Jaime Lannister: condemned for the wrong reason

[Welease Woger]

Jaime made bad disgusting call after bad disgusting call culminating in pushing a child out of a window. Remember why he had to do this. It was too hide the fact that HE WAS NAILING HIS SISTER.

Okay, now I'm going to defend Jaime. Not for trying to kill Bran, obviously, that's appalling. But his sex with his sister was consensual, they're two adults and boning each other per se didn't hurt anybody (throwing a boy through a window in order to hide it did, not the sex itself). It's not like Robert wasn't unfaithful either and the Targaryens practiced incest for centuries. I've seen people calling Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella "abominations" in these forums. How come Daenerys isn't an "abomination" too? Her father and her mother were brother and sister as well. Okay, she's not a bastard, but if we're criticizing Cersei for having sons out of her marriage, remember that Robert fathered more than five times as many bastards.

[WhiteOwl18]

Okay, now I'm going to defend Jaime. Not for trying to kill Bran, obviously, that's appalling. But his sex with his sister was consensual, they're two adults and boning each other per se didn't hurt anybody (throwing a boy through a window in order to hide it did, not the sex itself). It's not like Robert wasn't unfaithful either and the Targaryens practiced incest for centuries. I've seen people calling Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella "abominations" in these forums. How come Daenerys isn't an "abomination" too? Her father and her mother were brother and sister as well. Okay, she's not a bastard, but if we're criticizing Cersei for having sons out of her marriage, remember that Robert fathered more than five times as many bastards.

I have never read the abomination argument, but let me say that I don't think those kids are abominations, since it's absolutely not their fault that their parents commited incest. But incest itself is an abomination, even in Westeros. We have several characters talking of what a heinous act it is. The Targs commited incest for centuries and look how they turned out...

[grand old duke of stark]

Jaime was rotten from the beginning.

He found himself in that situation with Bran not through some quirk of fate, or impossible situation of conflicting loyalties. He found himself in that situation because he felt like fucking his sister and not really giving a damn about the consequences. He found himself in that situation because his confessed contigency plan was to kill anybody who stumbled across their badly concealed affair.

So yeah, when you conduct yourself like that for over a decade, you really have no leg to stand on when you need to start killing children to cover it all up. You are a villain. You are killing children to cover up your crimes.

Also, I'm tickled people continue to use the "he kills a kid of a man he hates to save his love, to save their children, to save his family. Even Ned Stark, in fact, thinks he might have done the same." defence when the events of ASoS and AFFC show Jaime didn't actually give two shits about his children, or his love Cersei if that love began to inconvience him personally.

He felt nothing when Joffrey died. He felt nothing when Tywin died (save for some anger at Tyrion). He threw Cersei's desperate plea for deliverance in the fire at Riverrun.

That you'd even compare him favourably to Ned, who was willing to risk all to save his nephew, who was willing to perjure himself to protect his wife, who was willing to sacrifice his honour and his status at the chance of saving his two daughters, is ridiculous.

IMO Jaime commited a black deed for a black reason. He was essentially amoral and indifferent to it and everyone except Cersei and Tyrion. But I think he's black because he chose to be tarred black when he did not justify his murder of Aerys to Ned or anyone else. He was selfish, solipsistic, and a law unto himself. He continued to live that way when he allowed Gregor Clegane to butcher the royal heirs, chased after Arya with mayhem in mind, murdered Jory, etc. Jaime was a hollow man with a hole where his heart should be.

That is a key reason his redemption arc is so very fascinating. By the way, while most people date the beginning of his turnaround to the loss of his hand, I submit that it began earlier when he experienced a small glimmer of respect for Brienne. That is when the black finally started modulating into grey.

[Consigliere]

Okay, now I'm going to defend Jaime. Not for trying to kill Bran, obviously, that's appalling. But his sex with his sister was consensual, they're two adults and boning each other per se didn't hurt anybody (throwing a boy through a window in order to hide it did, not the sex itself). It's not like Robert wasn't unfaithful either and the Targaryens practiced incest for centuries. I've seen people calling Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella "abominations" in these forums. How come Daenerys isn't an "abomination" too? Her father and her mother were brother and sister as well. Okay, she's not a bastard, but if we're criticizing Cersei for having sons out of her marriage, remember that Robert fathered more than five times as many bastards.

The sex was consentual, yes, but it was also treason. I don't quite understand the bolded part of your statement. Bran was pushed precisely because he saw Jamie and Cersei having sex and ended up crippled as a result. Not to mention that their relationship has cast doubt on the legitimacy of Joff, Tommen and Myrcella. As a result the Kingdom has plunged into a war that's still going on and one where alot of people have been hurt or killed.

[Le Cygne]

I've seen people calling Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella "abominations" in these forums.

I agree with you that's wrong to call them that, but by sleeping with Cersei (the queen), he did endanger the lives of any offspring.

Jaime was a hollow man with a hole where his heart should be.

He very much had a heart (he loved Cersei, Tyrion, and Tywin), but his heart was focused on the Lannisters. That was his tragic flaw.

[blood of the dragoon]

Okay, now I'm going to defend Jaime. Not for trying to kill Bran, obviously, that's appalling. But his sex with his sister was consensual, they're two adults

still disgusting and immoral. I know this, you know this, and Jaime sure as hell knew this.

and boning each other per se didn't hurt anybody (throwing a boy through a window in order to hide it did, not the sex itself).

You can't separate the one from the other

It's not like Robert wasn't unfaithful either and the Targaryens practiced incest for centuries. I've seen people calling Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella "abominations" in these forums. How come Daenerys isn't an "abomination" too? Her father and her mother were brother and sister as well. Okay, she's not a bastard, but if we're criticizing Cersei for having sons out of her marriage, remember that Robert fathered more than five times as many bastards.

So what? While all of these are true, they have no bearing on the topic at hand. Not saying these are bad points, they just don't belong here.

[mediterraneo]

I give a one up to the opening poster.
He needs it: Jaime attempts to kill a boy because Robert is a sadistical monster who marrys the daughter of the men who killed children even more innocent than Bran. Bran was guided by a magical raven that could be himself to scry on a very secluded, hidden room, on the top of an unused tower.
This OBVIOUSLY doesn't make him the legiptimate object to any phisical arm.
Elia's sons were hanging from her mother's arms.

I consider myself a Jaime fangirl but this is... kind of a stretch. I agree that he's a hero for killing Aerys (especially after I read about the wildfire plot and how horrible he was to his wife) so I do think it's a tiny bit unfair that he gets mocked and called the Kingslayer. But as Minsc pointed out, Jaime did nothing to protect Elia, Rhaenys, and Aegon, and he wasn't exactly doing it for the right reasons. He deserves to be criticized for that.

Talking of which: as Ned an Jaime were dogether when Elia was being raped and killed after her sons, should we give disrespect for "not doing anything" to both Ned and Jaime, because they were in the throne room playing to the longest dicked, or should we understand that they were not aware of Tywin's order to the Mountain to that respect? Or should you and me and Ser Lancelot from the arthurian myth, and Minsc (not the forum member, the character from Baldrus Gate) be held equally responsible for that, because nobody stopped it?

For me it's very simple: heroes don't push children of a window. That's it. If I see someone killing someone and the killer kills me because I saw him, do you think that he is entitled to kill me? If Jaime didn't want to be in danger, he shouldn't have sex with his sister. Period.

I do agree that he is redeamable, and I find his arc very interesting, but he is no hero.

Heroes don't kill childs. Not even to protect people. So there is no hero north of the neck, as the northerners came down to save one of them (Eddard) and a lot of kids died in the ensueing war. What the heck, are you saying that all of the northerners are worse than Jaime because they killed more children in their war? Even one would be enough, because Jaime never killed any one, I'd add, but...

Jaime was rotten from the beginning.

He found himself in that situation with Bran not through some quirk of fate, or impossible situation of conflicting loyalties. He found himself in that situation because he felt like fucking his sister and not really giving a damn about the consequences. He found himself in that situation because his confessed contigency plan was to kill anybody who stumbled across their badly concealed affair.

So yeah, when you conduct yourself like that for over a decade, you really have no leg to stand on when you need to start killing children to cover it all up. You are a villain. You are killing children to cover up your crimes.

...

How easy is to say "fuck" and condemn two consenting adults that loved themselves for the whole of their lifes against all and everything. West Side Story? Juliet and Romeo? All of them condemnable, because they "fuck".
Well, in my book it's not a crime to be in love with someone, it is not a crime to live the phisical part of love with consenting adults.
There is no crime there, so you have no point.

We can agree to disagree, if you want. If you believe to have the right to tell people which consenting adult is their right to love or not. By the way, even if you believe to have the right to tell somebody who he should love, you have not. Sorry.

I can understand killing a kid to save your entire family... if the threat to your family does not stem from your behaviour in the first place.

Well, it does not. The threat to Cersei, Jeoffrey, Myrcella and Tommen does not come from Jaime's love of them, it comes from Robert's cruelty and self entitlement. You can say he is the king, and the king has the right to be self entitled.
That's why he is the king, someone would say. Quite literally in the case of Robert: another men took once a girl that he considered "his" even if she was not and Robert killed or had killed the man, his wife and all of his children. And lived happily fucking pigs and hunting whores for around 17 years after that.

To say that the cause of the menace is "Jaime's behaviour" is to confund the motive of the assassin with the responsibility of it. Eddard's menace to Cersei to force her to escape is the motive of her killing his friend and taking him captive. The responsibility is hers not his. He gave her a motive. You see the similarity? Cersei's reaction is even moved from the same motive: to keep her children safe.

...

The worst thing is, no Jaime chapter has ever indicated that he regretted his action from a moral ground, only that it had made Cersei angry. Despite all his courtesy and apparent sincerity (and general lack douchiness) in his conversations and thoughts in AFFC, this one issue leads me to doubt what kind of redemption he has had. There is still a long way for Jaime to go and I don't want to him to end up as someone who, after everything, didn't change much at all.

Jaime didn't regret it because he is sincere, with the others and with himself.
If he was still so in love with Cersei, he would again kill anybody menacing her and her children. Martin is heinous in presenting him with an innocent child and not with the Mountain. It would be ethically much easier. But Jaime does not regret pushing Bran. He may be happy having failed, because now his children does not have Robert to fear, and Bran is no longer a threat. But put again in the moment and situation, he would do it again. Why regretting it? To feel hypocrite for a change? He was already a sincere man when he told to Catelyn, after explaining how to kill him: "I pushed him through the window because I wanted him to die". That has not changed.


PS: I cut and highlited some parts of the citations to make clear to what part I was answering.

[Ser Eric]

I am going to come out and say this but I don't see Incest as either immoral or wrong even in todays world.

I don't like incest and is has 'yuck' factor but logically thinking about it, what exactly is wrong if two consenting adults love each other and want to get intimate? Nothing.

[mediterraneo]

I've forgiven Jaime for Bran. I think it's fate. If Bran hadn't been pushed out the window and lost the use of his legs, would Bloodraven have been able to get through to him? Bran could end up being the ultimate hero orchestrating the defeat of the Others while up in the CotF cave. His only motivation for going there was the slim hope that he would be healed. Even now that he knows he will never walk again, BR has opened his mind to the Weirwood network. I am doubtful that Bran would have given up his dreams of being a Knight to become a Tree had the incident not dashed that dream for him.

In short, everything happens for a reason.

Well, Bran could be orchestrating the conquest of Westeros by the White Walkers for what we know. Bloodraven plans aren't clear. And the identity of the Three Eyed Crow is to be determined, there are doubts it is Bloodraven. It could be some different entity, it could even be future Bran. Or not. But that heretically a whole different thing, and it is not the scope of this thread. The only part of it that matters here is that someone consciently put the boy in the situation to see, pushing him to climb there at that moment, with visions of speaking crows. The person doing that consciently participates in the mess, his role to be determined by his/her motives when we will be given them.

[LordStoneheart]

Bran spilling the beans about the incest would mean:

- the end of Jaime

- the end of Cersei

- the end of their children (although at that point he cares about them more as extension of his love's happiness)

- the end of Lannister family (Robert's pretty non-discriminative in his wrath)

Bran's death means... Bran's death.

These points aren't necessarily true. My hypothetical here is that Robert and Eddard were out hunting which would've given Jaime and Cersei plenty of time to escape with their Lannister soldiers down the Kingsroad and get to the Westerlands, this being of course if Bran even tells them which I don't believe he would've had they attempted to buy and/or threaten his silence. So Jaime, Cersei, and the children get to the West and are under Tywin's protection. This debate could go on forever but I doubt Robert could get to them two let alone annihilate the whole Lannister family.

I condemn Jaime for the right reason. He tried to murder a child to cover up his crimes. No matter how you spin it, that's the reality.

[LordStoneheart]

I am going to come out and say this but I don't see Incest as either immoral or wrong even in todays world.

I don't like incest and is has 'yuck' factor but logically thinking about it, what exactly is wrong if two consenting adults love each other and want to get intimate? Nothing.

When one is married to the man the other is vowed to protect while also under a vague oath that may involve being chaste, and that man is infamous for killing the last king. Then its wrong.

[Ser Eric]

When one is married to the man the other is vowed to protect while also under a vague oath that may involve being chaste, and that man is infamous for killing the last king. Then its wrong.

Well yes, it's wrong in this case but I was talking about incest in general.

[LordStoneheart]

Well yes, it's wrong in this case but I was talking about incest in general.

To each their own... family. I guess. That topic is better left discussed on a different forum.

[blood of the dragoon]

I give a one up to the opening poster.

He needs it: Jaime attempts to kill a boy because Robert is a sadistical monster who marrys the daughter of the men who killed children even more innocent than Bran. Bran was guided by a magical raven that could be himself to scry on a very secluded, hidden room, on the top of an unused tower.

This OBVIOUSLY doesn't make him the legiptimate object to any phisical arm.

Elia's sons were hanging from her mother's arms.

Talking of which: as Ned an Jaime were dogether when Elia was being raped and killed after her sons, should we give disrespect for "not doing anything" to both Ned and Jaime, because they were in the throne room playing to the longest dicked, or should we understand that they were not aware of Tywin's order to the Mountain to that respect? Or should you and me and Ser Lancelot from the arthurian myth, and Minsc (not the forum member, the character from Baldrus Gate) be held equally responsible for that, because nobody stopped it?

Heroes don't kill childs. Not even to protect people. So there is no hero north of the neck, as the northerners came down to save one of them (Eddard) and a lot of kids died in the ensueing war. What the heck, are you saying that all of the northerners are worse than Jaime because they killed more children in their war? Even one would be enough, because Jaime never killed any one, I'd add, but...

How easy is to say "fuck" and condemn two consenting adults that loved themselves for the whole of their lifes against all and everything. West Side Story? Juliet and Romeo? All of them condemnable, because they "fuck".

Well, in my book it's not a crime to be in love with someone, it is not a crime to live the phisical part of love with consenting adults.

There is no crime there,

except, ya know, high treason

so you have no point.

We can agree to disagree, if you want. If you believe to have the right to tell people which consenting adult is their right to love or not. By the way, even if you believe to have the right to tell somebody who he should love, you have not. Sorry.

Well, it does not. The threat to Cersei, Jeoffrey, Myrcella and Tommen does not come from Jaime's love of them, it comes from Robert's cruelty and self entitlement. You can say he is the king, and the king has the right to be self entitled.

That's why he is the king, someone would say. Quite literally in the case of Robert: another men took once a girl that he considered "his" even if she was not and Robert killed or had killed the man, his wife and all of his children. And lived happily fucking pigs and hunting whores for around 17 years after that.

To say that the cause of the menace is "Jaime's behaviour" is to confund the motive of the assassin with the responsibility of it. Eddard's menace to Cersei to force her to escape is the motive of her killing his friend and taking him captive. The responsibility is hers not his. He gave her a motive. You see the similarity? Cersei's reaction is even moved from the same motive: to keep her children safe.

Jaime didn't regret it because he is sincere, with the others and with himself.

If he was still so in love with Cersei, he would again kill anybody menacing her and her children. Martin is heinous in presenting him with an innocent child and not with the Mountain. It would be ethically much easier. But Jaime does not regret pushing Bran. He may be happy having failed, because now his children does not have Robert to fear, and Bran is no longer a threat. But put again in the moment and situation, he would do it again. Why regretting it? To feel hypocrite for a change? He was already a sincere man when he told to Catelyn, after explaining how to kill him: "I pushed him through the window because I wanted him to die". That has not changed.

PS: I cut and highlited some parts of the citations to make clear to what part I was answering.

[aceluby]

Ned doesn't even condemn him... and it's HIS SON he threw out the window. That, to me, speaks volumes.

[The squid that squints]

I just wonder what would philosophers say about this.

This quote has made my evening, where's nephenee when you need her?

[Welease Woger]

I have never read the abomination argument, but let me say that I don't think those kids are abominations, since it's absolutely not their fault that their parents commited incest. But incest itself is an abomination, even in Westeros. We have several characters talking of what a heinous act it is. The Targs commited incest for centuries and look how they turned out...

You mean the madness of some Targaryens? Well, I don't know if it could be due to the incest -- but as Joffrey is kind of disturbed too, that could be true.

The sex was consentual, yes, but it was also treason. I don't quite understand the bolded part of your statement. Bran was pushed precisely because he saw Jamie and Cersei having sex and ended up crippled as a result. Not to mention that their relationship has cast doubt on the legitimacy of Joff, Tommen and Myrcella. As a result the Kingdom has plunged into a war that's still going on and one where alot of people have been hurt or killed.

I meant that the incest itself didn't hurt anybody, what caused all those problems were the circumstances and the things they did in order to hide it. Let's say Cersei was having sex with Arys Oakheart, instead of Jaimer -- that would have cast doubt on the legitimacy of Joff too and could have caused a war as well. So the problem is not the incest, but the treason (although Robert freely cheated on Cersei as well).

Well, personally I find incest disgusting. But immoral? No way. It was consensual, they loved each other.

[blood of the dragoon]

Well, personally I find incest disgusting. But immoral? No way. It was consensual, they loved each other.

Jaime was a jackass and cercei loved Jaime in that he was an extension of herself.

We're going to have to agree to disagree about the morality of incest. I say it's not like being gay, or into bondage, or any other sexuality people might frown upon. Sure, it's not pedophilia or rape, but it's not ok either.

[Ser Eric]

Jaime was a jackass and cercei loved Jaime in that he was an extension of herself.

We're going to have to agree to disagree about the morality of incest. I say it's not like being gay, or into bondage, or any other sexuality people might frown upon. Sure, it's not pedophilia or rape, but it's not ok either.

What you mean to say is you don't like it but that does not mean it's wrong or immoral.

[blood of the dragoon]

What you mean to say is you don't like it but that does not mean it's wrong or immoral.

No. I mean to say that there are things i'm not into (gay), and things i am (bondage) that people frown on that aren't wrong or immoral. Incest isn't one of them. I concede that it's nowhere near pedophilia or rape, but it is immoral.

At least that's my view. Take it or leave it.