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Was Rattleshirt so bad?


mankytoes

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Rattleshirt, The Lord of Bones, is "Treacherous and bloodthirsty", Jon Snow tells us. "If there’s honor in him, he hides it down beneath his suit of bones". But does he actually do anything to deserve this reputation? He thinks Jon can't be trusted, which he's 100% correct about. Then he appears to bravely sacrifice himself posing as Mance- ok he breaks down at the end, but I think that's pretty reasonable, at the thought of being burnt alive. This seems a good example of POV bias, we see him through Jon's eyes, so we see a villain, but really he appears quite a decent guy. Or am I missing something?


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Rattleshirt, The Lord of Bones, is "Treacherous and bloodthirsty", Jon Snow tells us. "If there’s honor in him, he hides it down beneath his suit of bones". But does he actually do anything to deserve this reputation? He thinks Jon can't be trusted, which he's 100% correct about. Then he appears to bravely sacrifice himself posing as Mance- ok he breaks down at the end, but I think that's pretty reasonable, at the thought of being burnt alive. This seems a good example of POV bias, we see him through Jon's eyes, so we see a villain, but really he appears quite a decent guy. Or am I missing something?

The guy is wearing a suit of bones made out of people- I think that pretty much answers your question conclusively about whether he is a decent person.

Rattleshirt doesn't bravely sacrifice himself at all. He spends the whole chapter crying and screaming that he's not Mance.

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He wears human remains as clothing!

But in all seriousness, I think that Rattleshirt is (at worst) kind of a jerk.

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Or, you know, a rapist and a murderer.

There's no reference in the book to him raping anyone. If you're just assuming that all wildlings are rapists, than that is a bit racist.

As for the murderer part, the only people we've seen him kill are enemy combatants.

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There's no reference in the book to him raping anyone. If you're just assuming that all wildlings are rapists, than that is a bit racist.

As for the murderer part, the only people we've seen him kill are enemy combatants.

Nope. Just the raiders. A tiny minority actually raiding the North, murdering anybody that could pose a threat to them, raping the women, sometimes murdering them as well, and carrying off the loot.

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I'm pretty sure rattle shirt is a murdering rapist who wears the bones of his fallen enemies and whatever other bones he finds. Not the misunderstood victim of wildling stereotyping that many of you seem to hope him to be. I'm pretty sure he had a reputation before jon ever met him.

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