“Burn them all.”
Those three words have come to define Aerys II, the last Targaryen monarch of Westeros and the man forever remembered as The Mad King. However, it is those very same words that have equally shaped the legacy of Jaime Lannister, the sworn bodyguard that put a sword through the Mad King, earning Jaime the derisive moniker throughout the realm of “Kingslayer.”
A man who just happened to save countless lives at the cost of his own honor.
This tribute video to Tywin’s son, featuring his flaws too (he did try to murder a small child by pushing him out of a tower window, all because Bran had caught Jaime having sex with his twin sister) honors both his killing of the Mad King in order to prevent the burning of King’s Landing and the death of its inhabitants, as well as him then secretly carrying the burden of Seven Kingdoms worth of scorn for having done so.
More important than the sacrifice Jaime made all those years ago in the Throne Room though is the potential sacrifice he might yet have to make, one far greater than killing the Mad King. Because those scores of wildfire that Aerys II placed under the city sat dormant for all that time, until another sociopath used it to blow up an entire sept worth of people to save herself. Now, it just might be Jaime who has to stop her—his sister-lover, the new ruler of Westeros: Queen Cersei—before she can kill even more.
This video is the latest installment from the YouTube channel TheGaroStudios, which has made a number of other wonderful tribute videos to some of the most important characters on Game Of Thrones. We already brought you the one on Tyrion, as well as Jon Snow and also Daenerys, and we hope to see many more of them as we wait for season seven.
Jaime Lannister is a complicated man with a complicated past, but one whose future may pose his greatest challenge yet. Can the Kingslayer that once lost his honor saving an entire city muster that honor to become the Queenslayer the city needs today?
Because, if he can’t, she just might “burn them all.”
What do you think of Jaime Lannister? Tell us in the comments below.
Images: HBO
