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[Book Spoilers] Loras and Alleged Character Assassination


freetickles

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I don't think it compares. The grief one feels with the loss of a lover strikes me as the sort of thing where sex and sexual intimacy would be rather too raw an experience to begin with. Especially, as with Loras, it seems quite likely that Renly was his only lover.

The thing is, Loras has been shown on the show to wear his heart on his sleeve -- his temper, his feelings, always come through, much as they do in the novel. A light-hearted and care free Loras... well, that's the Loras who holds some pleasant small talk with Sansa. And then she mentions stuff connected to Renly, and the grief comes through. But I'd think even on the show his sexual relations should be rather obviously tinged with the loss.

As it is, it's never mentioned, the death of Renly, even in one scene from the book where it could have well been noted, or in this new scene they invented. Ergo the writers don't think it worth mentioning or they have failed to think about the fact that they have not mentioned it. You can try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but that dog just won't hunt (to mix metaphors).

Don't forget that you are talking about your interpretation of Loras in the books. We really don't get a lot of information about the Renly and Loras relationship. It's in the background and very subtle. People base their opinion on that relationship on perhaps two or three comments by Loras. I think his comment about why he joined the Kingsguard is very nice. "When the sun has set, no candle can replace it." But what else is there to go by? We really don't know anything about that relationship in the first place, and the readers have added in a TON of romantic, lovely images of Loras and Renly that are not described in the text. It's all assumption.

I like the image of Loras as a romantic guy, but he did also murder two of Renly's kingsguards in hot blood. He's certainly not the perfect, respectable paragon of virtue that he portrays himself to be. He did use a mare in heat to beat Gregor in the joust. His house is known to be Lannisters with pretty flowers. So much is left open to interpretation with the Tyrells that you just don't know. It's common assumption that Loras was desperately in love with Renly, but that's really just one interpretation. The writers clearly have a different one.

The same thing happens with Stannis. I have a different interpretation of him from the books than the show. I didn't like his emotional appeals to Mel at all. Seems very out of character, especially to tell her that he's crazy about her. Very un-stannislike in my book. But this episode's Stannis dialogue redeemed him quite a bit. I take it as a different interpretation of Stannis. Not exactly what I wanted, but at least pretty reasonable.

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But what else is there to go by?

"It's said the Knight of Flowers went mad when he saw his king's body, and slew three of Renly's guards in his wrath, among them Emmon Cuy and Robar Royce."

He doesn't remember, Sansa realized, startled. He is only being kind to me, he doesn't remember me or the rose or any of it. She had been so certain that it meant something, that it meant everything. A red rose, not a white. "It was after you unhorsed Ser Robar Royce," she said, desperately.

He took his hand from her arm. "I slew Robar at Storm's End, my lady." It was not a boast; he sounded sad.

Him, and another of King Renly's Rainbow Guard as well, yes. Sansa had heard the women talking of it round the well, but for a moment she'd forgotten. "That was when Lord Renly was killed, wasn't it? How terrible for your poor sister."

"For Margaery?" His voice was tight. "To be sure. She was at Bitterbridge, though. She did not see."

"You!"

The last of the northmen had dismounted, Jaime saw, and now Loras Tyrell had seen Brienne.

"Ser Loras." She stood stupidly, holding her bridle.

Loras Tyrell strode toward her. "Why?" he said. "You will tell me why. He treated you kindly, gave you a rainbow cloak. Why would you kill him?"

"I never did. I would have died for him."

"You will." Ser Loras drew his longsword.

"And so it did." And some knights and lordlings too. "Well, you gave the singers something to make rhymes about, I suppose that's not to be despised. What did you do with Renly?"

"I buried him with mine own hands, in a place he showed me once when I was a squire at Storm's End. No one shall ever find him there to disturb his rest." He looked at Jaime defiantly. "I will defend King Tommen with all my strength, I swear it. I will give my life for his if need be. But I will never betray Renly, by word or deed. He was the king that should have been. He was the best of them."

I think there's plenty there to show his devotion, and his continuing devotion. I might also add that GRRM has noted that Loras has a literary antecedent in his own work, the young, hot-tempered, skilled warrior Breton Braith, who ends up doing all he can to avenge the death of his (male) lover in the course of Dying of the Light. (Braith is also an antecedent to the Hound -- half his face has a nasty burn scar). Martin clearly views that Achilles-Patroclus type of relationship as being operative here, where the loss of one partner is a lasting tragic grief.

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Not sure why so many seem to be worked up over Loras. He was one of the more minor characters in the book. We didn't see much of him really. He peacocked around some early and then got gravely injured.

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Yeah I never get why people take the candle line as so serious. The reason a scene like this would never have happened in the books, or with book Loras, is because Loras is in the Kingsguard!! And yeah, I get that he joins because he wants no other love than Renly, but in the show he couldn't do that (yet) for plotting reasons, so as such, some rebound sex is not the craziest thing in the world. At the very least, character assassination is WAY too strong a term for people to latch on to for this necessary scene in terms of plotting.

Cogman did a good job defending the choice in his interview.

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It doesn't matter if you don't get it or not. It is. People may care for any number of reasons -- they like that character particularly, they appreciate the depiction of an unambiguously gay man, they appreciate his tragic romance, they think he's badass, whatever -- but in the end, they do. The fact is that the writers of the show have this work before them that they are adapting, and the quality of their adaptation turns on things like whether they make good use of characters or not. Their depiction of Loras is not a complete one, and yet they could have made it complete with a line or two. That they didn't is, again, either bad writing or deliberately diminishing the character.

... some rebound sex is not the craziest thing in the world.

No, but having no sign or hint that Renly was ever in his life is fairly crazy. If they intended it to be there -- as Cogman argues it's supposed to be there ("I feel like he’s in mourning, he’s depressed, and this encounter with Olyvar is him medicating his wounds, if you will. ") -- then it doesn't come across and it is, sadly, a fault in the writing and possibly the acting (or at least the direction given to the actor).

Or, if they decided it was disposable, they decided that they could do without it and they're diminishing the character.

I think Bryan's preferred view is that, yes, it would have been good if they could get that across and they missed the opportunity there.

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Funny how so many people turn up here to tell how much they don't care about Loras, but seem to care greatly that others do care about him. Classic case of "stop liking what I don't like" I guess.

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I think Bryan's preferred view is that, yes, it would have been good if they could get that across and they missed the opportunity there.

Two of the most powerful lines that you quoted come directly from his appointment to the Kingsguard -- the "candle" line, and "he was the best of them/buried him with my own hands." But his appointment to the Kingsguard has not yet happened, so the opportunity for him to express those feelings is still there. I'd agree that his portrayal to date does not paint that same picture, but I don't think it is beyond repair. Now, if they don't fix it at that point, then I think they've done a disservice.

Loras is a minor character in whom I really never had much interest. Frankly, the whole "Rainbow Guard", "Knight of Flowers", and Renly being both gay and the "weak iron" seem to play off some stereotypes. But, I think what happened to Loras during the attack on Dragonstone, coupled with the bitterness/sadness he expressed when he joined the Kingsgaurd, may turn him into less of a flaming stereotype, and more of truly tragic, substantive character. Of course, that all depends on whether George plans on taking him that way after Dragonstone. But if so, I do think that more substantive Loras will be a weaker character if they don't fix this.

I don't think it compares. The grief one feels with the loss of a lover strikes me as the sort of thing where sex and sexual intimacy would be rather too raw an experience to begin with. Especially, as with Loras, it seems quite likely that Renly was his only lover.

That's something on which reasonable people can disagree, I think. Cogman's sense as a human being as to what someone grieving over a lost lover may do is no less invalid than any of ours.

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You know, I think people are forgetting - they used this scene to deliver the information to Littlefinger and therefore the Lannisters about what the Tyrells were cooking up. In the books Ser Dontos is the one who gives the info to Littlefinger and thus to the Lannisters, but he is not present in this season, so somebody needed to do it because they hadn't fleshed out Ser Dontos as a character.

In that respect this is a perfect way for LF to receive the information in a non suspicious manner. Maybe they didn't think of Loras at all, they were only concerned about how to get from point A to point B on the "Sansa isn't escaping the Lannisters" storyline.

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I think Bryan's preferred view is that, yes, it would have been good if they could get that across and they missed the opportunity there.

Two of the most powerful lines that you quoted come directly from his appointment to the Kingsguard -- the "candle" line, and "he was the best of them/buried him with my own hands." But his appointment to the Kingsguard has not yet happened, so the opportunity for him to express those feelings is still there. I'd agree that his portrayal to date does not paint that same picture, but I don't think it is beyond repair. Now, if they don't fix it at that point, then I think they've done a disservice.

Loras is a minor character in whom I really never had much interest. Frankly, the whole "Rainbow Guard", "Knight of Flowers", and Renly being both gay and the "weak iron" seem to play off some stereotypes. But, I think what happened to Loras during the attack on Dragonstone, coupled with the bitterness/sadness he expressed when he joined the Kingsgaurd, may turn him into less of a flaming stereotype, and more of truly tragic, substantive character. Of course, that all depends on whether George plans on taking him that way after Dragonstone. But if so, I do think that more substantive Loras will be a weaker character if they don't fix this.

I don't think it compares. The grief one feels with the loss of a lover strikes me as the sort of thing where sex and sexual intimacy would be rather too raw an experience to begin with. Especially, as with Loras, it seems quite likely that Renly was his only lover.

That's something on which reasonable people can disagree, I think. Cogman's sense as a human being as to what someone grieving over a lost lover may do is no less invalid than any of ours.

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You know, I think people are forgetting - they used this scene to deliver the information to Littlefinger and therefore the Lannisters about what the Tyrells were cooking up. In the books Ser Dontos is the one who gives the info to Littlefinger and thus to the Lannisters, but he is not present in this season, so somebody needed to do it because they hadn't fleshed out Ser Dontos as a character.

In that respect this is a perfect way for LF to receive the information in a non suspicious manner. Maybe they didn't think of Loras at all, they were only concerned about how to get from point A to point B on the "Sansa isn't escaping the Lannisters" storyline.

But they could have done that differently. They could have had Loras rejecting the advances of that guy, and perhaps angrily saying that he doesn't want Olyver, doesn't want Cersei, and the only person he wants is gone. Or something like that. The real point of contention, at bottom, is Cogman's belief that Loras' actions are a plausible way for someone in Loras' position to deal with grief, and I'm not sure there is an objectively correct answer to that.

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I do think the writers are creating a plausible way for the information to have gotten to Littlefinger, but I agree I wish Loras seemed a little more sad... a little more fractured like he seems in the books.

I do wish too we had seen Sansa get it that her rose was not a big deal to him. That was a pretty pivotal moment, I thought, for her character, too.

They had the conversation, they didn't quite find the way to give it the emotional nuance it had in the book for either character.

I'm not so upset about him sleeping with someone else, I just wanted a little more pathos.

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You know, I think people are forgetting - they used this scene to deliver the information to Littlefinger and therefore the Lannisters about what the Tyrells were cooking up. In the books Ser Dontos is the one who gives the info to Littlefinger and thus to the Lannisters, but he is not present in this season, so somebody needed to do it because they hadn't fleshed out Ser Dontos as a character.

In that respect this is a perfect way for LF to receive the information in a non suspicious manner. Maybe they didn't think of Loras at all, they were only concerned about how to get from point A to point B on the "Sansa isn't escaping the Lannisters" storyline.

That's kind of an odd way to write a script for a scene with Loras in it..

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I think there's plenty there to show his devotion, and his continuing devotion. I might also add that GRRM has noted that Loras has a literary antecedent in his own work, the young, hot-tempered, skilled warrior Breton Braith, who ends up doing all he can to avenge the death of his (male) lover in the course of Dying of the Light. (Braith is also an antecedent to the Hound -- half his face has a nasty burn scar). Martin clearly views that Achilles-Patroclus type of relationship as being operative here, where the loss of one partner is a lasting tragic grief.

I agree. As folks said, Loras Loved Renly it wasn't a crush, it wasn't a passing fancy, it was deep, meaningful love. TV Loras as mentioned seemed to be ready to jump at the first hot squire that came his way.

This is a good question to ask Forum members who have experienced loss of a romantic loved one, how long did it take for you to recover?

I know one guy his wife died in her sleep and it took him a year before he dated again . . the women at work were counting the clock because he was a good looking dude.

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But they could have done that differently. They could have had Loras rejecting the advances of that guy, and perhaps angrily saying that he doesn't want Olyver, doesn't want Cersei, and the only person he wants is gone. Or something like that. The real point of contention, at bottom, is Cogman's belief that Loras' actions are a plausible way for someone in Loras' position to deal with grief, and I'm not sure there is an objectively correct answer to that.

Better yet, in his fury he could have let slip that he doesn't want to marry Sansa. That way the plot could have been advanced without destroying his character.

The scene was just lazy (and bad) writing.

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I cant bring myself to care about how Loras is characterised.....in the books he was a boring character, a young Jaime but less badass and less interesting.

I really don't see the point of making comments like this. Evidently you're on a forum where people do care :) Why comment if you have no interest at all.

I think the issue here is that there are so many relatively easy ways the writers could have included a version of this scene and made it more in line with Loras' character in the books without changing much at all.

And to all the people criticizing the use of "character assassination" if you actually read the posts here, very very few people have actually been using that term :) It's more like "character deviation that seems to be unnecessary" that is our issue I would say :)

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