greydeath

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Vigil

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THE GIRL KING (2015)

requested by anonymous

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shireen having some form of prophetic dreams that r thanks to her like diluted targ blood (thanks great grandma rhaelle) is honestly ... one of my favourite things

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the more i think abt my ideal main canon (that i have yet to fully work out all the kinks of, but w/e) the more i think that the best case scenario re her Joan Of Arc Moment is that it simply … doesn’t come to fruition? maybe stannis considers it, but can’t do it, and that causes a crisis for him, or maybe i go with how i think grrm will eventually write it in that it’s done behind his back, and then i simply shrug my shoulders and go - But She Survives! maybe r’hllor is not a load of baloney, maybe we have a real iphigenia at aulis moment and as soon as the pyre is lit and the flames begin to consume her she disappears and is replaced by a deer, I DO NOT KNOW! but. what i do know is that she is very very unlikely to forgive who it was that tried to commit her to the flames and very unlike to forget

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WHERE'S MY FATHER? I WANT TO SEE MY FATHER [ ... ] WHERE'S MY FATHER? NO, YOU CAN'T DO THIS, FATHER, WHERE ARE YOU?! [ ... ] LET ME SEE MY FATHER! WHERE ARE YOU, PLEASE?

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slowly but surely we’re dining in a table full of regret

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❝ our homes begin to sound similar. ❞ indeed, perhaps music would be one such way to brighten up the dark and stormy corners of dragonstone, to lessen the blow of the storms or the sting of the salt-air.

patches the fool is the only provider of music in these parts, his jaunty little songs that sometimes forewarn of chilling yet, surely nonsensical events – he sings of mermen and dry rain and bloody royal weddings, spooking the princess and earning the ire of the red priestess. but it is to be expected, surely, after all that he has survived and experienced, and he is a cheerful companion for the most part, never judgemental, never cruel. they are rare enough qualities on this isle, shireen thinks.

❝ not since my uncle's death, when my father took the throne and i became his heir. ❞ a contentious truth, she knows, more aware of the realm-wide conflict than some might give her credit for, but a truth all the same. ❝ my education changed to better prepare me for my future, and so the harp began to fall through the cracks. ❞

some years. the careful, straight-backed, recitation. how she opens her mouth and a tiny echo of the hopeful king flows right out. incongruous to such a little thing. the laugh escapes her, bounding past whatever stock response. a high leap of a sound, half-surprise, muffled in the shell of her fingers. " no. dear one. music was not of high priority in my home.

you don't play anymore ? " she summons some semblance of stillness, eyes expectant.

had she some sisters, a brother, or perhaps if her mother had been more insistent, she might have learned the vielle with her cousins and even enjoyed it.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) dir. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

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maybe it’s a good thing shireen is doomed by the (eventual, looming) narrative bc if she lived long enough to possibly see her father succeed as king, she would be forced to marry, and i think this girl’s number two fear is being stuck in a loveless marriage (number one is dragons, bc duh)

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as is so often the case with the princess, she speaks earnestly and frankly, never one to hum and haw and wring her hands about what is to be expected of an answer from her – her father's daughter, through and through – though still careful when it comes to the choosing of her words. ❝ i was taught the harp for some years, but i was never very good at it. ❞ wind instruments were always out of the question, as her lungs were weak for a time after the greyscale, and the stiffness in her cheek would have made it doubly difficult.

❝ do you play anything, lady rahl? ❞

the isle of dragonstone was no place for a child. too grim. too cold and crawling with the ghosts of old magic. what little attempts to add joviality to the place only seemed to highlight this. but stannis' fawn stubbornly tries.

music makes bad things bearable and good things wonderful.

saccharine, almost sickly so.

it's difficult to see shireen for anything but her sweetness. her fragility. to shake that dull uncomfortable thread that plucks at her chest not quite pity. but the gnawing anticipation of something that will bruise. rot. " do you play ? " leera asks instead, the warmth of her grin betraying nothing.

@greydeath

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WHICH VERY SPECIFIC CHARACTER ARCHETYPE ARE YOU? THE BEAUTY.

Beloved, beautiful, naive, innocent—or at least, perceived this way. The one representing goodness, in all its purity, to others. Smarter than they let on.

tagged by @inflame my love my life etc. tagging @sanctamater @stjusts @rozeat @lcerys @halfyearsqueen

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@rozeat ... continued on from here,

not for the first time since her arrival at dragonstone, marian had found herself wishing for home. there was not so much green here as there was gray, the soil rocky and hard and no good for planting. the sea had lost its novelty altogether. but there was a duty to be done here, in visiting her cousin. her father ought to be sending knights and riders to aid stannis, maybe. but her father lay abed, hardly able to remember his own name these days. and she had little taste for sending her people to fight a war for a crown, a throne none of them would ever be permitted to see. so she, penning a letter in perfectly forged handwriting of her father's, had sent herself here as a gesture of goodwill. shireen was a sweet little girl and very like her father - in looks. in other ways, she was blessedly herself. ready for a story or song, of which marian had many. more than willing to play a game, or sew. the septas had tsked over the lady marian's own embroidery. a woman of her age with stitches such as these, no wonder she's unmarried. but shireen was also wise - wiser than she had expected. her words knocked marian in the chest as if she'd leveled a blunt piece of wood, and hit. she recovered little better than she would have if the girl had, indeed, struck her. marian leaned away from the window, toward shireen, playfully tapping one of the girl's temples. ❝ you, princess, have the mind of a maester, ❞ she chewed her lower lip, and then: ❝ it's a very lonely thing, to be a little girl all alone in a big house. or to be a very great girl, far from home. but i think we shall make fine companions of each other, don't you? ❞

it is a dark, grim place, the only home that shireen has only ever known; the dragons which frame windows and form staircases, the carved gargoyles and basilisks and wyverns that are dotted all around the castle, the windwyrm which seems to scream in the wind, echoing all over the isle. there is a reason that the princess chooses to spend the time she is allowed outside in aegon's garden as opposed to anywhere else, it being the most pleasant space this side of blackwater bay. shireen does not doubt that in its heyday, it was a magnificent keep, one that emulated power and glory for house targaryen –– but just as they have crumbled and caved in on themselves, so too has their heir's former seat.

she assumes this to be one of the reasons that they receive so few visitors, even less if one were to remove those that only come to see the rightful king of westeros. her companions here are limited, the makeshift small council that surround her father either tolerating or ignoring her, the maesters civil but old, the sworn swords gruff. some of them are still weary of her, of the cracked and discoloured skin that covers half her face. they shy away as though she's contagious still, even if they would never dare voice it for fear of their king's wrath. it's why her cousin's visit has pleased her so; not only is she unafraid of the greyscale, but she speaks openly and honestly, and she has a good heart.

not to mention, she has drawn the vexation of the two lone septas in the keep towards herself, and away from the young princess; she sometimes think they resent their presence on the island when there is such little need for them in the first place. a classic case of her parents disagreeing on how she ought to be raised, shireen thinks: womanly arts were for ladies who weren’t expected to lead a kingdom one day, a kingdom that would be fractured and reeling from war by the time she came to rule it. neat stitches on silk are useless when alliances must be forged, and building a sharp mind was more important than enhancing physical beauty that would never be there.

❝ i think you're right, cousin. ❞ solemnly she replies, though with a shadow of a smile beginning to pull at the lines of her face. ❝ i'm very glad to have you here with us. ❞

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The Onion Knight and his Princess + being cute together (requested by direwolves-and-shadowcats)

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god i'm. falling down the rabbit hole of shireen as iphigenia. it fits! so well! stannis as agamemnon, selyse as clytemnestra, shireen as iphigenia. n it's been foreshadowed already (to ME) when stannis says "if i must sacrifice one child to the flames to save a million from the dark ... sacrifice is never easy, davos, or it is no true sacrifice" and melisandre says “if a man with a thousand cows gives one to god, that is nothing, but a man who offers the only cow he owns ..."

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this is an independent writing blog for shireen baratheon, taking influences from both the show and the novels, with a healthy dose of personal headcanons and character development.  highly selective, mutuals only, minors dni, plotting intensive.  triggering content ahead, so do interact at your own risk.  written by meg, she/they, 23, gmt.

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