Episode 170: A STORM OF SWORDS, JAIME III: "Shall We Dance" 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 seventieth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Shall We Dance: An Analysis of ASOS, Jaime III” in which Jaime and Brienne bang … swords together, and we meet the bravest sellsword company around. You can say that they become Jaime and Brienne’s companions for a time.

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil:

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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!

Synopsis

Jaime, Brienne, and Cleos Frey are riding through a burnt-out Mad Max wasteland with more wolves than people when they arrive at the town of Maidenpool, where things somehow get worse. The gates have been smashed open and half the houses sacked or destroyed. No one’s around to greet them except some feral dogs. Oh, but Lord Mooton still holds the castle. That’s what’s important. Look at his banner in the wind!

Then there’s the titular Maidenpool, where (according to the song) Florian the Fool first spied on Jonquil bathing with her sisters. These days, it’s full to the brim with rotting corpses. Jaime, being Jaime, loves the irony so much he starts singing the goddamn song at the top of his goddamn lungs. When Brienne quite sensibly asks him what he thinks he’s doing, Jaime says he’s singing about maids prettier than her, showing off his Reddit-honed flirting skills. Cleos Frey begs Jaime to shut his fool mouth, because he’s afraid of Lord Mooton. Yeah, he’s a real threat, hiding in his castle up there. Jaime tells Cleos that their enemies aren’t the same as Brienne’s enemies. We’ll…see about that. Brienne threatens to gag Jaime; he tells her to go ahead if she’ll unchain him. He also offers to scrub her back in the pool, like he once did for Cersei. Oh, and he calls her “wench” again. They’re getting along great! Hope it works out for these crazy kids.

Brienne leads them down the road toward Duskendale. Jaime’s glad to see some green and growing things reappear; the burned wasteland reminded him of Aerys. Hm. Nothing to unpack there, moving right along. Unlike Cleos, Jaime is also glad that Brienne’s taking them along the quickest road, even if it’s more dangerous. You…sure about that, buddy? Yes he is, at least for now! He wants to get back to Cersei as quickly as possible. Jaime then tells us all about Twincest: The Prequel Years. He and Cersei used to sleep in each other’s arms as children. Even in the womb, according to Jaime. How in the hell he would know that is unclear. Stick it in his “romantic projection” file with the rest. Years before the Lannister twins hit puberty, they would imitate the dogs and horses they saw fuckin’ in the fields. One day, a maid caught them “playing” and told their mother Joanna, who shockingly didn’t approve. She put the kids in separate bedrooms and told them never to do it again. But then she died giving birth to Tyrion; Jaime doesn’t even remember what she looked like. Sad. Hey, you think Jaime or Cersei ever told Tyrion that his birth allowed them to resume fucking? Probably not. To bad. Could’ve really helped him bond with them.

Anywho, Jaime’s had to keep the sister-screwing secret ever since, and he’s tired of it. Maybe Stannis did him a favor by blabbing the truth to the world; now he can marry Cersei openly. Then they’ll marry Joffrey to Myrcella. Westeros will accept the incest, just like they did with the Targaryens! Wow, what a sensible, realistic train of thought. I love this plan. I’m excited to be a part of it. Jaime also thinks that he’ll send back Sansa Stark after all, just to see the look on Catelyn’s face. If only, if only.

At this point, Jaime’s musings are rudely interrupted by a flight of arrows. Jaime ducks in time, Brienne whips her sword out, but Cleos, naturally, twists his foot in the saddle and gets dragged off by his horse, his head bonking on the ground, making cartoon sound effects. Jaime realizes the arrows came from a low wall nearby and charges, hoping against hope that Brienne follows before the archers realize that he’s a) unarmed and b) in chains. Thankfully, she does, riding right past him and yelling her family name and home like this is Tolkien or some shit. The archers break and run, as Jaime knew they would; like he says to Brienne, archers know that they’re dead meat once they’re in sword swingin’ range. Jaime sees that Brienne has been shot by multiple arrows and offers to treat her wounds, given that Cleos was dragged off. Speaking of Cleos, they find the poor sucker dead, his skull broken to pieces by the ground. I guess I take back the cartoon sound effects? Nah, leave ‘em in.

Brienne is sad. Jaime is not. He wants his cousin’s clothes, his horse, and above all, his sword. Only to watch for danger when Brienne sleeps, though, he pinky swears it! Brienne refuses to arm Jaime, even if he promises not to turn on her. He broke his oath to Aerys, after all. Jaime says Brienne hasn’t cooked anyone in their armor (fact check: true) and begins to unbuckle Cleos’ swordbelt. Brienne tells him no, double no, no with whipped cream and a cherry on top, but Jaime has had enough:

Jaime was tired. Tired of her suspicions, tired of her insults, tired of her crooked teeth and her broad spotty face and that limp hair of hers.

He pulls out Cleos’ sword and in one practiced motion, brings it around to cut Brienne down dead…wait a minute, checking my notes…nope, Brienne got her sword out quick enough to stop him.

The duel begins. Feel like we need a sports announcer here. In this corner: the Terror of Tarth, the Maidencruel, it’s Brienne the Beauty! In this corner: the Kingslayer, the Lion of Night, it’s Jaime the Jackass! Jaime presses Brienne back, his pulse racing as the swords clang. This is what he was born for, he thinks: to fight. It’s been too long…

…which turns out to be more true than Jaime realizes. No matter where he attacks from, no matter how quickly he strikes, Brienne blocks every blow. Even when he drives her to her knees, she bounces back and starts forcing him to retreat. Jaime’s in chains and he’s fighting with an unfamiliar weapon, but it’s more than that. His sword skills all went to shit in his cell under Riverrun. Ah, but it’s more than that too:

She is stronger than I am.

That freaks Jaime right the fuck out. Don’t get him wrong, he was never the strongest fighter around. Robert in his prime, “muscled like a maiden’s fantasy,” he was stronger. So were Gerold Hightower and Arthur Dayne back in the glory days. Even in the present day, there are a handful of guys who bench more than Jaime Lannister: Greatjon Umber, Strongboar of Crakehall, and of course, the Clegane brothers. Jaime always won fights with his speed and finesse. But Brienne being stronger, that’s different. She’s a woman! That’s breaking the rules! Where’s the ref, blow the whistle already!

Brienne knows she’s winning, too; as she sends Jaime sprawling into the nearby brook, she calls for him to yield. He manages to wound her thigh, but only on the way to cracking his knee on the streambed. Brienne kicks away his sword, again telling him to yield. Jaime offers a counterargument in the form of wrestling her into the water. He tries to stab her with her own dagger, but she knocks it away and starts shoving him underwater like he’s a gym teacher in a dunk tank. Brienne tells Jaime one last time to yield or she’ll drown him. Jaime says that ackshually, that would make her an oathbreaker just like him, so much for the tolerant left, unsubscribe.

Suddenly, everyone bursts into laughter. Who’s everyone, you ask? Why, the pack of armed men who have been watching the fight like it’s pay-per-view. Jaime tells them there’s nothing to see here, he’s just beating his wife, typical day, but one of the armed men points out that she was doing the beating. George writes that he has no nose. Hmm…why does that seem so familiar…oh shit oh fuck

Jaime suddenly realizes that he knows these guys. They’re not the outlaws who killed Cleos; they’re the Brave Companions, aka the Bloody Mummers. Brienne offers them money; one skinny dude says they’ll take that, with Rorge chiming in to say that they’ll rape her next. Jaime doesn’t like the sound of that, and demands to speak to their commander. Turns out to be the skinny dude, Urswyck the Faithful, who recognizes Jaime even bald and bearded. Jaime tells them to hold Brienne captive for a ransom, and also to take his chains off before bringing him to see Vargo Hoat. After all, these jabronis work for his dad…right?

Nope, not anymore. The Mummers tell Jaime that they draw payroll from the Starks now. Jaime, being Jaime, once more can’t resist pointing out the irony: now they’re oathbreakers just like him! Sigh. Slow learner. Urswyck has both Jaime and Brienne pummeled and bound, despite Brienne’s protests that she also works for the Starks. Funny how that works. Jaime feels bad for Brienne, knowing she’s likely to be brutally assaulted by these men. He warns her not to fight back when they do.

He felt Brienne’s back stiffen against his. “Is that what you would do, if you were a woman?”

If I were a woman, I’d be Cersei. “If I were a woman, I’d make them kill me. But I’m not.”

Jaime then demands to speak with Urswyck, offering him gold to deliver them to Tywin in King’s Landing instead. Urswyck points out that Tywin would probably kill him as vengeance for the Mummers selling him out; Jaime admits in his thoughts that he was counting on exactly that. Urswyck then asks why he should betray Vargo. Jaime insists proudly that Tywin will kick Vargo’s ass…and then Urswyck slaps him across the face and tells him to shove it up his oathbreaking ass. Only now does Jaime realize he’s in serious trouble. Took him long enough! To be fair to him, he tries to get Brienne out of this as well, telling Urswyck that Tarth is called the Sapphire Isle. Brienne overhears this and points out to Jaime that it’s called that for the blue of its waters, but Jaime points out that her only chance to avoid gangrape is to make them think she’s worth a huge ransom. Otherwise, she could just let it happen and pretend they’re all Renly. Jaime Lannister, everyone: simultaneously the best and worst person he can be.

They find Vargo Hoat doing what he does best: breaking shit. Pretty much all he does, really. His Bloody Mummers have sacked a sept and are using the septon as an archery target. Northmen, these are your tax dollars at work. Vargo’s eating a half-cooked chicken, because time is money and who’s afraid of a little salmonella. Brienne again protests that she was sent lawfully by Catelyn, but Vargo Hoat could not possibly give less of a shit about that, and has her dragged away by Rorge. So much for the rules. Jaime decides to sway Vargo through an appeal to his greed. Tywin will pay a bunch of gold for me! That works about as well as it did with Urswyck, which is to say it doesn’t work at all. Vargo says he’ll have Tywin’s gold, but first he has to send him a message. The Mummers knock Jaime down and yank his arms out in front of him. One of them, a Dothraki, pulls out his long curved arakh blade.

They mean to scare me. The fool hopped on Jaime's back, giggling, as the Dothraki swaggered toward him. The goat wants me to piss my breeches and beg his mercy, but he'll never have that pleasure. He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard; no sellsword would make him scream.

Sunlight ran silver along the edge of the arakh as it came shivering down, almost too fast to see. And Jaime screamed.

And that is the synopsis for ASOS, Jaime III! What did you think, ser?

Depth

It’s amazing to think that we have only three chapters in A Storm of Swords before Jaime loses his hand. Throughout the narrative, he’s felt like a larger-than-life character torn from the pages of fantasy. He was the knight in shining armor, the best natural swordsman that Barristan Selmy ever seen. But he was also the smiling knight, the villain who pushed Bran out of the window yet whose easy smiles unnerve both readers and characters in the story. But it’s only when Jaime loses that hand - the one that slew Aerys, the one that pushed Bran from the window, the one he loses violently at chapter’s end - that we see the character that readers began to love. Jaime will never be the same after this chapter. In many ways, that’s for the betterment of his soul, but that comes at dear cost to the best POV in ASOIAF.

As well-written as Jaime’s first two chapters were, they feel like setup for this one. We’ve gotten accustomed to Jaime’s headspace, seen how he interacts with Brienne and the rest of the world, and how his thoughts just brush across the surface, hinting at something deeper and darker in his subconscious. Now all of that shifts into overdrive. Outlaws kill Cleos, then Jaime fights Brienne, then the Mummers take them captive, then Jaime loses his hand–everything moves so quickly that the first time you read it, all you can do is keep up, and George nails that breathless excitement. On reread, I can appreciate more how effectively the author establishes and then inverts the dynamics at play. Jaime is a prisoner, then a swordsman fighting for his freedom, then a prisoner again, only much worse off. Everyone remembers this chapter for what happens at the end, and for good reason, but Jaime losing his hand wouldn’t be as effective without the whole chapter making us uncertain about where we stand and what’s going to happen next. Definitely the best Jaime chapter so far–though I’ll be saying that about the next few Jaime chapters as well!

• Maidenpool (what’s left of it)
  • We open ASOS Jaime III to an anti-tolkien landscape: the green of the woods and field turned black by the fire.
  • The fields have been burned, the trees have been burned. And the bridges are gone too.
  • While Jaime, Brienne and Cleos attempt and eventually find a ford to cross with their horses, there’s a real feeling that the people in these lands have been trapped, herded in by killers.
  • The company sees no people, hears only wolves. Where are the people? Dead as they’ll come to find out.
  • Not all the people, of course. The first sight of Maidenpool finds Lord Mooten’s red salmon still flying above the castle on the hill.
  • He’s doing just fine, thanks. But underneath the castle is a scene of death and destruction.
  • The pool where legends say that Florian the Fool first saw Jonquil bathing with her sisters is filled with dead bodies.
  • The storied pool which more than hinted at sex and lust and life is now filled with death: life vanquished. The water poisoned by dead bodies.
  • It follows up on “They Lay with Lions,” the women hanged for pleasuring Lannister soldiers. Brienne said that no true knight would do such a thing; Jaime countered that knights see and do worse in every war
  • Both had half a point. Jaime is right that knights regularly betray their vows, not just him. Brienne is right that doing so makes them less than knights. How do we balance the ideal with the reality? Maybe the two of them can try to live up to their ideals while recognizing that humans are flawed even at their best, so they’ll never be the perfect knight
  • The point is less that there’s nothing to Brienne’s chivalric values, more that those values are often used as a smokescreen to cover up the truth
  • That collision and the disillusionment produced by it is what George is interested in, and you can see that when Jaime bursts into song
  • He’s making fun of the gap between how this pool is described in fiction and how it actually looks in a Westeros at war. For Jaime, like Sandor, that song is propaganda, a ribbon wrapped around a bloody sword
  • But still the banners still flap in the wind, the lord and his chosen few could take refuge from the slaughter.
  • Lord William Mooten holed up and let his people die. He’s the anti-Edmure Tully here. Where Edmure brought all his people into Riverrun because they were afraid, Mooten chose to embrace the fear and leave his own people to die.
  • The smallfolk were afraid too. They heard the shouts and screams, they saw their friends and family die.
  • But the gates to the castle were shut to the smallfolk.
  • Lord Mooten failed at the most basic level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Political Need: protecting his people.
  • Of course, to add some complexity to this dynamic, we will find out in AFFC that Mooten sent some of his men to fight among the Riverlands forces fighting for Robb and Edmure.
  • So, there were few fighting men left in the region to defend the smallfolk from the deprivations of war.
  • But there’s no excuse to not sound the bells as many people as possible within the walls to save them. That’s cowardice at the highest levels.
  • War is a disease, exposing the rot of men. Some do great deeds of valor and heroism, safeguarding the innocent and weak. Others perform murder and brutality and evil.
  • And some like Lord William Mooten expose their craven natures, resulting in the deaths of their people.
  • With all of these walk in the ruins chapters in ACOK/ASOS/AFFC, I’m reminded that this destruction is the deliberate work of Tywin Lannister
    • Send forth Vargo Hoat and his freeriders as well, and Ser Amory Lorch. Each is to have three hundred horse. Tell them I want to see the riverlands afire from the Gods Eye to the Red Fork.
  • As Brienne will find out in AFFC, Maidenpool was sacked by the Lannister army, but it wasn’t just the Lannisters who sacked the town:
    • Lions sacked his town, then wolves, then sellswords.
  • Lions did the first sack, then northmen and then sellswords. Everyone is preying on the defenseless.
  • Again, we’re getting a picture of Westeros that’s more complicated than the North = Good.
  • We’ll see Lord Mooton in AFFC when Brienne returns to Maidenpool. He’s knuckled under to the Lannisters and is playing sidekick to Randyll Tarly
  • Even in (relative) peace, restored to his position, he’s still not doing shit! As you were saying, he’s not a brute like Randyll, just a coward
  • Maidenpool is located near the border between the Riverlands and the Crownlands; if you look at House Mooton’s history, you see a pattern of split loyalties and shifting sides
  • It’s not easy to pick sides in a civil war. I’m sympathetic to the situation faced by families like the Swanns, who sent sons to multiple sides
  • But the flipside of that is every side taking out their frustration on civilians, and Mooton abandoning his people is unforgivable. We’re seeing more and more why the Brotherhood without Banners is so popular; that Mooton banner still flying in the wind is a symbol of irresponsible authority
  • Missing so far in this analysis is our character of Jaime Lannister, and what is his first response to witnessing the bodies in the pool? Singing!
  • He brings up the song of Six Maids in a Pool: a song that evokes both innocence and sex.
  • For Jaime, this gruesome scene of death and destruction invokes his bitter cynicism about the world of song and story.
  • Again, as that disappointed idealist, Jaime is pointing to the absurdity of song and story when compared to reality.
  • We don’t know what the truth of Florian and Jonquil really was, but Jaime thinks the story is ludicrous and silly. The story and song is Jonquil in the pool. The reality is the bloated bodies fouling the water.
  • Brienne tells Jaime to shut up. There might be someone listening! Cleos says they wouldn’t want to rouse brave Lord Mooten.
  • There could be other enemies about which … stamp that one as Cleos the Omniscient.
  • Jaime, though, is still caught up in reveling in cynicism, making jokes about seeing if Brienne can use the sword and engaging in that classic Jaime negging thing of calling Brienne a wench.
  • This finally drives Brienne angry enough that she lashes out, yelling that she’s Brienne.
  • At this point, Jaime’s constant use of mockery of Brienne has gotten under her skin. It’s no longer a fresh insult. It’s just retreading the same old “joke” over and over again.
  • Jaime realizes this and is using it to get an edge on Brienne and spring himself free of her.
  • On that note of springing himself free, it’s always struck me that Jaime wants to get down to King’s Landing too, but he refuses to go in chains and especially as a prisoner of a woman.
  • Now, though, the world turns green again, and we see that Jaime’s cynicism is rooted in something else: all this burned out land and dead bodies -- it reminds him of Aerys.
  • As Jaime will say later in the chapter, it all goes back to Aerys. He’s referring to the Bloody Mummers there, but it’s also an internal reference point that he always returns to.
  • The other internal reference point is Cersei. Jaime is tired of Brienne and Cleos’ company, thinking of his cousin as a much lesser Lannister.
  • With Cersei in mind, we get Jaime’s earliest memories of his love for his sister. As children, Joanna Lannister caught them doing something that he didn’t remember but mom thought it was so wrong that she put her children on opposite sides of the castle.
  • Interestingly, Joanna’s threat to her children was that she would tell Tywin what they did if they were caught doing it again.
  • In a normal family context, the don’t tell dad on me thing has a resonance, but man, it becomes all the darker when it’s in the context of Tywin Lannister.
  • Even Joanna knew that the threat of Tywin Lannister was enough to scare her own children, their own children.
  • But Joanna died, and Jaime can barely remember her face. I sympathize. Without pictures, I couldn’t remember my own father’s face as he died when I was young.
  • Probably my favorite Jaime scene in the story is his dream of his mother in AFFC, the closest thing the Lannister family ever gets to a reckoning
  • On reread, it’s clear that a lot of Jaime’s callousness comes from the emotional unavailability of literally everyone other than Cersei in his life
  • The only person who ever showed any other way to live was Joanna, and not only did she die, but Tywin only got colder in the aftermath
  • We’re gonna see when Jaime gets back to King’s Landing that both Cersei and Tywin do not believe him capable of independent thought, and treat his assertion of individuality as an outright attack against them
  • Joanna also enforced the rules on Jaime, but I think it’s clear she had his best interests in mind. I love the detail about sending them to the opposite sides of the Rock–that genuinely is a huge distance away from each other!
  • Jaime feels a magnetic pull to Cersei, as she said in book one: we’re two halves of a whole. His comment about them being close even in the womb frames their connection as cosmic for him, sacred, his spiritual core
  • It’s the source of meaning by which he judges everything else, and nothing else in life has ever measured up to it
  • Still, all these thoughts about Cersei lead Jaime back to this whole incest business. Stannis and the Starks revealed the truth. Fuck it. Let’s just be Targaryens. Let’s get sibling-married.
  • Now it’s clear to me that George hadn’t invented the Doctrine of Exceptionalism when he wrote ASOS. That came while he was writing F&B Vol 1.
  • So, here, it’s simply that the realm accepted Targaryen incest. Implied but not stated is that the reason this was accepted is that they had dragons.
  • Jaime isn’t thinking rationally here though. He thinks that a marriage to Cersei would undercut Joffrey’s claim to the Iron Throne, but it would just take steel to hold the throne. That’s how Robert won anyhow!
  • Which … yes. In a way. But Robert’s Rebellion was fought with the ostensible principle of upholding justice and removing a tyrant from power.
  • Can’t really imagine the realm rallying to the cause of sibling marriage, Jaime! And remember those dragons I mentioned? You have none.
  • Jaime then bizarrely compounds this line of thought by thinking that he should wed Joffrey to Myrcella just to normalize the practice.
  • I think all of this isn’t exactly rational, but it makes story sense, because these are the thoughts of someone who spent a year alone in the dungeons.
  • More than that, I think it shows Jaime living in a juvenile fantasy. He thinks his mere presence can bring swords to his side.
  • This is somewhat true, but what he’s not reckoning with — not yet at least — is that the swords at his side are there because of his father.
  • A father which just angrily dismissed accusations that Jaime and Cersei are fucking in our previous Tyrion chapter.
  • Tywin has deniability with Jaime and Cersei here — not especially plausible — but deniability all the same.
  • Jaime’s idea is to remove that plausibility altogether and then multiply his sins in the eyes of the population.
  • I think this speaks to something we examined at length with Robert Baratheon — these Robert’s Rebellion era veterans are still acting like they’re eighteen years old.
  • That rebellion arrested their development, and despite being men in their mid-30s, they still think and act like teenagers.
  • But then before readers can abandon Jaime, we get a hard pivot from Jaime to one of my favorite Jaime lines in the series:
    • 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.
  • Back when we did ACOK, Catelyn VII, this was the pivotal line for my defense of Catelyn releasing Jaime: he was going to follow through on what Catelyn wanted him to do.
  • Of course, Jaime can’t help but couch the entire idea as irony. Freeing Sansa and Arya would be hilarious.
  • This is another meta moment in Jaime’s story. It’s not funny within the story itself. But it’s funny to us, because it challenges our perception of Jaime.
  • The reader thought that Jaime would betray Catelyn, that he would break his oath to her.
  • Instead, he plans to keep it. It’s hilarious. Are you not entertained?
  • But perhaps somewhere deep in Jaime’s mind, buried beneath layers of cynicism and irony lies a shred of goodness.
  • Just as Tyrion is starting to realize he has no permanent place within the Lannister coalition, Jaime is getting sick of keeping quiet for the family’s sake. I think this goes hand in hand with his secrets about the Mad King
  • You can see that in how Jaime’s thoughts keep shifting from one to the other; as you say, Robert’s Rebellion never really ended for those that fought in it. Jaime keeps reliving those days
  • What he went through in the Kingsguard destroyed his ability to believe in the world around him, as did his reputation afterward as “Kingslayer”
  • He wants to rebel against the hypocritical pieties of Westeros by openly marrying Cersei and fighting a war to keep Joffrey on the Throne
  • It’s politically disastrous to say the least; like Tyrion’s plan to attack the Vale, this is less about sound military logistics than personal needs
  • Jaime wants to create a closed loop within his immediate family because no one else is worthy to him. He wants to create a situation in which he never has to deal with anyone else again
  • What makes him such a complex character is that his alienation is both sympathetic and unsympathetic. On one hand, he refuses to regard anyone else’s fears and desires as important. On the other, he’s not actually interested in the politics of Lannister dominance like Tywin is
  • So why not send the Stark sisters back? As a joke? It’s the right thing for the wrong reasons–Jaime’s flip flopping reveals he’s slipping into nihilism
  • He needs more of a push to decide what’s really important to him, to give a purpose to his actions in a purposeless world. He’s gonna get that push
• Outlaw attack!
  • So now that we’ve examined Jaime’s weird-ass thoughts, his meta winks to readers and his cynicism, it’s battle time, baby!
  • Well, not quite battle. It’s an ambush by outlaws.
  • No, not the Bloody Mummers. They show up in just a few minutes.
  • Nameless outlaws, the normal outlaws who harass travelers and plague the land in times of peace.
  • Even amidst the carnage and war in the Riverlands, the normal criminals remain.
  • In fact, I’d argue that the criminal class is uniquely suited to survive and thrive in war.
  • They were predators before the war started or more charitably, they’re survivors in an already-corrupt system.
  • The thrum of arrows announces the ambush, and Jaime, a #veteran, reacts instinctively by shouting at everyone to get down!
  • In the army or in the gym, we call that reaction: muscle memory. You train on reacting to indirect or direct fire over and over again until it’s a reaction that doesn’t take conscious thought.
  • Jaime was trained, but he also had experience with this type of ambush, this type of ranged weapon.
  • The Kingswood Brotherhood that Jaime fought against had characters like former outlaw and current Night’s Watchman Ullmer the Archer in their midst.
  • But once the location of the enemy and ambush are discovered, Jaime charges at them.
  • Is this the action of a rash, bold fool? Mayhaps. But it’s textbook Battle Drill #4: React to an Ambush.
  • Specifically, Brienne, Cleos and Jaime are in a near ambush situation, and the Ranger Handbook is very clear on what to do when faced with a near-ambush:
    • Soldiers in the kill zone immediately return fire, take up covered positions, and throw fragmentation grenades or concussion and smoke grenades. Immediately after the grenades detonate, soldiers in the kill zone assault through the ambush using fire and movement.
  • Sadly, grenades don’t exist in Westeros, but Jaime correctly gets his body into a low silhouette and then after finding his attackers behind a wall, speeds his horse towards the archers and yells at Brienne to do that same.
  • Brienne follows, and the archers get one more volley off at Jaime and Brienne, but it does no good.
  • They run away before Jaime and Brienne can fully close the distance, and that’s smart on their part. The advantage of ranged weapons is distance to target. When the target closes the distance, time to run.
  • As the archers run away, Jaime asks why Brienne didn’t pursue them into the woods. Because they were retreating.
  • Jaime says that’s the best time to kill archers: when they’re running away.
  • Brienne represents the songs and stories of chivalry: you don’t kill fleeing enemies: you fight them face to face.
  • Jaime represents the reality of war: you have to kill more of the enemy than yourself to win the war.
  • For those interested in who would be right in a modern context: the Geneva Convention would actually have Jaime be in the right: killing retreating enemies is not a war crime, killing surrendering enemies is.
  • I like Jaime’s perspective here because it reminds us that for all his arrogance and cynicism, Jaime isn’t a lead-from-behind kind of guy
  • He knows the battlefield. His instincts are sharply honed. In a chaotic situation, his POV becomes our refuge; he knows what’s up
  • This is how he’s always navigated the world. No matter what happens, he can fight his way out of any situation…until he can’t
  • His bravado about the archers is well-founded, but on reread, we know that it’s about to be stripped away from him
  • Speaking of killing, poor Ser Cleos Frey did not survive the battle, having been dragged to death by his horse.
  • Cleos Frey is an easy character to dismiss. He comes across as cowardly but was he really?
  • This was Cleos’  third time traveling through the war-torn Riverlands. He survived the first two times, but third time’s a charm, a curse.
  • The man deserved better. He had been a pawn of the Lannisters and the Starks, and now he’s another casualty of this war, another pawn knocked off the board, off his horse.
  • Jaime, though, dismisses Cleos’ death. He has plenty of other cousins. He wants his stuff now that he’s dead.
  • There’s a callousness to Jaime here that makes readers not identify with him anymore. The man just died, and Jaime wants his stuff. How rude!
  • But Jaime’s position is defensible in that this whole thing is about survival. He wants cleaner clothes and doesn’t want to wear his rags anymore.
  • He also wants Cleos’ sword … to help Brienne with the watches. Yeah … for the watches.
  • Brienne says that she won’t allow Jaime to be armed, but Jaime is sick of being told what to do, and he’s sick of Brienne’s company.
  • He reaches for his dick, I mean the sword.
  • Cleos has basically been comic relief in these Jaime chapters, in a way that reminds me of Edmure around his family: Cleos is always bumbling or babbling, never cool or witty or badass, easy to make fun of
  • Even his death is goofy. While Jaime thinks quickly and Brienne charges in like the badass she is, Cleos falls off his horse and is dragged to death
  • But like his cousin Lancel, he’s also used ruthlessly as a patsy by his more powerful relatives. He’s ultimately a pawn in the game of thrones, with no place in either one of his families, on either side of the war
  • The detail about his skull in pieces under Jaime’s fingers makes me flinch. No wonder he lies to Cleos’ parents about how he died; for all Jaime makes fun of the songs, he doesn’t always face the hard truths
  • In plot terms, Cleos is here to die so that Jaime can take his sword. He’s not only a messenger bird, he’s a delivery vehicle
  • In character terms, this gives George a chance to show off Jaime and Brienne’s different reactions. She says he’s still warm–a connection to life, recognizing humanity even as it fades. She might be thinking of Renly
  • Brienne is still an open wound emotionally; Jaime like a wound that’s been scabbed over. He refuses to mourn his cousin for the same reason he refuses to name his horses–it makes it hurt when they die
  • This is the full extension of Tyrion’s “wear it like armor” logic: Jaime’s walls are so high he can’t feel for anyone outside his siblings
  • All that matters, he says, is that Cleos will be cold soon, and he doesn’t need his things anymore. Jaime does. As you said, there’s a clear practicality to this, especially with outlaws all around them
  • But Jaime’s detached, sardonic attitude doesn’t ultimately work, in that it doesn’t save him from remembering the past
  • All of Brienne’s insults get to him. He mocks her looks in his words and thoughts to make her seem ridiculous, so then he can dismiss her hatred of him. He still feels it, though, and he draws his cousin’s sword against her for that as much as to win his freedom from his chains
• The duel
  • I love how George introduces us to Jaime and Brienne’s epic duel:
    • As the blade slid from the scabbard, he was already pivoting, bringing the sword around and up in a swift deadly arc.
  • Poetry and violence, the beauty of the whirl of steel arcing up, the horror of the violence Jaime intends with the sword.
  • Something in our lizard brains clicks at smooth angles of swordplay; not scientific, but is it the same reaction our brains have to dance as well? To sex?
  • We’ll talk more about the last question at the end of this episode, but Brienne is just as quick as Jaime bringing her own steel to parry his.
  • But Jaime quickly drives Brienne back with a flurry of sword cuts, thinking how his chains will make this fight a good sport.
  • All the while, Jaime’s blood sings.
  • Singing blood is so good. That is what combat feels like. The adrenaline coursing through your limbs, the blood rushing in your ears. It’s exciting, it makes you feel alive to stay alive, to attempt to deal death.
  • Beyond that emotional reaction by Jaime, we’re getting an almost swashbuckling, Errol Flynn from The Adventures of Robin Hood feel to the duel. Jaime smiling and joking around as he attempts to kill Brienne.
  • That’s Jaime’s mood anyhow. Brienne is focused on her duty, on keeping her vows. And she’s fighting for her own life.
  • The absurdity of all of this is that in order to keep her vows to Catelyn, Brienne can’t really fight back, can’t really kill Jaime. Yet she has to defend herself with deadly force while avoiding killing the man trying very hard to kill her.
  • There’s been this dumbass debate over who is the better swordsman: Jaime or Brienne with either side taking this singular sword fight as the evidence they need to support their side.
  • I think this debate is silly and dumb because both Jaime and Brienne are limited: Brienne isn’t trying to kill Jaime here. She can’t. And Jaime is fighting with his wrists chained together after having not touched a sword for nearly a year.
  • Still, to stay in the swashbuckling movie territory for a bit, the fucking, er, sword fight starts with Jaime on top similar to Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride vs Wesley.
  • Jaime thinks through his motions:
    • Left, right, backslash, swinging so hard that sparks flew when the swords came together, upswing, sideslash, overhand, always attacking, moving into her, step and slide, strike and step, step and strike, hacking, slashing, faster, faster, faster . . .
  • Obviously just a reference to the swordplay … but it gets to what you were saying before about Jaime’s sharply-honed instincts about warfare.
  • This is all deliberate as a memorized dance for Jaime. His entire life was spent training in the sword. He’s had the best training money can buy. And even though he’s been rotting in the Riverrun dungeons for a year, wielding a sword is muscle memory for Jaime.
  • One of my favorite non-book scenes from Game of Thrones is the “war stories” scene from Season One where Robert, Barristan and Jaime talk about their first kills.
  • Robert’s first was a Tarly highborn lad whose chest he carved in with his famous war hammer.
  • “Stupid boy”, Robert says. Untrained, or under-trained, and he died for it.
  • I have to imagine that was many of the people Jaime had fought with sword before this moment: untrained or undertrained boys.
  • It’s like a professional athlete, trained with every fiber of their mind and body to master a skill playing their game against JV athletes.
  • But Brienne ain’t JV.
  • The problem for Jaime is that Brienne had a similar training under the Evenstar Master of Arms Ser Goodwin.
  • Given that Brienne came to believe that she couldn’t aspire to traditional femininity, she took up the sword and mastered it the same way that Jaime did.
  • Jaime’s so glad to be doing what he knows and loves best again. He’s not dwelling on the past, he’s alive in the present moment, which stretches on and on: “Time slept when swords woke.” It brings him back to himself
  • It feels so good that he ignores all the signs that this fight isn’t going well. So what if his hands are chained together? So what if he’s fighting with another man’s sword? He’s the best, it’ll be enough to defeat Brienne
  • But Brienne is fast enough to get her sword out to block Jaime’s initial attack, and calm enough to match wits with him throughout
  • So, Brienne is able to defend herself against Jaime, and the first leg of the dance ends in a draw of sorts with Jaime out of breath.
  • This is the end of the first of three movements in the dance between Jaime and Brienne, and it struck me that this scene goes on and on.
  • But unlike Arya III where we were both a little “get on with it” on the horse-chase scene between Arya and the BWB from ASOS, Arya III, there wasn’t a moment where I wanted George to just wrap it up.
  • I think that’s because there are real stakes here. We knew Arya was going to be recaptured. We don’t know the outcome of this duel between Jaime and Brienne, and there are real stakes and limitations at work.
  • The second bout reiterates the stakes: Brienne will not harm Jaime, and Jaime dismisses Brienne as a wench before he tries to kill her again.
  • They dance through the forest, away from the body of poor, dead Cleos and into the woods.
  • Jaime still has the advantage here, but Brienne doesn’t make mistakes and avoids getting killed by Jaime repeatedly.
  • Jaime describes Brienne as having an iron cage around her which does a fantastic job of showing not telling how Brienne deflects every one of Jaime’s attacks from every angle.
  • The second round closes with an exhausted Jaime gasping for air before promoting Brienne from wench to “Not bad for a green squire.”
  • Jaime is still adapting a swashbuckling mentality, but there’s a growing respect Jaime has for Brienne, even if he’s in denial that Brienne is way, way better than a green squire.
  • I love how everything Jaime ignored as the fight began–all her advantages, all his disadvantages–grow in prominence in his POV as the fight goes on. It’s a perfect way of capturing his dawning awareness, the realization that for once, things aren’t going his way
  • The third and final round has Brienne taking over, becoming the Wesley to Jaime’s Inigo and gaining the clear advantage over Brienne, driving him back.
  • Hilariously, Jaime tries to rationalize how he could possibly lose to Brienne, this woman.
  • His skills went to rot in the dungeons, the damn Starks and Tullys are to blame. He has chains around his wrist! But wait, Jimbo, didn’t you start the round thinking that having the chains around your wrist would make it a contest?
  • But finally Jaime realizes the truth: Brienne is stronger than him.
  • I think Jaime is right here that Brienne is stronger than him -- especially in the state he’s in, but what Brienne demonstrates here more than strength is stamina.
  • She’s not just stronger than Jaime, she’s able to withstand his attacks and then become the attacker without running out of breath the way Jaime does.
  • Shock starts to set in over Jaime. Oh sure, there were a few men who were stronger than him, but this is a woman! Jaime’s misogyny is offended by this realization.
  • This moment shatters Jaime, despite all the evidence he’s already seen of Brienne’s strength. It’s one thing for her to be a badass in isolation, but more of a badass than him? That’s unacceptable! He was able to accept other men being stronger, but misogyny adds a little sting to this for him
  • Moreover, he was able to beat those other men with speed and skill, and even that’s not availing him now. Without that certainty in himself, without that gender identity that makes him male Cersei, who is he really?
  • The battle presses into a stream, and Jaime gets a cut at Brienne’s thigh, but then he slips on the rock and bangs his knee something fierce.
  • They tumble into the stream with Brienne in the, um, and this is a real position in mixed martial arts: the mount position.
  • Jaime is clearly beaten here as Brienne yells at him to yield, but Jaime refuses, lunging for a dagger before Brienne nearly tears Jaime’s arm off.
  • Brienne southern baptist baptizes Jaime in the Riverrun demanding that he yield. And Jaime spits water in her face.
  • It’s still a game for Jaime even as he’s clearly lost this match. Brienne forces his head back under water. First baptism clearly didn’t lead to the remission of Jaime’s sins. Time to re-baptize again Seventh Day Adventist-style!
  • Brienne threatens to drown Jaime, and Jaime decides to turn the moral tables on Brienne: you’d break your oath, like me?
  • Throughout the first three chapters of ASOS, Brienne and Jaime have parried back and forth over vows and oaths.
  • Brienne’s perspective as outlined in ASOS, Jaime II is that Aerys was mad a cruel, but Jaime broke his sacred oath to protect the king
  • In Jaime II, Jaime says that Brienne couldn’t possibly understand why he broke his oaths. What reason could he give that she would understand?
  • But here in Jaime III, Jaime is challenging Brienne about her oath: is it really worth keeping? Maybe you should break your oath like I did.
  • I love that Jaime is egging Brienne on to kill him, his self-loathing reaching the surface. In death, I would be right–you’d become just like me
  • Subconsciously, Jaime is talking about himself again. When faced with him and hundreds of thousands of others dying by Aerys’ order to wildfire King’s Landing, Jaime broke his oath.
  • Will Brienne do the same when Jaime threatens her own life? When Jaime would kill her rather than be brought to King’s Landing in chains?
  • Before Brienne can truly wrestle with this morally-impossible situation, though, she’s “rescued” from making that choice -- by the worst possible people.
• Reintroducing the Bloody Mummers
  • The Bloody Mummers, these assholes. It’s hard to think of a worse group of people that Jaime and Brienne could run into besides them.
  • There’s an interesting question embedded into the presence of the Mummers: why are they here? Maidenpool is a long way from Harrenhal.
  • What I think is that the Bloody Mummers were here to sack Maidenpool. Remember the town was sacked once by Lannisters, once by northmen and once by “outlaws.”
  • The outlaws in this case would likely be the Bloody Mummers who pick the remnants of Maidenpool clean and were probably the ones who threw the bodies into the pool.
  • Jaime correctly calls them the scum of the earth, the worst of the worst. And he’s not wrong.
  • This is not a good sign for Jaime and Brienne, but I do like what George does here narratively.
  • Jaime has been more than a little unsympathetic to readers so far. Sure, it’s fascinating to be inside his head and get his POV.
  • But his constant misogyny, his near-nihilism, his cynicism: they grate on Brienne’s nerves. They grate on reader’s nerves.
  • So, what to do? Introduce a much worse group!
  • You want to make the pivot for readers about a character; so, you bring in worse characters to highlight the contrast. It’s all in where you’re standing.
  • Totally agreed, I love the pacing and framing of this. The Mummers are just suddenly there, all along the banks of the river. They’re an audience–they’re like us, the reader, chuckling at Jaime and Brienne
  • The duel is so intimate and then the camera zooms out to take in the rest of the world. Like Jaime, we assume at first these are the outlaws who killed Cleos. Then you get that skin-crawling reveal of Rorge. George plays the audience like a fiddle here. We left the Mummers behind when Arya fled Harrenhal, and suddenly here they are with no warning
  • Remember Rorge and Biter? Rorge is here with his fellow Bloody Mummers, and he’s the first to speak.
  • Jaime attempts to play it off as him chastising his wife, which … hm, the Bramie fans gotta love that Jaime identifies Brienne as his wife!
  • Of course, there remains the misogyny inherent in Jaime’s attitude. Physically assaulting your wife is normal practice.
  • Brienne attempts to bribe the Bloody Mummers to let them go peacefully, but they have no interest in this.
  • Instead, Rorge gets right to his interest to rape Brienne. This is a very bad sign for Jaime and Brienne. Sellswords who sell their sword to the highest bidder are more interested in rape and violence than money.
  • What I think this demonstrates is that the desire for violence is stronger than the desire to get paid among the Bloody Mummers.
  • In a sympathetic moment for Jaime, he doesn’t think Brienne deserves to be raped. So, he asks who commands.
  • In steps Urswyck the Faithful who immediately identifies Jaime as “Ser Jaime.”
  • Villains may be evil, but that doesn’t mean that they’re stupid. Cunning villains are far more scary.
  • Jaime says that the Bloody Mummers will be rewarded for returning Jaime and Brienne to Father Tywin, and it’s clear that Jaime didn’t get the brief-up about events in the Riverlands.
  • He still thinks that the Bloody Mummers work for his dad. They’re mere employees, and they’ll get their bonus if they get him to Tywin.
  • This is funny to the Mummers. They switched sides, you see. They serve Roose Bolton. Tywin lost too many battles.
  • Jaime muses aloud that people say he has shit for honor, and that’s a good line. There’s always someone worse!
  • But it only results in Jaime getting punched in the stomach, and Brienne getting beaten by four men.
  • Brienne and Jaime get dragged back to the body of Cleos Frey, and Jaime notes that the surcoat of Cleos has arrows in both parts of his quartered sigil: Frey and Lannister.
  • The proud sigils didn’t save Cleos Frey. He died just like any man, but you do feel that the Bloody Mummers don’t even deserve to wear the sigil of two of the worst houses of Westeros.
  • Of course, Jaime was talking about stripping Cleos of his clothes and sword when this all began.
  • But his reasons for dishonoring the dead were to have better clothes than flea-bitten rags and to grab for that sword. This is just loot for the Brave Companions, another body to pick clean before moving to the next victim.
  • As soon as Brienne realizes they’re dealing with dangerous people, she offers up her money. But like the clansmen who approached Tyrion and Bronn in the Vale, the Mummers consider her money already hers
  • Same with her body: Rorge immediately threatens rape and the rest join in. The reader already knows what they’re capable of
  • “Nightmarish” is an overused word, but the structure of this really feels like a nightmare, a descent into the most terrible vibes imaginable
  • It’s the speed with which all this happens that makes it work so well. Every reversal brings more dread as things get worse and worse
  • The emotional dynamics of the chapter have shifted completely. The tension between Jaime and Brienne suddenly seems moot
  • Jaime seized the feeling of control along with his cousin’s sword, but that fulfillment faded as Brienne proved herself stronger than him, and now he loses the ability to win with words and his name along with his blade
  • This is a challenge for his cynical detachment. He’s being pulled across a moral line he never intended to cross, faced with a level of violence that is shocking even for him, and he can’t talk his way out of it
  • The Mummers have switched sides to the Starks. One more time, Jaime can’t resist the joke: after taking so much shit from Brienne about his honor, now they’re being confronted with a far worse kind of oathbreaker
  • Jaime told Cleos earlier that Brienne’s enemies weren’t the same as theirs. But now it doesn’t matter that Brienne is also working for the Starks. The sides are blurring together, both corrupted by the war
  • Bound for Vargo Hoat, Jaime warns Brienne that she’s going to be raped and not to resist.
  • That’s not what Jaime would do if he were a woman. He’d make them kill him or her before he or she was raped.
  • Jaime’s trying to think like a normie here. What’s the best normie tactic to stay alive? Just accept that rape will happen.
  • It’s a callous reaction by Jaime, but it’s also what he tells Tommen later in AFFC: Just go away inside.
  • In this new context, Jaime steps outside his armor only to reaffirm Brienne’s. He would not take her courage, because he knows that’s all you have left. It’s detachment as survival, it’s what he learned from Aerys
  • Jaime must have realized that Brienne wasn’t a normie either; so, he calls over to Urswyck and asks him hey, do you like money?
  • Not just the gold of Casterly Rock, but did you know that Tarth is known as the Sapphire Island? Gold and gems both!
  • It’s a rather unsophisticated attempt by Jaime to win over this sellsword to his side, but Urswyck isn’t buying what Jaime is selling.
  • He knows that Tywin Lannister is unforgiving when it comes to betrayal. He knows he’ll get hanged.
  • Tywin’s reputation precedes him, and Jaime can’t negotiate that way. So, he changes tactics: he’ll get Urswyck a pardon and a knighthood.
  • And c’mon, you can’t possibly believe that Vargo Hoat can stand before the power of Casterly Rock and House Lannister, right? You’d be a fool to think that.
  • Urswyck responds by slapping Jaime lazily across the face. Tywin lost too many battles. He’s not invincible. He’s been beaten over and over again.
  • This makes me think that news of the Blackwater has not quite reached the Bloody Mummers.
  • They’ve been too far away from the flagpole so to speak, sacking Maidenpool and without modern telecommunications, Urswyck doesn’t know that Tywin now has an army of westermen and reachmen at his back now.
  • Kinda makes me wonder what Urswyck’s response would have been had he known the outcome of the Blackwater.
  • Regardless, Urswyck won’t believe the words of an oathbreaker.
  • Jaime killing Aerys is the moment that Westeros remembers. Aerys’ cruelty is a memory sixteen years in the past, but Jaime lived on.
  • It always goes back to Aerys because Jaime survived and serves as a living reminder of his “misdeed.”
  • Jaime fantasizes about a heroic death for him and Brienne there -- again, highlighting Jaime’s juvenile mindset while also showing us that Jaime was infused with the songs and stories.
  • Jaime may not believe in that chivalric nonsense, but the songs and stories stay with you long after you stop believing them.
  • When Urswyck leaves, Brienne asks Jaime why he told the would-be knight that Tarth has sapphires. It’s called that because of the blue of its waters. Don’t you know that!?
  • Yes. Jaime was lying. And he was doing that to delay the rapes that Brienne would experience.
  • But since Brienne won’t accept Jaime’s sincere attempts to prevent her rape, she can just think of Renly.
  • Jaime returns to being unsympathetic at that moment. He’s angry, of course. Urswyck refused his offer because of Jaime’s reputation. Brienne mistrusts him.
  • There’s a Tyrion-esque trait in Jaime where you get the sense the guy just wants to be told “Thanks” just one time rather than be mistrusted.
  • A few hours later, they arrive at Vargo Hoat’s forward operating base or a sept that the Brave Companions sack to find a scene of sacrilege and desolation.
  • The gods of the Faith of the Seven have all been dragged from the sept, and a Dothraki, a foreigner tries to take out the ruby eyes of the Mother.
  • Meanwhile, a dead septon hangs upside down and is being used as target practice by the mummers.
  • This is a sickening scene that reminds me of the village that Arya, Gendry, Hot Pie, Lommy and Weasel found back in ACOK where Gregor Clegane and the Mountain’s Men were at.
  • And like that scene where the smell of dead men mingles with cooking meat, we find Vargo Hoat eating a chicken amidst all the slaughter.
  • Vargo lisps that Jaime is his captith and dismisses Brienne’s statement that she serves Lady Catelyn by ordering her beaten again but not to break her bones. She’s worth a ransom.
  • Just lovely stuff from the Bloody Mummers all around. The rot in their ranks is all-encompassing.
  • Shoved down at the campfire, Jaime notices all the coins around Vargo’s neck: every campaign he’s ever been on, every slaughter he’s ever participated in.
  • This scene at the sept is not the first time, the first people, the first place the Bloody Mummers despoiled. He’s taken coin from all over.
  • Jaime sees the opportunity and again tries the tactic he used with Urswyck: take me back to Tywin, and you’ll get a ransom.
  • And Vargo immediately agrees. Hooray? He’s getting all the gold in Casterly Rock. But not before he sends Tywin a message.
  • Wellllll not Tywin Lannister directly. The message is intended for Roose Bolton, but we’ll get all that good stuff come Jaime V.
  • As Jaime is held down by the Bloody Mummers, he thinks the message is “Be scared.” No, that’s not the message.
  • The message is the arakh that Zollo has and what it’s meant to do.
  • George showed us the beauty and violence of the sword with Brienne and Jaime in the woods.
  • At chapter’s end, he returns to that motif with sunlight running silver off the edge of the arakh as it shivers down.
  • It’s gorgeously-written, and you can feel it almost moving in a Zack Snyder slo-mo.
  • But the end of the chapter is Jaime screaming. This is oh moment, the moment when Jaime knows he’s not bound for a heroic death - at least not here.
  • And you gotta hand it to Jaime (sorry), it’s the moment in ASOIAF that will change Jaime forever.
  • The ending compresses it all, everything Jaime brings to the table and all the pushback he faces from the world around him
  • Like the chapter, it’s so brutally fast: not only to grip the audience’s attention in a vise, but also to express how Jaime feels
  • He is facing down powerlessness, more than he’s ever had to in his entire life. He’s always set the pace of things, dancing with swords where time stops. Now time is moving faster than ever, out of his control
  • Jaime thinks up until the last second that this can’t possibly be happening. It’s all for show, just to break him. He won’t break. He’s Jaime of House Lannister, the greatest swordsman in Westeros. He will never scream
  • This, in spite of losing the Battle at the Whispering Wood, in spite of losing his duel to Brienne, in spite of Cleos’ fate proving that he is not safe
  • This is the moment in which that infuriating reality-proof bubble that has defined Jaime so far as a character finally pops
  • The maiming itself is almost analysis-proof, in that it represents the end of rational thought for Jaime: the breakdown of his POV itself
  • It’s like an exclamation point, or a car backfiring. It’s the feeling of all the oxygen rushing out
  • The detail of the sunlight running along the silver of the arakh plunges the reader into this moment, like a razor blade is coming at our throats
  • It’s a before and after moment, and the chapters that follow are a gauntlet for the reader as much as Jaime: we have to start reading it differently

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

The supposed sapphires of Tarth will come up again in Jaime’s next chapter, when he uses that fool’s gold to save Brienne from gangrape.

Jaime tries to make good on his promise to send Sansa to her mother by sending Brienne to find her at the end of the book.

Jaime sarcastically offers to wash Brienne’s back in the pool at Maidenpool, but they’ll share a bath after all at Harrenhal.

Theory/Discussion

Is the duel between Jaime and Brienne the best sex scene George ever wrote?

• Jaime’s subconscious attraction to Brienne gets more and more conscious as we go through ASOS; this chapter is the crossover point
• Jaime starts by calling Brienne a fair maiden and offering to wash her back; he’s being sarcastic, of course, but like Sandor with Sansa, he’s also trying to cover for a connection that’s more earnest and hopeful than he’s used to
• Then the swords come out. Cersei tells us that Jaime said he only felt alive while in battle and in bed, linking the two together as George often does
• Jaime’s blood is singing, the swords are described as kissing, they move faster and faster until Jaime stops breathless, his sword drooping…they’re basically fucking, as close as the two of them can get, displacing their feelings
• The subtext gets less subtle as we go. During one break in the fighting, Jaime calls Brienne “my lady” and asks her for a dance. When the Mummers reveal themselves, George gives away the game completely, as Jaime thinks that Brienne is blushing like they caught them fucking instead of fighting
• It’s an extremely Freudian move, a case study in sublimation. Jaime’s never had a romantic or sexual connection outside his family; Brienne has only had negative experiences in this realm, save her unconsummated crush on Renly
• Violence brought them together, and violence keeps them together; captive of the Mummers, their connection is all they have
• George builds on this scene when Jaime gets an erection in the bathtub at Harrenhal and then rescues her from the bear pit
• George is inconsistent with his actual sex scenes; this scene is genuinely erotic because of how hard the characters are working to keep it at bay
• It’s existential as well as erotic–Jaime and Brienne are versions of each other. Jaime says that if he was a woman, he’d be Cersei. Part of what’s going on here is him reckoning with the possibility that if he was a woman, he’d be Brienne, or that she’s who he would want to be as a woman, rather than Cersei

Conclusion

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• Join us next week for ASOS Arya IV, in which Arya and the BWB tour the Riverlands in search of Beric Dondarrion but end up in Kashyyk before heading over to Acorn Hall to meet one of the best one-chapter characters in ASOIAF: Lady Smallwood.