Captain of the Guards: "Areo Hotah." We're in Dorne now, and it's just as fascinating and differentiated as every other new place we're being introduced to. I feel like, just from what has already been introduced in this small space that Dorne could be a novel all by itself. Martin introduces a dozen new characters, three of which are Oberyn's (The Red Viper) daughters. It's interesting that they all live up to the "Sand Snake" name, but are all completely different people personality wise. Arianne is possibly a big character. Hotah appears to be the Dornish version of Davos at the moment. He fits the model of the stalwart, upright Boy Scout who lacks in deeper complexity, and ultimately serves merely as a lens through which to view far more interesting and complicated characters. I say that, by the way, perfectly well liking Davos (who I hope is still alive? I can't remember if we ever heard what happened to him), and even liking Hotah. I'm just not particularly impressed, in a literary sense, by their characters. Doran is old and wise, a stereotype perhaps, to give us this wise old man that the people don't really appreciate, and likely won't appreciate until after his (impending) demise. It seems that no one can really die in these novels without a powder keg going off. Remove the character deaths for a moment from the novels, and pretend you live in Westeros. Now look at everyone who has died. Seems like every national, regional, and even folk hero on the entire continent has either been murdered or died of natural causes since these novels began. So of course Doran is going to die. And of course Dorne is going to do something batshit crazy. And you know what? Crazy as it sounds, at this point I kind of want them to go batshit crazy, because this novel has turned me into enough of a voyeur to want to see it all fall apart just to see how the characters deal with it. I'm utterly fascinated by this. Like I said, I think Dorne could be a novel all by itself, and I'm fascinated to see where this goes.
Cersei: So there's my gut reaction to having Cersei as a viewpoint character (and that reaction is this: BLEH!), and there's my analytical reaction. It's amazing, it's her first chapter and already we can see her totally unraveling. She reminds me of Azula from Avatar: TLA. She sees enemies everywhere, and is obsessed with her hold on power. I wonder how long it will take her to descend into total madness. That will be interesting if it happens since the Lannisters helped replace the Targaryens with madness as a casus belli. There are some interesting gender issues going on with Cersei as well. She's an extremely masculine woman in her behavior. Look at how she behaved with Robert, how aggressive she was with Jaime after he was unhanded, and her immediate attempts to snatch hold of power after Tywin's death. She's one of the boys, and that's how she wants to be treated. She wants Casterly Rock, she wants the throne, she wants her son to live on and take after her (or to act as her puppet so she can rule in his name). She makes an interesting comparison to a character like Brienne, who is also a highly masculinized character, but as a warrior, and also from a physical perspective. Her strength is noteworthy in that she could stand up to Jaime Lannister and win a tournament of knights. Her morality is derived from the same sort of code of knighthood that Sansa reveres so much but that is also somewhat removed from the gritty reality of knighthood. There's more to Brienne, and I see that she's a viewpoint character now, so I guess I'll have more to work with. But in general I think Brienne and Cersei are fascinating to compare, as they are both masculine female characters, but in completely different ways.
Usually when I do these posts, I take notes in a notebook while I read a chapter, then I write the blog maybe a day later basing it off the notes, but editing as I go to throw my off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts in. This time I was going just off notes that I wrote a couple weeks ago when I read these two chapters. So it might be a little more bare bones than usual.
