Game of Thrones, Book 4

The fourth Game of Thrones book is a bit weird. Correction: very weird. It doesn’t talk about half the main characters at all! George RR Martin explains why in the epilogue:

“I felt the readers would be better served by a book that told all the story for half the characters, rather than half the story for all the characters.”

And so we find missing half “the characters you love or love to hate”.

This book is all about Tywin Lannister, the “perfect Hand”, the man “who wore no crown, yet he was all a king should be”. Consider how outrageous that is, given that the man in question dies at the end of the previous book!

Inevitably, the man who “did what was needed” was never popular, notes his daughter, Cersei:

“King’s Landing had never loved Lord Tywin. He never wanted love, though.”

No wonder then that when the “perfect Hand” dies, the unravelling begins:

“When the lion falls the lesser beasts move in: the jackals and the vultures and the feral dogs.”

And so begins the next phase, as described by Samwell Tarly:

“The worst isn’t done. The worst is just beginning, and there are no happy endings.”

After the fall of such a strong man, it’s best if the successor to the role of the Hand is equally competent, something that Queen Cersei acknowledges:

“A weak ruler needs a strong Hand, as Aerys needed father. A strong ruler requires only a diligent servant to carry out his orders.”

Unfortunately, Cersei decides she’s a strong ruler! Add to that, she’s a woman, and so not exactly the gender to whom others will bend the knee to. That only adds to her frustration. And so, like Asha, another contender to a (different) throne, Cersei feels she can operate only by shows by strength. Or as Asha said:

“I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.”

Cersei soon begins to sees traitors everywhere, rues Jamie Lannister:

“His sweet sister seemed to think half the court was either useless or treasonous.”

To make matters worse for Cersei, when she turns to her brother to join her council, he being aware of his weaknesses, declines:

“I was made for a battlefield, not a council chamber.”

And Jamie isn’t first one to say No. Such instances only infuriate Cersei further:

“When Tywin Lannister spoke, men obeyed. When Cersei spoke, they felt free to counsel her, to contradict her, even refuse her.”

And patience isn’t exactly her virtue, notes Jamie:

“Their father had been as relentless and implacable as a glacier, where Cersei was all wildfire, especially when thwarted.”

All of this leads Cersei to surround herself with Yes-men, “sheep (who) all baaaaaaed along” with whatever she said. Problem solved? Not exactly. Because, as Cersei begins to discover, she’s just surrounded herself with incompetence:

“My enemies are everywhere and my friends are fools.”

Worse, as Littlefinger points out, even the sheep aren’t perfectly obedient:

“In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own. Sometimes they refuse to make the moves you’ve planned for them.”

And Cersei doesn’t appreciate the value of information, points out Jamie:

“Knowledge could be more valuable than gold, more deadly than a dagger.”

And so even her own brother, Jamie, fears she will take them all off the cliff:

“The crows will feast upon us all if you go on this way.”

And Littlefinger is taken aback at the speed at which Cersei drives:

“I always anticipated that she would beggar the realm and destroy herself, but I never expected she would do it quite so fast.”

Jamie notices that his father had set several things in motion that continue to roll on even after his death:

 “Even from the grave, Lord Tywin’s dead hand moves us all.”

By now, do you have the same feeling as Emmon Frey?

“A man such as Tywin Lannister comes but once in a thousand years.”

Hmmm… so let’s prick the Tywin bubble… a bit. He could have made his dwarf son, Tyrion, his successor as the Hand. After all, on that front, as his sister Lady Genna says:

 “Tyrion is Tywin’s son.”

But Tywin hated Tyrion. Not because of anything Tyrion did. Why then? Because Tyrion was a dwarf! No wonder that Lady Genna says:

“Men are such thundering great fools. Even the sort who come along once in a thousand years.”

So what then do we make of Tywin? His other son, Jamie, sums it up perfectly:

 “Even Lord Tywin never claimed to be a god.”