4541

I wouldn’t put Tywin in that list of characters.

4542

Tywin shouldn’t be on that list at all. He’s amoral, but far from evil or a monster. The second-to-worst thing you could say about the guy is that he betrayed a king that was murdering people at random, and the worst thing you can say about him is that he took his time doing so.

Biter and Rorge are both psychopath criminals. I guess they are by definition monsters, but they’re not really sane. Gregor Clegane and Vargo Hoat I’ll give you, along with most of Clegane’s warband and the larger part of the Bloody Mummers. I seem to recall that the books try to humanize a couple of them a little bit by suggesting that many of them started out as decent, upstanding people who were slowly worn down into their monstrous selves by years of raiding.

Craster is scum who left society to live by his own rules (which are terrible), and there is very little defense for his sacrifice of male babies… but at least you can see the reasons for his monstrous actions; he doesn’t seem to take much pleasure in them.

Joffrey is the most interesting though. Yes he’s a bastard of the highest order, but Martin (in both the books and the show) goes out of his way to show that much of his shitty nature was the result of a toxic mixture of unlimited wealth, privilege, a helicopter mother mother who would not ever permit him to be disciplined, and two fathers who (for different reasons) could not break through Cersai’s protective cordon and raise him properly. So yes, he’s monstrous, but Martin’s point is that Joffrey is less an outside antagonist than a symbol of the failure of some of the other characters.

This is driven home later…

In a scene not show in the TV show yet

… when Tyrion is looking down at a slowly-choking Joffrey and realizes that no matter how much hatred the kid engendered in him moments before, he is at his core just a 14-year-old boy who had all sorts of time to become something greater than he was then… especially given good guidance and advice.

But again: Martin’s point. Both Ned and Brienne must temper their “white hat” ways and see the shades of gray in order to survive. Some succeed better than others, obviously.

Mormont is a good example of a guy who succeeds by living in the gray area. He is kind and chooses to do good things, but he also ignores (and thus tacitly endorses) Craster’s actions. He insists on the Black Watch keeping to their oaths… except he really doesn’t.

Sam I’ll give you. Bran too, I guess – he’s kind of the anti-Joffrey; someone raised well who is forced to come to a strength of character due to hardship.

The Reed kids are such cyphers it’s tough to tell what’s up with them.

4543

Tywin shouldn’t be on that list at all. He’s amoral, but far from evil or a monster.

I don’t even know if he’s amoral. He has a moral code, but it’s not a particularly sympathetic one to our modern, non-Westerosian eyes. It’s one in which the Lannister clan’s status is paramount.

4544

I didn’t say non-existent, I said “rare”. I’m not one of those who holds that GRRM thinks only in shades of grey. He clearly has strong moral standards himself, and some of his characters do, but he’s interested in the grey because it makes for good reading (particularly redemptive or “turning to the Dark side” arcs).

I think what’s more interesting about GRRM than the shades of his characters’ morality as people, and what makes his work rich and deep for me, is his exploration of unintended consequences - sometimes a good person can do good things, but it leads to trouble; sometimes bad people can do bad things, but it leads to other good things happening.

4545

Actually many UK toffs still have something like that moral code. It’s a pretty remarkable thing for a family to sustain its wealth and status through hundreds of years of history, and the reason why some families have managed it for hundreds of years is precisely because that sort of “legacy” and “family name” idea is firmly ingrained into their family’s culture. It’s also part of the reason why the British aristocracy handled modernism and democracy so well compared to some other nations. They just had an intelligent pragmatic response to it - give as much to modernity and democracy as is necessary to keep the land, the seat, the name, the wealth, etc., but no more. “Real power” wasn’t as important as finding a way to preserve the family through time.

There was a program a few years ago on TV following the fortunes of some landed gentry family, and it was notable how strong this idea (which is almost non-existent for most people) was. The father was constantly doing a Tywin on his kids, reminding them about the importance of keeping the family’s estate in good repair so their children and childrens’ children would still have it in the future, ensuring the health of their land, etc., etc. Of course they don’t have the potentially fatal opposition of other families in the same way that they would have had in mediaeval times, but this is the sort of contemporary “half life” of sentiments that would have been Tywin-strength back in the days of the War of the Roses, upon which some of the general tone of ASOIAF is based.

4546

Yeah. anyone who has played CK2 will understand where Tywin is coming from.

4547

I think employing an “ends justify the means”, “do anything to anyone” policy for the sake of gaining and retaining the domination of yourself and your own family, to include allying with and using murdurous, barbarous, law-of-hospitality breaking folks like the Freys, is pretty amoral. That doesn’t have anything to do with our modern, non-Westerosian eyes. It’s been amoral since the dawn of human history for any and all tyrants and despots.

4548

The books (and to a lesser extent the TV series) describe society concerned with places to park excess offspring. Every lord and lady wants some strapping boy to carry on the family name, and with years’ long winters and the occasional war, you need some backup offspring when the firstborn heir dies. On the other hand, in years of peace and plenty, all the spare heirs are now liabilities. Without lands of their own to inherit, they’ll rebel before you can say “primogeniture.” The smallfolk are the same way, needing kids to help on the farm or in the Flea Bottom pot-shops, but when push comes to shove and summer turns to frost, the parents need someone else to make sure their kids have enough to eat. Yet after the winter famines, a family might be so depopulated that the survivors need to reclaim their children from wherever they were ditched. Possibly because the children would be a good source of protein.

So Westeros has the silent sisters, the Maesters, the Night’s Watch, the septons of the Seven, the begging brothers, the Kingsguard… numerous organizations for superfluous children to get shuffled off to. Once in those organizations, they lose their family name, and most of these organizations are explicitly celibate. The regular families, high and low, can keep on reproducing; the other organizations harvest the surplus population.

This distorted population pressure is why Westeros is cool with relationships that are less likely to result in children, as long as the first heir comes along, one way or another. Margaery was upfront about the down low with King Renly in Season 2 .

4549

I think there is a difference between a Tywin and a Littlefinger, to use these two to illustrate the point.

Tywin is ruthless, merciless even. However, all he does has a point, he’s working toward’s a goal. That is of course ensuring the safety of his family, both by strengthening their position as well as by destroying their enemies. He’ll marry his own daughter out to whoever will have her…as long as it serves a purpose.

Guys like Littlefinger are different. They are self serving as well, but there’s more to it than that. Littlefinger’s ‘gift’ to Joffrey served no real purpose beyond disposing of an informer. The thing is, there are any number of other ways to accomplish that and yet he chose the most torturous. I suppose you could say he earned points with Joffrey, but Joffrey is a psycho and he’s as apt to lop off Littlefinger’s head as remember LF did him a solid once. No, LF was being malicious in a very deliberate way, which is also why he threw it in Varys’s face, instead of somehow use it to his own(LF’s) advantage.

In short, there are bad men, which are just men who are not good, then there are evil men which I think is a whole other level.

4550

Well, I think we would probably say that Tywin is Lawful Ne – NO!

Can’t give in. Must… resist… urge to categorize in… D&D terms… OUCH!

Phew! One small pencil driven through the muscle of my right thigh was all it took this time. That’s a relief… I’d hate to lose another toe.

4551

Stannis is Lawful Neutral, Tywin is Lawful Evil.

ducks and runs for cover

4552

That type of malice is often quite deliberate in order to send a message. I assume the intent is that people are much less likely to betray you if they know their death will be grotesque and painful, as opposed to antiseptic and quick. The point is to cause fear - if Littlefinger were really some type of psychotic monster or out for savage personal revenge, he in fact wouldn’t have given Ros to Joffrey, he would have done the killing himself.

4553

That move, giving her to Joffrey, doesn’t really work as far as scaring off other potential spies. Am I to assume Littlefinger is going around telling people he gave her to Joffrey and that Joffrey tortured her to death? I imagine no, for one thing the risk is too great Joffrey finds out he’s talking about him and takes it badly.

He could have killed Ros in front of some of his girls and that would have served the purpose of scaring them far better. So I think, in a land full of spies, that Littlefinger knows it’s a fool’s errand to try and scare people from spying. People aren’t spying because they want to, they spy because they have to.

Varys, yes he’s tellking Varys, but that’s his evilness coming forward. He wants to make Varys feel he got the poor girl killed, and in a very bad way. He wants to inflict more pain. He might have, if he were a Tywin type bad guy, figured out a way to make Ros a double agent of sorts. He might have used his discovery of Varys’s spy against Varys. But that would requre a more rational and less willfully evil person and that leaves Littlefinger out.

4554

Seemed to me like Littlefinger was just killing two birds with one stone. Joffrey wants a whore to kill, Baelish has one he wants to get rid of. Why give Joffrey someone who might still be worth something to him?

4555

Viserys, Lord Frey, the Tickler were also written specifically to be unambiguously savage dicks.

And while “evil” or “monster” are battles I don’t care to fight, I would submit that Tywin was a villian to everyone except maybe his brother Kevan.

4556

Tyrion has done alright with his father. He’s had the carefree life of drinking and whores, because his dad’s rich and allows it. He was made acting hand of the king, by his dad. He has been set up by his dad in a marriage that would make him king of the north in a way. That’s hardly evil villain behavior by his dad.

Tywin is viewed by a villain by those who would oppose him and don’t, out of fear, or those who would oppose him and don’t, because they can’t. Just because the other guy is more powerful than you doesn’t make him a villain.

4557

You do realize his dad put him in the front ranks on the left flank in the first battle? Medieval era battles were gruesome enough for your average soldier, so an experienced field commander like Tywin knows full well the odds of survival for a dwarf in the vanguard. And telling your only legal heir to his face that he will not in fact inherit what’s due to him because he killed his own mother to come into the world is not what I would call the actions of a doting father. And GRRM’s Westerosi morality really seems to hinge on those who will harm children for political or personal gain and those who won’t. Tywin clearly falls into the former category.

Some of you guys engage in quite a bit of revisionism when it comes to Tywin, a character who is as Machiavellian as they come.

4558

You’re out of your mind. In addition to what John Reynolds said: what about Tysha, his first wife?

4559

Yeah, holding up Tyrion as Exhibit A. in Tywin’s defense of character trial is folly.

4560

Tywin don’t really care much about his children, and that make him a bad person. Tywin relation to Tyrion is bad, and poisoned, and by the Tywin side hypocrite. The moral high ground is by Tyrion side. Maybe is too easy, because we see a handicaped person overcome dificulties, so maybe Tyrion is engineered to be likeable.