Janos Slynt - Hero of The Wall

 

The Watchers on The Wall has  just finished and given us an hour of real enjoyment, a rip-roaring ride of sheer action. 

How about that for a contrast to last week's emotions at the conclusion of The Mountain and The Viper, eh?

Instead of feeling anger and upset, this week I've been left feeling thoroughly content, almost warm with satisfaction.

How atmospheric did the battle feel with the snow billowing down through the purple-black sky? And that fire, wow, lighting up the North for hundreds of miles in sublime beauty.

Then there's the giants, the bloody wooly mammoths and those mega scythes. What an hour of fun we've just had - though I do wish HBO would set aside the final two episodes of each season to be two hours long: I don't think tonight's episode would have lost anything by going into a second hour.

To dismiss tonight's episode as being solely action, however, would be doing it a disservice. Yes there were plenty of deaths, explosions and steel crashing on steel but we saw a range of characters develop in significant ways.

Samwell became a man, declaring himself 'not nothing anymore' and shooting one of those bald prats in the bonce with a crossbow.

Jon Snow became the leader he was destined to be, displaying a knowledge of tactics on The Wall, whilst going on to rally the NightsWatchmen fighting in the grounds of the castle onwards to victory.

Ygritte showed us that she's not the cold-hearted biatch that we thought at the end of last season as her eyes caught Jon's and she couldn't bring herself to kill Snow; letting out a joyous breath and a loving smile.....that is before the nodding Jimmy Grimble fired an arrow through her chest.

Even the angry bloke, Ser Allister, became likeable as he kicked some arse and gave Gingerbeard a decent fight, narrowly avoiding death as the Crows pushed him down a cat-flap.

Yet one character is getting pelters on Twitter and on various internet forums discussing our great show - Janos Slynt.

Scouse Slynt is being derided as a coward, a traitor, a slimeball. Well I say....justice for the Slynty one!

It's easy to see Slynt's behaviour as being disgraceful. We're so used to Hollywood giving us brave, noble characters willing to die for their cause in heroic fashion. Characters giving their lives to protect the greater good. Think the guy in Independence Day sacrificing himself by flying his plane into the core of the alien mothership, ultimately saving humanity.

If Janos Slynt was flying that plane he'd have feigned a course set for the mothership's core; bypassed the ship altogether and flown to Hawaii to enjoy his last few days slurping Pina Coladas on a beach and doing the hoola with some hotties while the rest of the world bowed down for their new overlords.

Isn't there something more....human about Slynt's behaviour there?

No?

Well consider this.

The only reason Slynt is at the wall in the first place is because he showed loyalty to the royal family by arresting a plotter against the Crown in Ned Stark.

We, as the audience, knew that Joffrey had no right to the crown. And we knew that Ned would have made a fair and just protector of the realm, but the residents of King's Landing, and the figures at court were not partial to that information. In the Goldcloaks eyes, Joffrey was the son of King Robert and rightful heir. Whether bribery came into it, or whether Slynt had been promised rewards for his loyalty to the Lannisters, the fact remains that in essence he was defending the King against malevolent influences. 

Should loyalty to the Crown be rewarded by a trip to The Wall until death?

Even the ardent Slynt hater must concede this is harsh.

 I used to work for a well-known clothing company during my time at college. The store was high up at a local shopping centre, with no windows, and during the summers the hot air would rise. This created a stifling heat on the shop floor.

A shame then that the air-conditioning unit had been broken for two years.

This meant that customers fainted from heat exhaustion in the changing rooms. Staff members on a couple of occasions went home feeling sick. I'd spend hours in that heat, feeling like hell in a pair of skinny jeans. The only thing worse than the muggy temperatures were the clone-like 'its hot in here isn't it?' comments from the customers. Responding to that remark 30 times a day wore me into the laminated floor.

How then did I feel when I opened the newspaper and saw the owner of our company grinning with beautiful models on each arm under headlines detailing another year of record profits in the region of £500m?

The air-conditioning unit would have cost £50 to fix.

But nobody came. Nobody cared about the watchers on the shop floor. We were the little people, expendable.

Not unlike those hearty hundred on The Wall.

How disillusioned must they feel to have to give their lives, fighting 100,000 with a lack of resources, cheap weapons, poor armour in seeming isolation?

None of the other regions apparently give a shit.

In King's Landing they play in tourneys. 

In Highgarden they sit around eating grapes amongst their greenery.

Characters like Cersei don't just ignore the pleas of the NightsWatch but actively mock them on the rare occasions they're brought up in conversation.

What motivation then has Slynt to die in pain, so plump little lords may enjoy their summer afternoons in peace and comfort?

Here is a man who has had his freedom and livelihood taken away for being loyal to the Crown and is now part of a tiny force given the task of fighting 100,000 men and monsters, under-resourced, as the rest of the realm sunbathes.

Given this context, can we still blame Janos Slynt for deciding against dying? 

Or should we champion our much-maligned former favourite of the Lannisters for sticking two fingers up at his boss and refusing to be yet another expendable 'little person'?

Companies and Kingdoms can ill-afford to forget about those on the ground, in the dirt, because often they're the only line of defence against much worse horrors.

Mistreat them and don't be surprised when you get a wooly mammoth at your doorstep; or a dehydrated mother of two from Dudley with a compensation form - admittedly two indistinguishable beasts cut from the same cloth I concede. 

 
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Prince Oberyn - Icarus

It's been an hour since the episode 'The Mountain and The Viper' concluded. The recording has long since come to an end and a Sky warning message is etched across the screen....'Your Sky box is about to go into stand-by mode'.

Fine....f**k off.

I'm not ready to get up yet. Can't you give a grief-stricken young man, crying in his pants at 1 o'clock in the morning, a few moments Murdoch!?

Eh? You heartless drongo.

Leave me to pull out clumps of my hair in shock at what has just unfolded before my eyes.

Probably not the most auspicious of times to fire up the blog, perhaps better to get some sleep, and react another time. Like those Premiership football managers who find a camera pointed in their mushes moments after an outrage has occurred and they end up making angry, irrational comments due to the heat of the moment getting the better of them.  

But perhaps a passionate, emotional entry is the perfect tribute to The Red Viper.

For any of you mad, sad or bad enough to have read every entry in The Garden of Whispers thus far, you'll have noticed that rather than react to an individual episode, I like to take a wider approach and talk about issues pertaining to the world of Game of Thrones. But after that, after that, tonight, I couldn't speak about anything else. No.....sorry!....I ain't 'avin it. 

You'll have to wait for your article on Bravosi eating habits or whether Benjen Stark has transformed into a tree for another time.

Oh Oberyn, if only you'd have worn a bloody helmet. Tyrion implored you to take heed of the warning. Like a dad, standing at the door, when you're off to do a bit of cycling.

'Pah, what does he know? Screw the helmet, it'll mess up my V05 surfer's-clay moulded bouffant.' Well, maybe we'll start paying attention after seeing tonight's horror show. 

If there is any comfort to take from Oberyn's brutal death, it's that he died the way he lived - full of passion and intent on getting justice.

He may have died at a ripe old age of 85, rocking in a chair in a stinking room of piss and asbestos. He may have died in a needless war, giving his life to profit a distanced lord or king, but he died attempting to win justice for his sister - a just and poetic death for the charismatic warrior poet.

That's not to say we're not going to miss him. 

We all have our favourite characters in Game of Thrones, and we all come to different interpretations. Who's 'good'? Who's 'bad'? Who's likeable? Who's grating?

For me, Oberyn [and to a lesser extent his entourage] breathed life into season four. If you're going to kill off the Stark threat, and kill off Joffrey, the audience needed something new and fresh to divert their attentions to and Oberyn stepped into the role perfectly. The striking yellow tunic became iconic; we got to see a much-needed ally in the capital for Tyrion and at last, there was somebody seemingly powerful enough to upset the Lannister lion-cart. Oh yeah...AND somebody to take screen time away from the duller characters such as Samwell Tarly and Bran.

Oberyn had the rare qualities of being self-confident, self-assured yet humble, with a sense of justice and compassion. Indeed, the conversation between Oberyn and Tyrion where the Viper relayed the story of the Dornish entourage arriving to see the baby imp remains one of the most beautifully touching moments in the series to date. 

This mixture of the fierce with the sympathetic brought about a genuinely 'cool' character in the form of the Prince.

If you ponder for a moment our world and the groups of people from your school / college / workplace, you'll note that most people tend to fall into one category or the other. There tends to be a whole wealth of confident types who strut around but lack any sort of humility or tenderness. And there seems to be a load of humble and reasoned types, who lack confidence in themselves. When you find somebody that displays both sides of the coin, it is a rare person indeed.

That is the main reason to like Oberyn. Someone immensely adept in wielding a blade and handling himself with the best, but also content to sit in a garden and write poetry. 

How can anybody dislike that?

Those who analyse Oberyn during the fight say that he should have coldly put his spear through The Mountain's fat Bluto head as soon as the beast had fallen.

Perhaps, but whereas an Unsullied, or even somebody like Baelish would have killed their opponent swiftly, almost mechanically, such behaviour would not have been part of the Viper's character. 

Some accuse him of hubris, of being like Icarus, who ignored the dangers and flew too close to the Sun, never anticipating the worst could happen.

I disagree. I don't think Oberyn was consumed with arrogance or hubris, he merely wanted answers, wanted acknowledgement and he let his emotions take over. He lost all sense and perspective because of love he bore for his family and this proved his undoing.

At this point in time I don't know if I'm pissed off with George RR Martin [peace be upon him] or whether I'll just stomach the death and move on with the show as it evolves. 

Has his fixation with shocking the audience prematurely robbed us of a fantastic personality?

At the moment I'm inclined to say 'yes', because I'm incredibly bitter. 

I'm inclined to go to Arizona, confiscate his bloody books off him and throw all of his pens in the bin lest he kill off another great character - all the while subjecting us to Arya, Jon Snow, Samwell, Bran and Reek. 

Alas, however, I've said it throughout The Garden of Whispers: Game of Thrones is supposed to mirror the real world and it is true, in our world there are plenty of injustices. 

The boring oft do outlive the charismatic. Being engaging and a poet isn't reason enough to ensure a prolonged life. Poorer shows would have had Oberyn winning in a predictable fashion. In a perverse way, Oberyn's unexpected death is exactly the reason we love Martin's creation.

Nevertheless Oberyn's death has affected me more so than any other hitherto, and I can't quite fully explain why. Was it because the Viper's motives were so pure, and he merely wanted to avenge his sister's death and get justice?

It can't be, Ned died for similar reasons and whilst that shocked and upset me, the intensity of emotion was nothing like this.

Perhaps it is the way Oberyn died? It is difficult to conceive of a more violent and nasty way to perish. In the early 20th century Sigmund Freud wrote a treatise named 'The Uncanny' which looked at the way in which we become 'terrified' by analysing 'The Sandman' a German fairytale where a creepy nutter goes around pulling the eyes out of children.

The uncanny was described as that emotion where our blood runs cold and our hairs stand on edge. It's a different sort of terror than the more obvious forms [being chased with an axe; watching Birmingham when it's 0-0 and there's 5 minutes of injury time]. Freud said the uncanny is something that appears 'familiar' but is also 'freaky ass shit' at the same time. Freud's perfect example was the doll, if it came alive with the lack of emotion on its face. 

Imagine that countenance. A slow turning head with a fixed, painted mouth, its marble eyes turning slowly and looking your way. Horrifying.

In theory, a doll shouldn't be frightening, but if it came alive the sense of dread you would be filled with would be 'the uncanny'. If you want to see what the uncanny looks like, simply search Google for images of 1900 Halloween photos, and view the scores of small children donning crudely crafted masks which appear more frightening than anything Hollywood could conjure up. 

In The Uncanny Freud wrote that we have a universal fear of incurring injuries to our eyes. We all know people who have gone through major surgery, I have known family members and friends who have had open heart surgery; amputations; brain surgery - but nothing sickened me as when I found out our plumber was in hospital having his eyes removed; his optic nerve messed about with, before his eyeballs were rinsed under the tap and popped back in.

"We know from psycho-analytic experience, however, that the fear of damaging or losing one's eyes is a terrible one in children. Many adults retain their apprehensiveness in this respect, and no physical injury is so much dreaded by them as an injury to the eye. We are accustomed to say, too, that we will treasure a thing as the apple of our eye." - Freud: 'The Uncanny".

In reality Oberyn's death hit me hard due to a combination of all three reasons. A charismatic, much-loved character dying; fighting for justice which he ostensibly hasn't won [I think The Mountain is still alive] and the death was so sickening to behold that I actually felt nauseous. This culminated in an event which will stay with me for the rest of the show until its final concluding episode.

So why not raise a glass tonight to Prince Oberyn? A man of style, passion, heart and justice, removed from the show before his time.

An electric yellow sun flare that burst into King's Landing and lit it up for a season.

Cersei may have smirked on seeing the Viper's head explode, but she forgets where her daughter is currently sheltered. Maybe soon we shall bare witness to the saying that the Lannisters aren't the only ones who pay their debts...

 
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 "You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children. You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children."