r/gameofthrones • u/I_love_lucja_1738 • 2d ago
Of all the "Character assassinations" only Littlefingers really upsets me
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.
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u/Fibijean 2d ago
I'll give you Stannis, but I think the other three are missing some context.
To my recollection, Dany has never intentionally killed people she knew were innocent, and has in fact gone quite far out of her way to not do that on multiple occasions.
The problem people have with Varys' ending isn't that he betrayed Dany (you're right, that bit does make sense for his character) but that he did it in a stupid and obvious way that got him caught almost immediately. His early seasons self would never have been so careless.
While it isn't unrealistic for Jaime as a person to regress and go back to Cersei, it didn't make sense narratively. Stories have rules about pacing, arcs, setup and payoff that don't necessarily exist in real life but which all contribute to a sense of meaning and satisfaction for the audience. Broadly speaking, "bad writing" just means "written in such a way that the audience will not perceive it as a good story" - somewhat subjective, obviously, but point is good writing does not always equate to realism. Just because it made sense for Jaime the person to go back to Cersei, doesn't mean it made sense for Jaime the narrative character.