A Clash of Kings
This post's been a long time coming, and as it turns out, it's long and rambly and bullet-pointed. Coherent, beautifully formed meta essays remain the dream, but until then, here's what's been on my mind. This post contains spoilers for books (and GoT seasons) one and two only; please don't go any further in the comments, as so many people are at different points in the series...
- I kept hearing about people who wolfed the first book down and then got stuck in the middle of the second, but I found it really compelling. It's only in hindsight, and having just seen the second season of the TV show, that I realise just how lengthy the wandering sections of this book are, particularly for Arya. But that feels essential to the atmosphere of tension and foreboding, and to creating in the reader's mind a sense of how barren and chaotic the wartorn Westeros landscape is. I admire how GRRM spent the first book building such a complex society, deceptively attractive and romantic in many ways, and the second book tearing the thing to pieces and revealing it for what it is. And just as you get overwhelmed by all the factions, so many that the blurb on my edition of the book actually undercounts them - there's Robb and Joffrey and Stannis and Renly and Dany and even bloody Theon - THEN you suddenly realise, somewhere near the end, just how insignificant the whole war will be if the Others ever get through the Wall, because, you know, Winter is Coming.
- This will sound like such an odd complaint, but I was a bit dismayed when magical elements started creeping into CoK. (Pause to smirk at "CoK". Okay, moving on.) I love fantasy, but magic is very soft-pedalled in the first book, at least compared to what I was expecting, and I guess that skewed my expectations. It's bookended by the Others and Dany's dragons (and her own Unburnt-ness), with some ice zombies at Castle Black, but the everyday life of Westeros is ruled by politics and the seasons - much like everyday life in medieval Europe. So two things in particular threw me, though I'd become accustomed to them by the end: Melisandre's religion involving real magic, and the whole Bran-becoming-a-warg/Jojen's-precognitive-dreams thing.
- I think what bothered me about Melisandre's religion was also that it felt like a too-obvious take on Christianity (one god, Rh'llor, the Lord of Light) supplanting paganism (the Seven). But then, considering that the religion of the Seven itself has a lot of echoes of Christianity in terms of how it runs through Westerosi life (especially with the Sept being the theatre for political marriages and executions)... looked at in that way, it's not such a simplistic parallel, in the same way that you can't map every individual in the books onto some figure from the succession wars of our own history. Also, it's interesting how the Maesters have the role that monks had in medieval Europe, but seem to be a secular order - it means that the culture in Westeros divides education and religion in a way that didn't (as I understans it) happen in Christian medieval Europe (though I wonder about Islamic Spain, about which I know next to nothing). I'm curious about what differences that makes, or will make as the series progresses. If the worship of Rh'llor really takes off, will the Citadel become a threat or an ally to that powerbase?
Melisandre herself didn't appeal to me at all in the book, seeming too much the generic Evil Sorceress, but Carice van Houten brought her alive for me in GoT and now I'm curious about her as a person.
- I'm still in two minds about Bran being a warg. By the end of the book, both he and Jon have had psychic experiences involving their wolves and it gets a bit easier to swallow. I'm not sure about the role of precognition in the series in general - Jojen's green dreams certainly have come true so far, but it seems to me that there's a subtle distinction between dreams predicting the future and their defining it. By the time he dreamed of the Ironmen invading, they were already set on their course. Could anything have been changed? (Actually, "Could anything have been changed?" is the question I find myself asking most as I read these books. What difference would X have made? I imagine the fic for this fandom must be a paradise of plotty canon fork AUs, especially with the lengthy waits between books giving people time to develop elaborate theories...) Also, I wonder if the comet has any actual significance, or if it's just there for the comedy value of everyone reading their own glory/doom into it.
- I still love Arya and I find what happens with her and Jaqen H'ghar in this book really interesting. One of the few things I know about the wider fandom is that there is a tendency to set up Arya against Sansa and for people to pick a side, but I don't think one is better than the other. Sansa's also trying to use her survival skills as best she can, just different ones, and I think it's easy to forget that she had the advantage/disadvantage of being raised by Ned Stark. Ned was a good soldier, loving father and wise leader in Winterfell, but was absolutely not equipped for the rest of the world. No wonder it takes Sansa so long to catch on that honour and chivalry are, for most people, only a veneer.
- My favourite in this book, though, is Tyrion. I love that he gets the chance to show how well he can scheme and play politics, though he also makes himself and Shae incredibly vulnerable. On the one hand I can understand him taking the risk - he loves her and as a Lannister he's used to being able to buy people's cooperation. On the other hand, the relationship is his Achilles heel and other people (Alayaya) suffer for it.
I'm not even sure at what point Cersei and he became enemies - maybe Jaime maintained the fragile balance between them until his capture, or maybe Tyrion simply didn't become a threat worthy of having murdered (as opposed to "the brother I hate because his birth killed my mother") in Cersei's mind until he started asking questions about why he'd been framed for the attempted murder of Bran. I wonder if it's related to Tyrion's being a perceived threat in terms of the family pecking order/who their father favours. Tyrion, of course, should rightfully inherit Casterly Rock. Jaime is out of the running due to being in the Kingsguard, which leaves Tyrion and Cersei - Cersei would not directly inherit, I think, but would be the means by which Joffrey would inherit. And there's nothing Cersei wouldn't do for Joffrey.
I love Tyrion's interactions with Pycelle, Littlefinger and especially Varys. Flicking through the book just now, I caught some nice foreshadowing when he and Varys discuss power:
"Varys smiled. 'Power resides where men believe it resides; no more and no less.'
'So power is a mummer's trick?'
'A shadow on the wall,' Varys murmured. 'Yet shadows can kill.'"
...which is so much more sinister second time around, in light of the manner of Renly's death. I was so shocked by that, even knowing that ASOIAF has a body count to rival The Hunger Games. I never entirely decided what I thought of him - only time would have told whether his kingship would have been one of style over substance, but he was certainly a savvy operator (got the Tyrells on his side, and the famine in King's Landing shows how important that is) and had good people around him (Loras, Margaery, Brienne) who I think would have aged well with him as comrades in war and advisers in peace. He had charisma without the underlying cruelty of Robert, and he handled things very, very cleverly when Catelyn came to negotiate with him. He also tried to reach out to Stannis, to avoid a fight, which was a wise move even if it was always likely to be rebuffed. Actually, I think I've just argued myself into realising that Renly would've made an excellent king. Shit.
Stannis... I believe him when he says he doesn't WANT to be king, didn't ask for the responsibility, but is just doing what he must because he must, unaccustomed as he is to public speaking, etc. etc. But I also believe that hubris always, always threatens a man like that in a position like that. People often act based on ego without being able to acknowledge it, and Stannis's ego has been well and truly tested over the years - Renly getting what should've been his? Watching Robert degenerate from a leader of men into a one-man bacchanal over the course of his reign, while mortgaging the realm to the hilt to Tywin Lannister? Yeah, I think Stannis might be suffering from some unacknowledged ego, and I'm not convinced that becoming monarch of the Seven Kingdoms would be good for him as a human being - to say nothing of the lack of popular support. (I don't think he'd be another Aerys - Joffrey could ABSOLUTELY be another Aerys - but I can picture him instituting an Augustus Caesar-like morality policy in order to clean up the realm, whereupon someone would probably murder him with a blade cunningly concealed in a dildo.)
Surprisingly, during this book I also realised that I didn't want Robb to become king. He doesn't interest me terribly as a person (his relationship with Catelyn, now THAT interests me), but that's not the reason - it's just obvious that the Iron Throne is terribly, terribly corrupting. And I know he's not shooting for the Iron Throne here, but it's also clear that in Westeros, you don't have a secure power base unless you rule everything. And that's the entire book (possibly series) in a nutshell: you always wind up having to do more harm than you could ever have wished for just to defend your own little patch of land: medieval mutually assured destruction.
And while we're looking at unsuitable candidates for high positions... there's Theon. All credit to GRRM, for a character I actively dislike, he manages to make Theon's POV chapters interesting and illuminating. I love the Viking-like culture of the Iron Islands and how it contrasts with that of Winterfell - that Theon could be so spectacularly wrong in his father's eyes by wearing stuff he's only bought, not killed for, is the perfect emblem of that. Theon becomes understandable if not actually likeable, and I love how Asha just lets him hang himself with his own cock- er, rope. I do feel sorry for him regarding Balon, though - it's hard to see what Theon could've done RIGHT as a hostage, in Balon's eyes. Add another to the long list of dysfunctional father/son relationships in ASOIAF.
Here's something I don't understand: when Bran and Rickon escape and Theon hunts for them, Reek (formerly Ramsay Bolton's man) comes to him with a theory - that the boys are hiding at Acorn Waters mill - apparently based on more knowledge than he's willing to account for. He's brought a sack from Winterfell, which he hands Theon as if it explains everything, and it turns out to contain a direwolf brooch. Theon gets angry because he knows he can trust no-one. I feel like I'm being dense, here, but I don't get the significance of the brooch or Theon's reasoning. Even knowing something of the name Reek based on later seasons of the TV show and what they show about book 5. I'm not looking for book 5 spoilers; I just want to know whether this part is intentionally obscure (because a germ of a theory I'm forming about book 5 is right) or if I'm missing something that's obvious from book 2 alone.
I get the impression (perhaps wrongly) that the whole subterfuge with the corpses of the children from the mill is Reek's idea, but I'm not sure (I forget the details of subsequent events from Bran's POV in the next book) whether Theon actively aided in Bran's escape by killing those kids as substitutes, or just killed them because, having lost the Starks, he had to bring *somebody's* corpses back to Winterfell in order not to appear ineffectual either to the Starks' people or his own. Either way, if he knows the Stark boys are still alive, he's taking a big risk should they ever re-emerge. That said, Theon hasn't been the best decision-maker so far.
That it's taken so long to put this post together creates odd perspectives (on Reek, especially). I've now finished A Feast For Crows, and heard some general enough spoilers on book 5 that I have some embryonic theories. But for now I should hurry up and post this. I'll say one more thing, though: this is the book where we learn that yes, GRRM is a ruthless killer, but he's also a liar. He reveals the "deaths" of Bran and Rickon off-page but in an utterly compelling and believable way. It's horrific. A tiny part of me wanted to put the book aside. The reveal that they're not actually dead comes mercifully before the end of the book (perhaps it didn't seem wise to let his readers hang on for years and perhaps not come back), but it also tells us that, while anyone (Renly!) can die, they're not dead unless you personally saw their throat slit or their head leave their shoulders. And sometimes, as on the other side of the Wall, not even then...
Next week (I know, hark at my ambition), A Storm of Swords, or at least volume I of it. And as somebraveapollo will be happy to hear, the meat of my thoughts on Tyrion... and Jaime. Because this was also the book where Jaime began to get interesting...
- I kept hearing about people who wolfed the first book down and then got stuck in the middle of the second, but I found it really compelling. It's only in hindsight, and having just seen the second season of the TV show, that I realise just how lengthy the wandering sections of this book are, particularly for Arya. But that feels essential to the atmosphere of tension and foreboding, and to creating in the reader's mind a sense of how barren and chaotic the wartorn Westeros landscape is. I admire how GRRM spent the first book building such a complex society, deceptively attractive and romantic in many ways, and the second book tearing the thing to pieces and revealing it for what it is. And just as you get overwhelmed by all the factions, so many that the blurb on my edition of the book actually undercounts them - there's Robb and Joffrey and Stannis and Renly and Dany and even bloody Theon - THEN you suddenly realise, somewhere near the end, just how insignificant the whole war will be if the Others ever get through the Wall, because, you know, Winter is Coming.
- This will sound like such an odd complaint, but I was a bit dismayed when magical elements started creeping into CoK. (Pause to smirk at "CoK". Okay, moving on.) I love fantasy, but magic is very soft-pedalled in the first book, at least compared to what I was expecting, and I guess that skewed my expectations. It's bookended by the Others and Dany's dragons (and her own Unburnt-ness), with some ice zombies at Castle Black, but the everyday life of Westeros is ruled by politics and the seasons - much like everyday life in medieval Europe. So two things in particular threw me, though I'd become accustomed to them by the end: Melisandre's religion involving real magic, and the whole Bran-becoming-a-warg/Jojen's-precognitive-dreams thing.
- I think what bothered me about Melisandre's religion was also that it felt like a too-obvious take on Christianity (one god, Rh'llor, the Lord of Light) supplanting paganism (the Seven). But then, considering that the religion of the Seven itself has a lot of echoes of Christianity in terms of how it runs through Westerosi life (especially with the Sept being the theatre for political marriages and executions)... looked at in that way, it's not such a simplistic parallel, in the same way that you can't map every individual in the books onto some figure from the succession wars of our own history. Also, it's interesting how the Maesters have the role that monks had in medieval Europe, but seem to be a secular order - it means that the culture in Westeros divides education and religion in a way that didn't (as I understans it) happen in Christian medieval Europe (though I wonder about Islamic Spain, about which I know next to nothing). I'm curious about what differences that makes, or will make as the series progresses. If the worship of Rh'llor really takes off, will the Citadel become a threat or an ally to that powerbase?
Melisandre herself didn't appeal to me at all in the book, seeming too much the generic Evil Sorceress, but Carice van Houten brought her alive for me in GoT and now I'm curious about her as a person.
- I'm still in two minds about Bran being a warg. By the end of the book, both he and Jon have had psychic experiences involving their wolves and it gets a bit easier to swallow. I'm not sure about the role of precognition in the series in general - Jojen's green dreams certainly have come true so far, but it seems to me that there's a subtle distinction between dreams predicting the future and their defining it. By the time he dreamed of the Ironmen invading, they were already set on their course. Could anything have been changed? (Actually, "Could anything have been changed?" is the question I find myself asking most as I read these books. What difference would X have made? I imagine the fic for this fandom must be a paradise of plotty canon fork AUs, especially with the lengthy waits between books giving people time to develop elaborate theories...) Also, I wonder if the comet has any actual significance, or if it's just there for the comedy value of everyone reading their own glory/doom into it.
- I still love Arya and I find what happens with her and Jaqen H'ghar in this book really interesting. One of the few things I know about the wider fandom is that there is a tendency to set up Arya against Sansa and for people to pick a side, but I don't think one is better than the other. Sansa's also trying to use her survival skills as best she can, just different ones, and I think it's easy to forget that she had the advantage/disadvantage of being raised by Ned Stark. Ned was a good soldier, loving father and wise leader in Winterfell, but was absolutely not equipped for the rest of the world. No wonder it takes Sansa so long to catch on that honour and chivalry are, for most people, only a veneer.
- My favourite in this book, though, is Tyrion. I love that he gets the chance to show how well he can scheme and play politics, though he also makes himself and Shae incredibly vulnerable. On the one hand I can understand him taking the risk - he loves her and as a Lannister he's used to being able to buy people's cooperation. On the other hand, the relationship is his Achilles heel and other people (Alayaya) suffer for it.
I'm not even sure at what point Cersei and he became enemies - maybe Jaime maintained the fragile balance between them until his capture, or maybe Tyrion simply didn't become a threat worthy of having murdered (as opposed to "the brother I hate because his birth killed my mother") in Cersei's mind until he started asking questions about why he'd been framed for the attempted murder of Bran. I wonder if it's related to Tyrion's being a perceived threat in terms of the family pecking order/who their father favours. Tyrion, of course, should rightfully inherit Casterly Rock. Jaime is out of the running due to being in the Kingsguard, which leaves Tyrion and Cersei - Cersei would not directly inherit, I think, but would be the means by which Joffrey would inherit. And there's nothing Cersei wouldn't do for Joffrey.
I love Tyrion's interactions with Pycelle, Littlefinger and especially Varys. Flicking through the book just now, I caught some nice foreshadowing when he and Varys discuss power:
"Varys smiled. 'Power resides where men believe it resides; no more and no less.'
'So power is a mummer's trick?'
'A shadow on the wall,' Varys murmured. 'Yet shadows can kill.'"
...which is so much more sinister second time around, in light of the manner of Renly's death. I was so shocked by that, even knowing that ASOIAF has a body count to rival The Hunger Games. I never entirely decided what I thought of him - only time would have told whether his kingship would have been one of style over substance, but he was certainly a savvy operator (got the Tyrells on his side, and the famine in King's Landing shows how important that is) and had good people around him (Loras, Margaery, Brienne) who I think would have aged well with him as comrades in war and advisers in peace. He had charisma without the underlying cruelty of Robert, and he handled things very, very cleverly when Catelyn came to negotiate with him. He also tried to reach out to Stannis, to avoid a fight, which was a wise move even if it was always likely to be rebuffed. Actually, I think I've just argued myself into realising that Renly would've made an excellent king. Shit.
Stannis... I believe him when he says he doesn't WANT to be king, didn't ask for the responsibility, but is just doing what he must because he must, unaccustomed as he is to public speaking, etc. etc. But I also believe that hubris always, always threatens a man like that in a position like that. People often act based on ego without being able to acknowledge it, and Stannis's ego has been well and truly tested over the years - Renly getting what should've been his? Watching Robert degenerate from a leader of men into a one-man bacchanal over the course of his reign, while mortgaging the realm to the hilt to Tywin Lannister? Yeah, I think Stannis might be suffering from some unacknowledged ego, and I'm not convinced that becoming monarch of the Seven Kingdoms would be good for him as a human being - to say nothing of the lack of popular support. (I don't think he'd be another Aerys - Joffrey could ABSOLUTELY be another Aerys - but I can picture him instituting an Augustus Caesar-like morality policy in order to clean up the realm, whereupon someone would probably murder him with a blade cunningly concealed in a dildo.)
Surprisingly, during this book I also realised that I didn't want Robb to become king. He doesn't interest me terribly as a person (his relationship with Catelyn, now THAT interests me), but that's not the reason - it's just obvious that the Iron Throne is terribly, terribly corrupting. And I know he's not shooting for the Iron Throne here, but it's also clear that in Westeros, you don't have a secure power base unless you rule everything. And that's the entire book (possibly series) in a nutshell: you always wind up having to do more harm than you could ever have wished for just to defend your own little patch of land: medieval mutually assured destruction.
And while we're looking at unsuitable candidates for high positions... there's Theon. All credit to GRRM, for a character I actively dislike, he manages to make Theon's POV chapters interesting and illuminating. I love the Viking-like culture of the Iron Islands and how it contrasts with that of Winterfell - that Theon could be so spectacularly wrong in his father's eyes by wearing stuff he's only bought, not killed for, is the perfect emblem of that. Theon becomes understandable if not actually likeable, and I love how Asha just lets him hang himself with his own cock- er, rope. I do feel sorry for him regarding Balon, though - it's hard to see what Theon could've done RIGHT as a hostage, in Balon's eyes. Add another to the long list of dysfunctional father/son relationships in ASOIAF.
Here's something I don't understand: when Bran and Rickon escape and Theon hunts for them, Reek (formerly Ramsay Bolton's man) comes to him with a theory - that the boys are hiding at Acorn Waters mill - apparently based on more knowledge than he's willing to account for. He's brought a sack from Winterfell, which he hands Theon as if it explains everything, and it turns out to contain a direwolf brooch. Theon gets angry because he knows he can trust no-one. I feel like I'm being dense, here, but I don't get the significance of the brooch or Theon's reasoning. Even knowing something of the name Reek based on later seasons of the TV show and what they show about book 5. I'm not looking for book 5 spoilers; I just want to know whether this part is intentionally obscure (because a germ of a theory I'm forming about book 5 is right) or if I'm missing something that's obvious from book 2 alone.
I get the impression (perhaps wrongly) that the whole subterfuge with the corpses of the children from the mill is Reek's idea, but I'm not sure (I forget the details of subsequent events from Bran's POV in the next book) whether Theon actively aided in Bran's escape by killing those kids as substitutes, or just killed them because, having lost the Starks, he had to bring *somebody's* corpses back to Winterfell in order not to appear ineffectual either to the Starks' people or his own. Either way, if he knows the Stark boys are still alive, he's taking a big risk should they ever re-emerge. That said, Theon hasn't been the best decision-maker so far.
That it's taken so long to put this post together creates odd perspectives (on Reek, especially). I've now finished A Feast For Crows, and heard some general enough spoilers on book 5 that I have some embryonic theories. But for now I should hurry up and post this. I'll say one more thing, though: this is the book where we learn that yes, GRRM is a ruthless killer, but he's also a liar. He reveals the "deaths" of Bran and Rickon off-page but in an utterly compelling and believable way. It's horrific. A tiny part of me wanted to put the book aside. The reveal that they're not actually dead comes mercifully before the end of the book (perhaps it didn't seem wise to let his readers hang on for years and perhaps not come back), but it also tells us that, while anyone (Renly!) can die, they're not dead unless you personally saw their throat slit or their head leave their shoulders. And sometimes, as on the other side of the Wall, not even then...
Next week (I know, hark at my ambition), A Storm of Swords, or at least volume I of it. And as somebraveapollo will be happy to hear, the meat of my thoughts on Tyrion... and Jaime. Because this was also the book where Jaime began to get interesting...