Bowen Marsh was right to remove Jon from office.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

On 3/7/2017 at 10:09 PM, BalerionTheCat said:

Not the Guest Right. But kinslaying. Because Jon and Bowen are brothers.

Old gods or new, it makes no matter, no man is so accursed as the kinslayer. If only Jon had *relationship* with a God or more. 

Absolutely not.  Castle Black is not the property of the lord commander.  He cannot will it to a relative nor can his children (which he's not supposed to have but even if he had one before he joined up he could not will the property to his child).  Bowen is not a guest. 

That isn't true. We have been told about Jon numberless times that "The Wall is yours." So Castle Black was his.

[cpg2016]

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The vow states that 'I live and die at my post'. Jon's post is at the Wall or, perhaps, beyond the Wall leading a ranging. He has no right to invade the realms of men with a foreign army. And that's what the wildlings are, they are a foreign army from beyond the Wall.

Which is it? Either his post is physical, in which case he has no business ever leaving Castle Black/the Wall, or it's metaphorical.  Which... it obviously is.  His "post" is his duty. And his only duty is to protect humanity against the Others.

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Desertion and treason are crimes you can commit by words alone (unlike murder). If I declare my desertion - as Jon did when he said he would be going down to Winterfell to deal with Ramsay - I am a deserter, just as Janos Slynt disobeyed an order of his Lord Commander when he told him to his face he would not be going to that castle. It doesn't matter that he was later willing to go when he realized he would lose his life over this issue.

It isn't.  You haven't pointed to one law or oath Jon swore that would prevent him from going south.  We've been waiting for a long time.  Again, lets stress this - he has only one job.  Anything he does in the pursuit of that goal is "legal" for him.  The Boltons are, probably unwittingly, helping the Others by killing the men who stand against them.  Jon is 100% justified in bringing them down, full stop.  He swore no oath not to intervene in "Southern" politics.  That is merely an intelligent tradition of the Watch.

And moreover, Jon isn't attacking Ramsay, he is defending against an explicit threat to the Night's Watch.  Ramsay isn't even subtle.  He threatens to attack unless Jon surrenders the sovereignty of the Watch, which would be treason.

And there is no question that mutiny is worse than desertion.

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

And no, as I laid out elsewhere the vow of the Night's Watch does not mention the Others in the vow. We only know that the Watch defends the Wall against unspecified enemies. Saying that's only the Others and not Others and wildlings is just an interpretation, just as it is an interpretation that the Others are meant.

This is wrong.  Straight up wrong.  The oath explicitly includes the words "the realms of men".  And as Jon himself makes clear in the text, he believes this to include ALL of humanity, not just humanity south of the Wall.  And his advisors, even the bigots and cravens like Bowen Marsh, have no rebuttal and tacitly agree with him.  So no.  You cannot draw some kind of false equivalency between the wildlings and the Others.  The Watch is there to protect humanity, and the Others are here to enslave humanity.  This is a binding commitment to protect the wildlings, both morally and for the more practical reasons Jon proposes.

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Jaime was wrong to kill King Aerys. He had sworn a vow to protect that man, after all, knowing fully well that this king was a cruel and sadistic madman. I have no pity for people who actually pledge to serve and protect such people knowing exactly who they are pledging themselves to. That is as if you were volunteering to help Gilles de Rais in his exploits, knowing fully well who and what that man is.

Jaime also swore a vow to protect the innocent.  So he literally cannot do both.  Which is it?  Protect his king, the psychotic despot, or protect half a million people from burning to death?  You seem to fall on the side of protecting the evil for a stupid legalistic reason as opposed to protecting the innocent for an excellent legalistic reason.  I'm sure you would be the guy letting KKK members get away with lynchings because they caught a black man drinking at the Whites Only water fountain.  You know... it's against the law.

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

And keep in mind that Jaime actually killed Aerys because he wanted to. He could have arrested or distracted the man to prevent him from burning KL. Jaime killed Rossart first, preventing the wildfire plot. Only then did he return to the throne room and deliberately told Aerys what he had done to see his fear and terror before he butchered the defenseless guy.

“When I came on Rossart, he was dressed as a common man-at-arms, hurrying to a postern gate. I slew him first. Then I slew Aerys, before he could find someone else to carry his message to the pyromancers.

As always, you are not only wrong, but willfully twist the text.  Jaime kills Rossart, who is essentially dressed as a spy at this point, in order to stop the plot.  He then kills Aerys because leaving him alive leaves the possibility that 500,000 people are murdered.  At no point does this one honest confession include sadistic gloating.  He then hunts down the other pyromancers, because as the rest of us know but you hhave conveniently forgotten, all of them are in on it!  Aerys didn't carry every effing barrel of wildfire himself, he had helpers, willing helpers, in his madness, and some if not many of them knew all the details.

Jaime killed Aerys because he judged that the slight injustice of killing a tyrannical, murderous rapist was worth it, versus allowing a chance that he managed to secretly get word to complete his plot.  What happens if he gets word to Belis or Garigus while he's awaiting trial?  On an ethical level, Aerys deserved to die, and on a practical level, he had to, because we know the Red Keep isn't exactly secure and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are at stake.

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

but it is nonetheless clear that Jaime did not kill Aerys to save other people, he did it because he could and because he wanted to. Most likely because he sick of that man forcing him to watch people burn alive and rape and claw his sister-wife. But it isn't even that or the wildfire plan that broke Jaime. It is Aerys' command to go and kill his own father that breaks the camel's back. That's when Jaime goes and out decides to kill Rossart.

Agaiun, it blows my mind that you can continue to argue when Martin has been so damn specific.  He "betrays" Aerys after hearing that Rossart is with him, not when he is told to bring Tywin's head.  That's why he goes after Rossart first; he knows the priority.  So just stop.  You are wrong, and there isn't room for interpretation.  Not only is there no evidence for your position, there is an overwhelming preponderance of evidence against it.

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Dunk did not really think when he struck Aerion. Had he thought he wouldn't have done it. He would have been too afraid of the consequences. Whether this was right or not is a very complex question. One could say that the death of Baelor Breakspear was too high a price. But one could also say that manhandling mad/cruel princes shouldn't be a crime under all circumstances. But then, perhaps Westeros shouldn't be a feudal society with stupid medieval laws?

See, this is why you are being roundly disagreed with.  You want to make this some complex legalistic and ethical question and then blame the resulting confusion on Westeros having "stupid medieval laws".  It isn't.  It's easy.

Dunk acts the way he does because protecting the innocent is not a question for him - it is the only path.  The first oath of a knight is to protect the weak and helpless.  It supersedes all others.  And no one knew Baelor Breakspear would die from this; as he himself says, a man who defends the innocent and remembers his vows when it isn't easy to do so is a man worth defending.  So no, there is no complexity here, as there isn't with Aerys' Kingsguard either.  Knights swear an oath.  When Barristan watches Aerys burn innocent men alive, or rape and mutilate his wife, he is betraying his most important oath, something he touches on in his own reflections, as does Jaime.

Westeros is a society with a complex set of laws and traditions.  Because it is a pre-modern society, oaths take the place of legal agreements in many cases.  And here we see that despite conflicting oaths, there is a right and wrong choice.  Even Brienne, who is obviously meant to represent a paragon of knightly virtue (her being a woman is meant to underscore that knighthood is not a series of prerequisite oaths but an attitude reflected in those oaths), agrees that Jaime does the right thing.

[cpg2016]

1 hour ago, Denam_Pavel said:

The Pink Letter was a response to Jon sending Mance to save his own sister as far as anyone other then Jon and Mel knows. Jon seemingly picked that fight, not Ramsay and rather then preserve the Watch's neutrality and thus their mission of fighting the apocalyptic army at the expense of their guests, is gonna leave to fight it. And where is the idea that Ramsay is somehow in contact with rogue elements within the Night's Watch coming from? Where would they even get the ravens for that to go unnoticed?

Actually, you have no evidence Jon sent him.  Jon is obviously aware, but it's pretty clear that Stannis and Mel conceive the plot (which Mel explains to Jon, not the other way around) with Mance.  Because Stannis, as a canny political operator, knows that Arya is all that holds the various factions in Winterfell together.  Mel brings Jon in because she has to (a) explain what happened to "Rattleshirt" and (b) because she wants to gain Jon's trust by helping him, and being seen to do it.

And the idea isn't that Ramsay is in touch with Marsh, it's that Marsh is in touch with Cersei.  Remember how Cersei is sending those 100 able bodied men to the Wall (specifically to assassinate Jon, I might add)?  That is why people, myself included, think Marsh is in cahoots.  And Castle Black has tons of ravens, why is it so absurd to think he can get one to go to Kings Landing?  My personal theory, which I've read elsewhere, is that Bowen Marsh was waiting for the men to show up from KL so that he had the definitive manpower to carry out his coup, as right now he has to deal with loyalist brothers and wildlings who owe their lives to Jon and are personally loyal to him.  He can't succeed in his plot without more than his small coterie of co-conspirators.  He acts when he does solely because it's his last chance to kill Jon, not to keep him from dishonoring the NW or some such nonsense.  He's Brutus or Cassius, if they were bigots - he kills Jon when he does because if he doesn't, he'll never be able to, and he does it so that he can go back to being king of the heap and not have to watch all these "savages" rise in power and authority.  

1 hour ago, Denam_Pavel said:

Literally every single mention tof Bowen Marsh in Winds of Winter and Storm of Swords makes note of how singular meticulous he is about keeping count of the Night's Watch supplies. Even the people that don't respect him at all give him that. When they had to reassess what they needed to make it through the winter given how many new mouths to feed they had, this quality was crucial to Jon (who himself had never been through a winter before). I don't know why this is such a hard thing for people to accept. Yes, Jon needed help to get started, he's not perfect.

Great catch, Sherlock.  He's the Chief fucking Steward, of course he's good at keeping accounts.  It's his job.  You know who else has that job?  Some 300 odd other guys at the Watch.  Does he have more information at his fingertips because he's in charge?  Sure.  Does that mean someone else couldn't have done that job competently?  No, obviously not.  What does this have to do with anything?  Hitler was a genius orator, and a psychopath.  Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant polymath, but also a proponent of slavery and a serial rapist.  Being good at your job doesn't make you a good person.

 

1 hour ago, The Hoare said:

Marsh didn't just disagreed with the LC and then killed him, he killed a traitor that cared more about his sister than with the threat beyond the wall.

Even Jon himself admit that what he was doing was oath breaking, and as we know it's punished by death.

We've seen what Jon did with people that refused to follow his orders(Slynt). In no way he would allow a trial, even if there were a precedent for it.

You are aware your quote undermines your entire point.  Jon at no point rescinds his vows.  In fact, what you quote undermines every single argument you and your ilk are making.  Jon never once betrays his vows, never once even indicates he intends to.  All he does is give his brothers the freedom to follow their conscience.  Again... one of you, ANY of you, need to show where Jon breaks a vow.  Just one place.  If he never breaks a single vow he's taken in service to the Watch, then he isn't a traitor or deserter.  And if he isn't a deserter, then Bowen Marsh is a mutineer and deserves condemnation.

So again, we will all wait.  Find the place where Jon says or even implies one or all of these things:

I am going to win glory

I am going to father a child

I am going to win myself a crown

I am going to forswear my oath to the Watch and desert

Just a heads up to others... don't hold your breath.

[The Commentator]

6 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

Actually, you have no evidence Jon sent him.  Jon is obviously aware, but it's pretty clear that Stannis and Mel conceive the plot (which Mel explains to Jon, not the other way around) with Mance.  Because Stannis, as a canny political operator, knows that Arya is all that holds the various factions in Winterfell together.  Mel brings Jon in because she has to (a) explain what happened to "Rattleshirt" and (b) because she wants to gain Jon's trust by helping him, and being seen to do it.

Mel offered to help Jon.  The decision was Jon's whether to accept or not.  Jon not only accepted, he was part of the planning.  The blame is on Jon.  Here's a quote:

A grey girl on a dying horse, fleeing from her marriage.  On the strength of those words he had loosed Mance Rayder and six spearwives on the north.  "Young ones, and pretty," Mance had said.  The unburnt king supplied some names, and Dolorous Edd had done the rest, smuggling them from Mole's Town.  (ADWD)

And the idea isn't that Ramsay is in touch with Marsh, it's that Marsh is in touch with Cersei.  Remember how Cersei is sending those 100 able bodied men to the Wall (specifically to assassinate Jon, I might add)?  That is why people, myself included, think Marsh is in cahoots.  And Castle Black has tons of ravens, why is it so absurd to think he can get one to go to Kings Landing?  My personal theory, which I've read elsewhere, is that Bowen Marsh was waiting for the men to show up from KL so that he had the definitive manpower to carry out his coup, as right now he has to deal with loyalist brothers and wildlings who owe their lives to Jon and are personally loyal to him.  He can't succeed in his plot without more than his small coterie of co-conspirators.  He acts when he does solely because it's his last chance to kill Jon, not to keep him from dishonoring the NW or some such nonsense.  He's Brutus or Cassius, if they were bigots - he kills Jon when he does because if he doesn't, he'll never be able to, and he does it so that he can go back to being king of the heap and not have to watch all these "savages" rise in power and authority.  

Great catch, Sherlock.  He's the Chief fucking Steward, of course he's good at keeping accounts.  It's his job.  You know who else has that job?  Some 300 odd other guys at the Watch.  Does he have more information at his fingertips because he's in charge?  Sure.  Does that mean someone else couldn't have done that job competently?  No, obviously not.  What does this have to do with anything?  Hitler was a genius orator, and a psychopath.  Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant polymath, but also a proponent of slavery and a serial rapist.  Being good at your job doesn't make you a good person.

 

You are aware your quote undermines your entire point.  Jon at no point rescinds his vows.  In fact, what you quote undermines every single argument you and your ilk are making.  Jon never once betrays his vows, never once even indicates he intends to.  All he does is give his brothers the freedom to follow their conscience.  Again... one of you, ANY of you, need to show where Jon breaks a vow.  Just one place.  If he never breaks a single vow he's taken in service to the Watch, then he isn't a traitor or deserter.  And if he isn't a deserter, then Bowen Marsh is a mutineer and deserves condemnation.

Have you read A Dance with Dragons?  Because it seems to me like you haven't.  That boy clearly broke his oaths and his vows.  He is guilty of treason.

Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand.  The Night's Watch takes no part.  He closed his fist and opened it again.  What you propose to do is nothing less than treason. (ADWD)

 

So again, we will all wait.  Find the place where Jon says or even implies one or all of these things:

I am going to win glory

I am going to father a child

I am going to win myself a crown

I am going to forswear my oath to the Watch and desert

Just a heads up to others... don't hold your breath.

 

[The Commentator]

7 hours ago, Adam Yozza said:

Except by your own argument you contradict yourself. "You are not punished for thoughts or intentions you have you don't actually realize" Jon might have declared that he was intending and planning to march south but he had not yet done so. If Marsh and his plotters can't be punished or blamed for plotting to kill Jon before the Pink Letter ever arrived, then Jon also can't be punished for intending to leave before he actually does so, even if it was in violation of his vows. However, as many have posted previously, Jon is not actually breaking any oaths in taking the fight to the Boltons. His only mission is to fight the Others. By threatening to attack the watch, Ramsay is inadvertently threatening the chances of that mission being a success. Moreover, there isn't actually anything in the Watch's oaths that say they can't be involved with events in the south. That's a tradition, but not a rule. Just like how fighting the Free Folk is a tradition, not a rule. The only oath Jon broke was not arresting and executing Mance when he discovered he was still alive.

Bowen Marsh had a duty to prevent Jon from leading a Wildling War Party to attack House Bolton.  That was the primary reason for the stabbing.  Make no mistake, Jon was guilty of not only vow breaking but he's also guilty of the highest treason. 

It was also a very stupid move to even try to remove Arya from her marriage.  Jon is slow but even he should have realized that doing so would cause problems with the Boltons.  Picking a fight was the wrong thing to do when you need every able-bodied people on the wall to protect the kingdom. 

 

Anyway, it's a moot point. Jon was in the right morally, which supersedes oaths anyway. If you say that Bowen was right to kill Jon because he broke an oath, you'd also have to say that Jaime was wrong to kill the Mad King and Dunk was wrong to strike Prince Aerion.

 

[giant snake]

36 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

 

So again, we will all wait.  Find the place where Jon says or even implies one or all of these things:

I am going to win glory

I am going to father a child

I am going to win myself a crown

I am going to forswear my oath to the Watch and desert

Just a heads up to others... don't hold your breath.

 

There is no answer because they are going off of a contrivance and off of assuming his motivations and actions, both of which we all actually know because he's a motherloving POV character for God's sake.  The whole point of putting us in the POV is to get that character's perspective and also so that we understand exactly what he knows and does not know and what his perceptions are.  Based off of all the facts we know from reading, we know that Jon's primary objective is to his Duty as Lord Commander.  We know, as a fact, that he turned down a crown and did not accept the chance to become the Lord Paramount of the North, as a representative of the Legally Legitimate Heir to the realm.  Everyone here knows that Joffrey is a bastard and that Stannis has the rightful claim, whether he is a good King or not.  It isn't up for debate whether or not Cersei's children are bastards or not.  Not to us anyway, and I suspect that the Lannister allies really don't care.  Their goals are more limited.

Personal bias has nothing to do with it - Stannis is the heir.  Personally I think that Stannis would be a terrible king.  Jaime Lannister is more kingly than any of the claimants, in my opinion, but that doesn't mean that he has a claim to the crown.  Jon had the opportunity, if he had wanted to, to claim Winterfell as his seat of power under the auspices of the Lawful King and he elected to remain on the wall in service to a higher duty.  Even supreme autiste Stannis Baratheon respected that decision and endorsed it, even though it was personally disappointing.  You would think this wouldn't go over the people trying to play lawyer to criticize Jon Snow.  It's fucking black and white levels of obviousness where Jon's loyalties lie.

 

Taking it to the next step, you are also correct in your assertion that Ramsay, the conspirators, and the Lannister plants are obstructing Jon in his duties to defend the Realm from an external and inhuman threat.  Their motivations don't matter and, to be honest, neither do Jon's when he takes Ramsay's bait.  He is making a decision in the broader context of his duties.  The conspirators are exploiting that and trying to restrain him even though he is the Lord Commander.  Again they are practicing plain old fashion obstructionism and they murder him when that doesn't work.  Implying that Jon was acting off of feelings because of his sister isn't pertinent.  Obviously Ramsay is a villain and is only concerned with securing his position of power.  I think it's actually funny how we aren't supposed to consider the ramifications of interfering with the Night's Watch when they are actively fighting The Others, but we are supposed to accept any excuse to restrain the Lord Commander when conspirators are actively consorting with powers of the realm in order to do it.  

What Ramsay and the Lannister allies did was to actively attack the Night's Watch.  Undermining them is an act of hostility itself and they know that they are doing it during a time of war against a foe that all of manking (at least the Seven Kingdoms) cannot possibly negotiate with.  I don't think it's very convincing to say that Jon is somehow derelict in his duties when it was his enemies who took the unprecedented step of involving the Night's Watch in their power struggle and working to betray all of man...and they struck first!  We know this from Cersei's POV chapters in AFfC that she wanted to play kingmaker with the Night's Watch.  The Bowen Marshes are going along with it and betraying their oaths on the fundamental level by doing so.  You can't make a convincing argument if you are going to pick and choose which parts of the Oath you want to abide by when you are justifying Jon's murder.

[Lord Varys]

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

Which is it? Either his post is physical, in which case he has no business ever leaving Castle Black/the Wall, or it's metaphorical.  Which... it obviously is.  His "post" is his duty. And his only duty is to protect humanity against the Others.

Then Gared and Dareon and anybody else physically leaving his post but still intending to fight the Others would be a deserter, either. But that's clearly not how people in the Seven Kingdoms see it. They are setting the standard, not you, and that standard is that you are a deserter when you abandon your post physically. Nobody cares whether you want to continue to do your duty in a moral sense, or crap like that.

Waging a war against the rulers of the North isn't his duty nor has it anything to do with the fight against the Others. 

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

It isn't.  You haven't pointed to one law or oath Jon swore that would prevent him from going south.  We've been waiting for a long time.  Again, lets stress this - he has only one job.  Anything he does in the pursuit of that goal is "legal" for him.  The Boltons are, probably unwittingly, helping the Others by killing the men who stand against them.  Jon is 100% justified in bringing them down, full stop.  He swore no oath not to intervene in "Southern" politics.  That is merely an intelligent tradition of the Watch.

He breaks his oath in quite a few instances there. He left his post, no longer protected the realms of men (which include the North in general as well as the members of House Bolton and the Northmen in their service he would have killed during his planned campaign), and he was about to try to win glory, another thing he is forbidden to do by the vow.

If it was okay for Jon to declare war on the Seven Kingdoms to do his duty why not go the entire road and say he would also be right if he tried to conquer them all, from the Wall down to Dorne. After all, that uniting the Realm under his iron fist could also have 'helped' defeating the Others. And why stop there? Why not conquer the Essos, Sothoryos, the entire world? Nothing in his vow says he cannot do that, either.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

And moreover, Jon isn't attacking Ramsay, he is defending against an explicit threat to the Night's Watch.  Ramsay isn't even subtle.  He threatens to attack unless Jon surrenders the sovereignty of the Watch, which would be treason.

The Night's Watch doesn't have any sovereignty. It isn't a state. Ramsay demands that Jon hand over some criminals and property to him. There is nothing wrong in that.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

And there is no question that mutiny is worse than desertion.

Certainly not. Do you think the sworn brothers serving and following the Night's King or Runcel Hightower didn't had a right to depose those men? They had a moral obligation to do so. Their oath demanded that of them, just as the vows Bowen Marsh swore compelled him to kill Jon.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

This is wrong.  Straight up wrong.  The oath explicitly includes the words "the realms of men".  And as Jon himself makes clear in the text, he believes this to include ALL of humanity, not just humanity south of the Wall.  And his advisors, even the bigots and cravens like Bowen Marsh, have no rebuttal and tacitly agree with him.  So no.  You cannot draw some kind of false equivalency between the wildlings and the Others.  The Watch is there to protect humanity, and the Others are here to enslave humanity.  This is a binding commitment to protect the wildlings, both morally and for the more practical reasons Jon proposes.

It also includes the Boltons, though, and excluding them is definitely breaking the oath. It is quite clear that the Seven Kingdoms are the realms of men the vow speaks of. The Valley of Thenn or the lands of the wildlings north of the wall are not the realms of men. If they were, they would all be south of the Wall. Because, you know, the lands north of the Wall are the territory of the Others. Those are the lands they are living in, the lands from which the enemy is going to come.

The wildlings are men, true, but their lands are not the realms of men the Wall was raised to protect. That's the very reason why Jon allows them to pass the Wall so that they are now part of the realms of men. But the Boltons were all along part of the realms of men and it goes directly against the vow of the Night's Watch to no longer protect but instead attack them. There is no excuse for that.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

Jaime also swore a vow to protect the innocent.  So he literally cannot do both.  Which is it?  Protect his king, the psychotic despot, or protect half a million people from burning to death?  You seem to fall on the side of protecting the evil for a stupid legalistic reason as opposed to protecting the innocent for an excellent legalistic reason.  I'm sure you would be the guy letting KKK members get away with lynchings because they caught a black man drinking at the Whites Only water fountain.  You know... it's against the law.

Again, Jaime swore a vow to always protect the king. Nobody in the Seven Kingdoms cares about the fact that he also swore some vows to defend the innocents, etc. because the Kingsguard are a very elite order expecting to put the king first in all things. Just as the mission to protect the realms of men from their enemies should come before any knightly vows a black brother also swore.

People like Ned know what kind of monster Aerys was but they still despise Jaime for killing because he simply no longer had the right to do that after he swore that vow.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

“When I came on Rossart, he was dressed as a common man-at-arms, hurrying to a postern gate. I slew him first. Then I slew Aerys, before he could find someone else to carry his message to the pyromancers.

 

That is Jaime's post hoc rationalization. Rossart had gotten his order and was no longer in the throne room. Aerys was there. Jaime returned to the throne after he had murdered Rossart and then he told Aerys what he had done and murdered him. The men was defenseless and Tywin's men were nearby. Jaime could have arrested the king, he could have overpowered him, he could have distracted him so that he never came up with the idea to send other messengers. But he did nothing of that sort. He killed him because he wanted to.

This is not a moral dilemma where the only way to prevent the burning of KL is to kill the king. Aerys didn't have the activator for some nukes up his sleeve. He was dependent on messengers and servants passing on his orders. We don't even know whether Rossart would have been able to implement the plan even if he had gotten out. Tywin's men were sacking the city already, and he may have been slain by one of those men on his way.

Not to mention that the Sack itself would have made it very difficult for the alchemists to flee the inferno. Aerys may have been willing to die, but we have no reason to believe Rossart and his cronies were willing to die, too.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

As always, you are not only wrong, but willfully twist the text.  Jaime kills Rossart, who is essentially dressed as a spy at this point, in order to stop the plot.  He then kills Aerys because leaving him alive leaves the possibility that 500,000 people are murdered.  At no point does this one honest confession include sadistic gloating.  He then hunts down the other pyromancers, because as the rest of us know but you hhave conveniently forgotten, all of them are in on it!  Aerys didn't carry every effing barrel of wildfire himself, he had helpers, willing helpers, in his madness, and some if not many of them knew all the details.

Killing Aerys may only have postponed the burning of KL. We know how volatile old wildfire is, after all. Quite a few of Aerys' fruits have been found over the years but perhaps not all of them. Those jars who are still hidden might one they ignite on their own and kill all the people Jaime allegedly saved.

Killing all the alchemists without recovering the wildfire endangered the people, it did not save them.

But, no, arresting Aerys could just as well saved the people the same way killing him did. Just as telling other people about the wildfire plan could have helped, too. It took Jaime days to track down the other alchemists - they could have implemented the plan in the meantime. If Jaime had told Tywin, Ned, and Robert things would have been prevented much more efficiently.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

Jaime killed Aerys because he judged that the slight injustice of killing a tyrannical, murderous rapist was worth it, versus allowing a chance that he managed to secretly get word to complete his plot.  What happens if he gets word to Belis or Garigus while he's awaiting trial?  On an ethical level, Aerys deserved to die, and on a practical level, he had to, because we know the Red Keep isn't exactly secure and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are at stake.

Well, Tywin wouldn't have given Aerys a trial. He would have treated him like he treated Rhaegar's wife and children. Perhaps even worse. But Jaime would have had cleaner hands. He wouldn't have been the Kingslayer. Just a Kingsguard who abandoned his king to his enemies.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

Agaiun, it blows my mind that you can continue to argue when Martin has been so damn specific.  He "betrays" Aerys after hearing that Rossart is with him, not when he is told to bring Tywin's head.  That's why he goes after Rossart first; he knows the priority.  So just stop.  You are wrong, and there isn't room for interpretation.  Not only is there no evidence for your position, there is an overwhelming preponderance of evidence against it.

Aerys sends Jaime out to bring him Tywin's head. Then Jaime goes to Rossart, kills him, and returns bloody to the throne room. Then Aerys asks him whose blood that is, expecting that it is Tywin's. But Jaime replies it is Rossart's and kills him. That's the sequence of events.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

Dunk acts the way he does because protecting the innocent is not a question for him - it is the only path.  The first oath of a knight is to protect the weak and helpless.  It supersedes all others.  And no one knew Baelor Breakspear would die from this; as he himself says, a man who defends the innocent and remembers his vows when it isn't easy to do so is a man worth defending.  So no, there is no complexity here, as there isn't with Aerys' Kingsguard either.  Knights swear an oath.  When Barristan watches Aerys burn innocent men alive, or rape and mutilate his wife, he is betraying his most important oath, something he touches on in his own reflections, as does Jaime.

So, you are thinking sitting in your grand feudal castle as a landed knight or knighted great lord, having your peasants work hard and die an early death without them ever enjoying a shred of the comfort and luxuries you enjoy on a daily basis is upholding your vow to protect the innocents?

This society is just structurally fucked up.

But Dunk didn't intervene there because he felt it was his duty - he isn't a knight and has never sworn any knightly vow, after all - he does so because he has the hots for Tanselle-Too-Tall. If Aerion had been beating an ugly and cruel woman who had previously humiliated Dunk he would not have intervened, just as he wouldn't have done anything had he had time to think. He didn't know what he was doing during the act. Had he recalled what happens to people who lay their hand son the blood of the dragon he wouldn't have done it.

35 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

Westeros is a society with a complex set of laws and traditions.  Because it is a pre-modern society, oaths take the place of legal agreements in many cases.  And here we see that despite conflicting oaths, there is a right and wrong choice.  Even Brienne, who is obviously meant to represent a paragon of knightly virtue (her being a woman is meant to underscore that knighthood is not a series of prerequisite oaths but an attitude reflected in those oaths), agrees that Jaime does the right thing.

Because he tells her his sad story, laying out what kind of crazy person Aerys was. But both of them deliberately forget that Jaime knew what kind of king he was swearing vow to at Harrenhal. He wasn't Selmy or Hightower who joined the Kingsguard during the reigns of Aegon V or Jaehaerys II. Jaime wanted to serve and protect Aerys II after the Duskendale affair. He knew who and what this man was and he didn't care.

I have no pity for a person who joins the Kingsguard of such a man and only complains later on. Nobody forced him to join the Kingsguard.

Just as nobody forced Jon to join the Night's Watch. But once they did they have to stick to the rules or - if not - suffer the consequences. And they both did, in a sense, Jaime could save his life but (thankfully) not his reputation, and Jon got himself killed. There is nothing wrong with that.

[BalerionTheCat]

3 hours ago, Denam_Pavel said:

Literally every single mention tof Bowen Marsh in Winds of Winter and Storm of Swords makes note of how singular meticulous he is about keeping count of the Night's Watch supplies. Even the people that don't respect him at all give him that.

Counting spoons and the like is a good quality for a clerk. A low rank administrator. You don't use these people for defining the long term strategy of a company. Or for leading people. This is meant to say Marsh is not able to take decisions concerning the NW.

[Lord Varys]

5 minutes ago, BalerionTheCat said:

Counting spoons and the like is a good quality for a clerk. A low rank administrator. You don't use these people for defining the long term strategy of a company. Or for leading people. This is meant to say Marsh is not able to take decisions concerning the NW.

Marsh is definitely no good political or military leader. But Jon's vision of the future is essentially mad. The man never lived through a long Northern winter, nor any winter at the Wall. He doesn't know what it means when you are down on your food and the snow is piling up dozens of feet. Marsh and the other older people know. They know what happens when winter has come to stay. And that's without the Others knocking at your door.

If the Others take their time and wait another four years before making their move Jon most likely would guard the Wall with a bunch of starved corpses. The chances that they will get food from anywhere - Braavosi gold or not - are very slim in light of the political developments in the South and the East. Aegon, Euron, Daenerys, Cersei, Littlefinger, etc. will see to that.

[BalerionTheCat]

8 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

But Jon's vision of the future is essentially mad. The man never lived through a long Northern winter, nor any winter at the Wall. He doesn't know what it means when you are down on your food and the snow is piling up dozens of feet. Marsh and the other older people know. They know what happens when winter has come to stay. And that's without the Others knocking at your door.

No winter in man's memory is like the one coming. At least, Jon and Mance and Stannis are recognizing it more than the morons in Marsh's team. Better living man to feed than zombies everywhere.

[SFDanny]

16 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Marsh is definitely no good political or military leader. But Jon's vision of the future is essentially mad. The man never lived through a long Northern winter, nor any winter at the Wall. He doesn't know what it means when you are down on your food and the snow is piling up dozens of feet. Marsh and the other older people know. They know what happens when winter has come to stay. And that's without the Others knocking at your door.

If the Others take their time and wait another four years before making their move Jon most likely would guard the Wall with a bunch of starved corpses. The chances that they will get food from anywhere - Braavosi gold or not - are very slim in light of the political developments in the South and the East. Aegon, Euron, Daenerys, Cersei, Littlefinger, etc. will see to that.

This is not an argument for taking Marsh's proposed strategy of letting the wildlings fend for themselves north of the Wall. It's a good argument for bringing them south and growing the number of people willing to fight the Others and guard the Wall. It's a great argument for getting cash and supplies now for supporting the armies needed to stop the Others. And it's even a better argument for uniting the people of the North behind leaders who will see fighting the Others as the first and greatest priority. All of which Jon is doing.

[Lord Varys]

13 minutes ago, BalerionTheCat said:

No winter in man's memory is like the one coming. At least, Jon and Mance and Stannis are recognizing it more than the morons in Marsh's team. Better living man to feed than zombies everywhere.

That really depends. If the Wall could keep the zombies out - and we don't yet that it can't - then it is irrelevant how many wildlings become wights.

10 minutes ago, SFDanny said:

This is not an argument for taking Marsh's proposed strategy of letting the wildlings fend for themselves north of the Wall. It's a good argument for bringing them south and growing the number of people willing to fight the Others and guard the Wall. It's a great argument for getting cash and supplies now for supporting the armies needed to stop the Others. And it's even a better argument for uniting the people of the North behind leaders who will see fighting the Others as the first and greatest priority. All of which Jon is doing.

But Jon simply can't do that. He cannot magically create food, nor is gold going to help him with getting food when it is really scarce. If the Reach is going to suffer a full-scale war, if not only the Riverlands and portions of the Crownlands, the West, and the North are going to have to buy food from other regions to feed their people in winter (as they already do), but large tracts of the Reach and the Stormlands as well (as things are looking right now) then nobody is going to sell food to the NW if they can also make huge profits by selling it to the wealthy lords of the Seven Kingdoms, from Dorne to the Wall.

Jon has a good priority but if he has to kill Northmen to see and understand those priorities he is as much an unwitting ally of the Others as Robert, Eddard, or Robb. It does not matter that he kills men who could guard the Wall for a good reason. It matters that he kills them.

And if the Pink Letter actually told the truth - if Ramsay defeated Stannis in a seven days battle and all his allies are dead, too (the clansmen, the Manderly and Glover men, etc.), if Ramsay and Roose sit warm and cozy in Winterfell with 3,000-4,000 well-armed and disciplined men then Jon simply has no chance to defeat them with Tormund's wildlings. The Bolton men would crush them as easily as Stannis crushed Mance's army. And that would be the end of it.

Motivation or not, Jon is a dead man walking if the Pink Letter is through. The only chance he has is that it is actually not true. But if it is then he is dead already, and if the Watch would allow him to march they would all be dead, too. And then there would be no chance whatsoever that the Others would be stopped by the NW because Ramsay and Roose (and the Iron Throne) sure as hell would hold the NW responsible for the actions of its Lord Commander.

But even if the Pink Letter is wrong and Stannis lived then a unification of the North would still not help to defeat the Others. They don't have enough men, and hundreds or thousands of men are going to die in pointless battles for the control of the North. Material and food will be destroyed and wasted. If the North continues to claim 'independence' or supports a pretender contesting the ruler on the Iron Throne (whoever that's going to be) then they can't expect or even ask the people down there for help. Not for men manning the Wall nor food to feed their population. There is no moral obligation to feed or support traitors or secessionists, after all.

What Jon should be doing is trying to get people to table to actually talk and accept the threats they are all facing. That is responsibility as the leader of the men who protect the realms of men.

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Then Gared and Dareon and anybody else physically leaving his post but still intending to fight the Others would be a deserter, either. But that's clearly not how people in the Seven Kingdoms see it. They are setting the standard, not you, and that standard is that you are a deserter when you abandon your post physically. Nobody cares whether you want to continue to do your duty in a moral sense, or crap like that.

Interesting. So was Yoren a deserter? He left the Wall. 

What's that you say? He was sent there by the LC? So the LC can send crows on legitimate missions south of the Wall. Truly fascinating. 

[Lord Varys]

45 minutes ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

Interesting. So was Yoren a deserter? He left the Wall. 

What's that you say? He was sent there by the LC? So the LC can send crows on legitimate missions south of the Wall. Truly fascinating. 

Sure, that's quite clear. Mance and Benjen were also visiting Winterfell while they served. And the wandering crows do a job. But if you leave the Wall without permission of your superiors you are a deserter by default. If you return late from a ranging for a (good) reason you are not, of course. If some of your brothers see you with the wildlings you are. And so on.

But the Lord Commander cannot declare on the Seven Kingdoms (i.e. the realms of men) without, well, being killed by his own men or expecting to face an attempt on his life.

[cpg2016]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

hen Gared and Dareon and anybody else physically leaving his post but still intending to fight the Others would be a deserter, either. But that's clearly not how people in the Seven Kingdoms see it. They are setting the standard, not you, and that standard is that you are a deserter when you abandon your post physically. Nobody cares whether you want to continue to do your duty in a moral sense, or crap like that.

Waging a war against the rulers of the North isn't his duty nor has it anything to do with the fight against the Others. 

Except, Gared and Dareon aren't intending to fight the Others, and they admit it, so I'm not sure what the point you are making is.  They are both deserters, and proud of it.

And Jon is perfectly within his rights to lead an army wherever the hell he wants, from the perspective of the Watch.  They've gone beyond the New Gift to fight wildlings in the past without "abandoning their post".  Jeor Mormont abandons his post, which is the Wall, to go on the Great Ranging.  See how stupid of a semantic argument this is?

Your post is symbolic of your duty.  If I'm doing my duty, I am at my post.  The fact that your contorting yourself into this awful semantic debate is proof of the lack of validity of your entire position.  Sentries get "posted" by armies - it doesn't always mean they have to stay on the exact inch of ground they're assigned.  It means they need to be vigilant in looking for threats, and this can involve patrolling.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

He breaks his oath in quite a few instances there. He left his post, no longer protected the realms of men (which include the North in general as well as the members of House Bolton and the Northmen in their service he would have killed during his planned campaign), and he was about to try to win glory, another thing he is forbidden to do by the vow.

He hasn't left his post, and he is still working to protect the realms of men.  Again, you asserting some random fiction doesn't make it true.  As we've discussed, "post" is not a physical place, as even you admitted when you had to grant your own terrible argument an exception to allow Lord Commander Mormont to be allowed beyond the Wall.  He was actively still protecting the realms of men, because the Boltons are working, however unwittingly, on the side of the Others.  And there is literally zero evidence he's trying to win glory.  We're in his head! for chrissakes, and he never says a single thing about winning glory that I can remember.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

If it was okay for Jon to declare war on the Seven Kingdoms to do his duty why not go the entire road and say he would also be right if he tried to conquer them all, from the Wall down to Dorne. After all, that uniting the Realm under his iron fist could also have 'helped' defeating the Others. And why stop there? Why not conquer the Essos, Sothoryos, the entire world? Nothing in his vow says he cannot do that, either.

Lol.  Okay, be as absurd as you like.  You are right, nothing does.  And if he couched it in those terms, I'd agree that Jon was not exceeding his mandate.  He'd be an idiot, but it's legal.  In this specific instance, Jon is actively rescuing his allies.  Helping Stannis means helping humanity, because Stannis is the ONLY lord or king willing to fight the Others.  Literally, the only one.  The only men Jon knows will be fighting on his side come the next Long Night are (technically) his sworn brothers, the wildlings he's saved, and Stannis' men.  The Boltons, in trying to kill Stannis, are trying to weaken his coalition.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The Night's Watch doesn't have any sovereignty. It isn't a state. Ramsay demands that Jon hand over some criminals and property to him. There is nothing wrong in that.

It does have sovereignty, and it is by definition a state.  I'm not sure how you don't understand this, but perhaps its time to go back to class for a bit before responding again.  The Gift and New Gift are solely under the purview of the Watch.  The Iron Throne has no ability to command the Watch, as explicitly see from Cersei's POV.  http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/National+sovereignty

Go read a little bit.  The Watch absolutely has sovereignty.  They set and collect their own taxes.  They have a monopoly on armed force within their own state.  They have the power to make treaties with outside groups (e.g. Craster), and they can make their own laws.  Lets be clear: you can believe what you want, but you are wrong, both in-universe and in real life.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Certainly not. Do you think the sworn brothers serving and following the Night's King or Runcel Hightower didn't had a right to depose those men? They had a moral obligation to do so. Their oath demanded that of them, just as the vows Bowen Marsh swore compelled him to kill Jon.

Both of those men broke their vows, buddy.  Get your facts straight.  Runcel Hightower had a son, and tried to bequeath his position to him.  That would be wearing a crown (being able to pass on sovereign power) AND having a child.  So, two of the three.

The Night's King allied with the Others.  Who are demonic ice zombies out to enslave all life, and thus, antithetical to the entire race of men.  So try again.

Don't you understand that in addition to being morally and ethically in the wrong here, you don't even have a factual leg to stand on?  You trot out the same tired argument, either I or someone comprehensively shuts you down, and you retreat to... the same arguments.  You need to actually present evidence, not your own stupidity wrapped up in an unrelated piece of text.  You can tell me the clouds that trail planes are evidence of the government dusting us with chemicals, but it doesn't make it so.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Again, Jaime swore a vow to always protect the king. Nobody in the Seven Kingdoms cares about the fact that he also swore some vows to defend the innocents, etc. because the Kingsguard are a very elite order expecting to put the king first in all things.

And Martin is making a very specific point about how the Kingsguard vows are warped, and their first duty is to protect the weak and the innocent.  Meryn Trant is self-evidently a bad person.  But he does his duty, so how can that be?  Because his job is not to beat little girls.  Jaime should go ahead and protect the king as long as it is proper; if his father attempts to assassinate Aerys, his job is to kill Tywin.  If the choice is killing Tywin to save Aerys, or killing Aerys to save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, the choice is clear - innocents come first.

  Jaime makes it clear - there are higher laws.  Every line GRRM writes is to refute this stupid, long since disproven notion you cling to.  Nazi camp guards were not excused because "they were following orders".  That isn't and has never been a legal or ethical excuse, and you are the worst kind of person for trying to justify anyone's actions on that basis.  

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That is Jaime's post hoc rationalization. Rossart had gotten his order and was no longer in the throne room. Aerys was there. Jaime returned to the throne after he had murdered Rossart and then he told Aerys what he had done and murdered him. The men was defenseless and Tywin's men were nearby. Jaime could have arrested the king, he could have overpowered him, he could have distracted him so that he never came up with the idea to send other messengers. But he did nothing of that sort. He killed him because he wanted to.

If that is your headcanon, that is fine, the same as I can't help your self-evident Klan and Nazi sympathies.  But the text bears out NONE of this, and explicitly refutes certain points.  Jaime knows and names at least three co-conspirators in the wildfire plot.   It is not difficult to imagine a way in which Aerys gets words to either of his other two pyromancers and tells them to light the fuse.

All we know is this.  Jaime knows Aerys is plotting to burn the city down with at least three pyromancers.  He is given a message from Aerys to kill Tywin, and is told simultaneously (literally) that Rossart, one of those pyromancers, is with the king.  He makes the correct call, deducing that Aerys intends to kill half a million people, and goes to stop Rossart.  Knowing that there are two other high ranking pyromancers lurking around with the knowledge to kill all those innocents, he makes a judgement call and kills Aerys rather than let him give the order.  Is it possible he could have imprisoned Aerys without allowing that order to be given?  Of course.  But we can debate all day what the odds of that are.  Jaime has to make a snap decision.  And he chooses to protect innocent life.  That that is his motivation, and not sadism, is evident because he hunts down the other pyromancers; if all he wanted was to kill Aerys for ordering him to kill Tywin, why bother?  All of your fanciful motivations have literally no basis in text, they aren't even implied.  And mind you, according to Jaime, Aerys took off running when he saw the blood on Jaime's blade and knew what it meant.  And given that Jaime is wearing a ton of armor, and Aerys isn't, it is well within possibility he can outrun Jaime over anything more than a very short distance.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Not to mention that the Sack itself would have made it very difficult for the alchemists to flee the inferno. Aerys may have been willing to die, but we have no reason to believe Rossart and his cronies were willing to die, too.

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.  Rossart was literally going to light the fuse.  So somehow, you know that, and yet the logic chain for you is "willing to light a giant bomb under his feet = was positive he wouldn't die".  All we know is Rossart, and the other two, were active and willing participants in the plot, which they knew would burn the city down.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Killing Aerys may only have postponed the burning of KL. We know how volatile old wildfire is, after all. Quite a few of Aerys' fruits have been found over the years but perhaps not all of them. Those jars who are still hidden might one they ignite on their own and kill all the people Jaime allegedly saved.

Oh, I see.  So the argument is, we should never save people, because the might die anyway?  Glad to know every murderer, every rapit, and every criminal in history has your stamp of approval, because hey! their victims were bound to die anyway, right?  

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Aerys sends Jaime out to bring him Tywin's head. Then Jaime goes to Rossart, kills him, and returns bloody to the throne room. Then Aerys asks him whose blood that is, expecting that it is Tywin's. But Jaime replies it is Rossart's and kills him. That's the sequence of events.

You don't get to ignore things that don't fit nicely into your theory.  Jaime specifically mentions that the news that Rossart is with Aerys is what motivates him.  He doesn't get that order and think "ho hum, lets kill a random pyromancer first!".  He knows what Rossarts presence means because he's been there for the whole planning process.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

So, you are thinking sitting in your grand feudal castle as a landed knight or knighted great lord, having your peasants work hard and die an early death without them ever enjoying a shred of the comfort and luxuries you enjoy on a daily basis is upholding your vow to protect the innocents?

I see you are as ignorant of history as you are of law, international politics, morality, ethics, and anything save a drive to defend bigots and murderers.

There is something called a feudal contract.  It was born out of the relative chaos of the end of the Roman Empire (in Europe).   Peasants swear to lords, to give them taxes and obeisance, and lords swear to protect those peasants.  Those knights and lords who protect the innocent, are upholding their end of the bargain.  Those that don't, and there are many examples in the text, are considered to be violating the feudal contract, much as Aerys II did.

Please, unless you know what you're talking about, don't open your prejudiced mouth.  I'm happy to educate you, but a basic primary school education, which you are so obviously lacking, would do even better (and save me time).

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But Dunk didn't intervene there because he felt it was his duty - he isn't a knight and has never sworn any knightly vow, after all - he does so because he has the hots for Tanselle-Too-Tall.

Again, you are an immoral and evil person if you actually think this.  You are aware that GRRM has set out to debunk traditional fantasy myths, right?  Dunk isn't a knight, but he acts the way a knight is supposed to act, so he's a hero.  Brienne isn't a knight, but at every turn protects the innocent despite that.  That is why they're heroes, some of the most unambiguously good people in the entire series.

You've failed to understand both the actual text, and the point GRRM is trying to make.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

He wasn't Selmy or Hightower who joined the Kingsguard during the reigns of Aegon V or Jaehaerys II. Jaime wanted to serve and protect Aerys II after the Duskendale affair. He knew who and what this man was and he didn't care.

This is explicitly refuted.  He joins to keep banging Cersei.  He's also 15 and has never been to court, IIRC.  It's highly debatable how aware he is, because he explicitly says he realizes who Aerys is a few moments later when he isn't allowed to join the Tourney, and wants to quit.

 

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Just as nobody forced Jon to join the Night's Watch. But once they did they have to stick to the rules or - if not - suffer the consequences. And they both did, in a sense, Jaime could save his life but (thankfully) not his reputation, and Jon got himself killed. There is nothing wrong with that.

I will remind you, you haven't managed to find ONE SINGLE RULE Jon has broken.

[cpg2016]

4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Sure, that's quite clear. Mance and Benjen were also visiting Winterfell while they served. And the wandering crows do a job. But if you leave the Wall without permission of your superiors you are a deserter by default. If you return late from a ranging for a (good) reason you are not, of course. If some of your brothers see you with the wildlings you are. And so on.

But the Lord Commander cannot declare on the Seven Kingdoms (i.e. the realms of men) without, well, being killed by his own men or expecting to face an attempt on his life.

The Seven Kingdoms are NOT the "realms of men".  Realms of men is a euphemism for humanity.

And since Jon never renounced his Lord Commandership, he's technically well within his rights to command himself to go wherever he wants.  Take your idiocy elsewhere, we're all tired of it

[cpg2016]

16 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

 

[kissdbyfire]

12 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

This doesn't change anything as I've pointed out repeatedly in the last thread on that topic. If I plan to murder you - which I don't - and you give me a pretext to kill you without committing a murder (like, say, by trying to kill me or a family member of mine) then I will not have murdered you despite the fact that I actually wanted to do that. You are not punished for thoughts or intentions you have which you don't actually realize. And killing a Lord Commander who has actually declared war on the realms of men (in the sense that he intended to lead a wildling army against the Lord of Winterfell) and declared to leave his post (which means he is not going to live and die there, as the vow commands) is the proper thing to do in such a case. Such people deserve no other fate than Gared or Dareon.

I disagree, but you already knew that. I don't care one fig if Jon's decisions made him a treasonous oathbreaker, because I still think those were the right decisions, every last one of them. And C3PO (sorry, can't remember the poster's name, will come back and edit in a bit) @cpg2016 made some excellent points about Jon's so-called desertion and all that. Dareon is a slightly different situation, but it isn't a discussion that belongs here.

Quote

Whatever Marsh and the others planned prior to the Shieldhall meeting is irrelevant. Jon broke his vow and deserted the Night's Watch during that meeting. That means everyone can kill him, just as anyone has a right to kill an outlaw. And that's what Marsh and the others did.

I can't even. Everyone has the right to kill anyone who, in their view, has committed a crime? Maybe we're reading different books... that would explain why we never seem to agree on anything. 

Quote

And there is a strong hint, by the way, that Marsh read the Pink Letter before Clydas delivered it to Jon. That's what the smear of pink wax is all about. Clydas got the letter, was terribly afraid, and either took it to Marsh or asked him to come to him. Then they opened the letter, read it, and closed it again. Subsequently Marsh and his circle made their plans. And their plan obviously was to kill the Lord Commander should he commit open treason. Which he then did in the Shieldhall. By that time they were prepared.

In your opinion. In mine it means Ramsay had access to the pink wax but not the seal, something Roose probably guards very closely. So, Ramsay simply applied a smear of pink wax thinking it would be enough to pass the letter as being a proper Bolton letter. 

Quote

The idea that these men were as stupid as to not actually know or correctly predict what Jon would do after he read the Pink Letter is not very likely. It is not that difficult to predict.

But they had the grace to wait until after his speech. And that means Marsh's tears were sincere. He did not want to kill Jon but the man didn't leave him any other choice.

I'm sorry but LMAO. 

[kissdbyfire]

@Lord Varys when you say, "Dunk wasn't a knight" it becomes clear why we can't agree on stuff. You are correct, Dunk wasn't a knight, at least not when we first meet him, and he is posing as one. Brienne isn't a knight either... and yet, these two non-knights, who according to you don't even have the right to claim they were doing their knightly duties when they protect the weak and the innocent, are the truest, most valiant embodiment of knighthood in the story. But you probably think they're not worthy of licking the boots of the likes of Boros Blount or Meryn Trant. Go figure. 

ETA: Beautifully 'ed by @cpg2016

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

@cpg2016 You and @giant snake already won this thread, as I declared earlier. I just failed to resist the urge to troll a little. 

But no, man, you guys already dropkicked this argument in the throat. The haters are just having their rhetorical death spasms.