#we can get aegon jerking it out a window

[daenerystargarycn]

“He’s always angry, but we haven’t done anything.”

“…but I have a crooked finger, just like Mama!”

“We were born here. Mama is our mother.”

“I do not wish to be different.” “Nor do I.”

“So let us be good sons and please those who love us, so they may forget what we lack.”

I’m never going to recover from this. Once again scenes were removed that would add to both boys characterizations, and we all know why. The scenes would make the audience realize how Aemond’s ‘I’m being bullied for not having a dragon :( I’m the real victim!’ storyline so fallible and easy to shatter in universe because it’s a completely normal occurrence for Targaryen’s. Aemond is not the first child to not have a dragon by the age of ten, the original conqueror’s, Baelon, Alyssa, Rhaenys, Laena, Viserys, Daemon, Aegon II, Helaena, etc. all claimed young or fully grown dragons somewhere between the ages of 11-18.

The only character that had the potential to be marketed as his biggest bully is his brother. They’re never going to convince me (and many others) that it was Rhaenyra’s sons who would ever go after another child for their lack of a dragon, especially given that they were almost surely taught that hatching a cradle egg is but one way for a Targaryen to have a dragon. Aemond felt lesser than his nephews due to the way Alicent was parenting him. She led him to believe that his nephews were bastards, that due to their blood they were beneath him, and this is what led to his inferiority complex. It makes more sense than the crock of shit the show runners decided to include in the show.

Rhaenyra and her sons were subjected to actual abuse and bigotry over the timeskip due to their gender and their blood, respectively. It very much makes me sick how they’re being treated by not only the show runners, but a decent portion of the audience as well. Bastardphobia is not cool or edgy. Looking down on someone because their parents weren’t married is vile. It falls into the same category as believing in blood supremacy. It’s 2024. Do better.

Jace and Luke will forever be Mama’s boys and are never beating the best brothers/sons allegations.

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[makerkenzie]

Get up. Go.

I’m going to engage with the question of Jaime Lannister showing up at Winterfell in Season 8.

A little structure for this post: 1. Leaving the “without Lannister army” ish to one side for a moment. 2. Leaving the “news of Cersei’s fuckery” to another side. 3. Putting Jaime’s travel specifics off to another side. Stipulate he shows up no sooner than Brienne and Podrick. 4. Put Dany’s ish aside for the nonce. It’s Winterfell, and winter is dead-ass here, so it’s the Starks’ turf. 5. Jon is included in the Starks. If/when he answers to Aegon, I’ll reconsider. Until then, he’s Jon and he’s of the North and the Starks are his fam.

Right? So, what happens when Ser I-Seldom-Fling-Children-From-Towers-to-Improve-Their-Health shows up at the Winterfell gates and says he wants to join in the fight for the living? How do the surviving Starks respond to him?

The Starks set up a certain framework throughout Season 7. This framework includes, but is not limited to: 1. Jon says the war of the living and the dead is the only war that matters. Ergo: old grievances are deprioritized. 2. Jon lets Theon live another day because he helped Sansa escape from the Boltons. Ergo: your earlier, shitty actions can be balanced against your later, positive actions, and the positive side may win out. 3. Jon says he can’t forgive every shitty thing Theon did to his family, but what he can forgive, he does. 4. Sansa says Tyrion always treated her kindly. Based on her input, Jon goes south and plays ball with Tyrion as Dany’s advisor. Ergo: your trustworthiness is assessed not by your family name, but by your behavior. Also, the Lannisters are not a monolith. 5. Sansa says Ser Jaime always treated Brienne honorably, and she trusts Brienne to have her back. In fact she outright orders Brienne to go south and interact with the Lannisters as House Stark’s representative. Lady Stark already has some sense of Jaime’s positive behavior. 6. Arya Stark, who previously told Brienne to fuck off because she got a fancy sword from Jaime, now wants to train with Brienne because she beat the Hound. They train together and they obviously enjoy it very much. Ergo: Arya’s no longer interested in guilt-by-association. 7. First thing in Season 7, Arya rounded up all the Frey men who participated in the Red Wedding and poisoned them, but she made sure to spare Lord Walder’s young wife. Ergo: you may be punished for following orders, you may be punished for going along with the crowd, you may be punished for doing awful things to save your own skin, but you will not be punished for being part of the wrong family. 8. The conflict between Sansa and Arya over Sansa’s supposedly having enjoyed her time with the Lannisters has already been resolved, and the verdict was that the girls have each other’s backs and Littlefinger had to die. Ergo: figure out what it’ll take to keep the pack alive through the winter, and do that. Also, when Lady Stark needs to know WTF is going on, Bran is her go-to guy. 9. Way back in Season 4: Aunt Lysa tried to shove Sansa out the Moon Door. Ergo: family can betray family. The Starks and their relations are no exception. 10. Whatever Bran doesn’t already know about who did what to whom, he can just commune with a weirwood tree and find out. 11. Best of all, Sansa announced to all of her peeps assembled at Winterfell that Littlefinger and Aunt Lysa conspired to kill Jon Arryn, and to make a long story short, the war that put the Starks through years of hell was Littlefinger’s idea. 12. Jon lets Ned Umber and Alys Karstark make a fresh vow of fealty to House Stark, after their relations died fighting for Ramsay. Ergo: you can dissociate yourself from the decisions of family members. 13. Last conversation we saw between the Stark ladies: the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.

Now let’s get back to Jaime showing up in Season 8!

First, this is the guy who tried to kill Bran, left him paraplegic.

The conditions in which he did that no longer apply, so I think the Starks are assured he’s not at risk of flinging another child from a tower, but he’s already done it once and the damage can’t be undone.

Do the rest of the Starks know Jaime’s the one who did that to Bran, though? Let’s assume they do. If they don’t already know, they’ll find out pretty soon after he arrives at the gates.

It’s not only that. There was also that time when he ambushed Ned out behind the brothel, and he killed Jory Cassel and left Ned with a busted-up leg. And then he fought at Whispering Wood. And he killed his cousin and a Karstark guy in an escape attempt from his captivity.

Yeah, so, what happens when this guy, with a history of behaving antagonistically to House Stark, shows up at Winterfell and says he wants to join the fight for the living?

They know what he’s done in the Stark-Lannister conflict. Sansa probably knows, between Tyrion and Brienne, of how much harm Jaime suffered in the same conflict. She probably knows something about his positive actions since he left his captivity. For example, that time when he saved Brienne from a bear. Which is how Brienne lived long enough to rescue Sansa and Theon from the Boltons and escort her up to Castle Black. To say nothing of Jaime’s giving Brienne a sword, armor, horse and squire and asking her very nicely to go and protect the Stark girls from his sister’s goons.

Without Sansa reuniting with Jon, the Boltons would still have Winterfell. Both Sansa and Jon either know already or will find out soon enough, that Jaime made a positive, necessary contribution to the sequence of events that led to the Starks getting back to their home and each other. He actually wasn’t involved in most of the horrible things that have either directly harmed their family or put them in harm’s way. Robert Baratheon’s death? Ned’s execution? Sansa’s captivity at Red Keep? Red Wedding? Anything involving Ramsay fucking Bolton? Jaime had no part in it.

What does he have to offer them now? He’s hardly a fighter anymore, but he has plenty of command experience, and that doesn’t hurt. He has a Valyrian steel sword, and Jon knows that’s a good thing. He brings the news that his sister is plotting with Euron Greyjoy to employ the Golden Company to pull the realm out from under everyone else while they’re busy saving humanity. That’s not good news, but they’d much rather hear it earlier, from him, than find out the hard way later on. That he’s willing to flip a giant left-handed bird at his vicious sister, and by doing so risk his own life, so he can keep his promises and join up with the Starks, says a lot about his priorities. It’s the sort of thing that makes a good impression. 

I think Sansa and Jon will agree that Jaime has already paid dearly for his acting antagonistically toward their family, he’s ultimately done them more good than harm, and what harm he did was mostly in the category of what Sansa would call “getting jerked around by Littlefinger’s lies.” He’s more of an asset than a liability in heading off the Snow Zombie Apocalypse.

(I’ve seen the occasional speculation of Dany being peeved at him for that time when he charged at her with a spear. I think Dany should understand that was totally normal and ethical behavior for a soldier in battle, especially reasonable compared to her roasting his soldiers like marshmallows wrapped in tinfoil, and if she doesn’t get that? Tyrion will set her straight if Jon doesn’t. Dany has no leg to stand on.)

That still leaves the harm he did to Bran, though.

Just like Jon can’t tell Theon everything’s forgiven because the harm wasn’t done to Jon? Nobody else can offer Jaime absolution for his injuring Bran. Nobody can forgive him except for Bran, and nobody can condemn him except for Bran. The last question is, if Jaime offered him an apology, how would Bran respond?

As I mentioned earlier in this post, Jaime isn’t about to re-offend. The twincest affair has been exposed, all the kids are dead, and now his relationship with his sister has imploded, so, history isn’t repeating itself any time soon, and horrible shit happened anyway. Including that he lost the hand he used to toss Bran out the window.

Seems karma’s already taken a brutal bite out of Jaime’s life, but as I also mentioned earlier, the damage to Bran can’t be undone. No amount of harm done to Jaime requires Bran to forgive him.

So we look at Bran during Season 7, and I ask: does this seem like a kid who’s determined not to accept an apology? Does he seem interested in prioritizing shit done to him years ago over dealing with the Snow Zombie Apocalypse? Does he seem like he’d look at Jaime, showing up with a Valyrian steel sword, vital information about his vicious sister, and military expertise, and say to his siblings, “But we can’t have him on our side, because he’s the reason I can’t walk”? Nah, I think Bran’s attitude will be Jaime’s of more use to them as an ally than a scapegoat.

The very worst-case reaction would be more like: “Why are you in here apologizing to me when you could be having a strategy meeting with Jon, right now? Get up. Go. If you can’t find Jon, Lady Brienne will show you the way.”

On balance, I think the wolves will be happy to bring a lion into the pack.