I feel like they need to be protected from themselves

I recently spotted a poll on Twitter: Who will kill Cersei? There were only like 4 options (okay), and Euron was one of them (good), but Jaime was still getting over 80% of the vote.

Post-S7, I kind of feel bad for fans who are still attached to Jaime as the Valonqar. How do we stage an intervention? 

Still haven’t changed my mind.

I haven’t updated this blog in some time. That’s mainly because I think I’ve made the case for Euron as the Valonqar about as well as any case can be made. 

This is only tangential, at best, to the prophecy, but here’s another idea for Euron: I think Theon will be the one to kill him. 

As we’ve discussed already, Euron is all about turning people’s value systems inside out. “When your tears have drowned you” links back to Euron’s methodology of torturing his victims by making them hate what they care about the most.

Therefore, the best candidate for bringing Euron down is someone who’s already had his entire sense of self burned to the ground, and lived to tell about it. That sounds like Theon. 

“What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.” 

“We already know...” no you don’t.

All y’all insisting Jaime’s arc cannot possibly be pointing anywhere except killing Cersei:

You guys sound like conspiracy theorists saying the lack of evidence of a conspiracy is, in itself, evidence of a cover-up. As opposed to considering that, maybe, you know...there is no conspiracy.

THAT’S HOW THE FUCK YOU SOUND.

Maybe soon I’ll write coherent sentences for this.

Who needs Jaime the Ironically Unforeseen Valonqar because Cersei never considered he could also be counted as her younger brother, when you can have Euron, the guy who became the actual killer by offering to kill the assumed killer? 

Who & Why, Part 7

I’ll tentatively call this the final installment in the series. Last post is here.

I’ve spent thousands of words on several posts talking about why other Valonqar candidates, especially Cersei’s not-little brother Jaime, are missing the “oh shit” factor that would make the best fulfillment of the prophecy.

After all those rounds of “no, not him, not him, nope, not that,” what is my positive answer to the question of Who & Why?

After ruling out FrankenGregor the Giant Zombie and Qyburn the Mad Scientist, what other named characters are still in a position of trust and proximity to Cersei? That leaves us with Euron Greyjoy. The guy with lots of ships and two good hands.

Euron’s reasoning for killing Cersei would not be sexual jealousy. He doesn’t give a fly’s fart how many other guys have tapped that fine ass. It wouldn’t be to prevent her committing an atrocity. If anything, it’s because he wants to commit bigger atrocities and it’s time to get Cersei out of the way. 

Cersei’s a useful idiot to Euron, and when she’s outlived her usefulness, he’ll have no reason to keep her around. That’s when he’ll choke the life from her.

But even more fun than the reasoning for Euron is the revelation to Cersei. She really should have seen this coming. She knew, before she let him into her circle, that he was already established in killing his allies when it suited him. He told her, to her face, that he had no respect for taboos against things like kinslaying, and she somehow thought she’d be different. Why was that? Why was she so willing to get into bed with this guy who had already admitted to killing his older brother and king? 

Euron offered to help Cersei with killing Tyrion. 

I don’t know if he’ll offer her that, in as many words, when they meet in the book version, but in Season 7, he’s already done so. He’s the guy who’s perfectly happy to kill his own family members and help Cersei kill hers. Shit, by late TWOW he may offer, in exactly those terms, to help her kill BOTH her brothers, and she’ll be all in favor. 

He was supposed to be the capstone in her lifelong plan to thwart the prophecy. That’s how he gets close enough to become the Valonqar of the prophecy. That’s the part where Cersei says to herself: “Oh shit.”

Who & Why, Part 6

This series should be a single essay, but I’m not that organized, so I’m just writing up random chunks as they occur to me. Last one is here.

I’ve already written several posts about why Jaime does not make a good candidate for the Valonqar. I’d like to say I’ve run out of reasons why Jaime isn’t the pre-ordained killer, but that would be premature.

Today I’d like to talk about a couple of other candidates that don’t make the cut.

I used to think Jaime was the Valonqar; yes, I really did. I thought he would kill his sister and then get on with his life and be with Brienne, none of this “we were born together and we’ll die together” crap. But I did think he was the killer, up until some time between Seasons 5 and 6.

The first alternative Valonqar I considered was not Euron. Before I watched Season 6, I did some re-reading and I noticed certain patterns emerging and I decided I liked Loras Tyrell for the job.

Yeah, we all saw how that turned out in the Season 6 finale.

At the time, I thought Loras was a good fit for the prophecy because he made a very tight parallel with Jaime and TBH Loras didn’t have all that much else going on in his story. He was not a POV character, and if he died in the process of killing his queen to keep her from committing some atrocity, that would suit his role just fine. Book version, he’s a recent addition to the Kingsguard, and he’s the third of three brothers, so that works for the “little brother” aspect.

The problem that I really should have given more respect at the time was that Loras was always on Cersei’s shit list. All the Tyrells were on Cersei’s shit list. She didn’t know the actual reason why she should hate the Tyrells (namely: Grandma Olenna conspired with Littlefucker to kill Joffrey), but she treated them like her enemies simply because she can’t fucking handle ANY other family getting their mitts on her precious babies. Ser Loras was part of that family, so Cersei always saw him as an enemy. So, he would have supplied a good reasoning for the Valonqar clause, but his identity failed the smell test.

Even so, I’m grateful for the time I spent with Loras as my preferred candidate because it freed me up from having to twist the narrative into pretzel shapes to support the idea of Jaime the Twinslayer. It was a mistake, but it was like a gateway drug to a better answer.

The next candidate I want to bring up is Ser Robert Strong aka FrankenGregor. I’ve seen a good argument for how FrankenGregor would be a handy fit for the “little brother” role, and while I was never really emotionally invested in the idea of the giant zombie as the queenslayer, it was an interesting case and I respected that. 

FrankenGregor the giant zombie is compliant with logistical concerns. He and Qyburn are among the few men still in close physical proximity to Cersei at the latest stages of both books and show versions. FrankenGregor and Qyburn are among the extremely few people Cersei has ever really trusted since the story began. As FrankenGregor is Cersei’s primary protector, that puts him in a good position to kill her by strangulation or other direct-contact means. As FrankenGregor is also a recent addition to the Kingsguard, that puts the “little brother” label on him. It would be pleasingly ironic for the giant zombie to strangle Cersei, as she made him her protector because he was the perfectly obedient killing machine of her dreams. She decided to build this fanatically terrifying enforcement system around herself because she spent all her life trying to thwart the prophecy, and her mad scientist’s special gift to her is what ends up fulfilling the prophecy.

It makes great sense, up to a point. Where it falls down is with FrankenGregor’s reasoning for killing Cersei. The problem is that he has no reasoning. If he kills Cersei, it’ll be because he malfunctions in the worst possible way, or because Qyburn uses him as a weapon to get rid of his boss. Either way is totally doable. The question is: how should Cersei have seen it coming? If her giant zombie malfunctions, when so far he’s done a very good job of being exactly what she needs him to be, that’s like fulfilling the prophecy as an afterthought. Deus ex oopsie. Whereas, if Qyburn uses him as a weapon when he’s all done being Cersei’s mad scientist, then FrankenGregor isn’t really the killer; Qyburn is the killer. That would still be plenty ironic, as Qyburn definitely occupies a place of trust for Cersei, But there...again, where’s the “oh shit” factor? What’s the reason for killing Cersei that makes sense for Qyburn’s story in particular, and that Cersei should have seen coming? Where’s the part where we cackle in vicious joy because Cersei played herself? 

With Loras, we have a good “why” but not a good “who.” FrankenGregor is just the opposite; the “who” makes sense but the “why” falls flat. 

Who & Why, Part 5

Continuing from this train of thought:

The next hypothetical reason why Jaime might kill Cersei is out of jealousy over her infidelity. 

First off, this theory shouldn’t even be on the table after Jaime put Cersei’s letter in the fire. Jaime has already demonstrated that he is not angry enough to kill her; he is angry enough to leave her to her fate. His AFFC-era mantra of “She’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack yadda yadda” has come to its conclusion, namely: he’s outta there. If Cersei’s infidelity were motivating him to kill her, his last two FeastDance chapters would have played out very differently. 

Putting all that aside, IF Jaime strangled his sister out of sexual jealousy, the revelation would be that Cersei set herself up to die as a victim of intimate partner violence. The message, for us, would be one of two things: 1) We should feel sorry for Cersei because that’s a fucked-up way to go, OR, 2) She should’ve seen that coming because that’s what happens when you cheat on your lover.

If the prophecy is fulfilled with Jaime strangling Cersei because Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and so forth, that’s a deeply misogynist narrative. While GRRM’s sexual politics are not perfect, he’s already presented this kind of violence as a problem, not a solution.

Yeah, we get the picture, weddings suck.

While we’re on the subject, I would like to register my disagreement with the idea of the Black Wedding.

Might Cersei marry Euron? I don’t rule it out. Will he use that occasion to strangle her? I doubt it very much.

We’ve already been there and done that. We’ve already had the occasion of Cersei’s son being poisoned to death at his own wedding. That much is karma for the Red Wedding, and one such occasion is sufficient. If we get yet another wedding as the setting of a major death, and especially the setting of a Lannister death, it suggests GRRM is running out of ideas. 

I did not make this video. I do not entirely agree with this video. I agree, of course, with the basic idea of Euron being the pre-ordained killer of Cersei.

If you’ve been reading my posts from the beginning, you’ll be unsurprised to hear I am unimpressed with this fan’s analysis of the linguistic elements of the prophecy. First off, get this out of the way: I don’t like how he pronounces “valonqar.” I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to use a “k” sound with that “q.” Second! I actually don’t think the use of masculine pronouns is all that revealing in this case. That’s just using the default masculine, a linguistic custom that’s well-established in-universe already. Using a masculine form in a place where it should be neutral is a tic that often pops up in conversations with foreign learners. If the Westerosi were not already given to using the default masculine, I would still not be surprised to hear Maggy using “his” in places where “her” is just as likely. Third, while High Valyrian is a language that includes some gender-neutral vocabulary, the word “valonqar” itself is not gender-neutral, as there is a separate word for “little sister.” Finally! I am still the only person on the Internet who thinks it’s very, very strange to use a Valyrian word in the middle of a Common Tongue conversation if that word simply means “little brother.” Quick reminder: I think it means something a bit more complicated in Maggy’s native tongue, and she used it in Valyrian because the Common Tongue translation doesn’t exist.

All that aside! This dude has a good eye for foreshadowing, he consumes both books and show, and he uses evidence from both, and I appreciate that. I especially enjoy his use of Euron’s showing off his “two good hands” in the S7 premiere. I thought it was just him making a dig at Jaime, but maaaaaybe it’s also D&D’s way of saying Euron is a better candidate than Jaime for something that needs two hands? Just a little?

However, there’s one aspect of his analysis that I’m not on board with, though it doesn’t affect the outcome of Euron as the valonqar. I don’t think the kids need to be punished for Tywin’s atrocities. When Cersei dies, it’ll be as a consequence of her own awfulness, not her dad’s. 

Who & Why, Part 4

Last post here.

Assuming Jaime kills Cersei to stop her from blowing up the city: The revelation would be more meaningful to us than to Cersei.

We would know that Jaime’s been there and done that before, so it’s meaningful to his arc in that he’s not going to let someone set off the wildfire even if that someone is his beloved twin (though she’s hardly beloved to him anymore).

Cersei wouldn’t get that part of the story, though. Cersei would be aware that the city is full of wildfire caches, but how would she know the Mad King put them there specifically because he was planning to go nuclear on the rebels? And even if she had that information, would she know that Jaime killed the Mad King specifically because he was about to trigger the nuclear option? I don’t think she’d know that. And Jaime isn’t going to explain to her that he’s killing her for the same reason he killed Aerys. 

Besides, we have strong evidence that King’s Landing will get blown up anyway. And I’m fairly sure it won’t be an accident, but the point is, it would be a really weird, stilted narrative if Jaime had to rush back to the capital when he’s so utterly done with it, strangle his sister to stop her from blowing the place to Kingdom Come, and then the place gets blown to Kingdom Come. You want Brienne to die following a compound cliffhanger so Jaime can be freed up to murder a sibling and still fail to prevent an atrocity? And this is supposed to be good storytelling?

No, that would be a trainwreck. Detach Jaime’s arc from Cersei’s death, and so many better things suddenly become possible.

Who & Why, Part 3

Next installation, going from this bit of business here. We need the killer to have a big, juicy reason to kill Cersei when he does. 

Now, what reasons might Jaime have for killing her?

The best scenario of Jaime becoming a twinslayer is that she does a replay of the Mad King situation, and he kills her to stop her from blowing up the city. That’s the one that makes the most sense.

And I don’t think that’ll happen. Why not? Because going on the Season 6 finale, that ship has sailed and Jaime wasn’t on it. Cersei didn’t try to blow up the entire city; just a little chunk of it so she could get rid of her more powerful opponents. And I don’t know to what extent that matches up with GRRM’s plans for TWOW, but I think that smaller-scale atrocity makes more sense for Cersei than doing what the Mad King did. She lit up a cache of wildfire, burned hundreds of people alive, destroyed a major cultural landmark, and Jaime wasn’t there to stop her. He came back while the Sept remains were still smoking, and...he spent another entire season dealing with her and not trying to kill her. 

We could argue (and in fact I do argue) that Jaime doesn’t entirely know Cersei was responsible for the Sept explosion, that he believes her cover story of it being an accident. Either way, the explosion happened and the time for Jaime to punish his sister for triggering their son’s suicide is past. He’s riding North and he’s already made an enemy of Cersei. 

We could put hundreds of thousands of words into speculating on how Cersei’s wildfire fetish plays out in the books, but just for the moment, look at what we have on the show: A wildfire explosion has been arranged. A full season later, Cersei is still alive, Jaime has openly put himself on her bad side, and he’s putting hundreds of miles between himself and the capital for reasons that are, amazingly enough, bigger than Cersei having killed hundreds of people. 

One might think D&D are trying to tell us twinslaying is not where Jaime’s arc is headed. They’re not GRRM, true, but they know more about his plans than we do.

Of all the ways Cersei might try to get her wildfire fetish on in the books, there are still the logistical questions of when and where. How would Jaime find out about Cersei’s intention to light up the wildfire, and how would he get there in time to stop her? While Jaime’s turning around to wrap his remaining good hand (clearly the prophecy is open to interpretation if a guy with only one hand is still a candidate) around her throat, where is Brienne? If the path to get Jaime to go a-twinslaying involves Brienne sacrificing herself in some “trial by combat” business with Zombie Catelyn and the Gang, then the path to get him there doesn’t exist. If Jaime can’t kill Cersei unless he’s separated from Brienne, and he can only separate from Brienne if she dies in TWOW, then perhaps the answer is that he’s not going to kill Cersei. The valonqar revelation is not important enough to override Jaime’s disentanglement from his sister AND ALSO discard Brienne before she’s had a chance to look after Sansa. Nope, not happening. 

Who & Why, Part 2

Continuing my thoughts from last post: the question of WHO kills Cersei is bound up with the matter of WHY he does so. In order for the revelation to have an effective “oh shit” factor, there needs to be a good reason for this character to choke the life from Cersei.

And by “good reason” I don’t mean it makes for a justifiable homicide; that’s a separate issue. I mean we need to understand the killer’s reasoning. It needs to be something we saw coming well in advance, but Cersei didn’t. It needs to be something Cersei would have seen coming well in advance if her worldview hadn’t been so thoroughly warped by trying to thwart the prophecy.

Now here’s another necessary overhead expense to the discussion: Cersei is not a sympathetic villain or a tragic hero. Cersei is awful and she’s always been awful. Even before she head the prophecy, she was already abusing Tyrion. There is no version of this story in which Cersei learns from her mistakes in all the right ways and does justice to a position of power. Cersei isn’t without her pathos, but she’s still a vicious narcissistic trainwreck. 

I’m just saying, I don’t think we’re supposed to feel sorry for Cersei when someone wraps his hands around her pale white throat. 

Moreover, it’s not like there’s a paucity of reasons why someone might want to kill Cersei. It’d be more interesting to count up the people who don’t want her dead, and the reasons someone might have for keeping her alive. 

It’s not just “who” but “why.”

Not too long ago, I did a reblog-reply of a post by goodqueenaly in which she has this to say about the Valonqar clause:

To think that anyone else could be the valonqar in my opinion completely misses the entire point of the prophecy. From the day Cersei heard Maggy the Frog’s predictions on her life and, especially, death, she has been haunted by the idea that her “little brother” would kill her. Because this thought has had such a profound impact in shaping Cersei’s life and worldview, the revelation has to be meaningful to Cersei. It’s Cersei who has to realize, in the moment of her death, why and how the person who has been ordained by fate or whatever you want to call it came to be her valonqarˆ. Someone who has no meaning to Cersei is simply not going to be her killer, and Jaime is the only one who makes a lick of narrative sense.

Up until the part that’s struck through, I agree with Ms. Friel and I think this is a very handy guide for interpreting the prophecy. My disagreement lies in the choice of Jaime as the “only one who makes a lick of narrative sense.” Jaime isn’t the only candidate who meets these criteria to fulfill the prophecy. Jaime is not the best candidate available. Jaime isn’t even a good candidate anymore. 

The matter of what the revelation means to Cersei is important, yes, but there’s also the question of what the event of her death means to the killer. The act of killing Cersei needs to be a meaningful step in the killer’s arc. This is called “A Song of Ice and Fire.” It is not A Song of Cersei and Jaime. It’s not even A Song of Incest and Dysfunction, although that could actually made a decent alternate title. As much fun as it is to argue over the circumstances of Cersei’s death, there are more important things happening in this series. The revelation of Cersei’s valonqar is not so overridingly important as to twist Jaime’s arc back to the relationship he’s worked so hard to put behind him. Jaime is not a supporting character in Cersei’s arc. Jaime has his own thematic importance and his own story to tell, and his becoming a twinslayer would not serve that story. 

But y’all don’t come here to see me get on my soapbox for Jaime Lannister. This is about Cersei and how GRRM plans to bring her cartoon-villain arc to a schadenfreude-laden conclusion. And that brings us back to my argument with goodqueenaly. And everyone else who’s so convinced the discussion is already closed. My position is that Jaime doesn’t even give us a good answer to the question of how the revelation is meaningful to Cersei.

How does Cersei realize, in the moment of her death, why and how the person who has been ordained by fate (or whatever) came to be her valonqar?

That little moment, when Cersei realizes why and how this person has become her killer as the prophecy foretold, is what I call (because I’m all about the classy language) the “oh shit” factor. The “oh shit” factor depends on these questions: 1) WHO is the killer, 2) WHY is he killing her?, and 3) HOW has he come to the position of being able to kill her? 

The third question also involves the matters of WHERE and WHEN Cersei dies. These are not the issues that drive the prophecy, but they are a necessary overhead expense to deciding who does the dirty deed. IOW, the killer needs to have physical proximity to Cersei at the right time. 

In addition to logistics, the killer needs to be someone whom Cersei trusts. First, because it’s much more feasible for him to strangle her if she lets him get close enough without her guards in the room. Second, because that’s a vital part of the “oh shit” factor: it doesn’t mean much to Cersei if the killer was already on her shit list.

Already, Jaime is not rising to the occasion. He can’t very well strangle his sister if she’s in King’s Landing and he’s in the North or the Riverlands. Even better, he’s no longer someone she trusts. She accused him of betraying her, and he had to ride up the Kingsroad all by his one-handed lonesome because she was threatening to have him killed. This is not a relationship with a shred of trust left. And if your response is, “but the show doesn’t count,” then first of all, enjoy your wrongness*, because D&D’s storytelling is much better predictor of GRRM’s outline than your cart-before-horse technique, and second: the books are hardly on your side. Already in AFFC, the twins are hardly on the same page. Already in ADWD, Jaime has effectively abandoned his Kingsguard vows and left Cersei to twist in the wind. He’s poking around the Riverlands to help Brienne with her quest to rescue Sansa Stark! He doesn’t care enough to strangle his sister, and she’s sitting there trying to convince herself he’ll still come back for her. It’s only a matter of time before Cersei admits to herself that Jaime is not on her side and cuts her losses accordingly.

This is getting long. More ideas later. For now, point is, Jaime’s not the guy who gives the best “oh shit” factor.

* When the show version tells you want you want to hear, you don’t tell us the show doesn’t count. 

I’ll bet Taena knows what it means.

She woke shuddering in Taena’s arms. “A bad dream,” she said weakly. “Did I scream? I’m sorry.”

“Dreams turn to dust in light of day. Was it the dwarf again? Why does he frighten you so, this silly little man?”

“He is going to kill me. It was foreseen when I was ten. I wanted to know who I would marry, but she said …”

“She?”

“The maegi.” The words came tumbling out of her. She could still hear Melara Hetherspoon insisting that if they never spoke about the prophecies, they would not come true. She was not so silent in the well, though. She screamed and shouted. “Tyrion is the valonqar,” she said. “Do you use that word in Myr? It’s High Valyrian, it means little brother.” She had asked Septa Saranella about the word, after Melara drowned.

Taena took her hand and stroked it. “This was a hateful woman, old and sick and ugly. You were young and beautiful, full of life and pride. She lived in Lannisport, you said, so she would have known of the dwarf and how he killed your lady mother. This creature dared not strike you, because of who you were, so she sought to wound you with her viper’s tongue.”

Martin, George R.R.. A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) (p. 661). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Here’s a tiny, quiet little clue hidden in plain sight. Cersei asks: “Do you use that word in Myr?” Which reminds us that modern Valyrian dialects are not interchangeable with High Valyrian. Maggy’s mother tongue was a modern Valyrian language. Thus, Septa Saranella’s translation was not necessarily the answer Cersei needed.

Furthermore, Cersei’s pointing out, “It’s High Valyrian, it means little brother,” is unnecessary to Taena. She’s a Myrish noblewoman; she knows High Valyrian much better than Cersei does. (Whitesplaining: Westeros edition)

But the point is that Taena is not on Cersei’s side. Cersei knows Taena is buddies with the Tyrells, and she somehow thinks she can control Taena and use the Tyrell connection to her benefit. Taena is not under Cersei’s control and is not serving Cersei’s interests. So when she neglects to answer Cersei’s question of, “Do you use that word in Myr?” we should wonder what she’s really thinking.

It’s so nice to see a bit of mainstream support for Euron as the Valonqar. Seems I’m not all alone after all. But then I’m still all alone in being critical of Cersei’s assumption of “valonqar” meaning “little brother.” Why are we all so interested in Valyrian as a gender-neutral language when we have the foreign word used in otherwise all-Common-Tongue conversations? Am I the only person who asks why Maggy acts like she doesn’t know how to say “little brother” or “younger sibling” in the Common Tongue? Seems I am.

Anyway, this is a very decent, clear-headed case for Euron based on show-only evidence. I might quibble a bit over whether Jaime seemed like the best candidate for that long, but I appreciate Brooke Deines’s pointing out that his departure in the S7 finale makes him extremely unlikely as the killer. I respect her analysis of Euron’s disposition and Cersei’s vulnerability with him.

So that leaves me with this criticism: the article states, at the beginning, that the Valonqar Clause is present only in the books. With that in mind, surely there should be some books-only evidence present in any argument for a given candidate. Show-only fans know about the Valonqar because of discussions with ASOIAF readers. Surely they would be interested in some book quotes on the subject. 

All criticisms aside, I’m very glad Brooke Deines has written this article and I’m very glad WiC has posted it. Any challenge to the certainty of Jaime as a twinslayer is much appreciated. More of this, please! 

Think about this?

Winter is Coming just posted an argument for Euron as the Valonqar. While I appreciate having some company on this, it’s a show-only argument on a books-only prophecy. Gimme a moment to grab my laptop and post a link with some criticism.

Asking the Ws

Here are a list of questions we should be asking about the Valonqar clause. In no particular order:

WHEN does Cersei die?

WHERE does Cersei die?

WHO is the killer?

WHY does he kill her?

HOW does he kill her?

HOW does the killer get close enough, at the right time, to kill her?

WHAT do the circumstances of her death mean to Cersei?

WHAT role does her death play in the overall narrative?

WHAT role does killing her play in the killer’s arc?