Moral Imperatives in Westeros: what constitutes villainy (and villains)?

[butterbumps!]

From discussion in other threads, it seems some of us are itchy to discuss morality as it concerns "right and wrong" in Westeros, as well as the way we, as modern readers, understand the moral imperatives facing the characters. So OnionAhai and I and collaborated on the OP of this thread to start to tease out what makes us think about certain acts/ characters as being more or less moral.

We're not really trying to prove the existence of morality per se, but more:

1. Do you see certain characters as villainous?

2. If so, what makes you see them as villainous?

3. Are there characters that fall into shades of grey for you, and if so, what makes a character fall into lighter/ darker on the spectrum for you?

For example, do you excuse/ count as amoral the actions of characters that ultimately lead to harm for reasons like "it's the social norm, they don't know any better, they're doing what they need to succeed in a corrupt system?" Or do you hold the characters to a sense of universal morality where you see their actions in terms of consistent moral judgments (i.e. "the slavers are wrong, because slavery is always immoral, and the fact that it is a cultural norm doesn't mean that slavery shouldn't be abolished")?

To what extent does oppression/ abuse justify a victim's use of questionable methods? Where do you draw the line between morally justifiable acts and downright villainy? Is the contextual "reasonableness" of an act enough to constitute that it was the "right thing to do?" How do you gauge "rightness" when characters are faced with conflicting oaths/ laws/ honor codes?"

To start off with, here’s a tangible example that gets at some of the issues that challenge us the most: Ned Stark beheading the deserter was an immoral act, just as Littlefinger conspiring to murder Jon Arryn was an immoral act (on the assumption that it’s immoral to kill except in self-defense). But then how do we explain why we don't consider Ned an immoral person for killing the deserter (or killing people on the battlefield, for that matter), while we do consider Littlefinger an immoral person for his actions? (We both struggle with the why).

How do you decide?

[Fragile Bird]

Now, here's a question for you, just for clarification - are you asking us essentially to look at the conduct of characters from the viewpoint of, "Is this acceptable behaviour in our modern times" or do you want a viewpoint from a higher level, from an altruistic point of view or from a, for lack of a better phrase, from a "Just Society" point of view.

[Silmarien]

To start with Ned.

Beheading the NW deserter is not an immoral act. Ned had no way of knowing that the NW man was speaking the truth - because no one had seen or heard of the White Walkers for 8000 years south of the Wall. NW deserters are executed because most of them end up there because they're criminals, and because of their oaths. We, the readers understand that the NW deserter DID see these creatures, but it's akin to using as a defense for deserting the military - going AWOL - as "I saw Big Foot/space aliens/the Loch Ness Monster"! That won't keep them out of the brig, anymore than it should stop Ned from killing the deserter.

He explains it in Bran's chapter - why he had to do it. Because NW deserters know that their lives are forfeit, thus they don't care anymore about what's right and wrong, and go around from town to town basically feeling above the law, since no matter what, if they get caught, they'll die anyway. Might as well have some rape, stealing, and murdering on the side, eh?

That was the rationale. Had Ned Stark been given ANY indication that what Gared said (sorry for spelling, it's prob wrong) was true, I'd be with you here, but to Ned what Gared was saying was utter madness. As liege Lord and since Gared was captured on Ned's lands, Ned was responsible for mete-ing out justice, which was beheading.

No convention in the King's law provides that deserters must be returned to Castle Black for punishment. I don't understand why people make that argument - that Ned should've shipped him back to be hung by the NW. Beheading is a much kinder way to die, actually.

ETA: I am judging Ned in a Westerosi context AND in a modern context. I tend to do so with most characters. I do understand that there are societal norms, and that people such as Drogo and the Dothraki taking slaves was normal for them. I don't think this makes them right.

And I don't think slavery is right - it was outlawed in the 7 kingdoms, so it IS a societal norm ( an anti-slavery stance, that is) from where Dany was born. The Grandmasters should know that killing slave children to taunt an invader is wrong - but they dehumanize their slaves and use them as chattel and animals. Dany correcting this error in perception is not wrong, and is a noble endeavor, IMHO.

So it's difficult to separate Westerosi standards from our own universal standards.

Rape, incest, murder, kinslaying, disobeying oaths/promises, and war atrocities like the RW are all wrong according to modern AND Westerosi norms. We don't have to argue from a 21st century perspective to say that Ser Gregor raping innocent women is wrong. It was wrong by the King's law, and punishable by gelding. We also don't need to argue that slavery was okay just because they practice it in Essos and have never known any other way.

Or are there people on the boards who defend the American South for keeping slaves because they "needed" the free labor for their massive agricultural exports? Do we really have people who defend this? I've never seen one.

But one would necessarily have to excuse a wealthy Georgian plantation owner with 100s of slaves from, say 1824, as "a product of his time", if we're going to excuse the Grand Masters for their brutal form of slavery in Essos and call Dany "stupid" for trying to reform their society.

I don't do this. Slavery is wrong no matter what time period. That wealthy Georgian should have been punished, or at the very least forced to provide real, adequate wages to every single slave he had.

The Grand Masters of Mereen are far more brutal on the whole with their slaves than any Americans (in general) were (and yes I know there were plenty of cruel slave-owners who beat, raped, and impregnated their slaves without caring at all - they deserve the same condemnation as the Mereneese slave-owners).

But I don't recall a time when an American slave-owner nailed up 163 slave children and cut out their entrails as a taunt to a Unionist army marching toward their city.

In any case, slavery was morally wrong in America, it is morally wrong in Westeros (otherwise Ser Jorah wouldn't be wanted for execution), and it's morally wrong in Mereen, Astapor, Yunkai, Volantis, Qarth, and all the free cities who practice it. Even in Pentos where they still have "slaves" yet pretend they do not.

I do not need to argue using 21st century values of right and wrong, or using the Geneva Convention, to make these statements.

[ServantOnIce]

Now, here's a question for you, just for clarification - are you asking us essentially to look at the conduct of characters from the viewpoint of, "Is this acceptable behaviour in our modern times" or do you want a viewpoint from a higher level, from an altruistic point of view or from a, for lack of a better phrase, from a "Just Society" point of view.

That is the issue, remember we all have different moralities based on our upbringing and interpretation of life as we know it.

So are we judging them according to what we know about Westerosi morality, Essos Morality or Summer Islands Morality? They are all different.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Now, here's a question for you, just for clarification - are you asking us essentially to look at the conduct of characters from the viewpoint of, "Is this acceptable behaviour in our modern times" or do you want a viewpoint from a higher level, from an altruistic point of view or from a, for lack of a better phrase, from a "Just Society" point of view.

That is the issue, remember we all have different moralities based on our upbringing and interpretation of life as we know it.

So are we judging them according to what we know about Westerosi morality, Essos Morality or Summer Islands Morality? They are all different.

The question is, what is your personal view on morality and how are you applying these moral judgements to Westeros. So you might say that it's not right to apply your moral views to Westeros, and the question is why do you not think it's right to do this? Why are these characters exempted from your normal moral judgements (if they are)?

[butterbumps!]

Now, here's a question for you, just for clarification - are you asking us essentially to look at the conduct of characters from the viewpoint of, "Is this acceptable behaviour in our modern times" or do you want a viewpoint from a higher level, from an altruistic point of view or from a, for lack of a better phrase, from a "Just Society" point of view.

Good question-- we didn't want to be too prescriptive in the OP, so that all viewpoints would be welcome. I think regarding framing responses, we're curious about whether our fellow readers evaluate the morality of actions and characters from a premise that there is an absolute morality (so a notion of morality that transcends time/ place), or whether you find yourself considering context/ what the characters believe to be right when you consider their actions/ intentions.

If it helps clarify a little more, there was a heated debate in another thread, and I suggested that I personally believe in absolute morality, and I defined this as "not engaging in acts that purposely infringe on the personhood of an other, for personal surplus (excess)." So I said that I sympathize with characters that are "stuck in the political and legal" system of Westeros who engage in actions I find violate my sense of morality, but I would ultimately have to conclude that those contextually reasonable actions are immoral. But beyond that, there's definitely characters I find villainous, versus other characters I admire and find courageous, and I can't quite tease out what leads me to those feelings.

I hope this clears things up. Really, we just wanted to see how others make sense of the "grey."

[Lykos]

I think the Dunk & Egg stories are a manual to how GRRM set the rules of moral and honour. Anyway I made Duncan the Tall my moral compass for Westeros, I will still rely on my own standards, but when I´m in doubt or do not understand the rules of Westeros feudalism, I think, how Dunk would have acted.

Concerning the example, since I´m against the death penalty, my standards don´t work. The NW deserter was a convicted criminal and knew what to expect, still I think Dunk would have considered a third solution, for example letting the deserter return to the Wall because he supplied valuable information. But Garth probably would have prefered death and we don´t know if it was possible for Ned to interrogate Garth in private. A Lord is quite limited in his manouvering space, because he has to uphold tradition and show consistancy in jurisdiction. Regarding LF scheming to kill Jon Arryn, well everything was wrong there, especialy since I have the feeling, that LF did it just to feel the power of being a player.

[Fragile Bird]

I agree with Silmarien, on one level, that level being Ned has a clear understanding of what his role as Lord Stark is, and how to carry out his duties.

On another level, however, is it immoral to execute someone without a trial? And, is it immoral to execute someone who is obviously mentally traumatized?

I think that many people remember the deserter as obviously fully functioning in the HBO opening episode. He asks Ned to tell his family what's happened to him, and he pretty calmly explains about the white walkers. But my recollection from the book is that he was a terrified, babbling man who wasn't making any sense.

Personally, I think the deserter was executed too quickly, in terms of Westeros justice. He was a man known to be an honorable member of the Night Watch, not a rapist or some other vile new recruit who could not be trusted to provide an honest explanation of why he was south of the Wall. He should have been given time to return to his senses, if possible. It may be that just the story he was telling made people believe he was mad, though.

Overall I'm against the death penalty, so I obviously don't believe he should have been executed. But surely whenever an author writes a series like ASOIAF, the author is challenging us to interact with the characters on multiple levels, and to think about how the scenarios used in the books uphold or violate our own sense of morality. I myself find it quite thought provoking when I read many posts describing certain conduct acceptable merely because the time period is medieval.

[Lummel]

From discussion in other threads, it seems some of us are itchy to discuss morality as it concerns "right and wrong" in Westeros, as well as the way we, as modern readers, understand the moral imperatives facing the characters. So OnionAhai and I and collaborated on the OP of this thread to start to tease out what makes us think about certain acts/ characters as being more or less moral.

For example, do you excuse/ count as amoral the actions of characters that ultimately lead to harm for reasons like "it's the social norm, they don't know any better, they're doing what they need to succeed in a corrupt system?" Or do you hold the characters to a sense of universal morality where you see their actions in terms of consistent moral judgments (i.e. "the slavers are wrong, because slavery is always immoral, and the fact that it is a cultural norm doesn't mean that slavery shouldn't be abolished")?...

I see entirely differently. It's a novel artifically and deliberately created by a man. Therefore the question is what does he want to tell us? How is this part of the story? What does it mean?

Generally many of the characters are trapped within moral codes or social obligations - it's not then just a case of deciding if an action is right or wrong but how the context may not effectively get the participant any choice - as in the case of The Ned and the deserter. It's not enough to judge The Ned you have to also judge the system that obliges him to execute the deserter. In my opinion an important part of the novel is the drive to criticise and to show how harmful and destructive the institutions of a society as a whole can be - something which I feel (maybe wrongly) is often ignored in fantasy novels.

[Lykos]

I see I´m piggy in the middle again, well the character test told me, I´m Sam. I should have known.

[Clarkrock7]

"not engaging in acts that purposely infringe on the personhood of an other, for personal surplus (excess)."

Ned beheading deserter = not immoral per this definition

Isn't our feeling that certain characters are villains have more to do with what we perceive their true motivations to be rather than exactly what it is they are doing? Ned might have killed 100 men in a war and we'd think nothing of it, but that he fought out of a sense of duty, honor and loyalty. If Littlefinger had one man killed simply to cause chaos and create an opportunity to advance himself we call him a villain.

I don't understand how anyone can reasonably apply modern societal norms and ideas of morality to a medieval society. The characters are all immoral if you believe that 13 or 14 year old girls having sex is immoral, which is a pretty universal belief these days in the US at least.

[Qhorin Halfhand and Yoren]

Let's see, Ned beheads a deserter as punishment for a crime, and in him being the Lord of the North he has to follow the law. He also thinks this is the right thing to do, and doesn't just kill a man for his own benefit.

Maybe or maybe not this is a little immoral or wrong but it is much less immoral than say someone who murders people and conspires to start a war (he knows of course that this action is harmful for society) for his own benefit. And we also have to some extend understand the people as people of their environment.

If I want to examine in utmost detail the beheading: He does have some point as someone who was part of the Night Watch can be any type of criminal and through the NW he doesn't follow his punishment. He also thinks that they are desperate and they can't be reintroduced into society. There is also an obsession with oaths and oathbreaking at play. I would say though that in the NW, people who are not great criminals can enter it. And I value human life and human prosperity above an oath. I am not actually someone who is opposed to the death penalty period ( though the finality of death making finding out if the one who was punished was inoccent after his death not having any use is an additional concern that makes me less likely to favor it than other punishments. I also value human life. But I also see worth in punishment and in proportiate punishment, and yes I see some crimes heinous enough that the death penalty becomes proportionate punishment.) but it might be excessive punishment here. Overall though judging with how Ned is a man of his times, and also that there are some valid reasons behind the punishment even if I don't perfectly agree with it, I don't think it is greatly immoral. If we are that strict with Ned, everyone in Westeros is somewhat immoral one way or the other, what matters the most is the quantity. Even today all of us have told lies which we might not had to tell (but of course some lies are more hurtful than others). In conclusion I don't see Ned as a man I would characterize as immoral but like all people he is not perfect. That doesn't mean we can't distinquish between highly immoral people and people who try to be moral or between immoral and moral actions. If our actions lack perfection it doesn't mean that they are not much better than other alternatives (which much worse alternatives we might call immoral).

Does the author wants us to judge whether a society or institutions that is based on oaths (and those taking the oaths might be coersed into the path of the NW)? Perhaps. So while the likes of LF can't be excused by any shitty moral relativism of the type that all lords are awful, it doesn't mean we don't get to judge the institutions that even the relatively not bad guys (Jeor Mormont, Eddard Stark) believe in.

[butterbumps!]

"not engaging in acts that purposely infringe on the personhood of an other, for personal surplus (excess)."

Ned beheading deserter = not immoral per this definition

Isn't our feeling that certain characters are villains have more to do with what we perceive their true motivations to be rather than exactly what it is they are doing? Ned might have killed 100 men in a war and we'd think nothing of it, but that he fought out of a sense of duty, honor and loyalty. If Littlefinger had one man killed simply to cause chaos and create an opportunity to advance himself we call him a villain.

I don't understand how anyone can reasonably apply modern societal norms and ideas of morality to a medieval society. The characters are all immoral if you believe that 13 or 14 year old girls having sex is immoral, which is a pretty universal belief these days in the US at least.

I appreciate this, certainly, and it speaks to the issue at hand pretty directly. Marital rape and abuse seem to be pretty mainstream in Westeros, yet that subject becomes a heated debate on this forum, because there are clearly a number of readers (myself included) who do apply a sense of morality to the Medieval context of Westeros, and as Martin is writing for modern readers, I think this is part of what he's aiming at, why the characters are so grey. For my part, I actually kind of like a number of the blacker characters in the series, despite the fact that I deem their actions immoral, and I think the greyness is an interesting conundrum Martin sets up for us- to have us toggle between moral relativism and absolutism. Why are some characters seen as "blacker" than others, even from the perspective of Westeros itself? Does more villainous mean that a character's actions harm more people than another's harmful actions?

Regarding Ned- It was just an example of how finding corporal punishment wrong would lead one to think of Ned's actions as immoral in an absolute sense-- I think Fragile Bird's post gets to the heart of it.

[IronSuitor]

As has been stated it is literally impossible to apply modern morality to the characters without everyone being a villain - they are nearly all in a warrior class of hyper-violent parasites who reap nearly all benefit from the labor of the smallfolk (the fact that we don't even know if serfdom is common demonstrates my point). Were you magically transported to Westeros you would feel the overwhelming moral imperative to break out the guillotine.

Morality across time (or realities) always boils down to intention. The absolutely worst (maybe not in terms of effect) are the sadists who cause suffering for the sheer joy of it - think Ramsay Bolton. Next come those who cause suffering to achieve what they think is a higher good - think Tywin. On the less villainous side of the equation would be those who basically follow their societies social norms. When they are cruel or stupid, it's usually because they simply aren't imaginative or strong enough to form their own moral basis. Finally, there are those who have the moral intellect to step back from cruelty even when society tells them otherwise. A character that consistently shows the ability to do this, even when it's just something their own experience has shown them (Dany and slavery), qualifies as "good" to me.

Then again, my moral judgement of characters rarely affects how much I enjoy them.

[Currawong]

But surely whenever an author writes a series like ASOIAF, the author is challenging us to interact with the characters on multiple levels, and to think about how the scenarios used in the books uphold or violate our own sense of morality. I myself find it quite thought provoking when I read many posts describing certain conduct acceptable merely because the time period is medieval.

Yes to this.

One of the things I have always enjoyed about the very best SF / fantasy writing is the ability to pose difficult moral issues and dilemmas, including aspects that are just not politically correct to raise or discuss these days. Because these works are set in different worlds and societies, we as readers get the chance to look at the issues both in those worlds, and in terms of what we see as morality and culture here. GRRM of course is a master at all this.

I am not sure that GRRM is necessarily putting forward "a" morality or viewpoint, but rather posing questions for us all. As we see through his various characters, " morality" is not simple black and white, and there are often very difficult and painful choices. There may in fact be no absolute "right" or "wrong" choice at all. People have to live (or die) with their choices, and it is sometimes interesting to think about asking various characters whether they would do this or that again, if they had their time over.

[SerBarristan]

From discussion in other threads, it seems some of us are itchy to discuss morality as it concerns "right and wrong" in Westeros, as well as the way we, as modern readers, understand the moral imperatives facing the characters. So OnionAhai and I and collaborated on the OP of this thread to start to tease out what makes us think about certain acts/ characters as being more or less moral.

For example, do you excuse/ count as amoral the actions of characters that ultimately lead to harm for reasons like "it's the social norm, they don't know any better, they're doing what they need to succeed in a corrupt system?" Or do you hold the characters to a sense of universal morality where you see their actions in terms of consistent moral judgments (i.e. "the slavers are wrong, because slavery is always immoral, and the fact that it is a cultural norm doesn't mean that slavery shouldn't be abolished")?

To what extent does oppression/ abuse justify a victim's use of questionable methods? Where do you draw the line between morally justifiable acts and downright villainy? Is the contextual "reasonableness" of an act enough to constitute that it was the "right thing to do?" How do you gauge "rightness" when characters are faced with conflicting oaths/ laws/ honor codes?"

To start off with, here’s a tangible example that gets at some of the issues that challenge us the most: Ned Stark beheading the deserter was an immoral act, just as Littlefinger conspiring to murder Jon Arryn was an immoral act (on the assumption that it’s immoral to kill except in self-defense). But then how do we explain why we don't consider Ned an immoral person for killing the deserter (or killing people on the battlefield, for that matter), while we do consider Littlefinger an immoral person for his actions? (We both struggle with the why).

How do you decide?

First, great thread idea. ;)

If you believe in absolute morality to any degree (and I do), it's very difficult to overlook the moral failings of much-loved characters like Ned, who is generally considered to be one of the "good guys." I think the deserter beheading is a non-starter, but Ned practices the insitutionalized misogyny of Westeros like everybody else. He may have displayed more grace and caring than others, but he still walked around with deeply messed up ideas about gender roles and arranged marriage etc. Had he survived, I don't doubt he would have tried to marry Arya off to some "high lord" so she could run his castle and make princes and lordlings. The point then is no one, not even the "good guys" should be immune from scrutiny.

The relativists defense here is something like Ned is a "victim" of his time, when misogyny woven into the fabric of society. This defense is totally inadequate to me. This kind of reasoning basically silences minority voices, usually the victims themselves and also the conscientious few who speak out in moral outrage. Let's take the Civil Rights Movements in the U.S. I have family aging family members who hold very racist ideas because they were born in a time when those ideas were commonplace and accepted. Is that a valid excuse? No. Because then I'm essentially saying "everyone thought that way" when in reality everyone did not. It's like ignoring all the people who marched and protested and did freedom rides in opposition to an unjust system (and lest we forget a lot of those people died because of these efforts). You're whitewashing them from history like they didn't exist. The same could be said for the abolitionists before the Civil War.

Take it back to Westeros and gender norms. There are people like Arya and Brienne who do not live up to the expectations society places on them. Brienne in particular feels the full brunt of the society's misogyny and but still perseveres. She's an awesome character. I love her. But to forgive the Ned Starks and Robert Baratheons et al. for dishing out the abuse she receives because that's the cultural norm? Absolutely unforgivable. Because there are people who don't subscribe to these fucked up norms. Her name is Brienne.

Of course, I reject relativism on its face because it's totally objectionable to me. Relativism is just dressed up nihilism... Saying I'm a moral relativist is saying I believe in doing the right thing when its convenient and socially acceptable to do so.

That said, I think you have to take into account context when judging these characters. For one thing, the kind of absolute morality I believe in is pretty basic and vague and I know it doesn't account for a good chunk of scenarios. I think you have some basic ideas about what's right and wrong and then you scaffold on top of that based on situation. This touches a bit on a point I was trying to make in a previous thread, which is that I would judge Littlefinger less severely if I genuinely believed he had no other choice than to behave the way he does, that his very survival depended on it. And I just don't buy that (course in that thread, LF's defender wasn't even saying he had no choice.. heh). So yes, even though I am something of an "absolutist," I still think context is important, and I don't think those two things are inconsistent necessarily.

The idea of "villainy" is really interesting. I think it goes to the broader point of how why one character is more detestable than another. Like you say, it's all shades of gray. Everyone has their sins. I think what's going on is basically the human brain likes dualities. We like black and white. Shades of gray and nuance is time consuming and for the sake of enjoying a TV show or book series, it's not fun either. Edit: Actually what am I talking about? This is totally fun. It's a big reason why I watch. Duh.

But it's also probably part of how we're hardwired to make snap judgments about people to increase our chances of survival. Given the characters that we have, who's the better guy? Who's the worse guy? In practice, I think we do take into account the shades of gray but it's also done very quickly and almost without thinking. But we need there to be "good guys" and "bad guys" so our brains or our hearts does a little calculation and spits out Ned = good guy. Ramsay = bad guy. Ok now I'm just rambling.

[Lord Littlefinger's Lash]

First, great thread idea. ;)

If you believe in absolute morality to any degree (and I do), it's very difficult to overlook the moral failings of much-loved characters like Ned, who is generally considered to be one of the "good guys." I think the deserter beheading is a non-starter, but Ned practices the insitutionalized misogyny of Westeros like everybody else. He may have displayed more grace and caring than others, but he still walked around with deeply messed up ideas about gender roles and arranged marriage etc. Had he survived, I don't doubt he would have tried to marry Arya off to some "high lord" so she could run his castle and make princes and lordlings. The point then is no one, not even the "good guys" should be immune from scrutiny.

The relativists defense here is something like Ned is a "victim" of his time, when misogyny woven into the fabric of society. This defense is totally inadequate to me. This kind of reasoning basically silences minority voices, usually the victims themselves and also the conscientious few who speak out in moral outrage. Let's take the Civil Rights Movements in the U.S. I have family aging family members who hold very racist ideas because they were born in a time when those ideas were commonplace and accepted. Is that a valid excuse? No. Because then I'm essentially saying "everyone thought that way" when in reality everyone did not. It's like ignoring all the people who marched and protested and did freedom rides in opposition to an unjust system (and lest we forget a lot of those people died because of these efforts). You're whitewashing them from history like they didn't exist. The same could be said for the abolitionists before the Civil War.

Take it back to Westeros and gender norms. There are people like Arya and Brienne who do not live up to the expectations society places on them. Brienne in particular feels the full brunt of the society's misogyny and but still perseveres. She's an awesome character. I love her. But to forgive the Ned Starks and Robert Baratheons et al. for dishing out the abuse she receives because that's the cultural norm? Absolutely unforgivable. Because there are people who don't subscribe to these fucked up norms. Her name is Brienne.

Of course, I reject relativism on its face because it's totally objectionable to me. Relativism is just dressed up nihilism... Saying I'm a moral relativist is saying I believe in doing the right thing when its convenient and socially acceptable to do so.

That said, I think you have to take into account context when judging these characters. For one thing, the kind of absolute morality I believe in is pretty basic and vague and I know it doesn't account for a good chunk of scenarios. I think you have some basic ideas about what's right and wrong and then you scaffold on top of that based on situation. This touches a bit on a point I was trying to make in a previous thread, which is that I would judge Littlefinger less severely if I genuinely believed he had no other choice than to behave the way he does, that his very survival depended on it. And I just don't buy that (course in that thread, LF's defender wasn't even saying he had no choice.. heh

No he wasn't. He was arguing every lord in Westeros deserves a good murdering. Ned Stark first, for being too stupid too live.

). So yes, even though I am something of an "absolutist," I still think context is important, and I don't think those two things are inconsistent necessarily.

The idea of "villainy" is really interesting. I think it goes to the broader point of how why one character is more detestable than another. Like you say, it's all shades of gray. Everyone has their sins. I think what's going on is basically the human brain likes dualities. We like black and white. Shades of gray and nuance is time consuming and for the sake of enjoying a TV show or book series, it's not fun either. Edit: Actually what am I talking about? This is totally fun. It's a big reason why I watch. Duh.

But it's also probably part of how we're hardwired to make snap judgments about people to increase our chances of survival. Given the characters that we have, who's the better guy? Who's the worse guy? In practice, I think we do take into account the shades of gray but it's also done very quickly and almost without thinking. But we need there to be "good guys" and "bad guys" so our brains or our hearts does a little calculation and spits out Ned = good guy. Ramsay = bad guy. Ok now I'm just rambling.

[SerBarristan]

No he wasn't. He was arguing every lord in Westeros deserves a good murdering. Ned Stark first, for being too stupid too live.

This statement and mine are not mutually exclusive.

[butterbumps!]

No he wasn't. He was arguing every lord in Westeros deserves a good murdering. Ned Stark first, for being too stupid too live.

wow. After 12 pages of trying decipher the premise, it turns out that was really just a "Ned is stupid" thread.

[Castel]

Well, I personally see moral absolutism as a joke. Moral codes are relative things crafted by society. And due to the way we seem to work, once we have one woven into us, it is extremely difficult to change, or even think about changing, one's mind. The closest thing I have to any absolute moral code is the reduction of unnecessary harm. So the less harm someone does the better in my mind. It all boils down to pragmatism for, me the more pragmatic the indiscretion the easier it is for me to forgive, if it is based on some moral code or selfish desire I tend to dislike it more.

So by that logic, I despise Robb Stark more than I despise say, Tywin. Tywin had his indiscretions but they never interfered with what he considered best for himself and by extension his realm. Robb Stark's did. By any measure Tywin is more villainous than Robb, but if I feel Tywin's actions were more beneficial to himself and his men then I see him as less the villain. IMO it's far more villainous to stick to a moral code that could potentially lead to the deaths of men who have sworn fealty to you and joined you in treason. Of course, this is due to my pseudo-moral nihilism I guess, a man's moral code is nothing but a set of guidelines generally starting at an arbitrary point, the idea that someone else should die for a moral code that, in that moment, is detrimental to it's holder is outrageous to me. So basically if Ned had to choose between what was moral and what was pragmatic and chose the former and more people died as a result of his decision then he would be the villain in my eyes.