#windriverdelta

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

What will Jaime's reaction and development in response to the probable slaughter of Freys and Lannisters ("Red Wedding 2.0") by Lady Stoneheart, and the rebellion of the Riverlands that will likely follow, be? While there are a lot of valonqar theories and theories of how he might survive the encounter with Stoneheart, but for some reason I don't recall any theories on this front. Might there be a realization that his family's, and his, actions in the Riverlands from AGoT forward were wrong?

Generally people who theorize about Red Wedding: Back 2 Tha Hood have this elaborate fantasy about Jaime being tied up and forced to watch. Usually in conjunction with the theory that he's already half mad because he had to kill Brienne, who sacrificed herself for him. I think the latter theory is highly contrary to both plot and character, so I've been rather doubtful of the former theory as well. (As well as it being in Riverrun: no this is not an invite for proponents of that element of the theory to tell me about it, I've seen it all before and nothing but TWOW will move me.) Personally, I think RW2: First Blood could be one of those downbeat refusal-of-catharsis moments GRRM does sometimes, which includes no direct POV, just hearing about the atrocities after the fact. It may be otherwise, but I'm still sure fans will not be remotely as satisfied as they expect to be.

Anyway. Jaime already knows the actions of his family in the Riverlands were wrong. His whole arc from ASOS onwards just rubbed his nose into it over and over and over again. Notably including his encounter with the Bloody Mummers his father brought to Westeros, notably returning to Harrenhal and finding the house of horrors Gregor had turned it into, notably the whole siege of Riverrun where he's hating the Freys, hating every moment he has to reward idiots like his uncle Emmon or a "scheming turncloak bitch" like Sybell Spicer. Just look at his conversation with Hoster Blackwood in ADWD:

"My father had a saying too. Never wound a foe when you can kill him. Dead men don't claim vengeance." "Their sons do," said Hoster, apologetically. "Not if you kill the sons as well. Ask the Casterlys about that if you doubt me. Ask Lord and Lady Tarbeck, or the Reynes of Castamere. Ask the Prince of Dragonstone." For an instant, the deep red clouds that crowned the western hills reminded him of Rhaegar's children, all wrapped up in crimson cloaks. "Is that why you killed all the Starks?" "Not all," said Jaime. "Lord Eddard's daughters live. One has just been wed. The other…" Brienne, where are you? Have you found her? "…if the gods are good, she'll forget she was a Stark. She'll wed some burly blacksmith or fat-faced innkeep, fill his house with children, and never need to fear that some knight might come along to smash their heads against a wall." "The gods are good," his hostage said, uncertainly. You go on believing that. Jaime let Honor feel his spurs.

This is not a man who is happy with his life and his or his family's actions. Especially considering he took the very first opportunity to abandon it all to help Brienne with her quest.

Now, if you mean, will Red Wedding 2: The Revenge cause Jaime to admit out loud that he and his dad done bad? *pfft* Not a clue in the world. Jaime's going to have a lot going on in TWOW, not in the least however he and Brienne escape (my personal theories including divine Bran intervention; there's a reason why the Brotherhood's cave is full of weirwood roots and has a weirwood throne just like Bloodraven's), and not in the least whatever the hell Cersei gets up to in KL and her probable flight to the Rock. I'm afraid that prejudging Jaime's personality changes that may come from all this is beyond my power, sorry.

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@windriverdelta replied to your post “What will Jaime's reaction and development in...”:

Yeah, it was the "Now, if you mean, will Red Wedding 2: The Revenge cause Jaime to admit out loud that he and his dad done bad?" question - because for all what he knows and thinks, he's still doing these bad things.

​aha, so you're asking more like, will he stop. And like I said, Jaime's going to be very busy, I think his Riverlands enforcement tour will be well past done by the time he gets out of it all. Mind you, I don't think he's going to ever give up entirely on the Lannister state of mind (Tywin's ability to give people complexes is very hard to shake). But a lot of the Riverlands tour was guilt over being responsible for his father's death (since Jaime freed Tyrion and gave him a reason to kill Tywin), which undoubtely made him extra-Lannistery for a while. And also Jaime was trying to get away and deal with his Cersei issues (by using Ilyn as a rubber duck therapist who beats you up), so a lot of his um, complex actions greatly depend on what Cersei ends up doing and how that makes him feel. (Even if they've "broken up", they'll always be connected.) And however the valonqar plays out, alas...

[goodqueenaly]

@windriverdelta reblogged your post “You said you were worried about Jeyne Westerling....”

Another thing worth adding is that it's not clear whether Tom O'Sevens knows that Jeyne Westerling is innocent. If he doesn't, then Lady Stoneheart won't be forewarned and instead assume that the Westerlings were all in on the Red Wedding, in line with her indiscriminate approach. In that case, it might be her that kills Jeyne rather than Prester - which is more dramatic and thematically appropriate IMO. If he does, then it gets a bit murkier - @turtle-paced and @goodqueenaly do we know whether Tom O'Sevens was around for Jaime's meetings with the Westerlings?

It’s unclear where Tom o'Sevens was exactly, physically speaking, between the end of “Jaime VI” (when Jaime leaves Tom to sing “The Rains of Castamere” to Edmure as Edmure is in the bath) and near the end of “Jaime VII” (when Jaime reencounters Tom as the latter listens to Emmon Frey’s long speech to the people of Riverrun). While there is certainly no mention of Tom being present when Jaime speaks with Jeyne and her mother (or, rather, to Jeyne and with Sybell) - only the nameless guardsman who notifies Jaime of the Westerlings' arrival and the guardsman (who may be the same individual) who escorts Lady Westerling from Lord Tully’s solar - it’s certainly at least remotely possible that news or rumors of this conversation reached Tom somewhere within the castle or the surrounding camp. Of course, even in such a scenario, you might think Tom or other onlookers would have noticed and/or heard about either Jeyne’s tearful declarations of her devotion to Robb or her small but spirited attempt to show herself in mourning for her husband - a pretty solid piece of evidence in Jeyne’s favor against any condemnation by the brotherhood.

In any event, I tend to see Jeyne’s death, as I mentioned, coming not at the hands (or rope) of Lady Stoneheart and the brotherhood but rather at the hands (or arrows) of Ser Forley and his men. For one, I don’t see any indication in the books that Lady Stoneheart and/or the brotherhood without banners believes that the Westerlings were in on or responsible for the Red Wedding. Certainly, nothing in either Merrett Frey’s or Brienne’s encounters with the brotherhood and Lady Stoneheart seems to imply that the group is looking for the Westerlings. Lem tells Brienne that Lady Stoneheart wanted “the men who killed [Robb] dead”, whom Lem himself identifies as “Freys and Boltons”. Too, while the brotherhood and Lady Stoneheart were certainly willing to hang Brienne and her companions, the obvious (though far from simple or sinister) connections between Brienne and the Baratheon-Lannister crown generally - the ultimate architect and beneficiary of the Red Wedding, of course - and Jaime specifically - that is, the man Roose Bolton wryly referenced before stabbing Robb - might hardly make Brienne (much less Tyrion’s former squire and Randyll Tarly’s former sworn man) appear innocent in the hardened, merciless eyes of either the brotherhood or Lady Stoneheart (again, the actual inaccuracy of such judgments notwithstanding). Yet what would Lady Stoneheart remember of the Westerlings except Jeyne’s devotion to Robb (coming from both Jeyne’s conversation with Catelyn and Jeyne’s unwillingness to part from him), the apparent attempts by Sybell to encourage Jeyne’s fertility with Robb, the open insults against Jeyne and the Westerlings lobbed by the Freys - and, of course, Raynald Westerling’s own death at the Twins? (Not to mention Brynden Tully’s devoted guardianship of Jeyne and her family in the aftermath of the Red Wedding.) Without the inside information we as readers know about Sybell’s plot against Robb and the Stark cause - and even then, Jaime’s conversation, as well as Jeyne's appearance thereafter, would have made it pretty obvious Jeyne herself was not a willing participant in her mother's plan of betraying the Starks - I’m not sure the brotherhood would see the Westerlings generally and/or Jeyne specifically as any more guilty for the Red Wedding than, say, Edmure, who will be in the convoy as well, to be joined eventually by his Frey bride.

More to the point, I think the author not very subtly highlighted Jeyne’s fate at the hands of Forley Prester and his men in “Jaime VII”. There seems to me very little point to have Jaime quite frankly tell Forley Prester that Jeyne would be “twice as dangerous as Edmure if she were ever to escape us” and demand that Forley “keep some archers near” Jeyne (not to mention Jaime’s decision to quadruple the escort’s numbers from its original setup) if the very crisis Jaime envisioned would not seem (to Forley and his men) to come to pass. Whether or not the actual intention of the brotherhood will be to free Jeyne from the Lannisters (and again, I’m not even sure what the brotherhood knows about Jeyne and/or the Westerlings at this moment), the mere appearance of the brotherhood attacking the Lannister convoy will I think be enough to scare Forley and his men into thinking that the “twice as dangerous” Jeyne is the target of a rescue attempt. 

Too, I don’t think it’s narratively unfitting for Jeyne to die in such a fashion. Indeed, Sybell had previously trusted in a Lannister promise to keep another one of her children safe: as Sybell admitted to Jaime, Raynald “knew nought of any … [sic] of the understanding with your lord father”, and expressed her hope that Raynald was “a captive at the Twins” - an idea mocked by Edwyn Frey and Walder Rivers, who reveal to Jaime that Raynald “took a quarrel in his shoulder and another in the gut” before falling in the river during the massacre. Just as Sybell and Walder Frey had each made pacts with Tywin Lannister, but not with one another, regarding the Red Wedding, so Sybell and Forley Prester have each had conversations with Jaime, but not with each other, about the future of her children - and just as the Lannister-sanctioned violence of the Red Wedding allowed the Freys the opportunity for family vengeance against the Westerlings, so I think the Lannister order to eliminate Jeyne in a possible future crisis (in Jaime’s mind) will win out over the life or lives of one or more of Sybell’s surviving children. Forley Prester neither knows nor, I think, would care about any agreement Sybell may have made with Tywin to give Jeyne and her sister Eleyna “worthy marriages” to “[l]ords or heirs” (not to mention any remaining reward for their brother Rollam); he had been given a mission by Jaime as the representative of the Lannisters and the Iron Throne, and as a hardened Lannister veteran, Forley I think would have every reason to prioritize such an order no matter what Sybell may think or say. Having helped arrange the betrayal of Catelyn’s son, at the hands of his ostensible bannermen, for the ambitions of Tywin Lannister and his regime, Sybell will I think find herself punished in kind - watching her own daughter (and perhaps her other children as well) be killed on the orders of of her own ostensible allies. 

Which is not to say the brotherhood and Lady Stoneheart might not hang anyone. Indeed, if Sybell is our POV for the prologue of TWOW - and I very much think she will be - then I could imagine Sybell may herself be hanged by the brotherhood and Lady Stoneheart at the end of this chapter. Her far from charitable attitude toward Robb - both dismissively referring to him as "the rebel" and admitting, at least to Jaime, that she had purposefully denied him children - will I think find her no favors with the woman who had not only in life been Robb's devoted mother but who herself still carries and contemplates the crown her son had worn - the very crown whose mate Sybell had roughly taken from Jeyne's own brow. (So much the worse for Sybell if she, Sybell, still has Jeyne's crown on her and asserts that it is no more than a "little crown" made for her by a dead rebel.) Just as Merrett Frey had attempted to justify first the Red Wedding and then his role in it, so perhaps Sybell will attempt to justify her own role in the pre-planning for the Red Wedding - a justification that would, It think, end for Sybell just as it did for Merrett.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Agreed, and also, @windriverdelta, Balerion is big, but all he really needs is to stand back a bit, lol. Like in Donato Giancola's calendar art...

...which is also very cool.

Bit of a light question this time: Do you believe that the Iron Throne was forged with Balerion's dragonfire? Even taking into account the size of the book!Iron Throne, given that Balerion's throat was large enough to swallow a mammoth whole it seems like the equivalent of writing a book with the tip of your tongue.

Yeah, but it's cool.

[cynicalclassicist]

Jaime keeps saying how terrible his family was, how much they are hated. But he was still out to help them. He still helps the Freys get Riverrun. He insults Edwyn Frey and Sybelle Spicer, but it's hollow when he's still rewarding them for their treachery against the Starks.

Meeting Brienne again... well, what will she say? What will Jaime say on seeing Catelyn's corpse, out to avenge her family? What will he say on seeing her do what his father takes such pride in doing, avenging slights against her family by destroying those responsible? After all, the new House Frey of Riverrun will likely be slain down to the children, and they're kin to Jaime. How will he feel knowing that his aunt and her family got killed because of what his father did?

What will Jaime's reaction and development in response to the probable slaughter of Freys and Lannisters ("Red Wedding 2.0") by Lady Stoneheart, and the rebellion of the Riverlands that will likely follow, be? While there are a lot of valonqar theories and theories of how he might survive the encounter with Stoneheart, but for some reason I don't recall any theories on this front. Might there be a realization that his family's, and his, actions in the Riverlands from AGoT forward were wrong?

Generally people who theorize about Red Wedding: Back 2 Tha Hood have this elaborate fantasy about Jaime being tied up and forced to watch. Usually in conjunction with the theory that he's already half mad because he had to kill Brienne, who sacrificed herself for him. I think the latter theory is highly contrary to both plot and character, so I've been rather doubtful of the former theory as well. (As well as it being in Riverrun: no this is not an invite for proponents of that element of the theory to tell me about it, I've seen it all before and nothing but TWOW will move me.) Personally, I think RW2: First Blood could be one of those downbeat refusal-of-catharsis moments GRRM does sometimes, which includes no direct POV, just hearing about the atrocities after the fact. It may be otherwise, but I'm still sure fans will not be remotely as satisfied as they expect to be.

Anyway. Jaime already knows the actions of his family in the Riverlands were wrong. His whole arc from ASOS onwards just rubbed his nose into it over and over and over again. Notably including his encounter with the Bloody Mummers his father brought to Westeros, notably returning to Harrenhal and finding the house of horrors Gregor had turned it into, notably the whole siege of Riverrun where he's hating the Freys, hating every moment he has to reward idiots like his uncle Emmon or a "scheming turncloak bitch" like Sybell Spicer. Just look at his conversation with Hoster Blackwood in ADWD:

"My father had a saying too. Never wound a foe when you can kill him. Dead men don't claim vengeance." "Their sons do," said Hoster, apologetically. "Not if you kill the sons as well. Ask the Casterlys about that if you doubt me. Ask Lord and Lady Tarbeck, or the Reynes of Castamere. Ask the Prince of Dragonstone." For an instant, the deep red clouds that crowned the western hills reminded him of Rhaegar's children, all wrapped up in crimson cloaks. "Is that why you killed all the Starks?" "Not all," said Jaime. "Lord Eddard's daughters live. One has just been wed. The other…" Brienne, where are you? Have you found her? "…if the gods are good, she'll forget she was a Stark. She'll wed some burly blacksmith or fat-faced innkeep, fill his house with children, and never need to fear that some knight might come along to smash their heads against a wall." "The gods are good," his hostage said, uncertainly. You go on believing that. Jaime let Honor feel his spurs.

This is not a man who is happy with his life and his or his family's actions. Especially considering he took the very first opportunity to abandon it all to help Brienne with her quest.

Now, if you mean, will Red Wedding 2: The Revenge cause Jaime to admit out loud that he and his dad done bad? *pfft* Not a clue in the world. Jaime's going to have a lot going on in TWOW, not in the least however he and Brienne escape (my personal theories including divine Bran intervention; there's a reason why the Brotherhood's cave is full of weirwood roots and has a weirwood throne just like Bloodraven's), and not in the least whatever the hell Cersei gets up to in KL and her probable flight to the Rock. I'm afraid that prejudging Jaime's personality changes that may come from all this is beyond my power, sorry.

________

@windriverdelta replied to your post “What will Jaime's reaction and development in...”:

Yeah, it was the "Now, if you mean, will Red Wedding 2: The Revenge cause Jaime to admit out loud that he and his dad done bad?" question - because for all what he knows and thinks, he's still doing these bad things.

​aha, so you're asking more like, will he stop. And like I said, Jaime's going to be very busy, I think his Riverlands enforcement tour will be well past done by the time he gets out of it all. Mind you, I don't think he's going to ever give up entirely on the Lannister state of mind (Tywin's ability to give people complexes is very hard to shake). But a lot of the Riverlands tour was guilt over being responsible for his father's death (since Jaime freed Tyrion and gave him a reason to kill Tywin), which undoubtely made him extra-Lannistery for a while. And also Jaime was trying to get away and deal with his Cersei issues (by using Ilyn as a rubber duck therapist who beats you up), so a lot of his um, complex actions greatly depend on what Cersei ends up doing and how that makes him feel. (Even if they've "broken up", they'll always be connected.) And however the valonqar plays out, alas...