Character choices

So I just finished playing the first episode of "The Walking Dead: Season 2" (the game, for anyone possibly confused) and it got me thinking.  Throughout the game (and the past episodes in season 1), you make choices and rarely if ever are they easy or simply or right or wrong.  Some aren't even choices.  In a striking moment in the first episode Season 1 (of the Walking Dead game), there's a poignant quote that, paraphrased, states that sometimes we don't choose, we just "do."  It made me think about the paths of our heroes (and perhaps those who even aren't heroes) in A Song of Ice and Fire.

We've got a ton to choose from, but before I continue, I'm going to throw this out there, because I love you and it's for your own good:

SPOILER ALERT!  I'm going to be discussing characters and character events through A Dance With Dragons.  There will be major plot points discussed and I do not want to ruin them for anyone so please, do not read further if there is potential for things to be ruined for you.  Thanks! (no spoilers for A Feast for Crows or A Dance With Dragons) 

 The first character I want to look at is Arya.  Now she is a firecracker and there's hardly anyone who reads the books who doesn't like her.  She's a solid fan favorite and, when you look at it, is tailor-made to be so.  She's fun, has teeth, there's "action" to her and she's very likable overall.  But then we look at her character closely and it breaks your heart a bit.

Arya is a child.  I think sometimes we either forget that or ignore it or for whatever reason we just lose it under all the other things.  The age just doesn't make itself present and front-and-center the way other flashier aspects of her character do.  Knowing that, think about where her character is and what she's gone through.

She was present for her father's public beheading.  Whether or not she saw it, that's still incredibly traumatic.  She was on edge in King's Landing to begin with, just having moved to an unfamiliar environment, but once she left, her life has been a chain of struggles.  As her journey progresses, one of the most noticeable aspects to her character becomes her list.  The list of names she repeats over and over and over and over, ad infinitum.  This is, really, a choice, and a rather extreme one.  She chooses vengeance.  Raw, red, bloody vengeance.  She devotes her time and energy to this idea and we can see her heart change.  She goes from this sweet, albeit mischievous, girl, to a jaded, hardened person.

Her identity changes so many times, yet the core aspect to her character that keeps her grounded is her singular firm goal of putting every name on her list in the ground.  It's interesting to think about how her life would be had she not chosen this outlook on her life or those who've impacted it.  What if she simply decided "You know what?  King Joffrey?  Queen Cersei? Ser Gregor? The rest?  What am I really going to do to them?  I can't lay a finger on them.  They're where they are, I'm where I am.  I hate them, but the best I can do for myself is try to scrape up what I can of my life and better myself.  I need to get back to the north.  I need to get home, no matter what, and stay there and try to start life over again."  To a point, that's what she was trying to do and we watch it fade more and more until she takes that iron coin and cashes it in.  She pays for her ticket to a place where they train some of the most lethal, cold individuals there are.  This is a path that she's on because she chose to seek it out and, sadly, it's hard to see a bright outcome at the end of her dark, dark road.

(no spoilers for A Dance With Dragons; vague discussion mainly relating to actions taken in A Storm of Swords)  Another character who interesting to look at in terms of choice is Daenerys.  When it comes to her, she does a lot of decision making, both publicly and internally.  What's interesting too is that she originally began her journey without any real choice or agency at all.  It was a slow buildup and then Drogo died.  She had nothing invested in her own life until she loved Drogo and when he died, it in many ways lit a fire under her.  The birth of the dragons and the inferno in which they were born also forged Dany's identity and set her on a path towards greatness.

As we watch Daenerys travel, she runs into many peoples.  She sees things she likes and more things she doesn't.  One of the main things we see is an overt anti-slavery sentiment and a deep-seated perspective of hers to be pro-freedom.  What we also see is a series of choices she makes that have far reaching consequences.  An example of this is when she visits Astapor to get her Unsullied army.  Here she gets a first-hand look at what slavery and that kind of environment can yield.  A few in power using those beneath them to generate profit.  We hear about how the Unsullied are created and trained and it is truly chilling.  We actually see that their masters have no problem doing what is required to deaden the souls of each Unsullied, to create a mobile statue capable of perfect obedience.  In the face of any danger, they do not move.  In the face of bribery or seduction, they stand dead to any offer.  They follow their master and that is simply all they know.  This and the other things she sees in the region of [aptly named] Slaver's Bay sets Dany on a course she chooses.

She goes to the slave cities and wreaks havoc.  She, in her own heart, decides that the way of life down there is not acceptable and goes about trying to change it (to varying degrees of success).  Here is one of the times where we see what George R. R. Martin wanted us to see in these books; that being in power and being what many would consider a "good" person, many times is not enough and the road to ruin is paved with the best of intentions.  Freedom is a grand and lofty idea.  To those who are privileged, the idea of being bound and restricted is galling to say the least.  But Dany, rather a while after setting her massive wheels in motion, starts to see other things her decisions have done.

She beings hearing about individuals who actually still want to be slaves.  Sure there are free men, but they have to find their own food.  They have to find their own housing.  They have to make their own way in a way that they are not at all accustomed to.  This is something that can be crippling to someone who's only known a life of slavery for decades.  One day, this silver-haired woman rolls into town and goes "ALRIGHT EVERYONE; YOU'RE FREE!  YAY!"  The slavers and slave masters are killed or done away with.  The slaves now are suddenly without work, lodging, food, and the life that they were used to and many were fine with ("ignorance is bliss" situation perhaps) is now upended.

This action, taken en masse, has huge, far-reaching consequences.  The news of what she is doing reaches across the globe and destabilizes a large economy on the world stage.  Without slaves, all of Slaver's Bay doesn't function and there are large amounts of trade that depends on everything that goes with the slave trade.  It's not just the slave trade itself, but also the labor it provides.  None are arguing that slavery is a good thing, but this is an example of an idealist choice and set of actions that can engulf an entire portion on the world in turmoil, and it all goes back to Dany and her quest to be the best queen.  It also leads to moments where we may, perhaps, ask ourselves, if Dany being queen is really as good an idea as we initially thought.

(A Dance With Dragons Spoilers to follow) One final character to look at is the character of Jon Snow.  At the end of A Storm of Swords we see him assume the mantle of Lord Commander of The Night's Watch.  All along we've seen him groomed and trained for this and when he gets the job, it's hard not to do a little fist-pump and a "YESSSSSSSSSSSSS; GO JON!" in our heads.

Then we open A Dance With Dragons, read it, and go "Crap."

This is not even to say that he does a "bad" job.  We see a lot of Ned in the decisions that Jon makes and there are positive and negative things about that.  Ned was an idealist in a lot of ways and as we've been conditioned through the series to understand, that doesn't always work out.

The choice Jon makes is a simple one, and that is to be a hard-ass.  It sounds harsh but really, it is exactly what he does.  This is because of this one last bit of advice given to him by Maester Aemon (this quote is pulled from A Wiki of Ice and Fire):

"Allow me to give my lord one last piece of counsel. The same counsel I once gave my brother when we parted for the last time. He was three-and-thirty when the Great Council chose him to mount the Iron Throne. A man grown with sons of his own, yet in some ways still a boy. Egg had an innocence to him, a sweetness we all loved. "Kill the boy within you," I told him the day I took ship for the Wall. "It takes a man to rule. An Aegon, not an Egg. Kill the boy and let the man be born." You are half the age that Egg was, and your own burden is crueler one, I fear. You will have little joy of your command, but I think you have the strength in you to do the things that must be done. Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born."

Maester Aemon meant, I believe, that Jon will need to make some hard decisions and to steel himself for those; to let go of things that are boy-like and to be a leader and model for the rest of the men to follow.  Jon takes this to mean that he has to let go of things that make him happy; things he feels are boy-ish.  In choosing this way of thinking, he sacrifices the thing that aided him most in his life on The Wall.  His friends.

As Lord Commander, Jon estranges himself, staying away from his friends and fully assuming the role of (as Bran would surely put it) "Jon the Lord."  He commands and takes no guff from anyone.  He makes decisions and demands those beneath him fall in line.  This leads him to making decisions that may actually be good decisions in themselves, but are done in such a way that they put off those under his command.

The main decision was that to ally themselves with the Wildlings.  So many of the men of the Night's Watch have this view of the Wildlings that is very much akin to racism.  Due to their differences, they should not be trusted, worked with or aided.  Some men view their duty as purely to keep Wildlings north of the wall, not really putting much stock in "Grumpkins and Snarks."  This perspective leads to unrest.  More and more, chaos north of The Wall brews and the pressure is on.  Jon, with added pressure from the presence of Stannis and Melisandre, makes heavy decisions, supplementing the Watch with Wildlings.  This makes many of the men angry, and Bowen Marsh, Lord Steward of the Night's Watch even speaks to him about this on multiple occasions.

In these instances, Jon is very much like Stannis, taking on a "my way or the highway" mentality.  Make no mistake, this was a choice.  Perhaps one that was ill informed; perhaps one that was prompted by misunderstood advice; perhaps one that could have gone differently had he read more books like Sam always went on about; but it didn't.  Jon made the calls.  Jon was as hard a man as the Wall and drove forward into the night, doing his best to save all he was sworn to protect.

In the end, it cost him his life, at the hands of the men under his command.  Now, the circumstances under which the death of Jon Snow occurred are of major discussion and I think that theories about that occurrence are a matter worthy of its own post altogether, but that it happened is huge.  We're talking about an assassination of the Lord Commander by the Nights Watch itself.  A brotherhood, ages old, turning on itself in its darkest hour.  It doesn't bode well for Westeros and it leads one to examine how choices that ring in a very personal way for our heroes can end up having repercussions that can quite literally impact the world at large.

With dragons in the east, the cold rising in the north, rebellion fermenting everywhere you look; there is danger brewing.  Many who we've come to know and love will die; and at the end of it all, there is no choice; Winter is here.