Examples of Hypocrites in Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.
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Game of Thrones
- Tywin Lannister:
- He constantly preaches the importance of family while destroying the bonds he has with his children by psychologically abusing them. Tywin often wastes no time reminding his children of their shortcomings, all whilst ignoring his poor parenting as a huge reason why they are so flawed.
- The majority of his actions which are considered "best for the family" often boil down to what will most benefit himself first. Tyrion even calls him out on how Tywin never makes any personal sacrifices for the sake of the Lannisters but expects his kids to do so in return... to which Tywin answers that his sacrifice was to let Tyrion survive childbirth. Case in point: he is very disappointed that he has no suitable heir and criticizes Jaime for remaining on the Kingsguard and Tyrion for being a deviant and presses his children into political marriages for the sake of family legacy (such as when he arranges for Cersei to marry Loras and have his children while she is still fertile) while never remarrying himself, even though as a man his reproductive system has no expiry date and he could have more children. Not to mention that by the time of the series he has been widowed for over thirty years so there could have been several more adult Lannister children by now to make new alliances and maybe make up for the "disappointments" of his first three children. Meanwhile, his first marriage was a marriage for love - his first cousin Joanna, who as another Lannister brought no new wealth, lands, or armies with her.
- He constantly condemns Tyrion for his whoring while secretly bedding them himself. Namely, Tyrion's former lover Shae, after Tyrion's trial.
- When Tyrion complains that his hill tribes in Season 1 are unruly Tywin is quick to preach that the responsibility of bad behavior from soldiers lies with their commander, but when Oberyn confronts him about Gregor Clegane however Tywin simply replies that men at war commit all kind of crimes without their superior's knowledge. In the books, Tywin insists that he never ordered Gregor to kill Elia but he did order Gregor to kill her children and only wishes that they did it cleanly.
- Also, his justification for the Red Wedding is that it's more noble to kill dozens at a dinner rather than thousands in battle.....which conveniently leaves out the fact that not only were Robb and his court slaughtered, but also his entire army, in a very cowardly way.
- Cersei Lannister:
- She calls Margaery a harlot and a whore, despite herself having committed adulterous incest with her brother. She also resents Margaery for manipulating the king and trying to become a power behind the throne like her... which, unlike Cersei, Margaery would prove seemingly successful at.
- So, Cersei defends her cheating on Robert with her brother Jaime as "true love" and her and Jaime "belonging together", adding too that her husband being an Unwanted Spouse who was whoring around himself, anyways? Fine... until Jaime goes to war and Cersei starts bedding a cousin behind her "true love's" back, as part of manipulating him to help kill her husband Robert.
- Cersei is deeply offended that Tywin played favorites with his children, favouring the gifted Jaime. Cersei has no problem playing favorites by focusing on her firstborn son Joffrey. Myrcella and Tommen are pretty much ignored unless there is some setback on the horizon.
- Cersei looks down on and insults Ellaria Sand for being a bastard even though all three of her own children are secretly illegitimate and pretenders to both the throne and to her own House.
- She accuses Tyrion of overestimating his own intelligence, something she does constantly, and often at great cost to herself and House Lannister. Tyrion calls her out on this immediately.
- She deeply loves Tommen because he is her son, but shows little respect and concern for the actual individual, not thinking twice before undermining and manipulating him or before hurting the woman he loves because Cersei's powerplays come first. At most, she views herself as a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
- She frets over Tommen's meekness and thinks that he needs to toughen up if he wants to survive and rule. At the same time she refuses to let him attend council meetings or audiences, ostensibly because the idea came from his wife Margery, but in reality more because she sees these innocuous requests as encroachment on her reign. "I waited for so long, the throne is MINE now, Tommen can wait too". And when Tommen actually stands up to her and defends Margery, Cersei immediately browbeats him back into submission in a particularcly sick and cruel way - by forcing him to personally punish his whipping boy.
- In Season 4, she accuses Tywin that once she is gone that he and Margaery would dig their claws into Tommen and fight over him until he would be ripped apart. Comes season 5, after Tywin's death, she constantly struggles with Margaery to manipulate Tommen, until he ends up killing himself after realizing that his mother's schemes ruined his chances of becoming a good king.
- Joffrey scorns his brother Tommen for crying during their sister Myrcella's farewell, conveniently forgetting he was on the verge of tears at Robert's deathbed and that he was weeping for his life when Arya had him at swordpoint and Nymeria bit his arm.
- Balon Greyjoy is quick to point out the flaws of others and abuses his son for growing up among the Starks even though it was his failure that made Theon a hostage in the first place. He also resents Ned and Robert for defeating him and taking his son, even though the Old Way he so cherishes encourages taking from those weaker than you and so by all rights everything was taken from him fair and square.
- A fairly minor example, but the Blackfish chides Edmure for calling Robb "nephew" rather than the style due to a king, whilst himself referring to Edmure as "nephew" rather than the style due to a Lord Paramount.
- Janos Slynt justifies his betrayal of Ned Stark by saying the man tried to bribe him. Tyrion notes that the only mistake there was not realizing Janos had already been bought.
- He also justifies this betrayal and the murder of a baby who was one of Robert's bastards by saying that "orders are orders". When he is later a member of the Night's Watch and Lord Commander Jon Snow assigns him the command of a ruined fort on The Wall , he refuses the order with a very insulting rebuttal. Laser-Guided Karma ensues.
- Walder Frey
- He speaks of his glorious victory and how his enemies crumbled before him, which annoys Jaime to the point where he asks how many battles Frey had personally partaken in. Not only does Frey dodge the question, but he then questions Jaime's personal combat prowess. This of course makes The Kingslayer even angrier.
- Walder Frey points out that while he's a bannerman to Catelyn Stark's father Hoster Tully, he's also a loyal subject of King Joffrey, so his loyalty to the crown takes precedence over his loyalty to his liege lord. However, he allows Robb Stark to cross the Twins in exchange for a marriage pact, then betrays and kills Robb over the marriage pact being broken, so Walder is truly only loyal to the people who can give him what he wants.
- Brienne of Tarth:
- She tells Stannis she's killing him in the name of Renly the rightful King... even though Stannis clearly had more right to the throne than Renly, and if he hadn't killed Renly, Renly probably would have killed him.
- Later, Brienne tells Sansa not to trust Davos for supporting Stannis and cites the fact he wasn't with Stannis to show his disloyalty. However, Davos was away on Stannis' orders and by this logic, Brienne was disloyal to Catelyn for not being with her when she was murdered. In fact, she comes across as worse by this logic, as rather than remaining to protect Sansa she went off to murder Stannis and it was only luck that enabled her to save Sansa.
- Roose Bolton becomes this in hindsight. Remember when he called the Greyjoys "treasonous whores" only to join the Freys in betraying Robb?
- Ellaria Sand off-handedly berates Jaime for being "The Kingslayer", then kills her king Doran Martell a few episodes later.
- Harald Karstark sided with the Boltons because the Starks killed his father. Yet he is not bothered in the slightest when Ramsay murders his own father Roose who also avenged Harald's father. He also sided with the Boltons who were allied with the Lannisters, whom his father had a hostile hatred of and would have never sided with any house allied with them. Not to mention that he doesn't seem to remember or care that the Boltons' Lannister allies killed his brothers, with Jaime Lannister himself having murdered Torrhen in cold blood. Combined with his cold demeanor, it really makes you wonder what his relationship with Torrhen and Harrion was like...
- Jaime Lannister:
- Him reminding Randyll Tarly that he had sworn an oath to the crown is kind of this considering that Jaime killed the king he had sworn to defend (while he was right to do it, it doesn't change the fact he betrayed his oath) and is persuading him to serve a woman that murdered a king (Robert) and a queen (Margaery) and is responsible for the death of another (Tommen).
- He claims to Brienne that he was proud of killing the Mad King before he unleashed wildfire on the people of King's Landing, come Season 7, he serves Cersei a Queen who unleashed wildfire on the people of King's Landing and willingly follows her around like a minion.
- Upon meeting Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen tries to get him to bend the knee by citing the oath his ancestors made. The moment he replies with the atrocities her father committed, she asks him not to judge her by her father's sins. It's such a blatant show of hypocrisy that even Jon Snow himself hangs a lampshade on it immediately afterwards.
- Varys has a hard time defending how his bid to remove Robert — a lazy and uninvolved ruler but one who provided peace and stability, and an improvement on the Mad King, with Viserys II, a cruel, stupid, and weak man — fits with his mantra about the "good of the Realm".
- This was an Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole due to the removal of the "Aegon" subplot from the books. Essentially, Varys has worked to slightly destabilize the Baratheon and Lannister dynasties because he was intending to put Rhaegar's allegedly still living son back on the throne, having been raised all of his life to be the "perfect prince". Varys's original plan was to use Viserys and Daenerys as decoys to distract King Robert before bringing over Aegon later. At some point, the showrunners decided not to use this subplot, so Varys's plans no longer make sense with what was established in the earlier seasons.
- Qhono tells Tyrion that his people (the Lannisters) are weak... Except you know, they are fighting against a Dothraki horde and a dragon. Not a fair strategy.
- Renly Baratheon:
- He claims him becoming King would be better for the common people, even though his attempt to usurp the Iron Throne leaves King's Landing starving.
- He asks Ned if good warriors make good Kings. However, he is basically planning to take the Iron Throne through military force. For someone who is afraid of blood and peaceable, he shows no remorse for ordering the deaths of Daenerys Targaryen and Viserys, which Ned alone disagreed with, and Robert felt guilty about and tried to rescind. He tells Catelyn he and Robb are natural allies, comparing them to his brother Robert and Robb's father Ned... except Renly went against Ned's wishes in trying to usurp the crown and abandons him in King's Landing.
- Eddard Stark:
- He is considered the most honest and honorable man in Westeros to a fault (and is on display prominently in the Honor Before Reason trope), but when Cat arrests Tyrion for being behind Bran's maiming in a spur of the moment decision, he claims to Robert that it was at his command. Ned frequently calls out other people for their faults as liars, cheats, and double-crossers, but apparently is willing to lie on behalf of his immediate family. Particularly egregious since he holds Jamie responsible for serving as bodyguard to the Mad King (who executed Ned's father and brother) and also breaking his oath for eventually killing the same king.
- Arya Stark:
- She is furious with her sister Sansa for lying and covering for Joffrey when Joffrey attacked Micah, leading to Micah's death. When Sansa points out that it was Sandor Clegane who killed Micah, Arya retorts that as Joffrey's sword shield, he does whatever Joffrey tells him to. But later on in Season Three, when Sandor is put on trial by the Brotherhood Without Banners, Arya angrily brings up the murder of Micah, even though by her previous logic, Joffrey should be the one held accountable for Micah's death, not Sandor. Sandor even retorts when Arya points out that she's the one who attacked Joffrey and Micah just ran away that he should have killed Arya instead.
- Arya briefly served as Tywin's cupbearer in Season Two when she was a prisoner at Harrenhal, yet she twice called out other people for doing the same thing - she was appalled Jaqen H'ghar became a Lannister soldier even though he had previously been their prisoner (he called her out on it), then again when she is reunited with Sansa, she gets angry when she finds a letter Sansa wrote back in Season One telling Robb to denounce Ned's claims Joffrey is a bastard and bend the knee and accuses her of serving their enemy, but Sansa retorts that Cersei forced her to write the letter and she had to pretend to still be loyal to the Lannisters to survive.
House of the Dragon
- Otto Hightower and Daemon Targaryen hate each other, but they're more alike than anyone wants to admit.
- Otto is outraged at Daemon visiting brothels in the wake of Queen Aemma and her son's deaths. Yet he instructs Alicent to go and "comfort" Viserys barely a day after his wife's death, essentially pimping out his daughter.
- Daemon later mocks Otto as a second son who needs to seize power and prestige because he can't inherit it… while Daemon himself is also exactly that.
- During their physical confrontation on Driftmark after Aemond loses his eye, Rhaenyra accuses Alicent of “hiding beneath the cloak of [her] own righteousness”. Considering that Rhaenyra has up to that point slept with a Kingsguard, had a decade-long affair that resulted in three obvious bastards, slept with her uncle at his wife’s (and her sister-in-law’s) funeral, and asked to have her own young half-brother tortured, Rhaenyra’s assessment of Alicent rings hollow. Even more galling is that any time someone questions her of any wrongdoing, Rhaenyra is the one to usually act righteously and calls any questions about her “lies”, “treason”, or “vile accusations”.
