The king doesn’t know what his hand is doing
As I make my way through rereading the A Song of Ice and Fire books it’s becoming increasingly clear that the role of the King’s Hand is not what it was intended to be. I can’t speak for every Hand or every Hand mentioned in the books because I’m not as informed as I’d like to be on the entire history of Westeros but I do think there’s a recurring pattern with most of the Hand’s we encounter: while the Hand is always supposed to be in near perfect synchronicity with the king, what the Hand really is is someone with much of the king’s authority who acts independently of the king.
Warning, spoilers below the fold…I just finished a chapter in A Storm of Swords where King Stannis’s Hand, Alester Florent, is imprisoned for trying to treaty with Lord Tywin Lannister. Keep in mind that Florent, Stannis’s Hand, had tried to end the war for Stannis by writing a letter offering that Stannis would give up his claim to the Iron Throne in return for a pardon. Florent was caught before the letter could get to Tywin though.
Hypothetically, there’s nothing unusual about correspondence between Joffrey and Stannis through these channels. The Hand is supposed to act on the king’s behalf. But Florent is imprisoned because he decided to make the offer to Tywin without Stannis’s permission. To be fair, it’s not certain what Tywin would have done if he had received the letter. If Tywin went to King Joffrey with it Joffrey probably would have rejected the offer. That’s likely why Florent addressed it to Tywin instead, because he knows that Tywin would be much more likely to accept the offer in the face of Joffrey’s wishes. This isn’t the first time Tywin has acted without his king’s permission either. And therein lies the truth about the role of the Hand, it’s a position with great power that does not consistently use that power to enforce what the king always wants.
In this respect, Tyrion was much like his father when he was the Hand prior to Tywin. Tyrion spent a great deal of his time acting as a rogue Hand of the King —arranging marriages, appointing officers to the City Watch, arresting the High Septon, thinking up and preparing an effective defense of King’s Landing for Stannis’s attack. Tyrion wants to do justice, as he says, and he knows that he won’t be able to do that if he does exactly what the Hand is supposed to do: whatever the king wants.
To be fair, with both Tywin and Tyrion, the dynamic between the king and the King’s Hand is a little bit different. Joffrey is an irascible and idiotic teenager and everybody knows it. Nobody in his family thinks he’s capable of making decisions that are actually good for the realm. They have to follow with Joffrey’s wishes sometimes so the people continue to think Joffrey really is the king in power as well as name (read: beheading Ned Stark) but that’s just a farce. In actuality both Tyrion when he’s Hand and Tywin are the ones with the real power. Tyrion, because he’s older and is appointed by Tywin, and Tywin because he’s got the army and gold to back up his orders. The real king isn’t Joffrey, it’s Tywin.
Neither of the previous Hands to Tywin and Tyrion are an exception to this rule either. Without going into too much detail about Stark’s poor decisions that lead up to his death (which has been done to death people. Come on, let’s move on!), it’s not hard to prove that he wasn’t exactly acting in unison with King Robert. If he was, the result probably would have been very different. Investigating Jon Arryn’s murder was probably something Robert would be curious about if he had known, true, but Stark looked into it and eventually, the lineage of the rest of the royal family, without Robert’s knowledge.
One could say that Stark was doing it in the name of the realm and because he knew it would be something Robert would want him to do but that’s only theoretical. Robert never actually tells Stark to investigate Arryn’s murder and then who Joffrey’s real father is, Stark does it on his own which, again, isn’t actually that unusual for the Hand of the King. It’s a similar story with Arryn as well. Arryn doesn’t tell Robert what he’s up to when he’s investigating the king’s family. None of this is actually very unusual for the King’s Hand. They act in the name of the king but oftentimes aren’t acting by the direct wishes of the king.
Older Hands are much the same too. Lord Qarlton Chelsted didn’t agree with King Aerys’s plans to burn King’s Landing to the ground if Robert ever made it there, so he resigned. In other words, Chelsted didn’t agree with the king and didn’t act in line with his orders.
Again, I write this post with hesitation because there have been a lot of Hands of the King but in recent memory, there’s a healthy pattern of the Hand acting without direct authorization or even against the wishes of the king.
Joff is underage. His mother, Cersei is Regent. So, everything you say pretty much goes, but it has nothing to do with Tyrion and Tywin making decisions either behind the back of the Regent (Tyrion) or without regard to her wishes. Tywin never even considers givign Joff “his way” to show that he is King. That Cersei allows him to make grave errors for that reason is one of her failings as Regent. Of course, when Joff is 16, then he would have power. Jaime gives tells the rest of the Kingsguard about King Tommen, “if he asks you to saddle his horse, do it. If he asks you to kill his horse, come to me.” That all of Joff’s “men” hadn’t been told the same, was a policy failure by someone. Tywin’s view of Ned’s execution was that the men really responsible should be executed. When he sends Tyrion to King’s Landing to serve as his substitute Hand, that is one of his tasks.Report
You make a good point. Even Davos, who is the closest thing we see to a truly loyal hand, does something completely against his king’s wishes. (Though he does confess it to Stannis almost immediately.)Report
Ah good point! I’d forgotten about Davos.Report
The office of the King’s Hand seems roughly equivalent to the Lord Chancellor, i.e. the most significant and powerful member of the Privy Council which was in turn the body by and through which the monarch ruled the country. They were usually churchmen though, rather than leading members of one of the Great Houses, and the only one I see that was even a member of a royal family was Geoffrey the Bastard, a Plantagenet and clergyman.
But if anything, the role that the various Hands have taken in the novels is pretty close to how actual Lord Chancellors sometimes behaved. More than a few were arrested for treason, and a significant number fell out of favor with the Crown and were dismissed only to be reinstated later. So the idea that a high-ranking member of a monarchial council would actually be working independently and occasionally at odds with the crown is not unrealistic.
Remember, we aren’t talking about a cabinet position with the federal government, which is basically just a job filled by someone who would otherwise be doing a different job. We’re talking about people who have no small degree of political power in their own right and are named to the council because of that power, partly to appease them, partly to keep them close to hand, and partly in the hope that by giving them some authority tied to the success of the Crown that they will be more loyal than they otherwise would be. Which is pretty much the way Martin’s Small Council operates.Report
It’s funny, one thing that doesn’t seem to happen a lot in the books with the King’s Hand is him falling out of favor with the King (although it does happen).
You make a really excellent point about who the hands tend to be. Still, I think we’re seeing all the exceptions with Davos, Tyrion, and Ned. Sure, Ned was powerful but Robert named him Hand because he said he could trust Ned.Report
Actually, there’s quite a bit of that, if you pay attention. Aerys II dismissed Tywin Lannister after deciding that Tywin was getting too uppity, attainted and exiled Owen Merryweather, exiled Jon Connington after the Battle of the Bells, and executed Qarlton Chelsted before finally naming Lord Rossart to the office, who was killed by Jamie Lannister.
And remember, Robert actually dismissed Ned there for a minute before deciding not to.Report
Good point.Report
By the way, here’s a brilliant AGoT role-playing game: http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6579356/game-of-thrones-rpgReport
Cool. Thanks.Report