What do it mean, 'best character'? The best written, the strongest, the most bad-ass?
But I'll tell you what I think about Tywin.
I. Hate. Tywin.
Most people defend Tywin because of his perceived competence, his ability to make the hard decisions that advance the cause of, his house and the Lannister legacy.
It's a crock.
Particularly the last two. He advances nothing but his own reputation, which is what you'd expect from a vain, vile narcissist like him.
Now, I'm not going to argue that Tywin wasn't smart and and that he didn't have a good knowledge of how the gears of power worked.
There's no disputing that he ruled the SEven Kingdoms as Aerys' Hand effectively and competently. And that he is one of the great players of the Game of Thrones. He is worthy of some respect.
Sharp Lessons
But it's the over the top reaction to what he feels are slights that gets me. That sickens me.
And yes, I know his father was a nincompoop, a weak-willed pushover who almost brought ruin onto House Lannister. Boo-hoo. Widdle Tywin didn't like being laughed at. Fair enough.
But there's a deft approach to such problems as Tytos Lannister encouraged; and there's the nuclear approach.
Tywin always goes nuclear.
First of all there's the way he dealt with the uppity lords who had defied his weak, ineffectual father, the Tarbecks and the Reynes.
There's no doubt they had some punishment coming. But he didn't just punish them. He wiped them out. Every man and child of them.
RAther than go through with a siege he simply demolished the Tarbeck's crumbling castle while the survivors, including Lady Tarbeck and her son, Tion the Red in it.
"Men say Tywin never smiled....When Tarbeck Hall came crashing down on Lady Ellyn...he smiled then.
--A Feast for Crows
Hilarious.
And let's look at the fate of the Reynes:
First of all, the Reyne's castle, Castamere was considered close to impregnable. Most of it was underground, in the gold mines that had made their house rich.
When the Reynes retreated to it's safest, he simply blocked all the exits and diverted a nearby stream into the castle.
[There were] more than three hundred men, women and children [in the] mines. Not one ever emerged. A few of the guards assigne to the smallest and most distant of the nine entrances reported hearing faint screams and shouts coming from beneath the earth one night but by daybreak the stones had gone silent once again.
Yeah. He made his reputation.
Was it necessary to teach them a lesson? Yes. Was it necessary to kill every single one of them and their servants to boot?
No. No it wasn't.
And then there's the matter of Tywin's father's mistress. The insult was that she was a commoner, the daughter of a candlestick maker. And after Tywin's mother died in childbirth, she became Tytos' mistress.
The horror. The daughter of a candlestick maker.
So what did Tywin do? What he always did. He went nuclear.
When Lord Tywin's father died he returned to Casterly Rock to find a...woman...bedecked in his lady mother's jewels, wearing one of her gowns. He stripped them off her and all else as well. For a fortnight she was paraded naked through the streets of Lannisport, to confess to every man she met that she was a thief and a harlot. That was how Lord Tywin Lannister dealt with whores.
--A Feast for Crows.
Bastard.
Legacy:
But it's all for his legacy, isn't it? It's necessary for him to do hard things to seal Lannister's reputation, wasn't it? He did it for the children!
No one messes with the Lannisters!
True.
You know who else generally never gets messed with? The Starks in the North. Well, up until recently.
Now, Ned Stark deals with things.
He was ready to chop off Jorah Mormont's head for selling his criminals into slavery.
But he wasn't ready to extinguish the Mormont family.
Oh and reemember the Martells? The story about how Oberyn Martell was offered as a potential bride to Cersei? And Tywin said no, Cersei's meant for Prince Rhaegar.
And then Elia married Rhaegar instead.
It took a few years.
But when he had the opportunity Tywin got his own back. And typically he went nuclear.
He had Elia's daughter murdered, literally dragged out from under her bed where she was hiding and 'stabbed half a hundred times'.
And he had AEgon, a mere infant, dashed against a wall. His reduced to 'a red ruin.'
And his murderer, Gregor Clegane raped Elia with the brains of Aegon still on his hands.
Sharp lessons, indeed.
And yes, he did order it. Maybe he regretted the gruesomeness of it all; the rape and murder of Elia he might not have planned. But he wanted those kids dead.
Tywin's legacy
And let's take a look at his legacy.
He's got a son whose big mouth got his main claim to fame, his sword-hand, chopped off and who despises himself so much he wants nothing to do with the legacy his father wants so badly with him.
Oh, and he's universally despised as the Kingslayer all over Westeros.
A daughter who's disrespected and hated by most of the realm and whose terrible decisions, driven by her paranoia, narcissm and her wish to do things like her father would do has pretty much pissed away any chance of the Lannister's retaining their hold on power in WEsteros.
Oh and some grandkids who are the sons of incest from his narcissistic twins' love affair.
If Tywin's line is still standing by the end of this series, I'll be surprised.
The rape of Tyrion
And then there's Tyrion.
What did Tyrion do? He was born a dwarf. And Tywin's wife died giving him life.
This shames Tywin. The gods have cursed Tyrion to 'teach [Tywin] humility' he declares.
Boo-frickin'-hoo.
So he gives him every shitty job he can.
He makes him chief plumber of Casterly Rock.
Appoints him as deputy Hand so he can deal with an almost impossible political situation in King's Landing, than refuses to give him any credit or honor.
He appoints him as Master of Coin, an office Littlefinger has made impossible to manage through his own Ponzi schemes and cooked books.
He forbids him from having sex with anybody! and disinherits him.
And then after presiding over a JOKE of a trial, he plans to have him executed.
And yes, I know he tells Tyrion that he plans to send him to the Wall. The fact is, everyone else(Jaime and Cersei) reflect that Tyrion is set to be put to death the day after he ended up escaping.
I doubt that Tyrion was ever going to be sent to the Wall.
He was going to kill his own disabled son.
I guess that would have put the inheritance question to rest. Take that, gods.
I'm not even going to get into his vile insistence that Tyrion rape Sansa Stark, a woman already humiliated a hundred times over who's been through more Tywin-inflicted trauma than almost anyone; his cynical disregard for the honor of the King's Guard(though maybe Cersei is responsible for the corruption of that office); his shitting all over the tradition of sending criminals to the Night's Watch; or his vile treatment of innocent peasants during the War, the inflicting of Tywin's Dogs(Clegane, Lorch, the Bloody Mummers) on the Riverlands, the utterly senseless destruction and death, the coming starvation that he's directly responsble for dealt out to thousands.
Reread those Arya chapters. He's torturing people to death for no reason. Toddlers getting their faces smashed in. Mothers raped and murdered. Fields burnt. Cows killed.
The Greatest Crime o all--I believe that children are the future
And lest it be forgotten, he took Tyrion's first wife and
- had her gang raped by an entire garrison(50 soldiers? 100 soldiers) forcing Tyrion to watch then
- forced Tyrion to take part in the rape
- forced Jaime to betray his brother with this crime
Tyrion raped Tysha.
And Tywin raped Tyrion, twisting him forever into a being who believes that no one can love him unless he pays them.
And then, in a stunning achievement in hypocrisy, he had sex with Shae.
And now Tyrion is a refugee in Essos, gnashing his teeth, blown to emotional bits, plotting revenge, death and ruin for House Lannister and Westeros itself.
Some legacy, Tywin.
No seriously. Fuck that guy.
There's only one death in this whole series that has satisfied me.
When Tywin shat his life away on the privy with his son's crossbolt lodged in his bowels...I cheered.
