I've read them a few times. - Edit 1
Before modification by Werthead at 21/03/2010 01:48:57 PM
So if you're a selfish jerk with no concern for the consequences to others, murder is no longer evil?
Well your repeated use of the term evil, which is in itself extremely limiting, does make the argument difficult to carry out. Remember this not the WHEEL OF TIME where evil is a sort of taint that seeps into people from a supernatural origin. There are only people, morality and motivations, and no-one's motivation is to be evil for the sake of it.
Jaime and Cersei tried to kill Bran (well Jaime did, Cersei was against it) because they feared he would expose them and the two of them and their three children would die horribly as a result. The protection of Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella is Cersei's primary motivation offsetting everything else, and although she takes it to pathological extremes, it isn't the case of her being 'evil' for the sake of it.
Jaime's evil acts in the books in fact are a lot harder to define. He killed Eddard's guards (in battle, although outnumbered) in revenge for Eddard's wife taking his brother hostage. He killed Aerys to save King's Landing from being blown sky high. As already mentioned, he did try to murder Bran but then his fate and the fate of his sister and his children was on the line. That doesn't offset the evil of the act, but does at least rationalize it by his own standards (and his crime was, if not forgiven, at least commuted by Bran's mother when she released him from Riverrun). The other people Jaime killed in the books (Karstark's sons, for example) were in warfare and battle.
Plus later on, Jaime did repent his actions and swore a new oath to uphold the honour of the Kingsguard and his former promise to Cat, which against the odds he has fulfilled so far (by taking Riverrun without bloodshed and sparing the castle garrison and survivors).
In what world is "cruel and uncaring" not evil? HE IS A F***ING CHILD MURDERER! Or did you think he dug up two corpses that died of natural causes to hang over the gates of Winterfell? He MURDERED and SKINNED the children of a woman with whom he had a casual sexual dalliance during his time as them Starks' hostage, placed them over the wall, murdered his own man to cover up the truth, and then executed the kennelmaster for his own crime! On WHAT scale is this not a string of evil actions, compounded and piled atop each other? He never spared Bran and Rickon, he simply was outsmarted and failed to catch them. They were alive in his captivity not out of any inclination towards mercy, but as hostages.
Fair point that Theon's actions can be considered evil (the two children were the children of the miller Theon passed earlier on in his hunt for the children). However, Theon did know that Bran and Rickon were hiding in the crypts. He just chose not to pursue them down there. Does that act redeem his evil elsewhere (probably not, although his acts in ADWD will be interesting to observe based on this)? Probably not. Your point here is a good one.
She still had no business killing the deserter. He was beyond the Seven Kingdoms, and she had no lawful authority. But that's what Ned Stark teaches his kids, right? "When you see someone who belongs dead, accompany them into the dark and murder them by stealth, even if they are not doing you any harm." And her reasons don't matter - she is still a murderer, who is joining an organization of people who commit murder for money. They can spin all the stories they like about avenging wicked step-mothers. The actions we see of a Faceless Man in the books include murdering an elderly man at the behest of his reprehensible and irredeemable brother, murdering a student to infiltrate the Citadel, and murdering a servant because he aroused the ire of a child.
At this stage Arya believes Bran and Rickon to be dead and knows that Sansa is a captive or missing. That leaves her as the senior-most Stark still at liberty as far as she knows, and the punishment of a deserter from the Night's Watch falls on her (as it fell on Ned to execute Gared in the prologue to the first book).
By modern standards, no, you wouldn't pursue and execute a traitor in a foreign nation without some sort of extradition process (unless you're Russian, of course, and think you can get away with it). But, as should have been made clear, the books are not set in a modern setting.
The Faceless Men are certainly a murderous and ruthless organisation, despite their shapeshifting friendly-seeming old men tutors. They did claim to cause the Doom as well because of the actions of the slave overseers, an event that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents, if not millions including the Bleeding Years that followed, across two continents. Certainly they are not good people, despite their religious justifications.
Again, bullcrap. He is evil because of WHAT he did, not why he did it. And you don't even have the PoV trap excuse to protect your citing of the given reasons of a man who is a notorious and admitted liar. He is NOT doing this for amusement, but for his own aggrandizement and self-gratitifcation of his resentments, grudges and lusts nurtured for over a decade. Either way, it does not matter. He is evil because of his betrayals, murders, and conspiracies to commit or abet or conceal others' crimes.
But using your 'evil acts' citation, Littlefinger caused the War of the Five Kings almost single-handed (of course, Illyrio and Varys were going to trigger a war as well, but not until a year or two later), orchestrated Joffrey's death which has now ultimately triggered a renewal of the conflict and (possibly inadvertantly) set the scenes for a massive religious conflageration. In terms of deaths caused in the books, Littlefinger probably outstrips almost everyone else combined. His only challenger may be Daenerys, for the war and death she has brought to Slaver's Bay.