The North Remembers

fearisforthewinter:

robbstark:

Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner. (Tyrion VI, A Storm of Swords)

Don’t you just love it when Tywin Lannister does that thing in which he calls roughly 3,500 people ‘a dozen’. This is a quote that has always bothered me because I’ve seen a lot of people praising it and calling it smart. I know that war is a terrible thing, but Tywin is wrong: it is more noble to kill ten thousand men than “a dozen” at dinner based on the simple fact that those ten thousand people will have an opportunity to defend themselves or at least, an opportunity of being aware of the fact that they’re in battle. I think Tywin is mistaking ‘more noble’ for ‘better’ here - it would not be better to kill ten thousand men in the battlefield than “a dozen” at dinner because killing is wrong, period.  

At the Red Wedding, the Freys got the northmen drunk so they were unconscious or not sober enough to fight. Not to mention that they broke the Guest Right which by nature in Westeros is sacred and simply “cannot” be broken. And this is just leaving out the fact that by itself, the fact of killing an army after offering them an alliance and a night of peaceful rest is cruel.

These are the things that killing “a dozen” people at dinner instead of ten thousand in war is: smarter, crueller, more pragmatic, more cowardly. 

It is not “more noble”.

#nobility is overrated and all but #yeah #there’s a reason why the reputations of the Boltons Freys and Lannisters are shit after the RW #there’s a reason Frey Pie happens #it’s not because Tywin’s a keen strategist

maidenandwarrior:

I kid you not, I thought up this theory after seeing it as a joke on the forums. I can’t find the thread now, but it was about guessing the identity of Ashara’s baby daddy, and all the usual suspects were there. Brandon, Ned, Robert…pretty much every man at Harrenhal. Then…