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Tywin Overrated?


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I've been thinking about Tywin's reputation and his actual accomplishments and it seems to me he is vastly overrated. When going over his story a clear pattern of pride, unnecessary brutality, poor planning, rash decisions, pride, and hypocrisy dominate him.

Admittedly he starts out pretty well, he eliminates two rival houses completely and earns a brutal but effective reputation. He becomes a competent hand of the king, and keeps Aerys in check for awhile. Its as he gets older that problems start to be clear. First his marriages reveal a massive hypocrisy on his part. He constantly demands his children have loveless marriages to advance the house, but he himself marries for love and refuses to remarry. Even though any kind of marriage could present a more desired heir and even if he did not want more children a useful alliance. I wouldn't fault him for not marrying out of a sense of loyalty or love of his wife, except he demands vastly different behavior from her children and abuses them. Plus he sleeps with a prostitute at least once probably more often, so it seems complete devotion to his dead wife is an unlikely cause. 

Which of course brings up his incredibly unwise treatment of his children. He spoils Cersei as a child in a manner similar to Joffrey, filling her with a pride and ego even larger than his. He ignores or is unaware of the twincest that has been happening since his kids were nine damn years old! I would so ignores because Joanna caught and separated them, how could Tywin not have been told about this by his wife? Or at least demand to know why they had to be separated. Even Kevan who never had a thought that was not Tywin's first(supposedly) knew, but he does nothing and we all know the results. Tyrion's treatment was all just one giant clusterfuck that ended as one could predict. Yes convincing your son that his wife was a whore and having her gang raped is totally not going to convince him only whores will love him causing his behavior to become worse while sowing the seeds of your own death with an unnecessary secret. Having the difficult to marry off son of yours that you consider embarrassing live a quiet life would be terrible, for some reason.

 

Bringing up Cersei also serves as a reminder that people are repeatedly able to scheme around him ruining his plans. Cersei manages to ruin his perfect heir with her Kingsguard plan, ruin his royal grandchildren with incest, and kind of ruining everything. The Tyrells nearly got Sansa, if it wasn't for littlefinger. Littlefinger and Varys like with everyone else scheme all around him.

 

This finally gets to his decisions and strategy. In the long run they nearly all fail disastrously. He can't be faulted for the defiance of duskendale, he responded to the situation well. It just bears mentioning that the ruthless Tywin had a reasonable opportunity to remove get Aerys killed, but ends up resolving the situation in a way every agrees was for the worse. But once again this was in no way Tywins fault it just falls into the general increasing scale of long term bad results. Next we have the sacking of kings landing, which was just terrible all around. Supposedly he had to prove his loyalty because he was a late comer to the war, which really makes no sense. No other house had to prove their loyalty, some are blatantly still pro targ. The Lannisters are the richest house, he could have given monetary support like he does for the rest of Robert's reign. He could have privately met with Robert and offered to pay for the Targ heirs to die in accidents. The ways to show loyalty are many, and the ways to do the dirty work with Targ heirs are just as many. Instead he sacks the city, which easily could have resulted in his sons death with no way of preventing that and the destruction of the capital. Yes he did not know of the wildfire plot, but things like that can happen when you recklessly attack a city. He sends his pets that he didn't feel the need to instruct to not kill the heirs in the most horrifying way ever. He claims that Elia could have lived, but this makes no sense as that would leave a witness he desperately needed to avoid. This creates a blood feud with the Martells. And in the end he only sort of got on the good side of Robert, but this wasn't essential as he had no way of knowing Robert would soon be open for marriage. The sack was clear, unnecessary, revenge. Next we have him lose his fleet to Victarion "dumb as a stump" greyjoy. Make up a reckless plan to attack the riverlands, so he could capture Ned based on the hope he would lead the response himself? And then bargain the hand of the king and best friend of the king for his son, hoping Robert does nothing in retaliation for such blatant breaches of the kings peace? Could he not have simply pulled on iron bank and call in all loans until his son is released crippling the entirety of Westeros and the iron throne without a single death? Or at the very least focus on the Vale. Tywin makes the horrible decision to then buy sellswords, like the brave companions, which is a horrible idea. Our supposedly Machiavellian character makes a decision that could not be more at odds with anything Machiavelli wrote. The results are predictably awful, his son loses what defined him and they birth the faith militant and bring Qyburn into play. He proceeds to have Jaime do the most important task of the invasion which gets him captured. When it comes to battle his plan relies on troops on his flank sucking enough for an over extension on the other side. Which not only fails but could easily have led to him being outflanked if not nothing at all because there is no way to guarantee enemy behavior. He retreats to Harrenhall, waits there as his lands get raided and is only successful in saving his entire dynasty because of a marriage alliance sealed by Littlefinger. The Red Wedding, while successful and well executed, relies once again entirely on events outside of his control that could not have been predicted. Basically Tywin only won because everybody else had larger schemes. Greyjoys wanted the North, Martells have their plan, Littlefinger secures the reach and vale, Tyrells want a good marriage, and the Freys are dicks.

We end Tywin's story with him having disowned both of his sons, the death of his grandson and the delay of a key marriage, convicting the wrong person for the crime while losing the key to the North, culminating in his murder by Tyrion while taking a shit after picking up his sloppy seconds.  A competent administrator and a man able to seize an opportunity gets turned into a legendary genius, which I think says more about how horrible incompetent feudal lords are than the brilliance of Tywin.

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Well the only reason I would disagree with you that he's overrated is because I never held him in that high of regard in the first place. I think you have put forth a substantial amount of evidence that Tywin is pretty incompetent. I would like to see how well he would fair without all the gold of Casterly Rock behind him.
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Tyrion's treatment was all just one giant clusterfuck that ended as one could predict. Yes convincing your son that his wife was a whore and having her gang raped is totally not going to convince him only whores will love him causing his behavior to become worse while sowing the seeds of your own death with an unnecessary secret. Having the difficult to marry off son of yours that you consider embarrassing live a quiet life would be terrible, for some reason.
 


It waa terrible because Tyrion married a commoner. For a Lannister to marry a crofter's daughter would be unacceptable. It would be shameful. It would stain the Lannister name for generations. I'm reasonably sure that Tywin would rather slit his wrists rather than allow any Lannister to marry someone that unsuitable.
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It waa terrible because Tyrion married a commoner. For a Lannister to marry a crofter's daughter would be unacceptable. It would be shameful. It would stain the Lannister name for generations. I'm reasonably sure that Tywin would rather slit his wrists rather than allow any Lannister to marry someone that unsuitable.

I know Tywin's reasoning, but that does not make it anymore logical or acceptable. And regardless of his objections, do you really think it makes in any way sense to gang rape the commoner whose only crime was a socially inappropriate marriage? As I said that only encouraged Tyrion's pursuit of whores, which Tywin wanted to curb. If that story spread I think it would be more embarrassing to the Lannister name by far. Beyond that, Tyrion would have been happy living a simple life with a common wife. That solves Tywins problems right there. He could say Tyrion ran away, died, or anything in return for Tyrion staying anonymous. He would no longer have what he considers a walking unmarriable embarrassment of a son. Instead he chose a disgusting response that eventual got him killed and earned the hatred of Tyrion that will probably destroy his house. He once again was ruthless and abusive out of a sense of pride that ultimately killed him

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Well the only reason I would disagree with you that he's overrated is because I never held him in that high of regard in the first place. I think you have put forth a substantial amount of evidence that Tywin is pretty incompetent. I would like to see how well he would fair without all the gold of Casterly Rock behind him.

I think he would do well enough, as I said he is at the very least able to administrate fairly well. In my opinion he has mostly wasted the benefit of the gold of casterly rock, ironically he criticizes his father often for not being able to collect debt but I highly doubt Tytos ever lent 3 million to a completely insolvent entity that even while under control of his house cannot pay the back the loans it owes to him. If any other claimant gets the throne the Lannisters can expect zero repayment

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Tywin is very overrated not that he's ever rated high in my opinion. He's a monster who got lucky in life.

And Tywin did more harm than good for House Lannister.

 

In the end yes. In the beginning he pretty much saved it. That being said brutally can't be the sole solution to everything which led to Tywin's downfall.

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In the end yes. In the beginning he pretty much saved it. That being said brutally can't be the sole solution to everything which led to Tywin's downfall

Tywin certainly took the idea of better to be feared than loved to an extreme that made it almost useless. Taking harsh or brutal actions can secure your reign, but they are best down all at the start so time to rebuild and people to move on exist. Using brutality as the solution to everything just creates more problems than you solve. 

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In the end yes. In the beginning he pretty much saved it. That being said brutally can't be the sole solution to everything which led to Tywin's downfall.


I agree.

I think what he did to the Reynes and Tarbecks barring the deaths of the children and innocents was needed because his family's survival was depending on it but outside of the Westerlands Tywin was unnecessarily cruel and brutal.

And the constant defense that he had to be is bullshit what did the Riverlands, KL, Elia and her children, Tysha, or his father's mistress ever do to the Lannosters?

Tywin was a evil little bitch who did cruelty and named it "for the good of our house" the Sack of KL, Elie and her babies, Tysha, his father's mistress was all for the good of Tywin not his house.
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I think he would do well enough, as I said he is at the very least able to administrate fairly well. In my opinion he has mostly wasted the benefit of the gold of casterly rock, ironically he criticizes his father often for not being able to collect debt but I highly doubt Tytos ever lent 3 million to a completely insolvent entity that even while under control of his house cannot pay the back the loans it owes to him. If any other claimant gets the throne the Lannisters can expect zero repayment


Agreed, maybe incompetent wasn't the right word, more so it was himself that got in his own way. Without his distorted obsession with family legacy, and seemingly fragile ego that depended on portraying the perfect image, I think he would be able to hold his own.
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I think a lot of the high praise for Tywin comes from Charles Dance's portrayal of him in the show.

 

To be fair his performance was magnificent.

 

Tywin certainly took the idea of better to be feared than loved to an extreme that made it almost useless. Taking harsh or brutal actions can secure your reign, but they are best down all at the start so time to rebuild and people to move on exist. Using brutality as the solution to everything just creates more problems than you solve. 

 

Yes that is basically what I said.

 

I agree.

I think what he did to the Reynes and Tarbecks barring the deaths of the children and innocents was needed because his family's survival was depending on it but outside of the Westerlands Tywin was unnecessarily cruel and brutal.

And the constant defense that he had to be is bullshit what did the Riverlands, KL, Elia and her children, Tysha, or his father's mistress ever do to the Lannosters?

Tywin was a evil little bitch who did cruelty and named it "for the good of our house" the Sack of KL, Elie and her babies, Tysha, his father's mistress was all for the good of Tywin not his house.

 

Reyne's and Tarbeck's made sense. Everything else was overkill.  Could have been called Tywin the Terrible, just like Ivan.

 

BTW is anyone going to read the link I posted? I assure you its very enlightening.

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Tywin is very overrated not that he's ever rated high in my opinion. He's a monster who got lucky in life.

 

Within Westeros he is rated very, very highly. Along with Robert and maybe Bloodraven he is one of the three most influential men of the last century.

 

From the Nine Penny Wars in 260 till his death in 300 he was among the handful of leaders of Westeros, successfully being a commander on the winning side in multiple wars while also being Hand, for a madman, during a prolonged period of peace and prosperity.

 

History rewards success and longevity and Tywin had it both in spades.
 

And Tywin did more harm than good for House Lannister.

 

Well that is clearly wrong. House Lannister peaked under the command of Tywin. In the last 300 years of Westeros History they had never been as influential or as powerful as they were under Tywin. Even after his death the Lannisters and the Westerlands are in a better position than they were when Tytos was 'ruling' the Westerlands.

 

 

I get that Tywin is something of an asshole (many of the greatest figures in history were) but downplaying his importance seems a little crazy and ignorant of what he actually did.

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I've been thinking about Tywin's reputation and his actual accomplishments and it seems to me he is vastly overrated. When going over his story a clear pattern of pride, unnecessary brutality, poor planning, rash decisions, pride, and hypocrisy dominate him.

 

It seems to me that in that case you have thought much but shallow and not read enough in the books. Tywin is not overrated at all but has time and again proved his capabilities.

 

Admittedly he starts out pretty well, he eliminates two rival houses completely and earns a brutal but effective reputation. He becomes a competent hand of the king, and keeps Aerys in check for awhile. Its as he gets older that problems start to be clear. First his marriages reveal a massive hypocrisy on his part. He constantly demands his children have loveless marriages to advance the house, but he himself marries for love and refuses to remarry. Even though any kind of marriage could present a more desired heir and even if he did not want more children a useful alliance. I wouldn't fault him for not marrying out of a sense of loyalty or love of his wife, except he demands vastly different behavior from her children and abuses them. Plus he sleeps with a prostitute at least once probably more often, so it seems complete devotion to his dead wife is an unlikely cause. 

 

 

I agree in regards to Aerys.

 

What proof do you or we have that Tywin arranged his own marriage? It might just as well have been his father or even grandfather and if so Tywin is not a hypocrit. He married as his father or grandfather commanded, and he expects his children to do the same.

 

In regards to remarry I would like to remind you that everyone, including Eddard Stark, expected Jaime Lannister to succeed his father to Casterly Rock, Kingsguard vows or not. And even if so there were many other Lannisters that could inherit after Tywin. As such Tywin had his prefered heir, Jaime, and after him many other Lannisters to carry on the name. To that I would also add that Tywin may also have been shrewd enough to not create the situation for Dance of the Lions by creating more heirs of his body than was needed.

 

That Tywin's parenting was bad is more or less beyond a doubt.

 

But I disagree that Tywin slept with prostitues. Everything about that scene and the ones before it looks to much like a set-up by Varys.

 

 

 

Which of course brings up his incredibly unwise treatment of his children. He spoils Cersei as a child in a manner similar to Joffrey, filling her with a pride and ego even larger than his. He ignores or is unaware of the twincest that has been happening since his kids were nine damn years old! I would so ignores because Joanna caught and separated them, how could Tywin not have been told about this by his wife? Or at least demand to know why they had to be separated. Even Kevan who never had a thought that was not Tywin's first(supposedly) knew, but he does nothing and we all know the results. Tyrion's treatment was all just one giant clusterfuck that ended as one could predict. Yes convincing your son that his wife was a whore and having her gang raped is totally not going to convince him only whores will love him causing his behavior to become worse while sowing the seeds of your own death with an unnecessary secret. Having the difficult to marry off son of yours that you consider embarrassing live a quiet life would be terrible, for some reason.

 

 

In regards to Joanna, maybe she was a person who does things herself instead of running to her husband to have him do it for her? Remember that Tywin didn't spend mucht time home but was mostly in King's Landing to serve as Hand of the King, so is entirely possible that he wasn't even informed about the separate bedrooms or, you know, trusted his wife to handle things herself.

 

In regards to Kevan knowing I only recall that he stated to have known afterwards and if he did know, what difference would it have done? Exposure would have left his niece and her children murdered and possibly the king attacking House Lannister with even more deaths regardless of the outcome.

 

I agree that the Tysha incident was horrible.

 

 

Bringing up Cersei also serves as a reminder that people are repeatedly able to scheme around him ruining his plans. Cersei manages to ruin his perfect heir with her Kingsguard plan, ruin his royal grandchildren with incest, and kind of ruining everything. The Tyrells nearly got Sansa, if it wasn't for littlefinger. Littlefinger and Varys like with everyone else scheme all around him.

 

 

How did she ruin Jaime or put him in the Kingsguard? The decision was ultimately Aerys, while Cersei is by sure no stranger to delusions of her own competence. What do you not seem to understand however is that Tywin at the end of the day is a human. That means that he can't know or foresee everything, and there's a great difference between a flawless superhuman and idiot.

 

 

This finally gets to his decisions and strategy. In the long run they nearly all fail disastrously. He can't be faulted for the defiance of duskendale, he responded to the situation well. It just bears mentioning that the ruthless Tywin had a reasonable opportunity to remove get Aerys killed, but ends up resolving the situation in a way every agrees was for the worse. But once again this was in no way Tywins fault it just falls into the general increasing scale of long term bad results. Next we have the sacking of kings landing, which was just terrible all around. Supposedly he had to prove his loyalty because he was a late comer to the war, which really makes no sense. No other house had to prove their loyalty, some are blatantly still pro targ. The Lannisters are the richest house, he could have given monetary support like he does for the rest of Robert's reign. He could have privately met with Robert and offered to pay for the Targ heirs to die in accidents. The ways to show loyalty are many, and the ways to do the dirty work with Targ heirs are just as many. Instead he sacks the city, which easily could have resulted in his sons death with no way of preventing that and the destruction of the capital. Yes he did not know of the wildfire plot, but things like that can happen when you recklessly attack a city. He sends his pets that he didn't feel the need to instruct to not kill the heirs in the most horrifying way ever. He claims that Elia could have lived, but this makes no sense as that would leave a witness he desperately needed to avoid. This creates a blood feud with the Martells. And in the end he only sort of got on the good side of Robert, but this wasn't essential as he had no way of knowing Robert would soon be open for marriage. The sack was clear, unnecessary, revenge. Next we have him lose his fleet to Victarion "dumb as a stump" greyjoy. Make up a reckless plan to attack the riverlands, so he could capture Ned based on the hope he would lead the response himself? And then bargain the hand of the king and best friend of the king for his son, hoping Robert does nothing in retaliation for such blatant breaches of the kings peace? Could he not have simply pulled on iron bank and call in all loans until his son is released crippling the entirety of Westeros and the iron throne without a single death? Or at the very least focus on the Vale. Tywin makes the horrible decision to then buy sellswords, like the brave companions, which is a horrible idea. Our supposedly Machiavellian character makes a decision that could not be more at odds with anything Machiavelli wrote. The results are predictably awful, his son loses what defined him and they birth the faith militant and bring Qyburn into play. He proceeds to have Jaime do the most important task of the invasion which gets him captured. When it comes to battle his plan relies on troops on his flank sucking enough for an over extension on the other side. Which not only fails but could easily have led to him being outflanked if not nothing at all because there is no way to guarantee enemy behavior. He retreats to Harrenhall, waits there as his lands get raided and is only successful in saving his entire dynasty because of a marriage alliance sealed by Littlefinger. The Red Wedding, while successful and well executed, relies once again entirely on events outside of his control that could not have been predicted. Basically Tywin only won because everybody else had larger schemes. Greyjoys wanted the North, Martells have their plan, Littlefinger secures the reach and vale, Tyrells want a good marriage, and the Freys are dicks.

We end Tywin's story with him having disowned both of his sons, the death of his grandson and the delay of a key marriage, convicting the wrong person for the crime while losing the key to the North, culminating in his murder by Tyrion while taking a shit after picking up his sloppy seconds.  A competent administrator and a man able to seize an opportunity gets turned into a legendary genius, which I think says more about how horrible incompetent feudal lords are than the brilliance of Tywin.

 

 

This was the funnies part to be sure.

 

First you make a convenient jump over the Tarbecks and Reynes.

 

In regards to Duskendale Tywin had not broken with Aerys so its rather in his favor that he don't escale the situation to get the king killed, even while the king's pissing on him. That's a definite mark against Tywin's supposed pettiness.

 

In regards to the Sack the only thing that I think that Tywin did wrong was to kill the Targaryen kids. It would have been to let Robert bloody his own hands with it. But as you fail to see is that the Lannisters came late and were given a position right next to the throne with Cersei marrying the royal family. If you want to look what happened with other Houses that didn't do like the Lannisters, the Tyrells have been excluded from influence at court for well-nigh a decade while Connington and Darry lost considerbal lands due to their close association with the Targaryens during the war. And the problem with the examples that you give are that they are either seen as attempts to gain favor after having sided with the losing side or outright paid services. If the Lannisters wanted to gain power in the new order they needed a dramatic and irrefutable way to show that the Lions were for the Stag, even if late.

 

Why would Elia have been a witness to anything? Everything that she witnessed is supposedly already public knowledge.

 

The Sack was absolutely about revenge but then again, Tywin had other reasons as well. And as you may or may not know, its hard to control soldiers that spills out into alleys and houses to fight an urban battle. Not to say that its foolish to antagonize your own soldiers on behalf of an enemy city.

 

I'd like to point out that it was Euron who planned the attack on Lannisport.

 

Tywin's plan to capture Eddard wasn't based on hope but on emperical experience. And note that Eddard would have gone west himself if it wasn't for Jaime's men crippling him when the horse crushed his leg.

 

In regards to Kings Robert, Robert did nothing when the Lannister soldiers and Eddard clashed in King's Landing so why would he do something now? Robert is a coward who bends every time whichever side the Lannisters wants him to bend.

 

As for attacking the Riverlands, you might remeber that it was Riverland soldiers who captured Tywin in the first place at the behest of the daughter of Lord Tully. They look pretty guilty.

 

Sellswords can be double-edged, no question about it.

 

These "results" that you call it are all things that are beyond Tywin's controll unless you think that he warged Cersei after his death and paid Vargo Hoat to mutilate Jaime.

 

In regards to the Green Fork of course you can't decide how the enemy will behave, but you can expect something and make a plan after it, and considering that Tywin had the reserve ready I find it hard to see that they wouldn't have been able to plug that potential gap.

 

The part about Harrenhall was rich, really funny. Tywin takes a strategic position from where he can threaten the Riverlands and also keep his communications to King's Landing clear as to be able to respons to a Barathen push on the city. I could make a whole thread on everything else that you either get wrong or ignore.

 

Nah, I think you conclusion says more about your hatred of the character than anything else.

 

 

The problem I see with it is that it don't seem to take the new info from the World Book into account.

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I know Tywin's reasoning, but that does not make it anymore logical or acceptable. And regardless of his objections, do you really think it makes in any way sense to gang rape the commoner whose only crime was a socially inappropriate marriage? As I said that only encouraged Tyrion's pursuit of whores, which Tywin wanted to curb. If that story spread I think it would be more embarrassing to the Lannister name by far. Beyond that, Tyrion would have been happy living a simple life with a common wife. That solves Tywins problems right there. He could say Tyrion ran away, died, or anything in return for Tyrion staying anonymous. He would no longer have what he considers a walking unmarriable embarrassment of a son. Instead he chose a disgusting response that eventual got him killed and earned the hatred of Tyrion that will probably destroy his house. He once again was ruthless and abusive out of a sense of pride that ultimately killed him

 

Tywin didn't care if Tyrion had every whore in the Seven Kingdoms. What he was against was inappropriate sentiments towards a member of the lower class which was seriously bad for a member of the nobility, not something unique to Tywin. The prince of Dragonflies had to give up the throne because he married a commoner- the nobles simply wouldn't stand for it. To put it another way marrying commoners is worse than murdering them if you're really high born. The whole foundation of Westeros- or any real medieval state is that there's class lines you just don't breach. The nobility is the nobility because they don't mingle with dirty commoners.

 

Tywin was snobbish even by Westerosi standards (he repealed most of Aegon V's laws during his time at hand) and that's what probably made his reaction so extreme. Still there was no way of allowing that marriage to go through- not for a proper noble. Hell- look at what Hoster Tully did when Lord Petyr Balish deflowered on of his daughters. Tyrion marrying a commoner is at least a hundred times worse

 

Also why would Tywin allow Tyrion to blackmail him?

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The problem I see with it is that it don't seem to take the new info from the World Book into account.

 

Well yes it was written in 2013, world book didn't come out until 2014.  Maybe he will update it eventually. Still everyone who thinks he is overrated doesn't understand Tywin very well.

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