What would Barristan have done about the wildfire?

[Lord Varys]

36 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Yeah the thing is Aerys's response to the defiance of Duskandale wasn't that mad. It was cruel and ruthless but it did served a point. It was the Reyne-Tarbeck rebellion 2.0. and no one considered Tywin mad for what he did. And after Duskandale, initially it was to be expected that Aerys would be a little jumpy and paranoid (the guy spent half a year in captivity). It was only later that people began to realize that Aerys's psyche had been completely broken by Duskandale, and only at Harrenhal did it became apparent. At the time it seemed an cruel and ruthless response to be sure but not a mad one. I mean think about it what would Tywin had done with the Darklyns?

Duskendale took place in 277 AC, four years before Jaime decided to join the Kingsguard. And Aerys II started to look like the crazy guy he was a couple of weeks/few months after Duskendale because he no longer allowed anyone to touch him after that.

Jaime knew what was going on - he just didn't think, as he usually does, somehow confusing the ideal of the Kingsguard with the reality of the job - that you can only be as noble as the king you protect and serve.

And it that sense he is at fault. Nobody forced him to become bodyguard of a lunatic. He wanted this - and he got what he wanted.

36 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

As I said I think 3 times already in this thread, Jaime didn't just do it in order to save KL (that was what pushed him over the edge). He did what he felt was justice. He finally realized that all his vows were contradictory and kinda hypocritical and he didn't care anymore. He just did what he felt was right (and yeah he did what was right from a moral point a view), stopping the wildfire plot and finally bringing Aerys to justice.

But that's not what is in his mental recollection. There is nothing there about him doing justice. He doesn't go to Aerys II and sentences him to death for his crime, or tells him comes to kill him because what the king made him witness and be a part of.

You make a mistake when you think that Jaime pointing out there are contradictory vows means he cares about those about protecting the innocents - he just recognizes the hypocrisy of the whole system, something he would have known before had he not been as stupid and naive as he is.

In that sense he is much like Sandor Clegane - the guy also understands what knights and knighthood means within the political system of Westeros (that they are the swords of the master, fed and armed and pampered so they keep the sheep in line and the enemies off their lands) - but this doesn't cause Sandor to try to become better than those knights - instead he aspires to become worse, relishing in the fact that he understands the nihilism that rules the world.

To a point Jaime is also warped and twisted by his experiences in KL. He only fought in a minor skirmish before, and he is only fifteen when he joins the KG. He is not accustomed to see a creature like Aerys II rape his sister-wife the way he does, nor has he any experience serving a madman or watch people being burned alive for, at times, not exactly convincing reasons (however, he would know everything about his father's deeds in the past, and should be no stranger to the barbaric way the Westerosi do 'justice').

Up to a certain point KL pushed Jaime to become a murderer, but the more crucial things behind that is his personality disorder and his character traits. How fucked-up the guy is and always you can see in him cuckolding his king, just after he became a Kingslayer, in him trying to kill a small child to hide things he was not forced to do, etc.

There are people who all want to blame Cersei for this, but they are not really making sense. Jaime is his own man - he wanted to do all that. And he actually takes responsibility for most of that.

And even with Aerys II - he never says he was in a moral dilemma or anything. He really wanted to do this and he is not sorry. If he were conflicted about it he would have told everyone about the wildfire plan - but he did not. He kept that for himself because he doesn't want people to understand why he is doing things - because nobody but he himself is allowed to judge him. That is the core of his narcissistic personality.

[Seams]

On 11/3/2019 at 12:45 PM, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Well when he talked about Ned judging him he is referring to the fact that Ned is an absolute hypocrite. Ned wanted to kill the Mad King (and Jaime had way better reason to do it) and broke his vow to obey the king yet he judged Jaime as ,,Kingslayer" and ,,Man with shit for honor" without even bothering to find out why he did it.

I meant to mention that Ned's unrealized desire to kill Aerys is a key piece of the dynamic between Jaime and the King.

I suspect GRRM is using an old archetype from The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Frazer, a 1922 book that has been discredited by anthropologists. Frazer's book has been influential on writers of fiction with its claim to have distilled commonalities in myths about sacred kings from various cultures. The juiciness of Frazer's archetypes continues to make them good models for writers, even if the scientists have rejected the 1922 interpretation of the stories.

The first and central example in Frazer's book is about a king who will be replaced by the man who kills him:

In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier.

2

The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his. For year in, year out, in summer and winter, in fair weather and in foul, he had to keep his lonely watch, and whenever he snatched a troubled slumber it was at the peril of his life.

Sounds a lot like paranoid King Aerys and, don't you know, he is slain by a stronger and craftier Jaime Lannister. Recall that Jaime doesn't just kill the king and recoil in horror at this necessary act of regicide: he immediately climbs the steps to the iron throne and seats himself there. When Ned enters the room - apparently moments later - he finds Jaime seated on the throne.

Did Jaime consciously want to become king? Probably not. I agree with the comments that his focus was on being a great knight and on Cersei. But there's the interesting part - Cersei and Jaime are two halves of a whole. They complete each other. Cersei wants the throne. And we eventually see Jaime's "mini me," Joffrey, become king. Dividing Jaime and Cersei into twins is a useful way of showing the new king killing the old king without having Jaime overtly play the role of ambitious, would-be king. GRRM is showing us that Jaime really did win that round of the Game of Thrones and he and his House end up in power, even if that was not Jaime's intention.

Readers are assured that Ned didn't want to be king, but I also agree with the points in this thread that Ned wanted to kill Aerys, and would have done so if Jaime hadn't beaten him to the task. He doesn't see himself as an ambitious player in the Game of Thrones, but he is and his children will act out - with variations - some of the events that didn't work out in favor of the Starks in previous generations.

Archetypes will repeat.

P.S. Back to the original topic. Upon reflection, I suspect that Barristan's attack on Hizdahr is a deliberate parallel to Jaime's attack on Aerys. I suspect that Ser Barristan is a dragonseed (don't know who his real parents might be), born in a brothel. So he would be related to Dany in some way and playing for Team Targ in the Game of Thrones. His efforts to champion Dany are similar to the throne-winning outcome for Lannisters after Jaime kills Aerys.