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:

Was that all I was? A sword hand?

Well, now I've given in to the dark side, and this is going to be a Jaime-Brienne blog for the next little while until I get back to writing chapter summaries, I'm bringing over some little things I wrote elsewhere so they're all in one place.

 

WARNING: A STORM OF SWORDS SPOILERS (you're fine if you've watched through Season 4 of "Game of Thrones")

Before he sends Brienne off on her mission to find Sansa, Jaime gives Brienne a princely gift: a Valyrian steel sword remade from Ned’s great sword Ice. Through the magic that clings to Valyrian swords, the new sword, half the size of the old one, is also completely changed in appearance: Ned’s Ice is described as a smoky grey, while the sword Jaime ripples with the colors of “blood and black” (which are the Targaryen colors, by the way!) and the light on its edge is tinged red. (My personal theory is that somehow this sword is going to end up in Jon Snow's hands, because he - like the sword is a Stark/Targaryen mixture - and because he keeps thinking that Longclaw is the "wrong" Valyrian steel sword for him. But that's by the by ...)

It occurs to me that Jaime, like the sword he gives Brienne, is broken and then reforged (by suffering and by proximity to Brienne) into something different. Jaime goes into a captivity as Cersei’s double with his full complement of limbs and of Lannister arrogance; he comes out of it crippled, bearded, with silver in his hair, and with a resuscitated belief in the ideals he once held.

Oathkeeper is Jaime’s father’s gift to him, a bribe for Jaime to abandon his Kingsguard oaths and to do what Tywin wants. I find it fascinating that Jaime chooses a name for this sword that’s so unlike the other named Valyrian steel swords we encounter. 

They are usually named for some attribute of the House to which they belong, e.g. the Targaryens have a connection with dragons and their sword is Blackfyre; the Starks’ house motto is “Winter is coming” and they have Ice; the Mormonts who live on Bear Island have Longclaw, and the "golden lions" of Lannisters had Brightroar, now lost. Failing these house-connected names, the Valyrian swords we know about have sort of generic “strike fear into people’s hearts” kind of name like Heartsbane, Widow’s Wail, Red Rain or Lady Forlorn. 

But Jaime chooses a name that is quite different from either of these conventions: Oathkeeper (like Arthur Dayne's Dawn and Azor Ahai's Lightbringer) is a promise of better things to come, rather than a threat or a reflection of familial glory. When Jaime calls the sword he gives Brienne "Oathkeeper", he is indicating his changed intentions (to keep the vow he made to Lady Catelyn, when once he thought resentfully that vows made under duress weren't "real") and he is also rebuking his father, who wants him to break his oaths for the greater glory of the Lannisters. When Brienne, who witnessed Jaime broken and reforged, accepts that reforged sword named Oathkeeper from a man who intends to keep his vows, in a sense, she becomes his sword-hand, wielding Jaime’s sword to do what he physically cannot.

Brienne promises Jaime that she’ll find Sansa Stark “for her lady mother’s sake. And for yours” but she makes no solemn vows or oaths to Jaime and he asks for none, partly because Jaime, of all people, knows that vows are traps, but partly because how do you ask for a vow from a part of yourself?

I dreamed of you ... (Some thoughts on Jaime, Brienne, the bearpit, the weirwood dream and other assorted miscellany)

And so I return to this oft-abandoned blog ... I haven't given up on the detailed reread project, but I think I need the fire (and ice) of a publication date for The Winds of Winter to get back to that. In the meantime, I've been thinking so much about Jaime and Brienne (my two favorite characters in the series) so let me leap forward, throw in a bunch of spoilers and talk about them for a bit. (WARNING: There are huge spoilers for A Storm of Swords under the break!)

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.)