Don't hate Cat

[Bayou Boy]

"How has she failed as a mother" you may ask? well. first off, her leaving winterfell and all her boys which Eddard has SPECIFICALLY asked her to watch over and went down to kings landing with Rod (who could have gone alone no problem to talkt o eddard, why did caitlyn need to come)

Circumstances intervened here.

Eddard told her to stay in Winterfell, before someone sent a footpad to kill Bran. We're privy to Eddard's POV chapters, and he never thought to himself that Cat had screwed up or disobeyed him by coming to King's Landing.

and then go later on and do the worst she could possibly do by letting the kingslayer go, through miles and miles of outlaw infested terrain with nobody but one bodyguard? all the while hoping that the oh so valliant knight who have no honor(at the time) to go and fufil himself and bring back the darling stark girls who were his enemy.

As Jaime himself thinks, though, Catelyn was trusting in Tyrion's honor, not his (Jaime's).

 

[Raven]

"How has she failed as a mother" you may ask? well. first off, her leaving winterfell and all her boys which Eddard has SPECIFICALLY asked her to watch over and went down to kings landing

To add to this:

Circumstances intervened here.

Eddard told her to stay in Winterfell, before someone sent a footpad to kill Bran. We're privy to Eddard's POV chapters, and he never thought to himself that Cat had screwed up or disobeyed him by coming to King's Landing.

You should also bear in mind that Ned did not consider Robb mature enough to be left in command. But Cat's distraction meant that Robb was, effectively, left in charge and had proved his ability to look after the place - another factor that Ned could not have known when he told Cat to stay behind.

Besides, we know that Ned would have ridden out to deal with Gregor himself had he not been wounded - leaving his daughters behind in King's Landing. Does that make him a bad father? No, it just means that a situation came up that required his presence elsewhere. Same thing.

with Rod (who could have gone alone no problem to talkt o eddard, why did caitlyn need to come)

Cat came because she was the sole witness to the attack, she bore physical evidence of what had happened, and she was Ned's own wife. This left no room for doubt about what had happened. Rodrik's second-hand testimony, with no physical proof, would not counted for nearly as much.

and then go later on and do the worst she could possibly do by letting the kingslayer go, through miles and miles of outlaw infested terrain with nobody but one bodyguard?

This is a failure 'as a mother'? It may have been a slim hope, but it was the only hope of freeing Sansa. Normally she's condemned for the opposite in regard to this - putting her status as a mother above the interests of the North.

and then she has the nerve to come up again (unwanted) replaces Beric

She didn't get a choice on that one, so far as we know.

 

[cape_royds]

Catelyn is the archetype of a noblewoman in that world. She is at her best when managing the affairs of her Great House and its political relations with other Houses.

--she gives quite a bit of shrewd advice to Robb and the other northern lords. She was right to suggest a "man with cold cunning" should lead Rob's infantry. She was wise to urge the northern lords to make a peace after Ned's execution--instead the drunken bannermen shouted her down.

--Catelyn was brilliant in negotiating the Frey alliance. It wasn't her fault that Robb threw it all away.

--Catelyn sized up Renly and Stannis accurately enough.

--Catelyn also urged Robb to retain Theon as a hostage rather than sending him back to Pyke.

--The reason she wants Arya to be ladylike is that she knows the day will come when Arya needs to get married off to cement House Stark's relations with some other family. The daughters of a great House need to have a lot of self-control and self-possession--that's what most of "being ladylike" is all about. Arya doesn't have much self-control, and that worries Catelyn.

--Catelyn detests the ******* raised among her family, because she puts her top priority on her House and lineage. In that context, bastards are simply not welcome, period. She will not take any risk of jeopardizing her lineage.

Now of course Catelyn's big blunder was in releasing the most valuable hostage her King held: Jaime Lannister. This led directly to the loss of the Karstarks. But granting that she was screwing up, was Catelyn mistaken in her assessment of Jaime's character? Catelyn recognized that the Kingslayer did possess a shred of honour--before even Jaime remembered that fact.

Now what bothers me about Catelyn is her snobbery. She is kind and generous enough, but always as superior to inferior. She lacks the common touch of a Margaery Tyrell, or the blunt geniality of a Genna Lannister.

As Tyrion recognized quickly, Catelyn simply cannot lower herself to properly reward a sellsword for his services. To be sure, Catelyn pities and succours Brienne of Tarth, but Brienne is a noblewoman of ancient lineage.

 

[Raven]

Now what bothers me about Catelyn is her snobbery. She is kind and generous enough, but always as superior to inferior.

Great post, but this is the one and only bit I disagree with (somewhat). Cat actually has, for a noblewoman, quite a 'common touch', and she is certainly not a 'snob'. When her father raves about 'Tansy', for example, she can remember the name of a common woman she used to see at Riverrun fifteen years ago, when Maester Vyman can't recall it. She recalls Masha Heddle and her kindness to the younger Cat. She knows the names of the smallfolk she interacts with. She feels sorry for Mya Stone because she'll never be able to marry Michael Redfort, for reasons of class: a 'snob' would simply think that this was how things ought to be.

I think what you might be meaning to say is that Cat isn't particularly warm or charismatic, which is true to an extent but not something that is affected by the class of the person she's talking to.

ETA - and yes, Tyrion does think that. But Tyrion isn't right about everything.

 

[Bayou Boy]

Now what bothers me about Catelyn is her snobbery. She is kind and generous enough, but always as superior to inferior. She lacks the common touch of a Margaery Tyrell, or the blunt geniality of a Genna Lannister.

As Tyrion recognized quickly, Catelyn simply cannot lower herself to properly reward a sellsword for his services. To be sure, Catelyn pities and succours Brienne of Tarth, but Brienne is a noblewoman of ancient lineage.

Another poster already alluded to this, but I just wanted to add that Catelyn's treatment of the sellswords Bronn and Chett in Book 1 had to do with her notions of honor, not the idea that they, as sellswords, were somehow beneath her.

Here's what Tyrion actually said to Bronn:

"My thanks," he said. "The thing is, you did not know the Starks. Lord Eddard is a proud, honorable, and honest man, and his lady wife is worse. Oh, no doubt she would have found a coin or two for you when this was all over, and pressed it in your hand with a polite word and a look of distaste, but that's the most you could have hoped for. The Starks look for courage and loyalty and honor in the men they choose to serve them, and if truth be told, you and Chiggen were lowborn scum."

Note that Tyrion's the one who calls Bronn (and Chiggen) "lowborn scum". IMO, and, seemingly, Tyrion's as well, the primary issue with Catelyn would have been that Bronn and Chiggen are less than honorable men, not the fact that they were of less than noble birth. And in Tyrion's opinion, Catelyn would have rewarded Bronn and Chiggen, she just wouldn't have trusted them or taken them into her service. Tyrion doesn't trust Bronn either.

"Did I offend you? My pardons . . . but you are scum, Bronn, make no mistake. Duty, honor, friendship, what's that to you? No, don't trouble yourself, we both know the answer. Still, you're not stupid. Once we reached the Vale, Lady Stark had no more need of you . . . but I did, and the one thing the Lannisters have never lacked for is gold. When the moment came to toss the dice, I was counting on your being smart enough to know where your best interest lay."

Catelyn, at an earlier point in Book 1, had no problem rewarding the sailors who helped get her and Ser Rodrik to King's Landing. In fact, she insisted on giving the sailors their money personally, thinking that the captain might cheat his crew out of their just reward.

 

[chongjasmine]

I don't hate Cat, but I dislike UnCat.

 

[Pentagathus]

If there's any reason for me to dislike Cat it's becuase she didn't slap some sense into Robb and make him trade Jaime for Arya and Sansa.

 

[IlliferThePenniless]

That would have been an absurd trade to make. Holding onto Jaime was tactically sound. In fact, I think there's a good argument to be made that Tywin would never have allowed The Red Wedding to go forward if the Starks still held his son.

 

[The Imp]

That would have been an absurd trade to make. Holding onto Jaime was tactically sound. In fact, I think there's a good argument to be made that Tywin would never have allowed The Red Wedding to go forward if the Starks still held his son.

You make a great point, and it underscores why the "institution" of hostage taking/keeping makes so much sense in the 7 Kingdoms. Also, in referencing the post above the quoted one, there's no way that two female children are "worth" a a person with the status (and gender) of Jaime Lannister. Maybe if Tywin threw in a couple number one draft picks and cash

 

[Pentagathus]

How can you judge the worth of your sisters? Robb should have cut off Jaimes hand himself (Jaime's hand for the Hand's head) and made the trade (he still held other members of Tywins family hostage, including Kevan's son.)
And this is assuming that he tries to trade his sisters for other hostages first (and obviously not in that peace offer he sent with Cleos Frey.)

 

[the smiling weirwood]

Well she should have married one of them off to a Tyrell before the Lannisters beat them to it.

 

[Pentagathus]

Can't do that if her duaghters are still captives.

 

[IlliferThePenniless]

The Lannisters only had one daughter to trade (Jayne Poole would have made a fairly inadequate Arya returned to Cat and Robb) and the Tyrells were committed to Reny's cause before the war even started. The best Cat could have won would have hoped for would have been Robb swearing allegiance to Renly (which he would have never done with all his damnable Stark pride).

But that timing couldn't really have worked. The exchange of prisoners would have taken time (can't be marrying off Sansa if she's still in Lannister clutches)... It's hard for me to see how Sansa could have been a marriageable asset given how quickly everything went down after Renly's murder.

And that ignores

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Ignores?

 

[IlliferThePenniless]

My bad... I plead tiredness. That was just a bit of editing that went awry...

 

[Ursa major]

Given the insights you've provided, ITP, I think we can all forgive you the odd, minor slip caused by being sleep-deprived.

 

[the smiling weirwood]

Oh, I was referring to before King Robert died. Sure, you can't refuse the king's offer to marry his son to your daughter, but there was still Arya.

 

[IlliferThePenniless]

I sort of get the impression that the prior to Robert's arrival the Starks weren't terribly plugged in the politics of the realm writ large. Ned seems totally unprepared for all the undercurrents in Kings Landing once he arrives. At the beginning he seems almost totally ignorant of the fact that there are under currents.

Ned obviously would have been much happier staying up north and dealing with Mance and, ultimately, the Others. The North is most is the most physically remote part of Westeros (save, perhaps, Dorne), they rarely even get minstrels visiting. It seems like before Robert's rebellion that wasn't the case (Ned fostered in The Vale with Robert, Brandon promised to a Tully), but after Robert's rebellion Neds seems to have been content to withdraw to Winterfell (The better to hide a secret about his ******* son perhaps?).

Maybe it's just because none of the Stark kids were really of marriageable age when AGoT commenced but I always got the impression they'd marry Arya off to a Bolton *shudder* or something to strengthen ties back home.

Is there any evidence for what the plan was for the Stark kids before Robert rolled into Winterfell and screwed everything up?

 

[the smiling weirwood]

No, apparently they were just sitting around being a happy family or something ridiculous like that.

If anyone, Cat should have gone to King's Landing, but she couldn't very well have been the King's Hand. Out of all the people in Winterfell she seemed most competent in politics and intrigue.

 

[IlliferThePenniless]

The big advantage that Cat would have had as the Stark representative in King's Landing would have been her potential ability to play Littlefinger. Hard to know if she would have known that she could or could have pulled it off, but she's Petyr's weak spot which would have given her a tremendous amount of power at court (I think we all expect Sansa to start playing this card at some point too).

Thinking about it, Ned's more or less complete failure as hand stemmed as much from his inability/unwillingness to ally himself with anyone as it did from his total lack of sense for what's going on around him. It's not hard to imagine that him gritting his teeth and resigning himself to playing nicely with Petyr, or Renly, or even Varys and the outcome could have been much different.

Though I suppose he wouldn't have been Eddard Stark if he'd been willing to do that...