"Tears," she[Cersei] said scornfully to Sansa as the woman was led from the hall. "The woman's weapon, my lady mother used to call them. [...]" -Sansa VI, aCoK

would love to know the context of joanna saying this to(/within earshot of?) cersei, who was 7yo at maximum. interesting parenting choice to want your very young daughter to be a better manipulator, instead of just treating crying as an honest expression of emotion.

A Game of Thrones - Catelyn X

A Clash of Kings - Catelyn VII

A Storm of Swords - Jaime I

A Storm of Swords - Jaime III

A Storm of Swords - Jaime III

A Storm of Swords - Jaime IV

Jaime & Passive Suicidal Ideation

His statements and actions concerning the subject are framed as him not being afraid. But he is. He is afraid of what he has become, afraid of confronting himself, afraid of confronting the world, and he is afraid of having to live.

He should not be brave enough to die. He should be brave enough to live.

Cersei and Brienne I am so, so sorry that people in this fandom have madonna-whore complexed you two. I'm so sorry that your characters and arcs have been reduced to you being the devil and angel on Jaime's shoulder. You deserve so much better than how you're perceived by this misogynistic fandom 🙏🏾

what an interesting way for Catelyn to pair up the men in her thoughts. Stannis and Renly, brothers at war. Robb and Robert, kings. Jaime and Jon? traitors? men who threaten her children? men she still has hope will help save them?

asoiaf predictions that will probably make people mad

sansa politically marries that guy whatshisface. kills littlefinger in self defense either via moon door or very fancy knife, possibly also poison. declares her husband regent of the vale in littlefinger's absence, and quickly allies herself with daenerys as dany pushes west. they fall in love, the embodiment of ice and fire.

brienne doesn't kill jaime bc honestly where would that leave the rest of us. anyway. they probs talk their way out of fighting lady stoneheart and either jaime dies fighting the others, leaving brienne to hedge knight her way around in his honor, or they disappear into the riverlands, never to be heard from again.

if any of the key five die (again), it's gonna be dany, but not in a mad queen way, but in self-sacrifice against the others after her conquest of westeros, which started with dragonstone. thematically implies that the reason daenys had that vision in the first place was so that the targaryens would continue on and produce dany in order to save the world. somehow the destruction of the iron throne will factor in, having served its distorted purpose in keeping the targaryen line alive long enough to create daenerys. this either kills drogon or sends him off toward the sunset sea.

dragonrider bran. either he or jon will rule westeros, don't know which.

speaking of jon, he's going to Come Back Wrong somehow. I think it'll be a targaryen-related way, but he's gonna eventually come around with his stark heritage. if he doesn't end up king of the seven kingdoms, he'll be king beyond the wall.

i don't know what's going to happen to arya. i think she'll surprise me, but i'm certain she's not gonna be lady of winterfell. i think that contradicts too much of her personal convictions about her purpose in life.

contrary to popular belief, i think there's only a 50/50 chance tyrion's gonna be a dragonrider. he's going to come over with dany but he will either choose to return to essos, searching for tysha or possibly accepting the reality of her death, or he'll stay on in westeros as jon's hand of the king. either way, penny will be a significant deciding factor.

stannis kills davos. not as a murder plot, but it's gonna be like. a whole thing.

missandei is protected and cared for and she writes a history of dany's brief reign as an adult(manifesting) and rickon is undeniably Odd now but he's going to be okay and somehow ends up the most normal brother. absolute tourney knight of a fellow (manifesting).

and last but not least, cersei is not killed by either of her brothers, although i think there's a slim chance she kills jaime, which triggers her death. she will be killed by one of her own plots, probably one related to wildfire, but being cersei, she will internalize it as a death by tyrion's hand.

A Game of Thrones, Tyrion I

“There is nothing Lord Eddard can do for the boy in any case.”

“He could end his torment,” Jaime said. “I would, if it were my son. It would be a mercy.”

“I advise against putting that suggestion to Lord Eddard, sweet brother,” Tyrion said. “He would not take it kindly.”

“Even if the boy does live, he will be a cripple. Worse than a cripple. A grotesque. Give me a good clean death.”

Tyrion replied with a shrug that accentuated the twist of his shoulders.

“Speaking for the grotesques,” he said, “I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities.”

Jaime push Bran out of the tower to death because he discover Jaime and Cersei having sex. He almost had maimed Arya because of Cersei. I find these acts somewhat similar to what Tywin did to Elia's children. Also him leaving Cersei and Tommen alone in KL when they needed him is basically what Rhaegar did with Elia and his children. He is not a hero.

I am such a HUGE fan of the parallels between Aegon & Rhaenys and Tommen & Myrcella. Jaime carries guilt for what happened to Rhaegar's children, but ultimately he reenacts it all, both as Rhaegar and as Tywin. He really is not a hero.

Something about the act of invoking Tywin's cruelty against the Stark children (not to mention the killing of Robert's bastards by Cersei) narratively seals the fates of the Lannister children.

Joffrey is killed while Cersei wails like Barra's mother. Myrcella is maimed with a sword and likely to be killed by someone's vengeful wrath. Tommen has foreshadowing to die from some kind of terrible impact to his head, possibly by a fall like Bran, with an uncertain reason or perpetrator. GRRM likes to visit poetic justice on his villains, and he'll kill innocents to do it.

It's a variation of the past, with different paths but ultimately the same sad end.

There's a ticking clock over these children's heads and it is hard to bear because it's not their fault.

have to say that every time i see someone reference a theory/belief that jaime’s going to die i become just a tad more sure that he won’t. like i well and truly believe that the fandom is blowing his prospects of death way out of proportion 💀 like why? what message would that be for? like what do you mean he dies? to find redemption in death? i have never seen it explained in a way that narratively makes sense

I was having so much fun reading about cersei's failgirl behavior that I forgot about the prophecy that basically drives her entire actions and motivations. Like this girl has been in a paranoic state of mind all her life.

Liking Jaime Lannister should have taught me something about characters getting redemption arcs but it didn't

ya ever think about how the lannister sibs all have big secrets kept from each other, like huge life-altering experiences? jaime's is the most obvious, the most talked-about, with the full story of his kingslaying and everything he endured from aerys leading up to it. it's clear enough to me that brienne was the first he opened up to about that, including either sibling. they never asked, but unlike ned stark and the rest deriding him as kingslayer, their lack of curiosity is no offense in itself bc as tywin's other children they would never judge him for turning his cloak purely out of family loyalty. ned's assumption of jaime's motives is directly tied to his judgment of jaime, but it's the judgment that rankles jaime so. choosing your father's life over a king's is hardly the worst crime in itself. how can he explain all the other reasons without prompting when its not just about his crime but all his trauma too? is there any basis for that in his relationship with cersei, who always relied on him for comfort and consolation but seems less adept at providing the same to him? or even with tyrion, his only real male friend for years, but also his baby brother, the one he was meant to protect and take care of, who was only 10 at the time of the kingslaying? even to fully share all with tyrion years later, both adults, could be something of a role reversal, forever shattering tyrion's image of him as the strong invulnerable golden big brother by revealing his own broken inner child. jaime can't break out from those sibling roles and patterns, so neither can ever understand that part of him, never knowing the early life he had at court without either of them with him.

and tyrion, who trusted jaime more than anyone in the world before learning the truth about tysha, still could not confide in him freely even when all that trust was still intact. jaime must have heard some story of what tywin did to tysha to feel the need to confess his lie, but he def didn't hear it straight from tyrion bc imo there's no way he could still think confessing would help anything if he understood how scarred tyrion was by what he witnessed and esp not knowing that tywin ordered him to participate at the end. tyrion could reveal all that to bronn when they barely knew each other but not to his beloved brother, his first and best friend. how can the most abused child explain all his unknown abuse to the golden child, the big brother meant to protect him who couldn't always do so? how does he even begin to reveal the deepest trauma that happened to him when jaime wasn't in the room, esp when the story does start with jaime apparently trying to help him by fixing him up with tysha?

and then there's cersei and all her secrets. she always turned to jaime for consolation, or at least when he knew she needed it, but how many times did he not know? how personally could she confide in him as they grew older and their paths diverged? we know the first big secret was maggy the frog's prophecy, her first big scare, which came on the cusp of puberty, an experience she couldn't share with her twin bc he would prob just laugh and make a joke of it. in their first real scene together, in bran's pov, he mocks lysa's motherly fears and likens her to cersei. ("I think birthing does something to your minds. You are all mad." He laughed.) then he makes light of her marital discord, ("And whose fault is that, sweet sister?"), having no idea of the depth of pain she'd suffered from robert, beyond his infidelities. he later blames her for being robert's queen, not his, only thinking of how she managed to arrange his kg post, that power to forever tie him to her in secret, never grasping her lack of control in marriage, that "a queen is only a woman after all". in her pride it was hard to reveal all she'd suffered as a woman, but she also couldn't rely on jaime's response if he knew of her abuse, knowing he would kill robert and get himself killed too, only making her and their children's lives more precarious. she couldn't trust him to listen about securing the throne before dealing with robert or that as robert's victim it was her right to decide such matters, to choose his fate, not jaime's place to avenge her without her say-so first. all bc they were both too stuck in their idea of jaime as her sword, nothing more, with jaime determined to protect her and tyrion, always a bodyguard before he ever donned a white cloak.

something something tywin did his best to play his children off each other and the most effective thing he did to divide them was by setting jaime up as the golden child and family protector. the designated lannister sword only pointing at threats outside their house. a knight serving his family whose protection was always limited, who could never protect them from the person who first hurt cersei and tyrion and made them who they were at a distance from him, bc ofc he couldn't fight his own father, much less slay him with a sword.

something something maybe the reason that joff+marg+loras was a surer recipe for kingslayer stew than robert+cersei+jaime is all down to that tyrell lack of abusive structure. not that loras cared more about marg, was more willing to kill for her than jaime was to kill robert, but that there wasn't a chance of marg hiding her misery from him if/when her husband abused her in their shared household. it's not like he understood her to the point of mind-reading but when their previous royal marital household involved her bearding for his boyfriend then they prob had a pretty good basis of open communication. in that sense, the lannicest twins with all their sexual and physical intimacy still had less emotional intimacy than the tyrell queen and her kg brother.

“He was perfectly sincere. Jaime Lannister had never been afraid of death.”

- Jaime I, ASoS

I love my pathetic babygirl menlosers staring at their women bosses with hearteyes:

who do you think in asoiaf would ve best adjusted if they got dumped in our world? i gote renly discovers Grindr in five minutes and does the no face shirtless body profile

Jaime would absolutely get an insta and start posting thirst traps within 30 minutes of being here. Eventually he and Renly would get in a competition for who can show the most skin without their pics being taken down for violating policy. Jaime eventually posts a full blown dick pic and doesn’t understand why everyone blows up his phone afterward, bc he didn’t totally understand that just everyone could see his posts

Most well adjusted though? I feel like Sam would do pretty good. He would IMMEDIATELY move somewhere warm like Florida or something bc FUCK THE WALL, and he would take Gilly with him. He’d go to community college while they both raise the baby, and just settle into a nice simple life. I think Sam would like that there isn’t as much emphasis placed on *bravery* and knightly standards of masculinity, and would feel more comfortable in his own skin. He and Gilly would definitely be that couple that sits in their rocking chairs on their front porch like 95% of the time they’re home. They don’t even have to talk, they just enjoy each other’s company and go to bed early. Sam would do good imo

Thinking about Jon, Jaime, and Theon all journeying to the underworld and being surrounded by death/dead people. I’ve always believed that the important connector here is Jon (because I believe he functions as a sort of God of the Dead figure - though that’s a story for another day), but like…it’s so interesting that all of them have this experience, and that Theon’s and Jaime’s dreams are connected mostly to Jon (and I guess to each other if you buy into weirwood.net). It’s hard not to read into the religious symbolism here because GRRM is no C.S Lewis so it’s hard to tell what Christian parallels are intended by the author. But like…one messiah, two “criminals”, all go through “death”? But who will reach salvation and who won’t? 🤔