100 replies to this topic

[B'uckles]

What is redemption? Not a place you get to, but more like a path. You don't "get there" by achieving certain results, do you? He needs to look deep, and make the continual effort. It ain't over when some scale is balanced, or someone pins a badge on you.

[kkae]

Sometimes I hope I could go back in time and chop that person's hand off who first wrote about Jaime's redemption arc. It is not about him redeeming himself in the eyes of gods and people but a personal journey.
It is a story of redefinition not redemption.

[Mr Stereo1]

When it comes to revenge, I try to accept the sunk cost fallacy. If Jaime was willing, from this point on, to be a genuinely good person then I could forgive him, although in-universe or out of it I would never forget. He did, after all, take part in incest which led to a war which cost, at a minimum, tens of thousands of lives and counting, fully aware that a civil war was a potential outcome. I would only ever like him as a person (I like him as a character because he's interesting, in the same was Cersei is) if he were to really dedicate himself near-completely to making amends to the people he's wronged, or humanity in general.

Specifically, if he could return to King's Landing in time to stop Cersei from burning the city, and claim his right as Lord of Casterly Rock in order to surrender to Aegon and prevent another round of bloodshed by sacrificing himself, and possibly his house.

[Mladen]

Princess_of_Sunspear, on 24 June 2012 - 03:34 PM, said:

Saving a Targ life would be different, and much more plausible. But then, there aren't many Targaryens left (Jon is unconfirmed, Aegon is disputed and Dany still isn't done with Essos)
I think saving a Targaryen life (thus earning a pardon for his family), taking his children and living somewhere far from KL would be best for him, imo.

Agree on that. But I don1t think he would make outcasts of Tommen and Myrcella. He cares too much for them...

[Faint]

Accept execution for his crimes, which is certainly merited, or, if granted relief, take the black. This isn't too complicated.

[MsLibby]

I feel a fair bit of  pity for Jaime.  Yes, he's a grown man and responsible for his own actions,  but he has been manipulated by his sister and his father since he was born it seems.  Cersea wants something from him she uses sex and his love for her, his father wants something and it's intimidation and, again, his love. Poor guy didn't stand a chance.

There were also a few places in the text that made me feel bad for him. When he was telling Brianne to escape inside herself, to just go away, when he expected her to be raped. It's the same advice he gave Tommen at the funeral. It was how he survived seeing so many atrocities.

The other bit was how he wanted to have more children, ones he could claim and hold. That was a rather sad statment to make.

[StannisBamfatheon]

Evamitchelle, on 24 June 2012 - 11:02 AM, said:

6. Go beyond the Wall and single-handedly (ha) save Bran from becoming an evil tree.

Not to derail the thread but can I ask a question about this?  Why is it necessarily that Bran is becoming an 'evil' tree...I don't understand that.  He's being taught by the children of the forest who defeated the Others in the first place....they might be good people to learn from.  I dunno...this just seems totally out of left field the only thing he's done using the trees was see some vision of the past there's nothing evil about that.

Edited by StannisBamfatheon, 24 June 2012 - 06:17 PM.

[Currawong]

B, on 24 June 2012 - 03:55 PM, said:

What is redemption? Not a place you get to, but more like a path. You don't "get there" by achieving certain results, do you? He needs to look deep, and make the continual effort. It ain't over when some scale is balanced, or someone pins a badge on you.

kkae, on 24 June 2012 - 04:10 PM, said:

Sometimes I hope I could go back in time and chop that person's hand off who first wrote about Jaime's redemption arc. It is not about him redeeming himself in the eyes of gods and people but a personal journey.  It is a story of redefinition not redemption.

Agree with both of these.   One of the things I like really love about the way Jaime is written as a character is that he hasn't undergone a huge "road to Damascus" conversion, through which he immediately repents of all his previous ways, resolves to be good and try to make amends, etc, etc.  I haven't seen any of those in RL, and frankly I don't believe in them, as you can't just suddenly live the 'good' life, change your thinking overnight, and put aside all that has gone before.  Changing your life is a huge struggle, and is often a case of two steps forward, one step back, so it is only natural that we don't see Jaime going "OMG, I was such a brute to Bran" and so on.  Frankly, I don't expect him ever to do that - I think he does / will 'regret' that he hurt a little boy (and he would obviously have preferred it to be death rather than maiming), but he will also recognise that he acted to protect the people he loved, including his own children.   He is not going to ever say that protecting his own children was 'wrong'.

Jaime reminds me very much of a person struggling to overcome an addiction, in his case to Cersei.   Anyone one who has ever battled to do that in some way will understand the struggles he is going through, and appreciate that he is trying, even if some of the changes in his thinking are almost subconscious.   And please: the threat as regards throwing the Tully baby back via trebuchet was exactly that - a threat, made in the full knowledge that people would take the threat seriously precisely because he was 'Jaime the Kingslayer'.  If you read on, you see how he does worry that he might have had to carry out the threat, serving his duty to the King (one oath) rather than keeping faith with Catelyn (a later oath, at sword point).   That 'too many oaths' speech at the end of Book 2 is a really critical one for understanding Jaime and many of his internal conflicts, as is the scene in the White Tower after he sends Brienne on her way, and he thinks about what he can write in the White Book about himself.   He knows it's up to him now, and IMHO, he makes a pretty good start in the rest of ASOS and in AFFC.

Depending on the circumstances, I could see him eventually telling Cersei that his duty to the king does not automatically mean a duty to the king's mother - that would very neatly echo the advice which John Darry gave to him about Aery's brutality to his wife.

Edited by Currawong, 24 June 2012 - 06:36 PM.

[l3ol3o]

I would really like to see Jaime cut off Cersei. He already has to some extent but I don't think he's done with her yet. I really want to see him take his kids away from her and go back to Casterly Rock. He needs to realize his children are in danger for the only reason of Cersei being in power. His children should be more important to his family, even if it costs the Lannisters the throne. I don't know if he will ever redeem himself for what he did to Bran though. Something like that is hard to redeem. Maybe he can save Bran somehow? I just don't see that happening though.

[Jolene Brown]

He clearly wants to tell Tommen and Myrcella the truth, given his thoughts in AFFC and ADWD (in fact, in ADWD, he appears fairly close to having decided to do so - he thinks to himself "I will have to tell Myrcella/her too," implying he has already decided to tell Tommen, I think); however, I think it will be almost impossible for him to do so - there is a real risk of their being put to death that is re-iterated by a variety of characters (including Catelyn Stark in her reflections in the sept before, I think, the siege of  Storm's End!).  We have seen the new High Septon - I don't think he would hesitate to execute them.

Other than that, I think the issue with him saving Sansa/Arya is that right now, neither of them are in a location or situation where he really makes sense as a part of their story.  I think saving Bran would make a lot more sense; however, that depends on your view as to the wisdom of Bran's current lifestyle choice... I personally am against his becoming a tree, but it's sort of ambiguous at this point whether the reader is intended to perceive it as good or bad.  I would lean toward good, but the imagery in Bran's last chapter is awfully disturbing and gothic.

[MsLibby]

It will be interesting to see if Jaime starts to feel anything for the kids. He wasn't allowed to get too close to them before, but how he went to Tommen during the funeral makes me have some hope he will eventually come to feel something for them.

[Currawong]

I think Jaime definitely feels something for his kids - apart from Joffrey! - and would have liked to be closer to them.   I really loved the way he gently tried to help Tommen at Tywins funeral, and 'the way he dealt with Tommen's fears were such a contrast to Cersei's harsh attitude which showed no understanding of the horrors felt by a little kid.

ETA:

Quote

I would really like to see Jaime cut off Cersei. He already has to some extent but I don't think he's done with her yet. I really want to see him take his kids away from her and go back to Casterly Rock.

The trouble is, he can't just take Tommen and head for Casterly Rock.   The King 'belongs' in KL, and Jaime's duty as LC of the KG is to the king there.  If he just took Tommen and headed home to Casterly Rock, it would be an open admission that the kid was his, and was not the rightful king.  And Jaime is not going to do that either.

Edited by Currawong, 24 June 2012 - 06:51 PM.

[Elba the Intoner]

I would just like to see him express some true remorse for what he did to Bran.

[MsLibby]

I'm not sure he ever will. In his mind he was protecting his own children, his own life. I don't think we can expect that.

[StannisBamfatheon]

Just because you're protecting your kids doesn't give you cart blanche to harm another persons innocent child. It's not like Bran was trying to spy on their twincest or anything he was a little boy doing what he loved and Jaime changed his life irrecovably.  Still like Jaime though but it's not justification for chucking Bran outta the tower just by saying he was "protecting" his family.

[Fantôme]

Plus we really have no reason to think he gave a damn about his children when he did it.

[MsLibby]

But what were his other alternatives to pushing Bran. What could he have done differently in that situation that wouldn't have resulted in the end of his life (and the children's and Cerseas)

[StannisBamfatheon]

MsLibby, on 24 June 2012 - 06:54 PM, said:

But what were his other alternatives to pushing Bran. What could he have done differently in that situation that wouldn't have resulted in the end of his life (and the children's and Cerseas)

So it's kill or be killed against a 10 year old?  nice!  Jaime himself says it later "we'll say he was dreaming, we'll say this, say that, say whatever it takes and life we'll go on..."  <----not ver batim there you get the idea.  If he had just thought it through a little more instead of just giving Bran the heave ho it would have gone better.  That scene is told from Bran's POV and he doesn't even know what the hell there doing he thought they were wrestling or something.  It was totally unnecesary.

[Currawong]

Jaime is a soldier.  When he sees an immediate threat, he doesn't waste time agonising about what to do, he acts.  Because on the battlefield, if you don't react fast, you are dead.  

You don't have the luxury of time to think, you just DO.   It's not as though he had a lot of time to stand there, have a debate with Cersei and Bran about what Bran did or didn't see, and only then decide that killing the kid was safer than trying to 'persuade' him to keep silent.  And even if Bran thought they were only 'wrestling', any adult to whom he'd happen to mention it would immediately have drawn the correct inference.

Edited by Currawong, 24 June 2012 - 07:01 PM.

[MsLibby]

I agree. His ability to make snap decisions is one of the things that make him a good soldier and, in this case, I think he did what he needed to do. Did I like it? Hell no. Do I think it was necessary? I can't think up a single thing he would have been able to do in that situation that would have given him an out. Particuarly with Cersea yelling about him seeing them.