Beauty and the Beast - Part I - Who is the Beauty and who the Beast?

It's probably no surprise that George R. R. Martin, who wrote for the TV show "Beauty and the Beast," really seems to like this fairy tale and has included two major Beauty and the Beast stories in A Song of Ice and Fire, those of Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister, and Sansa Stark and Sandor Clegane. 

I've just read the chapter in A Clash of Kings where Catelyn visits Jaime in the dungeons of Riverrun (one of my favorite chapters in that novel and in the series, because it’s so packed full of interesting things and quotable lines. “What’s a brother’s life when honor’s at stake?” “So many vows, they make you swear and swear” “There are no men like me.”) and it’s very, very striking to me that GRRM puts all this Beauty and the Beast stuff for Brienne and Jaime into Catelyn’s head, assigning her the role that Beauty's father plays in the original fairytale, of introducing Beauty and the Beast to one another. 

Catelyn (and the readers) meet Brienne at Renly’s tournament at Bitterbridge; before Brienne ever speaks a line of dialogue, we (and Catelyn) are informed that this woman is mockingly called “Brienne the Beauty” (in the same way that a giant might be called “Tiny.”)

"That's Brienne of Tarth, daughter to Lord Welwyn the Evenstar."

 "Daughter?" Catelyn was horrified 

"Brienne the Beauty, they name her ... though not to her face, lest they be called upon to defend those words with their bodies.

Catelyn also notices Brienne’s eyes, foreshadowing Jaime’s noticing them. And this is imo, very, very deliberate, because of that unattributable but very popular quote about eyes being the windows to your soul.

Beauty, they called her ... mocking... Brienne's eyes were large and very blue, a young girl's eyes, trusting and guileless, but the rest ... 

Catelyn, who sees elements of Sansa and Arya in Brienne, is wonderfully motherly and kind to this girl whose inability to fit into the norms of society is so manifest. She is with Brienne when Renly - the first man Brienne has loved - is murdered by the sorcery of a devotee of Rh’llor, and dissuades Brienne from fruitlessly seeking revenge against Stannis that will only lead to Brienne’s own death. Brienne, whose habit is to recklessly pledge her life and allegiance to anyone who’s kind to her, says her vows as Catelyn’s sworn sword, putting her on the tragic path to meet Catelyn’s horrifying revenant, Lady Stoneheart, who was raised from the dead by a devotee of Rh’llor, and, who in her quest for vengeance, makes Brienne swear a heartbreaking oath to kill the man she loves, in order to save the life of an innocent.

At Riverrun, Catelyn, who comforted Brienne in her grief for Renly, tells Brienne about Bran’s and Rickon’s supposed deaths - in fact, aside from the Riverrun Maester who gave Catelyn the message, Brienne is the only person in Riverrun who knows about Bran and Rickon at this point, just as Catelyn was the only witness besides Brienne to the shadow that killed Renly. Again, this is important. There are reasons why Catelyn, Brienne and Jaime form these alliances and connections and I really think Catelyn’s role in pushing Brienne and Jaime together cannot be understated. The dinner where Catelyn reveals this tragedy to Brienne is actually quite weird because Catelyn has this strange, dissociative conversation with Brienne, leaping from topic to topic, almost talking to herself. At one point, the reader is led to think that Catelyn will seek revenge on Jaime right then and there, since he is the only enemy who is within her power. 

And then we get to the dungeon, and (sadly) the only scene Catelyn and Jaime share. 

Jaime Lannister had been allowed no razor since the night he was taken in the Whispering Wood, and a shaggy beard covered his face, once so like the queen's. Glinting gold in the lamplight, the whiskers made him look like some great yellow beast, magnificent even in chains. His unwashed hair fell to his shoulders in ropes and tangles, the clothes were rotting on his body, his face was pale and wasted ... and even so, the power and the beauty of the man were apparent.

A Game of Thrones - Chapter 10 - Jon II

"It should have been you."

Catelyn Stark's words to Jon Snow in this chapter guaranteed that so many fans of the series would hate her forever for being mean to Jon. I don't share that view, by the way - I think Catelyn's words are cruel and unjustifiable, but don't signify that she's either a bad person. Martin is showing us that someone can be an essentially good person, who does or says one or two terrible things, which don't change the fact that they are not terrible people (he will do the inverse as well, making some people who may strike as terrible have done noble things as well.) And having read two chapters of Catelyn's POV already, we know that she doesn't sit around and think about how much she hates Jon all the time when she's not maddened by grief and guilt (we'll learn later in this chapter she thinks it was her fervent desire to have Ned leave Bran with her in Winterfell that resulted in her prayers being answered in the cruelest possible way). It's unfair and cruel, I don't deny, but I must say I find fandom's reaction of placing Catelyn on a par with Gregor Clegane on the scale of evil people we hate is disturbing to me. I can like and sympathize with both Jon and Catelyn, and I do.

Onto the chapter:

A Game of Thrones - Catelyn II (Chapter 6)

Sorry, this has taken me FOREVER because I have so much to say about this chapter, including a brand new Crack!Theory about stuff. (At this rate, though, I should be finishing up A Game of Thrones just about when The Winds of Winter comes out. Yay?)

Without further ado, my crack!theory. So at the beginning of this chapter, Catelyn spends quite a lot of time describing Winterfell. And while I initially (and on subsequent rereads) always sped up to the whole “Lannister conspiracy to murder Jon Arryn” section of this chapter, something struck me this time around:

“The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and scading waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man’s body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing.”

Ned doesn’t like the heat. “The Starks were made for the cold, he would tell her, and she would laugh and tell him in that case they had certainly built their castle in the wrong place.”
BUT ... they have totally NOT built their castle in the wrong place and here is why:

• Most obviously, that natural source of warmth is probably why Winterfell has survived all those winters and may secure its survival for the coming one. 

• Hot springs are often associated with volcanic activity, as are dragons (Valyria from which dragons came seems to have some kind of analogy to the regions of intense volcanic activity in our own world) and dragonglass (obsidian, which is cooled lava.) In other words, volcanoes and their byproducts seem to be inimical to the Others and the various creepy things associated with the reign of winter. 

So what if the “Stone Dragon” that Melisandre hopes to wake is in fact not at Dragonstone (despite its name) but at Winterfell and the “king’s blood” needed to wake it isn’t that of Stannis Baratheon or Robert Baratheon’s bastards but instead the blood of the Starks, who were once Kings in the North AND have the blood of the First Men in their veins, etc. 

I can’t help but shake the feeling that Winterfell is critically important to the storyline in more ways than simply being our jumping off point/home of the Starks, that somehow the place itself will play a role in the final confrontations between “ice” and “fire” because Winterfell itself unites those two elements in its buildings. Winterfell was supposedly built by Bran the Builder, who is also credited with constructing the Wall to keep the Others out - while the Wall has obvious magical properties, thus far, Winterfell hasn’t demonstrated any, but ... wouldn’t it be strange if Brandon Stark didn’t put ANY of the safeguards he put on the Wall onto the home of his own family? Hmmmm!


OK, moving on from my crack theory to an actual discussion of the chapter. Mercifully (given the other sex scenes Martin’s written in this series) we come in on the aftermath of Ned’s “urgent” lovemaking to Catelyn. Catelyn thinks that she could still give Ned another son (so ... just to emphasize, these people are all in the mid- to late-30s at this point and were VERY young during Robert’s Rebellion - Ned was Brienne’s age; Jaime, Cersei, Catelyn were a little younger. They were all just a little bit older than the kids of the main story, and I think we always have to remember that when we think about what they did/didn't do during the Rebellion.) 

A Game of Thrones - Catelyn I (Chapter 2)

• Ned is doing some post-execution cleanup of Ice when Catelyn brings him the news of Jon Arryn’s death and Robert’s imminent arrival at Winterfell, complete with Lannister queen and her brothers. The godswood makes Catelyn uncomfortable - even after all these years, she feels like a stranger at Winterfell, at least in the godswood. This is our first inkling about different religions - the North worships the ancient gods of the forest symbolized by the weirwood trees; the South worships the Seven in what sounds like a version of church (with holy oils and priests.) We also get our first mention of the “Children of the Forest” and the faces carved into the weir woods, which will, of course, be hugely significant later on. 
• Ned acknowledges that Gared was so terrified of whatever it was he saw (and that he was the fourth Night’s Watch deserter this year.) I guess it’s too much to expect that he’d start actually asking questions before he executes these guys because it is a bit like someone telling me they’d seen a woolly mammoth. I wouldn’t believe it. But STILL!
• Also, Ned apparently believes three years is old enough for Rickon to put his fears aside and recognize that “winter is coming.” But the words are somehow kind of rote, since a guy just told Ned that Winter REALLY is coming apparently and yet Ned isn’t hearing the underlying message. Which again, I don’t blame him for *too* much since obviously the readers know much more than he does.
• Ned and Catelyn talk about Lysa and her son, who have fled to the Eyrie. Ned first suggests Catelyn take the children to visit their aunt and cousin and cheer them up, but of course, since Robert is coming to Winterfell that won’t work. I do wonder what would have happened if Catelyn had taken Bran off to the Eyrie. Would he have climbed/fallen there or did the specific chain of events at Winterfell have to happen in exactly the way that they did?
• Ned clearly dislikes the Lannisters - he calls them an “infestation” and Cersei is “the Lannister woman” - and at this point, since he has no idea about the incest, it’s purely based on his having found Jaime on the throne and perhaps because Cersei took his sister Lyanna’s “rightful” place as Robert’s queen? Because he really seems to dislike her simply for being a Lannister, more than anything else: I get that he hates Tywin for the Sack of King’s Landing (and the murder of Rhaegar’s wife and children) and Jaime for being an oathbreaker, but Cersei hasn’t done anything to Ned besides “replace” Lyanna and not be too charming.