Evil/heinous charaters in Game of thrones? [Spoilers likely]

[Acsenray]

@Loach

Are you sure? Because the whole bastard thing happened because of John Arryn poking his nose in. Joffrey was a kid and had no reason to believe he wasn’t a Baratheon. The bastards weren’t a threat to anyone who didn’t know the truth about his birth. He’s the rightful king and then Tommen. Bastard Baratheons don’t matter unless you know your son is your brothers kid. I thought it was clear that it was Cersei. I’ll have to go back and look.

John Arryn did find out about it, but it’s not clear what, if anything, he was going to do about it.

What really triggered the War of the Five Kings is Petyr Baelish’s desire for chaos. He persuaded Lyssa to poison John Arryn, and made sure that Ned Stark would find the clues of Arryn’s investigation and publicize them, prompting Cersei to ensure Robert Baratheon’s death (the sequence of events was more complicated, but that’s essentially what happened).

For all we know, John Arryn was a skilled and wise administrator who would have used the information in a way that didn’t bring the whole structure of the state crashing to the ground.

[Colibri]

@AlsoNamedBort

We’re told that by people south of the wall. They haven’t seen a White Walker in thousands of years, that doesn’t mean they weren’t active. Do you think that baby we saw was the first one turned?

@Acsenray

Craster had been giving his sons to the White Walkers for decades. The White Walkers had been unseen by anyone else for centuries, but Craster had known about them.

Is that in the books, or is that something you’re making up?

[The_Peyote_Coyote]

@EllisDee

Challenge accepted!

Sam, Hot Pie, Gendry, …, uh, Davos? I think I’m out. Oh no, wait, Tommen and Myrcella. Six. And two were products of twincest and raised by Cersei. Go figure.

EDIT: Oh, Shireen makes seven.

Wow. I’m impressed. I didn’t realize it was that many.

[Nava]

@Colibri

Is that in the books, or is that something you’re making up?

It was in the books more explicitly than in the series, but take into account that we’re not talking about “giving them to the White Walkers” as in handing them over directly; we’re talking about exposing the babies. Whether each specific baby was taken by the Walkers, eaten by wolves or died of massive frostbite isn’t recorded.

[Emiliana]

@Colibri

Is that in the books, or is that something you’re making up?

You give yourself a lot of latitude.

[Telperion]

@Nava

It was in the books more explicitly than in the series, but take into account that we’re not talking about “giving them to the White Walkers” as in handing them over directly; we’re talking about exposing the babies. Whether each specific baby was taken by the Walkers, eaten by wolves or died of massive frostbite isn’t recorded.

It’s clearly a well established practice since a White Walker shows up to claim Gilly’s child.

[Acsenray]

@Colibri

Is that in the books, or is that something you’re making up?

Seriously? Everything in those Craster scenes implies that leaving boy children outside who then disappear is something the daughter-wives are well accustomed to.

Nothing in those scenes makes sense if it hasn’t happened many times before. Indeed, the narrative structure of those those scenes tell us “this is what happens whenever a boy is born in this house.”

The show depicts that as the explanation for why Craster is the only male human living at the keep and that this has been going on ever since Craster started impregnating his own daughters.

There is no other logical narrative message other than that Craster has always given his sons to the White Walkers, as long as he has been producing children. The events as shown are nonsensical otherwise. The further implication is that is the reason the White Walkers leave him alone while they periodically attack other Wildlings.

[Acsenray]

What we actually do learn from the books is that the White Walkers (that is, “the Others”), are not automatons who do nothing but march around and kill people to raise their armies.

They are actually sentient beings with a society and with personal lives. The books don’t (yet) have a Night King who is the original White Walker. Instead, there’s a “Night’s King,” who is a long-ago Lord Commander of the Night Watch, who abandoned his post and betrayed his vow because he fell in love with a female Other, and he is said to have married her. (It is heavily implied that this Lord Commander was a Stark.)

So, there are women Others. And they have relationships. So the Others have lives of their own. So the interactions that occur between the Others and the characters in the story doesn’t represent the entirety of the White Walker world.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

I wouldn’t mind a book, or at least a few chapters, from the POV of the Night King or a White Walker, exploring their society, such as it is. Could be chillingly good.