can you rant about bloodraven? i didn't really care about him until i found your blog and aegor-bamfsteel
I was kind of pro-him until striking up a friendship with @aegor-bamfsteel, save for what I felt was tricking Bran into coming north (”You will never walk again, but you will fly” - DICK MOVE). I think I got sucked in by the mystical crap and his speech about the things he missed in his life. I was also never super-comfortable about him (non-sexually) creeping on and grooming a 7-year-old boy through his dreams, and taking advantage of the event that made him disabled in order to sculpt himself a protege, especially Bran’s resulting depression. But truth be told, I don’t think I thought about it much.
My biggest issue with Bloodraven, apart from the cheesy-as-fuck chosen name, is the fact that he has absolutely no moral compass and fandom insists on twisting everything he does to suggest otherwise. If people said “Bloodraven is an amoral, power-hungry sociopath who’s a lot more like his father than he cares to admit, and I love it,” I could respect that. They’ve done that with characters like Daemon Targaryen, Original Flavor. But fandom’s perception of him is of a selfless ascetic whose actions were always directed towards The Good of the Realm™, and that…that’s just blatantly incorrect. (I know I use the trademark symbol a lot. I think it’s funny. :D)
(ETA: Tumblr apparently won’t let one do readmores. If you read the whole thing, I get nasty about BR and those who like him. You have been warned.)
These posts are a good place to start in terms of why I dislike Bloodraven, containing both my opinion and Aegor’s. I also ranted at length in another ask you sent me, which is linked here for anyone who’s reading this and doesn’t already have the details.
Basically: since Bloodraven’s conception, GRRM has warped the entire fabric of his narrative in ways that make it crystal-clear that BR is his self-insert. They also don’t make medical sense. I can buy that Brynden was born with albinism, since the condition tends to be autosomal recessive and one gene could have been carried down the Targaryen line without anyone manifesting it. Melissa Blackwood carried the corresponding gene, obviously. However, most RL people with albinism, due to UV light damage and a lack of pigment in the eye, are legally blind or close to it by the time they reach adulthood.
The red eyes thing is also dramatic as fuck, a trope that unfairly demonizes real-life people with albinism, and unrealistic besides; if anything, his eyes would more likely look very pale blue or purple, like his father’s. (You might want to check out the essays of lunaplath, who has albinism and is an ASOIAF fan, here on Tumblr. I’ve gotten some of this info from her blog. I’m not hotlinking her because we’ve never spoken and I don’t want to drag her into an argument she may dislike, but her blog is worth a look, definitely.) However, having said that - he’s a literal example of the Red Eyes Take Warning trope, and we’re not supposed to figure out that he’s evil???
I’ve already gone into why I dislike the Melissa Blackwood-Barba Bracken-Targaryen family narrative with regards to how Melissa is lifted up and practically canonized in the bits of text about her we’ve gotten. (Again: NAERYS WOULD NOT HAVE LIKED HER. She would have been horrified by her age, and then probably resentful and critical of Melissa herself, no matter how beloved she was by the court. I’ve read fic that has them bosom friends, at the “immodest” Barba’s expense, and I’m disgusted by it.) Brynden is another example of how that played out. He, unlike Aegor, was never quasi-disowned and forced to witness or at least hear about the murder of his family. Tell me, what disadvantages did this little fucker have?
Bloodraven is painted by fandom as Aegor’s foil, an obsequious Targaryen loyalist who - again - does everything For the Good of the Realm™, and possibly to fight the Others once his greenseeing powers kick in. BLOODRAVEN IS NOT LOYAL TO ANY CAUSE BUT HIS OWN. Every one of his actions comes across as performed specifically to kick Aegor in the nuts. The whole Shiera thing, for one (check out this awesome meta). Also: no matter how horrible Shiera was, Bloodraven should have left her the FUCK alone the first time she said no. Nice Guy much? Anyway. Major examples of his power-grabbing personality are embodied in his term as Aerys I’s hand. Unlike what the rest of fandom seems to think, he was not content to be the power behind the throne. If he was, he would have pushed Aerys into at least semi-competence and cultivated an image of himself as the wise, meek councilor. But no, every one of the brutal actions to come out of that regime had his stamp all over it; he wanted power and he wanted attention, and he WANTED to hurt people in doing it. (I dislike Cersei for the same reason. Sorry, I know you like her.)
But what strikes most deeply at the heart of my hatred for Bloodraven is the fact that he’s not only a kinslayer at least six times over (and arguably a kingslayer and a torturer, depending on what was done to Daemon II down in those dungeons), but a childslayer as well. The man killed children. Personally. On purpose. Possibly out of vengeance. No two ways about it. Whether it was him or one of his magic flunkeys on that ridge, the fact remains that he and his people shot “a rain of arrows” that killed two twelve-year-olds who were functioning in the protected role of standard-bearers. He also did the same thing to Daemon, when Daemon tried to protect his already-dead oldest son. Twelve is not the age of majority, either in ASOIAF or our world, no matter how Alyn Cockshaw editorializes them as “wretched witless bullies.” (Dude. That’s the war PTSD and retroactive reaction formation talking. Daemon himself never says a word about any of his brothers.) Aegon and Aemon didn’t deserve that. No child does. Bloodraven went ahead and did it anyway.
I’ve already ranted in the linked asks about how he got to go north WITH DARK SISTER AND AN HONOR GUARD THAT PROBABLY GOT HIM ELECTED LORD COMMANDER in the linked asks, so I don’t think I need to go into more detail about that. He was barely punished at all - bad form, Egg. Seriously, he should have been executed.
What really makes me rage, though, what really strikes at the heart of my hatred for him? Well, that has to do with the GOT finale (spoiler alert, obviously). This is kind of tinfoil hat territory, but I doubt that it’s something GRRM has thought of, so he can’t really refute the horrifying implications as of yet. It’s canon that dead greenseers go back into the trees and interact in that whole area, right? Well, King Bran is still connected to the weirwood network; in fact, that’s pretty much his only personality in the show. Which means that, essentially: Bloodraven, by proxy, ends the series as king. One among many, possibly, but for all his atrocious, sadistic, plain disgusting actions, he’s rewarded at the end. And he may have known about it for years - known that if he just stuck it out for a few decades after deserting, he would die (provided GRRM actually kills off this particular darling), but he’d also get all he ever wanted. Even thinking about it makes me feel sick.
So, yeah, I hate Bloodraven. He’s a fandom darling, and he doesn’t deserve it at all. (Another sickening bit of fic I read, from an author I can’t believe I once liked, has Maekar [on Baelor’s orders, no less] hunt down and kill Blackfyre supporters with a raven-warged Bloodraven providing greenseer input “on his shoulder.” Holy fucking shit.) He hurts and kills people of all ages on purpose, sometimes for no other reason than that they said something about him that he disliked. He’s an irredeemably evil Gary Stu of a character who I hope gets his comeuppance by the end of the series, and if he doesn’t…well, I think that’ll tell me where GRRM’s priorities really lie in terms of the message he’s sending. Gardener, my ass.
