I'd love to know, did you get the sense that robb was in love though with jeyne in the books? I remember at first assuming that yeah, of course he is, of course they are, but then in the following chapters I started to feel like he really wasn't, and she probably wasn't either (more infatuated and in lust) and then I just got this sense of forboding that things were going even more downhill for Robb in general, GRRM was clearly taking apart this fairytale... Just curious if I was the only one :)
It’s usually acknowledged that book!Robb doesn’t marry Jeyne “for love” (although he does tell Catelyn that “he took her castle and she took his heart”, but that sounded like waxing poetic to me). The way I see it, what sparked this relationship was neither sweeping love nor consuming lust (per se), but rather the vulnerability and need for comfort and human affection of a physically and emotionally wounded teenager carrying too much weight on his shoulders, who suddenly, in the middle of a war and upon receiving news of his younger brothers being horribly murdered, meets a girl of his age who’s probably just as lonely and unhappy as he is. Throw hormones in the mix and ta da, the damage is done, because Jeyne lost her virginity to him and even if she didn’t people would never stop gossiping about it, because it was known to everyone that the two of them were spending time alone in her room (later on you slowly start putting the pieces together and realize that Jeyne tending to Robb’s wounds was set up by Sybell who was already in negotiations with Tywin, but Jeyne herself was likely just an unwitting pawn in all of this, and I think she offered her comfort genuinely.)
The element of comfort and bonding over tragedy is not lost in Robb/Talisa either, but the book dynamic is less triumphant, definitely bittersweet, and specifically lacks the show’s follow-your-heart fuck politics I’m in love narrative. Also because, again, book!Robb and Jeyne are two teenagers who have barely had other experiences before each other, barely know each other, and the fact that there’s mutual attraction and affection between them doesn’t mean that they’re perfect for each other, or that it’s healthy for them to commit to marriage so early (and yet, the fact that this intimacy between them was mutually shared and born spontaneously before, not after, the wedding is more than you can say about most highborn couples anyway, since dynastic marriages in Westeros are usually arranged between two total strangers).Â
So yes, Martin is definitely deconstructing a fairytale trope, though not necessarily taking it apart in an ugly, cynical way. Robb doesn’t marry Jeyne for love, but he does to protect her honor and save her from the social humiliation of having been deflowered and thus “ruined”. And in a way, this is a form of love, though maybe not Love in an epic, absolute sense as it’s usually depicted in star-crossed romances (or in the show version). And of course, it’s a politically disastrous decision—he could have arranged a marriage between her and one of his bannermen, as it’s usually noted in fandom discussions, and save his betrothal to the Frey girl and (maybe?) not lose the war. But the thing is, Jeyne chose him. Jeyne made love to him, and I appreciate Robb for respecting her agency (however little she had considering Sybell was manipulating her, but Robb never had time to figure it out) and refusing to treat her as a commodity whose body can be disposed of and interchangeably given to this or that man as long as it’s not the one she spontaneously chose to have sex with. And for taking responsibility, instead of passing it along to someone else.
Now, Robb’s behavior in this circumstance is often criticized, not only for its catastrophic consequences but also because it originates from a terribly toxic concept of honor and social respectability. Obviously, there’s plenty to criticize in a system that is so repressive of extramarital sex and places so much emphasis on a woman’s virginity to the point that it’s often the be all end all of her value, and Robb’s choices are a product of this system, no doubt (another reason why he marries Jeyne is that it’s been drilled in his mind that bastards are shameful and that fathering one is morally reprehensible and a stain on your “honor”). But that doesn’t mean he’s morally wrong to marry Jeyne as opposed to inflict a random husband on her or just wash his hands clean and leave her to face the inevitable public scorn and her family’s wrath. He’s operating in a flawed system in which women are the first and often only ones to be thrown under the bus, and in this context what he chose was probably more respectful of Jeyne’s individuality and wishes than any other option.Â
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