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Brienne - unreliable narrator or simply a mistake


Inquisitor Glokta

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Hi

during my current re-read of AFFC i came across 2 errors in one of Briennes chapters and i was wondering if this is a case of Brienne being and unreliable narrator or if someone else might be to blame:

"They only say those things to win your lord father's favor," the woman had said. "You'll find truth in your looking glass, not on the tongues of men."

It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead at Harrenhal when Ser Hyle and his friends had played their game.

1 chapter earlier:

"At Highgarden, when King Renly called his banners, some men played a game with me. Ser Hyle was one of them."

So which was it, Highgarden or Harrenhal? (rhetorical question, I know it was at Highgarden)

On the next page, she is talking the melee at Bitterbridge:

She went to sleep dreaming of the fight they'd(Brienne and Loras) had, and of Ser Jaime fastening a rainbow cloak about her shoulders.

The second one could be a hint at Brienne having a crush on Jaime, i have to admit. We know she had a thing for Renly and it was him who gave her the rainbow cloak after the melee. Her dream could be a projection of Jaime (her current crush) on Renly (her previous crush).

I guess the second error is meant to be there, but I'm not sure what's up with the first one.

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but why would she mistake highgarden for harrenhal in her mind? i don't know.

Her maidenhead was at stake in both of them?

But Hyle Hunt wasnt in Harrenhal though, so I dont know how she placed him in both places.

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The second was intentional.

Brienne had been thinking about Jaime a lot. So in her dream, she replaced Renly with Jaime. She's got a crush on Jaime.

Here's another:

The bathhouse had been thick with the steam rising off the water, and Jaime had come walking through that mist naked as his name day, looking half a corpse and half a god. He climbed into the tub with me, she remembered, blushing. She seized a chunk of hard lye soap and scrubbed under her arms, trying to call up Renly’s face again.

He used the same writing technique with Sansa, she'd start to think of or dream of someone else and replace him with Sandor (who she'd been thinking about a lot).

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The first may well be a mistake, the second I see as her projecting Jaime considering how much time they spent and how her feelings may have changed in that time.

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Gonna have to go with the first error being just that, an error. I'd have a hard time believing Brienne to be an unreliable narrator, considering she is basically the most honourable and knight-like character in the series. I doubt that it's the same thing as Sansa and that whole unKiss thing.

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"It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead at Harrenhal, when Ser Hyle and his friends had played their game."

It's just a missing comma. It means that the experience she had with Ser Hyle in Highgarden helped her in Harrenhall.

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"It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead at Harrenhal, when Ser Hyle and his friends had played their game."

It's just a missing comma. It means that the experience she had with Ser Hyle in Highgarden helped her in Harrenhall.

She talks about being courted by men. They told her she was beautiful and so on, to gain her fathers seat. What does that have to with Harrenhal? Did Vargo Hoat court her to become the next Lord of Tarth?

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"It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead at Harrenhal, when Ser Hyle and his friends had played their game."

It's just a missing comma. It means that the experience she had with Ser Hyle in Highgarden helped her in Harrenhall.

that's probably it

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She talks about being courted by men. They told her she was beautiful and so on, to gain her fathers seat. What does that have to with Harrenhal? Did Vargo Hoat court her to become the next Lord of Tarth?

I was not implying that Vargo courted her. There are other similarities, such as facing the cruelty of some men once again.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Gonna have to go with the first error being just that, an error. I'd have a hard time believing Brienne to be an unreliable narrator, considering she is basically the most honourable and knight-like character in the series. I doubt that it's the same thing as Sansa and that whole unKiss thing.

I don't see how a fleeting, misremembered, unspoken detail would reflect poorly on her honor. Personally, I suspect it was just a minor error by GRRM, but the beauty of his "unreliable narrator" structure is that any minor inconsistency can be easily explained away!

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Hi

during my current re-read of AFFC i came across 2 errors in one of Briennes chapters and i was wondering if this is a case of Brienne being and unreliable narrator or if someone else might be to blame:

1 chapter earlier:

So which was it, Highgarden or Harrenhal? (rhetorical question, I know it was at Highgarden)

On the next page, she is talking the melee at Bitterbridge:

The second one could be a hint at Brienne having a crush on Jaime, i have to admit. We know she had a thing for Renly and it was him who gave her the rainbow cloak after the melee. Her dream could be a projection of Jaime (her current crush) on Renly (her previous crush).

I guess the second error is meant to be there, but I'm not sure what's up with the first one.

My vote is:

I think the first is a genuine mistake in the text.

The second I think is not a mistake or inconsistency at all, but Brienne's dreams starting to warp thanks to her feelings for Jaime.

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There are other Renly to Jaime segues, too, GRRM uses this technique a lot.

That night she dreamed herself in Renly's tent again... And when the shadow sword sliced through the green steel gorget and the blood began to flow, she saw that the dying king was not Renly after all but Jaime Lannister, and she had failed him.

She could not fight without her magic sword. Ser Jaime had given it to her. The thought of failing him as she had failed Lord Renly made her want to weep. "My sword. Please, I have to find my sword... Jaime called it Oathkeeper. Please."
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"It was a harsh lesson, one that left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead at Harrenhal, when Ser Hyle and his friends had played their game."

It's just a missing comma. It means that the experience she had with Ser Hyle in Highgarden helped her in Harrenhall.

I would write it thusly for even more clarity, "It was a harsh lesson when Ser Hyle and his friends had played their game and left her weeping, but it had stood her in good stead at Harrenhal."

I'm not sure how it helped her at Harrenhal, mind you, but she thinks it did.

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