[cellurdur]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

In that case, do not speak for pther people liking/disliking other characters.

I can speak for the other people I have discussed this with.

Is there evidence to that in GOT+etc?

Yes, because it's up to the reader to decide what is good or bad. Roose Bolton murdering peasants and then raping their wives puts him in the bad category.

Really?

And if you meant that they are without good, I disagree. Except for Ramsey. That guy is the only one that strikes me as pure evil

Cersei, Gregor, Roose, The Goat, the Bloody murmers etc. As for being pure evil, I never said such a thing. I don't think such a thing exist, but when you do enough bad actions, I believe you can be placed on the evil side.

Sauron has more good in him that a lot of those I listed.

The thing is, every character has his own good, his own ethical code. For some it is some abstract belief (eg: Ned). For others its what benefits their survival. Yet others don't even think in terms of what's good and what's not, but what is realistic and if it's worth doing it (eg: Baelish). This is the beauty of ASOIAF, that it allows for all these moral codes to coexist. You have Jack London's law of club and fang, but you also have Tolkien's gentler perspective, and many others besides.

Every character in every story acts according to their own code. It's very simplistic to think that anyone sets out to be evil. That being said when you keep doing evil actions you are going to be judged as bad.

Does the average person really do that? You may think so from a 21st century perspective, but to be honest, I think that Martin's idea of peasants caring about 1) their lives and 2) their crops/lands/livelihoods/etc is more realistic than peasants really caring who their lord is - so long as that lord treats them ok. In this sense, Martin is more realistic than Tolkien. As for the aristocracy, there are all kinds. Some that are loyal to their lords (that are present in both authors' works) and some that are loyal to themselves (ditto). The difference is that there are less of the latter in LOTR+others, and much more in GOT+others.

This is Martin's greatest failing. He is a pseudo historian and has actually not delved very deeply into what people thought at the time. People have not changed in the last 1000 years. Don't you care about who rules your country? Don't you care about if the laws are just? It's true that primary concerns maybe about self interest, but greater issues matter too. For a medieval audience the two were linked.

Loyalty to the Lord was incredibly important. You only need to read accounts of how people gladly died for their liege Lord. You get those out to further their own interest, but to think this applied to the majority is like thinking that the millions that volunteered to fight in the First World War were not patriotic.

Personally, there are very few I would call absolute villains, and even fewer are cartoon villains.

Because of the whole perspective thing, you get to see the goodness in many initially bad characters, and even if they don't have so much of it, you get to see and understand their thoughts and feelings and their philosophy. If you see it through ther lens, maybe it's not that bad after all, or bad from an abstract objective "good" but not from the "good" of reality.

Being completely evil is something that probably does not exist. When half the villains are worse than Sauron then there is not much good in them. Seeing why someone acts does not excuse their actions. Ramsey raping women or Cersei murdering innocent babies to massage her ego does not get better, because we see her point of view.

Agreed.

Yep.