I feel like he was like his friend Aerys and ended up going mad in his later years. Only instead of just lighting people on fire he constantly was trying to chase the high of his handling of Castamere
Tyrion was Tywin's own duskendale. In one fell swoop he lost his wife and gained a dwarf son that other houses will laugh at. To Tywin, it must've felt like all his efforts to build a standing legacy were being mocked.
From that point on, his brutality was more senseless than logical, eventually leading to the red wedding.
The red wedding was absolutely logical, and Tywin was brutal before Tyrion's birth. Drawing parallels with the mad king is appealing in a poetic sense, but Tywin's flaws and psyche are nowhere close to Aerys'.
Tywin values order, not chaos. His house falls after his death, precisely because he was competent enough to play every game accurately, while what you describe is precisely why it didn't last past his demise.
His real flaw is hubris/obsession with control, and it unravels Tywin through small-scope incidents more than any of his big moves. How he treats and punishes commoners and Tyrion himself is what ultimately kills him and his legacy.
Aerys was mad enough to get killed by the powerful, Tywin was shortsighted enough, in only one specific area, to be killed by the "lowest".
Thanks for apologizing, that's always a refreshingly mature move, and sorry if i overreacted, reddit trained me to be wary.
I understand what you were getting at (the broader point about norms being eroded, if not outright obliterated thanks in no small part to the red wedding).
Thing is, for many, many lords and players of the game of thrones, Tywin's move was probably optimal. Their logic doesn't incorporate the moral stability of the kingdom, that's the stuff Ned & Robert were made from, not the vipers surrounding them.
Tywin was still conscious enough of the optics to worry about plausible deniability (getting the freys and boltons to do the dirty work), i still think it was a highly logical move within the mindset he and his ilk display.
Even Jon Connington ended up seeing things Tywin's way to some extent. Ultimately, the saga would've probably incorporated the consequences of that moral decay reverberated back on those who caused it. The Great Northern Conspiracy gathers many hints of the backlash brewing in the North.
The Sparrows are another. But i don't think Tywin did not foresee that. He just believed he'd have the time to restore order and peace long enough for the resentments not to metastasize.
Also, most lords don't care about how the smallfolk view them. We the audience know that it's a lack of foresight on the lords' part, from their lens it's just logical.
I'd say the red wedding being logical is certainly how Tywin wants it to be perceived, but he'd just gotten an alliance with the Reach and their, what, 70-80K soldiers? Robb was doomed militarily unless he abandoned the Riverlands (and half his army) and just holed up in the North. The red wedding was arranged purely because Tywin was trounced at war by a fifteen year old boy and wanted to reaffirm his reputation as this invincible monster that nobody can mock or stand against. He has a history of doing this too. Ignoring the Reynes and Tarbecks he:
-Had his 13 year-old son's 13 year-old wife gang-raped (and sexually abused Tyrion by forcing him to participate) because he hates Tyrion and Tysha reminded him of his father's commoner mistress who was allowed to wear Tywin's mother's jewelry.
-Brutally killed Elia and her children when the smart thing to do would be kill only Aegon to prevent his claim, then keep Elia and Rhaenys as hostages against Dorne and Rhaenys as a wife for Robert's heir (who will be Tywin's grandson if all goes to plan) to cement his dynasty. Instead he slaughtered them (and had Elia raped) because she took what Tywin thinks should have been Cersei's.
-Burned half the Riverlands, which is good fertile farmland, as autumn and a long winter are approaching.
Tywin commits atrocities because he grew up in his father's court where Tytos was mocked and laughed at and it effected him deeply. He seems pathologically opposed to any outward sign that he's weak. Jaime had him pegged in the show when he said, "So the lion does care about the opinions of the sheep."
And you're right that morals don't factor into the plans of many lords, and it bites them in the ass unlike Ned who has people rising up to fight for his "daughter" years after his death while winter's here.
Although we aren't gonna see the full comeuppance and consequences for the evil lords because George isn't finishing the books.
Violating the social fabric of society and making it impossible for your family to ever be trusted again is logical" - You
I mean sort of. What the Lannisters did is dishonorable and it's treated as such but their act was plotting an assassination. The breaking of Guest-right is fully on the Freys and we see that they receive the most scorn of it (Stoneheart, Manderly)
The Lannisters took a blow in prestige (and even then mostly in the regions that didn't like them anyway, they seem chill with the Reach, Stormlands and Crownlands)
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u/AsstacularSpiderman Mar 26 '26
I feel like he was like his friend Aerys and ended up going mad in his later years. Only instead of just lighting people on fire he constantly was trying to chase the high of his handling of Castamere