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Fandom Friday: It's a Nice Day for a Red Wedding

(SBN keeps eating my fanpost. This is the third time I'm trying to post this!)

I have not been able to get Billy Idol's "White Wedding" out of my head, lol.

Anyway, if you watch the show, by now you know what "Red Wedding" means. Reaction across traditional and social media have ranged from mild surprise to complete disgust/disbelief. For my part, I was stunned by the episode, despite having read the books and knowing exactly what was about to happen. That was easily the most brutal 15 minutes of television in, well, ever.

What did you think?

We've been discussing various aspects of the novels on these threads, so I'll just leave you with this:

ASOIAF seems to favor the ruthlessly pragmatic over the nobly idealistic, so in that sense, all the Starks are doomed to fail, even Arya. (I might make an exception for Rickon, since Osha is presumably raising him and she seems to have all the cynicism absent in House Stark).

The people who win in that world are the ones who are clever about getting around the rules (i.e. the way Drogo kills Viserys in Vaes Dothrak, without spilling any blood), or the ones who don't mind breaking the rules nobody else would dare to (i.e. Walder Frey violates the guest right (in shocking fashion), making a mockery of Westeros's only inviolable tradition).

But it's worth noting that the real winners in that world never get their own hands dirty in the process. So while Tywin Lannister has clearly engineered the Red Wedding, he can also easily wash his hands of the whole thing. First, the only characters who know for certain the Lannisters were involved are either dead or allied with the Lannisters. For another, in the book, it is only heavily implied that the man who kills Robb is Roose Bolton. Catelyn sees Roose leave and a man in a pink flayed man cloak returns, but Catelyn never sees his face properly. Finally, Walder Frey is clearly just a pawn in the Lannister game and the Red Wedding is the Lannisters using Lord Walder as a fall guy, while not having to take responsibility for the consequences.

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