269 replies to this topic

[Castel]

Lord Littlefinger, on 28 March 2012 - 01:38 PM, said:

That morning she summoned her captains and commanders to the garden, rather than descending to the audience chamber. “Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.”
“There is nothing to stay for,” said Brown Ben Plumm.
“Your Grace, the slavers brought their doom on themselves,” said Daario Naharis.
“You have brought freedom as well,” Missandei pointed out.
“Freedom to starve?” asked Dany sharply. “Freedom to die? Am I a dragon, or a harpy?” Am I mad? Do I have the taint?
“A dragon,” Ser Barristan said with certainty. “Meereen is not Westeros, Your Grace.”
“But how can I rule seven kingdoms if I cannot rule a single city?” He had no answer to that. Dany turned away from them, to gaze out over the city once again. “My children need time to
heal and learn. My dragons need time to grow and test their wings. And I need the same. I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.” She turned back to look at their faces. “I will not march.”
“ What will you do then, Khaleesi?” asked Rakharo.
“Stay,” she said. “Rule. And be a queen.”

I don't see how this contradicts what I said? Dany doesn't just see Meereen as a chance to "practice" She went there because she wanted to free the people (I honestly can't remember, the unfortunate side effect of blasting through a book too fast) and to deal with slavers, once there, she realised she couldn't leave. She was right, she couldn't just abandon the Meereenese to their fate, then what sort of queen would she be, and yes, experience was a side benefit.

What I meant in my original post was that Dany didn't see Meereen as a dungeon she could mine for XP and leave when it suited her, she genuinely cared and that forced her to stay  (even in that quote that's what she talks about,the slaves). If she had looked upon all that war and pain and death as purely a dry run for Westeros, then there's a bigger issue.

Edited by Castel, 28 March 2012 - 10:26 PM.

[kg1982]

I'm surprised that there is all this discounting of Ned Stark on this thread and thinking that he is an automaton that always does the "lawful" thing.  Of all the characters, I think that Ned best embodies the struggle between what is lawful and what follows his moral code.  Ned has definitely made decisions that aren't lawful.  The lawful thing for Ned to do was to continue proclaiming that Stannis was king even after he was arrested; Ned was sullying the claim of the rightful king by the lying. However, Sansa's life was more important.  The lawful thing for Ned to do was to arrest Cersei and Jaime for treason and tell Robert that Cersei's children weren't his. However, he didn't want their blood on his hands.  And those are the two times that are outright stated to us.  There's also the little matter of Lyanna's promise.  If you believe that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, then Ned Stark had been committing treason for fifteen years by hiding the true Targaryen heir and proclaiming him his bastard son.  He did this because he loved Lyanna and Jon.  Ned Stark's moral code states that the killing of innocents is abhorrent and he's willing to defy the king in that matter.  

I think that the OP somehow thinks that because Littlefinger values self preservation and power above all else that somehow makes him better than Ned.  However, self preservation and power are great in the short term, but selling out one's soul is awful in the long term.  I'm thinking of people like Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi.  Their beliefs were more important than the short term gain they might get from a certain action, and they were willing to die for those beliefs.  When Ned Stark told Cersei he knew about her affair and when he hid Jon Targaryen for fifteen years, he knew these were risky actions.  However, Ned's own moral beliefs were more important than Ned's life.  

I also think that the main theme of the series about power is that it isn't worth it.  Power corrupts too much and turns you in to someone without morals.  It's much better to remain isolated in the North.

[Lord Littlefinger's Lash]

kg1982, on 28 March 2012 - 11:15 PM, said:

I'm surprised that there is all this discounting of Ned Stark on this thread and thinking that he is an automaton that always does the "lawful" thing.  Of all the characters, I think that Ned best embodies the struggle between what is lawful and what follows his moral code.  Ned has definitely made decisions that aren't lawful.  The lawful thing for Ned to do was to continue proclaiming that Stannis was king even after he was arrested; Ned was sullying the claim of the rightful king by the lying. However, Sansa's life was more important.  The lawful thing for Ned to do was to arrest Cersei and Jaime for treason and tell Robert that Cersei's children weren't his. However, he didn't want their blood on his hands.  And those are the two times that are outright stated to us.  There's also the little matter of Lyanna's promise.  If you believe that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, then Ned Stark had been committing treason for fifteen years by hiding the true Targaryen heir and proclaiming him his bastard son.  He did this because he loved Lyanna and Jon.  Ned Stark's moral code states that the killing of innocents is abhorrent and he's willing to defy the king in that matter.  

I think that the OP somehow thinks that because Littlefinger values self preservation and power above all else that somehow makes him better than Ned.  However, self preservation and power are great in the short term, but selling out one's soul is awful in the long term.  I'm thinking of people like Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi.  Their beliefs were more important than the short term gain they might get from a certain action, and they were willing to die for those beliefs.  When Ned Stark told Cersei he knew about her affair and when he hid Jon Targaryen for fifteen years, he knew these were risky actions.  However, Ned's own moral beliefs were more important than Ned's life.  

I also think that the main theme of the series about power is that it isn't worth it.  Power corrupts too much and turns you in to someone without morals.  It's much better to remain isolated in the North.

self preservation doesn't have anything do with Littlefinger.  I don't believe I mentioned him in the original post. Jon Snow, or Sand or whatever you want to call him isn't Rhaegar's heir, regardless. He still a bastard and so there's is no treason . I'm not sure what this soul thing is but you say there's a market for them? What's the going rate?

Now back to Ned.  Ned didn't die trying to introduce democracy to Westeros. He wasn't on a hunger strike for the abolition of serfdom.  (In fact is Ned a lord and the beneficiary of 8,000 years of the subjection the people of the North.) Ned died to support one brother of the man who last conquered the realm (via treasonous rebellion with Ned's help) over another. A point of order so utterly and completely absurd as to be laughable.  For the sake of this Ned lost all.  Not only his life but greatly endangering the lives of the aforementioned children he claims to prize above all else.  Only to be forced into the position he originally shunned for the sake of this so called honor.  All this while dramatically increasing the aggregate amount of danger to every innocent in the realm, including his children and Cersei's.  Of course Cersei is not innocent and her children need not have been harmed had he taken them in to custody, supporting Renly.

But no. That would make too much sense so, reductio ad absurdum, it cannot possibly be honorable.  And THAT is why Ned is stupid.  Also you'll note that not taking the position was something he should have done if he was unwilling to play the game.  Even then Roose Bolton would probably have made a cloak out of Ned at some point.

Edited by Lord Littlefinger's Lash, 29 March 2012 - 12:26 AM.

[voodooqueen126]

Lord Littlefinger, on 27 March 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

Now. you raise some valid points about Petyr. Unfortunately, you can’t have your cake and eat it to.  We see that grown men, Jamie, Tyrion, Tywin, Theon, Sanodr, ect see Sansa as sexually attractive.  From a strictly biological context apparently Sansa is sufficiently mature to be considered an object of desire.  Petyr’s like for Sansa is obviously the least appealing aspect of his character.  However, I do not see Petyr’s planning in terms of Catelyn, or that he has an obsession with Catelyn and or Sansa.

It totally is about Sansa as a replacement Catelyn; when he sees Catelyn for the first time in years he shows that he finds it hard to believe that Catelyn could be happy in Winterfell (and this is subtly alluded to when he tells Sansa that he always imagined Winterfell as cold) which imho shows his delusional tendency to imagine that Catelyn loved him and gave him her maidenhead. His first reaction to seeing Sansa is to say that she looks like her mother, when she talks about Loras being sent off to fight against Gregor Clegane as being like a song, he says that life is not a song (and I think he is reminiscing over his dual with Brandon Stark over Catelyn Tully), then when Sansa is before Cersei, Pycelle accuses Sansa of having Stark's "Traitor blood" which Petyr counters by saying that Sansa is like Catelyn Tully and not a thing like treacherous Ned Stark (not exact words) even though it was Catelyn who arrested Tyrion (on his misinformation) and also shows his tendency to solipsize Sansa into being purely like Catelyn (whom he likes to imagine loved him) and not the daughter of Ned Stark (who took Catelyn from him). Then when Petyr and Sansa next interact in late ASOS, he says it's because he loved her mother, who gave him her maidenhead. Petyr's new identity for Sansa is that of his daughter Alayne (the daughter he could never have with Catelyn). Then of course there is "only cat" just before Petyr murders Lysa. (see this is why Sansa's chapters bear a close reading).

As a SanSan shipper, sure I have nothing against Sansa as being sexually attractive-though Westerosi culture (like real life Medieval culture) frowns upon actually consumating with a girl of Sansa's age. Which is why Sandor didn't kiss Sansa: because when she sung to him, he realised that she was a child, and he ran off in shame and horror when he realised that even by kissing her, he would be crossing a moral event horizon.
No, what Petyr has in common with Humbert Humbert is not his depraved lust for young girls (Humbert prefers girls aged 9-13, whilst Petyr is clearly waiting for Sansa to be older, like atleast 14 but possibly 15, the age that Catelyn was when he 'loved' her) but their tendency to solipsize the objects of their desire.
Both Catelyn/Annabel Leigh are envisioned as the perfect woman, with whom they were denied the chance to screw. Whilst Sansa and Lolita who resemble Catelyn/Annabel Leigh are the second chance, with whom Petyr/Humbert pretends to be the father of, whilst trying to shape the objects of their desire into perfect women.
In the first case, Humbert fails:  Lolita resists Humbert by continuing on being a crass little American right to the end and never "vibrates beneath him " and cries herself to sleep every night, whilst Petyr is succeeding in shaping Sansa into a sort of mini-Petyr (see her interest and comprehension of Petyr's political lessons) but she to will never love Petyr (because his solipsizing is fated to fail) and is, I suspect fated to use those political lessons that Baelish teaches her to destroy him (out of revenge, ironically the same motive Petyr had to destroy the Tully's and Starks, only since Petyr's crimes are worse that Hoster and Brandon's crimes this will not be petty vengence but justice).
As to what I mean by solipsizing, well I am going to be a lazy person and copy and paste from the wiki article on Lolita: but

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In his essay on Stalinism "Koba the Dread," Martin Amis proposes that Lolita is an elaborate metaphor for the totalitarianism that destroyed the Russia of Nabokov's childhood (though Nabokov states in his afterword that he "[detests] symbols and allegories"). Amis interprets it as a story of tyranny told from the point of view of the tyrant. "Nabokov, in all his fiction, writes with incomparable penetration about delusion and coercion, about cruelty and lies," he says. "Even Lolita, especially Lolita, is a study in tyranny."
Critics have further noted that the novel gives very little information about what Lolita is personally like, that in effect she has been silenced. Nomi Tamir-Ghez writes "Not only is Lolita's voice silenced, her point of view, the way she sees the situation and feels about it, is rarely mentioned and can be only surmised by the reader...since it is Humbert who tells the story...throughout most of the novel, the reader is absorbed in Humbert's feelings".^[15] Similarly Mica Howe and Sarah Appleton Aguiar write that the novel silences and objectifies Lolita.^[16] Christine Clegg notes that this is a recurring theme in criticism of the novel in the 1990s.^[17] Actor Brian Cox who played Humbert in a 2009 one-man monologue show based on the novel stated that the novel is "not about Lolita as a flesh and blood entity. It’s Lolita as a memory" and concluded that a stage monologue would be truer to the book than any film could possibly be.^[18] Elizabeth Janeway writing in The New York Review of Books holds "Humbert is every man who is driven by desire, wanting his Lolita so badly that it never occurs to him to consider her as a human being, or as anything but a dream-figment made flesh".^[19]
Clegg sees the novel's non-disclosure of Lolita's feelings as directly linked to the fact that her real name is Dolores Haze and (in the novel but not the film) only Humbert refers to her as Lolita.^[20] Humbert also states he has effectively "solipsized" Lolita early in the novel.^[21] Eric Lemay of Northwestern University writes "The human child, the one noticed by non-nymphomaniacs, answers to other names, "Lo," "Lola," "Dolly," and, least alluring of all, "Dolores." "But in my arms," asserts Humbert, "she was always Lolita." And in his arms or out, "Lolita" was always the creation of Humbert's craven self,....The Siren-like Humbert sings a song of himself, to himself, and titles that self and that song "Lolita."...To transform Dolores into Lolita, to seal this sad adolescent within his musky self, Humbert must deny her her humanity."^{[size="2"][22]}
In 2003 Iranian expatriate Azar Nafisi published the memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran about a covert women's reading group. In an NPR interview Nafasi contrasts the sorrowful and seductive sides of Dolores/Lolita's character. She notes "Because her name is not Lolita, her real name is Dolores which as you know in Latin means dolour, so her real name is associated with sorrow and with anguish and with innocence, while Lolita becomes a sort of light-headed, seductive, and airy name. The Lolita of our novel is both of these at the same time and in our culture here today we only associate it with one aspect of that little girl and the crassest interpretation of her." <snip>
For Nafisi, the essence of the novel is Humbert's solipsism and his erasure of Lolita's independent identity. She writes: "Lolita was given to us as Humbert's creature [...] To reinvent her, Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own [...] Yet she does have a past. Despite Humbert's attempts to orphan Lolita by robbing her of her history, that past is still given to us in glimpses."

So I think Petyr basically makes the same mistake when it comes to Sansa/Alayne, only whilst Humbert's solipsizing of Delores/Lolita serves to highlight his tyranny/his cruelty/his evil/his villainhood.  Petyr's solipsizing of Sansa/Alayne is also an error of judgement/stupid as well as being evil/tyrannical destruction of another's identity.  At the end of the day Humbert and Delores/Lolita where just private individuals, whilst Petyr  and Sansa/Alayne are not: Petyr is a political giant, and Sansa is the daughter of the Lord of Winterfell, who Petyr betrayed on his march of political giantdom.
Petyr by getting wrapped up in his fantasy of Sansa/Alayne, basically forgets that Alayne (who if she were his real daughter would have every reason to love him), is really Sansa (who has every reason to hate him).

The fact that Petyr doesn't have a real daughter (to marry off to the Heir to the Vale) is because, as you say, he is not aiming for children/isn't playing the birds and bees game, but he aims at political status/he is playing the game of thrones. The problem is, by ignoring the game of birds and bees, he actually makes a crucial error in judgement: instead of having a loyal child to use as a pawn and sell off to the Lord of the Eyrie, he is trying to use the daughter of one of his enemies. As well as the fact that because Petyr is not playing the birds and bees games, he plays far more aggressively (with less regard to the long term/less regard for society as a whole)
Now, if Petyr had been sterile (like Varys the eunuch) or more rational (though a totally rational thing to do would be to use his own child). I suppose that he could've picked up any pretty girl off the street (like he picked off Jeyne Poole) to use as his pawn ie be a 'fake Sansa" or the daughter of his sister, or somebody who had a genuine reason to love him and be loyal to him, to marry off to the Heir to the Eyrie. Then poison Harry the Heir after his real daughter/or fake Sansa had given birth to a son or two, and thus use the Vale's armies to make himself King (somehow, not really sure if this plan would work, but you seem to believe that Petyr is aiming to become king, so lets say that's the plan).
But because Petyr, at his heart is not truly rational (ie he is not rationally aiming to become king)... instead of selecting a pawn who would be genuinely loyal to him: like a biological daughter, a niece, or an orphan whose life he had saved and who genuinely loves him.
Instead Petyr the irrational  picks Sansa to be his pawn, because she fits into his particular fantasy: her resemblance to Catelyn, and Petyr's obsession with Catelyn is what causes him to destroy Ned Stark/destroy Hoster Tully/destroy everything else that Sansa cared about.

Sure Petyr would rationalise this and say that it is better to use the genuine daughter of Ned Stark and thus be able to claim the North and Riverlands into the bargain (since his niece or biological daughter would have no claim to either, whilst an orphan/fake Sansa would always risk discovery).
But then why  teach her to be a player?  Petyr might reply that he teachers her his game to make her a better pawn (or to turn his pawn into a Queen by dragging her across the board)? Any fool can tell you that making the daughter of the man you betrayed, into a Queen (the most powerful piece on the board) is one step away from making her into another player. And if he is genuine about arranging her marriage to Harry the Heir, then he has made her a player by default, a player who through his tendency to confide in her, knows an awful lot about the real Petyr Baelish.
Now Petyr would say that Sansa was an orphan whose life he saved, and thus she should be incredibly grateful to him for saving her life, and thus she should come to love him and serve his interests. To which Sansa would say that she wouldn't have needed rescuing from Kings Landing if he hadn't betrayed her father, started a war that destroyed her family in an effort to avenge himself on Brandon Stark and Hoster Tully-, skuttled her marriage plans to Willas Tyrell and caused her to marry Tyrion and helped the Tyrells frame her for murder. Furthermore, Sansa would say, Petyr wasn't terribly grateful to Brandon Stark for sparing his life, infact this act so enraged Petyr that he set out to destroy House Stark (because Brandon humiliated Petyr simply by winning) so why should Sansa be truly grateful to Petyr?
Also the fact that he confides in  Sansa so much is further evidence of his solipsizing of her into Alayne: he wouldn't confide in Sansa so much if he remembered that she was really the daughter of Ned Stark, but because he is so wrapped up in his fantasy of Sansa as Alayne that he allows himself to forget that she has a history and an identity and that history and identity is that of the daughter of Ned Stark.

^'

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To my mind its just as likely Petyr wants to be king.  The reason Petyr pits Stark against Lannister is because of preexisting amenity between them and vulnerability of the Riverlands, particularly should the support of the Vale be withheld.  Should Ned have problem more pliable I think Petyr would have been happy to leave the Starks and Tullys be as long as they supported his future plans.  He destruction of them I merely an incidental bonus on his path Iron Throne, he doesn’t particularly care about them, he doesn’t particularly think about them with the exception of a visceral dislike for their condescension. More like, note to self, if I ever get a chance to fuck the Starks and Tullys up the ass, do so.

I think you are ascribing far too much rationality to Petyr. Sure he might want to be king but what drives him to have such an obsessional amount of ambition? In the end it comes down to Petyr's inner dysfunction, namely his desire to screw the Stark's and Tully's over and his visceral dislike of their condescension comes from the fact that they rejected his suit of Catelyn Tully (Well Hoster rejected his suit, and the Starks got her hand instead) .

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Now that being said, is it petty? Well ok. That’s not the word I’d use but ok.  The problem is, the whole fucking game of thrones is petty.  Generally speaking wanting to have power over others for the sake of having it is petty.  From my point of view that is a given of the feudal system.  Given that we’re reading about that game, and as I’ve said, I am.  The issue is who is the best at playing that game, not what is the most moral thing to do.  The most moral thing to do is not play the game at all.  Any moral person will at an inherent disadvantage playing the game.

  
Sure, if I were truly altruistic in the game of birds and bees, I would be petitioning all the ladies in Mensa to let me have their ovaries, have them fertilised by noble prize winners, and let me be the surrogate. but since I am not truly altruistic, but am more or less motivated by my desire to see a bunch of mini voodooqueens: 127, 128, 129, 130 etc. run around and go to private schools, read books, go to university and have successful careers... I won't.  Honestly such extremely altruistic behaviour is to opt out of the game of life completely.  And I am suspicious of people who want to opt out of the game of life, and terrified of people who want others to opt out of the game of life.
So when it comes to the game of thrones: if you're born in the position, that Eddard, Tywin, Tyrion, Robb, Sansa, Mace, Margaery, Quentyn, Doran, Stannis, but above Daenerys were born into, you have no choice but to play the game of thrones, without opting out of life completely, because failure to play the game of thrones will result in your own demise (or atleast a significant loss of your income and the lives of the people you rule over)

This becomes more complex when we come to warfare:
The reason so many characters within the text, hold Doran Martell in comtempt  is that they think he is a coward for not avenging himself on behalf of Elia(though we the readers know this is not true). Now it actually seems rather mad and petty to avenge oneself by going to war on a whole nation over a single rape and murder (revolting as that rape and murder maybe on a purely visceral level). After all the Austrians are generally considered to have been rather petty and vengeful for basically declaring war on Serbia over the Franz Ferdinand assasination.

However Westeros, is much further back in history than 1914 on the eve of WW1.
For starters, guns, gas... technology generally, make warfare far more expensive, and shifts the focus from individual knights to large scale armies of peasants/the working class, not to mention the complex alliance system, make modern warfare far more costly than medieval warfare (and Brienne's chapter's demonstrate that Medieval warfare is still costly). Since this technological advancement is only possible if one already has capitalism, so it comes that governments, to finance these ridiculously expensive wars, are forced to tax people much more. and when people are highly taxed they demand government representation far more loudly, so it is that people like Franz Ferdinand are basically less relevant, because government has switched from inherited power (Franz Ferdinand) to elected power (people like Lloyd George and Winston Churchill-although Churchill was still a member of the aristocracy). Only because the Germans and Austrians were behind the times in terms of democracy, they still acted like it was the Middle Ages, and therefore that the assasination of  heir to the throne merited WW1.
Needless to say,because the Austrian and German royal familys failed to realise that  it was no longer the Middle Ages (and because of Austria and German's unfortunate geographic location, it's nearly impossible for them to win wars anyway, plus they keep on trying to invade Russia), and therefore Franz Ferdinand didn't merit WW1, they no longer remain in power (even as constitutional monarch like Britain and Australia).
But because Westeros is in the Middle Ages, then executing the lord of Winterfell, and his heir, raping and murdering  the sister of the Prince of Dorne, does merit a war, because these people are parts of the government. This is why characters within Westeros, view Doran as a coward. Because they think that he, by  failing to avenge Elia and her children is basically allowing a massive insult to Dorne go unpunished. It would be like Hilary Clinton and her daughter were visiting Australia on a state visit, then China happened to invade Australia (because the Chinese PM and the guy most likely to be his heir had been viciously tortured to death by an insane Australian prime minister) and in the process they raped and murdered Hilary Clinton and murdered Chelsea Clinton, then America failed to do anything about it... The Americans would be seen as weak and people would be likely to try far more nasty stuff to other American politicians.
Only because Dorne is not like America, but more like Spain, Doran has to get his revenge by convincing a more powerful nation to get his justice for him. Which he is more or less plotting to do.
Same with Robb: he had no choice (well one always has a choice) but to go to war after Ned's execution, and the only reason he lost was the indefencebility of the Riverlands (since the North is sort of like Russia and the Riverlands are basically as indefinsible as Germany or Poland) and his dishonourable decision to sleep with Jeyne Westerling, then break his word to the Freys, though fortunately for the Stark cause, the Freys were so disproportionate in their response, that everyone now hates them) .

But for people like Petyr (on his level of society) I would say that yeah, it is pointless to seek  extreme power (like becoming a king) in a vicious and aggressive way, since his life doesn't depend on it and any children he might have only need money to prosper. Actually by seeking kingship he more or less ensures that his children are just as trapped playing the game of thrones that Ned Stark was, since the only way his children will be able to survive is that they continue on playing the game of thrones, because well you win or you die.. Having said that It's not wrong for people to seek power, though it is preferable for society that good people seek power (remember by that I include people like Margaret Thatcher, who once said "I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.") but even people less altruisticly inclined than Margaret Thatcher should be able to seek power, but not to destroy people or whole countries, which is really just silly.
IMHO the only reason Petyr seeks power is to assuage his pride, his obsession and revenge.

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That is the reason I said Ned was stupid.  You can’t be moral and play the game. Or at least not a moral absolutist.  I’m only looking at ability of the individual characters to play the game. Not welfare of the society as a whole, except as a secondary consideration as being overly ruthless will make a Lord intolerable. As an objective player of the game, then I would evaluate that my actions can be perceived to be as bad as Tywin Lannisters and still be acceptable to the other lords and populace.

If you're aiming at long term success (ie that your children will benefit from your actions after you have died), then you have to be a public servant (like Ned), rather than have the public serve you (like Tywin). If we read AFFC, we see that Tywin's failure to be a public servant (and failure as a parent) ie his insistence that the public serve him, begins to destroy the Lannister cause after his death, whilst ADWD shows that Ned's success as a public servant (the way Northerners view it) means that people are willing to go out of their way to help his children and their cause.
This seemingly altruistic behaviour on the part of the Northern lords is actually selfish, since they would all rather be ruled by the good public servant Starks, than by crazy psychopaths like Ramsay (who expects the public to serve him by allowing him to rape and flay their daughters).
Basically if we are born into a position of power (like Ned) and want our children to inherit our position of power, then it is generally advantageous to be moral, unless we are dealing with psychopaths, since for most subordinates , it is better to live under a moral leader than immoral one. Or put negatively: the only people who benefit from having people like Tywin in charge, are people like Gregor.
Having said that it advantages the lord to be moral (a moral lord is a public servant, a bad lord expects the public to serve him), imagination and cunning are still necessary attributes, and Ned's failure is largely a failure of imagination.

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Now granted I'm one of the HBO people, I came to read Game Of Thrones the series after watching season 1, and never would have started reading something called A Song of Ice and Fire.  So complaining about Petyr Baelish killing lords in Westeros is like complaining about Omar killing drug dealers on The Wire.  As far as I'm concerned those assholes deserve whatever they get.

For a lot of readers this generally applies more to Tyrion (who is increasingly villainous) in your case, (and please let this not come out like a personal attack)I think it also applies to Petyr, since Petyr is Humbert Humbert+politics:

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One of the novel's early champions, Lionel Trilling  warned in 1958 of the moral difficulty in interpreting a book with so eloquent and so self-deceived a narrator: "we find ourselves the more shocked when we realize that, in the course of reading the novel, we have come virtually to condone the violation it presents [...] we have been seduced into conniving in the violation, because we have permitted our fantasies to accept what we know to be revolting."

Because you seem to view lords to be on the same level as drug dealers who deserve to be terminated by Petyr, who you view as being like Omar (who I am guessing is a cop). Therefore to paraphrase Trilling...
I would say you have  been seduced into conniving with Petyr's desire to avenge himself on the Tullys and Starks , because your own nightmares about the aristocracy have caused you to see people like Hoster Tully and Ned Stark as revolting, and therefore you have virtually come to condone Petyr's destruction of much of Westeros, since you do not fundamentally realise that Petyr's goals and the actions that grow out from those goals are actually the things that are really nightmarish and revolting.

Obviously, in real life, you wouldn't go out and destabilise a whole society just to get rid of its aristocrats (aristocracies are naturally occuring: Australia has what we jokingly refer to as a squatocracy, and America has all those people that Edith Wharton wrote about) but you have been seduced when it comes to this particular character.
You have also been seduced by Brienne, ironically enough, who is the direct opposite of Petyr in everyway, in that she is more or less heading for saint-hood.
I like to think that this speaks about who you truly are, since we have Brienne's POV and we know who she truly is which is basically Westeros's answer to  Joan of Arc+cynicism, and that you like her means you basically like Brienne's altruistic worldview^.  This also causes me to hope that if we had Petyr's POV, and it confirmed my suspicions about him, you would find yourself trying to reach through the pages of the book to reemerge in Westeros for the explicit purpose of beating Petyr Baelish to death with a red hot poker. See just as we lack Lolita's Pov in Lolita and due to Humbert's solipsizing of her, and thus we have little idea of her true personality, so it is ironically enough with Petyr Baelish.
We have very little information about what Petyr Baelish is really like on the inside,  since he is so rarely honest,  so it's hard to guess his point of view and the way he sees things. It is only rarely, and generally in Sansa's POV chapters*, where  glimpses of  Baelish's true personality are given to us.  Even then, since the reader is absorbed in Sansa's feelings, we still learn very little about Petyr's true feelings. Unfortunately, if for whatever reason we find Sansa's chapters boring and thus avoid reading them closely, we might have a tendency to fit Petyr into our own fantasies (that Petyr is some sort of ubermensch player of the game of thrones who is sticking it up to stuffy aristocrats with their outmoded and silly notions of honour by his completely rational realpolitik) but on the  basis of the  rare glimpses afforded to us (in Sansa's POV chapters), it can be surmised that Petyr Baelish is basically a petty man obsessed with avenging himself on the people who wronged him when they rejected his suit at the age of 15, with rise to greatlordship and ambition just being means to gain that revenge and from late AGOT onwards: shape Sansa into Alayne and thus work out his Catelyn issues.
I am willing to bet money on it: Petyr is not meant to be a hero and like all villains he is motivated by something deeply irrational(lustful obsession congealed into petty vengefulness, despite being otherwise a genius ), and this deeply irrational core is revealed in Sansa's POV chapters. (actually one of beauties of Sansa's POV chapters is that Sansa is almost all about the inner life and so it's fitting that this fundamentally dishonest character more or less only reveals his inner life in her chapters.)

^If Brienne were a man, with black hair, preferably with green, or brown eyes, I too would be seduced by Brienne. Though since Brienne's personality is all chick, I am not sure how we would go down, but generally since I like female company, I think I would like Brian's personality...

* Although Ned, and Tyrion observe  his political personality and Catelyn thinks that Petyr is like her little brother, It is Sansa who comes closest to observing Petyr's inner life.

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With respect to Sansa.  I don’t think his relationship with her is horrible….by Westerosi standards.  But I don’t think it’s believable for him to tell her so much.  Perhaps he truly is delusional which would make sense with respect to explication.  But were his level of dysfunction really that high don’t believe he’d be as successful as he’s been.  I think instead its device to convey information to readers without giving Petyr a POV.  Which can’t be done because he knows too much.

Hmn, it could be a device, but I think the device is also a manifestation of Petyr's inner character and what little that is revealed about Petyr's character, reveals something dysfunctional which explains the device (ie the device is his tendency to confide in Sansa, and the dysfunction explains his tendency to confide)
I think it's possible to be brilliant the way Petyr is, and still be as dysfunctional as I think he is.
Petyr is simply a genius when it comes to politics, he could've still been a genius without the dysfunctional core, although without the inner dysfunction, he wouldn't have pressed himself so far.

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Lastly, yes Petyr’s insecurities and/or Sansa will ultimately be his doom.  As it was for Theon, as is often the case for all but the most skilled people of this character type.

Yup Westeros is not real life, and there is much foreshadowing that Petyr, as a villain, will be destroyed for ASOIAF to fulfill the purpose of literature, which is catharsis. By foreshadowing I mean this:
"I dreamt of a  of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow."
This giant could refer to either Petyr, Tyrion, or Ser Robert Strong. Since Tyrion is in Essos, Robert Strong is a giant and Sansa is a little girl, so really it has to be Petyr by default. Though perhaps she could somehow end up killing all three, which would be boss for me as a Sansa fan.
But I would say that not only does Petyr's demise have to happen, because destiny saysthat all villains must die or be defeated in works of literature. But I do believe that Petyr's demise at Sansa's hands will happen organically and as part of his character.
and his character is
1=obsessional lust for catelyn tully
now 1 times 2 is 2.
and to 2=petty desire to avenge self on Starks and Tully's
1+2=3
and 3=complete disregard for others/lack of empathy/tendency to solipsize/thievery/corruption/not planning for his children's future/deinvested in society as a whole/psychopathy or moral insanity/ tyranny/ evil/ villainhood/ absence of good.
because of these character traits 2 and 3, he has more or less played the game of thrones without shackles and therefore has been extremely successful in achieving vast amounts of power in the short term.
But because 2 more or less comes from 1, which is obsessional lust, he has a tendency to solipsize Sansa into Alayne, and because Alayne, this imaginary daughter of himself and Catelyn Tully, would have every reason to love him  if she were real, he therefore does not treat Sansa as the daughter of Ned Stark whom he betrayed (and he betrayed Ned Stark over 2). This manifests itself in a tendency to confide in her and also in his desire to teach her to become a player and his plan to organise her marriage to Harry the Heir.
But because solipsizing another person's identity is always destined to fail (ie obsessional lust and fantasy do more to revolt the object of desire than gain their love), and because it is more or less impossible to commit the perfect crime (and Petyr thinks he has committed the perfect crime in his destruction of the Stark's and Tullys) because in the end, someone always tells (Petyr tells Sansa an awful lot about himself, but Jeyne Poole or Sandor could expose a few other things) and someone always figures it out.
In this case it is has to be Sansa, since otherwise there would be no reason for her to be in the Vale with Littlefinger, she could've run off with Dontos, met up with Sandor, and lived happily after  when they rode Stranger off into the sunset.
See there would be no reason to make Sansa a POV character if all she was just a damsel in distress or just a victim (though that can be interesting, in the same way that Franz Kafka's the Trial is interesting).
See each POV character is more or less a hero in their own novel, and the beauty of ASOIAF is that we get to read several novels all entwined with each other.
The problem with Sansa's arc, is that she is more or less the heroine in an Ann Radcliffe novel (or a very dark horrifying version of Northanger Abbey-for instance Sansa in AGOT could be like Catherine Tilney in the Bath section of Northanger Abbey) with politics added, and because the entwining factor means that stories have to progress much more slowly, we are more or less stuck with Sansa midway through her character arc, as if the Mysteries of Udolpho or Romance of the Forest were cut off about halfway, when the heroines were still  terrified and helpless and only just starting to piece together the clues that will enable them to expose the villain.
With the added problem that each chapter of Mysteries of Udolpho or Romance of the Forest* was  interspersed with chapters of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley, A tale of Two Cities, Heart of Darkness, White Fang, Silas Marner, The Red and the Black, Kim and so on.

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BTW that’s not a sidetrack. That is the track. This is the side track:

Well you should have said that instead of that you have mommy parts.  Of course having children decreases the destructive tendencies of human nature and of men in particular.  And unattached males are typically more destructive.  This is the real reason polygamy is generally outlawed because low status males are compelled to foment revolution in order to get access to vaginas hoarded by the aristocracy.  

Had you simply said that, I would have agreed with you and stated that I am speaking in regard to the interests of the individual and not society as a whole.  And I did tell you that I do not expect individuals to act in the best interest of society.

Absolutely, because I have a completely irrational, selfish desire to see a bunch of little voodoqueens (127, 128, 129, 130 et) running about, and for them in turn to have even more little voodooqueens (131, 132, 133).
It means I have to think about society as a whole. Otherwise life will be miserable for (128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133). So I have a deep suspicion of people who don't want to see mini versions of themselves, because I fear that they will basically not care about the future/society as a whole.
I cynical person might say that by the elite hoarding all young women, thus causing low-status men to have a terrible hankering for vagina, they are inciting those young men to go out and conquer other countries (to acquire the women there), thus spreading that culture to a great many people.
Failing that, the low status young men can always be used as suicide bombers, thus furthering the interests of the elites (if you consider Bin Laden to be a member of the elite).

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And your problem is with the political system in Westeros and not with Petyr. If you’re going to through the trouble of engineering broad reaching rebellion, you might as well make yourself King rather introducing democracy.  Otherwise the return on the effort invested isn’t worth it.

Actually I don't have a problem with the political system of Westeros (it's the Middle Ages after all), but I do have a problem with people like Petyr.
You see  I don't want a broad reaching revolution for Westeros: Or atleast going on the basis of real world experience I would say that broad reaching revolutions always end up being far worse than the aristocrats that they superseded: Louis XVI vs Jacobins, Czarist Russia-Communist Russia (with the Mensheviks being a footnote), Mandarin China vs Maoist China (the gap here is a bit more significant), King Norodom Sihanouk vs the Khmer Rouge (with Lon Nol being a footnote).
Imposing democracy on pre-literate peasants never works anyway. The only two revolutions that have ever worked (ie brought long term prosperity to their people) have been England's Glorious Revolution and America's War of Independence.
What these two Revolutions have in common, is that they were just about getting rid of disliked regimes(James II and the British respectively), though their reasons for wanting to be rid of these regimes were ideological (James II was Catholic, the British were taxing the Americans but not giving them much say in government).
  In their desire for regime change, the Glorious and American Revolutions are not dissimilar  from the Tudor's superseding the House of York, the House of York getting rid of the House of Lancaster, the Lancaster's getting rid of Richard II, Isabella the She-wolf getting rid of Edward II, Edward I getting rid of the Welsh Royal family... Though the objections of course, were not usually ideological, but personal, although these personal reasons were usually sensible rather than petty: Richard III murdered his nephews, so Elizabeth Woodville cut a deal with Margaret Beaufort that Henry VII would marry Elizabeth of York and thus get rid of Richard III, Henry VI was crazy and made a terrible king, Richard II was a narcissist. The only two that can be described as petty personal, would be Isabella getting rid of Edward II (though he was a bad king, she seems to have disliked him because of his sexual disinterest in her, his lack of skill as a monarch was presumably how she was able to gather support to stage a coup and have him murdered though) and Edward I getting rid of the Welsh Princes (they betrayed him and Edward was simply power hungry).
Worth noting that most of these medieval dynasty changes were accompanied by the murder of the previous royal family to a lesser or greater degree, which is not dissimilar to the Revolutionary tendency to execute or murder the Kings and Queens that they overtook (Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed whilst their  son died of neglect, the Romanovs were murdered).
For example  the Tudors were willing to murder most surviving Yorkist claimants (generally those not descended from Elizabeth of York), just like Tywin was willing to murder the Targaryen children to ingratiate himself with Robert, and the Communists murdered the Romanovs.
Since it is self evident that Stalin was worse than the Czar, I don't feel the need to discuss that example indepth. (Though Russian's like Average Cheese love to point out that without Stalin, WW2 would not have been won, which might be true, but I think that Stalin could've achieved that without the crazy purges and mass starvation).
Yet the Tudors are remembered  as the dynasty that presided over the Renaissance and Reformation in England. Where as Robert will be remembered in Westeros as the many who tolerated child murder, spent a lot of money and was cuckolded by his wife, thus leading to a massive war. Joffrey will most likely gain an epithet like "Joffrey the Cruel", since his lack of mercy and cruelty brought about his own destruction. Tywin will be remembered as a child murderer and as a generally horrible person: now of course that will be 95%history is written by the winners/Targaryens/Tyrion, Samwell, or Sansa (these are the only POV characters with a fondness for books, though only the former could presently be described as intellectuals, whilst Sansa might become an intellectual when she is significantly older).
But there is an element in Tywin (which we see 'sharpened' in Joffrey) of needless brutality and sexual dysfunction. Sure he personally doesn't like being brutal (finds the red wedding to be overkill, and wonders why Armoury Lorch didn't just smother Rhaenys) or commit rape (that we know of).  But his willlingness to use and tolerate brutality created a huge number of enemies for his house. Whilst his sexual dysfunction-which I  have previously dubbed as a whore madonna complex-manifested  itself in a fondness for ordering sexualised punishments for women whom he had categorised as 'whore'. Fittingly enough, since his sexual dysfunction/whore madonna complex was the most irrational part of his character, his ordering the gang rape of Tysha brought about his own death.

In contrast I  wouldn't say that Henry VII was needlessly brutal, a spendthrift, sexually dysfunctional, even though history is written by winners.
Looking at  the two  most hated Tudor monarchs Henry VIII and Mary were willing to murder people as part of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.  Whilst the generally beloved (except in Ireland) Elizabeth I ,who even though she was even more of a Protestant than her father (who died thinking he was a good Catholic), "didn't want to make windows into men's souls".  Yet by the time Elizabeth died, England was far more Protestant than it had been on her accession, even though she generally only executed Catholics when they threatened her (like after her execomunication, and yes I am exaggerating her religious tolerance for the purposes of argument). So why is it that Elizabeth was able to achieve widespread religious revolution without resorting to Inquisition/burning/Renaissance equivalents to the Gulag or re-education camp?
Well I would say she was imaginative enough to be able to play the game of "force people to accept your particular brand of sky fairy" without resorting to mass violence:
Building on her brother Edward VI's efforts, she made church attendence where the services where in English mandatory, she encouraged Bible study and Bible reading. This had the unintended consequence of increasing literacy: Apparently neither of Shakespeare's parents were literate, whilst  Shakespeare  learnt to read at a schoolmore or less funded to enable it's pupils to read the  Bible in English.
Even though her successes weren't all that keen on building on her work (asides from James I, the Stuarts kept on marrying Catholic Princesses), by making access to education widespread, she was able to set the ball rolling for widespread religious change, so  that by the time that  Catholic James II came to the throne, the English people were willing to support the Glorious Revolution just to get rid of him (since they feared he would be another Mary I).
So widespread, positive social change, isn't achieved by violent revolutions but by minute reforms and changes in a society over a significant period of time. Come to think of it I could've probably made a simpler and much less controversial argument about the end of feudalism as well: although the Black Death is regarded as beginning of the end of feudalism, it was still a long time until serfdom vanished in England (a gradual process where economic changes demanded legal changes), and as some boarders pointed out to me, in some places it didn't end till the 19th century.
As to why I think the American Revolution was successful (in that America is the thriving democracy we all know and love and didn't decend into The Terror Y'all) I think because the American Revolution, like the Glorious Revolution, was more or less instituted by a reasonably literate and prosperous population simply to get rid of a disliked regime, rather than creating some sort of utopia. The Revolutions that sought to create utopias are the ones that descended into hell on earth.

What follows is a long detailed analysis of why I think that is so. I have put it in spoiler tags because it's not especially relevant, but since I typed it up, I can't bring myself to delete it

Spoiler

I think this is exemplified by the American "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator,  with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." *

vs Rousseau's "that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free" as well as France's "liberty, equality, fraternity" and even worse is  Germany's "unity, justice and freedom". The former concedes people are created equal and have a right to live, be free and pursue happiness (derived from Locke's "Civil interest I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things..." )

Because whilst people might be created equal and thus all have equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they do not remain equal: some people are mad, some people are dumb, some people are lazy, some people are immoral etc, so they tend to lose their liberty, and lives (when they impinge upon the liberty and lives of others) and be unsuccessful in the pursuit of happiness (because it's hard to acquire property/happiness if you are lazy, dumb or mad).
The latter is significant because  people do not have a right to be happy/own things but they do have a right to pursue happiness/ownership of things (and dispose of that property as they see fit, ie not have that property stolen from them, though arguably we do have a mild duty to leave our property to our children).
In contrast Rousseau says that we can force people into conforming with society's vision of liberty: which is good if those people are murderers, kidnappers and rapists, and thieves (ie have infringed upon the lives, liberty, and happiness/property of others) , but bad if those people are dissidents (haven't been sufficiently fraternal, unified or have been above their equals...).
For whilst people do have a right to justice and liberty (ie they have a right to just courts/life and not to be suppressed because they are dissidents) they are not equal (for reasons stated above)and they do not have a right to fraternity (because one gains fraternity-the love of others-by being loving/fraternal towards others, though we gain a duty to love our children when we bring them into the world). Fraternity is like property in many ways, in that it is something that we have the right to pursue, ie it is earned and we have a right to try and earn it, but it in itself is not a right. Of course both fraternity and property are things that make one happy.
Needless to say asking for unity in the same breath as asking for liberty is frankly asking for two mutually exclusively things. Though  if one is fighting for freedom/liberty then it is helpful for a country to be unified, but unity is a temporary tool that helps us preserve our liberties, not a desirable state in itself.

So to summarise: Rousseau allows for suppression, and the French and German slogans  contain demands for things that are not rights but are earned.
So people who believe these statements (that we are equal, have a right to fraternity or believe that unity is desirable at all times), are therefore more pre-disposed to murder people who are superior to themselves in some way: by having more property, being smarter, having an ancestral access to political power (ie being a member of the aristocracy), because such people belie the statement that all people are equal.
I suspect that people who believe that we have a right to fraternity (ie a right to be loved) tend to see those who resist their affections as somehow infringing upon their right to be loved (so perhaps Petyr believes he has a right to be loved, and when Catelyn rejects his affections, he regards it as a massive insult to his supposed right to be loved)
Whilst those who resist unity (like members of a religious minority) need to be forced to unite with others...

So I would say that the ideologies that saw as rights things that are actually earned (fraternity and equality) and prioritised unity, were basically asking for  the impossible. Thus the revolutions inspired by these ideologies  ended up committing mass murder, everytime they tried to apply such ideologies. Thus in an effort to create a perfect utopian, impossible society they tend to destroy anybody who doesn't conform (is not united) to their ideal. It is worth noting that these victims are often the exceptional people in society: kulaks, capitalists, intellectuals, aristocrats and religious minorities.  The former, simply by succeeding, belie the notion that we are all equal: since kulaks, capitalists, intellectuals and aristocrats simply by being successful at what they do show that it is possible to succeed and be happy without engineering broad reaching rebellion. (Though the getting rid of intellectuals is also about getting rid of potential dissenters, and getting rid of aristocrats gets rid of the previous elite, though I would say that aristocrats, who are often filled with a strong sense of duty or public service, by remaining alive belie the propaganda that the previous regime was filled with purely evil selfish decadent aristocrats). Whilst religious minorities, belie the notion that we are all united, and that we can all love each other (since in order to maintain their separate identity, they need to avoid intermarriage) and coincidentally are sometimes great intellectuals, capitalists and enjoy great quality of life, despite the fact that they were often horribly persecuted by the previous regime (ie the previous regime was working against their success, but they succeeded anyway, everyone hated them, but they were still happy and loving towards each other).
So exceptional people by threatening the core values of the revolutionary ideology, cause  people to ask was it really necessary to have that broad reaching rebellion in which so many were killed, when at the end of the day it was still possible for people to succeed under the old regime, and therefore does that mean that the old regime was not actually that bad? And that is a question no revolutionary government can afford for people to ask.
*yes I know that they owned slaves, dispossesed Native Americans and did not extend the vote to women, but the principles it sets up makes such injustices hypocritical, and it's hard to live as a hypocrite.

So whilst I think that the Westerosi feudal system needs to change, it doesn't need to change by means of a broad reaching revolution, but by slow and gradual legal reforms and economic liberilisation. Thus rendering the murder of aristocracy quite unnecessary, since as Westerosi society moves forward (rule of law makes capitalism possible, capitalism creates middle class, middle class demands political representation), the aristocracy simply loses their previously terrifying levels political power but is still left alive to contribute** and you would be foolish to think that they have nothing to contribute.
For instance the British aristocracy: makes huge contributions to the British military (for instance, when the officer class was especially hard hit by WW1, the aristocracy was rather hard hit, which shows their contribution the armed forces) and British political life (Winston Churchill, whilst he had an American mother, was an aristocrat, David Cameron is descended from King William IV). Simply put, aristocrats are bred to rule, lead and fight and they can usually do this even when their  terrifying amounts of political power is taken away from them:
For instance the Japanese abolished their caste system as part of the Meiji restoration, but a survey done in the 1970's showed that the descendants of the Samurai and other high caste people revealed that their descendants were still doing exceptionally well. For instance Princess Masako (wife of the crown prince) was from a samurai family and was a successful diplomat before her marriage.



*Like the Howards/Dukes of Norfolk, have inherited the position of Earl Marshal, which used to be a hugely powerful position but has now descended into organising state funerals, coronations and the opening of parliament. So the Howard family went from organising  rebellions to organising coronations...

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P.S. I think the women in the Iron Island have more freedom as well and they're more war like. Its hard to tell exactly, but based on Asha and her mother, who leaves Balon, at least.

Saltwives? Honour crimes? Sounds like Saudi Arabia. I think the Iron Islands are the worst place for women in Westeros after Wildling society (Which I think of as being like a cold Sierra Leone).

I would see Asha and her mother as being exceptional: mostly because, for all his other faults , Balon seems to be one of those men who genuinely likes women (or atleast likes both Asha and Alannys) and thus is willing to give both those women freedom to be themselves. Or atleast he is happy for Asha to be herself, because he loves her. And even if he doesn't like Alannys, he realises that if he had made Alannys stay with him, her insanity would have gotten on his nerves, so he just let her leave (it's almost "I want my beloved to be happy thing", which nobody would have suspected of a cantankerous fool like Balon)

[Castel]

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Saltwives? Honour crimes? Sounds like Saudi Arabia. I think the Iron Islands are the worst place for women in Westeros after Wildling society (Which I think of as being like a cold Sierra Leone).

Why do you think this? You've said it twice now and I'm curious.

[Lord Littlefinger's Lash]

voodooqueen126, on 30 March 2012 - 10:24 AM, said:

OK first things first.  You’re ignoring the fundamental question which makes, the entirety of your analysis, though thoughtful, irrelevant.  

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Are there any Lords who aren’t “villains” who don’t get themselves killed or get disinherited and sent to the wall? This is why I say your problem is not with Petyr, your problem is with Westeros. Meanwhile Tywin gave realm Twenty years of peace as hand and keeps outsiders from invading the Westerlands, until Robb Stark all the wars have been fought on his enemy’s land.

While I will address your other points, the fundamental fact that by having a hereditary aristocracy as its government where executive, legislative, judicial and military power reside in the entity of individual lords allows for and rewards the existence of men like Tywin Lannister, Randall Tarly, Roose Bolton, Walder Frey, Tyrion ect. ect.
So when I say your problem is with Westeros.   I do not mean you have to support the imposition of democracy upon Westeros.  What I mean is that given the natural occurrence of individuals such as Tywin, the long term survival of a dynasty composed of Ned Starks, Samwell Tarlys or Edmure Tullys is impossible.  And that it is impossible to assume the honor code by which Ned Stark to be self evident to other members of Westerosi society.  Therefore how can you impose upon them a duty to act in accordance with a standard which they do not hold and may not even be aware of.

It is from this, that the reasonableness of the actions of Tyrion, Petyr, Wyman Manderly, et al. is derived.  And your refusal to address the issue, is indicative of the fundamental flaw in your line of reasoning.  Such a Westerosi society comprised of Ned Starks is not an evolutionarily stable society.  It is not at equilibrium.  It cannot persist.

By ignoring that issue, or failing to present a solution to it, all you're doing is stating Westeros is a unpleasant place to live.  And that were world rid of people like Tyrion, Petyr, Tywin it would be a better place.  But that is a given.  It is a given that the antelope would be happier without the lions.  But the existence of lions is beyond the control of antelope.  Subsequently charging the lions with murder for eating meat is begging the question.

Edited by Lord Littlefinger's Lash, 30 March 2012 - 02:17 PM.

[Lord Littlefinger's Lash]

voodooqueen126, on 30 March 2012 - 10:24 AM, said:

If you're aiming at long term success (ie that your children will benefit from your actions after you have died), then you have to be a public servant (like Ned), rather than have the public serve you (like Tywin). If we read AFFC, we see that Tywin's failure to be a public servant

I don’t think is apparent.  Tywin’s failure as a father, yes.  But Tywin’s ruthless disregard to public service is highly beneficial to himself and house Lannister

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(and failure as a parent) ie his insistence that the public serve him, begins to destroy the Lannister cause after his death, whilst ADWD shows that Ned's success as a public servant (the way Northerners view it) means that people are willing to go out of their way to help his children and their cause.

It is not clear that northern affinity for House Stark has anything to do with Ned.  It is not clear that other Starks shared Ned’s value system.  It seems that Brandon, Lyanna and Bejen did not appear to.  “a bloody sword is a beautiful thing”, “come to me when you’ve sired a few bastards of your own”, “Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature”

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This seemingly altruistic behaviour on the part of the Northern lords is actually selfish

of course when I refer to public service, I am referring to the population as a whole not the small subset which constitute the lords.

“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.”

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, since they would all rather be ruled by the good public servant Starks, than by crazy psychopaths like Ramsay (who expects the public to serve him by allowing him to rape and flay their daughters).
Basically if we are born into a position of power (like Ned) and want our children to inherit our position of power, then it is generally advantageous to be

it is in the interest of the lords to spread peace and prosperity to their own people as widely as possible in order to decrease the likely hood those people will be desirous of alternative leadership.  But doing so is neither moral nor immoral.  As for being born into a position of power. You say this as though there is some inherent legitimacy to being born into an aristocracy. All it means is that your ancestors killed and terrified everyone in your vicinity until they were subjugated.  There's no reason why Eddard Stark should be allowed to pass on his claim to winterfell to his children except for his ability to defend that claim from those who take it from him.  That is all.  If Ned doesn't have the testicular fortitude to defend his claim, then he can abdicate and go to the Wall as Maester Aemon did.  Or the Quiet Isle as elder brother did.  The attempt to pass his birth on to his children in and of itself is a declaration of Ned Starks participation in the Game of Thrones.  He is a valid target for political decapitation, period.  

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moral, unless we are dealing with psychopaths, since for most subordinates , it is better to live under a moral leader than immoral one.

again, this not the case. The fact that Petyr and Doran keep their realms out of war, be it because they are plotting bloody vengeance (“immoral”) or they cannot abide the sight of blood (“moral”) is immaterial.  

“Cat knew that the men off the Brazen Monkey would not care about the name of a courtesan’s mother, though. Instead, she asked them for tidings of the Seven Kingdoms, and the war.“War?” laughed one of them. “What war? There is no war.”“Not in Gulltown,” said another. “Not in the Vale. The little lord’s kept us out of it, same as his mother did.”Same as his mother did. The lady of the Vale was her own mother’s sister. “Lady Lysa,” she said, “is she... ?”“... dead?” finished the freckled boy whose head was full of courtesans. “Aye. Murdered by her own singer.”

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Or put negatively: the only people who benefit from having people like Tywin in charge, are people like Gregor.
Having said that it advantages the lord to be moral (a moral lord is a public servant, a bad lord expects the public to serve him), imagination and cunning are still necessary attributes, and Ned's failure is largely a failure of imagination.

It is in fact Tywin Lannister’s ruthlessness that spares Tywin Lannister’s people the hardships inflicted upon the North.

” Lord Balon laughed. “Well, at the least you are no craven. No more than I’m a fool. Do you think I gather my ships to watch them rock at anchor? I mean to carve out a kingdom with fire and sword... but not from the west, and not at the bidding of King Robb the Boy. Casterly Rock
is too strong, and Lord Tywin too cunning by half. Aye, we might take Lannisport, but we should never keep it. No. I hunger for a different plum... not so juicy sweet, to be sure, yet it hangs there ripe and undefended.””

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For a lot of readers this generally applies more to Tyrion (who is increasingly villainous) in your case, (and please let this not come out like a personal attack)I think it also applies to Petyr, since Petyr is Humbert Humbert+politics:

It does apply to them. As it applies to Hoster Tully and Ned Stark.  Tywin Lannister and Randall Tarly

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Because you seem to view lords to be on the same level as drug dealers who deserve to be terminated by Petyr, who you view as being like Omar (who I am guessing is a cop).  

you would be wrong.  Omar Little https://en.wikipedia...iki/Omar_Little

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Therefore to paraphrase Trilling...
I would say you have  been seduced into conniving with Petyr's desire to avenge himself on the Tullys and Starks , because your own nightmares about the aristocracy

but I don’t have any nightmare about the aristocracy

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have caused you to see people like Hoster Tully and Ned Stark as revolting

I do not find either of them revolting. I merely find Ned stupid

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, and therefore you have virtually come to condone Petyr's

but Petyr does not destroy much of Westeros.  Tywin Lannister, Robb Stark and Edmure Tully do.  And I don't virtually condone Petyr's actions, I do condone them.

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destruction of much of Westeros, since you do not fundamentally realise that Petyr's goals and the actions that grow out from those goals are actually the things that are really nightmarish and revolting.

The nature of their motivations are ultimately irrelevant. The issue at hand is that one is better off, less likely to have your home burned down-your crops stolen-your wife raped, with Tywin or Tyrion  as your lord than you are with Edmure Tully

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Obviously, in real life, you wouldn't go out and destabilise a whole society just to get rid of its aristocrats (aristocracies are naturally occuring: Australia has what we jokingly refer to as a squatocracy, and America has all those people that Edith Wharton wrote about) but you have been seduced when it comes to this particular character.

oh but you would.   Storied as the daughters of the American Revolution may be, their position is not enshrined in law.  They existence of an upper class is entirely distinct from a hereditary aristocracy.

Edited by Lord Littlefinger's Lash, 31 March 2012 - 02:44 PM.

[Lord Littlefinger's Lash]

voodooqueen126, on 30 March 2012 - 10:24 AM, said:

You have also been seduced by Brienne, ironically enough, who is the direct opposite of Petyr in everyway, in that she is more or less heading for saint-hood.
I like to think that this speaks about who you truly are, since we have Brienne's POV and we know who she truly is which is basically Westeros's answer to  Joan of Arc+cynicism, and that you like her means you basically like Brienne's altruistic worldview^.  This also causes me to hope that if we had Petyr's POV, and it confirmed my suspicions about him, you would find yourself trying to reach through the pages of the book to reemerge in Westeros for the explicit purpose of beating Petyr Baelish to death with a red hot poker. See just as we lack Lolita's Pov in Lolita and due to Humbert's solipsizing of her, and thus we have little idea of her true personality, so it is ironically enough with Petyr Baelish..

But you are in fact aware of why I like Brienne.  It is for the same reason I like Petyr. Because rather than allowing their birth to determine their lives, in Brienne’s case sex in Petyr’s social position, they become the people they want to be in spite of societies desire to subjugate them to its will

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We have very little information about what Petyr Baelish is really like on the inside,  since he is so rarely honest,  so it's hard to guess his point of view and the way he sees things. It is only rarely, and generally in Sansa's POV chapters*, where  glimpses of  Baelish's true personality are given to us.  Even then, since the reader is absorbed in Sansa's feelings

some readers, certainly not this one.

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, we still learn very little about Petyr's true feelings. Unfortunately, if for whatever reason we find Sansa's chapters boring and thus avoid reading them closely, we might have a tendency to fit Petyr into our own fantasies (that Petyr is some sort of ubermensch player of the game of thrones who is sticking it up to stuffy aristocrats with their outmoded and silly notions of honour by his completely rational realpolitik)

but of course he does do those things

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but on the  basis of the  rare glimpses afforded to us (in Sansa's POV chapters), it can be surmised that Petyr Baelish is basically a petty man obsessed with avenging himself on the people who wronged him when they rejected his suit at the age of 15, with rise to greatlordship and ambition just being means to gain that revenge

well, you can call his motivations petty.  I do not consider them so.  I wouldn’t call him exacting revenge, obsessive either.  The opportunity presents itself and he avails himself of it. I find no reason to believe that were Ned Stark to have listened to Littlefinger and supported Renly rather than Stannis, that Petyr would have been compelled to smite the North and the Riverlands.

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and from late AGOT onwards: shape Sansa into Alayne and thus work out his Catelyn issues.
I am willing to bet money on it: Petyr is not meant to be a hero and like all villains

  I am willing to wager as much as well  
“There are no heroes...in life, the monsters win.”
― George R.R. Martin  http://www.goodreads...tes/show/417582

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he is motivated by something deeply irrational(lustful obsession congealed into petty vengefulness, despite being otherwise a genius ), and this deeply irrational core is revealed in Sansa's POV chapters. (actually one of beauties of Sansa's POV chapters is that Sansa is almost all about the inner life and so it's fitting that this fundamentally dishonest character more or less only reveals his inner life in her chapters.)

Well he’s certainly motivated by vengeance but its not petty

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^If Brienne were a man, with black hair, preferably with green, or brown eyes, I too would be seduced by Brienne. Though since Brienne's personality is all chick, I am not sure how we would go down, but generally since I like female company, I think I would like Brian's personality...

* Although Ned, and Tyrion observe  his political personality and Catelyn thinks that Petyr is like her little brother, It is Sansa who comes closest to observing Petyr's inner life.

I am not sure we know this. I am not sure how much of what we see in AFFC is genuinely Petyr

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Hmn, it could be a device, but I think the device is also a manifestation of Petyr's inner character and what little that is revealed about Petyr's character, reveals something dysfunctional which explains the device

Well of course Petyr dysfunctional.  As I noted, most people who achieve “greatness” are.  They are by definition abnormal and seek achievement as a salve for some internal compulsion invariably rooted in dysfunction  

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(ie the device is his tendency to confide in Sansa, and the dysfunction explains his tendency to confide)
I think it's possible to be brilliant the way Petyr is, and still be as dysfunctional as I think he is.
Petyr is simply a genius when it comes to politics, he could've still been a genius without the dysfunctional core, although without the inner dysfunction, he wouldn't have pressed himself so far.

precisely.  I tried to find it but I couldn’t. There’s a quote I remember from a magazine article a writer was interviewing the founder of a company.  He asked the founder “Why do you keep working, what is your motivation. If I made $100mn I would stop working” to which the CEO responds “That is why you will never make $100mn”

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Yup Westeros is not real life, and there is much foreshadowing that Petyr, as a villain, will be destroyed for ASOIAF to fulfill the purpose of literature, which is catharsis.

But catharsis is not the purpose of literature.  The purpose of literature is to entertain.  The need for catharsis reduces the entertainment value of literature by making it predictable and less realistic.

“…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman [Petyr Baelish, ahem], some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….”

― Bret Easton Ellis

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By foreshadowing I mean this:
"I dreamt of a  of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow."

AND YOU ACCUSE ME OF NOT READING SANSA!?! Looking is not seeing, child.  

“It’s not so great.” The boy knelt before the gatehouse. “Look, here comes a giant to knock it down.” He stood his doll in the snow and moved it jerkily. “Tromp tromp I’m a giant, I’m a giant,” he chanted. “Ho ho ho, open yourgates or I’ll mash them and smash them.” Swinging the doll by the legs, he knocked the top off one gatehouse tower and then the other.
It was more than Sansa could stand. “Robert, stop that.” Instead he swung the doll again, and a foot of wall exploded. She grabbed for his hand but she caught the doll instead. There was a loud ripping sound as the thin cloth tore. Suddenly she had the doll’s head, Robert had the legs and body, and the rag-and-sawdust stuffing was spilling in the snow.
Lord Robert’s mouth trembled. “You killed him,” he wailed. ...
“It was my fault.” Sansa showed them the doll’s head. “I ripped his doll in two. I never meant to, but...”
“His lordship was destroying the castle,” said Petyr.
“A giant,” the boy whispered, weeping. ....
They led the boy away. My lord husband, Sansa thought, as she contemplated the ruins of Winterfell. The snow had stopped, and it was colder than before. She wondered if Lord Robert would shake all through their wedding. At least Joffrey was sound of body. A mad rage seized hold of her. She picked up a broken branch and smashed the torn doll’s head down on top of it, then pushed it down atop the shattered gatehouse of her snow castle. The servants looked aghast, but when Littlefinger saw what she’d done he laughed. “If the tales be true, that’s not the first giant to end up with his head on Winterfell’s walls.”

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This giant could refer to either Petyr, Tyrion, or Ser Robert Strong. Since Tyrion is in Essos, Robert Strong is a giant and Sansa is a little girl, so really it has to be Petyr by default. Though perhaps she could somehow end up killing all three, which would be boss for me as a Sansa fan.
But I would say that not only does Petyr's demise have to happen, because destiny saysthat all villains must die or be defeated in works of literature. But I do believe that Petyr's demise at Sansa's hands will happen organically and as part of his character.
and his character is
1=obsessional lust for catelyn tully
now 1 times 2 is 2.
and to 2=petty desire to avenge self on Starks and Tully's
1+2=3
and 3=complete disregard for others/lack of empathy/tendency to solipsize/thievery/corruption/not planning for his children's future/deinvested in society as a whole/psychopathy or moral insanity/ tyranny/ evil/ villainhood/ absence of good.
because of these character traits 2 and 3, he has more or less played the game of thrones without shackles and therefore has been extremely successful in achieving vast amounts of power in the short term.
But because 2 more or less comes from 1, which is obsessional lust, he has a tendency to solipsize Sansa into Alayne, and because Alayne, this imaginary daughter of himself and Catelyn Tully, would have every reason to love him  if she were real, he therefore does not treat Sansa as the daughter of Ned Stark whom he betrayed (and he betrayed Ned Stark over 2). This manifests itself in a tendency to confide in her and also in his desire to teach her to become a player and his plan to organise her marriage to Harry the Heir.
But because solipsizing another person's identity is always destined to fail (ie obsessional lust and fantasy do more to revolt the object of desire than gain their love), and because it is more or less impossible to commit the perfect crime

of course this is inane. There’s no such thing as a perfect crime.  Its certainly possible to displace one power structure with another thereby eliminating the means of retribution.  Look not further than the contenents of North and South America

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(and Petyr thinks he has committed the perfect crime in his destruction of the Stark's and Tullys) because in the end, someone always tells (Petyr tells Sansa an awful lot about himself, but Jeyne Poole or Sandor could expose a few other things) and someone always figures it out.

with respect to Jeyne Poole, I am not sure she knows anything about Petyr.  Its not clear they’ve had any interaction or that anything involving Jeyne Poole is illegal

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In this case it is has to be Sansa, since otherwise there would be no reason for her to be in the Vale with Littlefinger

again, assuming facts which are not in evidence. The purpose of having Sansa in the vale is the same as having Davos or Asha with Stannis.  The same purpose for having Theon with Ramsay and Roose.  So that we can see what they’re doing.  

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, she could've run off with Dontos, met up with Sandor, and lived happily after  when they rode Stranger off into the sunset.
See there would be no reason to make Sansa a POV character if all she was just a damsel in distress or just a victim (though that can be interesting, in the same way that Franz Kafka's the Trial is interesting).

there is. Realism.

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See each POV character is more or less a hero

no they’re not Martin doesn’t even believe in heroes.

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in their own novel, and the beauty of ASOIAF is that we get to read several novels all entwined with each other.
The problem with Sansa's arc, is that she is more or less the heroine in an Ann Radcliffe novel (or a very dark horrifying version of Northanger Abbey-for instance Sansa in AGOT could be like Catherine Tilney in the Bath section of Northanger Abbey) with politics added, and because the entwining factor means that stories have to progress much more slowly, we are more or less stuck with Sansa midway through her character arc, as if the Mysteries of Udolpho or Romance of the Forest were cut off about halfway, when the heroines were still  terrified and helpless and only just starting to piece together the clues that will enable them to expose the villain.

alas, Martin is not such a simplistic writer. Prey Tell who is the Villain in Ethan Frome.  In what way does good triumph over evil in The Great Gatsby?

  “...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” http://www.goodreads...otes/show/49225

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With the added problem that each chapter of Mysteries of Udolpho or Romance of the Forest* was  interspersed with chapters of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley, A tale of Two Cities, Heart of Darkness, White Fang, Silas Marner, The Red and the Black, Kim and so on.

Edited by Lord Littlefinger's Lash, 31 March 2012 - 02:57 PM.

[Lord Littlefinger's Lash]

voodooqueen126, on 30 March 2012 - 10:24 AM, said:

Actually I don't have a problem with the political system of Westeros (it's the Middle Ages after all), but I do have a problem with people like Petyr.
You see  I don't want a broad reaching revolution for Westeros: Or atleast going on the basis of real world experience I would say that broad reaching revolutions always end up being far worse than the aristocrats that they superseded: Louis XVI vs Jacobins, Czarist Russia-Communist Russia (with the Mensheviks being a footnote), Mandarin China vs Maoist China (the gap here is a bit more significant), King Norodom Sihanouk vs the Khmer Rouge (with Lon Nol being a footnote).
Imposing democracy on pre-literate peasants never works anyway. The only two revolutions that have ever worked (ie brought long term prosperity to their people)

well this all depends on what time scale you choose of course and what you mean by “their people” Surely the Native Americans were themselves people.  Surely, 600,00 dead in the American Civil War would disagree.  As would slaves freed by Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation only enslaved by these would be champions of liberty.  All men are created equal.  Except for slave, they are only 3/5ths of a person, is undoubtedly what Jefferson meant to write.

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have been England's Glorious Revolution and America's War of Independence.
What these two Revolutions have in common, is that they were just about getting rid of disliked regimes(James II and the British respectively), though their reasons for wanting to be rid of these regimes were ideological (James II was Catholic, the British were taxing the Americans but not giving them much say in government).
  In their desire for regime change, the Glorious and American Revolutions are not dissimilar  from the Tudor's superseding the House of York, the House of York getting rid of the House of Lancaster, the Lancaster's getting rid of Richard II, Isabella the She-wolf getting rid of Edward II, Edward I getting rid of the Welsh Royal family... Though the objections of course, were not usually ideological, but personal, although these personal reasons were usually sensible rather than petty: Richard III murdered his nephews, so Elizabeth Woodville cut a deal with Margaret Beaufort that Henry VII would marry Elizabeth of York and thus get rid of Richard III, Henry VI was crazy and made a terrible king, Richard II was a narcissist. The only two that can be described as petty personal, would be Isabella getting rid of Edward II (though he was a bad king, she seems to have disliked him because of his sexual disinterest in her, his lack of skill as a monarch was presumably how she was able to gather support to stage a coup and have him murdered though) and Edward I getting rid of the Welsh Princes (they betrayed him and Edward was simply power hungry).
Worth noting that most of these medieval dynasty changes were accompanied by the murder of the previous royal family to a lesser or greater degree, which is not dissimilar to the Revolutionary tendency to execute or murder the Kings and Queens that they overtook (Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed whilst their  son died of neglect, the Romanovs were murdered).
For example  the Tudors were willing to murder most surviving Yorkist claimants (generally those not descended from Elizabeth of York), just like Tywin was willing to murder the Targaryen children to ingratiate himself with Robert, and the Communists murdered the Romanovs.
Since it is self evident that Stalin was worse than the Czar, I don't feel the need to discuss that example indepth. (Though Russian's like Average Cheese love to point out that without Stalin, WW2 would not have been won, which might be true, but I think that Stalin could've achieved that without the crazy purges and mass starvation).
Yet the Tudors are remembered  as the dynasty that presided over the Renaissance and Reformation in England. Where as Robert will be remembered in Westeros as the many who tolerated child murder, spent a lot of money and was cuckolded by his wife, thus leading to a massive war. Joffrey will most likely gain an epithet like "Joffrey the Cruel", since his lack of mercy and cruelty brought about his own destruction. Tywin will be remembered as a child murderer and as a generally horrible person: now of course that will be 95%history is written by the winners/Targaryens/Tyrion, Samwell, or Sansa (these are the only POV characters with a fondness for books, though only the former could presently be described as intellectuals, whilst Sansa might become an intellectual when she is significantly older).
But there is an element in Tywin (which we see 'sharpened' in Joffrey) of needless brutality and sexual dysfunction. Sure he personally doesn't like being brutal (finds the red wedding to be overkill, and wonders why Armoury Lorch didn't just smother Rhaenys) or commit rape (that we know of).  But his willlingness to use and tolerate brutality created a huge number of enemies for his house.

Has it? It seems that the rivals of house Lannister are natural and geographically occurring.  With the possible exception of Drone. But Dorne is yet to trouble House Lannister. Save for Mycella’s ear.

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Whilst his sexual dysfunction-which I  have previously dubbed as a whore madonna complex-manifested  itself in a fondness for ordering sexualised punishments for women whom he had categorised as 'whore'. Fittingly enough, since his sexual dysfunction/whore madonna complex was the most irrational part of his character, his ordering the gang rape of Tysha brought about his own death.

In contrast I  wouldn't say that Henry VII was needlessly brutal, a spendthrift, sexually dysfunctional, even though history is written by winners.
Looking at  the two  most hated Tudor monarchs Henry VIII

hated by whom?

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and Mary were willing to murder people as part of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.  Whilst the generally beloved (except in Ireland) Elizabeth I ,who even though she was even more of a Protestant than her father (who died thinking he was a good Catholic), "didn't want to make windows into men's souls".  Yet by the time Elizabeth died, England was far more Protestant than it had been on her accession, even though she generally only executed Catholics when they threatened her (like after her execomunication, and yes I am exaggerating her religious tolerance for the purposes of argument). So why is it that Elizabeth was able to achieve widespread religious revolution without resorting to Inquisition/burning/Renaissance equivalents to the Gulag or re-education camp?
Well I would say she was imaginative enough to be able to play the game of "force people to accept your particular brand of sky fairy" without resorting to mass violence:
Building on her brother Edward VI's efforts, she made church attendence where the services where in English mandatory, she encouraged Bible study and Bible reading. This had the unintended consequence of increasing literacy: Apparently neither of Shakespeare's parents were literate, whilst  Shakespeare  learnt to read at a schoolmore or less funded to enable it's pupils to read the  Bible in English.
Even though her successes weren't all that keen on building on her work (asides from James I, the Stuarts kept on marrying Catholic Princesses), by making access to education widespread, she was able to set the ball rolling for widespread religious change, so  that by the time that  Catholic James II came to the throne, the English people were willing to support the Glorious Revolution just to get rid of him (since they feared he would be another Mary I).
So widespread, positive social change, isn't achieved by violent revolutions but by minute reforms and changes in a society over a significant period of time. Come to think of it I could've probably made a simpler and much less controversial argument about the end of feudalism as well: although the Black Death is regarded as beginning of the end of feudalism, it was still a long time until serfdom vanished in England (a gradual process where economic changes demanded legal changes), and as some boarders pointed out to me, in some places it didn't end till the 19th century.
As to why I think the American Revolution was successful (in that America is the thriving democracy we all know and love and didn't decend into The Terror Y'all) I think because the American Revolution, like the Glorious Revolution

Surely the Dutch would disagree that their independence from Spain was not successful.  I would argue that the French revolution was a phenomenal success.  Robespierre not withstanding  

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, was more or less instituted by a reasonably literate and prosperous population simply to get rid of a disliked regime, rather than creating some sort of utopia. The Revolutions that sought to create utopias are the ones that descended into hell on earth.

What follows is a long detailed analysis of why I think that is so. I have put it in spoiler tags because it's not especially relevant, but since I typed it up, I can't bring myself to delete it

I think this is exemplified by the American "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator,  with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." *

yes. But of course that is not a law

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vs Rousseau's "that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free" as well as France's "liberty, equality, fraternity" and even worse is  Germany's "unity, justice and freedom". The former concedes people are created equal and have a right to live, be free and pursuehappiness (derived from Locke's "Civil interest I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things..." )

Because whilst people might be created equal and thus all have equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they do not remain equal

but of course they do. Equality is merely a statement that they shall not receive preferential treatment from the government because of an immutable characteristic. It was never intended as a communist manifesto, as I believe you well know.

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: some people are mad, some people are dumb, some people are lazy, some people are immoral etc, so they tend to lose their liberty, and lives (when they impinge upon the liberty and lives of others) and be unsuccessful in the pursuit of happiness (because it's hard to acquire property/happiness if you are lazy, dumb or mad).
The latter is significant because  people do not have a right to be happy/

this two things are no equivalent. Property ownership and happiness are completely disparate concepts and this is a lazy bit of slight of hand you are attempting here

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own things but they do have a right to pursuehappiness/ownership of things (and dispose of that property as they see fit, ie not have that property stolen from them, though arguably we do have a mild duty to leave our property to our children).

now you’re just making things up

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In contrast Rousseau says that we can force people into conforming with society's vision of liberty: which is good if those people are murderers, kidnappers and rapists, and thieves (ie have infringed upon the lives, liberty, and happiness/property of others) , but bad if those people are dissidents

I am not sure this is what Rousseau intended, unless by dissidents you mean Clergy and Aristocrats. In which case a date with the national razor was entirely appropriate

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(haven't been sufficiently fraternal, unified or have been above their equals...).
For whilst people do have a right to justice and liberty (ie they have a right to just courts/life and not to be suppressed because they are dissidents) they are not equal (for reasons stated above)and they do not have a right to fraternity (because one gains fraternity-the love of others-by being loving/fraternal towards others, though we gain a duty to love our children when we bring them into the world). Fraternity is like property in many ways, in that it is something that we have the right to pursue, ie it is earned and we have a right to try and earn it, but it in itself is not a right. Of course both fraternity and property are things that make one happy.
Needless to say asking for unity in the same breath as asking for liberty is frankly asking for two mutually exclusively things. Though  if one is fighting for freedom/liberty then it is helpful for a country to be unified, but unity is a temporary tool that helps us preserve our liberties, not a desirable state in itself.

So to summarise: Rousseau allows for suppression, and the French and German slogans  contain demands for things that are not rights but are earned.

they all contain demands for things which are not rights. Simply saying that something is self evident doesn’t make it so.

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So people who believe these statements (that we are equal

again this is a complete misinterpretation of the intent. Equal before the law is all that was intended.

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, have a right to fraternity or believe that unity is desirable at all times), are therefore more pre-disposed to murder people who are superior to themselves in some way

ummm… no. everyone is superior to someone in some way, no one believes this. And it does not follow from the aforementioned

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: by having more property, being smarter, having an ancestral access to political power (ie being a member of the aristocracy

of course having ancestral access to political power is not the same thing as Aristocracy.  Because heritage is enshrined in law and political dynasties can removed from power by simply not voting for them. Ask Jon Adams, Hillary Clinton and Caroline Kennedy about that.  

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), because such people belie the statement that all people are equal.
I suspect that people who believe that we have a right to fraternity (ie a right to be loved) tend to see those who resist their affections as somehow infringing upon their right to be loved (so perhaps Petyr believes he has a right to be loved, and when Catelyn rejects his affections, he regards it as a massive insult to his supposed right to be loved)

Again, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of Petyr and his motivations. There is no indication that belies he has a right or entitle to Catelyn’s love or Hoster’s patronage.  I’m beginning to think you are not reading what I write.

“And when I’m free,” he said slowly, “will I be free to go?”
“Sure you will.” She had a warm smile, despite her crooked teeth. “And we’ll be free to kill you. It’s dangerous being free, but most come to like the taste o’ it"

I included this quote, as I thought it would be self evident, to mean that Hoster Tully is free to do as he likes as are all lords in Westeros.  Petyr Baelish is free to be offended by Hoster Tully's actions and vow bloody retribution.  Robert was free smack Cersei in the face and Cersei was free to poison Robert that a boar might kill him.  Such is the way of life when the high lords play their game of thrones.  
I’m going to stop here because we’ve wonder so far off into the wilderness it is no longer relevant to Westeros.  

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Whilst those who resist unity (like members of a religious minority) need to be forced to unite with others...

So I would say that the ideologies that saw as rights things that are actually earned (fraternity and equality) and prioritised unity, were basically asking for  the impossible. Thus the revolutions inspired by these ideologies  ended up committing mass murder, everytime they tried to apply such ideologies. Thus in an effort to create a perfect utopian, impossiblesociety they tend to destroy anybody who doesn't conform (is not united) to their ideal. It is worth noting that these victims are often the exceptional people in society: kulaks, capitalists, intellectuals, aristocrats and religious minorities.  The former, simply by succeeding, belie the notion that we are all equal: since kulaks, capitalists, intellectuals and aristocrats simply by being successful at what they do show that it is possible to succeed and be happy without engineering broad reaching rebellion. (Though the getting rid of intellectuals is also about getting rid of potential dissenters, and getting rid of aristocrats gets rid of the previous elite, though I would say that aristocrats, who are often filled with a strong sense of duty or public service, by remaining alive belie the propaganda that the previous regime was filled with purely evil selfish decadent aristocrats). Whilst religious minorities, belie the notion that we are all united, and that we can all love each other (since in order to maintain their separate identity, they need to avoid intermarriage) and coincidentally are sometimes great intellectuals, capitalists and enjoy great quality of life, despite the fact that they were often horribly persecuted by the previous regime (ie the previous regime was working against their success, but they succeeded anyway, everyone hated them, but they were still happy and loving towards each other).
So exceptional people by threatening the core values of the revolutionary ideology, cause  people to ask was it really necessary to have that broad reaching rebellion in which so many were killed, when at the end of the day it was still possible for people to succeed under the old regime, and therefore does that mean that the old regime was not actually that bad?And that is a question no revolutionary government can afford for people to ask.
*yes I know that they owned slaves, dispossesed Native Americans and did not extend the vote to women, but the principles it sets up makes such injustices hypocritical, and it's hard to live as a hypocrite.


So whilst I think that the Westerosi feudal system needs to change

Yes.  And I don’t think its needs to change.  It is what it is.

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, it doesn't need to change by means of a broad reaching revolution, but by slow and gradual legal reforms and economic liberilisation. Thus rendering the murder of aristocracy quite unnecessary, since as Westerosi society moves forward (rule of law makes capitalism possible, capitalism creates middle class, middle class demands political representation), the aristocracy simply loses their previously terrifying levels political power but is still left alive to contribute** and you would be foolish to think that they have nothing to contribute.
For instance the British aristocracy: makes huge contributions to the British military (for instance, when the officer class was especially hard hit by WW1, the aristocracy was rather hard hit, which shows their contribution the armed forces) and British political life (Winston Churchill, whilst he had an American mother, was an aristocrat, David Cameron is descended from King William IV). Simply put, aristocrats are bred to rule, lead and fight and they can usually do this even when their  terrifying amounts of political power is taken away from them:
For instance the Japanese abolished their caste system as part of the Meiji restoration, but a survey done in the 1970's showed that the descendants of the Samurai and other high caste people revealed that their descendants were still doing exceptionally well. For instance Princess Masako (wife of the crown prince) was from a samurai family and was a successful diplomat before her marriage.

yes. yes. there will be elites in a society and they transmit advantages to their offspring.  The question is whether or not there are mechanisms in place which allow for those outside elite to enter its ranks and for those born into it to fall from it.  That this process takes more than one generation is basically a given.  The issue is that it not 8,000 years, as in the case of House Stark.

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*Like the Howards/Dukes of Norfolk, have inherited the position of Earl Marshal, which used to be a hugely powerful position but has now descended into organising state funerals, coronations and the opening of parliament. So the Howard family went from organising  rebellions to organising coronations...



Saltwives? Honour crimes? Sounds like Saudi Arabia. I think the Iron Islands are the worst place for women in Westeros after Wildling society (Which I think of as being like a cold Sierra Leone).

Be that as it may.  Saltwives are not Iron Born.  The key element being BORN ON THE IRON ISLANDS. They are people from other societies who are captured and brought back to the Iron Islands.  No woman born on the Iron Islands is a saltwife.  While you can discount Asha and Alannys all you want, they are the only women from the Iron Islands we have information about, which I originally stated.  Victarion’s honor killing, was of a Salt Wife who is by definition NOT IRON BORN

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I would see Asha and her mother as being exceptional: mostly because, for all his other faults , Balon seems to be one of those men who genuinely likes women (or atleast likes both Asha and Alannys) and thus is willing to give both those women freedom to be themselves. Or atleast he is happy for Asha to be herself, because he loves her. And even if he doesn't like Alannys, he realises that if he had made Alannys stay with him, her insanity would have gotten on his nerves, so he just let her leave (it's almost "I want my beloved to be happy thing", which nobody would have suspected of a cantankerous fool like Balon)

Edited by Lord Littlefinger's Lash, 31 March 2012 - 03:09 PM.

[Lord Littlefinger's Lash]

Lastly, with respect to your Sansa as Lolita analysis.  I am happy to respond to it.  But do you want me to?  As I mentioned above my issue with condemnation of Petyr is:

Spoiler

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Are there any Lords who aren’t “villains” who don’t get themselves killed or get disinherited and sent to the wall? This is why I say your problem is not with Petyr, your problem is with Westeros. Meanwhile Tywin gave realm Twenty years of peace as hand and keeps outsiders from invading the Westerlands, until Robb Stark all the wars have been fought on his enemy’s land.

While I will address your other points, the fundamental fact that by having a hereditary aristocracy as its government where executive, legislative, judicial and military power reside in the entity of individual lords allows for and rewards the existence of men like Tywin Lannister, Randall Tarly, Roose Bolton, Walder Frey, Tyrion ect. ect.
So when I say your problem is with Westeros. I do not mean you have to support the imposition of democracy upon Westeros. What I mean is that given the natural occurrence of individuals such as Tywin, the long term survival of a dynasty composed of Ned Starks, Samwell Tarlys or Edmure Tullys is impossible. And that it is impossible to assume the honor code by which Ned Stark to be self evident to other members of Westerosi society. Therefore how can you impose upon them a duty to act in accordance with a standard which they do not hold and may not even be aware of.

It is from this, that the reasonableness of the actions of Tyrion, Petyr, Wyman Manderly, et al. is derived. And your refusal to address the issue, is indicative of the fundamental flaw in your line of reasoning. Such a Westerosi society comprised of Ned Starks is not an evolutionarily stable society. It is not at equilibrium. It cannot persist.


By ignoring that issue, or failing to present a solution to it, all you're doing is stating Westeros is a unpleasant place to live. And that were world rid of people like Tyrion, Petyr, Tywin it would be a better place. But that is a given. It is a given that the antelope would be happier without the lions. But the existence of lions is beyond the control of antelope. Subsequently charging the lions with murder for eating meat is begging the question.  

What Petyr's relationship with Sansa and what his motivations for it are is entirely irrelevant until the aforementioned issue of eliminating the "immoral" lords from Westeros can be addressed.  Were Petyr to fall out the moon door tomorrow, what would prevent another similar man from taking his place.  We know what prevents the survival of men like Ned Stark and Samwell Tarly.  Petyr and his like.  Likewise if Petyr roasted Sansa with an apple stuffed in her mouth and served for dinner at the Vale's next harvest feast it would not change the fact a men like Ned Stark and Edmure Tully will always fall victim to men like of Petyr and Tywin.  So long as the society has no independent legislative or judicial functions to enforce "morality" on the lords themselves.

voodooqueen126, on 30 March 2012 - 10:24 AM, said:

Spoiler

It totally is about Sansa as a replacement Catelyn; when he sees Catelyn for the first time in years he shows that he finds it hard to believe that Catelyn could be happy in Winterfell (and this is subtly alluded to when he tells Sansa that he always imagined Winterfell as cold) which imho shows his delusional tendency to imagine that Catelyn loved him and gave him her maidenhead. His first reaction to seeing Sansa is to say that she looks like her mother, when she talks about Loras being sent off to fight against Gregor Clegane as being like a song, he says that life is not a song (and I think he is reminiscing over his dual with Brandon Stark over Catelyn Tully), then when Sansa is before Cersei, Pycelle accuses Sansa of having Stark's "Traitor blood" which Petyr counters by saying that Sansa is like Catelyn Tully and not a thing like treacherous Ned Stark (not exact words) even though it was Catelyn who arrested Tyrion (on his misinformation) and also shows his tendency to solipsize Sansa into being purely like Catelyn (whom he likes to imagine loved him) and not the daughter of Ned Stark (who took Catelyn from him). Then when Petyr and Sansa next interact in late ASOS, he says it's because he loved her mother, who gave him her maidenhead. Petyr's new identity for Sansa is that of his daughter Alayne (the daughter he could never have with Catelyn). Then of course there is "only cat" just before Petyr murders Lysa. (see this is why Sansa's chapters bear a close reading).
As a SanSan shipper, sure I have nothing against Sansa as being sexually attractive-though Westerosi culture (like real life Medieval culture) frowns upon actually consumating with a girl of Sansa's age. Which is why Sandor didn't kiss Sansa: because when she sung to him, he realised that she was a child, and he ran off in shame and horror when he realised that even by kissing her, he would be crossing a moral event horizon.
No, what Petyr has in common with Humbert Humbert is not his depraved lust for young girls (Humbert prefers girls aged 9-13, whilst Petyr is clearly waiting for Sansa to be older, like atleast 14 but possibly 15, the age that Catelyn was when he 'loved' her) but their tendency to solipsize the objects of their desire.
Both Catelyn/Annabel Leigh are envisioned as the perfect woman, with whom they were denied the chance to screw. Whilst Sansa and Lolita who resemble Catelyn/Annabel Leigh are the second chance, with whom Petyr/Humbert pretends to be the father of, whilst trying to shape the objects of their desire into perfect women.
In the first case, Humbert fails:  Lolita resists Humbert by continuing on being a crass little American right to the end and never "vibrates beneath him   " and cries herself to sleep every night, whilst Petyr is succeeding in shaping Sansa into a sort of mini-Petyr (see her interest and comprehension of Petyr's political lessons) but she to will never love Petyr (because his solipsizing is fated to fail) and is, I suspect fated to use those political lessons that Baelish teaches her to destroy him (out of revenge, ironically the same motive Petyr had to destroy the Tully's and Starks, only since Petyr's crimes are worse that Hoster and Brandon's crimes this will not be petty vengence but justice).
As to what I mean by solipsizing, well I am going to be a lazy person and copy and paste from the wiki article on Lolita: but[/font]

So I think Petyr basically makes the same mistake when it comes to Sansa/Alayne, only whilst Humbert's solipsizing of Delores/Lolita serves to highlight his tyranny/his cruelty/his evil/his villainhood.  Petyr's solipsizing of Sansa/Alayne is also an error of judgement/stupid as well as being evil/tyrannical destruction of another's identity.  At the end of the day Humbert and Delores/Lolita where just private individuals, whilst Petyr  and Sansa/Alayne are not: Petyr is a political giant, and Sansa is the daughter of the Lord of Winterfell, who Petyr betrayed on his march of political giantdom.
Petyr by getting wrapped up in his fantasy of Sansa/Alayne, basically forgets that Alayne (who if she were his real daughter would have every reason to love him), is really Sansa (who has every reason to hate him).
The fact that Petyr doesn't have a real daughter (to marry off to the Heir to the Vale) is because, as you say, he is not aiming for children/isn't playing the birds and bees game, but he aims at political status/he is playing the game of thrones. The problem is, by ignoring the game of birds and bees, he actually makes a crucial error in judgement: instead of having a loyal child to use as a pawn and sell off to the Lord of the Eyrie, he is trying to use the daughter of one of his enemies. As well as the fact that because Petyr is not playing the birds and bees games, he plays far more aggressively (with less regard to the long term/less regard for society as a whole)
Now, if Petyr had been sterile (like Varys the eunuch) or more rational (though a totally rational thing to do would be to use his own child). I suppose that he could've picked up any pretty girl off the street (like he picked off Jeyne Poole) to use as his pawn ie be a 'fake Sansa" or the daughter of his sister, or somebody who had a genuine reason to love him and be loyal to him, to marry off to the Heir to the Eyrie. Then poison Harry the Heir after his real daughter/or fake Sansa had given birth to a son or two, and thus use the Vale's armies to make himself King (somehow, not really sure if this plan would work, but you seem to believe that Petyr is aiming to become king, so lets say that's the plan).
But because Petyr, at his heart is not truly rational (ie he is not rationally aiming to become king)... instead of selecting a pawn who would be genuinely loyal to him: like a biological daughter, a niece, or an orphan whose life he had saved and who genuinely loves him.
Instead Petyr the irrational  picks Sansa to be his pawn, because she fits into his particular fantasy: her resemblance to Catelyn, and Petyr's obsession with Catelyn is what causes him to destroy Ned Stark/destroy Hoster Tully/destroy everything else that Sansa cared about.
Sure Petyr would rationalise this and say that it is better to use the genuine daughter of Ned Stark and thus be able to claim the North and Riverlands into the bargain (since his niece or biological daughter would have no claim to either, whilst an orphan/fake Sansa would always risk discovery).
But then why  teach her to be a player?  Petyr might reply that he teachers her his game to make her a better pawn (or to turn his pawn into a Queen by dragging her across the board)? Any fool can tell you that making the daughter of the man you betrayed, into a Queen (the most powerful piece on the board) is one step away from making her into another player. And if he is genuine about arranging her marriage to Harry the Heir, then he has made her a player by default, a player who through his tendency to confide in her, knows an awful lot about the real Petyr Baelish.
Now Petyr would say that Sansa was an orphan whose life he saved, and thus she should be incredibly grateful to him for saving her life, and thus she should come to love him and serve his interests. To which Sansa would say that she wouldn't have needed rescuing from Kings Landing if he hadn't betrayed her father, started a war that destroyed her family in an effort to avenge himself on Brandon Stark and Hoster Tully-, skuttled her marriage plans to Willas Tyrell and caused her to marry Tyrion and helped the Tyrells frame her for murder. Furthermore, Sansa would say, Petyr wasn't terribly grateful to Brandon Stark for sparing his life, infact this act so enraged Petyr that he set out to destroy House Stark (because Brandon humiliated Petyr simply by winning) so why should Sansa be truly grateful to Petyr?
Also the fact that he confides in  Sansa so much is further evidence of his solipsizing of her into Alayne: he wouldn't confide in Sansa so much if he remembered that she was really the daughter of Ned Stark, but because he is so wrapped up in his fantasy of Sansa as Alayne that he allows himself to forget that she has a history and an identity and that history and identity is that of the daughter of Ned Stark.
'

I think you are ascribing far too much rationality to Petyr. Sure he might want to be king but what drives him to have such an obsessional amount of ambition? In the end it comes down to Petyr's inner dysfunction, namely his desire to screw the Stark's and Tully's over and his visceral dislike of their condescension comes from the fact that they rejected his suit of Catelyn Tully (Well Hoster rejected his suit, and the Starks got her hand instead) .

Sure, if I were truly altruistic in the game of birds and bees, I would be petitioning all the ladies in Mensa to let me have their ovaries, have them fertilised by noble prize winners, and let me be the surrogate. but since I am not truly altruistic, but am more or less motivated by my desire to see a bunch of mini voodooqueens: 127, 128, 129, 130 etc. run around and go to private schools, read books, go to university and have successful careers... I won't.  Honestly such extremely altruistic behaviour is to opt out of the game of life completely.  And I am suspicious of people who want to opt out of the game of life, and terrified of people who want others to opt out of the game of life.
So when it comes to the game of thrones: if you're born in the position, that Eddard, Tywin, Tyrion, Robb, Sansa, Mace, Margaery, Quentyn, Doran, Stannis, but above Daenerys were born into, you have no choice but to play the game of thrones, without opting out of life completely, because failure to play the game of thrones will result in your own demise (or atleast a significant loss of your income and the lives of the people you rule over)
This becomes more complex when we come to warfare:
The reason so many characters within the text, hold Doran Martell in comtempt  is that they think he is a coward for not avenging himself on behalf of Elia(though we the readers know this is not true). Now it actually seems rather mad and petty to avenge oneself by going to war on a whole nation over a single rape and murder (revolting as that rape and murder maybe on a purely visceral level). After all the Austrians are generally considered to have been rather petty and vengeful for basically declaring war on Serbia over the Franz Ferdinand assasination.
However Westeros, is much further back in history than 1914 on the eve of WW1.
For starters, guns, gas... technology generally, make warfare far more expensive, and shifts the focus from individual knights to large scale armies of peasants/the working class, not to mention the complex alliance system, make modern warfare far more costly than medieval warfare (and Brienne's chapter's demonstrate that Medieval warfare is still costly). Since this technological advancement is only possible if one already has capitalism, so it comes that governments, to finance these ridiculously expensive wars, are forced to tax people much more. and when people are highly taxed they demand government representation far more loudly, so it is that people like Franz Ferdinand are basically less relevant, because government has switched from inherited power (Franz Ferdinand) to elected power (people like Lloyd George and Winston Churchill-although Churchill was still a member of the aristocracy). Only because the Germans and Austrians were behind the times in terms of democracy, they still acted like it was the Middle Ages, and therefore that the assasination of  heir to the throne merited WW1.
Needless to say,because the Austrian and German royal familys failed to realise that  it was no longer the Middle Ages (and because of Austria and German's unfortunate geographic location, it's nearly impossible for them to win wars anyway, plus they keep on trying to invade Russia), and therefore Franz Ferdinand didn't merit WW1, they no longer remain in power (even as constitutional monarch like Britain and Australia).
But because Westeros is in the Middle Ages, then executing the lord of Winterfell, and his heir, raping and murdering  the sister of the Prince of Dorne, does merit a war, because these people are parts of the government. This is why characters within Westeros, view Doran as a coward. Because they think that he, by  failing to avenge Elia and her children is basically allowing a massive insult to Dorne go unpunished. It would be like Hilary Clinton and her daughter were visiting Australia on a state visit, then China happened to invade Australia (because the Chinese PM and the guy most likely to be his heir had been viciously tortured to death by an insane Australian prime minister) and in the process they raped and murdered Hilary Clinton and murdered Chelsea Clinton, then America failed to do anything about it... The Americans would be seen as weak and people would be likely to try far more nasty stuff to other American politicians.
Only because Dorne is not like America, but more like Spain, Doran has to get his revenge by convincing a more powerful nation to get his justice for him. Which he is more or less plotting to do.
Same with Robb: he had no choice (well one always has a choice) but to go to war after Ned's execution, and the only reason he lost was the indefencebility of the Riverlands (since the North is sort of like Russia and the Riverlands are basically as indefinsible as Germany or Poland) and his dishonourable decision to sleep with Jeyne Westerling, then break his word to the Freys, though fortunately for the Stark cause, the Freys were so disproportionate in their response, that everyone now hates them) .
But for people like Petyr (on his level of society) I would say that yeah, it is pointless to seek  extreme power (like becoming a king) in a vicious and aggressive way, since his life doesn't depend on it and any children he might have only need money to prosper. Actually by seeking kingship he more or less ensures that his children are just as trapped playing the game of thrones that Ned Stark was, since the only way his children will be able to survive is that they continue on playing the game of thrones, because well you win or you die.. Having said that It's not wrong for people to seek power, though it is preferable for society that good people seek power (remember by that I include people like Margaret Thatcher, who once said "I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.") but even people less altruisticly inclined than Margaret Thatcher should be able to seek power, but not to destroy people or whole countries, which is really just silly.
IMHO the only reason Petyr seeks power is to assuage his pride, his obsession and revenge.
[font="Arial"]Absolutely, because I have a completely irrational, selfish desire to see a bunch of little voodoqueens (127, 128, 129, 130 et) running about, and for them in turn to have even more little voodooqueens (131, 132, 133).
It means I have to think about society as a whole. Otherwise life will be miserable for (128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133). So I have a deep suspicion of people who don't want to see mini versions of themselves, because I fear that they will basically not care about the future/society as a whole.
I cynical person might say that by the elite hoarding all young women, thus causing low-status men to have a terrible hankering for vagina, they are inciting those young men to go out and conquer other countries (to acquire the women there), thus spreading that culture to a great many people.
Failing that, the low status young men can always be used as suicide bombers, thus furthering the interests of the elites (if you consider Bin Laden to be a member of the elite).

Edited by Lord Littlefinger's Lash, 30 March 2012 - 10:06 PM.