Game of Thrones (TV Series)

The Mountain and the Viper (2014)

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: Jaime Lannister

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Quotes 

• Tyrion Lannister : What's the punishment for regicide? Drawing and quartering? Hanging? Breaking at the wheel?

  Jaime Lannister : Beheading.

  Tyrion Lannister : Seems rather ordinary. And he was my nephew as well, so what is that? Fratricide is brothers. Filicide is sons. Nepoticide. That's the one. Matricide, patricide, infanticide, suicide. There's no kind of killing that doesn't have its own word.

  Jaime Lannister : [referring to Alton Lannister]  Cousins.

  Tyrion Lannister : Cousins, you're right. There is no word for cousin killing. Well done. Do you remember cousin Orson? Orson Lannister?

  Jaime Lannister : Of course. Wet nurse dropped him on his head. Left him simple.

  Tyrion Lannister : Simple? Used to sit all day in the garden. Crushing beetles with a rock.

  [Jaime and Tyrion jokingly mimic how Orson used to crush beetles and the "kun kun kun" he made while doing so] 

  Tyrion Lannister : Nothing made him happier.

  Jaime Lannister : Nothing made YOU happier. You'd think being tormented from birth would have given you some affinity for the afflicted.

  Tyrion Lannister : On the contrary. Laughing at another person's misery was the only thing that made me feel like everyone else.

  Jaime Lannister : The joke wore thin, though.

  Tyrion Lannister : For you. You drifted away.

  Jaime Lannister : I had other interests.

  Tyrion Lannister : Yes, other interests. But I stayed with Orson.

  Jaime Lannister : Why?

  Tyrion Lannister : I was curious. Why was he smashing all those beetles? What did he get out of it? First thing I did was ask him "Orson, why are you smashing all those beetles?". He gave me an answer "Smath the beetles. Smath 'em. kun kun kun".

  [Jaime chuckles] 

  Tyrion Lannister : I wasn't deterred. I was the smartest person I knew. Certainly I had the wherewithal to unravel the mysteries that lay at the heart of a moron. So I went to Maester Volarik's library.

  Jaime Lannister : [shakes his head disgustedly]  Volarik. Tried to touch me once.

  Tyrion Lannister : Turns out, far too much has been written about great men and not nearly enough about morons. Doesn't seem right. In any case, I found nothing that illuminated the nature of Orson's affliction or the reason behind his relentless beetle slaughter. So I went back to the source. I may not have been able to speak with Orson, but I could observe him, watch him, the way men watch animals to come to a deeper understanding of their behavior. And as I watched, I became more and more sure of it. There was something happening there. His face was like the page of a book written in a language I didn't understand, but he wasn't mindless, he had his reasons. And I became possessed with knowing what they were. I began spending inordinate amounts of time watching him. I would eat my lunch in the garden, chewing my mutton to the music of "kun kun kun". And when I wasn't watching him, I was thinking about him. Father droned on about the family legacy and I thought about Orson's beetles. I read the histories of Targaryen conquests. Did I hear dragon wings? No, I heard "kun kun kun". And I still couldn't figure out why he was doing it. And I had to know because it was horrible, that all these beetles would be dying for no reason.

  Jaime Lannister : Every day around the world, men, women and children are murdered by the score. Who gives a dusty fuck about a bunch of beetles?

  Tyrion Lannister : I know, I know. But still, it filled me with dread. Piles and piles of them, years and years of them. How many countless living crawling things smashed and dried out and returned to the dirt? In my dreams I found myself standing on a beach made of beetle husks stretching as far as the eye could see. I woke up crying, weeping for their shattered little bodies. I tried to stop Orson once.

  Jaime Lannister : He was twice your size.

  Tyrion Lannister : He just pushed me aside with a "kun" and kept on smashing. Every day until that mule kicked him in the chest and killed him.

  [Tyrion notices a beetle on the floor. He picks it up, puts it back down and leaves it unharmed] 

  Tyrion Lannister : So what do you think? Why did he do it? What was it all about?

  Jaime Lannister : I don't know.

  [they hear bells tolling. Jaime stands and starts walking out of the cell] 

  Jaime Lannister : Good luck today.

  [Jaime leaves]