10x06, 'Casterly Rock'
Jorah hadn't thought that he would be sitting in Casterly Rock's grandiose hall with only Brienne of Tarth for company tonight. Brienne has remained silent throughout, but Jorah can see that she is wrestling with something. He's sure she'll speak soon enough.
He's right.
She starts off haltingly. "I was never meant for this life."
Jorah keeps his silence, waiting for her to continue at her own pace.
"I'm a knight," she continues. "I'm not a lady. When I agreed to marry Ser Jaime, I didn't think…" Her voice tails off.
She'd been swept away in the end of war, in the return of peace, in the hopes of the future.
Jorah doesn't blame her. It's all too easy to be caught up in a fantasy. Hadn't he done the same thing with Lynesse? Believed that they would live happily ever after as lord and lady of Bear Island?
"And hecarries the guilt of…of what he did everywhere he goes," she adds barely above a whisper, as if saying those words is the biggest betrayal. "He pretends that he doesn't care, that he's untouchable, but I know him, and I know how much he's suffering."
We carry the ghosts with us wherever we go, Jorah thinks. And what a ghost for Jaime Lannister to carry. Cersei will doubtless haunt him until his dying day.
They have to learn to live with those spectres. With the right person by his side, there is hope for Jaime.
Jorah is confident that Brienne is the right person.
"What do I do?" she says at last. Jaded. Bitter.
Helpless. Frightened.
And Jorah feels the pity intensify. Not that he pities her for being who she is, but because he understands how she feels, more than she thinks he does. He cannot change his own circumstances, but if he can make someone else's a little better…
"You love them the best that you can," he says slowly. "And perhaps that will never really be enough. But you do it anyway, because trying to stop would only hurt more. And, if you'll permit me to say, I think it's clear that he loves you too. If you both feel the same, it's easier to make it work. Don't push him to talk to you. Just let him know that you're there to listen to him, that you won't judge him. That will mean more to him than anything else, I promise you."
"Is that what you had to do?"
Now it's Jorah's turn to contemplate in silence for a moment, weighing up his words. "My relationship with the queen is vastly different." He won't deny his feelings; the whole of Westeros has been rumbling about it.
And so there they sit, two knights who had never thought to find themselves in the positions they're in, united by grief and love and longing. At least, Jorah thinks, there's hope for Brienne; there is love in her marriage.
There is no hope for his own heart.