Beauty, Love, and Honor - Jaime, Brienne and Cersei

In A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin frequently gives us twisted versions of different tropes: tropes that are common in fantasy (the hidden "commoner" who turns out to be a prince in reality which seems to be where Jon's story is headed), in romance (he definitely loves Beauty and the Beast because he's telling it at least twice in ASOIAF), as well as older tropes of courtly love and chivalry. And nowhere are those tropes, and their subversions, more apparent than in the story of Jaime Lannister, the soiled knight, who looks like a "king" according to Jon Snow, who is the most beautiful and most vile man Catelyn Stark has ever known, and whose white cloak "becomes him" as Brienne of Tarth says. In keeping with Jaime's complex inner life and storyline, his romantic relationships are equally complex and equally subvert our expectations.

Jaime Lannister and redemption arcs

Redemption is a very loaded word, because of its meaning for Christianity, where Christ the Redeemer is considered to have paid for the souls of sinners with his own life, there by redeeming - buying them back - from sin. Whereas when I talk about redemption, I mean the secondary meaning of the word, which is “the act of making something better” and by this definition I think Jaime IS on a redemption arc.

For me, redemption is a journey for which there is no endpoint. There’s no balance sheet, no moment in a redemption arc (or shouldn’t be) when someone says “OK, you did this and this and this and now you’ve paid for these bad things you did and you’re redeemed.” There’s never going to be a moment where we can say “Oh, Jaime did this, and that makes up for Bran”; if that were the case, then he already build up 500,000 souls worth of good karma when he saved King’s Landing and he can still kill 499,999 people and be on the plus side of the ledger, which is obviously a ridiculous assertion. It never works that way. (I prefer what the Talmud says: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” In other words, each action - good or bad - is complete in itself, and is not a tick in a cosmic ledger of good and evil.)

Redemption is also not about restitution; Jaime can’t restore Bran’s legs any more than he can grow a new hand for himself. He can never “make it up” to the person he actually injured. He can only do his best to do right by others he encounters, NOT to do those evil things for love again. For me, redemption lies less in adding up the measure of “good things vs. bad things” ("what’s one boy against a kingdom?" as Stannis asked when the answer is always going to be "one boy's life" as Davos answered) and more in recognizing what you have done that is evil, changing what you can change and trying to be a good person even if no one around you believes you can be. It’s holding your ground even when your sister mocks you and your father disowns you and doing what you KNOW is right. And so for me, by that measure, Jaime IS on a redemption arc.

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 - Tyrion I (Chapter 9)

Dany and Tyrion are the only two non-Stark POVs in the first book, which is quite interesting. Tyrion's first POV comes right after we see Jaime throw Bran out the window, though it's some time later (I'm not actually sure how much later, whether we're talking days or weeks here.) Mostly this chapter is all about how Tyrion is the "good" Lannister, quite different from his siblings. We already got a tiny glimpse of this in his conversation with Jon, but now we get to see what makes him tick. Warning: This will be VERY LONG because I really like the Lannister family dynamics and because Tyrion and Jaime (Handless and Noseless!) are endlessly fascinating to me! So … diving in:

Other halves ... or better halves? Jaime, Cersei and Brienne

I’ve jumped ahead a bit in my reread to reread the “good” bits of A Feast for Crows (that is to say, I like the entire novel, but I was really interested in focusing on the Jaime, Cersei and Brienne chapters), and specifically in talking about Jaime’s last chapter where he throws Cersei’s letter onto the fire.

From the beginning of Jaime’s POV, Martin has juxtaposed Jaime, Cersei and Brienne for us, and the burning of Cersei’s letter is another of these instances, (though not as immediately obvious as it was with Jaime’s weirwood dream in which Cersei takes away the “only light in the world” and leaves him in darkness but then Brienne lights that darkness with her glowing blue sword - Oathkeeper - or maybe Lightbringer?)

Still, the parallels between Jaime’s being sent away from Brienne by Roose Bolton, and returning for her when she is in mortal danger and Jaime’s being sent away from Cersei by Cersei and refusing to return for her when she begs are completely intentional.

A Game of Thrones - Bran II (Chapter 8)

“The things I do for love” - and we come to the fateful moment when Bran discovers the Queen and her brother are a little bit closer than they should be. Jaime Lannister may not get a POV until Book 3, but his actions - fifteen years earlier with Aerys and now - drive the story to a considerable extent. (And because I love Jaime and this is SUCH a pivotal chapter, it got really long! Sorry. No, I’m not! Also, it’s taken me FOREVER to do this (like, literally seven months, I think) because I wanted to do this chapter justice.)

Without further ado … the chapter at hand:

A Game of Thrones - Arya I (Chapter 7)

“The woman is important too.”

This chapter is our introduction to Arya Stark, and it’s mostly about character (rather than providing me with fodder for wacky theories and/or foreshadowing for the future.)

The first thing I want to say is that there seems to be this weird fault-line in fandom involving the Stark sisters: apparently if you like Arya, you cannot like Sansa and vice versa, and I think this potentially based on a great oversimplification particularly of Arya’s character. There’s the sense (fostered in part by the show) that Arya despises “girly” things and thinks that other girls are “stupid” but that’s not in the text, certainly not here. What we get is an Arya who wishes she could be better at the things her society and upbringing consider valuable assets in a highborn lady, although that is of course not all that she wishes. (Brienne, when we meet her and get inside her head, presents a similar case.) Only, in Arya’s case, she has the misfortune to both not be very good at things like embroidery and have a sister who is, from Arya’s perspective, flawless at doing those kinds of things.

As cute as Arya’s introduction was on the show, it established her as that “not like other girls/other girls are stupid” character right from the beginning, and Book!Arya is just more subtly drawn than that. (She doesn’t come in and show up her brother at archery, and in this chapter Jon tells her she’s too skinny to fight even with practice swords, a salutary dose of realism!!)

In other words, I think at least early on, Martin manages to avoid the pitfalls of making Arya “special/not like other girls” which is something that a lot of fantasy series tend to do, devaluing “girly” things and valorizing girls who are tomboys. Arya is much more complicated than this reductionist view - she actually wants to fit in, but she also wants to do her own thing, and the conflict between those two goals is one of the most interesting aspects of her character.

Now that I’ve had my polemic, onto the actual chapter: