Jaime Lannister and the Stage Coach Dilemma
Warning: Possible spoilers for those reading or watching Game of Thrones. If you’re up-to-date with the television series, then nothing in here will spoil anything. If you’re not, then you probably don’t want to read further. Also, if you’re going to get frustrated with Game of Thrones references, you also might not want to read this one. – RK
Paarfi of Roundwood [to the camera] We’re here today with Jaime Lannister, son of Tywin Lannister. Jaime, more commonly known as the Kingslayer, has agreed to this short interview, for which we are of course both honored and grateful. [Turning to his guest] Greetings, Kingslayer…
Jaime Lannister: Please, call me Jaime…
PofR: Oh, such a presumption would be the height of insolence…
JL: You didn’t let me finish. I was saying, “Please, call me Jaime, or I will end you.”
PofR: Ah. Yes… Right, then, Jaime. Again, I greet you, and thank you for taking the time for this interview.
JL: Of course.
PofR: Let’s get right to it.
JL: Let us.
PofR: Indeed. Here is my first question. It has recently come to our attention that you’re regicide was, in point of fact, done in the service of a greater good, preventing the immolation of King’s Landing on the orders of the mad King Areys. As is now well known (to viewers), the King would have laid waste to the city had you not killed him instead of protecting him, as was your sworn duty. Yet you have allowed yourself to be branded oath-breaker and, in many circles, scoundrel. Why have you not let it be known that the act for which you are most famous was in fact a piece of moral nobility rather than villainy?
JL: Ah, my dear Paarfi. While your gift with the quill is unmatched… [Parfi bows low at the compliment]… you have let yourself become confused regarding an important matter of diction.
PofR: Indeed?
JL: It pains me to say it, but you have. You see, what I did might, I suppose, have been called “noble,” but it was in no way “moral.” I can explain in two words. I won’t bore you with recounting the well-known “Stage Coach Dilemma”…
PofR: …in which people judge it morally wrong to throw the knave with the extra-large broadsword on his back off the rock outcropping to stop the horses from trampling the unsuspecting five squires in the horses’ path…
JL: …which illustrates that one must be careful to distinguish acts, on the one hand, that lead to the achievement of the greater good from, on the other hand, acts that fit our ideas about what is “moral.” From this we see that achieving the greater good and acting morally are in no ways synonyms.
PofR: Ah, I see. So your act was, let us say, “altruistic,” producing benefits to many, but immoral, violating a moral rule. Well, several rules, actually…
JL: Just so…
PofR: And how has the immorality of the act affected you?
JL: How can you ask? In the usual way… That is [Jaime sighs]… everyone is against me.
PofR: Well, not everyone…
JL: Well, true. You know, before the war broke out, feelings were mixed. Some were willing to overlook my deeds because, well, otherwise I might do violence unto them. And, by and large, close family members of mine were willing to overlook my immoral actions… Still, the prevalence of the moniker kingslayer, was in many circles not intended as a compliment. Then, with the war, coalitions and alliances, as you know, matter a great deal more than the details of who killed whom… So, now most people – especially lions and our allies – are willing to overlook my history with respect to a certain immoral – but, as you say, possibly noble – act.
PofR: Well, not all immoral acts are created equal…
JL: Have a care, my young friend…
PofR: Well, I am in no ways young, but let us pass on to this next issue. Let us speak, perhaps, only in hypotheticals…
JL: As long as we confine ourselves to them…
PofR: Suppose that you had, ah, close personal relations with a blood relative…?
JL: If you mean [unprintable] then just say [unprintable]!
PofR: Yes, just so. If you had had those sort of relations with your sister, Cirsei… which, I hastily add, is somewhat understandable given that you spent a part of your junior years away from her at… Crakehall with Lord Sumner, if I have it right…?
JL: You do…
PofR: Well, we have it on good authority that living apart from a close relative – especially a close relative with the sorts of charms possessed by your twin sister – can cause even the noblest of us to, shall we say, become quite helplessly ensorcelled…
JL: You have no idea…
PofR: And yet, here we have something of a seeming contradiction. Your father Tywin seems very pleased to let pass oath-breaking regarding the slaying of kings while you were sporting the white cloak, and yet here, in this hypothetical, why, here it seems he is disinclined to let matters pass, taking the moral – that is, moralistic view of the matter – as opposed to showing loyalty to his son. So, to summarize, in the king-slaying case he seems to choose kinship and loyalty over the moral rule, yet in the – yes, hypothetical – incest case, he chooses the weight of the moral rule over kinship. Is it not a puzzle?
JL: [laughs] Only if you don’t know my father. He is quite content to let a little oath-breaking go by when it serves his interests. But remember that if the three royal offspring were known – or thought – to be mine rather than those of the former king, Robert Baratheon, then they would lose claim to the line of succession. In short, he cannot support any supposed moral infraction I committed in this respect because to do so would compromise his self-interest in terms of maintaining the Lannister line of succession. To put it bluntly, he chooses loyalty over morality when it serves his purpose, and morality over loyalty when it serves his purpose. In this way, we can see, that one’s moral condemnation of others should be understood as a means to pursuit of interest, and easy to shake off when they ill fit the situation.
PofR: Well, that is one way to look at it, and, if I might, a most cynical one.
JL: Perhaps. Yet there are important lessons here of which you might want to take note. First, and perhaps foremost, while people sometimes use morally relevant actions in deciding whose side to take in conflicts, they do not always. Morality can be trumped by kinship and the exigencies of the moment…
PofR: Stay… that phrase, ‘the exigencies of the moment.’ I confess I like its sound.
JL: I’m honored that you do. [Jaime makes a barely courteous bow] From this we see that the claim that “kinship” and “loyalty” are types of morality are mistaken. These two are forces that work against morality, which is by its nature impartial. And, further, to bring things back to maters of interest to us, this lens, though you call it cynical, is an apt one through which to see many of the dilemmas faced by the characters, er, I mean, the participants in the politics afoot in Westeros. For instance, what is a man of the Night’s Watch to do if he can bring about the greater good only by betraying his oath of celibacy? And once he is foresworn – in the interest, be it understood, of the realm – should he be judged guilty and punished, or celebrated for the lives he has saved, as our poor soul in the Stage Coach Dilemma? To return to my case, suppose you grant that my choices and actions saved the good people of King’s Landing. Should I nonetheless be punished for oath-breaking and regicide? Or rewarded for saving those many lives of the little people?
PofR: I was under the impression I was to be asking the questions in this interview…
JL: And I was under the impression there would be mead in the green room.
PofR: [Paarfi shifts nervously] Are there other examples from the recent history of Westeros that illustrate these principles of which you speak so fondly?
JL: To be sure. But, come, let us leave such musings to the viewers, which will doubtless give them many hours of pleasant contemplation.
PofR: [turns back to the camera] And so, with those thoughts to ponder, we are pleased to be Paarfi of Roundwood… Until next time.
[fade to black]
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