But Warriors Dont Show Their Heart, Until The Axe Reveals It!

But warriors don’t show their heart, until the axe reveals it!

hi ! you've said once about joffrey "it’s because every father figure he had robert jaime tyrion all fucking abused the shit out of him" and while i totally agree about robert and jaime, i've failed to see how tyrion abused joffrey. i've always thought tyrion really wanted to guide joffrey, to bring him his knowledge, to be a kingmaker. In some ways, tyrion is the best tutor joff ever had, the only who man "care". especially when we all know joffrey was really awful withtyrion.

Hi Anon,

Tyrion and Joffrey were very much in a relationship of cyclical mutual abuse: one would say/do something, the other would react in self defense, note it, then say/do something later.  Tyrion is a very subtle character, and he certainly doesn’t think that he abuses Joffrey, or at least because he’s reacting to Joffrey’s attacks on him, he thinks either that he’s defending himself or that Joffrey deserves it in some way.  And Joffrey certainly doesn’t seem to care about whether or not he’s compounding on the societal (and familial) abuse laid on Tyrion.

When we first encounter Tyrion, this is the first interaction we see between him and Joffrey:

“None,” Tyrion said. “Yet it is expected of you. Your absence has been noted.”

“The Stark boy is nothing to me,” Joffrey said. “I cannot abide the wailing of women.”

Tyrion Lannister reached up and slapped his nephew hard across the face. The boy’s cheek began to redden. 

“One word,” Tyrion said, “and I will hit you again.”

“I’m going to tell Mother!” Joffrey exclaimed.

Tyrion hit him again.  Now both cheeks flamed.  

“You tell your mother,” Tyrion told him. “But first you get yourself to Lord and Lady Stark, and you fall to your knees in front of them, and you tell them how very sorry you are, and that you are at their service if there is the slightest thing you can do for them or theirs in this desperate hour, and that all your prayers go with them. Do you understand? Do you?”

The boy looked as though he was going to cry. Instead, he managed a weak nod. Then he turned and fled headlong from the yard, holding his cheek. Tyrion watched him run.  (Tyrion I, AGOT)

Joffrey is definitely being a misogynistic little shit in this scene, in addition to showing very little sympathy to the fact that Bran is on the verge of death.  The behavior in and of itself is abominable; but hitting him is physical abuse of a child.  Additionally, when Joffrey protests (going to an authority figure who might protect him from being hit), Tyrion hits him again, and challenges that safety.  

So what’s Tyrion reacting to here?  Joffrey being rude is one thing, but I think that it’s more telling to look at earlier in the scene: 

Tyrion glanced down and saw the Hound standing with young Joffrey as squires swarmed around them.  “At least he dies quietly,” the prince replied.  “It’s the wolf that makes the noise.  I could scarce sleep last night.”

Clegane cast a long shadow across the hard-packed earth as his squire lowered the black helm over his head.  “I could silence the creature, if it pleases you,” he said through the open visor.  His boy placed a longsword in his hand.  He tested the weight of it, slicing the cold morning air.  Behind him, the yard rang with the clangor of steel on steel.

The notion seemed to delight the prince.  “Send a dog to kill a dog!” he exclaimed.  “Winterfell is so infested with wolves, the Starks would never miss one.”

Tyrion hopped off the last step onto the yard.  “I beg to differ, nephew,” he said.  "The Starks can count past six.  Unlike some princes I might name.”

Joffrey had the grace at least to blush.

“A voice from nowhere,” Sandor said.  He peered through his helm, looking this way and that.  “Spirits of the air!”

The prince laughed, as he always laughed when his bodyguard did this mummer’s face.  Tyrion was used to it.  “Down here.” (Tyrion I, AGOT)

Joffrey is cruel; Tyrion berates him; Sandor makes fun of his disability; Joffrey laughs; Tyrion retaliates.  He’s very much reacting to the ableism here, and directing his frustration at Joffrey, because Joffrey’s already crossed the line even before Sandor Clegane opened his mouth.  I’ve seen people call this “tough love” or “teaching him a lesson” and my issue with that is that if he is teaching Joffrey a lesson, he, like Robert, is using negative reinforcement.  Physical abuse and belittling Joffrey’s intelligence are things that will shape him very much, and this is the first of several such interactions over the course of the two and a half books in which Joffrey is alive.  

But of course, you also can’t talk about Tyrion abusing Joffrey without also talking about how Joffrey repeatedly is horrible to Tyrion, down to his dying moment when he hires a troupe of dwarves to entertain at his wedding expressly to humiliate Tyrion.  It’s very much cyclical.  Joffrey is reacting to all the times Tyrion called him stupid, hit him, threatened him (Tyrion does this too) and made him feel powerless.  Meanwhile, Tyrion, when he does things like this, is reacting to all the times that Joffrey–like everyone else in Westeros–belittles him for his disability and hits him precisely where it hurts.  

Now here’s the thing, especially when you get to A Clash of Kings, I do very much think there’s a lot of idealism in Tyrion.  He cares very much about how he’s viewed by the larger public–I see this as being intimately related to being starved of love from his father–and cares about how he’s remembered.  He wants to do great things and be remembered for them.  But more importantly, he wants to do the right thing (such as he perceives it).

“So what will you do, m’lord, now that you’re the Hand of the King?” Shae asked him as he cupped that warm sweet flesh.

“Something Cersei will never expect,” Tyrion murmured softly against her slender neck.  “I’ll do…justice.” (Tyrion I, ACOK)

He definitely cares about what he is doing, and sees himself as doing the right thing, even if he often walks lines that are murky morally.  And I don’t for a second deny that Joffrey is absolutely gross to Tyrion.  But I wouldn’t also think that what he wants is not to guide Joffrey.  He wants power, and he wants no one to stand in his way (hence his tussels with Cersei).  Does he want to bring Joffrey knowledge?  He probably hopes that the boy will grow up and realize how great he is, but we never see him sit down with Joffrey and train him, or even treat him as someone who might learn, undoubtedly because if he were to do so, Joffrey would continue to be gross to him and because he sees Joffrey as a vicious lost cause.  So he tries to operate around Joffrey more than anything else, and manages to do this with some success until Tywin shows up and takes the reins away from him.  

She would sooner have returned to Meereen on dragon’s wings, to be sure. But that was a desire Drogon did not seem to share.

Val did not need to smile; she would have turned men’s heads in any court in the wide world.

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                                                                   Winter is coming.