Randyll Tarly

[mediocre cheese]

Yeah illyn payne can't read and he is a knight. On the other hand dany and tyrion are bilinguil (danys trilinguil) so I think simply being able to read doesn't make you highly educated.

[True Mortal]

I always picture Randyll Tarly as a more extreme version of Stannis - however, Davos did describe Stannis as hard, but not cruel. Randyll, on the other hand....

Randyll's treatment of Sam was to turn him into a manly man, but his methods were simply wrong. I think his methods had a lot of negative reinforcement which could have contributed/augmented the attitude of the Sam we know.

[Ser Lepus]

When I read about Randyll Tarly, I always think of the spartans, and how they managed to breed out themselves into extintion by applying a wrong eugenesic and social-engineering program...

1.-They narrowed their genetic pool by breeding only within a small group of a few thousand of citizens (at any given moment there were never more than 10.000 adult male citizens, discounting elders).

2.-They killed any baby who cried when washed with strong-smelling wine, which would the natural response of a healthy baby!

3.-They took the boys from their families at age 5-6 and from that moment they were subject to constant harassing, sexual abuse, physical punishement, underfeeding, and exposition to the elements.

4.-Children were purposelly feed less than the minimum necessary to stay healthy, in order to encourage them to steal (they were still severely punished if caught; the purpose of this was to force them to take risks and learn stealth).

5.-All feelings were seen as shameful and to be repressed; citizens, both male and female were purposelly made unable to communicate, empathize or even interpret each other feelings.

6.-Both genders were segregated and prevented from learning to communicate to each other; couples were technically supposed to meet only at night, to copulate and get the women pregnant with new children, but from wake to bed, men of fighting age were kept away from their wives, and single men were kept away from all girls.

7.-Extreme violence against serfs, second-class citizens and weak peers was encouraged; periodically some children were randomly chosen and beaten with sticks untill they fell to the ground unable to stay on their feet; falling too soon was a shameful show of weakness that made you likely to be harassed, so the kids endeavoured to stay on their feet as long as they could, sometimes dying. Some festivities all children were exposed to the midday summer sun for hours and then savagely whipped until they fell covered in blood, sometimes even dying because of the punishement.

Those kids who broke or were just no tough enough were denied citizenship or just killed by the extra beating they were administered to "toughen" them.

The results? Spartans soldiers were extremely tough, fearless, desensitized soldiers (sort of like the Unsullied)...they were also useless for anything else than sticking a spear to a guy in front of them, got old and died early, and had a zero or even negative rate of natural increase, meaning that they were unable to cover the losses of actual war, and because of that they were often afraid of sending their troops to battle outside, which meant that often they didn´t had much real combat experience, and their generals weren´t very creative or inventive...

By the time the romans conquered Greece, Sparta had become a tourist attraction, a sort of thematic park inhabited by only a few thousand people that were visited by foreigners coming to see their barbaric lifestyle; they were never exterminated, they just became irrelevant due to their inability to both increase their population and to change their customs, and eventually their population dropped to a point it was no longe viable and they got extinct...and they did that to themselves, trying to "toughen" themselves...

[Ororo727 Jon Snow Fangirl]

The weeping one was being fed roasted human in captivity and taunted for his weight.

The Manderlys acquitted themselves well in battle. They're neither dead nor associated with cowardice. Means there's some considerable ability to haul that paunch around and still kick ass- although taking a lance from a Manderly would be a seriously intimidating proposition even for a Gregor, I think.

I posted about this some time ago, but I've long thought Sam has his father's strengths and is in fact more stubborn than his father. They had a battle of wills which Sam won.

Sam accepts that he's a coward, because his father kept telling him he was. It's safe, and easy, and gets him out of things. Sam's also hardcore pragmatic. Sure, he pisses his pants when the blood starts to fly- he also sheds his share. Wait till Sam's in the Library and someone threatens the books, if you want to see an intimidating figure.

It's hard to express the concept, but if anything scared Randyll Tarly, that would be the end of him. Sam'd just piss his pants again and get on with it.

The scene with the Other- in my head, I see Sam going "Well, you're scary, I'd better stab you." Sam has a very, very strong will. He just doesn't think he's worth anything, and doesn't take care of himself as a result. Jon is correcting this.

After all, Sam's damn near the perfect soldier. Jon ordered him not to be afraid anymore, or act on it. Sam has the willpower to actually pull that off.

It occurs to me, and I'm rambly tonight, that that was Randyll's mistake. "Stop being a coward, I forbid it!" "I can't, I'm scared." "Well, I'll make you not-scared!" No, he should have said "Well, than I order you to never act on it!" "Sir, yes, sir!" "Now KILL!" "Sir, yes, sir- sir, may I go sing songs afterward, sir?"

Bran - "Can a man still be brave when he's afraid?"

Ned - "That's the only time a man can be brave."

What a difference is parenting.

[Zaydan]

Bran - "Can a man still be brave when he's afraid?"

Ned - "That's the only time a man can be brave."

Probably the first line in the whole series that "got" me.

Thumbs up to GRRM.