0:02 What did A Song of Ice and Fire look
0:04 like from Tywin Lannister's perspective?
0:07 Let's take a look. Hi everyone, this is
0:09 Robert. Welcome to Indeedgeek. If you
0:11 like theories, background, history, and
0:13 lore about A Song of Ice and Fire, The
0:14 Lord of the Rings, and The Witcher, then
0:18 this is the place for you. Welcome. This
0:19 is a sort of follow-up to a previous
0:22 video looking at Tywin's early life and
0:24 plan to boost House Lannister's fortunes
0:26 from the relatively lowly status they
0:29 were at when he was a child. And by the
0:31 start of A Song of Ice and Fire, Tywin
0:33 had achieved a lot. The Lannisters were
0:35 the second most powerful family in the
0:37 Seven Kingdoms, ostensibly behind only
0:39 the royal family themselves. But of
0:41 course, that still left one rung to
0:44 climb. The court in King's Landing was
0:46 full of Lannisters, Cersei, Jaime,
0:49 Lancel, Tyrek, and Lannister loyalists.
0:52 Illen Payne, Pycel, Boris, Blount,
0:54 Marinrant, and so on. But Tywin himself
0:56 stayed in Castasterly Rock as he had
0:59 done for most of the last two decades.
1:01 As was his way, he was waiting for the
1:03 right moment to arise, and then he would
1:06 act decisively. The moment arrived when
1:09 Catelyn Stark captured Tyrion at the in
1:11 at the crossroads. Things had been tense
1:13 before then, but this was a direct
1:16 attack on Lannister honor. Tywin may not
1:18 have loved Tyrion, but he couldn't allow
1:20 a Lannister to be captured like that
1:22 without being seen to respond forcibly.
1:24 And Tywin probably found out very
1:26 quickly. Even as he was being captured,
1:29 Tyrion thinks to himself that the free
1:31 rider with the gold coin in his pocket
1:33 would fly to Castasterly Rock like an
1:35 arrow. If not him, then someone else.
1:37 Riders would be after them within the
1:40 day. Birds would take wing, and surely
1:41 one of the riverlords would want to
1:43 curry favor with his father enough to
1:46 take a hand. Catelyn gives them the
1:48 slip. But Tywin does hear quickly and
1:52 responds quickly, not by obviously going
1:54 to war, but by sending the mountain and
1:56 some men dressed as briggins to pillage
1:59 their way through the Riverlands. There
2:01 was some deniability there, but still
2:03 everyone knew who was behind it. The
2:05 mountain is not exactly easily mistaken
2:08 for someone else. Remember, at this
2:10 time, Robert Baratheon was still alive
2:12 and well, and Ned Stark hand of the
2:14 king. Sending a Lannister army into the
2:16 field then would have been tantamount to
2:19 starting a civil war. And Tywin actually
2:21 wasn't after a war just then. He was
2:24 aiming to draw out Ned Stark. He rightly
2:26 judged that Ned would want to personally
2:28 lead a party out to confront the
2:30 mountain. This was, after all, an attack
2:32 on his wife's homeland and the king's
2:34 peace. Tywin thought he could capture
2:37 Ned and swap him for Tyrion. The problem
2:39 was that he didn't tell anyone in King's
2:41 Landing this plan, presumably because he
2:43 had to keep up that plausible
2:45 deniability, and sending a raven was a
2:48 bit risky. So, when Jaime hears about
2:50 Tyrion, he angrily confronts Ned on the
2:52 streets of King's Landing, leading to
2:55 Ned's injury. Jaime realized that
2:57 attacking the hand of the king was not a
2:58 good look for a member of the King's
3:00 Guard, so he rode off to the safety of
3:03 Castly Rock then, by which point the dye
3:06 was cast. Tywin then starts to amass a
3:08 couple of armies while Ned is out
3:09 injured for a week and King Robert
3:11 decides that it's a good time to go on a
3:14 long hunting trip. Finally, news arrives
3:17 that the king is dead and Ned has been
3:19 imprisoned and then finally that Rob has
3:21 called to the banners and is marching
3:24 south. That seems to have been the final
3:26 prompt for Tywin. Jaime leads an army
3:28 out of the Westerlands a week later,
3:30 winning the battle at the Golden Tooth,
3:32 then pushing on to Riverun, defeating
3:34 Edmure on the field and besieging the
3:36 castle. Meanwhile, Tywin himself with
3:39 Kevin took out two other key Riverlands
3:42 castles, Ravenree Hall and Harrenhal. He
3:44 ended up camped around the inn at the
3:47 crossroads. Why there? Well, it was a
3:49 great position to head anywhere on good
3:52 roads. King's Landing lay south on the
3:54 King's Road, the Veil of Aaron east,
3:56 Winterfell North, and Riverrun West. He
3:58 could react quickly to a fast-moving situation.
4:00 situation.
4:02 And why attack the Riverlands at all?
4:04 Well, because it was a key ally of the
4:06 North, who at the time were the only
4:08 real opponents in this war. Renley and
4:10 Stannis hadn't yet declared themselves,
4:12 though Tywin was wary of potential
4:14 attacks from either, and because it's
4:16 joined up his forces across the middle
4:18 of Westeros, from Castly Rock to King's Landing.
4:20 Landing.
4:22 Tyrion arrived at that point with his
4:24 hill tribes just in time for Tywin to
4:26 make his next move. He was delighted to
4:28 hear that the Starks were now moving
4:30 south down the king's road. He would
4:32 bring his army up to meet them. The
4:34 battle itself, the Battle of the Green
4:37 Fork, shows us Tywin's strategic mind at
4:39 work and also some of where his blind
4:42 spots are. He comes up with a plan to
4:43 place the hill tribesmen on the left of
4:46 his army, assuming that they will break
4:48 easily and further assuming that Rob,
4:50 inexperienced as he is, will overcommit
4:52 his forces there and leave himself
4:54 exposed to being encircled or
4:57 outflanked. As he says, the Stark boy is
4:59 a child. No doubt he likes the sound of
5:01 war horns well enough and the sight of
5:03 his banners fluttering in the wind, but
5:05 in the end it comes down to butcher's
5:09 work. I doubt he has the stomach for it.
5:11 As it turns out, the Hill tribesmen do
5:13 not break. And it isn't Rob in charge of
5:16 that army anyway. It is Roose Bolton, a
5:18 much more cautious general. Tywin gets
5:20 the victory, but it is far from
5:23 decisive. And soon after that, he learns
5:25 that Rob has outsmarted him, too,
5:26 sending a force over the twins,
5:28 defeating Jaime<unk>s army at the
5:30 Whispering Wood and breaking the siege
5:33 of Riverrun. More bad news followed.
5:35 Jaime is captured. Ned, a key bargaining
5:37 chip, has been beheaded and Sir Barrist
5:40 and Selme cast out of the King's Guard.
5:42 Renley has also now declared himself
5:43 king and allied himself with the
5:47 powerful Tyrells. Tywin now has a host
5:49 of issues to turn his attention to. He
5:52 would ideally have wanted to take
5:53 control in King's Landing as hand of the
5:55 king to stop Cersei from doing anything
5:58 else rash and to prepare its defenses in
6:00 case Stannis or Renley do attack there.
6:02 But if he did, he would be giving up all
6:04 the land he had claimed in the
6:06 Riverlands, giving Rob a strong grip on
6:08 the center of the continent. If he
6:10 headed west to deal with Rob's army at
6:12 Riverrun, he left the King's Road open
6:14 for Roose to head down to King's Landing
6:16 with his army of northerners. If he
6:18 stayed still, he ran the risk of being
6:20 caught in a not particularly defendable
6:22 position and caught between two or even
6:25 three armies. So, he sent Tyrion to
6:28 King's Landing to sort that mess out. We
6:29 don't have time here for a full
6:31 breakdown of Tywin's relationship with
6:33 Tyrion, but this at least shows that he
6:35 recognizes his intelligence and
6:38 political acumen. It is pure pragmatic
6:41 expediency. As he says to Tyrion later,
6:43 "There is a tool for every task, and a
6:46 task for every tool." Tyrion was clearly
6:50 the tool for that particular task. Tywin
6:52 himself with his army would move the
6:54 short distance to Harrenhal. It may not
6:56 be in the best of repair or have the
6:58 best of reputations, but it was a large,
7:00 strong castle close enough to his
7:02 original position to allow him to react
7:04 to whichever threat presented itself
7:06 next. And in particular, it guarded the
7:09 northern approach to King's Landing. He
7:11 further sends the mountain, Amry Lorch,
7:13 and Vargo Hot to double down on their
7:15 pillaging of the Riverlands. It would
7:17 cause damage to his opponents and
7:19 potentially draw Rob and Edmure out to
7:22 try to defend their bannerman.
7:24 Bad news, however, keeps coming. As
7:26 Tywin stays at Harrenhal, Stannis
7:28 declares himself and spreads the story
7:31 about Jaime and Cersei. Beric Dondarrion
7:33 refuses to die despite seemingly being
7:36 killed several times, and Rob takes a
7:37 fast-moving part of his army into the
7:40 Westerlands, destroying a new Lannister
7:42 army, being trained and winning several
7:45 battles. Tywin's apparent inactivity
7:48 here frustrates many on his side and on
7:51 Rob's. Rob had hoped to draw Tywin out
7:53 by his raids in the Westerlands. But
7:55 although it happens very much off page,
7:57 it seems that this is when Tywin starts
8:00 his alternative approach to winning the
8:02 war through diplomacy rather than on the
8:05 field of battle. Later, when Tyrion
8:07 comes to see him in the Tower of the
8:09 Hand in King's Landing, we get this exchange.
8:10 exchange.
8:13 Tywin starts, "Did you come here just to
8:14 complain of your bed chamber and to make
8:17 your lame japes? I have important
8:20 letters to finish. Important letters to
8:22 be sure. Some battles are won with
8:26 swords and spears, others with quills
8:28 and ravens.
8:30 We have to join up a lot of dots, but
8:32 there are three broad areas where this
8:35 diplomatic push works. First, with the
8:36 marriage of Rob Stark to Jane
8:39 Westerling. It seems that Tywin came to
8:41 a deal with Lady Cibil Spicer, Jane's
8:43 mother, to make it happen. We learned
8:45 some of the details about this much
8:47 later after Rob's death, when Jaime
8:49 questions Jane and Cibil about whether
8:52 Jane might be pregnant. She is not, said
8:54 Lady Cibil, as her daughter struggled to
8:57 escape. I made certain of that, as your
9:00 lord father bid me. Jaime nodded. Tywin
9:02 Lannister was not a man to overlook such
9:05 details. Unhand the girl, he said. I'm
9:08 done with her for now. As Jane fled,
9:10 sobbing down the stairs, he considered
9:12 her mother. House Westerling has its
9:14 pardon, and your brother Ralph has been
9:16 made lord of Castmir. What else would
9:19 you have of us? Your lord father
9:21 promised me worthy marriages for Jane
9:24 and her younger sister. Lords or heirs,
9:26 he swore to me, not younger sons, nor
9:29 household knights. Mention was made of a
9:32 match for my son as well. A bride from
9:34 Casterly Rock. Your lord father said
9:36 that Reel should have joy of him if all
9:39 went as we hoped. Even from the grave,
9:41 Lord Tywin's dead hand moves us all,
9:44 thinks Jaime. So, Tywin bribed House
9:46 Westing with a new lordship and some
9:49 advantageous marriages. How did Cibil
9:52 Spicer make Jane and Rob fall in love?
9:54 Well, I covered that in another video,
9:55 but suffice to say here that I think
9:58 magic and love potions were involved.
10:00 The result of that was Rob being forced
10:01 to abandon his attacks on the
10:04 Westerlands and charge back to Riveron,
10:06 then the twins, to attempt to patch up
10:08 his rocky alliance with the Freys. Which
10:10 brings us to the second focus of Tywin's
10:14 politicking. Walder Frey. He needed to
10:15 be persuaded to dispose of Rob through
10:18 what became known as the Red Wedding. It
10:20 seems that Walder had long admired
10:22 Tywin, was not averse to switching sides
10:24 for political advantage, and relished
10:27 hard negotiated deals like the one he'd
10:29 struck with Rob and Cat earlier in the
10:31 story. We can easily imagine quite a
10:33 drawn out negotiation here, perhaps
10:35 started by Tywin allowing the Frey
10:37 prisoners he held in Harrenhal to be
10:40 ransomed back. But out of all this,
10:42 Walder got a lot. Not just a pardon and
10:44 protection for House Frey from the
10:46 Lannisters, but also Emman Frey would be
10:49 made Lord of Riverun. Lancel Lannister
10:51 would be made Lord of Dar and made to
10:53 marry a Frey. Davin Lannister was also
10:56 to marry a Frey. And Joy Hill, a
10:57 Lannister bastard daughter, would marry
11:00 one of Walder's bastard sons.
11:03 The third focus of this diplomacy was
11:05 Roose Bolton, who would be made new
11:07 warden of the North. Again, we don't
11:08 know exactly when this started,
11:10 certainly not with any commitment from
11:11 Roose before the Battle of the
11:13 Blackwater, but we can see evidence of
11:16 it developing. In particular, when Jaime
11:18 is at Harrenhal and Vargo Hot is cut off
11:21 his hand, Roose decides to send him on
11:23 to Tywin with an escort of Bolton men
11:25 rather than back to rob his king, but he
11:28 is very concerned that Tywin might think
11:30 that he was responsible. Roose doesn't
11:33 spell it out, but Jaime understands what
11:35 Roose is saying. He wants to stay on the
11:38 right side of Tywin Lannister.
11:41 Vargo Hote's crime is mine, says Roose,
11:44 or may seem so in your father's eyes.
11:48 And therein lies my small difficulty. He
11:50 gazed at Jaime, his pale eyes
11:54 unblinking, expectant, chill. I see,
11:57 thinks Jaime. You want me to absolve you
11:59 of blame, to tell my father that this
12:02 stump is no work of yours? Jaime
12:05 laughed. Later, Roose sends a third of
12:07 his army, all Stark loyalists, to their
12:09 deaths at Duskondale in an apparent move
12:12 to show his new loyalties. And out of it
12:14 all, the Boltons got control of the
12:17 North. So that is Tywin's strategy for
12:18 dealing with Rob Stark and the
12:21 Riverlands. The net gain for him is not
12:23 just elimination of an enemy, but also
12:24 placing allies and politically
12:26 advantageous marriages throughout the
12:29 Riverlands and the North. But as I said,
12:31 that diplomacy by Raven took place over
12:33 several months, culminating in the Red
12:35 Wedding. Tywin may have kept his hands
12:38 clean there, but he was very much a part
12:40 of it. It wouldn't have happened without
12:41 his involvement.
12:44 Back in Harrenhal, he does finally make
12:45 a move west when word reaches him of
12:48 Renley's death. Judging that Stannis
12:49 would now be kept busy for a while
12:51 finishing off the siege of Storm's End
12:53 and trying to merge his and Renley's
12:55 armies, he heads off to tackle Rob's
12:56 army, who were at that point still
12:58 proving a problem in the Westerlands.
13:01 Not that he gets far. Edmure marches out
13:03 of Riverrun to stop him crossing the Red
13:06 Fork River, which he does. Fortuitously
13:08 for Tywin, this allows news to reach him
13:10 quicker that Stannis had taken Storm's
13:12 End quicker than expected and was
13:14 preparing to sail for King's Landing
13:17 very soon. Tywin was needed back there.
13:19 He marches his army back to the
13:20 headquarters of the Blackwater Rush,
13:22 where he joins forces with the Tyrells,
13:25 newly signed up to his side. Although
13:28 Tywin was surely involved here, this was
13:30 largely done at Tyrion's instigation and
13:32 through Littlefinger as intermediary,
13:34 offering Joffrey as husband to Marjgery.
13:36 The newly joint army then heads down
13:39 river, arriving at King's Landing just
13:40 in time to break Stannis's attacking
13:43 force. The chain and wildfire had done a
13:45 great job in slowing the assault, but
13:47 the arrival of the Lannister and Tyrell
13:49 army was the thing that really turned
13:52 the tide of the battle. Tywin then takes
13:54 up his office again as hand of the king
13:57 and carries on with his plotting. And we
13:59 should pause briefly to acknowledge here
14:02 that Tywin had turned the tide of that
14:04 war with astonishing efficiency and
14:06 brutality. After the Red Wedding, the
14:08 threat from the north was over. Stannis
14:10 had also retreated to Dragonstone, his
14:12 tail between his legs, a diminished
14:14 threat. Renley was dead, and the
14:16 Greyjoys were focusing their attentions
14:19 far from King's Landing. It wasn't all
14:21 down to him, but it must have felt like
14:24 a huge victory. Finally, he had achieved
14:26 his ambition to make the Lannisters the
14:27 most powerful family in the Seven
14:30 Kingdoms. His grandson was the king. He
14:32 was the hand, and there was no serious
14:35 opposition to their rule. Of course,
14:38 hubris can be a terrible thing. The next
14:40 few months show Tywin trying to cement
14:43 Lannister rule. Tyrion is made master of
14:45 coin, another role he is well suited to,
14:47 but Tyrion sees it as an insulting
14:50 demotion. Tyrion is also married off to
14:52 Sansa Stark, giving the Lannisters a
14:53 claim to Winterfell and blocking a
14:55 Tyrell plot to marry Sansa to Willis
14:59 Tyrell. He has the sword Ice reforged
15:01 into two smaller Valyrian steel swords,
15:03 one for Jaime and one for Joffrey.
15:05 Marjgerie is married to Joffrey, then
15:08 engaged to Tommen, Oberin Martell,
15:10 welcomed onto the small council. It is
15:12 perhaps ironic that at this moment of
15:14 the height of Lannister power, it is
15:16 Tywin's children that frustrate his
15:19 plans more than anyone else. Jaime gives
15:21 away the Valyrian steel sword he has
15:23 given and refuses his father's order to
15:24 leave the king's guard and become Lord
15:27 of Castly Rock. Cersei accuses, then
15:30 frames Tyrion for Joffrey's death,
15:31 leading to the trial by combat and
15:34 Tyrion being found guilty. Jaime
15:38 releases him. Then Tyrion kills Tywin.
15:40 We don't know what Tywin would have done
15:42 had he lived. Probably dealt more
15:44 competently with the Iron Bank debt
15:46 issue, kept the Tyrell Alliance solid,
15:48 and turned his attention to the other
15:50 threats to Lannister rule. The Greyjoys,
15:52 Stannis still, and in time young Griff
15:55 and Dany. We probably catch a flavor of
15:58 it when Kevin is briefly King's Regent,
15:59 though one wonders whether eventually
16:01 one of Tywin's enemies would have caught
16:03 up with him. There are hints that the
16:05 Red Viper was already poisoning him, and
16:07 surely Varys would have tried to deal
16:10 with him, too. But of course, in the
16:13 end, it was Tyrion. And we get one last
16:15 insight into Tywin's character before he
16:18 dies. Sheay, the sex worker Tywin had
16:19 banned Tyrion from bringing to King's
16:22 Landing, was in Tywin's bed. The austere
16:25 image Tywin presented to the world was
16:28 not what he was really like. That and
16:30 Tywin's response to Tyrion asking about
16:32 what his father had done to his other
16:34 love many years earlier with the trigger
16:36 that finally pushed Tyrion over the
16:40 edge. But if it hadn't been Tyrion, it
16:42 surely would have been someone else.
16:44 Tywin finally reached his goal of
16:46 ultimate power in the Seven Kingdoms.
16:49 But at what cost? He had no friends,
16:51 just allies and family. And when they
16:54 turned on him, it was over. Ultimately,
16:56 Tywin was the victim of his own
17:00 ruthlessness and double standards.
17:01 If you'd like to see more A Song of Ice
17:03 and Fire videos like this, there's a
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17:13 for watching. That's all for this time.
