Writ Small: Character Evolution in The Winds of Winter Part 1: The Good and the Neutral

A Song of Ice and Fire is nothing if not a character study painted against the canvass of politics, war and culture. George RR Martin is fond of paraphrasing Faulkner’s “The human heart in conflict is the only thing worth writing about.” As such, we expect that GRRM will continue to develop characters in The Winds of Winter. But interesting for our purposes, George RR Martin seems to enjoy contrasting and comparing character growth to historical and currently-living characters in the series. Characters often wonder about whether they’re the Smiling Knight, Tywin Lannister or Doran Martell.

But in contrast to the sometimes-popular view that all the characters are moving into dark moral and plot paths in The Winds of Winter, Nfriel, SomethingLikeaLawyer, Militant Penguin and I believe that there are some who are moving towards more positive or neutral directions. As such, part 1 focuses on the good. Thus was born a podcast idea and topic.

So, today, we analyze the following POV characters:

• Tyrion & how he’s moving from Mushroom to Lann the Clever
• Jaime & how he’s evolving from the Smiling Knight to Ser Arthur Dayne
• Bran’s wolf-knight to knight of the mind development
• Theon’s surprising redemption & movement from Reek to Torgon the Latecomer
• Asha’s pine-cone evolution & her desire not to be a boneheaded Iron Kraken.
• Arianne’s movement from Cersei to Doran Martell

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And if you’d like to listen along with your notes, go ahead and head on over to this link to read our manic google documenting. 

Thanks for listening!