Did Shae Go Too Far?

[RememberTheNorth]

(SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ TO THE END OF SoS YET!)

Since the second season of the TV show was released, I always thought Shae was one of the more interesting characters within GoT that I somewhat enjoyed seeing portrayed on screen. Other people always said she was a no good whore but I always thought that she truly had a soft spot for Tyrion and wanted what was best for him.

Cut to Tyrion's trial after Joffrey's less-than-perfect wedding. Although she tries to tell Tyrion otherwise (when he has his hands to her throat) in Tywin's bed chamber that the humiliating "evidence" she revealed about him was forced out of her by Cersei, I find it hard to believe that she HAD to reveal such explicit and degrading secrets about Tyrion when she didn't even NEED to go that much into detail (especially when much of King's Landing was watching.) Seriously, she didn't need to go into the "My giant of Lannister" stuff openly in front of court when such things were supposed to be her and Tyrion's secret alone. It seemed as if she purposely tried to throw Tyrion away just because he was yesterday's news to her.

I really don't know what to think about her. On one hand, she seems to hold secrets against the Lannisters--except Tyrion for the most part (as was depicted in the HBO show, when she threatens to harm another servant if she tells the queen about Sansa's flowering, or when she looks after Sansa during the Blackwater battle, etc.)

Maybe she was learning to play the game like Littlefinger and Varys? Maybe she had other intentions in mind when in Tywin's chambers? Who really knows?

[Big Daddy Dave]

I think she had deluded herself into thinking she could screw her way up the social ladder of King's Landing. Until Tyrion found her in his father's bed of course. That pretty much ended THAT.

[Jaime's Wench]

I was really shocked by Shae at the end of SoS and agree that she didn't need to go into quite that level of detail. Just a very good, scheming whore? Maybe... In that sense she's the exact opposite to Tysha, who loved Tyrion for who he was and never sought to deceive him. But at the same time, I have a hard time believing she was just a schemer and a liar. She played her part in making Tyrion love her almost too well.

[Marc Hill]

As Tywin responded when Tyrion asked him what became of Tysha: "Wherever whores go"

I think it applies more to Shae.

[FanTasy]

I think the way the show is depicting Shae stands more and more on his own. The Shae in the books to me is a different character.

[Big Daddy Dave]

Really? To me they feel very much the same.

[nepaliman_7]

I was really shocked by Shae at the end of SoS and agree that she didn't need to go into quite that level of detail. Just a very good, scheming whore? Maybe... In that sense she's the exact opposite to Tysha, who loved Tyrion for who he was and never sought to deceive him. But at the same time, I have a hard time believing she was just a schemer and a liar. She played her part in making Tyrion love her almost too well.

Same here. I thought Shae seemed like she would betray Tyrion eventually, but not humiliate him in court like that.

[msheafer33]

Other people always said she was a no good whore but I always thought that she truly had a soft spot for Tyrion and wanted what was best for him.

Even if Shae was indeed a whore with a "heart of gold", this would not necessarily translate into a soft spot for Tyrion. Tyrion is an evil murdering thug. He murdered her friend Symon, for starters. He also armed the mountain clans and sent them to rape and murder the people of the Vale.

Shae, we learn, has a sense of people. It is likely that Shae senses how dangerous Tyrion is, and therefore hates and fears him. Heart of gold or not.

[FanTasy]

Really? To me they feel very much the same.

:cool4: I had the same in Season 1, liked how the actress played. I've seen most parts of Season 1 before I read all the novels.

Then in Season 2 HBO-Shae for me becomes quite a different character as compared with how she is depicted in ACOK and with what her arc is in ASOS.

I still liked what the actress did with the role in Season 2 though

[ivor the swine]

As I was reading her testimony, my eyes did widen slightly. At first I was shocked that there were absolutly NO signs of compassion or regret that she was (in effect) condemning her supposed 'giant' to certain death, but during the Imp & Shae's next meeting it became clear how ruthless she could be to make a name for herself in KL or even Casterly Rock. Maybe Cersei will shed some light on her brothers lover's intentions later on?

[Knight ofthe Laughing Tree]

I agree with all that-- that being said, maybe an incentive for her to go above and beyond what the Lannisters wanted of her was the fact that well, they're the LANNISTERS ;) and she is a whore-- she is a woman (no rights), a poor (?) woman (no rights), and a whore..... so while in many respects she probably has a lot more independence than many of the highborn ladies, she lives in a completely different world. Her protector (Tyrion) stands condemned..... I hated the Shae that told all the bits she didn't need to at the trial. I get that Tyrion can be very very bad.... but all that being said, I can at least somewhat sympathize with Shae "confessing" that she was a victim of sorts in her present condition. But it was lame

[Giantsbabe]

While I hadn't read the Shae arc to the very end when I watched the first season of the TV show, I immediately found her character in the show very different from what I took from the books. Certainly in the second season, when she seems to become somewhat protective towards Sansa.

So my judgement of her shall be only based on what I read in the books. Until the end and the trial I wasn't really sure whether she truly had feelings for Tyrion or not. The way she always came back to him after he sent her away for her protection seemed to indicate that she did.

But I believe that she definitely had been very opportunistic and that she was trying to get the best out of the situation for herself.

Take the very beginning. She was just a camp follower, but decided to stay with the Imp. She couldn't have fallen in love with him by the time he offered her to stay, so she definitely was doing that for personal benefit. You may say that's what whores do, but she didn't just sleep with him and then go on to the next guy, but really became his (emotional) companion for money, something that goes further than usual "service", I'd say.

So I think she has it in her to take side with whoever promises her most. Tyrion offered her a good life, but she kept asking for jewelry and a higher social status.

I guess Cersei simply bought her with promises. Shae would have realized that Cersei wanted to do as much damage to Tyrion as she could, so the embarrasing details were an extra that Shae believed would pay off when all was done.

A Lannister always pays his debts. I guess what happened was Tyrion paying his debts to destiny. The first girl he loved lost everything for loving him, without being a whore, and the second one was an actual whore and that time Tyrion lost everything for loving her.

[Ramsay Gimp]

Tyrion gave her better than she deserved. It was clear that there was a lot more to her actions than just bearing false witness out of fear. She relished it

[Krystal]

I wasn't expecting she would tell everything.

[bullsfan78]

I agree with all that-- that being said, maybe an incentive for her to go above and beyond what the Lannisters wanted of her was the fact that well, they're the LANNISTERS ;) and she is a whore-- she is a woman (no rights), a poor (?) woman (no rights), and a whore..... so while in many respects she probably has a lot more independence than many of the highborn ladies, she lives in a completely different world. Her protector (Tyrion) stands condemned..... I hated the Shae that told all the bits she didn't need to at the trial. I get that Tyrion can be very very bad.... but all that being said, I can at least somewhat sympathize with Shae "confessing" that she was a victim of sorts in her present condition. But it was lame

I think this is a nice summary. I think Shae deserves a bit more sympathy than what I see in a lot of the comments, where she is accused of simply using Tyrion for his wealth. It's hard to know too much about Shae's motivations because we never get a POV chapter from her and we don't know much about her "interrogation" after Joffrey's murder. We know that Varys was well aware of her relationship with Tyrion. So we can assume that Cersei was armed with this knowledge already when she had Shae detained for questioning. Now, without giving away spoilers, we see in Feast that Cersei can be pretty brutal at extracting information from people. It is quite possible that Shae is telling Tyrion the truth about Cersei forcing this information out of her and making up lies about Tyrion and Sansa plotting together. We might wish that Shae would have sacrificed herself for Tyrion at her own risk by refusing to implicate him, but I think that would be setting higher standards for her than 90% of the characters in the series, especially when Tyrion most likely would have been condemned in any case (Shae's testimony wasn't really the deciding factor, it was more icing on the cake).

So, giving her the benefit of the doubt that Cersei might have used some coercion to get her to implicate Tyrion, the problem that the original poster and many others have is that she went into such excruciating detail about the giant of Lannister thing and other details that were designed to humiliate Tyrion. I can sympathize with these concerns, that it does make her look very selfish and cruel, but I'm hesitant to condemn her wholesale without knowing more about what threats were made against her. It's also quite possible that Varys had some knowledge of Tyrion and Shae's "pillow talk" (they did use his room as a rendezvous point at least once) that he could have fed to Cersei. We know that Cersei was 100% convinced of Tyrion's guilt, we can assume that she was well aware of Shae's relationship with him, and we have evidence throughout the series of the lengths Cersei will go to to get her way with vulnerable people.

As for her relationship with Tywin, which admittedly looks very bad for her character, we don't know when or how that started. It's possible Tywin became aware of Tyrion's continued meetings with her after he had threatened to hang Shae, and used that knowledge against her. Or it's possible that her detractors are right and she was simply motivated by greed. I just don't think we know enough to condemn her completely.

As for the poster two replies up who claimed that she "relished" it, we don't have any evidence of that. When she testifies, there are a couple of references in the text to her looking terrified. The text doesn't say that she was staring at Tyrion the whole time and smirking at him, as we might expect her to do if she was really doing it for the sheer joy of humiliating him.

[Maegor the Cuddly]

That was the point. The more she gave up, the more convincing she'd be. She didn't expect Tyrion to get out, and figured the only safe route was to spill it all. The more in-depth she got as to Tyrion's "horrible acts" towards her, the more sympathetic she was, the more Tyrion was criminalized, and the better chance she had to going up another rung on the social ladder.

[Lisbeth Sand]

The ending of the Shae storyline felt really rushed to me. I would've like to see more about her history before she was unceremoniously disposed of.

However, the entire time Tyrion was with her he was trying to convince himself that she was still a whore and only out for money/herself/whatever. This final act of hers only proved him right.