#jaime**

[him-e]

Hi, I’m not sure if you’ve talked about this already, but since I really enjoy your thoughts on ASoIaF (and got), I‘d love to read your analysis of Jaime’s ending in the show and whether you think his arc is going to end the same way in the books as well.

Can’t make an in depth analysis because I lack the mental energy / motivation for that, but yes, I believe that’s where his arc is going in the books too. He’ll have a role in the WftD, be one of the many heroes who will defend humanity against the Others, have a shot at happiness with Brienne, but ultimately he’ll feel compelled to go back to Cersei when shit goes down in King’s Landing because it’s ~his sister, his responsibility and he can’t shrug it off.

The main difference I think will be be that Jaime ~kills~ Cersei in a similar fashion to how Jon killed Dany in the show, perhaps in a hail mary to save the city again (consciously or not replicating the scenario that turned him into the Kingslayer when he was seventeen, only now there’s his sister in Aerys’ place, and a dragon queen in Tywin’s, threatening to unleash her fury on everyone if the city gates won’t open), or maybe to spare Cersei a much more horrifying death by dragonfire or worse, if she manages to piss Dany off the way she did in the show. Either way, there’s plenty of foreshadowing in the books that Jaime will be Cersei’s valonqar but the whole thing won’t play as Cersei imagines, not even remotely. I used to believe Jaime being the valonqar and Jaime playing a role in the war for the dawn couldn’t be both simultaneously true, but that was based on the assumption that the war for the dawn *needs* to be chronologically the final part of the story, which I no longer believe.

I’m also fairly certain that D&D took the valonqar part of the J/C arc and repurposed it for Jon/Dany, for reasons I can’t fully comprehend right now. Part of it is probably the fact that they have a soft spot for J/C---see how they consistently shied away from the most toxic aspects of their relationship---so they probably wanted to end this dynamic on a sweet/tragic note rather than a disturbing, alienating one. Perhaps BOTH Jaime and Jon are going to kill their respective lovers in the books (it wouldn’t be the first time their arcs parallel each other, you know), which would be fifty shades of yikesy, but I wouldn’t put it past GRRM, especially considering how guilt over Ygritte’s death is a recurring theme in Jon’s narrative and how Dany being backstabbed by someone who swore to be on her side to thwart her *dangerous* political vision echoes eerily the Ides of Marsh. Or, perhaps Dany dies in some other way that D&D couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt verbatim for whatever reason, so they chose to go for the (relatively) “simple” option of having her stabbed by Jon; or, GRRM didn’t give enough details about her death so they had to fill the blanks by rearranging book material conveniently.

...well, it turned out to be some kind of analysis anyway, didn’t it? being concise is not my strong suit, lol.

[him-e]

I remember, back then, that you said that people were wrong to say that Jaime's arc is about identity rather than redemption. However, now that that the show probably spoiled that he dies alongside Cersei, doesn't that confirm their take on his story not being about redemption?

No? If the show spoiled Jaime dying with Cersei, THEN it also spoiled that he actually redeems himself by choosing to fight in the war for the dawn, alongside Starks and Targaryens, to defend humanity. He risked his life for it. In fact, he wasn’t really expecting to come out of it alive. His choosing to die with Cersei doesn’t negate his being one of the heroes in the war for the dawn. He’s reconciling with Cersei the person, not with Cersei the embodiment of half a decade of bad, violent Lannister regimes. He didn’t go to her to be complicit in her crimes, but so she wouldn’t be alone in this terrifying hour, which I find actually compassionate. And I resent the idea that a final act of compassion and forgiveness towards his twin (or unconditional love, if you will) represents a negation of redemption. At worst, his going back to Cersei is a triumph of addiction over recovery, which is tragic on a personal level but it’s NOT a moral failure. Being trapped in a toxic relationship is not a moral failure—my JB shipper feels aside, I can’t stand the notion that Jaime’s redemption can’t be true or complete if he doesn’t also violently reject Cersei as a person and the feelings he has, or has had, for her.

Would people still consider him redeemed if he stabbed Cersei to death, instead? A woman who was already dying? I thought the message the Arya/Sandor scene conveyed is that life, love, compassion are worth a thousand times more than revenge or retribution. Even more than killing one sinner to prevent a massacre that is already happening anyway.

[him-e]

It is sweet, sad and frustrating how Jaime really does have so many gaps in knowledge when it comes to current political affairs but is basically (like Sansa, which is interesting too) a walking encyclopedia on great knights and heroes. I'm rereading A Feast and I noticed the cut-off-date seems to be sometime after he killed Aerys, he seems to know quite a lot about different players before that. I guess Tarth wasn't too important then as well. Looking forward to more Dunk and Egg stories now...

^^ One of the Jaime quotes I’m most fond of is when, dueling with Brienne, he realizes she’s stronger than him and quickly proceeds to update his mental chart of all the guys who could kick his ass in combat: Robert had been stronger than him, to be sure. The White Bull Gerold Hightower as well, in his heyday, and Ser Arthur Dayne. Amongst the living, Greatjon Umber was stronger, Strongboar of Crakehall most likely, both Cleganes for a certainty. The Mountain’s strength was like nothing human. 

Jaime has actually a lot of Sansa’s idealism and love for songs and courtly culture—jaded in his case. It’s palpable from his romanticized memories of the time he fought the Kingswood Brotherhood as a squire that he was an Arthur Dayne fanboy; the sworn brothers of the kingsguard were his heroes. That’s why when he enters the KG at 15 the blow is so hard, because he is quickly taught that a good kingsguard’s job has a lot more to do with quietly complying to the king’s whims and kink for torture and violence than with bravery, honor or heroism. Realizing that Aerys made him a kingsguard not for his valor, but to spite Tywin didn’t help either. Not unlike Sansa, being forced into the court’s toxic environment too young and inadequately prepared to be at the mercy of a mad, sadistic king, and seeing how all the adults & authority figures were cowards with no sense of honor and no intention to put their lives on the line to prevent the king’s crimes—it destroyed his faith in knighthood (and deeply traumatized him, in my opinion).

[him-e]

You know, I always wondered how Jaime could go "Oh yeah, the Boltons used to flay Stark princes, make pelts out of them and wear them to battle hundreds of years ago" and "I got no idea who the current Lord Bolton is, whatever" in the same breath but now I know. What a nerd! A nerd with massive issues.

Yeah I think he knew that it was Roose, but didn’t know much else about him aside from his family history which is well known across Westeros (“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). I believe Jaime’s ignorance/disinterest in all things political is partly genuine, but partly a performance too. He thinks knowing things is just not his strong suit; he convinced himself that he has an anti-political brain and revels in it, just as part of him perversely revels in being called the Kingslayer. He likes to pretend he doesn’t care—it’s all part of the persona he’s construed in all these years. But as we see later in his AFFC arc, if he buckles down, he can be quite the astute political observer, and occasionally thinker too.

It also amuses me that the full speech re: the Boltons having a long, bloody history of violent rivalry with the Starks is actually an attempt to help Brienne make sense of the Red Wedding. :))

[him-e]

"#um say hello to the 1000th lord commander of the night's watch?" is this your head canon? tell me about it please!

:))) I see it as a bittersweet compromise between the overwhelmingly popular Jaime dying with Cersei in a murder/suicide (or dying, period) and Jaime and Brienne riding together into the sunset of Tarth and having dozens of children (not that there’s anything wrong with wanting that, but it’s a bit too cheesy for me). I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this before, but basically I feel like the Kingsguard and the Night’s Watch are two sides of the same coin, two complementary facets of the ongoing narrative on honor and vows, heroism and commitment that is a central theme in asoiaf. Both require binding vows that last forever, both forbid marriage, both are pillars of Westeros’s society that spiraled into decline during the centuries, and both will need to be reformed heavily post endgame.

It would be darkly fitting if Jaime escapes the clutches of the Kingsguard (which he entered freely, but too young to be fully aware of what he was signing up for, not unlike Jon with the NW) only for a short while, just enough to have a brief blissful moment with Brienne in the middle of an apocalyptic winter, as the battle rages all around them—and then, when the dust settles and spring comes and he’s miraculously alive, he’s sentenced to join the newly reformed Night’s Watch as a punishment for his past crimes. Essentially trading his white cloak for a black one, vows for other vows. His narrative of honor and oaths would come full circle: he started in a prestigious but corrupt institution at the heart of the realm, ended in the extreme North, the harshest place of Westeros, doing a job that doesn’t win you any honor or glory but matters more than anything else, being a silent shadow protecting the realm when he used to be all shiny white and glittering gold hiding nothing but arrogance and empty pride.

plus I perversely like the idea of Jaime and Brienne being forever cockblocked by oaths lol, never being able to marry (though this runs counter to the tons of marriage foreshadowing in Brienne’s chapters), but hopefully, if Brienne stays in Sansa’s service at Winterfell, able to see each other every now and then. Clandestinely, perhaps.

I don’t think any of this is particularly likely canon wise, I don’t even know if there will be a Night’s Watch post war for the dawn, but hey, I enjoy the idea.

[him-e]

I read your male!cercei post and I agree that Jaime (in any scenario) is the least like Tywin. I think that if you superficially lived up to Tywin's expectations, he more or less left you alone/delegated education to others during your childhood. It's vaguely implied in the books and show that Jaime took advantage of that (more so than Cercei or Tyrion). His siblings have a bad/horrible relationship with Tywin, but Jaime seemed to keep a deliberate distance to (alive) Tywin - or is it just me?

Thing is, Jaime won the genetic lottery and looked exactly like the heir Tywin wanted, exceptional martial skills included, and yet he still failed Tywin’s expectations. 

By joining the kingsguard, he actually completely deviated from Tywin’s designated path and made the future of his house, the house his father worked so hard for, suddenly uncertain. But Tywin, in his infinite double standards and capacity for selective amnesia (see: doggedly ignoring the twincest), was just too attached to his own fantasy of Jaime the Perfect Male Heir to really admit to himself that his golden son could be such a major fuck up. He redirected most of his rage against Aerys for “stealing” his precious heir, and kept thinking Jaime’s choice of being in the kingsguard was just a juvenile phase that he’d eventually grow out of (the kingsguard’s vows are forever? what? who? I suddenly can’t read!). 

Jaime was in a much easier position than his siblings to begin with, because his father simply never accepted to see him as anything but his one and only heir (determined as he was to deny the obvious alternative, i.e. Tyrion). 

Ironically, Jaime’s male heir privilege is in large part what allowed him to develop the distance you mentioned. The self-confidence of knowing since childhood that you’re supposed to become, one day, Tywin’s equal, and the larger freedom that comes with being male, rich and able bodied in a martial society. Jaime was sent to squire in another lordly house, broadened his horizons, absorbed chivalric values, found non-Lannister role models like Arthur Dayne, all of which allowed him to (in part) escape Tywin’s clutches and judgment in a way his siblings couldn’t afford to.

He also never directly defied Tywin (not until Tywin straight up orders him to leave the KG and he says, fuck no) and, I gotta say, maintained a frustratingly passive attitude for most of his life that sort of kept him under Tywin’s radar. The Tysha incident, for example: Jaime just lazily followed Tywin’s instructions, and apparently it never occurred to him that he, as Tywin’s eldest son and a knight of the KG, could intervene in Tyrion’s defense, or the girl’s. 

[him-e]

did i read that wrong, or do you think jaime actually did have legal standing to intervene on behalf of tysha and tyrion and force tywin to back off?

I did not mention legal standing.