#czarryy

now that I got that out of the way, on to the specifics, let’s go through the two characters that matter less to this point, as in that answer I was talking about the currently living starks (or at least, currently still being part of the story), which would be: arya, sansa, bran, rickon, jon (bc he’s totally not dead) and cat/stoneheart, but at this point I’ll just say a few words about everyone.

I’m not counting ned here because ned is actually the only one who is not morally gray, he’s even too sure of his morals, but red herring: ned is presented as the protagonist/good guy/thoroughly honest dude and he is, but his black and white way of seeing the world and his fixation on honor at all costs eventually leads to his downfall and the beginning of his house’s, so the text is already sending you a hint that being a genuine good guy does not mean that you’re rewarded for it, nor that you can claim moral superiority anyway (I mean, when you hear jaime’s tale re aerys’ death ned’s opinion of jaime sounds very unfairly judging, just for one). also it translates to political suicide, but anyway this is about house stark not being straight up good guys in the literature sense and ned is actually one as far as tropes go so that was just to have it out of the way.

robb: robb is the only other one who is actually a good guy as far as the tropes he’s tied to and his narrative go, and who I wouldn’t really count in the morally gray area if only because he was perfectly conscious of where he was standing and of his reasonings even when he was taking questionable decisions or bad decisions, and all the bad decisions he took during the war were for emotional reasons rather than moral reasons (he slept with jeyne because he was in distress and married her because of honor, but it didn’t start from a moral standpoint). except that robb also died for it, so basically the only two members of house stark that I would not in any way count in that area died because of inherent *good* personality traits (ned died because he was honorable to a fault and robb died because he was trusting to a fault basically, and both are qualities that are seen as positive in theory, but in the asoiaf narrative they only bring you bad shit. oops.)

on to everyone else, going by degree from least to most:

rickon: I’m having rickon out of the way first because he’s a wild card - I mean he’s not even a POV and I’m not gonna go write meta on the morals of a kid who’s what, six years old at this point in the story. but I’d just like to state that for the time he was on screen this kid was basically left behind by all of his family, who of course was not willing to do it and didn’t want to but like I doubt he knows that, and who after his home was burned (and he was forced out of it by theon who I suppose was someone he considered a regular presence in the house, I doubt he had more deep opinions at that age) and had to flee it, as far as we know ended up with wildlings, on skaagos, which as far as we know is the one place in westeros where you find cannibals to that day. and his direwolf was arguably the most *savage* of the lot or how you call it - obviously I’m not gonna speculate that when davos finds him he’s going to be unfit for regular life because osha was with him and skaagos might be more civilized than people on the mainland think, but I highly doubt the kid is going to turn out to be little lord fauntleroy or that he might not grow up with serious issues, which in turn wouldn’t necessarily make him a 100% wholesome good person. if he didn’t grow up to be somewhat fucked up I’d be surprised, never mind that who knows if he even remembers his relatives? like, he’s six and he hasn’t seen them since he was four. I highly doubt his storyline is gonna reach ending-of-oliver-twist-sugar-levels and we might be in for fairly dark stuff.

jon: he’s the one more similar to ned and robb right now mostly because he’s perfectly aware of the entity of the things he’s done and he works through a lot of moral conflict when he knows he’s doing something bad or what have you (see: infiltrating the wildlings), but since he’s become lord commander he hasn’t exactly done things that are the epitome of knight in shining armor all of the time - see for one that he basically forced gilly to swap her newborn with mance’s son by the amazing argument of ‘if you don’t do it both kids are going to burn’. now, he might have been bluffing or just have been realistic (tho if we say he’s bluffing then you can interpret the entire ‘jaime saying he’d put edmure’s newborn on a trebuchet’ deal like that too) but manipulating someone into giving up their baby by threatening to having him burned alive when you know that she has a close relationship with your best friend is still fairly shitty for one. and every time that whole ‘what should lord commander snow do’ vs ‘what would I have done as jon snow when I didn’t have this responsibility’ theme showed back up it was when he had to take hard decisions. now, jon knows he’s doing shitty things when he does them and he’s still basically a decent guy but he’s still doing them, and that’s without counting what happens in WoW, because he could resurrect and be the exact same person or resurrect and be different in ways that aren’t necessarily making him a better person. eventually I think he’s just gonna stay the decent person he is because ffs he’s pretty much what the entire title of the series is talking about (I mean, his is the song of ice and fire? it’s jon’s, lol), but he’s not getting there by taking the ethical decision all the time.

sansa: with the premise that I blame all of it on littlefinger being a bastarda and that I know she has no choice in the matter, but she’s in a rock and a hard place right now because from what I gathered from her affc chapters lf is trying to poison sweetrobin with sweetsleep or whatever the name of that drug was - like, he’s obviously setting the maester up to be framed for it if/when sweetrobin dies, and by the end of the second alayne chapter in affc he made it overtly clear that his plan is to come into fruition based on the assumption that sweetrobin inevitably dies. also:

“Sweetsleep is the gentlest of poisons,” the waif told her, as she was grinding some with mortar and pestle. “A few grains will slow a pounding heart and stop a hand from shaking, and make a man feel calm and strong. A pinch will grant a night of deep and dreamless sleep. Three pinches will produce that sleep that does not end.”

+

Colemon only wanted what was best for his charge, Alayne knew, but what was best for the boy and what was best for Lord Arryn were not always the same. Petyr had said as much, and it was true. Maester Colemon cares only for the boy, though. Father and I have larger concerns.

and there was a long conversation where the maester explained her how worried he was that too much sweetsleep was going to be harmful in the end. now obviously littlefinger is manipulating her as well and that she can’t exactly act in her position, but it seems fairly obvious to me that she has to know what lf is doing here, and she’s being technically an accomplice for the moment, which puts her in a fairly gray area also because she’s generally going along with what lf does and what lf does is so not ethical in any way. now, I don’t think she has any blame to shoulder for that, she’s doing what she can to survive poor girl, but right now facts at hand she’s in a rock and a hard place also because she knows about lf’s plan for her which is basically ‘seduce this guy so you can inherit the vale when the twelve-year old sickly kid dies and then you get back winterfell’, which is very smart but is like, not exactly ethical either. now what she does about it in wow is going to be seen and I think she’s going to do the right thing anyway, but still, now she’s not in a fortress as far as being involved in ethically right things goes.

catelyn/stoneheart: obviously we had the whole ‘she’d take decisions based just on her family’s interests’ when she was alive never mind that cat is not presented as a flawless person anyway, but like, talking narratively right now: she’s a zombie corpse going around the riverlands hanging people left and right out of vengeance instinct and she was about to murder brienne aka probably the one person in westeros right now who actually wants to keep vows to her and make her best interests even after her death. as she is right now she’s gone straight into antagonist territory (I mean imo she’s to brienne what aerys was to jaime so…). she’s definitely not in the good guy position right now.

and then we have arya and bran which imo are the same level of terrifying morally gray right now but I’ll put arya first just because I think bran is the most important to the overall plot right now.

arya: obviously her experience has been shaped by her ptsd and you can’t expect a nine year old who sees her father die and then ends up at harrenhaal in those conditions and then almost gets killed in the red wedding to be an adjusted person, but never mind that during asos she was scaring the shit out of sandor clegane aka mr. morally gray TM, but… she’s twelve and currently training to be a professional assassin belonging to a group who makes changing their faces and impersonating other people their selling point. she’s twelve. and she’s already killed a fair amount of people, and now she’s training to get better at that in between people so creepy they’d totally belong in a horror movie? never mind that she should give up her entire identity for it. I hold out hope that the reason why she buried needle was that she has to unbury it sooner rather than later and realize she’s doing a really shitty thing, but arya right now to me is terrifying. she started to scare the shit out of me in asos tbh but in her current storyline? I get the creeps. I don’t see how people see her training as badass or whatever, the sooner she gets out of it the better. goes unsaid that I haven’t seen her do much of anything moral or ethical in the last couple books.

bran: bran imo is like, even fucking more terrifying right now. first: when we left him in his last adwd chapter we’ve basically been told that he has the potential to become the big brother of westeros, with the difference that as far as we know orwell’s big brother still couldn’t see through time. he’s that powerful a warger, and problem: in the adwd prologue there was the unwritten ethics wildling code of what wargers shouldn’t do. which was, eating human flesh, have sex with an animal while possessing an animal and possessing a human being which was like The Worst and no one actually tried to do or managed successfully… until bran did it with hodor, and it was fairly obvious from the text that hodor was not finding it funny or consenting to it in any way. (there also was the theory that the children of the forest might have given bran & co human meat to eat but that’s not confirmed - stiiiill.) and as far as I recall he did that more than once even if he must have had an inkling that it was far beyond shitty, it’s far into Fuck No Please territory. also as mature as he is… he’s ten years old. or eleven at most. and he has that kind of power, enough that he can pretty much warg into the entire fucking continent at this point probably. (if we accept that he was talking to theon through the trees/crows he’s already doing that.) and he has already done The Worst thing a warger can do. he’s so far into morally gray territory I’m frankly terrified.

now: the point is that all of the people above except cat (who I think is beyond reasoning at this point) are in fragile positions right now because they’re all caught in a moment where they aren’t doing Ethical Things 100% TM, which doesn’t mean that they will do bad shit later. like, bran can realize that you Don’t Possess People and uses his powers for good, arya unburies needle and realizes she’s off the deep end and gets the fuck out of dodge, sansa double-manipulates littlefinger and jon stays a decent person even considering the circumstances of his pseudo-death (I’d be pissed if I were him tbh XD), but they have to get there and it implies going through and arc where all of them are put in positions where doing the ethical thing isn’t a complete given, which is where they all are right now.

and this goes with the claim I was making about the lannisters in that post - like, my point was that things started with ‘the starks are the good guys TM, the lannisters are the bad guys TM but tyrion is the sympathetic one’ and now as far as I see it we have ‘every survived stark is in a morally questionable position or has been in one and will be in more while we saw that cersei is power-thirsty and a fairly terrible person but that’s always been her drive so she doesn’t care about anything else, tyrion went from sympathetic to his lowest point and now he’s raising up again, jaime is actually trying to stick to morals he forgot he had and is being a fairly decent person all things considered [because imo his arc is ‘he was a decent guy, life experiences turn him into a fairly bad person, more life experiences make him realize he wants to be that decent guy again, he’s sorta trying] and every other lannister around isn’t tywin and there’s no one really that horrid’. this doesn’t make the lannisters the good guys TM, but it makes their current moral positions fairly more clear than anyone on the stark side because at least you know where they stand and they do as well (which I doubt that at least sansa/arya/bran do right now). which is why I say that in asoiaf no one is a *good guy* or a *bad guy* TM anyway except for like, davos seaworth, but as a friend used to say, 95% of the neurons in the entire continent went to him, so XD

bonus icon under the cut!