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Why does the Hound hate Tyrion so much?


Peach King

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15 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I mean, one could even empathize with Chett while one was in his head, and this guy is one of the worst POVs in the books.

Yeah, when I read his POVs I kept thinking how his life might have changed if some maester (like Aemon) had taken the time and trouble to deal with his facial boils.

5 hours ago, Springwatch said:

The Hound is complicated, layered. He doesn't thrive on violence - he's a near alcoholic and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. 'He served, but found no pride in service. He fought, but took no joy in victory. He drank, to drown his pain in a sea of wine', as Elder Brother has it.

I find that the "men of the cloth" - the Elder Brother and even Thoros of Myr - had the best understanding of Sandor Clegane. Given this quote, it's reasonable to state that Sandor was NOT "an alcoholic" - he was what we call "self-medicating." He didn't have a compulsion to drink for drinking's sake, as we can see by his competence most of the time. It was to deaden his thoughts at certain particular times. (Or the occasional celebration, in which even Septas overindulged.) Note that he seems to drink more after Joffrey is crowned.

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17 hours ago, Trefayne said:

I don't think a single poster in this thread has defended Sandor or his actions in any way.

There's a lot to be said though.

On creepiness. Dontos hit on Sansa. LF hit on Sansa. Tyrion hit on Sansa (as was his marital duty). Marillion hit on Sansa. Pycelle probably groped her. Stableboys gape at her.

Sandor did not hit on Sansa, though he had a thousand opportunities to groom her or grope her. All he does is terrorise her and put a blade to her throat - even on the bed, it's the same as always.

I don't think these men are all paedophiles - it would be an epidemic (Pycelle is likely the exception here). In fact, both Tyrion and Sandor are explicitly repelled by Sansa's youth, but attracted by something else, which I think goes by the name of love, but in this world is something more concrete.

I mean, look at the way love is treated in the books:

  • 'Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.'[Cersei]
  • 'Love is madness, and lust is poison.' [Tyrion]
  • Her love for Daario is poison. A slower poison than the locusts, but in the end as deadly. [Barristan, on Dany]
  • 'Robert wanted smiles and cheers, always, so he went where he found them, to his friends and his whores. Robert wanted to be loved. My brother Tyrion has the same disease....' [Cersei]
  • He wanted something from her, but Sansa did not know what it was. He looks like a starving child, but I have no food to give him. Why won't he leave me be? [Sansa, on Tyrion]

In other words, there are addicts to the drug that is 'love'. There are also certain people, mostly women, who can feed that addiction, even unwittingly like Sansa. Alternatively, men like Tyrion and Robert go to whores, not just for sex, but to satisfy their need for love.

This is not a fun theory; it comes very close to blaming the victim for her own abuse, but it works better than an epidemic of paedophiles.

Point in favour of Sandor: (allegedly,) he has never been loved, or in love.

Point in favour of Sansa: she says that no-one will ever marry her for love.

Will we ever get to the point when love is no longer a poison, but just love? Because until then, I don't see any fledgling romances getting off the ground. The truest love seems to be between Jaime and Brienne, but neither of them has admitted it yet. Perhaps they never will.

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More in defence of the Hound -

The death of Mycah. This looked like wanton cruelty on a first read, but we know a lot more now:

  • Many or most soldiers believe that a quick death is the gift of mercy. Sandor definitely does.
  • Lannisters are seriously cruel and vindictive. Cersei wants Arya to lose a hand to pay for Joff's injuries. Joff has Sansa beaten by Kingsguard just for witnessing. Mycah, a commoner, is going to die; he's not going to be allowed to live and retell his version of events.
  • Joffrey accuses Mycah of attacking him alongside Arya, which she denies. So the Lannisters will want a confession out of Mycah. The Lannisters have torturers in their employ. Robert is probably against torture, but is lazy and drunk, and is unlikely to exert himself to protect a butcher's boy.

All this Sandor knows, so he gives Mycah a quick death now instead of a prolonged hunt, followed by the terror of capture and imprisonment, followed by the questioning, and the show trial, and finally, death.

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Back to the OP - I think the Hound and Tyrion can't get on because they're sort of different tribes. Opposites rarely get on in this world, and here we've got super short against super tall, really loves fire against really hates fire, extravagant versus austere - probably other things too. Basically, the sun prince against the moon dog.

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11 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

The death of Mycah.

I think you have really nailed it here! Sandor would likely have seen this scenario play out before. Remember, when he kills, he uses maximum force so as to cause instant death, unlike some. Would he bring a child back alive, knowing that brutal tortures would doubtlessly await him? I'm guessing no, and it's all right to accuse me of wishful thinking.

1 hour ago, Springwatch said:

both Tyrion and Sandor are explicitly repelled by Sansa's youth,

Good catch! Also, we in the 21st might be careful about crying "pedophile!" Back in medieval Westeros, the age of consent was around 12, or the time of first menses. So our "child" of say, 13 to 24** would be a "woman grown" in Westeros, and thus legal.

-------

* Why 24? That was the age of "the mere child" Monica Lewinsky when she and Bill Clinton had their impeachment-causing tryst.

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6 hours ago, Springwatch said:

In other words, there are addicts to the drug that is 'love'. There are also certain people, mostly women, who can feed that addiction, even unwittingly like Sansa. Alternatively, men like Tyrion and Robert go to whores, not just for sex, but to satisfy their need for love.

Most, if not all, of the types of people who suffer from this "addiction" have been denied love and affection in their formative years and are trying to fill a void. In Robert's case, he is trying to do this because of a present lack of love and his romantic notion of his lost "true" love. Even Ramsey suffers from it in his own psycho way as he tries to out do his father to gain love and approval (see daddy, I'm just like you!). The problem is that these people start to believe, or at least act like they believe, the view of those around them that saddled them with this affliction in the first place. Does this sound like the familiar pattern of two people we know who are notable for their size and ferocious nature?

Sandor reacts like just about any large man with a deep repression does; with violence. It is his choice, however, not to really relish it or make it his "hobby" like Gregor does. I think he does feel guilty afterward, which he drowns with wine and feigned indifference. As you noted, his drinking gets worse as his situation gets worse. He desires Sansa in his life, but then again he doesn't. He cuts his own expectations short because on some level he believes the things that people think/say about him. He wants her (and everyone's really) approval so badly, but has already set himself up to fail in his own mind, so he goes to type and sabotages the effort when Sansa actually shows him some compassion. He doesn't know how to process it. He climbs into his giant callous cocoon and tortures her just like Joff, even though he wants to protect her from him. This in turn causes more guilt and shame, making the drinking worse and .... well, you get the picture.

Tyrion is just a shorter version of Sandor. You don't think that if Tyrion had the size that he wouldn't bash in a few heads? Instead, Tyrion uses his wit as his sword and his family name as his shield (like Sandor). He also drinks to numb the pain and his consumption rises as he gets lower emotionally as well. He pretty much has the same reaction to Sansa too. He wants her approval when he could just simply take her. He pays to whore and now he gets squeamish about it? In Tyrion's case we know why he reacts this way. The Tysha affair really messed him up for trusting women and being afraid to actually love one again. Shae really messed him up further and now he is where he is.

Sansa does for both of them what they can't do for themselves (or herself for that matter), which is to reawaken the ideals they have been stomping on ever since life and people started stomping on them. This is why their characters are redeemable, but not someone like Gregor or Chett. In order to be redeemable, one has to want to be redeemed in the first place. Sometimes the hardest part of that is recognizing that you want it for yourself. All Chett wanted was his cushy job back.

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3 hours ago, Trefayne said:

Sansa does for both [Sandor and Tyrion] what they can't do for themselves (or herself for that matter), which is to reawaken the ideals they have been stomping on ever since life and people started stomping on them.

I've got to disagree in the case of Tyrion. We're in his head, and he never evinces any kind of "love" for Sansa. It's more like concern and consideration. He doesn't actually even "want" her. We see how different his relationship is with Shae. With Sansa, the best he thinks he can hope for is less hatred. She doesn't "do" anything for him.

With Sandor, I got the impression that Sansa may have been just about the first person to treat him with basic courtesy. That's because she just crawled out of the backwoods with her uncouth northern family, though. Although schooled in distinguishing among the great and the smallfolk and bastards, and treating each accordingly, Sansa doesn't immediately realize Sandor is just the house dog. As for Sandor, he's only one of millions of men who have mistaken basic courtesy as some kind of affection. By the time he leaves King's Landing, I suspect he's figured out his mistake and chalked it up as just another entry on a long, long list of disappointments, mistakes, and betrayals.

For that matter, Brienne made the same mistake with Renly. He didn't just laugh in her face and snicker behind her  back like all the other males. Who wouldn't feel at least a certain affection for someone like that?

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29 minutes ago, zandru said:

I've got to disagree in the case of Tyrion. We're in his head, and he never evinces any kind of "love" for Sansa. It's more like concern and consideration. He doesn't actually even "want" her. We see how different his relationship is with Shae. With Sansa, the best he thinks he can hope for is less hatred. She doesn't "do" anything for him.

It's not that kind of love I'm talking about. She represents an ideal he can't have justly. He doesn't want to be part of destroying her innocence. He doesn't want to be his family, but he is stuck with the situation. You saw how he acted at his own wedding. He made damn sure he was "nonfunctional" even though he knew Tywin would be less than pleased. The first time he publicly defies his father (and Hand) and he chooses to do it with a girl he doesn't have any reason to care about other than he feels that her family kind of got a bum deal? Tyrion had been privately defying Tywin for years, but for Sansa he is willing to ignore him in open society. Why?

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12 minutes ago, Trefayne said:

He doesn't want to be part of destroying her innocence.

Well, I can agree with you there. Tyrion, as I noted, has been obsessed and devastated over the Tysha affair and doesn't want to do to another person what Tywin did to him.

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5 minutes ago, zandru said:

Well, I can agree with you there. Tyrion, as I noted, has been obsessed and devastated over the Tysha affair and doesn't want to do to another person what Tywin did to him.

Except, in a moment of misdirected rage, Jaime when Tyrion told him he killed Joff. In that moment all the pent up rage at all that his brother was and he wasn't shot out.

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2 hours ago, Trefayne said:

Except, in a moment of misdirected rage,

That. Although Tyrion's rage wasn't all that far misdirected. Jaime had just informed him that it wasn't just Tywin's cruelty, that he Jaime had abetted it by telling Tyrion Tywin's lie that Tysha was just a hired whore. (Too many Tys!)

Tyrion's oldest and best friend and brother had been complicit in Tysha's humiliation, just as much as Tyrion himself was when he too bent to Tywin's will and raped his wife after the guardsmen had finished. So Tyrion struck back with the sharpest cutting edge of his wit and tongue. Throughout the rest of the books, this scene is burnt into the brothers' minds. Tyrion goes downhill rapidly, working systematically to drink himself to death. Jaime starts re-evaluating his sister and his life - and remembering the lessons from Brienne.

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25 minutes ago, zandru said:

That. Although Tyrion's rage wasn't all that far misdirected. Jaime had just informed him that it wasn't just Tywin's cruelty, that he Jaime had abetted it by telling Tyrion Tywin's lie that Tysha was just a hired whore. (Too many Tys!)

I know! No wonder everyone says the westerners are all inbred! ;)

The way I read that scene was Tyrion resented the situation more than his brother's complicity in it. Jaime just happened to be right in front of him and got it full in the face. I think Jaime realized this and that's why he still let him go. Otherwise why would he? Tyrion just confessed. I don't remember Jaime thinking about that moment at all in any of his subsequent POVs. He didn't seem to resent or hate Tyrion for it or even ruminate on whether it was even true or not. I can only assume that he never believed it at all and acted the way he did out his own sense of justice, like with Aerys.

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1 hour ago, Trefayne said:

Tyrion just confessed. I don't remember Jaime thinking about that moment at all in any of his subsequent POVs. He didn't seem to resent or hate Tyrion for it or even ruminate on whether it was even true or not. I can only assume that he never believed it at all

I think you're right. Jaime appeared to be a lot more shocked about Cersei's sexual conquests, and dwelled on them like Tyrion dwelled on "where do whores go?" Plus, although Joffrey was Jaime's son, they had never been close and Jaime didn't much approve of Joffrey's behavior, when it came down to it.

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Many great points made; I'll just pick a few:

22 hours ago, Trefayne said:

Most, if not all, of the types of people who suffer from this "addiction" have been denied love and affection in their formative years and are trying to fill a void.

Yes. I'd more or less overlooked this, but both Tyrion and Sandor were starved of affection and security in childhood. It's a major thing they have in common. They have grown up differently though... In terms of the 'love drug', Tyrion is the addict grasping for intimacy, Sandor is more of an abstainer, pushing intimacy away. Both seek consolation with whores though.

19 hours ago, zandru said:

I've got to disagree in the case of Tyrion. We're in his head, and he never evinces any kind of "love" for Sansa. It's more like concern and consideration. He doesn't actually even "want" her. We see how different his relationship is with Shae. With Sansa, the best he thinks he can hope for is less hatred. She doesn't "do" anything for him.

More or less this. He's still a love addict though - it's the realisation that his marriage is loveless that gives him that 'starving child' look.

The Sandor-Sansa connection has more depth: they have worked together (Dontos) and supported each other (in between the clashes of personality, to be sure). And they've got the idea of love between them - but is this genuine love? or is it more of a temporary obsession, in other words, the love drug, the sweet poison? I'd like to say it's all genuine, but I have to admit that in the scene after the Hand's Tourney feast - when she touches him, it's as if she gave him a shot in the arm with some powerful medication.

Anyway, both Tyrion and Sandor are going cold turkey on the love drug, and will be for some time. That should help them understand what's real and what's not.

 

ETA

More love drug:

Quote

 

"Is milord feeling unloved?" Dancy slid into his lap and nibbled at his ear. "I have a cure for that." 

Smiling, Tyrion shook his head. "You are too beautiful for words, sweetling, but I've grown fond of Alayaya's remedy."

 

 

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8 hours ago, Springwatch said:

Anyway, both Tyrion and Sandor are going cold turkey on the love drug, and will be for some time.

Tyrion for sure - he's certainly being treated with various degrees of brutality, and is dismayed to have become the object of affection of what, to his eyes, is just an ugly dwarf. (This doesn't say much for his self awareness, does it?)

But Sandor seems to have been taken into the bosom of the Quiet Isle. Clearly, he was cared for and made part of their society and daily activities. The Elder Brother was fiercely protective of him and his privacy, to allow him to find himself and to heal spirtually as well as physically. "Love" has got to be more than merely a man humping a woman. I think Sandor is actually experiencing love, manifested as fellowship. This is likely a first for him, and should make a difference. (We shall see...)

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On 8/8/2018 at 3:52 AM, zandru said:

But Sandor seems to have been taken into the bosom of the Quiet Isle. Clearly, he was cared for and made part of their society and daily activities. The Elder Brother was fiercely protective of him and his privacy, to allow him to find himself and to heal spirtually as well as physically. "Love" has got to be more than merely a man humping a woman. I think Sandor is actually experiencing love, manifested as fellowship. This is likely a first for him, and should make a difference. (We shall see...)

This, totally. I still believe love will save the day, because that makes a great story, but the crazy-in-love stuff is just not working at all. It's either transactional on one side, or just doomed. I think passionate, romantic love in Westeros has been twisted out of shape; like the seasons, it needs to be rescued and restored.

(I'm finding English is a terrible language to talk about love in. Not enough words - I'm sure other languages do it better.)

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