Does Cersei know how to use a sword or Jaime know how to sew?

[Lollygag]

As Jaime swears to never take up arms again against Tully or Stark and as he loses his sword hand with no ambidexterity in the least to recover this skill, Jaime is forced to take up using thought and diplomacy to fight his battles.

At the same time, Cersei who previously used her beauty and persuasive (or not so persuasive) words, is now losing those things to her not caring for herself and the mental blur of alcoholism. She’s been taking over the KG in her special Cersei way, and when we left her, she was in the arms of her new KG member, Robert Strong.

 

[Lluewhyn]

Well, Cersei is deadly with a lute. IIRC, she knocks out several teeth of the bard she casually smashes in the face.

All kidding aside, I'll agree with Bernie Mac: It's unlikely that the twinswaps included actual attendance of instruction of any kind. It seems more like they used these opportunities to explore around and see how people reacted and if they could tell the difference. Plus, as stated, weapon training is a skill in need of constant practice. In addition, how would Cersei explain showing up and suddenly losing all of the existing training that Jaime had learned by that point?

[Seams]

17 hours ago, Bernie Mac said:

"When we were little, Jaime and I were so much alike that even our lord father could not tell us apart. Sometimes as a lark we would dress in each other's clothes and spend a whole day each as the other. Yet even so, when Jaime was given his first sword, there was none for me. 'What do I get?' I remember asking. We were so much alike, I could never understand why they treated us so differently. Jaime learned to fight with sword and lance and mace, while I was taught to smile and sing and please"

These are really interesting lines, in context with the Tyrion info about weapons. Cersei sounds very much like Tyrion in that scene with Widow's Wail and Oathkeeper, feeling left out when Jaime receives a sword.

The part about smiling and singing and pleasing is also potentially significant. We know that Tywin has used all of his children as gamepieces in his game, with Aerys taking out one of Tywin's "knights" early in the game by inviting Jaime into the Kingsguard. But Cersei is taught other skills that are important to Tywin's game: flirting, seducing and singing. (We know that the Rains of Castamere song signals death for Tywin's enemies.)

Immediately before Tyrion meets up with Tywin and sees the new Lannister Valyrian steel swords, he has met with Symon Silver Tongue. Of course he makes a lot of promises to Symon, who is trying to blackmail him with information about Shae. Tyrion lets Bronn know that Symon has to disappear. We know that Brienne later sees a sword as a tongue:

Biter threw back his head and opened his mouth again, howling, and stuck his tongue out at her. It was sharply pointed, dripping blood, longer than any tongue should be. Sliding from his mouth, out and out and out, red and wet and glistening, it made a hideous sight, obscene. His tongue is a foot long, Brienne thought, just before the darkness took her. Why, it looks almost like a sword.

(AFfC, Chap. 37, Brienne VII)

I think we are being told that Symon Silver Tongue has something to do with Tyrion's relationship with swords. Bronn is the person who hands Tyrion the axe in his first experience with combat. Tyrion turns to Bronn to inform him that he wants Symon to disappear: "You may want his tongue, I understand it's made of silver. The rest of him should never be found." (ASoS, Chap. 32, Tyrion IV). I think GRRM is setting up Tyrion in a Joffrey role here, ordering that Symon be killed and his remains lost, just as Ned Stark's bones are lost. But Ned's sword is retained, just as Symon's tongue might be retained.

If the tongue is a special sword, what does it mean that Tyrion wants Bronn to have Symon's tongue?

Immediately after this exchange with Bronn, mini-Payne (Podrick) shows up and Bronn laughs when Tyrion scolds him a bit saying, "Don't bite the boy's head off now." Tyrion's reply is, "Why not? He never uses it." So there is an allusion to the King's Justice (Ser Ilyn) and beheading, as well as the eating of human flesh which we see in the Brienne / Biter encounter. Btw, Ser Ilyn has a silver sword, covered with runes, and no tongue.

Bronn is Tyrion's champion in his trial by combat until he becomes the de facto Lord of Stokeworth. Then Oberyn Martell takes over the job. Oberyn is the first person who talks to Tyrion after Joffrey ruins the valuable book Tyrion gave him as a groom's gift. They talk about the king / hand of the king who is not featured in the book, Lives of Four Kings, but who is suspected of murdering his nephew, King Baelor. Tyrion thinks the king (Viserys) is underappreciated. Ellaria Sand says that Baelor should have died after being bitten by vipers. Is this all a thinly disguised discussion of Joffrey's imminent death? Of Oberyn "The Red Viper" being unable to kill Ser Gregor?

There's something very interesting going on with champions and one-on-one combat here, as Joffrey asks Tyrion to be the champion when he wants him to join in the mummer jousting act at the wedding feast. Tyrion replies that Joffrey is the only man present that Tyrion would be able to defeat.

Of course, champion / champignon (French for mushroom) is one of my suspected wordplay pairs, which probably means that I should have looked at Tyrion's use of poisons along with all of the weapons he has used or handled. He keeps poison mushrooms hidden in his boot while traveling in Essos.

Anyway. Singing and swords. And cannibalism. And beheading. Uncles killing nephews. Killing and dismembering a singer, but giving him a new life in bowls of brown (and the people who eat those bowls of brown).

The silent sisters sew Ned's skull back onto his neck bones using silver wire. So we're back to sewing, in a roundabout way. If truth be told.

Also, fwiw, Arya hides the sword Needle instead of throwing it in the canal with her other personal belongings. One of her reasons for saving it is that it evokes Jon Snow's smile in her mind. So Cersei being taught to smile is linked, once again, to a sword. But a woman's sword.

[Reekazoid]

On ‎12‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 11:00 AM, Angel Eyes said:

A stable of "sworn swords" means nothing when you're stuck on your own. Just look at Cersei getting overpowered in the Great Sept in AFFC. 

 

On ‎12‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 11:15 AM, zandru said:

Indeed. For that matter, Cersei never realized how much she had lost when the Hound left the Lannister's service. Heck, none of the Lannisters did. I'm continuing to hope that this will come back and bite them at some point.

I actually agree with you both! I wasn't clear in the distinction between what I think Cersei thinks- that her stable protects her, and what I think, that it's an attempt to compensate.  Also there was going to be a sword sheath joke in there somewhere, but I got distracted.

[Lion of the West]

On 11/30/2018 at 2:01 PM, Angel Eyes said:

It’s talked about how Jaime and Cersei used to trade places as children, with Cersei taking lessons from the master-at-arms. Theoretically, would Cersei know how to use a sword and Jaime to sew? 

I’m rather surprised by Cersei to be honest; she has all this talk about wishing she was born a man, but carries no weapons, not even a knife. Who knows, a knife might be useful and with an incompetent like Boros Blount guarding you...

Well, I'm sure I used to do lots of things in my childhood that gave me skills that I haven't kept to this day.

Also I think that Cersei wishing to be a man has less to do with admiration for using weapons than realizing what limits are put on her as a woman and that she'd rather live without those limitations. And then she takes things down a unproductive and destructive path in a mad rebellion against patriarchy with the goal to make a place for herself within it rather than strive for its weakening or abolishment.

[Seams]

I wanted to take a fresh look at the queen's seamstress, who measures Sansa for (unbeknownst to Sansa) a wedding dress. If a seamstress is like a smith, and marriage and childbirth are the woman's equivalent of war (see Catelyn and Brienne's discussion on this point in ACoK), then this seamstress is sort of like Pate, the armorer in The Hedge Knight, who outfits Dunk for the tourney at Ashford Meadow.

GRRM does not give us a name for the seamstress, which is probably significant. We have a lot of named servants who play lesser roles, but this seamstress gets a larger role and no name. She is primarily referred to as the Queen's dressmaker (I believe - I am away from my books at the moment). We assume that means she works for Cersei because the resulting wedding dress is for Sansa's surprise wedding to Tyrion. It could be, however, that GRRM is playing with ambiguity again: Sansa is being manipulated by Cersei, Margaery and Olenna around this time, and others have pointed out that each could qualify as a queen in some sense.

(We see the seamstress only in connection with Sansa - maybe this is a hint from GRRM that she is Sansa's dressmaker, and that Sansa is some kind of queen. I mention this b/c it fits with a pet theory I am nursing along elsewhere.)

In another post, I noticed that a reader had described Sansa's dress as being made of "silk and myrish lace." I hope no one is shocked to find that I have a wordplay suspicion about myrish lace. My suspicion is that there is a deliberate anagram linking myrish lace, alchemy and chimera. The name Myrcella may also be related to this little group of linked words. If you add "silk and" to "myrish lace," and run them through the anagram website, you get some really interesting possibilities such as "alchemy / dirks / nails" or "chimera lady's links" or other words that could relate back to Sansa and/or her husband, Tyrion. (The armorer and apprentice for the Second Sons are named Hammer and Nail.)

When I went to the "A Search of Ice and Fire" website and looked at paragraphs where "silk" and "myrish lace" appear in the same paragraph, however, I found that Cersei and Margaery are described as wearing "silk and myrish lace" at some points, and Dany asks her maid to bring such a gown as she prepares for her wedding to Hizdahr. Lysa had dresses of silk and of Myrish lace, but they are left behind at the Eyrie when Sansa descends the mountain, sort of the way Lysa left her marriage behind when she made a faster descent from the Eyrie. Sansa's wedding dress, however, is described as "samite" and lace. I had to look up the definition of samite, and found: "a rich silk fabric interwoven with gold and silver threads, used for dressmaking and decoration in the Middle Ages." So, essentially, fancy silk and myrish lace.

Why did GRRM make Sansa's dress different from regular silk? My guess would be that the threads of gold and silver are part of the spider silk and butterfly or moth silk motif that includes Sansa's hair net at Joffrey's wedding feast. Here, the threads are telling us that Sansa is still wrapped in a cocoon and has not hatched and spread her wings. Maybe these dress threads contrast with the hairnet, where Sansa uses "threads" to net some prey of her own. The threads in her wedding dress may imply that she is imprisoned or confined, similar to Dany being married in her tokar / cocoon.

Alternatively, the gold and silver could be related to Lannister weapons (Jaime's gold sword and Tywin buying up silver to make swords to slay wargs) or they could relate to precious metals used in coins, which might put us on the trail of Viserys with his gold crown made of melted medallions taken from a belt or on the trail of the Masters of Coin, Littlefinger and Tyrion.

Another woman warrior observation: Meera Reed uses a net as a weapon, in addition to her forked spear. As I recall, she nets Bran's direwolf and Sam Tarly with it at various points. That net may be Meera's symbolic participation in the sewing and thread motif.

Reconnecting to the OP for a moment, it's interesting that Cersei or Tywin or Tyrion may be imprisoning Sansa with threads at her wedding to Tyrion, and Catelyn / Robb imprisoned Jaime with a sword at Riverrun. Or did Catelyn free Jaime with a sword? Of course, Catelyn also imprisoned Tyrion at the Eyrie, but did not use steel bars ( = swords?).

 

[Angel Eyes]

On 12/3/2018 at 8:13 PM, Reekazoid said:

 

I actually agree with you both! I wasn't clear in the distinction between what I think Cersei thinks- that her stable protects her, and what I think, that it's an attempt to compensate.  Also there was going to be a sword sheath joke in there somewhere, but I got distracted.

Blount's a bad, blunt sword. Ineffective as a bodyguard and likely to give up his charge to save his own skin, how he got onto the Kingsguard is anyone's guess.