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The Redemption of Jaime Lannister

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At first, A Song of Ice and Fire seems to be the saga of the Stark clan. That impression is smashed by the end of the first book: the patriarch Ned is dead, the adorable son Bran is paralyzed in his legs after being flung from a tower. The Starks are not direwolves but dodos, and George R.R. Martin turns out to enjoy toying with the assumptions of readers. Jaime Lannister is an object lesson in Martin’s brand of misdirection. Fans celebrate the series’ moral ambiguity, and I roll my eyes. They talk about how “Martin doesn’t write black and white fantasy – he writes with shades of grade,” suggesting there are no heroes or villains, just people. But there are plenty of villains. It’s just these are villains you can psychoanalyze. That’s not even possible to do with Jaime in books one and two. Jaime is the one who flings Bran from the tower, and while he doesn’t kill Ned personally, he does order Ned’s friends murdered in the street in a real mustache-twirler of a scene. He is a manifest

⌂ The Redemption of Jaime Lannister Introduction At first, A Song of Ice and Fire seems to be the saga of the Stark clan. That impression is smashed by the end of the first book: the patriarch Ned is dead, the adorable son Bran is paralyzed in his legs after being flung from a tower. The Starks are not direwolves but dodos, and George R.R. Martin turns out to enjoy toying with the assumptions of readers. Jaime Lannister is an object lesson in Martin’s brand of misdirection. Fans celebrate the series’ moral ambiguity, and I roll my eyes. They talk about how “Martin doesn’t write black and

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