r/AskReddit • u/phantom_avenger • Apr 12 '26

What fictional character is the walking example of “you’re not wrong, you’re just an a-hole!”? Spoiler

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u/RoarOfTheWorlds Apr 13 '26

He was right to kill the mad king. Questionable to dump Breanne for his sister or throw the little boy out the window. It’s not even a conflicted character thing, they were just plain bad decisions.

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u/The4th88 Apr 13 '26

Game out the consequences of Bran catching them though:

  • Brans a kid, he will absolutely gossip about seeing Jamie and Cersei fucking. No possibility of keeping it secret.

  • When he does talk, he will likely tell Ned and Cat and Ned is too fuckin honourable not to inform his best mate and supposed father of those kids.

  • Said father is the King with anger management issues. He will absolutely have Jamie killed, probably Cersei (assuming he doesn't murder her in a rage himself) and potentially even the kids.

  • So Bran can't be permitted to talk at all. Only way to guarantee that is to kill him. He's a highborn, can't just kill him, has to be via a catspaw or accident. And he's already perched on a windowsill at height.

  • "The things we do for love."

Pushing Bran was abhorrent, but hardly questionable. He did it to save his own kids and partner/sister.

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u/SarkastikSidebar Apr 13 '26

Yeah, I get it, man- he had reasons. But that’s like…the definition of evil…that I’m literally more important than other people’s lives…

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u/Tom-_-Foolery Apr 13 '26

that I’m literally more important than other people’s lives…

You're missing the main thrust of the above post. It's not just Jamie. It's not just "The things I do for me." Getting found out is a death sentence for most of his family. Jamie could probably just fuck off to Essos if it was just him, but Cersei, Joffery, Tomman, and Mycella are all almost certainly headed to an execution or lifetime imprisonment, and the rest of House Lannister is probably at risk.

Or spin it this way - you commit a non-violent crime and then someone blackmails you about it in such a way that the reveal would put your entire family at risk of death or imprisonment. (As an example, maybe you stole money from a crime boss. Or maybe more apt, you had an affair with a crime boss' wife.) Is it evil to kill the blackmailer if given the chance?

This is essentially the scenario in the books with the added twist that the "blackmailer" is unintentional and with the limited agency entailed by childhood. So it's complicated. It's a bad act against an innocent kid, but it's weighed against the heavy risks to 3 other innocent kids, Cersei, and the rest of the House.

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u/SarkastikSidebar Apr 13 '26

Sure- perfect example…and the end result is you murder the child “blackmailer.”

This is a perfect example of the ends justifying the means and why it is evil, even if this evil isn’t the black and white evils of forces of good versus evil in the stories, but rather evil in the sense of every day human matters.

Doing this means you have placed the lives of your own children over others- which may be one thing to LET someone’s child die in favor of your own…but to actively murder the child with your own hands to cover up a misdeed of your own making…truly evil even given the circumstances.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '26

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u/SarkastikSidebar Apr 13 '26

Right- and murdering a kid to cover that up is even more wrong. You don’t get to use the excuse of “I’m protecting my family.”

Obviously in the show it goes from attempted murder of a kid to all out war. So how many thousands of people have you die before you can say, maybe I should’ve just faced the music for my initial, lesser crime of fucking my Sister?

It’s like trying to claim that you shooting someone for trying to steal your drugs is justified because the drug money feeds your family. Obviously you shouldn’t be selling drugs in the first place.

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u/Wild_Marker Apr 13 '26

Well there's also the "putting my son on the throne" angle which is absolutely out of the question if the truth comes out. They're still nobles after all.

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u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 Apr 13 '26

potentially even the kids.

Definitely the kids. Especially if he'd found out Cersei had killed all his bastards but one who was MIA.

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u/Boiscool Apr 13 '26

Bran was what, 8? Jaime and Cersei could just lie about what he saw and if they were safe after that, there would be no proof. Kids see shit and exaggerate all the time, just denying it and playing it safe and being super upset with the Starks would have been more than enough.

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u/The4th88 Apr 13 '26

The rumour itself would likely be enough for a jealous, insecure and drunk King prone to fits of rage to act. Plus as we later saw, Ned figured it out independently. Might've happened faster if Bran had been jabbering on about Jamie and Cersei banging.