Hi, I love your work. I'm struggling to word this question properly, but do you think that when Tywin committed atrocities like what happened at Castamere, he saw that as a way to win approval from Joanna?
I don’t think Tywin committed atrocities as a way to win Joanna’s approval exactly, but I think Joanna approved. I think Tywin committed atrocities because that’s who he is, because that’s what he felt needed to be done. Joanna liking it is more of a bonus, less of a motivator imo.
Hey! It’s me again, your GOT secret Santa. Could you please elaborate on what aspects of the Tywin/Joanna ship you like? They’re not a ship I’ve ever written for, so I’d appreciate it if you could tell me why you like them so much. Anyways, I hope things are going great with you and that you’re getting ready for the holidays 😊
I love Tywin and Joanna because this ship is ASOIAF in its simplest form, stripped down to the bare bones, the meaning made plain.
In my opinion, ASOIAF is different from a lot of other fantasy I’ve read because it doesn’t focus on a magic system, and it doesn’t focus on a great war (we still barely even know anything about the Others).
ASOIAF is different; ASOIAF is about what makes us human. (Even GRRM’s term for the enemy, Other, comes back to this central theme of our humanity, because it suggests that humanity is fighting against something other than human beings, something un-human, something inhumane.)
Tywin is one of the most un-human human beings in the entire series. He’s also the villain that we get the most information about, and he still looms large over the text even in death. (Even in the brief glimpses of TWOW that he’s shared, GRRM keeps bringing him up.) GRRM has shown us all of these monstrous things about Tywin, but in doing so, he’s made the tiny glowing embers of Tywin’s humanity burn like the beacons of Minas Tirith.
It’s our joy and our love and our laughter that make us human. It’s our sorrow and our pain. But more than all that, our humanity is the connections we make to other people. It’s shared joy, shared love, shared laughter. Shared sorrow. Our compassion. To build a society is to connect people, to share with others. Tywin and Joanna is a society of two.
(That weirwood net of shared consciousness fascinates me - it’s an idea GRRM has written about before in his other works, and he keeps coming back to it.)
So those handful of smiles: for his wife, for the birth of his (first two) children, for his greatest accomplishments (gruesome as they are).
And the pain in this passage: “when Aerys II announced Ser Jaime's appointment from the Iron Throne, his lordship went to one knee and thanked the king for the great honor shown to his house. Then, pleading illness, Lord Tywin asked the king's leave to retire as Hand.”
And the utter and absolute pain in this one: “With her death, Grand Maester Pycelle observes, the joy went out of Tywin Lannister, yet still he persisted in his duty.”
It’s like a shot glass filled with sorrow. In AGOT through ADWD, the sorrow in those books is slow; it’s (mostly) meant to be sipped, and savored. But the way we experience Tywin’s pain, as GRRM writes it, it’s quick and it burns, and it burns out just as quickly as we move on to Tywin’s next atrocity.
So, for me at least, Tywin and Joanna are like a distilled version of ASOIAF. It’s the moments we share that make us human, and when Joanna died, Tywin’s humanity died with her.
That might not be the most helpful thing for writing a fanfic, so let me give you some other reasons:
My favorite short story is “The Last Rung on the Ladder”. I think I first read it ~20 years ago, and it still haunts me. It hurts. It’s about a brother and sister. It’s about taking things for granted, about the people we depend on, and about what happens when those people are no longer there.
“You're my big brother. I knew you'd take care of me.”
“Oh, Kitty, you don't know how close it was.” [...]
“No,” she said. “But I knew you were [...] there.”
Maybe this applies to Jaime and Cersei too, and Tywin/Joanna are just a different iteration, but it’s what keeps me coming back: what happens when the people you depend on ... the people you think are always going to be there ... what happens when those people -- those lifelines -- are gone?
Despite Tywin being (imo) a very social person, I think Tywin had very few real friends. In addition to being his wife, Joanna was Tywin’s friend, someone he could talk to, and confide in, and trust. Someone who made it all real. Someone who made it worth it.
And I think Tywin thought Joanna would always be there, the same way that everyone in AGOT-ASOS thought Tywin would always be there, “eternal as Casterly Rock”. I think Tywin always imagined that Joanna would outlive him, like it never occurred to him that she would die first, but instead she died when he was in his early 30s. That’s life-shattering to have the rug pulled out from under you like that.
Similarly, I think Joanna had this idea that she and Tywin would be together, but instead he was “often away”. We’re told that they were children together at Casterly Rock, but then at ~10 Tywin was sent away to be Aegon V’s cupbearer, and later he went away to war on the Stepstones, and then after her wedding Joanna had to be sent away because of Aerys, and we have Tywin sent to Lys at some point. What did it mean to her, that Tywin wasn’t there? For Joanna, I don’t necessarily think that Tywin not being there was entirely a bad thing, at least eventually, although I imagine it was painful at first. I think these forced separations from Tywin allowed her to grow, allowed her to eventually rule the Westerlands in Tywin’s name while he was away.
The thing that I always think of when I think about Tywin and Joanna is this poem, “Mrs. Beast” by Carol Ann Duffy, and I always think of this line, “Bring me the Beast for the night. Bring me the wine-cellar key. Let the less-loving one be me.” The more loving one is Tywin in my mind, no doubt about it. (I played with this poem for Tywin/Joanna here.)
There’s this scene I imagine in my own fanfiction, about a year before Joanna’s death, where there’s these silent tears, this despair on Joanna’s face, and Jaime asks his mother why she’s crying, and she says, “Because your lord father is home.”
I think Joanna always loved Tywin, to the very end, but Tywin is a difficult person to live with. I think his homecomings eventually became bittersweet. On the one hand, the love of her life has come home to her across hundreds of miles through snow, through bandits etc, but on the other hand, whenever Tywin comes home, Joanna has to take a back seat. Tywin sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. Everyone has to take a back seat to Tywin: “It has been hard for Kevan, living all his life in Tywin's shadow. It was hard for all my brothers. That shadow Tywin cast was long and black, and each of them had to struggle to find a little sun.“
This is all kind of leading into another reason I like Tywin/Joanna in that it’s an exploration of gender roles, and the ... the limits that women are under in Westeros, even under the very best circumstances. With Joanna, she’s white, she’s filthy rich, she’s a top-tier noblewoman, she’s beautiful. Contrasted against Rhaella, Joanna has a husband who loves her so much that we get lines about Joanna ruling Tywin and how this man who never ever smiles smiled for her. But there are still limits. We’re told that Tywin was ruled at home by his lady wife. Joanna’s influence is restricted, it’s dependent on what power Tywin gives her. While Rhaella physically was confined to Maegor’s Holdfast, Joanna’s influence is confined to the domestic sphere.
Westeros is a broken place, one that’s always been broken into little pieces (Seven Kingdoms, not one). Westeros breaks people. Like Mrs. Beast in the poem, I think Joanna was able to forget, for a time, about the world’s abused women. She was able to forget that Westeros breaks people, and that it especially breaks women. I think Joanna thought she was the exception, that she would have more, achieve more, do more ... and eventually I think she hits a wall, realizing that Tywin is her limiting factor, even as he lifts her up and grants her the power to do.
It’s these limits that fascinate me about House Lannister as a whole. Like, the Lannisters are introduced to us as infinite. (Thinkin about this a lot lately.) Bottomless wealth, eternal life, unfathomable beauty, all I do is win win win. But over the course of the books GRRM knocks all of this down and shows us that there is a finite quality to House Lannister. Tywin dies. With Jaime, I think GRRM is exploring the limits of redemption imo. Cersei is going to hit a wall. It’s that the culture of House Lannister, their fundamental values -- they don’t work.
Tywin is the poster boy of Westeros - he is the feudal system, he’s the face of its misogyny, he’s the walking embodiment of classism and income inequality and privilege and everything horrible about Westeros.
I don’t think it was ever possible for Joanna to be dealt a winning hand with Tywin, The system is rigged against women, and a woman would have to break the system entirely to win. But Tywin is the system, so it just doesn’t work.
I think of Joanna as a tragedy.
um.
idunno if any of that is helpful, but i sure wrote a lot. Also, I really like power couples and courtly intrigue and stuff like the Borgias. Hopefully that helps a little bit, I’m so sorry.
If you want to read other stuff I wrote, I collect my Tywin x Joanna writings under this tag:
#tjmeta
And these tags might also be useful: #joanna meta and #tywin meta
I’m so sorry, please know that I will absolutely love whatever you write! There are so few fics of Tywin/Joanna that I am excited for anything.
(Also I hate Aerys and he can go fuck himself. I think that Tywin tried to see Joanna as a person, as much as a man in such a deeply misogynistic society can see a woman as a person. I think Aerys saw Joanna as a battlefield. Also I really hate the theory that Tyrion is Aerys’s. Really hate that.)
Ok, im sorry, ILU SANTA! I HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING BEING DONE WITH YOUR FINALS AND HAVING A BREAK!!!
I recently saw an answer to an ask where you said the Lannister are small people, probably ever since The Hedge Knight. Do you think Joanna was small as well?
First, I really like this question, it’s a good one! Thank you for asking it!
Second, I assume you are referring to this post? (My friends, it really helps me if you supply the post number please!)
“you said the Lannister[s] are small people” Let’s elaborate on that before we proceed.
While the Lannisters are, on average, physically tall, I was using “small” metaphorically to indicate small moral stature and refer to character flaws, to indicate a person who is, on average, mean, or petty, or malicious, or lacking integrity, or contemptible, or bigoted, or pathetic, etc.
(Note that I am saying “on average” to indicate a general tendency which allows for exceptions.)
Tywin is a prime example of a man who is of small moral stature. See also. Basically the polar opposite of Brienne, who is a person of great moral stature.
Also, I think something is lost in the paraphrasing, because I think this tendency toward “smallness” predates THK. I said previously, “Even in the days of Duncan the Tall […], House Lannister would not stand for a cause that was right and just, and they have only grown smaller since.) It’s THK which gives us a very concrete historical example that we actually “see” happening in real (story) time, with the Lannisters refusing Dunk’s call, but if the histories can be believed, examples abound.
Now, do I think Joanna exhibited this tendency toward “smallness”? Sure, at least initially.
That’s just how I personally imagine her, given that GRRM isn’t particularly interested in exploring pre-series female characters, especially ones who are not Targaryens.
We don’t know a lot about Joanna, but we know something about the people around her, like Tywin and Genna and Kevan, and these people are … not … shining beacons of light in the series.
Personally, I think Tywin’s love is conditional, and if you oppose him or if you disappoint him or if you’re not largely on board with his program of dehumanization and Lannister Superiority, he finds that very, very frustrating. If Tywin is frustrated, he tells you to fuck off, to get away from him, he disowns you, he won’t speak to you (ask Jaime (who frustrated Tywin’s ambitions), ask Tyrion (there is not enough parenthetical space here to tell you all the ways Tyrion is at odds with Tywin), ask Genna (who, in her own words, disappointed Tywin)).
If you’re not on board, you’re not compatible with Tywin, in Tywin’s mind. That is who Tywin is in the books.
“Ser Kevan was his brother’s vanguard in council, Tyrion knew from long experience; he never had a thought that Lord Tywin had not had first. It has all been settled beforehand, he concluded, and this discussion’s no more than show.”
(From my understanding, the people in the vanguard are the people at the front of your army, leading the way. In more modern terms, Kevan is like Tywin’s tank, advancing Tywin’s ideas in the political arena and drawing enemy fire without taking significant damage, which allows Tywin to follow up with a kill shot from relative cover. In short, this is a concerted effort.)
Like … Tywin isn’t just a person, he’s also an ideology. And Kevan is on fucking board, ride or die, a true believer, loyal to the end, and this is what makes Tywin trust him and rely on him.
(This is why I’m not a fan of those “oh, poor Kevan” interpretations… but that’s just me.)
Genna was on fucking board too, she still resents Ellyn Tarbeck “that scheming bitch” <—ACTUAL. CANON. LINE. SHE’S STILL HOSTILE ALMOST 40 YEARS LATER. GENNA IS ON FUCKING BOARD. WWTD. (WHAT WOULD TYWIN DO.) TREBUCHET THE BABIES.
One of the few things we know about Joanna is that Tywin allowed himself to be vulnerable around her. The walls came down for her, the drawbridge lowered. For her, and only her. “Only Lady Joanna truly knows the man beneath the armor.” It’s only for Joanna that Tywin allowed his soft underbelly to be exposed. That implies a level of trust that we never see again in Tywin.
Also consider marriage vows in Westeros: “One flesh, one heart, one soul.”
I live in a largely secular place, so it’s easy to brush something like this off, yeah yeah yeah w/e. But to a Westerosi, these mean something - you’re combining two people into one. (These wedding vows are taken directly from Milton’s Paradise Lost, about Adam and Eve.)
So when Tywin, a literalist, marries Joanna, he is allowing her to become a part of himself.
That’s why I have a really, really, really hard time believing that Tywin fell in love with someone who was not “on board”. At least, initially.
I think that – initially – Joanna was a very bigoted person - someone who was classist, racist, misogynistic, etc.
But the reason that Joanna – or at least the Joanna that I imagine, cuz idk wtf george thinks, if anything – the reason that Joanna captivates me in a way that Tywin never can is because I’m interested in exploring the question, can Joanna change?
Can Joanna grow?
In the series, GRRM is interested in exploring how Jaime and Tyrion change throughout the books, and he has these men court Heroism and Villainy both, and they straddle the line between them.
But GRRM really isn’t that interested in exploring that kind of thing with Cersei in the text, imo, and that always seems kind of sad to me.
So I suppose, in my own writing, I make up for that with Joanna.
Like, in my fanfiction, the first scene where Tywin and Joanna interact is basically Tywin scandalized that Joanna is seemingly not dehumanizing this person, and Joanna reassuring him that it’s not what it looks like and basically “don’t be an idiot, Tywin, of course i’m not treating This Person like a human being, this is just the most convenient thing for me”
And I want to know how she grows from that - how does she eventually come to see This Person as a friend?
And we know that Joanna and the Princess of Dorne became friends, but how did they start?
Aerys was obviously racist, and I think Tywin was racist, but eventually we get to a point where, imo, Joanna wanted to marry her son to the Princess’s daughter, Elia, so how do we get there?
And what about Tytos’s mistress, what about Lynora Hill, what about Ellyn Tarbeck? What do these people mean to Joanna, how does she see them, what does she do?
What of Toad?
GRRM has seeded this era with so many interesting people, so many people for Joanna to run up against and push back against.
So I suppose, IN MY OWN WRITING, I imagine Joanna as small, and I find that the interesting thing is to watch her grow, and also to explore the limits of her growth.
Because her relationship with Tywin is a big factor in her life. If Joanna can see the Princess of Dorne as a human being, and Tywin can’t ….
And how does that make Joanna see herself, how does that change her…
…Joanna’s growth, Joanna’s disillusionment, her own realizations …
…I’m trying to find the right words, because I haven’t written this part yet…
Tywin ruled, and Joanna willingly assisted him in bricking up her own cage. Because Tywin is the living embodiment of Westerosi patriarchy, and Joanna helped him. She was complicit. And even a love as “deep and long-abiding” as Tywin’s can’t save her.
I suppose that’s why I find Tywin/Joanna so sad.
Sadder than GRRM imagined. I don’t think this is a story GRRM could write, tbh.
You've said before you think Joanna and Tywin would have more children if she'd lived - what do you think these hypothetical kids names would be?
Well, first of all, if Joanna had lived, I don’t think Tyrion would be named Tyrion because Tywin probably named him after Tyrion the Tormenter. So if you assume Joanna lives, her third child has to have a different name, before you can name any other kids.
Let’s pull out my Lannister Baby Names Book.
A few Lannister-ish boy names:
Richard (Honestly, Tywin would name one of his sons Dick Lannister and you can’t change my mind. Joanna probably had to persuade him not to use this name for their firstborn son and heir. If Tyrion didn’t have dwarfism and Joanna lived, I vote this for Tyrion’s name. Extra points for the Lionheart connotation. This is also the second R in GRRM)
Gawin (Arthurian legend)
Gareth (Arthurian legend)
Lyle
Henry
Jasper
Tomas
Edmund
George (Hey, the Lannisters already have a Martyn)
Raymond (first R in GRRM)
Jordan
Trys / Tryston
Reginald
Laurent
Mathys
A few Lannister-ish girl names:
Leonora
Gabriella
Cynthia
Cybele
Celine
Myrielle
Tylin (I stole this from Wheel of Time)
Elayne (ditto) (Arthurian legend theme)
Jocelyn
Juliette
Joline
Jorelle
Alys (like Alice, not like Black Aly)
Althea
Ryselle (tbh this feels more like a Reyne name)
Dylin
Mylene
Madalyn
Myriam
Ella
Remei
There are other names like Lysander that have similar Lannister styling but … they … don’t … feel right to me??? Like, Lysander or Lisandre feels like something from Essos, and we know how Tywin feels about Essos.
And I would suggest something like Cyrelle, but that sounds too similar to Cersei, and the girl that died. And I would suggest Lynora, but Joanna wouldn’t name a daughter after her bastard sister.
I’ve deliberately avoided Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella as names here because I think those names are related to Cersei’s insecurity, her desire to prove her worth in Tywin’s eyes and prove she’s very Lannister, in this case with very old and typical Lannister names for her children.
There’s a boldness in Tywin and Joanna’s name choices for the twins, a forging ahead that suggests that the names they would choose don’t have to be the typical Joffrey name type.
Now, Tywin and Joanna were married for 10 years, and in that time Joanna had two pregnancies. I estimate she was about 28 when she died, so she had about 10 to 15 more years to have children. Tywin was often serving in King’s Landing away from CR during Tyrion’s childhood, so I think we can assume a similar rate of pregnancy. So I would give Joanna two or three more pregnancies, after Tyrion.
Could Joanna have had another set of twins, after Jaime and Cersei? Possible.
The Lannisters have a tendency toward twins. While possible without IVF, having two sets of twins is rare, but it’s interesting to me that GRRM tells us that Jason (Joanna’s father) fathered two more girls and two more boys, after Stafford, despite Marla being an older mother. (Marla was born around ~212 - 215.) Stafford was born in the late 240s imo, when Marla was in her mid to late 30s. Those two boys might have been her next pregnancy, and the two girls her final pregnancy. (Or something like that.)
Let’s say Joanna has another set of twins after Tyrion (let’s say two girls, Tywin can have some coin for the SA bloc), and then she has a son, and then another son.
So in this AU we have
Cersei & Jaime
Richard
Elayne & … let’s go with Elinor*
Tomas
Mathys
*There is a popular theory in the Sandor fandom that Sandor’s sister was named Elinor Clegane, and, if we work backwards, it might be interesting to have Sandor’s sister named in honor of one of Tywin’s children.
Hey, I'm that video editor that asked for your Tywin-Joanna fancast and I'm working on an edit with Regbo and Wilde now. (By the way, thank you so much for the help.) Anyways, it's going quite well but I've tried five different songs by now and still don't think any of them really fit Tywin and Joanna. Do you know any songs that might suit them? Sorry for bothering you but I really do consider you the captain of this ship: )
Hi, good to hear from you again, I’m happy to help! Please, you’re not a bother! I’m excited for this project!
I have to say that I’m not very good at picking out songs tho!
I am the walking embodiment of that popular text post, “Every song is an OTP song if you’re trying hard enough.”
For example, one of the songs I’ve been listening to recently is “In the Silence” by JP Cooper, and the lyrics don’t fit perfectly but I like it:
And though I never said it with wordsThere was love in the silenceEven now after all of these yearsYou’re the light in my darknessDarling please, listen close and you’ll hearThere’s still love in the silenceEven now…
I don’t think that Tywin is the kind of person who would constantly be saying ILU, I think Tywin is more likely to express love by actions. Giving Jaime swords, giving Cersei a crown, giving Joanna the hope diamond and a pile of dead bodies. That kind of thing. Which I think can become frustrating if you’re on the receiving end.
One of the songs that I really like right now for Tywin/Joanna is Leonard Cohen’s If I Didn’t Have Your Love
If the sun would lose its lightAnd we lived an endless nightAnd there was nothing leftThat you could feelIf the sea were sand aloneAnd the flowers made of stoneAnd no one that you hurtCould ever healWell that’s how broken I would beWhat my life would seem to meIf I didn’t have your loveTo make it real
But I don’t know if that song is going to match the images in your video? Like, what mood are you going for? What scene or scenes are you trying to show?
I have a tag for Tywin/Joanna fanmixes, if that might help?
http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/tagged/tjfanmix
Maybe one of the songs here might fit your video?
I’m sorry, I don’t know if I’m being very helpful :((((( It’s just hard for me to say without seeing the video.
If other people have song recs, maybe they could add them in the notes to this post for the anon?
I just wanted to write down some of my Jon/Dany thoughts before I go to sleep. This isn’t in tracked tags, and I’m sorry I can’t help it about search. I don’t wanna argue with people about this, ok?
(this is about the books, this is about ships I like, (this is about tywin), this is about asoiaf themes, please do not talk to me about that show)
ASOIAF, to me, is a celebration of humanity. It’s about “our great glory, and our great tragedy”. When Maester Aemon says to Jon, “We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love,” that seems to me to be one of the great themes of ASOIAF: love. What better way to celebrate humanity than love? Love is the greatest celebration of the human condition.
So much of ASOIAF is about love. As @poorquentyn pointed out earlier today, even many of “ASOIAF’s top-tier villains [typically care deeply about someone else in their lives]; Tywin loved Joanna, Ramsay feels protective of his mother, Joff wanted Robert’s attention and respect, etc.” The importance of love is in Sansa’s “If I am ever queen, I’ll make them love me,” and it’s in Ned’s approach to ruling by developing a close personal relationship with the people he rules, and it’s in Cat’s heartwrenching “Ned loves my hair” and it’s the driving force behind so many vengeance/justice narratives, and it’s in Tyrion, my poor baby, longing for love in spite of a society that tells him that no one could ever love him (because ableism).
I’m not ultra invested in either Jon or Dany individually, but I’m super invested in ASOIAF on a thematic level. So it’s important to me that Jon/Dany fall in love. In my opinion, Jon and Dany falling in love is the biggest FUCK YOU they could ever give to the Others, the best way they could ever say not today, motherfuckers to the eldritch slavers trying to destroy humanity. I can already hear some people laughing at me, but it’s like ... Jon and Dany being in love, taking their love to the Other realm beyond the curtain of light ... it’s the best way for Jon and Dany to declare defiantly, “We’re human, we’re still alive, we’re “still breathing” as show!Jon says, and whatever you do, whether we live or die, we chose this love, we chose each other, and you can’t take this away from us.”
GRRM weaves a lot of poetry into his writing, and when he wrote for BATB, he referenced Dylan Thomas:
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
Like, ok, some big shit’s going to go down beyond the curtain of light, some big OMFG shit that I have no idea about, shit that nobody but GRRM knows -- can the Others tap into Jon’s mind post death? what are the rules of the Other realm? can a person ever come back once they go there? -- but Jon/Dany being in love is like humanity’s ~secret weapon~ in the War for the Dawn, a love that can outlast death itself. So truly -- TRULY -- I think Jon and Dany need to be in love to fight the Others. The True Knights going behind enemy lines in the War for the Dawn need to be the ... the most vital**, the most ... the most human we can possibly send, people with a heart full to bursting with love, and a love of humanity so great they would willingly sacrifice themselves for it.
**the irony of describing post-resurrection Jon “Technically A Zombie” Snow as “vital” is not lost on me, but GRRM likes irony. Black brothers as true knights, white-cloaked kingsguard as corrupt, etc, you get the picture.
In AGOT, Benjen says,
"You are a boy of fourteen," Benjen said. "Not a man, not yet. Until you have known a woman, you cannot understand what you would be giving up."
"I don't care about that!" Jon said hotly.
"You might, if you knew what it meant," Benjen said. "If you knew what the oath would cost you, you might be less eager to pay the price, son."
Jon felt anger rise inside him. "I'm not your son!"
Benjen Stark stood up. "More's the pity." He put a hand on Jon's shoulder.
"Come back to me after you've fathered a few bastards of your own, and we'll see how you feel."
and this idea of Benjen’s that life is worth living is kind of summed up to Jon when Ygritte says, “And if we die, we die. All men must die, Jon Snow. But first we'll live."
Because Jon was so in love with Ygritte. He loved her, and that’s why GRRM made it hurt when she died. (And I like my ASOIAF to really hurt, so I like to imagine Ygritte was pregnant with Jon’s child when she died.)
And the thing about “But first we’ll live” is that you have to keep living. That’s why it’s sooooo so important to me about Jon/Dany on a thematic level. More on that in a sec.
*~*~*
And I’m sorry but I can’t write an ASOIAF post without bringing in Tywin, because I love him. I love him, because he’s the perfect obverse of all of GRRM’s themes that I love. Tywin’s like a black hole among the stars, like negative space in the narrative. When studied, he increases my understanding of all the rest. (GRRM works a lot with negative space in the narrative imo.)
With Tywin, it’s like he died. It’s like he lived and loved Joanna and then he died with her long ago,. But he keeps walking, like one of the Others’ reanimated wights, raised up to continue their agenda to dehumanize every person in Westeros. (I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Tywin unwittingly works on behalf of the Enemy.) (Also, please nobody try to twist my words on me, Tywin was obviously a terrible person long before Joanna died, but he was exceptionally monstrous, even to his own children, after she died.)
People ask me relatively regularly, like, who do you think Tywin would marry in an AU after Joanna dies, and I’m always like 1. I don’t like AUs and 2. he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t remarry, and he definitely wouldn’t fall in love again, because that’s the Point of his character. He’s the negative space. Tywin’s the anti-celebration of humanity, he’s humanity’s sad, lonely, rainy funeral that no one attends. He doesn’t love, he doesn’t smile, he doesn’t eat much (read the descriptions in the books), he takes no joy in meat nor mead (oh gosh could I talk about GRRM’s Tuf Voyaging here), he doesn’t live in a book series that celebrates life.
Tywin doesn’t even celebrate the life that he loved, Joanna’s life. There’s this moment in ASOS where Tyrion thinks about how his father p much never talks about his mother. Think about that.
There was something I was reading recently, I can’t remember where, but it was about the parents of a child who had died, and it said something along the lines of, the worst thing you could do to them was to avoid talking about their child, to pretend as if the child had never existed. Because talking about their child, remembering their child, was how they kept him alive, how they kept loving him.
But Tywin never wants to talk about his wife who was the great love of his life. Tywin never even says Joanna’s name in the books, never says her name in a book series that places so much importance on names and naming.*** He doesn’t want to breathe life into her memory, doesn’t want to love. If not for Tyrion’s presence as a constant reminder of everything he lost, I think Tywin would be content to pretend that Joanna hadn’t existed at all. (Ouch.)
*** @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly, I really liked your theory (do we still call it a theory?) about how in the books Jon will be the first person to call Dany “Dany” out loud since Viserys. Just, ugh, the naming of people, and the intimacy, the connection created by saying a name, or the distance created by not saying one, ugh
*~*~*
OK anyways, that was more than a sec, sorry, I got carried away, but BACK TO JON SNOW. With Jon, to me, the narrative demands that he keep living, keep loving, keep finding love. A living love in Daenerys.
There’s this short story GRRM wrote a long time ago in Dreamsongs about a guy who has his heart broken, but he gets back up and loves again, only to have his heart broken again, and so on, until he gives up and concludes that love is a lie, and he decides never to look for love again, and he closes his heart, and that’s it, that’s the end. It’s a horror story.
And with Jon -- Jon isn’t that horror story, he’s not that guy who has One Love, and when that One Love dies, that’s it, that’s the end. Being human is to keep loving, and to keep looking for love even after your heart is broken. (And let me tell you, Jon is looking in ADWD; “lonely and lovely and lethal”. He’s searching, but not yet finding.)
And I know that people call this cliche, but to me, GRRM plays with archetypes, so here he’s playing with the hero and heroine falling in love, and putting his own spin on it. (Fire wight romance!!! Think back to 1993 and ask yourself how many fire wight romances there were when ASOIAF was conceived!!! Cliche. heh.)
And I’m just ... my mouth is watering in anticipation of GRRM’s Jon/Dany romance in the books, because it’s like!! Technically a dead guy!! Technically a zombie!!! A dead guy resurrected by fire!! To fall in love with the bride of fire!!! A technically dead guy is gonna be representing GRRM’s greatest celebration of life!! This is almost as good as the psychedelic BATB spider falling in love in Dreamsongs!!! God!!! GOD!!!! PLEASE GEORGE, FINISH TWOW, I’M SO EXCITED FOR THIS
I wanted to speak briefly about Tywin and knighthood, and Tywin’s love for Joanna as a chivalric romance, and how Tywin’s refusal to marry again is a sign of his devotion.
@racefortheironthrone spoke recently about chivalric romance: “In chivalry, devotion to your liege lord is a sign of virtue; in chivalric romance, devotion to your love is likewise” [x].
Now, Tywin isn’t an archetype of chivalry. Tywin is just one of many examples of GRRM’s critique of knighthood. Knights revered throughout Westeros follow all the forms of knighthood, but it’s something hollow. Outwardly men like Tywin are all "sunlight on bright steel and gilded spurs” but inside they’re rotten.
Tywin was clearly not one of GRRM’s True Knights as defined by Duncan the Tall. Clearly.
But I think Tywin considered himself to be the consummate knight. (Tywin is a medieval poster boy in a lot of ways, and for all that GRRM got wrong about the Middle Ages, he got Tywin so right. So horrifyingly right.)
Knights are supposed to be brave, and Tywin never turned down a war. He was devoted to the crown, despite all the slights he suffered under Aerys. Tywin believed himself to be just, because he had a warped value system. Protecting women, children, and innocents? Well, when your definition of “people”=“Lannisters” and everyone else is somehow “less” and barely registers on your radar, if at all, then “women, children, and innocents” becomes a very select group, and sure, Tywin would tell you he did his damnedest to protect them. (He would say that even after marrying Cersei to a rapist, because in his mind he did right by Cersei, getting her the best marriage possible.)
So! I think Tywin practiced his own crimson-and-gold brand of chivalry and that Tywin/Joanna can be viewed as a chivalric romance, of a knight and his lady love.
Now, I’ve spoken often and at great length about #tywin and prostitutes, but I don’t think Tywin’s adultery diminishes his devotion to Joanna, at least from Tywin’s perspective. Indeed, I’ve argued previously that Tywin’s need for absolute secrecy in his liaisons was a sign of devotion to his lady wife.
To all of Westeros, even to his closest family, Tywin projected the image of a husband who was utterly devoted to his wife. I think this was more than mere image, despite the prostitutes. Everything we’re told about Tywin’s love for his wife suggests to me that it transcended physical intimacy. (It would have to, given how Tywin and Joanna were so often separated for long periods throughout their marriage.)
In GRRM’s own words, Tywin didn’t want to remarry after Joanna’s death. This to me suggests Tywin’s great loyalty to his wife, someone for whom Tywin felt an emotional / intellectual / spiritual connection with in my opinion.
@racefortheironthrone had more to say about chivalric romance:
The woman, who ensnares a man via attraction and then worship from afar, is declared the man’s liege lord, which is then followed by a ritual rejection. The knight, being rejected, falls literally love-sick to the point of death (a symbolic punishment for his destabilizing, excessive lust), and must then do heroic deeds in order to prove himself to his lady (again, echoing a knight’s service to his liege lord).
Once he proves himself, things go either two ways. Either he gains favor, but the two remain chaste, which might lead to a happy ending. Or they consummate, in which case they have to die tragically.
“The woman [...] is declared the man’s liege lord” // “Lord Tywin Lannister ruled the Seven Kingdoms, but Lady Joanna ruled Lord Tywin.”
^^^This mirrors a feudal relationship, like a sworn sword’s devotion to his liege.
“followed by a ritual rejection.” Well, I’ll be god-damned. (I wrote it and I didn’t even know wtf chivalric romance was at the time.)
“The knight, being rejected, [...] must then do heroic deeds in order to prove himself to his lady” // The War of the Ninepenny Kings, the Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion, the Handship. (Tywin and Joanna were betrothed for years, but they did not marry until after Tywin became Hand.)
“Once he proves himself, [...] they consummate, in which case they have to die tragically.” // “He was not the same man after she died, Imp. The best part of him died with her.”
So anyways, I think there are elements of chivalric romance in what GRRM wrote of Tywin and Joanna’s relationship, and I’ve definitely expanded on those elements in my own fanfiction.
