Hi! Hope you are doing well. How do you think, will Bran become unemotional in the books too or is that a show-only thing? Do you have any predictions for his story in the books and/or the show?
The problem with the show is that it generally handles character development with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, either exaggerating it for extra shock value, or oversimplifying and stripping it of its complexity and nuances.
In particular, it tends to use “ruthless and emotionless” as the default to signify “this character who used to be sheltered and naive has gone through a lot of shit and has now toughened up and accepted his/her heroic responsibilities”. This is evident with Arya and Sansa, but also with other characters like Dany, who started the series as “too” innocent and naive or in a position of “feminine” powerlessness and “softness”, which needed to be ‘’’’’’beaten out of them’’’’’. On the other hand you have characters like show!Jon who seem to embody a more masculine and therefore inherently admirable paradigm of compassion and kindness, who no matter how many times they fall are never forced to lose their integrity or reevaluate their moral compass (despite having gone through equally psychologically devastating shit—in Jon’s case, he was literally murdered and then brought back to life, none of which seems to have left visible or permanent consequences on his personality).
Back to Bran, I think he belongs to the first tier. The problem with his depiction is not the “what”, but the “how”. I’m fairly certain Bran’s training montage with Bloodraven AND his enormous powers will have consequences on his personality in the books too. For one thing, GRRM isn’t the type of writer who glosses over the cons of having too much power, and also, he has already abundantly set up those consequences with Bran breaking the unwritten laws of warging. First and foremost, his warging Hodor—as per Haggon’s rules in Varamyr’s pov, warging another human is a big no no. It’s unclear what happens if you do, but one must assume nothing good for your soul. Bran is also spending more and more time inside Summer, to the point that he’s starting to lose sense of where he ends and Summer begins. This is another thing that can easily escalate into losing one’s humanity (whatever you mean by that: your compassion? Your identity? Your rational reasoning? Your ability to love? Your boundaries? Your limits? All of the above? etc.). And finally, he has feasted on human meat, both in his wolf and human form (ADWD: No flesh had ever tasted half as good, he thinks while warging Summer and "devouring the choices bits” of a few corpses of men of the Night’s Watch that Coldhands killed and left behind. Then he suddenly comes back in his human body to discover that Meera and the others are having some *pig meat* for dinner that Coldhands supposedly found somewhere. The entire passage is pretty disturbing, and implies that Bran (and Jojen) realize that it’s no pig meat Coldhands brought to them, but a human body, one of those that Bran-as-Summer had fed on minutes earlier).
And he hasn’t started delving into the full brunt of his greensight powers YET. Once he does, I’m fairly certain he will come back as… different—certainly different compared to how his siblings remember him. I don’t think the show is wrong in that respect. But I also have no doubt the book depiction of his *otherness* will be infinitely more nuanced than him acting like a blank-stared robot with an obsolete social skills database. Since the show is also known for merging storylines, I wonder if some of Jon’s post-resurrection characterization was conflated with Bran’s, too. As I mentioned earlier, show!Jon’s compassion and kindness is treated as untouchable and never challenged by the narrative because he is one of those characters who are mouthpieces for the show’s moral thesis, so he *can’t* “lose himself” the way other characters do. So it’s possible that some of his “undead” narrative arc was transferred onto other characters, like Bran (and Arya, and maybe even Sansa).
I kinda like the idea that Robb, much like Sansa but maybe less extreme, had this internal coping mechanism of drawing on stories and legends to cope with everything - and then probably failing to reconcile these romantic stories with what is really happening. Now I really wish GRRM would've shown us Robb's POV, then maybe Sansa wouldn't be judged so harshely for doing the same (though Jaime isn't really judged so much for doing that either).
I think all the Starklings have this tendency to rely on stories and fantasy “scripts”, whether they’re romantic or adventurous, roles learned from childhood that they’ve grown to idealize and use as a pattern to model their identity on and to cope with reality in the most extreme cases. You see it with Robb’s “wearing the lord’s face”, with Jon’s romanticizing the shit out of the Night’s Watch before he sees its reality, with Arya’s burning anger when she is faced with the corruption, cruelty and selfishness of the ruling class, with Bran’s love for climbing and Old Nan’s tales of brave knights and magical creatures, with Sansa’s… everything. They’re all dreamers. It’s clearly a sign of their young age, but I think it’s also a fundamental part of their identity and upbringing. The world beats them down over and over again, and as each of them is forced to become the script they used to romanticize, they lose part of their naivete, they get tougher, but never give up on their idealism. They never stop seeing how the world should be. (and yes, it’s a shame we will never be able to know Robb as we know the other kids. Being the oldest sibling, and one who got along fairly well with pretty much everyone in the Stark household, his pov might have offered great insight not only on him but on his brothers and sisters too)
I'm not saying that Sansa should have got a huge sword and then mightily sung it at Littlefinger's head But, she could've easily got a knife and cut his throat. Lord knows Arya isn't some big woman who could do it either, yet she was still reduced to an executer, and it rubs me the wrong way that people are quick to jump into Sansa's defense. Arya is also a young girl, and a nobleborn lady, same as Sansa, why is she so different? Why where she and Bran only used at the end for that awful scene?
she could’ve easily got a knife and cut his throat
why, so y’all could complain she was given Arya’s traits and skills?
It takes some skill to kill someone with a knife, you know. No one wants to watch Littlefinger stagger around gasping and bleeding like a pig for the entire hall while Sansa, completely unfamiliar with weapons, tries to figure where to stab him to make him finally die. A botched execution is a horrible sight to behold, horrible for the executioner and even more horrible for the executed, remember Theon and ser Rodrik?
On the other hand, who had a 2 years internship in the most lethal and efficient guild of assassins in the world, and is actually capable of gutting someone without an extra dose of suspension of disbelief on the audience’s part?
Arya is also a young girl, and a nobleborn lady, same as Sansa, why is she so different?
This is an intentionally naive question and you know it. Let’s not pretend Arya and Sansa spent their formative years doing the same things. While some of their abilities coincide (being observant, concealing one’s emotions, performing different identities, assessing other people’s motivations, etc.) they were developed in radically different environments, and used for different purposes, and Arya learned how to handle weapons properly whereas Sansa didn’t. She has the skills to take a man’s life quickly and cleanly. No she didn’t train to specifically execute people, and yes her skills make her potentially one of the most powerful and important players in the story’s climax, but in this specific situation? She is currently the only Stark in Winterfell who can carry out the execution, and instead of having Sansa summon, say, lord Royce or Glover or someone with enough upper body strength to swing a greatsword on Petyr’s neck, she kept it in the family and did it herself, because this is house Stark sentencing LF and house Stark executing him. Not just Sansa. House Stark.
To support this wank, you must deliberately think of the figure of the executioner as it is in the south—someone like Ilyn Payne, a hired headsman who sits in a corner until he’s summoned, kills, cleans his blade and leaves. But the executioner role as embodied by Arya in this storyline is one of the three arms of the justice system. Not a lower rank peon, but someone who actively participated in the sentence, took part to the plan that led to this public exposure, decided on her own if the sentence was just enough to be carried out, and wasn’t sitting at Sansa’s right since the beginning only because having LF believe she was the one to be sentenced until it was too late was part of the masquerade she and Sansa (and presumably Bran too) concocted together.
Why where she and Bran only used at the end for that awful scene?
This is a separate issue. And I wonder why you would want to fix it by making Sansa be the one who carries the execution out, sidelining her siblings even more.
None of the scheming and deliberations that preceded the sentence were actually shown. They were implied (hence its being a joint effort), but not shown. This storyline was horribly written, because it was built around the final plot twist rather than focusing on the characters and their development and interactions, which resulted in sidelining Arya and reducing her to a sort of villain in Sansa’s pov precisely for the sake of keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat, which was trash. But this is a writing issue, and you can’t conflate it with an alleged character flaw like Sansa “not” acting like a True Member of house Stark. Who are we criticizing here, Sansa or the writers?
We are “quick to jump to Sansa’s defense” because this is the first time a Stark is put in the position to be DEFENDED from the accusation of executing people “the wrong way”.
Curiously, no one questioned Robb’s Starkness when he ordered to hang some men (as it was his prerogative to), and certainly none of you reflected on the fact that Bran, had he been lord of Winterfell, would use an executioner too, unless you expect him to execute people personally by, I don’t know, warging into them and frying their brains from the inside? Which wouldn’t be Orthodox McStark Execution™ anyway? Apparently only Evil Sansa Stans can spread misogynist and ableist bullshit, but this is exactly what this wank is doing by taking “the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword” literally, as if it were the be all end all of the Stark McMasculine way, the touchstone to prove whether you’re physically violent enough to rule Winterfell.
It’s funny how everyone focuses on the swinging the sword part which is OBVIOUSLY a fancy metaphor and not to be taken at face value as some sort of unbreakable Northern Law (not all executions are beheadings, as once again proved by Robb above), and forget about the following and more important lesson that Ned gives to Bran, which is:
If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.“One day, Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.
This is not a lesson in ~~doing it all by yourself~~, for fuck’s sake. That would be ridiculous. Ruling (especially ruling well) involves the help and collaboration of different people, even in the North.
This is a lesson in RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY.
Ned is telling Bran that taking a person’s life is not a joke, not a privilege, not a business, not a spectacle, it’s a serious burden that needs to be considered very carefully. And didn’t Sansa consider carefully? Didn’t she?
Justice fell to Sansa, and Sansa did not look away. She. Never. Did. She didn’t with Ramsay and more than anything else she didn’t with Littlefinger; looked him in the eye the whole time, pronounced his death sentence and watched him die and she did NOT HIDE BEHIND PAID EXECUTIONERS, and Arya and Bran did precisely the SAME THING. All of them judged Littlefinger guilty and watched him die.
While I’m at it, let me clarify one more point that is only tangential to this wank: Sansa did not take pleasure in this execution:
You must not forget what death is, and Sansa is in no danger of forgetting, trust me.
In an ideal world, neither Arya nor Sansa should take upon themselves the traumatic task of materially executing a person.
But this isn’t an ideal world, and it’s not what this wank is about, is it? It’s about making Sansa look inept and “undeserving” and incompatible with Northern values to justify the outrage at her being in a position of power in the first place. It’s not really about Arya being reduced to an executioner (Arya’s characterization in the show is a separate issue, that wouldn’t magically improve if Sansa had executed LF with her own hands), it’s Sansa being the one who pronounced the sentence.
Surely Lady's death couldn't necessarily mean that Alayne will never be Sansa again or Sansa will never return to Winterfell or stay in the North or have a position of power/decision making in North that she'll die before the books end or that she's no longer a "Stark" or even, that there's no possibility of her getting a happy ending?
I agree, it doesn’t necessarily mean any of these things. First, I don’t think a character’s death foreshadowing would take that long to pay off.
Second, not to get into show vs books discourse, but other direwolves might die before the books end. I don’t think this means their owners will also be doomed.
Third, Robb didn’t lose Grey Wind until the Red Wedding; they died in the same circumstances, virtually together (though Grey Wind was outside the hall). Had Grey Wind died earlier, then I’d say yes, maybe the death of your bonded direwolf is a bad omen or death foreshadowing for you as well. But I can’t see a real pattern here.
Four, Lady’s bones were sent to Winterfell; I think this will eventually be significant for Sansa’s arc.
Five, GRRM said that the girls are “adrift” (can’t find the exact quote) because they lost their wolves. Of course, Arya has only been physically separated from Nymeria but hasn’t really lost her, while Sansa’s connection to Lady was forever severed (whether or not some part of Lady still lives in Sansa, it’s hard to say).
I think what GRRM means is that the direwolf connection is important for a Stark kid to navigate the world; it becomes a compass, an anchor to their identity and a source of strength and clarity. Note that Robb in ASOS starts distancing himself from Grey Wind; he indulges those among his allies who fear him and keeps him often in the kennels, doesn’t pay attention to the wolf’s instincts and denies his bond with him (“I am not a wolf, no matter what they call me”), which troubles Catelyn a lot, and in hindsight with good reason. In other words, a Starkling who loses or rejects the connection with his or her direwolf is a Starkling who is more likely to make mistakes, take unwise decisions, be confused or manipulated, forget who he or she is, be lured away from “the pack”.
This is probably what Lady’s death meant for Sansa; looking back at her arc, it’s clear that she was lured away from her pack, and then made captive. She’s the one who has been hostage of the enemies for the longest, and she’s the most susceptible to their influence; she doesn’t have the wolf dreams to remind her that there’s a world outside of the walls she’s confined in, that she’s still part of a pack; she can’t taste blood in her mouth or hunt and run in the wilderness, she only has her own intuition to rely on; in short she has to live through all her traumatic experiences as inexorably human and alone. But none of this is definitive and, if anything, it only makes her resilience more impressive, as we see that despite losing her wolf and being immersed in “Alayne” 24/7, Sansa hasn’t lost herself yet, and I’m sure she’s on an upward spiral in twow in terms of reclaiming her identity.
It’s possible, even likely that Sansa will always be a little different than her siblings, maybe superficially a little less “Northern”, and her path back to home and to her “Starkness” won’t be magical but primarily political. But I don’t see why this should be a flaw, let alone a bad omen or something that makes her inadequate to have her own place in the North. Again, Winterfell is where a literal piece of her soul is buried.
In regards to Lady and why she had to die: I can only imagine how difficult it would be for Sansa to 'blend in' at King's Landing if she had a Direwolf (A visual reminder of who she really is). Lady would almost constantly draw the ire of Joffrey and Cersei. Direwolf or not, Joffrey wouldn't have left Lady peacefully in the Kennel. She'd have been used as a gruesome way to punish Sansa. Now, her bones are in Winterfell, making the place even more significant to Sansa. Unlike Say, Bran.
Not sure what you mean re: Bran (Winterfell is super significant to him, at least in his book narrative), but good point about Lady in King’s Landing. TBH the primary reason for Lady’s death and Nymeria’s getting lost in the Riverlands is doylist. The direwolves would have never worked in the context of King’s Landing, with all the shit that was supposed to happen to Arya and Sansa. They are the girls’ protectors, and it was crucial to both girls’ narratives that they’d find themselves with no protection, isolated and vulnerable, alone among enemies or complete strangers.
And, like you said, neither Joffrey nor Cersei would tolerate the direwolves for much longer. I suppose it would be, among many things, a matter of family pride and propaganda: it’s just unacceptable that the Starks’ token beasts are thriving and roaming undisturbed around the capital, while the great lions of the West are all but extinct. What kind of image would it convey? That the Starks are so metal that these huge predators bow down before two little girls, while the Lannisters have nothing? Imagine the gossip at court and among the smallfolk. Joffrey and Cersei would be seething.
Hypothetically speaking, how do you think Brandon and/or Rickard Stark would've handled Lyanna's death and the reality of bb!Jon? If one (or both) of them were alive, would it still be Ned going to ToJ to find his sister and nephew and how would they react to Mr Quiet-and-Responsible going "Yup, this is Definitely My Baby, that I Personally Have Sired."
I think Ned’s choices re: Jon are deeply personal ones, that characterize him so deeply and extend well beyond his loyalty as a brother, or even his Stark values. It’s clear that Ned and Lyanna loved each other, and were close enough for Lyanna to confide her concerns about Robert to him. Was Ned Lyanna’s favourite brother? I don’t know, and I don’t think he needs to, to explain his choices.
One important, vital trait of Ned is his intense and (in context) peculiar compassion for children, that overrides political reasoning and sometimes common sense too. But I don’t necessarily see this as a Stark trait by default, or something that Brandon and Rickard also had in spades. The “wolf blood” doesn’t always manifest in championing the weak and the innocent, like Lyanna and Arya do: it can be violent and unforgiving, in the spirit of the old kings of winter (consider Brandon beating the shit out of a barely 15, scrawny Littlefinger, for example. Or Rickard betrothing Lyanna against her will—not that it wasn’t a common practice in Westeros, but that’s another issue).
Let’s also consider Ned hiding Jon from what was at the time his best friend, for more context. For all Ned loved Robert as a brother and held him in great esteem, it was painfully clear to him, even back then, that Lyanna was right in believing half-Targaryen Jon had to be protected from him. Now, sure, Robert had political reasons to want Rhaegar’s natural son dead. But baby Jon is also the living proof and constant reminder of what happened to Lyanna, of what Rhaegar did to her—and that might be hard to stomach for someone who loved Lyanna fiercely but doesn’t necessarily share Ned’s unflinching compassion for children, nor wasn’t there in the ToJ to see with his own eyes how desperate Lyanna was to protect her son. So I wonder, in a hypothetical scenario where Ned still goes to the ToJ but Brandon and Rickard are still alive**, would Lyanna ask Ned to hide Jon from their brother and father too? Would Ned do it anyway, as part of his decision not to implicate anyone else in his lie, but also because deep inside he doesn’t trust their reaction?
and how would they react to Mr Quiet-and-Responsible going “Yup, this is Definitely My Baby, that I Personally Have Sired.”
well… if they knew Ned well, they’d certainly have suspicions. One thing is to lie to Catelyn who is basically a stranger, another thing entirely is to lie to your own family who knows you since you were born, and it would be interesting to watch Ned deal with that, and whether eventually Brandon and Rickard would guess the truth, and what would they do at that point. (also, remember that if Rickard is still alive, he, and not Ned, is the lord of Winterfell, so it’s possible that he’d veto Ned’s decision to raise Jon in Winterfell in the first place, and that changes Jon’s story completely).
** not considering how this would alter the course of Robert’s rebellion, since their executions and Aerys’s subsequent demanding Ned and Robert’s heads were what started the rebellion in the first place.
I like the theory that he was involved with Lyanna’s plans to meet up with Rhaegar and that, given how it all ended, felt so guilty that he decided to join the NW as a form of atonement, or because he knew he and Ned needed to part ways or they’d end up blaming each other. In any case, he knows Ned and he probably knew Lyanna well enough to recognize her in Jon. I think he (together with Howland Reed in the books) will be crucial in disclosing r+l=j.
