Game of Thrones: The Red Wedding
Sep. 30th, 2022 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerGame of Thrones S3E9 is entitled "The Rains of Castamere" but it's popularly known as The Red Wedding for the bloody event that occurs. In the books this occurs in the middle of book 3, A Storm of Swords, but that volume was so large the producers of the TV series split its events across seasons 3-4. That placed the Red Wedding as the dramatic climax of Season 3, which is good storytelling.
I'll put my thoughts about the massacre behind a spoiler cut, but before I do I'll note that seeing some spoilers with names of characters who die didn't actually spoil the show for me. The episode was still shocking.
At the Red Wedding, "King in the North" Robb Stark is betrayed by Walder Frey and Roose Bolton, heads of two houses who previously swore allegiance to him. They kill Robb, his pregnant wife, his mother, and many of his bannermen. Frey and Bolton reveal in a subsequent scene that they've been plotting this betrayal for quite some time at the behest of the Lannisters.
Why betray Robb? Well, aside from the fact that Tywin Lannister offered them greater titles and probably financial rewards, too, each many had his own personal dislikes of Robb Stark.
Walder Frey was humiliated that Robb reneged on his promise to marry one of Frey's daughters or granddaughters when he married the commoner Talisa instead. That promise had secured Frey's army at a critical time in war with the Lannister armies.
Roose Bolton had grown frustrated with Robb that the latter spurned his military advice too often. He thought many of Robb's choices were too soft— including his decisions to marry Talisa for love instead of marrying a Frey woman to secure alliances. In Bolton's view, echoed across many other nobly born characters in the series, a successful king and general must make pragmatic choices, Machiavellian choices, even though they seem harsh. He made his own Machiavellian judgment that Robb was no longer the right king to follow. He'd squandered too many important opportunities and had alienated too many alliances, and now no longer had a way to win.
Of course, it's Robb's soft side, his refusal to embrace cold, Machiavellian strategies, that make him a sympathetic character. That, plus actor Richard Madden's onscreen charisma (and that of Michelle Fairly as Catelyn Stark), led the showrunners to deviate from the books by making Robb a major character in the TV series. In the books he's not a viewpoint character; stories involving him are told from third person perspective.
The showrunners' choice to raise Robb's prominence was a good one. Robb was one of few sympathetic characters in the story and an important counterpoint to all the evil and amoral conniving. But as the showrunners, and the author, too, attest, one of the themes of the show is that evil gets its way most of the time. Yet again, evil wins and the good guys die.
I'll put my thoughts about the massacre behind a spoiler cut, but before I do I'll note that seeing some spoilers with names of characters who die didn't actually spoil the show for me. The episode was still shocking.
At the Red Wedding, "King in the North" Robb Stark is betrayed by Walder Frey and Roose Bolton, heads of two houses who previously swore allegiance to him. They kill Robb, his pregnant wife, his mother, and many of his bannermen. Frey and Bolton reveal in a subsequent scene that they've been plotting this betrayal for quite some time at the behest of the Lannisters.
Why betray Robb? Well, aside from the fact that Tywin Lannister offered them greater titles and probably financial rewards, too, each many had his own personal dislikes of Robb Stark.
Walder Frey was humiliated that Robb reneged on his promise to marry one of Frey's daughters or granddaughters when he married the commoner Talisa instead. That promise had secured Frey's army at a critical time in war with the Lannister armies.
Roose Bolton had grown frustrated with Robb that the latter spurned his military advice too often. He thought many of Robb's choices were too soft— including his decisions to marry Talisa for love instead of marrying a Frey woman to secure alliances. In Bolton's view, echoed across many other nobly born characters in the series, a successful king and general must make pragmatic choices, Machiavellian choices, even though they seem harsh. He made his own Machiavellian judgment that Robb was no longer the right king to follow. He'd squandered too many important opportunities and had alienated too many alliances, and now no longer had a way to win.
Of course, it's Robb's soft side, his refusal to embrace cold, Machiavellian strategies, that make him a sympathetic character. That, plus actor Richard Madden's onscreen charisma (and that of Michelle Fairly as Catelyn Stark), led the showrunners to deviate from the books by making Robb a major character in the TV series. In the books he's not a viewpoint character; stories involving him are told from third person perspective.
The showrunners' choice to raise Robb's prominence was a good one. Robb was one of few sympathetic characters in the story and an important counterpoint to all the evil and amoral conniving. But as the showrunners, and the author, too, attest, one of the themes of the show is that evil gets its way most of the time. Yet again, evil wins and the good guys die.
