#rob stark

Excerpt from Bran I, AGOT.

They give me women boners

It's a little fascinating, I guess, like maybe they recognize on an intellectual level that it's not actually thematically accurate to view characters in such black+white terms but we've been so thoroughly socialized to see characters through a Good Guy vs Bad Guy lens that it overrides any evidence that contradicts it.

Like awhile back, I said I wouldn't characterize (book) Rob Stark as a "great person", that he certainly had good intentions but that doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. The road to hell and all that. He's certainly trying his best, but he's a dumb 15-year-old boy who unquestioningly follows his father's extremely rigid, unnuanced moral code to an ultimately harmful end. Y'know, just like Ned.

We're not supposed to think Ned and Rob's rigid honor code is a good thing. Ned could have swallowed his pride a little bit to have Cersei arrested, to act as regent with Joffrey on the throne, etc. but that violated his rigid sense of honor. The honorable path results in his entire household being murdered, Sansa being subjected to extreme abuse for years, his own death, the War of the Five Kings...like it's a catastrophically bad decision that gets 90% of the people he's supposed to protect hurt or murdered. He was unwilling to sacrifice a shred of pride by being a little duplicitous for the greater good, his actions are driven by ego with a thin veneer of ~Honor~ on top.

And Rob follows in his father's footsteps. By insisting on breaking the Frey marriage pact/alliance by marrying Jeyne after impulsively sleeping with her, he sets in motion the events that lead to the Red Wedding. He gets himself, his men and his mother murdered, which allows the monstrous Boltons to seize power over the North and leaves his remaining allies extremely vulnerable to attack by the Lannister forces. Edmure, Riverrun and the greater Riverlands are fucked. Moreover, it's left his sisters in extremely precarious positions, their wellbeing hinged on Rob's continued survival. Instead, Arya has to go full Feral Orphan Child mode and Sansa is put in a god awful position where she either has to remain an abused hostage at court or rely on Petyr "wow you're like really mature for your age" Baelish to find some semblance of safety.

If Rob had simply swallowed his pride and, I dunno, married Jeyne off to one of his higher-ranking bannermen, none of this would have happened. It doesn't ensure a win, but it definitely would have prevented such a devastating loss. He gets more leeway because, again, he is a dumb 15-year-old boy, but also: he is a 15-year-old king, as well, that requires thinking about the bigger picture. He didn't have to become a king, he chose to do so and thus accepted the responsibility this comes with (mainly: don't get everyone following you killed).

You're not supposed to accept "Being rigidly honorable means you're a good man" at face value; it's repeatedly proven to actually be quite a selfish, prideful thing. It's actually more admirable, in many ways, to be willing to take an L for the betterment of everyone.

Anyway, I got pushback for this take lol

And it was odd. Because a good deal of the book series is largely built around challenging black and white thinking. By the time we get to the War of the Five Kings and see how it's effecting the smallfolk, it's pretty clear none of the Westerosi nobility are "good people". Honestly, Edmure might come closest for allowing the peasants of the Riverlands to take refuge inside his castle and even then Catelyn's like "...Well that's weird. And sweet. But mostly weird, though"

Yet a good chunk of the fandom has compartmentalized characters into Good and Bad categories. I think the show is partly to blame, the show does frame certain characters as heroes vs villains. It can't even handle portraying a guy like Tyrion as a charmingly likable but also profoundly shitty man (he is Tywin writ small, afterall). He just gets flattened into "a good guy with y'know...some issues"

The Young Wolf, Rob St

The White Wolf, Jon Snow

The Wolf Girl, Sansa Stark

The Night Wolf, Arya Stark

The Winged Wolf, Bran Stark

The Wolf Child, Rickon Stark

5 Dire wolves for the trueborn Starks, and one white wolf for the one called Snow