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[HBO] Game of Thrones S2 on Sunday; spoilers abound, no tags; NO BOOKS
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that was an elegant solution
also drogo and jaime are the hottest
I wasn't saying his intelligence factored in on his legitimacy. Those were simply two different points about what is sparking a civil war. Again, my understand is that while the realm isn't always at peace, Robert's rebellion and apparently the Greyjoy rebellion, there are times of peace. If what Cat did was considered a legitimate and accepted way of handling noble disputes, I argue that the periods of peace could not have happened. If it was, then nobles would be doing it all the time and no noble would travel alone to being with.
My fundamental point is the understanding we are given about the state of noble relations and the fears a nobleman, Tyrion, would have traveling alone, or lack there of, make the idea that Cat could kidnap him, without the complete understanding that this will result in a massive war, impossible. The fact that she doesn't seem to care about all the horrors of war she is about to unleash by 'arresting' him and not trying to establish at least a fair trail and presentation of evidence, make her a pretty awful person. Especially considering how flimsy her reasons for believing he tried to kill Bran are in the first place.
Drogo and Jaime are indeed the hottest.
And by that I mean Drogo and Drogo are the hottest.
EDIT: It was an elegant solution, though.
True.
jaime in particular, that rugged pillar of man
Tywin is the shit. I rewatched the first season before the premiere, and damn I forgot how awesome he was.
Cersei bothers me, every time she does that stupid thing she does. I can't even describe it, but she does it all the time. Like, it's a half lean back with this stupid look on her face that makes me want to throw shit at her.
Tyrion is awesome, though, more than awesome enough to make up for Cersei. And Jaime is Jaime.
All of them combined are only about as awesome as Drogo's left pec.
And bench press.
Also, eating puppies. High in protein.
Mostly dark magic, though.
The map in the book has Riverrun and the Vale being equidistant from the Kingsroad, but heading toward Riverrun is heading toward Casterly Rock. Rushing into the lion's mouth, as it were.
Further, if "what makes Tywin Lannister happy" is your measure for what is good and legal in Westeros, well
...most westermen would probably agree with you. Fine.
Cat acted rashly and impulsively, I won't argue that, but if your part in this discussion is meant to place her on equal ground with Cersei fucking Lannister, man. Still not even close. Not even a little.
No there doesn't. Killing the shit out of the other guy and beating him into submission and/or the threat there of is pretty much the standard way these things are resolved.
Tywin starts fucking up the Riverlands because he can and because the King won't stop him.
One might say, in Ned's defense, that Joffrey is an absolute disaster of a king. But, that's not much exoneration for Ned. Ned didn't care that Joffrey was a terrible brat, he cared that Joffrey was illegitimate and thus not the true heir. Ned tried to act against him out of fealty to the feudal code, not concern for the realm. And he did so in a way that was utterly disastrous for the realm.
I mean consider this: Ned could have gone straightaway to Robert with the news of Joffrey's illegitimacy. Instead, he choose to warn Cersei first, because he was queasy over what Robert would have done with them. The result of this incredibly poor decision was that he gave Cersei the time to outplay him, execute him, and trigger a rebellion in the North. A rebellion in the North is going to kill a lot more sons and mothers than just Cersei and Joff, so whatever queasyness he felt was misplaced. Cat, of course, helped the political situation not at all with her ham-fisted arrest of Tyrion on little-to-no evidence. This strikes me as a worse sin on her ledger than her generally being a dick to Jon Snow, unappealing as that is, because again the consequences are far worse.
This is, of course, not to say that Cersei or Joff is so great--they're both nasty pieces of work. It is, rather, to say that the Starks' particularly myopic cocktail of personal loyalty and feudal honor is actually not so admirable. There's a natural tendency as a viewer to like the characters who we would want to spend time with, and there's no doubt that the Ned and Cat would make better friends than the Cersei and Joff. Ned and Cat have personal warmth and resolve, where Cersei and Joff are cruel and catty. But when we step back and think about them not as friends, but rather as political actors whose decisions have very real consequences for the people outside their immediate circle, suddenly it's apparent that what they've done is deeply wrong.
So, that's my case for Ned and Cat being the secret villains of the story.
And while there's certainly honour and belief in the feudal code going on here, Ned's investigation is mostly fueled by solving the murder of a close friend.
His going to Cersei may not have been smart, but I'd hardly call coming down on the side of "not child murder" to be villainous.
Thinking about it now, most of the problems seem to stem from the Starks underestimating the lengths the Lannisters were willing to go to in retaliation.
Kinda reminds me a bit of the Farseer trilogy in that way.
I think you're conflating misguided/blundering with sinful/evil pretty hard, here. Yes, part of what Game of Thrones is doing is deconstructing the traditional medieval fantasy notions of honor, chivalry, and honest combat; but the story shows that Ned and Catelyn's (and all the Starks' really) naivete is ill-advised and unsuccessful, not that it's actively immoral. You might as well lay your moral approbation at Lincoln's feet for starting the Civil War, rather than at the seceding slave states. Just because a strategy works doesn't mean it's moral, something the show demonstrates on a pretty constant basis.
It's also not as though Ned went, "Who cares if there's war, I'm in the right here"--he honestly believed that things would turn out the way he thought they should. His actions were foolish, not selfish or malicious.
But, in this context, it is--as I said, if he was really against child murder, he wouldn't allow a war to start in which countless children will be murdered. That's my point: generally we see things like 'not personally killing any kids' and 'bringing justice to a dead friend' as admirable, because in our normal lives they are pretty admirable. But in a King's Court, they aren't necessarily. The problem with the Starks is that they act like they're just ordinary people--concerned with loyalty to close friends, personal rectitude, and so on. But they aren't. They're an incredibly important noble house. And when they ignore the impact that honoring their personal attachments has on the realm at large, they cause incredible suffering.
He didn't start a war. The war was already on to some extent. Tywin marshalled forces the minute
You are acting like civil war and regicide were the logical and foreseeable outcomes of Ned's actions when they simply weren't. He was certainly naive to expect Cersei not to move against him, but there's no way he could have anticipated them murdering Robert right away and throwing him in a cell before he even had time to blink.
Honestly I don't think the Lannisters reaction to Ned was all that extreme. Cersei gave Ned several different opportunities to walk away. Assuming that the wine was spiked (which is a good assumption) she even waited to the last minute to kill Robert and that could have been a disaster (if Ned had told Robert about the incest, even on his death bed Robert would have made sure that 4 heads would end up on spikes).
I mean Ned basically gave Cersei the choice of kill a bunch of people or see her kids killed. The option of running was no option at all, since even Tywin Lannister could not fend off the combined might of the army that Robert could assemble.
The Lannisters are evil bastards, but there reaction to Ned's rebellion was fairly reasonable. If Joffrey had not killed Ned for the hell of it the only people who would have died were the people in Ned's employ and Robert. Tywin raping and pillaging Catelyn's people in response to Catelyn's adjective removed of Tyrion strikes me as far more evil then Cersei's reaction to Ned trying to set in motion events that would have inevitably ended up with the death of her children.
What I don't understand here is Cersei's plan. Giving Robert a lot of wine is not an assassination plot, it is a hail mary at best. It's the equivalent of leaving a banana peel on the stairs. So if Robert didn't get himself gored to death, wtf was she gonna do when he got back from his hunting trip? Because she sure as shit didn't seem to be packing any bags.
Do people normally go looking for banana peels on stairs? When they find them, do the banana peels charge them and rip them open with foot-long tusks unless you quickly stab them with a spear to pin them to the floor? And now make the banana a good hundred and fifty pounds of enraged wild animal. Now imagine the chances of even a skilled hunter of the mighty banana peel on the stairs getting killed doing that if they were also drunk off their tits. And that's when you're not Robert Baratheon, the kind of guy who, when he's doing something he hates will let it fall apart, but when he's doing something he wants to do will follow it through to the bitter end.
Besides, IIRC the boar plot was put into motion before Ned went to the Queen to let her know what he'd found. It was an opportunity she saw, now that she had an obedient squire in place and an excuse to put him into a dangerous situation while he was hammered.
Well, the Eyrie is literally impregnable. There's only one way to approach and that's via a mountain.
It's the insurance policy against Civil War. Cat's process being "Even though I follow the law, Tywin won't care and will just lay siege to wherever we go. The only way around this is by going somewhere he can't lay siege."
The only way she can enforce the law is by going to the Eyrie.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
I wondered about this too. I can only assume that the wine was actually spiked with something; as Robert would frequently be hammered and go hunting and come back without a scratch on him. Even then there was a certain amount of luck that none of the party interfered and Robert was dealt a mortal blow.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy PSN:pablocampy
She's knowingly cruel, she has Lady executed despite it being Nymeria who bit Joffery, she is actively contemptuous of her subjects to the point that she doesn't care if they're killed.
It's unlikely that I'd agree that anyone is a good person by the standards of today, but even relative to the society of the day she's a bad person. Ned, Cat, Renly, Robert, Tyrion, even Tywin aren't actively contemptuous of the smallfolk. Ned, Cat, Renly and Tyrion are at worst indifferent to their plights - and one might say they're concerned for their welfare, albeit in a manner we now recognise as twisted. Tywin is indifferent - he'd seek not to have to kill them all if there were another way to accomplish his ends just as effectively. Cersei on the other hand doesn't think having to kill the smallfolk is a negative.
SODOMISE INTOLERANCE
Tide goes in. Tide goes out.
Bad and good are not villain or hero.
His loyalty to Robert let him look the other way while an absolute disaster took the throne. If Ned had an ounce of political awareness and pragmatism he'd have taken the throne himself and kept the Lannisters on as much shorter leash
This is my pet theory.
Jaime, Robert and Ned all stood in that throne room with the blood of the mad king on their hands, and everyone, INCLUDING ROBERT, would have backed a Stark Crown. Robert was an unrivaled soldier and leader of men on the battlefield, but it was obvious from the start that he wold be a terrible king. He never wanted the crown - he told Ned as much in the first and second episodes.
Sure, Ned would not have been a perfect king, but he wouldn't have bankrupted the crown, forced all of Westeros into debt to the Lannisters, created a fucking insane "product of incest" heir, and generally wouldn't have been a dick to anyone (especially since his code of honor would have demanded he dole out the punishment personally), thus leaving little room for the kinds of back room scheming that Robert inspired.
Shit, the entire Dothraki kalasar rising up (which ultimately leads to the awakening of dragons into the world again) was because of Robert's botched attempts on Dany's life; something Ned was actively opposed to and never would have pursued as king.
Ned would have been a fairly boring king. Sure, nobody would be totally happy with the guy. In fact there may be some that simply hate him. But his predictable, honorable to a fault and even handed presence would not demand rebellion or revolt.
Westeros could have used some boring times. Their absence is pretty much directly tied to Ned's inability to do the right thing when it was needed.
iirc It's mentioned that the amount of wine Robert drank was not abnormal but it was effecting him much more than usual... which would mean the wine wasn't just regular old wine....
Stronger wine than his usual vintage mixed with hunting a crazy ass boar = his death. A Lannister around every corner probably didnt help either.
Also worth noting that the boy who was serving the wine to King Robert
This.
He looks like Jaime.
I disagree.
Actually, he was right to give to Stannis. The only reason that failed is because he trusted Littlefinger to much. That said, the dude clearly needed lesson in political manipulation and having his own spy network.
Since this group is all about poisoning kings like little sneaky-snakes, I had assumed that something was added to the wine to create this desired effect.