Warning this is rambly:

This is a totally fair argument and other deeply misogynistic men in the story totally do get a pass because we're not in most of their heads and or we're inclined to like them for narrative reasons.

For example: Roose Bolton is terrible for innumerable reasons, including his taking right of first night.

Something that may be interesting for you to check out that I happen to agree with is this view regarding the incident with Tyrion and Tysha. Joannalannister from the tumblr ASOIAF community has had some good posts about this (http://joannalannister.tumblr.com/post/46972826468/tw-ableism-tw-rape-tw-sexual-abuse). That's not to say he's great. We can totally castigate Tyrion for murdering Shay and for the way he treats the sex worker in ADWD and many other things he does.

As for Victarion, something to note is that he did drown the boy sex workers from that ship he captured for being "unnatural" and burn the seven female sex workers for Rhllor. The rest of the female sex workers he distributed to his crew. Don't get me wrong though, Satin doesn't get treated great at the Wall either as a former boy sex worker. Westeros is not a safe place for folks working in society's oldest occupation.

I guess what I'd say is, this society in general isn't safe for gay folks, or women, or sex workers, or folks who are not highborn and many folks with power are either actively morally bankrupt (Gregor), deeply self-serving and manipulative (Littlefinger), just ignore terrible things when they are happening or some combination of the three. It doesn't mean those people cannot have moments of mercy or kindness. They aren't orcs after all (something Tolkien ultimately regretted, making the orcs irredeemably evil).

Here is Sean T Collins (BoiledLeather's) argument against Vic, which I found incredibly persuasive (thought it would make more sense to repost his argument than ramble through my own paraphrasing).
There’s something uniquely loathsome about Victarion Greyjoy, even compared to the likes of Gregor Clegane and Ramsay Bolton — and Euron Greyjoy, for that matter. I think it’s that while most of the other real monsters we’ve met are self-aware enough to delight in their cruelty, Victarion’s approach to abominable conduct is unthinking, unexamined. I don’t think it’s pleasant to him, but in a way that just makes it worse, because therefore he has no pleasure-principle incentive to be cruel that you or I can understand. He merely has no real respect for the lives of others, and no inkling that he might ought to, and behaves accordingly. Thus when he beats his own wife to death, it’s something he’s “forced” to do by the brother who cuckolded him with her, and he feels worse for himself than for her. Thus he sentences the gay prostitutes the Iron Victory seizes at sea to death with less thought than he’s given to the pros and cons of having a concubine who can’t talk. Thus he opposes slavery, but still participates in the trade when he needs the money and still summarily executes slaves for a sacrifice to the gods. Ramsay and Gregor’s torture of their victims is its own twisted acknowledgement of their personhood — the people who’ve fallen into their clutches have agency, and they seek to obliterate that agency with extravagant cruelty. Victarion never gets even that far. You might as well be furniture to him, and the whole time he’s using you he’ll be thinking about how uncomfortable he is sitting on you.
But you don’t have to take my word for it: No less an authority than George R.R. Martin called him "basically a dullard and a brute." Victarion suxxxxxx

See here is the thing. Victarion has a PoV so u see whats going in his head, while the others don't. So we don't know what their thought processes are.

For me Victarion comes off as a typical Iron Islander. He is no worse or better then Baelon Greyjoy, Nute the barber etc etc.

Also we never seen Victarion rape or torture anyone. We only see him execute people , he does this to please the drowned gods and R'hollr. Stannis does it too. Do did the ancient Straks. Problem is not Victarion . Problem is with the awful priests, awful gods, awful teachings and awful culture.

This logic "unintentionally doing evil is worse than intentionally doing evil" i don't get it. Victarion's crimes are worse than Roose and Gregor crimes, I don't buy this logic at all. I guess closest I can compare this to is. Hunting animals for pleasure vs hunting animals for food. As a vegetarian , i think both acts r aweful, but i'm sure meat eater will feel the latter is acceptable. How is doing evil and deriving pleasure from it not worse ?

I'm not saying Victarion is the best or most noble character in Ice and Fire. GRRM is right Victarion is a dullard and a brute. But Cmon, compared to Ramsey, Craster, Gregor and Roose he is better.

Fair enough that he might not LITERALLY be the worst, it's not like there aren't plenty of terrible people in this world. I definitely think there are plenty who are 'worse'. A lot of it is personal bias, but of all the POV characters he is the most unpleasant to read about for me. I think he just stands out to me because he's the one POV character I can't empathise with at all, whereas I can at least relate to people like Theon or Cersei to some extent. Doesn't mean I can't appreciate his place in the story or don't think he's an interesting character. I think Tywin and Littlefinger are interesting characters even if I think they also happen to be morally reprehensible. Violence against women or people who lack power is also something that I'm really sensitive to, so that's also probably why.

I love the Oberyn acrobatics in the trailer. We like epic fights in film because they look epic, not because they are realistic necessarily, which is the reason why everyone liked the lightsaber fight at the end of Phantom Menace. I think Oberyn's probably just warming up and, as Amin said, showing off.

The House of the Undying is one of the trippier parts of the books that I don't remember well, mainly because I don't kiss the ground Dany walks on like many other people do and so I just had to force myself through Danaerys' story in ACOK and as soon as you introduce prophecies into the mix, I care less automatically because it means someone is controlling fate to make things happen in the future in some fashion, which is a nice concept in theory but it ignores the fact that the probability that noone controls anything. I think the reason the adaptation ended up changing the House of the Undying sequence is because once you introduce prophecy the audience won't care about anything else because prophecies have such an authoritative presence that the other events just have no impact on what's "supposed" to happen in the audience's mind. I think now looking back on the wolf at a feast of corpses, that image could have been an allusion to things other than the Red Wedding if indeed the Others start reanimating everyone (if they ever do) so maybe we'll literally get an Un-Robb feasting on Freys by the end of the series. It's also interesting that she's told to go right the whole time because usually you'd be able to choose the "right path" in life as far as you are able to so I think it's interesting that Martin allows his characters only so much free will.

Regarding the three-headed dragon, if Martin makes any of the Lannister kids into secret Targaryens I'll be seriously disappointed because that's some soap opera stuff that the series has stayed away from so far and the L+R=J stuff is also something that I only reluctantly tolerate because it's the ultimate safety net that I generally don't care for.

The vision that I find interesting is the smiling corpse-like figure on a ship, which is obviously Theon because his lips are "grey" and he's smiling, a sign of "joy". and so, since what is dead may never die, maybe it's meant to be symbolic of his rebirth post-Reek? We know that his arrogant smiles were such a part of him when he still called himself Theon (I mean he named his horse Smiler) and so his smile turned from arrogant to sad after the Ramsay treatment?

I think the "mount to dread" could be Ser Robert Strong if he truly is the Mountain that Rides reborn or maybe even Daario because he has shown himself to be quite despicable.

The king with blue eyes, sword and no shadow would be Jon or Stannis because undead people seem to have blue eyes, unless Melisandre resurrects Jon, in which case I assume he'd have red eyes like Stoneheart. A ghost is like a shadow in many ways, so this could imply either the shadow demons or Ghost and the sword is obviously lightbringer. So if Danaerys is indeed slayer of lies, then the idea of either Stannis or Jon being Azor Ahai could crumble like so much other hopes. On the other hand, if Ramsay's letter is true about him having Stannis' sword, and if he indeed turs out to be the Night's King reincarnate, then the blue-eyed king could also refer to him, seeing as the sword Lightbringer being his is just another lie that needs dispelling. The cloth dragon would obviously refer to Aegon and I always took the stone dragon to be the literal stone dragons at Dragonstone.

As for the three betrayals, I'd say Mirri Maz Duur was for blood, Illyrio is going to be for gold and Jorah was the one for love. Just because the betrayals are mentioned in a certain order does not mean that they have to happen in that order within the story. I say Illyrio for gold because he does not seem to care about Dany at all, since he also helps Aegon simultaneously and everything he does shows us that he is a man who values gold and luxury above all else and since danaerys still remembers him as a friend, maybe that bubble has to burst.

The lion running through the green grass, could be related to the Ghost grass in some fashion maybe because it is supposed to be taller than a man as well as the lion in the prophecy?

NB: I agree, the Last Unicorn should definitely be a VOK episode of its own (fun fact: Christopher Lee provided both the original English voice and the German dub for King Haggard an living in Germany at the time I watched the film in German on VHS and I could not believe that he did them both at first when I saw the English version years later). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_xJtc6Z-jI

This is the reason that I don't hate on Victarion as a lot of people here do. We mythologize the Middle Ages but GRRM does a good job at reminding us that they were not princess in towers and shining noble knights but instead full of horror, ignorance, and despair.

The series would be horrible if all character were Victarion-like POVs. Instead, we get one viewpoint into a culture that is not really addressed by any of the other Ironborn POVs. GRRM uses Theon to fantasize the Ironborn because he was never truly Ironborn. Asha is used to show that the Ironborn are not all dullards and brutes but that they are independant minded and selfish. Victarion closes the circle by reminding us that when they talk about raping and reaving. THEY ACTUALLY MEAN RAPING AND REAVING!!

Victarion not being a masogynistic idiot would not make sense. If he was a noble character it would be divergent from the entire Ironborn story. He was sent by his crazy brother to kidnap a beautiful Queen with dragons and all he was given was a horn. As much as I love the Ironborn, THEY ARE NOT THAT SMART!

I love the Reader but a POV for him would be really tireing: "Victarion is an idiot. My brother was an idiot. Asha has some promise but she will not listen to me. FUCK! I guess I will just go read another book."



There are far worse characters in ASOIAF. I am just glad we got Victarian's POV and not Ramsey, Craster, Gregor, or Roose's.

I use hyperbole when I call Vic the worst, other characters commit worse crimes etc. etc. I also think he's a valuable POV, both into a certain part of the plot I enjoy and into Ironborne culture. However, the reason I dislike him so storngly is because of what Sean said about agency. When Ramsay tortures someone into oblivion he's doing it to remove their personhood, to deny them their humanity on some level, it's an acknowledgement that tey are people. The joy he takes in it is horrific, but also rooted in the pleasure he gets ind estroying a person. Vic just does stuff because he feels obligated too. He'll torture and murder people not because he wants to, not because he's trying to destroy a person, but because he feels obligated too. And the whole time he does it he'll be thinking of how annoying it is and what a waste of time or something. It's somehow, to me, more disrespectful for the victim. Be that as it may, other people are within their rights not to dislike the whiny bastard as much as I do.

Yeah I got that too. He's sort of like the guy who feels like he has to tag along with the group because he's a member and so he thinks that his membership in the group hinges on the fact that he has to do what he thinks the other members expect him to do and he does it without remorse because to him there is nothing to feel ashamed of or guilty about. It's normalizingwhat should be horrible to everyone else. He might not be bearing the people he hurts any ill-will personally but he is the sort of guy who would be part of a mob because he feels that belonging and proving himself to that mob is the most important thing there is. Hence why I think he'd have made a pretty lousy king because everything hinges on how he can live up to expectations of others around him, hence why he's so obsessed with proving his manliness, which is problematic for him because he's sexist enough to piss Dany off the first time he meets her. He values the wrong things and so his status as an Ironborn warrior goes before everything else in his mind, which robs other people of their potential worth and dignity as human beings because ultimately they are not important enough to him to feel truly guilty over what he does to them. He's not really conflicted and so he's a lot like Steelshanks in that sense but in other ways he's very different because Steelshanks didn't really bemoan the fact that there was no war going on but with Victarion having war seems like an excuse to let loose and prove himself for the glory of the Ironborn as he would tell others but it's only really about him, which is a very narcissistic and one of the reasons why he intends to backstab Euron. He's not content with his lot in life, which may be where Theon got some of his more annoying character traits from but theon had a chance to reflect on his errors, mainly because he was not revered by others like Victarion is as that legendary warrior, which will prove to be Victarion's hybris in the end because he's not flexible enough to change his positions and adapt to an unfamiliar social environment.

Very true - he does give a perspective into the Greyjoys because he is more representative of them I guess than either Theon or Asha. I don't know how this turned into a massive debate about Victarion thread but there you go. I tend to think he's going to get totally played by Euron and/ or Moqorro. Dude is not the brightest. I'm not afraid of drowning, I'm just going to wear heavy armour all the time. LOL OK dude.

Also, not to go on about this forever but ... even in Ironborn culture, what Victarion did to his wife is not normal. Balon banished Euron and told Victarion never to speak of what he did, presumably because beating your wife to death with your own bare hands doesn't really reflect well on the family. Even in a sexist society, that is an extreme response to being cuckolded. His own fucked up sexist principles and sense of honour 'made' him do it. And I still can't get over the fact that he feels sorry for himself in this situation LIKE HE IS THE VICTIM. Gahh anyway I should probably stop ranting about this! Back to talking about House of the Undying!

It's the banality of evil argument: the character does not see anything wrong with what he does and so he is capable of inflicting great harm on others repeatedly without realizing the wrongfulness of the act because he's considering it normal. Unintentionally doing evil is worse than intentionally doing it in that the person doing it will not recognize the things he does as evil because what he does has been normalized to the point of taking out the horror of the act entirely and so it is likely to say he'll do whatever bad stuff he does again, just as a routine and unless someone makes him realize that he should feel very ashamed of doing what he does, he's not going to feel guilty but at the same time he's an adult and should know better than to think showing mercy is weakness because, no matter what culture and/or teachings, one still has a choice not to go along with the group. A character like Roose, who knows that what he is doing is evil and does not want to take pride in it, thus shows an awareness of the wrongfulness of the acts that at least shows to me that the gravity of the situation has been acknowledged in some weird way by the character, which Victarion does not do because killing enemies and reaping is his routine job and he does not question his job ever.

That's not to say that the things that Ramsay Bolton or Gregor Clegane do are somehow not more heinous but at least they acknowledge that some evil act has been committed and they own their actions unapologetically whilst revelling in the atrocity, which weirdly enough shows that they have understood how awful it must feel for the victims but obviously only in the sense that the victim has still some kind of significance, even if it is only to be the subject of Gregor's or Ramsay's mockery. They acknowledge the fact that they are making people feel awful because they know what they're doing is awful. The fact that Victarion seemingly forgets about the people he hurts except those who he thinks live up to his standard of manliness is more self-gratification on his part than anything else because the strength of his enemies reflects better on him and so it makes him feel special to have killed a strong enemy but it never crosses his mind that killing them mercilessly is awful in itself and weak opponents have no bearing on his mind at all and the fact that he's essentially ruining someone's life does not even cross his mind, hence why he wants to dominate Daenerys sexually: because he sees nothing wrong with debasing her and obectifying her that way, even though he must have come across other cultures surely who think of women differently and yet he does not reconsider what he's been taught his whole life about the world.

The worst thing is, when we consider his dead wife he feels like HE was the victim there. It's like The US starting wars, going on torturing people in Guantanamo, locking up people indefinitely or killing them with drones and then turning around and saying "look how awful I've become, look what YOU made ME do, o woe is me, I'm the victim in all of this because I am the one who's suffering internally, not the people I am making suffer through my actions" and all the rest of us going "you sort of had a choice not to go there and you did it anyway because you felt it was a justified and normal response to what happened to you and because you could not be the bigger man and stick to some kind of principles" and that's what Victarion is. He's a bully who cannot deal with humiliation like a grown-up and move on from it without making a scene.

This.

Not to mention that Victarion won't kill Euron because "kinslaying" is a no-no? What about when Vic killed his wife, that's supposed to be okay?

Thank you Beric, that is perfect. The bit about Ramsay and Gergor reveling in their own evil is something I agree with as well, by doing so they at least acknowledge the agency/existence of their victims by denying it.

I think Martin said it best himself when he called Victarion "a dullard and a brute" http://observationdeck.io9.com/george-r ... -886117845 .

He's stupid but not stupid enough to not know the taboo of kinslaying but he'd totally kill Euron if he wasn't his brother, which seems such an extreme response.

Agreed. And for wahtever reason i prefer a psychopathic super villain like ramsay or Gregor to a dullard and brute like Victarion.

I got the impression that she was a 'salt wife' rather than a 'real' wife, not that I'm sure I really understand the difference. So is she more like a paramour? Obviously this doesn't make what he did any more justified except in his own head.

I'm not really great with remembering much about Greyjoy stuff, but they don't seem to care as much about marriage and legitimacy as mainland Westeros. We really don't know enough about this whole thing and who she even is. I feel like there's an implication that she was raped by Euron rather than willingly sleeping with him but maybe this is my own weird reading of the situation.

I always got the sense Euron didn't really bother to get consent too, but that's mostly because I hate him so much and she'd have to ahve been pretty ballsy to risk fucking Vic's brother in a culture like the Ironborne's.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't she only a salt wife?
Doesn't count, you totally get a pass on that.
<edit - oops, sorry aryastark7330, I somehow missed your post. But one might argue that even a real wife wouldn't count. Unless you're a dirty kinmarryer. Like Tywin. Sickf#ck.>

Plus he's such a badass. He gets bored with slaying normal men and fantasizes about taking on the kingslayer and/or the knight of flowers just to see if he could beat them. And that's without even knowing they have only 3 hands and one skin between the two of them. Bad. Ass. It is known.

Which is why I've learned to not entirely trust the characters reminiscing about past events in their lives that we were not shown directly. They all feel like unreliable narrators to me. I feel like guys like Victarion are so self-involved that they'll bend events around in their head to fit a certain narrative that they've built for themselves in their lives (I would have said to justiy what they are doing but Victarion does not see anything that would require any justification, since it's his conception that this is how it's been and this is therefore apparently how it should be, hence no need to get upset about anything he does, really). Maybe his wife had legitimate reasons to want to leave Victarion for exactly the personality traits we discussed previously (which, given that she was a salt wife captured and would have been essentially treated in a fashion similar but not entirely like a slave, might have been rather likely) and rather than admitting that she might have been right about some aspects of his character, he puts the fault on her and Euron, and according to him that's reason enough to resort to mindless violence against them rather than talk it through like a sensible human being would, which is sadly rather pathetic and speaks to the dichotomy that always exists in warmongering societies: every slight is a deadly inslut and hence resorting to violence (verbal or physical) is the only solution because that's the message the culture around them has fed them but they have a unique opportunity to discover other cultures and customs and gain life experience from that but most of them think they're better than everybody else and so why would they need to learn anything from anyone if they are "exceptional"?

The Reader, Euron and Theon are great examples of people who don't want to fit in. It's Victarion's sense of entitlement that one can clearly see in Theon as well in ACOK in that once he is in charge and things don't go his way he can't help but make stupid and reprehensible moral choices because of his need to conform to an image he's been fed and yet at the same time at least he's uncomfortable with these choices and knows deep down that there's no reason to be excessively immoral and reprehensible, precisely because he's been raised by the Starks who shared a different lifestyle wth him, whereas Victarion sort of shrugs it off like it's nothing and he allows for bad things to happen like his men raping that maester and casually threatens to do worse.

It's not his wife's honour that Victarion was trying to avenge here because, even if it was rape, had he cared at all about her as a human being he wouldn't have killed her in the first place for being in a situation that she could not have been responsible for in any way so it all comes back to him and his own self-image, his disdain for the female gender and his insecurities that he always has to prove himself to others. If she has been raped by Euron that does not in theory wound his own self-image as a man because it gives him an opportunity to save/avenge her and thus build himself that hero image that he desires, except for the fact that in the present case he gains nothing from it because salt wives and thralls are treated like servants in the Iron Islands, nd hence are not held in high regard. I guess it'd only matter to him in a way that has to do with his culture's misogynistic notions of property rights that extend even to women to a certain degree, since he considers her HIS saltwife and so Euron would have overstepped those boundaries but still, it's no reason to want to kill someone over because revenge and justice are not the same thing and mentioning it to Balon and the fact that Balon does not want him to talk about his wife killing incident to others makes that even clearer. This is one of those rare instances where I can give Balon some credit for actually caring enough about the gravity of the incident to banish his own brother permanently, which was a sentence that avoided bloodshed while leaving Euron a lifetime to feel guilty for what he'd done, if he had indeed raped Victarion's third wife. If she cheated on Victarion though, Victarion either would have had to take it as a criticism of his horrible character that makes her want to leave him or of his sexual prowess, both of which he hates calling into question in any circumstances because it undermines the foundations of his personal narrative of absolute "testosterator" (I like making up nouns). He even says so to himself, if the incident had been known men would have laughed at him and so that was justification enough to kill her, which isn't a good reason to want to kill her, Euron or anyone at all really. Being a badass warrior is not impressive to me in that whole context.

Tyrion murders his 'salt wife' after she sleeps with a family member (motives/coercion/rape unknown). He has yet to feel a smidge of remorse for that. Sounds awfully similar to Victarion to me.

Have we condemned Tyrion as a completely awful person, like we have Victarion? If anything, Tyrion should be condemned more because we know he's intelligent and expect a higher standard of morals from him. Somehow Shae's murder is always overlooked when people discuss Tyrion, yet Victarion killing his salt wife is one of his defining characteristics.

I agree Jesicka, it's hugely awful on Tyrion's part. One thing I'd say is that Tyrion acted out of rage and the fact that she testified against him justifies it for many, despite the fact that's unfair as I can't imagine she had any real choice. Still, point most definitely taken.

This. Also Shae having survival sex with Tywin is understandable. Some of the fandom vilifying her and acting like it justifies Tyrion's strangling her to death I do not understand. And the way he is in Dance is even worse.

I agree completely. Tyrion is petty because he plays into the preconceived notions that people have of him and killing Shae plays into that because he says he's going to be the monster that everyone says he is and so him giving up trying to be good is just such an easy and cowardly way out that it is hard for me to justify anything he does in that moment and all good conséquences coming from that are purely incidental because that's not why he kills Tywin. he's just doing what he told Jon he sometimes dreamed about since book 1 and there is no reason at all to kill Shae except for revenge, which, sorry Tyrion fans, is not a valid reason and that has nothing to do withthe age we live in. There are enough people who condemn actions like these within the story that it should be easy to recognize that tyrion is not a positive figure at that point.
The reason why people don't discuss Tyrion in the same way as Victarion is because that's what Victarion constantly thinks and whines about because it's about his manhood, whereas Tyrion does not think about Shae once she's dead and he's really creepy to a lot of other women in Essos and so I have to question if Tyrion really respects women or not, or only women in a certain higher-up social class like Sansa, whereas he would not necessarily care about the feelings of prostitutes.

Very true. What he did to Shae was completely unjustified, although it took me a while to see that for some reason because it's all from Tyrion's perspective and he doesn't consider her motives at all. I think it's because the Victarion thing is the first thing we learn about him, whereas we are initially sympathetic to Tyrion and care about him as a character. Rereading Tyrion it becomes more obvious about some of his ... problematic attitudes to women and other things from the first book onwards, whereas the first time I think I was blinded by my first initial good impression. No idea if that makes any sense. He is definitely a much darker character than lots of people seem to think.

Agreed.

i LOVED lady griffin's crack pot theory on missandei and think it is most probably a THING. good episode great guest hosts. LOVED this chapter .............i think my anger of HotU on the show will subside as long as we get some of the prophesies on future eps.

on another note: seriously mimi? you cant find ANY joy of the show anymore? like ZERO joy really? really?

Don't know if I agree, but Illyrio's motives are very unclear. Could be possible.

I don't think the betrayal for gold is actually going to be about acquiring money or wealth - I think gold in that sense is a red herring. My personal opinion is that the betrayal for gold refers to the Green Grace and Hizdahr controlling the Sons of the Harpy and manipulating Dany so that Hizdahr will take control of the city from her. The main reason is that Daenerys VII, the chapter in which they wed, has the very last sentence being:

"Four hours later, they emerged again as man and wife, bound together wrist and ankle with chains of yellow gold."

Personally, I'm sort of surprised that more people haven't argued for that interpretation online; the end of that chapter really jumped out at me.

As for the episode: I loved the suggestion that Missandei would be the betrayal for love (though I don't buy it for a second - I'm still betting on Jorah, who would go totally bonkers to find that Jon Snow not only replaced him as Jeor's surrogate son, but is also going to marry Dany in the future). And I'm suddenly pretty convinced that Jon Connington could be the the beast emerging from the stone - one things the hosts don't mention is that the prophecy actually doesn't say it's a dragon, just a "winged beast", and Connington IS a griffin... There would need to be an explanation for the "breathing shadow fire" part, but it's certainly interesting...

Could the "shadow" be greyscale (The Shrouded Lord, etc.), with Connington's arrival unleashing a plague across Westeros?