Really want to know fandom’s opinion on Lord Selwyn Tarth. I am rather curious about his certain reactions related to Brienne.
Hear me out:
Has he abandoned Brienne, or distanced himself from her?
300 dragons? He offered 300 gold dragons to a group of people known for their savagery. Very well aware that horrible things can happen to her. He is a lord of an island and his only child is stuck, that’s a paltry amount. We know 40000 dragons are offered for tourney winners. We know that Tarth is known for its marble mines.
Fine, it may be a fair ransom, as Jaime mentions. Why didn’t he send help in any way? He is a lord so he must have sworn swords, knights of his own, a small army, navy? Yes, Harrenhal is far away from Tarth, still when she was rescued from the bear pit was he aware where Brienne is headed? From Harrenhal to Kings Landing, to the time Brienne was in Kings Landing as a prisoner, where were Tarth’s Knights to protect Evenstar’s only child and future Evenstar? Tarth is much closer to Kings Landing, if I am not wrong its roughly three days away by sea.
There is not even a single mention of Lord Selwyn reaching out or even checking on Brienne. A raven, a rider?
Emotionally unavailable?
He may be a good father by westrosi standards as he allowed Brienne to learn the skills she wanted to n all that but in her entire AFFC journey, she never recalls a fond memory with her father. Her ONLY parent.
Something is missing. Brienne obviously loves and adores him and considers him noble and good. But wouldn’t a parent be concerned for his child in war torn westros.
Thoughts?
I’ve always wondered the same thing. Jaime thinks that 300 dragons is “a fair ransom for a knight,” but for Selwyn’s only child and heir? Even if Tarth is poor, wouldn’t a loving father promise almost anything?
Brienne thinks that her father deserves a proper daughter or son, rather than Brienne, who is unfit to be either. Where did she get that sense of being inadequate? From the larger culture, of course, but specifically from her septa. The septa who Selwyn never noticed was abusive?
And what about his string of mistresses, appearing and disappearing year after year? What effect did that have on the heart and mind of a growing girl?
He did allow her to train at arms, and to join Renly, but was that support for her, or indifference?
My biggest pet peeve with Selwyn is that he should have done so much more for Brienne but instead, he brought mistresses home and played a bachelor. First thing he should have done after his wife and Gal died was to remarry. By remarrying he could have gotten a new heir, so Brienne wouldn’t have pressure to marry well. Secondly, with marrying a lady from another noble house, she would be a friend/ally to Brienne. Also Selwyn’s new wife could bring her male/female relatives to visit Tarth, who in turn could be friends/possible matches for Brienne.
If Selwyn really didn’t want to remarry he could bring in a noble elderly lady (maybe a widow), either his own relative or his late wife’s relative who could act as a guardian for Brienne. That woman could host other noble ladies in the castle. Also she would weed out abusive servants like Roelle.
Or Selwyn could send Brienne to the mainland to visit or live with some other noble lady (like Selyse Baratheon) where she could meet other people or potential husbands.
Or Selwyn could ask his bannermen to send their daughters to Evenfall where they could be friends for Brienne.
But Selwyn did none of that. Instead, he hosted his mistresses in the house, which means that no noble family would send their daughters to visit Evenfall. There are no respectable noble ladies in Evenfall, so no one would chaperone the visitors, and they could end up taken advantage of. Hell, given that Selwyn is a known womaniser, any mother would be worried that their girls would end up sitting in Selwyn’s lap.
By bringing mistresses into the house instead of noble ladies, Selwyn is pretty much denying Brienne a company of her peers, which explains why Brienne is so damn lonely.
She was basically a princess in a tower while growing up!! She was isolated from other noble girls because her father was a horny bastard.
OK, I don’t know how much of this all is GRRM being oblivious about networks that noble women had (Lady Cat has no friends either, she should at least have wives of other northern houses as her peers) and how much is GRRM playing coy with Selwyn’s motives.
But Selwyn Tarth did Brienne dirty, so fuck him.
The more I think about it, the less I can make sense about Selwyn.
All of the above is true.
But also, he sent her alone to Storm’s End and wrote Renly Brienne was a very good fighter - which is a quite unusual thing to do, and write, about your daughter when you’re a Westerosi lord. So he seems to trust her a lot?
And he let her “play at his feet” in Evenfall Hall (ah, this Cortnay Penrose’s speech about baby Brienne is so sweet…), instead of shipping her with her nurse or her septa.
And they were singers in Evenfal Hall - albeit it’s difficult to see if that was because Brienne loved songs or because Selwyn fancies singers. Her memories about the singers are a bit unsettling to read for me - "I remember a woman … she came from some place across the narrow sea. I could not even say what language she sang in, but her voice was as lovely as she was. She had eyes the color of plums and her waist was so tiny my father could put his hands around it. His hands were almost as big as mine.“ She closed her long, thick fingers, as if to hide them.” (ACOCK, Catelyn VI)
He certainly didn’t give her confidence to sing in public…
It’s really hard to see if Selwyn’s a clueless loving father, or a total asshole, or, as his Doran, has such a long game in mind he forgot his daughter can’t read his mind and will have her own explanations about things. And it’s even harder to say which part of this is intentional from Martin, and which part is that his writing is inconsistent when it comes to women’s sociability and upbringing.
Catelyn’s a good example. Of course, she had ladies in waiting around her. She told it to Brienne : ”Brienne, I have taken many wellborn ladies into my service over the years, but never one like you. I am no battle commander.“ (ACOK, Catelyn V).
But we never saw this female entourage on page - none of them were here for the King and his family’s visit at the beginning of AGOT… (as well as Cersei’s ladies in waiting, by the way).
So I’m afraid Selwyn will stay an enigma until we have more canon materials. Until then, I deem the guy’s quite fishy, though!
Of course it is not confirmed, but add in the sighting Arya has of someone who may be Selwyn in Braavos it gives a quite complicated picture:
It was almost noon before she saw the man she wanted, a prosperous shipowner she had seen doing business with the old man three time before. Big and bald and burly, he wore a heavy cloak of plush brown velvet trimmed with fur and a brown leather belt ornamented with silver moons and stars. Some mishap had left one leg stiff. He walked slowly, leaning on a cane. (ADWD, The Ugly Little Girl).
On what we’ve got, I don’t think we can make any hard judgements on Selwyn. At most, I think we can just say he was emotionally distant from Brienne, and possibly has his own things going on in the background that Brienne is not privy too (dodgy dealings in Braavos? Definite affairs etc.) I don’t think the narrative encourages us to think about it too deeply, other than notice how Selwyn’s rough contours reflect Tywin (I mean, they even have similar sounding names!) Jaime and Brienne’s lives are parallel in so many ways. Why not their fathers?
this is a big double standard.
if we agree that Brienne should marry for affection, and not be forced into a marriage of convenience for her family’s sake, why would we want anything less for Selwyn? if we think that he has a responsibility to marry a stranger and fuck them often enough to have children, why shouldn’t Brienne do it too?
the facts about Selwyn are: -Brienne, moral hardass, thinks he’s a good guy -he gave her decades of sword training & didn’t force her to marry anyone -he’s proud of her physical abilities and openly praises her for it, even when it comes at great risk to her life -he allows her to run off to play soldier despite her being his only heir -heimmediately offered a ransom for her, which was all he could do considering the distance, and it was enough money to impress a Lannister -he likes to sleep with women and is in no apparent hurry to marry
none of that screams UNREPENTANT ASSHOLE to me. does he do some lowkey problematic stuff? sure! this is ASOIAF! everyone is problematic! but do we actually know of anything bad he’s done? nope
I feel like a problem when reading Selwyn is that we have no clear information about his motivations, only what other people, mainly Brienne (who is still very young and loves him), say about him, and people worry about the purity of his intentions.
I also think we can agree that by Westerosi standards, Selwyn *has* failed Brienne. For example, he stopped trying to marry her - it’s probably very hard to find her a suitor after she beat the old man with a sword - and imo that was probably for the best. We don’t know if he did it because he thought she would be very unhappy or because he had other plans for her or because he thought they could wait until he was older and Tarth was a more imminent prize for a potential suitor. When it comes to the ransom, maybe he hoped they could slowly work their way up to a larger sum instead of appearing desperate offering everything for his only child, but the mummers didn’t take it. It could be a number of things in any of these situations and we would drive ourselves mad trying to speculate the *whys*.
I think what matters about Selwyn as a character is the way he has affected Brienne, noble intentions or not. My personal reading is simply that he lives in that grey area of fathers who might love their children but do not actively act in their favor if it’s too much work they don’t feel like giving. Selwyn’s spirit - Selwyn’s vibe, like the kids say - doesn’t sound unbelievable to me. He seems benign enough in some things - he allowed the girl to receive training with a sword, for example, because she wanted to. He also is in a unique position of power in his household, with no one directly to answer to, and he can do generally as he wishes without worrying too much about the consequences or the way his actions can affect his daughter. Maybe there’s something else going on, we don’t know. I tend to think these are only partial
To compare him with another dad, he reminds me of Mr Bennett a little, from Pride and Prejudice. A father largely loved by his kids, but a father who most definitely failed them on a number of ways given the standards of the time and place. It’s an injustice and a harsh reality for the child, I suppose, but it is what it is and the child can do little to change that. I actually like the grayness of Selwyn’s character as a father, because its spirit feels realistic to me. I don’t think I particularly like Selwyn *himself*, though.
For now that’s where I stand. We have to look at the way his action and inaction have affected Brienne, and work through her feelings about her dad to understand how isolated she’s been, and how she thinks that since she hasn’t been able to *be* a proper lady yet she must try to honor him in whatever way she can, through deeds, mostly. Selwyn to me is more of a shadow so far because Brienne is haunted by that shadow of inadequacy, that fleeting feeling she might have gotten from her dad not because he insulted her like Roelle, but because he didn’t pay attention to her. It’s also a parallel to Jaime, who lived many years acting the orders of an overbearing father who always made sure to let him know he wasn’t enough and the minute he didn’t follow the orders he became “less than.” They both *know* they’re not enough for their fathers but for opposite reasons, because they’re also supposed to reflect each other as narrative foils.
ALT
