I also believe Elia had good relationships with SOME of the Kingsguard. Not to say there was bad blood, but obviously, some bonds were stronger than others. For example, Arthur and Lewyn are out of question. Both are Dornish, both have known Elia all their lives, and both love her dearly.
It is also believed that Lewyn Martell joined the Kingsguard AFTER Elia had joined the royal family.
Then we have Oswell Whent and Jon Darry. Of these two, I think Oswell would be closer to Elia than Jon. Having said that, I’ve always imagined Oswell as a bit of a rogue, but in a good way, you know? A bit of a joker, a bit rough around the edges but reliable.
As for Darry, Gerold Hightower and Barristan Selmy, I think there was neutrality. That’s their job, if you know what I mean. I don’t think they were particularly close, partly because I imagine there was a bit of an age gap between them and Elia, Rhaegar, etc...
As for Gerold, I think the neutrality stems from him being Lord Commander. These three seem more pro-Aerys than pro-Rhaegar. Don’t stone me, I’m not saying they were 100% defenders of him, but there is evidence.
- The Darrys have always been linked to the Targaryens; it is Ser Willem Darry who takes Dany and Viserys away. Jon Darry was guarding the gate alongside Jaime when Aerys was abusing Rhaella. We don’t know what he was thinking.
- Barristan has several lines in the books referring to Elia with affection but also with a certain distance. It is from his remarks that we know Rhaegar and Elia had a somewhat… complex marriage.
Then there’s my poor Jaime. He’s just a kid at the moment. I reckon he did have a bit of a soft spot for Elia; they knew each other and their mothers even wanted to set them up.
I’d go so far as to say (and like everything on this blog, this is just my own headcanon) that Elia had a certain maternal affection for Jaime, and vice versa.
The only one I think might be a bit of a bitchy character is JonCon, but that’s because he isn’t very fond of the Dornish and was in love with Rhaegar.
this is mainly inspired by this post by sworsandarms
I'm just posting this because I've seen multiple people make this mistake in the past couple of months, specifically with regards to the kingsguard who tells Jaime why it's not their place to stop Aerys from raping his wife. A lot of people think it was Gerold Hightower, the at the time Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who said this to Jaime. But in truth it was Jon Darry who said it.
I think some people tend to get this moment mixed up with a different moment with Aerys' Kingsguard, that being when Jaime tells Catelyn about how Rickard and Brandon were killed by Aerys in a perverse display of trial by combat with fire as Aerys' champion.
It's clear that both moments are meant as condemnations of Aerys' Kingsguard, and for very similar reasons with regards to how they act about obeying the whims of a tyrant like Aerys. But there are distinctions to be drawn in how these actions reflect on the men in question.
With Gerold Hightower, the condemnation is primarily based in questioning the idea of unwavering loyalty in the face of atrocity. He asks Jaime to not judge Aerys, that it is not their place as Kingsguard to even condemn the king in their own minds because it goes against the very ethos of their vows to him. He goes to Jaime and stops him from even so much as thinking such ideas in the first place.
With Jon Darry, it's much more about actually having said thoughts, but still deciding against your better judgment to act in face of horrific violence. Knights are sworn to protect women and the innocent, and as Jaime points out, their vows as Kingsguard extend to protecting Rhaella as well. However, Jon points out the obvious fallacy in that idea. They have to allow the king to do as he wants and aid and abet his actions through their inaction.
Anyway, this is mostly just been me splitting hairs, but I feel like there is something more being said in either scene than just pointing out that Aerys was mad and therefore made the Kingsguard complicit in his atrocities.
Hopefully some people read this and start distinguishing them more in their analysis of the text as well
The day had been windy when he said farewell to Rhaegar, in the yard of the Red Keep. The prince had donned his night-black armor, with the three headed dragon picked out in rubies on his breastplate. “Your Grace,” Jaime had pleaded, “let Darry stay to guard the king this once, or Ser Barristan. Their cloaks are as white as mine.”
Prince Rhaegar shook his head. “My royal sire fears your father more than his does our cousin Robert. He wants you close, so Lord Tywin cannot harm him. I dare not take a crutch away from him at such hour.”
Jaime’s anger had risen up in his throat. “I am not a crutch. I am a knight of the Kingsguard.”
“The guard the king,” Ser Jon Darry snapped at him. “When you donned that cloak, you promised to obey.”
Rhaegar had out his hand on Jaime’s shoulder. “When this battle is done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago, but….well, it does no good to speak of roads not taken. We shall talk when I return.”
Those were the last words Rhaegar Targaryen ever spoke to him. Outside the gates an army had assembled, whilst another descended on the Trident. So the Prince of Dragonstone mounted up and donned his tall black helm, and rode forth to his doom.
I know you, Kingslayer, the beast seemed to be saying. I have been here all the time, waiting for you to come to me. And it seemed to Jaime that he knew that voice, the iron tones that had once belonged to Rhaegar, Prince of Dragonstone.
The day had been windy when he said farewell to Rhaegar, in the yard of the Red Keep. The prince had donned his night-black armor, with the three-headed dragon picked out in rubies on his breastplate. "Your Grace," Jaime had pleaded, "let Darry stay to guard the king this once, or Ser Barristan. Their cloaks are as white as mine."
Prince Rhaegar shook his head. "My royal sire fears your father more than he does our cousin Robert. He wants you close, so Lord Tywin cannot harm him. I dare not take crutch away from him at such an hour."
Jaime's anger had risen up in his throat. "I am not a crutch. I am a knight of the Kingsguard."
"Then guard the king," Ser Jon Darry snapped at him. "When you donned that cloak, you promised to obey."
Rhaegar had put his hand on Jaime's shoulder. "When this battle is done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago, but.....well, it does no good to speak of roads not take. We shall talk when I return."
Those were the last words Rhaegar Targaryen ever spoke to him. Outside the gates an army had assembled, whilst another descended on the Trident. So the Prince of Dragonstone mounted up and donned his tall black helm, and rode forth to his doom.
You know what? Let’s talk about Jaime’s weirwood dream. Let’s do this. I’ve heard that people have argued about this but it’s obvious what this dream is getting at.
TL;DR: What happened in it?
Cersei abandoned him to his fate
Tywin abandoned him, too
he confronted his past in the form of Oswell Whent, Jon Darry, Lewyn Martell, Gerold Hightower, Arthur Dayne, and Rhaegar Targaryen
Brienne stood with him
both were naked, symbolizing vulnerability
Brienne is there for him when he needs it, not Cersei, so he goes back for Brienne. She helps him confront his past, solidifying that she’s his future, not his sister.
All passages are quoted from Jaime VI, A Storm of Swords, pages 609 to 612.
Naked and alone he stood, surrounded by enemies, with stone walls all around him pressing close. The Rock, he knew. He could feel the immense weight of it above his head. He was home. He was home and whole.
He held his right hand up and flexed his fingers to feel the strength in them. It felt as good as sex. As good as swordplay. Four fingers and a thumb. He had dreamed that he was maimed, but it wasn’t so. Relief made him dizzy. My hand, my good hand. Nothing could hurt him so long as he was whole.
I just want to remind you all that Brienne and Jaime’s sword fight in his third chapter was an analog for sex. :) And he just revealed that he finds swordplay as good as sex. :) Jaime and Brienne had sword sex. :) It’s literally canon. :)
Also of note: “Nothing could hurt him so long as he was whole.” Jaime places so much of his worth on his hand, to the point that he’s now thinking of it as his savior.
Around him stood a dozen tall dark figures in cowled robes that hid their faces. In their hands were spears. “Who are you?” he demanded of them. “What business do you have in Casterly Rock?”
They gave no answer, only prodding him with the points of their spears. He had no choice but to descend. Down a twisting passageway he went, narrow steps carved from the living rock, down and down. I must go up, he told himself. Up, not down. Why am I going down? Below the earth his doom awaited, he knew with the certainty of dream; something dark and terrible lurked there, something that wanted. Jaime tried to halt, but their spears prodded him on. If only I had my sword, nothing could harm me.
Repetition of the idea that wielding a sword means he can’t be hurt. Jaime believes that his sword hand is the “best part” of himself because that’s what everyone else placed priority on.
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 nothing. 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.
Cersei abandons Jaime; she doesn’t stay to protect him when he needs it the most. She asserts that they came into the world together and are meant to die together, yet Jaime’s dream is telling him that, when it comes down to it, Cersei will choose her own life over dying with Jaime.
“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. As he raised the sword a finger of pale flame flickered at the point and crept up along the edge, stopping a hand’s breath from the hilt. The fire took on the color of steel itself so it burned with a silvery-blue light, and the gloom pulled back. Crouching, listening, Jaime moved in a circle, ready for anything that might come out of the darkness. The water flowed into his boots, ankle deep and bitterly cold. Beware the water, he told himself. There may be creatures living in it, hidden in the deeps...
More repetition of invincibility as long as he has a sword. The sword catching fire can be argued as foreshadowing for him (or Brienne) wielding Lightbringer and being Azor Ahai, but the important part here is that “the gloom pulled back.”
From behind came a great splash. Jaime whirled toward the sound...but the faint light revealed only Brienne of Tarth, her hands bound in heavy chains. “I swore to keep you safe,” the wench said stubbornly. “I swore an oath.” Naked, she raised her hands to Jaime. “Ser. Please. If you would be so good.”
The steel parted like silk. “A sword,” Brienne begged, and there it was, scabbard, belt, and all. She buckled it around her thick waist. The light was so dim that Jaime could scarcely see her, though they stood a scant few feet apart. In this light she could almost be a beauty, he thought. In this light she could almost be a knight. Brienne’s sword took flame as well, burning silvery blue. The darkness retreated more.
“The flames will burn so long as you live,” he heard Cersei call. “When they die, so must you.”
Brienne’s sword is now afire as well, fending off the darkness with Jaime’s. She’s with him while Cersei’s being ominous and abandoning Jaime. Him thinking of Brienne as both a beauty and a knight is acknowledging both parts of her character: the traditionally feminine part of her and the warrior part of her.
“Sister!” he shouted. “Stay with me! Stay!” There was no reply but the soft sound of retreating footsteps.
Brienne moved her longsword back and forth, watching the silvery flames shift and shimmer. Beneath her feet, a reflection of the burning blade shown on the surface of the flat black water. She was as tall and strong as he remembered, yet it seemed to Jaime that she had more of a woman’s shape now.
“Do they keep a bear down here?” Brienne was moving, slow and wary, sword to hand; step, turn, and listen. Each step made a little splash. “A cave lion? Direwolves? Some bear? Tell me, Jaime. What lives here? What lives in the darkness?”
“Doom.” No bear, he knew. No lion. “Only doom.”
It’s worth noting that the animals suggested by dream Brienne are the Lannisters’ animal, the Starks’ animal, and the bear that irl Brienne fights in Harrenhal. It’s also interesting that Jaime notices that Brienne is womanly; he’s subconsciously recognizing that she’s a woman, in the same sense that Cersei’s a woman.
In the cool silvery-blue light of the swords, the big wench looked pale and fierce. “I mislike this place.”
“I’m not fond of it myself.” Their blades made a little island of light, but all around them stretched a sea of darkness, unending. “My feet are wet.”
“We could go back the way they brought us. If you climbed on my shoulders you’d have no trouble reaching that tunnel mouth.”
Then I could follow Cersei. He could feel himself growing hard at the thought, and turned away so Brienne would not see.
I find it interesting that Jaime’s instinct is to turn away from Brienne: is he ashamed? If so, that could mean a couple things.
Jaime subconsciously knows that he’s fallen for Brienne and is therefore ashamed that he’s aroused by thoughts of his sister.
He knows it’s wrong and subconsciously believes that Brienne’s too pure to see something so vile.
Whatever the reason, it serves to say that Jaime isn’t happy over this development; it’s not the right time nor the right place.
“Listen.” She put a hand on his shoulder, and he trembled at the sudden touch. She’s warm. “Something comes.” Brienne lifted her sword to point off to his left. “There.”
He peered through the gloom until he saw it too. Something was moving through the darkness, he could not quite make it out...
“A man on a horse. No, two. Two riders, side by side.”
“Down here, beneath the Rock?” It made no sense. Yet there came two riders on pale horses, men and mounts both armored. The destriers emerged from the blackness at a slow walk. They make no sound, Jaime realized. No splashing, no clink of mail nor clop of hoof. He remembered Eddard Stark, riding the length of Aerys’s throne room wrapped in silence. Only his eyes had spoken; a lord’s eyes, cold and grey and full of judgement.
“Is it you, Stark?” Jaime called. “Come ahead. I never feared you living, I do not fear you dead.”
Brienne touched his arm. “There are more.”
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 Bulle, Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, Sword of the Morning. And beside them, crowned in a mist of grief with his long hair streaming behind him, rode Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone and rightful heir to the Iron Throne.
This is where Jaime’s dream starts to come together: the future he thought he had has deserted him, leaving the future he does have to confront his past with him.
“You don’t frighten me,” he called, turning as they split to either side of him. He did not know which way to face. “I will fight you one by one or all together. But who is there for the wench to duel? She gets cross when you leave her out.”
“I swore an oath to keep him safe,” she said to Rhaegar’s shade. “I swore a holy oath.”
“We all swore oaths,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, so sadly.
The shades dismounted from their ghostly horses. When they drew their longswords, it made not a sound. “He was going to burn the city,” Jaime said. “To leave Robert naught but ashes.”
“He was your king,” said Darry.
“You swore to keep him safe,” said Whent.
“And the children, them as well,” said Prince Lewyn.
Prince Rhaegar burned with a cold light, now white, now red, now dark. “I left my wife and children in your hands.”
“I never thought he’d hurt them.” Jaime’s sword was burning less brightly now. “I was with the king...”
“Killing the king,” said Ser Arthur.
“Cutting his throat,” said Prince Lewyn.
“The king you had sworn to die for,” said the White Bull.
The fires that ran along the blade were guttering out, and Jaime remembered what Cersei had said. No. Terror closed a hand about his throat. Then his sword went dark, and only Brienne’s burned, as the ghosts came rushing in.
“No,” he said, “no, no, no. Nooooooooo!”
Cersei deserts Jaime, who he’s been trying to get back to for the entire book. Who stands with him? Brienne, who is his future. Who do they stand against? People from Jaime’s past that tell him how he failed. He failed to keep Elia, Rhaenys, and Aegon alive; he failed to protect Aerys; he broke his vows.
Brienne stands with him against the past that’s haunted him for the past fourteen+ years. Not Cersei. Brienne. She’s his future, GRRM really can’t make it any more obvious than he’s doing.
I learned from the White Bull and Barristan the Bold. I learned from Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, who could have slain all five of you with his left hand while he was taking a piss with the right. I learned from Prince Lewyn of Dorne and Ser Oswell Whent and Ser Jonothor Darry, good men every one.
The day had been windy when he said farewell to Rhaegar, in the yard of the Red Keep.
The prince had donned his night-black armor, with the three-headed dragon picked out in rubies on his breastplate.
“Your Grace,” Jaime had pleaded, “let Darry stay to guard the king this once, or Ser Barristan. Their cloaks are as white as mine.”
Prince Rhaegar shook his head.
"My royal sire fears your father more than he does our cousin Robert. He wants you close, so Lord Tywin cannot harm him. I dare not take that crutch away from him at such an hour.“
Jaime’s anger had risen up in his throat. "I am not a crutch. I am a knight of the Kingsguard.”
"Then guard the king,“ Ser Jon Darry snapped at him. "When you donned that cloak, you promised to obey.”
Rhaegar had put his hand on Jaime’s shoulder. “When this battle’s done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago, but … well, it does no good to speak of roads not taken. We shall talk when I return.”
Those were the last words Rhaegar Targaryen ever spoke to him.
Outside the gates an army had assembled, whilst another descended on the Trident.
So the Prince of Dragonstone mounted up and donned his tall black helm, and rode forth to his doom.
