Warrior Philosophy in Game of Thrones (12 page)

“Life is strange.  Not so many years ago we fought as enemies at the Trident.”

I like this moment between two old warriors and it reminds me of something I have witnessed in The Samurai Game® which is a game of awareness which is often used to explore matters of leadership and choice.  Within the game, the players are in 2 'Clans' doing battle, and one of the things which can happen is that the players can experience a metaphorical death.  They are dead within the Game.  It is part of what brings a sense of import and consequence to the Game itself, but it also means that part of the game can be experiencing a ritual death.  What I have witnessed there and experienced myself when playing the Game is that even though it is a ritual death, people still come out profoundly connected with each other because they have gone through the experience together.  I have heard many people speak of how affected they were when team-mates died in battle.  Even people from opposite clans who were fighting during the Game, come out connected by the experience of having fought, lived and died through the same Game.  This has a very similar feel to me as the conversation between Ned Stark and Ser Barristan Selmy.   In a surprising number of ancient indigenous tribal cultures they would have regular ritual battles between tribes.  Sometimes it was at a certain time of the year and sometimes it was to resolve disputes.  Either way, the goal was rarely to kill each other, it was to best the other clan.  People were hurt but rarely killed.  The First Nation American tradition of 'Counting Coup' was part of this kind of practice whereby it was considered a greater achievement to touch an opponent with an open hand in combat than to beat them fighting with weapons.  Obviously when there were less people and the warriors were also the hunter-gatherers tribes could have wiped each other out in open warfare very fast so there is a basic wisdom I these practices but I think there may have been more to it than that.  I think perhaps there was a way that the bonding and mutual respect that is fostered when facing each other in combat was being used to help bond the young men from different tribal groups so as older men they could more wisely collaborate for the good of their tribes.  This is pure speculation but based on what I have read on the psychology and experience of soldiers, and what I have witnessed in the Samurai Game®, I have my suspicions.  There is a quote from the Hagakure which I think Syrio, Ned and Barristan would appreciate:

“A certain person said, “In the saint's mausoleum there is a poem that goes:

If in one's heart

He follows the path of sincerity,

Though he does not pray,

Will not the gods protect him?

What is this path of sincerity?”

A man answered him by saying, “You seem to like poetry.  I will answer you with a poem.

As everything in the world is but a sham,

Death is the only sincerity.

It is said that becoming as a dead man in one's daily living is the following of the path of sincerity.”

Death is so often seen as a curse, and in Westeros it is embodied as one of the 7 faces of the god: The Stranger.  No-one wishes to look on it's face and it is feared more than worshipped.  What I offer here is that Death can be our wisest advisor and can even be the presence which gives greatest clarity, meaning, and focus to our lives.  Death is coming for all of us, so I'll ask you again:

Do you wish to meet Death as a familiar friend, or as an implacable enemy?

Chapter 7 – Honour

“There are few men of honour in the capital.  You are one of them.  I would like to believe I am another, strange as that may seem.”


      
Varys

So much in the collective psyche of Westeros seems to revolve around matters of honour, and yet, so much of what we witness in the lead characters involves dishonourable action and deceit.  Throughout Westeros, Jaime Lannister is known as 'The Kingslayer' and to some degree is viewed and treated as an oathbreaker and therefore at some basic level untrustworthy.  I can understand that, if you can't trust a person's word then it's hard to gauge what they will or won't do in any situation.  That someone's actions match their words shows a basic  quality of integrity and helps to engender a deep trust so without this, where do you stand with someone?  In everyday life, I know for myself that if someone repeatedly says they'll do something and then doesn't deliver, I start to lode trust in them.  Not necessarily in a big way but in that I will choose not to rely on them in the future.  I start to have a working assumption that they might let me down.  I have experienced this happening when I have let people down too and I understand it – I think it's a common way of operating whether it is conscious or unconscious.  Jaime Lannister's case is interesting though because many, if not most of the people that treat him as untrustworthy also recognise that the King he killed needed to die.  He was, unjust, actually mad, and spiralling out of control.  Because of his paranoia the Kingsguard were potentially the only people in a position to ill King Aerys too.  Jaime and Ned Stark have a dialogue about it at one point in the story which includes this exchange:

Jaime:

“500 men just stood there and watched.  All the great knights of the seven kingdoms, you think anyone said a word?  Lifted a finger?  No Lord Stark. 500 men and this room was silent as a crypt.  Except for the screams of course, and the mad King laughing.  And later, when I watched the mad King die, I remembered him laughing as your father burned.  It felt like justice.”

Ned:

“Is that what you tell yourself at night?  That you're a servant of justice?  That you were avenging my father when you shoved a sword in Aerys Targaryen's back?”

Jaime:

“Tell me, if I'd stabbed the mad King in the belly instead of the back, would you admire me more?”

Ned:

“You served him well.  When serving was safe.”
[xlvii]

There is a kind of hypocrisy about how Jaime Lannister is treated.  He did something that arguably needed doing, but because he broke an oath in doing so he is ostracised for it.  There is a particularly sharp edge to this with Ned Stark because mad King Aerys murdered his father, brother and sister.  You would have thought that if anyone would understand Jaime's actions, Ned would.  There is definitely other kinds of water under the bridge between these two but much of the distrust seems to stem from this fact that Jaime broke his oath as a member of the Kingsguard and killed his King.  The inherent dilemma in Jaime's position and the way he is judged exemplifies the two ends of the spectrum around honour for me: taking action because you believe it to be the right thing, and taking action because you believe it to be the necessary thing.  These may not seem like opposites and I think they are not mutually exclusive – the best acts fulfil both criteria – but as motivations they are very different.

In many ways these two ends of the spectrum when looking at honour are perfectly embodied by the heads of the houses who are the biggest players in this first part of the story:  Eddard Stark and Tywin Lannister.  Ned Stark counts honour so highly that, as I have discussed earlier here, sometimes it blinds him and he may even fail in the task for the sake of trying to perform it honourably.  Tywin seems to have eyes only for the prize and the ends can justify any means.   It seems to me ironic that two men of such different outlooks could both have the honour of their houses so central in their minds, and yet they both do.  My sense is that Ned is concerned with preserving the legacy of his family – he is past focused.  His
castle
of
Winterfell
is ancient and it's very foundations are filled with a crypt holding statues of the  great Lords of Stark from the past.  There is a sense of Ned being is service to his honour – as shows in the moment when he chooses to go and serve as Hand to the King and says to Catelyn “I have no choice”.   Tywin is concerned with creating the legacy of his family as a seat of greatness for generations to come – he is future focused.  This is very clearly expressed in a conversation he has with Jaime:

“Your mother's dead.  Before long I'll be dead. And you.  And your brother, and your sister, and all her children.  All of us dead, all of us rotting in the ground.  It's the family name that lives on, it's all that lives on.  Not your personal glory, not your honour, but family.  Do you understand?”
[xlviii]

In some ways I think both Ned and Tywin concern themselves greatly with the honour of their Houses, but for Ned it is honour for the sake of doing what is right, for Tywin it is honour for the sake of the results it gets.  Again we see his focus on ends rather than means.  If these two great men are at either end of this spectrum then King Robert Baratheon sits in the middle – a pragmatist to Ned's idealist, but not the cold cynicism of Tywin.  We see this in the scene where Robert has heard that Daenerys Targaryen is pregnant and want to have her killed:

Ned says:

“You'll dishonour yourself forever if you do this!”

Robert replies:

“Honour?  I've got seven kingdoms to rule.  One King, seven kingdoms.  Do you think honour keeps them in line?  Do you think it's honour keeping the peace?  It's fear, fear and blood!”

I would prefer to think that a sense of honour is part of what keeps order in a society too but perhaps I am an idealist as well.  Varys is an unlikely source of honour at first glance but as he says of himself in the quote at the start of this chapter, I think he is a man of honour.  His is the honour that is worn very much on the inside.  He doesn't care how people view him but he does try to do what he believes is the right thing for the realm.  It is his own personal sense of honour he serves.  While Ned is definitely most concerned with doing what he judges to be the honourable thing I'd say he is not unconcerned with how others see him.  That is why he is so embarrassed and sensitive about his infidelity to Catelyn which led to Jon Snow's birth.  Tyrion Lannister is another example of someone who definitely follows his own sense of honour, but doesn't care much what others think.  His sense of honour comes out in how he treats people, like when he goes back to Winterfell on the way south from the Wall and has designed a special saddle to help Bran Stark.  He also speaks very directly to Jon Snow about serving the honour of his house:

“I must do my part for the honour of my house, wouldn't you agree?  But how?  Well, my brother has his sword, and I have my mind, and a mind needs books like a sword needs a whet-stone.”
[xlix]

It is interesting that Tyrion later falls in with Bronn the sell-sword who's orientation around honour is so much like Tyrion's father Tywin.  After Bronn uses numerous tricks, evasions and trips to beat Ser Vardis when Bronn stands as Tyrion's champion in a trial by combat Lysa Arryn (nee Tully) says:

“You don't fight with honour.”

To which Bronn replies:

“He did.”
(indicating the man he has just killed)
[l]

I could almost hear Tywin Lannister giving the same response, although I doubt he would have the same sense of humour or insolence that Bronn brings to the phrase.

Jaime Lannister holds the honour of his house very differently than Tyrion and is much more concerned with what people think of him.  His father Tywin criticizes him for it saying:

“You spend far too much time worrying what people think of you.”

To which Jaime replies:

“I could care less what anyone thinks of me”

Tywin responds:

“Yeh well
that's
what you want other people to think of you.”

Tywin has nailed Jaime on this one – and no wonder he's his father!  This part of the scene follows on from a conversation where Tywin asks why Ned Stark isn't dead.  Jaime explains that one of their spearmen interfered when Jaime and Ned were in single combat.  Jaime says:

“It wouldn't have been clean.”
[li]

Not “It wouldn't have been right” or “Just”, or “Fair.”  It is about how the win would have been perceived, and Jaime wanted to beat Ned Stark fair and square for the sake of his reputation.  It was a matter of vanity for Jaime.  For Tywin honour is a tool for getting a job done as we see very clearly later in this scene.  When he speaks of why they must take Tyrion back (who has been arrested by Catelyn Stark):

“He's a Lannister.  He might be the lowest of the Lannisters but he's one of us.  And every day that he remains a prisoner, the less our name commands respect.”

The honour of their house is a tool for wielding power and control for Tywin.  Catelyn (supported by Ned) arrests Tyrion for the sake of seeing justice done, Tywin wants him back for the sake of preserving his power-base.  The difference between the two Houses could not be more clearly symbolised than by this situation.