I Fear I Am Growing Quite Fond Of You, Gwayne Hightower

i fear i am growing quite fond of you, gwayne hightower

i love my lesbian divorce drama

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SER SIMON STRONG YOU ARE VERY DEAR TO ME

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My toxic trait is making edits instead of writing

The poem is Cassandra by Friedrich Schiller (translated by Daniel Platt)

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Do you think Tywin truly loves Alysanne? I suppose beneath all the anger and disapproval, he does have some begrudging respect for her. He taught her how to be politically astute and she lived up to it.

Ooo this is a good question! The short answer is that he loves her to an extent. His love has limits. He loves her so long as she is useful to him and playing by his rules. 

I don’t think Tywin is capable of loving someone unconditionally. Maybe he truly loved Joanna, we don’t know. We only have the accounts of the people who knew him then, two of those accounts being his children who were very young. 

I think his love for Jaime and Cersei is conditional and hinged on their usefulness as pawns for his own ambition. His reaction to Jaime’s capture, in my opinion, is not one of outrage for his son but rather outrage for the perceived slight against him and House Lannister. 

This extends to Alysanne. He loved her when she was in Winterfell, when she listened to what he taught and heeded his words. He loved her as a political pawn, a toehold in the distant North. He loved the idea that he would have an (at that point in time) obedient and biddable granddaughter as the Lady of Winterfell. So long as Alysanne did as directed, she was worthy of his “love.” 

You're right in that he certainly respects her political acumen, but he does not love her in the way we understand familial love. He might have said he loved her at one point (pre-fall of Casterly Rock), but he does not love Alysanne the woman. He loves Alysanne the pawn. If she were to die he would not grieve his granddaughter, he would grieve the lost potential her position would grant him. 

TMTTW’s version of the Red Wedding is a good example of this. His concern was not for her happiness. Tywin’s goal was not only to end the war but also to bring her back under his control by any means necessary. Jaime is right in that Tywin would have expected Alysanne to eventually fall back in line and bend to his will. And if she refused and Tywin no longer had use for her, he would have discarded her. Perhaps to the Silent Sisters or to confinement in the Rock. 

(There is also the angle that the Red Wedding was, in part, an opportunity for him to punish Alysanne for her taking of Casterly Rock. That was a huge blow to him, and Tywin cannot countenance an affront of that nature.)

So Tywin might say he loves her (and his children), but his version of love is not truly love. I would venture to say that Tywin has, at the very least, narcisstic tendencies. Like Cersei, he sees his children (and grandchildren) as extensions of himself. It is part of why he hates Tyrion - Tyrion is the most like him, and he despises what he sees. 

Thank you for the question! I always love the chance to ramble about things like this ❤️❤️❤️

Plotting a new fic let's goooo