Sansa and Arya - The Rose and The Weed

When we first met Sansa and Arya Stark as two squabbling teenagers in the ramshackle, wind-swept, stony towers of Winterfell we noted two distinctly different personalities at play. For Sansa was a spoilt brat. She was short with her aides; she barked at her father and she lied, to protect Joffrey, condemning an innocent animal to a bloody fate. Sansa had all the markings of a girl that hadn't experienced the gritty reality of Game of Thrones, she was comfortable.

In Arya the audience sympathised. Here was a charming girl of smiles with an acerbic tongue and seemingly endless energy.

We enjoyed her touching relationship with Jon Snow [one of the few Starks to constantly show him loving attention]; we shared her hatred of Joffrey and we could almost feel the great warmth emanating from the scenes with Syrio Forel. 

Arya was our favourite Stark daughter.......right until poor dead Ned lost his head.

'What!' I hear the book readers cry. 'We still love Arya!'

Yes, she seems a firm favourite amongst those wretched people who have read the books. 

But might you naysayers cease spoiler-posting for one moment and reconsider your character loyalties?

For in the world of Game of Thrones, as in our world, life is such a precious thing. Arya seemingly has no qualms with extinguishing precious life. She even seems to get some sort of 'kick' out of doing so. Like a garden weed suffocating the surrounding plants.

Note her vile expression of glee when she pierces the neck of a defenceless soldier who had long since surrendered.

Or the cold, expressionless countenance of a psychopath as she eyes up another kill in the most recent episode. 

Arya has no contemplation of whether she has the moral right to take life, neither does she consider the grieving families she is leaving behind in her reign of terror. She is almost robotic. Like a terminator with a blocked nose and a bowl haircut.

If poor Ned looked down upon her now, would he be proud? I'm not so sure.

Arya supporters will point to the fact that everybody she's killed hitherto had it 'coming to them'.

Debatable.

When she stabbed a young boy on escaping King's Landing, was that a proportionate response to evade capture? The dutiful boy was merely trying to stop the escape of a reported traitor.

Even the murder of the Lannister soldier and Rorge is questionable. Shouldn't these men have faced trial for their crimes? Who made Arya judge, jury and executioner?

She even has the audacity to plot the murder of The Hound, the man keeping her alive, because this dog was ordered to kill a butcher's boy [who supposedly tried to kill Joffrey].

Was The Hound's crime any worse than those committed by Arya?

Increasingly we see a figure not only demented with her indifference towards death but laden with double standards too. 

Yet, I like Baelish. How can I dislike Arya for showing no regard towards murder but praise Littlefinger?

I believe it is explained by age.

We all hate the precocious do we not?

I remember walking through those glass doors into Starbucks to get my usual vanilla latté one morning. I was stuck behind a middle class couple and their child [who looked like Robyn of The Vale] perusing the cake counter.

No matter. No rush.

The bespectacled mother was analysing the poppy seed biscuits and clucking in thought. 

...No problem.

At the till she then turns to little Robyn, a boy no more than seven years old, and asks him if he would like a cappuccino.

Little Robyn nodded.

I almost fell back into the newspaper stand in disbelief.

I bit my lip with irritation. Kids that age should be drinking chemically-enhanced, borderline-poisonous Panda Pops from the Wacky Warehouse, not cappuccinos.

It tapped into a mindset i'm sure many of us share: there is something sickening about the young abandoning their youth and acting decades older.

The absolute worst show on television is the Junior Apprentice. Twelve year olds in ill-fitting suits, whipping out Blackberries and talking about cash-flow and profit forecasts.

Go and find some conkers for the love of God.

And this is the problem with Arya. 

Her response to Ned's execution hasn't been consistent with the reaction of a young teenager. The way she values life lacks the innocence and fragility of a youthful mind. She is a cappuccino. There's something deeply unlikeable about that.

The only Stark to have witnessed the horror of Ned's execution was Sansa [for Yoren made Arya look away].

As Arya's likeability plummeted after that fateful scene, Sansa's rose.

Unfortunate Sansa has had to suffer far greater than Arya. Not only did she witness her father being slaughtered, but throughout the series she has been forced to look upon Ned's head on a spike; endure public beatings from Meryn Trant and Joffrey; face attempts on her life; she's been threatened with rape; she had to marry Tyrion against her will and more recently, she narrowly avoided being flung out of the Moon Door.

In response to this, Sansa routinely cries, breaks down and shows the humility, heart and vulnerability one would associate with a young lady in such a situation.

She displays a certain humanity.

And in spite of all these horrors and all the emotional breakdowns, Sansa still finds the inner strength to carry herself with such a grace and dignity befitting a true lady of her title.

Sansa isn't going around stabbing little boys to death, or making lists of who to torture. She is the smile of defiance, a Lady Diana of Game of Thrones. Westeros' Rose.

And who didn't shed a tear when Sansa entered the Eyrie winter gardens? When she witnessed the snow of the North, her home, for the first time since her mother, father and brother were butchered?

I cried my eyes out of course.

You'd have needed a cold heart of stone to resist weeping.....or the personality of Arya.

Nobody could begrudge unfortunate Sansa a happy ending, not even the heartless book readers.

To weather the storm of hateful thunder, lightening and heavy rain and remain the rose is true testament to Sansa when so many lesser characters would have become weeds.

Whatever happens from this point onwards, Ned and Catelyn's oldest daughter can hold her head up high - I've no doubt they would be proud. 

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The Beauty of Daario Naharis

"I fight for beauty. The Gods gave us two gifts to entertain ourselves before we die - the thrill of fucking a woman who wants to be fucked, and the thrill of killing a man who wants to kill you."

When Daario Naharis proudly delivers this speech in one of his early scenes it tells us everything we need to know about the character of the man and perhaps, his future intentions. This opening dialogue wasn't idle chit chat, but a crystal clear window into the long haired dandy's soul. These were the words of a true Aesthete [the fops of the 19th century who studied 'beauty' and were obsessed with attempting to define it - not people with dodgy toe hygiene, although I can't imagine the Second Sons have access to decent footwear].

Aesthetes were identified by their love of unregulated pleasure, their pursuit of the beautiful and the desire to indulge the senses. They loved flowers [one of Daario's chief interests], perfumes, absinthe, music, heroin. 

If you were catching a flight with them at Birmingham Airport they'd likely miss their plane and be found pissed in the duty free shop, prostrate on the floor with Calvin Klein testers lodged up their nasal passages.

"We had philosophical differences....over your beauty, it meant more to me than it did to them....i'm the simplest man you'll ever meet - I only do what I want to do. - Daario Naharis"

In Walter Pater's treatise 'The Renaissance' Pater stresses that the true Aesthete sees life as fleeting and momentary, as sand in the hourglass, and that they should follow their passions before it's too late. Cram in as much pleasure as possible. Do what you want to do. Avoid forming habits, for the formulaic kills life, dulls the senses, instead seek to test new opinions, try new things and most importantly desire the beautiful as that is the highest of endeavours. 

Patter was vilified for these views. It was deemed that they promoted amorality and reckless hedonism. Should we be teaching the kappa-clad, 18 year old single mother of two to be out on the tiles downing shots of cheeky vimto off a barman's bare arse? On a school night!? Or would such a figure have a responsibility to act less selfishly? To look after her children.

Should we admire Daaro Naharis when he states that he only does what he wants to do, or is this a damaging and callous mindset to have?

Like all great Aesthetes, Daario Naharis has deferred to beauty above all other considerations. Were he a man of loyalty he might have fought for his employers, Yunkai. Were he a man of morality he wouldn't have become a sellsword in the first place, instead he may have opted for a 'just' occupation such as farmer or priest.

Yet Daario fights for beauty, and has declared himself loyal to the 'fittest', 'sexiest', in short 'most beautiful' leader in the race for the Iron Throne - Daenerys. He cares not for her anti-slavery politics, nor her birthright claim of Westeros, he's just drawn to the beautiful allure of the nymph-like Khaleesi. 

Is this such an irrational way to live? 

If South Korea declared war on Italy and you enlisted to fight for the Italians because you prefer their women, would that make you mad?

In our world, perhaps.

In Game of Thrones Daario merely embodies one branch of philosophy in a maelstrom of competing ideologies.

There is however, a huge problem with this mindset. A problem that Aesthetes have struggled with since Longinus of Ancient Greece.....beauty is totally subjective.

There are some people out there who stare at their televisions and touch themselves over Yara Greyjoy and aren't interested in Daenerys. There are some out there who lick their laptop monitors with lust whenever Walder Frey's daughters line up for parade. There are those who long for Loras Tyrell. Others for Tyrion - dwarf fetish enthusiasts. Dirty cows.

Two men can listen to the same song. Where one hears beauty, the other hears f***ing Nickleback.

Immanuel Kant wrote that taste is totally subjective, yet we believe that beauty is objective.  Just because I think that Daenerys is beautiful, doesn't mean I should assume that everybody thinks the same.

Yet people do, and people get angry when you disagree with their judgements and they end up dismissing you as 'tasteless' or having an inferior intellect.

We all know somebody like this. Those ignorant enough to suggest that their taste in music or comedy is 'superior' to the taste of others. 

Those fans of The Smiths who would sneer at EDM as being 'inferior'.

Yet Immanuel Kant stated that EDM is infinitely more beautiful than anything The Smiths or any guitar band has ever created.


Kant identified three areas of taste: the agreeable, the just and the beautiful.

The agreeable is that which can be measured by a concept, eg 'this chair is soft', 'this steak is tender'. 

The just is that which forms society's ethical code and acts as the basis for its morality.

The beautiful is that which cannot be measured by a concept, Kant uses an example of a flower.

Whereas some shitty Smiths song, or Arctic Monkeys track is 'agreeable' in that acts to 'educate the audience about life in a council house', the song has a purpose, like a chair. The EDM track has no purpose, it merely floats around on a higher plain, listless and beautiful, unblemished by meaning, like a flower.

If Daario Naharis was in HMV he would almost certainly pick up Swedish House Mafia's greatest hits, before spitting on a Radiohead album.

And under Kant's philosophy we can see why he chose to fight for Daenerys.

The Lannisters are agreeable, they'll pay you in gold and give you castles. Stannis is just, he offers religious spiritual purity and salvation.

But Daenerys is beautiful, floating around Essos being attractive, seemingly purposeless.  It's easy to see why the Aesthete would be drawn towards this true beauty.

Ultimately, however, all beauty fades, and the Aesthete must not be trusted. Should Daenerys stock her army with those who only follow her for such superficial reasons she will undoubtedly find trouble as the wrinkles crinkle across her cheeks, her blonde locks turn grey and her posture starts to fatten.

Then the fickle Aesthetes move on, in their never ending pursuit of beauty - perhaps to Sansa or whoever next they deem to be beauty's ambassador.

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Misunderstood Masters

 

 As Game of Thrones continues to rise in popularity the audience is inevitably becoming more varied, more vocal and absolutely batshit irrational.

That's not me being a fantasy hipster. A fantasy Zane Lowe figure sitting on a pile of Discworld novels in a linen Gandalf gown, rolling my eyes and tutting as I listen to the delivery men over the road talking about how they'd like to bang 'the one with the dragons'.

I'm not that kind of Game of Thrones snob.

I haven't even read all of the books yet and I consider anybody who has to be...well.....sub-human scum actually. As you quite well know.

But Game of Thrones is now hugely popular, which means one thing.....loads of mentals are going to criticise it.

The most mental of all the mentals are the self-appointed protectors of morality; the bastions of good taste; the champions of the housewives; Mary Whitehouse's clone army - the Guardianistas.

Foppish graduates working in social media, living in dripping damp East London bedsits where they sit eating their tea on a squeaky, creaky mattresses and tuck into slabs of hard cheese using stained, rusty cutlery.

Oddities in cagoules, Stevenage fans with yellow teeth.

Debauched striking teachers flitting between independent coffee houses, subsisting on a diet of brie and the smell of their own farts.

These hordes have discovered Game of Thrones and they don't like what they're seeing.

One of the leading Guardianistas hissed recently that they'd stopped watching altogether due to the rampant misogyny in the show:

"After yet another rape scene, I no longer trust the creators to bridge the gap of thoughtful conversation between action and intent – so I've given up on Game of Thrones for good...I’m exhausted by the triumph of men at the expense of women as a narrative device. " 

We can quickly disregard this lady's screeching indignation as nonsense in two ways:

Firstly, the suffering in Game of Thrones is genderless. If you moan about a dubious rape scene but totally ignore previous scenes where a tortured Theon has his turnip crunched off; Joffrey [a mere child] chokes to death after a gruesome poisoning and Westeros' true king, Viserys, has a bowl of boiling gold poured over his mush, if you ignore that the violence is nondiscriminatory you come across as being selective in your outrage...and a bit of a smelly Guardianista hypocrite.

But secondly, and most importantly, this is a medieval fantasy series loosely based around the events of the War of the Roses with snippets from Ancient Rome. There was unchecked rape, murder, incest, adultery galore during these time periods. Although Game of Thrones is a totally fictional world, it would be utterly disingenuous and....well...absolutely shit...to exclude these aspects from the narrative. It would cheat the audience.

As Ramsey Snow says - if you want to watch a program rife with political correctness and sweet sugary niceness then download a John Lewis staff relations video.

Let's be truthful here, it's never been art's role to teach society how to behave.

Art should be unrestricted. 

You're saying Game of Thrones isn't allowed to reflect a time period of cruelty because it might upset some giggling simpleton sitting in a glass office stuffing her face with Angel Delight?

I say to her - switch the channel over. 

Put something bland on if you can't contemplate viewing that which challenges your rigid line of thought.

I hear Downton Abbey is good this time of year.

It's always problematic to apply morality to history, and to art, and especially to something that is a blend of the two.

We've recently seen the Masters of Slaver's Bay rounded up and crucified for participating in the slave trade. And whilst many contemporary Game of Thrones viewers saw this as justice, I couldn't help but feel sorry for them.

Can you take your ethical code from 21st century Western Europe and bash the colourfully clothed Masters over the head with it? I'm not so sure.

Slavery is abhorrent to us, but if you were there in Slaver's Bay, if you were born into a Masters' family and all you ever knew was their social order...the chances are you'd go along with it. You'd find it the norm.

Would you deserve to die nailed to a cross?

Would you be 'evil', or merely a product of your time?

In many ways the Masters, with their grey hair and their sad faces reminded me of our 70s entertainers.

That sad bunch currently being hunted down, rounded up and retrospectively punished by a cold new world mechanically immune to tactile characters, applying 2014 post-feminism justice to 1970s bum-slapping.

You might have seen a Ken Barlow, a Freddie Star or a Jim Davidson in those turquoise tunics, shuffling along the streets of Meereen in their leather brown sandals.

All three found innocent in our world, but in the world of Daenerys, condemned to the nails and the cross without trial.

How many of us would face our doom at the cross if a Daenerys arrived on our doorstep tomorrow and frowned on the practice of eating meat for example, or she dictated that kissing women on the cheek is sexual assault? Would there be many of us left?

Ask not if the bell tolls for the Masters, it tolls for thee.

Of course our Guardian correspondent would hail Daenerys as the bringer of justice and divine retribution for the 'evil' practices of the Masters. The mass slaughter of hundreds of them would be perfectly justified, because here in 21st century Britain we know that slavery is terrible.

Yet there is no nuance in this line of thought and besides, we've established that this journalist is a bleedin' idiot anyway.

The Masters weren't all evil. Aye, some must have been dodgy, but others would have been fairly reasonable people; and yet they all succumbed to the same brutal death.

This is the problem of making rash outbursts like that of Daenerys or the Guardian columnist, [two raging symbols of the terror of unregulated feminism] you simply end up chucking the baby out with the dishwater. Or the dishes out with the bathwater, or whatever the expression is.

A decent leader would have gradually faded out the practice of slavery by introducing wages, better  working conditions, holidays and dress-down Fridays. 

A nice bit of human rights legislation.

But then again, give it one hundred years and the grandchildren of these oppressed slaves would be sitting in their Homebase jacuzzis, sipping Grey Goose Vodka and bemoaning all this 'bureaucracy' around these days and how the old times were best.

Sometimes you can't please them.

They'd slap each other on the backs and pledge to vote for a party of former Masters posing as common people....EssosKip. 

So maybe a decent leader, on taking the city,  would have just maintained the traditions of Meereen and turned a blind eye to the slave trade. A move that would have at least avoided the future ball ache of the newly freed ranting and raving about referendums, failing to realise how good they've actually got it. 

There is always a lot to consider in these tricky ethical issues. It's never the apt course of action to just crucify everyone or call for a ban on Game of Thrones. 

This is the brand of irrationality that will see you working for the Guardian in perpetual outrage, hurling DVDs out of the window because they contain something that might possibly offend somebody, somewhere.

And by the lord of light, you don't want that, believe me.

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Baelish - Working Class Hero

Class has become a dirty word in our society.

Whenever people mention class it's always in a cringe-worthy context, is it not?

It's mentioned by seventeen year old northern college students with unfortunate bowl haircuts; posing on twitter by sticking their fingers up in their avatars as they retweet every utterance that drips out of George Galloway's gargantuan gob.

It's an unfunny remark by a politician cheaply attempting to undermine their rivals by bringing up what schools they attended.

It's Bob Crow losing his rag on Have I Got News for You and making the audience feel uncomfortable with incongruous ranting.

This is the great shame, because class as an issue is all around us. 

It informs your dress sense; your accent; what tv stations you tend to watch; your political views; how you spend your free time; your diet; your life expectency; your levels of education and even your choice of holiday destination.

Book a ticket for an Easyjet flight from Luton to Malaga and then go skiing in the Alps. Compare the British on both trips and tell me class doesn't exist in our society. 

I'm not suggesting that every middle class person walks around in a cashmere jumper eating hummus, speaking in an RP accent as they race home to watch Newsnight. Or that every working class person can be seen donning the latest JD tracksuit, eating McDonalds, grunting in a regional dialect before they go home and watch Coronation Street. That's not totally true for every person....just most.

I spent four years at university, three at UCLAN in Preston, one at the University of Leeds. If you go to Leeds and you meander up to the student section of the city centre you will come to a bridge. On the one side is Leeds Met, on the other stands the University of Leeds. 

The bridge is essentially The Wall - protecting a tapestry of Hollister hoody-wearing Surrey-ites with golden, flawless, vitamin C infused skin from coming face-to-face with the riff raff.

On the other side of the great class wall lingers the wet-look gelled bonces of the local Yorkshire wildlings, studying Sports Science and playing 'head the bin' in drunken glee.

There's no Night'sWatch to keep order in check here, instead the divide holds through the threat of receiving dirty, disparaging looks for anybody carelessly wandering too close to the border.

I would never have gone to Leeds university at the age of 18. Yes people from state schools do go to top universities, and yes there aren't any 'real' barriers or 'walls' stopping a working class kid from going to a redbrick. But as a general rule of thumb, it doesn't happen on a noticeable level. Not in my experience.

I'd have never studied at Leeds at all if I hadn't opted to change whilst at UCLAN.

During my middle year I'd become a huge fan of Russell Brand's comedy but I grew frustrated with not understanding many of the references dropped into his jokes. I was ashamed that I couldn't grasp a fair chunk of the words Brand was using. So I decided to alter that. 

I bought loads of Penguin Classics from Waterstones and gave myself the task of finishing one every couple of weeks. On top of that, I had to expand my vocabulary. 

The Guardian was subsidised in the Uni shop. I made a decision to purchase it every day, read it from front to back and highlight any words I didn't understand with one of those chunky highlighter pens. Once back at the flat i'd make up a list of the highlighted words, search for their definitions online and memorise them.

It is amazing how your essay grades change when you substitute 'everywhere' for 'ubiquitous', 'apparently' for 'ostensibly' and 'stubborn' for 'obstinate'.

Never let it be said that style over substance is a nonsense. In many cases it's everything.

Don't over-egg it either else you'll look like a try hard arsehole who's swallowed a Shakespeare play. Orwell did say that it is better to use plain language to put across ideas - although he probably didn't take into account university mark schemes when making that claim.

I crossed that Yorkshire bridge. Scaled the wall. My nan, old nan, was a cleaner at Birmingham University and now her grandson was sharing lectures with the children of diplomats. Though strangely there were no Ferrero Roches being handed out - I thought they'd be on tap.

How then, do you then expect me to hate Baelish?  

How? It's an impossibility.

For here is a man operating in a world dominated by high born lords with birth rights, obscene levels of wealth and unbound family connections. Baelish is the rags to riches storyline. The working class hero.

He owns no sword, no bow, no axe. His words and his wit are his weapons.

He created his own sigil, the mockingbird. A bird that imitates its rivals song and uses this to infiltrate their nests. Quite apt for the Machiavellian workings of the almost Thomas Cromwell-esque Littlefinger.

The Lannisters with their glowing skin, perfect teeth, blonde locks and golden lions wouldn't be out of place at Leeds University. Oh yes, you could picture them sauntering around Hyde Park in the sun.

Baelish would be in that Leeds Met Sport Science class, rejecting offers of a lunch time game of 'head the bin'. 

He'd be staring intently out of the window, glaring across the bridge....and plotting...

They ask how can you like a man who poisons children, kills the unarmed and betrays an honourable man like Ned Stark? I'd respond with what I say to those people who get too wrapped up in hating Big Brother contestants.....it's tv, it's art, don't apply your real life morality to something like Game of Thrones. Treat the show as a metaphor if you must find some kind of meaning.

If Littlefinger lived next door you'd be totally justified in despising him, for he is a highly dangerous individual. But this is Game of Thrones, a snake pit. You have to admire the ingenuity of the man as he fights against his social status. You have to laud his pragmatism and lose yourself in his climb.

For Baelish is one half of the dichotomy of order. A manifestation of chaos. Varys is his polar opposite, a simpering bald Buddha of stability. Varys will stop at nothing to ensure the status quo continues; he'll work tirelessly to avoid plunging Westeros into a state of war. Every Varys action thus far is 'for the good of the realm' - whatever that means.

If Varys was part of our university metaphor he'd be the admissions officer. Smiling in the courtyard on a red-skied October afternoon as he welcomes another coach load of Lannisters to the green gardens of the Headingley campus. 


Let us then champion Lord Baelish. 

He who sees an ostensibly untraversable bridge and fits dynamite to its foundations.

Baelish will not resign himself to a life of mediocrity just because he was born into anonymity. So who is the more evil? Baelish for seeking betterment and self-fulfillment or Varys for denying opportunity to the people?

No house sigil; no family wealth; spurned by his childhood love; beaten by a Stark brute; mocked by the powerful.....yet he is rising, and rising quickly.

There's inspiration in the narrative of Petyr Baelish. That is why he is one of the most romantic characters in a show packed full of huge personalities. 

A working class hero, aye, he'll get into those Headingley gardens yet. 

I wouldn't bet against it.

              

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