Welcome back to A Read of Ice and Fire! Please join me as I read and react, for the very first time, to George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.
Today’s entry is Part 20 of A Feast for Crows, in which we cover Chapter 28 (“Cersei”).
Previous entries are located in the Index. The only spoilers in the post itself will be for the actual chapters covered and for the chapters previous to them. As for the comments, please note that the Powers That Be have provided you a lovely spoiler thread here on Tor.com. Any spoileriffic discussion should go there, where I won’t see it. Non-spoiler comments go below, in the comments to the post itself.
And now, the post!
Chapter 28: Cersei
What Happens
Cersei rides in a litter with Lady Taena Merryweather to see the new High Septon, highly irritated that she is obliged to go to him and ask why he has not yet come to give Tommen his blessing as king. She quizzes Taena about Margaery’s possible interests in the men in her entourage, and is skeptical of Margaery’s claim that Lord Renly was too drunk to consummate their marriage on their wedding night. Taena mentions that Margaery’s brother Loras is more devoted to her than any other. They discuss the history of the High Septons, and Cersei urges Taena to bring her son to court as a companion for Tommen.
The litter is blocked at the foot of Visenya’s Hill by a great gathering of sparrows, all camped upon the steps leading to the Great Sept. Cersei is appalled by their gall and filth, but rather than sparking a riot by ordering them cleared away, decides to continue to the sept on foot. She becomes incensed when she sees that the sparrows have heaped bones on the statue of Baelor the Beloved; one of the sparrows tells her they are the bones of holy men and women, “murdered for their faith.” Cersei tries to win them by declaring that their deaths shall be avenged, but the man tells her they would rather have protection for the clergy still living. The situation grows unstable, but Cersei manages to get them away and to the sept, though she is further angered when her guards are not allowed inside with her.
Inside, she finds the new High Septon in plain, worn clothes, on his knees scrubbing the floor, along with the rest of the septons. He tells her that the fine robes and crown given the last High Septon have been sold for charity. Cersei recalls how he had been installed at the insistence of the sparrows, and concludes he is mad. They go to kneel before the Crone, and Cersei tells him she wants the sparrows gone from the city, but he answers that they do not befoul the plaza more than the execution done there. Cersei is incredulous that he dares to bring up Ned Stark’s beheading, but forces herself to agree that doing before the sept was in poor taste. He says most of them have nowhere to go, and that not all of the soldiers raping and pillaging their places of worship were wolves or followers of Lord Stannis. He mentions the atrocities said to have been perpetrated by the Hound at Saltpans, which include raping and mutilating a twelve-year-old girl promised to the Faith. Cersei points out that the Hound is a traitor, and fights for Dondarrion now, not Tommen. The High Septon still wants to know why there is no one to protect the faithful.
He and Cersei bargain; in return for giving his blessing to King Tommen, the High Septon wants a decree repealing the law of Maegor the Cruel, which prohibits the clergy from bearing arms, and restore the ancient Faith Militant orders of the Sword and Star. Cersei agrees, on condition that he forgive the crown its debt of nearly a million dragons. The High Septon agrees, and says he will send his sparrows off “to defend the meek and humble of the land, reborn as Poor Fellows as of old.” Well-pleased with herself, Cersei takes her leave.
On the way back to the keep, Cersei explains to Taena the history of the Warrior’s Sons and the Poor Fellows. The former, also called Swords, were knights who gave up their worldly possessions to swear themselves to the High Septon, while the latter, also called Stars, were common wandering brothers who acted as armed escorts for travelers, but both were infamous for their implacable hatred of enemies of the Faith. Taena suggests, enemies like Stannis and his red sorceress, and Cersei gleefully agrees.
Her good mood is soured, though, when they encounter Margaery Tyrell also returning to the keep from a ride with her cousins. Cersei thinks irritably on Margaery’s vigorous daily activities, and her continual efforts to get Tommen to join her, which Cersei considers attempts to steal Tommen from her. She comes to the sudden conclusion that the Tyrells must be harboring Tyrion at Highgarden. Cersei and Margaery make sweetly venomous small talk, and Cersei warns Margaery to be careful in the woods, where Robert had lost his life. She remembers how she had used to duck out of going hunting with Robert so that she could steal time with Jaime.
Margaery smiled at Ser Loras; a sweet sisterly smile, full of fondness. “Your Grace is kind to fear for me, but my brother keeps me well protected.”
Go and hunt, Cersei had urged Robert, half a hundred times. My brother keeps me well protected. She recalled what Taena had told her earlier, and a laugh came bursting from her lips.
“Your Grace laughs so prettily.” Lady Margaery gave her a quizzical smile. “Might we share the jest?”
“You will,” the queen said. “I promise you, you will.”
Commentary
Jeez, Cersei, just because you were boinking your brother doesn’t mean everyone is.
Of course, I can’t quite tell whether Cersei genuinely thinks that Margaery and Loras really are getting it on, or whether she just thinks she could get leverage out of making everyone think that they are. The latter would actually be rather diabolically clever of her, provided she can make a convincing enough case for it.
Which she may not be able to, since I’m assuming for now that it’s total bullshit. I could be wrong about that, and certainly I know Margaery Tyrell is a lot more savvy than her façade suggests, but for whatever reason, at the moment my gut feeling is that she is not actually deceitful in the way Cersei believes her to be. She is maneuvering for her own advantage and protection, certainly (and wouldn’t you, if you were in the lions’ den?), but I feel that at core she is still exactly what she presents herself to be—i.e. a virgin, and certainly not fucking her brother.
This assumption is helped along quite a bit by Taena’s tale of Margaery’s wedding night with Renly (with Loras carrying her up to the bedchamber and etc). Cersei seems to assume that the story implied that some kind of torrid incestuous threesome happened, ooh la la, whereas given the hints we’ve received of Loras’s and Renly’s apparently deep and abiding love affair, the first thing it suggested to my mind is that Loras and Renly were probably the only ones using the wedding bed that night, and that Margaery probably went off and read a book or something. I mean, I think she was what, ten when she married Renly? Young, in any case. So it’s hardly even surprising that she wouldn’t care about being left out of the nookie.
Though this version of events, if true, suggests some fascinating possibilities about the relationship between Margaery and Loras. Like, maybe she had no idea what was going on and Loras and Renly just waited for her to fall asleep before knocking boots, but far less boring an idea was that she was in fact perfectly well aware of Loras and Renly’s relationship, and was actually complicit in helping it along. Which is a notion that I find kind of weirdly delightful. It probably says something that I am wanting to coo over the idea of Margaery helping her brother carry out his clandestine gay love affair with her husband. It’s nuts, but somehow adorable? Look, I don’t know.
In any case, obviously I have no idea if any of this speculation even remotely holds water, but now I’m kind of dying to find out if I’m right.
In the meantime, let’s move on to OH MY GOD CERSEI WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND PLEASE SLAP YOURSELF NOW.
Did I read that right? Did Cersei just blithely agree to let the state religion arm itself? With soldiers who only answer to the Pope the High Septon? Really? Really?
I did, didn’t I.
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
Oy.
I REALLY don’t need to be a political theory expert to know that this is just about the absolute worst idea in the history of potentially regime-toppling bad ideas. Yes, Cersei, the Knights Templar the orders of Sword and Star were “implacable to the enemies of the Faith.” So what happens if they decide “enemies of the Faith” includes YOU?
You MORON.
Ow, the stupid, it burnsssss.
Yeah, so this is totally going to end well, not. It might even not end well almost immediately, depending on whether Mr. Oh So Humble Floor Scrubber there is already planning to attempt a coup, or is merely setting things up to have the capacity to do so, should a sufficient threshold of godlessness on Cersei’s part be reached. Ugh.
Mind you, I am not blind to the legitimate concerns of the clergy here. It is, definitely, total bullshit that the sanctity of their septs and their persons have been so grossly violated, and it is even more total bullshit that the crown has done nothing to protect them, from either their enemies or from their own people. I’m not sure that I agree that the depredations against the clergy should outweigh the identical depredations being simultaneously carried out against, you know, everyone else, but nevertheless I agree that it absolutely should not be happening.
And yeah, giving the clergy the ability to defend themselves seems like on paper a good solution to that, but I know waaaay too much history about the exploits of autonomous theocratic militants for this notion to do anything but give me an extreme case of the screaming meemies. For my money, Cersei couldn’t have done herself a worse disservice than if she’d pressed a giant red button labeled DANGEROUSLY DESTABILIZE MY KINGDOM HERE. Because, you know, it was already so very very stable to begin with. Yeah.
Good Lord, pun intended.
But, you know, congrats on paying off one of your credit cards there, Cersei. Good job, well done. Have a slow clap.
*rolls eyes*
Other notes:
This Saltpans massacre thing is continuing to throw me, because I’m continuing to be convinced, for some reason, that it never happened. Or at least that if it did happen, it wasn’t the Hound who did it. I’m not even sure where I’m getting that conviction from, except that I just don’t understand why Clegane would have even done it in the first place. Not because he’s such a bastion of righteousness or anything, but just because it (obviously) was way too attention-drawing an act for a guy who, last I heard, was just trying to get the hell out of Dodge. Not to mention, raping and mutilating a young girl for (apparently) the LOLZ really seems more like his brother’s style than his.
But who knows. I assume at some point I’ll actually find out what the hell the deal is with this rumor, but for now I’m assuming it’s all wrong.
She thought of Joffrey, clawing at his neck. In his last moments he had looked to her in desperate appeal, and a sudden memory had stopped her heart; a drop of red blood hissing in a candle flame, a croaking voice that spoke of crowns and shrouds, of death at the hands of the valonqar.
Oh, look, a hint at this damn Maggy prophecy the story’s been so cagey about!
And… I’m not a whole lot more enlightened, really. Other than that something in the foretelling predicted Joffrey’s death, which, okay, but that’s kind of ancient history at this point. The only other thing is the reference to “valonqar,” which… do I know what that means? I feel like maybe I’ve heard that term before, but I’m not sure. Maybe it is a reference to Arya’s crazy death cult people?
(…Ooh, does that mean it might be a prediction that Arya is going to kill Cersei? Because I ain’t gonna lie, that would be awesome, in a total Inigo Montoya kind of way.)
Still, the absence of a bloody sheet meant little, by itself. Common peasant girls bled like pigs upon their wedding nights, she had heard, but that was less true of highborn maids like Margaery Tyrell. A lord’s daughter was more like to give her maidenhead to a horse than a husband, it was said, and Margaery had been riding since she was old enough to walk.
Well, at least Cersei demonstrates here that she knows the whole “bleeding being proof of virginity” thing is crap. Pity that’s something that even modern-day folk don’t seem to know.
Cersei did not intend to squander Tommen’s strength playing wet nurse to sparrows, or guarding the wrinkled cunts of a thousand sour septas. Half of them are probably praying for a good raping.
…Buuut she pretty much loses all feminist points instantly right here, minus another ten million for being a terrible human being in general. Seriously, Cersei? Seriously?
You know what, you are fired, girl. Go to hell. Go directly to hell, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dragons. I will maybe even swallow my protests, just this once, if it ends up that the Westeros Neo-Templars send you there. Really, just – go. Away. Now.
Ugh.
And that’s our post for today, mine darlings! Have a summer’s day or seven, and I’ll see you next Thursday!
“The latter would actually be rather diabolically clever of her, provided she can make a convincing enough case for it.”
The problem with that is Cersei is nowhere near diabolically clever.
Um, did the High Septon ask for the Swords and Stars, or did he ask for law and order and got a “help yourself, I need my troops myself” from Cersei?
Margaery was, I believe, 16 when she married Renly. (She was older than Joffrey, and her first wedding took place in Renly’s camp after he had fled King’s Landing in A Game of thrones.)
Glad you immediately grasped the implications of Cersie’s stupidity. Nothing says good government like a nice armed jihad. While the “Seven” are the official state religion, there seem to be sizable minorities who share at least 3 other faiths (2 of which have proven to have actual power). What happens when armed fanatics attack them?
Cersei, Cersei, Cersei. You just got rolled big, and you haven’t a fricking clue.
Yeah, the descent of Cersei continues apace.
I think even a three-year-old could probably twig to the fact that rearming the Faith, particularly when the ranks are swelled by a lot of desparate, dispossessed recruits and they’re being led by a rigidly righteous new High Septon, is a super-terrible idea. So there’s something pathetically amusing about how Cersei’s all dislocating her arm patting herself on the back for her cleverness. Oy.
Cersei: “Those mobs are a problem, I want to be rid of them. Let’s arm them.” An armed mob is certainly easier to deal with than an unarmed mob.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I just can’t today with your review Leigh, it was the best thing ever, and I can’t even say why!
I think your point about Margaery is pretty spot on, in re Loras and Renly, remember the Queen of Thorns talked openly about Loras’ proclivities in front of Margaery, so amongst the Tyrells it seems to be an open secret.
The main problem with cersei is that she… oh nevermind, that bitch be whack alll over.
(roll over for possible TV show spoilers) The TV series gave us the peek at the Baratheon-Tyrell bedchambers that Leigh was wondering about. I really hope that once she has caught up with the current books, Leigh does also an episode-by-episode blogging of the series!
I quite like the new High Septon – selling off the church’s jewels to care for the poor shows more concern for the common folk than pretty much anyone besides the Brotherhood has shown thus far.
Nonetheless, this is a dreadful politico-strategic decision on Cersei’s part. It’s one of my favourite chapters because it epitomizes her style of rule. First, she ignored the issue of selection of a new High Septon in a previous chapter, so now she’s got one she can’t influence; then she makes a terrible decision to re-create the Faith Militant, just to deal with some of the crown’s debts; and then she congratulates herself and thinks she’s a Tywin-like genius for doing it. She’s just so clueless.
I don’t think Marg is a virgin – she’s politically savvy enough to have known that she’d need a child to secure her position as Renly’s queen, and Renly would have known that too, regardless of his preferences. But Cersei’s belief that she’s sleeping with Loras is pretty clearly projection.
Ah, the chapter where Cersei makes one of her biggest blunders ever while congratulating herself on how brilliant she is. Not a new type of behavior for her, but this is… ramped up in its stupidity. Hey, Cersei, you admit to yourself you know nothing about why Maegor passed those laws – how about at least reading up on it before deciding to revoke them? That is, since you can’t see the obvious.
The sad thing is that it’s so easy to believe the whole mess. It’s exactly what Cersei would do. The one thing about the situation that made me hesitate the first time I read it was the High Septon agreeing to forgive the loan. He just seems too fanatical and upright to stoop to bartering that way. Crowning Tommen is different – by repealing the law, he’s proving himself a good king who deserves to be crowned, in the HS’s eyes. But the loan… that smacks too much of bribery and corruption. Or so it seems to me that he’d feel.
I think Margaery was fourteen when she and Renly were married. Considered beddable in Westeros, certainly. (Renly had originally wanted to oust Cersei and have Robert marry Margaery instead, if you remember.) She’s about sixteen now. And of course Cersei is going to think she’s sleeping with her brother – to Cersei, that’s just normal behavior, but one that can be used to discredit Marg.
Great read, Leigh, your reactions match my own for so much in this chapter. Cersei’s speculation on Margaery’s maidenhood is amusing, especially Taena’s comment that she doesn’t believe it because Renly was clearly aroused on the wedding night when Margaery was carried to him (by Loras! LOL).
Cersei is such a bad person that every time we’re in her head it makes me sick. There are worse people in Westeros, but I don’t think there are any whose heads we’ve been in, not even Victorian. And she really is fickle and impulsive without even realizing it. She has reverse sexist thoughts when her bodyguard reaches for his sword (“why are all men such children?”, then a few moments later she contemplates having Trant kill the High Septon, but thinks “not here, not now”. There is an interesting line here, when Cersei is speakintg to the High Septon: “If he dares mention gold, I will deal with this one as I did the last and find a pious eight-year-old to wear the crystal crown“. Very interesting….
Yeah, Cersei’s “total victory” in saving the throne almost a million dragons is so obviously foolish to everyone but her, but she really is short-sighted.
Glad you immediately grasped the implications of Cersie’s stupidity. Nothing says good government like a nice armed jihad. While the “Seven” are the official state religion, there seem to be sizable minorities who share at least 3 other faiths (2 of which have proven to have actual power). What happens when armed fanatics attack them?
Leigh, I was waiting to read your reaction to this chapter and you did not disappoint me.
Makeing the High Septon a “king” with an army just increased Cersei’s problems. Long term planning is not Cersei’s stong point, to say the least.
The “needing a good raping” comment is oddly one I have heard before. Not just from male jerks but from so-called enlighten females talking about unenlightened females. Cersei is in many was a trope to women who gain power but have no idea what to do with it once they get it. (Men also suffer from this, to be fair).
Is Cersei and anti Nedd? Trust no one vs trust everyone?
If I remember correctly Cersei think about how she had the last High Septon killed. She may believe, foolishly, that she therefore can control an armed Church.
@11, I don’t think Margaery’s a virgin, because I’m pretty sure she’s sleeping with some of those pretty handmaidens she’s surrounded by.
But I don’t think it’s likely that she’s had sex with a man, unless it was Renly’s uninterested fumblings.
“If he dares mention gold, I will deal with this one as I did the last and find a pious eight-year-old to wear the crystal crown“.
This is pretty much a confession that Cersei killed the last High Septon, probably because he was appointed by Tyrion (and she’s paranoid about Tyrion). So, one more murder to put on Cersei’s body count!
I don’t know how you thought Cersei had any feminist point before this, Leigh. As has been pointed out in lots of Cersei chapters before this, she can moan about men not respecting her because she’s a woman, but she also disrespects all the women that surround her, thinking that they’re stupid, sending them to be Qyburn’s experiments, etc. Basically Cersei just likes to whine and complain about other people, regardless of gender. I doubt she would approve of a law that would repell male primogeniture if it did end up with another woman on power (Myrcella, Aryanne Martell or Daenerys Targaryen).
Chapter 28 – Cersei: It seems that Cersei is engaging in a dangerous game in trying to cast aspersions upon Margaery in terms of the marriage bed since Cersei is far from clean in that respect.
The Sparrows nesting habits don’t seem to be all that neat about Baelor’s statue. The new high Septon seems to really take his faith to heart. Unlike the previous political toadies. This isn’t the type of person that Cersei has any experience in dealing with. That they are also feeling (and being) preyed upon by the various bandits, rogues and just plain old nasty armed groups doesn’t help the state they are starting out in here.
The whole “Hound and the Saltpans” incident continues to not seem right. I continue to smell a red herring rather than a hound.
Rearming the “Faith Militant” seems like a most crucial mistake on Cersei’s part. While it may help the sparrows and pilgrims, church’s having their own independent armies has not worked out at all well here. In addition, transforming the civil war into a religious and civil war is a far more dangerous step to take than Cersei has any idea. This is going to come back to haunt her, I think. While Cersei believes herself to have gotten a great deal, she may have just started a ball rolling that a million dragons won’t be able to stop.
Well done on thinking though the implications of Cersei allowing the sparrows to be armed. You go, Cersei! :*/
I won’t spoil you as to the TV show but you’ll be fascinated to see how Margaery is presented. Really interesting characterization re the issue of how innocent (or not) she is.
she may have just started a ball rolling that a million dragons won’t be able to stop.
Well, maybe three can, though?
Lunatic-fringe theory for the crowd to chew on:
Cercei isn’t as dumb/incompetent as she seems; she’s intentially driving the kingdom to collapse to facilitate a Targaryen restoration.
Hah! Projection is a funny thing. There is still a sizable part of fandom that believes Loras and Marg are boinking because Cersei (!) thinks so, which always makes me boggle a little. But then, not a single Tyrell POV is making people almost as paranoid as Cersei about them. Hm.
Oh, I love this Leigh! Yeah, that’s pretty much what I think happened after Taena left the scene:
Loras and Renly going at it like bunnies on the floor.
Marg blushing under her coverlets: Guys? …. Guys? …. Hello? I’m right over here? … Guys?
Loras: Oh, fuck of sis, this is my wedding night! You can do the … eww … thing with Renly later.
(btw. Marg was 15 when she married Renly and is now close to 17)
Mind you a vague threesome connotation is in the wedding night story Taena tells and the show also played around with this a bit in a different way. But yeah, I too think this idea should be left for
sexytacky fanfiction.There is not much readers of this series agree on, but it seems to be a truth universally acknowleged that rearming the Faith is a bad idea. I’m really curious to see how GRRM resolves this issue at the end, how will whoever ends up on the iron throne manage to dissolve the Stars and Stripes now? Or is it just something future kings/queens of Westeros will have to deal with forever?
Aeryl@20:Yes, three dragons are a completely different story from a million. :-)
@23 – You think Dany, Euron, or Stannis would deal with them for more than a count to ten?
Oh Cersei. As horrible as she is, I actually enjoy her trainwreck chapters because of the way she thinks she’s being so brilliant. She differs from the Ironborn – the other “villainous” POVs – because we’ve been following Cersei indirectly for two thousand pages already. Cersei’s earned her POV chapters; I don’t like her, but I know her well enough by now to want to see what she’s up to.
She’s not actually stupid – Cersei’s failings are not due to intelligence, but her own shallow, petty motivations. She’s a narcissist incapable of empathizing with anyone else, and does not think beyond her own immediate gratification. Look carefully at how she thinks about Tommen; she never so much as expresses a single thought about him as his own person – only as a reflection of herself.
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that empowering an independent army in the middle of your capital is not going to end well, because it never ends well.
My initial response to this chapter was: “Wow, did Cersei actually do something sensible?! It’s bound to turn out badly, because seemingly-good ideas always do in this story, but I don’t see how.”
She’ll clearly never bestir herself to defend these people from the rampaging murderers we know are out there, there’ll be a massive storm of some kind when the crown’s debts come due, and a mob opposed to Tommen is a massacre waiting to happen. Three problems reduced at once! Also, the clergy of the Faith have done exactly nothing significant in the story so far. There are good individuals (Merribald) and bad ones (Urswyck, Utt), but the institution has been a political non-entity. Which goes to show that I should not be a ruler.
That said, an essay on Westeros princes (http://towerofthehand.com/blog/2014/03/28-hollow-crowns-deadly-thrones/index.html — SPOILERS THRU ADWD) aptly and amusuingly describes Cersei and Joffrey’s mindset of “The peasants are revolting.”
Still in momentary sympathy mode, I shared Cersei’s irritation at Marg’s seemingly-carefree little procession. The kingdom is going to hell and they’re off picking flowers! Which is admittedly better than sending it to hell even faster, but still.
@15: Cersei doesn’t trust or distrust everyone. She just trusts the untrustworthy, and vice versa. But, yeah. Ned follows the rules and thinks everyone else will, while Cersei breaks the rules but thinks everyone else will follow them. As LF said, sometimes the other game pieces don’t do what you expect, which neither Ned or Cersei understand.
Her “praying for a good raping” thought is horrible and inexcusable, but I’ve wondered if she actually believed it. As a woman for whom sex is the main form of interacting with people for both political gain and entertainment, she might find it hard to imagine anyone vowing celibacy, and think that a septa who does so for career reasons would secretly hope to be “forced” to break that vow.
@20, @24 – Pratchett, once more, says it best:
I had a similar reaction to you, namely that it’s really not a great idea to give the Faith their own army (or any religion) but…if they do decide Cersei is an Enemy of the Faith, I may not protest so much. Hah.
I enjoyed the linked article on virginity as social construct, in that I’ve had similar thoughts about the folly of reducing the concept to ‘part x in part y’ and the double standard with which it is applied.
valonqar…
Oh here we go… D=
This is not the first time that the Stars and Swords have been mentioned. In The Sworn Sword, there was a throwaway line about them, presented with no explanation: “‘Twas Aegon’s son King Maegor who took Coldmoat from us, when Lord Ormond Osgrey spoke out against his supression of the Stars and Swords, as the Poor Fellows and the Warrior’s Sons were called.”
I found that the Cersei chapters made getting through AFFC difficult. Constant paranoia? Check. Smug self-satisfaction? Check. Acting stupidly without thinking it through? Check. If it didn’t already exist, the phrase “She’s a legend in her own mind” would be invented for her. Ugh.
I am forgetting when the Saltpans massacre was supposed to have occurred. Hadn’t Arya already left the Hound for dead before then?
You know, I thought for just a moment we’d be able to get through ONE chapter of Martin’s works without mentioning someone getting raped. Maybe we did back in the first book, I’m sure there’s gotta be one in there somewhere. But damn, at this rate the supply and demand of canola is getting crazy.
A Rape Of Crones perhaps…
1st time poster! (long time reader :P) Great recap and review. Nice reactions.
@16: Personally, that’s what I thought Cersei meant when she was comparing Margaery to Loras, instead of the whole incest angle.
@34, But that ignores that Margary’s to her words were similar to Cersei’s to Robert.
I just got that sense from Marg when she was first introduced with Olenna in that Sansa chapter.
Annnnd off to the spoiler thread….
I have been following this read for a few months now and I have only just caught up. Expect me every Thursday for a comment of mine (if there is anything worth commenting).
@37, Owlay Welcome!
We long timers recommend what we call “taking the black” i.e. registering for an account with Tor.com. It will allow you the privilege of editing comments(in case you post spoilers), and you’ll have access to a landing page that lets you keep track of the posts you’ve been commenting on!
On this chapter……………….I only have to say that it presents a faith revival with the accompanying fanaticism and that in these circumstances rearming the Stars and the Swords might not be the best thing to do.
Another thing: So the High Septon is only called the High Septon? Doesn’t he, you know, take a new more religious name when he assumes office? That’s sure to cause many inconveniences when trying to tell them apart.
Oh yes! I do love watching Leigh read and discuss the insanity which is Cersei Lannister.
Previously GRRM has demonstrated an remarkable ability to alter the reader sympathies by exposing us to POV chapters of villains. But here he does the opposite — Cersei’s POV reveals her to be (if possible) even worse than she appears on the outside.
I particularly like the little discussion between Lady Merryweather and Cersei concerning Lady Merryweather’s little boy. There’s no way Taena is going to bring that child into this nest of vipers. Cersei should be noticing this, but it all gets lost in her memories of Joffrey and the prophecy. Cersei? That woman is not your friend!
Cersei is so dumb and evil that she’s become a caricature of herself. It’s ridiculous that she makes mistake after mistake and never sees it, like she’s defined by her blonde hair.
@41, not really, it’s actually fairly organic character development. In the first book, she plotted and schemed, but she had Robert as a check on her power and a safety net, so she couldn’t do too much, and if she screwed up, well….she’s the Queen….what are you gonna do? The second and third books, Tyrion and Tywin respectively handled most of the “active” plotting, and Cersei just has to reap the benefits. Now, though, we’re seeing pure Cersei, and it’s….unimpressive, to say the least.
It bothers me some, just how stupid Cersei has gotten to be.
I’m reminded of that old Star Trek episode where some woman switches her brain into Kirk’s body, takes over command of the Enterprise, and makes a complete hash of it. And when she’s caught, all she can do is wail, “But I wanted to be the Captain!”
That’s Cersei– “But I wanted to be the Queen!”
But, I don’t know, all the other contenders have some brains, or at least cunning. Why is the-woman-who-wants-to-be-queen so much stupider than any of the-men-who-want-to-be-king? Is she really nothing more than an extended dumb-blonde joke?
When reading the chapter, I too thought, ‘Very bad idea.’ ‘Persopolis’ flashed to mind- how all the secular rebels thought they would take over and force the Ayatollah’s followers back to the mosques. Then they found themselves against the wall.
I know some of you like the High Sparrow’s humility, but that was a real danger sign. It’s a short step from piety to fanaticism.
@39: A High Septon gives up his birth name without taking any other title, and individual ones are referred to (at least by the non-clergy) as “the fat one, ” the one before the fat one,” and suchlike. It comes up in this chapter, in Cersei and Taena’s conversation, though I only remember it because I reread the chapter today.
It’s also noticeable that the High Septon uses the royal “We” when referring to himelf. It very clearly is designed to parallel the Papacy, and the Stars are likely based on the Templars, as has been discussed. And Cersei just congratulated herself on restoring them, when they gave even the Targaryans trouble. Well done, Cersei, have some more Hippocras.
While from Cersei’s point of view, allowing rivals to power to have more power might be a bad thing, in this sort of setting, the right to raise troops equals power. Wouldn’t spreading around the military authority actually be a step in the right direction? Contrary to popular mythology, the cornerstone of liberty in America & similar states is not democracy, but the separation of power.
We see to a certain extent that happens in Westeros, where the kings can’t run roughshod over everyone, because the power is dispersed among the nobility, so he kind of needs cooperation from the rest to get anything done. But that’s aristocrats.
In a society like the Seven Kingdoms, the Faith can’t really tyrannize unless they get control of the government, which is invested in the personal power and loyalties commanded by a king. Taking control of the apparatus won’t mean much, because, well, there isn’t any. No one really depends on Kings Landing & the Iron Throne for much other than handling other nobles. Each region is pretty much set up to govern itself just fine. They had a functioning and prosperous society for hundreds, if not thousands of years just fine before the Targaryens showed up to unify the whole place, and could revert to self-governance just fine as well. The ways the Faith have of seizing power are no more or less than they had before. If they gained sufficient influence over the monarch, they could advise him to run things as they wished, but that has nothing to do with their armies. Not that they were able to do jack all with such things against the Targaryen invaders, or really do much in the grand scheme of things against the subsequent monarchs.
The real key to the Faith’s success would have been their popularity. If bounties on the warriors were not enough to get rid of the orders, that could only be because the people were sheltering, protecting and hiding them. Which also generally happens when monarchs think to rid people of the oppression of organized religion. It’s why secret compartments in English houses are sometimes called “priest holes”. So when you get down to it, arming the Faith is as close to giving the common people influence and power as they are going to get without a massive paradigm shift. Not to mention, they might prove more amenable to an anti-Others crusade than the average Andal noblemen more concerned with protecting their property than the human race.
The faith are far more dependent on the good-will of the common people in such circumstances, and at this point, represent the best opportunity for a check on the king and aristocracy. At the very least, the Poor Fellows represent an alternative career for the militarily-inclined peasants to being a thug for the local bossman. A recurring issue throughout the books is the trouble men have ignoring or leaving behind the family and loyalties they are supposed to put aside when joining a nuetral organization, like the maesters, Night’s Watch or Kingsguard. If that’s a thing, then the Poor Fellows are just as unlikely to forget where they came from, and the additional moral authority of their masters is a reason to hope that they can be restrained from atrocities. The cause and institutional continuity answers a number of the dehumanizing factors Meribald cites and then there is the example of Ser Bonifer’s troops.
It’s more a case of their being able to play on the supposedly sacrosanct immunities of the clergy, and the whole “if they dare insult the gods in this way, what will they stop at?” See Randyll Tarly’s rationale in punishing the thief who looted a sept. Regular people complain about getting assaulted or burned out or whatever, but that is usually laughed off with the excuse that it’s just a part of war, and even the military necessity is cited regarding the legitimacy of depriving the enemy of supplies and labor. Such rationales do not hold in the case of the clergy who are distinct from the rest of the people, who have put themselves aside from participation in that sort of thing, and who are not anyone’s enemy. It’s like hospital ships under the laws of war. Where even civilian merchant ships can be legitimately targeted in some circumstances, because of their strategic or logistical value, hospital ships are off limits. They are also required to not be armed in anyway. They have another purpose, and they are disarmed for exactly the reason that it removes any sincere motivation for destroying them. Like the Faith of the Seven, they are disarmed because they are made specially exempt from attack, and they are able to be afforded that exemption because they are unarmed. It’s not a case of being protected like the crown is supposed to protect everyone else, it is a case of them being specifically stripped of arms and protection. Even commoners can carry weapons, and hire sellswords or thugs to guard their businesses (just as merchant ships may be armed), but the Faith cannot, because they were promised they would be protected in exchange for their non-participation in the military struggles of the realm.
Also, as I noted above, they are the best protection for “everyone else”. With the nobles all off answering the call to arms of their liege lords, there is no local security. Historically, the right to shelter in a church is well known. If there are armsmen guarding such places, that right gains teeth. We see Catelyn half criticizing Edmure for bringing “useless mouths” into Riverrun when they fear a Lannister attack, so the notion of any other lawful protection is apparently not a thing. I don’t know if it’s as true in Westeros as in Medieval Europe, but some sort of religious facility was present in nearly every community of any size, and was often the central feature of a town or village. So spreading out volunteers who have royal and ecclesiastical sanction to protect churches and monasteries and abbeys means more security generally available for the regular folks. And by the nature of their influence, the clergy are going to be very reluctant to use those thugs to exclude people, while the nobles are not going to be very sanguine about the use of those armsmen to enforce religious authority, like tithing (as opposed to legitimate levies on church-held lands) or attendance at services. That’s checks and balances in its most elemental form.
It’s kind of sad, but not really unexpected that Leigh would automatically assume hypocrisy or a scam of some kind regarding the High Septon’s reforming bent. At leas that’s what I take from her “Mr. Oh So Humble Floor Scrubber” line.
Aeryl @@@@@8
I don’t, actually. I recall she said he was good at knocking men off horses with a stick, which could be innuendo for the amusement of the more sophisticated in her entourage, but that is pretty much the opposite of “talked openly”. Loras’ brother Garlan came the closest by alluding to Tyrion being a better husband than Loras at Sansa’s wedding, but it’s still not “openly.”
Aerona @@@@@ 27
Excellent points, complementing my own.
How do they write official church histories? Are there history books about “the fat High Septon who was elected during king Robert’s reign”?
@43 Amaryllis
It bothers me some, just how stupid Cersei has gotten to be.
She’s always been this stupid it just didn’t show as much because she had never been in a position where she needed any measure of political cunning or an eye for long-term repercussions.
As someone else said earlier, she’s very cunning when it comes to immediate personal gain and gratifiation. And that’s all she did (and had done) when we met her. Her “masterful outmaneuvering of Ned” was actually no different from what she thinks about in this chapter…find someone and pay him to stab her opponent with something sharp and pointy (or at least threaten to).
But in the case of Ned and Robert it meant stepping onto the political stage instead of just petty personal stuff and it immediately started backfiring horribly at every corner. Having three kids with her brother was all about narcissism and personal gratification and once that became a political issue things went kablooey. Killing Robert really did nothing but delay and put a completely unstable psychopath on the throne, killing Ned (or allowing to in any case, see -> psychopath) turned a small tendril of smoke into a continent wide wildfire, and the list just goes on from there.
She never dealt with the issue at hand from a political perspective (read: remove Ned from the picture in a inconspicuous way) but always in an almost childish knee-jerk kinda way. Ned’s gonna tell Robert? Kill Robert. Ned’s gonna tell everyone and Varys has set everything up to remove the threat to Joffrey? Let Joffrey kill Ned instead.
Everything we ever saw her do was never done with the grand scheme of things in mind. And now that she’s actually in charge it really shows. Getting inside her head just made it worse, but really she’s always been this way…
@49 Randalator
You’re really giving Cersei too much credit for taking Ned down.
What was her plan? To provide Robert with a stronger wine hoping that he would be too drunk to defend against a boar.
It’s like John Wilkes Booth coming to that theatre and trying to kill Lincoln by throwing a banana skin on the stairs while the president was walking up to the balcony.
Even killing Robert would have given Cersei nothing if only Ned had had a bit more cunning and if it hadn’t been for LF’s treachery.
Cersei owes all her successes in earlier books to luck and powerful allies. Now she has none of them any longer.
This makes me really want you to watch the TV show. I mean, team Margaery regardless b/c I hate Cersei but that would be adorable. I don’t know how old Margaery was when she married Remly but … 10 seems too young? Maybe like 14 or 15? I think less time has passed in these books then you might think.
Cersei girl you are so bad at ruling. Like so bad. It’s both depressing and hilarious in a dark kind of way.
@50 ptyx
You’re really giving Cersei too much credit for taking Ned down.
What was her plan? To provide Robert with a stronger wine hoping that he would be too drunk to defend against a boar.
It was a bit more than that, the boar was just a lucky accident. The plan according to Varys was to stage a hunting accident and blame it on general royal shitfaced-ness. The 3x as potent wine was only meant to create an explanation for the untimely demise. Without the boar, Robert would have (airquotes) fallen from his horse or drunkenly staggered into the path of an arrow (airquotes). And if all that had failed, he’d have fallen down the stairs into a bag of knives. However it was going to play out, he wouldn’t have escaped his fate.
As for the rest, that’s kinda my point. Cersei is cunning in the immediate situation (here the all-options-covered hunting accident scheme) but completely oblivious to anything her “solution” might cause further down the line and in fact pathologically unable to correctly see all the undercurrents beyond her biased/sexist interpretations.
Birgit @@@@@ 48
I would imagine they don’t make an issue of his individuality. The High Septon is the High Septon. Anything he does redounds to the credit of the office, rather than the individual. His accomplishments are not his, they are the work of the gods and the Faith. Blame, of course, is going to be flushed down the memory hole anyway, so no point in singling the individual out.
@bill D5
In a society like the Seven Kingdoms, the Faith can’t really tyrannize unless they get control of the government,
You assert this, but don’t really back it up except to say how central religious facilities are to the common people, which no one is disputing. Nor is anyone disputing that the faithful don’t have the right to defend themselves.
But it’s a ludicrous assertion, there are hundreds of way people can tyrannize others without “control of the government”. Obsructing Republicans are tyrannizing the people of this country right now because the refuse to compromise to accomplish anything for the good of the nation.
The arming of the Faith is analogous to the PATRIOT ACT, in that yes, something terrible happened that must be addressed, but the proposed solution creates more problems that it solves.
Since you see fit to bring in actual Medieval history, might I invite you to research the Templars, a faithful army not beholden to any one nation but to a religious institution more concerned with it’s own piety and wealth than the well being of its adherents?
And if you’re going to counter than the High Septon seems unconcerned about money because he forgave the debt, well you can’t buy an army for a million dragons, so I say he got a hell of a deal.
And yes, Olenna says that, and she also talks about the fact that Loras wouldn’t make a good husband for Sansa. It’s not stated outright for Sansa’s sake, but everyone else obviously knows what she is talking about.
@50 & 52, Don’t forget Cersei’s plans to kill Robert were being instituted way before Ned learned the truth. Varys warned Ned to get Robert out of the melee tourney for that reason.
Cersei also mentioned that she was forced to move up her timetable by Ned. She was planning to get rid of Robert, but she had to do it before she could take care of Renly and Stannis, because of Ned.
Regarding Renly and Loras, sometimes it seems like an open secret, and sometimes it seems like many people don’t know about their affair. Sansa obviously never had a clue, and many of our early glimpses at them came from her (especially our glimpses of Loras, who she had a massive crush on). Olenna’s comment never struck me as implying anything about Loras’ sexual preferences. She just kind of characterizes him as the typical medeival jock, being only good at “knocking men off a horse with a stick”. Of course, Olenna being as savvy as she is, I’m sure she knew about Renly and Loras, but like everyone else I think she was cagey about discussing it openly, especially anywhere that non-Tyrell ears could hear.
My guess is that this High Septon is at this momnet quite sincere in wanting to protect the faithful. My second guess is that this is going to prove to be a slope covered in the slipperiest of oils and that protecting the faithful is going to turn into a full blown religious war and Cersei is not going to be seen as the best front woman for the faithful.
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men an’ Hig Septons an’ Queens …
@56, Yes, but the specific instance I’m referring to is when they were interrogating Sansa about Joffrey, when they had Butterbumps singing Bear and the Maiden Fair so no non-Tyrell ears could hear.
@@@@@ BillD5
I don’t know how it works in the United States (where apparently, according to your point of view, the right to bear arms is necessary to form a democracy), but it’s politics 101 that the state is based on the monopoly of the use of force. To have several groups with military force, not all of them responding to the same authority, is a recipe for making a civil war start or go longer, instead of making it end. And a civil war sucks for everyone inside the realm (except maybe arms dealers).
Cersei here makes one of her most stupid mistakes. And it’s appalling, because it relates to a lesson she taught Ned Stark in book 1: state is based on monopoly of the use of force. When King Robert was dying, both Ned Stark and Cersei tried to get the city watch, the biggest military force in the capital, on their side. To do this, both of them went to Littlefinger, the man who controlled the money that could pay the leader of the city’s watch. Cersei’s terms (a title and a castle for the leader of the city watch, further opportunities of advancement for LF) were much sweeter than Ned Stark’s, who refused to offer anything to LF besides “do what’s right” (not to mention Ned intended Stannis to become king, the one guy who would fire LF from the small council immediately). LF actually tried to make a counter proposal to Ned, saying they could become regents for Joffrey together, but Ned refused. In the end, the legal authority given to Ned by Robert’s will meant nothing against Cersei having the city watch on her pocket. The city watch killed all of Ned’s men and imprisoned him. Why did Cersei win? Because she had the biggest army compared to Ned at that time, in the crucial place that is the capital. Having an army in the capital is very important. That’s probably why there was a restriction on how many soldiers the great houses could bring with their lords in King’s Landing. And that’s why the Praetorian Guard was one of the most influential institutions in the Roman empire, choosing who would become emperor in several instances.
What Cersei has done here is creating a parallel army of who knows what size that has the right to bear arms inside the kingdom’s capital. In the future what’s stopping the High Septon from saying “The Seven have spoken to me. The true rightful ruler of all Westeros is the High Septon, not any king or queen”? Then Cersei (and all the kings with smaller armies than the Faith) are fucked.
There’s a difference between checks and balances inside the rule of law (where conflicts between different institutions will be solved in a pacific way and the armed forces have a clear, ultimate, chief, like the commander in chief of modern times) and between having several armies responding to different authorities inside a country. In the feudal system there’s bound to be several armed forces responding to a different lord in each part of the country, but there’s also a hierarchy of vassals and lords, with the king being the chief lord. Cersei has not made clear in her deal that the Faith’s armed forces respond to her or her son or whoever is sitting on the Iron Throne at the time. It’s very difficult for a temporal ruler to do so with an armed force that responds to religious authority, and that’s why Maegor the Cruel outlawed the Faith’s army, even though he had dragons on his side. Because of one argument: who has the higher authority, the king or God? The guy who is a good warrior /ruler or the creator of the universe? You can’t blame a soldier for choosing the second option.
@59, In addition to your excellent points, while this High Septon seems to be a good guy, he’s upset over the execution of Ned Stark, he wants to feed and protect people, and he’s willing to get on his knees and work, doesn’t mean the next High Septon will be as altruistic. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
@58 – I think, in the US, one of the ideas behind the right to bear arms is tying in a little bit to what you describe with regard to Ned’s legal authority basically being null because Cersei has the bigger army. My impression is that there are those who believe that the rights of the public with regard to democracy, voting, etc can be taken away/overriden if they don’t have the means to back them up.
I’m not saying I agree with that mentality or think it’s going to matter what way or the other if people have guns if the government really DID decide to stage some kind of hostile, military takeover and set a torch to the Constitution. Ultimately I tend to fall on the side of, perhaps naively, relying on debate and the non-violent checks and balances we already have in place keeping our laws and systems as just as possible, and as a populace in some ways I think we’ve shown we’re not ‘responsible’ enough for the priveledge of having firearms so readily available (and there are a lot of other issues going on in addition to the fact that they are available). But in the US it can be a very heated topic people are very invested in.
@59, I believe the better perspective regarding U.S. the right to bear arms is the final ‘check’ against governmental power. Or as Thomas Jefferson put it, “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
Certainly from a political standpoint, a single military force controlled by the government is desireable. But let’s not kid ourselves. The lords under any king can (and have) choosen to not back their king and to honor local alliances. As such, the idea that either in Westerosi or real world history, a king always had the one and only fighting force in his kingdom is not true.
With regard to the ability and right to wield the power, the High Speton would fall under the same caregory as a powerful lord: able to lend credence to the monarchy or not by assisting in their actions. Yet I would suggest that it would take much more control than he can muster, and that this will simply create yet another loosely controlled faction. I would echo previous comments that this force would be more dependent on the will of the people (for the time being).
We can certainly draw some real-world examples of how this sort of militarization of religious communities has ended badly, but it is also not without precedent that groups outside of the overall government fare better at protecting local communities.
Getting back to the story, I suspect that Mr Martin plans for this to end badly for Cersei. I suspect it will end up being a wash for the rest of Westeros, with most of the positives going to the small folk.
I had the same reaction of dread to arming the Stars and the Sparrows, but I can’t really figure out why. I looked into the Templars to try to find if there had been some really bad incidents of them being a huge thorn in a rulers side, and they seem to have been militarily benign. While in Europe they seem to have been no worse than any other religious order, in that while they certainly used power for personal gain, they limited themselve to abusing religious power rather than abusing their military power. Outside of Europe their usage of military power probably wouldn’t bother European monarchs.
Here’s an interesting link discussing this –
http://www.historytoday.com/helen-nicholson/saints-or-sinners-knights-templar-medieval-europe
So – why do I and so many other commentors view this decisions of Cersei’s as so bad?
@47, 62
But the Swords and Stars would not be about giving more power to “the people” – they’d mean giving more power to the Faith of the Seven. One organized religion, in a society that has several. For all the High Septon’s words about defending the people, it’s really all about the Faith. If the Swords and Stars came upon a conflict between followers of the old gods and followers of the new, what’s likely to be the outcome? What about someone who simply doesn’t follow the tenets of the Seven, does anyone think they’d fight very hard to protect him/her? And with that being the case, the religious minorities will have cause for complaint. So do we get officially sanctioned religious discrimination, or does the Crown give other religions the right to arm themselves as well? And if they do, how long before there’s a clash between them?
And who’s going to feed these Swords and Stars? The Faith? But they’re going to be all over the place. Are “the people” expected to feed them? Those same ones who can’t feed themselves because the countryside has been ravaged by civil war? If they’re hungry enough, how long before these armed sparrows and knights start taking the food they need, all in the name of the Good Deeds they’re doing For The Faith?
@62: That Jefferson quote is a fake. See http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fears-people-there-libertyquotation
@65Sophist, thanks for the link. Not a quote I ever really liked, honestly. To my mind far too simplistic and anyway, we’ve seen that throughout history when a government fears its people, there is paranoia; not so sure about liberty.
Kato
@63: It’s not just about military aggression – it’s also about economics: the income from Templar land belonged to the order, not the French king, and any noble who wanted to rid himself from the king’s influence could join the order at any time.
If you want to look into an order that came into military conflict with secular rulers plenty of times, the Teutonic Knights might be of more interest to you.
@63, Armed religious orders not beholden to a state, tend to attempt to destabalize states.
The Teutonic Knights founded Prussia, and the Templar Knights tried to do the same. Not that Westeros breaking into smaller kingdoms couldn’t be beneficial in the long run for everyone, but destabilized states don’t do a good job protecting their citizens, something the S&S claim to want.
So, yes, there is historical cause to be wary.
And don’t forget, the Templars were all about converting the Holy Land. You handwave this away, with “Outside of Europe their usage of military power probably wouldn’t bother European monarchs” and acknowledge that the Templars main abuses were religious ones.
Well, Westeros itself is a religously diverse nation, with at least four distinct religions being practiced. You don’t see the concern for the S&S to conduct a Holy Crusade within their own nation?
War (and other catastrophes) seem to have a polarizing effect on religious beliefs. Some victims become more cynically secular, taking it as evidence of god(s) being implacably cruel, indifferent, or non-existent. Others become more pious, turning to god(s) as more merciful than the rulers who have deliberately or neglectfully caused such devastation, or else as a punishing force which must be appeased. Cersei clearly despises the smallfolk and wants them all to vanish, boosting the appeal of another option (be it gods or other human rulers).
@63 – We have some excellent examples of armed theocracies in the world today. The politcal dynamics (and level of destruction) is something to give anyone pause. Holy wars, crusades, jihads – whatever you call them – end up bloody and prolonged, because the combatants are all convinced of their righteousness. When you think the gods are on your side, you don’t surrender.
And Cersei has just set up Westeros for a holy war. Yikes.
Several people have made comments about there being multiple religions in Westeros. While there is a surprising degree of religious tolerance, in that followers of other faiths (the Lord of Light, the Northern gods, and the Drowned God) are permitted to practice and preach their beliefs, it is notable that the Faith of the Seven IS, in fact, THE FAITH of the 7 Kingdoms. I would suspect that because Aegon the Conqueror wanted to bring the North into his new empire, he made sure to allow the Old gods to be worshipped, but prior to the Conqueror there were multiple clashes between the Northern followers of the Old gods and the rest of the kingdoms, where the worship of The Seven supplanted the Old gods.
It is also notable that Aegon made sure to adopt the Faith of the Seven, the Andal religion prominent in most of Westeros, and to date his reign from when the High Septon crowned him. So while multiple religions are tolerated in Westeros, apparently moreso than in medeival Europe, there is in fact a State Religion: The faith of the Seven is THE religion of the Seven Kingdoms.
@65, thanks for pointing that out.
The question I wished to pose is was what do we do with unchecked governmental power? In this setting, governmental methods are few. And in many cases, we have accepted that the method of ‘correcting’ a government ends in a brutal conflict between an ensconced monarch and insurrectionist nobles. Do either of these parties show much compassion for the citizenry? Not occording to Meribald from Chapter 25. If we are uncomfortable with an organized religion that can cause such chaos, why are we not equally concerned with a government that can (and in the case of Westeros) frequently does occur?
The question I wished to pose is was what do we do with unchecked governmental power? In this setting, governmental methods are few. And in many cases, we have accepted that the method of ‘correcting’ a government ends in a brutal conflict between an ensconced monarch and insurrectionist nobles.
The concept of unchecked governmental power post-dates the Middle Ages, which is the setting for Westeros. Feudal society was one of alternating rights and duties between monarchs and nobles, not absolute royal power. The very fact that “correcting” the king ends up in war demonstrates that royal power was not “unchecked”.
That said, the chaos we see in Westeros (and that we saw in the 14th C and the Wars of the Roses) doesn’t offer much of a solution either. The Medieval world solved the problem of chaos by centralizing power, not by further devolving it to the nobility or to “the people”. That could be done only when order was re-established. As Aristotle was (I think) the first to point out, it’s not monarchy which leads to tyranny, it’s anarchy. That’s consistent with the experience of Athens, where democracy actually arose out of tyranny, in part because tyranny created the ordered society that democracy requires.
If we are uncomfortable with an organized religion that can cause such chaos, why are we not equally concerned with a government that can (and in the case of Westeros) frequently does occur?
Roll over for spoilers:
Turning back to Westeros, I expect we’ll see something like the ending of the 100 Years War, with Arya playing the role of Joan of Arc to restore Jon to the throne. I also expect her death to be the catalyst for him agreeing to take the throne. The restoration of order with Jon as the rightful King can then serve as the basis for progress. That’s just speculation on my part, of course.
[Moderator note: whited out spoilers.]
@@@@@ 64 Lyanna
Yep. The Faith of the Seven is made of people, though. That was kind of my point when I cited how so many institutions are ineffective at eradicating birth loyalties. I also made the point that the people are not getting any power without a massive & unprecedented shakeup. Recall that the Faith has been armed before (and actually, unless it was a recent innovation prior to Aegon’s arrival, they were armed longer than they were disarmed). And there is no record of religious tyranny in the Seven Kingdoms. They were certainly not very effective at crusading North to eradicate the First Men’s paganism, or able to forcibly convert the Blackwoods, living right there in the middle of Andal lands, with a Seven-worshipping rival House that would have seized upon any excuse to bring in outside parties’ power against their rival. They were not able to stop the ironborn heathens from terrorizing the coasts in the name of the Drowned God or very effective against them conquering an entire one of the seven kingdoms, and holding it until Aegon’s day.
It never happened here (hell, even the Knights Templar & Hospitallers never ruled Outremer, the land they were founded to protect – those kingdoms were ruled by the descendants of the secular warriors who carved them out, in defiance of the religious authorities in the crusade), and it never happened there. So why is your default assumption that it inevitably WILL happen?
As far as the point that they would not help anyone other than their faith, so what? If a measure is not 100% effective, it must not be used? If it only enhances the safety of the followers of the Seven (who have to be something like 80% of the population), that’s still an improvement. I would also like to point out that not a whole lot of non-Sevenist people are getting raped and pillaged and slaughtered on the scale of where the worst of the war is hitting.
As for the logistics issues you raise, those people are not brand new, popped out of a cloning tank. The resources of Westeros sufficed to feed them yesterday, and may or may not feed them tomorrow. If there is not enough food tomorrow, it would not have been enough if they had not joined the orders. The amount of food relative to the population has not changed, and did not change when Cersei made her deal. In the long term, that issue of assessment and distribution might prove a problem, but there was already going to be a massive food shortage with the onset of winter, following an autumn of war and destruction. At least with those people actively employed by a single institution, there might be some coordination that would get the food to where it’s needed. Those without food or weapons to protect what food they might have were going to starve anyway. From what we have seen, the Faith is has a better track record on taking care of those kinds of people anyway, the exception being those court clerics who are now being put in their place with a man who seems to have his priorities in better shape than they. And you cannot say men like Meribald are the exception without better evidence than your own distaste for such institutions, when such actions appear to be explicit doctrine of the Faith, but which was ignored in times of plenty.
In the long term, another group of bullyboys extorting the people is more likely to lead to competition between nobles who already do that, and the clergy you assert will be trying to get in on the game. The nobles with any sort of self-preservation are not going to let others shear their private flocks. As it is, we see plenty of evidence that many religious communities are as self-sufficient in Westeros as they were in Medieval Europe.
And did so in a land that had previously been ruled by more barbaric Baltic tribes. The Teutonic Knights laid the foundation for a state that would eventually become among the most modern and advanced in Europe, as opposed to another Lithuania or Estonia. Good people, but not contributing great thinkers or scientists on the scale of the subjects of the Prussian electors, kings and emperors. As far as the whole “taking land from primitives to build a more civilized state” thing, it is hardly a crime unique to the Teutonic Knights or groups with their religious character.
Aaaannnd? Fewer burkhas would be a bad thing how? Also, you’re kind of wrong. They were about protecting the Holy Land, from the various hostile religious groups who stole it from the Eastern Roman Empire, and once they had it back for good, proceded to run it into the ground. The Islamics of the area and time were so much closer to the modern anti-religious stereotypes of all orgainzed religion’s intolerance and repression. Since when are incremental improvements a bad thing?
I think the lack of concern over the S&S conducting a Crusade within their own nation would be, first of all, impossible since they don’t use crosses, and a bit wierd since you are forgetting the “own nation” part. These are people, not Starcraft units. Why would they attack themselves? Crusading against the First Men or ironborn is not “within their own nation” since those are different ethnic groups with different cultural traditions (and thus different nations). But since in the centuries or millenia of their prior existence, they didn’t, I think the burden of proof is on you to prove they would.
And did so in a land that had previously been ruled by more barbaric Baltic tribes. The Teutonic Knights laid the foundation for a state that would eventually become among the most modern and advanced in Europe, as opposed to another Lithuania or Estonia.
That’s an awful lot of credit you’re giving them for something which happened 700 years later and with the intervention of a number of other states.
But of course, the fact that the Baltics were “barbarians” gave the Knights the right to kill, plunder, and convert them by force. Like we treated the Native Americans, perhaps?
As far as the whole “taking land from primitives to build a more civilized state” thing, it is hardly a crime unique to the Teutonic Knights or groups with their religious character.
Actually, it’s a very Christian thing. It’s exactly what they did throughout the Dark Ages and into the Modern Era.
They were about protecting the Holy Land, from the various hostile religious groups who stole it from the Eastern Roman Empire, and once they had it back for good, proceded to run it into the ground.
Only if by “protecting” you mean “massacring all the inhabitants”. Those “hostile religious groups” you mention had been controlling the city of Jerusalem for 450+ years before the Knights Templar existed, though they’d never done anything to harm the French knights who formed the Templars. “Their” conquest of that territory was just as legitimate as that of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia. And the Eastern Empire was a separate and distinct Empire, with a different language and a different religion, than Western Europe.
The Islamics of the area and time were so much closer to the modern anti-religious stereotypes of all orgainzed religion’s intolerance and repression.
I think you meant the Catholics of that era. Islam, like Orthodoxy, was far more civilized than Western Europe at that time.
@73 appears to have big-time spoiler
Ryamano @@@@@ 59
I said nothing of the sort. I said that dispersed power is the core of American and other Western states’ freedoms and prosperity. In fact, I specifically denied the connection between those conditions and democracy. That right to bear arms stuff is only peripheral to this issue, which is basically that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. In the US, with a more developed political system, the power is dispersed between different branches of government. In Westeros, which is less developed, with more reliance on custom, tradition, and direct force, you can’t just wave a wand and create new agencies or governing bodies, so the answer is to spread out the power. The more groups with the power to tell other groups where to head in, the less likely anyone will be able to abuse a monopoly on power. Your definition of a state is absurd, because it simply does not apply to the reality of well, anything but totalitarian states. The national government in Westeros does not have a monopoly on force. That’s why there IS a civil war raging.
Also rather fatuous is your implication that civil war is the worst thing. By your stated ideals, when Joffrey took the throne and started throwing his weight around, that would have been the end of it. Everyone would do what Joffrey said, because he would have the monopoly of force, and any alternative would be the unacceptable nadir or civil war.
You cite historical and book precedents about the monopoly of force and the BAD things it has led to, and you expect me to believe that breaking up that monopoly is undesirable? Sure, from the point of view of the one on top it would be bad, but I said that in my first comment. She happens to be not only malicious, but inept, so why is it not an improvement to see someone who might be better, but could hardly be worse, get some power by access to force.
Your assertion that whoever has the biggest army is automatically and irreversibly destined to be in charge is also simplistic and unrealistic. Your assumption that allowing the Faith to arm will automatically give them the biggest and most effective army is a bit of an enormous leap. I would imagine that people who live every day by the calculus of force correlations would also see the danger and work to alleviate or forestall it.
Your claims about checks and balances are a false distinction. Checks and balances are based on authority and power, which in the end come down to violence. That’s why the President has the authority to command the army, but Congress controls its funding and organization, so neither branch is assured of the ability to use the army against the other. Regarding your contention about several armies responding to different authorities in the same country, that is status quo ante libros, in Westeros. Hell, Ned and Robert had this very conversation on the road to Kings Landing (stop that TV show nonsense about “the capital”. The word ‘capital’ does not appear in the books at all IIRC), where Ned opposed the appointment of Jaime as Warden of the East, because it would be concentrating too much of the realm’s military power in one pair of hands. He knew exactly what the implications of a monopoly on military force were.
You assert the feudal system is a hierarchy, and that’s what the kings and higher lords want you to think, but in origin it is a series of alliances, with one member having the authority to make the decisions. A lord was as bound to bring his forces to the call of a vassal as the vassal was to bring his own men to answer the lord’s summons to war. In practice, I would think that 3.5 books would show you exactly how nonexistent the authority of the “chief lord” at the top of the hierarchy is when it comes to commanding the subordinate lords in the hierarchy.
@sophist, Bill D5 – Moderator here. You’ve both been here long enough to know that this discussion is getting out of hand, both in terms of being largely off-topic and in terms of getting increasingly personal. Let’s end this here.
@MDNY – thanks for letting us know. Which part should be whited out?
Bill D5@75:Tyranny does not apply only to acts of government. Rather, it can be applied to any oppresive, unreasonable or arbitrary use of power. For example, “Bert jolted awake as the tyranny of the alarm broke his slumber.”, is a perfectly reasonable sentence.
The big problem is words like tyranny or barbaric/ian/whatever have specific meanings in the fields of sociology or history that may or may not line up with their commonly used mostly pejorative meanings. So I find a lot of the above posts a lot less clear than their author’s probably intended…by context I’m guessing no one who wrote them is in history/sociology, but you never know.
It’s made clearer later, but there’s lots of hints so far that the general societal structure of Westeros isn’t as simple or clear as has been claimed in many posts above :)
@80 Stefan-there’s a comment in the last paragraph about a certain character being linked with royalty- that’s the most popular theory among fandom, but one Leigh hasn’t caught (about the “rightful king”). It’s not a clear-cut spoiler but it’s something I thought belonged in the spoiler thread more than here.
@83 MDNY – Thank you! I whited out the entire paragraph.
So – why do I and so many other commentors view this decisions of Cersei’s as so bad?
Even if some think it would be good for Westeros if Cersei’s decision to arm the church will cause trouble for the Lannisters, it would still be a bad decision, because Cersei will cause her own fall.
Stefan, I am just a little curious how you think Sophist’s criticism of my post or the posts I made to which he was was responding was personal. I’ll concede the off-topic, but I didn’t pick up on any animosity in his post, or hold any towards him, and there were no remarks of a personal nature, simply a historical debate. I have, as you say, been here a while, and the rather unhelpful commenting guidelines the moderators always hide behind when criticizing commenters, are so vague, general and apparently subjective in their application, I would sincerely appreciate some specific examples of the actual boundaries to avoid this sort of thing. If you could explain what either of us was saying of a personal nature, I think that would help, since it seems to be one of those things I don’t get.
Thank you
@bill D5 Moderator here: the moderation guidelines cover a lot of ground because we’re trying to create a comfortable, respectful atmosphere for everyone to engage in these conversations, and it’s up to us to determine when someone is stepping over that line. Posting walls of text and taking an aggressive tone towards other commenters (even within a historical debate) is a violation of our moderation policy, and the spirit of these discussions. If you’re not able to interact with other commenters in an actively respectful manner, by allowing others their opinions, toning down your inflammatory language, and curtailing the length of your comments, we won’t be able to let you engage in this space. Thank you.
So, I looked up Pious (the word)
Webster’s new world college
dictionary edition third
Gave me this here knowledge
The book was large, prodigious
definition begin
“having or showing religious
devotion, zealous in
the performance of religious
obligations” bringing
us to the somewhat litigious
following def “Springing
From actual or pretended
religious devotion
or moral motives” def 2 end
now to strike commotion,
what you’re thinking (weren’t you?)
the third def, “Seemingly
virtuous, affecting virtue
hypocritically”
And just for fun joy making
start definition four
here it goes, “Sacred as disting
guished from secular or
profane”, and look now dearie friends!
def five, finality
Quote: “having or showing a sense
of duty/loyalty
to parents, family, friends, etc”
(This one’s Archaic, though”)
and now you see, you’re all jetset
to use words like a pro!
I think the most important thing
is not to confuse two
importantly different meanings
of words off used by you
the difference is that between
Nice Guy and nice guy, see?
Righteous and self-righteous quite mean
two things inversed for me.
So, do you mean pious, pious,
pious, pious. or even
pious (archaic). Why just
can’t eye to eye be seen?
The last paragraph of #22 seems a bit of a spoiler. It discusses something the show put forward front and center which is more obscure in the books, and is relevant to this week’s post.
That’s a bit of an overstatement IMHO, but I’ll white it out if you think it’s that relevant (I personally don’t).
We all read WOT, and we know how the White Cloaks turned out.
Tabbyfl55@92:Rather, we all (including WOT) have seen the same histories play out here.
Something that will be interesting to watch for as events work out will be instances of possible divine intervention. The Seven seem to have been fairly inactive in the direct intervention realm with Davos’ rescue from the island being the only big possibility that I can recall.
We’ve seen Melisandre and Thoros perform various acts that they claim as divine intervention.
Underlying all of this, GRRM has not given us very much insight into the underlying nature of the religions of Westros and indeed has left ambiguity as to the actual existence of the beings all of the groups claim as gods. All quite interesting areas for observation.
It’s hard for me to compare WOT with SoIaF (if not impossible), but for the sake of argument: the Whitecloakes turned out just fine.
@94: Really? Maybe by the end, when Galad was in charge and the world was literally ending, but that was only after they looted and murdered their way across most of the continent, causing enormous amounts of havoc and destabilizing several governments. They were effectively no different from Masema’s band of idiots, in terms of action and outcome.
@@@@@ billD5
I said nothing of the sort. I said that dispersed power is the core of American and other Western states’ freedoms and prosperity. In fact, I specifically [i]denied the connection between those conditions and democracy. That right to bear arms stuff is only peripheral to this issue, which is basically that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. In the US, with a more developed political system, the power is dispersed between different branches of government. In Westeros, which is less developed, with more reliance on custom, tradition, and direct force, you can’t just wave a wand and create new agencies or governing bodies, so the answer is to spread out the power. The more groups with the power to tell other groups where to head in, the less likely anyone will be able to abuse a monopoly on power. Your definition of a state is absurd, because it simply does not apply to the reality of well, anything but totalitarian states. The national government in Westeros does not have a monopoly on force. That’s why there IS a civil war raging. [/i]
Take that definition of what a state is with Max Weber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
Seems to me to be a very good definition. What is your definition of state, BillD5?
Anyway, Westeros in the last books is the definition of a civil war, a place where there’s no state or more than one group calling itself the state. So of course no one has the monopoly on legitimate violence. Westeros at the beginning of book 1 had that, with legitimate violence being the monopoly of the lords of each land. Which place is the better place to live in? Why do the men of the Brotherhood without Banners say at first they were “King Robert’s men”? The ideal they’re fighting for is for a time when there was no such violence as war rapes and looting being perpetrated on the common men, and they use the times of peace under King Robert’s time as the ideal.
Also rather fatuous is your implication that civil war is the worst thing. By your stated ideals, when Joffrey took the throne and started throwing his weight around, that would have been the end of it. Everyone would do what Joffrey said, because he would have the monopoly of force, and any alternative would be the unacceptable nadir or civil war.
Joffrey could only terrorize the population of King’s Landing and the nobles he could’ve called to his court, like the mad king Aerys. A civil war of the size we see in Westeros is terrorizing people Joffrey would’ve never met in his entire life, like the Northmen in the west coast, the inhabitants of Winterfell, most people in the Riverlands, the people of the Vale of Arryn (that are now feeling the brunt of the deal Tyrion made at the end of book 1, with the tribes there having received better weapons to do their raiding). So yes, even a horrible king is better than civil war in a place like Westeros. This is not the modern state, where a tyrant can get absolute power everywhere, it’s a place where power is regionalized, and how bad it gets depends a lot on how bad the local lord is.
You cite historical and book precedents about the monopoly of force and the BAD things it has led to, and you expect me to believe that breaking up that monopoly is undesirable? Sure, from the point of view of the one on top it would be bad, but I said that in my first comment. She happens to be not only malicious, but inept, so why is it not an improvement to see someone who might be better, but could hardly be worse, get some power by access to force.
Do you want historical examples of when the monopoly of force has been broken? How about every civil war in the history of mankind? What Westeros needs after 3 years of civil war and the incoming winter that will last years is stability, not new contenders for power to arise.
@@@@@ 95: Absolutely, all they needed was a good leader. Like all large groups do. The Sparrows are no exception. And the new High Septon might just be the leader they need.
No, they needed a total apocalypse. Absent The End of Everything, Galad may or may not have been able to curb some of their worse tendencies, but he almost certainly would have continued their nasty habit of occupying neighboring nations and declaring themselves a law unto themselves, based on 1) their military superiority to whatever local government was around, and 2) their devotion to a rigid religious code that was out of step with the way the majority of the population of the continent chose to live.
Hm, that’s a bit too speculative for me, if you don’t mind ;-) I know one thing for a fact: in the end they turned out just fine. And be that as it may, it’s really impossible for me to compare them with the Sparrows. I can see where the comparison comes from, but I just can’t judge the Sparrows for what the Whitecloakes did in another story.
Still it bears mentioning as a cause for apprehension. That’s all I’m sayin’.
I’m still on book 6 on WOT but so far it seems like Masema/Prophet would be a better comparision for the High Sparrow. Part of the problem with Masema was a lack of education, he didn’t understand that the starvation problems were being caused by a lack of food more than a lack of money. The Sparrow is more ‘sane’ than Masema but seems to face the same issues.
The WOT discussions might be better in a WOT thread as some people might not have read WOT yet and unexptantly stumble over the comments.
I don’t care myself and I’m sure Leigh has seen those parts [:-)] but, just sayin’
Although arming the faith was an incredibly stupid thing to do, I do wonder whether it made any difference. The faith was already arming itself and the gold cloaks had little control over them anyway. Might as well get 1 million gold from them, arm your own force and then wipe them out using wild fire (of course Cersei used the money to build toys for her young bastard instead).
Going through these readings of the fourth book, season 5 does not look promising to me at all.
Hello, all–because of the long holiday weekend here in the U.S. and some related scheduling issues on our end, we’ve decided to push today’s post back until next Thursday (July 10th). Thanks for your patience, and happy Fourth of July to those celebrating!
Boooooooooooo!!!! Well, I guess I won’t have any reason to stay when the office closes at 2 now. Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy!
@105: Join us in the spoiler thread to talk HBO.
Season 1 would be the only “safe” one for Leigh to see. All others are mash of all books.
@106: Enjoy your weekend of not having to police this thread! :-)
re: safe Season 1
That’s a moot point anyway, because if my (admittedly
occasionallyfrequently) faulty memory serves right Leigh also avoids the show because she doesn’t want to get biased in her opinions/imagination of the world and characters by the choice of actors, props, etc.Ah, I see. Thanks for the information.
This chapter, for me, encapsulates a lot of why I like the character of Cersei. She’s a villain, she’s a trainwreck, she’s petty, she’s a terrible person, amd she’s incredibly human. The character works for me, because I know that there’s people just like her in the real world.
At the very least, seeing how eager the High Septon was to cross off the kingdom’s debt to the Faith should have tipped Cersei off. Yet she never has any second thoughts on her obviously awful decisions for the kingdom.
On Saltpans, what really bothers me is that the Hound is dead. Unless Dondarion really goes around the Seven Kingdoms resurrecting all of the characters who were killed in these novels (come to think of it, it would be a great way to put an army together), I don’t see how he would be able to do everything they say he did. Last time we saw the Hound with a young girl, ha was begging her to kill him and couldn’t do anything to force her to do it, so no, he definitely didn’t rape that girl.
And we get another gem from Cersei in this chapter:
“… guarding the wrinkled cunts of a thousand sour septas. Half of them are probably praying for a good raping.”
And then to go along with this one from a few chapters later in this book:
“Cersei took him by the ear and dragged him squealing to the door, where she found Ser Boros Blount standing guard. “Ser Boros, His Grace has forgotten himself. Kindly escort him to his bedchamber and bring up Pate. This time I want Tommen to whip the boy himself. He is to continue until the boy is bleeding from both cheeks. If His Grace refuses, or says one word of protest, summon Qyburn and tell him to remove Pate’s tongue.“
I don’t know what Martin has in store for Cersei’s fate in the story, but, the way he is ramping up her awfulness in this book it certainly is either a very horrible death, or, something similar to Galina/Elaida/Moghedien’s from another series.
I can’t wait! : )
Cersei it’s not because you’re a woman you get no respect. It’s because you are an IDIOT!!!
I’ve always assumed that Margaery’s marriage to Renly was a cozy little arrangement between the three of them, she gets to be queen as well as providing a convenient shield for Renly and Loras’ prayers. I’m also wondering if maybe Margaery shares her favorite brother’s predilection for same sex relationships, in which case marriage to a man who’d make few demands on her would be a total win.