ASOIAF: You Can't Blame Cersei, You Have to Blame Stannis, Tyrion, etc.

as it's needless to say that I am really
happy to have positive response to my first two videos on a Song of Ice and Fire it's an understatement to say my channel is not known for talking about Game of Thrones in A Song of Ice and Fire anyone who subscribed to this channel because they liked those first two videos his problem is shocked and horrified that more than ten videos on totally unrelated topics since then almost totally about vegan politics and my approach to Song of Ice and Fire is largely political it's putting an emphasis and I guess the political and ethical questions raised by the text because that's what I find to be the most interesting and most rewarding part of the story um a lot of people have made videos on a psychoactive fire for many months or for many years before getting the kind of audience that I got right away so again thank you guys for showing up and many people wrote in to me to say that they wanted me to make more videos of this kind would that having been said I would never become the sort of channel that tries to upload one video every week on a southern Ice and Fire I'm not gonna cast shade on other channels but I think you know there are many other channels that try to have something original to say about this work of literature every week or even every day and it gets a bit ridiculous even some of the podcasts that don't work to a strict schedule I notice a big difference between what they were uploading when they first started talking about it when they were sincerely you know excited to be saying things that I felt hadn't but said before things they felt they needed to say and as their enthusiasm dwindled as that were struggling to come up with themes they they felt they needed to explore or points they needed to make to respond to some of the criticism of God which has been constructive meaningful criticism on the whole I think that a lot of you may not have background in I don't mean to say like that in script writing there's a popular concept that's just called the one line fix and I'm going to say this is industry standard terms when you talk to people who do work in script writing or I don't know any kind of commercial writing um a one-line fix is not a retcon a one-line fix means you have a character acknowledge something that result that resolves a problem into continuity so I do not watch I don't watch movies period I was gonna say I don't watch mainstream movies I have not watched any of the movies from this generation I have not watched any of the x-men movies or Avengers movies or anything like that but I'm told I've read an example of this was that in the recent Iron Man movies apparently the conclusion to one of the Iron Man movies apparently the the least popular of the Iron Man movies had the main character resolving that he was going to stop being Iron Man he was going to give up playing this role which obviously is inconvenient for the sequels and for the later Avengers movies or something some other movies that came out of that can I've seen none of this stuff but um you know the writers in a later movie simply put in a one-line fix so apparently there's one line where that character Iron Man sits down and reflects well you know I thought I was gonna quit being Iron Man but I just decided I wasn't gonna do it that's it it's not a retcon it's a one line fix a lot of you seem to criticize my approach to the books and you think you can predict what George or Martin is gonna do in the books because you you seem to think that a one line fix is impossible whereas it's not only possible it's entirely standard normal in the industry you know how is it possible that Ned Stark at the end of the Civil War that put Robert Baratheon in power how is it possible that he was on the East Coast getting a fisherwoman pregnant a fisherman's wife pregnant fisherman's daughter pregnant member of the fishing community on the East Coast how is it possible he got her pregnant while he was supposed to be somewhere else at the same time how is it possible that he had that baby on the East Coast at the same time John snow exists that hurts at her if George wants to he can put in a one-line fix he can have somebody reflect oh you know during the war people were trying to assassinate Ned Stark so he had a doppelganger he had someone pretending to be him and that guy went to the East Coast and got this woman pregnant done if you want to it's not a retcon you just have an explanation dropped him like you're from the plot that's only one line long that resolves all the securities result so if he wants to on the other hand he could make a big deal out of it the other hand he could decide that Jon Snow is in fact genuinely the son of this fisherman's wife to you know shocked us all that Jon Snow is not of Noble blood that he's the result of Ned Stark having a love affair when he was on the East Coast in those circumstances and he would in effect reproach the audience for ignoring the importance of that story which is spelled out to us in a very factual way it's not presented to us you know there's no reason to suspect that story is false when it's presented us in the plot it could be that is Jon Snow's real origin and that you know the story of Liana and Lee Anna's kid is actually unrelated that it's not linked to Jon Snow so you know he can do that if he wants to ah in this way I mean especially given the highly improvised and loose structure of the book the fact that he made things up as he went along I think we're likely to see quite a few plot threads quite a through suggests a few suggestive possibilities of that kind resolved and discarded through a one-line fix and you know George is entitled but that makes the story even more predictable if what you're trying to do is predict it so this video I'm going to talk about Cersei Lannister and a little bit about Jaime Lannister but I mean I think the other point is unlike some other you know podcasters and you know video makers etc I don't think I don't think that predicting what happens next in the plot is really the most meaningful way for us to apply our minds of these books I think that the ethical questions the political questions of the thematic questions are more worth answering so I'll give you one now that a zero predictive power I think it's remarkable and I think it just reflects that most people read the book so many years ago and they forgot what happened in the books you know no offense but so many years and so many thousands of pages I think it's remarkable that right now there's this kind of widespread consensus that the point of the book somatically is to present a Tyrion and Tywin the conflict between the father and the son to to present this as a very simple good versus evil dichotomy that the father is evil and that the son is good now again this isn't just because of the TV show or something I think this is because in memory in retrospect people really simplify what that plot shows us what it tells us about Tyrion so Tyrion is the dwarf is the son and sorry Tywin is the father I say that because the names genuinely confusing they're so they're so similar alright well you know how would you feel if you were the father and you knew through your spies you knew for a fact that your son had done what the son did in this story in this story it isn't merely the case people seem to simplify this in retrospect it isn't merely the case that Tyrion slept with a prostitute that's a great simplification Tyrion fell in love with a prostitute and when he met the prostitutes pimp he had ordered this pimp murdered chopped up and put into a stew the corpse of this guy was you know sold in the market and eaten by human beings okay if you were the father of this kid if you knew this now again how he knows it is another question many people feel that bran is actually in the employ of the father and not just in the employ of the son doesn't matter but this kind of conduct on the part of your son these are not trivial indulgences this isn't just that your son drinks too much this isn't just that your son is short and ugly and bad with women okay this isn't just that your son is sleeping with a prostitute okay these are to say this is a serious ethical transgression is understatement it's murder and it's worse than murder and it's murder that wasn't motivated by any good reason in that same period back when Tyrion is still in King's Landing and when Tywin is watching him in his conduct as hand of the king Tyrion shows absolutely no interest in the starvation of the common people inside the city now I think that the author included that for many different reasons I think there's a very intentional contrast between the way different characters respond to food scarcity the pressure of the possibility of starvation I think very intentionally were shown that Tyrion has these sort of haughty aristocratic attitudes as if people starving is sort of a natural and inevitable part of war and that's part of the problem with the peasants do you leave the peasants to deal with it and he just goes back to his castle he goes back to the Red Keep and he eats a sumptuous meal which is described in great detail not accidentally by the author he lives in privilege and he just doesn't pay the slightest attention to the reality of starvation that's of course very much linked to the war conditions around him by contrast John snow up in the north even though we can't really solve the problem John snow is really concerned with servation even though the people starving are not his responsibility John snow is not in that part of the book he's not king of the north John snow is only the lord commander of the wall he's only responsible for giving food to people inside the wall not to the peasants outside it he genuinely has no responsibility if the peasants or the wildlings are starving but he cares okay now that contrast is not obvious because there are thousands of pages in between I'm sorry I've not counted the number of pages and for some people decades so many years passed between them that when they read those books that the moral point of that is is lost but you know in terms of Tyrion and Tywin and House Lannister generally the idea that the father is simply evil and the son is simply good it's not true at all and again you have to you have to put yourself in that position how would you feel if that was your son I look I mean my youtube channel is full of morality lectures if I found out that my son had murdered a pimp because he was in love with that pimps prostitute to say I would harshly condemn him is an understatement and you know to me this is totally unforgivable it's not the only you know immoral and forgivable thing that Tyrion does in that part of the books that Tyrion does before his father dies before he murders his own father um so I just say this in this way it's interesting to me that right now in 2016 2016 there's 20 17 starts we're now in the last few days of 2016 um I think that many of the characters thematically have become misunderstood and I think that's more interesting more important than talking about them in terms of plot points or in terms of predicting what happens next in the plot um okay so turning my attention now to Cersei what I want to say about Cersei is really very simple and it illustrates these um Cersei Lannister right now the end of 2016 2017 it's somewhat hilarious to me that so many people read her plot as currently showing a woman who is going to have to take responsibility for and face up to the consequences for burning down the red keep I'm sorry mixing up a book and show sorry in the TV show she doesn't burn down the red keep in the TV show she blows up the great Sept of Baelor but any case in both the book and the show it is very clearly foreshadowed in the book it's very clearly for sure she's gonna light something on fire she's gonna burn down some part of the city and kill a lot of people before the TV show tackled those themes and showed us Cersei burning down the great Sept of Baelor a lot of people already saw that coming they assumed that was built into the plot etc what I thought was interesting is that currently when he talked to people 2016-2017 I think they've forgotten many of the major plot points many of the thematic issues that are raised with Cersei and in the books and they seem to regard this as a turning point her story where she is now going to be you know in effect interrogated by the public or you know in some sense put on trial there'll be a question for taking responsibility for this act of terrorism that has completely transformed the political landscape in this fictional universe and to me what's interesting is when I read the same material I think the point is the exact opposite what Cersei has shown us again and again is that she's someone who refuses to take responsibility for actions anything she is really guilty of she will blame other people for and if you don't accept the blame she casts on other people she will take you captive and torture you to death so her use of torture I think is tremendously thematically important her use of the lie is tremendously thematically important and that she is basically a dictator who rules by the lie and anyone who doesn't accept her lies is torture to death so we had a great example that in the books that is not in a TV show when Cersei plotted to assassinate one of her political rivals from Dorne and she wanted to blame the assassination on her brother and to have the the assassins chance her brother's name so that people would believe there was some kind of rebel group being led by her brother in the countryside of Westeros it's totally absurd the whole nature of the lie is absolutely ridiculous but she comes up with these lies she enforces them brutally and I think in many ways she raises themes that are familiar from historical figures such as Joseph Stalin and well okay let's just leave it Stalin but you know Lenin and Stalin we're the nature of the political persecution the nature of you know people being wiped out etc um either you are on Cersei side or she is going to put you in a dungeon and torture you until you agree with her version of the story or she's gonna eliminate you and I think the books are much more likely to trade in those themes where everyone is forced to accept the lie that Cersei is not responsible quite possible she would blame Tyrion quite possible she would blame Stannis she claimed the followers of Stannis Baratheon who worshiped the red God who worshiped this scary foreign God that they are responsible for burning down the great Sept of Baelor for carrying out this act of terrorism etc etc so those themes are also built into the books and again it's just interesting to me that the books have been long enough that people have forgotten that people have completely lost track of really what who Cersei is and what the point of her story is and again I don't mean plot points I really mean thigh matically politically ethically who she is what question she raises for us as readers um so one final thing to say in this video because I don't have so much to say here I do think it's interesting that Cersei her plot is very clearly foreshadowed in a sense we know what's gonna happen in Cersei storyline many many ways even with the TV show even with out with the TV show revealing to us some things that are gonna happen we know in many ways what's in Circe's future partly through prophecy partly through foreshadowing etc etc by contrast we do not know at all what's gonna happen with Jaime her brother Jaime Lannister the plot there is very unpredictable but in Jamie's case the thematic and ethical point of his storyline is very clear whereas in Circe's case is very unclear you know it's very easy to see in terms of Jamie's character there's a redemption story there's an ethical point to his plot etc etc we all we all know that but we have no idea what he's gonna do what's gonna happen next his storyline currently as 2016 ends with a cliffhanger and really nobody knows what's gonna happen um nobody could possibly sketch out what's gonna happen next in storyline but in the end with Cersei in Circe's case we do know what's gonna happen but what we don't know is why it matters but we don't know is what it means politically I always thought it was somewhat hilarious that people have been naming their kids after Daenerys there are more and more kids in America who have names like Khaleesi but if you read the books you think look this is really a very morally murky character there a lot of gray areas in what she's doing and why she's doing him what's gonna happen next there's no reason to think she's gonna be a morally pure or morally positive character by the end of the story almost nobody is in these books I'm just too sophisticated for that uh I have not heard of anyone named ngey especially not using this spelling of Cersei I do know one woman whose name is Cersei who was not named after the books and it's not spelled that way um but I don't know III doubt that the point is gonna be just to make Cersei into a caricature of the evil dictator but definitely some of the aspects of dictatorship including I mean we can't under 8 we can't underestimate the significance of torture itself as a theme and an issue that's explored throughout these books the years when these books were written george RR martin was reflecting on the united states use of torture sort of the same as everyone else like so many other people in america was such a huge issue in american politics and you know I think his background he was reflecting back on the memories the Vietnam War the memories of the Irish troubles the Irish Civil War the use of torture in Ireland and then also the use of torture by the United States in Iraq Afghanistan Guantanamo Bay etc so these were themes that were really hanging in the air and I do think that Cersei Lannister more than any other character has got to be the laboratory where the author shows us what he thinks about this or you know reflects further on the ethics and even the practical consequences having a kingdom in which the truth is decided by one person holding the reins of power and being willing to torture anyone to death who disagrees with her