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Anyone else wish Penny didn't exist?


Abdallah

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Pennys entire purpose in ASOIAF is the help be the Catalyst to show Tyrions inner turmoil with himself.  He just killed his father, his brother he grown to loathe helped him escape.  He's leaving his land as a criminal.  He's married to Sansa, who he seems to genuinely respect (and maybe care for?)....and now he's on a boat, drunk, and no idea and/or clue what to do next.  Pennys status and situation is/was used to help humble Tyrion and start his character turn.  She served a purpose in the novels...even though she sucked as a character.  But I do see why GRRM added her into the story.

It's very similar to how Brienne was used in Jaimes story arc.  Brienne was the catalyst to start Jaimes turn from being viewed as a heartless, arrogant prick and into a more humanized, caring, and gray character.  And this was achieved through him dealing with Brienne.  Now it's Tyrions turn, and this time, being changed through Penny.

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Ehh, but Brienne is so much more than a morality pet for Jaime.  She's a pre existing character with her own interesting set of contradicting issues and life goals.  Penny is a young woman who's only goal is to live as boring a life as possible.  

And personally I think that Jorah was a much more interesting catalyst for Tyrion as he has prexisting backstory and goals.  He is also a "broken thing" at this point - but Tyrion refuses to empathize with him (consciously) because he's not the "right kind" of vulnerable.  Yet he does help him, repeatedly, and even he doesn't know why.  I just don see what Penny offered that was more interesting. 

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I just remember that there was a minor incident when Penny talked alone with someone (some woman?) and helped the team to move along. I believe that she may have more of an agenda than we believe. She might be someone's agent or spy. Varys'? Littlefinger's? (hell, he hired her and her brother - do we even have a proof that he is really dead?) As someone said here, Penny is an actress, for all we know she might be playing Tyrion to some degree.
 

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As already pointed out, Penny plays an important role in Tyrion's character arc, a role which needed to be filled by someone. If Penny did not exist, some other character would have been created in her stead, and we have no way of knowing what sort of character he or she would have been. 

Also, it is important to remember we are only seeing Penny through Tyrion's eyes; Penny us annoying to the reader because Penny is annoying to Tyrion. We may view Penny differently if we see her from another's perspective. 

 

Slightly off topic, but the mentions of Groat made me think about it. I'm a little surprised Tywin allowed the jousting dwarves at all, since Tyrion's dwarfishness is such an affront to Tywin, and their presence only called more attention to Tyrion. 

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5 hours ago, Seams said:

</snip>I also suspect that GRRM wants us to dislike Penny for her apparent whiny weakness and her unattractiveness, even to Tyrion with his missing nose. He wants us to underestimate her because characters we don't suspect are important provide the best plot twists.

@Seams you might be right.

But GRRM could have made her a likeable character, or a strong character, if he wanted to. She has already caught Baelish in a lie (Oswell at Pentos) although one that we, rather than Tyrion, pick up on. He feels a compulsive desire to tell Jaime and Penny and whomever listens to him long enough that he murdered Joffrey, then despise them all for 'accusing him of being a dwarf', but he has not the slightest interest in the wedding arrangements for the Purple Wedding, or who might actually have murdered Joffrey, or how.

On the other hand, there is a strong "just like a dwarf - only female!" aspect to Penny's character. And GRRM's female and differently-able characters all have something a little off in their internal characterisation (how they think, and see themselves) - women and cripples are always extremely influenced by the implacable external male gaze of the patriarchal society they live in, not just in ways that are fair enough, but also in ways that make them somewhat less believable than the normally-abled male characters, and quite unlike historical people in real life.

For instance, the women of Westeros really get off on appallingly bad sex, and the lesbians of Westeros enjoy a bit of sausage almost as much as the gays of Westeros do (and treat the charms of the women who attempt to serve them with almost as much notorious indifference).

And, like differently-able Westerosi, the most important thing is what some random stranger/ subject/ underling must think of you. Which makes every differently-able person thin-skinned, and self-pitying about whatever their point of difference is. Unless they are a half-wit, in which case they are too stupid to notice.

Or if they are too fat to sit a horse - both men and women of comfortable girth take outright, to-your-face nastiness with easy indifference, and get on with life regardless, while cripples and dwarves are on the alert for any sign of pity/horror/ ignorance/ patronage/ misplaced compassion that they can be insulted by, and whine or are vexed about being unable to do things they obviously can do or work around (eg. Bran, after accident, no longer ties his own bootlaces, even though he still has the long torso and short legs of an eight year old, the full use of his hands, and the same spacial-problem-solving skills he used to climb with. He can't stand to watch the Walders at the quintain, now he can never be a knight,  even though he has a specially trained horse with four good legs. When he was a normal boy, he wouldn't listen to Maester Luwin  - not even the object lesson of the clay doll convinced him that he might fall and be harmed. Also, quite odd that he fell from that height and landed feet first - gravity in the real world would have caved in his chest or skull. And odd the coma and the amnesia, when there seems to be no head injuries. )

I know dwarfism isn't a disability, any more than being a giant or too fat for one's amour. But in Westeros, being too fat to sit a horse isn't a disability, even when that is the primary form of transport. Being a giant is more like belonging to an uncomfortably sub-human race (ie. they can breed with humans, but they are not as smart, have a different phrenology, pelt-like body hair, can't digest meat.) 

Dwarfs have the same "there when it suits the narrative, and gone when its not" quality of the disabled of Westeros, they provoke the same horror in others, and are consumed by the same self-pity, the same all-defining impotence as the man that losing a limb, or a tongue, or the ugly maids of Westeros.

So, even though it is very likely GRRM has deliberately made Penny unlikeable, it is also very possible he has done so for reasons that will only make me like her less.  And even if she turns out to be an extremely underestimated and sensational device for a plot twist, I don't think she can escape the way Tyrion has defined her existance, and become a person in her own right. 

Arya or Brienne type characters (Penny is a member of a sellsword company, hence I'm thinking some kind of warrior-woman character) have spent some time outside the PoV of the characters they exist to serve in feminine contrast to. It's not like Brienne defeated Jaime at the tourney of Bitterbridge, or became his squire, has never even been noticed by another point of view character, let alone have her own point of view.

Not that I want Penny to have her own PoV. Or maybe that is the twist- Penny is really a figment of Tyrion's imagination brought on by DT's, the dwarf's Penny, that complex relationship he has had with women and money,  a sign that he has totally dissociated from his feminine side since killing Shae, an outlet for the love for performing, tumbling, putting on a show, he has had to suppress in order to hide and survive. Or maybe I just wish she never existed.

Usually I'm a fan of equal casting and diversity in casting, especially of background characters, but the highlight of The Lion and the Rose for me was seeing those five male dwarves run out. I see it as one thing the show did better.

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But Penny, who wasn't born into wealth and nobility like Tyrion and didn't have his outstanding intellect, was defined as a 'dwarf girl' by the entire society. She is taught to keep her head down and not annoy 'tall people', she internalized the view of herself as something 'less' than an average person (and that's part of why Tyrion is so annoyed by her). So it makes sense that her most visible characteristic, to the outside world and to Tyrion form whose POV we see her, is being a dwarf girl with no self-esteem.

Besides, she is no Tyrion, but I'm not sure if she's the most flat character around here. She's just  more carefully  looked at by the readers and judged if she is 'sufficiently' fleshed up, since she is the only female dwarf in the story.

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22 minutes ago, Tianzi said:

But Penny, who wasn't born into wealth and nobility like Tyrion and didn't have his outstanding intellect, was defined as a 'dwarf girl' by the entire society. She is taught to keep her head down and not annoy 'tall people', she internalized the view of herself as something 'less' than an average person (and that's part of why Tyrion is so annoyed by her). So it makes sense that her most visible characteristic, to the outside world and to Tyrion form whose POV we see her, is being a dwarf girl with no self-esteem.

Besides, she is no Tyrion, but I'm not sure if she's the most flat character around here. She's just  more carefully  looked at by the readers and judged if she is 'sufficiently' fleshed up, since she is the only female dwarf in the story.

I interpreted Penny's sense of self-esteem differently. She fondly recalls a father who taught her to capitalize on her stature; to put it to use in the family act. She is not taught to avoid annoying tall people, she is taught to make big people laugh. So she uses her wit as well as her physical characteristics to make a living.

When we see her, she is grieving for her brother, and she holds Tyrion responsible for her brother's death, but she is carrying on with her life and figuring out how to keep the act going - which causes her to zero in on Tyrion as one of the few people around who still had his head and can wear the wooden armor. Pretty resourceful of her. AND she manages to talk him into joining the act, even though it's the last thing that Tyrion would ever be willing to do. He does it because she persuades him that it is the best way to survive the voyage with the menacing crew members. So she is not a pathetic lost soul, I think, but a canny survivor who knows how to get what she wants.

For what it's worth, I spotted one of GRRM's word games involving Penny's brother, Groat, and Vargo Hoat. While Groat is a victim in the Game of Thrones, I suspect Penny will surprise us by showing her survival skills, perhaps "changing the rules" of the Game of Thrones. (I admit, though, mentor figures such as Jeor Mormont and Maester Luwin tend to teach their lessons to a hero and then they die. So Penny may exit the story in a similar way, once Tyrion has learned what he needs to learn from her.)

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I just had an omg moment. So glad this thread reopened the Penny topic, because I had spent quite a lot of time trying to sort out her purpose a couple or three months ago, and I couldn't quite figure her out.

Here is the money quote that I thought might indicate that Penny has a couple of elephants waiting for her at home:

... “It was Father’s idea to do the tilts. He even trained the first pig, but by then he was too sick to ride her, so Oppo took his place. I always rode the dog. We performed for the Sealord of Braavos once, and he laughed so hard that afterward he gave each of us a … a grand gift.” [ADwD]

As with many conversations between Tyrion and Penny, he changes the subject or finishes her thought for her without waiting to hear what she might have to say.

My omg thought here is the the Sealord of Braavos might have given Penny and her brother dragon eggs. Other little hints add up to this: in a nearby chapter, Prince Doran Martell casually mentions that it would be relatively easy to hide a young dragon on a cog. Tyrion and Penny are passengers on a cog. Moqorro talks about young dragons and old: he's not talking about Aerys or Rhaegar and Danaerys; he's talking about Dany's dragons being old and Penny's dragons being young. (I assume they aren't hatched yet?) When they play cyvasse, Penny tries to make the elephants "fly," and Tyrion has to remind her that only dragons fly. With his expertise on dragons, Tyrion will be able to teach Penny how to ride her dragon and how to care for it.

When Tyrion arrives in Essos, he is hidden in a wine barrel. I've always assumed, when he emerges from the barrel, this symbolic rebirth is a hatching: Tyrion is like a dragon emerging from an egg. But it puzzled me that the cracking of the hull of the Selasori Qhoran as the storm ends is also like the cracking of an egg. If there are two dragon eggs, that would explain why there are two "hatchings" in Tyrion's arc - the second one is Penny.

(The following comment is hidden because it partially reveals a key plot point in the Dunk & Egg story, "The Mystery Knight." Don't reveal the contents if you intend to read that story.)

 

 

I was also thinking that the resolution involving a troupe of mummer dwarfs enlisted to help Bloodraven in the Dunk & Egg story is further support for this theory. I don't want to give away too much, but there is a connection between the dragon's egg and the dwarf in that story, which might be a hint for us here.

 

What do you want to bet that Tyrion names his dragon Brightroar?

Another thought: Qyburn is making a headless super-champion for Cersei, using the body of Gregor Clegane. Penny's brother, Oppo or Groat, has been beheaded but Tyrion soon puts on his armor and helmet. I don't know if a David and Goliath showdown is in the works, or if the headless knight scenario will remain a symbolic parallel between the two story lines. I do think there's a deliberate juxtaposition of similar elements here, though.

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38 minutes ago, Seams said:

I just had an omg moment. So glad this thread reopened the Penny topic, because I had spent quite a lot of time trying to sort out her purpose a couple or three months ago, and I couldn't quite figure her out.

Here is the money quote that I thought might indicate that Penny has a couple of elephants waiting for her at home:

... “It was Father’s idea to do the tilts. He even trained the first pig, but by then he was too sick to ride her, so Oppo took his place. I always rode the dog. We performed for the Sealord of Braavos once, and he laughed so hard that afterward he gave each of us a … a grand gift.” [ADwD]

As with many conversations between Tyrion and Penny, he changes the subject or finishes her thought for her without waiting to hear what she might have to say.

My omg thought here is the the Sealord of Braavos might have given Penny and her brother dragon eggs. Other little hints add up to this: in a nearby chapter, Prince Doran Martell casually mentions that it would be relatively easy to hide a young dragon on a cog. Tyrion and Penny are passengers on a cog. Moqorro talks about young dragons and old: he's not talking about Aerys or Rhaegar and Danaerys; he's talking about Dany's dragons being old and Penny's dragons being young. (I assume they aren't hatched yet?) When they play cyvasse, Penny tries to make the elephants "fly," and Tyrion has to remind her that only dragons fly. With his expertise on dragons, Tyrion will be able to teach Penny how to ride her dragon and how to care for it.

When Tyrion arrives in Essos, he is hidden in a wine barrel. I've always assumed, when he emerges from the barrel, this symbolic rebirth is a hatching: Tyrion is like a dragon emerging from an egg. But it puzzled me that the cracking of the hull of the Selasori Qhoran as the storm ends is also like the cracking of an egg. If there are two dragon eggs, that would explain why there are two "hatchings" in Tyrion's arc - the second one is Penny.

What do you want to bet that Tyrion names his dragon Brightroar?

Another thought: Qyburn is making a headless super-champion for Cersei, using the body of Gregor Clegane. Penny's brother, Oppo or Groat, has been beheaded but Tyrion soon puts on his armor and helmet. I don't know if a David and Goliath showdown is in the works, or if the headless knight scenario will remain a symbolic parallel between the two story lines. I do think there's a deliberate juxtaposition of similar elements here, though.

if this comes true i will burn my book in protest

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While I hate penny and as she is boring, feel that she's here because it's showing Tyrion at a real low point in life, he's part of a mummers show which is a real fall from grace. But I think it's pivotal because I feel like this is the lowest we'll see him before he makes that climb to the top again. It's the same with Dany and Jon. Our three main protagonists are having to go through a real low point, arguably the lowest in their lives before they make that step to become the heroes they were meant to be. 

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9 hours ago, zandru said:

At one point, Tyrion notes Penny's similarity to Sansa Stark Lannister: both naive, starry-eyed girls who don't seem able to see the ugliness of the reality all around them. But Penny has none of Sansa's considerable advantages: she lacks Sansa's beauty, is a dwarf, and is not from one of the highest Houses in all Westeros. Penny will get no breaks from society; Sansa is protected by her status and looks. Even as a "bastard" (Alayne), Sansa is bathed, clothed and her hair done by a bevy of handmaids.

So it's significant that Tyrion feels protective towards Penny. He would have been justified, by the rules of his society, in dumping her at the first opportunity, leaving her to be taken by the pale mare outside the gates of Mereen. But he doesn't. Penny is important in Tyrion's character development and (one hopes) further awakening.

Bingo, the character Penny is most similar to is Sansa, without the wealth and beauty, of course.

 

5 hours ago, Eden-Mackenzie said:

As already pointed out, Penny plays an important role in Tyrion's character arc, a role which needed to be filled by someone. If Penny did not exist, some other character would have been created in her stead, and we have no way of knowing what sort of character he or she would have been. 

Also, it is important to remember we are only seeing Penny through Tyrion's eyes; Penny us annoying to the reader because Penny is annoying to Tyrion. We may view Penny differently if we see her from another's perspective. 

 

Slightly off topic, but the mentions of Groat made me think about it. I'm a little surprised Tywin allowed the jousting dwarves at all, since Tyrion's dwarfishness is such an affront to Tywin, and their presence only called more attention to Tyrion. 

This is such a wonderful point. There is a reason GRRM is using POVs the way he is. Far too many people don't take this into account when trying to understand the story.

ETA: Forgot to answer the question. No, I like Penny. I have no problem with her existence.

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9 hours ago, Sigella said:

My interpretation of her is that she's set up as the cliché of a moral guide: only there to help Tyrion come to terms with his shortcomings. By learning to love, or at least care for, Penny he'll learn to love, or care for, himself better and blah blah blah. I really hope GRRM has a really nice twist to this coming up... because as is its not great.

Tyrion and Penny makes me think of "The Dwarf" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dwarf_(Lagerkvist_novel) ) and I'm so hoping for a scene that surpasses "the evil dwarf mock satanic ritual" scene in kickassery. 

Honestly, Tyrion's going to kill Penny. 

In a recent TWOW chapter, he flips on her when she presses one of his buttons by accident and mentions that if he had a crossbow on him he would've shot her in the gut

Penny's there to undercut his character and darken Tyrion up even more 

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I certainly don't hate Penny. I agree that we're seeing her through Tyrion's eyes, and that affects our perspective. I can also see how readers would find her annoying, as, when face with tragedy and danger, she tends to whine, cry, and doggedly cling to the life she knew. Her coping mechanism differs from most of the other characters, who stab and snark their way through life.

As to whether or not she's a plot device or a character, that's more to personal opinion. She's certainly memorable.  

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2 hours ago, ThePrinceThatKnewNothing said:

While I hate penny and as she is boring, feel that she's here because it's showing Tyrion at a real low point in life, he's part of a mummers show which is a real fall from grace. But I think it's pivotal because I feel like this is the lowest we'll see him before he makes that climb to the top again. It's the same with Dany and Jon. Our three main protagonists are having to go through a real low point, arguably the lowest in their lives before they make that step to become the heroes they were meant to be. 

I think it's the opposite of that. 

 

Tyrion, Jon and Dany are going to jump another step down. 

 

There is a very real chance that Tyrion is going to kill Penny when she accidentally flips his switch again.

Dany just decided that dragons plant no trees and is about to go fire and blood on civilizations

And Jon is about to come back as Unjon and less of the virtuous person he used to be 

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