A Knight, a Prince and a Mentor

[Curled Finger]

Sometimes a deeper look leads no where but it's often revealing.  The way characters are written in ASOIAF is still very impressive to me.  Forget everything you know and just read the descriptors of Tywin Lannister and fall in love with the written drawing of this character.  One of the characters I enjoy most is Brienne of Tarth.   She's got so much going on in her past and present and future no doubt.  Her backstory is so sad and lonely and filled with really nasty acts of meanness against her.  Brienne of Tarth heralds the awkwardness and unlooked-for victimization so many kids endure in their private childhoods.  She’s a rigid straight arrow with few friends and so many haters among men who could not hold their own against her in a one on one match.  She’s an athlete and bit of a scholar in her own way.  She has beautiful manners but little sense of humor.  Life has been hard for her and she has learned some very hard lessons not all little ladies ever learn:  she has failed her single duty before turning 12 years old.  Brienne is mindful of her duty to her father but that duty does not fit.  She simply is not qualified for the job.  She would be a better son any day of the week.  Still the love she and her father bear for each other is obvious in the affection for him she tells in relating his no doubt exasperated support of her career in fighting.   Quite a forward thinking guy, the Evenstar.  

This tiny boy watches his brothers watch his parents die a horrible death close enough to maybe hear.  His fun big brother shortly goes off to ward so this child is left in the primary care of a maester and septons and surely every manner of support staff as could be had under Stannis’ final edicts.  This couldn’t have been great fun for a little kid who surely reveled in being a little boy.  Gads.  Someone good happened to Renly, who grew up as a contemporary of Brienne’s.  Maybe it was good rearing or maybe 12 year-old Renly dug the whole chivalric code of knightly conduct or not.  The little prince was compassionate and kind enough while being physically capable of actually bodily stopping a horrified Brienne fleeing a dance humiliated.  Somehow he gets her dancing and whispers such sweet support to her.  He turns what we know is among Brienne’s most bitter memories into so much better for Brienne.  It’s not clear to me if Brienne loved Renly for that moment.  I don’t think Brienne actually considers love so much as she’s determined she isn’t worth it.  Cripples, bastards and broken things indeed.  But I think she considered him her hero a little bit and was delighted to repay his kindness toward her in spades.  Maybe there is something in Renly we don’t see so obviously.

Socially awkward Amazonian fighting badass machine Brienne takes her job seriously.  She seems to have taken up as a house knight as opposed to personal security, though sworn sword does have kingsguard overtones.  Maybe it’s only the difference between perks and forfeitures at various levels as Brienne’s current vows, spoken and silent, seem to have extended bonus pack awards of duty.  Hedge knight seems altogether less complicated employment.  Still, Brienne seems to get to experience all the levels of security not unlike Arya’s intelligence gaining training.  Body guard, jailer, guide, kings guard, sworn sword, protector, undertaker, defender, friend, subject, object and captive...Brienne’s experience is a walking conscience born of some pretty nasty experience.  This woman has been through Hell before she ever runs across Lady Stoneheart.  We know Jamie plays big in what plot Stoneheart devises.  Whether Brienne loves Jamie Lannister or not I think I want less than it is not there.   I do not read what she thinks about Jamie as romantic so much as she defends him to herself and everyone who will listen.  She believes in him.  She respects the Kingslayer.  Bet neither of them ever saw that coming.  Again, she and Jamie seem to be on a parallel sort of journey to self discovery.  There is a connection with Jamie that is not unlike the connection with Renly.  Jamie annoyed repulsed, confused, rescued, caused admiration and inspired a higher calling in Brienne.  I believe Jamie believes in her and she digs that.  She’s as plain spoken as Davos and I think he digs that.  They respect each other and that’s more than I could have hoped for either of them.  

 

[CamiloRP]

I'll take this as an invitation to write about the characters we love and why. I love Theon. I have always thought there's a fate worse than death and Theon found it. Much like Slum (I'll never stop praising The Armageddon Rag) who was a hippie that loved life until he got tortured and stop being himself. Theon goes through the same process, he used to smile all the time, now he has no teeth, he used to be a great dancer, bowman and horse rider, now he can't even walk right and has lost three fingers, he loved sex and now he has no cock, but the worst of all is that he actually stopped being himself, he stopped loving life, making jokes and smiling, he started being sad all the fucking time. And he got himself there, I assume we've all been made to make impossible decisions, and I imagine I'm not the same that afterwards I realize I chose wrong, but now it's too late and I have to continue. It has happened after many screw ups, but at that time it often seems like your only choice is to double down and keep making mistakes, that's what happened to Theon times a billion, and I love it.

[Curled Finger]

@CamiloRP...that is not exactly what I expected to read but very much what I was saying.   I guess the holidays are making me think about children, but you take this to an even deeper level where a young adult is learning the consequences of a horrid and wrong betrayal.   Theon has paid, hasn't he?  I reckon there are some who could not forgive his actions.  If Bran is willing to I reckon I am too.