That is an absurd distinction. In the first place, aside from the Dark One, no one in WoT is evil in that manner either. They simply want what they perceive to be best for themselves (in general, immorality) and are not at all scrupulous about the means they are willing to use to get it. Asmodean, for example, was not evil for evil's sake, he simply wanted to avoid dying, and didn't care whom he hurt to get what he wanted. Rahvin appears to have insecurities and rejection issues, and was willing to commit rape to assuage them. Lanfear, Mesaana & Semirhage wanted the power, recognition or license they perceived as their due. Ishamael might have made a conscious choice to align himself with evil for its own sake, but he seems to reject definitions of morality or right and wrong, or else is so disturbed by the cosmology of the Wheel of Time (and rightfully so, IMO), that he is willing to end it all. He's basically Buddha, but taking a different approach to the same issue.

In the second place, you would appear to be rejecting the idea that evil could exist in the real world, since we don't have a Padan Fain or Tash or Sauron or Dark One or Morgoth or dark side of the Force. Which is absurd. By your definition, Hitler is not evil, since he did not set out to be that way. He simply sought to remedy what he considered wrong.

No one makes Satan's choice from Paradise Lost ( "evil be thou my good" etc), but that does not mean there is not evil in the real world or in a fantasy world that lacks a tangible anthropromorphic menace.

Since we've established that no one does that, such arguments are meaningless. She takes actions that are utterly indefensible and completely self-serving and your absurd acceptance of her rationalizations do not change that. Was it the threat to her children that drove her to murder her childhood friend? Was it the threat to her children that drove her to betray her husband and thwart the line of succession to the throne? Or to abort her child by him out of sheer spite?

EVIL! What is so hard about that? Committing murders of people who had no responsibility for an act, in a disproportionate amount of harm for that act is acceptable in your lights? I guess you would shrug it off if your neighbor disembowled your dog in order to warn you that your leaves were blowing on his lawn? The Starks had killed no one, and Jaime specifically eschewed harming Ned, who claimed sole responsibility for arresting Tyrion (which, let us not forget, he had a perfectly legal right to do, as the son of a former Hand of the King, and Royal servitor of two decades should know very well). He chose to murder innocents to intimidate people into forsaking their lawful responsibilities when those touched on people he felt guilty for wronging as a teenager.

As if that was the only way. Not only that, he knew about the preparations of the pyromancers and alerted no one to the threat, out of pique that people who were in complete ignorance of his reasons diapproved of his actions. People use the scenario of a ticking time bomb to support expediant measures like torture, by in Jaime's case, he simply murdered the bombers, but left the bombs to sit where anyone else could set them off by accident or on purpose. He shows in the books that he has enough moral development to be ashamed of his crimes, no matter what rationalization he might give, or posture of indifference he might affect, so why do you simply take his assertion that he was trying to save the city at face value? He shows that he is still haunted by his actions deep down inside, and knows his wrongdoing for what it is, so it is entirely plausible that he simply found an excuse to vent his misguided frustrations against Aerys for the failure of his plot to use the Kingsguard to gain better access to Cersei.

HIS standards? We are accepting the personal self-serving rationalizations of a sociopath and unabashed pervert, liar and traitor as a measuring stick for his actions?! Don't give me that crap about his children, when he himself repeatedly disclaims any affection or feeling for them, beyond the avuncular, and notes that the only affect Joffrey's death has on him is to wonder how it will affect his sexual partner. Even if it was a genuine concern, as in the case of Cersei, he was the one who place them in danger by his own willful actions in defiance of all known standards of morality. It does not justify his compounded evil actions in furtherance of his wrongdoing.

And when you find me a place where I (or anyone reliable in the books) have ever asserted that such acts were evil or immoral, I might give a damn. The urgency of a mother to protect her surviving children does not "commute" in anyway the guilt or liability of his attempted murder of one. Whatever decision is made by a woman forced to choose between justice for a dead child and the survival of two living ones, the threat or guilt attached to any of the actions which endangered any of those children is not ameliorated in the least. Jaime's crimes against Bran were not for Catelyn to forgive, and her expediency in trading him for her daughters does not count as forgiveness in the least. And if she had forgiven him, all she could forgive him was for the suffering she felt at the harm done a loved one. He has not been forgiven for the assault and attempted murder, anymore than if Cersei had told him it was okay afterwards. Her own balking at murdering Bran means nothing. Trying to kill him is an evil action, and claiming afterwards that you wished someone had not done it is in no way, shape or form a virtuous act (more likely a bit of hypocrisy, since it works out in her favor and she is able to condemn it sanctimoniously because her hands are clean). Further comments to the effect that she wished he would die to end his and his parents' suffering are similarly suspect, as is Jaime's attempt to lay the blame at Cersei's feet with his look of disgust at her and claim that he does it for love.

He threatened to murder still more children to induce the defenders to surrender! His ability to deprive them of their family home and dispossess them from their inheritance for the crime of defending themselves against his father's aggression and atrocities without losing any more soldiers does not count as a good deed or morally upstanding act. In fact, he accepted that he would have gone ahead and attcked anyway, if they had not surrendered peaceably. His high station and fortunate birth gives him the ability to fob off his murders and such on his underlings, it does not relieve him of the responsibility for them. By your lights, a man with a long history of selfish, illegal and unlawful acts rationalizing his ability to keep within the narrow technical letter of a promise, while failing to live up to the most important aspects of it, is acting morally, and never mind that he is still doing harm in taking the property of the Tullys and abetting the enemies of the Starks, while sanctimoniously claiming that he is keeping his oath. There is also the issue of his supposed repentance coming after he lacks the power to do further wrongs. In fact, he never shows any sign of repentance, he simply is a little more cautious about lashing out violently now that he entirely lacks the means to do so! He abjures his sister when she rejects him, mocks him, dismisses him from her company and drives him to uncover her own infidelities. Hardly a sincere act of repentance for his past wrongs in that regard. He foregoes the most extreme vengeance possible (in accordance with his ruhtless father's advice on best winning hearts and minds) and refrains from further atrocity... now that he has no further need of such means and his war is won! If he is so sincere in his repentance, why does he not confess his adultery and paternity of Tommen and support Stannis' claim to the throne? He could surely broker a deal for the continued survival of his neice and nephew, counting of her new in-laws or a permanent exile to remove their threat to Stannis rule.

Werthead's official position: Murdering two children CAN BE CONSIDERED evil. In what absurd fairy-tale universe do you live where you equivocate and have doubts about such things? I may get credit for naming the PoV trap, but I cannot conceive that anyone could be so ensnared as to make child murder for diversionary purposes merely a talking point to be conceded in a debate about the nature of evil.

PROBABLY not!?! Even if I accept your absurd assertion that he consciously allowed threats to his reign to live unmolested & unmonitored beneath his roof, his balking at killing two children he was raised with as if a brother could not by even the most charitable and desperate exaggeration be said to approach the wanton slaughter of innocent children and mutilation of their corpses to conceal his failure to apprehend fugitives. His theoretical mercy to a couple of characters who happen to be the protagonists does not change the facts of his deeds.

And on what do you base the assertion that he knew they were in the crypts? I actually went and read all his chapters in aCoK after their "deaths" and the only hint I could possibly interpret in that manner was his refusal to let Maester Luwin bury the bodies there. Since he needed the HEADS to show everyone that he killed them, his refusal is easily explained. Less understandable is his not procuring them to stave off the wrath of his beseigers. If Beth Cassel was insufficient to call off an attack, surely Bran or Rickon would have worked. It cannot have been the embarrassment of revealing his subterfuge, as he was willing to withstand the contempt of his best warrior to threaten Ser Rodrik with hanging his daughter. In addition, he had to know that the emergence of the Stark boys from the crypt at any time would surely have been able to rouse the castle against his men. Simply put, there is no reason to extrapolate such knowledge of their presence from his acitons, nor is there sufficient evidence of his knowledge of their survival to take that as a given. And even if he did know, it proves nothing regarding his morality. You get points for saving lives, and you lose them for taking lives. Refraining from killing people in your power does NOT count as good, much less ameliorate evil.


Not even remotely. She is not, and was not the Lord of Winterfell, nor had she any prospect of being so. Even if Ned Stark himself had been there, he would not have been right in murdering Dareon according to the laws of a foreign country.

Oh, and the Sealord of Braavos would have no problems with people pursuing criminals into his city and murdering them? When Braavos was actually FOUNDED as a refuge for those fleeing coerced labor? Where on earth do you think the modern world comes from? There was not simply a magic wand waved at the beginning of the industrial revolution or the so-called Enlightenment or Renaissance periods. In fact, the legal concepts of hot pursuit, sovereignty and jurisdiction go back even further than the Middle Ages! In the Medieval times, for instance, a criminal fleeing a lord's justice was able to go to a town or city and remain there until a statute of limitation expired (typically a year and a day, depending on the town's charter) and walk free of his crime. Just because the series is set in a High Middle Ages equivalent period does not make it a lawless free-for-all.
Firstly, the right of the Lord of Winterfell to execute deserters from the Watch is not exclusive, but almost certainly is bound to whoever's lands he is caught on. If he was caught on any other lord's land, they would not hold him for the Lord of Winterfell, they would do the deed themselves or pass him along to a higher authority if that was what the law or their own inclinations demanded. The execution of deserters is a matter of lawful authority, and Gareth in that case, just happened to fall into the jurisdiction of Lord Eddard, because that is where he was caught.
Secondly, this right to execute deserters does not devolve on family members, unless they are duly authorized to act in the Lord's name. Arya is neither the ruler of Winterfell, whatever her claim to the place, nor is she ever authorized to act on his behalf.
Thirdly, desertion is not a moral absolute, but a legal issue, and there is not the slightest indication that Braavos upholds the laws of Westeros in such matters. In Braavos, the laws of Westeros are irrelevant, and Arya has no rights or privileges as a noble or lawful representative of the Seven Kingdoms or the Lord of the North that the government of Braavos does not explicitly recognize.

And that's why he is evil. I was not questioning that, I was challenging your implication that he did it just for fun, and calling into question the relevance of this alleged motivation.