IMO, Tywin has the same problem the Dothraki and Ironborn have, though on an individual rather than society-wide level. He's not so much a 'hardass political operator & strategist extraordinaire' as he is 'a clueless writer's idea of a hardass political operator & strategist extraordinaire'. As the Ironborn and the Dothraki a respectively based less on actual Vikings and Mongols/Plains Indians but more-so on Hollywood caricatures of those people with a crapton of unnecessary edge thrown in, so too did Martin write Tywin based less on what actual ruthless & infamous medieval nobles/royals like Edward Longshanks, Philip IV and Warwick the Kingmaker (who he seems to have not bothered researching beyond the surface level, same as Vikings/Mongols) were like but on what he saw in Braveheart, The Accursed Kings or whatever.
Martin using the fact that Comanche and Sioux were living moonman memes to justify the Dothraki remains hilarious. Yes, they were hilariously honest about how insane and genocidal and downright evil their societies were. The fact that the very name Comanche was a shitpost by them (Lifting the slur their victims used against them and making it their tribal name.), they were still strategic geniuses. I mean they went from cave man tier primitivity even by the standards of other plains Indians to fighting every major military power on
Earth for almost two centuries straight before the US finally bodied them...With them essentially inventing the asymmetrical style mobile warfare doctrine the US has used since the Sherman tank... ie the Comanche were able to get away with all the insane shit they did because their method of warfare was two to three hundred years ahead of everyone else.
And the moment they ran into someone who adapted to it..they got smashed for being a bunch of whackos.
And yeah, the Mongols did the skull pyramid thing. They turned Iraq into a post apocalyptic wasteland, they also had free trade, were the first major global economy to issue paper money and remove their currency from the Gold Standard (Not that this experiment lasted long but yeah.) were insistent upon exchanging as much knowledge and goods and services as possible and also had some remarkably compassionate laws that made joe blue subject of Temujin's Empire and its vassal hordes pretty happy.
Tywin has none of that, he doesn't rule the Westerlands benevolently, the life of the average peasant out there is probably shittier than it is in Dorne or the North because unlike out there..Tywin lets his craziest vassals do whatever they please and just assumes the stupid amounts of silver and gold in the ground means no one can complain because his peons are likely slightly better off materially than everywhere else.
He doesn't really understand that when you default to "RAZE THE OFFENDERS AND RAPE THEIR CHILDREN!" off the fucking bat...That it actually doesn't make you look strong. It makes you look pathetic and weak and insane.
Rob Stark called that bluff and he called it hard and if he had half of Cregan Stark's personality Tywin quite literally would have ended up hanging from a Weirwood tree by his nutsack. As it was, he likely did so much damage to Lannister prestige and capitol that even in death, he's got the old lion by the balls because his absolute dismantling of their image of strength and the extremely barbaric by their cultural norms manner in which he dealt with the Starks...made him look desperate and scared.
tldr: the Tyrells cucking the Lannister's was House Stark's legacy.
This would be less of a problem, I'm sure, if Martin & his publisher did not insist on advertising ASOIAF as the 'grimly realistic' alternative to LOTR. Only for it to turn out that orcs & trolls are more believable than the Ironborn & Dothraki societies, and Sauron is a better example of a manipulative & ruthless medieval evil overlord than Tywin.
I think it was Gwynne that soccer dad fantasy author who poses with his gigantic dogs and battle axes for his amazon books that said it best when he said "Game of Thrones is basically just an FX Network writer's attempt to reboot the Godfather Novel"
No arguments here. Frankly, the meltdowns wokies had over Cersei's & especially Daenerys' denouements reminded me of
that time Eric Andre asked a Spice Girl what she thought about Margaret Thatcher: the obvious answer to his question about the application of 'girl power' being, of course, a resounding yes. It's like they either forgot women with power can easily be as evil (or at least prone to morally questionable behavior) as men if not more, or worse (and more likely), they can't handle seeing women doing evil things and
actually being treated as evil by the narrative because of these evil deeds, simply because they are Wahman.
Livia Drusilla existed...any argument that women can't be monstrous tyrants is instantaneously nullified by that fact.
I've seen Redditors unironically arguing that Dany should have been allowed to continue on with her war against the world and D&D are bad not for writing such an unbelievably stupid ending in the first place but for putting a stop to this feminist fantasy of literally burning down The Patriarchy™, and Bran is a bad choice for the final king not because he's been totally useless to the story (so much so that he was left out of an entire season at one point) but because it's misogynistic to have Girl Hitler's rightful throne be assumed by an omnipotent god-king instead. Truly ridiculous stuff, even by Reddit's subterranean standards.
Ah yes, the incestous homonculus whose descended from a race of literal lizard people who were just as deadly to the world as the Others were...Because that's who you want to initiate a global revolution.
TV Deanarys was Gracchus Babeuf with tits...fuck all that.
This phenomenon would also explain the rash of Current Year female protagonists who manage to be simultaneously duller than a plank of wood and unfunny, unpleasant jackasses of titanic proportions who leave you wondering whether they're supposed to be the villains after all. Marvel's come down with that especially bad recently, but the trend has been increasingly aggressively affecting pretty much all of media since 2015-16.
I couldn't make it through five minutes of Slavic power fantasy she hulk...I shall now try House of the dragon.
Wish me luck brothers..This is gonna be a doozy