Why no Robb POV?

[inkasrain]

Well none of the Kings have a POV, i think it's a way to keep them mysterious.

I agree; I always thought it was a very specific storytelling choice that GRRM gives us POVs near the people wearing crowns, but not from the kings themselves.

Cersei complicates the theory a little, but then she breaks a lot of the rules.

[A'shaman]

I think a Robb POV would have just been too repetitive, would have felt like a Jon POV with a dash of Ned POV. No need to have two POVs that are extremely similar.

[sadfascist]

hmm, I didn't think of the "no King has a POV" thing. That's really interesting. OTOH, Dany and Cersei seem to break the rule and arguably for good reason, i.e. it would be impossible to fully capture the trials of ruling a kingdom through someone else's POV. Maybe that's by design, since the first three books were about power struggles and how to gain power and AFFC/ADWD is about using that power to actually rule. You know, it's kind of like a politician being all things to all people so he can win an election but showing his true personality by the actions he takes once in office. It's a neat lesson in the unpredictability of leadership. Even Littlefinger thought Cersei would take five years to screw up the kingdom :rolleyes:.

I have to say I don't agree with the people who said Robb is too boring/redundant to be a POV. Yes, Robb does seem a lot like a mini Ned--to Catelyn. Remember we see him basically only through Cat's eyes. Imagine if we only saw Arya or Sansa or Bran or Jon or even Ned himself through Cat's eyes. How much would we be missing? IMO Robb is actually pretty mysterious and his actions are hard to understand. What's his endgame? What's really going on between him, Theon, and Jon? What're his thoughts toward his father? Why does he wed Jen? All these things hint at hidden depths to his character which Cat doesn't really grasp. I hope and expect that the HBO show is going to make that clear next season.

Those dramatic events are a distraction from the story - just background infill. Spending time on them with a POV character would be a waste of narrative and the more i read and reread the more I think that GRRM is pretty efficient in his story telling, what he tells us and how he tells us turns out to be important.

That's a good point. Still, I'm not sure I would go so far as to say that AGOT would have been worse with the Battle of the Whispering Wood in it.

[Free Northman]

hmm, I didn't think of the "no King has a POV" thing. That's really interesting. OTOH, Dany and Cersei seem to break the rule and arguably for good reason, i.e. it would be impossible to fully capture the trials of ruling a kingdom through someone else's POV. Maybe that's by design, since the first three books were about power struggles and how to gain power and AFFC/ADWD is about using that power to actually rule. You know, it's kind of like a politician being all things to all people so he can win an election but showing his true personality by the actions he takes once in office. It's a neat lesson in the unpredictability of leadership. Even Littlefinger thought Cersei would take five years to screw up the kingdom :rolleyes:.

I have to say I don't agree with the people who said Robb is too boring/redundant to be a POV. Yes, Robb does seem a lot like a mini Ned--to Catelyn. Remember we see him basically only through Cat's eyes. Imagine if we only saw Arya or Sansa or Bran or Jon or even Ned himself through Cat's eyes. How much would we be missing? IMO Robb is actually pretty mysterious and his actions are hard to understand. What's his endgame? What's really going on between him, Theon, and Jon? What're his thoughts toward his father? Why does he wed Jen? All these things hint at hidden depths to his character which Cat doesn't really grasp. I hope and expect that the HBO show is going to make that clear next season.

That's a good point. Still, I'm not sure I would go so far as to say that AGOT would have been worse with the Battle of the Whispering Wood in it.

I tend to disagree regarding Robb's mysterious depths. To me he is basically a robot, who acts completely predictably based on the teachings of his father, but with no practical brainpower to go along with it. "Honour" supposedly called for him to marry Jeyne Westerling, in his own mind at least. Yet I would think that a measure of common sense is absent from his "super honourable" mindset. If his honour lead to the deaths of all his followers, and the breaking of his vows to the Freys, well, that's stupid, in my view. And not that honourable actually. If it was Eddard, who Robb supposedly modelled his behavior on, then he would have stuck to his duties to his subjects above and beyond his feelings of guilt towards deflowering poor Jeyne.

As I said before, Robb is a soft Tully trying to live up to the hard ideals of his Stark heritage. And in the end, he failed at it.

[LugaJetboyGirl]

I tend to disagree regarding Robb's mysterious depths. To me he is basically a robot, who acts completely predictably based on the teachings of his father, but with no practical brainpower to go along with it. "Honour" supposedly called for him to marry Jeyne Westerling, in his own mind at least. Yet I would think that a measure of common sense is absent from his "super honourable" mindset. If his honour lead to the deaths of all his followers, and the breaking of his vows to the Freys, well, that's stupid, in my view. And not that honourable actually. If it was Eddard, who Robb supposedly modelled his behavior on, then he would have stuck to his duties to his subjects above and beyond his feelings of guilt towards deflowering poor Jeyne.

As I said before, Robb is a soft Tully trying to live up to the hard ideals of his Stark heritage. And in the end, he failed at it.

If Robb's actions are based on the teachings of his father and 'honor,' then I think Robb is much more of a Stark than you are giving him credit for. After all, many people think one of Ned's major faults is that he was too tied to honor and was not able to see beyond it. All of his largest and most deadly mistakes were based on 'honor,' combined with his inability to perceive that other people would not abide by his same northern code. Honor kept him from acting rationally and wisely; he repeatedly made bad leadership and political decisions because of it.

And the same was true with Robb. I don't think his choices are any less irrationally stupid then Ned's. I might even go so far as to say that Robb's decisions were usually more wise than his dad's. However, he, like Ned, made one particular decision based on honor that pissed off a 'dishonorable' enemy, yet he was unwilling to see the danger.

So they are both honorable, dumb, and dead.

[Free Northman]

If Robb's actions are based on the teachings of his father and 'honor,' then I think Robb is much more of a Stark than you are giving him credit for. After all, many people think one of Ned's major faults is that he was too tied to honor and was not able to see beyond it. All of his largest and most deadly mistakes were based on 'honor,' combined with his inability to perceive that other people would not abide by his same northern code. Honor kept him from acting rationally and wisely; he repeatedly made bad leadership and political decisions because of it.

And the same was true with Robb. I don't think his choices are any less irrationally stupid then Ned's. I might even go so far as to say that Robb's decisions were usually more wise than his dad's. However, he, like Ned, made one particular decision based on honor that pissed off a 'dishonorable' enemy, yet he was unwilling to see the danger.

So they are both honorable, dumb, and dead.

I disagree.

Robb CLAIMED that it was honor that drove him to marry Jeyne, but it was really just youthful emotion and infatuation.

The HOUNORABLE thing would have been to honor his vow to marry a Frey, even if it made him unhappy, because that was his duty to his people. Yet Robb convinced himself that honor happened to support what his heart was urging him to do, which was to marry the pretty little maid he slept with in his moment of weakness.

That's why I say Robb had a soft heart, which didn't combine well with the Stark notion of honour.

[Silversun]

I thought it was important that no King of Westeros has a POV. The only claimant to the throne who does is Dany, which may also be important. Its not like there was no other characters to tell her story

[Bradley]

I disagree.

Robb CLAIMED that it was honor that drove him to marry Jeyne, but it was really just youthful emotion and infatuation.

The HOUNORABLE thing would have been to honor his vow to marry a Frey, even if it made him unhappy, because that was his duty to his people. Yet Robb convinced himself that honor happened to support what his heart was urging him to do, which was to marry the pretty little maid he slept with in his moment of weakness.

That's why I say Robb had a soft heart, which didn't combine well with the Stark notion of honour.

The Lannisters have this exact conversation in ASoS. Kevan summarizes it nicely, he chose her honor over his own.

Also, Robb has loads of sufficiently "icy" moments. Are you sure you aren't just basing this off of his looks?

[gertiekeddle]

It's odd, I actually never missed a Robb POV. It's partly because he seemed to be up to fail from the start like many others have said (I'm not sure whether I saw him that clearly failing when I first read the series, but some form of fail to come was certainly visible). But the main reason is that we seem to get all we need to know about this particular Stark by other character's point of views. For most characters the perception we had changes quite much or even rapidly (as in Jamie's case) when they (first) get their own POV. For Robb I don't see this. He wasn't uninteresting, but I most likely didn't expect more from him than what we already saw.

[Mike]

I don't know why, but there was always too much Tully in Robb's character for my taste. If I had to describe him I'd say he was a Tully trying to live up to Stark ideals, as taught to him by his father. But without the required "iciness" that his Stark Blood should have given him.

That hard edge in Eddard, Jon and Arya seemed missing in Robb.I don't know, that's just my take on it. This softness is forgivable in Bran, who is the mystic/greenseer character. It is not forgivable in a Warrior King.

I felt Robb was always set up to fail.

A couple of things:

As others have pointed out, Robb had his share of "icy" moments. Beheading Rickard Karstark certainly required that hard northern edge that you refer to. I believe that Catelyn mentions that Robb is his father's son several times, and, iirc, Tywin Lannister does as well.

You seem to be implying that having too much Tully in his blood made Robb soft. Well, the Blackfish is a Tully, and he's one of the most badass characters in the books.

[Olenna]

One of GRRM's great strengths as a writer is that he shows the POVs of very different kinds of characters rather than just the standard "heroic" ones. Yeah, he could have done yet another POV of a young leader/warrior, but that archetype is already well represented by Jon and frankly is overrepresented in the fantasy genre as a whole. Instead, he gives us Catelyn, which is a much more interesting choice because (a) no one ever writes the POV of a middle-aged, non-gorgeous mom in fantasy, (B) this strategy shows us how callow and vulnerable Robb is, which is not something we necessarily would have gotten from his own POV, and © we already have the POVs of 4 other Stark kids, for god's sake. If Robb had replaced Catelyn as a POV in AGOT, we would have had 6 kid/teenager POVs and 2 adult ones.

[Sensuki Dorjan]

The OP will get his wish with the TV series, as Robb will be more of a main char in the second season

[Free Northman]

Also, Robb always seemed like direct competition for Jon as Eddard's warrior son. I always felt him to be kind of superfluous, and just filling the temporary void between Eddard's death and when Jon could take over as the head Stark.

[Songlian]

I'm also on the opinion that Robb doesn't have a POV because none of the kings do. In my opinion, that was a great decision.

I've also never felt the need for a Robb POV. I think Cat was sufficiently perceptive to give us a good view on his actions and struggles for the time she interacts with him. Not sure how much more a Robb POV would have added to that.

[Misthaufen]

All true but he's no Erikson when it comes to epic battles.

And that is a very, very, very good thing. Given that Erikson expanded what should have been a few short books into a 10-book series full of boring extraneous information and spends 300 pages on characters that have no relation to any of the many main stories....

[j52y]

I think we haven't gotten a Robb chapter for the several reasons that have already been mentioned.

There's the motif of not seeing the POV of the 5 kings.

The subversion of the fantasy trope of the young warriot avenging his father.

The fact that most of his story we could find out from other characters.

GRRM said, at one point, he had only planned on using the original 8 POV's to tell the entire SoIaF story. But, he realized that he couldn't tell ACoK without showing Stannis's POV - enter Davos. And he also needed to show the Iron Born POV and the sacking of Winterfell - enter a Theon POV. And so on for all of the new POV's. But we already see a Stark POV, through Catelyn, and his story in ACoK was easily told through reports to Tyrion or in the beginning of ASoS by Robb himself.

This isn't to say that Robb isn't an interesting character - there are a lot of interesting non-POV characters. he's actually one of my favorite characters. But his POV clearly isn't essential to the story, and I would go a step further and say that GRRM was making a point by not giving him a POV.

[John (Snow) Doe]

Showing Robb's storyline via Cat's POV allows the chapters to take a different tone. A Robb POV chapter would have too similar a flavor to a Jon chapter, ie - young male hero out to prove himself.

[sadfascist]

GRRM said, at one point, he had only planned on using the original 8 POV's to tell the entire SoIaF story. But, he realized that he couldn't tell ACoK without showing Stannis's POV - enter Davos. And he also needed to show the Iron Born POV and the sacking of Winterfell - enter a Theon POV. And so on for all of the new POV's.

can anyone find a cite for this?

I was under the impression he was holding some POVs back in the first book to set up later reveals. Otherwise I'm not sure exactly what Jaime's POV is good for.

[j52y]

can anyone find a cite for this?

I was under the impression he was holding some POVs back in the first book to set up later reveals. Otherwise I'm not sure exactly what Jaime's POV is good for.

It says it in this topic:

"According to George, ADWD will introduce the last new POV characters in the books (barring future one-off prologue/epilogue POVs). However, he has also pointed out that his original plan was to tell the entire story of ASoIaF from just the POVs in A Game of Thrones only, and these plans are subject to change."

Jaime's POV tells his story. It seems likely to me that Jaime will make an extremely important choice somewhere down the line, and we will have to understand him to understand why that choice was made. In fact, that choice might be the decision not to storm Riverrun, but to talk his way out of it. And Blackfish's escape (because of this choice) might have long-reaching consequences.

It's also possible that GRRM though Jaime had an interesting story and wanted to tell it. I do doubt that, though.

[damian]

i think at least a small part of the reason may have been "where" the story was unfolding and whether george wanted the story told in that spot at that particular time. he uses the pov's to tell the story in different parts of the world, at different times, and rob almost always has catelyn or bran or another pov character right there with him during the early stages of the story.