Kevan Lannister was NOT a "good man."

[Alden Rothack]

19 minutes ago, astarkchoice said:

Again by modern standards none are exactly  great.

Davos is an ex smuggler willing to assist stannis in waging a war that could kill thousands or tens of thousands ..even when he sees dark magic is being used

Sansa is the sort of spoiled distant head in the clouds  lady from feudal times that would always want new dresses or jewellry and be oblivious to how many starving peasants could have ate instead of those being made, ignores jofferys obvious sadism and betrays her family twice before being tortured into something resembling a better person

Cat we forget treated jon like dogshit and started a war that could end the lives of thousands and starve even more on a whim for her family regardless of how many men at arms also have families and  still betrayed them all to let jamie go

Bran is increasingly forcing his will on a mentaly disabled man whos been nothing but supportive of him to impress a girl..... hodor has literaly been carrying him and still he rapes the poor dudes mind on a fancy!!!!

Sam.and gilly il sorta give you but sams refusal to face his cowardice until late adulthood put his family in danger (weakness in a house would encourage others to strike) hes technicaly an oathbreaker amd gilly has inadvertedly  possibly helped create others with craster.

 

Ned we literaly see 1st thing  execute a man for the crime of running away from what by our standards is basicaly slavery  , has waged a rebellion war killing thousands to help avenge his family and save his own skin (never mind the soliders families  ned?)  Then goes to kl and all his thoughts are his family , friend and his own honour  never once thinking 'shit the huge household.guard iv brought here could be slaughtered if i dont quit fucking around being mr honour ..better send for reinforcements'

Elaria sand who pre red viper getting his 'eyes opened' by the mountain wanted the lannisters dead 

Dany isnt grey she may now be freeing slaves (but doing a terrible job at it) but she STILL belives mass bloodshed is fine to get the throne she believes is hers! War and countless death for commonfolk  must be waged for what she feels entitled to 

Arya is becomming a cold blooded assasin, murdering a buisnessman for short changing some widows 

Jamie threw a fucking kid out a window man and doesnt get much better until he loses a hand...even the  he still wagss war for the lannisters and threatens edmure with   his child

Brienne il sorta give u but she is also a spoilt lady child, playing knight in a world where shes expected to marry to strengten and protect her house! She can play with  swords all she wants  a marriage alliance would bring 100s if not 1000s of armed men to her familys defence thus doing far more to  ward off enemies....  but she refuses to do so instead opens them up.for scorn (the sort tytos lannister almost destroyed his house with)

Some of them are bad by their standards all of them are bad by ours

Even under normal circumstances girls and boys would be working in service from seven years old, damsell was originally a female page (noble girl not old enough to be a lady's maid or marry)

the baker who was flogged instead of locked in the pillory and pelted with rocks and shit for putting sawdust in his bread got off easy by historical standards particularly given Randal Tarly's general reputation

Lord Tarth and Samwell Tarly are just as weak and ripe for mockery as Tytos was, your are correct about that, in the other direction Ned is likely quietly mocked for letting Robb and Sansa be so Andal and follow the seven, that he built an septa for Cat would have provoked strong words from families like the Umbers or the mountain clans, it likely stopped at words only because of the extreme loyalty they have for the starks including Ned

[Nathan Stark]

2 hours ago, Aldarion said:

We cannot, because books are set in medieval setting. By medieval standards, many modern standards would be frankly insane - and for a good reason. Applying modern standards to a medieval society would end in a failed society.

Different conditions result in different standards. So we have to see what was common, and why, in a comparable historical society, and then see how it compares to that standard.

However:

I do agree with this. Only unambigiously good king-like characters (so a king or a lord paramount) were Ned Stark and Robb Stark. Well, Young Griff also seems good so far, but it may be too early to tell. Rest of them? Stannis is not a bad man per se, but considering what he allows Melisandre to do I would not call him a good man either. Renly decided to make a power grab for the throne. Mace just wants more power, Doran is obsessed with revenge, Tywin was a murderous asshole obsessed with grabbing power, Kevan supported him with no question and is emulating him. Edmure is... well, I don't remember much about him. Robert Arryn just wants to see people fly. Balon was a crazy asshole, Euron is an insane and flat out evil asshole. Petyr is evil.

ASOIAF is not historical fiction. It is a fantasy series, written by a modern author, for a modern audience. Your standard of ignoring that context in favor of comparing Westerosi feudalism with actual, historical European feudalism misses the point of the series. These books are about power, but one the big recurring motifs is how bad actors abuse their power. So you end up with characters like Tywin, who is symbolic of feudalism at its absolute worst, and the author specifically takes time to tell us what he thinks of Tywin. Tywin is constantly, endlessly paired with literal human excrement. His army's camp smells like a sewage dump. His magnificent stallion drops a huge load on the floor of the Red Keep. Tywin dies on a privy, where the author gleefully informs us that his turds are not gilded. We even get to watch his corpse slowly putrify in a very humiliating public fashion. George R. R. Martin is essentially asking us to apply our own values to a major villian in this fictional world by constantly calling Tywin and all his works "shit." Except he shows us these things rather than simply telling us.

While ASOIAF draws heavily from real world history, and borrows from European, and even ancient Chinese feudalism, these aspects are not intended to accurately portray how those societies lived and functioned. Instead, Martin uses the backdrop of a fantasy midieval setting, filled with magic and fairytale monsters and zombies, to tell a story about powerful people and institutions losing their way and falling short of their responsibility to protect those under their care. Whether it is the Nights Watch completely forgetting about the threat of the Others, or the noble families going to war and ravaging the land just as winter is coming on, the powerful rulers of this series are critisized for their shortsighted focus on political brinksmanship.

The story Martin is telling is meant to act as a warning about the corrupting influence power can have if we aren't careful with it. With great power comes great responsibility, but the nobility of Westeros have completely forgotten what they owe their people. Tywin, and Kevan, and most of the other characters listed in @Aldarion's comment, are extreme examples, but they work well within the context of ASOIAF. But we must judge these characters by our modern standards because our own political leaders are very suceptible to forgetting their own responsibilities and abusing their authority and taking their power for granted. ASOIAF may be set in a fantastical setting heavily resembling part of our real history, but it is a modern story, intended for a modern audience, and it carries a specific message for that audience. To overlook this and to take its midieval setting as permission to let the some of the worst characters off the hook for their behavior is, in my opinion, a real disservice to the author and to the story.

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, Nathan Stark said:

ASOIAF is not historical fiction. It is a fantasy series, written by a modern author, for a modern audience. Your standard of ignoring that context in favor of comparing Westerosi feudalism with actual, historical European feudalism misses the point of the series. These books are about power, but one the big recurring motifs is how bad actors abuse their power. So you end up with characters like Tywin, who is symbolic of feudalism at its absolute worst, and the author specifically takes time to tell us what he thinks of Tywin. Tywin is constantly, endlessly paired with literal human excrement. His army's camp smells like a sewage dump. His magnificent stallion drops a huge load on the floor of the Red Keep. Tywin dies on a privy, where the author gleefully informs us that his turds are not gilded. We even get to watch his corpse slowly putrify in a very humiliating public fashion. George R. R. Martin is essentially asking us to apply our own values to a major villian in this fictional world by constantly calling Tywin and all his works "shit." Except he shows us these things rather than simply telling us.

While ASOIAF draws heavily from real world history, and borrows from European, and even ancient Chinese feudalism, these aspects are not intended to accurately portray how those societies lived and functioned. Instead, Martin uses the backdrop of a fantasy midieval setting, filled with magic and fairytale monsters and zombies, to tell a story about powerful people and institutions losing their way and falling short of their responsibility to protect those under their care. Whether it is the Nights Watch completely forgetting about the threat of the Others, or the noble families going to war and ravaging the land just as winter is coming on, the powerful rulers of this series are critisized for their shortsighted focus on political brinksmanship.

The story Martin is telling is meant to act as a warning about the corrupting influence power can have if we aren't careful with it. With great power comes great responsibility, but the nobility of Westeros have completely forgotten what they owe their people. Tywin, and Kevan, and most of the other characters listed in @Aldarion's comment, are extreme examples, but they work well within the context of ASOIAF. But we must judge these characters by our modern standards because our own political leaders are very suceptible to forgetting their own responsibilities and abusing their authority and taking their power for granted. ASOIAF may be set in a fantastical setting heavily resembling part of our real history, but it is a modern story, intended for a modern audience, and it carries a specific message for that audience. To overlook this and to take its midieval setting as permission to let the some of the worst characters off the hook for their behavior is, in my opinion, a real disservice to the author and to the story.

It’s a world at war.  Almost all of us would consider WW2 a just war.  That doesn’t alter the fact that the Western allies fought the war with extreme brutality against the Axis (the Red Army was even more brutal).  We can’t expect sympathetic characters in this tale to display more restraint than people like Churchill, Truman, Curtis Le May did.

Arson, execution of hostages and collaborators , pillage, eye for an eye punishment, torture for information are all normative.  Any leader has to get his/her hands dirty.  Most of us would do these things in war, or condone them, if the stakes were high enough.

Trying to hold people to the standards of a modern liberal democracy in peace time would just be unreasonable.

[The Red Prince]

On 12/5/2022 at 9:01 AM, Loose Bolt said:

In my head canon Kevan is typical 2nd son. After all oldest sons are trained to become leaders of their houses when younger sons are trained to obey orders and learn that they will be less equal than their older brothers. So second sons like Kevan, Ned and Stannis had different training than their older brothers who were more free to do what they wanted to do. In fact all those men mentioned above were less wild than their older brothers.

Thats a very good analysis and it makes a lot of sense, i think it makes it even worse when they are slighted by their older brothers, like stannis felt in relation to Robert, because it drives home even further this "inferiority" between them. 

[Alden Rothack]

5 minutes ago, SeanF said:

It’s a world at war.  Almost all of us would consider WW2 a just war.  That doesn’t alter the fact that the Western allies fought the war with extreme brutality against the Axis (the Red Army was even more brutal).  We can’t expect sympathetic characters in this tale to display more restraint than people like Churchill, Truman, Curtis Le May did.

Arson, execution of hostages and collaborators , pillage, eye for an eye punishment, torture for information are all normative.  Any leader has to get his/her hands dirty.

Trying to hold people to the standards of a modern liberal democracy in peace time would just be unreasonable.

The Good Guys do what is necessary and usually just as they understand it, the bad guys do it for fun and to excess even if it harms their goals, Tywin is one of the latter

"Hes a raping, murdering kinslaying bastard"

"the bastard part is his fathers sin not his."

"Hes a raping, murdering kinslaying mad dog, can we cut off his head now."

THRUNK

[sifth]

29 minutes ago, Alden Rothack said:

The Good Guys do what is necessary and usually just as they understand it, the bad guys do it for fun and to excess even if it harms their goals, Tywin is one of the latter

"Hes a raping, murdering kinslaying bastard"

"the bastard part is his fathers sin not his."

"Hes a raping, murdering kinslaying mad dog, can we cut off his head now."

THRUNK

And Kevan supported and helped him the entire time. He was basically his second in command.

[Alden Rothack]

1 minute ago, sifth said:

And Kevan supported and helped him the entire time. He was basically his second in command.

Yes he did, even the petty stuff which he really should have advised against as it harms their reputation

By the time Tywin dies their reputation is in tatters and its directly his fault

[astarkchoice]

3 hours ago, Alden Rothack said:

Some of them are bad by their standards all of them are bad by ours

Even under normal circumstances girls and boys would be working in service from seven years old, damsell was originally a female page (noble girl not old enough to be a lady's maid or marry)

the baker who was flogged instead of locked in the pillory and pelted with rocks and shit for putting sawdust in his bread got off easy by historical standards particularly given Randal Tarly's general reputation

Lord Tarth and Samwell Tarly are just as weak and ripe for mockery as Tytos was, your are correct about that, in the other direction Ned is likely quietly mocked for letting Robb and Sansa be so Andal and follow the seven, that he built an septa for Cat would have provoked strong words from families like the Umbers or the mountain clans, it likely stopped at words only because of the extreme loyalty they have for the starks including Ned

Yeah  true but bear in mind ned is also feared too. From our perspective hes an honourable and brave man but  from an outside pov hes  seen as unrelenting in executing justice the old way ie  personaly, a battle hardened commander with arguably the norths strongest house + whos friends and family connections means he is unassailable in military terms by any potentialy rebellious vassals.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

58 minutes ago, SeanF said:

It’s a world at war.  Almost all of us would consider WW2 a just war.  That doesn’t alter the fact that the Western allies fought the war with extreme brutality against the Axis (the Red Army was even more brutal).  We can’t expect sympathetic characters in this tale to display more restraint than people like Churchill, Truman, Curtis Le May did.

Arson, execution of hostages and collaborators , pillage, eye for an eye punishment, torture for information are all normative.  Any leader has to get his/her hands dirty.  Most of us would do these things in war, or condone them, if the stakes were high enough.

Trying to hold people to the standards of a modern liberal democracy in peace time would just be unreasonable.

GRRM himself has said that WW2 was all in all a just war, despite generally being a conscientious objector. But saying that a war is justified overall doesn't mean that the brutal details, and especially the consequences, should be glossed over to make the rationale for war more palatable. That's essentially what wartime propaganda does, and--not completely coincidentally, given their history--what a lot of superhero fiction narratives do as well.

GRRM doesn't deny even his best behaved characters the reality of some shortcomings and weaknesses; he certainly won't let the ugly realities of war get swept under the rug, even when a war is justified. One of the central themes of the series is that war is a solution that tends to create ever more problems down the road. It's the endless cycle, part of the titular song of ice and fire, at least as originally voiced by Robert Frost.

[Alden Rothack]

1 hour ago, astarkchoice said:

Yeah  true but bear in mind ned is also feared too. From our perspective hes an honourable and brave man but  from an outside pov hes  seen as unrelenting in executing justice the old way ie  personaly, a battle hardened commander with arguably the norths strongest house + whos friends and family connections means he is unassailable in military terms by any potentialy rebellious vassals.

I'd say the Manderleys are the norths strongest single house

Ned is honourable, brave and just, hes popular because of that not in spite of it, he gets away with doing things others wouldn't because hes not petty or capricious despite being a king in all but name

Robert, Renly and Tywin among others are petty and capricious and it hurts them greatly in ways they fail to understand before it kills them

Apart from Briene for Renly nobody in the southrons inspires the kind of loyalty ned and the starks do

[Aldarion]

5 hours ago, Nathan Stark said:

ASOIAF is not historical fiction. It is a fantasy series, written by a modern author, for a modern audience. Your standard of ignoring that context in favor of comparing Westerosi feudalism with actual, historical European feudalism misses the point of the series. These books are about power, but one the big recurring motifs is how bad actors abuse their power. So you end up with characters like Tywin, who is symbolic of feudalism at its absolute worst, and the author specifically takes time to tell us what he thinks of Tywin. Tywin is constantly, endlessly paired with literal human excrement. His army's camp smells like a sewage dump. His magnificent stallion drops a huge load on the floor of the Red Keep. Tywin dies on a privy, where the author gleefully informs us that his turds are not gilded. We even get to watch his corpse slowly putrify in a very humiliating public fashion. George R. R. Martin is essentially asking us to apply our own values to a major villian in this fictional world by constantly calling Tywin and all his works "shit." Except he shows us these things rather than simply telling us.

While ASOIAF draws heavily from real world history, and borrows from European, and even ancient Chinese feudalism, these aspects are not intended to accurately portray how those societies lived and functioned. Instead, Martin uses the backdrop of a fantasy midieval setting, filled with magic and fairytale monsters and zombies, to tell a story about powerful people and institutions losing their way and falling short of their responsibility to protect those under their care. Whether it is the Nights Watch completely forgetting about the threat of the Others, or the noble families going to war and ravaging the land just as winter is coming on, the powerful rulers of this series are critisized for their shortsighted focus on political brinksmanship.

The story Martin is telling is meant to act as a warning about the corrupting influence power can have if we aren't careful with it. With great power comes great responsibility, but the nobility of Westeros have completely forgotten what they owe their people. Tywin, and Kevan, and most of the other characters listed in @Aldarion's comment, are extreme examples, but they work well within the context of ASOIAF. But we must judge these characters by our modern standards because our own political leaders are very suceptible to forgetting their own responsibilities and abusing their authority and taking their power for granted. ASOIAF may be set in a fantastical setting heavily resembling part of our real history, but it is a modern story, intended for a modern audience, and it carries a specific message for that audience. To overlook this and to take its midieval setting as permission to let the some of the worst characters off the hook for their behavior is, in my opinion, a real disservice to the author and to the story.

And that is the main problem I have with the series. This whole "power goes bad" thing simply doesn't work in a medieval monarchy, much less a medieval feudal monarchy. And insistence of having basically modern people and issues in a medieval setting is one of reasons why people today have so many stupid ideas about what Middle Ages were like (for example, that monarchy is inherently tyrannical and so on).

Honestly, Tolkien did this whole "corrupting influence of power" thing far better than Martin did, and without basically massacring the historic political systems in the process.

[Alden Rothack]

2 hours ago, Aldarion said:

And that is the main problem I have with the series. This whole "power goes bad" thing simply doesn't work in a medieval monarchy, much less a medieval feudal monarchy. And insistence of having basically modern people and issues in a medieval setting is one of reasons why people today have so many stupid ideas about what Middle Ages were like (for example, that monarchy is inherently tyrannical and so on).

Honestly, Tolkien did this whole "corrupting influence of power" thing far better than Martin did, and without basically massacring the historic political systems in the process.

including the church but having it basically powerless because most nobles aren't believers is ahistorical in the extreme, having the faith and the maesters separate orders likewise, many issues I've already mentioned elsewhere

Monarchy is actually less prone to tyrany because it doesn't need to justify itself to the majority just the great magnates and maybe a few particularly merchants and guilds.

[James Arryn]

11 hours ago, Nathan Stark said:

You really don't. Kevan is just as bad as Tywin, for doing all he could to carry out Tywin's orders. Jaime and Tyrion are morally grey, not outright evil, though Tyrion is headed in the wrong direction. Cersei is bad, but she is also mostly just bonkers. In comparison, Kevan is... personally kind and affable, but is just as implicated in Tywin's crimes as Tywin is.

Tyrion’s grey is pretty black. Martin’s best boiled frog; he has a perceived sexual rival murdered out of jealousy, kills Shae because she treated him like she was his employee (which she was) rather than the love he fantasize about, and he has long done stuff like break a minstrels’s playing hand because he found him annoying. He dreams of bloody revenge and following murdering Shae and Tywin his thoughts for like the entire next book are self-pity. I like Tyrion, he was my favourite character until he killed Shae and that opened my eyes to all the very evil shit he had been doing for a while. 

[astarkchoice]

4 hours ago, Alden Rothack said:

I'd say the Manderleys are the norths strongest single house

Ned is honourable, brave and just, hes popular because of that not in spite of it, he gets away with doing things others wouldn't because hes not petty or capricious despite being a king in all but name

Robert, Renly and Tywin among others are petty and capricious and it hurts them greatly in ways they fail to understand before it kills them

Apart from Briene for Renly nobody in the southrons inspires the kind of loyalty ned and the starks do

Id say its between the starks and manderlys def 

 

I agree  that The starks keeping people alive during the winter def adds to their popularity and people willing to fight for them  ,ned in particular we learn from  the clansmen theres security under ned and he spends time.with his vassals etc but there is also a factor of fear that keeps the likes of boltons etc in line

[Alden Rothack]

1 minute ago, astarkchoice said:

Id say its between the starks and manderlys def 

 

I agree  that The starks keeping people alive during the winter def adds to their popularity and people willing to fight for them  ,ned in particular we learn from  the clansmen theres security under ned and he spends time.with his vassals etc but there is also a factor of fear that keeps the likes of boltons etc in line

Ned will not will not torture and murder for fun as mad dogs like Ramsey and Gregor do but he will kill and most likely have tortured those who earned it by their actions, he would have had Roose killed if he had learned of the Boltons invading Hornwood of that you can be sure

[astarkchoice]

Just now, Alden Rothack said:

Ned will not will not torture and murder for fun as mad dogs like Ramsey and Gregor do but he will kill and most likely have tortured those who earned it by their actions, he would have had Roose killed if he had learned of the Boltons invading Hornwood of that you can be sure

Yeah ned was both feared and loved , firm but fair....goddamn you joffery!!

[Alden Rothack]

Just now, astarkchoice said:

Yeah ned was both feared and loved , firm but fair....goddamn you joffery!!

Joffrey is a vicious idiot, Tommen is a weak willed idiot (Even if cats are awesome)

[Aldarion]

3 hours ago, Alden Rothack said:

including the church but having it basically powerless because most nobles aren't believers is ahistorical in the extreme, having the faith and the maesters separate orders likewise, many issues I've already mentioned elsewhere

Monarchy is actually less prone to tyrany because it doesn't need to justify itself to the majority just the great magnates and maybe a few particularly merchants and guilds.

Precisely. ASoIaF is basically a modern society overlaid with a bunch of misconceptions that today's people have about the medieval society.

[SeanF]

4 hours ago, Alden Rothack said:

including the church but having it basically powerless because most nobles aren't believers is ahistorical in the extreme, having the faith and the maesters separate orders likewise, many issues I've already mentioned elsewhere

Monarchy is actually less prone to tyrany because it doesn't need to justify itself to the majority just the great magnates and maybe a few particularly merchants and guilds.

Even if monarchy is prone to tyranny, it’s better to serve one tyrant than to have to serve multiple tyrants, when aristocrats vie with each other for power.

[King_Tristifer_IV_Mudd]

Tywin was the Top G. Kevan is just a TySimp.