I wouldn’t put random acts of kindness past Littlefinger, though.
Unlike, say, Tywin Lannister (who’s clearly lawful evil).
I see Littlefinger and Tywin on an equal moral footing, actually. Littlefinger’s rigorous pursuit of interests is limited to himself, and he will be cruel or kind as furthers his interests. Tywin is the same, but his self-interest extends to all of House Lannister.
Not so clear imo. Tywin ruled the seven kingdoms for 20 years of peace and prosperity as hand of the king and he is the main reason the mad king is remembered fondly by most of the common people.
But mere self interest isn’t enough to decide things, not in this world. The degree to which they pursue their self interest and the manner in which they do so is what matters. The Lannisters are certainly devious, but the bulk of their power is through legitimate business: mining and lending. They’re just savvy enough to always come out ahead. And Tywin would never show kindness.
I agree with all of this, but I can’t see Littlefinger doing random acts of kindness, either. At least, I don’t recall anything like that in the books. Even his obsession with the Tully girls seems based on self-interest, perhaps revenge by now.
Tywin Lannister is a pretty fascinating character. He is certainly ruthless, the type for whom the ends will justify any means. He appears to have absolutely no humor, even more so than Stannis, but unlike Stannis there seems to be a side of him that Tywin is hiding. Witness the whole episode with Shae. Given his behavior towards Tyrion, it seems very out of character. But perhaps what we’ve seen is not really all that’s there. Tywin certainly appear to have issues stemming from his father, which may explain the things that sets him off: slights to his house, and prostitutes.
Yeah, the whole thing with prostitutes is interesting re: Tywin. Between the shaming of Tyrion when he was younger, the insistence on no prostitutes later down the line, and then taking Shae into his bed later…there’s a whole lotta history there that I don’t see us getting a peek into.
Tywin is obiously a sick dude. That whole thing with Tysha, Tyrion’s first wife. Yeesh. And then who knows what was going on with Shae, but given the Tysha thing, I doubt it was really out of character for him.
The thing is, Tyrion’s first wife wasn’t even a prostitute (if we can believe Jaime, which I think we can in this case). He just made that up for no real good reason other than to torture her and Tyrion.
Littlefinger is random? I think he’s calculating. The appearance of randomness is carefully crafted.
Personally, I think he’s just very good at improvising and turning a situation to his advantage. He’s got a lot of schemes running but I don’t think he actually has a master plan that he’s following. He’s just making it up as he goes.
This could well be true, but I keep expecting a grand speech <in the books, anyway> where he lays out his goals and grievances. He should be too smart for that, but him randomly dying and never giving us any insight would be boring!
I’ve lost interest in whatever point I was trying to make, but just to let you know — I’m rereading the book, and in the scene where Bronn acts as Tyrion’s champion in the trial by combat, Cat flashes back to the duel between Brandon and Petyr, and explicitly says she loved Petyr like a brother.
Remind me what happened, please?
In addition to D&D alignments, perhaps we need a Ruthlessness Index, running from “Very principled” to “Willing to bend the rules” to “Doesn’t care much about rules at all” to “Will do pretty much anything other than felch goats” to “Completely ruthless”? Then again, most of the characters would be at various points on the right edge of that scale.
Tyrion met and fell in love with a commoner, Tywyn forced Jamie to tell Tyrion she was a hooker he hired to pretend to love him then had a whole barracks of men fuck her then made Tyrion fuck her.
Tywin always struck me as Lawful Neutral, in that he had a strict sense of “this is how things should be” and stuck to his principles. He did do things that seem evil (like the Tysha fiasco) but he was never cruel for its own sake (unlike Aerys or Joffery). Although Shae in his bed did throw me for a loop. What was THAT? It just seemed so incredibly out of character for him. I guess we’ll never know.
Tyrion strikes me as Chaotic Good. He definitely has a sense of morality. Jaime is probably closer to Chaotic Neutral, with one toe over into Chaotic Good.
The whole barracks raped her. Then 14-year-old Tyrion raped her.
Hows that any different from what i just said?
There are two politicians, one doesn’t care about gay marriage, one spends all his time talking about traditional marriage. Which is more likely to visit rentboy.com?
That’s bow it is with Tywin and hookers.
And gave her a silver coin for every man who raped her, and then a gold coin from Tyrion, because a Lannister is worth more.
Way more gruesome to re-read when you know she actually was innocent of the setup, not a whore, and very possibly loved him.