Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 80 - ASOS Jaime Intro/I

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

  Out in the waters of the Trident, we learn Jaime's innerworkings - and watch Brienne of Tarth be a badass.   Intro by Anton Langhage  --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric  Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl  Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/  Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor  Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com    

Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon, A Song of Ice and Fire, Episode 80, Jamie 1 in a Storm of Swords, and an intro to Jamie Lansdale. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. You know me from the internet, Liza Narber on Twitter, Tumblr, LizaNarberGold.com. tumblr lies in arbor gold.com and i am eliana another one of your hosts you might know me as glass table girl on reddit on the mason monthly podcast maybe as arithmetic over on twitter yes maybe maybe you do maybe you don't maybe you just know her as one of your other hosts we don't know there are no hosts like me only me we are starting jamie lannister this is an exciting feat you really gotta hand it to us oh my god i don't know that joke was just golden i'm proud of us we haven't even cracked into this episode yet and here we are. But before we talk about this episode, let's talk about some stuff that's come out recently.

This past January, we had a Patreon episode. So many episodes. They make you record and record. They actually do. Actually, no one does. We do. We did make ourselves do this. Patrons $5 and up get special episodes every single month on a very special topic this past month we talked about the maiden vault from a song of ice and fire so it was in a song of ice and fire themed episode this episode coming out in february uh it's gonna be special and we're not gonna announce it this

week but hang tight patrons you can check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon. February will be interesting in terms of things. First of all, we are starting the month off, of course, with a new POV. And we have some fun stuff planned for this kickoff. Not for today, just in general, for Jamie. Not for today. And not next week. Not next week either. Not for today. Just in general, for Jamie. Not for today. And not next week. Not next week either.

Not next week. But it could be the third week. Anyways, so stay tuned. Maybe you'll hear about it next week on Jamie too. But before we do all that, let's talk about some emails and tweets of note, some of which will have to do with Jamie Lannister.

Never heard of him. We did get an email from our friend Julie who said, Hello lovelies, I was revisiting Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies in preparation for the final book, and something reminded me of you talking about the Ned. One of the characters refers to Henry VIII as the Tudor. Also in Outlander, the Laird of Clanchief is repeatedly referred to as the Mackenzie. So it could be that the calling the head of a family like a king or lord, the or thee, was a mark of respect and or a way to be clear you're talking about the head of the family. It's just a

guess, but the fact that George has the flint as well leads me to think at least in literature it's a thing and possibly in history too julie also attached a photo of her writing buddy poncho or pancho not sure he's not great on ideas but he does keep her arms warm love to all especially the cats wow especially the cats especially the cats like specifically especially yeah interesting interesting she likes the executive producers they are well one of them is the other is the intern yeah jake's an intern because i fired him i thought it was because of the nepotism because of the nepotism prevalent in the cat in this cat-astrophe email i feel like i want to say that one time i read something on reddit that said that yes this was an actual dialectical thing that this was an actual thing within the english dialect uh in some areas but you know i'm gonna

be real i might have been years ago and forgotten it, but I think it's a good catch and a good connection with some of the other fiction. I know that George R. R. Martin has spoken highly of Diana Gabaldon's The Outlander series and follows it. Every now and then he posts about it on his blog

and you know what? I've actually just started watching Outlander recently. I'm still only on the first season i know a few of the other a song of ice and fire subreddit mods are really into it such as isabel jen an angry biologist but um you know what i have just started it's it's fun it's very dramatic yeah and it's i've heard that i haven't read it um or watched it i'd like to read it but i've heard mixed reviews it really shows you how underutilized ed and your tully's actor is though in game oh in game of thrones yeah absolutely i've

seen him in a couple things yeah he turns out as a very flexible actor so thank you so much Julie also Poncho you know before I opened up the photo I thought Poncho was going to be a cat because of the shout out to the cats with Poncho is I think a small fox like panda red panda like

looking dog that's how I would describe poncho how about you i would describe poncho as a tiny floof with eyeballs and a walnut for a brain we don't know that i just want to hug him yes he does seem very huggable though and i mean walnuts look like brains to be fair that's true so it's not insulting it just happens to be a walnut. I just remember the line from Jason Mendoza, like, oh, the doctor says that my brain's super smooth.

Smoothest brains I've ever seen. I was like, oh god. So we got another email from our friend Pete. It says, hiya GGC. I have had some ideas on the corrosive effects of Os as it applies to the Kingsguard, Septons, the Order of Maesters, and the Night's Watch. Specifically that of compulsory celibacy, in which it shames or criminalizes normal human nature and drives as payment to serve the realm for a term of life, and in some cases on pain of death the hypocrisy here is that high lords and kings father bastards all over the kingdom except for doran and it's the onus and the onus is placed on bastards not the father practices like prima nocta or lord's right of the first night and

ancestral polygamy by the king illustrates that the whole feudal society is corrupt to its core so in a world like this jamie lannister was right when he said it was the white cloak that soiled me not the other way around in a crazy world like that choosing to continue his teenage sexual fumbling with his twin sister into adulthood has a in for a penny in for a pound cost to it as he feels he can only die once for his illicit passion if found out anywho those are my thoughts on it thanks for reading pete yep thank you so much pete for sending us an email i think it's been a couple weeks since we got a pete email so that was good uh absolutely on all of this in fact i thought of something new

while you just read this around eliana of how a lot of this in fact i thought of something new while you just read this around eliana of how a lot of uh you and i have been talking about fire and blood off the record a lot lately not just for this we're always talking about fire and blood what am i talking about but we were talking about fire and blood and you know all these targaryen sisters a lot of them just got chosen to marry their brother right they didn't really have a say in it it was you are going to do this because it's what we do uh and a lot of them would never think of it otherwise they wouldn't think of having another partner and some of them obviously would think very much so of having another partner not someone blood related to them so it's such an

interesting concept that jamie and cersei come to love each other toxically speaking um they choose it you know instead of uh the whole Targaryen bound together by dragon and fire and blood and whatever so interesting thought uh and we see a lot of what you're talking about with kind of that penal colony situation going on with Jon which we just transferred out of and we're transitioning into this POV. No man has been able to give the Night's Watch a good rule because the Night's Watch is set up to fail, right? It's a land for outcasts.

It's the last stop for people in society. And it very much so shows in the way that we see King's Landing treat with them and the way that the Lannister outrider lackeys attack Yoren's group as well. And as Jaime learned when he was younger, there was really no right way to do his job. He was asked to do inconsistent and corrupt things all of the time and to

turn his head when his brothers did them as well. Yeah. I thought this was a good email and really sets the tone for much of what we're going to be discussing in this chapter and the rest of jamie's and like you said the inconsistency of all of these oaths with one another i do think like the idea of swearing yourself to celibacy, I understand the logic behind it for these orders, right?

Like, their logic behind it is you choose to do so because you are dedicating your life to something and also so that you won't have any competing, like... Loyalties. Yeah, loyalties. And I get it but at the same time as you pointed out like the night's watch i mean it's pretty it's pretty compulsory right like it many people don't get that choice it's it's fucked that it's not just the rule of law forcing itself upon people in that way it's doing so in a way that's controlling bodies and procreation and i think it's interesting that a lot of these that we get here kind of flips the script a little and that it's forcing it's controlling for the most part

male sexuality as opposed to female sexuality right and the difference of course is people get sent to the night's watch where the king's guard is set up as this prestigious order of knights but it turns out once you enter the order of knights um they aren't really prestigious right at one point they were shiny and beautiful and now they're awful they beat children now uh they're garbage they're not shiny and beautiful and it's like you get inducted into the secret order and the secret order's behavioral past in history has become that this is the norm yeah and i think it's like that for the maester too like part of the reason why is because it's set up so that every like home will have a maester right that will be loyal to that family though as we've seen and especially as barbara dustin points out in the theon chapters like doesn't

always work like that and also like at the same time like did they all need to do that like there are many maesters who stay in the citadel and i'm just saying you can be a fucking librarian or teacher without having to give up having a family it's really about dehumanizing and removing that humanity right like how do humans connect with each other um this may be a fantasy book but they are still technically humans right they're not aliens so how do humans connect they connect through other humans and when you remove that humanity they especially the king guard they're being desensitized right you have to protect the king do whatever the king says no matter what and some of those things that the king can say to do can be pretty awful and

traumatic and if you don't go away inside like we hear uh jamie you know think on. If you don't go away inside, you won't survive them. I would be really interested to see Jaime Lannister meet any of the Unsullied or perhaps even Arya Hotha if that ever happens, because the extreme case of what happens with the Kingsguard, as you pointed out, like in terms of this dehumanization process or the attempt to do so, this dehumanization process or the attempt to do so, we see it with characters like Arya, who has been castrated, as well as the Unsullied. They didn't choose that for themselves either, and they don't get to take oaths.

That control of sexuality is forced upon them. And this was very much a choice. Yeah. And you end up seeing, especially in Danny's chapters within the same book that forced like that they themselves also it seems like maybe they go inside, maybe not. But like they must write there, they're forced to endure so much horror like from an early age and for the king like from an early age yeah there's something about turning that switch off of your humanity um that i feel like there's almost something in there of the Others in the North and the Kingsguard having to turn their humanity off to fight for the King. I mean, it's a state of being, another, of being a zombie. Yeah, and it's not that those like the Unsullied and Aryo...

We see Aryo has so many emotions and that's the point, right? right? And Aryo, we see Aryo has so many emotions and that's the point, right? Within each of the Unsullied, they too have all these thoughts and things that they think and maybe those are there more when they're no longer in Astapor and they're sent into homes like we see at the beginning of A Game of Thrones. Illyrio Mopatis has some Unsullied even though he's not supposed to in Pentos and for them it's not that they've turned off their community it's been forcibly taken from them and that's more horrific and it's interesting to see that it'll be interesting to contextualize that as they come to westeros and what those who have taken that choice will think of it and especially what they will think of it i mean it's a shame that george

says that we won't get any associate povs which may or may not be true technically melisandre might be one right and i don't know well there's lots more to delve in again thank you pete for that email we have a lot to get into in this episode. I think we're going to talk more about some of those points as we expand through. But first, I'd like to hit our intro lightning round, which isn't going to be like our normal lightning rounds. We are starting a new point of view. We're starting Jaime, so we have to go over, of course, a little bit of history. bit of history. Sir Jamie Lannister was twin to Queen Cersei, tall and golden, with flashing green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife. He wore crimson silk, high black boots, a black satin cloak. On the breast of his tunic, the lion of his house was embroidered in gold thread,

roaring its defiance. They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face was embroidered in gold thread roaring its defiance they called him the lion of lancer to his face and whispered king slayer behind his back john found it hard to look away from him this is what a king should look like he thought to himself as the man passed i thought you were done with john's voices so funny everyone can have john as a treat It's so funny. Everyone can have Jon as a treat. Little Jon as a treat. As a treat.

Yes. So this is one of the first really extensive looks that we get at Jaime at the start of A Game of Thrones. Because as you all know, Jaime, pretty important to the very beginning of the Song of Ice and Fire series. That's what I've been told. Allegedly. Allegedly. Yeah, we get him in the very beginning. of the song of ice and fire series like that's what i've been told allegedly allegedly yeah we got him in the very beginning some of the first chapters uh and he does get his little info dump when we start those chapters it's interesting that he pops up in john's pov and john thinks that jamie is what a cane looked like when he arrived at winterfell you know we get we get a

little hesitation from ned we'll get to that um but soon soon you know he throws brand out of a window to improve his health after brand sees him doing some really weird wrestling with his twin sister cersei sets off a whole chain of events you might know it it's called a song of ice and fire it's a whole thing i imagine there's like jamie lannister holding brand out the window, record scratch. You might be wondering how I got here. Sometimes I think about Jamie like, ah, yeah, it's that one kid, um, looks down at hand at smudged name Bradley. And we're about to talk about how Jamie got here. Bradley. Anyway, so we're gonna back up a bit.

Um, because a lot, a lot has gotten us to this point. And a lot more, you know, happens between the beginning of Jamie's life and the whole throwing kids out of windows part of it.

Yeah, we're gonna unravel a lot of it throughout this chapter and the next couple chapters to come of course we have the bathhouse eventually so y'all know it gets juicy there but i want to go even farther back than that to start with jamie to the 1993 pitch letter that george had written there are two things i want to talk about from the pitch letter that involved Jaime. The first thing is, all the North will be inflamed by war. Robb will win several splendid victories and maim Joffrey Baratheon on the battlefield, but in the end, he will not be able to stand against Jaime and Tyrion Lannister and their allies. Robb Stark will die in battle and Tyrion Lannister will besiege and burn Winterfell. So some of that

stayed true, right? And we'll talk about that very soon. But then there's a second part from the 1993 pitch letter. Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, plot, and play the Game of Thrones, finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king's brutality. Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the seven kingdoms by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of secession and blaming his brother tyrian for the murders whoa yeah little little 180 a lot of 180 i mean so it's interesting that he inherits right what was going to be Joffrey's injury. And now I kind of wonder, were we going to get like more of a humanization like to Joffrey?

Is that what that means? Yeah, because he was going to, well, I mean, not just that. In this version and in this original outline, Sansa ended up staying with Joffrey, right? And having babies and being just like a married prisoner forever uh there's a lot different here and even more is jamie's not in the king's guard in this version obviously i don't think we know that he wasn't entirely but like yeah i think it might have been because part of some of the chapters were already written right like the first 13 chapters of a game of thrones were written and sent along with this letter if i'm not mistaken so he would that would have probably already been established but if he had it in there i mean like there's it's

interesting because when you read a game of thrones there's a lot that still feels like artifacts of what was in the 1993 letter right there's so much including that john line right of how jamie looked the way that he imagines a king would look it feels very much like foreshadowing that was eventually thrown away but it's still interesting to analyze within the context of what we actually get yeah and it seems likely the transformation of this that we're seeing now cersei has really replaced jamie in that latter plot in the current storyline one by one everyone ahead of her keeps dying and she will probably assert herself or try to assert herself on the

throne at some point but she's even blaming tyrian for all these deaths even though she actually believes he's doing them she's not wrong about one of them yeah just one only one um yeah i do feel that he switched tyria not turning i do feel like he might have made the choice i don't know if he exactly like completely swapped circe and jamie's storylines i think he did in the sense that she's now got the throne storyline i don't know if like circe was going to get more of that um a more sympathetic and humanizing storyline and we do get her pov but i i kind of sometimes think he was going to do that right especially with the way that you see ned and circe's interaction play out yeah she's nothing but the very uh meek housewifey and then suddenly he's all like whoa

no there's so much fire in her eyes and you suddenly see it though she's real angry so yeah that bitch would kill anyone and blame tyrian i guess but if we want to roll the clock forward a little bit, we can stop at 266 AC, which is where Jamie was born at Casterly Rock to Joanna and Tywin Lannister after his twin sister Cersei came out first. He came out clutching her foot, in fact. Some of the traits they inherited are that they did not plan to have to pay to change their last name on their marriage certificates, like their parents joanna and tywin it's so practical i do think and we'll probably talk about this more maybe in like circe's chapters one day you know the valen car prophecy i i think i've touched on this before maybe somewhere of him clutching her foot right points to the possibility of jamie being the valen car it feels very much like an achilles heel reference absolutely and it is for both of them truly yeah true true it really is

uh especially considering that's the hand wow we'll get to that aries sent them a gift of gold uh that weighed as much as the twins and said by the way since i sent this money gifting you about these twins now you have to bring them to court when you're physically able to do so haha uh you guys are basically my political friend hostages that's a thing yeah frenemies whether or not they went is up in the air but they did go in 272 ac i could see tywin being like we're not leaving for at least 10 fortnights. Yeah, he's like, oh, hang on, hang on, Joanna. Joanna's calling for some paid leave right now.

We have rights. As children, Jamie and Cersei, as we know, especially from Cersei's POV, would swap places and clothes. It's mostly Cersei dressing up as Jamie, though, being confused for him. And then they also started to partake in sexual experimentation with each other interesting they got caught and their mother threatened to tell their father if they didn't stop she put their bedrooms on opposite sides of the castle to help stop this but you know unfortunately she died about like a year maybe less than later in 273 ac so you know like, you know, what's two different sides of the castle? That's not gonna stop us.

And then they got like a shitty consolation, which was Tyrion. Yeah, they got a younger brother at the same time as, you know, they lost the person who was stopping them from committing incest all the time. Whatever. My mom died and all I got was laid and this horrible brother. Oh my god!

So, you know how Tywin tried to marry Cersei off to Rhaegar? It was like the biggest goal, the biggest dream, right? He also tried to get Jaime in as Rhaegar's squire, but that didn't work, so Jaime ended up squiring with Lord Sumner at Crakehall. When they were 12, Cersei was summoned to go to King's Landing with Tywin. And then Jaime won his first melee at age 13.

For a lot of Jaime's youth, right, so he was in the Riverlands squiring. And Lord Hoster Tully had this great idea of betrothing Lysa and Jaime. This is actually legitimately a good idea. But Jaime was more interested in listening to Sir Brynden Blackfish Tully's war stories.

He's like, wow, he's so cool. He's my greatest hero ever. Sports, sports. To be honest, I mean, like, yeah, I said, it's not a bad idea if Jamie and Liza had been betrothed and married. Maybe that would have been better for both of them. I think you're not wrong. Could have been better for the realm honestly for many people in fact um but anyways but jamie wasn't gonna have that because he found out about all this

from cersei who convinced him to join the king's guard so that he wouldn't have to marry any stupid girl he could keep fucking her all the time be near her always and they'll just hang out at king's landing all the time because she's like look i'm gonna cuck rhaegar and we'll still be together she made her case by coming to him at an inn dressed as a serving girl and there's of course the quote by morning casterly rock seemed a small price to pay to be near her always. So he does it. He gives up his entire claim. And hey, in the serving girl outfit, tries that move on Ned. On the Ned.

Sorry. Yeah. You know, she's like, it worked once. Maybe it'll work again. But, you know, hang on. Before we get there, we're going to come back. Let's come back to Jamie's adolescence. A lot of things happen. So between all of that happening, Jaime actually joined Cracol, Lord Cracol, in fighting the Kingswood Brotherhood. He saved him from Big Belly Ben in The Smiling Knight. And because of this, Arthur Dayne himself knighted Jaime at age 15.

Because of this, Arthur Dayne himself knighted Jaime at age 15. That's, like, really big. A huge deal in Westeros. Like, that's, I don't know, the biggest sports star knighting you. Arthur with the magical sword is, like, superhero swordsman of old. He is Jaime's hero. This is the dream come true for Jaime. He thinks he's finally living his dream out. He's a knight, knighted by his hero. This is the dream come true for Jamie. He thinks he's finally living his dream out. He's a knight, knighted by his hero.

This is like Sansa-level disillusionment of the songs, but this time it's with some swords. Yeah, absolutely. This is like... Yeah, I'm trying to think of an apt comparison in sports, and it turns out I can't do it. I was like, it's like if a swimming guy, I can see his face, can't remember. Phelps, it's like if Phelps was like, you are the

best swimmer ever, Eliana, and the answer is I'm not. It's like if the early 2000s Pistons came to my house and were like, do you want to shoot some hoops? And I would say yes. Yeah, it's

like that it's like watching scooby-doo as a kid and the harlem globetrotters came on and you're like i can do the ball thing on my arms for sure it's like if serena williams now was like hey you want to hang out also let's play tennis you were super good at tennis i'm not super good at tennis but it'd be like that but jamie was actually good at tennis i'm not super good at tennis but it'd be like that but jamie was actually good at what he does you know yeah you'd like hit the thing and you'd be like love love bitch exactly anyway so back to giving up casterly rock a moon's turn after jamie and circe role-playing at the inn jam Jaime gets a raven summoning him to become part of the Kingsguard he's like wow she really did it

and he goes and he does it he joins the Kingsguard at the tourney at Harrenhal and then he gets to and then he misses out on all of the festivities because Lord Aerys is like great congratulations you signed your life away now go to King's Landing

and guard Queen queen rayella and viserys and then jamie realizes oh my god i was a pawn in an elaborate scheme to make tywin angry yeah and it worked the scheme to make tywin angry worked but you know what didn't work the scheme to be with cersei because tywin was so mad that he resigned as Hand of the King and took Cersei back to Casterly Rock with him so Jaime's stuck in King's Landing alone taking a vow of celibacy to sleep

with his sister now he can't do that teenage boy like his life is over his dick is hard yeah he was thinking with his dick and it all blew up because that's what happens when you make decisions based on wanting to fuck your sister, I guess. Something this brings to mind, and it's kind of a spicy take. Are you ready for a spicy take so early?

Okay. to me is aligned with sansa betraying ned in book one in that she went to cersei thinking she was doing the right thing that she was going to get what she wants which was being queen while also bringing glory to her house right and then it turns out that it turned her into a hostage of king's landing which is pretty much what happened to jamie i think that's absolutely true and like so we're gonna bring this up a lot throughout this first chapter and maybe throughout many of jamie's chapters there are so many people we could have put jamie's chapter right after oh my god yes and we tried and thought about all of them trust me we did like he would have gone actually great after sansa's chapters for exactly what you said right there's so much of his story that's about the disillusionment of like the songs we could have put him after theons as we'll talk

about but we chose to put him after johns because now we've gone through all those other chapters and can refer back to them it all made sense in my head but it did it did things that don't make sense in the real world or in people's heads circe's plans because along with all of this i mean here we get start getting a little early taste a little early peek at circe not being great at long-term plans and schemes like that didn't didn't quite work out here she she really thought she had something yeah hindsight's 20 20 sirs yeah it really is well it turns out that jamie's new boss is terrible when he gets his new job at the king's guard but like really bad like cruel would burn

people and then go assault his wife afterwards uh gerald hower told Jaime not to judge Aerys, that it's his job to protect and obey, not to question, and also to protect. Like protecting Rhaella. Jonathor Derry, when Jaime asked whether or not they should be protecting Rhaella, was like, yes, but not from

him. You know, as we lay it all out like this, I'm starting to realize that it's kind of meaningful that not only does all of this begin to show us like Jaime's slow disillusionment as a Kingsguard, but also Jaime's first job, his first role as a Kingsguard was being sent to protect Rhaella. So that's what he's told from the get-go is what he's supposed to do. We don't really see it in his thoughts. So I assume that he didn't interact with her that much or connect with her but i mean along with the values that he had as a knight with those oaths that he was he had taken about protecting people i would kind of

wonder if that plays a role in why this moment is so striking for him because that was the first thing he was supposed to do and so he's like i'm supposed to protect her too right and then he gets that very conflicting order of wait no we don't because when you join this you know this guild you're thinking that you're bringing glory to your family you're a king's guard you are one of the finest knights in the realm who can protect anyone. Your sister from Men, who she has to marry, like Robert. Your sister.

Yeah, Cersei from Robert eventually. I mean, your little brother who gets picked on. I kind of wonder now that you bring that up, Tyrion must play a role in that too as he realizes not only can he not protect him, he's actively part of what hurts him Jaime deals with all this by dissociating when all this terrible stuff happens and by thinking about his sister and finally he decides enough is enough during Robert's rebellion. Yeah, Jaime was actually kind of there when

all of this started, if you come back to that whole Aerys burning people thing. He bagged Rhaegar to take him into battle with him, and Rhaegar was like, that's cool, but you know, my dad wants you as a hostage or collateral in securing your dad's loyalty. It's chill. But he

does promise when he returns that there will be reform, and he asks jamie to protect his wife ellia martel and their children agon and rainies not only does that not happen uh very bloody does not happen he ends up killing king aries and his pyromancer that was probably going to be used for destroying the whole city but no one knows this except brienne and a handful of chapters will get there this is a reread guys yeah it turns out actually this was a good thing that jamie did but afterwards he's like wow that was very tiring i'm very confused about what's gonna happen next

i'm gonna just climb all these stairs and sit on the really weird chair um it's fine and then edward stark finds him sitting on the chair and like any good romantic comedy there's bad communication hijinks ensue it leads to decades of bad blood between the families that's definitely a way to put it on the framing anyways eventually robert becomes king he marries cersei jamie is still in the king's guard despite despite ned being like but what if he wasn't and robert's like but what if he was and finally at long last cersei's plan finally finally comes true it bears fruit finally she's in king's landing as the queen, and he's a Kingsguard close to her.

And they have three children, Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen. But it's like Joanna said, in the dream that we'll talk about at length eventually. You know, they weren't, that's nothing that she planned for them. You know, he says to her, I'm a knight, and she's just so sad, like, oh, honey, you sure are a knight. She planned a lot of different things for them, like maybe different sexual partners.

Yes, she did have those plans, and I think her and the unnamed Princess of Dorne and their other friends really could have had strong alliances. I mean, imagine if all that shit, if she didn't die, the rebellion may not have happened. That's actually a very, very interesting idea. I think it's probably been explored by someone like Joanna Lannister on Tumblr.

If you guys have ever seen Joanna Lannister explored. Sorry. She is a Tumblr. No, she's a great meta writer. Yeah, she actually really is. If you haven't checked her out, check her out. But she is like the Lannister go-to. So if I ever need some sort of biblical reference on a Lannister date or like a thing, I just go scroll through her tags and it gets me good, you know?

It gets me good, you know? While Jaime's not allowed to actually parent these children, Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen, though, for very obvious reasons. He has to keep them at arm or hands length away. And he dissociates completely from them. Cersei wouldn't even let him hold them when they were born. We really see the effect of this as Jaime rides through the Riverlands. And I'm excited to explore more of that when we get to Feast. We'll get more of his thoughts on guarding his king and how he should be doing that.

Tommen. So when Jamie's story isn't a strange retelling of Lancelot and Lady Guinevere which it actually A horny retelling? Yeah.

A hornier? I don't know. I think Lancelot and Guinevere was pretty horny retelling. Yeah. Which like- A hornier. I don't know. I think Lancelot and Guinevere was pretty horny in and of itself. Jaime and Tyrion kept having a very close relationship. Jaime turns out was a very good older brother, except for the time where he lied to his younger brother about his marriage and said that, oh, your wife is actually a sex worker that I hired,

and basically destroyed his marriage and his younger brother's sense of self-worth entirely and leads to a horrible bout of sexual violence. Other than that, other than that. Good relationship. Otherwise good relationship because Tyrion was like great older brother. You got me a horse that I greatly treasure for my 23rd birthday.

Super meaningful, very emotional when it dies. Yeah, for my 23rd birthday super meaningful very emotional when it dies yeah probably because he didn't get to grieve for taisha the horse no tear in yeah i was also kind of hurt by the horse i'm not gonna lie oh my god so years later jamie and cersei are totally still boning. In secret, of course. Our first glimpse of him by Ned Stark in the main series comes. There came Ser Jamie Lannister with hair as bright as beaten gold. And then a little bit later. Robert had looked at Cersei and her twin brother Jamie had taken her quietly by the arm, and she had said no more.

With the death of Jon Arryn, Robert means to name Jaime Warden of the East, which would dramatically increase Lannister military power. They obviously already have the stronghold on the West. So, there are many, many reasons why we put Jaime after Jon. Incredibly large amount of reasons. But we really also consider putting him after theon but i think the quote up top is the biggest reason why john and why john and jamie really mesh for sure there's so much that i think you know as as pete points out there's a lot to tie in

with the differences between the order of the night's watch and that of the king's guard um but you know speaking of the king's guard jam that of the Kingsguard. But, you know, speaking of the Kingsguard, Jaime, he's just coasting at his job right now. He's loitering around King's Landing when we get back there in Game of Thrones. He wins another tourney celebrating Ned. He's like, whatever.

And then later on, things start getting all dramatic. You know, there's like a war kind of brewing, and then Jaime's like, fuck this peace. Fuck this piece shit he attacks ned and kills all of ned's close men including jory and boo i would boo i was supposed to go into this open-minded but you had to bring that shit up sorry boo i'm so open-minded i actually really like the Jamie chapters I like Jamie also Chloe's meh I like him as a character doesn't mean that he does

always the right thing or the good thing but I like him as a character and I like his growth yeah I think he's one of the most interesting characters and really embodies I think a lot of what George wanted to explore in A Song of Ice and Fire and they start getting that right as uh very very soon and they start giving a better summary of the things that happened here since uh these don't come up within jamie's chapters and by

a better summary i mean we're still going at this very fast it's still a lightning round um yes jamie flees king's landing and joins up with Tywin's host after this, and then he partakes in the War of the Five Kings, smashing the Riverland armies, especially at Golden Tooth. He defeats Edmure Tully at Riverrun and captures him, but in the Battle of the Whispering Wood, Jaime gets captured after furiously trying to cut his way through all of the men to kill rob stark and you know he almost succeeds but he doesn't which is why you never do that don't let your pride take you except he almost did it he almost succeeded uh almost which you know on one hand like people are like that was dumb but on the other hand there is actually a logic behind this weird really kind of weird dumb hail mary move that jamie's doing right now. Because like, now that we're looking at it in holistically within the rest of his life,

I kind of get it. I'm like, of course he thinks this is gonna work. Because if he did succeed in getting all the way to Rob, he got all the way up to Rob. All right, he cut through like 20 men and got up to Rob. And it's because he believes that killing Robb is going to end this Northern Rebellion. I mean, Tywin believed it too, for what it's worth. That's why we get the Red Wedding. And like Robb isn't crowned yet as a king during this part. This is still in a Game of Thrones. Jaime has seen firsthand the effects of what happens when you kill the leader of a faction,

right? It's why he's called Kingslayer, and like, that very much played a big role in well, ending the loyalist faction, but still, like, I get it! I get it! Yeah. Um, also side note, speaking of Jaime's capture in the Whispering Wood,

one year, the first year that I ever attended Ice and Fire Con, Skad from Davos Fingers partook in the fanfiction contest year the first year that i ever attended ice and fire con scad from davos fingers partook in the fan fiction contest i think i've already plugged this before but i'm plugging it again his prompts uh that he drew out of like the hat or whatever made him ship rob and jamie and he wrote this great great fanfic and it is entitled The Whispering Wood and I will leave that to your imagination but I think it's on SweetYFT's YouTube channel

oh my god please go check that out guys if you can because you will be in for a treat a whispering wood treat some salami as a treat so Jamie fails and gets captured as i said because he goes all out with his pride and that brings us up to a clash of kings where he's imprisoned most of the

book tyrian tries to free him and jamie for obvious reasons attempts to escape but he doesn't rob start doesn't choose to exchange jamie for his sisters and catalan ends up interrogating jamie in the dungeon learning the truth about bran and well i think they almost fought there's a lot of sexual tension in this dungeon scene for some reason and i'm gonna be real it's very interesting because jamie exudes a lot of confidence for a guy who's ever who's like only ever fucked one woman in his life and that woman happens to be his family member very very interesting uh he's i don't know he's very charming very uh like i thought he was even though he was dirty in those dungeons he was about to like charm the pants off Catelyn like a hate fucker. She was like, dirty.

And then I'm thinking of that scene in Futurama where, remember, there's Frye and she's like, dirty boy, dirty boy. That's the scene. Oh, that's the scene. Well, this brings us to where we last left Jaime. This is the last place we left him before we get into Jaime in A Storm of Swords.

And that is in Catelyn's last chapter in A Clash of Kings. I made no such claim. The Starks were nothing to me, I will say. I think it passing odd that I am loved by one for a kindness I never did and reviled by so many

for my finest act at robert's coronation i was made to kneel at the royal feet beside grand maester pisel and varies the eunuch so that he might forgive us our crimes before he took us into his service as for your ned he should have kissed the hand that slew aries but he preferred to scorn the Ars he found sitting on Robert's throne. I think Ned loved Robert better than he ever loved his brother or his father. Or even you, my lady. He was never unfaithful to Robert, was he? Come, Lady Stark, don't you find all this terribly amusing? Brienne pushed the door open and stepped inside the cell.

You called, my lady give me your sword catelyn held out her hand the clash of kings catelyn seven such a great end to a chapter to an arc to a book's arc even and something i find really amusing is that in the last book of course we know that brienne and jamie are uh kind of a little bit fucked right lady stoneheart sees them spoiler and uh wants them to choose wants brienne to choose between her loyalties between sword and between hanging and the word that brienne calls in the gallows to release them she yells something we don't know from the book but george rr martin at miss con in 2012 said that the word she called for was sword so the very end of their clash of kings run was abbreviated with sword and the very beginning of their stoneheart arc coming round circle opening back up starts with sword and one day we're gonna get to Brienne chapters and I think it is heavily implied by the way

Brienne is watching Pod right begin to struggle for air that she says sword so in this moment she finally gets to understand what it means when Jaime has been saying this whole time so many vows they make you swear and swear and what it means to be asked by someone you serve to do something that maybe goes against what you feel is right well before we jump into jamie one i think we're gonna have a lot to explore about house lannister in these chapters from everything we've talked about in the past however many minutes you guys can obviously see house lannister is a little fucked up they're like only a little pretty greek tragedy right very much so greek tragedy so much like they make the house of atreus feel a little normal like whether it's the oedipal

factor dead moms or the illegitimate baby shit possibly happening twin cest there's kind of a separation between some of the whole spicy incest stories of the gods in greek mythology in this case i guess targaryens and the regular folk but it's obvious especially from the lannister pride that we've been talking about they all think themselves the next best thing yeah you know how some people joke that maybe to the tyrells or like yeah their shit don't stink the lannisters think that they poop gold we find out that they don't that's confirmed in universe it's a canon we the masters of the canon can tell you that along with the house of atreus vibes i think that's like a good call i also kind of have wondered two things they're sort of like i followed the house of usher by edgar allen poe

i kind of got that vibe from them also like it's not confirmed in the short story but it's maybe implied that the two siblings in the house are might have an ancestral relationship and then the house like falls apart and and you know shows the end of their line it seems like jamie and cersei might be the end of their line. I kind of also have wondered if Jamie and Cersei, to an extent, is George's exploration of... There's this story by Robert Heinlein called All You Zombies. In which a person... It's a very narcissistic story, literally. There's time travel involved. Coming back to Futurama, that's definitely, I think,

a little inspired by this story as well. Literally a narcissistic story. And I'll let you all put the pieces together. I think it's all free on the internet for you to read right now. And I kind of wonder if that's what we see with Jamie and Cersei, especially with Cersei, right? That desire to fuck oneself, as opposed to just the incest. The less that they come to reflect one another, the less sexually attracted to one another they are. The more that they get outside of their selves in a way,

or well, the more Jamie stops reflecting Cersei. Who knew this is what it took. Yeah, true. But until then. Well, that brings us to our,

what we missed lightning round on Jamie one in a storm of swords. And the only chapter we missed in a storm of Swords was the prologue, where Chet tries to turn his cloak, but in the end, he is stopped by Winter. Indeed, because what a surprise. What a banger. You turn that first page after the prologue, you expect you're going to see Arya, Tyrion, Sansa. No, you get Jaime. What?

Remember your first time reading these books and not knowing? You're like, Jaime. Anyway. It was kind of like a fun surprise. It was! I was like, wow! We're sprung from Riverrun by Brienne and Catelyn. Jaime, Brienne, and their cousin Cleos make their way down the Trident

and they meet trouble along the way. An east wind blew through his tangled hair as soft and fragrant as cersei's fingers he could hear birds singing and feel the river moving beneath the boat as the sweep of the oars sent them toward the pale pink dawn after so long in darkness the world was so sweet that jamie lannister felt. I'm alive and drunk on sunlight. A laugh bursts from his lips, sudden as a quail flushed from cover.

What an opening. It is. It is. He's just so joyous in this moment. Well, you have to have a good open for your first Jamie chapter. You got to go big. And not only does he go big

in bringing it with the prose, but he goes big in bringing it with Brienne of Tarth, who shushes Jaime. And Jaime thinks of her. Ugly, but yet at the same time, also pretty hot. She's muscular and skilled at swords. He passes the time in the boat thinking of her bod, but in Cersei's gowns. She could row longer and harder than his cousin, cleo's fray who was rowing the other ore as i read jamie's chapter i was starting to think of contextualizing him in this moment especially within the narratives of some of the other like jailbreaks that we've seen in a song

of ice and fire of theon and sansa's like escapes uh maybe evena, who we haven't gotten to yet. There's a lot of POVs who escape captivity, so it's interesting how Jaime's feels so comical next to theirs. Very sarcastic and flippant. His internal monologue. It breeds more early

Theon than it does later Theon. Much lighter than Sansa's. and for somebody who just spent like a year locked up in shackles yeah for sure and i mean like he he's got a slightly easy go of it i guess compared to some of them but not entirely i mean being a prisoner doesn't sound great sounds pretty bad as an understatement jamie thinks that Brienne looks like a strong peasant wedge, but speaks like a highborn who wears a long sword and dagger. He plans, once out of the iron manacles Catelyn put on him, to find out. Catelyn Stark had gotten him nice and drunk and suddenly

let him free. Escaping Riverrun required some fighting and climbing and less stairs, but finally they set out in a boat. The water gate is lifted at Catelyn's command, and Jaime's life has been traded for new terms. And that's what he remembered, as he takes a wine nap, as one does, and here he is, awake. He thinks his brother Tyrion would laugh very much so at the irony of Jaime sleeping through his own escape, and he tries to get Brienne to take his chains off. I also find this comical because tyrian would not be laughing right now literally tyrian's last chapters the end of clash of kings is blackwater oh that's true he's getting ready to be captured but instead um ends up pretty

much hospitalized for a long time coming back to the whole like escape escape vibes right they all have kind of required assistance in their escape here jamie has brienne doing a lot of the work for him right and it's kind of interesting the difference in the agency and desire required to be able to escape jamie actually kind of i think sets off in a way that chain of events not not chain of events, but like sets off a lot of these. He's one of the first that we see. And we don't root for it the same way that we do for Theon and Sansa because it's not set up in the same way. It's the start of his storyline. It's another reason that I think he's really interesting,

contrasted with Theon's POV. Yeah. There's some really great banter back and forth with brienne calling jamie kingslayer and he calls her wench in return she asks if he denies he slew a king and he asks if she denies what's in her pants he also asks her to take off her pants and just prove it which i'm like damn just fuck already no just kidding but then he's like calling her flat chested which is less romantic so i don't know maybe don't he could be into that but also and he just doesn't know yet but they're both just trying to get anyone to see them for who they are they're both just trying to

be be called by their names you know yeah he's got he's got a lot to work out on this road trip that's all they've got both do, but him especially. Cleos Frey, of all people, is the one to tell Jaime, you know, you should mind your courtesies. And then Jaime launches internally into some thoughts about Cleos' blood. He's like, that's Aunt Jenna's son. She's a cool Lannister, but he's also the son of Eamon Frey. Not a cool Lannister.

In fact, not a cool frey either he's a wuss yeah no frey is cool except for like olivar no there's a quite a few there's olivar there's like three gatehouse amy there's oliver there's roslyn there's um oliver's brother that i don't remember the name of i've wrote i've written a lot about a lot of frays fat waldo's great too bless her emin so emin fray for those of you keeping track at home here is 12th in line for the twins but if you recall he's the one that gets promised river run which is a total joke it's like that's cute that's not real kleos had vowed to deliver Catelyn's message to Tyrion of the new terms, and then was promised his release afterwards.

And those weren't the only vows exchanged the evening before. There was a wedding. There was not a wedding. I just wanted to say that. She had laid the point of the big wench's sword against his heart and said, Swear that you will never take up arms against Stark nor Tully. Swear that you will compel your brother to honor his pledge to return my daughters safe and unharmed. Swear on your honor as a knight, on your honor as a Lannister, on your honor as a sworn brother of the Kingsguard. Swear it by your sister's life and your father's and your son's, by the old gods and the new, and I'll send you back to your sister. Refuse and I will have your blood he remembered the prick of the steel through his rags as she twisted the point

of the sword yeah it's intense it's a pretty interesting line especially in the context of what's probably i think one of the most iconic lines from jamie in the series of what's probably, I think, one of the most iconic lines from Jaime in the series. Maybe one of the most iconic lines in the whole series that comes from his discussion with Catelyn. It's not this one. It's the same discussion, but it occurs earlier

because we get this in this chapter and this one comes in Catelyn's chapter. Anyway. So many vows. They make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets.

Do his bidding. Your life or his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws.

It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other. It's interesting. Catelyn heard this whole spiel, and yet her answer was, You know what? Let's make him swear more oaths. Yes. She's like, you know what? We'll just make him swear all of these oaths by all of the lives.

Therefore, they can't conflict, maybe. All of the oaths ever. And I think that's one of the reasons why we thought Jaime's really interesting after Jon, right? Like, we all know what the Night's Watch's Oates are. We've said it several times. Everyone else has said it several times. Everyone fucking knows what it is. We never explicitly get the Kingsguard Oates within the books.

There's a Westeros board and user who, coincidentally enough, is named Twinslayer. And they broke it down. They grabbed a couple of quotes. And what it's come down to is like, protect the king from harm or threat. Provide the same Kingsguard protection to royals, lovers, mistresses, and bastards, but only if so directed. Follow orders from the king, other royals, the hand, and the small councils. Serve the king's pleasure orders from the king other royals the hand and the small councils serve the king's pleasure keep the king's secrets protect the king's name and honor and maintain chastity we saw in john's chapters right that he pretty much broke every night's watch vow

in a very kind of backwards way but he still did it even without you know kind of meaning to Jamie same deal you know he's kind of broken every single Kingsguard oath by this point in his life especially you know the whole like most important one to protect your king and he really did it in style it's not like he failed in defending his king against an assailant he's like but what if i i just did it i was the assailant and honestly he was right it's it's pretty pointed that we get those two arguments for him at the beginning of a game of thrones like ned being wary of him and then john also just projecting goodness onto jamie because he looks like what he thinks a true knight should be and then we get the start of jamie's changing character right he's like stripped of his

knightly armor he doesn't have hair anymore in like a second and that's when we begin to like see him transforming yeah i love that transformation that the jamie we know in the first couple books before the pov is hardened and dissociative and an asshole uh because the society that's molded him that way but here he is now broken down not a gold penny to his name right not a goddamn gold dragon to his name daddy's gold can't save him right this second uh in fact they're lucky they have the girls because that's what's saving him but jamie thinks the high septon may not regard these oaths very well since he was dead drunk, chained to a wall at sword point when he was forced to make them. But he also thinks religion's fake, and that he thinks about Catelyn Stark kicking over his pail of shit that was in his cell,

and he wonders why she would trust a man with shit for honor with her daughters, but realizes she's really trusting tyrian not him he's just the messenger he thinks out loud perhaps she is not so stupid after all but brienne hears him and thinks he's speaking about her i can see where she would get that chain of logic i feel like from this thought pattern he has going back and forth and i'm pretty sure stephen adamill said this actually in one of his essays but it's obvious here that jamie has no plan to follow through with anything he said he'd do like it's not even in his radar he wasn't even planning on it he didn't even consider doing it like he figures he's just gonna go home somehow get rid of brianne you know somehow drop

kleos off at daycare and go home to his brother and his sister and shit's gonna go back to normal he's gonna get back to his dad everything for sure absolutely and i mean like i think that's as i think about these it's kind of interesting that like there were oaths that he meant to keep and he kind of fucked all of them up these ones he had no intention of keeping and he's kind of actually ended up very much trying to keep them yes absolutely until then jimmy's like all right all right let me explain i wasn't talking about you i was talking to myself it it becomes a habit you know when you're just a prisoner for a long time she's like uh okay so she just says nothing back and he notes that she seems to be highborn from the way

that she holds herself, and tells her as such, and she explains she gives her own little info down for this time to him, reminding all of us upon the release of A Storm of Swords in the year 2000 that she is the only daughter of Selwyn Tarth,

the Lord of Evenfall, and Jaime is surprised. She's like, so what are you doing serving rob of house stark when uh your houses were into storm's end he's like oh by the way tarth is a ghastly large rock in the narrow sea and she tells him i don't serve rob i serve lady catlin and catlin commanded that we're gonna go back to king's's Landing. We're not going to banter, so shut the fuck up. Or you can go talk to Cleos over there. And that she has, in her words, no words for monsters. Then we get this passage that I think is very telling, where Jaime is kind of laughing at her.

Are there monsters hereabouts, hiding beneath the water, perhaps, in that thick of willows? And me without my sword. A man who would violate his own sister, murder his king, and fling an innocent child to his death deserves no other name. And then Jaime thinks. Innocent? The wretched boy was spying on us. All Jaime had wanted was an hour alone with cersei their journey north had been one long torment seeing her every day unable to touch her knowing that robert stumbled drunkenly into her bed every night in that great creaking wheelhouse tyrian had done his best to keep him in good humor but it had not been enough what's that boy's name Bradley Bradley uh Braden Stark yeah

yeah I mean I do think that's what he thinks for a second um but I'm sure he learns it eventually once he causes him all that trouble so I did want to stop on this this uh quote for a bit I remember back then when uh Steven Adler released his analysis of this chapter

and this line had really struck me as i was rereading it it turns out i had actually highlighted this line it stands out to me that in all of jamie's interiority what we get regarding his justifications for flinging brand out the window is innocent the wretched boy was spying on us all jamie had wanted was an hour alone with circe right like he doesn't say that he flung bran out the window to save his family in fact circe chastises him soon after um or we we learned that circe chastises him soon after because it actually she felt endangered his family george actually says in like in its chronicled somewhere necessary speak martin that when people have posed the question of why did jamie fling brand out the

window or like what what was the rationale behind writing something like that he's like well what would you do if your children were at risk and i understand that this might be how george explains it to people and his rationale but I do think it's telling that Jamie's interiority doesn't show that being why he does that to Bran at all no and it's not the only time that it comes up

it's often referred to as the Stark boy and really it's not coming out that way it's coming out like you had a boner kind of makes it a little more interesting um it makes it more complex that we would that people might like ascribe or project that uh beneficial narrative onto jamie's actions it seems like george does and maybe that was what he was thinking but you know if we got if we took word

of god right out of it if we took the author's intent out of it this is how it would be read i also think that it's interesting that in this in the same moment we hear that part of what was so frustrating for jamie was their journey north had been one long tournament seeing her every day unable to touch her knowing that robert stumbled drunkenly into her bed every night in that great creaking wheelhouse right like we know that cersei did not cersei didn't want to have sex with robert right this is marital rape and yet jamie in this moment isn't thinking about cersei or what she's undergoing right having to endure that under Robert the whole time and it's interesting that he doesn't really think of it in the context yes it's less violent than what Ares did to Rayella but I mean it's still marital rape same same as both were and he doesn't think

of what Circe is going through he thinks of how it was difficult for him that he couldn't touch her and some other man got to have her and not him. Yeah, that really stuck out to me, this read. And it really circles back to something that also popped out. I didn't notice it until you read it about how he was made to kneel with Varys and with Maester Pycelle to Robert as, you know, to get on his knees in front of the royalty and basically beg for forgiveness from him before he was led on to be Kingsguard again for another season.

So I don't know. There's just these little, very prideful moments that Jaime has that, you know, he charges at Rob and that's why he was taken prisoner because you know he did a very brave hail mary move that could have worked but it didn't and he suffered for it yeah he very much so is in that perpetual state of 15 year old boy who had a little taste of glory against the Kingswood,

you know? Yeah. He thinks he's the wild card. He's like, I'm going to just play my hand. It's not necessarily, Oh wow. I didn't even mean for that pun to happen,

but, and he's starting to learn. It doesn't always work. Yeah. And he's like, but what if I actually did try to play the game? Because like, obviously he was burned.

He tried to play the game once it didn't work out for him. And he was like, I'm just never going to do it again. You know, now that you just said it, the part where he was made to kneel with Pycelle and Varys. I'm thinking about it again in the context of Pete's email. All of them, Pycelle and Jamie have taken vows of celibacy. Varys has not. But I mean, it's a well-known fact that he's a eunuch.

So vow of celibacy. various has not but i mean it's a well-known fact that he's a he's a eunuch so vow of celibacy um you shall father no children except upon your sister yep it's basically like making yourself right it's not like weird it's basically masturbation at that point right so jamie tells brienne off and to watch her mouth about Cersei, and she once more tells him not to call her wench. He asks why she cares what a monster calls her. Hmm. My name is Brienne, she repeated, dogged as a hound. Lady Brienne, she looked so uncomfortable that Jamie sensed a weakness.

Or would Sir Brienne be more to your taste? He laughed. No, I fear not. You can trick out a milk cow and crupper, crinit and chamfron, and bard her all in silk, but that doesn't mean you can ride her into battle. It's a fancy colloquialism. If you guys remember from our last John episodes,

we talked about some of the fancy colloquialisms and idioms that came about there, and that was a good one you know dress her up okay so a while back Aziz from History of Westeros actually tweeted about it and it's one of

my favorite things I'm so glad he highlighted it but my name is Brienne she repeated dogged as a hound that that like obviously a nod and it's not the only Brienne, she repeated, dogged as a hound. That, that, like, obviously a nod. And it's not the only nod to the hound in this entire chapter. We're gonna hear

a lot of stuff coming up. Sandor, being brought up into this, is a great person to compare her to. He refuses to be called a knight as a kingsguard and rejects knighthood and its values, but he's actually the closest to practicing knighthood's values brienne is unable to be a true knight in the current climate because of the current reign's gender norms and westeros and the

employ she finds herself in as well uh renly obviously was a different camp than joining up with the oh king joffrey baratheon and it's a bit different like jonquil dark under aliceanne is a much different allegory it was a much different time jaharis and aliceanne were very much so building while cersei is trying to help control over joffrey with tywin and it's a very awful horrendous reign uh and jonquil dark is very much so an analog to brienne right like this is another sandbox thing george was playing with especially under catalan or sansa in the future i think it's there to tell us that it can happen if it happens under the correct rule and i very much so think that lady brienne and sir brienne will come to be in the future. But it will take the right rulers to do so.

Sandor will likely also die a true knight. Both of these characters suffer cruelties as children. Both of the cruelties revolve around their, quote, monstrous looks, unquote. Sandor's being actual monstrous looks given to him from his brother and flame. Brienne's really just the cruelty of boys. Throw in a few spare remarks we'll hear as we go along, like grave-dicking and knights beating children, and Sandor reminders are aplenty here.

And on purpose, as we know what happens further to Brienne, the hound helm, and of course her face. Now, I want to put this out as a precursor. Yes, these are Jaime chapters, but we will obviously be covering a lot of Brienne. Never fear, you'll get a good break before Brienne. No spoilers on our POV order, but you will get a little break before we go to Brienne, so this will all feel new again someday. But there is some Sandor in Jaime as well, and Sandor being prominent and thematic in this chapter kind of makes sense. They both became children's soldiers out of necessity and survival in a way. Jaime

became a pawn of the game with his father being played by Aerys and Cersei playing with him. Sandor also had to join up into the Lannister army in a totally different rank. Joffrey kind of really looks up to Sandor. He looks up a little to Jaime too, right? But doesn't really have a relationship, a real relationship with either of them. And as you said, yes, we're going to talk about Brienne a lot. I mean, you kind of can't, you can't not. She's like such a big part of the next few chapters.

you kind of can't you can't not she's like such a big part of the next few chapters she's in many way a catalyst uh for much of what happens in jamie's story but it's a good thing that she gets her own too i mean jamie would have been boring honestly to just read him with no brienne changing him um she affected his life and added sexual tension again and we love sexual tension not from your sister i actually do this is true but let's talk about jamie's cousin kleos he says once more that jamie should watch his words and you know what we shouldn't quarrel with such a long trip ahead of us all right we're in a cramped van car all right i don't know when we're gonna get there and jamie says okay fine i won't fight all right but i get to hold the map and if i'm gonna quarrel i'm gonna do it with a sword then he notes kleos is wearing a surcoat quartered with both the fray and lannister

sigils beneath his cloak that's so. He's really trying to front. Yeah, he's like, hmm. He's trying to hedge all his bets here. Not working great. He starts to instigate a bit more with Brienne, asking if is every woman on Tarth as ugly as you? And then he pities the men

that live on that pitiful mountain in the water. And Brienne's like, shut the fuck up sapphire sapphire isle is beautiful it is probably and if you don't shut it i'm gonna gag you and jamie internally is like yes and no i'm joking but jamie's like please top me that's the only way i get off just ask cersei um you're kind of blonde if I squint. Jaime decides to grant her wish of him speaking to Cleos instead of her, asking

if Cleos thinks Brienne is rather rude. He commends Brienne, though, on having a spine and says, Ah, yes, well, she did call me a monster to my face cuz instead of behind my back like most men do. He legitimately respects this. He actually does. He's like, thank God someone's got he's like

you know she's got some awesome moxie yeah she does cleo says that lady stark must have spread lies to brienne the starks couldn't beat him at swords so they had to spread lies about him instead even though they're truths not lies and the starks also beat him at swords for those keeping count at home just want to make sure the scoreboard's out there yeah jamie is keeping count he's like no they beat me at swords you idiot that's why we were prisoners right if we were winning do you think i would be a prisoner yeah he's like excuse me cleos but also this is this is actually in fact a lannister tactic they could not beat the Starks at swords so they used lies

and ravens and trickery at the Red Wedding yes it's true though they couldn't have won otherwise yeah they couldn't Jaime gives a knowing smile wondering like

is Cleo's gonna finally fucking get it? And he's like, is Cleo sucking up to me? Is he trying to ingratiate himself in me? Or is he actually just like this? Why are you like this? And Cleo's goes on to say, any man who'd believe that a sworn brother of the Kingsguard would harm a child does not know the meaning of honor oh boy yeah later on boy do i not want you to read a clash of kings i know

later on jamie's gonna be like i know the meaning of honor it's a horse one day we'll get there um seriously though sansa one clash of kings shall we go sir aries offered his arm and she let him lead her from her chambers if she must have one of the king's guard dogging her steps sansa preferred it be him sir boros was short-tempered sir marin cold and sir mandan's strange dead eyes made her uneasy while sir preston treated her like a lackwit. Aerys Oakheart was courteous and would talk to her cordially, once he even objected when Joffrey commanded him to hit her. He did hit her in the end, but not hard, as Sir Meryn or Sir Boros might have, and at least he had argued.

The others obeyed without question, except for the hound, but Joff never asked the hound to punish her. He used the other five for that. but Joff never asked the hound to punish her he used the other five for that uh just wanted a reminder that the Kingsguard would never hit innocent children

never never Cleos Frey not all of them in varying degrees many times with full chainmail gloves no or swords Jamie at least didn't do that right with full chainmail gloves. No. Or swords.

Jamie at least didn't do that, right? He didn't hit Bran. He threw him out the window. Yeah, and so the next line in this is that he came to regret throwing Bran out of the window, but mostly because Cersei wouldn't quit nagging him. That actually is how he feels. That is legitimately how he feels. I didn't write the book, so you can't be nagging him. That actually is how he feels. That is legitimately how he feels. I didn't write the book, so you can't be mad at me, guys.

Yeah, Cersei actually is the one who shows concern here for a bit. At first, you kind of wonder, like, does she feel bad? Because she points out Bran was seven. We could have told him frightened him into silence done something else uh but turns out maybe she was actually just concerned about like what if he wakes up and remembers that was the bigger concern and jamie just pulled her into his lap telling her you know what we're gonna lie about it all right we're gonna tell him if that happens that you were dreaming and if it came to that like then I'll just kill Ned Stark

it's fine I'll go to war with Robert if I have to it's fine and he thinks like the war for Cersei's cunt that's what the singers are gonna call it yeah and that of course she tries to squeal out of his grasp and then he kisses her and holds her close and at first

she resists but then she gives in and he rips her clothing off of her and they forget close and at first she resists but then she gives in and he rips her clothing off of her and they forget all about braden stark braden stark bradford stark bradley stark uh he wonders if cersei had remembered bran after all of the orgasms and sent the cat's paw after brandon he's like i don't think she did it because she would have sent me to do it and the assassin royally forked up they move along the river and there's rotting tree banks and rocky bluffs and jamie spies a watchtower ahead i love this imagery here long before they were upon it he knew that it stood abandoned its weathered stones

overgrown with climbing roses it's pretty prose but it reminds me of a couple things at first it makes me think of the tyrells climbing roses right but when i think deeper it really does remind me of the tourney at heron hall and the false spring and i mean liana and rhaegar likely would have come right through this area right dashing through on horseback to me it symbolizes that dead dying youth the roses overgrown the tower demolished not a cab's covered aria 6 in a clash of kings this week and they talked a lot on how war shapes a place and the people that believe aries the second was a better ruler than the current regime who obviously do not know that Ares planned to roast the entire earth.

And all the plots that lead to, from, or through Harrenhal, it all seems to have this nostalgic feeling, almost like riding your horse into a different time period. And the scenery here feels like that as well. There's heavy forestation, wide water, but abandoned holdfasts and a lack of people. All the people have died and gone and now the river lands is basically nothing but the ghosts of war the north isn't the only place you find zombies this is where the dead live emmett said in not a cast last episode aries is

the standard by which all of the horrific abuses of power in a song of ice and fire are set and yet here we have the people telling us they miss him they're nostalgic for him as jamie and brianna and kleos race toward harrenhal well maybe not so much for kleos right uh the ghosts come more and more alive for jamie we begin to get more and more into that mindset and trauma of 15 and 16 year old jamie and the horrors that he saw and it all finally bubbles over when he gets to the bathhouse you know what what strikes me about the way that some of the scene looks also is it's a lot of scenery that we're going to see revisited in brienne's own chapters later when she

does her own quests throughout westeros um and sees a lot of the other aftermath of the horrors of the war um it's interesting that throughout all this, Jamie doesn't really think, what if all of this is my fault? That's true, actually, but that would mean he'd have to take some accountability. That doesn't come until at least three to four chapters from now. Maybe later, but yes. The wind shifts. Cleos helps set the blue and

red striped Tully canvas into the air so that they can sail faster. Makes them a lot more likely to be noticed. They would likely have to fight if they met Lannister forces, or if they even met Tully forces. Really, everyone's an enemy right now.

But it was all they had Brienne takes the rudder and they start to make some good speed Jaime says you know we could travel far less if instead we went to my father's house instead of Tyrion's but Brienne's like

no the whole point of this is that I'm gonna come back with the stark sisters brian's like all right all right cleo's lend me your knife it's gonna be fine and brian's like no jamie's like it's fine okay fine cleo's give me a shave leave the beard though and he realizes in that moment that brian fears him even while he's restrained. He wants to pass unnoticed, a bald man with a filthy beard instead of the Kingslayer with luscious locks. But the luscious locks aren't really that luscious right now.

Cleos is cutting them out. They're matted. Lice is coming out with them. Jaime douses his head in water and then Cleos shaves off the last bits of stubble. Jaime looks at his reflection and he doesn't know it he looks five years older thinner hollowed eyes wrinkles he thinks that he doesn't look like cersei much now and that she'll be unhappy about that which we kind of mentioned up top but uh cersei obviously sees people and things as extensions of herself and that might be where this relationship happens and then starts to go south jb thinks like oh this is actually like really good at shaving

fascinatingly this is a thought we get um and again i've said it several times we could have done jb right after theon right like along with the imprisonment suddenly he finds himself looking at at his own reflection and realizes he looks a lot older thinner right he looks like he's aged so much uh his hair even changes same as Theon's does and I I've written um an essay before chronicling how hair kind of signals change within characters throughout A Song of Ice and Fire I mean it's true in real life too and I think I spoke about it back then when we did Sansa's chapters you know people do that sometimes they're like I need a change in my life they get their hair cut Jamie does that right now uh the way we've done

this order now we can refer to both Theon and Jon, whatever. And like with Theon's chapters, along with the change in appearance post-imprisonment and the changing of the characters, it starts to really happen around rivers, right? For Theon, it was crossing that one river once more to kill the Miller's boys. Here with Jaime, it's a lot slower. He's traveling this river and begins thinking about it himself. He's within the riverlands itself a place that's kind of an in-between when it comes to all the different kingdoms it's his own like Rubicon but also I think of another line from Heraclitus of no man ever steps in the same river twice for it's not the same river and he's not the same man Jamie began this process of change at river run so i think it's

quite notable that he is going to return to river run and the riverlands and feast and he's going to be a very different man in many ways and also the riverlands is going to be quite different too it'll have changed hands and leadership the way that he leaves the riverlands when we see him last there he was trying to almost set up a little bit of foundation right a little bit of infrastructure um right some wrongs deal with some hostage situations and see if they could get the riverlands back to functioning so yes he's still working for the mob at that point which is his family even though his dad's dead so it's like why are's still working for the mob at that point, which is his family, even though his dad's dead. So it's like, why are you still working for your family?

But he's still, you know, pumping that Lannister name out there. But he has to keep the king's peace, right? And that's what he tried to do. So back on the skiff, Cleos falls asleep midday and Jaime takes this time to appreciate his semi-freedom. He stretches out to watch trees and shacks and rocks pass by the boat. Birds fly overhead, silverfish swim in the water, but he thinks that's a bad omen because they're totally trout. But the omens just seem to get worse because they pass dead men swollen in the water in Lannister Crimson. He wonders if he knew the man.

Back when there was no war, the Trident would have been way busier with merchants and fishermen and barges, all taking up vacancy on the fort, but not now. They pass empty villages, empty nets, people who run when they see the sight of a sail, pass burnt tower houses, people watched from afar, waiting to make sure the skiff that's passing is not an enemy brienne seems to catch any dangers that threaten to throw their skiff over and jamie

compliments her on this sincerely she regards him pretty suspiciously saying she doesn't really know the rivers she learned oars and sails at tarth though before she could ride and then it looks like it might rain and jamie welcomes that he's like man i haven't had a shower in a long time we don't really have showers but i kind of get the idea of it when it comes from the sky uh first though they smell and see smoke in the distance they float closer uh seeing smoking remains of a building in an oak full of that is uh full of dead sex workers because once upon a time it was a brothel brianne says this was not chivalry chivalrously done and that no true knight would condone such wanton butchery true knights see worse every time they ride to war wench said jamie and do worse

yes brianne turned the rudder toward the shore i'll leave no innocence to be food for crows a heartless wench crows need to eat as well stay to the river and leave the dead alone woman so in this line we get a sense of who jamie is in this moment right he's not trying to he's not trying to rock the boat he's just like but what about let's let's just have the status quo he's like the world needs to keep turning the way that it is anyway he never got rewarded for doing the right thing so why would he keep doing it yeah exactly he was condemned for it so why would he do yes true and every time that he thought about doing the right thing he was told no don't do that so they land the skiff upstream by the oak jamie climbs clumsily to the shore rinsing himself off in the water the women hang with a sign on one of the corpses that reads they lay with lions

and then jamie jamie smiles at this because not only was this unchivalrously done, it was done by Brienne's side. Allegedly. She said she serves Lady Catelyn. Anyway, this is a reread. So we already know how jaded Jamie is. He counters Brienne's ideas of true knighthood with their own sins.

Knowing them firsthand. Being a knight and all. And he tells Brienne that this was done by her side you know she's like again no because what he's trying to do is get her to be as jaded as he is he's trying to tear the veil off and change her in that horror right the way that it was for him right he's trying to turn her into into him? We see the Hound do this with Sansa too, in a way. And for Jaime, he realized the fairy tales and legends of knighthood were a lie when they started to become unattainable for him.

But I think that the difference for Brienne is like, they were always unattainable for her. The gender norms of Westeros told her, well, you can't be the beautiful princess you also can't be the knight and she's just like well i'm just gonna try to do the best that i can and that's something that's going to uh really resonate with jamie later on in a way brienne has every bit of the ferocity that cersei has but she is completely the inversion right uh cersei grew up knowing that she couldn't have those things and because of it

she lashed out and she internalized all that misogyny and brienne took those things internalized them and wanted to do better wanted to do something good and to be good yeah and it's something that he hates in ned stark as well right because he thinks that ned stark also has a sullied honor in his own way he's he asks by what right does the wolf judge the lion and he doesn't like it many characters right that's why they love the narrative that ned fathered a bastard because they don't like the idea that someone could fail and keep trying to do better. Cleos recognizes this inn, as some of his men had found comfort there when they last were at Riverrun. Nothing remained of the building but the black stone foundation and a tangle of collapsed

beams, charred black. Smoke still rose from the ashes. Jaime left brothels and whores to his brother tyrian cersei was the only woman he had ever wanted jamie remarks they earned their traitor's collars by kissing and serving the lord father's his lord father's men and that they're on bracken land jonos bracken had his castle burnt by tywin and he would have no love for lannisters really good nod especially since jamie has to treat with Jonos Bracken later on. True. Also, another thing that I'm thinking of in Brienne's storyline, but the delay with lions, or like, they love Lannister men. I mean, we don't know that Brienne and Jaime will sleep together in the books.

I hope that they will. I i think i think it's been pretty prophesied before the bad show even kind of already happens right like in jamie three but it's i i want it to happen i desperately do and i mean it's literally going to use that same language. Oh, that would be so good. I'd be so happy. Anyway, but she, right? She's trying to honor these women, right? And quite frankly, she might be one of those who would have been branded as they lay with lions. Throwing it out there. Absolutely. out there absolutely and i do think coming back to that idea of the last word being soared with cattle and toli uh in the last chapter they were all in together and of course the last chapter

that comes up with all of them again in the end of the series here of what we have published i think there's another nod right here that this very first chapter of the Jamie and Brienne show moving on the road starts with hanged people right yes yes Lannister uh quote-unquote Lannister supporters or Lannister sympathizers or people that obviously were really just trying to make their money they're just trying to make a living they really were probably just getting a buck or two yeah um that's definitely that's a good connection but for now

Cleos thinks that you know what it could be Mark Piper who did this or maybe Beric Dondarrion it wasn't Beric Dondarrion he thinks it could be Bolton's Northmen Cleos comments that except Beric only kills soldiers but I mean yeah maybe it'll be Beric's men

later on once you know they're taken over by Lady Stoneheart whatever later on Jaime says his father defeated Bolton though and Cleos is like yeah he was taken but not broken Bolton came back right and he commands now at Harrenhal and Jaime's like

I don't really like that I don't like the sound of that at all. Yeah, and from here, this guides us to Harrenhal, right? We were always going to Harrenhal. That foreboding mention of Bolton controlling the keep starts here, and Harrenhal is where Jaime's life died. Day zero, he's crowned a Kingsguard member and

whisked away to his own tower, so to say, unable to compete guarding rayella and her son um i don't think the princess and the tower trope is alone there right we can add jamie to it kings garden the tower yeah uh that's such a i mean we do have a gerald high tower first of all um but i think that's such a good point that Harrenhal is a place of great significance in Jaime's life yeah now that he's going there and has to face his old

ghosts and he does right the bear pit is a very big it's a big moment for him that is a moment that shows a bunch of growth and it's truly some really chivalrous romanticism it's beautiful it's you know you swoon when you read it okay it's just gorgeous it's a gorgeous jumps back into the bear pit so he did it's his so we'll get back to it we'll get back to it oh my god we're never

doing this podcast ever i mean how are we gonna get through all day yeah we're never doing this podcast ever. I mean, how are we going to get through all these dating chapters? Yeah, we're all just like, but this thing that happens in two chapters, let's talk about it now. He warns Brienne the trident and King's Road are really likely to be watched at this point, and she's not bothered. She tells him they would have to go through her to get to him, and he grants her the courtesy of her name during this exchange, hoping that she might actually listen to him. When Jamie questions how intimidating she would be on the King's Road, she defends herself, saying she was one of Renly's chosen seven in the Rainbow Guard. Really good thing to lead with, though, honestly.

Yeah, he's like, I'm just as good as you. And he mocks her, saying, so you're likely one of seven girls in Renly's Guard. And he goes, a singer once said that all maids are fair and silk but he never met you did he damn what the fuck yeah it's kind of rude yeah i'm so glad the love of my life tells me i'm a sow in silk all the time it's interesting that he mocks runley's king's guard considering that that what later on Jamie's like you know who I kind of see a little bit of like my younger self in Loras Terrell

yes you know Jamie's negging Brienne turns red tells him we have graves to dig okay interesting gravedigger again brings us right back to Sandor right the gravedigger. Interesting. Again, brings us right back to Sandor, right?

The gravedigger lowered his head. When Dog went to sniff him, he dropped his spade and scratched his ear. So Sandor as the gravedigger was very much so set up, even back here. And of course, this easily brings our mind to Sandor and Brienne's likely shared ancestor, Dunk the Lunk, Duncan the Tall tall another king's guard member who we first meet digging a grave he laid him out on the bottom of the grave and stood over him for a time the smell of rain was in the air again and he knew he ought to fill that hole before the rain broke but it was hard to throw dirt down on that tired old face the hedge knight another great hedge knight nod here since we've discussed many times

before but george wrote these books practically neck and neck next to each other and the themes are so very apparent the tree that the tavern women are tied to is a giant oak oak and iron guard me well or else i'm dead and doomed to hell i think Brienne burying these dead women, even though she doesn't know them, especially as they were harmed for doing their jobs and surviving, is so important. And we really get to see the three characterizations of these characters in this scene. Cleo thinks that burying these dead women is a waste of time and they're not worth it because they're sex workers. Jamie, as we know, is very blasé.ase he does not care he would not have wasted his time with it uh he knows someone else could have done that and brienne does it because

men and women's lives have meaning and letting their deaths be displayed like this is pretty atrocious and disrespectful yeah she does because she's like it's the right thing to do as you said atrocious and disrespectful if we're trying to do the right thing it almost happens to her brienne climbs the oak tree to cut down the women while of course cleo's complains but when she gets to the top she shouts down and she's like oh shit uh she spotted a sail on the water coming to them they hurry shoving off and and Brienne commands Cleos to row as well. And then we get a chase scene. Too fast, too furious. On the river.

Yeah, Jaime's chained up. All he can do is try to see the sails. Mud-red, watery blue sails that are following them. They spend a good hour, the other boat tailing them. Sometimes visible, sometimes not. And Jaime notes that it's a river galley with 18 men rowing. There is no way for them to outrow this one. He's already done the math and split up the people.

Six to Jamie, six to Cleo, six to Brienne. Jamie would have taken eight, but he hints that his chains are hindering him, and Brienne ignores that hint. She's busy rowing to get them out of this mess, while Jamie talks Cleo down, saying that these people are going to be exhausted they had a long night and they've likely only rested two rowers at a time they only have this small burst of we see the enemy energy but jamie thinks they're going to be tired and they'll be able to kill some but then he also thinks the best they could hope for is to die with swords in their hands of course he does i do want to correct

myself briefly it wouldn't be like too fast too furious because the earlier fast and furious movies were about racing the later ones were more about heists and chases so this would be one of the later ones anyway um i would like to argue that the fast and furious series is actually more about a family wow even if it's not a blood family. You're right. Thank you. And maybe Fast and Furious are the friends you made along the way. It actually is.

We have a quote here of He was perfectly sincere. Jamie Lannister had never been afraid of death. Brienne broke off rowing. Sweat had stuck strands of her flax-colored hair to her forehead and her grimace made her look homelier than ever you are under my protection she said her voice so thick with anger that was almost a growl he had to laugh at such fierceness she's the hound with teats he thought or would be if she had any teats to speak of stop looking then protect me wench or free me to protect myself

so there we have our next sandor reference moving past that there's so many peppered in here like in this like first chapter i know i love it very interesting um and again jamie in the context of bianna describing jamie's background looking looking at it as it's all been laid out now in this lightning round, you know, he's supposed to be a protector, right? It's literally his job. Literally the thing he's supposed to do as a knight.

So I find it quite pointed that in his disgraced state right now, suddenly instead of being the protector, he's the one who has to be protected there's that very very much reversal and i mean he's not innocent he's not worthy of this protection and yet brienne is doing her best to do so in a way that jamie failed to do he was unable to do and in many ways was disallowed from doing in the past the boat is furiously gaining on them and jamie sees men

with crossbows on the deck and he thinks he hated archers a stocky bald man with a green weeping willow embroidered on his surcoat and the silver trout of river run fastening his cloak stands at the prow of the ships once a great fighter sir robin reiger's fighting days were long over kind of funny coincidence here that uh tyrian killed his dad with a crossbow huh and jamie hates archers just putting that out there yeah funny line uh i think jamie of course hates archers for cowardice right uh he prefers to kill a man when they're facing you. But late medieval England was really fond of archers because inexpensive, easy quantity they could raise for armies and kings tended to keep a strong guard of them on their personal guard. The master of crossbows

was a prestigious position in France for a prominent time period and shooting and shooting guilds kind of rose up very often. They were a common way to build potential soldiers. So Jaime, yes, hates these archers for the cowardice, that you should kill a man face-to-face or in intimate combat. So really, this is probably more self-reflection on his own cowardice regarding Aerys and Rhaella, but I like the added subtext that the archers were a prestigious but glorified position in his eyes and that they were also assholes for not having to do the up-close work like he's had to do jamie calls out to robin to robin reiger when the boats are within 50 feet of each other asking him if he had have you come to wish me godspeed? And then they banter words, and he negs Robin this time,

and Rhyger calls for them to abandon their arms in the water, and no one will be harmed. And then Jaime's like, and he's also like, what happened to your hair? And Jaime's like, well, I had this plan. I was going to blind people with my baldness, and as he says that, all I can think about is Krillin from Dragon Ball Z like this was literally one of his signature moves

it was always very exciting for me whenever he did it I was like yes Krillin Krillin's my man see and now that makes me think of that makes me think of Caillou oh interesting I don't think of Caillou very often I don't think about Caillou at all what's the other anime guy

that looks like grown-up kaiju one punch man yes there you go did they come out with i think the second see i haven't watched the second season yet um and i don't follow the manga i haven't watched any um it's fun it's a fun you should watch it it's a funny anime. I've heard good things. I have. Cleos tells Jamie to use Catelyn Stark as their excuse, but Ryder says, you know what? She doesn't rule in Riverrunner, right? So go put your weapons in the water. And Jamie's like, well, I have no

sword, but if I did, I'd sink it through your belly and hack the balls off those four Cravens. Is this helping? Is this not? This is this helping is this not this is not helping jamie yeah he knows i mean what does he have to lose it's just yelling out the car window it's you know he doesn't really have a hand to wave with um oh my gosh just kidding he has two for now jamie is answered by a flight of arrows that barely miss him they pierce the boat instead brienne is busy driving

the boat as they meet another ben and she commands kleos to take the tiller jamie to take an oar to keep them away from the rocks jamie watches brienne's eyes and he thinks they're pretty and calm she's not afraid and she's not desperate she's determined i love this back and forth of jamie thinking and saying that she's ugly or that he hates her but then within the same like heartbeat his actions or a secondary thought seem to betray that we're gonna see this a lot more as we get to the end of the chapter and every single week i think uh going forward we'll see this more i love this trope in shoujo manga also not a joke uh they round a corner a brief break from the arrows and jamie pushes them off

of a half submerged boulder which then causes brianne to fall into the water and then she's gone but then she pulls herself up at the base of the rocky bluffs because would you believe that brianne might be a strong swimmer having grown up on sapphire isle that Brienne might be a strong swimmer having grown up on Sapphire Isle. The Sapphire Isle. She's a strong something. She's like freaking strong woman in this scene. Cleos is paying more attention to her than the water.

And Jaime's like, come on, Cleos, get with it, get with it. Brienne can catch up later. The large galley can also catch up because it's catching up to them now. Brienne is climbing up the cliff face and Jaime realizes Sir Rhyger is going to be able to see Brienne and command her shot by those archers. So Jaime shoots his shot and he sees if he can rile up Rhyger's pride a little more. And he challenges him to one on one combat. And he's like, I'll still be in chains. And Rhyger refuses. He's like, nope, I'm commanded and riger refuses he's like nope i'm commanded to

bring you back alive if i can and he tells his archers to get ready to notch draw and loose their bows narrow their he commands his archers to notch draw and loose but they miss loosing a boulder that tumbles down onto their boat tears their sail sail, breaks in two, sends two archers to the river, cripples an oarsman, and the galley begins to fill with water extremely fast and off Jaime and Cleo's fuck to get Brienne from the clifftop.

This is a really interesting way to adapt the plot of Mulan to Jaime's storyline. Jaime thinks that the gods are good after all, as they leave the galley struggling in the waters, thinking that, you know, it really couldn't

have been planned better. He's like, now we're gonna lose Brienne and Riker's crew in one good motion. And then Brienne gracefully like, dives off of the clifftop and he can't help but admire that form. Olympic, Olympic 10 out of 10 toward their place in the water. And he thinks, man, you know, with one good swing of the orb,

we're going to be able to get rid of her. And yet instead, instead. It's not supposed to be funny, but it is. I think it is supposed to be funny. You know, there's a lot in Jaime's interiority that's just as funny and witty as Tyrion oh yes you can see how they probably

exchanged barbs all the time but you know instead of hitting Brienne with the oar he's like but what if I pulled her back on with it and he doesn't even think about it though the same beat of him thinking i'll be able to get rid of brienne he instinctively offers the ore to bring her up

and i think actions speak louder than words here jamie shows that throughout the entire chapter and book his split wants and loyalties are so very strong. He wants to grow, and he's finally had his first taste of freedom from the life he was kind of stuck in in many ways. But he chooses his family and Cersei first, time and time and again. But what if he chose Jaime first? What would happen in that alternate universe? Well, the struggle between those two ideas is what we're going to explore moving forward yeah and also the rivals to lovers romantic trope yes and beauty and the beast all the worlds colliding but for now we close the chapter

as he helped her into the skiff water ran from her hair and dripped from her sodden clothing to pool on the deck. She's even uglier wet. Who'd have thought it possible? You're a bloody stupid wen, she told her. We could have sailed on without you. I suppose you expect me to thank you? I want none of your thanks, Kingslayer. I swore an oath to bring you safe to King's Landing. And you actually mean to keep it? Jamie gave her his brightest smile. Now there's a wonder.

Oathkeeper? Question mark? I strongly- This is good? This is good. I strongly believe that. It's probably not true, but Oathkeeper the Keyblade is a reference to this I think so

I want to I want to believe in the heart of the cards wait no but there is cards in what is it Chain of Memories that's true and I mean there's totally blue eyes blue dragon

oh my god so yeah that's our first Jaime episode it is and like it ends with Jaime once more pondering the idea of keeping vows and that's literally like how this chapter very much starts

as he reflects on the vows that he made to Catelyn Stark and he has no intent to keep them but he's like wow I guess Brienne does I love that their first chapter ends on her saying she swore an oath chilling stuff

there's a lot of really great parallels to the past chapters to Catelyn to Brienne in the future in this chapter as a first chapter of the book not counting the prologue is a very strong chapter to start it off a very different chapter and i think george made the right decision putting absolutely it it sends you for a loop in

many different ways you're like wow we're getting into the head of the guy who like set off set in motion all of these events. And you suddenly start to realize... I mean, Jamie's just such a well-constructed exploration for George, right? And not to mention, we're seeing the Riverlands through someone's eyes that didn't grow up there. That's true, too. It's someone... He spent a lot of time there.

But as you said, not native. Well, next week we are going to be doing Chapter 2, Jamie 2, In a Storm of Swords. I am very, very excited about that one. I'm more excited about Jamie's third chapter, but we'll talk about that next week. A lot of the things that we've discussed about jamie's past we're going to revisit in much more detail next chapter so that'll be very interesting i think you know what'd be what's cool about some of these older characters right we did a lot of the young characters but with barrison and jamie you get a lot of the he's like 30 something right you get a lot of flashbacks

because they have lived a lot of life prior to this moment yeah it makes up for getting these late character additions right you get sansa and brian and aria and john and danny from the very start uh but you don't get jamie and that's okay because you know he has a rich history the way george weaves in finally giving him a voice and giving us that view into his world is brilliant and and for a lot of the young characters it's their initial preconceptions the world being challenged and i think for the older characters it's unlearning things and trying to relearn new things it's it's a different there there there's ways obviously in which they connect people are always growing and learning

if they want to and we find Jamie suddenly for the first time in his life in a very long time wanting to and it's a hell of a ride we're on this river of life together

just around the river bend is Robin Riger together just around the riverbed is robin reiger so make sure you guys are subscribed to us on social media if you want to shout out something about the episode or talk about jamie lannister or talk about anything a song of ice and fire shoot us a tweet or a direct message over at Girls Gone Canon, C-A-N-O-N, or girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. Yes, and of course, I mean, here we are. We have just started Jamie Lannister, but we're going to have a lot of other episodes come out soon, too. Things are going to get a little mixed up this February, but stay tuned. Subscribe to us on all the

podcast platforms you can find us on Stitcher on Acast on Google Play on Apple what is it called whatever I'm gonna fucking call it iTunes it's fucking iTunes Spotify those are the big ones

there's other ones that we're on I forgot oh Podbean Podbean's a big one it's where we host all these things and of course we could not bring you these episodes every week without our wonderful patrons who support us in many many ways and also fiscally if you want to be a patron you can pledge to us five5 and up patrons actually get specially crafted episodes every single month. Last month was an episode on the Maiden Vault in A Song of Ice and Fire. And this month, we are about to announce in the next week or two. So stay tuned for that information.

As always, I have been one of your hosts, Chloe. And I have been another one of your hosts, Alayana. Thanks for listening, guys.