Episode 136: A CLASH OF KINGS, CATELYN VII: "The Dark Knight (Part 2) SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.

Welcome to the one hundred and thirty-sixth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “The Dark Knight, Part 2: An Analysis of ACOK, Catelyn VII,” in which Catelyn and Jaime exchange riddles, because apparently this is The Hobbit now.

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil:

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack
• Grandmaester Timbob, troubleshooter of systems and designer of circuit boards
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves, Captain of the war galley NIGHT WOLF, the ship that stalks the Seven Seas, and Wielder of the Valyrian Steel trident SUMMONER, the blade that brings the Deep Ones
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
• Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
• Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
• Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
• Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
• Lord Micah, the Quilled Lion, Warden of the West, Herald of the Golden Tooth, Master of the Banefort and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen's Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
• Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
• Laurence, Prince of Dorne
• Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
• Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
• The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
• Lady Stephanie
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• Ser Sourcedelica
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• Lord Adam T
• Lady Alexandra of Tarth
• Ser Kristoph Logas, Bloody Scorpion of the Red Field, Defender of the Letter of Kin, and the Wolverine of house Qorgyle
• Lady Elizabeth, Mistress of Horse (Faced Lesbians)
• Ser Josh Snow Bastard Bounty Hunter of the North
• Ser Veyor, Chief of Parties in the Frozen Wastes
• Lord Peter
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• Marshall Harrison—Absent, shipwrecked in the Jade Sea
• Grave-Robb Stark, the Cadaver King and Horror of Harrenhal
• Olaf, proponent of establishing a feudal, pseudodemocratic system of Great Councils, wherein every count votes
• Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices
• Lord Nick
• Thucydides, Lord of Plagues
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen’s Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• Lord Gene the Splendid, Master of Coin, Warden of Tampa Bay
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• Lord Charles Tyrell of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Mander, Defender of the Marches, High Marshal of the Reach, Warden of the South, and The Heir of House Tyrell
• Luke, Lord of Lone Leaf & The Pillar of Autumn
• Squid Pro Quo
• Master of Zorse
• Joe Snow “King of the Metro North and protector of the Tri-State”
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Airship Arrogance
• Squire Matt S, future Ser Matt S, the one who will bring balance to the Kingdoms
• BWord, Queen Beyond the Wall
• Lord Kyle
• Lord Samuel Seaworth
• Ser Max, Lord Commander of the Constitutional Guard
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Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Lord Travis, our small council Master of Ships, asks:

I get the Mad King is a complete nutter, but why did he want Robert Baratheon's head? Ned Stark, ok sure. Ned's father and brother just came to the capital and "threatened" the royal family. IIRC the text says it was because Robert was Lyanna's betrothed. Was Aerys going to kill everyone associated with House Stark? Did he find out about the KotLT and link Robert to Lyanna that way too? Was someone else whispering his head and wanted to start a war by asking for too much from Jon Arryn?

So, thank you, Lord Travis for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher-level patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, free merch, mini-episodes, access to the NotASlack and bonus episodes like our just-released episode on Fevre Dream Chapter 14, part 2 and our upcoming episode on the Pink Letter and why Ramsay wrote it.

If you’re listening to this episode on the release day, that episode will be out this week, thanksgiving week in the United States. So, we hope you’ll listen. After listening, I’ve been told by many legal analysts that you will be legally bound to agree with us that Ramsay wrote the Pink Letter. I’m sorry, but it’s the law.

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Catelyn, she had received news that Bran and Rickon were dead, and she decided to visit Jaime Lannister in the dungeon under Riverrun. Let’s find out what happens with the rest of that conversation in this synopsis of ACOK, Jaime I, wait, A Clash of Kings, Catelyn VII!

Synopsis

Catelyn realizes that Jaime is arrogance and pride. She tells Jaime that if he doesn’t want to speak with her, that’s fine. Go drink your wine or piss into it. She’s outta here.

At the door, Catelyn hears a voice behind her.

"Lady Stark." She turned, waited. "Things go to rust in this damp," Jaime went on. "Even a man's courtesies. Stay, and you shall have your answers . . . for a price."

He has no shame. "Captives do not set prices."

"Oh, you'll find mine modest enough. Your turnkey tells me nothing but vile lies, and he cannot even keep them straight. One day he says Cersei has been flayed, and the next it's my father. Answer my questions and I'll answer yours."

"Truthfully?"

"Oh, it's truth you want? Be careful, my lady. Tyrion says that people often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up."

Catelyn claims she’s strong enough. So, then Jaime asks for his wine. After Catelyn gives it to him, Jaime declares it “sour and vile” but doable. What’s Catelyn’s first question?

Not knowing how long this game might continue, Catelyn wasted no time. "Are you Joffrey's father?"

"You would never ask unless you knew the answer."

"I want it from your own lips."

He shrugged. "Joffrey is mine. As are the rest of Cersei's brood, I suppose."

So, Jaime is Cersei’s lover? Yup. Now his question:

"Do all my kin still live?"

"Ser Stafford Lannister was slain at Oxcross, I am told."

Jaime was unmoved. "Uncle Dolt, my sister called him. It's Cersei and Tyrion who concern me. As well as my lord father."

"They live, all three." But not long, if the gods are good.

Now Catelyn’s question.

Catelyn wondered if he would dare answer her next question with anything but a lie. "How did my son Bran come to fall?"

"I flung him from a window."

The easy way he said it took her voice away for an instant. If I had a knife, I would kill him now, she thought, until she remembered the girls. Her throat constricted as she said, "You were a knight, sworn to defend the weak and innocent."

"He was weak enough, but perhaps not so innocent. He was spying on us."

Catelyn says Bran would not spy. Jaime tells her to blame the gods for having him climb up to his window and see something he was not supposed to.

"Blame the gods?" she said, incredulous. "Yours was the hand that threw him. You meant for him to die."

His chains chinked softly. "I seldom fling children from towers to improve their health. Yes, I meant for him to die."

Catelyn tries to put the pieces together:

"And when he did not, you knew your danger was worse than ever, so you gave your catspaw a bag of silver to make certain Bran would never wake."

"Did I now?" Jaime lifted his cup and took a long swallow. "I won't deny we talked of it, but you were with the boy day and night, your maester and Lord Eddard attended him frequently, and there were guards, even those damned direwolves . . . it would have required cutting my way through half of Winterfell. And why bother, when the boy seemed like to die of his own accord?"

Cat tells Jaime that if he’s lying, the Q&A session is over. Jaime had no part? He did not. On his honor as a Lannister. In response, Catelyn kicks over the poop-pot and says that’s what his honor is worth.

Jaime Lannister backed away from the spill as far as his chains would allow. "I may indeed have shit for honor, I won't deny it, but I have never yet hired anyone to do my killing. Believe what you will, Lady Stark, but if I had wanted your Bran dead I would have slain him myself."

Gods be merciful, he's telling the truth. "If you did not send the killer, your sister did."

Nope not Cersei. She wouldn’t keep secrets from Jaime. Oh really now, Jaime? Hm. Let’s test that one out one book hence. If it wasn’t Cersei, it was Tyrion, right? Nah, Jaime says.

"Then why did the assassin have his dagger?"

"What dagger was this?"

"It was so long," she said, holding her hands apart, "plain, but finely made, with a blade of Valyrian steel and a dragonbone hilt. Your brother won it from Lord Baelish at the tourney on Prince Joffrey's name day."

Jaime drinks some more and remembers the dagger. He asks how Tyrion won it. Tyrion won it, wagering on Jaime when he tilted against Loras Tyrell. But then Catelyn pauses and corrects herself. Tyrion wagered on Loras.

"Tyrion always backed me in the lists," Jaime said, "but that day Ser Loras unhorsed me. A mischance, I took the boy too lightly, but no matter. Whatever my brother wagered, he lost . . . but that dagger did change hands, I recall it now. Robert showed it to me that night at the feast. His Grace loved to salt my wounds, especially when drunk. And when was he not drunk?"

Catelyn remembers that Tyrion said as much in the Mountains of the Moon. She hadn’t believed him then, because small-dick Littlefinger had claimed otherwise. Wait a second. Is Littlefinger not exactly trustworthy? Besides, Jaime and Tyrion hadn’t seen each other in a year. So, maybe he’s telling the truth? But no. Littlefinger loved her. She demands to know if Jaime is lying, thinking there’s a trap here. Jaime says he’s not lying. He admitted to throwing Bran out of a window. So, what purpose would lying serve? But now it’s his turn.

“Have Robert's brothers taken the field?"

"They have."

"Now there's a niggardly response. Give me more than that, or your next answer will be as poor."

"Stannis marches against King's Landing," she said grudgingly. "Renly is dead, murdered at Bitterbridge by his brother, through some black art I do not understand."

Jaime says that’s too bad about Renly. He liked him. Not Stannis though. How about the Tyrells: whose side are they on? They were Renly’s and now no one knows.

"Your boy must be feeling lonely."

"Robb was sixteen a few days past . . . a man grown, and a king. He's won every battle he's fought. The last word we had from him, he had taken the Crag from the Westerlings."

"He hasn't faced my father yet, has he?"

"When he does, he'll defeat him. As he did you."

"He took me unawares. A craven's trick."

Catelyn is outraged at this talk of tricks especially after Tyrion sent cutthroats to spring Jaime free. Oh yeah, Jaime retorts, if one of your boys was in jail, the other boys would have done the same.

My son has no brothers, she thought, but she would not share her pain with a creature such as this.

Jaime drank some more wine. "What's a brother's life when honor is at stake, eh?" Another sip. "Tyrion is clever enough to realize that your son will never consent to ransom me."

Reluctantly, Catelyn agrees, saying that Robb’s bannermen want Jaime dead, especially Rickard Karstark: the guy whose sons Jaime killed. Jaime thinks about this for a moment and says yeah, he got them good and hard, but he was trying to kill Robb. It was the war shit, m’lady of Stark. That’s what any knight would do.

"How can you still count yourself a knight, when you have forsaken every vow you ever swore?" Catelyn asked.

Jaime reached for the flagon to refill his cup. "So many vows . . . they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other."

I fucking love this scene. I love this chapter. I love this dialogue.

Jaime drinks some more and declares that he was the youngest man to wear the white cloak.

"And the youngest to betray all it stood for, Kingslayer."

"Kingslayer," he pronounced carefully. "And such a king he was!" He lifted his cup. "To Aerys Targaryen, the Second of His Name, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. And to the sword that opened his throat. A golden sword, don't you know. Until his blood ran red down the blade. Those are the Lannister colors, red and gold."

As he laughed, she realized the wine had done its work; Jaime had drained most of the flagon, and he was drunk. "Only a man like you would be proud of such an act."

Jaime reminds Catelyn of his earlier answer about there being no men like him. Also, just for shits and giggles, did Ned ever tell Cat about Rickard or Brandon’s deaths? Catelyn says yes. Brandon was strangled, and Lord Rickard was killed as well. She wonders why he’s asking. He’s not telling just yet. He asks again, how did the two Starks die? Strangled or beheaded.

Jaime takes another swig and tells her that Ned tried to spare her the brutal truth. But Catelyn can ask him, and he’d tell her the real truth. But Catelyn doesn’t want to know. He’s dead. Maybe, but Jaime thinks Brandon was like him: warm blooded instead of having cold water in his veins like Ned. And that just sets Catelyn right the fuck off:

"Brandon was nothing like you."

"If you say so. You and he were to wed."

"He was on his way to Riverrun when . . . " Strange, how telling it still made her throat grow tight, after all these years. " . . . when he heard about Lyanna, and went to King's Landing instead. It was a rash thing to do." She remembered how her own father had raged when the news had been brought to Riverrun. The gallant fool, was what he called Brandon.

Jaime poured the last half cup of wine. "He rode into the Red Keep with a few companions, shouting for Prince Rhaegar to come out and die. But Rhaegar wasn't there. Aerys sent his guards to arrest them all for plotting his son's murder. The others were lords' sons too, it seems to me."

Catelyn remembers the names of the men who went with Brandon. Ethan Glover, Jeffory Mallister, Kyle Royce, Elbert Arryn. Aerys Targaryen arrested them all and ordered their fathers to come to court to answer for treason. And when their dads came, he murdered all of them, save for Ethan Glover without trial.

"There were trials. Of a sort. Lord Rickard demanded trial by combat, and the king granted the request. Stark armored himself as for battle, thinking to duel one of the Kingsguard. Me, perhaps. Instead they took him to the throne room and suspended him from the rafters while two of Aerys's pyromancers kindled a blaze beneath him. The king told him that fire was the champion of House Targaryen. So all Lord Rickard needed to do to prove himself innocent of treason was . . . well, not burn.

"When the fire was blazing, Brandon was brought in. His hands were chained behind his back, and around his neck was a wet leathern cord attached to a device the king had brought from Tyrosh. His legs were left free, though, and his longsword was set down just beyond his reach.

"The pyromancers roasted Lord Rickard slowly, banking and fanning that fire carefully to get a nice even heat. His cloak caught first, and then his surcoat, and soon he wore nothing but metal and ashes. Next he would start to cook, Aerys promised . . . unless his son could free him. Brandon tried, but the more he struggled, the tighter the cord constricted around his throat. In the end he strangled himself.

"As for Lord Rickard, the steel of his breastplate turned cherry-red before the end, and his gold melted off his spurs and dripped down into the fire. I stood at the foot of the Iron Throne in my white armor and white cloak, filling my head with thoughts of Cersei. After, Gerold Hightower himself took me aside and said to me, 'You swore a vow to guard the king, not to judge him.' That was the White Bull, loyal to the end and a better man than me, all agree."

Catelyn is now thoroughly shook. She figures that this is so horrifying that it has to be true. But Jaime can’t possibly want people to believe he became the Kingslayer to avenge Brandon. Ha, no he didn’t. He didn’t give a shit about the Starks. He has no idea why he was hated for his finest act and loved for a kindness he never did. He was forced to knee to Robert along with Pycelle and Varys, but Ned refused to kiss his hand. He only wanted to scorn Jaime for sitting Robert’s throne. Really, did Ned love anyone - his dad, his bro or even Catelyn as much as he did Robert? He was never unfaithful to Robert anyhow. It’s hilarious, bro.

"I find nothing about you amusing, Kingslayer."

"That name again. I don't think I'll fuck you after all, Littlefinger had you first, didn't he? I never eat off another man's trencher. Besides, you're not half so lovely as my sister." His smile cut. "I've never lain with any woman but Cersei. In my own way, I have been truer than your Ned ever was. Poor old dead Ned. So who has shit for honor now, I ask you? What was the name of that bastard he fathered?"

Catelyn took a step backward. "Brienne."

"No, that wasn't it." Jaime Lannister upended the flagon. A trickle ran down onto his face, bright as blood. "Snow, that was the one. Such a white name . . . like the pretty cloaks they give us in the Kingsguard when we swear our pretty oaths."

Brienne pushed open the door and stepped inside the cell. "You called, my lady?"

"Give me your sword." Catelyn held out her hand.

And that is ACOK, Catelyn VII. That was one hell of a chapter. What did you think, ser?

Depth

Last time we set the mood, talking about Catelyn’s despair and how it manifested in her conversations with Brienne and Hoster, as well as the imagery surrounding all of them. Now we get to the meat of the chapter: a struggle of wills between Catelyn Stark and Jaime Lannister. This is one of the great dialogue scenes in the series; within ACOK, I think only Stannis v. Renly is better. Even as both Catelyn and Jaime claim to be dispassionately cutting away distortions to arrive at the truth, both of them are also open wounds psychologically, with so many fragile defense mechanisms coming into conflict. They’re testing each other with specific goals in mind, but as the conversation gets off topic (and as Jaime gets progressively more wasted), this scene takes shape as being less about those specific goals and more about what has become of the Robert’s Rebellion generation--how they’ve changed since their glory days, mostly for the worse.

When we get to Jaime’s chapters in ASOS, I’m going to talk about how the recontextualization of Jaime Lannister as seen in his POV chapters is the greatest literary triumph that George accomplished in the story. This is George re-subverting the trope. Jaime as the dashing and beautiful knight who turns out to be the villain in AGOT then becomes a human character in ASOS, and we start to sympathize, even like him! And this literary triumph starts here in ACOK, Catelyn VII. I love Stannis and Renly’s dialogue from Catelyn III so much, but IMO, there’s no better dialogue scene in the books. I love how we learn some of the history and story behind Robert’s Rebellion, but what makes this poignant is that this is not some academic recounting of events: it’s the story told through two sad people who live with the emotions that these historical events imbued upon them. But first, there can be no truth without trust, and thus rules must be established.

• Rules of the game
  • Catelyn is about to walk away from Jaime, thinking him empty of honor and humanity, when he reaches out with an unexpected olive branch
  • It’s unexpected not only to her but to us, because “arrogance, pride, and empty courage” is all we saw of him in AGOT. Who knew there was more?
  • Jaime says that things go to rust in the damp, even a man’s courtesies. I’m going to be quoting him a lot, it’s all so memorable!
  • As is often the case with Jaime, it’s difficult to tell if he’s being sincere or sarcastic, or maybe a mix of both. On one hand, he does offer Catelyn answers to her questions. On the other, the line about courtesies does not sound sincere. He had no courtesy to go to rust in the first place
  • Once again this is like Sandor Clegane, who speaks out of both sides of his mouth: mocking the language of chivalry, but also embracing it
  • Jaime offers Catelyn a fair deal, an exchange of information. It’s an establishment of trust between Stark and Lannister on the most intimate possible level. Don’t think it would scale up necessarily, but still positive
  • Jaime, it turns out, wants information as well. He’s been locked up since before the book started, after all, and his jailers feed him fake news
  • They can help each other...which is exactly what Catelyn hopes with regards to her daughters, though Jaime doesn’t know that yet
  • Catelyn’s not sure about that whole trust thing, though. She asks whether Jaime will answer truthfully. Kind of a useless question, by definition
  • But it gives Jaime an opportunity to introduce a key theme of his character: people don’t really like truth, they just claim that they do
  • In reality, we prefer fantasies and fictions spiked with just enough truth to delude ourselves. Jaime passes this on from Tyrion, and on reread, the irony is clear: Jaime has kept a bitter truth from Tyrion RE Tysha
  • In part, this is faux-deep posturing. You want the truth? You can’t HANDLE the truth! But defense mechanisms aside, Jaime has a point. Catelyn will, later in this conversation, think “I do not want to know this”
  • The truth hurts, which is why Jaime reaches for the wine. Now that he knows Catelyn didn’t poison it, there are truths he can’t face down sober
  • There’s a great contrast here with the chapter we just covered in Fevre Dream with Joshua York spending an entire chapter monologuing his backstory and all the secrets he’s hid from his friend Abner Marsh.
  • When we talked about that chapter, we talked about how that chapter is great, but GRRM opts for Joshua just to monologue on his truths rather than convey the information in a more interesting way.
  • This is a more interesting way that we get at the backstory to ASOIAF, demonstrating George’s growth as a writer to make this conversation dynamic and exciting.
  • I love the idea you bring up about this being the rules of a game: it’s the game of thrones: not a fun game but also one that must be played.
  • But I also love how the game reminds us of the drinking games we played in our youth: Never have I ever being the one that comes to mind.
  • And in that, I look on these mid-30s people and think that Jaime is still playing games, because, at heart, he, like Robert, Cersei, Jon Connington, Doran Martell and so many others in the story: their maturation stopped at the Tourney of Harrenhal and Robert’s Rebellion.
  • They’re playing a game, because they can’t have a free exchange of ideas; they must play a drinking game to get at the truth.
  • But again, this isn’t fun. As you were saying, Catelyn is going to realize that she doesn’t want to hear this truth.
  • And this is key: I don’t think Jaime is having fun either. Sure, he’s sarcastic, uses a lot of great wordplay and gives the appearance of having a grand old time.
  • But the reality is that these events that Jaime is about to talk about are Jaime’s open, festering wounds.
  • It’s almost as if Jaime is exfoliating the wounds, letting air and light in. He’s treating Catelyn like a therapist, exposing his dirty secrets: the dirtiest, of course, being the incest and his children.
• First exchange: family relations
  • Jaime, as the very model of courtesy, allows the lady to have the first question. Catelyn, as an intelligent person, knows that she must prioritize her questions because she doesn’t know how long the game will last
  • If she only gets one shot, she wants to uncover the secret at the heart of the war: is Stannis’ accusation true? Did Jaime father Cersei’s kids?
  • Rather than directly answer, Jaime points out that Catelyn would only ask that if it was already public knowledge. She wouldn’t just come up with it
  • Catelyn wants the truth from Jaime’s own lips, she says. This is a profoundly human desire. When we say we want the truth, we don’t mean bare facts. We mean a rush of catharsis, the power of admitting the truth
  • Catelyn desperately wants Jaime to confirm her priors. Humble yourself, humiliate yourself, admit that you sinned and you are what’s wrong with the world. Only then do we stand a chance of making a better one
  • Jaime refuses to do that, in part because he’s just not into humility as a rule, but also because he perceives the blind spots in her worldview
  • Even when Jaime admits to his twincest coup, he does it casually, with a shrug. Joffrey’s mine, yeah, and I suppose the rest are! Who cares?
  • This seems like a chilling lack of concern for one’s own children. When Jaime becomes a POV, we will learn that Cersei kept him at a distance
  • On reread, I also think that Jaime is deliberately antagonizing Catelyn so as to deny her the catharsis she seeks, preventing her from taking refuge
  • Jaime’s not weeping. He’s not on his knees, cursing the world, begging forgiveness. He admits to this like it’s on the level of faking a sick day
  • That’s not the tone Catelyn was looking for! Didn’t Jaime read the previous scenes? This is serious dramatic tragedy! Jaime punctures all of that
  • The alternate analysis here is that Jaime is acting similar to his brother Tyrion when he dealt with Cersei when she tells him that I have your little whore.
  • Recall how Tyrion refuses to say the name Shae by name and tries to play it off as no big deal.
  • The same dynamic may be present here with Jaime admitting to fathering Cersei’s children.
  • It’s no big deal, Catelyn, haha, it’s the new thing. And didn’t you know the Targaryens did it too?
  • That said, I think your interpretation of Jaime as getting under Catelyn’s skin by denying her catharsis is more likely to be correct.
  • And that speaks to the nature of catharsis in ASOIAF as we’ve talked about many times in the past.
  • Catelyn, now retreating into her belief in the songs and stories, wants that moment when the evil and defeated robber knight admits how evil and bad he is.
  • But Jaime denies this to Cersei, much as George denies us catharsis in those fist-pumping moments in the story when drawn against the timeline of the series.
  • Catelyn keeps pressing him, searching for that cathartic admission of wrongdoing. You admit to being your sister’s lover? Say it, I need this
  • Jaime’s response is wonderfully slippery: I’ve always loved my sister. For all that Jaime claims to be a bold truth-teller, he’s full of his own BS
  • He dodges implications as much as everyone else, and is forced to face that when he becomes a POV. This is also an admission on Jaime’s part that he genuinely loves Cersei, which is not exactly a mutual feeling
  • Jaime says that Catelyn owes him two questions now, even though the second one was an extension of the first and he didn’t actually answer it
  • Right away, this fragile peace and exchange of information falls apart. Not even due to outright dishonesty--just slippages, little gaps and alienations. Jaime, too, uses up both his questions on the same topic: his family
  • It’s clearly been eating away at him not to know how they’re faring. Catelyn answers first with the report of Stafford’s death at Oxcross
  • But Jaime doesn’t care about Stafford. Why? Because Cersei didn’t, and Jaime takes his cues from her. Jaime limits his scope of empathy to her, their father Tywin...and to Tyrion, who he loves, his one defiance of Cersei
  • Catelyn, too, still has limits to her empathy even as she tries to cut a deal with the Lannisters. She thinks that while Jaime’s immediately family lives, she hopes that won’t be the case for much longer, even though her plan depends on Tyrion! Those are the tangled webs of the war at work, and these contradictions will grow around Catelyn come ASOS
  • It’s, again, such a human moment for Catelyn to trust that Tyrion will release Sansa in exchange for Jaime while still hoping that Tyrion dies.
  • That’s not logical! But it’s so human to wish your enemies dead even as you consider doing something which will require Tyrion to be alive by the time Jaime reaches King’s landing.
  • Something I wonder here: is it possible that Catelyn is subconsciously remembering the parlay before the parlay when she and Stannis chatted, and Stannis promised that he would return her daughters to her if he found them?
  • Stannis would kill Tyrion and Cersei, and he would give catelyn her daughters back … alive or dead.
  • You can start to see the wheels in Catelyn’s brain turning at the thought of a win-win. Either Stannis wins, and he returns Catelyn’s daughters. Or Jaime shows up to the victorious Lannisters, and Tyrion returns Sansa.
  • I’m not saying that this is what would happen in practice, but it seems to be theory that Catelyn is starting to operate under.
• Second exchange: Bran and the dagger
  • Jaime answered Catelyn’s first question more easily than she expected. What about the second? Will he dare tell the truth about Bran’s fall?
  • Yes, he will! Jaime confesses to attempted child murder as casually as he confessed to the creation of children, as if they’re equally meaningless
  • It takes Catelyn’s breath away. The monstrous crime that afflicted her family, causing her so much heartache and sleepless nights. It broke her, at some level. It ought to have broken Jaime even more. But it didn’t
  • Even more than the act itself, I think it’s Jaime’s seeming lack of sorrow or seriousness that leads Catelyn to wish she could kill him then and there
  • The authors of Catelyn’s despair don’t even have the dignity to regard their sins with solemnity. Bran isn’t even important to Jaime as a victim
  • Only the memory of Catelyn’s daughters holds her back. For the first time reader, that’s because Cersei would punish Sansa for any harm inflicted upon Jaime, but on reread, we know Catelyn needs Jaime for her trade
  • So instead, Catelyn once again tries to hold Jaime to account. As always, she falls back on the structures around her: you were a sworn knight!
  • Unlike Sandor, Jaime does not immediately respond by deconstructing the institution of knighthood. That comes later in the conversation
  • Instead, Jaime declares that Bran was spying on him and Cersei. Therefore, he was not among the innocents covered in his vows
  • This is highly dubious, to put it politely, and flaming horseshit, to put it more bluntly. Bran didn’t know what he was going to see until he saw it
  • He did not climb up there to spy on the Lannisters, and even if he had, child murder is still frowned upon--publicly, at least
  • To put it in a Boomer context that George is probably aware of: the real crime was Daniel Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers, not that Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson lied to the American public about the Vietnam War.
  • In George’s world, he puts the Pentagon Papers in a defensible context for Jaime/McNamara by having Jaime vocalize the danger that leaking classified material means to #TheTroops, and Jaime is a troop.
  • Kidding aside, in George’s worldview, he thinks that Jaime has reasons to have done what he’s doing, and there’s more complexity behind the act on Jaime’s part.
  • As George said in 2014, Jaime believes that he’s still doing a noble act by committing an act of child-murder:
    • Remember, Jaime isn't just trying to kill Bran because he's an annoying little kid. Bran has seen something that is basically a death sentence for Jaime, for Cersei, and their children – their three actual children. So I've asked people who do have children, "Well, what would you do in Jaime's situation?" They say, "Well, I'm not a bad guy – I wouldn't kill." Are you sure? Never? If Bran tells King Robert he's going to kill you and your sister-lover, and your three children. . .
  • In Jaime’s opinion, him attempting to silence Bran was to preserve the lives of Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen
  • … except, when does he give a shit about these kids when he’s exposed to them in the story?
  • Even here, just before we get this admission about Bran, Jaime is all Yup, they’re mine instead of Yes, they’re mine, and I’m so worried for their welfare and safety. If my secret came out, it would mean my own blood was in peril.
  • That may be bravado on Jaime’s part, never admitting to weakness, but what about when we get into Jaime’s head when he becomes a POV character?
  • There’s really nothing that Jaime feels emotionally when Joffrey dies. He’s a rock without any emotions, telling Cersei:
    • "He is my seed. He's never called me Father. No more than Joffrey ever did. You warned me a thousand times never to show any undue interest in them."
  • Of course, I think that’s a deeply layered psychological response by Jaime with his cold response to his son’s death built from reinforced behavior of never showing interest in Joffrey translating to not having any actual interest in Joffrey.
  • To me, I’m continuing on my death of the author bit here (go back and listen to our 10th episode on AGOT, Bran II) and thinking that what Jaime states here about Bran and thus about his own children is consistent with his actions.
  • So, where would Jaime want to shift the blame on if it was fate that had Bran climb up to the window outside of his and Cersei’s room?
  • Jaime then shifts blame to the gods. They were watching all of it as Bran was watching us. They didn’t intervene. They could have!
  • In part, this is Jaime building his way up to the argument that the systems around them are corrupted and unjust, not just him as an individual
  • But in the moment, he’s clearly dodging responsibility, as Catelyn points out. Jaime and Cersei are responsible for creating a situation upon which it would be fatal to intrude. They knew the consequences if anybody saw
  • Catelyn clearly has the upper hand on Jaime here...and then she promptly overplays it by bringing up the catspaw, accusing Jaime of sending him
  • As we’ve said before, this is probably the weakest plot point in the series, and we don’t want to beat a dead horse on the specifics
  • What matters here in terms of character is that Catelyn is faced with overwhelming evidence that Littlefinger lied to her, and can’t accept it
  • As she has to admit, Jaime and Tyrion are telling the same story, which would be impossible to coordinate given they’ve been apart the whole time
  • But Catelyn hates the idea that the little brother figure from her cherished childhood has grown into an enemy who has tricked her into a war
  • She’d rather keep thinking of Jaime as her true enemy, easy to hate. His honor is easy to dismiss; she lashes out and kicks his shit across the floor
  • Just as Jaime predicted, she hungered for truth, but didn’t care for the taste of it when he served it up. He doesn’t like the truth about Bran, either, and the “shit for honor” insult gets under his skin as well
  • Jaime says that he is past caring what people think of him, but that’s clearly not the case. He’s reshaped himself around his reputation
  • Even as both Catelyn and Jaime claim to be putting forth their most honest selves, they can’t help but flinch, like touching a hot stove
  • Jaime’s reaction against being accused of having shit for honor is so clutch here.
    • I may have shit for honor.
  • May is the optimal word. Jaime is holding back here, knowing that Westeros considers him to have acted dishonorably as kingsguard knight in service to Aerys II Targaryen.
  • That’s what Jaime evaluates himself against, and it’s what Westeros evaluates him against.
  • But notice that Catelyn isn’t talking about that! She’s talking about Jaime’s actions with pushing Bran out of the windowsill and then the second attempt on Bran’s life.
  • Of course, Jaime was innocent of the second attempt against Bran.
  • But bringing it back to the longer view of history, Catelyn traces Jaime’s dishonor as a straight line from Aerys to Bran.
  • That’s just Catelyn in a nutshell: people are good or evil, and their past actions confirm her suspicions about the present.
  • That worldview is challenged by Jaime as she realizes that he didn’t send the catspaw after Bran. Neither did Cersei or Tyrion.
  • And that’s one reason why I like the Joffrey as sending the catspaw for the sake of Catelyn refusing to believe that her childhood friend would betray. That’s cognitive dissonance at its best, and again, human. More on this come ASOS.
• Third exchange: Baratheons and Karstarks
  • From there, we shift back to the bigger picture. This war isn’t just a private vendetta between the Stark and Lannister clans, after all
  • What of the Baratheons, Jaime asks? Have Robert’s brothers taken the field? They have, Catelyn says. Full stop. Not exactly honoring the spirit of their deal, as Jaime says! Again the question of how much they can trust
  • Catelyn reluctantly elaborates on what she saw in the south: Renly was murdered via sorcery by Stannis, who is now marching on King’s Landing
  • Jaime says that’s a pity, as he liked Renly, but not so much Stannis. A revealing glimpse as to where Jaime’s head is at
  • Both Baratheons posed a threat to Jaime and his children, but Renly never made Jaime feel bad about it, so he gets a pass
  • Remember, what Jaime hates most is being judged, and Stannis’ whole thing is judging people. Gendry told us that before we even met him
  • I’m sure Jaime was also responding to a clear threat from Stannis in terms of the succession; had Renly been the elder, it might’ve been different
  • As he does throughout ACOK, George frames Renly and Stannis as perfectly matched opposites, a contrast working its way thru everything
  • Renly’s optics game continues to be strong -- so strong that even Jaime likes him.
  • (And this despite Renly’s conspiracy to plant Margaery into Robert’s bed as he knew the truth of who the father of Cersei’s kids were)
  • Renly could charm anyone with a smiling face while holding a knife behind it.
  • Kind of an interesting parallel here is how Tyrion regards Robert Baratheon earlier in ACOK:
    • Tyrion had rather liked Robert Baratheon, great blustering oaf that he was . . . doubtless in part because his sister loathed him so
  • Tyrion related to Robert due to both Cersei liking him but also that Robert’s drunken lechery was a similar current with Tyrion’s.
  • You see how Jaime would have liked Renly as similar to him: the courtly manners, the smiling, handsome face. Jaime sees a coal mirror to his own.
  • Not so the case with Stannis who appears to be the personification of justice.
  • To the point, it was Stannis who had a different take on what should have happened with Jaime after Robert’s Rebellion.
    • The eunuch should never have been pardoned. No more than the Kingslayer. At the least, Robert should have stripped the white cloak from Jaime and sent him to the Wall, as Lord Stark urged. He listened to Jon Arryn instead.
  • Like we were talking about last week, the thing undergirding Jaime’s anger at the new ruling class is how they climbed into power through him killing Aerys and then spurned him as the kingslayer.
  • Stannis wanted to go a step further by taking away the white cloak and sending Jaime to the Wall.
  • So, Jaime joins the long list of “fuck that Stannis guy” characters in the story, and that list is only growing.
  • Jaime next inquires after the Tyrells, the most powerful single faction in Westeros. Catelyn says they were backing Renly at first
  • Jaime sees another opening: so Robb hasn’t made any new allies, huh? He must be feeling lonely! Catelyn responds by rattling off Robb’s resume
  • There’s a tragic note to this on reread. In the buildup to and aftermath of the Red Wedding, multiple characters note that Robb won every battle, but it didn’t help him win the war. Catelyn doesn’t realize that the rules are going to change around her, that Robb will fall short by a hidden metric
  • Jaime says Robb hasn’t faced Tywin yet and Robb only defeated Jaime with a craven’s trick that took him unawares. Again the bitter irony: Tywin will not defeat Robb in the field, but with a craven’s trick that takes him unawares, in a far less even-handed fashion than the Whispering Wood
  • These blustering pretensions give way to the insecurity and rage at the heart of House Lannister. Catelyn points out that Jaime has no right to talk of tricks, not after Tyrion sent in false envoys to try and free him
  • Jaime flips the script, saying Robb would do the same thing to free Bran and Rickon. Now, Robb did not send false envoys to free Sansa--he tried to keep these diplomatic norms alive. But that’s not the point for Catelyn
  • The point for her is that Bran and Rickon are dead. Even if Robb wanted to fight fire with fire regarding dishonorable tactics, it’s just too late
  • She won’t share that pain with Jaime, however. Even though they might have some things in common, even though they might act similarly if the shoes were on the other feet, Catelyn is still all alone in her grief
  • I think Jaime makes a stronger “we are the same, you and I” argument when he says that Tyrion will have little hope of ransoming Jaime through the proper channels. Robb will never give him up. As such, if Tyrion ever wants to see his brother again, he kinda has to bend the rules
  • Catelyn doesn’t have a comeback for that, because it’s true. She’s only here because it’s true! She’s about to bend the rules herself in order to try and get Sansa back, because she knows Robb will reject the official way
  • And Robb will reject sending Jaime back officially in large part because of his lords. Like Rickard Karstark, whose sons Jaime slew in battle
  • Catelyn is again trying to provoke Jaime into shame for his actions, but Jaime doesn’t feel bad about the Karstarks. Here, I think he’s on more solid ground than he was with Bran. It was battle; they had swords in hands; as Catelyn herself said at the time, they were there to die for Robb
  • This doesn’t exactly make Jaime a monster. It does make him politically radioactive, which in Jaime’s mind, justifies the prison break...even though that made him more politically radioactive than ever!
  • Suffice to say, this is not going how Catelyn wanted. Instead of clarity, everything is more muddled than before, because Jaime is not fitting neatly into the little box she has for him in her mind, just as Jaime the character is starting to change shape in the mind of the reader
  • Part of what hamstrings Catelyn’s arguments with Jaime is that she is grounding her arguments both in conventional wisdom but also because she’s limiting herself to arguments that benefit her particular side.
  • That Jaime was out in the field altogether fighting as a commander for Tywin while Robert was still alive is a spot where Catelyn would have a point.
  • But Catelyn focuses in on the individual: you killed people at the expense of the actual ethical argument about Jaime’s conduct: he was prosecuting an illegal war and breaking the king’s peace while the king lived.
  • This is not the last time this is going to happen with Jaime of course as he will fight on behalf of an illegitimate regime in the Riverlands that has built itself on the atrocity of the Red Wedding.
  • And like there, Jaime will always ground his actions only in individual terms. I didn’t want to go, but at least I didn’t technically lift a sword against the Starks or Tullys and never consider that he’s still the overall wrong thing.
  • That conflict in AFFC/ADWD is only the latest iteration for Jaime about those types of things as he has his orders from Tommen and his vow to Catelyn we’ll chat about towards the end of the podcast.
  • But that’s oaths for you, isn’t it?
• So many oaths
  • Jaime says that any other knight would have killed the Karstarks. That’s not about him being a villain--that’s the nature of power and war
  • Sandor said the same thing to Sansa. What do you think knights are for? Chivalry sates the crowd, inspires the singers, but knights are for killing
  • Catelyn insists otherwise. A knight exists to uphold his vows. They are embodiments of the values she believes in; Jaime betrayed those values
  • Jaime has broken every oath he ever swore. Therefore, he is no true knight. Westeros is forsaken because of those individual weaknesses
  • This is the core of Catelyn’s worldview, and Jaime is now just sad and drunk enough to take dead aim at it, instead of evading it with witticisms
  • He does so with one of the great monologues in the series, one of the most quoted passages in ASOIAF. You’ll find it all over social media bios, elaborate gifsets, even tattoos. This is writing that resonates with people
  • Why is that? Because with a single paragraph, Jaime uproots all the cultural topsoil between himself and Catelyn to get at something universal
  • The problem, Jaime says, is not that we are all hopeless sinners who fail to live up to our perfect ideals. The problem is the ideals themselves
  • Their society is addicted to vows, the performance of values. Their society has confused surface for substance, imposing song-frameworks on reality
  • In the process, their society has ignored the question of what it actually means for a given individual to make sense of those values
  • Jaime argues that while a given oath might make sense on its own, it will inevitably come into contradiction with another, equally important oath
  • George, through Jaime, is arguing that the essence of maturation is recognizing that everything is more than the sum of its parts
  • Just as Catelyn’s view of Jaime is too simplistic to capture the whole, so too is her view of her society and its values
  • She wants to believe that if everyone gets in line and behaves, they’ll live in a good world. Jaime counters that it is impossible to get in line and behave even if you wanted to, because the rules contradict each other
  • Obey the laws. Sounds good. Obey the king. But what if the king is breaking the laws? How can you honor the crown, your family, and the people if they have different interests and are working at cross-purposes?
  • Jaime is, of course, talking specifically about the Mad King, as he will make explicit in just a minute. But this passage resonates because it touches upon the whole of human experience, across every border
  • Anyone who has ever tried to wield power, or raise children, or worship a mysterious god, has run headlong into this dilemma
  • No matter what you do, Jaime says, you fail. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one value or the other; they cannot coexist
  • No matter what motivates this specific war or that one, the human heart in conflict with itself is always lurking underneath the game of thrones. Peace is difficult to create in part because of our BS power structures, but also because it’s difficult to imagine. We’re ultimately monkeys with anxiety
  • In truth, peace awaits us only in the grave...and maybe not even then, if the Others have their way. Their zombies are metaphors for the ghosts we carry with us, memories come to claim us, the bitter truth beneath belief
  • Catelyn is persisting on thinking of her values as isolated ideals. One on one tests; you either pass or fail. Jaime is forcing her to consider these ideals in context with each other, like the seven gods who are one
  • That’s why he brings up the faded glory of his youth: I was the youngest man to wear the white cloak. I was a legend out of the song. And now I understand that I was a mummer’s dragon, something to wave for the cheering crowd, my shining cloak covering up the truth
  • Jaime’s oaths monologue articulates the difference between thinking in individuals and thinking in systems more succinctly than any textbook, and it delivers an emotional wallop to every reader. It forces us to contemplate the contradictions we have navigated in our own lives, the ways in which the things we believe make it impossible for us to live honestly
  • Jaime has gone from a one-note villain to one of the most complex and challenging characters in the story. What an accomplishment!
  • It’s an accomplishment that’s borne from George’s gardening style.
  • You were talking last week about how the original Jaime was just a straight up villain, killing his way onto the Iron Throne.
  • And here, we see how George gardened his way into a fantastic and challenging character in the form of Jaime Lannister.
  • Not originally intended as a POV character, George, probably influenced by his examination of knighthood in The Hedge Knight, struck gold with molding Jaime into a human character with real inner conflict.
  • I relate to Jaime in my own life - no, not the child murders and incest: this part, the vows, the conflicts between those vows.
  • That one little line about all of the swirling vows sums it up so well: it’s too much. I feel that! I took an oath of office to obey the orders of the president of the United States and the officers appointed over me and also honor the constitution, regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. There’s never been a conflict over that before, right? Hm.
  • So does Stannis: That was a hard choosing. My blood or my liege. My brother or my king.
  • You can see how people would be made miserable or even driven mad in attempting to resolve the conflicts that Jaime has dealt with.
  • But Jaime has not gone mad, because he has decided not to resolve these conflicts.
  • Jaime is an ultimate individualist, seeing himself as making the impossible choice by breaking his own vow to protect the king in order to satisfy his other vows: protect the innocent/defend the weak.
  • Catelyn demands to know why Jaime can still call himself a knight, and Jaime Lannister, drunk and bitterly nostalgic, can look at Westeros: a land awash in chivalry and knights who stood, saw and did nothing or actively participate(d) when atrocity occurs and say, “Yup. At least, I finally did something.”
• Fire and blood
  • Jaime was remembering his brief glory days as a child prodigy, and Catelyn takes that away: you may have been the youngest ever to wear the white cloak, but you became the youngest ever to betray it, too
  • Kingslayer, she calls him. An epithet spat at Jaime wherever he goes. This is why he is considered a man with shit for honor
  • Jaime responds by confronting the hypocrisy at the heart of this attitude. “And what a king he was!” If everyone acknowledges that Aerys was a mentally ill tyrant, why is Jaime so despised for removing him from power?
  • As Robert said in book one: someone had to kill Aerys. The Rebellion was inexorably headed in that direction. Who cares which hand held the knife?
  • Ned argued that it mattered because Jaime tainted the Kingsguard. Worse, he tainted Robert’s throne with his oathbreaking
  • Brienne makes the same argument in ASOS:
    • "Aerys was mad and cruel, no one has ever denied that. He was still king, crowned and anointed. And you had sworn to protect him."
  • There is a gigantic flaw in these arguments that Jaime now finally makes plain to the reader. If someone as unfit and dangerous as the Mad King could continue to wield power after the extent of his condition became clear, these institutions were already hopelessly corrupt
  • If the rule you believed in led you here, of what use was the rule? Ned and Brienne refuse to acknowledge the possibility that their beloved network of oaths is precisely what allowed the Mad King to stay in power so long
  • The Kingsguard knights were best poised to do something about Aerys. He trusted them even after he stopped trusting everyone else. They were witness to the worst of his crimes. No one else could’ve stopped them
  • But they didn’t. Why? Was it because these great knights were secretly paranoid sadists like Aerys, and they were enjoying his crimes?
  • No, and that’s the point. They went along with it because of the systems around them. Their worldviews told them to stick to their oaths, and so they stuck to their oaths even in the face of abuses of power that their worldviews never prepared them for
  • Jaime thinks he should’ve been treated like a hero. Instead, he was treated like a villain. To him, that demonstrated that their society has no clue what actually constitutes heroism and villainy, despite their songs
  • Jaime’s compatriots in Aerys II’s kingsguard - all considered the best knights of the realm, honorable knights, the cream of chivalry - all fell back on their oaths when they witnessed their king commit atrocity as Gerold Hightower told Jaime:
    • You swore an oath to guard the king, not to judge him.
  • Jaime sarcastically refers to Gerold as “a better man than him, all agree”, knowing that this chivalrous knight, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, retreated morally into his vows when the king was committing murder.
  • But vows, like laws, are a reflection of what society values and holds dear.
  • And when those vows prevent otherwise good, honorable men like Barristan Selmy, Gerold Hightower, Arthur Dayne, Jonothor Darry, Lewyn Hightower and Oswell Whent from standing up to tyranny, then maybe the whole goddamn system is rotten.
  • Back in 2012, George was asked:
    • Arthur Dayne has been presented as the quintessential chivalrous knight. How could he support the atrocities of Aerys, that even Jaime was horrified by?
  • And his response was: Well... keep reading.
  • To me, this signals that the kingsguard knights had plans to do something: namely, to overthrow Aerys II and replace him with Rhaegar, hence why they were guarding Rhaegar’s son Jon rather than fight at the Trident.
  • Rhaegar would have been an improvement over Aerys II, no doubt. Robert was an improvement over Aerys II - though not by much.
  • But that’s kind of the point: replacing Aerys with Rhaegar or Robert didn’t put the realm to rights.
  • A good king could be followed by a bad king. Good King Jaehaerys was succeeded by Viserys I. Viserys II was succeeded by Aegon IV. Joffrey succeeded Robert. Euron succeeded Balon.
  • It goes on and on and on. Vows underpin a rotten political foundation in Westeros, and changing the musty old carpet won’t help anyone when the foundation of the house (of the dragon) is crumbling underneath.
  • And how is it that Gerold Hightower morally squared being at the Tower of Joy rather than the Trident: We swore a vow.
  • It’s not enough!
  • That was the status quo which Jaime is being accused of forever tainting, and he is done keeping his anger and loneliness about that inside him
  • The combination of deprivation and drunkenness sends him reeling back in time to his traumatic rebirth, Aerys’ red blood on his golden blade. The Lannister colors, he says; they made him who he is
  • He’s proud of it, even though it broke his life apart forever. It’s the one thing he did that still makes sense to him
  • Catelyn says only a man like him would be proud of that. Jaime reminds her that he’s all alone--only he made this decision, and only he bears the consequences. The Kingsguard keeps the king’s secrets, after all
  • And now Jaime starts sharing those secrets, partially to break Catelyn’s holier-than-thou attitude, but also to unburden himself of the pain
  • Do you know what really happened, Jaime asks Catelyn, back when we were young and beautiful? Did Ned ever tell you his truth, the tragic backstory that made him so old and afraid before his time, a broken man?
  • She doesn’t know, and neither do we. As first time readers, we haven’t troubled to wonder about the deaths of Rickard and Brandon Stark
  • We might be inclined to agree with Catelyn: “dead is dead.” They’re gone, it was wrong, and Aerys was overthrown. What use digging deeper?
  • That mindset, Jaime argues, is precisely what has allowed abuses of power to continue. We memory-hole them because they’re so painful, but in doing so, we make ourselves powerless to stop them from happening
  • Catelyn does not want to know this, as she thinks. She does not want to remember Brandon. Jaime forces her to. Remember the kind of man he was, less like Ned, more like me, the man you claim to despise
  • Catelyn has buried Brandon very deep, and it hurts to recall how close they came to a life together, before he turned aside to King’s Landing
  • This is going to be the first time that Jaime will be so triggered by someone hanging him with the kingslayer name that he’ll reveal a horrible truth about Aerys, and it won’t be the last.
  • With Catelyn, Jaime goes for the jugular, refusing to let people get away with “Brandon was murdered by the kingslayer. How dreadful.” He wants people to remember the real Aerys, and the monstrosity of his conduct that Jaime was witness to.
  • And so, he chooses to tell Catelyn the truth of Brandon Stark and Rickard Stark’s deaths to try to shake Catelyn loose. You want to call me the kingslayer, let’s examine who the mad king really was.
  • It’s the same tact that will finally push Jaime over the edge with Brienne in ASOS as she will repeatedly call him kingslayer rather than his name, and she does it when he’s handless and in the bathtub at Harrenhal, and whoops, Jaime is revealing the details about ‘Mad Aerys.’
  • On that note of the mad king, I wonder whether Aerys’ nickname of the ‘mad king’ works to obfuscate his terrible deeds. No one needs to know what specific actions Aerys undertook to demonstrate his unfitness for office. The name works alone.
  • But Jaime is here to rip away the words we use to hide from the truth, because it remains too much.
  • It’s not that Jaime is doing a hard truths cut both ways bit like Stannis does. He’s not doing this from a sense of altruism. They damn him for killing the king he was sworn to protect. He’ll damn them with the truth.
  • Word reached Brandon of Rhaegar absconding with Lyanna. Hoster raged against this accident of history, the whims of individual agency at work; he had a conspiracy in place to resolve everything, and Brandon fucked it up
  • Jaime recalls the spectacle of Brandon riding into the Red Keep like a hero out of the songs, roaring for Rhaegar to come out and die
  • He was accompanied by others; more lords’ sons, as Jaime recalls. But Catelyn knows their names. How strange, she thinks to herself
  • That’s how memory works. Some things you bury too deep to recall; other details float immediately to the surface. There’s no real logic to it
  • The point is how painful it is to engage with the past, and how that pain has worked itself out through both individuals and larger systems
  • Catelyn remembers their names. That’s how you honor people; that’s how you keep the dead alive. Names on gravestones, on plaques, memorials
  • She remembers the official canonized history, and neatly lays it out to Jaime: Aerys had them all killed without trial, and so we went to war
  • This is not factually inaccurate, but it is clearly incomplete. It’s impossible to really reckon with what happened without digging deeper
  • Jaime is here to escort Catelyn past the coverup. I was there. I saw it all. I cannot forget, I cannot say “dead is dead” and be blissful in my ignorance
  • Jaime doesn’t know their names, the official history--instead, he knows the unofficial history, never written down, never made public, belonging to him
  • What actually happened in the Red Keep is that Aerys offered Rickard Stark a trial by combat. He armored himself for a duel, following his social norms wherein this divide could be settled and society could keep rolling
  • As Jaime says, Rickard thought he’d be fighting one of the Kingsguard, maybe Jaime himself. That’s how this sort of thing is supposed to work
  • Instead, the Mad King’s pyromancers suspended him in a cage high above the throne room and began building a pyre beneath him
  • Aerys told Rickard that fire, itself, is the champion of House Targaryen. If Rickard wanted to prove Brandon’s innocence, he just had to not burn
  • Aerys then made Brandon watch with a noose around his neck, promising that Rickard would die unless his son could free him
  • Both Stark men died, of course. Brandon strangled himself trying to get loose, and Rickard’s flesh melted into his armor
  • George describes the bile rising in Catelyn’s throat as she listens to this, and the reader feels the same way. This is a nightmare scenario
  • We’ve gone from Shakespearian tragedy to full-on horror. Imagine yourself in Rickard’s place. Imagine the moment the cage door slams shut. Imagine your confusion, followed by horrible dawning awareness
  • No. Surely not. The king is not that mad. He cannot think he’ll get away with this. Someone will stop him. They must. I can see them, they can see me! I am Lord Rickard Stark of Winterfell! I cannot die this way...
  • ...but he did. He died one of the most painful deaths imaginable, and his son had to watch. Brandon wanted only to be the hero and save the day. In his efforts to do so, he literally got himself killed, strangling himself in his desperation to reach his sword and cut his father loose
  • Brandon and Rickard were adults. They were not unintelligent. Brandon was capable of restraint, as we see in his duel with young Littlefinger
  • The mistake they made was in their assessment of how power works. They believed the systems around them would work to constrain obviously unfit individuals. They learned far too late that the systems around them are, in fact, easily hijacked by those unfit individuals. See also Euron
  • The argument, the correct argument was that the Targaryens had gone too far in violating political norms in killing Rickard Stark when he came to ask for Brandon’s release, and this, along with Aerys calling for Robert and Ned’s heads, led to a justifiable rebellion.
  • Brandon Stark rolling into King’s Landing calling for Rhaegar to come out and die: you can understand why Aerys might arrest him.
  • But murdering Rickard Stark was the final act of aggression by the sovereign against his Lord Paramount.
  • Rickard Stark came to King’s Landing peacefully, without an army, to ask for his son’s release, and Aerys responded with cruelty and murder.
  • And everyone in King’s landing stood by and let it happen.
  • This is the shadow that power can cast on the wall. No one had to obey the king. The king’s men could have said no. The kingsguard could have rushed in to save Rickard. The “five hundred men” that Jaime says in the Thrones Show were present and “silent as the crypt.”
  • Barristan Selmy: the famed knight and kingsguard, who stopped to finish writing his White Book entry on the way out of King’s Landing: stood, saw and did nothing.
  • That, ultimately, is Jaime’s message to Catelyn. Not just that the horrible thing happened, but that “good men” stood there, watched, did nothing
  • Jaime only got through it by filling his head with thoughts of Cersei. That explains so much of Jaime’s psychology right there: he’s so obsessed with his sister in part because while fucking her, he can forget these traumas
  • These were formative years for him. He was still a young man, reliant on what was supposed to be the wisdom of his elders to guide him
  • One of those elders, Gerold Hightower, took him aside afterward and said:
    • “You swore a vow to guard the king, not to judge him.”
  • It’s difficult to express what a loathsome sentiment this is. All of the hypocrisy and culpability of Westeros RE the Mad King is summarized
  • This is every “I was only following orders” excuse that every flunky of every monster offers up after the fact. Systemic injustices do not require everyone to be a giggling sadist. They just require passivity, an inherent preference for the status quo. All evil needs is good men doing nothing
  • Now, George is wise enough to know that one good man doing something is not nearly enough, on its own, to vanquish evil--gotta think in systems
  • Jaime did what Brandon was trying to do, albeit more successfully--pull out your sword, take down the tyrants, become a big damn hero
  • Did that save the day for Westeros? No, because killing Aerys left in place the political and cultural systems that had given him free reign
  • The next king, Robert, had no larger critique to offer than “Targaryens suck.” As Tywin says, Robert knew he needed Rhaegar’s children dead, but he didn’t want to do it himself, because that’s not what heroes do
  • Jaime feels the same way about his terrible reputation. You all needed Aerys dead, but none of you wanted to do it. I took it upon myself
  • So now he lives in a world that hates him and calls him “Kingslayer” while hero-worshipping Gerold Hightower, who thought the most important takeaway was that Jaime not dare to judge these horrific murders
  • And Jaime was still so young when all of this occurred: probably 16 years old, and the knights in shining armor are telling him that he took an oath to protect the king.
  • I was re-reading ASOS, Jaime VI when Jaime dreams of his former brothers in the kingsguard who all damn him for breaking his vow to save Aerys, and Jaime responds that Aerys was going to burn the city.
  • And Jonothor Darry says He was your king the same way that the other parent might tell an abused child He is your father.
  • At some level, I always wonder what would have these knights have done if they were in Jaime’s place? Would Barristan have stood by and allowed Aerys to nuke King’s Landing?
  • Yeah, I kind-of think they would. Notice that if there was a conspiracy to overthrow Aerys at the Tourney of Harrenhal in 281, the burning of Rickard and Brandon occurred after these white cloaks had tried to go for Rhaegar.
  • They were still willing to let atrocity occur in the smaller scale of two people, but what is scale when compared to the vows that these jerks value above apparently everything else.
  • Remember how this conversation started? Catelyn didn’t come down here to unravel this backstory. But this conversation is about more than the specific deal she wants to make. It’s about everything informing how these two people look at one another, the changing backdrop against which their individual decisions take place. It’s about how their generation got here
  • And just as Catelyn resisted the truth about Littlefinger, she resists the implications of Jaime’s story. She admits to herself it’s probably true; it’s so memorably hideous that she can’t believe Jaime made it all up
  • But all she does in response is move the goalposts. So what if Aerys really was that horrible? Are you saying you slew him to avenge the Starks?
  • She’s trying to dodge Jaime’s point, which is that keeping your oaths in such a nightmare scenario starts to seem absurd, even evil in itself
  • Jaime, of course, is used to such dismissals. Even now, when he’s exposed more of himself than ever before, he just gets shit on for it
  • Honesty gets him nothing, so Jaime has developed sarcasm and belligerence as defense mechanisms. I didn’t do it for the Starks!
  • The Starks were nothing to me, he says...and they still are, he implies. There is still no one like me, only me. Even in confession, I am alone
  • In the past, as in the present, the conventional wisdom shies away from the truth, and punishes Jaime for daring to look it in the face
  • In the present, Catelyn still acts like Jaime did the wrong thing. In the past, Jaime was forced to beg forgiveness from Robert for vacating his throne
  • Even Ned scorned Jaime. Ned, whose father and brother were murdered by the king Jaime slew. Jaime says Ned should’ve thanked him, but all Ned cared about was Jaime sitting on what was now Robert’s throne
  • Back in the pitch letter, and even in book one, the image of Jaime on the throne was a sign of Lannister avarice. Now, it becomes a sign of projected Lannister avarice, the assumption of bad faith
  • If everyone is going to just assume that Jaime is a villain, why should he bother trying to be a hero? Tyrion feels the same way in ASOS
  • Jaime says that Ned loved Robert more than he loved his brother Brandon, or their father Rickard, or even his young bride Catelyn
  • After all, he was never unfaithful to Robert, was he? To Jaime, the fact that the honorable judgmental Ned Stark had a bastard is more proof of social hypocrisy. They call that bastard Snow, so white and pretty like the Kingsguard cloaks when we swear our vows. Lies covering up the truth
  • Ironically, on reread, we know that Jaime has actually fallen for a coverup! Jon is not Ned’s bastard; Ned, like Jaime, soiled his honor to do the right thing. These people who think they are opposites have much in common
  • As with the Ned v. Cersei showdown in the Red Keep godswood in book one, the divides of the war obscure a deeper commonality: Stark or Lannister, we are all the Robert’s Rebellion generation, and we are all broken because of what really happened when we were young
  • At the start of this chapter, Catelyn had been plunged into fresh grief. Now she has peeled back time to unlock stale grief, pain that has sunk its roots in deep over time, transforming her and her enemies alike
  • Jaime might be wrong about where Jon comes from, but I think he’s right that Ned loved Robert more than his own father, brother, and even wife
  • Ned had never met Catelyn until the day they married; their relationship has been overshadowed by grief, haunted by what could have been
  • Robert, though, was an ideal in Ned’s mind. The perfect king, muscled like a maiden’s fantasy, a hero stepped out of the songs into real life
  • But then Robert got old and died. So too did Ned. And now here Jaime and Catelyn are with the pieces of the broken world they left behind
  • Jaime, of course, frames all of this as a bitter joke. Gallows humor is all he has left now that earnest attachments have been burned away
  • Catelyn says she finds nothing amusing about you, Kingslayer. Again she falls back on that epithet, the convenient definition of Jaime as the sort of obvious storybook villain responsible for all the world’s sins
  • This, in spite of everything Jaime has just told her. Catelyn asked for truth, and then just as Jaime predicted, she did not like the taste of it
  • “Kingslayer” pokes into the wound Jaime just reopened, so naturally, he’s not happy about it, falling back on more crude sexual innuendo
  • Beneath the posturing, however, is more pain. I was reminded throughout this reread of this chapter of Sartre’s classic play No Exit
  • In the play, several people are confined to a room together in what appears to be the afterlife. They promptly start making each other miserable, leading to the famous climactic line: “Hell is other people!”
  • This line is often taken out of context, and so the precise meaning is obscured. It’s more specific than “other people are unbearable”
  • What No Exit exposes as hellish about human interaction is that you have no power over how another person sees you. Hell is other people in the sense that you are permanently trapped within the perspective of others
  • Jaime would agree. Even after telling Catelyn the truth, he is still the vile “Kingslayer” in her mind’s eye, and there is nothing he can do about it
  • ACOK Catelyn VII ends on a cliffhanger. We don’t know what Catelyn is about to do with Brienne’s sword; given how insulting Jaime is being, we might assume she’s about to maim or kill him with it
  • How appropriate that a chapter all about hidden truths ends with a hidden truth: Catelyn frees Jaime, which we’ll find out in ASOS
  • Catelyn is the only POV character in ACOK who exits the book before the Battle of Blackwater. That kinda has to be the case; after the Blackwater, Catelyn would be much less likely to free Jaime, even in her grief
  • As first time readers, we are left wondering what happened here for the rest of the book. On reread, knowing what happened, the emotional qualities stand out more to me than the suspense and mystery
  • No matter what Catelyn does with that sword, it won’t fix their forsaken world, any more than Jaime was able to fix everything with his sword
  • She could cut Jaime’s tongue out, and it wouldn’t erase the devastating words he has spoken. In ASOS, we will learn that Catelyn came away from this conversation with a fledgling scrap of hope
  • In isolation, however, this chapter leaves us in the same place where we began: all alone with the dark (k)night, as the shadows close in
  • Earlier in ACOK, Tyrion said "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
  • The truth has cut Catelyn, and you’d understand her emotionally - not objectively - if she decided to have Brienne stab Jaime right then and there.
  • But Jaime has proven one thing to Catelyn: he may be a monster in Catelyn’s eyes, but he’s an honest monster.
  • That question of Jaime as a monster that we’re left with at the end of Catelyn’s story in ACOK is going to animate so much of Brienne and Jaime’s interactions early in ACOK.
  • So, too, will the kinslayer vs. wench name-calling in lieu of using their actual names.
  • This chapter is the springboard for Jaime to get downriver with Brienne and on into territory where his character changes, becomes slightly better.
  • But back at Riverrun, Jaime and Brienne leave behind an even-more broken Catelyn whose heart grows stonier still as the truth behind her father-in-law and her would-be husband’s murder now join with Catelyn’s grief over her dead sons.
  • And those hits will not stop. Soon, Robb returns as the Freys leave. And even as Jaime will somehow make it to King’s Landing, she’ll head north to her doom.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Jaime will further elaborate on the Aerys backstory to Brienne in ASOS

When Jaime says he is beloved by one for a kindness he never did, he means Tyrion loving him for supposedly arranging his tryst with Tysha, as will be revealed in ASOS

Catelyn says that the Tyrells don’t seem to have taken a new side yet. That’s George setting us up for the reveal that they have joined forces with Tywin

At the end of the chapter, Catelyn calls Brienne’s name and asks for her sword. At the end of Brienne’s arc in AFFC, she calls out “sword” to Stoneheart

Theory/Discussion

Does Catelyn Stark do the wrong thing here?

Catelyn did nothing wrong

• Time to be Catelyn’s lawyer. Hell yeah.
• My defense of Catelyn rests on three arguments:
  • Jaime has zero value as a hostage until Catelyn gives him value by releasing him.
  • Jaime proved his worth to Catelyn through his honesty and furthermore plans to fulfill his part of the bargain
  • Jaime can influence Acting Hand Tyrion, Queen Regent Cersei or AssHand Tywin to release Sansa
• Let’s first talk about the original value of Jaime as articulated by Catelyn back in AGOT, Catelyn VIII:
  • Our best hope, our only true hope, is that you can defeat the foe in the field. If you should chance to take Lord Tywin or the Kingslayer captive, why then a trade might very well be possible, but that is not the heart of it. So long as you have power enough that they must fear you, Ned and your sister should be safe. Cersei is wise enough to know that she may need them to make her peace, should the fighting go against her.
• So, from the get-go, the entire endeavor of fighting Jaime or Tywin was to take them prisoner in order to conduct a hostage swap: Jaime or Tywin for Ned and the girls.
• Of course, half of this bargain didn’t work out because Joffrey (with Littlefinger’s probable help) murdered Ned.
• But Sansa is still a captive of the Lannisters, and theoretically a trade is still possible.
• However, by ACOK, the two sides are holding Sansa/Jaime in order to secure the survival/good treatment of the other as Cersei told Tyrion in the previous chapter.
• Otherwise, the current value of Jaime is to hold him prisoner in order to keep him off the battlefield.
• Catelyn attempts to mitigate that by having Jaime swear the following oath (at swordpoint, mind you):
  • "Swear that you will never again take up arms against Stark nor Tully. Swear that you will compel your brother to honor his pledge to return my daughters safe and unharmed. Swear on your honor as a knight, on your honor as a Lannister, on your honor as a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard. Swear it by your sister's life, and your father's, and your son's, by the old gods and the new, and I'll send you back to your sister. Refuse, and I will have your blood." (ASOS, Jaime I)
• Jaime does follow up this memory of the oath with a thought about whether the High Septon would think an oath at sword point was valid, but shockingly, as Jaime thinks in ASOS, he plans to keep the part of the oath about returning Sansa:
  • Jaime had decided that he would return Sansa, and the younger girl as well if she could be found. It was not like to win him back his lost honor, but the notion of keeping faith when they all expected betrayal amused him more than he could say. (ASOS, Jaime III)
• And as indicated by his resistance to Cersei’s order to march on Riverrun in AFFC and his later reflection that he had technically kept his oath to Catelyn not fight the Starks or Tullys by not fighting any battles at Riverrun, Jaime was planning to keep his oath not to take up arms as well.
• Back in the Riverrun dungeon, Catelyn had no guarantee that Jaime was planning to keep his oath, but it should be noted that Catelyn thinks throughout the dialogue scene that Jaime was being honest with Catelyn — to his disadvantage at several points.
• I think Jaime’s honesty, most of all, influenced Catelyn’s desperate gambit to try to win back Sansa which was, again, the intended purpose of holding Jaime prisoner in the first place.
• Moreover, Robb later tells Catelyn that she was in the right to have originally urged Robb to do the prisoner exchange:
  • "I should have traded the Kingslayer for Sansa when you first urged it," Robb said as they walked the gallery. "If I'd offered to wed her to the Knight of Flowers, the Tyrells might be ours instead of Joffrey's. I should have thought of that." (ASOS, Catelyn IV)
• To give the quote full context: Robb was NOT agreeing with Catelyn’s decision to free Sansa without his leave. He’s rather saying that he should have taken up his mom’s advice back in the day and worked an official agreement with the Lannisters from the outset.
• So, now that we’ve established a few pieces, let’s talk about the fly in my ointment: are the Lannisters good faith actors here?
  • No, they are not.
• However, the Lannisters are not altogether bad faith actors in every circumstance.
• Let’s start with Tyrion: the person who Catelyn releases Jaime to. He’s certainly proved to be bad faith in defying the peace banner to try and spring Jaime previously.
• And yet, in his conversation with Sansa after that evil scene in the throne room, he has this one line that’s stuck with me:
  • “The next time you visit the godswood, pray that your brother has the wisdom to bend the knee. Once the north returns to the king's peace, I mean to send you home."
• What this quote indicates is that Tyrion was open to releasing Sansa under his own terms: the Starks bending the knee.
• But if Jaime shows back up in King’s Landing, with the intent to take Sansa back to King’s Landing, then he may be able to convince Tyrion to follow suit.
• Jaime had convinced Tyrion of the lie that Tywin told him about Tysha being a sex worker after all. Is it so far to assume Jaime couldn’t sway Tyrion to release Sansa — especially as her value is low to the Lannister cause and Tyrion has a natural sympathy for Sansa’s plight under Joffrey?
• Now, Cersei. The Queen Regent’s primary investment in Sansa was her ability to play brood-mare to Joffrey, but at the end of the last Sansa chapter, Cersei knows that Sansa doesn’t want to marry Joffrey.
• And anyways, Sansa has even less value as the Blackwater brings the Tyrells and the marriage between Joffrey and Margaery to cement the alliance. So, perhaps, Cersei won’t mind.
• Finally, there’s the shitlord who dies on the toilet: Lord Tywin Lannister.
• Tywin is the worst bad faith actor in the Lannister cause, but he is not altogether bad faith in that he has returned former hostages/prisoners like Wylis Manderly.
• Of course, Tywin does this after Wyman returns to the king’s peace; so, that must mean that he’s only willing to do prisoner/hostage swaps after fire and steel have been served and the enemies go to their knees?
• In actuality, no! Tywin does ransoms for the Frey as Arya observes at Harrenhal when the Freys are still Stark loyalists.
• Moreover, Tywin does a real-live prisoner swap in ASOS with Tywin at the head of Lannister operations in King’s Landing:
  • Robb had dispatched Jeyne's uncle Rolph Spicer to deliver young Martyn Lannister to the Golden Tooth the very day he received Lord Tywin's assent to the exchange of captives. It was deftly done. Her son was relieved of his fear for Martyn's safety, Galbart Glover was relieved to hear that his brother Robett had been put on a ship at Duskendale. (ASOS, Catelyn V)
• What I’m ultimately arguing is that the Lannisters are bad faith actors, but they are not wholly treacherous and can be negotiated with. Jaime for Sansa rests in this category as it gives the Lannisters what they want in exchange for an asset that doesn’t mean all that much to them as ACOK closes.
• Ladies and gentlemen of the podcast court, I rest my case. Catelyn has only done one thing wrong ever in her entire life.

Catelyn did a thing wrong

• I don’t think it’s wise for Catelyn to trust the Lannister brothers. Tyrion has already broken custom by sending in false envoys to free Jaime, and as Jaime himself will think in ASOS, how valid is a vow given drunk at swordpoint?
• Even putting that aside, however, the fact is that Catelyn does not have the authority to exchange hostages with the Lannisters. As such, even if the Lannisters were operating in good faith, they have no reason to consider themselves obligated to return Sansa. Robb, not Catelyn, is the Stark/Tully authority with whom the Lannisters would make deals, if they were so inclined
• And Robb would not approve of exchanging Jaime for Sansa. Catelyn knows that; she thought as much in her previous chapter when Cleos first introduced the possibility. She even admitted Robb would have good reason to refuse
• We also have to consider this decision within the larger political context. If Stannis wins the upcoming battle, Catelyn’s deal is moot. If the Lannisters win, she has just given away Robb’s major asset in suing for peace. It’s a lose-lose
• If Catelyn hadn’t sent away Jaime, could Robb have traded him to Tywin for a pardon after the Blackwater, avoiding the Red Wedding? Maybe, maybe not. As we’ll get into in ASOS, Tywin appears to have already begun the planning for the Red Wedding before learning Jaime was free. There might have been no way out
• On the whole, however, I think Catelyn’s decision here made things harder for her side of the war with no clear benefit. I get why she did it--loss and grief made her desperate to get back what loved ones she could. That’s the structure of tragedy for you: disasters inspire further disasters. The fallout awaits in ASOS

But now, to use Olenna’s wonderful wording, that the cow is milked, and they can’t squirt the cream back up the udder, what should have Robb done after learning what Catelyn did?

• IMO: Own his mom’s decision and pretend that it was his own. This will be my most controversial point, but I must be brave and face the arrows you are presently notching to your rhetorical bows.
• There’s an opportunity for Robb here to kill two birds with one stone. He has plausible - and truthful - deniability for knowing Catelyn released Jaime. So, he can appease his lords.
• And on the other hand, Robb can secretly send a bird from Riverrun to King’s Landing telling Tywin that he’s sending Jaime back to King’s Landing in exchange for Sansa.
• The problem, of course, is that Edmure sends out three ravens to Harrenhal. So, Robb would also have to send out another set of birds countermanding Edmure’s order.
• But it’s still only three ravens — all going to one location: Harrenhal. It seems more easy than not to countermand the order and let Jaime get to King’s Landing while other birds fly to the Red Keep.
• Robb doesn’t follow my imagined AU for good character-based reasons.
• I think the problem Robb would run into if he tried this gambit is the same problem Balon Greyjoy ran into: Tywin already has what he wants. Why should he give Robb anything? No negotiation has taken place beforehand here
• Moreover, I don’t think the Lannisters would believe Robb’s secret letter that he let Jaime go. Nothing passes the smell test here. Robb wouldn’t send Jaime on faith, Robb wouldn’t wait until weeks after he was gone to send word to King’s Landing, and Robb wouldn’t send a lone Stormlands woman as Jaime’s escort
• Even putting that aside, Jaime will just tell his family the truth when he gets to the city, and then they will know that Catelyn freed him and they owe Robb nothing
• Finally, Robb countermanding Edmure’s orders to seize the Kingslayer cannot be so easily kept secret as a letter to Tywin, and letting Jaime pass by Harrenhal is going to be just as unpopular with his lords as letting Jaime go in the first place

Conclusion

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