Question re: Arya and the Faceless Men

[Raksha 2014]

6 hours ago, Hangatyr said:

"The Faceless Men don't post a list of prices on their door. The way it works, you go to them and tell them who you want killed, and then they negotiate the price. The prominent the victim, the more difficult to get to, the more dangerous for the assassin and the guild, the higher the price."

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/The_Cost_of_Faceless_Men

 

It could be that the Faceless Men charge low fees for certain interesting clients if the assassination will prove a good learning experience for FM trainees like Arya.  You don't send a promising trainee out to kill a noble with 100 guards for the trainee's first assignment.  

[Raksha 2014]

6 minutes ago, hallam said:

Arya is trained to use a sword. And the Waif is not. Nor does the Waif expect Arya to know how to defend herself. 

It seems to me that the troupe is Arya's ticket back to Westeros. So presumably the younger actress has to be out of the way for that to happen. They have probably discovered that the rum was poisoned. I would guess the younger actress runs off, kills herself or is helped.

Well one possibility is that she isn't actually going to sleep. Another is that she has grown up and no longer wants to kill Cersei for the sake of it. She can see things from her point of view.

That and the 'Valonquar' has that kill.

Walder Frey on the other hand...

 

Cersei forced Arya to drive her wolf away; and forced Ned to kill the sister of Arya's wolf.  Not to mention Cersei ordering Mycah's death.  I don't think Arya has wiped Cersei's name off her list.

[hallam]

5 minutes ago, Raksha 2014 said:

Cersei forced Arya to drive her wolf away; and forced Ned to kill the sister of Arya's wolf.  Not to mention Cersei ordering Mycah's death.  I don't think Arya has wiped Cersei's name off her list.

Mycah was killed by the Hound on the orders of Joffrey. And Arya doesn't kill the hound when she has the chance to.

[The Handsome Man]

1 hour ago, Charlie Of House Bucket said:

The child-turned-master-assassin idea is unfortunately a well trodden cliché, but GRRM managed to make it (in my opinion) fresh and interesting with the FM, and the Braavos sections in general are some of my favourite bits of descriptive writing in all the books.

Agree.  Indeed, there are several points in the FM/Arya chapters where there are hints that Arya is using the FM -- absorbing as much training as possible for her own ends.  She can be seen as manipulating them.  Its fascinating to watch her bounce back and forth between a "no one" assassin and Arya, all the while staying eerily cool.  From Mercy (underlining mine):

“[Raff] You’ll need to carry me.”

See? thought Mercy. You know your line, and so do I.

“Think so?” asked Arya, sweetly.

Raff the Sweetling looked up sharply as the long thin blade came sliding from her sleeve. She slipped it through his throat beneath the chin, twisted, and ripped it back out sideways with a single smooth slash. A fine red rain followed, and in his eyes the light went out.

The show ignores this part of her character - or at least has thus far; let' see how the last few episodes play out.

[ebourget]

39 minutes ago, Raksha 2014 said:

 

It could be that the Faceless Men charge low fees for certain interesting clients if the assassination will prove a good learning experience for FM trainees like Arya.  You don't send a promising trainee out to kill a noble with 100 guards for the trainee's first assignment.  

Ok this is some olympic level rationalization.  This whole assignment was either test/faint or just bad writing.  Simple as that.   The thin man was a far more complicated assignment given to her much earlier...

26 minutes ago, hallam said:

Mycah was killed by the Hound on the orders of Joffrey. And Arya doesn't kill the hound when she has the chance to.

Don't know why we're analyzing this.    The show reduced the list to 3 people for just this reason, to clear up the discrepancies.  Now its just Cersei, Frey & the mountain.    She doesn't talk about thoros or Ilyn payne, etc because they don't so obviously deserve it, they may but their transgressions are so minor by comparison.    

[Smoke317]

I think they've put it right there in front of us. Arya realizes that she's not a cold blooded assassin and she doesn't need the faceless men to hide/change her appearance. She can do it just like the actress in the troupe does... But "a face will need to be added to the wall". It will be the waifs or even the young actress. Hopefully Jaq'en accepts that and lets her leave without a bounty being placed on her head.

Then again, maybe this has been a test for both Arya and the Waif. The Waifs personal vendetta against Arya is against the FM beliefs. She is the one who will have failed and Arya will have passed her final test and be accepted in and shown how to change faces. I wouldn't be surprised if we get some kind of explanation from the waif about why she resents Arya during their confrontation. After killing her Arya will confront Jaq'en with this Intel and he will say he knew all along and "you're in"...

[Xarkar]

I still dont understand the whole FM story.

When Jaqen left her the first time, he said she could come and learn (to be a FM) and then she could offer up the people on her list to the red god.

Yet when she is training, they get all pissed when she kills Meryn Trant.  This makes very little sense.  Jaqen originally implied, if she came and learned she would be free to kill who she wanted.  yet now, there are rules that only death can pay for life, and she isnt free to take a life.

 

I have a feeling there is more to the story.  Maybe Arya will "Pass" her test, when she kills the Waif.  IE she made the right choice in not killing lady Crane, then kills the Waif.   

 

Or there is just shitty writing and no continuity.  

[jbob]

Don't see the problem other people are having. The FM have small assignments for their newer recruitments. They can't just sit around waiting. And why give an important assignment to someone like Arya who has already broken the rules and shown herself as having some sort of conscience? Face it, the FM are bad guys. They're evil. Like Ramsay and Euron and Joffrey and all the other idiots who justify their murders. They were training her to be a bad guy, but she's still the same girl who was disgusted by Mycah's death. She's still Arya who hated Hound for robbing a man.

Anyway, glad this whole plot is over anyway.

[hallam]

1 minute ago, jbob said:

Don't see the problem other people are having. The FM have small assignments for their newer recruitments. They can't just sit around waiting. And why give an important assignment to someone like Arya who has already broken the rules and shown herself as having some sort of conscience? Face it, the FM are bad guys. They're evil. Like Ramsay and Euron and Joffrey and all the other idiots who justify their murders.

Exactly.

Arya's plot arc is that in the wake of her father's murder she sees herself as an avenging angel of death. Hence the death list. She joins a death cult because of that belief. Jaq'un shows her that she is not what she imagines herself to be. After dispatching the Waif, the debt to the many faced god is paid. Arya returns to Westeros with the players and ends up in KL. She then dispatches people only because she needs to to survive.

 

BTW, Jaq'un seems a lot less portentous if his references to 'the many faced God' are replaced by 'the one eyed trouser snake' in his speeches and they make just as much sense.

Final thought, perhaps Ramsay will be having some sort of party and need some players for it.

[ebourget]

19 minutes ago, jbob said:

Don't see the problem other people are having. The FM have small assignments for their newer recruitments. They can't just sit around waiting. And why give an important assignment to someone like Arya who has already broken the rules and shown herself as having some sort of conscience? Face it, the FM are bad guys. They're evil. Like Ramsay and Euron and Joffrey and all the other idiots who justify their murders. They were training her to be a bad guy, but she's still the same girl who was disgusted by Mycah's death. She's still Arya who hated Hound for robbing a man.

Anyway, glad this whole plot is over anyway.

Curious, why do you think they're bad guys?   Cause that's not my impression at all.   The show writers are just really bad.   If you exclude the waif, i don't see the evil.   She's a dull show creation that is misrepresenting them.

[hallam]

Just now, ebourget said:

Curious, why do you think they're bad guys?   Cause that's not my impression at all.   The show writers are just really bad.   If you exclude the waif, i don't see the evil.   She's a dull show creation that is misrepresenting them.

Dood... 

They go round murdering people for money. And you don't see that makes them bad people.

What are you, a devotee of Tuggi?

[ebourget]

When have we seen them accept money for their services... go on.   They have a reputation sure.   But for everything we have seen from ARYA's perspective, this does not fit at all.  Book or show.

And to quote the Hound, more or less, Everyone you've ever loved is a killer.  Your father was a killer, your brothers are killers, and your sons will be killers.  Better get used to looking at them.

Edit:  They take sacrifices, more than they actually take money.  and they give gifts.   This sounds evil to you?  Then who isn't in asoiaf?

[jbob]

15 minutes ago, ebourget said:

Curious, why do you think they're bad guys?   Cause that's not my impression at all.   The show writers are just really bad.   If you exclude the waif, i don't see the evil.   She's a dull show creation that is misrepresenting them.

They're willing to kill innocent people for money. They're evil. In the real world, they'd go to jail for that. And it doesn't matter what their reasoning is. They are the opposite of Arya's true self.

[Illiterati]

I honestly thing FM are setting the Waif up to get killed.  She is acting more like "someone" than Arya is, and in addition, he told Arya that one way or another, a face will be put on the wall.  the gods don't care if it's Lady Crane, Arya, or the Waif.

Additionally, her first hit at the direction of the FM was a man who was cheating people.  There could be moral requirement for performing a hit after all, and the true test could be that even while she is "no one," she retains enough moral compass not to kill someone who has caused no harm.

However, I don't think that's the way it goes.  I think either the FM accept that a face was put on the wall as required, and that a rogue-thinking waif has been put aside, but send her on her way with no hard feelings because she just doesn't have the mettle to be a cold-blooded assassin, or she kills the waif and dramatically escapes the HoB&W to b left looking over her shoulder the rest of her life.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[ebourget]

1 minute ago, jbob said:

They're willing to kill innocent people for money. They're evil. In the real world, they'd go to jail for that. And it doesn't matter what their reasoning is. They are the opposite of Arya's true self.

You really haven't been paying attention if you just think they kill innocent people for money.  Because there's very little basis for this from the only perspective we have inside the house of black and white.  It dismisses so much of their mythology. And why in seven hells would a guild of paid assassins A. Found a city of freedom, B. Build and occupy a temple design to worship ALL the GODS, and C. Why would they accept non-monetary fees for their services or even give the gift for free to people who just come to their temple hat in hand.

Seems to me that the obvious red herring is the assassins guild reputation rather than the death-based religion reputation. Things are never as they seem to be at the House of Black and White, no matter how badly the show portrays them.

As far as this Lady Crane mission is concerned, there is much yet to be revealed I'm sure.   But, we don't know anything about it to begin with.   We don't know

• Who ask for it
• Why they asked for it
• What they paid for it
• What Crane may have done to deserve it
• Whether she was even a legitimate target or just a test.

So much speculation but the 'paid assassins' theory doesn't really hold up.   Like I said earlier, they take sacrifices more than they actually take money, and when they do take money it's like 2 thirds of your wealth.   Ask a wealthy person what would happen if they lost 2/3s of their wealth.  It would be life changing, an actual sacrifice.

[Charlie Of House Bucket]

Someone just a few posts ago referred to them as a death cult, and this is I think closest to the TRVTH of the matter.  It's not evil, per se, at least not in their minds.  It's more amoral than immoral though.  Valar morghulis.  All men must die.  They refer to death giving as a gift, and sometimes it is very much that, albeit often in a Kevorkian sense.  For the chronic pain sufferer, it is probably indeed a gift.  

On the other hand, they've got a mercenary aspect, where a high price can buy death - and yes - this is what most of us call immoral, e.g. when a nasty person pays for the death of a virtuous one, or depending on your moral outlook about death penalties at all, any condoned or paid-for murder for any reason including proportional revenge against the nastiest of nasties.  IOW, how one sees the FM is proportional to one's own morality/ethics.     

The question of Arya's fit into this is I think another book vs. show issue.  In the books, while she has a sense of right and wrong, she's exactly that thing GRRM is known for - "gray morality."   She's perfectly willing not only to kill an insurance man she doesn't know, but also to kill a Night's Watch deserter (presumably on the basis that he has committed treason against her half-brother by desertion, which is pretty weak if she is to be considered truly ethically sound).  In the show, neither of these things happen.  Her kills thus far are against those who "deserve it."

[jandslegate]

I could see the mission being a staged (no pun intended) test. I mean otherwise it seems a bit too coincidental that 'a girl'  was given a contract to kill Cersei, one of the people on Arya Starks list and it was Arya Starks sister Sansa that commissioned the contract. Granted they are all actors or 'players' but the symbolism is either heavy-handed spoon-feeding from D&D or it's meant to be 'meta'. Also, I certainly do hope there's more to the FM than just trope-esque assassins guild. I mean, by the end of the current books they have started getting involved in some deeply rooted plot lines that could effect the war with the WW's. 

[Illiterati]

I just watched back Season 2 Ep 10......The FM told Arya she would have an opportunity to offer up her list to the Red God if she joined them.  I have a hard time reconciling that with the possibility that the FM would want to rid her of any personal agenda.......

[tmug]

4 hours ago, Smoke317 said:

I think they've put it right there in front of us. Arya realizes that she's not a cold blooded assassin and she doesn't need the faceless men to hide/change her appearance. She can do it just like the actress in the troupe does... But "a face will need to be added to the wall". It will be the waifs or even the young actress. Hopefully Jaq'en accepts that and lets her leave without a bounty being placed on her head.

Then again, maybe this has been a test for both Arya and the Waif. The Waifs personal vendetta against Arya is against the FM beliefs. She is the one who will have failed and Arya will have passed her final test and be accepted in and shown how to change faces. I wouldn't be surprised if we get some kind of explanation from the waif about why she resents Arya during their confrontation. After killing her Arya will confront Jaq'en with this Intel and he will say he knew all along and "you're in"...

I think you are on to something here because it seemed the whole thing about the FM is that death is a gift, it should not be taken lightly. Crane showed that she does not deserve to die, Arya also has seemingly taken a step back from her revenge list. The Waif on the other hand has a personal vendetta against "Arya Stark", a big FM no-no. Jaquen is setting the Waif up for failure, Arya succeeded if she truly understands Cersei's motives behind her madness, in other words much like the Hound - Cersei's life is worse than death, no need to kill her because that would be a gift. 

 

[Morgana Lannister]

7 hours ago, hallam said:

Arya is trained to use a sword. And the Waif is not. Nor does the Waif expect Arya to know how to defend herself. 

It seems to me that the troupe is Arya's ticket back to Westeros. So presumably the younger actress has to be out of the way for that to happen. They have probably discovered that the rum was poisoned. I would guess the younger actress runs off, kills herself or is helped.

Well one possibility is that she isn't actually going to sleep. Another is that she has grown up and no longer wants to kill Cersei for the sake of it. She can see things from her point of view.

That and the 'Valonquar' has that kill.

Walder Frey on the other hand...

I am hoping that she might re-think the list a bit but yeah Walder is got to go lol