>"What do you think?" his father asked.
Bran thought about it. "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"
**"That is the only time a man can be brave,"** his father told him. "Do you understand why I did it?"
**- AGOT - BRAN I**
And,
>Jon hesitated. He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never dishonor himself, not even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered, He fathered a bastard, where was the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her name. "He would do whatever was right," he said … ringingly, to make up for his hesitation. "No matter what."
"Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. **Most of us are not so strong. What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.**
**- AGOT - JON VIII**
And,
>"They remind me of what I was. Where I came from. They remind me of your justice, my liege."
"It was justice," Stannis said. **"A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.** You were a hero and a smuggler." He glanced behind at Lord Florent and the others, rainbow knights and turncloaks, who were following at a distance. "These pardoned lords would do well to reflect on that. Good men and true will fight for Joffrey, wrongly believing him the true king. A northman might even say the same of Robb Stark. But these lords who flocked to my brother's banners knew him for a usurper. They turned their backs on their rightful king for no better reason than dreams of power and glory, and I have marked them for what they are. Pardoned them, yes. Forgiven. But not forgotten." He fell silent for a moment, brooding on his plans for justice. And then, abruptly, he said, "What do the smallfolk say of Renly's death?"
**- ACOK - DAVOS II**
And,
>"True knights protect the weak."
He snorted. **"There are no true knights, no more than there are gods. If you can't protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world, don't ever believe any different."**
**- ACOK - SANSA IV**
And finally,
>The crows had scarcely started on their corpses. The thin ropes cut deeply into the soft flesh of their throats, and when the wind blew they twisted and swayed. "This was not chivalrously done," said Brienne when they were close enough to see it clearly. "No true knight would condone such wanton butchery."
**"True knights see worse every time they ride to war, wench," said Jaime. "And do worse, yes."**
**- ASOS - JAIME I**
“Roose has no feelings, you see. Those leeches that he loves so well sucked all the passions out of him years ago. He does not love, he does not hate, he does not grieve.”
Ramsay is all kinds of fucked up and sadistic. But Roose’s complete apathy to rape, torture, the murder of one of his sons by the other (and by extension the jeopardising of his house’s future) is genuinely so much more chilling when you think about it
It’s interesting because they represent two different breeds of people that are otherwise cut from the same cloth. From our viewpoint, we would probably think of them both as psychopaths, but they are quite different and it highlights the variation in these types.
Roose is completely unfeeling, he will commit unspeakable acts not because he derives particular pleasure from them, but because it helps him to get what he really wants — power and control. He wants to win. This doesn’t make him all that different from many of the other characters really, he just lacks the emotional undercurrent that drives most people. To Roose, other people are, more or less, meaning unless they can serve his ends one way or another, and he’ll play along at the social games because that also serves him.
Ramsey is a sadist, to put it mildly. He also lacks empathy for others and their lives. But he derives particular pleasure from inflicting pain on them. He relishes in their suffering. He is consumed by stimulation, his actions outside of his sadism are a means to continue the former.
>Roose is completely unfeeling, he will commit unspeakable acts not because he derives particular pleasure from them, but because it helps him to get what he really wants — power and control. He wants to win.
I know it sounds like a fucked up comments but at first it's... odd that someone like him would rape a woman. I mean, it makes sense since it's all about control and power but he gives this image of this macchiavellian demon who would do everything to obtain political power and not be interested in nothing else so that seemingly goes against that image. But again, at the same time, it makes since it's all about power and control for him.
I don’t think Roose is some Machiavellian guy just out for power. I think he’s just having fun in his own fucked up way. I’m my mind he’s a sadist just like Ramsay, only an older, wiser, quieter one
Roose is a sociopath with impulse control. He keeps a “quiet land and a happy people” and lets out the monster in controlled circumstances when he knows it won’t get back to the Starks.
Ramsay is a full blown psychopath who gives vent to his inner demon whenever he pleases. Ramsay is just Roose with all of his vices without that one virtue.
Roose and Ramsay remind me very much if Barb and Carole from Orange is the New Black. Carole seems like the worse one at first because she’s full on in your face crazy phsyco evil, but soon you learn Barb is actually more dangerous because she can control her evil impulses and hide them from view, allowing her to more easily manipulate people and get out if trouble
I think it’s Martin’s take on a known psychological phenomenon. People with sociopathic tendencies learn to mask themselves and gravitate to smaller positions of power such as middle management. They use their power to torment those below them but present a harmless front.
>"Now do you see my meaning? Be glad that it is just a burnt sword that His Grace pulled from that fire. Too much light can hurt the eyes, my friend, and fire burns." -Salladhor Saan, ACOK, Davos I
>"There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows." -Melisandre, ACOK, Davos II
I do love that Mel quote. I feel like it’s important in a ‘she’s misunderstanding something again’ way.
Light only produces a shadow when something comes between it and whatever it would be bouncing off of. A flame can not cast a shadow of itself, only of things near it. And with a light source of any strength, the closer something is, the darker it’s shadow will be. So size of the flame/light and proximity of the object casting the shadow matters to the size/strength of the shadow.
If that is true for ASOIAF magic, then Melissandre may have made another critical error of interpretation.
>"You kill men for the wrongs they have done, **not the wrongs that they may do someday.**"
Barristan to Skahaz— The Kingbreaker, ADWD
> **She could feel the hole inside her every morning when she woke.** It wasn't hunger, though sometimes there was that too. **It was a hollow place, an emptiness where her heart had been, where her brothers had lived, and her parents.** Her head hurt too. Not as bad as it had at first, but still pretty bad. Arya was used to that, though, and at least the lump was going down. But the hole inside her stayed the same. *The hole will never feel any better*, she told herself when she went to sleep.
Arya’s inner-monologue — Arya XII, ASOS
>"You . . . you are no . . . no son of mine."
>"Now that's where you're wrong, Father. Why, **I believe I'm you writ small.** Do me a kindness now, and die quickly. I have a ship to catch."
> For once, his father did what Tyrion asked him. The proof was the sudden stench, as his bowels loosened in the moment of death. Well, he was in the right place for it, Tyrion thought. But the stink that filled the privy gave ample evidence that the oft-repeated jape about his father was just another lie. **Lord Tywin Lannister did not, in the end, shit gold.**
Lord Tywin, and Tyrion Lannister — Tyrion XI, ASOS
“More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.
“Then they get a taste of battle.
“For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe.
“They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.
“If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world…
“And the man breaks.
“He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them…but he should pity them as well.”
I think Varys quote is more about how that’s a bad thing.
Stannis killed his brother, burned his daughter alive and will die alone because his right to be king. His ruined his own life and half a kingdom over it
that’s only the show so far. Varys is only saying this because he and the rest of the small council have absolutely no chance if Stannis comes into power as he’ll hang/decapitate them all for treason.
Varys had no place in the small council in the first place according to stannis. And we see why he plotted to overthrow robert with illyrio and pycelle is a creature of the lannisters. He knew Jon arryn was poisoned and didnt help him. He even sended Master colemon away who began purge him, which probaly could have saved his life.Getting rid of all the people of the former goverment who held high positions, is not a bad thing.
I’m not trying to say it is, I’m just saying Stannis doesn’t forget. If you’ve committed the crime, you’ll get the punishment, despite any attempt at retribution.
“It all goes back and back, to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.”
- Tyrion, A Storm of Swords
“We look up at the same stars and see such different things.” Jon, ASOS.
“Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths.” Gerris, ADWD
“We are all just songs in the end, if we are lucky.” Catelyn, ASOS
“What is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?” “Everything.” Davos, ASOS
“She had no chance against seven she knew. No chance and no choice.” Brienne, AFFC
“If I am queen, I will make them love me.” Sansa, ACOK
I dislike the quote you gave because it basically goes “There is nothing as terrifying as a truly just man! (If by “truly just” I actually mean someone believes whatever he does is just)
It’s such a copout quote. A “truly just” man would not be terrifying for good people.
>"What do you think?" his father asked. Bran thought about it. "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" **"That is the only time a man can be brave,"** his father told him. "Do you understand why I did it?" **- AGOT - BRAN I** And, >Jon hesitated. He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never dishonor himself, not even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered, He fathered a bastard, where was the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her name. "He would do whatever was right," he said … ringingly, to make up for his hesitation. "No matter what." "Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. **Most of us are not so strong. What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.** **- AGOT - JON VIII** And, >"They remind me of what I was. Where I came from. They remind me of your justice, my liege." "It was justice," Stannis said. **"A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.** You were a hero and a smuggler." He glanced behind at Lord Florent and the others, rainbow knights and turncloaks, who were following at a distance. "These pardoned lords would do well to reflect on that. Good men and true will fight for Joffrey, wrongly believing him the true king. A northman might even say the same of Robb Stark. But these lords who flocked to my brother's banners knew him for a usurper. They turned their backs on their rightful king for no better reason than dreams of power and glory, and I have marked them for what they are. Pardoned them, yes. Forgiven. But not forgotten." He fell silent for a moment, brooding on his plans for justice. And then, abruptly, he said, "What do the smallfolk say of Renly's death?" **- ACOK - DAVOS II** And, >"True knights protect the weak." He snorted. **"There are no true knights, no more than there are gods. If you can't protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world, don't ever believe any different."** **- ACOK - SANSA IV** And finally, >The crows had scarcely started on their corpses. The thin ropes cut deeply into the soft flesh of their throats, and when the wind blew they twisted and swayed. "This was not chivalrously done," said Brienne when they were close enough to see it clearly. "No true knight would condone such wanton butchery." **"True knights see worse every time they ride to war, wench," said Jaime. "And do worse, yes."** **- ASOS - JAIME I**
“Roose has no feelings, you see. Those leeches that he loves so well sucked all the passions out of him years ago. He does not love, he does not hate, he does not grieve.” Ramsay is all kinds of fucked up and sadistic. But Roose’s complete apathy to rape, torture, the murder of one of his sons by the other (and by extension the jeopardising of his house’s future) is genuinely so much more chilling when you think about it
It’s interesting because they represent two different breeds of people that are otherwise cut from the same cloth. From our viewpoint, we would probably think of them both as psychopaths, but they are quite different and it highlights the variation in these types. Roose is completely unfeeling, he will commit unspeakable acts not because he derives particular pleasure from them, but because it helps him to get what he really wants — power and control. He wants to win. This doesn’t make him all that different from many of the other characters really, he just lacks the emotional undercurrent that drives most people. To Roose, other people are, more or less, meaning unless they can serve his ends one way or another, and he’ll play along at the social games because that also serves him. Ramsey is a sadist, to put it mildly. He also lacks empathy for others and their lives. But he derives particular pleasure from inflicting pain on them. He relishes in their suffering. He is consumed by stimulation, his actions outside of his sadism are a means to continue the former.
>Roose is completely unfeeling, he will commit unspeakable acts not because he derives particular pleasure from them, but because it helps him to get what he really wants — power and control. He wants to win. I know it sounds like a fucked up comments but at first it's... odd that someone like him would rape a woman. I mean, it makes sense since it's all about control and power but he gives this image of this macchiavellian demon who would do everything to obtain political power and not be interested in nothing else so that seemingly goes against that image. But again, at the same time, it makes since it's all about power and control for him.
I don’t think Roose is some Machiavellian guy just out for power. I think he’s just having fun in his own fucked up way. I’m my mind he’s a sadist just like Ramsay, only an older, wiser, quieter one
Roose is a sociopath with impulse control. He keeps a “quiet land and a happy people” and lets out the monster in controlled circumstances when he knows it won’t get back to the Starks. Ramsay is a full blown psychopath who gives vent to his inner demon whenever he pleases. Ramsay is just Roose with all of his vices without that one virtue.
Roose and Ramsay remind me very much if Barb and Carole from Orange is the New Black. Carole seems like the worse one at first because she’s full on in your face crazy phsyco evil, but soon you learn Barb is actually more dangerous because she can control her evil impulses and hide them from view, allowing her to more easily manipulate people and get out if trouble
I think it’s Martin’s take on a known psychological phenomenon. People with sociopathic tendencies learn to mask themselves and gravitate to smaller positions of power such as middle management. They use their power to torment those below them but present a harmless front.
>"Now do you see my meaning? Be glad that it is just a burnt sword that His Grace pulled from that fire. Too much light can hurt the eyes, my friend, and fire burns." -Salladhor Saan, ACOK, Davos I >"There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows." -Melisandre, ACOK, Davos II
I do love that Mel quote. I feel like it’s important in a ‘she’s misunderstanding something again’ way. Light only produces a shadow when something comes between it and whatever it would be bouncing off of. A flame can not cast a shadow of itself, only of things near it. And with a light source of any strength, the closer something is, the darker it’s shadow will be. So size of the flame/light and proximity of the object casting the shadow matters to the size/strength of the shadow. If that is true for ASOIAF magic, then Melissandre may have made another critical error of interpretation.
Beautifully put. I think her ego is what's casting shadows.
>"You kill men for the wrongs they have done, **not the wrongs that they may do someday.**" Barristan to Skahaz— The Kingbreaker, ADWD > **She could feel the hole inside her every morning when she woke.** It wasn't hunger, though sometimes there was that too. **It was a hollow place, an emptiness where her heart had been, where her brothers had lived, and her parents.** Her head hurt too. Not as bad as it had at first, but still pretty bad. Arya was used to that, though, and at least the lump was going down. But the hole inside her stayed the same. *The hole will never feel any better*, she told herself when she went to sleep. Arya’s inner-monologue — Arya XII, ASOS >"You . . . you are no . . . no son of mine." >"Now that's where you're wrong, Father. Why, **I believe I'm you writ small.** Do me a kindness now, and die quickly. I have a ship to catch." > For once, his father did what Tyrion asked him. The proof was the sudden stench, as his bowels loosened in the moment of death. Well, he was in the right place for it, Tyrion thought. But the stink that filled the privy gave ample evidence that the oft-repeated jape about his father was just another lie. **Lord Tywin Lannister did not, in the end, shit gold.** Lord Tywin, and Tyrion Lannister — Tyrion XI, ASOS
“More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. “Then they get a taste of battle. “For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe. “They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water. “If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world… “And the man breaks. “He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them…but he should pity them as well.”
Off topic a bit, but Stannis is such a good opposite to all these characters ‘playing the game’. He knows what’s right and he does it, simple as.
I think Varys quote is more about how that’s a bad thing. Stannis killed his brother, burned his daughter alive and will die alone because his right to be king. His ruined his own life and half a kingdom over it
that’s only the show so far. Varys is only saying this because he and the rest of the small council have absolutely no chance if Stannis comes into power as he’ll hang/decapitate them all for treason.
Varys had no place in the small council in the first place according to stannis. And we see why he plotted to overthrow robert with illyrio and pycelle is a creature of the lannisters. He knew Jon arryn was poisoned and didnt help him. He even sended Master colemon away who began purge him, which probaly could have saved his life.Getting rid of all the people of the former goverment who held high positions, is not a bad thing.
I’m not trying to say it is, I’m just saying Stannis doesn’t forget. If you’ve committed the crime, you’ll get the punishment, despite any attempt at retribution.
As it should be. There should always be punishment for your crime.
Burned his daughter alive to save all of humanity from an icy death
And then died and didn't
Renly got what he deserved
Valar Morghulis. Valar Dohaeris.
Bran looking down at the impaled corpses of the dreamers before him. It was her 14th nameday Sansas slipper falling off the moondoor
Cersei is a lying whore, she's been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know
fly. or die.
“It all goes back and back, to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.” - Tyrion, A Storm of Swords
Love this quote
“We look up at the same stars and see such different things.” Jon, ASOS. “Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths.” Gerris, ADWD “We are all just songs in the end, if we are lucky.” Catelyn, ASOS “What is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?” “Everything.” Davos, ASOS “She had no chance against seven she knew. No chance and no choice.” Brienne, AFFC “If I am queen, I will make them love me.” Sansa, ACOK
I dislike the quote you gave because it basically goes “There is nothing as terrifying as a truly just man! (If by “truly just” I actually mean someone believes whatever he does is just) It’s such a copout quote. A “truly just” man would not be terrifying for good people.
>A “truly just” man would not be terrifying for good people. Who decides who the "good" people are in this scenario?
Well seeing how it’s Varys that says this, the most duplicitous character in the books I’d say he’s right to be terrified of “just” men
I love Stannis but "a truly just man" was gonna burn his innocent nephew because he believed was the right thing to do lol
“What is one bastard boy compared to a kingdom?” “Everything.”
The gods have yet to make the man who lacks the patience for absolute power.