Why does everyone love lady stoneheart?

[The Great and Mighty Poo]

On 5/14/2017 at 5:13 PM, The Mountain That Flies said:

I've personally seen more hate for Stoneheart than love. My understanding is that many people dislike her one-dimensional nature, and that while Cat clearly paid a price for coming back the entire character of Stoneheart is unnecessary.

Personally I like that she acts a personification of how the horrors of war can turn good people into monsters. That said, there's not much of a personality to get engaged in, and my prior point of could have been supplanted by a more gradual descent.

I agree.

[Walda]

On 15/05/2017 at 11:04 AM, Ser Frasier of House Crane said:

I personally am not a fan of Lady Stoneheart and the concept of resurrecting so many characters, and I think one of the wisest moves D&D ever pulled was leaving her out of the adaptation. I can see why people gravitate towards the character, and I've often had to hear how I just "don't get it" when I voice how much I dislike the character and concept, but my dislike still stands.

Oh dear, I suspect you speak too soon. If Gendry comes back in Season Seven, she'll be on like Donkey Kong for sure.

I love Lady Stoneheart, the mother who became the stranger. She is a desolate, ruthless, inconsolable character, born in the bloody grass by the Trident, with the taste of fire in her mouth, and a cold dead heart. She exists because Beric Dondarrion swore on his honour as a knight that Arya would be returned safely to her mother's arms.

Apart from keeping Arya relevant (remember when the Kindly Man asked her if she feared death? It's all about Stoneheart), and killing Freys (which never gets old) in the surrounds of Weirwood Central (God's Eye), a region infested with Westeros's biggest wolf pack lead by Arya's warg (that pulled LSH out of the trident); Lady Stoneheart is also playing fairy godmother for Brienne, bringing her back together with Jaime.

Because she is all about love, mother's love, true love, love of duty, love of family, love of honour.

What's not to love about LSH?

[BricksAndSparrows]

On 5/14/2017 at 5:48 PM, snow is the man said:

I never understood it. I don't hate her character or anything but I don't get how she seems like a fan favorite.

I think it's because she sorta personifies the vengeance we all believe the Stark's deserve. 

[Lord Wraith]

6 hours ago, BricksAndSparrows said:

I think it's because she sorta personifies the vengeance we all believe the Stark's deserve. 

Indeed, everyone is ready for the "shitstorm of Stark/Tully vengeance". A lot more innocent people are going to die along with the ones who actually had a role. I am sure many will be cheering this, I certainly won't be.

[Gargarax]

1 hour ago, Lord Wraith said:

Indeed, everyone is ready for the "shitstorm of Stark/Tully vengeance". A lot more innocent people are going to die along with the ones who actually had a role. I am sure many will be cheering this, I certainly won't be.

My hope is that Martin is much too clever to have it all end in sensless revenge. Until now, there have been very few acts of revenge that gave the reader a sense of poetic justice, and I don't think Martin will change that soon.

[Tai Pan]

On 5/15/2017 at 0:38 AM, snow is the man said:

I am a huge stark fan except for bran and sansa (bran is boring to me and everytime I think of sansa I think of her yelling at arya "stop your ruining everything" Of course I imagine part of the reason I don't particulary like lady stoneheart is I never like catelyn stark. Mostly do to how she could be extremly selfish and cruel to jon

That is actually one of the things I liked about Catelyn.  She knew how to put Jon in his place.  I know I'm letting my dislike for Jon influence my opinion of Catelyn but there it is.  

Catelyn was stubborn and messed up when she took Tyrion but Tywin would have done the same thing if someone tried to murder one of his children under his roof.  I blamed Cat at first but realized many of the great houses would have arrested Tyrion just the same.

[Luddagain]

Sorry to shock you but LS IS Catelyn Tully - her REAL self. Being reborn sort of brings to the front the deep persona. Beric was a noble if foolhardy  Catelyn is just a self centred woman.

I can think of NOTHING that essentially distinguishes her from Cersei, other than bonking her brother.

Both put their kids ahead of all others and are prepared to be cruel and murderous if necessary

Cersei - Robert's kids, Catelyn Ned's son. Because Robert was a fool and weak she could get away with murder. Catelyn was more passive but essentially was hoping for Jon's death via NW. If Ned had been a weak man Jon would have been packed off somewhere with poor food and  no care in the hope he would die as a small child.

Catelyn as LS was prepared to murder poor little Podrik - a boy of 12. Ned would NEVER have condoned this, nor even Dany for all her savagery.

Think on this. Rickard Karstark murdered two young squires (older than Podrik) and for this act of revenge, born of grief for his sons, Robb removes his head. Catelyn is prepared to murder Podrick for exactly the same reasons, but she has more sympathy that Karstark. why? Because she is a woman? Because she is a Stark? 

Catelyn committed an act of treason in releasing Jaime. There is no other word for it. 

Sure I can have sympathy for her in her grief, just as I have for Karstark, but I cannot pretend either is justified. I can forgive Arya her savage ways because she is a 10 year old child.  The other two are adults who should know better.

Catelyn's judgement and child rearing is just about as awful as Cersei's. She mishandles Sansa (spoiling her) and Arya (trying to manage by bullying - the feminine equivalent of Randall Tarley), neglecting Rickon in her guilt fueled grief for Bran, Neglecting BOTH Bran and Rickon in her desire to be  Riverland player in the war.  She trusts LF when she should not and her handling of Tyrion is nothing short of stupid - even more stupid then Brandon Stark.

While she showed some skill in arranging the Frey marriage it could be argued that she really did NOT know her son Robb well enough.

Lady Smallwood has lost her only son, but remained kind to Arya, not a vengeful demon.

 

[Luddagain]

Ian Dunross

Catelyn had NO business arresting Tyrion or at least she could have arrested him and taken him to KL for trial.  To do otherwise was stupid beyond measure.

No I do not get the Jon hate. Sure some might see him as boring and a bit of a trope, but hating him seems absurd. Other than being a bit whiny as a 14 year old when forced to leave his home and live in a cold cell with rapists and murderers (effectively sent to jail for the rest of his life) he is pretty decent. He is arrogant at first but not as much as say Wymar Royce, and listens and grasps what Noye says. He then makes amends.

It is hard NOT to have sympathy for any  child raised as a second class citizen in a big house, where  they are handled with injustice and unkindness. For Jon it is the treatment handed out by Catelyn, for Arya it is mostly Septa Morane but Catelyn a little. Sam Tarley his dad, Tyrion his dad.  If we ever met them I might feel sympathy for the Frey bastards, or little Joy Hill.  Even Jeyne Poole must have has a bit of a hard time being the second best to Sansa always.

[hiraeth]

On 15.5.2017. at 3:33 AM, Ian Dunross said:

Do you also notice that most who like LSH are very partial to the Starks?  They like her because in their eyes she is an instrument of revenge for the Starks.  I myself do not care for LSH.

I love all the Starks, but despise Cat and also LSH - in LSH she finally has the means and resources to show her true nature - she is partially the reason her children are not prepared for the GT, she was the one with great ambitions but without the intellectual capacity and strenght of character to support them, she is partly the reason for her children not knowing the traditions of the North and family history, not to mention the cruel and irrational behaviour to Jon. She was blind to LF's game, she was the one to persuade Ned to trust him, she did not see through LF's and Lysa's game to bring the Starks and Lannisters on collision course to F's sake benefit. And the ultimate blunder - letting Jaime go free... And now she is given a chance to further complicate things for everyone... Yuk... 

[Springwatch]

On 03/06/2017 at 9:38 PM, Ian Dunross said:

That is actually one of the things I liked about Catelyn.  She knew how to put Jon in his place.  I know I'm letting my dislike for Jon influence my opinion of Catelyn but there it is.  

That's a ... refreshing point of view. It's true Jon is better off than 99.9% of the inhabitants of Westeros, and he'd have been happier if he'd remembered that. No one sent him to the Wall, either - Ned would have set him up anywhere as anything he liked. So, yeah, he is a bit whingey.

On 03/06/2017 at 9:38 PM, Ian Dunross said:

Catelyn was stubborn and messed up when she took Tyrion but Tywin would have done the same thing if someone tried to murder one of his children under his roof.  I blamed Cat at first but realized many of the great houses would have arrested Tyrion just the same.

Cat did a brilliant job with Tyrion. Look at it from her point of view.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Tyrion to send one of his men on Cat's trail next day. Find a quiet spot and then shoot her in the back. Blame it on bandits. Easy, and impossible to defend against.

So Tyrion's got the means and the opportunity to murder her, but does he have a motive?

From her point of view, he does. There have been two attempts to murder Bran, and the murder weapon points to Tyrion. So she thinks she's meeting a killer who now knows she has made a really fast, emergency-style journey to Ned - the emergency being the attack on Bran, and the journey, of course, to bring evidence. A prudent murderer would have killed her before she caused any more trouble. She had to act.

That's what I love about Cat - she thinks for herself, and she acts. She has the power and she uses it. That's quite rare for a female character. Of course, motherhood makes her irrational, but we can't expect grrm to avoid all the tropes, can we?

Stoneheart isn't Cat - she's just that frozen moment in time when Cat was fighting to the death with her family's enemies. That's not enough humanity to be interesting.

[Lady bonehead]

Cat was a real actor when she was alive, but now she is strictly a symbol of a negative spiritual force (vengeance).  Even though this is a story about aristocrats almost exclusively, I strongly feel that the real actors here are the rank-and-file members of the BwB, and I hope to see them play a bigger role in WoW.

[Winter's Cold]

One word. Vengeance. That is what Lady Stoneheart represents. No more mercy to enemies of the Starks and Tullies. The only thing that awaits them is death. She has already taken out a couple of Freys and recaptured Jaime. I hope that she lives long enough to see the Freys, Lannisters and Boltons brought low.

[Lady bonehead]

38 minutes ago, Winter's Cold said:

One word. Vengeance. That is what Lady Stoneheart represents. No more mercy to enemies of the Starks and Tullies. The only thing that awaits them is death. She has already taken out a couple of Freys and recaptured Jaime. I hope that she lives long enough to see the Freys, Lannisters and Boltons brought low.

And then what? She can't "live" long enough to se anything because she isn't alive.  The real Cat released Jaime even though she hated his guts because she had more important things to think about than vengeance. UnCat doesn't have an actual plan because zombies don't think about the future. My point is that her followers need to realize this at some point.

[Jaime4Brienne]

I absolutely hate her and this is why: Because she hung Podrick. He was only around 12 at the time. I have a 13 year old son so I have a pretty good idea what a 12 year old would look/be like.I read upthread that Catelyn really loved her kids. Ho Ho is all I've got to say to that. I don't think leaving a four yr old and someone that is near death to run after your oldest child is a great mother, but I digress.

Anybody that murders a child/attempts to murder a child (one she knew had nothing to do with it, not to mention Hyle who also had nothing to do with it) Is just pure evil and I hope Brienne chops her head off ASAP.

Also...has anybody actually thought about what a body would be like after 3 days in the water? I don't even think it would be recognizable so when people say they want Sansa/Arya/Bran or any of her kids to meet up with her...I'm like "Seriously?"

[Jaime4Brienne]

On 5/16/2017 at 9:39 PM, BricksAndSparrows said:

I think it's because she sorta personifies the vengeance we all believe the Stark's deserve. 

We don't all believe it. I never liked the Starks (besides Ayra and I'm neutral on Bran) so could careless whether they get their vengeance or not.

[Danelle]

52 minutes ago, Jaime4Brienne said:

We don't all believe it. I never liked the Starks (besides Ayra and I'm neutral on Bran) so could careless whether they get their vengeance or not.

I like the Starks, well not all of them but Sansa and Jon I adore them, and yet I don't really like LS. Then again her arc is far from over and I will make up my mind about her in the next book when hopefully we will find out what she plans to do with Jaime and Brienne. Needless to say, I will loathe her if anything happens to Jaime and Brienne. 

[BricksAndSparrows]

10 hours ago, Jaime4Brienne said:

We don't all believe it. I never liked the Starks (besides Ayra and I'm neutral on Bran) so could careless whether they get their vengeance or not.

Yeah... I considered being a bit more careful with my choice of words, but "some people believe the Starks deserve," was a bit clumsy.

 

[The Mother of The Others]

Stoneheart seems to have made a decision and stuck with it.   Cat's previous problem was an overabundance of zig zag between "I'm warring with you!" and "Here's a peace offering that sabotages my war effort!"   So Stoneheart plugs that leaky heart issue at least.  Hello, Consistency.  (Uh oh, about to be a problem for everyone's favorite couple, though. So it's not her frozen mind i love so much as how the freys didn't get away with their crime.  Plus i love the potential of her giving us insight into how to have zombie armies of our own, if the right persons get to study her or expand their spell, etc.)

[Castellan]

On 17 May 2017 at 6:39 AM, BricksAndSparrows said:

I think it's because she sorta personifies the vengeance we all believe the Stark's deserve. 

Hmmm although I am a second generation atheist I think one good thing about Christianity is the rejection of that notion (revenge). Do you really think hanging every Lannister soldier you see is just?

I suppose some people and their acts are monstrous and require a response (I wish every character in the book would just stop whatever they are doing, unite to kill Ramsay, then go back to warfare) but LS is over the top.

[Lord Wraith]

6 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Stoneheart seems to have made a decision and stuck with it.   Cat's previous problem was an overabundance of zig zag between "I'm warring with you!" and "Here's a peace offering that sabotages my war effort!"   So Stoneheart plugs that leaky heart issue at least.  Hello, Consistency.  (Uh oh, about to be a problem for everyone's favorite couple, though. So it's not her frozen mind i love so much as how the freys didn't get away with their crime.  Plus i love the potential of her giving us insight into how to have zombie armies of our own, if the right persons get to study her or expand their spell, etc.)

This oh so much. Perfect example at Crossroad's Inn. Cat thinks it must not comes to war, goes downstairs captures Tyrion and starts the war. WTF?

7 minutes ago, Castellan said:

Hmmm although I am a second generation atheist I think one good thing about Christianity is the rejection of that notion (revenge). Do you really think hanging every Lannister soldier you see is just?

I suppose some people and their acts are monstrous and require a response (I wish every character in the book would just stop whatever they are doing, unite to kill Ramsay, then go back to warfare) but LS is over the top.

Just like the people who think all Frey's deserve to die just for being Frey's. They really don't. What about the good ones that held faith with Robb, or the ones who had nothing to do with the Red Wedding? Most people will cheer when we she more dead Frey's next book. Just kind of sad.