Trial By Combat: “Does It Make F***ing Sense?”

Welcome to The Podcast That Drinks and Knows Things’ Drowned Word! The Drowned Word focuses on topics discussed in the most recent episode of the show, which this week was S04E06 The Laws of Gods and Men – The Monster You Think I Am.

The really important part of this episode is the fact that Peter Dinklage can ACT. Did you see that “For Your Consideration” monologue? Did you? He earned that Emmy win.

None of the hosts really asked a question about this part, but I’m going to talk about it anyway because it’s just so good. This moment has been festering since season one. It’s extremely satisfying when Tywin tells Tyrion that he’s not on trial for being a dwarf, and Tyrion says:

Oh, yes I am. I’ve been on trial for that my entire life.

We know Tyrion is constantly affected by his status as a dwarf. To hear him finally get to accuse everyone- especially his father- of putting him on trial for the crime of his birth is extremely powerful.

Tyrion refuses to take the blame for Joffrey’s death. He tells the court:

I wish I was the monster you think I am.

Have we ever had a more beautiful character moment for Tyrion? He’s not always a good man, he’s not always an evil man, but he is always faced with the consequences of what life has handed him. The consequences of something that is not and could not ever be his fault.

And he thinks, “This would all be a lot easier if I actually WAS who they thought I was.” If he was a horrible, hideous monster, maybe he would have killed Joffery. Maybe he’d accept his punishment for that act. Maybe he’d have already killed his whole family and been done with it. But Tyrion is a complicated man. He wants to do what is right. But he also wants to be valued and heard and powerful and important.

So because Tyrion will “get no justice here,” he calls for a trial by combat to “let the gods decide [his] fate.”

This moment prompted Luke to ask, “Trial by combat. Does it make f***ing sense?”

I know I’ve already bored you with my soliloquy about Tyrion, so let’s get into attempting to answer Luke’s question: does trial by combat make any sense?

According to this great article by Priceonomics (which includes spoilers for season 6, be warned), trials by combat, or duellums, are thousands of years old. This method was used in cases where there was no serious proof and a judge or authority couldn’t resolve the issue. But how did they actually work? Were they even fair?

In theory, God helped the honest party win the fight. In practice, the strongest person, or the person with the money to hire the strongest champion, won the case. In yet another example of history failing to live up to our romanticization of it, trials by combat usually ended with one of the fighters surrendering, and judges often had champions use weaker weapons like clubs to keep the trials non-lethal.

It makes sense, then, that Tyrion would request a trial by combat. He is touting his innocence over and over, and he is not being believed. They can’t prove Tyrion’s guilt and he can’t convince them of his innocence, so he calls for the only reliable method left to him: a duellum (great word, add it to your vocabulary).

Personally, I like the idea of a trial by combat. Pick a strong champion and you win! I also love the poetry of it in this moment. Tyrion is so sick of fighting, fighting the same people over the same thing they’ve been fighting about his entire life. He’s ready to let someone else stand up for him and fight. Good thing he’s got strong friends.

Until next time, thanks for reading The Drowned Word, and remember, what is read may never die.