

“This was what he was meant for; he never felt so alive as when he was fighting, with death balanced on every stroke. And with my wrists chained together, the wench may even give me a contest for a time.”

Synopsis: you’ve got to hand it to Jaime Lannister, he knows when to pick a fight at the worst time.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.



Political Analysis

I don’t always have a very good eye as to why GRRM and/or his editors decide on the particular order of different chapters for an entire book (needless to say, I’m very glad that other people do and can come up with things like the combined AFFC/ADWD reading orders). Sometimes, however, I do get a sense as to why smaller sections are ordered the way they are. Jaime III comes right after Catelyn III because it shows us the other side of the fallout from Catelyn freeing the Kingslayer: last chapter, Rickard Karstark went to insane lengths to kick off a (futile) hunt for Jaime Lannister; in this chapter, in an act of cosmic irony, Jaime Lannister will be captured completely by accident.

More importantly, Jaime III is an audacious experiment by GRRM, a profound transformation of personality and identity in the middle of a book. We’ve seen characters change before: Tyrion experiences a shock after his wounding, but a lot of the mental transformation takes place between the end of ACOK and the beginning of ASOS and will be overshadowed by the one he’ll undergo between the end of ASOS and the beginning of ADWD. Likewise, Davos’ shock at losing his sons happens between books and Davos ends up being a more resilient personality whose ACOK incarnation is easily recognizable in his appearance in ADWD.

By contrast, Jaime Lannister in his first two appearances in ASOS is pretty much the same arrogant child-murdering sisterfucker that we saw in Bran II of AGOT. But in Jaime III, he experiences a thorough (although not complete) obliteration of his self-image that, rather than acting as the tragic end of his story, forces him to rethink who he is and what he’s doing with his life. Note that I have not used the term “redemption arc” – as I’ll explain in future Jaime chapters, I think something different is going on.

Arriving in Maidenpool

Setting the scene nicely for a chapter that is ultimately about how the Lannisters’ scorched-earth tactics are backfiring on them, Jaime III opens at Maidenpool, which has become a synecdoche for what the War of Five Kings has done to the Riverlands:

Two days’ ride to either side of the kingsroad, they passed through a wide swath of destruction, miles of blackened fields and orchards where the trunks of dead trees jutted into the air like archers’ stakes. The bridges were burnt as well, and the streams swollen by autumn rains, so they had to range along the banks in search of fords. The nights were alive with howling of wolves, but they saw no people. At Maidenpool, Lord Mooton’s red salmon still flew above the castle on its hill, but the town walls were deserted, the gates smashed, half the homes and shops burned or plundered. They saw nothing living but a few feral dogs that went slinking away at the sound of their approach. The pool from which the town took its name, where legend said that Florian the Fool had first glimpsed Jonquil bathing with her sisters, was so choked with rotting corpses that the water had turned into a murky grey-green soup.

It’s a scene of total and complete inversion: nature is destroyed, but so is civilization; wolves have replaced people in the countryside and feral dogs have replaced them in the town streets. And everywhere, illusions are stripped bare. The Mootons have kept their castle, but only by reneging on any responsibility to protect the people who support them; the Maiden’s Pool associated with chivalric romance is befouled by rotting corpses. All of this should stand as a warning to turn back, that the southeastern Riverlands currently comprising the Duskendale front in the War of Five Kings are not safe for travellers.

This in turn raises the question: why (and how) are Jaime and Brienne in Maidenpool? When last we left our duo, they had decided to take the road that led south from the Inn of the Kneeling Man rather than the road that led southeast (where seemingly the Brotherhood Without Banners were laid in wait). The problem is that Maidenpool is 400 miles east of the Inn, following a straight line from where the River Road goes from the Inn to Lord Harroway’s Town and then along the bank of the Trident, and decidely not due south of the Inn.

This raises two problems: the first is that the trap from Jaime II doesn’t fit geographically with other chapters in ASOS. We’ll see in the next couple of Arya chapters that the Brotherhood Without Banners has multiple bases due south of the Inn of the Kneeling Man (Castle Lychester, the hidden treetop village, High Heart, Acorn Hall, Stoney Sept, etc.), so it makes little sense that one would be less likely to be ambushed by the Brotherhood by taking the road that goes right into their sphere of influence rather than the southeastern road, which leads to areas where the Brotherhood is weaker (due to the proximity to Harrenhal and King’s Landing). Indeed, if one was to reverse the decision of southeast vs. south in Jaime II, that would better fit with what we know of the Brotherhood’s activities and their arrival in Maidenpool.

The second problem is that it doesn’t make much sense for Jaime and Brienne to have gone to Maidenpool from the Inn, because that route extends their journey considerably. If they’d taken the southern road (assuming they avoided the Brotherhood) instead, they could have headed directly down to the Blackwater Rush and then followed that to where it meets the Gold Road, a much faster route to King’s Landing. Moreover, the southern route would have allowed them to avoid passing close to Harrenhal, which they would have wanted to do since they knew that the fortress was held by the North now. Even if one assumes that Jaime and Brienne took the southern road and then turned off and went offroad parallel to the southeastern road until they hit Maidenpool, that route would have taken them closer to Harrenhal than the existing road would.

In this chapter, we see a similar Hob’s choice as in the last one: do you take the Duskendale road or the coast road?

The wench turned her horse’s head and trotted away. Jaime and Ser Cleos followed her out of the ashes of Maidenpool. A half mile on, green began to creep back into the world once more. Jaime was glad. The burned lands reminded him too much of Aerys. “She’s taking the Duskendale road,” Ser Cleos muttered. “It would be safer to follow the coast.” “Safe but slower. I’m for Duskendale, cuz.”

This choice is ultimately meaningless: the Duskendale road and the coast road converge on Duskendale (since, as a port city it lies on the coast), which (as neither Brienne nor Jaime know) is “the worst of the fighting” between the Northern infantry and Gregor Clegane and Randyll Tarly’s forces. Either route, therefore, leads them into greater danger. Moreover, as Brienne will learn to her peril in AFFC, Crackclaw Point is just as much a den of marauding outriders, outlaws, and broken men as the Riverlands.

Jaime and Cersei, Above the Law

So much for physical geography. When it comes to psychological or moral geography, however, Jaime III gives us a disturbing insight into Jaime’s relationship with Cersei. In previous chapters, we’ve gotten bits and pieces of how Jaime thinks about Cersei and a more substantial account of how Cersei convinced him to join the Kingsguard. But in this chapter, we get an extended passage that lays out the origins of that relationship and how Jaime thinks about it:

He could never bear to be long apart from his twin. Even as children, they would creep into each other’s beds and sleep with their arms entwined. Even in the womb. Long before his sister’s flowering or the advent of his own manhood, they had seen mares and stallions in the fields and dogs and bitches in the kennels and played at doing the same. Once their mother’s maid had caught them at it…he did not recall just what they had been doing, but whatever it was had horrified Lady Joanna. She’d sent the maid away, moved Jaime’s bedchamber to the other side of Casterly Rock, set a guard outside Cersei’s, and told them that they must never do that again or she would have no choice but to tell their lord father. They need not have feared, though. It was not long after that she died birthing Tyrion. Jaime barely remembered what his mother had looked like. Perhaps Stannis Baratheon and the Starks had done him a kindness. They had spread their tale of incest all over the Seven Kingdoms, so there was nothing left to hide. Why shouldn’t I marry Cersei openly and share her bed every night? The dragons always married their sisters. Septons, lords, and smallfolk had turned a blind eye to the Targaryens for hundreds of years, let them do the same for House Lannister. It would play havoc with Joffrey’s claim to the crown, to be sure, but in the end it had been swords that had won the Iron Throne for Robert, and swords could keep Joffrey there as well, regardless of whose seed he was. We could marry him to Myrcella, once we’ve sent Sansa Stark back to her mother. That would show the realm that the Lannisters are above their laws, like gods and Targaryens.

Needless to say, this is not the normalizing “you don’t choose who you love” attitude from the show. Jaime’s relationship with Cersei began as deviant childhood behavior, rooted in a narcisstic over-identification with his twin (hence later in the chapter him thinking “If I were a woman, I’d be Cersei”), that escaped correction because of the untimely death of their mother (which likely contributed to a weaker supervision of the two children outside of those areas which Tywin took an interest in).

In adulthood, far from seeing his relationship with Cersei as an exception to the taboo due to the uncontrollable nature of love, Jaime not only seeks to openly flout the taboo by marrying Cersei but also impose incest on his son-nephew and daughter-neice (which puts discussion of choice in an entirely different light). And all of this, from childhood to adulthood, is rooted in the belief that the Lannisters are a superior kind of being, literally above the law.

Jaime’s thinking here comes off as really off-putting and repellant, and deliberately so. As we’ve seen with the test case of Theon, GRRM likes to maximize our disdain for his villain protagonists right at the moment where he hits them with disproportionate suffering, once again “wielding empathy like a cudgel.” Hence, the chapter that begins with Jaime unveiling his Ptolemian pretensions will end with Zollo bringing the arakh down on his wrist.

The Attack

Rather than dwelling on Jaime’s psyche, the chapter moves rather quickly to its inciting incident, as the party is ambushed shortly after leaving Maidenpool:

Jaime heard a soft thrum from behind, as if a dozen birds had taken flight at once. “Down!” he shouted, throwing himself against the neck of his horse. The gelding screamed and reared as an arrow took him in the rump. Other shafts went hissing past. Jaime saw Ser Cleos lurch from the saddle, twisting as his foot caught in the stirrup. His palfrey bolted, and Frey was dragged past shouting, head bouncing against the ground. Jaime’s gelding lumbered off ponderously, blowing and snorting in pain. He craned around to look for Brienne. She was still ahorse, an arrow lodged in her back and another in her leg, but she seemed not to feel them.

The reaction of each participant is quite fitting: Brienne is a goddamn Determinator (note that even before the duel, Jaime is ignoring the clues that maybe you shouldn’t pick fights with someone who’s tough enough to ignore arrows); poor Cleos Frey dies in an unlucky and pathetic fashion (like most Freys), with Jaime shrugging it off that “I am amply provisioned in cousins” before callously laying claim to “his horse and his clothes;” and Jaime recklessly charges in, because he doesn’t think about consequences and continues to despise archers:

A few last arrows sped harmlessly past; then the bowmen broke and ran, the way unsupported bowmen always broke and ran before the charge of knights. Brienne reined up at the wall. By the time Jaime reached her, they had all melted into the wood twenty yards away. “Lost your taste for battle?” “They were running.” “That’s the best time to kill them…bowmen are fearless so long as they can hide behind walls and shoot at you from afar, but if you come at them, they run.”

Incidentally, one of the things that puzzles me about this ambush is that, later in the chapter, Jaime comes to the conclusion that the Bloody Mummers “were not the outlaws who had killed Ser Cleos.” This strikes me as somewhat odd: on a Doylist level, it seems awkward and unnecessary for GRRM to insert some random outlaws into the chapter right before the Bloody Mummers show up when he could simply combine the two; on a Watsonian level, both groups show up roughly in a small area within a few minutes of each other. And it’s not like the Bloody Mummers wouldn’t launch unprovoked ambushes against travelers, when we’ve seen them ravaging the Riverlands before and we’ll see them do it again at Saltpans.

Finally, the last thing that this ambush accomplishes is that it disturbs the status quo enough for Jaime to get his hands on the late Ser Cleos Frey’s sword, which kicks off the main event.

The Duel of the Fates

While Jaime trying to kill Brienne may seem to come out of nowhere, this conflict has actually been brewing for quite some time, both in the previous two chapters and in this chapter, as Jaime continues to antagonize Brienne, whose temper gradually erodes in response:

“I have a yen to see if the wench can use that sword she wears.” “If you won’t be quiet, you leave me no choice but to gag you, Kingslayer.” “Unchain my hands and I’ll play mute all the way to King’s Landing. What could be fairer than that, wench?” “Brienne! My name is Brienne!”

This kind of dynamic between two people who are most comfortable communicating with others through violence really can only end in one way. The funny thing about it, though, is that there really isn’t any cause for it breaking out into violence – Jaime’s almost home, a fight might allow the outlaws he knows are in the area to catch up to them, and Brienne hasn’t done or said anything that she hasn’t in the previous two chapters. Indeed, it seems as if Jaime starts the duel for no other reason than he just doesn’t like her: “Jaime was tired. Tired of her suspicions, tired of her insults, tired of her crooked teeth and her broad spotty face and that limp thin hair of hers.”

That being said, the duel that ensues between Jaime and Brienne is, for my money, one of the very best that GRRM has ever written, combining vivid description of hand-to-hand combat, in-depth character study, and an entire dramatic arc in miniature. It begins with Jaime at his most arrogant:

Ignoring her protests, he grasped the hilt of his cousin’s longsword with both hands, held the corpse down with his foot, and pulled. As the blade slid from the scabbard, he was already pivoting, bringing the sword around and up in a swift deadly arc. Steel met steel with a ringing, bone-jarring clang. Somehow Brienne had gotten her own blade out in time. Jaime laughed. “Very good, wench.” “Give me the sword, Kingslayer.” “Oh, I will.”

From this brief exchange, we can see a few things: first, we see Jaime being once again totally uncaring about his cousin, because in his mind Cleos wasn’t a real Lannister (and thus wasn’t a real person). Second, we can see that Jaime is absolutely certain that he’s going to win, because he’s completely underestimating despite having seen her physical prowess on multiple occasions. Third, that certainty is due to the fact that he defines himself as a swordsman full stop (in sharp contrast to his father’s emphasis on strategy and statesmanship):

Jaime’s blood was singing. This was what he was meant for; he never felt so alive as when he was fighting, with death balanced on every stroke. And with my wrists chained together, the wench may even give me a contest for a time. His chains forced him to use a two-handed grip, though of course the weight and reach were less than if the blade had been a true two-handed greatsword, but what did it matter? His cousin’s sword was long enough to write an end to this Brienne of Tarth.

What’s fascinating here is that, because Jaime Lannister is a world-class swordsman, he can tell that he’s in a terrible position – his wrists are chained together (which limits his movement, weighs him down, and potentially allows his enemy to pull him off balance), and he’s stuck using the wrong technique for the wrong sword – but because in his mind he is JAIME LANNISTER, BESTEST SWORDSMAN EVAR, he completely disregards this important information in favor of denial and projection:

High, low, overhand, he rained down steel upon her…faster, faster, faster… …until, breathless, he stepped back and let the point of the sword fall to the ground, giving her a moment of respite. “Not half bad,” he acknowledged. “For a wench.” She took a slow deep breath, her eyes watching him warily. “I would not hurt you, Kingslayer.” “As if you could…” He drove her away from his cousin’s corpse, drove her across the road, drove her into the trees. She stumbled once on a root she never saw, and for a moment he thought she was done, but she went to one knee instead of falling and never lost a beat.

Not that long into the fight, Jaime is already out of breath but projects his weakness onto Brienne so that he’s “giving her a moment of respite” even though her breathing is “slow [and] deep.” As if to ward off any doubts as much as Brienne’s sword, Jaime launches into an all out attack that is his high-water mark in the duel, and to give the man his due he almost succeeds when Brienne almost falls, echoing Ser Barristan’s philosophy about the nature of chance in martial combat.

The problem for Jaime is that “almost” only counts for horseshoes and hand grenades:

…the woman started grunting like a sow at every crash, yet somehow he could not reach her. It was as if she had an iron cage around her that stopped every blow…Grunting, she came at him, blade whirling, and suddenly it was Jaime struggling to keep steel from skin. One of her slashes raked across his brow, and blood ran down into his right eye. The Others take her, and Riverrun as well! His skills had gone to rust and rot in that bloody dungeon, and the chains were no great help either. His eye closed, his shoulders were going numb from the jarring they’d taken, and his wrists ached from the weight of chains, manacles, and sword. His longsword grew heavier with every blow, and Jaime knew he was not swinging it as quickly as he’d done earlier, nor raising it as high. She is stronger than I am. The realization chilled him. Robert had been stronger than him, to be sure. The White Bull Gerold Hightower as well, in his heyday, and Ser Arthur Dayne. Amongst the living, Greatjon Umber was stronger, Strongboar of Crakehall most likely, both Cleganes for a certainty. The Mountain’s strength was like nothing human. It did not matter. With speed and skill, Jaime could beat them all. But this was a woman. A huge cow of a woman, to be sure, but even so…by rights, she should be the one wearing down. …A slick stone turned under Jaime’s foot. As he felt himself falling, he twisted the mischance into a diving lunge. His point scraped past her parry and bit into her upper thigh. A red flower blossomed, and Jaime had an instant to savor the sight of her blood before his knee slammed into a rock. The pain was blinding. Brienne splashed into him and kicked away his sword. “YIELD!”

As we’ll learn in AFFC, Brienne’s astonishing stamina is not merely a natural physical attribute but a deeper strategy that she’s been honing for years: use the sexism of her opponents (and it’s made explicit that it is his gender prejudices which have led him to underestimate Brienne, more on this later) to get them to tire themselves out through over-exertion, and then move in for the kill. And indeed, it’s not until she literally beats it into him that Jaime is willing to admit that a woman could be stronger and tougher than he is. (More on this later when Jaime’s thinking on rape comes up.)

At the same time, we also get a sense that Jaime is a Broken Ace even before his mutilation. As with many professional atheletes, he knows that time is his worst enemy, so that three months of inactivity has robbed him of the “speed and skill” that once allowed him to overcome deficits of strength and stamina. However, as with many professional atheletes (and generals, politicians, executives, and artists) fear of loss of reputation means that he’s beginning to look to excuses – I was clapped in irons, I have chains on my wrists, there’s blood in my eye, I stumbled on a rock – for why his defeats shouldn’t count, rather than re-thinking his approach or trying something new.

In the final moments of the duel, all of this comes together: Jaime finally manages to wound Brienne, but like in a boxing movie where one fighter just can’t punch hard enough to hurt their opponent, she has the stamina to soak the injury, whereas Jaime is completely disabled by a chance collision with a rock. Showing that even in the part of life that he cares the most about that there is a core element of self-centered immaturity to his personality, Jaime refuses to yield once defeated (remember this when the topic of honor comes up).

Enter the Bloody Mummers

Jaime’s defeat at Brienne’s hands, however, turns out to be not only prelude for much worse to come, but also the cause of their capture by the Bloody Mummers:

Armed men lined both sides of the brook. Small wonder, we were making enough noise to wake a dragon. “Well met, friends,” he called to them amiably. “My pardons if I disturbed you. You caught me chastising my wife.” “Seemed to me she was doing the chastising.” The man who spoke was thick and powerful, and the nasal bar of his iron halfhelm did not wholly conceal his lack of a nose.

Needless to say, the “Brave Companions” introduce a Rob Zombie level of clownish, grotesque horror to the proceedings. Their ridiculous outward appearance is only a disguise, though, fooling both Jaime (and sometimes the reader as well) into forgetting how dangerous they really are. Jaime in particular under-estimates the Bloody Mummers because he’s completely blinded by his own class privilege. Wounded, half-drowned, and unarmed, he nontheless thinks that being a Lannister means he can dictate how this situation will play out:

“Who commands here?” Jaime demanded loudly. “I have that honor, Ser Jaime.” The cadaver’s eyes were rimmed in red, his hair thin and dry. Dark blue veins could be seen through the pallid skin of his hands and face. “Urswyck I am. Called Urswyck the Faithful.” Jaime had no more use for these than he did for Gregor Clegane or Amory Lorch. Dogs, his father called them all, and he used them like dogs, to hound his prey and put fear in their hearts. “If you know me, Urswyck, you know you’ll have your reward. A Lannister always pays his debts. As for the wench, she’s highborn, and worth a good ransom.”

Urswyck is an interesting choice as the leader of this detachment, because on the surface he’s one of the more normal-looking of the Bloody Mummers, in comparison to Rorge, Shagwell, or Zollo…but more normal in comparison to them still means being described as a walking corpse. This walking corpse is a frighteningly organized psychopath, who cheerily confesses to murdering his own wife, and recruits “perfectly human monsters” like Rorge and Biter to the Company. And even as he mockingly flaunts his nickname in front of Jaime, Jaime thinks that he can dictate terms to a loyal hound:

There was something sly about the way Urswyck was smiling that Jaime did not like. “You heard me. Where’s the goat?” “A few hours distant. He will be pleased to see you, I have no doubt, but I would not call him a goat to his face. Lord Vargo grows prickly about his dignity.” Since when has that slobbering savage had dignity? “I’ll be sure and remember that, when I see him. Lord of what, pray?” “Harrenhal. It has been promised.” Harrenhal? Has my father taken leave of his senses? Jaime raised his hands. “I’ll have these chains off.” Urswyck’s chuckle was papery dry. Something is very wrong here. Jaime gave no sign of his discomfiture, but only smiled. “Did I say something amusing?” “…You and your father lost too many battles,” offered the Dornishman. “We had to trade our lion pelts for wolfskins.” Urswyck spread his hands. “What Timeon means to say is that the Brave Companions are no longer in the hire of House Lannister. We now serve Lord Bolton, and the King in the North.”

Even as he sees warning signs all around him – Urswyck’s sly mirthful countenance, Vargo Hoat becoming the lord of Harrenhal, the mocking laughter of his inferiors – Jaime can’t quite bring himself to draw lines of cause and effect between his (and his father’s actions). Jaime’s reckless prosecution of the early Riverlands campaign and his father’s decision to unleash unrestricted warfare against civilians have eroded the norms of war that once protected members of the nobility. Hence, when Brienne attempts to invoke the laws of war to protect them – “Stop, he’s not to be harmed! Lady Catelyn sent us, an exchange of hostages, he’s under my protection…” – it doesn’t work any better than Jaime’s abrupt command.

Thus, when Jaime tries for a second time to invoke his privilege in a bid to buy his way to freedom, he gets a rude awakening that the rules have changed:

“What would you have of me, ser? And mind your tongue, or I’ll chastise you again.” “Gold,” said Jaime. “You do like gold?” …Jaime gave Urswyck a knowing smile. “All the gold in Casterly Rock. Why let the goat enjoy it? Why not take us to King’s Landing, and collect my ransom for yourself?…” …For half a heartbeat Urswyck considered the proposition. “King’s Landing is a long way, and your father is there. Lord Tywin may resent us for selling Harrenhal to Lord Bolton.” He’s cleverer than he looks. Jaime had been been looking forward to hanging the wretch while his pockets bulged with gold. “Leave me to deal with my father. I’ll get you a royal pardon for any crimes you have committed. I’ll get you a knighthood.” …Urswyck leaned over and slapped him lazily across the face. The sheer casual insolence of it was worse than the blow itself. He does not fear me, Jaime realized, with a chill.

Not only are the nobility no longer in charge, the lower orders (even sadistic psychopaths like Urswyck) think politically, follow long-term interests, and are observers of human character. Indeed, the irony is that Jaime’s attempt to manipulate Urswyck by appealing to his baser impulses, it’s Jaime who’s planning to betray Urswyck and go back on his word the moment that proximity to Lannister armies gives him the upper hand. When it doesn’t work, Jaime feels his privilege ebbing away – he’s never lived a day of his life when the Lannister name and his father’s myth hasn’t protected him more than his sword ever has – and he’s as terrified as any other spoiled manchild.

This incident, moreover, throws into harsh relief all of Jaime’s self-pitying ruminations on his lost honor:

Jaime had decided that he would return Sansa, and the younger girl as well if she could be found. It was not like to win him back his lost honor, but the notion of keeping faith when they all expected betrayal amused him more than he could say. “…Your oaths are worthless. You swore an oath to Aerys.”

“You haven’t cooked anyone in their armor so far as I know…” “…I have heard enough, Kingslayer. I would have to be a great fool indeed to believe the promises of an oathbreaker like you.” He kicked his horse and galloped smartly ahead. Aerys, Jaime thought resentfully. It always turns on Aerys.

It becomes harder to sympathize with his protests that he’s the wronged party or to take on face value that he’s actually going to follow through on hypothetical promises to do the right thing, however, when we’ve seen him planning to betray and murder people for the crime of being insolent to him.

CW: Jaime Lannister and Rape

At the same time, we would be wrong to read the Bloody Mummer’s upending of the social order as some sort of progressive endeavor – for that we’ll have to wait for Arya’s chapters and their portrait of the Brotherhood without Banners – rather, these are the actions of scavengers looking to loot the remains of civilization. Right from the outset, the Bloody Mummers jump from undermining the custom of ransoms to overlooking the rules of chivalry in favor of sexually assaulting a highborn prisoner:

A cadaverous man in a tattered leather cloak said, “We’ll take that for a start, m’lady.” “Then we’ll have your cunt,” said the noseless man. “It can’t be as ugly as the rest of you.” “Turn her over and rape her arse, Rorge,” urged a Dornish spearman with a red silk scarf wound about his helm. “That way you won’t need to look at her.” “And rob her o’ the pleasure o’ looking at me?” Noseless said, and the others laughed.

There’s not much to say about the Bloody Mummers themselves, save to say that this is pure sadism, with a nihilistic twist – ransoms are offered precisely to prevent this kind of behavior. so this is very much against their long-term interests. On the other hand, I think there is something to be said about Jaime here, if only because I have seen arguments in some corners of Tumblr that Jaime’s attitudes to sexual assault are feminist and I don’t think that’s quite right.

It is true that when it looks like Brienne is going to be assaulted, “Jaime felt sorry for her” and he does come up with the lie that “Tarth is called the Sapphire Isle, a maiden told me once” in an attempt to forestall that violation. However, other passages from this chapter point to more problematic attitudes:



Ugly and stubborn though she might be, the wench deserved better than to be gang raped by such refuse as these. “When we make camp for the night, you’ll be raped, and more than once,” he warned her. “You’d be wise not to resist. If you fight them, you’ll lose more than a few teeth.” He felt Brienne’s back stiffen against his. “Is that what you would do, if you were a woman?” If I were a woman I’d be Cersei. “If I were a woman, I’d make them kill me. But I’m not.” …He swayed with the motion of his horse, wishing for a sword. Two swords would be even better. One for the wench and one for me. We’d die, but we’d take half of them down to hell with us. “Why did you tell him Tarth was the Sapphire Isle?” Brienne whispered when Urswyck was out of earshot. “He’s like to think my father’s rich in gemstones . . .” “The sooner they know how little you’re worth in ransom, the sooner the rapes begin. Every man here will mount you, but what do you care? Just close your eyes, open your legs, and pretend they’re all Lord Renly.”

First, you have the implication that Jaime’s objection is that the Bloody Mummers are too lowly to sexually assault a highborn woman (further proof that chivalry is at heart circumscribed by class), which is accompanied by an implication that Brienne’s appearance (already raised by the Bloody Mummers) is somehow a factor in whether rape is deserved. Second, at the end of the day Jaime’s advice is that Brienne ought to submit to rape, while hypocritically claiming that he himself would bravely choose death over dishonor. This hypothetical bravado is clearly grounded on the premise that his gender – his next layer of privilege, now that class has clearly been stripped away – protects him from bodily violation, something that he will soon be disabused of. Third, when Brienne rightly calls out that his proposed solution (which still relies heavily on classism) is eventually going to backfire, Jaime’s reaction is a spiteful slap at Brienne’s feelings for Renly coupled with a suggestion that she should not merely submit to rape but actively enjoy it.

Needless to say, this doesn’t strike me as particularly enlightened.

Vargo Hoat, the Cargo Goat

In this state of extreme peril and class identity in crisis, Jaime and Brienne finally meet Vargo Hoat:

The day was almost done by the time they found Vargo Hoat, sacking a small sept with another dozen of his Brave Companions. The leaded windows had been smashed, the carved wooden gods dragged out into the sunlight. The fattest Dothraki Jaime had ever seen was sitting on the Mother’s chest when they rode up, prying out her chalcedony eyes with the point of his knife. Nearby, a skinny balding septon hung upside down from the limb of a spreading chestnut tree. Three of the Brave Companions were using his corpse for an archery butt. One of them must have been good; the dead man had arrows through both of his eyes. When the sellswords spied Urswyck and the captives, a cry went up in half a dozen tongues. The goat was seated by a cookfire eating a half-cooked bird off a skewer, grease and blood running down his fingers into his long stringy beard. He wiped his hands on his tunic and rose. “Kingthlayer,” he slobbered. “You are my captifth.” “My lord, I am Brienne of Tarth,” the wench called out. “Lady Catelyn Stark commanded me to deliver Ser Jaime to his brother at King’s Landing.” The goat gave her a disinterested glance. “Thilence her.”

Up front, it’s important to note that, while Vargo Hoat is clearly ridiculous – Sylvester the Cat in human form, covered in grease and blood – this is an intentional ridiculousness. Like a magician who flourishes with one hand to distract their audience from what the other hand is doing, GRRM is using Vargo to lower the defenses of his readers in preparation of the shock to come. In the background, however, he’s leaving clues that the Bloody Mummers are dangerous as hell. The sacking of this small sept, one domino in the chain that will eventually lead to the uprising of the Sparrows, is a systematic breaking of taboos – sacred objects are defiled as much out of boredom as out of greed, priests are turned into archery butts in a particularly childish display of sadism.

And so Jaime falls once more for GRRM’s trick, thinking that Vargo Hoat is a fool who can be condescendingly bullied and bribed into restoring the proper order of things:

“Lord Vargo, you were foolish to leave my father’s service, but it is not too late to make amends. He will pay well for me, you know it.” “Oh yeth,” said Vargo Hoat. “Half the gold in Cathterly Rock, I thall have. But firth I mutht thend him a methage.” He said something in his slithery goatish tongue. They mean to scare me. The fool hopped on Jaime’s back, giggling, as the Dothraki swaggered toward him. The goat wants me to piss my breeches and beg his mercy, but he’ll never have that pleasure. He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard; no sellsword would make him scream. Sunlight ran silver along the edge of the arakh as it came shivering down, almost too fast to see. And Jaime screamed.

At a stroke, Jaime loses not just a hand, but his belief in himself. Not only is he no longer a swordsman who can cut down kings or hands at will, whose skill protects him from the laws of gods and men, he’s not even the fearless warrior he boasted of being to Brienne. All of his hypothetical courage, his pride in his blood and his knightly titles, can’t prevent what men are doing to his body nor his body’s own response. So this existential howl is not merely an expression of pain, but a question begged of the universe: who is Jaime Lannister?

Historical Analysis:

Once upon a time – or more accurately, from 1480-1562 CE – there was a certain knight named Gottfried von Berlichingen, who came from Württemberg in south-central Germany. Gottfried, or Götz as he was known, first took up arms at the age of 17 to fight for Frederick I, the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. Frederick was newly-ascended to his title and notoriously loved to live ostentatiously (he would later be deposed by his own sons for having watsed the family fortune), so he liked to travel with a big entourage and Götz clearly cut an impressive figure.

Götz was clearly impressive enough that Frederick made him his standard-bearer when the two of them fought for the Holy Roman Emperor across the Low Countries from Burgundy to Brabant to Lorraine, and then into Switzerland during the Swabian War of 1499. The following year, Götz decided to go into business for himself and formed a company of mercenaries, working for any number of Early Modern notables.

In 1504, Götz’s company was under contract to Albert IV, the Wittelsbach Duke of Bavaria-Munich. An ambitious and grasping man who’d married into the House of Hapsburg without exactly getting the permission of her father Emperor Frederick III (who was pissed off that Albert had illegally seized some imperial fiefdoms), when the Duke of Bavaria-Landshut died, Albert saw an opportunity to gobble up his cousin’s land. The Landshut War of Sucession revolved around an interesting point of law for fans of ASOIAF – can a nobleman name his daughter as heir when both imperial law (which said that the Emperor should inherit) and an agreement with another branch of the family (which said that the Munich Wittelsbachs should inherit) said otherwise?

And so for two years, the countryside around the city of Landshut was expertly ravaged by Götz and his comrades, while the city itself was placed under siege. One day, in a truly freak occurance, one of the cannons of Landshut shot at Götz and struck the edge of his sword, forcing it down onto his hand and cutting the hand off.

But that’s only the beginning of the story…

What If?

As you might expect, there are many different points at which the events of Jaime III could have diverged. Here are just a few:

Jaime and Brienne had taken the coast road? This one is perhaps the most unknown, leaving aside my quibbles about geography. Even without the remnants of the Bloody Mummers, Cracklclaw Point is hardly free of Targaryen loyalists, outlaws, wreckers, and squishers. And even if Jaime and Brienne had managed to get past those dangers, the coast road would still lead them to Duskendale, where it’s possible that they might have been recaptured by the retreating Northmen (which would lead them to Harrenhal, and possibly lead to Jaime’s death if word of Rickard Karstark had arrived in time), or the Lannister/Tyrell army (which would probably see Jaime freed and Brienne imprisoned).

This one is perhaps the most unknown, leaving aside my quibbles about geography. Even without the remnants of the Bloody Mummers, Cracklclaw Point is hardly free of Targaryen loyalists, outlaws, wreckers, and squishers. And even if Jaime and Brienne had managed to get past those dangers, the coast road would still lead them to Duskendale, where it’s possible that they might have been recaptured by the retreating Northmen (which would lead them to Harrenhal, and possibly lead to Jaime’s death if word of Rickard Karstark had arrived in time), or the Lannister/Tyrell army (which would probably see Jaime freed and Brienne imprisoned). Jaime had won the fight? Even if he had, the odds are that Jaime would still be captured and mutilated by the Bloody Mummers, in the event that he was taken alive. The main difference to me is that Brienne probably would not have been around for the trip back to Harrenhal, which might well means that Jaime lets himself die of his wounds, quite possibly means that Vargo Hoat escapes his fate at Harrenhal, or that Jaime might get back to King’s Landing before the Purple Wedding.

Even if he had, the odds are that Jaime would still be captured and mutilated by the Bloody Mummers, in the event that he was taken alive. The main difference to me is that Brienne probably would not have been around for the trip back to Harrenhal, which might well means that Jaime lets himself die of his wounds, quite possibly means that Vargo Hoat escapes his fate at Harrenhal, or that Jaime might get back to King’s Landing before the Purple Wedding. One or both of them had died at the hands of the Bloody Mummers? Given their notorious lack of discipline, it’s quite possible that either Jaime or Brienne might have died here. Jaime dying has significant knock-on effects – Tyrion may or may not have been freed by Varys (who might decide that ending the male Lannister line is a better play), and Riverrun probably continues to hold out against the Lannisters and Freys. If Brienne dies, then Jaime never sends her off on her quest, which in addition to ensuring that Shagwell, Rorge, and Biter live, probably means that Jaime will die at Lady Stoneheart’s hands.

Given their notorious lack of discipline, it’s quite possible that either Jaime or Brienne might have died here. Jaime dying has significant knock-on effects – Tyrion may or may not have been freed by Varys (who might decide that ending the male Lannister line is a better play), and Riverrun probably continues to hold out against the Lannisters and Freys. If Brienne dies, then Jaime never sends her off on her quest, which in addition to ensuring that Shagwell, Rorge, and Biter live, probably means that Jaime will die at Lady Stoneheart’s hands. Jaime is ransomed back? This one is more muted and more psychological in character. Without feeling as much of an obligation to Brienne – who possibly dies in the bear pit in this scenario – or experiencing the loss of his hand, Jaime’s old personality arrives in King’s Landing, probably before the Purple Wedding. Does this mean he actually tries to marry Cersei? (Can’t imagine Tywin allowing this.) Does this mean he wouldn’t be offered Casterly Rock? (There’s not as much of a pretext.) Does this mean he doesn’t turn it down? (After all, if he wants to marry, that suggests less of a dedication to his vows.) It’s not clear.

Book v. Show:

In general, I’m of two minds about how this scene was handled on the show. On the one hand, Jaime and Brienne’s duel is very well done, and the actual chopping off of the hand is as well. On the other, having them be discovered because Brienne showed mercy to a farmer is starting to feed into the show’s belief that honor is stupid. More importantly, while switching from the Brave Companions to Bolton men does streamline things somewhat in terms of cast, it does damage in terms of thematics – rather than Jaime getting hit by the consequences of his and his father’s mistakes, he just randomly gets caught by the enemy. And as I’ve said before, there’s a difference between tragedy and “an asshole getting hit by a bus.”

However, I will absolutely defend to the end the smash-cut from Jaime getting his hand lopped off to the “Bear and the Maiden Fair” by the Hold Steady. Really evoked the macabre humor of the Bloody Mummers.