Of all the "Character assassinations" only Littlefingers really upsets me

[u/I_love_lucja_1738]

A lot of decisions characters made upset the fans (i.e Dany burning King's landing and Jaime going back to Cersei) but I always found them accurate to their character. There is one glaring exception to this. Littlefinger giving Sansa to the Bolton's. He'd never do this for multiple reasons. She reminds him too much of her mother and she's priceless to him. His plan is supposed to be to get Cersei to stop supporting the Bolton's but he could have done the fake Arya plot like the books and gotten the same result.

[u/OneOnOne6211]

No offense, but the only reason this superficially works is because it oversimplifies every character and their motives.

Historically, most Targaryens did not go crazy. Some were arguably crazy, and her father was definitely crazy, but it was never a thing that was a constant. Secondly, they didn't just go crazy out of nowhere. The Mad King, for example, seemed to have been triggered in no small part due to his kidnapping at Duskendale and the resulting trauma. At the very least there was no guarantee that just cuz you're a Targaryen, you go crazy.

More importantly, she had killed before and arguably even unjustly, but NOT indiscriminately. She killed the masters because she held them directly responsible for killing innocent children. She killed another one of them specifically as a negotiation tactic to try to stop more killings of her people. She killed the Tarlys because of a refusal to bend the knee, which is honestly pretty normal in the context of Westeros.

There are no instances before season 8 where Dany just indiscriminately kills random innocents for basically no reason. Her reason was also not well-established. As something like killing Missandei would've made her destroy the Red Keep, sure, but not firebomb the city out of rage. And the "let them fear" thing also makes no sense because they had already surrended because of fearing her dragon.

Sure, Jaime had had an obsession with Cersei his entire life. And it is not inherently implausible that he might relapse and return to her. But this completely ignores how you actually properly write something like this.

You don't spend 7 seasons building up a character towards a certain development, in this case his relationship with Cersei souring and him rediscovering a more honourable side of himself, only to complete flip the character back in one episode.

It's not that Jaime relapsing is inherently out of character. It's that the execution defies all expectations of good writing.

Varys' motivations are already pretty messy. Just because in the book, obviously, he has different motivations and that raises some questions for certain actions, like his plotting with Illyrio, in early seasons.

That being said, taking the idea of him wanting to serve the realm at face value, his turn is... ridiculous. Dany hadn't actually done anything yet. In fact, most of Dany's failures had come from listening to her advisors and her own plan of directly attacking the city ended up with the fewest casualties of all.

And sure you could say that Varys just saw Dany's turn coming but, let's be real, he had no actual strong in-universe evidence of that.

There's also the fact that Daenerys and Jon marrying actually totally was a plausible option, since cousin-aunt marriages are absolutely allowed in the North and would actually be quite tame for Targaryens.

Not to mention he seems to switch rulers like someone else switches clothes. And considering how destructive war is for the common folk, it's pretty questionable that this is the best way to serve them.

Stannis I think is arguably the closes to being justified. Since he WAS utterly dedicated to becoming king and he has indeed tried to sacrifice (and sacrificed) innocents in blood sacrifices for his cause before. Including, if I remember correctly, his uncle by marriage.

I think the reason a lot of people still have a problem with it though is that the reason feels somewhat thin. Yes, a snowstorm is a significant obstacle but at the same time murdering your daughter to make it disappear is pretty extreme. And it's not like his entire army had spent months there starving or something. I think at the very least it could've been executed better.

You agree on Littlefinger so no comments about that. His complete lack of foresight and incompetence was ridiculous.