I mean, I guess. I’m just avoiding my life responsibilities and kind of hovering around the idea that GRRM might have originally had other plans for Jaime that don’t bear out after other plot changes. D&D were seemingly perfectly content to let Nikolaj’s resemblance to Sawyer/Josh Holloway cue us into a bad boy redemption arc that wasn’t actually present in the script. (Nikolaj was perfectly cast as Jaime, but we all know that D&D never saw a shortcut they didn’t take.) You look at Jaime’s first appearance and you already know he’s an outward asshole with a tragic backstory and secret sensitive side. People who only watched the show have no idea that Jaime was talented, and it’s easy to lose track of the fact that he’s a contemporary to Ned and not Jon (though some of that is due to us seeing Charles Dance’s Tywin as Ned’s peer). TLDR I think Jaime is being kept around and strung along because he’s one of the few living nobles who was in KL and actually knows how Robert’s Rebellion played out.