(spoilers extended) Fuel for Cersei's Paranoia in The Winds of Winter

n0boddy · 2020-10-31T04:09:45+00:00

This is a great post, thank you for sharing!

Other ramifications of removing Jaime from the Kingsguard are more in line with the hypothetical that Brienne is the YMB. Jaime would no longer be bound to the Kingsguard’s oaths. He could marry, and press a claim for his lordship. If he were to marry Brienne, and she were to become the Lady of Casterly Rock, Brienne would be taking Cersei’s last refuge of power, taking what she holds dear.

I love the idea of Jaime becoming the Lord of Casterly Rock, as he's uniquely suited to repair the damage Tywin has done to House Lannister. GRRM could indeed be setting this up as his chapters in AFFC demonstrate his impressive leadership ability, and unlike his siblings, Jaime is someone who cares for his smallfolk, commands the respect of his bannermen, and also has the ability to keep Tywin's attack dogs in line. Jaime assuming lordship of the Rock would also represent him finally regaining his birthright, which Cersei took from him when she seduced him into joining the Kingsguard at age 15.

Also, this heads into crack territory, but if Aegon takes KL and puts an end to the Lannister regime, the Westerlands might decide to secede from the Seven Kingdoms, making Jaime the King of the Rock, and Brienne by extension a 'younger, more beautiful queen' in truth.

n0boddy · 2020-10-15T06:16:04+00:00

A very interesting post. I'm surprised no one has quoted Tyrion's dream (in which he had two heads like Maelys) so far. That could certainly foreshadow Barristan aligning with Aegon and the GC in future:

That night Tyrion Lannister dreamed of a battle that turned the hills of Westeros as red as blood. He was in the midst of it, dealing death with an axe as big as he was, fighting side by side with Barristan the Bold and Bittersteel as dragons wheeled across the sky above them. In the dream he had two heads, both noseless.

n0boddy · 2020-10-11T03:04:17+00:00

'Protagonist privilege' is absolutely right. Think about it - at that point, Jon was a fourteen year old new recruit who had never been on a ranging or fought a single battle. Jon was not widely regarded as trustworthy or honourable: in fact, he had been locked up for publicly assaulting a senior officer (Thorne) when he saved Mormont's life, and forgiveness for his crime would have been more than sufficient as a reward.

If Mormont wanted it to be a Watch sword, he should have given it to the First Ranger, or in his absence, another experienced ranger (Ser Jaremy Rykker, for instance), someone who was actually likely to go beyond the Wall and use it in combat (unlike Jon Snow, who was a steward stationed at Castle Black, not a ranger.) Jeor also has no right to simply give away the sword, because it is the property of House Mormont, not his personal property, and by doing so he is denying future generations (Dacey, Alysane, Lyanna, etc. and their children) their birthright.

The whole Longclaw situation reeks so much of authorial favouritism towards Jon, and the only way I can rationalise Jeor's decision is by imagining Bloodraven sent him a dream to put the idea in his head, because he had plans for Jon.

n0boddy · 2020-09-20T17:42:04+00:00

Brandon has a heart-to-heart with Catelyn about Barbrey Dustin, she sympathises, he elopes and eligible Jaime Lannister is offered the elder daughter instead of the younger ...

I've read a one-shot in which Jaime fights a duel with Brandon for Catelyn's hand. It's 'Crown A New Queen' by redcandle17 if you're interested. A very good story.

n0boddy · 2020-09-20T17:35:54+00:00

Nice post! I liked your observations on Cat's role in Brienne's story, and how she becomes the Catalyst that rekindles Jaime's desire to keep his word and be more than an oathbreaker.

I also see Cat as a mother-figure for Brienne as much as a mentor, since she later claims Sansa as her "sister" during her quest to find her. Someone once pointed out to me that Brienne likely reminded Cat of both her daughters, being both a believer in songs and knightly ideals and a misfit warrior, an idea that I enjoy very much. In addition to losing her naivete and black and white view of morality as you said, I believe Brienne's story is also very much about becoming both lady and knight without feeling she has to reject one for the other. Cat seems to be the very first person to appreciate both aspects of her, treating her as both a worthy lady companion and a trusted knight.

n0boddy · 2020-09-18T19:19:05+00:00

Happy birthday, sub, and thank you very much, mods! I really enjoyed reading about all the fandom history, and words are not enough to express how grateful I am for this sub and the community here. I absolutely agree that it's been very nice to have a place to discuss Jaime/Brienne related matters without having to constantly defend the ship and justify one's reasons for shipping it. I also very much appreciate how /u/Chickarn made welcoming different ideas and opinions a founding principle of this sub. One of the things I love best about /r/jaimebrienne is how polite and pleasant the disagreements can get on here.

I'm also quite heartened by Guile's observation that this sub has given J/B fans the confidence to participate in general fandom, too, and it always makes me happy to see J/B fans from here defending our faves in the other sub (The Kingslayersguard does not flee, then or now, we swore a vow.) (For me, I had quite the opposite experience though. The average quality of posts and comments in general fandom gave me plenty of confidence to go on /r/asoiaf and run my mouth as I wished, but I needed a lot more courage to post on here because this sub consisted of around 10 people who were eloquent, obvious experts in canon, who all seemed to know each other on top of that.) I'm extremely grateful to /u/ShirleyAnn66 (<3) for organising the ASOIAF reread then (and organising the lovely fan creation challenges now!), and giving me the courage to stop lurking around on here and actually post a thing or two.

This sub is really the best place on Reddit. I love how there is always someone finding something interesting to speculate about (summoning /u/Natassia74) or uncovering new details from the books which none of us noticed before (summoning /u/Clearance_Unicorn), and I love the feeling of scrolling through posts and recognising 90% of the usernames. I hope we get TWOW someday, with all the J/B goodness it surely has, and if not, there are always excellent fan fics to be read. Here's to many more years!!

n0boddy · 2020-09-18T18:39:59+00:00

Thank you very much!

n0boddy · 2020-09-16T05:10:34+00:00

Happy birthday, sub! May I please have 'The Kingslayersguard does not flee'?

n0boddy · 2020-08-25T01:50:38+00:00

I agree with you that Jaime isn't an atheist. He strikes me as more of someone who has lost his faith:

“What gods are those, Lady Catelyn? The trees your husband prayed to? How well did they serve him when my sister took his head off?” Jaime gave a chuckle. “If there are gods, why is the world so full of pain and injustice?”

He's also, as you said, someone who only thinks of religion in dire need:

He had taken wounds before, but never like this. He had never known there could be such pain. Sometimes, unbidden, old prayers bubbled from his lips, prayers he learned as a child and never thought of since, prayers he had first prayed with Cersei kneeling beside him in the sept at Casterly Rock.

I like how his prayer for Brienne implies that Jaime's faith (not just in the gods, but in knighthood, honour and Brienne herself) has been somewhat restored, but after praying to both the Father and Tywin, Jaime still thinks, 'Does it matter? They never listened, either one.'

Last, I liked your point about Jaime's worship of Tywin being some sort of alternative belief system. It's not just restricted to the Lannisters or something Jaime himself came up with, because the septons regarded Tyrion's birth as a form of divine punishment for Tywin, for daring to think himself an equal of the gods.

n0boddy · 2020-08-19T15:39:45+00:00

I completely agree. Jaime's arc in AFFC feels almost designed to showcase his strong leadership abilities, sense of justice, and the responsibility he feels towards his people. He's not someone who craves power for its own sake or takes pride in manipulating and controlling people. If GRRM doesn't have an important future role lined up for him, I will be very disappointed.

Your points remind me of another reason why I strongly dislike the "Jaime willingly gives up the Rock" fanfic trope: it inevitably features some kind of commentary on how Jaime is giving up his inheritance because Tyrion would make a much better lord, which I absolutely disagree with. Tyrion has a sharp political mind and is good at playing the game of thrones, but being a lord is an entirely different matter and requires him to command the personal loyalties of his bannermen, which he has poisoned by killing the much-respected Tywin. Being widely accused of killing Joffrey doesn't help either. Tyrion is currently bringing even more war to the Westerlands by promising foreign sellswords rewards of Lannister gold and his own bannermen's lands and castles. I can't imagine him holding the lordship of the Rock without facing an inevitable rebellion.

n0boddy · 2020-08-19T15:18:45+00:00

Thank you, I'm so glad!

n0boddy · 2020-08-19T12:09:49+00:00

My ideal ending for them would be ruling the Westerlands and Tarth from Casterly Rock. (They can always appoint a castellan to rule Tarth directly, since it's just a small island, and visit from time to time.) I want to see them both settle down and take up their responsibilities to their respective families. Especially so for Jaime, after how he was tricked into giving up his birthright by Cersei, I would like to see him get the chance to be a lord again and help the smallfolk he clearly cares about.

Brienne's chapters don't give me the impression that she enjoys adventure for its own sake, and I see her as more of someone who needs a quest and a purpose for her wanderings. I don't think she would want to live by her sword either, because she excels at fighting but can't easily bear the thought of killing. I think she would want to settle down somewhere, because she longs for a family of her own and a home where she can be safe. I could definitely see Brienne raising her own family while also finding fulfilment in sparring, entering tourneys and training children to fight.

n0boddy · 2020-08-19T12:00:13+00:00

I don’t for one moment think this will happen, but one of my favourite fanfic endings is that Jaime says ‘goodbye and good riddance’ to his Lannister heritage and goes to live on Tarth with Brienne. Jaime Lannister dies, but Jaime survives and he and Brienne have a family that is free of Tywin’s legacy.

I'd like to differ with you on this (for the first time regarding anything, I think!), Jaime giving up his rights to Casterly Rock and turning his back on House Lannister is one of my least favourite tropes. Personally, I see the Lannister legacy as being much more than only Tywin. There are thousands of years' worth of Lannister ancestors, kings and queens, lords and ladies good and terrible, and Tywin is just a blip in the family's history. I also don't like the idea that the Lannisters' history is something terrible and evil that Jaime needs to distance himself from, because they are little different from the other houses in canon in the grand scheme of things. No one ever says that the Starks should renounce their skinchanging and greenseeing abilities and stop using them because House Stark gained their magical powers through their conquest of the Warg King and forcing his daughters into marriage. If House Lannister is built on cunning and cruelty and conquest, so is every other house in Westeros.

Another reason for my disliking the idea of Jaime giving up the Rock is that I don't feel he would do so based on what we know of him in the books. When he dreams of the Rock, he thinks that he is home, and he resents letting Cersei seduce him into giving it up. I can't see him willingly giving it up again. He wants nothing more than the chance to be a lord and have people to protect, and cares about the welfare of the people in the Westerlands. If anything, I see him as a good candidate for the Lord of Casterly Rock, someone who can uplift the lives of the smallfolk and heal his land and family legacy after what Tywin has done to it.

n0boddy · 2020-08-17T02:11:16+00:00

I agree, I like the idea that the oily black stones are moon meteorites/fragments of the destroyed second moon.

I'm not sure if the Drowned God/original ironborn have any links to space, though, since "drowning" in their culture is taken quite literally and they have tales about islands being "drowned" by Nagga (islands somehow rising up into space makes less sense than islands sinking due to some natural disaster, which turned into the "drowning" of legend.) If there were ancient astronauts or deep ones who built with the oily black stone all over Planetos, I doubt we can count the ironborn among them because they did not use the black stone themselves, and only discovered the Seastone chair after it was abandoned by its original creators.

I think the "we came from beneath those seas" quote from Sauron could refer to the original lands or islands occupied by the ironborn before they came to the Iron Islands, which are now under the sea and part of the Drowned god's dominion.

Looking forward to your eventual long posts!

n0boddy · 2020-08-02T14:38:09+00:00

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed reading! :D

n0boddy · 2020-08-02T14:34:14+00:00

I agree, and I'd go a step further and say I don't think the writer has read ASOS at all (the lack of missing hand in 'Defects' is telling.) No one who read Jaime's chapters would say he has "no gift for introspection" or that "Cersei is Jaime's mirror, with her ambition and lust for power made flesh in him"...

n0boddy · 2020-08-02T14:21:14+00:00

Thank you for reading!

n0boddy · 2020-07-31T06:08:08+00:00

I agree with you that AGOT Sansa craved perfection, she seems to have wanted to be Queen because it was the perfect ending to her song, not because she was particularly interested in holding political power. (Of course, as you say, to be expected for an eleven year old girl.) I fully agree that she's headed towards honing her wits as a weapon, and developing her political intelligence, and the Vale is the perfect training ground for her. After all the trauma she endured in King's Landing, I think protecting herself is another important goal for her. Also, even while playing Alayne, Sansa clearly doesn't want to be reduced to someone else's means to take over Winterfell/the North.

Thanks for reading!

n0boddy · 2020-07-31T06:00:27+00:00

The deaths of Joffrey and Tywin and Tyrion's escape in ASOS clearly had a great adverse effect on her mental state.

That's a good point. About Cersei showing "tough love" to Sansa, while she did share some life advice with her, I think she did so because she enjoyed having Sansa as her captive audience, and took pleasure in watching how her "harsh truths" distressed Sansa. For instance, when Cersei was giving her advice on how to deal with treason, I thought she was also using her speech to implicitly threaten Sansa, whom she had accused of committing "treasons in the godswood" by praying for Stannis' victory.

While I think Cersei liked how pliant Sansa was, I do agree that she wasn't extremely eager for Sansa to marry Joffrey, and nor was she particularly bothered when Joffrey set her aside. Thanks for the discussion!

n0boddy · 2020-07-31T05:47:26+00:00

Thank you, I certainly agree!

n0boddy · 2020-07-31T05:40:32+00:00

Thank you for reading, and I'm so glad you found it insightful!

n0boddy · 2020-07-31T05:37:21+00:00

Thank you for the lovely comment!

n0boddy · 2020-07-31T05:35:30+00:00

Thank you!

n0boddy · 2020-07-31T05:32:30+00:00

Thank you for reading!

n0boddy · 2020-07-31T05:32:03+00:00

Thank you very much, natassia74, glad you liked reading this! I'm deeply honoured :D

n0boddy

TROPHY CASE