Great read of Jaime IV. What would have happened if Jaime had been allowed to fight at the Tourney of Harrenhal? As Cersei isn’t there who gets named Queen if he wins? Or might he ultimately lose because he is still young and going up against more experienced Knights like Arthur?

eidetictelekinetic said:I’m not one to miss “what if?” bait – what would have happened if Jaime had been allowed to fight at the Tourney of Harrenhal? (Great analysis of one of my favorite ASOS chapters btw!)

Okay, I’ll bite: what do you think would change from OTL if Jaime had been allowed to fight at the tourney at Harrenhal?

What would have happened if Jaime had been allowed to fight at the Tourney of Harrenhal? Hahaha hint taken

Taking the hint, what would have happened if Jaime had participated at the tourney at Harrenhal?

So what happens if Jaime is allowed to fight in the tourney of Harrenhall after being named to the Kingsguard?

indomitablerocinante said:What would have happened if Jaime had been allowed to fight at the Tourney of Harrenhal?

Aha, my scheme has worked! Answer below the cut:

So Jaime is probably right that, if he was allowed to fight at Harrenhal, he probably would have won, considering that he was one of the best tourney knights of his day and that Martin has established that being fired up by circumstances can inspire a jouster to greatness. This butterflies away the whole scene with Rhaegar crowning Lyanna the Queen of Love and Beauty, which avoids a scene but probably doesn’t prevent them running off.

However, the more interesting question is who Jaime would have named instead. See, unlike @cynicalclassicist, I’m not sure that Cersei couldn’t have been there. We know from the Knight of the Laughing Tree that Tywin didn’t go, but that “many of his bannermen and knights attended all the same,” and Cersei could have been escorted by one of them.

The trickier thing is whether Cersei would have had the opportunity, because here the text is somewhat inconsistent. In one place in Jaime II, it’s suggested that Jaime and Cersei did in fact overlap (if only briefly) at the royal court at the time that Jaime was made a knight of the Kingsguard, which was the same day as the Tourney:

Jaime’s investiture freed him from Lysa Tully. Elsewise, nothing went as planned. His father had never been more furious. He could not object openly—Cersei had judged that correctly—but he resigned the Handship on some thin pretext and returned to Casterly Rock, taking his daughter with him. Instead of being together, Cersei and Jaime just changed places, and he found himself alone at court, guarding a mad king while four lesser men took their turns dancing on knives in his father’s ill-fitting shoes.

The key thing here is that Tywin “returned to Casterly Rock,” so that he was at King’s Landing when he resigned. So if Jaime was invested at the tourney, “before the king’s pavilion, kneeling on the green grass in white armor while half the realm looked on,” how is it that Tywin (and thus Cersei) was not there if the investiture was what made him resign and take Cersei home?

So I think it’s possible that Cersei would have been able to be at the tourney, and if she had been there, absolutely Jaime would have named her Queen of Love and Beauty. As far as the outside world was concerned, Jaime would have been honoring (and promoting) his sister; as far as Jaime was concerned, it would have added the perfect tragic note to his story, giving the crown of flowers even as the sibling-lovers are parted by cruel fate.

However, if Cersei wasn’t there, I think it probable that Jaime would have named either Queen Rhaella or Princess Elia, as both would have been proper for a knight of the Kingsguard to honor House Targaryen. (Whether Aerys would have seen the latter as a Dornish plot is another question altogether.)

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jaime IV, ASOS

“They took my sword hand. Was that all I was, a sword hand?”

Synopsis: Jaime tries to die, but decides to live instead.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

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It occurs to me that Jaime’s sulky act surrounding his regicide might have less to do with breaking his oath to avert a holocaust than with his own dysfunctional relationship with Tywin. Have we ever seen an account of Tywin’s reaction to Aerys’s death?

I don’t think it’s got a lot to do with his relationship with Tywin – Aerys ordering Jaime to kill his father is the catalyst that gets Jaime to finally act on his feelings, but the feelings that were already there before Tywin enters into it were primarily about the conflict between his romantic conception of knighthood and the horrific reality of serving a mad king who got his rocks off on burning people alive.

As for Tywin’s reaction to Jaime killing Aerys specifically, I think he would have seen it quite similarly to how he saw the death of Rhaenys and Aegon:

“We had come late to Robert’s cause. It was necessary to demonstrate our loyalty. When I laid those bodies before the throne, no man could doubt that we had forsaken House Targaryen forever.” (ASOS, Tyrion VI)

For Robert to become king, Aerys needed to die. Jaime killing Aerys was another example of the Lannisters demonstrating their loyalty to the new regime, and was thus the necessary and practical thing.

OTOH, I think Tywin would have felt very differently about what Jaime did after. Sitting the Iron Throne ahead of Robert could have jeopardized the Lannister-Baratheon alliance; if you’re going to sit the throne, you only do it if you mean to rule and have a plan that you’ll ruthlessly pursue to make it happen.

And so on.

About Pycelle and Varys. How is it that Jaime and the Pyromancers knew about the Wildfire under KL but Pycelle and Varys didn’t? Pycelle obviously didn’t know since he wanted to let Tywin through the gates and he wouldn’t consciously endanger him. Varys doesn’t seem to know either. Why did Aerys hide the plot from them? If he didn’t trust them about the Wildfire, why did he turn to them for counsel when Tywin knocked on the door, and then deferred to Pycelle anyway?

“Three can keep a secret if two are dead.”

Here’s who Aerys told about the wildfire: the three pyromancers Rossart, Garigus, and Belis. That’s it. (Jaime Lannister was the only other person in the room when this happened, and he killed the other four people involved.) The Lord Hand Chelsted “became suspicious” when he saw “Rossart, Belis, and Garigus coming and going night and day,” but when he confronted Aerys, he was immediately burned alive and couldn’t share what he knew.

So Pycelle didn’t know because Aerys kept his Small Council ignorant of his plans, because he didn’t want anyone trying to stop him.

As for why Varys didn’t know, even the best spymaster needs time to develop sources, collect information, and then correctly analyze this information. The problem is that the wildfire plot only included a few people, who maintained a high degree of operational security:

“Everything was done in the utmost secrecy by a handful of master pyromancers. They did not even trust their own acolytes to help.”

(Jaime V, ASOS)

As for why Aerys didn’t trust them on the plot but trusted them on other things, this was a fairly consistent pattern of his paranoia, where he was simultaneously afraid of the same people he was deeply dependent on, and refused to remove people who he thought was trying to kill or replace him:

“By this time, King Aerys had become aware of the widespread belief that he himself was but a hollow figurehead and Tywin Lannister the true master of the Seven Kingdoms. These sentiments greatly angered the king, and His Grace became determined to disprove them and to humble his “overmighty servant” and “put him back into his place.”
…Tywin Lannister attempted to return his chain of office the next morning, but the king refused to accept his resignation.
Aerys II could, of course, have dismissed Tywin Lannister at any time and named his own man as Hand of the King, but instead, for whatever reason, the king chose to keep his boyhood friend close by him, laboring on his behalf, even as he began to undermine him in ways both great and small.”

(WOIAF)

Aerys’ weird mind-game with Tywin lasted for a decade, and then the moment it ended, he started a new one with Jaime Lannister. As Jaime puts it, “Aerys liked to keep me close. I was my father’s son, so he did not trust me.” So it’s entirely consistent that Aerys would feel the same way about Pycelle and Varys.

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jaime III, ASOS

“This was what he was meant for; he never felt so alive as when he was fighting, with death balanced on every stroke. And with my wrists chained together, the wench may even give me a contest for a time.” Synopsis: you’ve got to hand it to Jaime Lannister, he knows when to pick a fight at the worst time. SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song…

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Could Tywin have asked Robert to release Jaime from the Kingsguard immediately after the rebellion? And send him back to Casterly Rock. Also if the answer is yes, I don’t understand why he didn’t do it.

He could have asked, but Robert wouldn’t have necessarily said yes…

However, the way Tywin phrases it here suggests that he did see Jaime’s vow as binding until recently:

Lord Tywin glanced at Jaime’s stump again. “You cannot serve in the Kingsguard without a sword hand—”
“I can,” he interrupted. “And I will. There’s precedent. I’ll look in the White Book and find it, if you like. Crippled or whole, a knight of the Kingsguard serves for life.”
“Cersei ended that when she replaced Ser Barristan on grounds of age. A suitable gift to the Faith will persuade the High Septon to release you from your vows. Your sister was foolish to dismiss Selmy, admittedly, but now that she has opened the gates—” (Jaime VII, ASOS)

So it may well have been that he thought at the time that it was unthinkable that a member of the Kingsguard would be dismissed from office, but once it happened, he was happy enough to use the precedent (and a fair bit of bribery) to get what he wanted.

Would you call Jaime irresponsible?

I would, I could, I have.

Do you think the reason Martin made Brienne so devoted almost pathetically to Renly was due to him wanting her to not seem perfect?

No, I don’t think that’s it. In chivalry, devotion to your liege lord is a sign of virtue; in chivalric romance, devotion to your love is likewise. Brienne’s case is rather efficient in that the two are one.

I think GRRM made Brienne devoted to Renly was to set up the idea that Brienne’s purpose in life is to protect others to the point of laying down her life in the approved fashion (”all his other knights wanted things of him, castles or honors or riches, but all that Brienne wanted was to die for him”), but that Renly wasn’t actually worthy of her service. Hence why Brienne spends all of AFFC looking for a maiden in need of defending, while slowly forgetting Renly and developing a deeper connection to Jaime.

Now, I have a darker guess about what Brienne’s endgame is than some people would like, but I think it’s definitely grounded in the rules and forms of chivalric romance and thus in Brienne’s character…

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jaime II, ASOS

“…wolves’ work, or maybe lions, what’s the difference?”
Synopsis: Jaime, Brienne, and Ser Cleos arrive at the Inn of the Kneeling Man, where everybody knows your name.
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
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Opinions on Gotz von Berlichingen?

A veritable historical badass. For the uninitiated, Gotz was a mercenary who had fought for Frederick of Brandenburg, the Emperor Maximilian I, Albert IV of Bavaria, and a bunch of other Early Modern notables. Famously, Gotz lost his right arm during a siege when, in an incredibly unlikely turn of events, an enemy cannon ball hit the edge of his sword, forcing it down onto his hand and cutting it off.

So, there I think we see an element of Jaime’s mutilation. Unlike the Lannisters, however, Berlichingen was a practical man, if somewhat hot-tempered (Gotz was known for a number of feuds and duels, occasionally capturing various counts or raiding Nuremberg merchants), and he built himself a prosthetic that wasn’t made of a single piece of gold and thus completely useless. Gotz’ prosthetic used a system of hinges and straps to allow the hand to grasp objects. And so Gotz kept on keeping on.

Gotz was also a significant player in the German Peasants’ War of 1524-5, and although he ended up fighting on both sides, was one of the few professional soldiers who fought for the rebels. As a result, Goethe wrote a play about his life, in which Gotz is portrayed as a heroic individualist and national hero. Famously, during the third act, Gotz is put under siege by the imperial army, and when asked to surrender, says:

Mich ergeben! Auf Gnad und Ungnad! Mit wem redet Ihr! Bin ich ein Räuber! Sag deinem Hauptmann: Vor Ihro Kaiserliche Majestät hab ich, wie immer, schuldigen Respekt. Er aber, sag’s ihm, er kann mich im Arsche lecken!

(Me, surrender! At mercy! Whom do you speak with? Am I a robber! Tell your captain that for His Imperial Majesty, I have, as always, due respect. But he, tell him that, he can lick me in the arse!)