Lady Dustin and revenge

[SaffronLady]

12 hours ago, Darth Sidious said:

Arya has gone insane. She’s crazy.

Says more about yourself than Arya.

[sifth]

On 11/2/2023 at 11:55 PM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Lololololololololol. Yes, Lady Catelyn, a woman who spends..most of the books asking her son to make peace with the Lannisters. At several times mentions that killing the Lannisters won't bring back Eddard, etc. That character. Good lord, do people hate Catelyn and make up reasons to make her worse. 

Catelyn Stark makes a threat in desperation, rank desperation. Flight of fight moment of pure human adrenaline pumping. She then follows through with her threat. It's one of the most heart wrenching scenes in this book, and people just...hate Catelyn Stark, so they somehow make it about Jinglebell and not the fact that she just watched not only her son, but an entire room full of people at a wedding get murdered. I am honestly so tired of seeing this take. It's bogus to be blunt. You know most murders actually take place like Catelyn's actions. Spur of the moment, not thought out. And many of those murderers go on to regret their actions. Do you know who DOESN'T regret their actions, people who carefully plan the murders. Yet, people in this forum act like "acts of desperation" murders are worse than planned out murders, which is crazed. In the modern day, we literally charge them differently (with the latter being treated more harshly, with larger sentences). 

Lady Catelyn being on this list is so ridiculous as to be laughable. You just hate Catelyn. Stop freaking stretching. 

Also characters actually obsessed with revenge you didn't mention : Tyrion Lannister, Tywin Lannister (the Reynes and Castameres..was basically just revenge for "laughing" at house Lannister. That is why he did it)

He’s talking about Cat in her current state, not her former.

[sifth]

On 11/4/2023 at 2:58 AM, Craving Peaches said:

Catelyn was clearly not in her right mind at the end, and Lady Stoneheart is not Catelyn, so the idea that Catelyn is obsessed with revenge does not hold much weight.

By that logic Beric wasn’t Beric and he seemed like a nice guy both alive and dead. I don’t agree with that logic.

Edited November 12, 2023 by sifth

[Alester Florent]

52 minutes ago, sifth said:

By that logic Beric was Beric and he seemed like a nice guy both alive and dead. I don’t agree with that logic.

Wasn't part of the issue that Cat had been dead for too long? (Days, rather than at most a couple of hours for any of Beric's resurrections)? She has a lot less of her humanity left than Beric did. 

And that's assuming that the fire was as effective passed on from the repeatedly-dead Beric as it would have been from Thoros in the first place.

[The Commentator]

On 11/8/2023 at 11:11 AM, Roswell said:

Arya and Cat are the only ones who have done terrible deeds worthy of equally terrible punishments. 

  Until Doran and Barbrey set their plans in motion. 

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

17 hours ago, sifth said:

By that logic Beric wasn’t Beric and he seemed like a nice guy both alive and dead. I don’t agree with that logic.

First off, there is heavy suggesting Beric is not Beric anymore. However, I think what happens with this process is some parts of the people come back, not all of them. In Catelyn's case, she had just watched her son (and a lot of others she knew) get murdered. What was brought back was her anger and desperation from that moment in time. In Beric's case, he was obviously focused on his "duty to the realm" in his final moments. But also as others have mentioned, Catelyn had been dead several days and very little of who she was was brought back. Beric talks about this, saying that less and less of him is being brought back each time (I would presume as he has spent more and more time dead). 

Another note, I've also often felt that Thoros of Myr rubbed off on Dondarrian a lot. I'm not saying whatever Beric was wasn't partially Beric Dondarrian, but I also thought perhaps Thoros's also guided Beric toward being the good dude he was. Keep in mind when we see Beric, he seems a shell of a man, and Thoros is the one who seems to be leading the BwB spiritually. 

And again, Catelyn is a woman who quite literally encouraged Robb to lay down his arms and make peace with the Lannisters. She was literally the least vengeful of Robb Stark's advisors. People often praise Ellaria Sand's speech in Dorne (as they should), but honestly Catelyn made a fairly similar plea to Robb (I believe toward the beginning of ASoS). The concept that this vengeful monster (Lady Stoneheart) is Catelyn, I think is just born of Catelyn-hate (which although I see less of these days, used to be very common place in the ASOIAF community). 

[sifth]

5 hours ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

 

Another note, I've also often felt that Thoros of Myr rubbed off on Dondarrian a lot. I'm not saying whatever Beric was wasn't partially Beric Dondarrian, but I also thought perhaps Thoros's also guided Beric toward being the good dude he was. Keep in mind when we see Beric, he seems a shell of a man, and Thoros is the one who seems to be leading the BwB spiritually. 

 

Pretty sure Beric was a really nice guy, even when he was alive. Ned trusted him and young other Ned, looked up to him as a positive role model. Thoros loved him as well. I get that Beric mentions that he's a shell of his former self, but if that is indeed true, Beric must have been one of the kindest characters in the series, because the Beric we do see is a really nice guy. He truly wanted to help Arya and to find a way to safely reunite her with her mother.

This is why I often get annoyed when people say the series has no good people in it, just grey characters.

[Northern Sword]

3 hours ago, sifth said:

Pretty sure Beric was a really nice guy, even when he was alive. Ned trusted him and young other Ned, looked up to him as a positive role model. Thoros loved him as well. I get that Beric mentions that he's a shell of his former self, but if that is indeed true, Beric must have been one of the kindest characters in the series, because the Beric we do see is a really nice guy. He truly wanted to help Arya and to find a way to safely reunite her with her mother.

This is why I often get annoyed when people say the series has no good people in it, just grey characters.

I tend to agree, but I look at Beric as having honor. Which is why Ned chose him. But the loyalty of Thoros and the rest of the BWOB must have been more then kindness or honor. He must have been a great leader as well, even after death and resurrection.

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

On 11/13/2023 at 8:37 PM, sifth said:

This is why I often get annoyed when people say the series has no good people in it, just grey characters.

I mean I would argue Beric is morally grey. Just on the light side of gray (like Joffrey or Tywin on on the dark side of gray). Don't get me wrong, I really like Beric, Thoros, and the BwB...just they are outlaws, and they do outlaw stuff. They aren't perfectly upstanding moral pillars. The point when people harp on the moral grayness of the series is that the characters are realistic and deal with realistic issues like real people (and unlike a lot of fantasy, which makes the choices easy for the characters by constantly presenting them with easy moral choices rather than difficult ones). 

If I had to pick the least morally grey (and most white knight) character in the series, it would be Brienne, as shown in this quote below.

"Seven. Brienne thought again, despairing. She had no chance against seven, she knew. No chance, and no choice." - Brienne just being a hero. 

[Moiraine Sedai]

Lady Dustin is not alone in disliking the Starks. Throwing Ned’s bones to her hounds sounds awful but it’s less bad than what the Lannisters did to him. Letting her hounds chew on his bones is no worse than the violation Arya and the faceless men do to the dead. Lady Dustin will get mild punishment coming her way but in no way does she deserve to be on the same condemn list as Arya, Cat, and Doran. Cat lost her humanity just like Arya is losing her own sanity. Doran will get betrayed by the snakes. His brother, sister, and son are dead. He’s not going to find happiness.  

Edited November 15, 2023 by Moiraine Sedai

[John Suburbs]

On 11/2/2023 at 11:27 PM, James Fenimore Cooper XXII said:

It is human nature to want revenge but some of the characters carry this too far.  Lady Dustin tells a chilling story to Reek.  She wants to feed Eddard's bones to her dogs.  The goal is sickening.  Barbrey is not alone, however.  Lady Catelyn, Arya Stark, and Doran Martell are just as motivated by that negative emotion driving them towards revenge.  Innocents like Dareon, Jingle Bells, and you could argue, Quentyn are the undeserving victims of their lust for revenge.  For the four, I do not see a happy ending. 

I'm a little late to this thread, but for what it's worth:

Barbrey's story about hating Ned and the Starks is a lie. The real purpose of this visit was to unblock the door to the crypts and leave a big trail of tracks through the snow to hide those of anyone coming in or going out through the secret entrance down there.

It was right after this little trek that the murders started.

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

On 11/15/2023 at 11:48 PM, Moiraine Sedai said:

Lady Dustin is not alone in disliking the Starks. Throwing Ned’s bones to her hounds sounds awful but it’s less bad than what the Lannisters did to him. Letting her hounds chew on his bones is no worse than the violation Arya and the faceless men do to the dead. Lady Dustin will get mild punishment coming her way but in no way does she deserve to be on the same condemn list as Arya, Cat, and Doran. Cat lost her humanity just like Arya is losing her own sanity. Doran will get betrayed by the snakes. His brother, sister, and son are dead. He’s not going to find happiness.  

Why do so many people in this forum still hate Catelyn? Like, seriously folks. Catelyn is one of the least evil characters in this series who does some of the least "punishable" things. Are we talking about the same character? 

1. Tyrion murders his ex-lover out of revenge who was begging him to stop. He also orders several people's deaths, or callously disregards human life at several points out of spite/revenge. He also does horrible things to several women that if I bring up will cause Tyrion fan boys to come out of the wood works, so I wont' say exactly what he does. Most importantly, he murders his father clearly out of revenge. 

2. Arya is an assassin, assassinating people. She also kills people who have nothing to do with her, and certainly it seems for revenge-esq reasons. 

3. Daenerys (who I still think is a great lady) burned a woman alive and also hung up a bunch of people to slowly die (also approved torture once) out of revenge. 

4. Jon Snow, who again, a great person, still ordered a man executed pretty dang quickly for not following orders (felt a bit like revenge to me, I'm talking about Jonos Slynt). I'm finding it difficult to think of anything else Jon Snow does that is all that revenge-oriented. Maybe his....approval (if not order) of Alys Karstark's marriage to the Magnar of Thenn? 

5. Stannis murders his brother and also another dude with shadow babies. If we want to talk about revenge, Stannis is not a dude who lets revenge idyll. He would probably call it justice, but ....looks more like revenge sometimes. 

6. All of the Greyjoys do horrible things. Do I have to list them all? Many of those things were revenge oriented. 

7. The Martell plot line also has a lot of revenge, from Doran and the Sand Snakes(toward the Lannisters), but also Arianne is heavily motivated by revenge at her father for skipping her (she is wrong, but she thinks he did). 

8. Robert Baratheon's entire reason for being King (from his perspective) was revenge based, and arguably Eddard could have been revenge motivated as well (they did kill his father and brother). 

9. Tywin is a revenge-crazed dude who revenges every single small slight to his honor/Lannister pride. He would literally murder everyone in his path just because they said, "Lannisters smell like poop" or something equally as petty. 

Anyways, I feel tired. This concept that Catelyn Tully Stark is particularly motived by revenge is silly. Half the characters in these books are motivated by revenge. And again, this is important y'all, Lady Stoneheart isn't Catelyn. I thin GRRM wasn't even vague about this....it is clearly not her (maybe some remnant of her does exist within Lady Stoneheart...but the vast majority of what makes Lady Stoneheart is like just some crazed thoughts in the final seconds of a person's life...not the whole of that person). But even if Lady Stoneheart WAS Catelyn, she still wouldn't be the character most motivated by revenge or most deserving of "punishment". Firstly, she has already been punished, repeatedly. She deserves peace and solace. Secondly, she is mainly murdering Freys. ...Who murdered her family and people. If Lady Stoneheart represents anything in the story, it's like Karma for being a bad person (i.e. The Freys kind of deserve it). The concept that Catelyn herself deserves some sort of punishment is weird, because it directly goes against the thematic purpose that Lady Stoneheart seems to represent in the story : She represents the justifiable rage/anger that the characters who follow the rules of hospitality and don't do war crimes feel toward the ones who don't follow the rules of hospitality and do war crimes casually. 

[SaffronLady]

10 hours ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Are we talking about the same character?

Sedai is one of those "Starks Other, Dany/Targs FTW" folks, said person looks at the same character through a Myrish lens.

Which means they don't "see" the same character as you do, distorted as it is by the lens.

[Jaenara Belarys]

On 11/16/2023 at 8:13 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Why do so many people in this forum still hate Catelyn? Like, seriously folks. Catelyn is one of the least evil characters in this series who does some of the least "punishable" things. Are we talking about the same character? 

 

Catelyn honestly seemed like a fairly nice lady in a lot of cases. Her dislike of Jon I can rationalize and understand because of her thinking of Jon's mother. 

And no, Moraine's vision of the Starks is as warped as the space around a black hole. You cannot have a rational conversation with her and her friends, since they don't actually argue and never concede a point or refute with good evidence. 

[Aebram]

On 11/15/2023 at 10:10 AM, John Suburbs said:

Barbrey's story about hating Ned and the Starks is a lie. The real purpose of this visit was to unblock the door to the crypts and leave a big trail of tracks through the snow to hide those of anyone coming in or going out through the secret entrance down there.

It was right after this little trek that the murders started.

Couldn't it be some of both? It seems possible that, yes, her real purpose was to open access to the crypts, but also that she has real resentment or even hatred for some of the Starks. If her story about Brandon was a lie, it certainly was an elaborate one, with all those details about "bloody swords" and such. And if she and Brandon were indeed lovers, as she claims, that can explain how she knows about the secret entrance.

It occurs to me that this may be a clue to the identity of the Hooded Man. Before she traveled to Winterfell, Barbrey may have arranged with some friend or ally that she would open the secret entrance, and he would sneak into the castle and sow some chaos. If so, the HM must be someone that she was able to communicate with fairly rapidly, i.e someone who was at or near Barrowton at that time.

For anyone who's interested, I wrote a more detailed post about the Hooded Man; he's one of my favorite Mysteries.

 

Edited November 20, 2023 by Aebram

[The Commentator]

The Stark supporters are really trying to paint Lady Dustin as some kind of closet pro-stark person. I don’t think she is a Stark sympathizer.  Her story is explicit and the justifications she has to dislike the Starks all ring with truth.  She only played along to Robb’s foolish demands because she had no choice. It’s nothing more than humoring a stupid wolf boy who had it in his power to rain pain down on her own family.  The Starks will get their bitter deserts. Don’t you worry about that. Yeah they’re going to rain pain on the Lannisters, Boltons, and Freys. And granted some of those folks deserve it. Jaime and Ramsey are examples of nasty sewer rats that have been asking for punishment.
 

Arya killed two already that doesn’t deserve it. She will receive her own punishment. It is already happening in her mind as sanity leaves her. I have to reconsider old Barbrey though. What has she done to deserve retribution coming her way?  None for the moment. She was rude to Theon but really now. 

[John Suburbs]

13 hours ago, Aebram said:

Couldn't it be some of both? It seems possible that, yes, her real purpose was to open access to the crypts, but also that she has real resentment or even hatred for some of the Starks. If her story about Brandon was a lie, it certainly was an elaborate one, with all those details about "bloody swords" and such. And if she and Brandon were indeed lovers, as she claims, that can explain how she knows about the secret entrance.

It occurs to me that this may be a clue to the identity of the Hooded Man. Before she traveled to Winterfell, Barbrey may have arranged with some friend or ally that she would open the secret entrance, and he would sneak into the castle and sow some chaos. If so, the HM must be someone that she was able to communicate with fairly rapidly, i.e someone who was at or near Barrowton at that time.

For anyone who's interested, I wrote a more detailed post about the Hooded Man; he's one of my favorite Mysteries.

 

I doubt the story about Brandon is a lie. It certainly sounds like something he would do, with both sisters in fact. But to say this and Lord Dustin's bones bred a lifelong hatred of all Starks is a stretch. First, she barely knew Dustin when she wed him, and he was a big step down for her anyway, since she originally wanted Brandon and was then willing to settle for Ned. Then he goes off to war within six months of their marriage and she is so overly distraught by his death and burial that she harbors this lifelong resentment? Even though it made her Lady of Barrowtown? Doesn't add up. 

And Barbey herself did not need to know about the secret entrance before this. Any of the northern lords might know about it -- most likely Manderly.

Here is a pretty good, although overly long, theory on the Hooded Man:

The Hooded Man Uncloaked | Meditations on A Song of Ice and Fire (wordpress.com)

 

[Aebram]

8 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Here is a pretty good, although overly long, theory on the Hooded Man:

The Hooded Man Uncloaked | Meditations on A Song of Ice and Fire (wordpress.com)

Thanks for the link. Someone sent it to me in a comment on my own post, the one I linked to above.  It makes some interesting points, but I disagree with its conclusion. I explained why in a later comment.

[sweetsunray]

The "secret entrance" has no real foundation in the books

• Bran knows the castle's secrets, more than maester Aemon, but even he doesn't know about the secret entrance. If he had, he wouldn't have needed Hodor to throw all his strength against the blocked crypt entrance after the sack of Winterfell, with blocks of the First Keep blocking the door from being opened from the inside. He could have used the alternative route. If Bran doesn't know it, then nobody knows.
• The crypts themselves lead to the hot springs of the godswood, which is btw 3 acres big. So while it is a vast cavernous tunnel system, its sole entry point is the crypt's entrance. This makes sense when so many allusions about secret underground cities of the past is about "taking shelter". If you have only one entrance to seal, the enemy cannot get in.
• The latter is supported by the later building and lay-out of Winterfell: several (I repeat "several") hills and valleys within the walls of Winterfell, a 3 acre godswood at the heart/center of Winterfell, the oldest buildings (towers and first keep) near the crypt entrance, and expanions from thereon to an even bigger perimeter with the Walls fully enclosing it. So if there is a "backdoor" entrance it actually would still fall within Winterfell.

[Aebram]

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The "secret entrance" has no real foundation in the books.

We know that Griffin's Roost has two of them. And we know that they exist here in real-life Earth.

 

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Bran knows the castle's secrets, more than maester Aemon, but even he doesn't know about the secret entrance. 

There are secrets, and then there are secrets. Bran knows things about the older buildings in the castle that have been forgotten by everyone else. But his parents may have other secrets, such as the existence of an escape tunnel, that they have withheld from the younger children, and perhaps from most of the population of Winterfell.

 

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The crypts themselves lead to the hot springs of the godswood

Do they? Where in the text does it state that?