ALL LEATHER MUST BE BOILED

leeniebean:

boiledleather:

The unspoken reason Robb marries Jeyne Westerling after they have sex is because he doesn’t want to be like his father, right? He doesn’t want to knock someone up in the middle of a war and wind up with a bastard, making no one happy — not the dad, not the mom, not the kid, not the Frey wife, not the Frey wife’s legitimate kids.

Robb loses the war he’s fighting to avenge his father because he doesn’t want to be like his father.

No disrespect intended…  but I disagree entirely.

Robb was emulating his father, known as one of the most honorable men in the kingdom, by choosing Jeyne’s honor over his own.

Having slept with Jeyne, he would have made her unfit to be wed to another (which, as we all know, is virtually the only value attributed to high-born girls in Westeros).  This would bring dishonor to her and her house.

Right, I agree, Robb was trying to do the honorable thing, and Ned had a well-deserved reputation for doing the honorable thing…but not in this specific kind of situation. On the contrary, Ned is believed to have fathered a child out of wedlock while married to another woman, a child he went on to take away from the kid’s mom and raise himself over his wife’s protest. As far as everyone other than Howland Reed knows — and “everyone” includes Robb — it’s the one major stain on his honor, the exception that proves the rule.

In short, Robb found himself facing the same choice he believed his father once faced, and went in the opposite direction with it. He made a point of not emulating Eddard. That’s all I’m saying.