The Lannisters Knew How To Handle Critics in Game of Thrones

A reminder to keep your head down and do your work

This week we’ve been back through Game of Thrones in our house. I haven’t watched it again since 2011 when the series first premiered on HBO and took over popular culture for the next eight years. There’s so much to be said about the characters in this show. Starks. Lannisters. Targaryens. Dothrakis. Baratheons. I’d forgotten how powerful this contest for control of Kings Landing and Westeros is. It’s not my intention to dunk on House of the Dragon, the new spinoff series set generations before GoT during the reign of House Targaryen, but there wasn’t much about the new series that left an impression or stuff to think about. King Viserys Targaryen and his willingness to let critics speak freely is one notable exception that we wrote about here on Geeky Stoics.

Viserys hears that rabble-rousers are questioning his choice of royal heir, and his advisor urges him to have their tongues cut out. The king, very much not inclined toward violence, declines. “Tongues will not change the succession. Let them wag.” He sounds a bit like Cicero, the Roman senator who scribbled down “Let other people worry over what they will say about you. They will say it in any case.”

“Those who can’t talk about those who can” is what actor Denzel Washington once had to say about his critics in Hollywood.

It’s true. You must not distract yourself with the useless opinions of others. “A lion doesn’t concern him with the opinions of the sheep” is what Tywin Lannister says to his son, Jaime, in Game of Thrones’ first season.

We have a balance to strike in our lives. Can we carry on with our work without reading the comments section or nervously checking on reviews? Can we be receptive to feedback and eager to learn or adjust without our entire existence hinging on the validation of others?

The tricky thing about this scene between Tywin and Jaime Lannister is that they’re the villains of this chapter in Game of Thrones.

Tywin is a nasty man, but he’s quite sane. In a Westeros full of madmen and murderers… controversial opinion here…but Tywin Lannister would be a decent king….simply because he is practical, understands power politics, and can be reasonable.

We don’t want to take advice from a bad guy, but not caring what people think about them is sort of their superpower. They are freed from self-imposed obligations to people around them whom they hold in contempt or see as lesser.

Good people need to hear this sometimes. They tend to think about others more than your villains of the world, and then they get trapped by that sense of care. A time will come when doing good requires being at odds with those around you who have been deceived or caught up in evil.

This little exchange between two Lannister men about the limiting effect of other people’s opinions is worth remembering. There is real wisdom there.

Thanks for reading. I hope this gives you something to think about as you finish off the week. Below we have exclusive content for Paid Subscribers about future plans for Geeky Stoics, a personal essay and some special projects we’re working on here. Join up! This community is growing day by day and we’d love to have you with us at the ground level

— Stephen Kent

Last night I had some much-needed quiet time and took the opportunity to journal a bit. Geeky Stoics was on my mind. We’ve been trying to hammer out what the core virtues of Geeky Stoics are. These core virtues will be what we base our content around and write books about. It took quite a bit of brainstorming, but I think we have them. We call them our “pillars”.

One of them is WONDER. The idea of Wonder is something along the lines of Plato’s Cave. We live in a world that we call “reality”. And it is real, it’s not a simulation, but we’ve come to believe that there a deeper realities than what your eyes can see. Stories are the window into those deeper truths about humanity, God, and the spiritual life. Without story, we’re living in a room with no windows. I cribbed this idea from C.S. Lewis and wrote it out in my journal. I’ll share it with you.

The House In The Clearing

Imagine you’ve been lost in a forest, dense and shadowy, until a clearing appears ahead of you. In the clearing sits a house. It’s simple, and charming and invites you toward it with an innate warmth and an alluring front door. When you enter, you stand in a vast hallway longer than it is wide. It’s bright white, plain and neither hot nor cold in the house. It just is. Then you notice doors lining each side of the hall. They weren’t there just moments ago. You think nothing of it. You open the nearest door and step inside a room full of color, bookshelves, a warm fire, and cozy furniture.

You’ve never felt anything like this before. It’s perfect. The only thing missing is windows. You’re confined in a picture-perfect space that looks almost ripped from a catalog. It’s like nothing else exists beyond these walls when you’re inside. You want more, as one always does. So you leave and reenter the hallway of doors to cross through a different threshold. You pick a door and enter. Inside is another perfect space lined with books, sofas, a warm cracking fire, and a fine rug that entices you to leave your shoes by the door. You want to stay a while. The fibers of the rug run through your toes and it all seems just right. This room even has a great big window.

Through the glass, you look beyond the walls of the room and onto an immense sea. The sun shines above and in the distance, you see an island through the far-off mist of the horizon. Ever so faintly, the island passes in and out of sight through the mist. You stir inside as the island calls out to you in a space between spaces in your heart of hearts. In this room, you sense you’ve experienced a new reality, something new and necessary in a way you didn’t even know you needed. But you also see something beyond the room’s charms, something bigger and more glorious. You’ll have to journey there now to this place, this island you’ve only been able to see through that one window in the room within the house in the clearing.

You’ve been in a story. A book. A movie. A play. A song. It spoke to a higher truth. This window showed you a deeper reality than even the most perfect enclosed space designed by human hands. That window was the truest thing you’ve ever seen. The dense and shadowy forest that led you there now seems like nothing but a bad dream. For the first time in your life, you have seen the world as it truly is, but once you leave that room…and we always must leave the room…the only thing you’ll know for certain is the longing you carry home for that window’s perfect view of the sea and your desire to be there again. Good thing the house in the clearing is always open.