poorquentyn:

Endgame speculation is, of course, ambrosia. But it tends to revolve around who will die (and how spectacularly) in the final pushback against the Others, and not what the world will look like once they’ve gone. Bran seems to me the character most intimately connected with the world to come; he’s already come somewhat unstuck in time, his consciousness is gradually transcending his body, the physical world at large, and possibly mortality itself, and he seems the best poised to grasp the totalizing meaning and weight of the collective story of ASOIAF. He’s the time capsule, the memory-vessel, the true narrator.

But that’s at the cosmic level; there are surprisingly few hints as to what Westeros and Essos would actually look like on the ground in the wake of a successful second war for the dawn. This is especially true because most child characters, the generation that will inherit what’s left, are either a) utterly doomed to die before they get there (Tommen, Myrcella, Sweetrobin, Shireen…) or b) suffering in a manner that imprisons them in the present; speculating on the future is time wasted when you’re so busy surviving just to have a future. As such, we don’t necessarily get a good sense of what kind of adults they’ll turn out to be, beyond generally traumatized. 

…there is this one exception, however, and it would probably piss Bran off something awful.

Big Walder Frey is my favorite minor character. This is true in large part because while ruthless ambition is generally corrosive in adults, I find it oddly charming in little kids. Big Walder knows exactly what he wants to do with his life–rule the Twins–at the age of nine, and is committed to that long game with a murderous zen that is adorable and utterly terrifying in equal measure. The great joke of House Frey is that it’s this hateful backbiting snake’s den full to bursting with the worst adults in Westeros, but at the very bottom there’s this little kid that all that venom has just drained into, and he’s entirely composed of it, and he’s going to regurgitate it on anyone between him and his prize…and no one around him seems to notice, even though he is so confident and so ready and so sure that he simply announces what he is going to do to his family, over and over.

“We’re cousins, not brothers,” added Big Walder, the little one. “I’m Walder son of Jammos. My father was Lord Walder’s son by his fourth wife. He’s Walder son of Merrett. His grandmother was Lord Walder’s third wife, the Crakehall. He’s ahead of me in the line of succession even though I’m older.”

“Only by fifty-two days,” Little Walder objected. “And neither of us will ever hold the Twins, stupid.”

“I will,” Big Walder declared. [Translation: I’m going to kill you.]

“Ryman is old too,” said Little Walder. “Past forty, I bet. And he has a bad belly. Do you think he’ll be lord?”

“I’ll be lord. I don’t care if he is.” [Translation: I’m going to kill him…if he doesn’t get himself killed first.]

“Did you find your cousins, my lord?”

“No. I never thought we would. They’re dead. Lord Wyman had
them killed. That’s what I would have done if I was him.” [Translation…not required on that one.]

There isn’t even a little foreshadowing moment like “Maester Luwin looked at Big Walder for a long moment, his eyebrows raised” or “Reek wondered if Hosteen and Aenys knew what they had in their young cousin” or anything like that. The only explanation, of course, is that he’s nine. So no one makes the connection when his cousin turns up dead. 

Snow slid from Ser Hosteen’s cloaks as he stalked toward the high table, his steps ringing against the floor. A dozen Frey knights and men-at-arms entered behind him. One was a boy Theon knew—Big Walder, the little one, fox-faced and skinny as a stick. His chest and arms and cloak were spattered with blood.

The scent of it set the horses to screaming. Dogs slid out from under the tables, sniffing. Men rose from the benches. The body in Ser Hosteen’s arms sparkled in the torchlight, armored in pink frost. The cold outside had frozen his blood.

That’s the other reason to love Big Walder: the classic I May Be Evil But That’s Just Fucked Up moment. Big Walder is willing to kill or let die dozens of his fellow Freys, but the gratuitous pleasure Ramsay takes in inflicting pain is simply beyond his moral event horizon:

Little Walder swung down from the saddle. “You can see to my horse too, Reek. And to my little cousin’s.”

“I can see to my own horse,” said Big Walder. Little Walder had become Lord Ramsay’s best boy and grew more like him every day, but the smaller Frey was made of different stuff and seldom took part in his cousin’s games and cruelties.

Reek paid the squires no mind. He led Blood off toward the stables, hopping aside when the stallion tried to kick him. The hunters strode into the hall, all but Ben Bones, who was cursing at the dogs to stop them fighting over the severed head.

Big Walder followed him into the stables, leading his own mount. Reek stole a look at him as he removed Blood’s bit. “Who was he?” he said softly, so the other stablehands would not hear.

“No one.” Big Walder pulled the saddle off his grey. “An old man we met on the road, is all. He was driving an old nanny goat and four kids.”

“His lordship slew him for his goats?”

“His lordship slew him for calling him Lord Snow.”

(Note that Big Walder talks to Theon as though Theon is, in fact, a human being.)

Of course, Big Walder primarily killed Little Walder because the latter stood ahead of the former in the succession, and because Big Walder realized how easy it would be to frame the Manderlys. (He immediately and intuitively grasps that Wyman had his relatives killed, and uses that information to cover his own murdering. How can you not love my brilliant baby boy) But Big Walder may also have acted out of growing horror at Little Walder becoming “more like [Ramsay] every day.” What was it Lord Wyman said, beholding the corpse and musing internally on recipes?

“So young,” said Wyman Manderly. “Though mayhaps this was a blessing. Had he lived, he would have grown up to be a Frey.”

Perhaps Big Walder feared Little Walder would actually grow up a Bolton.

This sort of thing is necessary, of course, to establish Ramsay’s place at the top (or bottom, I suppose) of ASOIAF’s taxonomy of villains; like Joffrey, he freaks even the other killers out. But GRRM is also emphasizing this contrast between the Walders as a preview of the world to come. Little Walder exemplifies the Westeros that makes me, at some deep horrible level, glad the Others are on their way. The corrupt, arrogant, sadistic Little Walders of the story…well, as usual, Stannis puts it best: 

Stannis glowered up at Theon where he hung. “You are not the only turncloak here, it would seem. Would that all the lords in the Seven Kingdoms had but a single neck… “ 

And certainly, most of the Freys will suffer for the Red Wedding, those that haven’t already. But as the noose tightens, the incentives will change for the Freys determined to survive above all else: they will sell out their family.

“A little spittle on Lord Walder’s tomb is not like to disturb the grave worms,” Qyburn agreed, “but it would also be useful if someone were to be punished for the Red Wedding. A few Frey heads would do much to mollify the north.”

“Lord Walder will never sacrifice his own,” said Pycelle.

“No,” mused Cersei, “but his heirs may be less squeamish. Lord Walder will soon do us the courtesy of dying, we can hope. What better way for the new Lord of the Crossing to rid himself of inconvenient half brothers, disagreeable cousins, and scheming sisters than by naming them the culprits?”

It was like to be every son for himself when the old man died, and every
daughter as well. The new Lord of the Crossing would doubtless keep on
some of his uncles, nephews, and cousins at the Twins, the ones he
happened to like or trust, or more likely the ones he thought would
prove useful to him. The rest of us he’ll shove out to fend for
ourselves.

But Big Walder’s still a little young to wield power at that level; I have another candidate in mind.

…[A]nd after Ryman came his own sons, Edwyn and Black Walder, who were even worse. “Fortunately,” Lame Lothar once said, “they hate each other even more than they hate us.”

Merrett wasn’t certain that was fortunate at all, and for that matter Lothar himself might be more dangerous than either of them. Lord Walder had ordered the slaughter of the Starks at Roslin’s wedding, but it had been Lame Lothar who had plotted it out with Roose Bolton, all the way down to which songs would be played. Lothar was a very amusing fellow to get drunk with, but Merrett would never be so foolish as to turn his back on him.

Lame Lothar Frey, charming and courteous and utterly devious, has no sons of his own, but he does have a nephew; if Lothar were to follow his father as Lord of the Crossing, his heir would be the little boy everyone instinctively calls Big. Remember Osha’s insight into Little Walder?

“The big one they call little, it comes to me he’s well named. Big outside, little inside…”

The reverse is true of Big Walder. My baby contains multitudes.

Even Bran, much as he resents both young Freys for being able to run and play with Rickon, grudgingly recognizes that Big Walder is the worthier of the two.

“These threats are unseemly, and I’ll hear no more of them. Is this how you behave at the Twins, Walder Frey?”

“If I want to.” Atop his courser, Little Walder gave Luwin a sullen glare, as if to say, You are only a maester, who are you to reproach a Frey of the Crossing?

“Well, it is not how Lady Stark’s wards ought behave at Winterfell. What’s at the root of this?” The maester looked at each boy in turn. “One of you will tell me, I swear, or-”

“We were having a jape with Hodor,” confessed Big Walder. “I am sorry if we offended Prince Bran. We only meant to be amusing.” He at least had the grace to look abashed.

Little Walder only looked peevish. “And me,” he said. “I was only being amusing too.”

“Was it Lord Tywin he defeated?” asked Bran.

“No,” said the maester. “Ser Stafford Lannister commanded the enemy host. He was slain in the battle.”

Bran had never even heard of Ser Stafford Lannister. He found himself agreeing with Big Walder when he said, “Lord Tywin is the only one who matters.”

Ser Rodrik reminded him to send something to his foster brothers, so he sent Little Walder some boiled beets and Big Walder the buttered turnips.

(Ok, that last one is a little subjective, but I’d much rather have buttered turnips than boiled beets…no, fuck it, that’s objectively correct. Beets are tolerable as paper-thin splashes of color in a salad. Otherwise, they are hideous alien roots and are never to be trusted.)

The endgame in my head is, in some sense, all about how Big Walder ends up with the Twins, and Skahaz Shavepate ends up with Slaver’s Bay (in retrospect, foreshadowed from his very first appearance), and the Tyrells end up with most if not all of the south. It’s not about the world taking a massive leap forward to utopia or even democracy; it’s about the “long and slow boring of hard boards.” It’s about things getting incrementally better. I will so very take the Tyrells over the Lannisters, the Shavepates over the Sons of the Harpy, and Big Walder over Little Walder. Choosing the lesser evil isn’t a sad half-measure, not in a world where the greater evils are the likes of Ramsay, Gregor, Craster, Rorge…or the Others, above them all. Sometimes, it’s enough to kill the ravaging monsters at the door, and hope the little nine-year-old monster at your side is “the right kind of terrible,” the kind who will rebuild the world…if for no other reason than so he’ll have something to rule.