Remind me, why was Tywin a bad guy again?

[The Fallen]

As Ramsay err Kittyhat was nice enough to demonstrate for us above. It is a slippery slope going from passing moral judgement on everything to advocating murder and torture. You know how many times I have read people posting here advocating the killing of every Frey, man, woman, and child?

I'm answering the question that was asked about Tywin being a bad guy. And I purposely used the standard, expectations and social mores of Westerosi society. If Tywin's behavior was somewhat normal we wouldn't get the condemnation of those actions by the rest of that particular society.

Now if we're talking about the Dothraki, then Tywin's actions would probably be considered tame.

[Kittyhat]

If a fictional character can get you so worked up as to have thoughts of violence going through your head, you need more help than me or anyone else on this forum could provide.

That's a stupid comment, to say nothing of assinine. Of course we have emotional investment in characters, or there would be no point to fiction of any sort. No one would have so much as batted an eye about the Red Wedding.

So yes, I have an emotional reaction to such characters, but it's not as if I go about my day fretting over Tywin. Truth be told, it's more the disturbing take some of the posters here have on the matter that worries me, because those aren't fictional characters but rather real people, and they're defending a child-murdering rapist and saying he's not really a bad person!

Yeah, that kind of disturbs me a little. It makes me wonder what people I encounter from day to day might really be capable of, if only they were given the kind of power Tywin enjoyed. It certainly makes me wonder what some of the people here would do with it, given they apparently don't see anything particularly wrong with his actions.

[FuzzyJAM]

That's a stupid comment, to say nothing of assinine. Of course we have emotional investment in characters, or there would be no point to fiction of any sort. No one would have so much as batted an eye about the Red Wedding.

So yes, I have an emotional reaction to such characters, but it's not as if I go about my day fretting over Tywin. Truth be told, it's more the disturbing take some of the posters here have on the matter that worries me, because those aren't fictional characters but rather real people, and they're defending a child-murdering rapist and saying he's not really a bad person!

Yeah, that kind of disturbs me a little. It makes me wonder what people I encounter from day to day might really be capable of, if only they were given the kind of power Tywin enjoyed. It certainly makes me wonder what some of the people here would do with it, given they apparently don't see anything particularly wrong with his actions.

The internet: arguing for social contract theory more succinctly than Hobbes and Leviathan ever could since 1986!

[Grumpy Midget]

That's a stupid comment, to say nothing of assinine. Of course we have emotional investment in characters, or there would be no point to fiction of any sort. No one would have so much as batted an eye about the Red Wedding.

So yes, I have an emotional reaction to such characters, but it's not as if I go about my day fretting over Tywin. Truth be told, it's more the disturbing take some of the posters here have on the matter that worries me, because those aren't fictional characters but rather real people, and they're defending a child-murdering rapist and saying he's not really a bad person!

Yeah, that kind of disturbs me a little. It makes me wonder what people I encounter from day to day might really be capable of, if only they were given the kind of power Tywin enjoyed. It certainly makes me wonder what some of the people here would do with it, given they apparently don't see anything particularly wrong with his actions.

You done putting words into my mouth? Where have you seen me or anyone else on this forum defending Tywin in regards to his treatment of Tysha? If a man commits one crime, no matter how heinous, should every other action he makes in his lifetime be judged according to that one crime? Should he be tortured to death, as you have advocated?

Don't pretend to be concerned about other posters here. No one but you advocated torturing someone to death.

[corbon]

Get off your moral high horse. The people who died in the war don't give two shits that Robb is the "good guy" and Tywin is the "bad guy".

Funny that. They are dead and don't feel anything. The people who live though, the people affected who can still feel, do give two shits. Tywin is mocked and laughed at by everyone and the name Lannister has become a byword for treachery and falseness.

By contrast, people in the North are prepared to risk their lives for a litle girl just because they believe she is a Stark. Lots of people who won't have anything to gain by 'controlling her' too. So someone gives a shit.

Any functioning society has to have standards and mores of conduct. Breaking those standards and more is 'bad' because if people don't adhere to them then society itself can collapse into anarchy and destruction. Guest right for example - if people can't travel safely then travel will get less and less and eventually the realm will be a series of isolated enclaves which collapse as few of them can feed themselves.

Tywin broke standards and mores left right and centre because he felt that he was more important than society and the end justified the means. That makes him Bad by definition. He also ignored the fact that mores and standards have a purpose, and breaking them has repercussions down the line that aren't easily seen. He died due to one of them, pushing his son hard enough to break through another engrained barrier, patricide and kinslaying.

Its not a moral high horse, its how society is able to function.

As an aside, the OP asked why.Others gave reasons. You put up some poor counter arguments, to which I responded.

I'm not sure what horse you are on, but perhaps you'd like to dismount and discourse on an even footing?

PS Tywin being 'bad' doesn't mean Tywin is 'black' or has no good in him, just that he is a dark enough shade of grey to be considered 'bad'. For reasons provided.

[Kittyhat]

You done putting words into my mouth? Where have you seen me or anyone else on this forum defending Tywin in regards to his treatment of Tysha?

There have been people throughout this thread defending him and saying he's not "really" bad. I'm not going to go back and find each post for you; do your own reading.

If a man commits one crime

Excuse me? One crime?

:lmao:

Hey, there's a series of books collectively called "A Song of Ice and Fire." The first one is titled A Game of Thrones. You should read them someday.

should every other action he makes in his lifetime be judged according to that one crime?

If Tywin had been a genuinely repentant man, troubled by the dark deeds of his past, I might have a different opinion of him. He was not. In fact, he was quite busy throughout his time in the books committing more dark deeds.

Don't pretend to be concerned about other posters here. No one but you advocated torturing someone to death.

I'm not so much advocating it as saying I'd want to do it in the case of a monster like him. I never held it up as the right thing as such to do, and it was largely hyperbole (of which I am from time to time guilty) to boot, though honestly I have a hard time feeling all that badly about the idea where someone like Tywin is concerned.

And should I? Should I really feel badly about wishing ill toward people like him?

I think not.

To quote Carl Lee Hailey in A Time to Kill, "Yes they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in Hell!"

[Prince of Dragonstone]

Tywin let his monsters loose on the smallfolk to specifically brutalize them.

Robb never gave Bolton instructions to do what he did. Like everything else the Boltons have done in this series, it was done behind the Starks' backs. The Starks would never condone such a thing. Tywin not only condoned it, but commanded it. I'm certainly not a Stark fan boy by any means but at least I can honestly say that Robb Stark was a better man than Tywin Lannister and I LIKED the character of Tywin more than Robb, btw.

[The Storm Queen]

Probably seen as a bad buy because in most moral discussions the end do not justify the means. Tywin was always a do whatever it takes kind of leader. He clearly has no qualms about trampling and sacrificing anyone for the greater good of the realm (sometimes) and his house (always). From most modern moral view points, this mentality is a bad thing.

I am not even sure if he really always was rational in his quest to maintain Lannister power and reputation. Consider Tysha. I understood that he was not happy about the marriage between a commoner and his son, even Ned Stark would not be happy about such a thing. But the most prudent thing to do for the Lannisters would have been to

1. seek a divorce

2. Pay Tysha off: Arrange another marriage for her or arrange her to be trained as a septa or something like that

What Tywin did instead was making a huge fuss about Tyrion´s marriage. The fact that he was married to a commoner seems to be an open secret in Westeros and why not? You could expect every guard that raped Tysha to talk about the whole incident. Tywin might have taught his son a "lesson" but the price was high: His son hated him so much that he was willing to break a grave taboo and kill his own father. People in Westeros secretly laugh about Tywin´s dwarf son and his marriage to a commoner.

Instead of minimalizing the damage Tywin maximalized it

[Grumpy Midget]

Funny that. They are dead and don't feel anything. The people who live though, the people affected who can still feel, do give two shits. Tywin is mocked and laughed at by everyone and the name Lannister has become a byword for treachery and falseness.

By contrast, people in the North are prepared to risk their lives for a litle girl just because they believe she is a Stark. Lots of people who won't have anything to gain by 'controlling her' too. So someone gives a shit.

Any functioning society has to have standards and mores of conduct. Breaking those standards and more is 'bad' because if people don't adhere to them then society itself can collapse into anarchy and destruction. Guest right for example - if people can't travel safely then travel will get less and less and eventually the realm will be a series of isolated enclaves which collapse as few of them can feed themselves.

Tywin broke standards and mores left right and centre because he felt that he was more important than society and the end justified the means. That makes him Bad by definition. He also ignored the fact that mores and standards have a purpose, and breaking them has repercussions down the line that aren't easily seen. He died due to one of them, pushing his son hard enough to break through another engrained barrier, patricide and kinslaying.

Its not a moral high horse, its how society is able to function.

As an aside, the OP asked why.Others gave reasons. You put up some poor counter arguments, to which I responded.

I'm not sure what horse you are on, but perhaps you'd like to dismount and discourse on an even footing?

PS Tywin being 'bad' doesn't mean Tywin is 'black' or has no good in him, just that he is a dark enough shade of grey to be considered 'bad'. For reasons provided.

Where ever did you get the idea that "Tywin is mocked and laughed at by everyone and the name Lannister has become a byword for treachery and falseness"?

People are fighting over "Arya" in order to use her as a political tool. Loyalty to the name 'Stark' come from a sense of tradition, and how much value people place on oaths of vassalage. Two can play at that game. How many houses abandoned House Lannister when it looked like the Lannisters were done for?

Which social standards did Tywin break now? Brutalizing peasants? Damn near every nobleman does that in one form or another. At least Tywin did it not for pleasure but because he believed the end justified the means. Treating Tyrion bad? Westerosi society in general looked upon dwarfs as abominations. Now Tywin's gonna be singled out for blame because he was part of an ignorant society?

Oh, I love the fact that according to you, "because he(Tywin) felt that he was more important than society and the end justified the means. That makes him Bad by definition." If that's not a moral high horse, I don't know what is.

[TrueMetis]

Tywin broke dozens of social and biological rules, the kind that are so ingrained and obvious that they don't even have to be stated or written. People just know them. This is exemplified by his own son killing him, breaking every biological imperative imaginable. That's pretty much as close to objectively bad as one gets.

[David Selig]

Who cares about Robb? Even if he was a worse monster than Tywin and was responsible for worse atrocities (not true, of course, but I am speaking hypothetically), this wouldn't have excused Tywin's crimes one bit.

This ridiculous "there are no bad guys in ASOIF" mantra so many posters like to parrot is simply stupid. Of course there are, and Tywin is clearly one of them. Just because he's a ore complex character than the usual one-dimensional villain in fiction doesn't make him less of a villain.

Some people seem to think that the only evil people are the likes of Ramsay, who commit crimes "for the evulz". But ruthless pragmatics guys like Tywin are just as bad, often worse. If you murder a hundred men because this would give you more power, it is just as bad as killing them because you are a sick bastard who enjoys killing. So far Tywin has directly caused way more deaths and rapes than Ramsay.

[Maroucia]

Even though I agree that once you’re death, the reason you were killed does not matter, I would much prefer being killed by a pragmatic guy like Tywin who would just execute me, then by a psychopath as Ramsay who would skin me for months and then change my name to Reek and make me live with his dogs.

At least Tywin always had a reason to do what he done and I never got the feeling that he enjoyed torturing others. I think this is what draws the line between a psychopath and a pragmatic leader.

Any king, president, prime minister or anyone that leads a war is going to kill a whole lot of people in the end; but as terrible as it is, it doesn’t mean that they are killers in their real life.

It makes a difference to me.

[David Selig]

But Tywin uses people like Vargo and his company, who love torturing just as much as Ramsay, and he encourages them to do it on a large scale. So no, he won't torture you personally, he just orders his rabid dogs to do it, which isn't any better.

[Roose Seal]

Tywin is Lawful Evil. He may have thought there was some kind of reasoning or justification behind is evil deeds, but it didn't change the fact that they were in fact evil. Ordering someone to rape and kill innocents is just as bad as doing the deed yourself, if not worse.

How anyone could read about the whole Tysha gang-rape thing and think of him as anything other than a very, very, evil person, is completely beyond me.

[Currawong]

Tywin is the ultimate "the ends justify the means" guy. There's every indication that he was a good Hand and a good administrator, and certainly he restored the Lannnister fortunes after his own father's actions. And I don't condemn him for marrying Cersei off in a political marriage, or seeking to do so again aftyer Robert's death - those arranged marriages where women were often goods to be bartered were the social norm in Westeros, so it is wrong to condemn Tywin for that aspect of his behaviour.

But somewhere along the line, Tywin's whole concept of "family" and family honour seems to have become totally warped, so that he would do anything and everything to maintain what he thought was necessary in terms of family status and 'honour'. His whole treatment of Tyrion stems from his ideal that Lannisters could not have less than perfect children. He wouldn't put Tyrion out on the hillside to die, but he wouldn't treat him as a normal son either.

And then when the war of the five kings came, he was utterly pragmatic and ruthless in doing what he thought needed to be done in terms of winning. If sacking the Riverlands was going to hamper the Starks and their cause, then so be it. If murdering a few people at a feast was going to shorten the war and save lives, then that too was OK - never mind society's 'guest rights'. The ends always justify the means. So when your ideal warrior son escapes captivity and turns up in KL, you expect that in the cause of family interests, he will naturally fall into line, agree to being bought out of the KG and accept a marriage to his (Jaime's) supposed nephew's widow, in reality his son's widow.

[Lord Yarwyck]

Tywin Lannister was a good ruler but a terrible, terrible man. He brought prosperity to Westeros when he was King Aerys' Hand, and likely would have done the same had he not been killed by his son. That does not excuse his war crimes, his hypocrisy or his poor treatment of his children, which is bad in Jaime and Cersei's case and utterly horrific in Tyrion's.

Let's break down Tywin's crimes and examine his motivations:

WAR CRIMES:

Tywin unleashes monsters like Ser Gregor and the Brave Companions in order to "forage". This has two purposes: 1. It brings his army the food and treasure it needs to continue campaigning i.e looting It is not justified, but seems to be widespread in Westeros: after all, Northerners seem to have committed similar crimes over the course of their campaign. What sets the Clegane men and the Brave Companions apart is the wanton sadism with which they act. Tywin knows about this too, and he allows it to go on in order to serve a purpose - to ruin the Riverlands and to cow the smallfolk. Again, there is a pragmatic outcome - the butchery is not merely the end in itself.

HIS CHILDREN:

Tywin lives in fear of one thing - House Lannister becoming what it was under his father, Tytos: a joke. In this regard, he tries to raise children so that they might not slip back into becoming toothless lions. This is why he married off his daughter and planned to do so again over her wishes. This is why he coldly disowns his favoured son when that son refuses to compromise his already soiled honour for him. And it is for this reason that he treats Tyrion so horribly - because, to him, Tyrion represents that degeneration. He is blinded to the fact that Tyrion is actually a good person and a capable Lannister because Tyrion (in his eyes) "killed" the love of his life. Again, the evil is "justified" (in Ty's eyes) because it is done to ensure prosperity for the Lannisters and the Westerlands.

Ultimately, Tywin is ruthlessly pragmatic. He has goals, not scruples. His burning of the Riverlands and the Red Wedding were the right call if you subscribe to the same morality as Tywin. However, even if one subscribes to such a coldly rational mindset, his treatment of Tyrion was immoral because it went beyond the bounds of any pragmatic goal and was motivated by sheer hatred. Unfortunately, such a person is only as good as his goals and his judgement, which was faulty in Tyrion's case and ultimately proved his undoing. If you don't subscribe to Tywin's utilitarianism, he is at best a well-intentioned extremist and at worst a complete monster.

[Malpka]

As for Tywin being bad - well he certainly is not saint, however as far as we know only evil act he committed was Tysha rape, and giving history of his father and and his father story one can see when it came from. (not trying to justify it in any way, just trying to explain where his decision came from, alll the same acknowledging its evilness)

As for people condemning him for using people like Gregor - it actually give him a credit as strategist. Try to think about it that way, if you were revolting lord and he would send to you someone like Selmy, who would come to your lands, call you for a battle, then even in case of defeat, you would revolt again in year or two, however if you know he send Gregor, who will slaughter your people, burn villages and towns, spread salt on your fields, rape your wife, children and probably you as well, just before killing you (not very fast), then you would surrender - mighty fast - and never though of revolting again.

[Dornish Bannerman]

He seems evil to his enemies, but he only does the things that needs to be done, but one does not want to. Like the Rains of Castamere, and the Red Wedding.

I thing he is a great character, only harsh at times. Like towards Tyrion when he tells him that he will never be Lord of Casterly Rock.

[Malpka]

Additionally i find one of the biggest disappointments in the series, that Joffrey didn't live long enough to be teach little lesson by Tywin. :(

[Child of Spring]

I don't think he's the epitome of evil, but he's no saint. The way he treats his children (especially Tyrion) is sometimes sick. As many of you already said, he has unrealistic expectations regarding them and no mistake goes unpunished. And here is the killing of Rhaegar's children and Elia and all other murders he committed (not necessarily by his own hand but they were still committed on his orders) so he definitely has a lot of blood on his hands. But he doesn't repulse me like Ramsay or the Mountain. He's very intelligent and has some good qualities, but over all I see him as a very ambitious and ruthless man.