221 ASOS 78 Tyrion XI: Owed

After Jaime frees Tyrion, having arranged his escape through Varys, Jaime tells Tyrion Tywin made him lie about Tysha. Tyrion goes to confront Tywin, find Shae in his bed and strangles her. Tyrion Kills Tywin.

I think the author's intention with the end of that chapter is a major reveal about the psychological state Tyrion's been in since book 1. I think we're meant to see Tyrion transform into a villain, but more importantly, to see the cacade of his villain's motive so that we understand how it happened and ultimately see Tyrion as an innocent as well as a murderer, understanding how he was destroyed and made monstrous despite his best intentions: a complex dark grey character.

Tyrion tells the story of Tysha multiple times, always leading up to Tywin's revenge. At first, I thought the reveal was going to be that Tywin participated in Tysha's gang rape, since there seemed to be some detail left unmentioned, something that was going to shock us. I think that reveal is meant to be Jaime's lie. We were already set up to want to see Tyrion forgive Jaime, who is freeing him. This is especially hilighted by our knowledge that Jaime has been long troubled and condemned himself for his part in the lie. Instead, Tyrion turns murderous, his worst qualities on display. He tells Jamie he killed Joffrey just to hurt him, that they have become enemies and he'll kill him for this. That's supposed to be focal.

I think Shae's role in Tyrion's villain turn is even more central and vital. It reveals that Tyrion has long displaced his fury at Tywin onto Tysha because of Jaime's lie. When Tyrion would have, at thirteen, dedicated his life to killing Tywin for what he did to Tyrion's loving wife, Tyrion instead hated himself for falling for Tysha's scam. And, he's hated Tysha, as part of the displacement of his rage at Tywin onto himself. For a decade, Tyrion has stewed in humilated self-condemnation for wanting to believe himself loveable. Yet, Tyrion has always felt the pea under all those mattresses. It may even be his primary characteristic that Tyrion knows he's goddamned loveable and that there is something wrong with a world that would revile him. Why not just replace Tysha with Shae? Wouldn't any whore be able to deliver that love, since one was?

But it does the opposite. Instead of feeling that it's safe to fall in love with Shae, the way he sensed it was safe to fall in love with good, innocent Tysha, Tyrion is only made painfully aware of how easy it would be to delude himself and hates himself for wanting to. He becomes obsessed with her fidelity, surrounding her with ugly guards despite there not really being any indication that Shae would break contract. It's all about Tyrion and how hopeless his craving for a loving wife. (This gets really hammered with Sansa)

When Tyrion strangled Shae with the chain she'd worn for him, too, in that same bed, it was ghost Tysha he was strangling: the imaginary and demonized whore of Tywin's lie, made real by Shae's cruelty to Tyrion in court. That she unneccesarily revealed that she would call him"giant," but made it seem he'd required that of her as a kink, was not just an uncalled for cruelty and proof she did not care about him at all, it was like she'd been setting him up the whole time and that he let it happen because so naive and so trusting and so desperate for a speck of affection that he failed himself despite all the self-doubt that ruined the facade anyway. It's abot the depth of Tyrion's despair.

What is so villainous about Tyrion, in that chapter, is that he knows he has been so totally destroyed that he has no reason not to just be a destroyer. Why not be the demon he's been painted? I think we're meant to sympathize deeply with Tyrion and that those who focus vehmently on Shae are over analyzing and probably also inserting agendas that have nothing to do with ASOIAF.