Jaime’s Riverrun arc is both darkly hilarious and quietly damning if you don’t fall for his internal PR campaign. Jaime spends the entire siege doing this incredible cognitive dissonance routine where he’s like: “wow… people are so unfair to me. they see “Kingslayer” and “Lannister” and don’t even give me a chance. i’m trying to be reasonable now. i’ve grown. i’m different.”
And then -immediately- he corners Edmure in the bath, a setting that is intimate, vulnerable, and deliberately humiliating, and says, with his full chest, by the way, I will murder your infant child and send his soul screaming into the afterlife if you don’t comply.
SIR. That is not diplomacy. that is not growth. that is weaponized trauma delivered naked and unprovoked. and what kills me is that Jaime genuinely seems to think this is clever, even merciful. He frames it to himself as: “I’m just being honest”, “I’m preventing further bloodshed” or “This is better than a battle”
Meanwhile he’s literally running a Lannister Greatest Hits Tour: baby murder (callback to Rhaegar’s kids), mass civilian slaughter (Reynes of Castamere), religious genocide (Sept of Remembrance vibes) and the implied promise that this family never forgets and never forgives and he’s shocked – shocked – that Edmure caves out of terror rather than respect.
The funniest and bleakest part is that Jaime wants to be seen as honorable so badly here. He’s desperate to be “Goldenhand the Just,” the man who keeps oaths and ends wars cleanly. But what he actually does is reproduce the exact same Lannister logic he claims to hate: peace through terror, compliance through the threat of annihilation and “this is kinder than what we could do” That’s Tywin’s philosophy. Jaime just delivers it with more self-pity and fewer spreadsheets.
And the Blackfish clocking him instantly is the chef’s kiss. Brynden isn’t refusing to negotiate because Jaime is misunderstood. He’s refusing because he sees perfectly clearly that: Jaime cannot be trusted, Jaime’s word means nothing once Lannister interests are threatened and Jaime’s “honor” collapses the second he wants something badly enough. Which the bath scene proves in real time.
So yeah. The siege of Riverrun is wild because it exposes the gap between: Jaime’s self-narrative: reformed knight, tragic man, moral actor and Jaime’s actual behavior: still perfectly willing to threaten babies, cities, and innocent people the moment it’s convenient. He’s not “just a little guy.” He’s a man who wants absolution without accountability, and Riverrun is where the text quietly goes: no, actually, you don’t get that yet.