Dareon was a victim of Arya's brand of "justice"

[Tucu]

3 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Yes and no. My guess, especially given that as of Mercy I

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she basically has no more place in the Faceless men having killed Ralf the Sweetling

Is that she will go to the Riverlands and there help (alongside Nymeria and her pack) pull off Red Wedding 2.0. However that will be the point that she will realize enough is enough and she will proceed to then mercy kill Stoneheart.

Regarding Mercy I:

Spoiler

I think she was still following orders even if her chosen target was known to her. Check this line from Mercy I: " This would make trouble for the Sealord and the envoy with the chicken on his chest, she did not doubt."

 

[Alyn Oakenfist]

1 minute ago, Tucu said:

Regarding Mercy I:

Spoiler

Wouldn't that defeat the point the faceless men were trying to make. Giving her sweet and easy revenge doesn't seem the kind of thing they'd do. And what's more look at how she does it. This isn't simple valar morghulis, no she relishes in it. It's clearly vengeance on her part, so even if he was assigned, odds are Arya still failed.

 

[Tucu]

Just now, Alyn Oakenfist said:

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Wouldn't that defeat the point the faceless men were trying to make. Giving her sweet and easy revenge doesn't seem the kind of thing they'd do. And what's more look at how she does it. This isn't simple valar morghulis, no she relishes in it. It's clearly vengeance on her part, so even if he was assigned, odds are Arya still failed.

 

Spoiler

If she was ordered to sow chaos between the Searlord and the Iron Throne (as the line I quoted implies), she would be OK with the Faceless Men. She might get a light chastising like the other times she broke the rules, but they will keep promoting her.

 

[SeanF]

18 minutes ago, CamiloRP said:

As many people have argued above, she didn't do what Ned or Jon would have done. They would have executed him, in public, with witnesses, and they would have looked him in the eye and heard his last words before killing him. Not sneakily stabbing him and dumping his body in the river. 

Arya certainly believes she's justified in what she did, and that's the problem, all the trauma she went trough, all the injustices she lived, are taking a toll on her, and have warped her sense of justice. First she killed in self defense, then she killed unarguably bad people for questionable reasons (one of the three names she gives to Jaqen, she does because she doesn't like a joke they tell) then she kills because she's ordered to, and now she killed because she thought it was the right thing to do. Will she continue escalating? Will she next kill a random person because they told an awful joke? What if she hears someone say Ned or Robb were traitors? It's hard for children to del with their emotions, many chose to get angry whenever they feel anything uncomfortable, many turn towards violence on a dime because of those very reasons. It's not uncommon for a ten year old to beat up someone for almost no reason. The problem is that Arya doesn't process it by beating people up (which would still be a problem) she goes straight to murder.

TBF, the joke Chiswick was telling was about the gang rape of a an innkeep's daughter and the murder of her brother.  If anybody had it coming, it was Chiswick.

I feel immense sympathy for Arya because of the horrors she's been subject to at an early age.  If she does break bad, the vast majority of the fault will lie with those who subjected her to such horrors.  Where the show went very wrong (well, one of the many ways it went very wrong) was as (a) to portray Arya as a gleeful sadist and (b) to treat this as a positive thing.

[TheLastWolf]

21 hours ago, lrresistable said:

and Jaime in particular has only slept with 1 woman so it's not like he's a player or anything.

3. Cersei, Pia and in future, Brienne 

But I get the gist... 

As to the rest of the thread, just another provacative, views&replies garnering Dany worshipping Stark hatred thread. Nothing new. What's all the hullabulla about!? 

Spoiler

Emboldened, my line 

Adiós 

[El Guapo]

25 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

3. Cersei, Pia and in future, Brienne 

But I get the gist... 

As to the rest of the thread, just another provacative, views&replies garnering Dany worshipping Stark hatred thread. Nothing new. What's all the hullabulla about!? 

  Hide contents

Emboldened, my line 

Adiós 

 

Interesting. The only mention of Dany on this thread is from you. Obsessed much?

And sorry the morality of Arya killing Daeron is a valid discussion and if your Stark worshipping self can't handle people talking about it then perhaps this thread isn't for you.

[CamiloRP]

30 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Yes and no. My guess, especially given that as of Mercy I

  Hide contents

she basically has no more place in the Faceless men having killed Ralf the Sweetling

Is that she will go to the Riverlands and there help (alongside Nymeria and her pack) pull off Red Wedding 2.0. However that will be the point that she will realize enough is enough and she will proceed to then mercy kill Stoneheart.

Yes, I think that's very likely as well, tho when I wrote about her murdering someone just because they called Ned ro Robb traitors I suddenly realized how likely that was too.

[CamiloRP]

14 minutes ago, SeanF said:

TBF, the joke Chiswick was telling was about the gang rape of a an innkeep's daughter and the murder of her brother.  If anybody had it coming, it was Chiswick.

Yes, I'm not saying he didn't deserve it, but the fact is that when she does this she's positioning herself as judge and jury, so if she goes down that path he would be a Punisher like figure, and even in Westeros, that is not acceptable.

 

Quote

I feel immense sympathy for Arya because of the horrors she's been subject to at an early age.  If she does break bad, the vast majority of the fault will lie with those who subjected her to such horrors.  Where the show went very wrong (well, one of the many ways it went very wrong) was as (a) to portray Arya as a gleeful sadist and (b) to treat this as a positive thing.

Completely agree.

[Alyn Oakenfist]

14 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

3. Cersei, Pia and in future, Brienne 

Pia? When on earth does she sleep with Pia?

[Julia H.]

2 hours ago, Springwatch said:

We don't have to expand on every man's hand be raised against him - we already know what that means. The villages raised their hands against Gared, but they didn't kill him - they tied him up and summoned their lord. And Ned didn't tip Gared into a canal and steal his boots - he acted formally, with twenty witnesses including his sons and Theon and what you might call section leaders of his personnel, like Hullen, master of horse.

And Arya knows all this! She's a bright, curious child who likes to sit and listen to the men talking, and she's close to her brothers too. Bran knew what to expect from the King's Justice, so would she.

I agree that Arya was in FM mode when she kill Dareon. I don't think she would claim to be acting Lord Stark - it wasn't the King's Justice she handed out, it was her own.

 

1 hour ago, CamiloRP said:

As many people have argued above, she didn't do what Ned or Jon would have done. They would have executed him, in public, with witnesses, and they would have looked him in the eye and heard his last words before killing him. Not sneakily stabbing him and dumping his body in the river. 

 

Arya herself did not have the power to openly sit in formal judgement over Dareon, nor was she able to take him to any competent authority who could. She couldn't even hope that any competent authority (such as the Warden of the North used to be in the North) would somehow reach him in Braavos. Gared was captured and taken to Ned because at that time and in that place there was an authority people could turn to, trusting his judgment. There and then there was law and order, justice was done openly, and no honest people had to wonder what was wrong and what was right.

In Arya's world, this has been completely absent ever since her father was taken prisoner. No judge to pronounce a just sentence, no legal judgment, only brutes killing and torturing people for gold or pleasure, only isolated individuals dying or fighting back as well as they could, only her own sense of justice and not only for her own sake but for other people's plight as well - and then the kind of justice delivered by the FM. In her world, there is no community or law and order, just the individual who must personally do what he or she finds the right thing to do because there will be no one else to do it or to even help with it.

This is not her madness, this is the madness of the world around her, and her way of adapting to it. She could easily have walked away from Dareon and Sam and the whole problem of NW desertion. Her killing of Dareon, sadly, may very well be a sign of her insistence on somehow keeping up something of the old justice and the old law that used to hold the world together in the horribly twisted circumstances she is currently trying to survive in. 

[Lord Varys]

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

Actually, I’d side with Sansa if she killed someone like LF, after working out what he did to her family, or Cersei.

Of course, but if she were doing that without being in any legal position allowing her to try and execute that person she would still be a murderess.

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

Similarly, I’ve no problem with Arya killing the Tickler, or Raff the Sweetling.

Up to a point I agree there - although the way she dispatches Raff is very insidious and the guy becomes her victim there. She doesn't fight with an open visor, so to speak. But I definitely would agree that Arya has a genuinely good motivation to see those men dead. But that's not the case for Dareon or the insurance guy or even that Bolton guardsman she murdered.

The problem with Arya is that murder has become a normal thing to her, something that comes naturally to her, something she does to resolve (minor) problems she faces. She might still be some kind of 'good murderer', but that doesn't mean what she does is good.

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

WRT Sansa, I think her moral threshold will be the extent to which she is complicit in Sweetrobin’s death.  

I actually think her killing Littlefinger is a problem independent of that, considering whatever he did to Ned, etc. - he also saved her from the Lannisters. She owes him for that on a personal level. But I honestly don't expect Sansa to do away with Littlefinger eventually because of what he did in the past but because of what he plans to do in the future ... and because Sansa's plans for herself do not include Littlefinger.

8 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

Would any VIP actually care what happened to nobody like Dareon? Or I suspect that very few lordlings would fuck around just to find killer of person who was already outlaw.

Depends how and where the guy was murdered. But the question isn't whether Arya would be captured or not, the question is that what she did was already murder in Westeros. Westeros isn't a world where anybody can just kill people when they feel like it.

And to be sure - Dareon as wandering crow would have done pretty much the same thing as Dareon at Braavos. He would also have sung at inns and stuff, and he would have celebrated the fact that he no longer has to hang out at the Wall. But in this capacity this wouldn't have made him a deserter.

8 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

After all Westeros do not really have human rights and law enforcement in there really sucks. So people have tendency to fix of their own problems by using violence. I assume that as long as nobody important or their interests are not harmed VIPs do nothing to stop that happening.

No, murder is a crime and people are persecuted for that. Just think of our good friend Chett. People did care that he murdered that girl.

 

[CamiloRP]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Up to a point I agree there - although the way she dispatches Raff is very insidious and the guy becomes her victim there. She doesn't fight with an open visor, so to speak. But I definitely would agree that Arya has a genuinely good motivation to see those men dead. But that's not the case for Dareon or the insurance guy or even that Bolton guardsman she murdered.

The problem with Arya is that murder has become a normal thing to her, something that comes naturally to her, something she does to resolve (minor) problems she faces. She might still be some kind of 'good murderer', but that doesn't mean what she does is good.

I agree with the bold bit, but I think the murder of the Bolton guardsman was one of her more excusable murders, second to the stable boy and the weasel soup incident. The guardsman hadn't done anything to Arya, but she and her friends were trapped and had a very grip future to look up to, and the guardsmen would've prevented them them from escaping. His murder was a necessity for her, it was a type of self defense.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, CamiloRP said:

I agree with the bold bit, but I think the murder of the Bolton guardsman was one of her more excusable murders, second to the stable boy and the weasel soup incident. The guardsman hadn't done anything to Arya, but she and her friends were trapped and had a very grip future to look up to, and the guardsmen would've prevented them them from escaping. His murder was a necessity for her, it was a type of self defense.

I think it was very much self-defence.  Harrenhall was a concentration camp.  Ditto when she warged into Nymeria to kill the pursuers.

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, CamiloRP said:

I agree with the bold bit, but I think the murder of the Bolton guardsman was one of her more excusable murders, second to the stable boy and the weasel soup incident. The guardsman hadn't done anything to Arya, but she and her friends were trapped and had a very grip future to look up to, and the guardsmen would've prevented them them from escaping. His murder was a necessity for her, it was a type of self defense.

In context it is somewhat excusable ... but I've severe problems with it.

For one, with the fact that Arya of House Stark kept her identity hidden from the Northmen she helped take Harrenhal. If 'Weasel' had told the guys she freed from the dungeon who she was, everything would have been different. And that's her direct responsibility.

Also, while she had a grasp that serving under Vargo Hoat would be unpleasant - ugly, even - it wasn't a clear death sentence.

And then - finally - the fact that her first idea to get out of Harrenhal was to kill a guardsman and not, you know, try to sneak out some other way is also very telling - and rather ugly if you think about it in detail.

That guardsman was an innocent Northman, after all. He never did anything wrong as far as we or Arya know.

28 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think it was very much self-defence.  Harrenhall was a concentration camp.  Ditto when she warged into Nymeria to kill the pursuers.

I actually don't think Arya killed the pursuers. That were Nymeria and her pack on their own, with Arya just witnessing what happened in her sleep. It might be that Nymeria realized through their skinchanger bond that Arya was in danger from those people, but even that isn't really necessary.

[Springwatch]

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Arya herself did not have the power to openly sit in formal judgement over Dareon, nor was she able to take him to any competent authority who could. She couldn't even hope that any competent authority (such as the Warden of the North used to be in the North) would somehow reach him in Braavos. Gared was captured and taken to Ned because at that time and in that place there was an authority people could turn to, trusting his judgment. There and then there was law and order, justice was done openly, and no honest people had to wonder what was wrong and what was right.

In Arya's world, this has been completely absent ever since her father was taken prisoner. No judge to pronounce a just sentence, no legal judgment, only brutes killing and torturing people for gold or pleasure, only isolated individuals dying or fighting back as well as they could, only her own sense of justice and not only for her own sake but for other people's plight as well - and then the kind of justice delivered by the FM. In her world, there is no community or law and order, just the individual who must personally do what he or she finds the right thing to do because there will be no one else to do it or to even help with it.

This is not her madness, this is the madness of the world around her, and her way of adapting to it. She could easily have walked away from Dareon and Sam and the whole problem of NW desertion. Her killing of Dareon, sadly, may very well be a sign of her insistence on somehow keeping up something of the old justice and the old law that used to hold the world together in the horribly twisted circumstances she is currently trying to survive in. 

Eloquent, but it doesn't fit the case:

1. Braavos is not some wild frontier. It has it's own systems of law and order (such as they are), which are better than anarchy.
2. Dareon is clearly not a brute killing and torturing for pleasure. He likes singing and women and pretty clothes. No threat to anyone.
3. There is a very, very clear route to justice for Dareon, which is that Sam, an official Brother of the Watch, will report him. I can't remember if Sam has set sail at this point, but if he has, he can report Dareon's desertion at Oldtown. If not, Arya has killed Sam's sole means of support.

[Lord Varys]

By the way - the 'execution' of Gared is also a travesty of justice in the sense that Eddard Stark simply dismisses what the man has to say and focus on formal defection when in fact whatever Gared witnessed and said was of paramount importance for the survival of mankind.

And on a formal level - the execution of a madman also is something only barbaric/primitive societies would consider (sort of like that trials and executions of animals people did in the middle ages). If Gared was indeed mad, then Ned shouldn't have taken his head because a madman isn't responsible for what he did, including desertion.

And if he wasn't mad, then Ned is a moron for not listening to what Gared had to say.

[Julia H.]

15 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

Eloquent, but it doesn't fit the case:

1. Braavos is not some wild frontier. It has it's own systems of law and order (such as they are), which are better than anarchy.
2. Dareon is clearly not a brute killing and torturing for pleasure. He likes singing and women and pretty clothes. No threat to anyone.
3. There is a very, very clear route to justice for Dareon, which is that Sam, an official Brother of the Watch, will report him. I can't remember if Sam has set sail at this point, but if he has, he can report Dareon's desertion at Oldtown. If not, Arya has killed Sam's sole means of support.

1. Braavos is not interested in Night's Watch matters. Besides, it is not a world where an orphan child on her own can find official protection. Who cares what an abandoned child is doing on her own in the streets? Who does Arya know she could trust to deliver justice in Braavos? 

2. I did not refer to Dareon as a brute or a murderer. I was referring to Arya's experience of the world. She has not seen anyone in power lift a finger against brutes and murderers in the Riverlands. That experience alone is enough to shatter any illusions about a protective justice system in the world, and she did not experience anything in Braavos that would change that. I did not say she killed Dareon because Dareon was a brute and a murderer. He wasn't. She killed him because he was a deserter and because that was what her father would have done (albeit in a different way).  

Incidentally though, Eddard did say this about deserters:

"No man is more dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile."

And Arya knows a few things about vile crimes. 

3. Sam can report Dareon in Oldtown. And then the FBI will start an investigation. 

Well, no. Arya has no reason to believe in the existence of official justice in Westeros any longer. She may not even know how these things should officially happen. Besides, even if she believed in an official justice system in Westeros, she would know, from her own experience, that Dareon could just disappear in Braavos, never to be reached by any Westerosi judge. Which is exactly what was going to happen. (By the way, did Sam report him in Oldtown? Or does he know that Dareon is dead? I can't recall this part.) Who exactly from Westeros would go after Dareon in Essos, especially in the current circumstances? As for Sam's sole means of support... that's one thing Dareon was not going to be. 

[Lord Varys]

4 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

1. Braavos is not interested in Night's Watch matters. Besides, it is not a world where an orphan child on her own can find official protection. Who cares what an abandoned child is doing on her own in the streets? Who does Arya know she could trust to deliver justice in Braavos? 

Perhaps the Faceless Men, who took Arya in and offered her to pursue any kind of career in Braavos she could possibly want? If there is a crime going on she can report it to them and they could report it to the authorities.

4 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

2. I did not refer to Dareon as a brute or a murderer. I was referring to Arya's experience of the world. She has not seen anyone in power lift a finger against brutes and murderers in the Riverlands. That experience alone is enough to shatter any illusions about a protective justice system in the world, and she did not experience anything in Braavos that would change that. I did not say she killed Dareon because Dareon was a brute and a murderer. He wasn't. She killed him because he was a deserter and because that was what her father would have done (albeit in a different way).  

Incidentally though, Eddard did say this about deserters:

"No man is more dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile."

And Arya knows a few things about vile crimes. 

That is just a silly defense. It is like saying the child of a judge or policeman who is himself/herself not a judge or policeman can and should act as if he or she were a judge or policeman. But that kind of thing makes him/her a criminal guilty of vigilantism.

And a deserter of the NW is definitely not a dangerous man in the Free City of Braavos were people, rightfully, don't give a damn about Westerosi laws and customs and vows.

Eddard Stark would have never murdered Dareon had he chanced on him in Braavos. And he would be horrified by the thought that his daughter could devolve to the level of murdering people on the street. It would disgust him, and rightfully so. Because, you know, Arya Stark definitely takes joy in killing people. You can see that in Mercy chapter. Just as she took joy in not killing Sandor when she felt this was even more horrible a punishment than killing him.

And to be sure - picking on Dareon is just sick. Sam also sort of deserted by wasting his money on a dying man and putting himself in a position where he could no longer catch a ship to Oldtown. He is supposed to become a maester as quickly as possible and then return to Castle Black. His mission was not to sacrifice everything he had to stop a very old man from dying.

Dareon could have come around to accompany Sam to Oldtown eventually ... but Arya took that possibility away from him when she murdered him.

Vice versa, a Samwell losing all hope to ever leave Braavos could have also ended up in a Dareon-like position where he had to take on jobs to provide for him and Gilly and the child. Had he done that, Arya could have easily enough murdered him, too.

4 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

3. Sam can report Dareon in Oldtown. And then the FBI will start an investigation. 

Well, no. Arya has no reason to believe in the existence of official justice in Westeros any longer. She may not even know how these things should officially happen. Besides, even if she believed in an official justice system in Westeros, she would know, from her own experience, that Dareon could just disappear in Braavos, never to be reached by any Westerosi judge. Which is exactly what was going to happen. (By the way, did Sam report him in Oldtown? Or does he know that Dareon is dead? I can't recall this part.) Who exactly from Westeros would go after Dareon in Essos, especially in the current circumstances? As for Sam's sole means of support... that's one thing Dareon was not going to be. 

It is completely irrelevant that Dareon deserted. Westeros and the world have much more important problems than that.

[Lilac & Gooseberries]

16 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think Arya was wrong to do it (subject to any further information).  However, I think it evidences how damaged she is, not that she is a villain.

I don’t necessarily disagree. What believe that Arya is a traumatised 10 years old. Are all of her decisions correct? No. Was she mistaken to kill Daeron? Mayhaps. My opinion is that Arya is a child, even per Westerosi standards, for all she knows she is all alone in the world, with enemies all around her, no one to help her and she has to survive. Even the trauma of seeing her father being decapitated and her running for her life is enough for me to feel sorry for her.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Lilac & Gooseberries said:

I don’t necessarily disagree. What believe that Arya is a traumatised 10 years old. Are all of her decisions correct? No. Was she mistaken to kill Daeron? Mayhaps. My opinion is that Arya is a child, even per Westerosi standards, for all she knows she is all alone in the world, with enemies all around her, no one to help her and she has to survive. Even the trauma of seeing her father being decapitated and her running for her life is enough for me to feel sorry for her.

Feeling sorry for her and her being a murderer are not mutually exclusive. I like Arya, too, ever more so the more darker she becomes. The Mercy chapter is a master piece. That is powerful stuff. The point of the character clearly is that she is no nice girl but about to become a very competent assassin.

But trauma is no excuse for murder, especially if she kills people who are not/no longer her enemies - like Dareon. And while Raff had it coming, he, too, is lured into a trap and murdered while he is completely helpless in a context where he was no danger to Arya at all.

Killing in self-defense is one thing, doing it because you like doing it - and pursuing a career in the assassin industry as she is doing right now - can and should come with certain consequences attached to it. Like you having to pay the price for murder if you are caught. Or you being reviled by your friends and family for what you have become.

And Arya understand herself how she changes. Even back in ACoK she fears the prospect of telling her family what she did already, and that grows worse and worse along the way.