Great post! Well said. I heartily dislike "kuhleesee is my favrit carecter" and "Tyrion should ride dragons because he's cool" posts... which my post was only a half step above.
I share the sentiment of dislike for such posts too, but at least one can discuss about your post. What is there to discuss about personal favourites and perceived coolness?
Oh... You've caught me red handed, Sry. Guilty as charged. And I would not classify my post as trolling, but merely playing devil's advocate in an aggressive manner. (If I believed in using smilies, I'd insert one here.) I enthusiastically like passionate defenses of characters. You make me realize that I'm overlooking parts of the story.
TBH, I'm also playing devil's advocate to a degree since I don't exactly approve of her actions and beliefs, but considering we aren't going to be getting new materials for discussion soon, all that is left it to try to look at the old in a new light.
I absolutely agree that one of GRRM's themes is perspective. "Starks are good and Lannisters are bad" was presented to us at the beginning of the story... but now we know that not all Starks are good and not all Lannisters are bad. Jaime was the first villain introduced and he is still a villain, but he may also be the greatest hero of the kingdom... and no one knows it!
Most definitely. The entire point of using the third person sympathetic POV is to also give importance to perspective and Martin is always very careful as to whom to give the POV when he can make the choice between several characters. In a way, he is manipulating with the reader and then showing the reader that we were just as wrong as the characters through which we were shown others and the events. He had everyone develop a very strong dislike for Jaime and then revealed things we never suspected and had him develop in a way nobody expected in the beginning. This is one of the things I really like about ASOIAF. It teaches you a lesson in a rather subtle manner that your perspective isn't always all-knowing and that there are two sides of every coin as much as we sometimes like to neglect the fact.
Lots of characters jump to conclusions or make rash judgments of others. The foremost example may be Catelyn. She was misled by Lysa's note. She pushed Eddard to leave. She spat hate at Jon. She refused to leave Bran. She left Winterfell. She trusted Littlefinger. She kidnapped Tyrion. She went to Lysa's. She refused to go to Winterfell. She rescued Brienne. She condemned Karstark. She freed Jaime. She trusted Walder.
Catelyn is a very poor judge of character and her views in family being first and foremost blinds her to a larger scheme. She thinks too micro when she should think macro. Brienne and Jaime are direct consequences of this.
She misjudges Lysa and Middlefinger because she trusted them as children and blinded herself to how they felt about her. She blinded herself to Lysa's love of Middlefinger and she blinded herself to Middlefinger's faults because she kept looking at them as people they used to be and not people they became. In that sense, she towards them is not unlike Ned towards Robert though Ned's was in large part want to believe and Catelyn's was simply lack of questioning.
Catelyn also had southron ambitions and she wanted the honours of the King's Hand for Ned. She did not understand that in a lair of treacheries, Ned is the words person to send which is again her inability to judge a character properly.
Spitting hate at Jon was simply her pride being wounded and inability to go against the way she was raised and blame her lord husband. There are no excuses there. As much as she was hurt by Jon's existence, Jon did nothing wrong and she had no right to blame him or treat him as she did.
Refusing to leave Bran was yet another consequence of her inability to think macro. Her other children needed her. Robb was too young to rule a castle on his own and Rickon was too young to be neglected so. Catelyn simply focuses on one thing and then blinds herself to everything else.
She didn't trust Walder Frey though. She made that perfectly clear. She trusted however in the Guest Right protecting her. Considering how sacred that is in Westeros, I don't think we can blame her for that. There is plenty of other stuff we can blame her for, anyway.
Catelyn was right about the Lannisters attacking Bran twice, she just could not figure out which one it was... and started a civil war. She knew there was danger in serving and refusing Robert, but she could not guide Eddard better. She did her best speaking to Stannis and Renly, but no one could have convinced them to abandon their schemes.
Terrible judge of character. All of that and her clinging to that role of mother so much. She kept thinking as a mother, a wife, a sister, etc. and not as a highborn lady surrounded by the power struggle. She is not able to guide Ned because she wouldn't even be able to guide herself there. She was raised to be a wife of a lord, bear his children, and maintain his household. She wasn't raised to be a lady and in that sense she is similar to Kevan's wife. Only Kevan had the good sense to make sure his wife stays in Lannisport and didn't consult her on the matters of the state. The one thing in which Catelyn lead Ned was to have him trust Middlefinger and we all know how that ended. Her inability to understand that the rule she abides by, the rule of family's safety and well-being, of family looking after each other, is not upheld by everyone is what really did her in. She considered Middlefinger her family and she thought that he would protect her family because of it.
With more information and patience and luck... (and GRRM taking the story in a totally different direction)... Catelyn might have found a whole new perspective... and a way to refuse Robert, sniff out Jaime, sniff out Joffrey, turn back Robb, get her girls back... and live happily ever after.
Could she have, really? Catelyn had access to information. She had means to accomplish the ends of gaining that information, but even when shown otherwise, she willingly blinds herself and continues with how she did before despite all the things that disprove her. Lysa shows how deranged she is from early on, but Catelyn allows her to go on and doesn't share her doubts with anyone, but buried them. And that is just the most prominent example. Middlefinger was so suspicious to everyone that even Ned didn't trust him and yet Catelyn blinds herself to that because of who he was. Her own illusions of people are so important to her, because family has to be perfect and come first, that all the facts amount to nothing.
However, Catelyn's flaws regarding perspective don't steam from being isolated like Ygritte's do. She willingly blinds herself because to open her eyes is too hard. She is the redneck here, so to say. The only wall limiting her is that of her own making.
Yes, Jon was put into an impossible situation. He used Ygritte. He betrayed her love to save the NW. He renounced his honor to save lives. That situation was not dissimilar to Jaime's when Aerys II ordered KL's destruction. Jon was tough. But he, like many in the NW, never got real closure to his previous life. The only female he ever had any relationship with... was Arya. And Ygritte made it so easy...
Jon was easy prey to any woman, to be honest. He was so afraid of repeating his father's mistake that he removed himself from female company. Any woman with an inkling of experience would make an easy sport of him. The fact that he still resisted her to a degree is rather astonishing, but that is thanks to Ygritte not being manipulative and cunning enough. A woman with such qualities would have made a proper wildling out of Jon. Ygritte made everything so easy so abandoning her wasn't as hard because he never had to work for her. He liked her well-enough, but she was free so he never valued her. His issues with betraying her steam more from his upbringing that his feelings for her.
Ygritte was passionate. She was bold. She took chances and damned the consequences. She fooled herself into thinking Jon was wonderful after he spared her life. And she got herself in an impossible situation.
She was too naive. She mistook weakness and mercy for disloyalty.
I understand different cultures mold us all. Our values. Our hopes. But a lie is a lie... and Jon lied a lot... because he was convinced the Wildlings were eeeeeviiiiiilllllll and had to be destroyed. A lot of people died from those lies, maybe more or maybe less than if he'd told the truth. I don't know. His hero worship of Qhorin allowed him to be manipulated. Minor Spoiler! (Highlight for text.)After ASOS, he became convinced there were other options! He did not have to accept Qhorin's version of events. He could have chosen to die with honor and put the burden back on Qhorin where it belonged! Qhorin ordered the murder of Wildlings in their sleep, which Jon and Stonesnake carried out. Sure, Jon mucked up the order to murder Ygritte, but Qhorin mucked up the mission by continuing after he knew it was fatally compromised.... And Qhorin's plan to put the whole burden on Jon was shameful.
A lie is a lie. No such thing as a white lie, on that I agree. Only, with Jon dead, there is nobody there to spy on Wildlings. Qhorin would never be able to pull it off. It is really irony that what made Jon the worst choice for that mission, also made him the best. He was too green to be seen as a threat. It was also highly implied that Qhorin did the Jon mucks up the murder of Ygritte part on purpose. He already expected him not to kill her. He was making a gambit there.
Everything about the way Jon was raised allowed swift and easy manipulation of him. He grew up in Winterfell, for Old Gods's sake. That is like the place that is breeding ground for people who wear a sign "Manipulate me at will!". Just look at Sansa. In that sense, she and Jon are very similar; both so easy to manipulate because of the illusions of grandeur they have about NW and court, about honour and courtesy respectively. Even when disillusionment kicks in, they can hardly cope because they lead such sheltered lives in a sense.
Murder is murder. I don't care if you lived in ancient Babylon, in the Soviet Union, in the Ming Dynasty, or on Tatooine. What Ygritte did to that old man was wrong. She viewed it as an act of war... but how did the war start? Did Mance open negotiations with Jeor? No. He just gathered an army and marched towards the Wall. Did Jeor start it by scouting Mance's army? It seems both sides viewed it as just a continuation of a five thousand year old state of war and anyone within two hundred miles of the Wall (on the other side) was considered a participant. (And anyone on their own side was innocent.)
That is their way because they view the other side as closer to animals than humans. It goes against the moral of "Thou shan't kill" they both uphold, but they justify it because lolwar. They still have morals. They are just looking for ways around it. Even the fact that she justifies it as an act of war shows you that she doesn't just shrug it off. She had morals, she just goes around them. And I do agree that nothing really justifies it, but it doesn't make her amoral.
The war started because the Wall was erected. That is all that is to it. Not very dissimilar to what Jaime concludes about the BvsB in the Riverlands. They are warring over some past slight that they don't even know the truth of and over slights that are consequence of that slight. Same thing about the wildlings vs The Seven Kingdoms.
Did Ygritte personally know that old man contributed to the NW? Did she know he'd gone over the Wall to kill Wildlings? Did she consider he might have been a voice of peace? What if the old man was leading a petition to allow Wildlings on the Gift? And the reverse is true... Did Jon and Stonesnake know those Wildlings were evil? What if they were ambassadors from Mance to Jeor? It was all fear of discovery and guilt by proximity.
They didn't and that is the point. They are what their upbringing made of them and they were on a mission to take the Wall. The man the knew nothing about could have warned the NW about their presence. There were still other ways of dealing with that, capture for instance, but their upbringing never taught them to value the lives of people south of the wall. Some of them learn, some don't. Same don't learn because they are never really given a chance to learn, some willingly blind themselves every when it is poking them in the eye. Jon did his damnest best to do the later because that was the only way he could cope with what he had to do,
but once he no longer has that burden, he actually learns. (I had put the spoiler in white.) Because you can really pick up on him trying so hard to blind himself. Just go over what he thinks and feels after they go over the wall and all the ways he is trying to distance himself and trying to ignore the humanity of wildlings he discovered. He knows what he has to do and he is going to do it, but everything he learnt while with them and everything he was taught in Winterfell is making it so hard to make himself believe he is doing the right thing. And he is a Stark. They all seem to have this need to do right by people and damn the consequences programmed into their genome.
As for the ambassador thingy, they have their ways and customs of how the send an ambassador so that is a really far-fetched idea, especially since Mance did collect an army and declared himself King Beyond Wall.
And they are very lovely.
