A Lannister always pays his debts.
The Lannisters, like most families, are a unique and strange unit with weird depths and dark spots, some of which the public sees, and some which are secrets and most of which revolve around their crazy-ass narcissistic father. Who is so full of himself, he has portraits like this made of him:
hey are a in unique position: not only the head of their region, which, for all intents and purposes is a semi-autonomous state in its own right; but their family is also the richest in the country. Their father’s unbridled narcissism has led to such a fearsome reputation that everybody in their little country and a good deal of people outside of it fear the Lannisters, seeing the name as synonymous with the rape and murder of innocent people for perceived insults: or simply for knowing someone who offered a perceived insult. (Masha Heddle, or the servants of the Reynes of Castamere.) Imagine Jaime’s world.
Your family literally hires homicidal maniacs to rape, steal, burn, torture and kill innocent men, women, children, babies, animals.
Your father never fucking smiles at you and spends all his time looking at you like he is going to vomit all over your clean white scale mail. You are expected to be great, unyielding, strong, smart and advance the reputation. Everything you do is a disappointment. You are not allowed to marry who you want, or do what you want. You are not allowed to travel. YOu are not allowed to choose your destiny. You are one of the best badasses in the country and you should be doing deeds that the poets sing about for millennia but instead you are trapped in a dead end job in a city where everyone is trying to fellate you or sodomize you. Metaphorically speaking, of course.Your boss thinks you suck. Your colleagues, are either a bunch of nobodies or jerks who have sticks up their asses and look down on you.
The damn peasants spit when they hear your name because you sacrificed your honor to save thousands of people from certain death.
And if you want to have sex with your sister, who is totally the only girl in the kingdom hot enough for your utter hotness, you had just better forget that nonsense, buster. It is so unfair.
To make matters worse, your family is intelligent, displaying a keen judgement of character that, if not blunted by the ego and narcissism which your father is trying to cram down your throat 24/7, is pretty accurate and right on. Furthermore, you have a cynical and dark sense of humor that no one in all of po’-faced Westeros gets but you and your siblings! I mean, what can you do but laugh when you see the bones of somebody swinging in the breeze, someone who just happened to have unwittingly served roast chicken to somebody who pissed off your father?
Who can you relate to? The servants with their foreheads placed to the ground? Your bannermen, who smile and laugh at you no matter what you say? Your peers, who view you as the power-mad murderers of babies? Varys the goddamn spider? Maybe Littlefinger, but you can’t help but think he’s just a wimpy little pencil pusher trying to get above himself. There are, like, a handful of people you relate to: your siblings, and to some extent your uncles, aunt and cousin and that is it.
But Tyrion is special.
He grew up crippled, the victim of his father’s scorn. The victim of your beloved sister’s non inconsiderable cruelty. But he grew up because you loved him and he loved you and you were the source of the love that sustained him into adulthood. Tyrion is smarter than you; he is more patient than you; he thinks things over (quickly!); he always makes the intelligent choice; he sees to the heart of every situation and usually accurately; he is free to fuck with abandon anybody who will take his coin and he can do it all: from engineering saddles to fixing a plumbing system to organizing the defense of a starving city to running a continent wide empire in the middle of a war competently. All you can do is fight. You are not even a particularly good general.
And he is funny. He is literally the only guy you can cut loose with and laugh your ass off at the sad sickness of it all the sad sickness you grew up in.
What’s more, Tyrion worships you. You are everything he is not, he thinks. You are the one source of love, the source of light that sustained Tyrion when he was growing up in darkness.
(And you fucked him over and ruined his life and only chance at love but he doesn’t know that.)
Yet, he loves you for it. And his love, which you don’t really deserve is actually the only real love you get in this life.
You owe Tyrion.
Written July 14th
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