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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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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The Rains of Castamere

 

 'And who are you?' the proud lord said

'That I must bow so low.

 Only a cat of a different coat

That's all the truth I know

In a coat of gold, or a coat of red

A lion still has claws

And mine are long and sharp my lord

As long and sharp as yours.'

And so he spoke, and so he spoke

That lord of Castamere

But now the rains weep o'er his hall

With no one there to hear

Yes now the rains weep o'er his hall

And not a soul to hear. 

                                             

The Rains of Castamere tells the story of Lord Reyne's rebellion against The Lannisters, overlords of the region known as the Westerlands.

House Reyne had been promised a marriage into the Lannister family, only for it to be withdrawn and offered to the Freys at the last minute [no doubt due to political machinations]. This knocked Reyne's nose out of joint, prompting the house to take up arms. 

The red lion of Reyne pitted against the gold of the Lannisters. Two cats each with long, sharp claws.

After initially starting off as the favourite in the conflict due to the weakness of the Lannister leader Tytos, the Reynes' early victories were turned on their head by Tytos' son Tywin Lannister. The golden lion's forces besieged the Reynes' castle, forced home the advantage and destroyed the rebels. 

No Reynes survived. The red lion erased forever more.

It's unclear whether the exchange in the poem is supposed to have taken place or whether it's merely a metaphor intended to romanticise the feud between the two houses. Ultimately that distinction is irrelevant. What matters is the hauntingly powerful content. How it illustrates the Game of Thrones world; what it tells us about our society and how we should treat others.

We should stop and ponder the poem any time we get the urge to send our food back when we're in restaurants because the cuisine might be slightly different to what we expected. In that dynamic the waiters have the power, they'll spit in your lasagne; they'll rub your asparagus up their arse cracks; they'll gargle your soup. It's not worth it. If I found broken glass in my food and the waiter came over to ask how i'm finding my meal i'd crunch 'very good thanks, nice' through my glass-shard smile and bleeding gums. I'd raise a quivering thumbs up before passing out from the pain as soon as the restauranteur faded back into the smoke of kitchens.

You must always think of the consequences of your actions when faced with those who can hurt you.

Lord Reyne didn't. In that scenario Lord Reyne would be an over-opinionated Yorkshireman tutting, clucking, and checking his watch every minute his bangers and mash were taking to cook. When the meal was finally presented he'd roll his eyes with indignant dismissal. He'd send the dish back because the mash potato isn't white enough. Once in the kitchens the waiters and chefs would allow the pet cat to roll around in the food before bringing it back out. The Yorkshireman would gulp it down and try to get out of paying.

The Yorkshireman, like so many from that wretched region, displayed arrogance, hubris and ignorance....but crucially, he lacked a self-awareness of the situation and paid dearly by digesting a rancid compound of sausage, potato, cat hair and fleas.

'And who are you?...That I must bow so low'

 This is no way to talk to the richest family in Westeros. It strikes of a haughty attitude, it's the kind of language that creates enemies and the last kind of enemy you want in Game of Thrones is one that is exceedingly rich; in charge of your local area and is murderous and unscrupluous in securing and maintaining power.

There is nothing to be gained by acting like this. Insult your boss at work you will be sacked. If you insult a police officer you will be arrested. If you insult your doctor it may be the difference between obtaining life-saving treatment or sub-par, death-bringing treatment. Yet so many in society bark at their peers, put people's backs up, bespoil their image for no real reason other to sate their own narcissism.

This rule isn't just for situations where you are the lesser in the relationship either. 

It rings true for all situations, as all men are the potential architects of your downfall. The Roman emperor Caligula would mock a palace guard named Cassius on a daily basis. Cassius was a seasoned Roman war-hero but apparently suffered from a high pitched voice. Whenever Cassius entered the room or walked nearby, Caligula would mock and hurl insults:

'Ooo-eee!'

'Stop inhaling party balloons you silly goose!'

Are some of the insults Caligula might have shouted. The point is he did shout stuff like this and he apparently made Cassius kiss his hand in an offensive manner too. 

One day Cassius walked up to Caligula as the Roman Emperor was addressing an acting troupe ahead of a theatrical meeting; the soldier brandished a blade and stabbed Caligula 30 times in the chest until the leader of Rome dropped to the ground and died in a pool of blood.

So much for Caligula.

Oh how we see such parallels with the demise of Joffrey. The TV show hasn't definitively announced who poisoned the pixie-faced shit yet but it will doubtless be somebody he has upset by his actions or words. 

Tywin Lannister does not make this short-sighted mistake of needlessly offending. 

Think back to every scene of his you have witnessed, you will struggle to find one where he outwardly and obviously insults the person he is speaking to [his children aside].

Indeed in 'The Lion and The Rose', Tywin enters into a dialogue with Lord Oberyn of Dorne and despite the Dornish prince accusing Tywin of sanctioning rape, child-murder, and generally being impoverished, Tywin resists the urge to respond in kind - instead, he opts to make light of gout before wishing the Southerners a pleasant stay.

Might then have House Reyne succeeded in Game of Thrones had they concealed their intentions, acted with a shred of subtlety and bided their time? Alas they did not. And now the poem brings us to the modern day:

'Now the rains weep o'er his hall and not a soul to hear'

Lord Reyne's hubris has resulted in his hall crumbling in wind-swept isolation. It is nowt more than a monument of rubble. The rain pours onto the hall but there is nobody left inside this palace to hear the beating of the water against the glass.

Might you then enter that hall of Castamere? 

What would you find? 

At first glance you'd note that the floor would be covered in brick that has fallen from the walls. It would break under the placing pressure of your feet. Your footsteps would echo throughout the dusty room, bringing momentary life to this dead abode. The few rays of light that seep through the stained glass would light up nothing but passing shadows on the wall.

This is the hall of those who would blindly dish out offence without contemplating consequence.

Avoid this hall at all costs. Do not so cheaply create enemies and,well, if you heed this warning you might just go on to hear the rains beat o'er your own hall for many more nights to come.

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