A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 56) Tyrion VII: Don Lannister

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, I decided to hypnotize some chickens in lieu of discussing Robb's battle tactics. In today's post, I include a picture of James Bond to spare myself having to discuss the Lannister battle tactics either.


Tyrion and his band of clansmen have arrived at one of the Lannister camps "at the crossroads." Let's go see where that is on our handy-dandy map.

Hrm.

He's come from the Vale of Arryn, and Tywin has come from Casterly Rock. Sooooo... are they at Riverrun? (Answer: no, they're not. If you zoom in that map enough, they're between Saltpans and Lord Harroway's Town. Crossroads of what, you ask? I have no frickin' clue.)

Anyways, Tyrion's clansmen aren't keen on letting him go off alone. So he tells them their leaders may accompany him and then runs off before they can contradict him.  These are his thoughts:

That was the trouble with the clans; they had an absurd notion that every man's voice should be heard in council, so they argued about everything, endlessly. Even their women were allowed to speak. Small wonder that it had been hundreds of years since they had last threatened the Vale with anything beyond an occasional raid.

Two thoughts: first, that this is the future de facto ruler of the Seven Kingdoms talking, and second, that there is a perfectly reasonable alternative to the "everyone talks about everything" problem. What you do is you take turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week, and all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the cases of more major import. I mean, you can't expect to go 'round wielding supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you and dammit, I meant to save that joke for Stannis Baratheon.

One of the savages is a Burned Man named Timett, who put out his own eye. All of the other burned men were frightened by him and made him their chief. This is the most sensible means of selecting a ruler I have yet seen in this franchise.

There are crossbowmen at the "wall." Amused to note that the means by which Tywin will be dispatched from this world precede him directly in appearance.  Anyway, then Tyrion is led half a league from the crossroads, and we get some authentic GRRM wartorn-landscape wordage, and we learn that Tywin is in the inn "at the crossroads." Very confused now. The camp is, apparently, spread out over leagues. Makes the HBO version look titchy, but then, so much does. Compare, e.g., the book and show versions of the Red Wedding, and note that the latter is essentially 12 extras being stabbed in a barn.

We get a paragraph of Lord Tywin Lannister's description, but really it can be boiled down into a sentence and a half: "When his once-thick golden hair had begun to recede, he had commanded his barber to shave his head; Lord Tywin did not believe in half measures."

Pictured: half measures

 I joke. Yes, yes, Tywin should look like this:

And my rejoinder is that Ian Fleming's James Bond looks more like this

than like this

but very few people are complaining about this sort of thing anymore, right? "Ah," but you say, "Ian Fleming's James Bond did not have his hair used as a means of effectively describing his character in the very first paragraph in which he appeared, did he?" To which my response is that I really don't care, the point of this drawn-out exercise was to put a scrumptious-looking Daniel Craig in this post and thereby boost its pageviews. Anyway, Charles Dance was a fantastic Tywin, and so I don't begrudge him not wearing a bald cap.

Anyway, Tywin (the Bald) points out that Jaime would never submit to capture at the hands of a woman. Oh, Tywin, be glad you did not live to read ADWD, for many reasons, but first among them that.

Anyway, the war is going well. Edmure Tully is captured and Jaime is laying siege to Riverrun. The river lords are more or less broken, and all that's left is for Tywin to unfurl the "mission accomplished" banner on the deck of one of his ships. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, Robert Baratheon is dead, which means that Cersei is in charge at King's Landing. Even now Tywin has to be entertaining the thought of a three-way civil war - I mean, it's not like he's going to be caught with his britches down any time soon and yes I used that joke last time too, but the alternative was a bit of wordplay involving Renly and the phrase "three-way" and I couldn't be bothered.

The clansmen barge into the room and there are introductions. Tywin treats them cordially enough, but the fun starts when they're interrupted again by a messenger her to tell them that the Stark host is moving.  Splendid! Tywin, uber strategist that he is, will surely lie in wait in a massive concave and smash them in one fell blow. Ah, no. Tywin decides to be clever and lure him into a trap, completely blind to the notion that Robb might actually try his hand at this thing called tactics.

On the plus side, he gets the clansman to fight for him with just a few words. Awesome Lannister is awesome.