Nevermind.
Look, the guy threw a little kid out of a window, there is no explanation that makes him not a villain. He’s not a villain for killing Aerys, he’s not a villain for fucking Cersei, he’s not even a villain for thinking honor is complete bullshit. He threw Bran out of a window, there is very little he can do at this point to not be put squarely into the “bad guy” column.
I get the impression from the books that Martin wants us to like Catelyn and just fails at that for me. But your interpretation probably makes more sense.
Jaime, however, is one of the characters that Martin absolutely gets spot on. As others have mentioned, he threw a kid out of fucking window, but he’s still a likeable guy. That’s not easy to accomplish.
Well, I don’t know. If he had let Bran run off unharmed to tattle, Jaime, Cersei, and their children would have been put to death. He had a choice between the life of some kid and his own life and the life of his family.
Doesn’t Cersei comment that they could have either scared him into not talking or lied about it. He was 6 in the books. He didn’t know what sex was. Fairly easy to make up a story explaining that Bran didn’t see what he thought.
Cersei does say that, and she may have been right, but Jon Arryn had already figured out the incest angle and neither Cersei or Jaime knew whether he’d told anyone. If Bran starts talking about how he saw the two of them “wrestling” or whatever he’d think it was, there may have been someone around who could’ve put 2 and 2 together.
I get the same impression of Catelyn and do not like her in book or show despite feeling that I’m being lead by the nose to. And I do like Jamie. He’s very complex, to have done terrible things but still make you like him. Much like Walter on Fringe.
Wow, I thought I’d get like 2 posts answering my question in this thread.
This proves we can talk about our fiction endlessly no matter the question.
You can’t excuse throwing a kid out of a window, you just can’t. He’s a bad guy, period.
What if the kid was trapped in a burning car and you couldn’t get him out?
We’ll have to agree to disagree on that. Best case scenario for not throwing Bran out the window is 3 innocent children and 2 less than innocent adults are put to the sword. But likely as not civil war could erupt from it as well. God knows what Tywin would do if his children and grandchildren had been executed for incest and cuckoldry, and that assumes they are captured and executed cleanly to begin with but I doubt Jaime would have gone down without one hell of a fight. So it’s one innocent life vs several and the possibility of war and thousands or tens of thousands more dead. That’s a damn good excuse for throwing a kid out of a window.
Far more unforgivable to me is his chastisement of Ned by slaughtering his guards and injuring Ned. Because that doesn’t help anybody. It’s not like Catelyn would hear that had happened and up and release Tyrion. It could only make the situation worse.
This is a whoosh, right?
Ever watched Kill Bill?
The tie-ins to Song of Ice and Fire are interesting.
There’s a whole website, The Inn at the Crossroads, dedicated to recipes from Westeros. There are several covers of the songs The Rains of Castamere and The Bear and the Maiden Fair, and of course that song of Cersei calling on the Seven to give Jaime a hand.