Is Brienne of Tarth morally grey?

[Stormking902]

GRRM has created a story where even the bad guys have good qualities and good guys have some bad qualities thats what makes Asoiaf so awesome IMO, so what is Briennes bad qualties if any.?

Also since she is Lord Tarth heir what is in the future for Brienne will she become Lady of Tarth or KG perhaps?? 

[Philokles]

She supports a usurper with no reasonable explanation of why he should come ahead of his brother, because she fancies him.

[Nevets]

55 minutes ago, Horse of Kent said:

She supports a usurper with no reasonable explanation of why he should come ahead of his brother, because she fancies him.

She had a lot of good company in that decision.  Plus, he was her liege lord.  I'm sure something will come up, probably to do with Jaime, that will cause her to morally compromise.

[Ser Petyr Parker]

11 minutes ago, Nevets said:

She had a lot of good company in that decision.  Plus, he was her liege lord.  I'm sure something will come up, probably to do with Jaime, that will cause her to morally compromise.

Like selling him out to Lady Stoneheart?

[thehandwipes]

What's with all the "Is this or that Morally Grey" threads in this forum right now?  It seems like someone's trying to make a point, but what?

Brienne is certainly one of the most virtuous people in our story, but still, she did pledge herself to a usurper.  And its likely she will soon face the Jaime Dilemma in the shape of Jaime himself as she must make a choice with no clearly marked virtuous path.

[TMIFairy]

1 hour ago, Horse of Kent said:

She supports a usurper with no reasonable explanation of why he should come ahead of his brother, because she fancies him.

As others have said - this can be constructed as following her Liege Lord. And if her Lord Father had opted for Renly, then she would be wrong to follow Stannis.

If Renly is breaking vows/customs than the shame is on him (or Lord Tarth), not her.

As to the OP - unless there are some close relatives who could assume the lordship in a non-contested manner, than her becoming KG would be shriking her Duty - to her Liege (whoever that might be at that time), her House, her Bannermen and Smallfolk. It would be abandoning her fief to anarchy.

[DominusNovus]

I can't fault her for following Renly if her father did, as well. Even Stannis wouldn't be able to, having himself sided with his family and liege lord over his rightful king.

On the other hand, in Stannis' case, the rightful king had demanded the desth of Stannis' brother, without a remotely just cause. Stannis gave no such 'out' aside from being unpopular.

On the third hand, that simply means that, absent evidence of incest, Brienne should be loyal to Joffrey.

[Clegane'sPup]

6 hours ago, thehandwipes said:

What's with all the "Is this or that Morally Grey" threads in this forum right now?  It seems like someone's trying to make a point, but what?

That is a good question and I would really be interested in reading peoples remarks about what the point is with this entire morally grey BS.

Brienne has a unique role in the never ending story and it has to do with her father. The way read it is that Brienne’s story goes against the stereotypes of what females are “supposed to be.”

Her father eventually allowed Brienne to be Brienne. Problem is she the daughter of Lord of Evenfall. Brienne was in a sense protected from reality. It is not until she ventures out into the world of Westeros that she has her rude awakening. Brienne believed in all that is good and honorable. She was innocent of the ugliness of the world.

I don’t know where Martin is going to take her story. If she survives her Jaime & LSH ordeal I hope she goes home.

As a side note --- Brienne did not fight the Hound. Brienne ended up in a pit fighting a bear while wearing a pink dress trying to kill the bear with a blunted sword until Jaime saved her with the help of some of Bolton’s men.

If anyone cares to look at some of Brienne’s thoughts as written by the author --- they are in the reveal tab.
 

Spoiler

A Feast for Crows - Brienne II     Her hand went to her sword hilt, and she found herself wondering if Ser Shadrich would think her easy prey just because she was a woman. Lord Grandison's castellan had once made that error. Humfrey Wagstaff was his name; a proud old man of five-and-sixty, with a nose like a hawk and a spotted head. The day they were betrothed, he warned Brienne that he would expect her to be a proper woman once they'd wed. "I will not have my lady wife cavorting about in man's mail. On this you shall obey me, lest I be forced to chastise you."

She was sixteen and no stranger to a sword, but still shy despite her prowess in the yard. Yet somehow she had found the courage to tell Ser Humfrey that she would accept chastisement only from a man who could outfight her. The old knight purpled, but agreed to don his own armor to teach her a woman's proper place. They fought with blunted tourney weapons, so Brienne's mace had no spikes. She broke Ser Humfrey's collarbone, two ribs, and their betrothal. He was her third prospective husband, and her last. Her father did not insist again.

A Feast for Crows - Brienne IV      Brienne curled up beneath her cloak, with Podrick yawning at her side. I was not always wary, she might have shouted down at Crabb. When I was a little girl I believed that all men were as noble as my father. Even the men who told her what a pretty girl she was, how tall and bright and clever, how graceful when she danced. It was Septa Roelle who had lifted the scales from her eyes. "They only say those things to win your lord father's favor," the woman had said. "You'll find truth in your looking glass, not on the tongues of men." It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead at Harrenhal when Ser Hyle and his friends had played their game. A maid has to be mistrustful in this world, or she will not be a maid for long, she was thinking, as the rain began to fall.

In the mêlée at Bitterbridge she had sought out her suitors and battered them one by one, Farrow and Ambrose and Bushy, Mark Mullendore and Raymond Nayland and Will the Stork. She had ridden over Harry Sawyer and broken Robin Potter's helm, giving him a nasty scar. And when the last of them had fallen, the Mother had delivered Connington to her. This time Ser Ronnet held a sword and not a rose. Every blow she dealt him was sweeter than a kiss.

A Feast for Crows - Brienne VI      Go home, child. You have a home, which is more than many can say in these dark days. You have a noble father who must surely love you. Consider his grief if you should never return. Perhaps they will bring your sword and shield to him, after you have fallen. Perhaps he will even hang them in his hall and look on them with pride . . . but if you were to ask him, I know he would tell you that he would sooner have a living daughter than a shattered shield."

"A daughter." Brienne's eyes filled with tears. "He deserves that. A daughter who could sing to him and grace his hall and bear him grandsons. He deserves a son too, a strong and gallant son to bring honor to his name. Galladon drowned when I was four and he was eight, though, and Alysanne and Arianne died still in the cradle. I am the only child the gods let him keep. The freakish one, not fit to be a son or daughter." All of it came pouring out of Brienne then, like black blood from a wound; the betrayals and betrothals, Red Ronnet and his rose, Lord Renly dancing with her, the wager for her maidenhead, the bitter tears she shed the night her king wed Margaery Tyrell, the mêlée at Bitterbridge, the rainbow cloak that she had been so proud of, the shadow in the king's pavilion, Renly dying in her arms, Riverrun and Lady Catelyn, the voyage down the Trident, dueling Jaime in the woods, the Bloody Mummers, Jaime crying "Sapphires," Jaime in the tub at Harrenhal with steam rising from his body, the taste of Vargo Hoat's blood when she bit down on his ear, the bear pit, Jaime leaping down onto the sand, the long ride to King's Landing, Sansa Stark, the vow she'd sworn to Jaime, the vow she'd sworn to Lady Catelyn, Oathkeeper, Duskendale, Maidenpool, Nimble Dick and Crackclaw and the Whispers, the men she'd killed . . .

A Feast for Crows - Brienne VII     They had come to the crossroads, quite literally; the place where the kingsroad, the river road, and the high road all came together. The high road would take them east through the mountains to the Vale of Arryn, where Lady Sansa's aunt had ruled until her death. West ran the river road, which followed the course of the Red Fork to Riverrun and Sansa's great-uncle, who was besieged but still alive. Or they could ride the kingsroad north, past the Twins and through the Neck with its bogs and marshes. If she could find a way past Moat Cailin and whoever held it now, the kingsroad would bring them all the way to Winterfell.

Or I could take the kingsroad south, Brienne thought. I could slink back to King's Landing, confess my failure to Ser Jaime, give him back his sword, and find a ship to carry me home to Tarth, as the Elder Brother urged. The thought was a bitter one, yet there was part of her that yearned for Evenfall and her father, and another part that wondered if Jaime would comfort her should she weep upon his shoulder. That was what men wanted, wasn't it? Soft helpless women that they needed to protect?

A Feast for Crows - Brienne VIII       When it was time to mount again, they yanked a leather hood down over her face. There were no eyeholes. The leather muffled the sounds around her. The taste of onions lingered on her tongue, sharp as the knowledge of her failure. They mean to hang me. She thought of Jaime, of Sansa, of her father back on Tarth, and was glad for the hood. It helped hide the tears welling in her eyes. From time to time she heard the outlaws talking, but she could not make out their words. After a while she gave herself up to weariness and the slow, steady motion of her horse.

This time she dreamed that she was home again, at Evenfall. Through the tall arched windows of her lord father's hall she could see the sun just going down. I was safe here. I was safe.

[GyantSpyder]

Knights in the story are always "morally grey" in the sense of not being perfect, because they give up their agency when they swear their sword. You can't be a uniformly, universally good person if you don't take a critical responsibility for your own choices, especially if one common choice you make is to kill people.

Where we are in the story right now in the books, Brienne appears to have made a critical decision because of a promise she has made to somebody who probably doesn't deserve her loyalty. We haven't yet seen the consequences of it, but there will be consequences.

But it is a question of degree. The story isn't really about "morally grey" people - it's about how some actions are good and others are bad, and people do both. People aren't grey like clouds or mist, morally nebulous, they are white and black, like half-rotten onions. They have good parts and bad parts.

[Therae]

Brienne, I think, starts out believing that moral purity is actually possible, and has it herself because she was not confronted with any decisions that lacked, for her, an obvious right course of action. As a result, she's pretty quick to judge others for their "betrayals," and to believe that a bad act means a bad person. We see many, if not most, of the major characters struggling with some variation on the theme of what is the most right thing to do in a given situation; we see Brienne struggling to learn that this is the case for pretty much everyone, and her turn is happening right where we left her, since she has to make a choice between betraying the oath she made to Cat Stark, even though she knows that unCat is very obviously demanding something totally unfair based on a.completely false premise, leading Jaime to a punishment she knows he doesn't deserve, or allowing Pod and Ser Hyle, who are innocent, to die along with her if she refuses to choose. Basically, she's got her own scaled-down version of Jaime's situation with Aerys.

i wouldn't call her morally grey, but up till her road trip with Jaime, I would say she suffered from an over abundance of righteous idealism (it has been said that genuine saints are difficult people to be near), but she's coming around and learning for herself that when it really counts, the choice tends to be which kind of wrong is the least bad. In her case, she needs a few specks of grey (and I submit that she will never have more than the absolute minimum of non-white) to grow.

[TMIFairy]

As to Brienne's idealism - Clegane's Pup is IMO correct in pointing out that she comes from a background of privilege and was about as aware of "real life" as Sansa or Jon Snow had been at the onset of their "journeys".

And she is a freaking teenager! She may be She-HulkTM but she was 19 (maybe still 18) when she became a Rainbow Guard. She is now around her 20th nameday ...

Those of us here who are cynical middle agers please think back to the shit you believed at 20.

Those of you who are not simply listen to your elders - and get ready to bolt once we begin talking about the times when texting involved chiseling words out on stone slates ...

 

[Clegane'sPup]

14 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

It is strange that nobody remembers the actual vow, symbolized by the word "sword", that Stoneheart demanded of her.

There is this marvelous search site that can be used to provide support for a persons ideas if the person is so inclined to do so.

https://asearchoficeandfire.com/

 

[Nihlus]

She's sort of a doofus who worships the last person who was nice to her. 

[Clegane'sPup]

7 minutes ago, Nihlus said:

She's sort of a doofus who worships the last person who was nice to her. 

I like this. Clean, simple and to the point.

[Clegane'sPup]

15 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

Yet try as I might, I cannot find the part where Lady Stoneheart orders Brienne to take the rope, tie up the kingslayer, and bring him to me.   But everyone seems to assume that was one of the options.

Is this what you are speaking of? The man with the Hound helmet is not Sandor. This FFC chapter is Brienne’s last FFC chapter.  She has no DwD chapters and Jaime has one chapter in DwD.

A Feast for Crows - Brienne VIII   The Hound snatched the end of the rope from the man holding it. "Let's see if she can dance," he said, and gave a yank.   Brienne felt the hemp constricting, digging into her skin, jerking her chin upward. Ser Hyle was cursing them eloquently, but not the boy. Podrick never lifted his eyes, not even when his feet were jerked up off the ground. If this is another dream, it is time for me to awaken. If this is real, it is time for me to die. All she could see was Podrick, the noose around his thin neck, his legs twitching. Her mouth opened. Pod was kicking, choking, dying. Brienne sucked the air in desperately, even as the rope was strangling her. Nothing had ever hurt so much.     She screamed a word.

A Dance with Dragons - Jaime I     He posted sentries to see that no one left the confines of the village. He sent out scouts as well, to make certain no enemy took them unawares. It was near midnight when two came riding back with a woman they had taken captive. "She rode up bold as you please, m'lord, demanding words with you."    Jaime scrambled to his feet. "My lady. I had not thought to see you again so soon." Gods be good, she looks ten years older than when I saw her last. And what's happened to her face? "That bandage … you've been wounded …"   "A bite." She touched the hilt of her sword, the sword that he had given her. Oathkeeper. "My lord, you gave me a quest."

 

[Clegane'sPup]

5 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

No.

Cool.

[Lady Blizzardborn]

Brienne's biggest fault (and it's a very human one) is allowing her emotions to cloud her judgment. As a Kingsguard her job was to protect Renly, not to avenge him. It's only because she loved Renly that she vowed to hunt Stannis down and kill him. She's also lost any kind of objectivity where Jaime is concerned. 

Still she's one of the lightest grey characters in the series. She doesn't mean anyone any harm unless she fully believes--always with some justification--that they totally deserve it. 

3 hours ago, Clegane'sPup said:

That is a good question and I would really be interested in reading peoples remarks about what the point is with this entire morally grey BS.

We've pretty much discussed everything else there is to discuss in the series, haven't we? It's getting difficult to find new angles and ideas. Gotta pass the time somehow. 

[Clegane'sPup]

31 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Brienne's biggest fault (and it's a very human one) is allowing her emotions to cloud her judgment. As a Kingsguard her job was to protect Renly, not to avenge him. It's only because she loved Renly that she vowed to hunt Stannis down and kill him. She's also lost any kind of objectivity where Jaime is concerned. 

I have no comment unless you provide textual context. Patience and practice leads me to intellect over emotion.

32 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

Still she's one of the lightest grey characters in the series. She doesn't mean anyone any harm unless she fully believes--always with some justification--that they totally deserve it. 

That last part about justification and passing judgement kinda resonates with me. I guess that makes me morally grey or is that gray?

34 minutes ago, Lady Blizzardborn said:

We've pretty much discussed everything else there is to discuss in the series, haven't we? It's getting difficult to find new angles and ideas. Gotta pass the time somehow. 

If you say so. I can rationalize anything i want to.

[Curled Finger]

Brienne is quite a character. She shines in a story so filled with Joffreys, Vargo Hoats and Ramsay Boltons.  She's not perfect, but her short comings are actually part of her charm.   No, I don't think she's morally grey.   Her moral code is sterling--mostly because it hasn't really been tested at levels that matter supremely.   This agreeing to go for Jamie to free Pod and to a lesser degree, Hyle Hunt, prove that her heart is in the right place.   She will defend and protect her little 12 year-old boy.  I expect the 1st words in her POV to be along the lines of "...bought a temporary reprieve for her companions.   But what could she do?   Jamie would know what to do..."  She agrees to this "betrayal of Jamie" because she absolutely trusts he will figure a way out of it.   Brienne ain't doing nothing of her own volition against Jamie.   The worst I can say about Brienne is that she's innocent of much of the evil in the world.   But she's learning and learning well.  I hope that Brienne will be permitted to maintain her higher moral ground in the story.    I love a really good character being allowed to stay really good.   

The term and new catch phrase, "morally grey" is a thing now.    I use the term "human" in its stead because I think it explains the idea more succinctly.   I fail to understand why X character or X character gets called out on this carpet unless the newer or younger readers are just trying to define a character that obviously doesn't fit the morally grey theme--Brienne, Sam and Davos. Hard to be a good guy in a story like this.   

[The Fattest Leech]

1 hour ago, Curled Finger said:

Brienne is quite a character. She shines in a story so filled with Joffreys, Vargo Hoats and Ramsay Boltons.  She's not perfect, but her short comings are actually part of her charm.   No, I don't think she's morally grey.   Her moral code is sterling--mostly because it hasn't really been tested at levels that matter supremely.   This agreeing to go for Jamie to free Pod and to a lesser degree, Hyle Hunt, prove that her heart is in the right place.   She will defend and protect her little 12 year-old boy.  I expect the 1st words in her POV to be along the lines of "...bought a temporary reprieve for her companions.   But what could she do?   Jamie would know what to do..."  She agrees to this "betrayal of Jamie" because she absolutely trusts he will figure a way out of it.   Brienne ain't doing nothing of her own volition against Jamie.   The worst I can say about Brienne is that she's innocent of much of the evil in the world.   But she's learning and learning well.  I hope that Brienne will be permitted to maintain her higher moral ground in the story.    I love a really good character being allowed to stay really good.   

Yes, yes, yes to Brienne. Especially the bolded.

1 hour ago, Curled Finger said:

The term and new catch phrase, "morally grey" is a thing now.    I use the term "human" in its stead because I think it explains the idea more succinctly.   I fail to understand why X character or X character gets called out on this carpet unless the newer or younger readers are just trying to define a character that obviously doesn't fit the morally grey theme--Brienne, Sam and Davos. Hard to be a good guy in a story like this.   

I am thinking this is based on George using similar verbiage about his characters and fans wanting to stick with that. Just a guess and I could be wrong   However, I think George may be tricking himself with how "grey" he makes his characters. Some are very clear cut good or bad. Having dogs does not a saint make.