Yeah, surprised we haven't seen more votes for Jaime. Easily the most sympathetic king-murdering, child-crippling, sister-fucking gentleman out there.
He's a complex character, but I don't remember reading many passages in Jaime chapters that make me have to take a break and kind of pause to digest what I just read about Jaime. They are there, but they haven't tugged me as much as some of the other characters more powerful lines have
Your lordship lost a son at the Red Wedding. I lost four upon the Blackwater. And why? Because the Lannisters stole the throne. Go to King’s Landing and look on Tommen with your own eyes, if you doubt me. A blind man could see it. What does Stannis offer you? Vengeance. Vengeance for my sons and yours, for your husbands and your fathers and your brothers. Vengeance for your murdered lord, your murdered king, your butchered princes. Vengeance!
It's no secret that Jaime and the Hound are my two most favorite characters in terms of how they are written. No, they don't necessarily have the coolest arcs or most intriguing stories, but the layers and depth of their characters (which IMO have only had the surface scratched so far) make them amazing. These two guys embody the "grey area" of the series with their moral ambiguity and the constant conflict between personal self-interest vs. greater good. I LOVE them and can't wait to see what GRRM has in store for them.
Post by Direwolf Blitzer on Sept 14, 2015 17:56:31 GMT
Right on, Bacon.
Westeros is a pretty brutal place to live, and the hierarchy and class structure is fairly unforgiving. Jaime and the Hound are fun because when we first meet them, they seem to be rather unthinking and unfeeling cogs in the machine. Jaime enjoys being a real jerk and he gets away with it because he's the queen's brother, etc. The Hound is a bloody sword-for-hire who kills little kids because, hey, that's his job.
But then you get Jaime's interior monologue and you realize he's rather torn about the whole kingslayer thing. On the one hand, he wanted to be an honorable man. On the other, killing Aerys, while technically dishonorable, was possible the best thing he ever did. And of course you have the Cersei/Brienne conflict, where Jaime's affections move from Cersei, who is the embodiment of entitlement, to Brienne, who is (mostly) a self-made woman. In a sense, he questions the notion of the good. Is Cersei good because she's pretty and of noble birth? Is that enough? Is Brienne good even though she's ugly and not-at-all feminine? (Might even be a parallel here between Jaime and Dany. Cersei as Daario, Brienne as Quentyn*, cf. Selmy's "mud" speech)
And of course the Hound is a much more complex character than he first seems, what with the childhood burning incident, etc. He's a terribly wounded man, inside and out. His name strikes fear in others, but is a curse to himself; he clearly doesn't relish being the loyal attack dog for a family of narcissistic sociopaths, but he doesn't have a lot of career options at this stage. He is a man who has seen that all the exalted ideals of his country (knighthood and its attendant virtues) are a sham, and yet, I think he truly believes in them, cf. his interactions with the Stark girls. Clegane, I think, just wanted to give the world a high-five and maybe talk about his collection of model trains. But the world gave him fire and blood, so to speak, so he squelched any conscience he may have had and got on with it.
He's a complex character, but I don't remember reading many passages in Jaime chapters that make me have to take a break and kind of pause to digest what I just read about Jaime. They are there, but they haven't tugged me as much as some of the other characters more powerful lines have
I liked his bit with the white book. But if we're just talking about well-written passages, I could give the crown to Davos, too. One of my favorite bits is how he remembers his wife and their family, and thinks of her as being a portly woman with saggy boobs, and the "best woman in the world" or some such. He is easily the most "human" character George has, a man who's primary focus is on his own family and his personal honor, not on any larger-than-life quests or aspirations, etc.
*The character George introduced in Book Five of his trilogy. Who lived briefly, occupied many pages, and accomplished nothing.