I read the Catelyn chapter that details the Red Wedding in George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords during gym class, sometime during the spring of my senior year of high school. Because I was not supposed to be reading at the time, I remember having to modulate my emotional response. I sat on the indoor bleachers by the basketball court, panicking and flipping through the remaining pages to see if another Catelyn chapter appeared. When I finished the novel later in the week, I was greeted by this haunting bit of prose,
When she lowered her hood, something tightened in Merrett [Frey, a lesser son]’s chest. No. No, I saw her die. […] Raymun opened her throat from ear to ear. She was dead. […] her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him and they hated.
“She don’t speak,” said the big man in the yellow cloak. “You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.” He turned to the dead woman and said, “What do you say, m’lady? Was he a part of it?”
Lady Catelyn’s eyes never left him. She nodded1.
I remember not being able to sleep after finishing it. I did not start reading A Song of Ice and Fire until 2000 when the first three novels had been published, so this was, in addition to the end of the novel, the first time I did not have more of the series to satisfy me. The first glut of reading was over, and it ended with a morass of feelings that my seventeen-year-old self was not fully prepared to cope with.
[Spoilers for HBO’s Game of Thrones and the Song of Ice and Fire novels]
Catelyn appears only once more in Martin’s currently published books—a Brienne chapter in A Feast for Crows. It is in the indices for that novel that Martin gives this undead Catelyn Stark a plethora of new names: “Mother Mercy,” “The Silent Sister,” “The Hangwoman,” and the one that fans have adopted as both primary epithet and de facto spoiler tag, “Lady Stoneheart.” Fans of this turn of events, myself included, eagerly awaited her appearance in Game of Thrones and were somewhat shocked when she was not the season finale-ending stinger of the show’s fourth season in 2014.
Early on, there were signs that the character might have been cut entirely, with the director of season four’s finale, Alex Graves, stating, “[W]hen you get into taking Michelle Fairley, one of the greatest actresses around, and making her a zombie who doesn’t speak and goes around killing people, what’s the best way to integrate that into the show?”2 Over the next two seasons, speculation over whether or not Lady Stoneheart had been completely written out or was merely being saved for a critical moment grew to a fever pitch: fans attempting to read the tea leaves of one of Lena Headey’s Instagram posts, which turned out to be the actress “drunk in Palm Springs,”3 and The AV Club’s Myles McNutt, devoting an entire section of his reviews of season six to a “Lady Stoneheart Truther Corner.”4 By the time the season six finale aired and Beric Dondarrion—who, in the novels, sacrifices himself to bring Catelyn Stark back to life—returned to the screen, it was painfully clear that Lady Stoneheart would not appear, and Martin began insisting that her inclusion was the one change he’d fought for above all others.
So: why the endless agitation over her inclusion? In a show that has left many characters on the cutting room floor, why is Lady Stoneheart the one that so many fans of ASoIaF still yearn for? And, what, if anything, does the show lose in refusing to exhume Catelyn Stark?
In many ways, the resurrection of Catelyn Stark is the turning point for the novels. It is the original halfway mark of Martin’s proposed six-book series (a structure that was compromised by the decision to release 2005’s A Feast for Crows and 2011’s A Dance With Dragons as two separate novels). It is an ameliorative for the Red Wedding where Catelyn, her son Robb, and the majority of the Starks’ bannermen and soldiers are murdered. It is the tipping point for the presence of magic in the famously low-on-fantasy fantasy novels, where a narrator is so altered by magical forces that magic is no longer a matter of plausible deniability. It is also pivotal insofar as it marks the first time Martin reversed his dead-is-dead rule, bringing back a major character. 5
More than any of these things, however, the resurrection of Catelyn Stark is a perfect object lesson on the perils of getting what you wish for. Fans of ASoIaF and GoT likely understand all too well the singular pleasures of despairing at the death of a beloved character. Simply looking up YouTube results for “Ned Stark death reactions” might give the uninitiated a window into the complicated ballet of fury, frustration, shock, resignation, thrill, and catharsis that such moments provide. The Red Wedding is the gloomy apotheosis of that routine: Robb, who, in another author’s hands, might be the young protagonist of the series, fails to avenge his father’s unjust death and leaves his fledgling kingdom in disarray to be carved up by his enemies. Similarly, Catelyn, who has been the voice of sober reason throughout Robb’s campaign, is caught up in his mistakes and killed for nothing more than loving her son and attending her brother’s wedding.
It is the bleakest and most nihilistic moment in a series that regularly subjects its readers to the trauma of parting with beloved characters—made all the more horrible as the chapter is centered on her, sticking to a close third person that details first her (mistaken) realization that all of her children are dead or married to her enemies, followed by a descent into madness where she claws the skin off of her face, murders an innocent, and has her throat slit while we read her increasingly nonsensical thoughts: “It hurts so much, she thought […] It tickles. That made her laugh until she screamed […] a hand grabbed her scalp […] and she thought No, don’t cut my hair, Ned loves my hair.”6 The remaining third of the novel has plenty of twists and turns, but readers often spend it in a state of distraction—trying to confirm whether or not the horror they just experienced really happened or hoping, against hope, that somehow Robb and Catelyn have made it out alive and unscathed. And then Catelyn closes out the novel, neither alive nor unscathed, but still a force to be reckoned with. It is exactly what the reader has been yearning for; it is not at all what the reader wants.
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Martin has famously compared Catelyn’s return as a reaction against his childhood disappointment over the resurrection of Gandalf, telling interviewers, “That’s, in some ways, me talking to Tolkien in the dialogue, saying, ‘Yeah, if someone comes back from being dead, especially if they suffer a violent, traumatic death, they’re not going to come back as nice as ever.’”7 Martin rebukes the trope of magical-resurrection-as-deus-ex-machina so often used to correct a plot hole or give readers the reassurance that good will triumph in the end because it transcends death. Martin uses it to show us that justice is unavailable, and coming back from the dead is not preferable to remaining such. The Catelyn that returns from death is not the woman we’ve followed through two thousand-odd pages; instead, she’s an avatar of blind vengeance. In A Feast for Crows, Martin uses Lady Stoneheart’s tortured physicality as a sign of her inability to fully be Catelyn Stark: “[S]he reached up under her jaw and and grasped her neck, as if she meant to throttle herself. Instead, she spoke… Her voice was halting, broken, tortured. The sound seemed to come from her throat, part croak, part wheeze, part death rattle. The language of the damned.”8 Lady Stoneheart is, in part, Martin’s horrifying meditation on why death—even the cruel and untimely death that he is so liberal in dispensing to beloved characters—is simpler, cleaner, and kinder than magical solutions. It’s Martin letting us bend the finger of our monkey’s paw and forcing us to live with the awful consequences.
As many fans who frequent internet forums know, Catelyn’s resurrection is a source of intense debate. Much of this runs along sexist lines, with Catelyn Stark cast as a stand-in for all harridan wives/mothers who keep their husbands/sons from having adventurous fun; her caution and political savvy are misread as overprotective worry and meddling. While this sort of critique is clearly beneath contempt, it is worth noting that Catelyn Stark is one of the few female narrators who comfortably inhabits a traditionally feminine role in Westeros. Brienne, Arya, Asha (Yara in the show), Daenerys, Cersei, and Arianne Martell (cut from the show but arguably parallel to Ellaria Sand) all chafe at the restrictive feminine roles they have been given and find ways to take on traditionally masculine ones.
While Martin’s series is certainly capacious enough to have female-identifying characters take on any number of roles, and it is certainly a benefit to have male-authored, epic fantasy feature women who question the extremely patriarchal rape culture in which they live, there is also an important, representative perspective that is fulfilled by having a woman who operates entirely within the traditionally feminine sphere and is, nevertheless, perceptive, serious, and able to influence the larger world of Westeros. For those readers and viewers who are unnerved by the toxic masculinity of Westeros’ martial, honor-obsessed culture, Catelyn Stark is a clear and compelling alternative. She argues for her husband and son to exercise the diplomacy that she is barred from personally performing. She continually reminds the audience that, while women and children have no direct power in Westerosi society, their lives are always at stake even when they are not on the battlefield.
Game of Thrones manages to land the gut-punch of the Red Wedding insofar as it cruelly and abruptly ends Catelyn’s life; it spends the last twenty-three seconds of “The Rains of Castamere” (Season 3, Episode 9) in an agonizing, lingering shot, the majority of which is taken up by actress Michelle Fairley’s tormented, silent expression. The show even suggests the hole they are leaving in the narrative by having the camera continue to hold for a few seconds after Catelyn’s throat has been cut and she drops out of frame. But for all the emotional impact of the scene, it cannot capture the nuance of Catelyn’s complicated relationship with patriarchal authority. Catelyn is often, unfairly, dismissed as a martinet (a criticism that, without the aid of her internal monologue, is more apt on the show), advising her son to make hardline, unyielding decisions where their enemies are concerned. But the most fateful actions she takes as a living character are focused on the safe return of her daughters. She grants her daughters the kind of humanity that Robb and his lieutenants’ military stratagems cannot afford to grant them: insisting that their lives are worthwhile even though they have no martial prowess and command no armies.
The show cuts against this by changing her last living act from the murder of Aegon “Jinglebell” Frey, an aging, cognitively-disabled grandson of Red Wedding architect Walder Frey, to the murder of Joyeuse Frey, the elderly villain’s fifteen-year-old wife, whose blank stare speaks volumes about her joyless matrimonial imprisonment. While both characters are complete innocents—cementing some of Martin’s feelings about the futility of revenge—Joyeuse is an on-the-nose analog for Catelyn’s daughter Sansa, thereby rendering Catelyn’s act a backpedal of her espoused female solidarity. The show drives this home by altering Walder Frey’s response to Catelyn’s murderous threat. In A Storm of Swords, the exchange is:
“On my honor as a Tully” she told lord Walder, “on my honor as a Stark, I will trade your boy’s life for Robbs. A son for a son.” […]
“A son for a son, heh,” he repeated. “But that’s a grandson… and he never was much use.”
[…] Robb had broken his word, but Catelyn kept hers. She tugged at Aegon’s hair and sawed at his neck until blade grated on bone.9
Whereas the dialogue in “The Rains of Castamere” is:
Catelyn: On my honor as a Tully, on my honor as a Stark, let him go or I will cut your wife’s throat.
Walder: I’ll find another.10
The differences are minor but telling. Martin has Catelyn desperately attempt to play by the patriarchal rules of Westeros, understanding, it would seem, that bastions of toxic masculinity do not care about the feminist values that define her. Her calculus is off: Aegon is not a valuable son, and the hollow, meaningless deal is rendered moot. Catelyn’s choice to go through with Aegon’s murder is a further, pointless capitulation to the harsh rules of the game of thrones. Benioff and Weiss’ script, on the other hand, have Catelyn attempting to play off of Walder’s (non-existent) love for his wife. Instead of a political bargain that mirrors what Catelyn has been attempting to push aside, the dialogue is simply a referendum on the disposability of Westerosi women. Without access to Catelyn’s internal monologue, the show cannot capture the nuance of her decision to go through with the murder, making it a tacit acceptance and endorsement of Walder’s position. So says the show: thus ends Catelyn Stark, a bastion of feminist solidarity until she isn’t.
Essentially, the show attempts to give us Catelyn Stark’s descent out of empathetic justice and into cruel revenge in truncated miniature. Martin’s choice to transform Catelyn Stark into Lady Stoneheart in the books provides a more valuable tale about the poisonous nature of revenge. Seeing as Catelyn ceases to be a narrator—and how could she be, given the dramatic horror of being unable to understand her motivations in full?—Martin leaves a lot of our auguring of her thoughts to descriptions of her appearance. At the close of A Storm of Swords, Martin has the unfortunate Merret Frey note that:
[Her] flesh had gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color of curdled milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had turned white and brittle as a crone’s. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face was shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails.11
The corruption of her body moves directly to a questioning of her mental state: have her mental faculties also gone “pudding soft”? Is the loss of her hair a metonym for the loss of her wits? Furthermore, Martin, who has always positioned Catelyn as a mother first and foremost, invokes language that speaks to the end of her motherly empathy and love with his reference to “curdled milk,” and the comparison to a crone (who represents a post-motherly stage of female life both in traditional European mythology and in Martin’s fictional Faith of the Seven). By rooting our assumptions about her psychology in the physical, Martin drives at the point that Catelyn’s mercilessness is rooted in physical trauma and magical transformation. Violent death has changed her; she is not compromised by the failure of her ideals and values but by a literal break with the living world. Finally, Martin reminds us of the fact that Catelyn’s single-minded vengeance is a direct response to the ways in which she has been crushed by patriarchal culture. In having her “throat cut too deep,” she is literally and figuratively silenced. The members of the Brotherhood Without Banners, who serve her, do not actually listen to her counsel: they interpret her meaning and act on her unvoiced testimony. In that same epilogue mentioned at the beginning of this article, it is critical that we note how her follower lays out the terms of Merret’s trial without her spoken input. He says, “What do you say, m’lady? Was he a part of it?” She merely nods in response. The choice to kill is still left in masculine hands.
Game of Thrones attempts to tie off the storylines of the Red Wedding (which Lady Stoneheart dominates in the novels) by offering its viewers pure revenge-thriller schadenfreude. During the season six finale, “The Winds of Winter,” and the season seven premiere, “Dragonstone,” viewers are given, first, Arya’s assassination of Walder Frey and then her assumption of his identity to poison the entirety of his house (save his new wife, as though attempting to make up for Catelyn’s actions in “The Rains of Castamere”). Both scenes are shot for maximum viewer satisfaction, waiting to reveal Arya’s identity until after the deaths are carried out, and the latter having Arya-as-Walder lecture the Frey clan on exactly why they need to die:
I’m proud of you lot. […] Brave men, all of you. Butchered a woman pregnant with her babe. Cut the throat of a mother of five. […] But you didn’t slaughter every one of the Starks […] that was your mistake. […] Leave one wolf alive and the sheep are never safe. When people ask you what happened here, tell them the North remembers. Tell them winter came for House Frey.12
It’s stirring, satisfying stuff. But there’s no nuance in it. The show treats Arya’s killing spree as pure justice and audience wish-fulfillment. Compare that to the Storm of Swords epilogue, where we are forced to see Lady Stoneheart’s murder from the perspective of her victim. Furthermore, Merrett Frey’s execution comes at the end of an entire chapter spent in his head, detailing his sad existence as a hapless lesser son and clarifying that his only part in the Red Wedding was to keep Robb Stark’s most fearsome bannerman as drunk as possible. It is not merely that Lady Stoneheart is pitiless and un-nuanced compared with the woman she was in her previous life, it is that her revenge is a methodical eradication of the Freys, picking off the weakest and least responsible one by one in an attempt to make the entire, voluminous clan pay. We have not yet seen how Martin plans on resolving this plot. Knowing his propensity to veer away from moments of purely satisfying revenge, I suspect that Lady Stoneheart will either be unable to exact her revenge on Walder Frey himself or that the moment will be made uncomfortable by an evocation of sympathy or pity for one of Martin’s least sympathetic villains. Either way, I highly doubt that Walder Frey’s death will be the stand-up-and-cheer moment that the show provided.
At the end of the day, a lot of analyses of what does and does not work in a piece of adaptation come down to the deeply personal relationship between IP and fan. When it comes to the fate of Catelyn Stark, I still feel a keen loss on behalf of fans who did not read the novels; the loss of that particular moment of hope, relief, elation, despair, revulsion, and terror all at once. It may be a selfish feeling. After all, one can find numerous thinkpieces on how the show is vastly improved by leaving Catelyn Stark dead on the rushes of the Twins.
I cannot help but think that the very process of adaptation is, in and of itself, a reflection of what Lady Stoneheart provides the reader. After all, the show is breathing life into something dead. As with Catelyn, there is no reclaiming the past in full, and nothing ever comes back quite the way you wanted.
Tyler Dean is a professor of Victorian Gothic Literature. He holds a doctorate from the University of California Irvine and teaches at a handful of Southern California colleges. More of his writing can be found at his website and his fantastical bestiary can be found on Facebook at @presumptivebestiary.
[1]Martin, George. A Storm of Swords. Bantam paperback edition, 2002, p.1128.
[2]Martin, Denise. “Game of Thrones Director Alex Graves on Lady Stoneheart and the Show’s Most Expensive Scene,” Vulture, June 16, 2014, www.vulture.com/2014/06/game-of-thrones-season-4-finale-director-alex-graves-stoneheart-wight.html, Accessed March 28, 2019.
[3]Comicbook, Joe. “Game of Throne’s Lena Headey Explains Lady Stoneheart Instagram.” Comicbook, March 28, 2019, https://comicbook.com/blog/2014/06/17/game-of-thrones-lena-headey-explains-lady-stoneheart-instagram, accessed March 29, 2019.
[4]McNutt, Myles. “A Pastoral Elegy Gives Thrones a Thematically Rich ‘Reveal’ (Experts).” The AV Club, June 5, 2016, https://tv.avclub.com/a-pastoral-elegy-gives-thrones-a-thematically-rich-rev-1798188646, Accessed March 29, 2019.
[5]To those who point out that Beric Dondarrion is the first character brought back to life, in Martin’s narrative, I would argue that the Lightning Lord is only ever a major character post-resurrection. Like the Children of the Forest or Melisandre, we only ever know him as someone who mysteriously embodies what might be or might not be magic.
[6]Martin, George. A Storm of Swords. Bantam paperback edition, 2002. pp 704-705.
[7]D’addario, Daniel. “George RR Martin on the One Game of Thrones Change He’d ‘Argued Against.’” Time.com, July 17, 2017, www.time.com/4791258/game-of-thrones-george-r-r-martin-interview. Accessed March 27, 2019.
[8]Martin, George. A Feast for Crows. Bantam paperback edition, 2011. p. 913.
[9]Martin, George. A Storm of Swords. Bantam paperback edition, 2002. pp 704.
[10]“The Rains of Castamere.” Game of Thrones, created by David Benioff and DB Weiss, performances by Michelle Fairley, David Bradley, season 3, episode 9, Bighead Littlehead Productions and HBO, 2013.
[11]Martin, George. A Storm of Swords. Bantam paperback edition, 2002. pp 1128.
[12]“Dragonstone.” Game of Thrones, created by David Benioff and DB Weiss, performances by David Bradley, Maisie Williams, season 7, episode 1, Bighead Littlehead Productions and HBO, 2017.
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Excellent analysis! I was just thinking yesterday how dispirited Martin must feel that someone else is telling the ending of his story to tens of millions of people, and they are telling it in a way that, to him, must seem entirely off base. I hope he can find it in him to finish his version anyway…
This is a really nice piece. There are only two things I would nitpick:
1. “…magic is no longer a matter of plausible deniability”: I don’t get this. There may not be as many cleary magical incidents per chapter as in some other fantasy novels, but there are still plenty of pretty dramatic ones that have no rational explanation, starting with the resurrection of a murdered Night’s Watch man in the very first chapter. Why is it more convincing just because it happens directly to a former POV character?
2. “…she is not compromised by the failure of her ideals and values but by a literal break with the living world”: That’s a fair reading, but I think there’s another that the text strongly suggests. Lord Beric is the other person we’ve seen undergo this kind of resurrection. What was Lord Beric doing at the time he died? Trying to carry out a command to bring summary justice upon Gregor Clegane and end the war crimes of his Lannister soldiers. And after being revived, Beric basically keeps doing that, and only that. Catelyn’s last moments of life were spent watching her son die violently, and then bringing herself to kill a total innocent in revenge. She’s already made a break with her values at that point, and given up on anything but retribution. Stoneheart is stuck in that moment forever.
Excellent analysis indeed!
I was brokenhearted when I realized Lady Stoneheart had been written out (and so far remains as such, AFAIK). On the other hand, I understand that there were reasons for that, as Jon Snow’s death and resurrection would not have had the same impact otherwise.
Though personally I watched the fans’ desperation with a touch of irony, since I was sure Jon Snow simply could not remain dead. He and Daenerys are the only characters that were safe until the final season, and then all bets are off.
…magic is no longer a matter of plausible deniability”: I don’t get this. There may not be as many cleary magical incidents per chapter as in some other fantasy novels, but there are still plenty of pretty dramatic ones that have no rational explanation, starting with the resurrection of a murdered Night’s Watch man in the very first chapter. Why is it more convincing just because it happens directly to a former POV character?
Yeah, agreed. That doesn’t work in any sense.
If it means “we the readers can no longer deny magic exists”, well, that ship sailed in the prologue to the first book, as you point out.
If it means “major characters can no longer deny magic exists” – many major characters have been witnessing magic in person for a long while before that. Daenerys walks out of a fire unharmed at the end of the first book. Davos witnesses the birth of a shadow in the second. Jon sees corpses walking. Bran learns warging.
And even after Catelyn’s revival, some major characters don’t realise what’s going on – Tyrion, Cersei.
Catelyn: On my honor as a Tully, on my honor as a Stark, let him go or I will cut your wife’s throat.
Walder: I’ll find another
This, like so many of the best bits, is a lift from actual mediaeval history: IIRC it was Black Agnes of Dunbar who called the bluff of a threat to kill her son by simply gesturing towards the relevant organs and saying “I can make more heirs” – the threat was not in this case carried out.
@5 ajay: Thanks for the medieval tidbit!
@1 jec81: Dispirited, Martin? Au contraire. The very thing that has enraged fans for years now is that he seems to be enjoying himself, and too much so.
He is involved in a lot of projects, has been churning out Dunk and Egg prequel stories and Westeros history books like there’s no tomorrow, and has kept inflating the latter ASOIAF books with even more new characters and subplots. Not to mention that all of the above has kept him laughing all the way to the bank.
Dispirited, my foot.
I really enjoyed reading this analysis, although I will say that Catelyn was never a character I loved even in the books. From her rejection of Jon (who had nothing to do with her husband’s suspected infidelity – athough of course we know that’s not the way it happened) to the way I feel in some ways her own stubborness with Tyrion is what led to the debacle in the first place – I never considered her a particularly savvy character.
@2 – I like your analysis on being stuck in time, unchanging in death. Death in some ways is the end of life/change.
I’ve always interpreted Lady Stoneheart as a metaphor for Arya’s vengeance crusade.
@1: thanks so much for your response! I will, of course, be sad if Martin doesn’t get to finish his series—heartbroken even—but I think I see the divergence between book and show as something of an advantage. In rereading some of the later books for this and future articles, it’s been brought home to me how utterly dissimilar the two things are at this point and it all but ensures that when (if) Winds of Winter or Dream of Spring comes out there will be plenty of new material and a chance to see things play out for the first time all over again.
@2: I take your point about her being compromised before she dies. I love your assertion that she is stuck forever in that moment. In an earlier draft of the article I also discussed how Lady Stoneheart is a metaphor for the problems of older generations sticking around. By the end of book 3, a huge portion of the generation that witnessed/planned Robert’s Rebellion is dead: Ned, Robert, Tywin, Balon Greyjoy, Jon Arryn, Lysa, etc. With their death there is some chance for the next generation to set things right and Cat’s resurrection is a blockade on that. As the books continue and more older folks return/reveal themselves (Jon Connington, Brynden Rivers, Doran Martell finally putting his plan in motion) it seems like Martin will be doubling down on that idea that it’s necessary for the past to die so the future can be better.
@6/ashgrove – William Marshal was also subjected to much the same threat, to which his father one-upped Black Agnes by announcing the more poetic“I still have the hammer and anvil to make more!”
Personally I’ve long believed that Lady Stoneheart needs to be put down for everybody’s sake, including and maybe especially, that of whatever is left of Catelyn Tully, Lady Stark.
Beric felt his personality and humanity leaking away with every revival. Catelyn’s state is much worse. She was dead too long, there was too little left for her to be anything but a vengeance machine zombie. A dreadful fate.
I disagree with the analysis of Cat’s actions at the Red Wedding. She didn’t throw away her feminism. Somehow she is supposed to remain calm and rational when crossbow bolts start flying and guys with swords start chopping people up?
“Oh, look at that, a guy just stabbed Robb, and another just shot him with a crossbow. Maybe I should grab a hostage and try to bargain this out. Hey, the only one close enough to grab is a woman. Is that the right feminist choice I should be making at a time like this?”
And this:
“The show cuts against this by changing her last living act from the murder of Aegon “Jinglebell” Frey, an aging, cognitively-disabled grandson of Red Wedding architect Walder Frey, to the murder of Joyeuse Frey, the elderly villain’s fifteen-year-old wife, whose blank stare speaks volumes about her joyless matrimonial imprisonment. “
Or maybe the blank stare is because she’s 15 years old and people are shooting crossbows and stabbing people all over the place. Her marriage may be hell, but I’d bet its nothing compared to blood and guts flying all over the place.
I think you’re making assumptions that fit your narrative and not the book’s.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
@13 In fictional contrivances, a cigar is whatever the creator wants it to be. If that scene had been a real life historical happening, sure, she may have just happened to grab whoever was closest. In fiction, someone had to make a choice of who to put in that position: either literally in proximity to Catelyn, or figuratively, playing the possibly symbolic sacrificial lamb. (And even when the author doesn’t consciously write in symbolism, well, we still grow up steeped in a culture that suggests certain connections, which I’d argue are even more likely to creep in out of the subconscious when the author didn’t intend.)
It’s the same problem as authors putting women in suggestive attire because that character is just so ~empowered~ : there are broader trends at play, and even the most independent character is still just a chqracter, a puppet, with no autonomy or choice of their own.
She’s named in the text of AFFC, not just the indices. From chapter 25 when Hyle Hunt tells Brienne & Co. what his cousin Alyn learned while seeking the “Hound” who led the slaughter at Saltpans:
Then in Chapter 42, when Gendry is talking with Brienne a while before her sentencing:
It’s kind of weird that she “don’t talk” and is silent in the ASOS Epilogue, but does “talk” in AFFC, as you described. Brienne can’t understand her, but the men with her allegedly can.
Martin is definitely a master of “be careful what you wish for.” He makes us want awful things to happen to terrible characters — and then subjects them to things so horrific we may often with they hadn’t happened. He makes us want beloved characters to survive — and then they survive or get resurrected, and do/are such horrible things that we may sometimes wish they hadn’t.
Removing Stoneheart from GoT, and replacing her vengeance with Arya’s is definitely in keeping with the show’s focus on the applause-worthy righteousness of lethal vengeance, something the books repeatedly push back against. Even with the general popularity of zombie stories in her culture — heck, even in GoT with the wights — it’s hard to say that Catelyn becoming a creature of pure decay, grief, and rage is a good thing for anyone, least of all for Catelyn. (Also, as a devotee of House Manderly, I object to Arya’s misuse of our patented weapon. Anyone using Frey Pie should personally consume some, and have the recipient consume some, before implicitly or explicitly revealing its nature. She barely let him eat any of it before killing him, a literal and figurative waste.)
I like Cat and I love Michelle Fairley but Cat was far from savvy. She trusted Littlefinger and distrusted Jon. She captured Tyrion and lost him. She let Jaime go and lost the Karstarks. She sold Robb and Arya to the Freys. I will admit I expected Lady Stoneheart to be the one to revived Jon, saving her husband’s bastard (she thinks) after all her children died (she thinks).
@7: The latest Dunk & Egg story came out in 2010, before the last book, so not sure what you’re talking about there.
Lady Stoneheart was able to be removed because she, like Quentyn, is utterly inconsequential.
@@@@@13. ragnarekbeard
Your pretty excellent post made me realize that I had missed something in my reading. So I went back to the article and found, among others, this chestnut: “thereby rendering Catelyn’s act a backpedal of her espoused female solidarity.”
Um, WHAT? She is trying to save her son in any way she can. What does this have to do with “female solidarity”? This kind of context-free pseudo analysis makes me grind my teeth.
@17 Werthead: You are missing the point. The problem with the Dunk and Egg stories is that they exist instead of. The same problem that mired the last ASOIAF books, which instead of getting on with the story kept adding subplots and secondary and tertiary characters ad nauseam. I almost missed the return of (book) Jaqen H’ghar in A Feast for Crows.
We even got a new Targaryen pretender to the throne. I mean, WTF? One of the things we have to thank Benioff and Weiss is that they have tightened and focused the narrative down to the essential. Yes, a lot of nuances have been lost, sometimes unfortunately, but at least we’re getting somewhere with the story. The books are going nowhere fast, and I personally doubt that Martin will ever finish them.
@@@@@ 19 Jaythree: Lady Stoneheart is not essential to the plot, but thematically she is. In that, at least, I agree with Dean.
The problem with Quentyn is simpler: dramatic economy and flare. He would have had to be established as ye another secondary character –yet another actor and yet some additional screen time with no point other than being sacrificed at the Red Wedding. Frey’s wife was already there. And one would never believe for a second that Frey (as written in the show and as portrayed by marvelous David Bradley) would choose a disabled grandson over Robb Stark. A young wife might have given him pause. Just might.
@22 – Are you talking about the same character? The disabled grandson is Aegon. Quentyn is the Martell heir who gets toasted.
@@@@@ 23 Lisamarie: Sorry, got my secondary characters mixed up.
despite having read the books several times and having watched the series (once) your close reading reveals a great deal of nuance that I had not considered. All in all, I find myself viewing the series and the novels as separate entities and while I enjoy remembering a corresponding scene from the book while watching the series, I think it was the loss of Lady Stoneheart that created the fork in the road. Thanks for the nuance and the memory. The books sometimes seem like another lifetime.
This annoys me:
“Martin has famously compared Catelyn’s return as a reaction against his childhood disappointment over the resurrection of Gandalf, telling interviewers, “That’s, in some ways, me talking to Tolkien in the dialogue, saying, ‘Yeah, if someone comes back from being dead, especially if they suffer a violent, traumatic death, they’re not going to come back as nice as ever.’”
Gandalf wasn’t dead. He’s the equivalent of an angel taking a physical form. That form was destroyed and he came back in a new one because his job was undone. He came back changed, because he’d briefly returned to Valar after centuries of being away. He came back more centered, happier, knowing his job was almost completed. Even I got that when I read the books as a child. Martin missed the whole point of the transformation, and that’s not a shortcoming of Tolkien’s writing but of Martin’s understanding.
I wonder whether the correspondence between Joyeuse (god, what a name) and Sansa actually allows Catelyn, in her final moments, to atone for pushing her daughter into the matrimonial meat-grinder. There’s certainly an argument to be made that death is preferable to being the child bride of Walder Frey, particularly when he’s just publicly declared you fair game to his enemies — is this Catelyn giving Joyeuse a release that she couldn’t have granted to Sansa?
(…it’s at least more on-brand than deciding to slaughter an innocent girl with no value to Walder and no resemblance to Robb.)
@26 Kate: THANK YOU. I thought Martin’s statement was… just weird, to say the least
I also think that Gandalf comes back refreshed but also upgraded, not as much transformed as transfigured, in the Christian sense. Hence his words:
“‘Gandalf,’ the old man repeated, as if recalling from old memory a long disused word. ‘Yes, that was the name. I was Gandalf.'”
He has come back with the power and authority to deal with Saruman, who used to be his superior and was able to imprison him, and that’s why he is clad in white, not the other way around.
“Yes, I am white now,’ said Gandalf. ‘Indeed I am Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been.'”
Hah, agreed with @26 and @28 but I didn’t want to go there, heh.
But yes, I think people in general fundamentally misunderstand Tolkien, especially when they compare Tolkien to Martin as examples of ‘optimistic happy ending’ vs ‘grimdark’ fantasy. Tolkien certainly wasn’t grimdark (or graphic/vulgar), and in general his ‘good’ characters are more ‘good’ than ambiguous (unless you’re talking the Silmarillion), but…he was not optimistic, even despite the happy (for now) ending.
But I think in general Tolkien is one of those writers who has been overshadowed by the tropes he helped to push into the popular eye, and are now being played with, subverted/inverted, etc so, by now, he seems quaint and derivative.
@@@@@ 26 – Excellent point. I would just add the one correction that Gandalf did not return to the Valar. His spirit actually left the world entirely and returned to Eru (God), and it was Eru who send him back with increased power and authority. I believe Tolkien puts it in one of his letters that though it was the plan of the Valar to send the Wizards to Middle-Earth, it was Eru who adopted and enhanced their plan in the moment of its failure, ie, Gandalf’s death.
@29: YES, YES and HELL YEAH. One of the things I liked about Jackson’s LOTR movies is that he somehow captured and kept that somber melancholy that pervades the books (though he does tone it down).
In Tolkien’s world, once things are lost, they are lost forever, and every new age of the world is an age diminished in splendor from the previous ones. In that sense, he goes beyond anything grimdark has ever dished out.
This analysis once again confirms my assessment of the series – its a horrible read, little more than torture-port, with no attempt at payoff or denouement even for suffering through it to the bitter end.
It has always been my (admittedly, extremely unpopular) opinion that ASOIAF is nothing more than a testament to how much rambling old-man Martin hates the fantasy genre, and a vehicle for his self-indulgent mirth at how people who claim to love fantasy also somehow love his “f*you” disassembly of it.
I’ve tried to read his books perhaps 6 times now, never lasting more than a few hundred pages at a time before dropping them in disgust. Why in the Nine Hel#s would anyone willingly immerse themselves in that kind of hate?
@32. I have thrown the books in anger when a favorite dies (they all seem to) but other than that…what great reads. Now that the show is ending, maybe he will get the dang books finished.
Outstanding analysis! You have summed up many of the inarticulate musing that plague me. I have enjoyed the HBO rendition of GOT but it is Martin’s conclusion that is most important to me.
Your presentation here demonstrated for me the many of the facets needed for successful writing.
@29: Yes. I’ve heard that Tolkien espoused the belief that sorrow is an integral part of beauty (there can be sorrow without beauty, but apparently not vice versa), which makes no ruddy sense to my way of thinking but comes through in his writings. But he also believed that evil is always its own undoing, sooner or later, a viewpoint I find gratingly optimistic and unrealistic. And he could be really harsh toward people in despair. Mind you, happy endings or “good” victories of any kind annoy me nowadays, so although I recognize that LotR’s conclusion involved much loss and quiet grief, it’s still too happy for my taste. (And especially when I first read it, I didn’t care about anything in it after Gollum died because Gollum was my everything).
@32: I personally adore ASOIAF, but I’ve seen plenty of people in fantasy fandom groups experess opionins along the same lines as yours, so I don’t think it’s an extremely unpopular opinion.
Well, I think he would say there certainly can be beauty without sorrow, just probably not in this world. In this world, love/beauty are likely to involve sorrow, because we live in ‘Arda Marred’, etc.
I’m sure the despair thing comes from the idea in Catholicsim that radical despair itself represents a loss of hope/faith which (assuming sound mind) would be considered a sin. As we learn more about the human mind I do think many of those teachings have been expanded upon. I feel like in Tolkien’s world though, there’s always juuuust enough hope, heh. Because sometimes that’s how it is (or at least how it seems to me today, in these times). As a person who tends to sink into black, nihilistic moods for days at a time, I find it something I need to be reminded of…
I’ve found Sam Gamgee, in word and deed, to be an especially reliable short-term treatment for acute despair. Though I was recently surprised to reread this bit: “After all, [Sam] had never had any real hope in the affair from the beginning, but being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.” I had been thinking a lot about the nature of hope and despair, but had thought of cheerfulness as a result of hope, not something felt in place of it. Made me wonder if hope is future-oriented, while cheerfulness can be felt about the present.
While Tolkien’s work runs on eucatastrophe and the characters may or may not know where think are going, there is a pervading feeling of destiny or “doom,” in the neutral sense of the word. Some ‘good’ things will happen, some ‘bad’ things will happen. In ASOIAF, you never know what will happen. Sure, it’s likely to be bad for individuals and even societies, but there’s no inevitable decline or ascension. Not permanently, anyway. And some characters still find much beauty and joy, even in the midst of destruction and loss. Or at least the readers can find that beauty in Martin’s gorgeous prose. Though Tolkien’s prose was gorgeous, too, but has more of a dichotomy between beautiful places that are healthy in some way and ugly ones ravaged or corrupted by evil, which is frankly an issue with the way many of us view the real world, but that’s a different subject altogether…
Aaaand I’m rambling. Sorry. I’ve had a loooong day.
As a veteran of WWI Tolkien must have learned a lot about hope and despair and the graduations in between and coping mechanisms from his own emotions and from observing his fellow soldiers.
@32 That’s an interesting take on ASOIAF, but Martin has written so many other SFF books (and excellent ones, at that) that it just does not ring true.
I have always felt that in ASOIAF he was trying to write an updated post-Tolkienian high fantasy with less elves and more of sex and (apparently, at least) senseless deaths. And he has said that he was inspired by Tad William’s epic Memory, Sorry and Thorn series, itself a grittier take on Tolkienian HF.
As it turns out, he disliked Tolkien more than I thought possible. Which is in itself an incentive. Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy is a hate/love letter to C.S Lewis and, to a certain extent, J.K Rowlings (herself only the latest and most successful in a long tradition of magic boarding school literature).
Honestly, I cheered upon learning Lady Stoneheart would remain dead. Twice in my life, I’ve thrown a book across the room in unrepentant rage. First time was at the end of Stephen King’s Thinner… and the second was Lady Stoneheart’s appearance in A Feast for Crows. Indeed, that Brienne chapter marked the moment I gave up on the series. The GoT television series definitely made the better choice in my mind, as it removed its most despicable character, Catelyn, and retained the true heart of the story, Brienne.
“(And especially when I first read it, I didn’t care about anything in it after Gollum died because Gollum was my everything).”
Bellatrix, is that you?
*giggle* Nah, just a girl who yearns for gillyweed. I’d like to say my obsession with Gollum is equivalent to Bellatrix’ obsession with Voldemort, but I can’t say it’s actually been tested and proven to the same degree. Now I feel inferior, and she would concur. :-p
@42: :-D
I was surprised to discover that Andy Serkis was a seriously sexy man in real life. Live and see…