other side of them loves you. She doesn’t let people in, as she said so herself, she doesn’t know how to trust anymore. And with Jaime specifically, I think that tendency of hiding behind her walls would actually get worse before it gets better, because the stakes are higher. She’d shut down. She’d go quiet in a way that Jaime would find absolutely maddening. I don’t think he would handle that well at first. He’d push. He’d provoke. He’d say something sharp to make her react because her silence would be unbearable to him, and then they’d fight, and the fight would probably be clarifying in the end but the road there would not be pretty. Brienne is also self sacrificial to her own detriment, another problem they would have to contend with. Her willingness to throw herself away for honor and to sacrifice herself for those she loves would be something he’d have a hard time dealing with. He’d try to stop her. He’d put himself in front of whatever she was trying to walk into, which is its own form of the exact same problem, and Brienne would be furious with him. It’s ironic because they would be essentially doing the same thing for each other, but that would 100% cause problems in their relationship.

I think they are two people whose defense mechanisms are almost perfectly designed to antagonize each other, and they’d have to learn to navigate that.

Something else they would have to contend with I think, is that love, for Jaime would not always express itself in ways that are noble. I think he would, without question, prioritize Brienne’s life over other people’s lives for example. If the choice is Brienne or the more honorable path, he’s choosing Brienne. And that’s not a “flaw” he’d grow out of, that’s the shape his love takes. He already pushed a child out of a window to protect what he loved. I’m not equating the two situations, obviously, and of course that comes with its own price; we see in text how what he has done eats at him. But the capacity for that kind of ruthless, uncompromising prioritization is still in him. It’s just that now it would be in service of something real, and of someone who wouldn’t ask that of him. And Brienne, who structures her entire identity around doing the right thing, the honorable thing, would find that genuinely difficult to reconcile. That’s complicated.

The sexual aspect would be no different as well imo. I think people picture Jaime and Brienne’s physical relationship as something tender and tentative, a lot of gentle first times and nervous vulnerability, which, fine, there might be elements of that given Brienne’s, and even Jaime’s to a certain extent, inexperience. But the text has been building a sexual charge between them since the moment they were on page together, and nothing about that charge is gentle. They are extremely physical people. And they match one another in that physicality. When it does go somewhere, I don’t think it’s soft. I think it’s the release of something that’s been held under enormous pressure for a very long time. I think the sheer amount of suppressed want between them would produce something pretty consuming. These are two people who have been starved in different ways, and I don’t think either of them would be particularly restrained about it once the door is open.

So when I say it would be a little toxic, that’s what I mean. I don’t think love has to be always portrayed as this clean cut nice thing, and I don’t think George does that either, even when it’s a love that is “worthy” of existing, even when it’s justified.

Also visual representation of their relationship at any point in time:

I plucked them off the tree myself.

The tree. Their tree. Tywin takes a plum from the plate, his thumb running along the seam, imagining you having done the same.

He smells it, inhales the sweet scent, presses the fruit against his lips. It feels smooth, warmed by his hand. Not quite like the plum you had let him taste back then.

Most loyal, your Lady from the orchards.

The orchards. A rare place, a curious one. One that seems to be untouched from war and hunger. Owned by an ally of the Lannisters. Some lord who makes his gold with apples and plums and pears. A man whose business is seeds and fruits and who ironically only sired one child, and a daughter at that.

The Lady from the orchards.

Without noticing Tywin licks along the seam, the tip of his tongue pushing through the skin and into the flesh without much resistance.

Sweet and tart, the juice running down his chin. Dripping onto the paper.

He sucks and slurps at the slit of the plum before finally taking a bite.

Dear Lady, Tywin's quill scratches over a square of parchment, send more plums, for I miss their taste. Take them from the tree under which you gave me the ripest of plums, for I want to taste it again.

Tywin pauses, scratching his chin and feeling the sticky juice spreading over his skin. Like the memories spreading in his mind.

The tree. As old as Tywin since it was planted the day of his birth in honor of the new child. 'Come, let me show you your tree,' you said and he had been annoyed. Could this dull girl not see that he was exhausted after months of mud and blood and war? Could she not fathom how he just wanted to rest for a week before returning to the frontlines?

You couldn't. Half his age and full of a good, calm life you just wanted to show the great Lord Tywin, the Old Lion, the Hand of the King his tree. And because he was hungry for colors that weren't mud-brown and blood red and you were sweet like honeyed wine, he agreed eventually.

His tree stood tall and proud, the branches laden with ample plums. It wasn't among the other trees but had its own, designated place, sunny, with rich soil, birdsong filling the air. A piece of quiet Tywin hadn't tasted in a long while.

'Help me, my Lord?' you chirped like the pert sparrows swarming the grounds, already climbing a rickety wooden ladder. Tywin saw it, the way your foot stepped onto the hem of your dress, the way you were so eager to pluck plums for him that you didn't care if you broke a bone in the process.

Swiftly he lashed out, his fingers digging into the backs of your thighs just when you slipped off the third rung. By the Seven, you felt as ample as the ripe fruits, smelled of grass and fresh cut apple slices. And you laughed as if you didn't just fall into the arms of Lord Tywin Lannister but of a common harvest hand.

The plums, pulled in halves by your fingers and offered in your palm, were the best he ever had. Carrying the warmth of the sun in their flesh, each piece felt like he ate a summer's day.

The ink on the quill has dried, so Tywin dips the tip back into the liquid, scratching more words onto the parchment: I will brook no delay. Send a whole crate.

He picks up the second plum from the plate, turning it, letting his fingers press against it, not hard enough to break the purple skin. Yours felt just as smooth under the pads of his fingers. The quill moves again, hastily now.

Bring your Lord his favorite plum.

The one you let him taste under the old tree, where the grass and your skin were painted with dapples of sunshine.

The one he couldn't believe you offered him, a weary and stern man with more silver than gold in his hair.

But days spent with walking beneath trees, with watching men and women alike filling crate after crate with fruits, with being just a lord among the smallfolk and not the Old Lion—it turned him into someone else. A man, who he last had been decades ago. When life was a little simpler and he still could accept small joys that came his way.

'You are leaving tomorrow, no?' you asked and sat down next to him. Tywin Lannister, sitting under a tree in the grass. Something so unheard of it had to stay a secret, right here in the shadow of his tree.

A plum, pulled in half and nestled in your outstretched hand, was offered to him. He took it—like he had so often the last days—and noticed your thumb. It was glistening with sweet plum juice and he thought about taking your hand, too. To suck your finger between his lips and lick the sweetness from your skin.

And so he did it.

And you let him.

And when he drew you closer you followed his wordless command.

Bring your Lord his favorite plum.

A plum, pulled open and nestled between your thighs, was offered to him. He took it, tasted it, heated flesh—warmed from a day out in the sun. The salt of your skin, candied with the ever present plum aroma, a delectable tartness. Summer in his nose and on his tongue.

There, under the canopy of leaves and purple plums, Tywin hid between your thighs and you shielded him with the excess of your skirts. Painted over his sighs with your own. Fed him.

Bring your Lord his favorite plum. I want to taste her again.

The quill stops moving again, the soft scratching on the parchment ceases. A raven would reach the orchards by tomorrow evening. More plums could be here by the end of the week.

Tywin breaks open the last plum from his plate and runs his thumb over the pit sitting in its center until it glistens like his fingers did that one afternoon.

You could be here by the end of the week. He licks his thumb and then his lips, picking up the quill again.

Your plum is ripe, my Lady.

comment or reblog for Tywin to ask for your plum and for never ending gratitude 😌💛

pearl dividers: @cursed-carmine