What, exactly, is wrong with Lysa?

[Daena the Defiant]

Add me to the "We suppor this post"-list.

And I.

[So NOT a Maiden Fair]

` Lysa was always messed up. So what that she loved LF, but he didn't reciprocate. Haven't we all been there? I'm not feeling sorry for her foe that.

Being forced to abort is bad, but she shouldn't have gotten pregnant by the LF. She knows the rules, just like every other highborn girl.

She still managed to land a Lord Paramount. Would she rather have gone to live with LF on the Fingers, counting sheep pellets?

I think Lysa was batty from the get. She made bad decisions and couldn't live with the consequences. You have to held accountable for your bad decisions. She was luckier than most.

Seriously?! Her father had no consideration for her feelings, made her abort a baby froma man she loved, practically sold her to a man three times her age with whom she was forced to have sex with almost every night to have heirs for house Arryn, had several miscarriages. Yes, she could've been stronger, but I really can't blame her for being the way she was either.

[Annara Snow]

` Lysa was always messed up. So what that she loved LF, but he didn't reciprocate. Haven't we all been there? I'm not feeling sorry for her foe that.

Being forced to abort is bad, but she shouldn't have gotten pregnant by the LF. She knows the rules, just like every other highborn girl.

She still managed to land a Lord Paramount. Would she rather have gone to live with LF on the Fingers, counting sheep pellets?

Maybe she would have. How would you know? It's not like she ever got a choice. She didn't even get the choice to decide what she would do with her pregnancy. She didn't get the choice to decide who she was going to have sex with, or spend her life with. She had zero choices, and her father made all the decisions for her, disregarding her feelings completely.

[grand old duke of stark]

She just the most obvious example of the hidden dysfunctionality within the Tully family.

I guess that makes the Blackfish the fish out of water ;-} .

Seriously, you are right. But additionally, let's blame Littlefinger and Hoster for setting off the domino effect that led to Lysa's descent into madness. Too bad Brandon didn't skewer LF; but then, there wouldn't be much of a story if he had. Like Tywin with his equally dysfunctional family, Hoster more or less used his family with no regard to possible consequences other than his own self-centered goals. In RL, history is littered with noble and royal 'mediaeval' fathers who pretty much sold their sons and daughters off to further the family's political or acquistional aims.

i agree with the assertion that Lysa was un poco loco to begin with. The cumulative effect of all her disappointments and betrayals and grief and lack of love was her almost complete unraveling. No wonder she practically slavered over Sweet Robin, and even he didn't seem as loving as she probably wanted. So the fact that she's almost totally barmy at the end is quite understandable. Where I disagree with many posters is that Cat was crazy. She was made of (much) sterner stuff. Despite body blow after body blow, she still functioned in leadership and decision-making, though both were skewed by her increasing need to get her kids back no matter what. What finally loosened her grip on sanity was--despite her precautions--the Frey betrayal and her son being murdered before her eyes. And then she, understandably, invited death. Even as Lady Stoneheart, IMO she still has some grip on reality--but her focus had narrowed to retribution.

[jon stark I]

Lysa was unbalanced from the start.She goes to the bed of a drunk wounded man who fought for the hand of her sister and she sleeps with him while LF whispers Cats name I mean isn't it obvius he loves Cat not Lysa.Her father does what any other noble lord would do he terminates the pregnancy but I think Hoster Tully used overdose in the abortion medicine so that causes some damage to her and she suffers more.

Lysa was weak minded as far as I understand she was always in Cats shadow.Lysas life got srewed up by her one mistake loving LF.She was very easily manipulated she is actually insane.But comparing her to Uncat I have to say even Uncat sounds more sane then Lysa.

[Djinn]

I guess that makes the Blackfish the fish out of water ;-} .

Well, Blackfish holds a decades long pissmatch with Hoster about marriage not because he wants to marry someone else, but because he doesn't want Hoster to be the one to decide, but has no problem helping Robb pressuring Edmure into it.

Catelyn transfers her anger at the adultery from Ned to Jon.

Hoster matchmaker hitches everybody(or tries) in his family but not his son/heir.

Edmure is in his mid-twenties without any matches in sight and hates singers because of a teenage fling.

Everybody(in the family) always assumes the worst of Edmure(either be dishonorable, whoremonger, coward, gloryhound, stupid).

So, while Lannisters, Greyjoys, Targaryens and Baratheons are more obviously dysfunctional, Tully's also have quite a bit of it as well.

[blood of the dragoon]

It seems to me that there's something in the blood. Lysa and Catelyn both go insane after losing too many of their children. When we meet her in AGOT, Lysa has had gods-only-know how many miscarriages and stillbirths and has only one son who is weak and sickly, of whom she is insanely overprotective. In other words, she's already gone through the trauma off-page and lost her mind.

Catelyn starts off the series as the proud mother of five healthy children. Over the course of the series she loses them one by one - Arya disappears, Bran and Rickon are apparently killed, Sansa is forced into a marriage with a high likelihood that she'll be killed once she's had a son, and then Robb is cut down right in front of her. Over the course of this ordeal she gets progressively nuttier until she loses it completely and makes her sister look sane by comparison.

I don't think this is a Tully thing, i think it's a human thing.

[mambru]

Post-partum psychosis is also a possibility...

[The Frosted King]

Some people go through life accumulating misery and slights, and seem to never find contentment.

Lysa as a young girl, made an exceedingly stupid decision.

Had her path organically continued from her slipping into bed with Petyr, she'd likely be the unspoken of Tully daughter, who married an upjumped man at arms.

She and her little family live on a barren spit of land in the Fingers.

Her husband is distant and cold mostly, and her only respite is her child, who she's told stories of her childhood home in the great castle of Riverrun, but he's never seen it.

Would she be happy? Maybe, but likely not.

That would be her life, had Hoster played the unrealistic father with 21st century values role.

There weren't many suitable choices in the matter left to him.

And stop making his decision seem outrageously cruel.

People in their position weren't free pf expectations of duty and responsibility.

Part of the privilege of being waited on and living in that 1% was making alliances that benefit your house.

You want the freedom of choosing your spouse, become a peasant.

[Winter's Knight]

Eesh.

Forcing a girl to abort her child, sans consent, without even telling her is a horrible, horrible thing to do. Hoster realises this while he's dying and it haunts him. Cat specifically refers to it as a wrong done to Lysa. You don't need 21st century morals to realise how fucked up that is.

[The Fallen]

Seriously?! Her father had no consideration for her feelings, made her abort a baby froma man she loved, practically sold her to a man three times her age with whom she was forced to have sex with almost every night to have heirs for house Arryn, had several miscarriages. Yes, she could've been stronger, but I really can't blame her for being the way she was either.

Maybe she would have. How would you know? It's not like she ever got a choice. She didn't even get the choice to decide what she would do with her pregnancy. She didn't get the choice to decide who she was going to have sex with, or spend her life with. She had zero choices, and her father made all the decisions for her, disregarding her feelings completely.

The point I'm trying to make is that highborn women don't have choices. Heck, the men, most of the time, don't have choices. What choice did Cat have? Cersei is a grown woman and Tywin was telling her that she was to remarry, no ifs, ands or buts. Sansa had no choice. Neither did Arya. Nor Wylla. The only woman with a choice is Arriane. And that was only because Doran's initial choice fell through.

[mindchap]

She has plot-twister syndrome. :)

Seriously though, I have to go with the majority on this one, when you go through hell sometimes the hell just sticks with you.

[The Wolves]

Her dad dosed her with abortion medicine to terminate her lovechild with Littlefinger.

Then he sold her to a man (Jon Arryn) more than twice her age and hundreds of miles away from anyone she'd ever known or cared about.

Then she had several miscarriages, probably resulting from the after-affects of having been exposed to the abortion medicine in the first place.

She is the illustration of how unfair the medieval/feudal socio-political system is for women and how quickly/completely it can break them.

I agree but even after all of this I still can't feel to horrible for Lysa because I've seen so much more pain and suffering to others than what Lysa ever experienced.

[Ramsay Gimp]

Some people go through life accumulating misery and slights, and seem to never find contentment.

Lysa as a young girl, made an exceedingly stupid decision.

Had her path organically continued from her slipping into bed with Petyr, she'd likely be the unspoken of Tully daughter, who married an upjumped man at arms.

She and her little family live on a barren spit of land in the Fingers.

Her husband is distant and cold mostly, and her only respite is her child, who she's told stories of her childhood home in the great castle of Riverrun, but he's never seen it.

Would she be happy? Maybe, but likely not.

That would be her life, had Hoster played the unrealistic father with 21st century values role.

There weren't many suitable choices in the matter left to him.

And stop making his decision seem outrageously cruel.

People in their position weren't free pf expectations of duty and responsibility.

Part of the privilege of being waited on and living in that 1% was making alliances that benefit your house.

You want the freedom of choosing your spouse, become a peasant.

:agree:

Whatever trauma she experienced pales in comparison to many other characters, who didn't become sociopathic, obsessive bitches who murdered their husbands and did nothing while their family's seat get stolen and their family slaughtered.

(seriously, she's willing to shove Tyrion out the Moon Door for a crime she committed but isn't willing to fight the Lannisters to defend Riverrun? I hope she had a long fall to think about Littlefinger's last words to her)

[mambru]

The point I'm trying to make is that highborn women don't have choices.

Actually, it depends...depends of the flexibility of one's particular family. Brienne did get a choice, for example. Hell, even when fat Lord Manderley's plan depended on looking stern and making the Freys believe he was going to be exceedingly harsh to Wylla on their behalf, he gave Wylla the choice of marrying a Frey or joining the Silent Sisters. Granted, it was kind of a shitty choice, but Lord Manderley didn't threaten to force her to marry her against her will, even when his plan depended on making it look like he was sincerely on the Freys' side. IMO, that means that marching the bride to the altar at swordpoint is the exception rather than the rule. As for aborting pregnancies, IIRC, LF told the story of one of the Arryn women who got pregnant out of wedlock, and had the baby, who died. Now an unwed pregnancy is a bad thing for a reputation for the house, but they let it happen anyway. Same with Lollys.

So Hoster, by basically giving his daughter poison for a pregnancy he knew she wanted, invading her body integrity without her knowledge and against her will, was acting outside the norm of even his own society, which was a cruelty that haunted him to his deathbed, from which he continued to beg forgiveness of Lysa.

[Winter's Knight]

:agree:

Whatever trauma she experienced pales in comparison to many other characters, who didn't become sociopathic, obsessive bitches who murdered their husbands and did nothing while their family's seat get stolen and their family slaughtered.

See, I think that after a certain point, you can't expect a person to be loyal to their families. The fact that Lysa didn't rise for her father doesn't really upset me, just like it wouldn't upset me if Sam refuses to have anything further to do with his father.

[The Wolves]

See, I think that after a certain point, you can't expect a person to be loyal to their families. The fact that Lysa didn't rise for her father doesn't really upset me, just like it wouldn't upset me if Sam refuses to have anything further to do with his father.

But what about Edmure and Cat? Also the Blackfish served her really well, what about them?

And trying to kill Sansa because she was molested by Littlefinger

[Ramsay Gimp]

See, I think that after a certain point, you can't expect a person to be loyal to their families. The fact that Lysa didn't rise for her father doesn't really upset me, just like it wouldn't upset me if Sam refuses to have anything further to do with his father.

But her father was dying, as she well knew. It was Edmure and Cat's lives who were on the line, not to mention her family seat. But she's content to let them die and Riverrun be destroyed, all over jealousy of Cat and (admittedly justified) resentment for her father?

Tyrion hates his dad and siblings, but I doubt he would do nothing if Casterly Rock was going to be claimed or destroyed by a non-Lannister family

[Winter's Knight]

But what about Edmure and Cat? Also the Blackfish served her really well, what about them?

And trying to kill Sansa because she was molested by Littlefinger

I was just referring to her cold-blooded if sensible decision to preserve the Vale instead of rising for her father and sister. I certainly don't think she was right or justified in her treatment of Sansa, although I do understand the despair and insecurities that caused it.

[Annara Snow]

The point I'm trying to make is that highborn women don't have choices. Heck, the men, most of the time, don't have choices. What choice did Cat have? Cersei is a grown woman and Tywin was telling her that she was to remarry, no ifs, ands or buts. Sansa had no choice. Neither did Arya. Nor Wylla. The only woman with a choice is Arriane. And that was only because Doran's initial choice fell through.

Well that's exactly the point. Being a woman in that kind of society generally sucks and you don't get to make choices, instead the choices are made for you by your father, brothers, husband... * Does the fact that so many women were denied any choice when it comes to their own life and their own bodies make it all right? Hell, no.

Lysa's example is still particularly cruel, though. And there is no indication that Cat was forced to marry Ned, certainly not the way Sansa was forced to marry; Cat was just a dutiful daughter. This implies she had some choice, or else she wouldn't have a choice to not be dutiful.

*...unless you're a rich widow in a powerful position (unlike poor lady Hornwood). Had Lysa been smarter, she would have never remarried - instead, she'd have toyed with all her "suitors", dangling the possibility of marriage in front of them, and kept LF as her lover, and he wouldn't have any power over her or the Vale on his own, and would have to keep her alive and please her to keep any influence over the Vale.