I am not. I am judging them by absolute moral values, and the stated values of their own world. You may note I have never, for instance, condemned the Targaryens for incest or polygamy. Murder is still murder, and your argument about holding life in less value IS taken into consideration WHERE valid. For the most part, that assertion is self-satified BS that is founded on smug assumptions of your own moral superiority. In actuality, comtemporary mores are rather permissive and debased, and there is little indication that aside from a morally baselss affectation of revulsion for killing (more probably founded on the lack of necessity or familiarity with the mechanics or process of death, than on any moral refinements, IMO), our own set of values and commonly held beliefs is more stringent than that of a medieval culture or medieval-based fantasy world.

What is this absurd point you are making? Are you operating from an assumption that a reputed arsonist and corrupt politician and a military dictator who overthrew a constitutional electoral system are morally righteous men? In fact, Crassus's & Caesar's crucifixtions were simply carrying out the accepted laws of the time! Piracy is, and always has been (until our highly moralistic and intolerant times of course ), a capital crime, punishable by any sort of authority who catches them in the act, as is revolution against the established government. Neither man instituted crucifixtion as a novelty punishment, and it was in fact, a legally prescribed method of execution for certain crimes, including violence by slaves, and possibly piracy. The only moral issues in those cases are purely personal, depending on how much of their egos and self-aggrandizement motivated their actions, which are remembered for their flamboyance, rather than their alleged cruelty.

Which is what YOU people are doing when you balk at applying it. And there is nothing tricky about it.

From a threat they themselves created! Innocent people have to die because Jaime and Cersei claim to love each other and their misbegotten children? I would agree that killing Tommen and Myrcella, at the very least, would be wrong, but it does not give Jaime and Cersei the right to commit treason and regicide on the off-chance that someone might do it.
Additionally, you are accepting the assertions of two selfish, dishonest and morally cowardly people that their motives are pure. In each case their assertions of the love of their children (one never actually made by Jaime, BTW, who never claims more than an uncle's care for a nephew or knight's concern for the well-being of his sovereign [and a laughable concern from Jaime Lannister of all people] ), are highly suspect, usually coming in order to deflect accusations and spread the blame. Cersei claims that Jaime did it without her consent, while Jaime's words and expression clearly tried to place the blame on Cersei.

That doesn't make it right.

Not a parent, and I would hope I was better than that. In any case, my theoretical failure to live up to a moral standard, as claimed by a person who has never met me, does not invalidate that standard. The accepted notion that everyone has his price does not make selling out acceptable.

Speak for yourself.

YOU are the one applying a modern outlook. If he was not in his right mind, then he had to go! He could not be responsible for his own actions, and was doubly a danger to others! The assumption that an insane person is exempt from punishment or preventive measures is a relatively MODERN legalistic notion. It is simply a legal position, and not nearly as widespread as you and your ilk seem to believe (if it WAS so acceptable, lawyers would be going to it all the time). Gareth might have had extenuating circumstances, but Ned had no way of knowing those, and was acting completely in the bounds of his moral rights and his moral and legal obligations. Gareth has been a member of the Night's Watch for a very long time, and knew full well the penalty for desertion. If he is driven so far out of his right mind that the threat of death will not deter him, what is to be done with him? If threats of death will not stop a person, only actual death will. He knew it was death to leave the Wall, but did so anyway. Whether or not he was capable of making that distinction is irrelevant - what else might he do in his state? How are we to be assured that his desperate mental illness will not drive him to lash out at innocents he perceives as a threat? Or do you think the Others inflicted a benevolent and harmless madness on him?

In any case, there is no suggestion that the Seven Kingdoms follows the M'Nauhton precedent of English Common Law or the 1980s Supreme Court decision that you can't execute a whack-job. Even if they did, in such instances, there is a legal definition of insanity that must be met, regardless of the medical or psychiatric diagnosis of the defendant. There is simply no moral issue at stake here, merely a legal one exaggerated into a moral position by a culture so indifferent to moral philosophy they cannot discern a difference between legal and moral.

And it doesn't change the fact that she is evil. In the first place, I doubt your assumption that she would automatically be committed, as you appear to be severely lacking in your understanding of psychiatry and the legal process. In the second, while it might make a difference if you are attempting to determine her fate in the afterlife, for all practical purposes, the reasons don't matter. She is evil, and her action are evil, regardless of the degree of her guilt. Were she to stand trial under a modern judiciary, she would only evade punishment if the jury was composed of willfully ignorant people not unlike yourself, who could be persuaded by her attorneys to forego the jury instructions and legal definitions of insanity and assume they knew better than legal professionals what those terms should mean. There is not the slightest suggestion that she was acting on an irresistable impulse, and her history of keeping her crimes a secret and extreme efforts to avoid the consequences of her actions plainly indicate that she knew damn well what she was up to. Whatever mental illnesses she might be suffering from, she is hardly incompetant or inculpable.



And what ARE those standards? Sure she is bad, and embracing occasions of wrongdoing, but despite being a nasty piece of work, she has only really murdered one or at the most three people, compared to the purely selfish atrocities of the others.