#//there were better pictures of angry juvenile lions but they were either slightly too big or too small

[asoiafanimals]

AGOT X - The Royal Family

(aka. Gee Robert, are you sure those kids are legitimate?)

Robert Baratheon: Red Deer

Robert Baratheon is the King of the Seven Kingdoms, who came into power after rebelling against the Targaryens in response to the Crown Prince kidnapping his betrothed. Before the events of the first book, his Hand of the King and former foster-father Jon Arryn dies, so he travels with half of his court to Winterfell to appoint his childhood best friend Ned Stark. He has grown fat and lazy in the years of his Kingship, and is uninterested in the actual business of ruling. He allows the pet wolf of Ned’s daughter to be killed and refuses to listen when told he cannot fight in the tourney melee. After an argument with Ned over his decision to assassinate the pregnant girl Daenerys, he goes off into the woods to hunt, where he becomes too drunk and is fatally wounded by a large wild boar. On his deathbed he tells Ned to reverse his decision to send assassins after Daenerys, and names Ned as regent until his eldest son comes of age.

-

Baratheons = Stags is fairly obvious, and Red Deer seemed like the most intimidating option other than things like elk and moose. They aren’t exactly very muscular as the Baratheons are especially in the legs, but that’s a small enough thing to change up through a fantasy lens. Most pictures of Red Stags I could find seemed more Rebellion-era Robert than GOT Robert, and the one I’m using is the one that best fit. I like to picture a big fat thing with a huge ruff of fur around its neck, and antlers almost too heavy for it to carry (don’t ask me how his antlered helm would work, maybe the helmet is specifically forged to fit around the antlers?)

Cersei Lannister: African Lioness

Cersei Lannister is the wife of Robert, mother of his heirs, and Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. In Winterfell when Robert goes out hunting, she and her twin brother Jaime have sex in an abandoned tower but are discovered by Bran Stark. Cersei instructs her brother to do something and he pushes the boy out of a window. Later on the Kingsroad, she takes the side of her son Joffrey and orders the execution of Arya’s direwolf, when the wolf cannot be found she instead orders the execution of Sansa’s direwolf, who was innocent. When Eddard discovers the truth that her children are illegitimate and products of insect, he meets her in the Godswood and gives her a chance to flee because he intends to tell Rober the truth when he returns from his hunting trip. She attempts to seduce him, but fails. Prior to Robert’s hunting trip, she had given her cousin Lancel Lannister instructions to give Robert too much strongwine, so he would become drunk and be killed during his hunt. On the morning of his death, she denies Robert’s will of having Ned be named regent, imprisons him and murders his household. She arranges for a public confession and for Ned to be sent to the Wall, but her son Joffrey ignores her advice and executes him instead. 

-

Cersei is roughly the height of Ned, just a bit shorter than Jaime and a lot shorter than Robert. She’s very slender and even her upright walk is very catlike. 

Joffrey Baratheon: African Lion

Joffrey Baratheon is the heir to the Iron Throne and the legal son of Robert and Cersei, betrothed to Sansa Stark. On the Kingsroad, he and Sansa come across her sister Arya sparring with a butcher’s boy, Joffrey commands Mycah to spar with him and draws blood, causing Arya to jump to his defence. When Joffrey turns his rage on her, he is bitten by her wolf Nymeria, and he lashes out at Sansa when she attempts to help him. He lies and claims that all three of them attacked him, and Sansa’s direwolf Lady is executed as a result. When his father dies and he is named King, Sansa begs Joffrey for mercy for her father,  but he goes against both her and his mother’s wishes and orders him beheaded for spreading the fact that he is born of incest. Joffrey names his grandfather Tywin as Hand and dismisses the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Barristan Selmy in favour of his ‘uncle’ Jaime Lannister. He forces Sansa to look upon her father’s head when he has it placed on a spike.

-

Joffrey is old enough that his proportions are more like those of an adult lion than a cub, but his mane hasn’t come in fully yet and comes in short tufts and spikes around his neck and head. The cub in the photo is the right proportion, but his mane is a little fuller than that. 

Myrcella Baratheon: African Lioness

Myrcella is the middle child of Robert and Cersei, and their only girl. During the feast at Winterfell she dances with Robb Stark, and on the journey to King’s Landing she rides in the Royal Wheelhouse with her mother, where Sansa occasionally joins them. She and her brother Tommen mistake Arya for a boy when she chases cats in the Red Keep. Eddard Starks discovers that she and her brothers are products of incest, being the children of Cersei and her brother Jaime. The King’s brother Renly instructs Ned to seize her and her siblings, but he refuses. She is present when Ned is arrested in the throne room.

-

Myrcella is older than Tommen, and thus a little bit bigger. I imagine her as quite plump, with big cheeks and big eyes, and a lighter fur shade than her brothers. She only has a few spots around the bottom of her legs.

Tommen Baratheon: African Lion

Tommen is the youngest child of Cersei and Robert, and the heir to the throne after Joffrey. At Winterfell, he is beaten by Bran Stark in training with wooden swords. He and his sister mistake Arya for a boy when she chases cats in the Red Keep.  Eddard Starks discovers that he and his siblings are products of incest, being the children of Cersei and her brother Jaime. The King’s brother Renly instructs Ned to seize the Royal children, but he refuses. Tommen is present when Ned is arrested in the throne room.

-

Tommen is definitely the smallest of the children in the books, probably only a little bit bigger than Rickon. He’s definitely a little pudgy boy, with short little legs and a big round body. He still has all of his cub-spots. 

Genetics

So this definitely requires a follow-up explanation on how the genetics of this alternate-universe works along with my Catelyn post. When two different species reproduce (don’t think about the sex stuff too hard), the offspring will usually all be of the one species, only with a 1/50% chance for an outlier. The general perception in Westeros is that the more ‘noble’ the house, the more dominant the gene, but this is really just explained by the large proliferation of larger noble houses anyways. It is seen as a slight affront to the father’s masculinity if his offspring are not all his species, but only in the same way that having only female children would be, or marrying a non-virgin woman, or being impotent, etc. 

So Robert and Cersei’s children being lions doesn’t really raise as many eyebrows as much as them being golden-haired does in canon. For this is to be believable every other Lannister/House pairing in the series results in lions (Cleos Frey, son of Genna Lannister, is a lion), and all of Robert’s bastards are red deer. 

[problems-of-immortality]

Some significant info on the cities and races in my world under the cut.

Humans are the dominant race as of the current era- about a thousand years after the country was founded by the dragons and elves and the Forgotten War happened. They live in villages scattered across the country’s western, southern and northern edges- with five major cities. Potentially, humans can live until at least a hundred in my world, if violent death or illness doesn't catch them first. They start to slow in appearance age slightly, after they hit 40. The five major cities are the Capital, the port city of Akairo, the northern temple/castle of Ao, the merchant hotspot of Midori and the city of nobility known as Murasaki. They're each named for a Japanese color. Villages, post-War places, humans and elves have Celtic/Germanic/Greco-Christian names- but dragons and older locations have Japanese names.

The nomadic elves traditionally living in the plains live to between seventy and a hundred. They age slow in appearance but have a high death rate because they regularly hunt the tengu birds for bones and feathers, as well as a delicacy meal cooked in Dragon's Bane during special occasions. Tengu are super dangerous and a nomadic elf is supposed to kill one when they come of age. Killing more than one puts you in high esteem, and often they take trophies in the form of skulls and the blue head plumage. They don't have body hair except for their heads. They don't use tattoos but wearing tengu feathers show status and they paint their stags.

Nomadic elves have a reverence for only one of the original five dragons, though they know the others through oral stories that are kind of mythic compared to the actual records hidden by their reclusive cousins. This dragon is neither Ryota nor Shiro but is important and currently absent. They haven't made an appearance yet, but I have them in development. The forest elves are reclusive, skilled in magic, and hide a city deep in the forest, protected by magic, the very forest itself, and a guardian dragon, specifically Ryota and before him, Shiro. They live between two and five centuries and contain most lore thought lost in their city.

Dragons were believed almost extinct, until Shiro and Arian started the Rebellion, by killing the current Emperor. Now, half-breeds and pure-breeds alike are coming out of hiding- after Shiro and Arian destroy swathes of Murasaki in a fight with the main character, Ryoku. 

Full-blooded dragons have far more control of shapeshifting. While they can't control what they look like in dragon form, they can with a human or elven form. Aside from the permanent tail, a purebred can completely control their appearance if they're clever enough, from hair and eye color to gender. Shiro's rather good at it, but with his vanity he sticks to the same rather unique appearance and has since he woke up, about 46 years before the story started. 

Even pure-blooded dragons like Shiro can show dragon characteristics in their human form uncontrollably if they are too angry. Scales and claws form on their hands and feet, while their eyes take on a reptilian quality in response to adrenaline. And eventually, they have to shift back to their true-form if they stay out of it for too long- or the shift happens forcibly and painfully.

Pure-blooded dragons have an average lifespan of 5,000 years, if unnatural death does not take them first. They can hibernate for long periods, but dragons over at least a thousand that hibernate for too long start to show signs of memory loss.

Half-blood hybrids can shapeshift into full dragons for a limited period. But both of their shapeshifting appearances are fixed by genetics.  Half-breeds can will themselves between forms easily if they do it frequently, but the less they do it the more painful and emotionally-driven the change is. 

Hybrids age about the same as their mother species. As most of the dragons revealed so far in my story have been male, hybrids like Ryoku and Arian will live the life spans of a human or elf.  

Dragons mix better as half-breeds with elves due to their deep connection to nature and magic, but all half-breeds and dragons have anger issues. Shiro and Ryota have a tight hold on theirs, Ryoku's temperament fluctuates, but Kyouhei had a bad temper for a dragon. Humans and dragons don't mix very well. Their tempers/aggressive tendencies clash with one another, and the few half-breeds of that kind either die with their mother on birth, or end up like Arian. Arian is human/dragon, and when his human mother died giving birth to him, Kyouhei tried to kill his own son after losing it in grief. Shiro was there trying to help and he wound up killing Kyouhei accidentally.

Some animal species of note-

Tengu are a species of bird in the plains and forests both that are super aggressive somewhat cousins to dragons. Picture a bird like creature resembling a raven with black feathers and a blue feathered crest similar to a cockatiel. Except each said bird is the size of a horse and has a serpentine tail, with a beakful of teeth and noxious saliva. They're also capable of basic speech so they're even creepier because of it. They'll argue over corpses and kills with voices that sound like they swallowed glass, yet their phrasing tends to be basic and almost childish. Their bite is poisonous and can only be cured with a flower called Dragon's Bane. The flower is intoxicating to tengu and dragons.

I have a very large species of stag with feet resembling paws instead of hooves and two sets of antlers. The more nomadic elves consider them companions and they live on the plains.

One of the creatures I still have in the drafting stage exists in the mountain ranges of Nijiryuu. Picture a creature with the body of a mountain lion, covered in fur, but the head of an owl, and it screams. They hunt hares and mountain goats, and sometimes livestock. They're scary but about as normal in the north as one would consider a wolf or an actual mountain lion. They’re called banshees. I picture that their head/beak/eye structure is similar to that of a barn owl but with fur instead of feathers, and actual ears much like a cat's. Their neck is somewhat long to add a degree of reach, and they have long claws to rip apart prey as well as to dig out hares in the snow or mud. Their beak is small but can easily tear tendons off of bone in thin strips, and a lion's tail for balance. The screaming is their vocalization for mating as well as being territorial. 

They vary in size- most juveniles are the size of a leopard but they can get as big as a full grown lion the more well off they are. It's either desperate juveniles or bold veterans that go after livestock and occasionally stray villagers.

They are aggressive and solitary- luckily banshees stick to the north and tengu to the south. Aside from them and the deer having paws and two sets of antlers, most of the other animals include regular hare, foxes, horses, and livestock. Snakes, turtles and crocodiles are normal near rivers, and regular birds are common.