Why didn't Littlefinger try the Bronn approach in dueling?

[hodorisfaclessman]

49 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

As the ward of a Lord Paramount, I'd think that Petyr would have training in arms.

Probably did but he was smaller and weaker and not a noted swordsman..hed be adverage at best whereas brandon was basicaly northern robert!

Brandon has  a huge size,speed,skill and prob exp  advantage over him....basicaly it was always gonna be an ass whupping! Hence why cat tells brandon to not kill him not to be careful

By contrast bronn probably prefers to fight light armour (prob never afford full suit of plate) and is a skillled warrior....he  knows he sacrifices protection for speed but has probably done so most of his life

He makes a measured dec  to stand for tyrion when he sees an older smaller man of no real note as a warrior  and is confident in his ability to match most he meets anyway....had lysa chosen lynn corbray  or brozne royce itd have been different 

[hodorisfaclessman]

7 hours ago, Stormking902 said:

Brandon Stark was a seasoned warrior who was known for his skills with a sword, LF was a nobody with no noteworthy skill with a sword which is why the outcome that happened HAPPENED. 

This it was a weight class mismatch to begin   with and  the bigger man was the far more skilled fighter too.....no plan coulda savd lf

[Dorian Martell's son]

20 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

When Littlefinger wanted to duel Brandon Stark for Catelyn's hand, why didn't he think of fighting Brandon the same way Bronn fought Ser Vardis Egen, by dodging everything, waiting for him to tire, and then stabbing him? He just sounds like he went in there with no strategy, and almost got torn to pieces. Those underdogs he looked up to got through their problems because they had a plan.

LF was not a fighter. Brandon was quite skilled. 

[zandru]

3 hours ago, White Ravens said:

Petyr was lowborn

No, Petyr was no "smallfolk" - his family may have had only a towerhouse on a desolate isle, but they were still nobility. Very minor, but it was the difference between being a serf and living off the labor of your serfs. Ditto Sandor Clegane. His family were "landed knights." Not commoners, lowborn, and definitely not smallfolk.

[Daemon The Black Dragon]

Bronn's a experienced sellsword and almost as good as Jaime, according to Tyrion. LF was a inexperienced 14-15 year old who isn't very skilled. 

[Back door hodor]

On 9/27/2018 at 6:57 PM, Ylath's Snout said:

Like others have said, Bronn is a skilled warrior, Little Finger is never indicated to be any good in a fight or to have been back then.

Also Ser Vardis Egen seems like kind of a chump TBH. "Just dodge everything" really shouldn't work when you are dealing with a competent fighting in full armor. Yeah maybe you can dodge his sword strike but he'd still have a shield or mail gauntlt to batter you while you are off-balance from doding the sword swipe.

This is kinda like asking "Why wasn't Ned a master schemer like Varys".

Agreed...dudes a total chump 

[Blackfish Tully]

I think that we may be underestimating Littlefinger's skill with a sword , he is the son of a Lord of the Vale which would means he would have training in arms from childhood and also his family fortune and status are all based on his great grandfather's skill with a sword and his grandfather and father were both Knights i believe so the family is obviously very martial so they would not have neglected Petyr's  training . Also as the ward of the Lord of the Riverlands he would have the same sword training as Edmure .

But Brandon was 20 years old while Littlefinger was barely 15 and that's a big gap at that age . Not to mention that Brandon was by all accounts a special swordsman . Littlefinger showed a lot of nerve challenging him and refusing to yield when he realized he had little chance .

 

That fight was over almost as soon as it began. Brandon was a man grown, and he drove Littlefinger all the way across the bailey and down the water stair, raining steel on him with every step, until the boy was staggering and bleeding from a dozen wounds. "Yield!" he called, more than once, but Petyr would only shake his head and fight on, grimly. When the river was lapping at their ankles, Brandon finally ended it, with a brutal backhand cut that bit through Petyr's rings and leather into the soft flesh below the ribs, so deep that Catelyn was certain that the wound was mortal. He looked at her as he fell and murmured "Cat" as the bright blood came flowing out between his mailed fingers. She thought she had forgotten that.

 

 

 

 

[wia]

I think Littlefinger should've tried the Bronn's approach that doesn't require many years of training and a great deal of talent - not fighting the battle he's likely to lose.

As for why he didn't, borrowing the words, "the things I do for love".

[Ylath's Snout]

2 hours ago, Blackfish Tully said:

I think that we may be underestimating Littlefinger's skill with a sword , he is the son of a Lord of the Vale which would means he would have training in arms from childhood and also his family fortune and status are all based on his great grandfather's skill with a sword and his grandfather and father were both Knights i believe so the family is obviously very martial so they would not have neglected Petyr's  training .

Thing is, Little Finger's family is very poor right? So it is unlikely that they could afford could afford a dedicated tutor to teach him and I would assume that his father was busy ruling the keep and maybe scrounging for work to do all that teaching himself.

2 hours ago, Blackfish Tully said:

Also as the ward of the Lord of the Riverlands he would have the same sword training as Edmure .

But isn't Edmure average at best as a one-on-one fighter? Certainly not good enough to pull of the sort of risky strat Bronn used without significant danger to himself?

[HoodedCrow]

LF seems more like a cloak and dagger kind of guy. But now he’s got the money to pay for swords and nobility. Brandon, Rickard, Lysa, Jon, Robert, Ned, Cat and Robb are dead, and LF has Alayne, SR, Harrenhal, and command of the Eyrie. Nice recovery...for now.

[zandru]

The brief duel indicates Petyr Baelish was not a highly trained swordsman; he's described as small for his age. We can extrapolate that he's probably puny, with slow reaction times and a certain clumsiness. Moreover, the duel occurred before Baelish became the sneaky back-stabber that we know so well. He was, it appears, the romantic fool.

What the Brandon duel told him was that he'd be crazy to ever try to take on trained knights at their own games. That he needed to specialize in backstabbing, deception, lying, plotting, manipulating - the "soft" martial arts. Plus, the duel gave him an eternal hatred of the Starks and a weirdo "hate/love" fixation on Lady Catelyn Stark. Made no difference to her that her Brandon was tortured to death by the mad king, and her husband was now innocent Eddard - Baelish still hated them all. They were responsible for his public humiliation, his being sent back home in disgrace, and him losing his (former) great love. Who he then worked tirelessly to humiliate by claiming to have de-flowered her prior to her wedding, telling the lie to everybody in King's Landing who would listen (per Tyrion). He no longer loves Catelyn, nor Sansa - but they're both great tools he can use to further his various other schemes. His feelings for Sansa are creepy and often lustful, but not love.

Surely Petyr would have known or suspected that he couldn't prevail over Brandon?! I suspect he had a few romantic notions (see para 1), one being that "love" would conquer all. Another would be that he could die in Catelyn's loving arms as she wept over him, or that she would personally nurse him back to health and ditch Brandon.

He was sadly mistaken.

[honorable men]

Not many kids are picked to become wards of Great Houses and what did fostering LF achieve?

[BRANDON GREYSTARK]

Baelish still would have lost .BRANDON LOVED THE SONG OF SWORDS. It also saved his life . Brandon could have taken Baelish's action as cowardly and killed him in a rage .

[honorable men]

Imagine warding the future rulers of Blackwoods and Brackens. Imagine keeping just one frey around, one of your strongest vassal, probably less animosity in the kingdoms. ffs even having them squire for the Blackfish for a while would be thrilling enough.

 

We are told we live in a feudal society...

[Ylath's Snout]

8 hours ago, honorable men said:

Imagine warding the future rulers of Blackwoods and Brackens.

One personal friendship isn't enough to break a literally thousands of years old rivalry that have brought down several kings.

8 hours ago, honorable men said:

Imagine keeping just one frey around, one of your strongest vassal

Yeah, rewarding treasonous bannermen that won't heed the call while snubbing loyal Houses. Nothing could go wrong there. Not to mention that House Frey's is so large that you'd have to ward twelve kids or something like that to make all the branches happy with you.

Hoster might have been a better rules if he had made other choice but: A that is true of every single character in a leadership role in this story. B People making "suboptimal choices" isn't unrealistic or dumb, it's human. Some of those choices could have made things far worse as well.

8 hours ago, honorable men said:

Not many kids are picked to become wards of Great Houses and what did fostering LF achieve?

It was a boon to a personal friend. 

[Angel Eyes]

Well, I guess looking back at this thread, it just seemed odd to me that Littlefinger, who was always cunning and clever, couldn't/wouldn't think of a tactic to beat a larger, stronger opponent, especially considering his romantic ideas of an underdog beating a brute with his wits, either by outmaneuvering him or, poisoning his weapon so that even if he got a single scratch, Brandon would be severely injured or killed, even taunting him by saying he got to Catelyn first. 

[zandru]

33 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

it just seemed odd to me that Littlefinger, who was always cunning and clever,

I maintain, as I've said before, that Baelish was NOT "cunning and clever" at the beginnning. His actions, what little we know from the women's memories, were that of a romance-besotted child who believed "the songs" were true, that love would triumph over skill at arms, that even a brave show would win the heart of the fair maid.

Notice how Littlefinger is always on about "life is not a song" and putting the cynical, ugly cast on everything he tells Sansa. That "fight" with (drubbing by)  Brandon and the even uglier aftermath disillusioned him, and like many people who Believed, but were harshly disillusioned, Baelish turned on his old idealism. He accepted, even embraced the fact that he was no good at arms, but decided he could take down all those Brave Kights with his cleverness, his deceptions, his manipulations. He ran whorehouses, taking down the idea of feminine purity and honor. I've often mentioned how he talked about his former "great love."

Possibly the LIttlefinger of today would have thought of Bron's technique, assuming he had any martial skills. I doubt that he did, however, because he'd found it cheap enough to hire such men to do his dirty work for him.

[Euron III Greyjoy]

Baelish was a small little kid who had never really fought with anyone before, and he was fighting against a man 4 years older then him who was also a skilled swordsman. 

[Ylath's Snout]

1 hour ago, Angel Eyes said:

especially considering his romantic ideas of an underdog beating a brute with his wits

I suspect that Little Finger's head was far too high in the clouds to think that he even needed a clever plan, the power of love and all that. 

 

[Trigger Warning]

If anyone ever pulls a knife on you in the street just dodge all their attacks and you'll be okay.