Do you think there's a possibility of Book JB having a *similar* storyline as the show? Jaime cruelly breaking Brienne's heart so he could protect her or valonqar Cersei or some shit so she wouldn't follow him? I despise that trope with a passion, and I don't give a fuck if he comes back with an apology or leaves her a letter. If that happens, I swear to God I am done with JB and Jaime. He's already done questionable things and sent her on a suicide mission so he's on thin ice. If he pulls that shit, then he's cancelled. If people defend that storyline, I'll destroy them too. And if it's written as Brienne forgiving him because deep down she knew he loved her, I will literally burn GRRM because Brienne deserves more than scraps and heartbreak. I am so angry just thinking about it (and thinking about his reaction to the LSH situation.) How could he hypothetically do that?
I would be super angry at GRRM if he left Brienne crying in the snow too but, luckily, I don't believe that is Brienne’s future in the books and here is my list of reasons why.
1) Show Deviations and the Loss of Theme
The JB plot line was hit with a huge number of deviations from the books, possibly even more than any other in the story (except, perhaps, Stannis and Euron). These deviations stretch right back to Episode 1 when Jaime said "the things I do for love" jauntily then shoved Bran out of the window, rather than delivering "the things I do for love" with loathing. Right from the off, Show!Jaime is a fundamentally different character from Book!Jaime.
The deviations did not start to get truly egregious until Season 4, when Jaime and Brienne turn up in King's Landing pre-Joffrey's death, and therefore Sansa is still there. Not only does this totally undermine Jaime sending Brienne off to look for Sansa (because it makes them both look lazy and/or stupid and undermines the sacredness of the oath they made), it fundamentally changes the twincest scene in the sept. Where for Book!Jaime and Book!Cersei their sept sex scene comes at the point of their reunion and is therefore Jaime achieving the “goal” he has been aiming for all book (and is one of their usual slightly dubious yes-no, push-pull shags), Show!Jaime had clearly been back in KL for some time before the sept sex and was there for Joffrey’s death, meaning he raped Show!Cersei for... um... reasons.
(*Yes, yes, I know it wasn’t intended to be a rape scene*)
In the books, the sept scene is the last time Jaime and Cersei have sex, and it is fuelled by the desperate emotions of seeing each other again.
"Yes," Cersei said as he thrust, "my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you're home now, you're home now, you're home." (ASOS, Jaime VII).
(Soz, we are now all traumatised)
In spite of the fact that Jaime has been hoping and longing and dreaming of his reunion with his sister, it quickly turns to ashes in his mouth. Jaime and Cersei's romantic relationship rapidly begins to fall apart when both siblings come to realise that the other was not who they believed them to be and that they don't want the same things anymore. In contrast, the show continued to keep Jaime and Cersei together beyond that point; where Book!Jaime refused to sleep with Book!Cersei in the White Sword Tower after deciding to take his oaths seriously (inspired by Brienne), Show!Jaime knocked the White Book off the table so he could shag Show!Cersei. Show!Jaime returned to Show!Cersei after Riverrun instead of going off with Show!Brienne, and we even got "Jaime and Cersei in love in bed" scenes in S7. The show kept Jaime and Cersei together even as the books it was based on ripped them apart. Consequently, Show!Jaime and Show!Cersei are more narratively connected than Book!Jaime and Book!Cersei have ever been, and Show!Jaime is therefore much more culpable for and intertwined with Show!Cersei's bad acts than Book!Jaime is for Book!Cersei's.
Another important point to make here is that Show!Tyrion did not get his Dark!Tyrion "where do whores go?" plot, so does not end up telling Jaime that Cersei cheated on him. Show!Jaime therefore never gets that vital piece of information that serves as the catalyst for him to re-examine his relationship with Cersei and therefore continues to follow Cersei round like a puppy for seasons and seasons doing evil things when she asks. Brienne only ever shows up to scold Jaime into doing the right thing (see the entire Riverrun situation). This is a monstrously bad adaptation of Jaime’s book arc. The show reduces Brienne and Cersei to being the angel and devil on Jaime's shoulders directing Jaime to do good or bad things depending who he spoke to last, which is bullshit because Book!Jaime has his own conscience. Book!Cersei and Book!Brienne are characters in their own right who are not just there to manipulate Jaime in one way or the other. Book!Jaime has his own moral compass which he uses to be inspired by Brienne, rather than just being guilt tripped by her every five seconds.
Show!Jaime then got none of Book Jaime's arc. No weirwood dream, no Lady Stoneheart, no Peck and Pia, no Lancel, and only a tiny bit of Edmure and Riverrun (which was totally framed as for Cersei). Part of this comes from D&D's total misreading of the message of the books. They thought it was about showing that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I think the real crux of GRRM's story is that good people can do bad things if sufficiently motivated. Daenerys ruined the economy of Slaver's Bay and pushed millions of people into poverty for the noble cause of freeing slaves, Jon threatened a baby to prevent Melisandre getting her hands on dark magic, Stannis will be motivated to kill his own daughter because he thinks it will save the world, and Jaime pushed a boy out of a window because he loved Cersei and wanted to protect her.
Instead of grasping this concept, D&D fell back on the cliched "power corrupts” theme and turned Daenerys' nuanced arc into her going mad in the last five minutes, Jon never wanting any power at all, Stannis became a one-dimensional evil villain, and the entire impulse at the centre of Jaime's arc changed from the things I do for love to the things I do for Cersei. Those two ideas are so fundamentally different it almost hurts and demonstrates that D&D were not intending to accurately adapt Jaime’s arc, just as they were not willing to adapt GRRM’s more complicated message about people and the nature of power. Book!Jaime will always do reckless, impulsive things for love, but what happens when he falls for someone valiant and noble rather than power-hungry and scheming? Oh yeah, he jumps into a bear pit to protect Brienne and decides to save the daughter of his enemy rather than push a kid out a window. Jaime falling in love with Brienne and being inspired to re-evaluate his life in her image is almost the opposite of all these other "heroic" characters doing bad things for a good cause and it makes the story deeper and richer for it.
As for Brienne, Show!Brienne got none of the beautiful explorations of knighthood, valour, and womanhood in the Riverlands with Pod, Dick Crabb, and Hyle Hunt that she gets in the book. Her epic "no chance, no choice" moment was given to the Hound IIRC, and she was reduced to solely wanting to break the glass ceiling by getting a knighthood (D&D thought they were being non-sexist by doing this, proving that a strong woman doesn’t need a man, but we all really know that the truly non-sexist thing would be to let Brienne have a nice boyfriend and still be a kickass knight).
Everything about her joining Renly's KG for love rather than career opportunities is side-lined, and with it everything that makes her Jaime's true mirror. The similarities are uncanny, when you think about it: both Book!Jaime and Book!Brienne joined the KG because they wanted to be close to the person they loved (Cersei and Renly respectively), both gave up their inheritances for the person they loved, both are accused of being kingslayers (Jaime rightly, Brienne wrongly), both go travelling with a member of the Payne family (Jaime with Ilyn, Brienne with Pod), both bond with a squire (Jaime with Peck, Brienne with Pod), both protect women from rape (Jaime with Pia, Brienne with the orphans at the inn), and both have to face a conflict of oaths (Jaime with Aerys, Brienne with Lady Stoneheart). Book!Brienne does not want to be a knight to show she has girl power, Book!Brienne wants to be a knight because she wants to be part of the romantic stories she loved as a girl so much, and she wants to find a man who will love her for who she is. She wants to be a woman and a knight.
Now, before I go on to discuss my thoughts on the valonqar, there is one thing in your post I briefly want to address:
He's already done questionable things and sent her on a suicide mission so he's on thin ice.
If you are talking about Jaime sending Brienne to find Sansa here... that is not a negative thing at all (and we do see a sign that Jaime feels awful about Brienne being injured in his one chapter in ADWD). By sending her off with a priceless sword to find Sansa, Jaime recognised that Brienne was his equal and a knight and gave her all the validation she has ever wanted (even if he was a sarcastic lil bitch while doing it). And it was not a suicide mission. While Show!Jaime makes some stupid ass comment about never thinking Brienne would find Sansa (then why did you send her on the quest, you idiot?!?!), Book!Jaime never doubts for a single second that Brienne will find Sansa and bring her somewhere safe. Brienne is his protector, his guiding light; she pulled him back from the brink of death when he was at his lowest. Why would he ever doubt her for a moment?
"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." (ADWD, Jaime I).
(*Oh god, I love them, I love them, I love them*)
On the future of JB, it is noticeable that GRRM barely said a word about Jaime or Brienne in Hibberd’s recent book which covered the show adaptation, which I think demonstrates that it is one of the few storylines that has totally remained unspoiled by the show. Therefore, all the guesses we can make at their future is from reading the published books and I think that clearly shows that we are heading in a JB direction. Originally, GRRM intended Jaime to have eight chapters in AFFC (before his final one was shunted into ADWD) and... mmm... guess who also has eight. Yes, Brienne! Jaime and Brienne are equals and they are true mirrors of each other, and one day they will fight with twin swords, meaning that all the trappings of soulmates that Cersei originally marked out as belonging exclusively to her and Jaime will actually belong to Jaime and Brienne.
2) Is Jaime the valonqar?
Maybe, possibly, perhaps.
I have a short list of valonqar candidates and Jaime is on it - the other candidates are Aegon, Tommen, and Loras, but I won't go into all that here - and I tend to favour different candidates depending on the day of the week. However, in terms of the valonqar being Jaime, I can see how it could work: there is something ironic in Cersei being paranoid about the wrong brother and if Cersei wildfire's KL she could be an excellent Aerys 2.0. But will Jaime return to Cersei romantically before he does it? Will he abandon Brienne and be cruel to her in order to stop her following him? Will Jaime murder-suicide Cersei leaving Brienne heartbroken?
There are only two groups I have seen advocating the Jaime abandoning Brienne/murder-suicide valonqar theories: the first are twincest shippers, who are obviously theorising about the ending of their ship, and the second are BNFs who have collectively decided to be very cautious when arguing the books are going to be much different from the show. Some of these people argue that there has been "foreshadowing" of Jaime and Cersei dying together, but that mainly comes down to the conception that Cersei promotes of hers and Jaime's relationship that he breaks away from in AFFC, which includes all the "we are born together, we will die together" stuff. The triangle of Cersei/Jaime/Brienne POVs in AFFC show that Jaime and Cersei are not two halves of a whole, because Jaime and Brienne are much more similar than Jaime and Cersei could ever be, so why would they die together if every other part of Cersei's conception has proved wrong?
"My queen," said Qyburn, "have you . . . forgotten? Ser Jaime has no sword hand. If he should champion you and lose . . ."
We will leave this world together, as we once came into it. "He will not lose. Not Jaime. Not with my life at stake." (AFFC, Cersei X)
(Of course, Jaime did sweet fuck all to come and help Cersei out of this situation, showing that Cersei's entire conception of their relationship is rubbish, as he didn't even try to save her, let alone lose on her behalf.)
Jaime himself has only thought of dying with Cersei once, and that comes in Jaime's fourth chapter in ASOS:
As they approached the clifflike walls of Black Harren's monstrous castle, Brienne squeezed his arm. "Lord Bolton holds this castle. The Boltons are bannermen to the Starks."
"The Boltons skin their enemies." Jaime remembered that much about the northman. Tyrion would have known all there was to know about the Lord of the Dreadfort, but Tyrion was a thousand leagues away, with Cersei. I cannot die while Cersei lives, he told himself. We will die together as we were born together. (ASOS, Jaime IV).
This scene becomes before the bath (ie. before Jaime's metaphorical rebirth) and before he truly began to embark on his redemption/self-actualisation arc. It is also important to note that he only states he cannot die before Cersei, not that he cannot live without her. While lots of people have put stock in this statement to show that the born together/die together stuff is not just Cersei, we actually get just as must "foreshadowing" that he is going to die with Brienne from Jaime’s POV, because Jaime also thinks about dying with her:
Aerys, Jaime thought resentfully. It always turns on Aerys. He swayed with the motion of his horse, wishing for a sword. Two swords would be even better. One for the wench and one for me. We'd die, but we'd take half of them down with us. (ASOS, Jaime III).
The weirwood dream also gives us a significant hint that Cersei will die before Jaime:
“The steps ended abruptly on echoing darkness. Jaime had the sense of vast space before him. He jerked to a halt, teetering on the edge of nothingness. A spearpoint jabbed at the small of the back, shoving him into the abyss. He shouted, but the fall was short. He landed on his hands and knees, upon soft sand and shallow water. There were watery caverns deep below Casterly Rock, but this one was strange to him. “What place is this?”
“Your place.” The voice echoed; it was a hundred voices, a thousand, the voices of all the Lannisters since Lann the Clever, who’d lived at the dawn of days. But most of all it was his father’s voice, and beside Lord Tywin stood his sister, pale and beautiful, a torch burning in her hand. Joffrey was there as well, the son they’d made together, and behind them a dozen more dark shapes with golden hair.
“Sister, why has Father brought us here?”
“Us? This is your place, Brother. This is your darkness.” Her torch was the only light in the cavern. Her torch was the only light in the world. She turned to go.
“Stay with me,” Jaime pleaded. “Don’t leave me here alone.” But they were leaving. “Don’t leave me in the dark!” Something terrible lived down here. “Give me a sword, at least.”
“I gave you a sword,” Lord Tywin said.
It was at his feet. Jaime groped under the water until his hand closed upon the hilt. Nothing can hurt me so long as I have a sword. (ASOS, Jaime VI).
There are several things of note here:
Cersei leaves Jaime, Jaime does not leave Cersei.
There is no sign of anything directly violent here; Jaime doesn't hurt Cersei, he doesn't grow angry at her. It is just a straightforward case of Cersei leaving.
When Cersei leaves Jaime, she goes with Tywin and Joffrey but not Tyrion or Genna, even though Jaime recognises the crowd of people as Lannisters. Why is this significant? Because Cersei leaves with dead Lannisters, not living ones, while Jaime continues on through the caverns and comes across Brienne.
We know that this dream is at least somewhat prophetic because Tywin gives Jaime a sword, just as he gave him Oathkeeper in the waking world.
(If you want more on the dream, there is an absolutely amazing meta by @janiedean that I recommend 100% which shows how this dream is not directly about Jaime's future, per se, but about overcoming his trauma and it therefore can be seen to point to him living.)
The denouement of the dream sees Jaime facing off with Brienne against Rhaegar and the KG, and there is something quite striking about them:
He saw them too. They were armored all in snow, it seemed to him, and ribbons of mist swirled back from their shoulders. The visors of their helms were closed, but Jaime Lannister did not need to look upon their faces to know them.
Five had been his brothers. Oswell Whent and Jon Darry. Lewyn Martell, a prince of Dorne. The White Bull, Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, Sword of the Morning. And beside them, crowned in mist and grief with his long hair streaming behind him, rode Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone and rightful heir to the Iron Throne. (ASOS, Jaime VI).
They are armoured in snow. Why the hell would the KG be armoured in snow unless they were meant to at least partially represent the Others?
Cersei is going to die before Jaime, then Jaime and Brienne are going to fight the Others together. It is all there in the dream.
3) Jaime, Brienne, and gender subversion
Game of Thrones was a highly, highly conservative show when it came to gender, sexuality, and gender reputation. Renly was turned into a stereotypically camp gay man. Loras was presented as super promiscuous, despite being devoted to Renly's memory and determinedly celibate in the books. Asha, who is a tomboy/masculine presenting but very straight in the books, was changed into being lesbian/bi in the show because she looked like a butch lesbian (while feminine presenting Daenerys and Cersei's bisexuality/bicuriosity was completely erased). Female nudity and sexual violence against women was regularly used for titillation and nothing more, and Sansa's story was changed from the one in the books where she slowly learned to use her mind and play the game into being a rape victim who we were told (not shown) was super smart. Endless scenes of "sexposition" were forced on us, when all I was interested is was wtf Littlefinger's plans were.
Then you have the sex scenes female characters appeared in, which are always the most basic hot man-hot woman pairings. We had the horrible Daenerys-Drogo rape scenes in S1, some scattered Daenerys-Daario scenes, and then the Jonerys sex scene at the end of S7 where the camera lovingly panned to them shagging by the fire. We had too many extra twincest scenes to count. In 8x01, we had a four hour long sex scene between Bronn and the "sexy" prostitutes. Compare all those examples to the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Arya-Gendry and Jaime-Brienne love scenes we had (both of which were culminations of seasons long relationships).
What do Arya and Brienne have in common, I wonder, to determine that their sex scenes will be so short?
Oh yeah! They are both gender non-conforming women, and the showrunners fundamentally didn't believe that other characters (or the audience) would accept them as objects of desire. With Arya, there was the slightly awkward fact that we had seen Maisie Williams grow up on television that perhaps also had an effect, but with Brienne the issue was fundamentally that D&D couldn't see the sex appeal. Hence the gross drinking game and even grosser "devirginised" comment in the script, and medieval-esque Westeros suddenly transforming into a 21st century frat house to encourage two bros into bed.
In the last episodes of S8, Show!Brienne was presented as someone who never and could never be sexually attracted to Jaime Lannister, hence why the D&D scripts played up the "bros in bed" angle (although, it must be mentioned here, that Bryan Cogman's 8x02 and GC and NCW played up the romance for all it was worth, and it was due to them we got the good bits we did). Brienne being left in the snow was a result of shaping her story through the male gaze; how could Jaime ever truly see her as someone other than a buddy when she was not an attractive woman? How could the writers expect the audience to see her as someone Jaime could be attracted to, especially when he had hot but crackers Cersei back home? The answer was that D&D/HBO could not imagine something so subversive as Jaime being attracted to Brienne, so they had him leave her.
(Apparently, a hot guy/ugly woman pairing is so much more subversive than literal incest with your twin).
So, while this view of Brienne as someone who could not attract Jaime was written all over their interactions as portrayed in the scripts of 8x04, does it hold true for the books? Does GRRM think Brienne is someone Jaime can never be sexually attracted to?
But the cow could row. Beneath her roughspun brown breeches were calves like cords of wood, and the long muscles of her arms stretched and tightened with each stroke of the oars. Even after rowing half the night, she showed no signs of tiring, which was more than could be said for his cousin Ser Cleos, laboring on the other oar. (ASOS, Jaime I).
Jaime notices Brienne's body, and is quite entranced by her calves, her arms, and the way her muscles move. He does not similarly describe what Cleos' muscles are doing while he is rowing.
Brienne moved the tiller and the skiff sheared left, sail rippling. Jaime watched her eyes. Pretty eyes, he thought, and calm. He knew how to read a man's eyes. He knew what fear looked like. She is determined, not desperate. (ASOS, Jaime I).
Pretty. Fucking. Eyes. Jaime, babe, you are meant to hate Brienne at this point, remember?
Jaime caught a glimpse of the thick blonde bush at the juncture of her thighs as she climbed out. She was much hairier than his sister. Absurdly, he felt his cock stir beneath the bathwater. Now I know I have been too long away from Cersei. He averted his eyes, troubled by his body's response. (ASOS, Jaime V).
I saw a post on westeros.org that did an experiment by replacing Jaime and Brienne's names in this scene with those of two platonic friends (Jon and Sam) to see if it revealed anything interesting. The sexual tension suddenly became hilariously obvious.
And he gets a stiffy and tries to deny the reason for said stiffy. LOL.
He had commanded Ser Addam Marbrand to search the Street of Silk. "Look under every bed, you know how fond my brother is of brothels." The gold cloaks would find more of interest beneath the whores' skirts than beneath their beds. He wondered how many bastard children would be born of the pointless search.
Unbidden, his thoughts went to Brienne of Tarth. Stupid stubborn ugly wench. He wondered where she was.Father give her strength... (AFFC, Jaime I).
Jaime's train of thoughts: Brothels => whores => beneath whores' skirts => sex => bastard children => Brienne of Tarth => stupid ugly woman => where is she? = prays for her, despite being an atheist.
Peck and Garrett hauled water, and Pia found him something clean to sup in. The girl glanced at him shyly as she shook his doublet out. Jaime was uncomfortably aware of the curve of hip and breast beneath her roughspun brown dress. He found himself remembering the things that Pia had whispered to him at Harrenhal, the night that Qyburn sent her to his bed. Sometimes when I'm with some man, she'd said, I close my eyes and pretend it's you on top of me.
He was grateful when the bath was deep enough to conceal his arousal. As he lowered himself into the steaming water, he recalled another bath, the one he'd shared with Brienne. He had been feverish and weak from loss of blood, and the heat had made him so dizzy he found himself saying things better left unsaid. This time he had no excuse. (AFFC, Jaime IV).
Jaime's train of thoughts: Pia's shyness => Pia's body => Pia's attempt to chat him up => Gets a stiffy in the bath => thinks of the bath he shared with Brienne, in which he got yet another erection.
"White," she said, "but your hand is solid gold. I like that in a man. And what is it you like in a woman, m'lord?"
"Innocence." (ADWD, Jaime I).
Hildy: And what is it you like in a woman, m'lord?
Given that Jaime is discovering that he can be attracted to other women after becoming estranged from Cersei throughout AFFC and ADWD, Jaime never says outright that he is attracted to Brienne, but it is all there in the subtext. Jaime is attracted to Brienne, Jaime admires Brienne, Jaime loves Brienne, so it is highly unlikely that he will treat her with the disrespect he did on the show.
Jaime might be the valonqar, but if he is, Brienne will know/be beside him while he does it and then they will go onto fight against the Others together wielding twin swords.
If Jaime is not the valonqar, Cersei will still probably die before him (maybe even in TWOW) and then Jaime and Brienne will go onto fight against the Others together wielding twin swords.
Jaime might die fighting the Others, but if he does Brienne will be fully aware of his love and will not feel disgraced or dishonoured.
And if Jaime lives, well, @janiedean wrote yet another brilliant meta where she shows that Jaime living would fit well with what GRRM has written previously.
