I was particularly surprised by the brilliant audacity of his actions in Mereen because there’s nothing in the show to suggest that he would be able to cope when given unexpected command of a city that is both at war with itself and under threat from more powerful external enemies. By, for example, playing factions off against each other while secretly preparing a lethal defence. I mean, I half expected him to make some unsustainable deal with his enemies and then complacently sit back until, to his great shock, they proved to be untrustworthy and attacked. He’d probably have to be rescued by Dany at the last minute, I imagined.
But no. The writers’ really stuck to his character as a naive optimist who proved himself a liability as King’s Hand and totally screwed up the Battle of the Blackwater.
And of course all the other Tully officers have to be sticklers as well. I’m not saying it’s flat out impossible, I’m saying that it was glossed over in a dramatically unsatisfying fashion. “Well, I’m the real lord” “well, yup, guess you are, now we will unquestioningly do whatever you say, because we are mere background”.
Right. Tyrion’s sudden naivete is just inexplicable as Arya’s. Also, Varys still maintains his network of little birds in Essos (which is how he found out that Tyrion was in Mereen). How could he have been unaware that Volantis was preparing an enormous invasion fleet? That would have taken many months to assemble. Surely he would have gotten wind of it.
Edmure had been lord for maybe a few weeks before he was taken captive and held for two years, and was seen as pretty much of a buffoon anyway. And the Tully troops are amply aware that their adversaries have no honor whatsoever. (They would not be aware that Jaime might possibly honor an oath now.) They would have every reason to think that surrender to the Lannisters and Freys would be suicidal. The Tully troops would have to be not merely loyal but insane to go along with it.
That’s what I was saying, that there should have been at least a little more of a fight before the Tullys let Edmure in, and before they opened the gates to let the Lannisters in. We haven’t been shown much about the Tullys, but we’ve been shown a bit more about the Freys and Lannisters, and I would think the men would think their chances of doing well would be a bit better sticking with the Tullys.
Of course, in that case the men wanted to surrender while Theon didn’t, which didn’t turn out too well for any of them.
Basically, the main lesson of GoT is that no one should ever surrender, any time, any where, to anyone. It will, with rare exceptions, get you flayed, beheaded, burned at the stake, or crucified. Better to go out fighting or even starve to death.
Everything in Westeros started going to shit when Tywin died. None of the faith militant nonsense or Cersei’s crazy ineffiectiveness or any of that shit would’ve gone down on his watch.
The writing of the show also happened to start taking a downturn immediately following his death.
All this Sand Snake Arya Faceless nonsense wouldn’t be going on if Tywin was still around. He held together the show as much as he held together Westeros.
How is it clear to anyone? Do we know what ended up happening to the soldiers who surrendered? Do we know that the besieging armies would have been able to either batter down the castle walls or outwait two years of supplies?
There are probably times when you’re happily holed up in a castle with two years of supplies, and your hated enemies, made up of families that have betrayed and murdered your friends and relatives, are besieging you… and the correct decision is to open up the gates with absolutely no guarantee of any sort, on the order of someone who was never good at anything in the first place, and has been prisoner of those enemies for several years.
But I feel like that ought to at least require some explanation and convincing.
Also note, btw, that the people in the castle just learned for the first time that there are still people out in the world with armies running around being sympathetic to them. It’s one thing if the war is clearly lost, and you want to hold out until the last man just because. But Tywin Lannister just got killed, you’ve just learned that Sansa Stark is still alive and gathering an army, etc. The greater fluidity in the political situation means that stubbornly staying in your castle actually has a chance for a positive endgame.
One final point: it’s a bit ridiculous for Edmure to basically surrender his castle based on threats made to a son that he has never met who he has no reason to believe even exists. Of course the Freys would lie to him and claim that his wife was pregnant and gave birth. Why would he trust them? I mean, obviously he’s seriously messed up, but that seems like a weird thing to take at absolute face value.
I’m afraid it’s all too explicable: We’re now past the end of George RR Martin’s story, and the people picking up his story and running with it do not have a fraction of his talent, and they don’t have years to plot out an intricate path towards the end of the story.
Hopefully this has just been a temporary setback in quality, but I’m worried that the post-Martin Game of Thrones is going to take a significant dive in quality.
Also, the deal requires him to give up his ancestral lands and castle. It would be one thing if the deal resulted in the restoration of his line and their lands, but he’s just being offered the chance to live out his days in exile in Casterly Rock. He’s not even being offered a real future for his unknown son.
Remember though, they have no chance of winning. Edmure’s choices are, be executed, have his son die, lose his lands, his castle, and have the men loyal to him starve for two years and then be executed, or survive as a hostage, perhaps have his men turned free, and live to see his son become a minor knight.
River Run was never going to be in Tully hands again (as far as Edmure knew, for all we know, the tides will turn in when the Dothraki are marauding around Westeros and Ice Zombies wandering the fields). It was always going to be lost to his family. The only difference is that by surrendering, he, his son, and perhaps his men survive.
Not yet, no. But he did marry into the Freys, and AFAIU the Lannisters are taking Riverrun on behalf of the Freys ; so there’s a possibility, if Edmure proves servile enough, that he might be given the run of Riverrun anyway if only to keep the locals nice and happy that their ancestral lords are in charge, rather than some sackless leather cap wearing fuckers who look like they smell of long dead frogs.
They have every chance of winning. As has been said, the garrison can withstand a siege of two years. The Blackfish has only recently retaken the castle, so he knows what the situation is outside. He knows Tywin is dead and the Lannisters have big problems in King’s Landing. He has every reason to think they may not be able to maintain a long siege.
Edmure has been a captive and may not know the strategic situation, but he doesn’t even bother to ask the Blackfish what the situation is. Of course, Edmure has been depicted as an idiot, so maybe he would be stupid enough to do that. But it was very, very, very stupid.
As I said, the Blackfish hasn’t been isolated for that long, so he knows Tywin is dead. But the news that Sansa is still alive is news and would definitely mean that they have some hope of relief.
The Lannisters don’t have any existential threats that the Blackfish knows about. He has no reason to think their house will fall. And even if they did have something better to do, the Frey don’t.
Sansa is asking him for help, so she can attack a superior force in Winterfell. He’d have to be a pretty optimistic dude to think she was coming to help.
In no way was Edmure’s decision stupid, it was his only intelligent play.
The point is not “oh, Sansa will come and save us”. It’s “the war is far from over”.
Given that he didn’t even bother to ask his highly respected Uncle what had been going on in the years when he was locked in a dungeon, it’s hard to imagine that his decision was based on intelligence at all.
That said, it’s not so much implausible that a PTSD’d, broken, tortured, messed up guy who was a weakling to begin with would accept Jamie’s demands immediately. It’s implausible that everyone else, with no apparent dissent, would say “ok, if you say so my lord, let’s open the gates”.
