Let Tyrion be Evil!

Unfortunately, it is what's best.

Peter Dinklage is a very handsome man.

Tyrion Lannister is not a very handsome man. Quite the opposite, in fact. This is okay, because Dinklage’s performance was too good, I wouldn’t want to see it hidden by makeup. But it is worth noting that Tyrion Lannister, a fictional character so very great that he has cemented himself as one of the greatest of all time though his story isn’t even close to over yet (will it ever be?), is not handsome. He is actually very, very ugly. This is an important part of his story. But not inextricably so.

Since he’s been treated so terribly throughout his entire miserable (yet endlessly privileged and indulgent) life for being a dwarf, it makes sense that you can motivate Tyrion’s chiseled, handsome portrayal on the TV show similarly to ugly Tyrion from the books. That is, with a desire for love and affection that he was never given. No, since he was born a dwarf, even handsome TV Tyrion received no love from his cold, terrible father. I guess what I’m saying is, Tyrion doesn’t need to be ugly-looking to be Tyrion Lannister. But that’s not the main thing the TV show missed.

Tyrion Lannister is ugly on the inside.

Trigger Warning: To anybody sensitive to topics on Sexual Assault, please stop reading right now.

Let’s talk about where every Game of Thrones fan who’s worth a damn knows the show lost the plot: the tragedy of Tyrion and Tysha. Many GOT stans will say the show tanked after Season 6, and the show should’ve just ended with the two excellent final episodes Battle of the Bastards and The Winds of Winter, which gave us one of the greatest battles ever brought to screen and some extremely satisfying conclusions to long-running arcs. Bella Ramsey’s stirring speech naming Jon Snow the King in the North? Literally gives me goosebumps- and I don’t even like Season 6. Bella Ramsey is just that good, bless their still-so-young heart. Cersei blowing up the Sept and Tommen’s suicide? Riveting. Her torture of the Sands in the cruelest ways one could imagine (forcing a woman to watch her daughter starve right in front of her? Locking that crazy nun in a room with The Mountain? Still freaks me out) was stirring.

Some people like Season 7. I would not deign to pay them any mind. Some people claim to enjoy Season 8. I do not believe them. I begged my stepmother to give up the show after Season 6, but she soldiered on, only to be disappointed. Like I told her she would be. In truth, the last great Season of GOT was Season 3, although 4 had some of the shows best moments, most stirring scenes, and finest performances. They just… dropped the ball on some pretty important stuff.

There are some inexcusable flaws in the later years. Some really big ones. I don’t need to talk about how Ramsay Bolton’s sexual abuse of Sansa was cruel storytelling and terribly unnecessary. How depicting rape in such a sensationalist way felt like a dark, morbid indulgence in the atrocity, unlike how sexual abuse had been depicted in earlier seasons… terrible. Realistic and, as we all know, present in all war. But terrible. When you do it how they did it with Sansa and Ramsay, you know that the writers are just trying to inspire shock and awe. I was shocked, alright. Shocked their attempts at being thrilling had become so craven.

Yes, most people will tell you thrones fell off after Season 6, because there was still great stuff happening in 6. As a matter of fact, most of the performances remained great all the way through that wretched finale (some weren’t even that good in the show’s finest years, but most were passable at the very least). Some of it looked cool, although the design team famously got lazy (like when they left a Starbucks cup in frame or tried to cheat us into thinking King’s Landing was in the middle of a desert or shot the Long Night in… pitch black….). But despite all this, Game of Thrones at its worst was still more fun to watch than most of TV at its best. This is because the story, the characters, the myth of it all, are just so damn good.

Especially poor Tyrion Lannister.

And Tyrion, who sits at the center of this story, is also at the center of how it all went wrong.

Have you heard the story of Tyrion and Tysha?

In the Game of Thrones books, Tyrion Lannister has a devastating, formative, traumatic relationship with Tysha, a young woman he loved. A teenaged Tyrion meets Tysha, a beautiful young woman, on a trip with his father. Tyrion had been shown almost no love in his entire childhood, and was convinced nobody would ever find him beautiful because of the way he looks. This feeling has followed him around every corner. Nobody could ever love the dwarf Tyrion, no matter how rich his family was.

But Tyrion meets this lovely young woman and learns from a group of soldiers that she is a traveling wheelhouse girl, someone who provides “companionship” and “warmth” but is viewed as a lowly servant in the eyes of nobility. After he and his brother Jaime, a bold and dangerous swordsman, fought off a group of rapers attacking young Tysha, Tyrion is taken by her, and helps Tysha escape.

Soon, his feelings for her become genuine, and the two end up marrying in a secret ceremony. It’s unheard of for someone of Tyrion’s nobility deigning to be with a lowly peasant like Tysha (I’ve been that lowly peasant to someone of nobility before- it’s not very fun), but Tyrion was in love.

And then, as always, his father Tywin comes in to ruin everything. He is outraged that Tyrion would disrespect their family name by bedding a lowly peasant.

If you do not want to read about horrific sexual abuse, please click out.

To punish Tyrion, Tywin forces him to witness Tysha being raped by a group of his soldiers, telling Tyrion that she was a “whore” and that he had been deceived. He then forces Tyrion to rape her, too.

Tyrion’s brother Jaime, the only person who had ever shown him love, explained to Tyrion that Tysha was, in fact, a “whore” who pretended to fall in love with Tyrion for his gold. Jaime told Tyrion he had hired her to make Tyrion a man. Growing up, the dwarf of Casterly Rock never believed he could be loved, so he believed Jaime’s story. It made more sense to him than Tysha’s love. This trauma went on to define Tyrion’s relationships with women for the rest of his life. Tysha only wanted him for gold. That was all the dwarf was good for. He could never be loved.

Then, after some pretty bad stuff happens in the Lannister family, Jaime, fearing he’ll never see Tyrion again and overcome with guilt, reveals to Tyrion that the story he’d told about Tysha was a lie. She wasn’t a whore. The brothers had truly saved her from attackers in the street that day. It was not a setup. Tywin was furious that Tyrion had married a commoner, so he forced Jaime to tell Tyrion this lie. Tywin could not let Tyrion think he’d been loved.

Part of this fury came from Tywin’s relationship with his father, Tytos, who he despised for his weakness. Tytos, after Tywin’s mother died, took a common woman into their home, and the woman proceeded to wear Tywin’s mother’s clothes and jewelry. Tywin refused to believe Tyrion could be loved for anything but his wealth, just as this common woman who had married Tytos only loved him for his. Tywin was abusive towards Tyrion, a lot (this is because Tyrion is exactly like him, and Tywin hates himself, but I’m tired and don’t feel like getting into that).

Apparently, Tywin fabricated this lie so Tyrion would never go looking after the girl, but likely also the basic cruelty of robbing Tyrion of even the memory of her love by convincing him that it wasn't real. Jaime, however, thought his father simply wanted to annul the marriage, and had no idea what Tywin was planning to do.

Did Tywin actually love Tyrion deep down? He certainly didn’t show it, if he did. Tyrion embodied many of the things Tywin hated about himself. That’s undoubtedly why Tywin was so cruel to him. But could it have been a secret “tough love?” Well, Tywin did name Tyrion Hand of the King. Why would he? I don’t think Tywin loved his son. I think he hated him because he hated himself. But it’s worth a thought.

But Tywin doesn’t deserve the clout of us talking about him this much, though I have much more to say. So let’s move on.

We don’t know if Tyrion and Tysha’s story was one of true love. She very well could have been in it for money all along. But it’s the fact that it could have been love that makes something in Tyrion snap. Tyrion goes on to murder his father (for a variety of reasons, not just the Tysha thing), but before he does, he can’t help but ask… what happened to Tysha? Where did she go? His father responds with three words that stick with Tyrion for the rest of his life- “Wherever whores go.”

Later on, Tyrion would go on to ask himself on many occasions… “where do whores go?” Could Tysha still be out there? He’s well-aware he’ll likely never find out.

I don’t think I need to explain why the dark tragedy of Tyrion and Tysha is so narratively compelling. A dark and morbid tale, beautifully told. A deep, compelling backstory for this character whose brilliant mind could have made the world so much better had it been given any love.

Before leaving King’s Landing, Tyrion strikes Jaime and swears that he’ll get his revenge. The two leave each other on terrible terms. Jaime feels bad for Tyrion for a lot of reasons, but Tyrion is out for vengeance. The whole city of King’s Landing, a city he had saved at the Battle of Blackwater Bay, had betrayed him. His family betrayed him. Shae, his newest sexual partner of sorts, had betrayed him (he murdered her, too).

An African proverb tells us "A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth"

This is Tyrion Lannister. A man who has sworn to become the monster that everybody told him he was.

The show pretty much botches the Tysha thing.

The showrunners said this was because they couldn’t fit every subplot from the books into the show. This is objectively true for many, many of the subplots, but I suspect something else in the Tysha department:

Tyrion has to be a hero.

And the showrunners couldn’t bare to let things go sour between him and Jaime.

In the show, the Tysha betrayal is removed from the story. Tyrion and his brother leave each other with a warm hug, surely to reunite one day on good terms. Tyrion goes and teams up with Daenerys Targaryen to win her the iron throne. Why? Because he thinks she’ll be good at it. He flees Westeros across the Narrow Sea to Essos and becomes Dany’s advisor… because he wants to make the world a better place.

Tyrion is a great character, you see, so we must make him a hero. And as the writing of the series tanks, so does Tyrion’s intelligence. His decisions all start to get really bad. He’s lost the savvy we saw him demonstrate in King’s Landing (although none of that savvy exactly paid off, so was it savvy at all? It sure was something).

In the books, Tyrion does not leave the murder scene of Tywin a sweetheart. He becomes a nihilistic drunk, longing for death. He spends a good chunk of the most recent book waiting for death to come his way. He sends a would-be new Targaryen king to go attack Westeros (long story, huge omission from the show), not because he thinks this king would be good at it… just because he wanted to see if he could get away with manipulating him like that. And Tyrion does get away with it.

He’s very much what we in modern society call “blackpilled.” He hates the world for rejecting him, and he wants to burn it down. He’s been obsessed with dragons his whole life, and he’s currently on track to meet one in person when he and Daenerys cross paths (which is due to happen within the first chapters of Winds of Winter, should it ever release). I, and many other fans of the series, believe that Tyrion will convince Daenerys to invade Westeros with her dragons… not because he thinks she’d be good at it, but because dragons are really good at burning shit down. Tyrion has made it clear that he will use his knowledge of King’s Landing and its defenses to help Daenerys take the throne in exchange for the opportunity to “kill and rape” his sister (she’s also a very bad person like Tywin, by the way. Jaime, while very complex, is definitely the best person in that family). It is this revenge that changed his perspective on life. He doesn’t want to die anymore, he wants to live. So he can burn down the village that did not embrace him.

Tyrion is a tragic character. This does not mean he’s a good guy. Tragic characters do not need to be heroes. Tragic villains are actually many of the best ones.

As a matter of fact, decades ago, George RR Martin said in an interview that Tyrion is a villain. It seems to be part of George’s long-game plans to turn Tyrion into the evil man he was painted as by the nobles and commoners alike. To tell a story of someone who could’ve been good, turned evil by an evil world.

I think the Mad Queen story of Daenerys losing her shit and burning Kings Landing, so controversial in the show, will happen in the books. She’s indulged in violence since book one. She’s a Targaryen- violent conquest is in her blood.

But in the TV show, Tyrion, who never gets a chance to turn evil, is the voice of reason telling her NOT to burn the city down. The Mad Queen arc can end up being very good in the books- the problem was the show rushed it into two fucking episodes. But Dany’s already on track to be a genocidal monster. George just needs to release the books, in the name of the seven (you’re a fucking dweeb if you understand that).

Peter Dinklage deserved a better Tyrion.

He deserved to turn into an evil man, desperate to punish the world for not accepting him. He’s such a fine actor. He would’ve done unbelievable things with this character.

But the show got millions of viewers, even after they abandoned what made the source material compelling. The actors still won (and earned, astoundingly so) their Emmys. Game of Thrones stood out in the fantasy genre because of the characters, the politics, the intrigue, and the careful thought put into making the world of Westeros REAL. The show didn’t need that. Because most people don’t need intrigue, they need CGI.

Instead of Tyrion the terror, we got Tyrion the hero, Tyrion the wise (although he rarely seems to do anything wise). A true shame. Dinklage is as good as it gets. And Tyrion the terror is, too.

Maybe one day, when we get an animated series that tells the story exactly how it’s told in the books.

A boy can dream. For the night is dark, and full of terrors.