sweetsunray

No it's superfluous info for George's writing style. That's like arguing that MMDs ritual or what Rhaego looked like when he was born is too big a thing not to include. George gives us crumbs every step of the way to realize for ourselves why Arya came to the decision. Sam's accusations to Dareon inside the inn Saving Sam from drowning (because of Dareon's words and actions) her observations of Dareon in the time between Sam and her decision that night, which include his boasts of desertion, boasts about getting away with it him now lusting after the 14 year old daughter of the woman he wed The complete picture is that of a bad selfish pedo guy who doesn't give a damn about anybody. He's a handsome Chett without the boils Dareon loves to talk. He talked, every step of the way. She stopped him from talking any more bullshit. And here are the lines that condemned Dareon in Arya's eyes Don't know where you get the notion he was attacked from behind. His body was never found. And Arya never reports attacking him from behind, only slitting his throat. Think you imagined it.

To the first: She has watched and observed Dareon for a while, where he boasted about himself often enough. He wore his desertion like a proud peacock (literally) She walks with him and we don't actually witness the scene. For all we know she did have a talk with him. To the second: Are you saying it would be ok for you if she challenged him to a duel at the braavos' pond? To the third: I disagree that Arya believes it's wrong and that this is the reason why she rationalizes it within a legal frame. I do believe her judgment had more to do with him abandoning Sam and the people with Sam (she knows of this) to starve basically, at what sort of human he was. I very much doubt that Arya would have killed him, if he had helped Sam and then gone his own way. So, no, I don't think Arya believes it was wrong, but that the world and others expect a legal frame for her to go out of her way to murder a man she basically believes is an evil man and that the world is slightly better off without him. In the same sense, it's not just enough for Arya that the insurance guy is a religious/weird legal sanctioned assassination, but that she's only fine with it after the kindly man tells her that the insurance guy robs widows and orphans of their money, and leaves them to beg or starve. If the kindly man had not told her this, Arya would not have killed him. Initially it seems so, but the self-pity and self-empathy of anti-social people is as real as anyone else's. They just happen to lie about the circumstances. The realness of the self-pity doesn't make their stories true. In that sense, actions always speak louder than words. Dareon failed 100% the moment he believed he could get away with it.

I wasn't exactly arguing that it was "legal" in the eyes of either Westeros or Braavos, but in the mind of Ayra it was, who as a child chooses to kill to improve the lack of seeing justice done. To her he's a deserter. She would consider those vows as universal, because they speak of the "realms of men" and that implies "global". You're right she doesn't think she's a queen in the North, which is why I didn't include that possibilty in my original post you responded to, but I mentioned it, once you argued she's a child. And you're wrong that a child ruler cannot act without a regent or cannot order the execution of deserters or anyone else for that matter. Yes, in practice trials and regents make the decision for a child ruler, but nobody argued that Joffrey had no right to order someone killed or have their tongue taken out or beat a hostage girl. They did it. And everybody waves around papers saying "it has King Tommen's stamp" on it. So, apparently adults who should know better are either following the orders of a minor or relying on the orders of a child. None of them argue "the regent ordered it". Is the killing of Dareon a murder? Oh yes absolutely. And Joffrey's and Tommen's orders are executions. Somehow I have 0 issues with the murder of Dareon and a lot with most legal executions by the other two children, even though Tommen's a very sweet boy who is at heart innocent of it all. Which is I why I don't care so much about "the legal" part of the debate. It suffices for me to recognize that to Arya's mind she is using legal standards insofar she knows them to see justice done: a deserter, an apparent legal assassination, and an answered prayer. Is it effed up? Yes. Is it sad? It's heartbreaking. Is it "wrong"? It's wrong that a child grows up believing correctly that's the sole way to see justice done.

I think they could have, but they preferred to defer it to the nearest lord, which was the LP, since he was found in the hills near WF. And children can also be lords and ladies, and kings or ladies. For all we know, Robb appeased his mother with his will, and believing Arya dead, he added some caveat in his will of making Jon heir, that included Jon, and she may be Queen in the North for all we know. If Tommen can put his stamps on arrest warrants and execution orders happily, then Arya's at least choosing who dies herself and by a better standard. It's certainly implied, when Jon makes his attempt in aGoT as far as just beyond Mole's Town. Deserters are considered the most dangerous, exactly because they're outlawed and cannot trust or rely on anyone for shelter or food. People only are bound to survive in this manner if being seen is a risk to their lives. And "outlaw" literally means "outside the law". Braavos... you mean the city where braavos kill each other for fun at some pond? Where people go to pray in a temple if they want someone killed, and get their wish granted for a "price"?

Oh that Hizdahr doesn't know her and even after marrying her believes she'll eat those is not something I'll contest. Which is why he's an obvious patsy to me.

Cat mentions and interacts with Shadd a few times on their way south to Renly in aCoK. Descriptions or mannerisms of characters are usually established in a limited sense, depending on the POV. Cat tends to describe people by hair and stature or body type, especially if these features stand out. So, we know Wendel is the fattest man she ever saw with a mustache like a walrus, and Hallis is muscular and has a square brown beard. If Shadd had been a less than average height, Cat would have remarked on it.

Dareon... As far as Arya knows, he broke his vow to the Night's Watch, and this vow is not just about protecting Westeros, but protecting the realms of men, and as far as I remember, Braavos is one of those realms of men. Once he deserted from his vows to these realms, imo he's an outlaw in Braavos as much as he is in the North. You might disagree on whether it is justified to execute or kill deserters of the NW, especially if they never had a choice like Jon to ride away from the Wall to freedom before making any vows, but then that is a general discussion about that deserter rule, and not something to pick on Arya for. She does what any other Westerosi lord would do, even in Essos, if they came across a NW deserter. The killing of a NW deserter is not just something that solely a Lord or King Stark of Winterfell is allowed to do. Everybody is allowed to do so. Personally I do believe there should be far more nuance to it, but I cannot hold it against Arya yet that she basically executes that particular right, even in Braavos. Equally I don't feel sorry for Dareon. If he had chosen to help Sam, Aemon, Gilly and then decided to leave behind in Braavos, at the very least he would have helped the immediate people who were physically dependent on him to get on their way. But he could not even do that. For some reason, I lean towards this having carried more weight with Arya than the desertion alone. She saw someone who abandoned his friends in a strange city and who considered it an opportunity to desert, believing he could get away with it, not unlike the last surviving adults who abandoned her, Gendry, Weasel, Hot Pie and Lommy in the Riverlands to let them starve after the attack on the holdfast and Yoren got killed. On top of that he knows very well what wights and Others are. They're not grumkin stories anymore. His complete lack of basic humanity in relation to what he knows and the people he trained with, who helped him, etc, and how he ogled Lanna, the daughter of the Sailor's Wife makes me disbelieve the story he tells about it not being rape when he was caught with the lord's daughter. Him and Marillion sound like two peas in a pod. Dareon? There's your example of an anti-social personality.

Chaos and division was always aimed at creating support from Westerosi lords. In JonCon's chapter with the GC though we learn the GC was to meet up with the Dothraki, suggesting a united invasion. But Viserys was always supposed to be a patsy for Aegon, the man to lend more credence to the claim that Aegon is Rhaegar's son. If Doran had wed Arianne to the patsy Viserys, she would have been wed to an abuser who likely feels as much disdain for Dorne as he does for Dothraki, and end up in the thick of it when Aegon and Viserys end up fighting one another.

Not really. Not if the Dothraki and Viserys originally were meant to create chaos and destabilize Westeros for Aegon to swoop in and save the day. It just turned out that Westeros didn't need a Dothraki horde or a villainous Viserys to plummet into chaos.

I would say that people have a tendency to project their inner motivation onto other people. This is true for people who are motivated by empathy as much as people who are motivated by envy, greed, having power ... Littlefinger at heart believes that everyone can be corrupted, that all will act on envy, jealousy, greed, desire for power, revenge or self preserving survival. Not even Ned Stark or Catelyn disprove this for him: Ned chose to confess to treason (a lie). While Ned Stark did this to protect the lives of his daughters, Sansa and Arya, LF would interprete this act as - he just wants to live and survive. Cat never slept with LF, but LF believes she did; that he was her first. As a consequence he believes her wedding Ned was to be the Lady of WF and he cannot fathom that she loves Ned. He applies this projection onto Sansa as well, who initially as a young child wanted to be queen, supporting the awful heir over her family. LF would translate this as a deep secret lust for power. And he would expect that free and away from her family, she will be free to give into that. And since in his mind both Cat and Lysa were in love with him or lusted after him, he projects that onto Sansa as well. So, yes, he has a blind spot, but the blind spot is born from his view on humanity as a whole.

Loving to put his stamp on blank paper

Agreed. And I was not claiming we live in a just and fair world either. I solely referred to the society we readers live in with time to discuss fictional book characters and plots, which is not the whole world, and even our societies are not without injustices and real life harm, villains and systemic abuse. But if the means to seek justice and fairness of a society can be put on a scale, our societies (our meaning "the societies of readers") provides us with the most venues that are non-violent to seek justice and change.

And not only in a more peaceful world, but one where we feel society and institutions aim at dealing with criminals relatively just. Sure we may debate about the severity of punishments, and justice is not truly blind to color, financial means, etc, and innocent people do end up in prison for years, and some criminals get away with their crimes for years too. It is far from perfect. Nevertheless we live in a society where we not just have legal broad means to seek justice but also can protest or voice our anger if we believe something was unjust. Arya's first lesson south of the Neck is how unjust the kingdom is: the heir apparent wounding an untrained boy, using real steel against a real stick, then lying about it all, and the queen demanding the death of an innocent animal for it, the king agreeing to it, and the armless innocent smallfolk boy being cut into pieces by a killer on a horse. It's just absolutely weird imo that readers think of Arya a psychopath, when she's basically the character who feels the injustices of her society the keenest. Her emotional distress and anger over this is exactly how an empathic modern person would emotionally respond when seeing such injustice firsthand done to others. The manner in which she tries to do something about it, as either a vigilante or assassin, is disturbing, especially for her age and though not many would admit it, her gender, but she uses the means she believes she has at her disposal. She does not have three dragons or armies to enforce her justice nor to create new laws. She only has a needle.

Dany's been in Meereen long enough for anyone with eyes and ears at court would know she mostly eats fruit. Whenever she's asked what she wants for food, she asks for some type of fruit. Dany's a fructarian bat in Meereen so to speak. If the locusts were poisoned they were never meant to actually poison Dany whatsoever, because it would have been expected that Dany wouldn't eat them anyway. Instead then it would have been the intent to make Dany believe there was an assassination plot with poison.

Likewise

But it was him looking like Rhaegar that bedazzled her. While Taena and Aurane may have work together at times with the Tyrells, it would be as much a means to an end as it is with Cersei. To make it easier for Aegon to swoop in (though during aFfC, they would believe Dany would be part of the exile-team). As for the Tyrells: they killed Joffrey, not even allowing him even one night with Margaery. There's no way that Olenna would risk her granddaughter's physical safety or Loras's or their reputation.

Taena is an agent for Varys, because she informs Cersei about Olenna having a chest of Gardener gold coins, which was the coin discovered by Qyburn in Rugen's sleeping cell. But Rugen = Varys and so Varys planted the coin to make Cersei suspect the Tyrells. Cersei explicitly told Qyburn not to tell anyone else about the coin. Officially only Cerse and Qyburn knows, and of course Varys who planted the coin. Taena provding this info about Olenna's Gardener coins therefore was info dropped meant to make Cersei even more suspicious of the Tyrells. The Tyrells are not aware of Cersei's personal feelings towards Rhaegar. While it became obvious what Tywin hoped for when he brought Cersei to court, they are unaware she was infatuated with him. But Varys witnessed this, since he came to Aerys' court the same year as Cersei came to court. And it would be another 2 years before Rhaegar wed Elia.

There's the pale mare, which is dysenteria

Psychopathy is prevalent for 1%. That is not modern statistics. That has always been the case. Hare's definition and marker for psychopathy on his scale (having 30 out of 40) was chosen to fit the 1% marker. It's not new modern statistics that makes IQ of 100 a 50% prevalence. That's exactly what IQ 100 means. Same thing for the diagnosis of psychopathy. 50% of the population will score 0-4 out of 40 on Hare's scale. 1% will score 30 out of 40, and that 1% of the population. I think you're turning statistical prevalence on its head. 2/3 kids raised in an abusive home will statistically end up empathically okay, 1/3 will not. I've already mentioned that. While 1/3 is 6x higher than the general population, and thus nurture makes things worse, many of these 1/3 will have genetical risk factors. The research for the reverse is too early still to be conclusive evidence. We're talking less than 2 decades of such hypothesises and efforts made with ethical difficulties for control groups. Psychopathy is no more widespread in Westeros as it is in our world. But abusers, butchers and killers are rewarded with power in Westeros. Knighthood is an access for psychopaths to gain power. It is the same issue as why the prevalence of psychopathy is higher than 1% in our world in the financial world, politicians and CEOs than in the general population. Psychopaths crave power, and certain systems or environment reward them exactly because they're callous sharks. But no, Cersei, Viserys, Joffrey, Tywin, Aerion (not an heir, not an awful parent), and many others are not "the norm" for Westerosi nobility. If they were they wouldn't need to "mask" it or pretend to have clean hands. And I hesitate to consider most of them psychopaths anyway, even for an exercise. Sadistic narcissists may be worse than a non sadistic psychopath.

I agree. It seems to be two different locations. If Beric is inside the hill of High Heart, no need to go to the Peach, etc. And Jaime slept with his head on a weirwood stump too in the Riverlands.

It's ok. We learn from experiences and it's an honest mistake to make

I'm a layman with personal experience which took several years of trauma impact recovery, including delving deeply into the material that's out there. Although in a way, since then I simply cannot deal with stress anymore the same way as I used to before the relationshit (no typo). Since I knew his family and background - caring divorced parents who tried to both instill norms as well as provide emotionally and materially, siblings and cousins ok, middle class - I can only come to the conclusion it wasn't "nurture".

We do disagree. If it was purely on account of social structures then he wouldn't have siblings brought up in the same privilege almost contradict your stance, and in certain cases he made the problematic siblings the younger ones or part of the family that are not first in line to inherit.

I think the source of that cited sentence is actually the wikipedia, no? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy . In a way that wiki author sentence itself goes against wiki guidelines. It is the wiki author who refers to it as "highly subjective", which is basically his own opinion. And it reads as an overgeneralized interpretation from a wiki-author rather than a quote from Sadock, Sadock and Ruiz. Furthermore, the exaggerated generalized criticism by the wiki author stems mostly from certain criticism on Hare's PCL (which has been revized). The "criticism" section on the wiki page about psychopathy, quotes Dorothy Otnow Lewis, as having criticised Hare's PCL-R checklist, and her claims in that criticism are left without review. She claims for example that Hare claims psychopaths can be diagnozed purely based on their criminal files and without a personal interview. This is an outright lie, for Hare claims the opposite. Dorothy Otnow Lewis's expertise is on Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), what used to be called Multiple Personalty Disorder, which is a disorder that is far more under scrutiny than psychopathy. She compartmentalizes disorders or causes and misrepresents the checklist. Her high profile case testimony in trials leans to giving one individual various diagnosis simultaneously (comorbidity). Her own research is based on small samples without a control group. And in the Shawcross case her comorbid diagnosis and "expert" evidence was partially based on hypnosis. Basically we can throw Dorothy Otnow Lewis' criticism in the bin, and that includes her claim that "half of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist consists of symptoms of mania, hypomania, and frontal-lobe dysfunction, which frequently results in underlying disorders being dismissed" I don't know enough about Dr. Martens, but this article sort of made me puke (https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/hidden-suffering-psychopath). It sounds like Dr. Martens fell for the pity party of psychopaths, in which they excel. Most of their victims usually are deeply loving individuals trying to provide stability, love, understanding,etc... And it misrepresents the diagnosis, using a straw man (popular misconception) to knock down a serious effort. That said, yes, there is a risk of misusing the checklist and labeling people. But let's just say that psychopaths do not lack feeling sorry for themselves or self-empathy. They lack it for other people. The criticism section then uses findings of those diagnosed with ASPD and DID not lacking regret, but well, psychopathy is much narrower defined than ASPD and DID is questionable.

Now, the issue with a literary fictional work is that even if George writes a character with a particular disorder or personality in mind, he does this from his laymen perspective, no matter how well he does it. And most readers, even well informed or experienced readers, are also laymen. In that sense labeling a fictional character with a medical diagnosis seems beside the point. What we do have for certain adult characters are references to certain behaviors or issues that were in evidence at a young age: Petyr Baelish as a mischievous boy play-acting contrite in Cat's memory, Selmy thinking of Viserys as problematic as a child even, and Joffrey as a minor cutting up a cat and bullying his siblings, Cersei chucking her friend in a well over Jaime, and other examples in Dunk and Egg or Fire & Blood (Aerion, ...). These are all characters who displayed harmful behavior towards siblings and other innocent people or animals at a very young developing age and this behavior did not improve as either a teen or an adult. George therefore is deliberately making them out to have been villains in the making from a very young age. You may disagree or agree whether this is true in reality or not, but the text is pretty clear in that regard on those characters.