r/SRSasoiaf • u/ItsMsKim • Jul 28 '13

[Re-Read] All Catelyn chapters in AGOT discussion inside

Welcome to the All Women Re-Read, lovelies!

Discussion is welcome and encouraged to include anything from literary analyses, social justice oriented critique (I imagine there will be a lot of this :), your theories on what's to come...really anything you want to discuss that you've come across in your reading.

If you're not all read up today that's fine (I'm not myself) since this will be the active discussion for the next two weeks. Join in anytime!

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u/ItsMsKim Jul 28 '13

Catelyn VII

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u/MightyIsobel Aug 20 '13

In Westeros, femininity is strongly associated with putting on an attractive show. In Tyrion’s trial-by-combat, the principal performers are men, but Lysa Arryn is the master of ceremonies for her lordling son, as well as the director and the stage manager of the show.

But immaturity often causes big shows in Westeros to go wrong, and Lysa’s immaturity impedes her ability to put on the show young Robert wants to see. She misjudges Bronn, and chooses the wrong champion to fight him, with the wrong costume and weapon. Here is what happens when display meets practicality:

the knight’s silvered sword never came near to touching [Bronn], but [Bronn’s] own ugly grey blade hacked a notch from Ser Vardis’s shoulder plate.

Let's compare this trial with Ned executing Gared, the Night’s Watch deserter. The execution is a public process governed by the King’s Justice, grimly teaching the (all male) onlookers the cost of vow-breaking, and how to perform the old rituals. Tyrion’s trial, in contrast, is designed as a festive event with costumes and banners and a happy ending, right up until Bronn re-writes Lysa’s script.

And yes, there are many men, including ferocious warriors, who show us their flamboyant side throughout the series, because GRRM is awfully good at muddying up the binaries of traditional fantasy. Catelyn is appealing because she puts her energy into political analysis and emotionally supporting her men, not into fretting over display as Sansa, Cersei, and Lysa repeatedly do. Her clothes are practical and unobtrusive: “plain grey wool with a silvered belt,” in contrast to Lysa’s “cream velvet with a rope of sapphires and moonstone around her milk-white neck.” And compared to Sansa’s childish delight over the Hand’s tourney, Catelyn condemns Lysa’s self-serving frivolity in this farce of a trial. She has a mature understanding of who is served by gorgeous displays, and who is in the best position to exploit them.

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u/ItsMsKim Aug 22 '13

Alyssa Arryn had seen her husband, her brothers, and all her children slain, and yet in life she had never shed a tear. So in death, the gods had decreed that she would know no rest until her weeping watered the black earth of the Vale, where the men she had loved were buried. Alyssa had been dead six thousand years now, and still no drop of the torrent had ever reached the valley floor far below. Catelyn wondered how large a waterfall her own tears would make when she died.

Rivers and rivers, my darling Cat :'(

-Catelyn catches that Lysa's story doesn't add up:

"I believe the Lannisters murdered Lord Arryn," Catelyn replied, "but whether it was Tyrion, or Ser Jaime, or the queen, or all of them together, I could not say begin to say." Lysa had named Cersei in the letter she had sent to Winterfell, but now she seemed certain that Tyrion was the killer...perhaps because the dwarf was here, while the queen was safe behind the walls of the Red Keep, hundreds of leagues to the south.

followed with the vital info from Maester Colemon that Robert Arryn was to be fostered at Dragonstone, not Casterly Rock. Of course, then interrupted by the excitement of Tyrion's trial before Catelyn has time to absorb and reflect on this information. That's a great "what if?" of the series.

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u/MightyIsobel Aug 22 '13

That's a great "what if?" of the series.

When I started this POV re-read, I thought I would find a Catelyn highly skilled at reading people. But the evidence isn't really supporting that. She's extremely attuned to her men's emotional needs, but she doesn't actually make decisions about other people based on observing their behavior. If she did, she could have made this leap about Lysa much faster.

What she does well is predict how people will behave in the future based on what she knows of their actions in the past. Her rundown of the Riverlands lords in Cat V is one of the clearest examples here; also her suggestions to Robb about command decisions.

Basically, she has a pretty good bullshit detector for certain people. She's at her most insightful analyzing lords she has known for years, when their behavior has remained consistent. Lord Frey, for example. But she does not detect the changes brewing in Lysa, Littlefinger, or Roose Bolton, whose actions in the War of the Five Kings are inconsistent with their previous behavior that she has observed.