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Try reading the books Cannoli Send a noteboard - 20/03/2010 10:50:01 PM
Of the characters named, the ones who really only could qualify are Jaime and Cersei, who both perform 'evil' deeds which lead, or should lead, to the deaths of innocence. A lot of the others act without thought for the consequences.
So if you're a selfish jerk with no concern for the consequences to others, murder is no longer evil?

Theon is cruel and uncaring, but not evil as such. He spares Bran and Rickon when he had a chance to kill them, for example, and was happy to let the realm condemn him as a child-murderer.
In what world is "cruel and uncaring" not evil? HE IS A F***ING CHILD MURDERER! Or did you think he dug up two corpses that died of natural causes to hang over the gates of Winterfell? He MURDERED and SKINNED the children of a woman with whom he had a casual sexual dalliance during his time as the Starks' hostage, placed them over the wall, murdered his own man to cover up the truth, and then executed the kennelmaster for his own crime! On WHAT scale is this not a string of evil actions, compounded and piled atop each other? He never spared Bran and Rickon, he simply was outsmarted and failed to catch them. They were alive in his captivity not out of any inclination towards mercy, but as hostages.

As for Arya, she is becoming increasingly desensitized to violence and is clearly suffering from stress-related disorders, but the people she has directly murdered have been enemies of her house, people trying to kill her or a deserter from the Night's Watch. The only true innocent she might have been said to have killed was the stableboy, but he was trying to kidnap her and she did act in self-defence.
She still had no business killing the deserter. He was beyond the Seven Kingdoms, and she had no lawful authority. But that's what Ned Stark teaches his kids, right? "When you see someone who belongs dead, accompany them into the dark and murder them by stealth, even if they are not doing you any harm." And her reasons don't matter - she is still a murderer, who is joining an organization of people who commit murder for money. They can spin all the stories they like about avenging wicked step-mothers. The actions we see of a Faceless Man in the books include murdering an elderly man at the behest of his reprehensible and irredeemable brother, murdering a student to infiltrate the Citadel, and murdering a servant because he aroused the ire of a child.

And Robert was on the list but Tywin wasn't? Or Viserys? How does that work out?
The QP did not purport to be a list of the most evil characters in the series, it simply gave an apparently random array of characters and asked which is the most evil. And most of the characters on the list far outstrip Viserys. Some petty bullying of his sister, arrogance unbecoming his actual station, and a drunken threat of violence are scarcely evil on the scale of joining an assassin's guild, treason, regicide, infidelity, infanticide, rebellion, oath-breaking and usurpation of a throne. As for Tywin, you can palm off that tired old excuse of the greater good even more for him than for anyone else. At least he is not a hypocrite - he has an amoral worldview and his actions are all done with a specific goal in mind for the good of his family, which immediately falls to pieces without his hand. When this excuse is used for most other characters, it is generally suspect and self-serving, but Tywin lives it all the way through. If you are going to use such excuses for anyone, Tywin comes out best with that reason.

That doesn't change the fact that he IS evil, but I am not the one using situational bullcrap to defend the indensible.

And no Littlefinger? By his own admission, he ferments chaos which results in thousands of innocent deaths purely as a game to amuse himself. By that definition, he is the most 'evil' character of them all.
Again, bullcrap. He is evil because of WHAT he did, not why he did it. And you don't even have the PoV trap excuse to protect your citing of the given reasons of a man who is a notorious and admitted liar. He is NOT doing this for amusement, but for his own aggrandizement and self-gratitifcation of his resentments, grudges and lusts nurtured for over a decade. Either way, it does not matter. He is evil because of his betrayals, murders, and conspiracies to commit or abet or conceal others' crimes.
Cannoli
"Sometimes unhinged, sometimes unfair, always entertaining"
- The Crownless

“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Deus Vult!
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ASoI&F Quickpoll: Evil characters - 18/03/2010 02:04:24 PM 1425 Views
Re: ASoI&F Quickpoll: Evil characters - 18/03/2010 02:32:48 PM 881 Views
Re: ASoI&F Quickpoll: Evil characters - 18/03/2010 06:34:29 PM 818 Views
Exactly. - 18/03/2010 09:07:56 PM 883 Views
I have never heard anyone defend Cersei. - 18/03/2010 07:04:33 PM 876 Views
Confusing likability with goodness - 18/03/2010 08:59:40 PM 876 Views
Arya may not be "good"... - 18/03/2010 09:15:46 PM 926 Views
Do you think a child can be evil? *NM* - 18/03/2010 09:18:06 PM 373 Views
We sometimes hear about kids doing horrible things - 18/03/2010 09:41:30 PM 758 Views
Is that because they may not understand the consequences of their actions? - 18/03/2010 09:45:33 PM 830 Views
Most likely, yes. Plus their reasons for doing bad things lack deeper inferior motives. - 18/03/2010 10:09:25 PM 871 Views
Arya is old enough to understand cause and effect... - 18/03/2010 11:04:31 PM 961 Views
Soldiers do the same thing. - 19/03/2010 03:23:35 AM 795 Views
Just what I was about to say, yeah *NM* - 19/03/2010 07:55:47 AM 342 Views
Arya is legitimately the most evil... - 18/03/2010 09:45:04 PM 1154 Views
No, she's not - 18/03/2010 11:45:23 PM 811 Views
Cersei doesn't have true justification - 18/03/2010 11:47:44 PM 941 Views
what makes ambition better? - 19/03/2010 03:30:04 AM 785 Views
*nods* - 19/03/2010 07:58:31 AM 903 Views
Re: Arya is legitimately the most evil... - 19/03/2010 10:50:56 PM 801 Views
I was looking forward to his response as well. - 19/03/2010 11:13:35 PM 917 Views
Nope - 20/03/2010 10:23:19 PM 974 Views
Evil is such a limiting term to use. - 20/03/2010 12:18:24 PM 775 Views
Try reading the books - 20/03/2010 10:50:01 PM 987 Views
just out of curiousity - 21/03/2010 03:01:02 AM 870 Views
Sort of. - 22/03/2010 11:37:04 PM 779 Views
I've read them a few times. - 21/03/2010 01:47:52 PM 872 Views
Just a "few" times? - 21/03/2010 06:07:14 PM 920 Views
Only three times. - 21/03/2010 11:20:12 PM 827 Views
Who is Jon Connington? - 22/03/2010 01:30:44 AM 969 Views
people seem to be forgetting - 21/03/2010 09:11:04 PM 932 Views
Some of that is BS... - 22/03/2010 04:18:06 AM 855 Views
Thank you. - 23/03/2010 01:59:38 AM 856 Views
*NM* - 23/03/2010 03:58:24 AM 297 Views
ROFLMAO. Most people complain that my values are medieval & out of touch with the modern world! - 23/03/2010 01:54:58 AM 1211 Views
It really shocks that I'm going to say this. - 23/03/2010 03:23:28 AM 785 Views
To clarify, "evil" means VERY, VERY BAD. - 23/03/2010 01:12:39 AM 1033 Views
your problem is you seem equate legality with morality - 24/03/2010 04:07:42 AM 776 Views
I was responding to someone ELSE making that error - 24/03/2010 03:13:36 PM 1051 Views

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