Talking about Jaime and redemption is like stepping on a landmine in fandom. Let’s do it.

Look, in theory, everyone can be redeemed as long as they are capable of changing. Jaime is capable of change; the person we met in AGoT is not the same one we left off in ADWD. So in the abstract sense, yes he could be redeemed but only if he takes measures to earn that redemption. But is Jaime taking those measures? The answer is a resounding no.

Oh sure he wants to regain his honor. He is not happy with who he has become and wants to change that but the thing that doesn’t often get discussed about this arc is that Jaime’s motivation is centered around him. He is not doing something because it’s the right thing to do or because he actually cares about these people, he’s doing it because he is struggling with his self-image and wishes to improve it. We see this in how he constructs narratives in his head, casts himself in it and merrily ignores the things that do not fit. Any action that Jaime takes in the Riverlands is done so that he can pat himself on the back for it and feel good about himself. Of course there is nothing inherently wrong in finding satisfaction in doing a moral thing, and most redemption arcs often start with a person feeling bad about themselves, but this is fundamentally what Jaime’s arc in AFFC is solely about – feeling good about himself. He willfully ignores the reality of the situation in the Riverlands, and of his own culpability in it, just because it does not fit with the image he wants to construct for himself. Does he try to make up for it, for any of it? Nope.

Yes, he sends Brienne after Sansa, and he tries to prevent additional bloodshed in the Riverrun siege, but even that is about how he feels about himself. He does not send Brienne after Sansa because he cares about Sansa or because he wants to make up for destroying her life, but because Sansa is his last chance for honor. That’s it, that’s his purpose. It’s a very self-centered view that he displays again and again in AFFC.
He ends the Riverrun siege without bloodshed not because he gives a damn
about these people’s lives, but because he wants to keep the illusion
of keeping his vow to Catelyn that he has come to see as a symbol
of regaining his honor. Not that I agree with praising him for ending the
siege without bloodshed in the first place because I don’t understand why I should commend
Jaime for it. I should praise him for…. not committing an additional crime? Is that what
redemption is or how it’s earned? He is already validating the Red Wedding and rewarding
its culprits but I guess people find it praise-worthy that he doesn’t
murder his way into Riverrun to do it. Give the boy a gold star.

The reason Jaime resents that Edmure make
him verbalize his threats is because Edmure denies him the
illusion of being generous and honorable that Jaime has constructed in his head. Edmure is also forcing Jaime to face
the fact that what he is trying to achieve in the Riverlands is not peace but subjugation built on a bloody crime.

Jaime is willfully rationalizing his actions and deluding himself into thinking that what he is doing is honorable and that he is doing the right thing and restoring the king’s peace but we are not really meant to buy into his self-delusion, especially since GRRM makes sure to deconstruct those delusions.

Peace and justice, that’s what Jaime would like to think he is doing in the Riverlands, but is it really? Because here’s the justice that Jaime enforces:

No Wodes appeared, nor any of their smallfolk, though some outlaws had
taken shelter in the root cellar beneath the second brother’s keep. One
of them wore the ruins of a crimson cloak, but Jaime hanged him with the
rest. It felt good. This was justice. Make a habit of it, Lannister,
and one day men might call you Goldenhand after all. Goldenhand the
Just.

Was it justice? The only indication we got to point to these people being outlaws is that….. they took shelter in an abandoned keep? Jaime reflects on the devastation in the Riverlands and on how “scarce a field remained unburnt, a town unsacked, a maiden undespoiled”. The lords and landed knights have abandoned their smallfolk, from old Ser Quincy who barred himself inside his castle and left his smallfolk to the mercy of Rorge and Biter in Saltpans to the Blackfish himself who stripped the land of resources before retreating to Riverrun. So were these people Jaime hanged outlaws, or simply starving and homeless people driven out of their homes by the war and taking refuge wherever they could? Does Jaime spare half a second to consider this?

And what about his oh-so-proud reaction to rescuing Pia? Oh he absolutely was in the right to punish her attempted rapist but like, all of the Mountain’s men have raped Pia. Repeatedly. And Jaime takes them on and adds them to his ranks – the men that he says of “about the best that could be said for Gregor’s men was that they were
not quite as vile and violent a bunch as the Brave Companions.”, the men who are largely responsible for why the Riverlands are in such a bad shape, the men who were behind the Raping of the Riverlands, murderers and rapists and despicable human beings all. But Jaime is Goldenhand the Just for punishing one of them? What about the rest? Where’s the justice their victims are owed, or does Jaime get to pick and choose who gets justice and who doesn’t?

What about the victims of the Red Wedding? These people who were slaughtered treacherously while they were guests beneath the Freys’ roof. It’s really rich of Jaime to pat himself on the back for doing “justice” when he is rewarding a bunch of criminals. What grounds does Jaime Lannister have to claim that he is restoring the peace and meting out justice when he is refusing to enforce the law? When he is allowing and enabling the breakage of one of the oldest customs in Westeros that just happens to be essential to the health of the state? What Jaime is doing is the opposite of justice, and it’s no different than what Rhaegar Frey is advocating in White Harbor, just dressed up in gold.

And while Jaime is deluding himself into thinking himself Goldenhand the Just, we get this gem

If
the Blackfish would not listen, he would have no choice but to break
the vow he’d made to Catelyn Stark. The vow he’d sworn his king came
first.

Where do I even being? At Jaime putting the responsibility of breaking his word to Catelyn on the Blackfish who refuses to bow to a violent illegitimate regime, or that Jaime is honestly deluding himself into believing that he is keeping his vows and thus is being “honorable” when he knows that Tommen has no right to his crown? The Lannisters organized a coup and killed everyone who dared speak against it, and Jaime can not even own up to it. He rationalizes the hell out of it to make himself feel like he is being honorable. But he isn’t. What he is doing is legitimizing a crime his family committed and pulling a PR stunt by calling it peace. Of course the only one who buys into said stunt is Jaime himself.

The most basic start for a character to earn redemption begins with
owning up to and facing what they’ve done wrong, something that Jaime
really has not done. Does Jaime regret his incestuous
relationship with Cersei? Only insofar as he could hate her for lying to him and not
being faithful to him but does he, at any point, own up or regret that he was one of the main pillars of a violent coup that sent the realm propelling into war? We’ve all argued extensively over the nature of his “peace tour”
in the Riverlands and butted heads over whether his actions were honorable or not, but the fact is that Jaime is responsible for all of
the shit that went down. The whole situation is of his own creation. Jaime sent the ball rolling when he chose to sleep with his sister, father bastards on her and help her usurp the crown. He committed treason and destabilized the realm by sleeping
with his sister but the thing he regrets about it is trusting
Cersei.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Jaime and I adore his arc. But one of things I love about it is how it forced me to examine my view of redemption arcs and how conditioned I was to consider an arc redemptive just because an asshole character started to be just a bit less of an asshole. Because I used to call Jaime’s arc redemption. But it’s not. Jaime is not seeking redemption, he’s searching for a new identity. The two things are not mutually exclusive, of course, but I’ve yet to see Jaime do anything to earn redemption. A couple of decent acts do not magically redeem someone, and the road to redemption can not lie in actively trying to emulate a notorious war criminal or upholding his legacy, which is what Jaime does in trying to prove he is Tywin’s kid.

Make no mistake, Jaime is still breaking his vows with his actions in the Riverlands, both his knightly vows that are based on protecting the innocent and defending the weak, and his vow to Catelyn to never take up arms against her family.
Threatening to catapult Edmure’s baby if he does not surrender Riverrun
goes against Jaime’s vow to Catelyn. Validating a grotesque crime like
the Red Wedding by rewarding the people who took part in it goes against
Jaime’s vows to Catelyn. Jaime’s obvious distaste for the Freys means
nothing when he is enabling their rule. His verbal attack on Sybelle
Spicer is hypocritical since his contempt is due to his own father’s
scheming and manipulations. Gosh, are we supposed to applaud Jaime for
detesting those people for something that his own father orchestrated
when he is trying to follow in Tywin’s footsteps? Jaime
does not reject Tywin’s methods, he follows and validates them, then
despises those who aided Tywin so he could maintain a false moral
superiority, even though Jaime’s actions in the Riverlands do nothing but compound Tywin’s crimes. There’s nothing honorable about pushing an illegitimate regime on the region, or in forcing a family to surrender their seat to the people who killed their kin by threatening to
catapult

a baby. Jaime behaving honorably in the Riverlands is an illusion, just like his “peace” is. His actions undermine the rule of the law, they make a mockery out of justice; what kind of redemption can ever be found in that?