#and dany will continue changing all the lands she rules for the better

[ufevents]

GLEERIUM

when ganggyn’s attack on vessalius comes, it is unexpected. ouros, one of gleerium’s cities most equipped for war, is the first target. 

the guards of ouros’s ramparts lining the river have long since grown complacent, used to a passive emperor yumi posing no threat to their borders. much of the firepower now patrols former etlia territory, ensuring no uprisings from the country squelched and absorbed into gleerium a year and a half ago.

indeed, the guards on duty are too busy chatting amongst themselves to notice the legion of ganggyn pegasus knights emerging from the horizon. they fly over the river, approaching rapidly, and by the time the watchmen realize what’s happening, it’s far too late.

ganggyn’s pegasus knights make quick work of those on watch, and they do so quietly, with intention of using the element of surprise to their advantage as long as possible.

of course, you can only be so quiet while killing several guards, especially when they shout out, alerting those nearby.

the pegasus knights are prepared for this, though; far more prepared than ouros is. 

they fight, and the tides of the battle clearly run in ganggyn’s favor.

they take control of the parapets lining the river within two hours, in which dani, atop a pegasus herself, calls out to one of the others: “call in the archers!”

the other pegasus knight nods, then flies away, back across the river to rendezvous with additional ganggyn troops.

meanwhile, a different threat has infiltrated vessalius, east of ouros: a small army of trained assassins who methodically and expertly pick the vessalius army apart, approaching on ouros themselves.

the archers come across the river in boats, then fire grappling arrows at the now ganggyn-occupied walls of ouros, climbing up themselves. they take their places there, and once the long wall beside the river is secured, the pegasus knights push forward, deeper into the city.

within a few days, emperor misu declares war, as she told alfan she would. by then, ouros, and vessalius itself, are in deep trouble. ganggyn troops are in firm control of the walls surrounding the city, spanning from the river border to the grand walls that once served as a barricade between gleerium and etlia.

fear spreads throughout gleerium as rapidly as ganggyn’s troops expand across vessalius. after all, if their military capital falls to ganggyn, is anywhere safe?

GANGGYN

the monster threat is not dealt with.

it is a careful balance: defend dalyang, which seems to be hub of monster activity in deyuis, or invade gleerium. misu sends most of their experienced troops to gleerium, holding some behind in order to quickly train new volunteers on how to deal with the monsters at home.

it works for now, granted, they are only mere days into the new war.

for now, misu and alfan huddle around a map of etlia in dalyang palace’s war room. the table it rests on is still dusty, this room abandoned for years under emperor yumi’s rule. misu, however, has spent much of the past few days here, sometimes accompanied by the former grand duke of etlia, and sometimes not.

“i’m not sure if gleerium has done anything along the river border since taking over etlia, but if nothing has changed, the border should be very easy for you to cross,” alfan explains. “lucinier–– soule, they’re calling it now, i’ve heard ––is the most equipped for war, being so close to ouros. i am not sure how much this will aid or hinder you. i believe it is most likely they’ve removed any offensive power from the area in order to prevent uprisings by people that know the land better than they do. it’s also possible, however, that gleerium has their own weapons and soldiers there, prepared to put down a potential rebellion with haste. regardless, i’d recommend taking control of soule first, because once you do, you will have another stronghold to use against gleerium.”

misu nods, and alfan continues: “i am not sure how many gleerium troops are stationed in etlia in general. likely many, to make sure the country remains fully in their control. i am sure the remaining etlian fighters would be happy to aid you, but i fear there are few left. most gave their lives when etlia fell, so i am not certain how much we can actually help you. my knowledge is also limited due to my time away. i can tell you how things were while i was still grand duke, but that is all. i’m sorry, misu.”

“no need to be sorry, alfan,” misu replies with a soft smile, resting a hand on his shoulder. “i have my resources. from what i am aware of, yes, there are a hefty amount of gleerium guards occupying former etlia territory. that may indeed be why our forces had such success attacking ouros. i believe gleerium is frazzled and unsure where to focus their attention: call the vast majority of their troops back to defend ouros at risk of etlian uprising as soon as they depart, or maintain control over etlia at the risk of ouros falling. both benefit us.”

alfan is the one to nod this time.

“i believe i know much of what has happened in soule, remilly, and valenvers since you were captured. what i do not know is the land itself, and how to win the hearts of the people there.”

“i do believe i can help with that part,” alfan agrees, lips quirking up in a smile.

misu smiles as well.

alfan turns his attention back to the map, and points out important locations that ganggyn may use to their advantage for more than an hour.

“i will likely need you to repeat much of this to minister dani once i can get her off the frontlines,” misu smiles sheepishly. “but it seems we truly must take advantage of gleerium’s weakness and occupy former etlian territory as soon as possible. we have ouros’s walls on our side already. if we can find anyone that wants to fight gleerium in your country, their aid will be much appreciated; i will have members of my army train them themselves if needed.”

alfan briefly purses his lips for a moment, then nods. 

GLEERIUM

ganggyn slowly expands their reach to the west while fighting against ouros troops, now backed up by troops from felice itself. 

as they do, ganggyn’s troops assure civilians in former etlia territory that they will not harm them. “gleerium is our only enemy,” they say. “we will free you.”

some of the former etlians are invigorated, suddenly passionate toward ganggyn’s cause. some, however, are more skeptical, and others are simply tired of fighting. 

regardless, ganggyn gains strength, and slowly chases the gleerium troops west of ouros back out of the territory they won a year and a half ago. slowly. perhaps ganggyn is just that strong, or perhaps gleerium does not care so much about their newest territory after all.

OMADUUN

posters begin to crop up in the more populated areas of omaduun:

KING ANDREAS REQUESTS THE ASSISTANCE OF MAGES FOR HANDSOME PAY.

of course, even those in omaduun know of ganggyn and gleerium’s war. by now, all of deyuis does. 

many in omaduun are unbothered, convinced the conflict will not reach them. most are discouraged from involving themselves in the war, regardless of promised compensation, but of course, some do not listen. some do choose to aid gleerium for andreas’s promise of a generous amount of gold, but most do not, at least for now.

“i don’t know what he thinks we’ll be able to do for him anyway. pegasus knights are very resistant to magic. what he needs to do is target the assassins,” a mage girl gossips to her friend in the library.

gayeon is still here, studying. she returns to ganggyn every now and again to report her findings, but she ultimately has come up short in her search for the magic responsible for yumi’s death. by now, she is mostly just waiting to speak to the archsage. she regularly pesters the school of sorcery’s secretary, who is beyond tired of her by now, but it doesn’t seem to make anything move faster.

sometimes, she considers posing as a student herself, and simply asking one of the others that passes through the library what they know of dark magic poison that seems to turn the target into a skeleton shortly after their death. it sounds silly, though, and the last thing she wants is for the wrong person to learn the truth of yumi’s death.

she has read so much of poison in the books in this library, but none of it sounds like what was done to her emperor. 

what did misu say...the same thing happened to drewitt?

gayeon heard from the few privy to the knowledge that alfan himself currently occupies dalyang palace. is it possible that he knows something about the same poison–– or curse? ––that befell his son?

maybe she’ll have to pay him a visit, though she’s sure he’s quite busy. she’s never spoken to him herself, but yumi always told her he was very kind. gayeon doesn’t think he’ll mind.

PODAKKO

there is unrest, even in podakko. it’s not a matter of internal conflict; instead, it’s mercenaries with torn allegiances in the war, officials from both gleerium and ganggyn coming to the country in search of extra help in their war. some choose not to involve themselves, while others chase coin no matter where it leads. sometimes, it puts mercenary friends against each other: those that once worked together now employed for opposing sides in the war.

that may just be the risk mercenaries run in their line of work, though.

ysmene keeps a close eye on matters, but otherwise stays uninvolved herself, believing in her peoples’ autonomy, so long as it doesn’t cause great difficulties for podakko. after all, fighting in the country is commonplace. when does the queen decide it is so severe that she must intervene?

it isn’t easy.

ZORATORI ALLIANCE

the tension between the birds bleeds away, dwarfed by the conflict in the rest of the continent and controlled by faeryn’s assurance of dealing with their problems more seriously.

as is often the case, however, the laguz councilors barely acknowledge the new war in the west. they see no reason to stress out their people with issues that do not impact them.

at least for now.

they urge the laguz to go about their lives as usual and avoid involvement in the war. 

councilor thegrorthius, however, is careful not to make any promises of the laguz’s safety. after all, he has lived through nearly every war deyuis has endured; he knows better than to tell anyone the war will not impact them, especially in the early stages.

it is far too soon to know.

NOYILLAI

the neutral zone still undergoes slow renovations and construction after the damage done by the monster attacks. perhaps it’s a good thing that some of noyillai’s previous residents evacuated after the attacks, because it makes room for early refugees of ganggyn and gleerium’s war to take shelter in the safe zone it provides.

after a few weeks of the fighting, however, andreas withdraws gleerium’s help from the area, with many apologies to laurelia. 

she tells him it’s fine, but not without harboring a little bitterness. 

she suspects he doesn’t want gleerium to help any ganggyn refugees. 

laurelia, however, is determined to help anyone that comes to noyillai. as long as she has anything to do with it, it will remain a safe haven even while in ruins.

[aerltarg]

thinking again how names of direwolves given to them in the very beginning actually speak very loud abt starklings' arcs and even foreshadow them BUT re: stark sisters.

nymeria, huge female alpha leading hundreds of wolves, with no fear of men and hunting everything she sees fit, that got her name after the historical figure, the princess of her people, the leader and military commander, who fought to get a new home for them and succeeded in that, changed the laws of the lands she conquered to the better for women and left her daughters as heirs, who is remembered as a “warrior queen” and a “witch queen”.

and lady, a simple yet a sweet name given by the girl who was “a lady at three” herself, never misbehaved pup.

and dead too early.

i think it only adds up to the already rich leadership arc and foreshadowing of arya, her ties to northern politics plot and even her warging and skinchanging abilities if you remember the “witch queen” bit. after all, she's the only one who got separated from her direwolf so early on but still became a warg, so powerful that she has wolf dreams even from another continent.

and it opens some interesting speculations abt sansa's ending. currently she is in a very complicated and dangerous position. imo, there's no other purpose for her to be in the vale than to use the power she has (or the greater power she might have in future) for helping the north w food, possibly in the great war and considering the losses the north will endure during the upcoming war against the boltons and the set up inheritance crisis of the starks, when we are said multiple times how rich it is when it comes to food supplies. however, i don't think sansa will stay in the vale forever for multiple reasons, major of which are several obstacles in her way of becoming the lady of the eyrie. and now, looking at this direwolves names foreshadowing, i got persuaded even moreso that sansa won't become a lady of the castle, possibly she will give up the noble lady's position whatsoever. how exactly will it look like? i don't know though hope for the happiest outcome, e.g. sansa escaping w the help of sandor and settling for the simpler life w him.

it actually will be so poetic! arya who never hoped to be a queen will become the leader of her people because of her natural gift for this and important lessons she learnt, and sansa who craved the flashing luxury and glory of life of royalty and was so eager to conform to whatever standards southern lords might have for their wives will come to appreciate the simple life w man whom she judged first by his looks, smth she never thought abt before too.

it becomes double interesting if you consider there all the parallels arya shares w alysanne targaryen but especially these ones:

Alysanne Targaryen, the youngest child of King Aenys and Queen Alyssa, had been little known amongst the lords and ladies of the realm before then. Her childhood had been spent in the shadow of her brothers and her elder sister, Rhaena, and when she was spoken of at all it was as “the little maid” and “the other daughter.” She was little, this was true; slim and slight of frame, Alysanne was oft described as pretty but seldom as beautiful, though she was born of a house renowned for beauty. Her eyes were blue rather than purple, her hair a mass of honey-colored curls. No man ever questioned her wits. (Fire & Blood)

skinny, pretty, smart, but in the youth overshadowed by elder sister? sounds too familiar, isn't it? yet, it was alysanne who is forever remembered as the “good queen” and who also changed the laws of the lands she came to rule for the better, especially for women, just like nymeria of ny sar, and who wanted her eldest daughter (called, funnily enough, daenerys) to be the next ruler as the queen regnant. while her elder sister rhaena was never happy as a wife to kings or a lady wife to a lord.

tldr; arya and sansa will end up in positions they didn't expect but even moreso didn't expect such positions to make them happy.

[raya-rhaenyra-ahsoka]

Why Daenerys Should've Stayed Longer in the North Than Attack Cersei Too Soon (Which is a dick move, really) PART 2

This is a continuation from my other post, as promised. Here’s the link to Part 1 here.

ALLIES FROM THE SOUTH

The Stormlands. With Dany recently legitimizing Robert Baratheon’s last living bastard, Gendry (Yay!), and appointed him as the new Lord of Storm’s End, I think he had pledged his loyalty and full support to her.

Now since the Baratheons are the overlords of the Stormlands, it ultimately makes the Stormlands part of Dany’s new rule in Westeros. And if the Stormmen questioned Gendry’s legitimacy, there are two people who can back him up: Ser Davos Seaworth, a landed knight, and Ser Brienne of Tarth, literally the heiress to Evenfall in Tarth Island. Both of whom are from the Stormlands and have served the late Baratheon lords, Stannis,

and Renly, respectively.

TV show-wise, Gendry had taken over Edric Storm’s plotline. Edric Storm was another one of Robert’s many bastards and it was him who Ser Davos saved from being killed by Mellisandre in the books, not Gendry. Gendry himself was grateful to Davos for saving his life and he sort of stepped up as his own parental figure. I also think Gendry reminded Davos of the son he lost during the Battle of Blackwater Bay.

As for Brienne, she and Gendry never shared a conversation in the show, but in the books, he even saved her life. Brienne came from Tarth, an island in the Stormlands, where her father Selwyn Tarth is lord and one of the many bannermen of the Baratheons of Storm’s End. Brienne came across Gendry in the Inn at the Crossroads while she was searching for the Stark girls. When she saw him, she literally thought he was Renly because of his striking resemblance to his uncle. Their exchange went something like this:

Brienne: Oh my god, Lord Renly?!

Gendry: Uh, what? Lord? Lol no, I’m just a smith.

I wished it happened in the show, it would’ve been funny.

Dorne. There isn’t much plot regarding Dorne in the show. (Again, f*ck D&D for ruining a great sub-plot of the story!) But in the books, the Martell heiress, Arianne was the ultimate feminist icon. She supported and fought for Myrcella Baratheon’s claim to the Iron throne over her younger brother, Tommen, and she hoped that the rest of Westeros would follow after Dorne’s right of inheritance regardless of gender and order of birth. But no! They disregarded that seemingly important plot that even George R.R. Martin was disappointed about the changes. (We hear you, George!) Nevertheless, Arianne would’ve supported a queen, yes. But between Daenerys and Cersei, she’d probably go with Dany mainly because of their family ties. In case you forgot, Rhaegar’s late first wife, Elia Martell, was Arianne’s aunt. Also, because of what happened to Elia and Oberyn Martell in King’s Landing, the Martells practically loathed the Lannisters. In the show, Oberyn Martell’s paramour Ellaria Sand, and his bastard daughters, the Sand Snakes, hated the Lannisters, that’s why they sided with Dany. But with all of them dead and House Martell now extinct, I think the new prince of Dorne would’ve allied himself with a tamer ruler, not one who plays with wildfire. (Note: this is when Dany stayed in the North and did not march south yet.)

Spies. In the Art of War, the use of spies implies gaining knowledge of the enemy, knowing their motive and their next move. With Lord Varys the Spider in Winterfell, who’s still serving under Daenerys, has its advantages. Vary’s networks of spies or as what he called them, his “little birds” are literally scattered across the seven kingdoms.

His little birds are actually children, and appearance-wise, cannot be easily identified as spies. With his intel, they could easily formulate a plan to defeat Cersei.

DEFENSE AT SEA

 If Cersei couldn’t do it by land, she’ll go by sea. Which, Daenerys of course, have the appropriate fleets to defend, covering both the Narrow and Sunset Seas. Here's a map:

(Source: pinterest.com)

Enemies to the East. If Cersei will be stupid enough to attack through the Narrow Sea by sea, Daenerys has the fleets to defend. The Northern fleet, a.k.a the Manderly Fleet of White Harbor and the Arryn Fleet in Gulltown in the Vale will join forces.

Enemies to the West. And if they invade through the Sunset Sea, they’d have to pass the Iron Islands, where Yara Greyjoy’s Fleet will intercept them, with the help of the Mallister Fleet in Seagard.

Who would win depends. The only other person that’s probably as good as Euron at sea is his niece, Yara. The rest of Dany’s fleet would have to get lucky or outnumber the number of ships in a fleet.

At this point, you’ll probably be like, oh, what if they steer clear from the fleets and enter the North’s weakly defended areas? Okay, that job falls to the castles nearest to their borders. The northernmost castle is the Last Hearth, the seat of House Umber, which is practically already deserted. On the south is Greywater Watch, which has the strongest defense out of all four cardinal directions. On both east and west hold the seat of two branches of House Flint, with Widow’s Watch on the east, and Flint’s Finger on the west (Again, refer to the map above). Once they see Cersei’s fleet, they’ll inform the people in Winterfell.

People tend to forget that Daenerys has the only air support with her dragons. So when she hears about this, she’ll easily burn the enemy fleet with one dracarys away.

That is, if Qyburn hadn’t installed that big-ass crossbow in one of the ships, then she’ll have to be better at dodging them. It gets better if Jon’s willing to help her with Rhaegal, but we’ll never know.

OUTNUMBERED AND SURROUNDED

The map shows the Crownlands and its neighboring kingdoms of the Vale, the Riverlands, the Reach, and the Stormlands. (Source: pinterest.com)

Territories. With Cersei sacrificing Casterly Rock to tighten her grip on the Iron Throne, she technically had also sacrificed the Westerlands, which meant everything north of King’s Landing is Dany’s territory now. With Dany’s army and territories secured, the Crownlands, where King’s Landing is, is technically surrounded by the Vale, the Riverlands, the Reach, and Stormlands. I included the Reach because, well, she roasted the Tarlys and took the remaining men to her cause with a choice, bend the knee or die in a blaze of glory.

Armies. Dany has the combined armies of North, Vale, Riverlands, Westerlands, Reach, Stormlands, and maybe Dorne, plus, the Unsullied; fleets of the North, Vale, Riverlands, and Yara’s fleet from the Iron Islands; and the only air support, her two remaining dragons. Cersei on the other hand, just had the army of the Crownlands, King’s Landing’s City Watch, the queensguard, plus, the Golden Company without elephants; and Euron Greyjoy’s fleet.

I think it’s obvious that Dany outnumbers Cersei’s army, by a lot. And at this point, Dany has enough allies to lay a siege on King’s Landing.

DAENERYS VS. CERSEI

Let’s discuss the difference in the personalities and motives of Daenerys Targaryen and Cersei Lannister.

They both have blond hair, are the only girl among three siblings, and are queens in their own right. But that’s where their similarities end.

Cersei currently sits on the iron throne, and she is loving the perks that came with it. Endless Power, which meant she can do whatever she wants and not care about what people think, like sleeping with her brother. With the news of Dany coming back to Westeros, she sees her as a threat and wanted nothing more than for Dany to disappear so she could stay in power.

Daenerys, however, claims that being the queen of the seven kingdoms is her birthright, as it was the Targaryens that reunited the whole continent of Westeros. Of course, it’s still power, but at the same time, she sees it as a responsibility as well. (With great power, comes great responsibility. Wow, I’m quoting Spiderman now.) She believes that as a queen, it’s her job to take care and provide for the needs of her subjects and even makes an effort to hold court as she listened to their demands. She also thinks that slavery is a big no-no, so she freed them.

The key to becoming a great leader is finding the balance between being loved and feared by your subjects. Cersei is more likely feared than loved. She also doesn’t care about her people, a fact that she admitted to her brother, Tyrion once. Daenerys most likely had the scale tips on balance, with her being equally loved and feared by her subjects. She’s loved because she actually takes time to listen to the people’s needs, and feared because she could take you out using her dragons with one word.

If Dany did lay siege on King’s Landing (again, we aren’t counting her major mad queen moment), the only thing Cersei can use against Dany is the people living within the city walls. Cersei might have heard that Dany’s been freeing slaves in the cities surrounding Slaver’s Bay, and figured out that she has a soft spot for the common folk.

In conclusion, if Daenerys had simply waited out and took her time planning and gathering allies and supplies against Cersei, she would’ve been successful in her campaign to retake Westeros. But then again, we aren’t the writers for this show. In the end, they had Jon battling through himself while he chooses to reply with either of his two favorite lines, She’s my queen or I don’t want it. Or that Sansa and Arya doesn’t like Dany at all and think that she’s a power-hungry, dragon-riding bitch. Or that Bran doesn’t give a f*ck about anything. So, yeah. What do you guys think?

[silverducks]

Jaime Lannister – A theory on his ending in the books

So, as you can probably tell from my blog, I’m not quite yet over the ending of Game of Thrones, which I binged watched and finished about a month and a half ago now.

The main issue is the ending, or the last 3 episodes to be more precise, where so many things didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The main one being, for me, how the story ended for Jaime Lannister.

So, whilst writing all my super long character analysis for Jaime is definitely helping, (I’m about half way through the next one), I’ve also been reading about possible ways his story could go, and how it might end in the books.

And today I came across a theory I really, really like. It’s become my new headcanon for what will happen in the books and I’ve added a mix of other theories I’ve read to it as well.

Now, show and book spoilers beneath the cut.

First off, I’d like to say I haven’t yet read the books, so this post is based on the show and what I’ve read happens in the books. None of these theories are my own, but I’ve combined them all together in a way that actually makes a lot of sense to me. So until the books prove me wrong – or I come across an even better theory, this is my new headcanon.

(I don’t have any links as they’re random posts/comments etc I’ve found on the net on my phone, but I’m not claiming these ideas as my own, just putting it all together, so I hope the lack of links to source is ok.)

So without any further preamble, the theory is that Jaime and Tyrion’s story arcs and endgame in the book were reversed in the show. This would mean that the main plot points the writer, George R.R. Martin (GRRM) told the screenwriters (D&D), were swapped around between the two characters.

That would mean that it would be Jaime who became the hand of the King, not Tyrion, and Jaime who put forward the idea of the Bran becoming King.

And I love this theory, because it would be such a fitting end for Jaime. And below I will explain why.

Firstly, the idea of Jaime becoming the Hand of the King for Bran is a wonderful final step in his character arc – he’s gone from throwing this kid out of a tower to try and kill him, to serving as his main advisor, trusted with the power and command of the King. Jaime and Bran’s character arcs are already connected, much more than Tyrion’s ever was, and for the similar reason why Bran gave it to Tyrion, he could give it to Jaime – in fact it makes more sense!

And rather than a redemptodeath for Jaime, he doesn’t have to die, and can instead have a fulfilling life, continually making up for past wrongs as the Hand, and with the real love of his life, Brienne. She could still be Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, as per the show, but married to Jaime (they’d change that outdated celibacy/non marriage rule easily enough), giving her a much more satisfying ending. And why does Jaime have to die? He’s atoned for his past wrongs, lost that darn hand that (symbolically in the show), did push Bran out the window, and it doesn’t serve any other higher story telling purpose… And by becoming the Hand of the King, after he lost the hand that hurt said King, is even more symbolic.

I know Jaime has refused to be Hand before, but that was old Jaime. And if we assume Jaime continues on his road to self-betterment, then he can continue to learn and improve the skills that would make a good Hand. He’s becoming more honourable, but has seen enough of the world to know sometimes there’s a conflicting choice (unlike Ned in series one). He’s been learning to rely on his own wits and brains much more since he can’t now just fight his way out of everything – and is proving pretty smart. He is proving to be a good commander of the army and has been a Lord Commander for the Kingsguard. And has enough Lannister cunning, but with actual mercy and honour, to make it work. A stark King with a Lannister Hand!

Imagine, ending the very first episode of the show with Jaime pushing Bran out that window, to ending with Jaime by his side, advising (and also of course) protecting him. How good is a full circle/reflection piece for Jaime as that!

And in a similar vein, Jaime can be the one to put forward to the council of Lords (I assume something similar happens in the books, but much better written), that Bran should be King. That being the all-knowing Three Eyed Raven means he’s a good match. And surely the other Lords would more likely listen to Jaime – who is a good commander – than Tyrion, who hasn’t really won over many of the Lords in Westeros. After all, he was sentenced to death for killing a King (they don’t know it was a set up), and also killed his father and escaped. He’s been in a foreign land serving a foreign (to them anyway) ruler who has just sacked their Capitol city. Doesn’t it just make so much more sense that they’d listen to an alive Jaime? Yes he killed the King too, but he also did a lot of other good stuff as per his redemption arc etc.

Anyway, I just think it makes more sense – and then the Kingslayer Jaime, becomes the Kingmaker Jaime – again another wonderful full circle arc for him.

So, from a storytelling theme, symbolism and arc perspective, I think it just makes so much sense!

But when you also look at the show itself, in comparison to the books and where the show sort of went wrong, it makes more sense too.

So, just to give a bit of background on it, the theory I read today about Jaime and Tyrion’s role reversal was in a post mainly looking at how Tyrion’s character seems to be going in a very different direction in the books versus the show.

The idea is that book Tyrion is in a much darker place in the books than show Tyrion, and this, in the upcoming books, could continue. This could send book Tyrion down a difficult, morally dark path, which could result in him becoming more of a villain type character, perhaps taking on more and more of his father’s bad traits. This makes sense to me, as Tyrion was most like his father and was certainly cunning. And where the books start to properly deviate from the show, after series four, Tyrion could go either way. He has just killed his father and his lover. And in the books he also falls out with Jaime when Jaime tells him the truth about his first wife (that she wasn’t a whore like Tywin said). Being in this foreign land with all these dark thoughts and deeds haunting him, I can definitely see him turning into more of a bad guy.

So, basically, a completely different story arc for Tyrion.

In terms of his endgame? Well, if he’s swapped with Jaime’s then I guess it means he might die. Maybe after killing Cersei, hence them dying “together.” Or at least be punished such as sent to the Wall or something. I don’t think GRRM said either Lannister brother actually dies in Cersei’s loving arms, so I’m guessing they took some differences in both Jaime’s and Tyrion’s endgame, if the theory is correct.

And I’m tempted to believe it is, because it helps explain Tyrion’s kind of dodgy characterisation in the later series of the show. He just wasn’t really the same after series four, which at the time, I just put down to D&D not being clever enough writers to write a clever character such as Tyrion. But with this theory, it actually makes more sense. Tyrion was such a fan favourite character in the show, the underdog, clever, snarky good guy, I can understand why D&D didn’t want to take him down this other, darker path. In the books, there’s much more time and details and PoVs to make it work, whereas the show would struggle, especially against such a popular fandom character.

It also explains why Jaime never told him the truth about his wife, or they had their big fall out in the show.

And by changing Tyrion’s story arc so much, they didn’t really know what to replace it with (I think we all agree D&D are not the best writers), so his characterisation was not only off in later series, but it meant they took Jaime’s end game and gave it to Tyrion instead. And this further makes sense as they might have thought having just Cersei (a female) the only bad Lannister at the end was too much, especially when one of the other main female characters, Dany, was also going bad. So, they made Jaime “hateful” in the end to better match and even out Cersei, because it was supposed to be Tyrion…

(I do think D&D were also unhealthily obsessed with Cersei and Twincest, so they probably thought it have them an extra good reason.)

And there’s a really good reflection in this between the two brothers – Jaime starts out the villain, but ends up the underdog hero, Tyrion starts out the underdog hero, but ends up the villain.

But, in changing Tyrion’s character, if indeed it does, it then also has a knock on effect for so many other things.

The theory also said that he might negatively influence Dany, when they meet. For example, help to slowly bring out her suppressed mad/dark side, encourage her to take Kings Landing (which the theory points out Tyrion actually ends up hating because of how the people there view him.) So perhaps if Tyrion’s influence is so vengeful in the books, maybe’s Dany’s own turn to madness makes much more sense. And the lack of Tyrion’s negative influence in the show, undermines this. And this could then make Jon’s decision to have to kill her much harder etc.

So, I do think it’s quite possible, looking at Tyrion’s side, that they gave him a very different story arc, and so had to swap it up with Jaime’s endgame.

The show has certainly mixed and matched up characters from the book, so this would help explain why the main beats are still GRRMs, but why they didn’t just work for some of the characters. So not completely made up and ruined, but they just weren’t able to make the pieces fit together properly in their changed version. (And I do think they could have easily done a much better job, so I’m not letting D&D off the hook.)

Now, back to Jaime, because as much as I love all the characters, I’ll be honest, it’s only really Jaime and Brienne who I obsess enough over to properly theorise about.

Why do I think this works so well for Jaime? Well, first off, the whole him dying in Cersei’s arms just does not make any sense at all to me (hence all my super long posts about it). Especially if we take into account how over Cersei show Jaime seems in series 8, until that scene in episode 4. He behaves like he’s completely cut ties with her, fallen out of love with her and has fallen truly in love with someone else instead – Brienne. This is even more obvious in the books, where Jaime actually burns Cersei’s letter where she’s begging for help. And when he looks back on it later, he’s dreading retuning to Kings Landing and facing her. In fact, he thinks that Cersei might well die, but there’s nothing he can do anyway and perhaps she deserves it. Granted we do have 2 more books to go, but this is like the complete opposite of his ending in series 8, that I think it’s highly unlikely it was meant to happen in the books. A LOT of stuff would have to happen for book Jaime to change his mind now.

But as they gave Jaime’s ending to Tyrion, as per our theory, then what do they do with Jaime? Well, why not have him die in Cersei’s arms and fulfil their Twincest fix. Have Jaime be the bad brother Lannister, not Tyrion.

In fact, I don’t think D&D knew what to do with Jaime either, as he changes so abruptly in the show. It’s like they had to try to cover Jaime’s actual plot points from GRRM (which I’d assume were things like fighting the dead, getting together with Brienne), but then suddenly have him change his mind and rush back to Cersei... Also, as much as I loved Jaime in early series 8, he doesn’t really do anything pivotal. If you take him out of the equation and have him never even in series 8, the actual storylines all stay the same anyway. So, for me, this further adds weight to the idea that, in swapping Jaime’s endgame with Tyrion, they were left with the same problem, what do we then do with Jaime?

It’s like other aspects – they try to change one thing, but by changing that, it affects everything else so what you’re left with doesn’t make sense for the characters.

Now, so far I’ve talked mainly about the show, because overall I do think the main plot points in the show will happen in the books. And if you consider the role reversal between Tyrion and Jaime, it makes more sense why what happened did happen (which makes no sense in the show story itself).

But this is where I start to tie the various theories I’ve read together – it also makes a lot of sense in the books, for Jaime to not die, but instead be Bran’s Hand.

Other than the wonderful symmetry we’d get, as mentioned above, there’s a few things that happen in Jaime’s arc just in the books that make it even more possible, which I’ll talk about now.

So, most of this comes from Jaime’s fever dream, or also called his Weirwood dream. Now, there’s lots of analysis on this dream on the net, and there’s lots of ideas, some conflicting, of what it could mean. It’s not all relevant to this particular theory, so I’ll just summarise it. Basically, in the books, Jaime doesn’t go back to save Brienne from the bear straight away. Instead he travels quite far away with Bolton’s men, and goes to sleep on, what we assume, is a Weirwood stump. At the same time, Jaime is also suffering from a fever due to his hand becoming infected. Now, that means he’s potentially delirious, but also the dream is potentially prophetic. The Weirwood trees are those magic trees that Bran uses to have visions and to find the first Three Eyed Raven. I’m sure there’s more about them in the books as well. But it’s this potential for it being prophetic that I’m most interested in here.

Ok, so the dream starts a bit like a nightmare – Jaime is led somewhere underground that’s dark and feels dangerous by lots of ghosts. He first assumes it’s under Casterly Rock, and indeed he thinks he’s surrounded by the ghosts of the Lannister family. He’s scared and naked (eg vulnerable) and his father, sister and Joeffrey come. Cersei is holding a torch – the only light in the world for Jaime, but they leave and Jaime is left scared again in the dark. Before they go, he begs them for a sword, which Tywin says he gave him, and he begs Cersei to not leave him. Jaime finds a sword and as he touches it, the blade flames blue, providing some light. Now, a lot of analysis on this part of the dream tie it to Jaime’s metaphorical death, (ie of the old Jaime going to Hell) or breaking away from his family so they leave him. The light of Cersei’s going out, and instead a new light on Jaime’s sword coming, could also then symbolise that he’s breaking away (or about to) from Cersei and finding himself, his own light, instead. I also think, as we know Tywin and Joeffrey die later in the books and show, that it’s also foretelling their deaths. Which means it’s likely that Cersei dies before Jaime in the books, hence why he leaves her and he can’t follow. So this firstly means Jaime can’t die in Cersei’s arms.

Now, the next bit of the dream gets interesting, because who shows up next, after Cersei and his family has gone? Brienne of course! She appears (also naked) and Jaime imagines she looks not only more like a woman now, but also that in the light she could also be beauty, and a knight. This is generally taken to show Jaime’s growing (and so far subconscious) attraction to Brienne – and that he sees her as both a warrior and a woman. Now she asks for a sword, and also asks to be able to keep him safe, as she has pledged this and must keep her oath. A sword appears and Jaime gives it to her, and it also starts burning with blue flames.

Now, I think these two swords represent Oathkeeper (the one Jaime gives to Brienne in series four) and Widow’s Wail, which Jaime gets after Tommen dies in series 7. And these are two Valyrian steel swords that were from the melted down sword Ice, which used to be Neds. Now, I don’t think this is coincidental, but again I’ll come back to this.

Brienne is there to help protect Jaime, but she also asks him what’s down in this dark place (which may or may not still symbolise Casterly Rock or another place). Jaime says doom, and Brienne is worried it’s a bear (foreshadowing her being in the bear pit later). We hear, but don’t see Cersei saying that if the flames go out, Jaime will die.

In the next part of the dream ghostly, mist like figures appear and Jaime recognises them as his former Kingsguard and then Rhaeger, the heir to the throne before he was killed in Robert’s rebellion. These ghostly figures accuse Jaime of not keeping his oaths and seem about to attack. Jaime tries to plead with them and give his reasons, and Brienne is still there ready to defend him. These ghosts likely represent the internal guilt and self-hatred Jaime still has for killing the Mad King, but also for not saving Rhaeger’s own children, which were murdered on Tywin’s orders. As the ghost like figures continue to accuse Jaime, the flame on his own sword goes out, and the ghosts rush in, and then Jaime wakes up. As soon as he wakes up, pretty much, he demands Bolton’s men take him back to Harrenhal, where he then saves Brienne just like in the show.

Now, I read a lot of people saying this foretells Jaime’s death, that his flame goes out, but I disagree. I think the fact that Brienne has a matching flame, on a twin sword to his, means that Jaime doesn’t die – after all Cersei says flameS. Instead, I think this ending to the dream foretells that Brienne will actually save Jaime – that as long as she is alive, Jaime will also be.

Now, onto more foreshadowing theories from this dream – I think the ghostly, mist like figures also represent the White Walkers, and that him and Brienne are there facing them means that they will indeed (just like in the show) stand together to fight them in the books. As this has also happened after Cersei has left Jaime with his now dead father and son, I think it means she’ll already have died by this point.

I also think his guilt and the mention of Rhaegar’s children, which Jaime feels guilty about failing to protect, will also tie into Jon’s storyline. As the only surviving child of Rhaegar, I think once Jaime finds out, and Jon, Jaime will pledge himself to protect/serve Jon to make up for this guilt. I then think, based on this, that Jaime will effectively save Jon’s life in the battle with the White Walkers and then, Brienne will have to save Jaime’s. After all, she says in the dream she pledged to protect and save Jaime.

Now, the reason I think the end of the dream means Brienne saves Jaime, is not only because her flame keeps burning in the dream, but also because, as soon as Jaime wakes up, he decides he has to save Brienne. As we are going with the idea that this dream is prophetic from the Weirwood stump, it seems very important that Jaime rescues Brienne, so she can be there to fight with him. And what better reason than having to save him, when his own light (the sword flames) has failed?

And those swords – two halves of one whole, from Ice, the Stark’s sword. Turning into blue flames and helping them in the battle against the dead. Likely at or near Winterfell like in the show… When the books have a theory about a special sword called Lightbringer, wielded by the hero Azor Ahai to defeat the Others..

Soooo, perhaps this is really going into the realms of fan theory, but I definitely think that ICE could be Lightbringer, and that Brienne and Jaime, with Jon (who imo is the Azor Ahai character) will be imperative in helping to defeat the White Walkers. And that Jaime will fall in this battle, and Brienne will have to be there to save him so he doesn’t die.

Now, you might ask, what does all this random dream theorising mean for Jaime becoming the Hand of the King? Well, first of all I think it foreshadows that both Jaime and Brienne have a major part to play in the battle against the dead – much more than in the show. And that as Jaime is near death, it was super important for Brienne to be there to save him. And that it was super important for Jaime to give Brienne the sword Oathkeeper, and have Widow’s Wail himself – two halves of the same sword. So, all this must happen, and Brienne must save Jaime, which is why Jaime was given the prophetic dream in the first place. After all, if he hadn’t of saved Brienne, none of the above could go as it should…

And, this is where Bran comes in and this is more my own idea than anything else, so forgive me if I’m just not understanding the books properly. But as Bran himself sees visions through the Weirwood trees, which I suspect are due to them being sent either by the old Three Eyed Raven, or markers from Bran himself in the future, or perhaps fate or another unseen magical force. Then I wonder if the reason why Jaime was sent this vision, is because of Bran – and also the White Walkers. That Jaime had to help in the fight, but also had to be saved by Brienne. (Maybe even because it’s through his interactions with Brienne that he does become a better person and chooses to fight). And he had to be saved, because it was his destiny to be the Hand of the King to Bran. And also to save Jon so Jon can defeat the White Walkers. And that perhaps, this saving of Jon by Jaime is another reason why he is chosen as the Hand of the King.

I would also like to add in here, my other theories for book Jaime, which can lead him up to being Hand of the King, and tie up other loose ends in his story arc. So, the books and the show deviate a lot for Jaime after series four – he breaks away from Cersei much earlier and he’s currently off on an adventure in the Riverlands with Brienne in the books. A story arc not put into the show, featuring Lady Stoneheart (LSH). Now, she is a re-resurrected, zombie like version of Catelyn Stark, who is hell bent on revenge for the Freys and the Lannisters for the Red Wedding. She’s threatened Brienne with the death of Pod, unless she brings her Jaime. (At least that’s what most people infer from the books, it’s left open ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Now, my theory on this is that somehow Jaime and Brienne will have to fight each other in a trial by combat (echoed in the show itself by Brienne’s line about maybe having to fight Jaime). Of course they won’t be able to kill each other and will somehow be able to escape from, or kill Lady Stonehart.

So, why am I mentioning this? Well, GRRM himself has said he was disappointed they didn’t include the LSH plot in the show. Instead, D&D completely cut it out and sent Jaime to Dorne instead (as in series 5, which isn’t in the books). But for GRRM to say he wanted it in the show, makes me think there’s something very significant that is going to happen from it – either to the characters, or their relationship. Something which will later prove to be important in the rest of the story. This makes me think that Jaime and Brienne have a much bigger impact on the overall story arc than they were given in the show. And if it is more important, it makes the idea they’d have an important ending as well – Hand and LC of Kingsguard respectively – make more sense. And perhaps add more weight to the idea that Jaime HAD to save Brienne.

Now, after LSH, my idea is that Jaime will have to go back to Kings Landing and Cersei – but not in a romantic way. I think, like in the show, Jaime’s going to have a story arc that takes him on the role of commanding the Lannister’s forces against Dany’s when they get to Westeros. And if we assume Cersei does die before the battle with the undead, maybe this is also when Jaime kills Cersei – if he is the Valanqar, the one prophesised to kill Cersei. Or it could be someone else…

I then think the battle for Kings Landing will happen before that of the White Walkers, so Jaime then goes to help in the North, and catches up with Brienne again, who has been busy saving Sansa after her and Jaime parted ways (on good, but still unrealised and not yet acknowledged romantic terms) after LSH. I then think, like in the show, Jaime and Brienne will get together near the end, but this time not only will there be no Cersei for Jaime to rush back to (and throwing his character arc out the window like he does in the show), but he will still live to then become King Bran’s hand.

Of course, there’s still so many unknowns, and all, none or bits of this could happen, so I really hope we do get to see the last two books and find out what really happens.

But until then, I’m going to stick with the idea that Jaime marries Brienne, and becomes the Hand of the King and survives!

There, that’s the end of my theory – several all tied together really. I’d be interested to know what people think.

I know that my later reasons are more random ideas, but I do think, above all, the idea that Jaime is going to be the Hand of the King, not Tyrion, helps explain why the show didn’t really make sense for those characters (Jaime's 180 change at the end being the main one). But also just the wonderful symmetry of a redeemed Jaime fulfilling the role of Hand, for a King he once tried to kill, after he became a better person after losing his own hand…

[chillyravenart]

Hi, I'm curious about your opinion on a seldom discussed asoiaf matter: Rhaegar Targaryen's relationship with his mother, Rhaella. It's bugging me since there's little to no mention of it in any of the books. Safe to assume that Viserys was close to her, her crown was his last joy according to Dany. Dany herself sadly doesn't count, she only has stories about their mom. But Rhaegar has plenty of years. He must have seen her misery as well. Surely he didn't just stand aside and did nothing right?

It's a seldom discussed matter for a reason, we simply don't have enough material on their relationship and only mere snippets on them entirely. I have opinions and views of my own, but none of them are fully backed up by canon- because the info just doesn’t exist :( 

Rhaegar was born to thirteen-year old Rhaella during the Tragedy at Summerhall- an event that was said to overshadow him throughout his life. As per royal etiquette, I can only assume that baby Rhaegar was brought up by wetnurses and tutored by maesters as a child, with limited access to his mother. This would have been exacerbated by the fact that within the first eleven years of Rhaegar’s life, Rhaella lost FIVE babies. Her role was to provide Aerys with heirs and spares, and for a very long time, it ended in grief. I’m sure Rhaegar would have known of his mother’s misery, but there’s literally nothing to illustrate that point. Royal children did not share the same maternal relationship as children today, and whilst I’m certain Rhaella loved her firstborn, I just don’t know if they were super close on account of her losses, as well as Aerys’ increasing madness. 

I’ve done some rambling below the cut just to try and explore this further. Hope it makes sense lol!

To start off with, Rhaella and Aerys’ marriage was never a happy one. Aerys was unfaithful, and Rhaella clearly disapproved.

Sadly, the marriage between Aerys II Targaryen and his sister, Rhaella, was not as happy; though she turned a blind eye to most of the king’s infidelities, the queen did not approve of his “turning my ladies into his whores.”

This led Rhaella to eventually dismiss her friend and lady-in-waiting Joanna Lannister, who as everyone knows, married Aerys’ Hand, Tywin Lannister. Her marriage suffered as did her health when she lost 5 babies in a ten year period.

Relations between the king and queen grew even more strained when Rhaella proved unable to give Aerys any further children. Miscarriages in 263 and 264 were followed by a stillborn daughter born in 267. Prince Daeron, born in 269, survived for only half a year. Then came another stillbirth in 270, another miscarriage in 271, and Prince Aegon, born two turns premature in 272, dead in 273.

This tidbit had escaped me entirely but when Tytos Lannister died in 267AC, Tywin returned west and Aerys accompanied him with Rhaegar.

Though His Grace left the queen behind in King’s Landing (Her Grace was pregnant with the child who proved to be the stillborn Princess Shaena), he took their eight-year-old son Rhaegar, Prince of Dragonstone, and more than half the court. For the better part of the next year, the Seven Kingdoms were ruled from Lannisport and Casterly Rock, where both the king and his Hand were in residence…

This highlights a period of almost a year where Rhaella and Rhaegar were separated. Again, I can only assume they missed each other- as any mother and child would- but nothing is written of it. It was also during this time that Aerys’ relationship with Rhaella began to show cracks.

At first His Grace comforted Rhaella in her grief, but over time his compassion turned to suspicion. By 270 AC, he had decided that the queen was being unfaithful to him…

Aerys began imposing restrictions on Rhaella at this stage, forbidding her to leave Maegor’s Holdfast and having two septas share her bed. This probably extended to her relationship with Rhaegar too, sadly.

The march of the king’s madness seemed to abate for a time in 274 AC, when Queen Rhaella gave birth to a son. So profound was His Grace’s joy that it seemed to restore him to his old self once again … but Prince Jaehaerys died later that same year, plunging Aerys into despair….

Nothing is mentioned of Rhaegar during these troubling times, but again, I can only assume he was kept separate from the inner workings of the queen’s court and wasn’t fully exposed to his mother’s troubles. We also know he was a solitary child during his early years and preferred books until the age of ten when he decided to take up arms too. He was seventeen when Viserys was born, and was “everything that could be wanted in an heir apparent” and yet it was still overcast by Aerys’ deteriorating mental health. It’s also worthy of note that once Rhaegar came of age, his role in the workings of the court would have increased; he may have sat at council meetings and been prepared for the role of heir. This paired with the fact that he continued to read, train vigorously, and travel to Summerhall on his own indicates that he didn’t really have much of a “family environment” to speak of. I always wonder where he got his love of music from, and I’d like to think Rhaella enjoyed his sad songs and harp skills- but again, WE DON’T KNOW :’(

The birth of Prince Viserys only seemed to make Aerys II more fearful and obsessive, however. Though the new young princeling seemed healthy enough, the king was terrified lest he suffer the same fate as his brothers… Even the queen herself was forbidden to be alone with the infant…

I don’t think Rhaella and Viserys were as close as could be hoped during Viserys’ early childhood. Aerys was extremely paranoid, particularly after the defiance of Duskendale which broke him irrevocably and turned him against his wife and heir.

Convinced that the smallfolk and lords were plotting against his life and fearing that even Queen Rhaella and Prince Rhaegar might be part of these plots, he reached across the narrow sea to Pentos and imported a eunuch named Varys to serve as his spymaster…

Similarly, when Rhaegar wed Elia in 280AC, Aerys did not attend, nor did he allow Viserys to attend. Since there’s no mention of Rhaella being prohibited, we can safely assume that she was in attendance.

They were wed the following year, in a lavish ceremony at the Great Sept of Baelor in King’s Landing, but Aerys II did not attend. He told the small council that he feared an attempt upon his life if he left the confines of the Red Keep, even with his Kingsguard to protect him. Nor would he allow his younger son, Viserys, to attend his brother’s wedding…

Rhaegar and Elia took up residence on Dragonstone after the wedding, presumably because Rhaegar and Aerys were definitely at odds at this stage and rumours and paranoia were rampant. There were talks of Aerys possibly disinheriting Rhaegar, Rhaegar deposing Aerys etc. Again, no clue on how Rhaella would have felt about this- but you can probably guess! The only slight snippet we have is when Rhaegar presented Rhaenys in court.

When Prince Rhaegar returned to the Red Keep to present his daughter to his own mother and father, Queen Rhaella embraced the babe warmly…

This certainly gives us an insight to how pleased Rhaella would have been to be a grandma, so I can imagine this reunion would have been very dear to her too. Fast forward to the Tourney at Harrenhal, neither Rhaella or Viserys were present, and had been left behind at the Red Keep. During the Rebellion, we know Rhaegar meant to win the war and bring about change- for his own family too, “... changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago, but... well, it does no good to speak of roads not taken…”

But when Rhaegar was slain at the Trident,

When the word reached court, Aerys packed the queen off to Dragonstone with Prince Viserys…

Nothing is mentioned of her reaction to her firstborn’s death (but we can imagine) nor the nine months Rhaella and Viserys spent together, but it must have been a time fraught with worry and fear as King’s Landing fell and House Targaryen was unmade. I feel most deeply for Rhaella’s life, and I wish we had more detail on her direct relationship with her children- particularly Rhaegar- but alas, there is not much to work with. All I can say is, despite her woes and losses and the abuse she suffered, Rhaella was a strong woman, she held her own and was dignified until the end. I’m certain she adored all her children, and the pain she suffered throughout her life affected her acutely, but she remained with her faculties intact and was able to possess the fortitude to carry Daenerys to full-term and deliver her safely, before sadly perishing herself. 

RIP Rhaella, your daughter is amazing and you would be so proud of her, and Rhaegar’s legacy also lives on. VIVA LA HOUSE TARGARYEN!!!! I really hope this answered your question, if not, it certainly made me sad AF to research all this.

[rainhadaenerys]

Post season 8 fix-it headcanon/Jonerys fanfic outline

For Daenerys Resurrection Week, Day 1: Resurrection and forgiveness

A long time ago I commented here that I had written an outline for a post season 8 fix-it fanfic. And I did write some things, mostly about the political situation in the story, and character's motivations. As far as actually coming up with a proper story and proper scenes though, I didn't really go very far. And to be honest I really don't feel like writing fics, I'd rather spend my energy on metas. But I wanted to share my headcanon anyway.

To start, my headcanon is canon-compliant. I appreciate fix-it AUs, but I have a problem with them because I always feel the need to acknowledge canon. So I acknowledge everything that happened in season 8. But in my headcanon, I completely absolve Dany of everything. Instead, I tend to think Bran warged into Dany and made her burn King's Landing, urged by Sansa. So yeah, this is not for Stark fans. My headcanon is pretty much anti everyone but Dany and Jon. (By the way, if anyone has seen any fic with this premise, and that follows season 8 canon, can you please tell me? I don't know why, but it seems no one has thought of this so far? Or maybe I just haven't seen it, since I don't read a lot of fanfic, but I would appreciate reading a fic like this)

Ok, but now you're probably thinking, but why would Bran do this? Why would Sansa tell him to do this? Isn't it OOC? That's where my complete reinterpretation of Bran and Sansa's characters start. I'm sorry I had to vilify them, but I see no other way to completely absolve Dany.

First, Bran: When Bran had met Bloodraven, Bloodraven had hoped that by teaching Bran his abilities, he would have someone to help him look into the past and find an easier way to defeat the Night King. Probably, the children of the forest told him about something (like, maybe, some hidden magical artifact), but they didn’t know where this magical artifact was. So Bloodraven thought having another person with the Three Eyed Raven’s powers would help defeat the Night King. Bran followed Bloodraven’s instructions faithfully, but in the end, he didn’t find anything that would help, and that’s why he was useless in the War for the Dawn. The reason why the Night King was going after Bran was because the Night King knew Bran had the powers to find out his secret and destroy him easily (ie, without a battle). But Bran wasn’t able to do this in the end.

But Bran’s journey to become the three eyed raven wasn’t meaningless to the story. As Jojen once warned Bran, if he spent too much time inside the mind of a wolf, he would lose himself. And this is what happened. Bran spent most of his time warging on ravens, wolves, trees, trying to find the answer. He had seen in his future visions that the Night King would be defeated, so he wasn’t much worried about that (which explains his calm behavior when the Night King came to kill him), but he didn’t know exactly how, he thought he would be the one to do it, so he worked tirelessly and warged tirelessly (btw, Bran’s future visions are more flawed. He can look into the past easily if he knows what to look for, but the future isn’t as clear and it changes constantly, it is based on possibilities). Bloodraven had time to adapt before he spent most of his time warging. Bran didn’t have that time, because the need was urgent, so the time spent warging animals and trees made him start losing his humanity, in the sense that he stopped caring, and stopped having as much empathy. He loved his family to some extent, and he still had some sense of self preservation, but he had almost no empathy left for others.

Now, let's talk about Sansa. Sansa, during her journey, became a hardened woman. Unlike book Sansa, who keeps her kindness, show!Sansa has absorbed the lessons her abusers taught her: don’t trust anyone, look out only for yourself, take any advantage you can manage. This is what Sansa has been doing for quite some time. She doesn’t tell the truth about who killed Lysa Arryn, and the reason for this isn’t that she’s afraid of Littlefinger and sees no other choice. No. Sansa has entirely embraced Littlefinger and his plans. She later resents him for selling her to the Boltons, but this experience just leaves her more traumatized. So Sansa becomes a different person: her trauma makes her look out only for herself. She had always wished for power (since season 1 she wanted to be queen), and this hasn't changed, but now, it's also tied with her traumas: she wants power as a way for her to feel in control after lacking agency for so long.

So here's how I would interpret Sansa's actions since she escaped the Boltons. In season 6, when Littlefinger reminds Sansa that Jon is a threat to her, and only her half brother, Sansa starts plotting against him. She secretly corresponds with Littlefinger, and doesn’t tell Jon about the Vale army. She does this for different reasons: she thought that by doing this, Jon and Rickon had more chance to die, and she could become queen without Jon there to threaten her power. She also wanted to be seen as the hero of the battle, the one that saved them at the last minute, so she could have more chances of becoming queen. Not only that, but she didn’t want the Wildlings in the North and saw them as expendable. They were only a tool to her. She wanted to use them to get her lands and titles back, and used the fact that Jon saved them to try to convince Jon that they should fight (Sansa does say in season 6 that the Wildlings should fight for Winterfell because they owe Jon their lives). So she saw them as expendable tools to get Winterfell back, but she also didn’t care that they would die because she withheld information about the Vale army: the less foreign savages in the North, the better. When she doesn’t get her position of Queen in the North, she starts undermining Jon deliberately. Jon asks her to stop, but she continues doing it. When Bran returns, she offers Bran the position of Lord of Winterfell, and is relieved that he doesn’t want it. When the lords talk about putting her in Jon’s place, she doesn’t reprimand them. In her conflict with Arya, she was indeed going to kill Arya. After all, she sends Brienne away after Littlefinger reminds her that Brienne is sworn to protect both her and Arya. She only doesn’t kill Arya because she goes to Bran and learns that Littlefinger was manipulating her, and she realizes that Littlefinger is a bigger threat than Arya. She was fine in keeping Littlefinger as an ally before, she didn’t care about all the horrible things he did, but she realizes that keeping him alive would be more dangerous than advantageous. So she makes a sham trial to kill him, while also omitting her involvement in Littlefinger’s schemes in the Vale and the fact that she knew about them.

So by the time Dany gets to Winterfell, Sansa is a person that only cares about her position and privileges. When she hears Dany talking about her reforms in favor of the smallfolk, she is scandalized. Unlike book!Sansa, show!Sansa never lived as a bastard, and keeps her classism. Sansa is against Dany not because of pettiness or stupid distrust, but because she feels her power threatened, and because she thinks Dany is a tyrant for wanting to take away the privileges of the nobility. So Sansa tries to undermine Dany in every way she can: publicly telling Dany that she and her armies aren’t welcome; badmouthing Dany while Dany is fighting for her. When Sansa sees Dany giving Storm’s End to Gendry, she hates seeing it because she thinks giving Storm’s End to a bastard is an absurd (after all, she was usurped by her bastard brother) and also because if the Northern Lords see Dany’s generosity, they might not be so against her, especially after Dany fought for them. Finally, Sansa betrays the oath she swore to Jon in the godswood, telling Tyrion Jon’s secret, not necessarily because she wants Jon to be king, but because she wants to overthrow Dany. And she knows that if her plans succeeds, Dany will end up dead and no longer a threat. She doesn’t care that this could spark a civil war and that innocents could die. She doesn't care that she's plotting the death of a woman that just saved her. She only wants to retain her power, and she wouldn’t be allowed to do that if Dany actually “broke the wheel”. She continues not to care about anyone but herself by humiliating Edmure when he speaks (because she wants herself to be queen), and when Tyrion suggests Bran, she undermines him as well: first saying that Bran can’t rule because he doesn’t want it and can’t have children, and later by asking for independence, knowing that asking for independence would just lead to political instability and possibly war, but not caring about it, because she wants to be queen. So these are Sansa’s motivations.

So how would the idea of Bran warging into Dany work? Well, Bran has future visions. He doesn't choose to have them, they happen to him, and they are uncertain. But as we did see twice, Bran saw a dragon flying over King's Landing, and he saw the throne room destroyed. He later tells people in the Dragonpit that he knew he was going to be king. This implies that he didn't just have a vision of a dragon over King's Landing, but that he also had more detailed visions of what would happen later. He also tells Jon that Jon was "exactly where he has supposed to be", which implies that he knew Jon would kill Dany. So Bran knew many things: knew a dragon would fly over King's Landing, knew the throne room would be destroyed, knew Jon would kill Dany (meaning that he probably knew Dany was going to be responsible for the destruction), and knew the political ramifications of all that (he was going to be king). I think that, despite the fact his visions of the future are not as exact as visions of the past and present, every evidence seems to point out that Bran knew Dany would destroy King's Landing. So I choose to believe that he saw Dany, at the back of a dragon, burning everything, and all the subsequent events that happened with it.

So maybe, Bran started looking into the future and saw Dany becoming more and more depressed. He thought this would make her burn King's Landing. And he has seen how much Sansa craves power, and he still has some loyalty to his family. So he really has no interest in preventing an outcome that gets his family on top, and given that he has lost much of his empathy due to too much time warging on animais and trees, he doesn't really try to do anything to prevent the burning of King's Landing. He doesn't warn Dany or Jon. He tells Jon the truth about his parentage even though he knows that the truth would cause chaos. And so on.

At some point, he tells Sansa what's going to happen. And Sansa also does nothing to prevent it, and instead, wants to make it happen (like when she tells the truth of Jon's parentage). She takes Bran's visions of Dany burning King's Landing as a confirmation of her bias against Dany, which makes her feel righteous in her actions. And she wants House Stark on top, so she doesn't really stop to think that maybe, just maybe, she should be trying to prevent this from happening.

So when Dany marchs south, and attacks King's Landing, Bran watches over things to see what's happening, and Sansa waits by his side for him to tell her the news. But as time passes, nothing happens. Dany is not burning King's Landing as they expected. She is only attacking the soldiers, and is close to winning without bloodshed (This did, in fact, happen in the show. Dany never attacks any civilians before the bells, she only attacks military targets). Sansa starts to get anxious. Sansa was already expecting that she would become queen, and she becomes nervous when this possibility starts to be threatened. Then, when King's Landing surrenders, Sansa gets more desperate, and asks Bran to do something, telling him that they shouldn't allow Dany to stay in power. Bran, dispassionate as he is about everything and not really caring about people, tells Sansa that the possibility of warging into Dany exists. Sansa asks Bran to do it. He asks if she is certain, and in the desperation of the moment, Sansa says yes. So for Sansa, this was about seeing the power that she craved slipping through her fingers once again. For Bran, he was simply doing what Sansa wanted. He didn't particularly care about becoming King, but he didn't really have much empathy for the people of King's Landing, so to him it didn't matter.

Dany doesn't really realize what's happening. She is in a very emotionally fragile state, and she is already feeling certain things like anger and despair. This makes her vulnerable to Bran. A person with the mental strength to resist Bran’s warging could have done it, but Dany couldn't. So when we see Dany shaking her head in episode 8x5, before she starts burning King's Landing, it's because she was fighting against Bran's invasion, but in the end she couldn't resist it. So everything we see from that moment in episode 8x5 until Dany's death, Dany is only vaguely aware of the things she is doing, but is actually being controlled by Bran. And Bran is doing everything to make sure the outcome Sansa desired (Dany's death) happens: after Dany's attack, Bran makes her land with Drogon and makes her give Grey Worm the order to kill the Lannister soldiers that surrendered. He makes the speech about world domination. And Bran's warging is also the explanation why Dany acted so weird in the last episode. It's also the reason Dany didn't have anyone to protect her when Jon came to kill her: Bran made her give orders to her soldiers to leave her alone, and to let Jon come in without taking his weapons. When Jon stabs Dany, it's when Bran finally leaves her mind, and it's the first moment of full awareness she has since Bran warged her. So the betrayal and heartbreak she feels is even worse. She wakes from a trance and sees the man she loves killing her.

Now, you might wonder, why did Bran and Sansa have to go to such extreme lengths? Why didn't they warg a random soldier to do the job and kill Dany, instead of making her burn thousands of innocents to make Jon kill her? Expecting that Jon would make the decision to kill Dany is risky, because he could decide not to do it, and Bran and Sansa's plan would fall apart. But the problem is: they didn't simply want Dany to die. They wanted to destroy her reputation, to make sure that none of her followers could seize power. If Dany simply died, the throne would go to Jon, and measures to break the wheel could still happen. Sansa didn't want this to happen, she didn’t want to lose her privileges, she wanted the herself in power and Dany's forces neutralized. By warging into Dany, they could destroy Dany's reputation, make Tyrion and Jon kill her and destroy their own chances of seizing power, and destroy the chance that Dany's allies could seize power instead of her. With Dany burning King's Landing, Bran and Sansa could spin the narrative that Dany is a radical extremist, and that her wish to make reforms is what made her a tyrant. And so on. So this is why none of them thought of warging someone and making them kill Dany, or warging Dany and making her kill herself. (Besides, I headcanon that warging someone is easier if the person is in a fragile mental state, so maybe trying to warg someone else wouldn't work).

So this is my headcanon to explain Dany burning King's Landing. From this point, everything happens as in the show: Bran and Sansa get their crowns, Arya sails west of Westeros (and dies in a storm because I have no creativity to think of a story for her and I started to hate her show self anyway), Tyrion becomes Hand and Jon is exiled. Drogon obviously, takes Dany to Volantis to resurrect her.

In exile, Jon is miserable. On the one hand, he tells himself he did the right thing. After all, Dany seemed intent on "liberating" more cities, and could maybe kill his family. And regardless of whether she would burn more cities or not, or kill his family or not, he thinks that anyone who would burn innocents for no reason and call it "necessary" shouldn't rule.

On the other hand, Jon blames himself for all the ways he failed Dany. He thinks that he was so caught up in his own angst about his parentage, about how he and Dany were related, that he didn't notice how much she was hurting. So while Jon tells himself he did the right thing in killing her, he also blames himself for not comforting her, for disregarding her fears about the dangers of his parentage coming out and telling the secret to his family, for not standing up more for her. He wonders if he only could have comforted her, then maybe she wouldn’t have ended up like that. He also starts to doubt his decision to kill her: if Dany did what she did because she became mad with grief, then maybe he could have helped her come to her senses. Maybe he didn't have to kill her. Maybe he could have helped her heal. So I headcanon that Jon would be really hard on himself and start to hate himself for killing Dany. (By the way, it's also important to consider Jon's state of mind when he kills Dany. I'm sure seeing thousands of innocents burned by dragonfire must be pretty traumatic, and would push him to decide that killing Dany was necessary).

But not only Jon blames himself, he also starts to blame his family for what they did to Dany. He starts to hate Sansa for conspiring against her (and almost leading to Dany's death, since Sansa telling the truth made Varys try to poison Dany). He blames his family for being so cold to Dany, for using her for her resources and then discarding her, and thinks about how things could have gone differently if they hadn't done these things. And at some point, Jon will remember Bran's cryptic line about him being "exactly where he was supposed to be", and start to get suspicious that Bran knew what Dany would do, and that Bran knew Jon would end up killing her, and did nothing to prevent it. But Jon will brush off these suspicions by thinking that "his family would never do this to him".

Meanwhile, Dany will, obviously, be resurrected. Drogon will take her body to Volantis, but since he is an animal, it's not like he knows what to do with it. So he will rest with her body and mourn her somewhere in Volantis, and some slaves will find him. Said slaves will recognize Dany. They have never seen her, of course, but seeing a silver haired woman and a black dragon, it's not difficult to guess who she is. And they will also mourn her, of course. Dany was a hope to many slaves. These slaves also hoped that Dany would come to save them, so seeing the dragon queen dead is the death of those dreams. They try to get to Drogon, and Drogon, slowly, comes to trust them to get near Dany. They bring a red priestess to where Dany's body is to make the rites usually done for the dead and honor the dragon queen. They don't really tell this to anyone, because they don't want her body to be found and desecrated by slave masters. So the ceremony is done in secret. But something they didn't expect happens: as the priestess gives her the last kiss, Dany is resurrected.

Oh, and as soon as Dany is resurrected, something terrible already happens: she has a miscarriage. Dany had found out she was pregnant very recently, and didn't have time to tell Jon. But since he killed her, the baby died, and didn't come back when she was resurrected. (I don't have the link right now, but I remember reading GRRM say that people who return from the dead are those who feel a strong sense of purpose, and I think a fetus wouldn't have that, so I don't think the baby would be resurrected)

Well, with all of this, Dany is incredibly traumatized. She doesn't know she was being warged by Bran, and she feels guilty for what she thinks she did to King's Landing. She has lost another child, she has lost her hope for the future, the love of her life has killed her. So she falls into depression, and starts to live hidden in Volantis (the red priestess that resurrected her helps her with a spell to prevent Bran from using his powers to see her). She has given up on the idea of helping people. And she doesn’t want to fly on Drogon anymore, because she has horrible flashbacks of what she did to King’s Landing, and because she doesn’t trust herself with a weapon as powerful as Drogon.

But after some time, Dany will start coming back to her former self. She’ll see the suffering of the slaves in Volantis, she will hear the news about Volantis going to war against the cities of Dragon’s Bay in order to re-enslave everyone, and she will hear about how some of the Dothraki have come back to their old ways and are enslaving again, and she’ll decide that she needs to do something about it. This is when she decides to ride Drogon again.

*by the way, here’s a parenthesis about the political situation in Essos*

Volantis has slavery, and is preparing for war against Meereen and Astapor. Meereen and Astapor are still strong and anti-slavery, because Dany left former slaves in the government, and she also left military forces to avoid her new governments being overthrown (like what happened the first time in Astapor, so Dany learned from her mistakes). Daario is still loyal to Dany, because he really loved her (and also because the Meereenese government is paying him to protect the city, so he really has no reason to turn on them). In Yunkai, however, Dany had wanted to do the same thing she did in Astapor (kill all the masters), but Tyrion convinced her not to do it, opting for only cutting the throats of two of the Yunkish leaders. This means that even though Yunkai is being watched by Dany’s army in the region, and they don’t openly sell slaves anymore (lest they provoke a war against Astapor in Meereen, which would be bad now that Yunkai is weakened), the Yunkish leaders are still conspiring to bring back slavery, but this time, instead of funding the Sons of the Harpy (once again, they’re not doing this anymore because Astapor and Meereen are aware that they were the culprits, and the resurgence of the Sons of the Harpy would mean war as well), they are secretly negotiating with Volantis, asking for help (since the end of slavery in Dragon’s Bay meant that the price of slaves went up, and Volantis’ economy was suffering because of this).

Meanwhile, some of the Dothraki returned to Essos. Of the ones that returned, some Dothraki believed in Dany, meaning that they didn’t return to the old ways and some even have hope that she will return, since she’s the Stallion that Mounts the World. While others have made up their own khalasars, and started enslaving and raiding again (even selling slaves to Volantis and other slave cities that remained). These khalasars that returned to the old ways are allied with Volantis.

I don’t  really have a headcanon for cities like Pentos, Myr, Tyrosh, Lys and others. I don’t know if they will still have slavery or not. The show doesn’t really mention it as far as I remember, so it could go either way.

*end of parenthesis about Essos*

So Dany starts by seeking for her khalasar, the ones that are in Essos. Some of the Dothraki (the ones that didn’t go back to their old ways and didn’t go back to being slavers) eagerly accept her back. Together with them, Dany starts again her army, and they end up defeating those other khalasars that started enslaving again. So once again, Dany unites the khalasars in Essos. But there are still some Dothraki left in Westeros, so Dany hasn’t reunited all khalasars yet.

After uniting the khalasars in Essos, stopping them from engaging in slavery, and stopping them from selling slaves to Volantis and other cities, at some point, Dany will reunite with the Unsullied. Together with her new khalasar, the Unsullied, and Drogon, Dany will start a war against the slave cities that remain in Essos. She will liberate Volantis and many other cities. She will go back to Slaver’s Bay and destroy the counter-revolutionary movement in Yunkai. She will reunite with Daario too, and things will happen between them, because I ship Dany and Daario, and also because I think Dany deserves to have some physical and emotional comfort before she reunites with Jon.

So with all that Dany is doing in Essos, news of Dany’s resurrection will reach Westeros, and they will greatly worry Bran, Tyrion and Sansa.

*And here’s another parenthesis, about the political situation in Westeros*

Tyrion is now theoretically Lord of Casterly Rock, but the Lannisters of Lannisport are opposing him (and unfortunately, ableism is a part of it). Tyrion has support from some of them, with whom he had a good relationship in the past, but not from most of them (and that fact the he killed Tywin is obviously another reason why many would oppose him). However, most of the Lannisport Lannisters start to die or disappear mysteriously - through suicide, through murder, or simply disappearing. This isn’t Tyrion’s doing, though. He doesn’t know why this is happening, but in the end, only his allies survived, and Tyrion starts to get a better hold on the Westerlands. (What is actually happening is that Bran has spies/ravens and is ordering the killing of those he views as opposition. He does this because he sees no other choice, because the situation in the Six Kingdoms is very chaotic)

In the Reach, Bronn is now lord, which is pissing off many lords (they think it’s an absurd that a sellsword was given Highgarden when many of the Reach families had better claims to it). He has the support of the Tarlys, because Sam’s family wants to support the new regime. But the region is in a chaos. Many lords are rebelling, the smallfolk are rebelling because Bronn is greedy and exploits them, and doesn’t give them justice (They aren’t necessarily hungry, because it’s the Reach. But Bronn is trying to indulge some lords to gain their alliance and be able to contend against the lords that are against him, so he let’s them do whatever they want with the smallfolk and offers the smallfolk no protection). Outlaw groups start to form to fight against Bronn and his allies, but he answers with brutality to those who oppose him or that try to ask him for anything better for the smallfolk. Bronn keeps his own sellsword army, that he rewards greatly to help him stop the smallfolk from claiming for more rights (and spending so much money on sellswords gains Bronn the enmities of some lords and smallfolk). Some of the Unsullied didn’t go to Naath (only Grey Worm’s closest friends went), and stayed in the Reach, and they help the outlaw groups.

The new prince of Dorne doesn’t have any allegiance to Bran. As soon as things calm down, he declares for Independence, given that King Bran gave independence to his own sister. He stops paying tributes, and Bran sends troops (composed of soldiers from the Crownlands, the Westerlands, Riverlands and the Stormlands) against them. The prince of Dorne answers, ready to fight for his independence. Bran brutally crushes his opposition.

Yara and the Ironborn want independence. Yara also resents the Starks for killing Dany, and also for making her brother die for them. She has taken back the Iron Islands from Euron in season 8, but now, without Dany’s support and the fear of dragons, some of the Ironborn don’t want a woman as their queen, and they want to go back to the old ways as Euron promised (while Yara, still loyal to Dany, has decided to uphold her ideals, decreeing that there should be no more raiding and raping). So the Iron Islands declare independence, but they are divided. Yara still has more support (since many of Euron’s supporters died in Dany’s attack to King’s Landing), but the few that don’t follow her start to raid the Riverlands, Westerlands and the North.

Edmure is a good lord, but the Riverlands have suffered greatly from the wars and the winter. When he tries to ask the Iron Throne for help to feed his people, the Iron Throne doesn’t send much. His niece Sansa is not going to help either (as she has her own concerns with food and can’t share), and Edmure starts go get disillusioned with the new regime and with his own family, who won’t help him, and who will also make his people fight in another war (against Dorne), while his people are being attacked by the Ironborn. And he doesn’t forget how Sansa humiliated him at the Dragonpit.

Gendry is loyal to the Starks, but only because he knew Arya and Jon. With both of them gone, his loyalty to King Bran is weak. He cares more about his own smallfolk. Gendry was a lowborn bastard after all, so he wants to do everything he can for them. But with time, he sees that the new regime is not interested in helping the smallfolk, just like they weren’t interested in listening to Sam’s idea of democracy. His loyalty also starts to waver. He also has problems with some lords from the Stormlands that don’t like that some bastard is now in charge, but it’s less than Bronn, since Gendry is indeed trying to be a good lord, and he is indeed Robert Baratheon’s son (he was recognized as such by Stannis Baratheon, and later by Daenerys Targaryen, so now it’s common knowledge).

The North also suffered with the War for the Dawn and the winter. Sansa is regarded as a competent lady by the Northern lords, but she has no love in the North. The Northern Lords kinda just got stuck with her. Sansa had stored grain in Winterfell to feed the castle and her armies, but that only means that the smallfolk in other parts of the North had to give up part of their harvest to send to Winterfell, and now, with the Winter, they are starving. To quell discontentment, Sansa tries bringing food from White Harbour, and Bran also sends her food. The fact that Bran is sending food to his sister for lower prices than usually done when trading with other foreign lands makes the lords of the Six Kingdoms angry. Bran stops sending so much food, so Sansa starts demanding more tributes from White Harbour. This angers Lord Manderly more and more, and Lord Manderly decides to demand for independence. Sansa had publicly complained many times about Dany being a tyrant for not giving her independence, so he uses the same argument Sansa used in the Dragonpit: White Harbour had suffered too much: they had sent their troops to fight the Night King alongside the Starks, but not only that, they had been the ones that most contributed to feeding the North. Because of this, he thinks he deserves independence, just like Sansa argued that she deserved independence from the Seven Kingdoms. He argues that what Sansa did created a precedent for independence, and that it would be tyranny if she refused to give it to him. Sansa is outraged, and sends her troops to make Lord Manderly bend the knee and force him to send food again.

The Vale will stay loyal to the Starks to the end, since they have mostly been left alone, and are not having as much problems with food (they weren’t very affected by wars, and their land is fertile). Nepotism also helps, because Bran won’t demand too much from his family. Edmure, also Bran’s family, was asking for help, but Tyrion advised that Lord Royce, the regent of the Vale and Sweetrobin’s advisor, was a proud man and their most loyal ally, and that angering him and making him send food to the Riverlands would be bad for them (Tyrion was wrong, as always).

By the way, winter isn’t over. Book speculation often said that the Others were the cause of the long winter, but in the show, we saw that there was snow in King’s Landing even after the White Walkers were defeated. So here, we’ll accept the fact that the seasons being long is just a normal thing for their world. After they kill Dany, Westeros goes through a few months of “false spring”, but winter returns stronger than ever after that. Crops die, hunger spreads through the land.

So basically, everything is chaos.

*end of the parenthesis about Westeros*

So with the chaos that is happening in Westeros, and the news of Dany’s return, Bran, Tyrion and Sansa start to get nervous. They pardon Jon, and Sansa sends men after Jon to bring him back from beyond the Wall, because she believes having Jon in Winterfell could serve as a shield in case Dany attacks (she thinks Dany might still love him, or that Jon might be able to negotiate with her. In a last case scenario, she could deliver Jon to Dany to make Dany leave her alone), and also, because she feels lonely, since her entire family left her.

Jon comes back to Winterfell. At some point, he overhears a conversation between Sansa and Maester Wolkan. Maester Wolkan was in the room when Sansa asked Bran to warg into Dany, and he knows the truth. Sansa sworn him to secrecy, but now, he comes to her with news of Dany’s resurrection, and asks Sansa if Dany would want revenge for Bran having warged into her. Sansa answers that she is not sure that Daenerys has memories or if she is aware that she was being warged, and if Daenerys doesn’t remember, she might not seek revenge.

So when Jon overhears this conversation, he learns that Daenerys was innocent, and that she is alive. He is horrified by what his family did, and also feels guilty for not believing in Daenerys, for having trusted his family and dismissed Dany’s fears, and so on. There’s a lot of angst. Jon then pretends he didn’t hear Sansa’s conversation, and pretends that everything is ok. He runs away from Winterfell in the middle of the night, without warning, with the intention of going to Dany.

From this moment on, I’m not really sure of what happens. I like the idea of Jon spending some time in the South, helping outlaw groups in the Reach, and learning about his brother’s tyranny. On the other hand, I don’t know how Jon could escape being seen by Bran’s ravens. So maybe Jon simply takes a ship and goes to Essos. But before he manages to take his ship, I still like to think that he talks with the smallfolk and hears what has been happening in Westeros (since he didn’t hear anything about it when he was exiled beyond the Wall).

Jon and Dany eventually reunite. Jon is brought to her in her war camp (because Dany is still at war with the slavers in Essos). While on the one hand Dany feels angry at Jon for killing her, for not supporting her and for giving up on her, on the other hand, she feels ashamed of what she did in King’s Landing and thinks she deserved to die (after all, Dany herself would have killed a person that burned innocents for no reason). So she accepts to meet Jon, but only with her guards around her, because while she still loves Jon, she is also afraid of him. Dany doesn’t have any intention of getting revenge against Jon, since she feels guilty about what she did. She is curious about what could possibly be the reason for Jon to look for her again, and thinks that he wants to kill her in the name of his family.

Jon is still very confused and tormented, and while a part of him believes that Dany is innocent, another part of him doesn’t want to believe that his siblings would have been capable of doing such an atrocity. So when he and Dany talk, he starts by asking her why she did what she did to King’s Landing. Dany answers that she doesn’t really know. That before she realized, she was doing it, like she couldn’t control herself. She tells Jon that her memories of King’s Landing almost don’t feel real, and that she is ashamed of what she did. This convinces Jon that Dany is indeed innocent, and he tells her the truth.

And this causes a lot of angst, of course. Initially, it makes Dany angry that he didn’t believe in her innocence and that he gave up on her so easily. She accuses him of having betrayed her, of having abandoned her. She also tells Jon that she was pregnant, and that because he killed her, he also killed their child (and this of course, makes Jon feel even more guilty). But with time, the anger passes, and she starts to see Jon as another victim of his family’s machinations (unlike Jon, who was hesitant in believing the worst of his siblings, Dany has a very low opinion of the Starks).

So Dany forgives Jon. They don’t return to their romantic relationship, but consider each other friends. And Jon starts to help her in her fight against slavery in Essos. This makes them content, since neither of them wants to ever return to Westeros. But unfortunately for them, news of Dany’s resurrection have started to reach more people, and lords from Westeros come to her to ask for her help in deposing Bran and the lords loyal to him. Listening to all the things that are happening in Westeros and how much the people are suffering only angers Dany. And it angers Jon as well. So they make plans to return to Westeros. Dany leaves a big part of her army of Unsullied and Dothraki in Essos, so that they could keep on with their fight against the masters. She returns to Westeros mostly with the army of their Westerosi allies (and her dragon, of course).

Dany has in mind a new political system, with a council of noblemen and a council of the smallfolk, so she negotiates with her allies with this in mind, making it clear that if they want to support her claim, they also have to support her reforms She has decided that she won’t hesitate to use force against the lords who don’t accept her reforms.

*another parenthesis*

Since I said I didn’t really have everything figured out, here are some alternatives to the things that I just described:

Maybe the reason Jon went back to Winterfell wasn’t because Sansa called him, but because when Jon was beyond the Wall, he saw that the White Walkers weren’t entirely gone. So maybe, what makes Dany return to Westeros isn’t that she wants revenge or because the lords are asking her to return, but because of the White Walkers. This would leave her conflicted, because the last time she tried to help those people she was betrayed and killed.

Or maybe Dany’s motivation to return to Westeros are just that she wants revenge. In this case, maybe she won’t even accept the alliance with the Lords, because she wants to change things for the common people. Or maybe she makes alliances with lesser lords promising them more political influence and that lesser lords would have as much sway as high lords in her new system (as well as smallfolk would also have more power).

*end of parenthesis*

Whatever Dany’s motivations for returning to Westeros are, she returns to Westeros, takes back the throne, and takes revenge. Dany is no longer the trusting soft person she was when she first went to Westeros. She comes with fire and blood, uses force when she needs to. Bran dies, because he is way too powerful for Dany to keep alive and trust that he won’t warg or spy on anyone again. As for Sansa and Tyrion, I could see different endgames: they could be exiled, imprisoned and kept as hostages, or Dany could kill them both for treason: Sansa because she revealed Jon’s parentage against Jon and Dany’s wishes, and also because of her part in the plan to make Bran warg into Dany; and Tyrion for telling what Sansa told him to Varys without Dany’s permission, which led Varys to try to poison Dany, and Dany could have died due to Tyrion’s actions; though I could see Dany being more lenient towards Tyrion than Sansa, since Sansa’s crimes are more grave. But I don’t see Dany ever accepting him as an advisor again.

Jonerys will reconcile and rule. There might be some conflict with Jon because he doesn’t want to see his family die (which is why there could be the possibility of keeping Sansa alive but as a prisoner), but in the end they get back together, marry and have children. Dany creates a new government in which both smallfolk and lords can have representatives and create laws, and she creates laws that limit the powers of the lords and stops them from abusing the smallfolk. She could also give some autonomy to each of the kingdoms: she doesn’t fully give them independence, but this greater autonomy helps quell the growing wishes for independence from each of the kingdoms.

So that’s my post season 8 headcanon. Dany was entirely innocent, the Starks were the villains, and Bran warged into Dany. Btw, if anyone wants to use this headcanon to actually write a fic, feel free to do so. Just please tell me because I’d love to read it.

[moon-ruled-rising]

as the rain hides the stars | xiv

Read the full story here...

xiv: we can’t make any promises

This ain’t for the best,

my reputation’s never been worse so,

he must like me for me.

We can’t make any promises

now can we babe?

But you can make me a drink.

-Taylor Swift, “Delicate”

When Dany was younger, she planned her future wedding with as much fever and gusto as a young princess with every resource at her disposal could. It would take place in the Great Sept of Baelor, obviously, as that was where all royal weddings took place. She would marry a wealthy foreign diplomat, or even better, a foreign prince. The guest list would be a mile long, with even more people attending the reception afterwards. Above all else, she remembered wanting one of those ridiculous many-tiered cakes and a hideous confection of tulle and lace for a dress. 

Of course, as Dany got older, the wedding day dreams were replaced with visions of a career and increasingly less domesticality. If nuptials ever presented themselves, she would go the quick and easy route of elopement. Anything else was frilly fantasy. 

Except now, those things were tangible and real. And the only thing that survived of her childhood wedding plans was the foreign prince, the only thing she didn’t have a say in. 

The Queen commandeered an old study near Dany’s guest room to be their official wedding planning headquarters. The whole space transformed and lost in the madness of planning two royal weddings in the span of a month.

In order for all the kinks to be worked out on the paperwork and numbers part of the treaty, Dany and Jon needed to be married as soon as possible. On top of that, both families were convinced they could sell the out-of-the-blue engagement as a whirlwind, love at first sight romance. Which meant they were stuck with a very limited window to get everything planned to the high expectations of the most important wedding of the decade. Maybe even the century. 

 Catelyn sat opposite of her with Elia and the Palace Event Planner, their electronic forms attentive on the screens. The Royal Event Planner from the Stark side was going over more options for color schemes. 

They’d ruled out Targaryen red and black unanimously and Dany shot down both the mauve and dusty pink options. She’d had enough of those colors in her youth. Varys always insisted she wear pink to everything important, as all unmarried Targaryen ladies did for centuries. The last thing Dany wanted was to deal with it on an already stressful, terrifying day.

The planner pressed a button on her little remote and another color palette appeared. 

“This one consists of laurel green, timberwolf, and a neutral grey,” she reported before continuing on about the reasoning behind the colors. 

“Too much green,” Dany said with only slight disinterest, reaching for a ring of fabric swatches near her.

“The ceremony is taking place in Godswood, the last thing we need is more green.” Catelyn agreed.

As Dany ran her hands over the pieces of cloth, she noticed a familiar color. 

“What about this one?”

She held the burgundy swatch up so everyone in the meeting room could see, including the two virtual guests. Deeper than Targaryen red and verging on purple, it was the same color as the heart-shaped leaves of the Weirwood tree.

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Catelyn cooed.

Elia voiced her approval at the same time.

“Could you create a palette around this and bring it tomorrow?”

“I can have it to you tonight, Your Highness.” She collected the sample and made a note.

“Thank you. And there’s no rush,” Dany smiled.

Once the meetings were over she hoped to avoid anything marriage related. She looked at the long list they still needed to cover. At least we’re getting somewhere. 

“Next item of business is wedding party assignments,” the planner continued.

“Since this marriage involves someone who is first in line for the throne, candidates for bridesmaids and page boys are selected by proximity to the royal family as well as status within the court. Here is a list of possible candidates.”

A list of potential bridal attendants landed in front of her. Rhaenys and Aegon were at the top of their respective categories along with Sansa, Arya, and Bran but the rest of the list was names she was unfamiliar with. 

“Lyanna Mormont would be a good choice. The Mormont’s have always been strong supporters of House Stark and her grandfather, Jeor Mormont, is currently Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Choosing her would be a statement about your commitment to the Night’s Watch, who defend our Northern Borders.” Catelyn suggested.

Dany made a star by the name and surveyed the rest; Karstark, Maderley, Tallheart. She wanted Missandei as her maid of honor but knew better than to suggest it. It wasn’t her wedding. Technically, it was a transaction between the heir and the useful spare. Everything had to follow tradition.

She expected there to be limits on what liberties could be taken. Rhaegar and Elia’s wedding was much the same way, everything decided for them and all they had to do was show up and say the words. It all looked sparkling and magical to fourteen year old Dany as she watched from the audience with the other bridesmaids. 

Another list was set in front of her but this time she knew the names. They were the great houses of Baratheon, Tyrell, Arryn, and Tully. There would be at least one bridal attendant from each region and with the wedding between Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon, there was a spot open. Dany marked another star by Myrcella’s name and continued to survey them.

“We don’t have to have them all decided today, but within the next few days is preferable. We still have to send out the invitations and notify the choices for bridal attendants,” the planner reminded the room as Dany placed the selective list into the binder holding all of the wedding plans.

The mockup of the new couple’s cypher was tucked inside the cover, an intertwined D and J with a crown over it. It was strange to see her initials with someone else’s. 

According to Catelyn, a traditional Northern royal wedding ceremony included a processional, presentation of a sword, exchanging of vows and rings, changing of the bride's cloak, and recessional. 

“I’m sure we have a maiden’s cloak somewhere in this palace. They were in fashion once,” Elai stated, “I’ll have someone start looking as soon possible. Unless, Dany wants to commission a new one but that would tie up the seamstresses.”

“I was actually thinking we could exclude the changing of the cloak,” Dany spoke up.

The look she gained from the room wasn’t what she would describe as pleased. 

“It’s been performed at wedding’s for centuries,” Catelyn argued.

“Well, then, what if we altered it. A veil, cloak, and dress is a lot of layers but if we substituted something else. Like…”

To be honest, Dany hadn’t thought her suggestion through and as she frantically racked her brain for an example, she remembered Sansa’s festival outfit and the particular piece of sparkle that caught her eye.

“A brooch.”

“A brooch, Your Highness?” the planner questioned.

“Yes.”

“I think it’s a lovely idea. There are certainly more dragon pins in our collection than cloaks,” Elia offered, being the only obvious supporter of Dany in the room at the moment.

“We would need to discuss it further,” Catlyn sighed, writing something down.

It was the first time one of Dany’s suggestions garnered such a reaction from Catelyn and she was especially grateful she hadn’t suggested Missandei be in the wedding party.

“Now, there is one more tradition that we would like to keep. The first dance is always performed as a choreographed reel.”

“Choreography?” Dany bleated.

“Dany, you’ve taken dance lessons,” Elia tried to reassure her.

“When I was twelve. And something tells me this is a completely different wheelhouse than ballet and ballroom.”

Catlyn spoke up, “Not entirely but it does require a few sessions to get everything smooth. Unless you want to do away with that too.”

The way the Queen’s eyes settled on her was a warning and a challenge. As if speaking against her would bring the whole wrath of the North upon Dany. 

She straightened and tilted her chin a fraction, “I haven’t made my mind up yet.”

The wedding planner cleared her throat. Dany took that as her sign to let the moment pass and return to the task at hand. 

“We usually broadcast the ceremony but given the circumstances we’ve decided against it,” the planner informed, “but there will be a photographer there to capture everything.”

At least she wouldn’t have to deal with bloggers analysing every angle and glance. 

Her phone buzzed next to her and she turned it over out of curiosity. The notification expanded even though Dany didn’t want it to, revealing the news headline about her engagement. Her throat tightened and she squeezed her eyes shut as she took a deep breath. For most of the morning she’d been able to sit through the planning session with a detached sense of reality, like she was watching someone else flip through books of swatches and check items off lists. 

“Your Highness, are you alright?”

“Could you all excuse me for a moment?”

Dany stood and walked from the room with as much control as she could. As soon as the door closed her pace quickened. She wasn’t sure where she was headed but the more distance she put between herself and the wedding business the better she would feel. It took a flight of stairs and several turns before she was satisfied, only to realize she was absolutely lost.

With only one tour of a place as massive as Winterfell, there was no way Dany wasn’t going to get turned around. The sounds of a conversation came from a room down the hall. As she approached the details of the exchange became clear.

“I mean, this woman hasn’t had a single long term relationship in her life and suddenly she’s up and engaged to a man with a much higher rank after a week.”

She knew at once what they were talking about and rolled her eyes. Jon wasn’t that much higher ranked. 

The door was open when she reached the room, so she leaned against the frame. It was a smoking lounge and the conversation was coming from an old radio. Jon sat in one of the leather chairs, engaging in the act that the room was meant for.

“I’ll tell you what it is, it’s southern imperialism.”

The second person laughed.

“You shouldn’t listen to this shit,” she warned, a hint of teasing in her voice, “It’ll rot your brain.”

When Jon looked up, she stepped into the room, crossing to sit next to the radio as well. The room had a masculine energy about it that Dany was smitten with. Dark wood and leather, the stone around the fireplace and the sleek bear pelt on the shining wood floor, just one of the many hunting trophies on display with old weapons.

“A King should always listen to what his people have to say,” he remarked.

“To genuine criticism, but this is just conspiracy and gross speculation.”

The radio personality continued, “We’re allowing this foreign woman access to the ear of the most important person in our country. Now, what do you think she’s gonna do with that kind of power?”

“Push her own agenda.”

“Exactly, her southern agenda. She may have had people fooled at the Midsummer festival with that traditional dress stunt, but I was not impressed.”

She scoffed. The outfit wasn’t meant to be a PR stunt. Sansa suggested it and Dany agreed but they failed to consider that Dany was actually a nice person who wasn’t putting on a front.

And as for pushing her southern agenda, Dany wished they knew how much she loathed her brother and refused to impart his plans on anyone. Especially after the text message she’d received from him the other night, demanding her to hurry up and seal the deal. It was then she figured out how to work the whole ugly mess to her advantage. 

No matter where in the world she ran, she still had to answer to her brother and the Crown. And renouncing her titles was a hassle with too many negative repercussions, including Rhaegar’s thinly veiled threat of black listing her if she did. But in his desperate attempt to settle her down, he was handing her an escape plan on a silver platter. 

It wasn’t the sort of liberation Dany was looking for but it was the only kind she was going to get. And if it weren’t for the hysteria surrounding the weddings, she might have counted down the days like she did before her departure to university, with giddy anticipation.

As she brought her attention back to the radio personalities and their outlandish theories, she let herself sink down into the club chair. It was much more comfortable than the wooden one she sat in all morning and she was past caring if she wrinkled her business casual ensemble.

“While I’m with you on imperialism, I think there is a more obvious reason they’re engaged so soon and that is Princess Daenerys’ wardrobe. If you didn’t know, the Targaryen’s hosted their annual charity gala and the dress she wore was … putting a lot on display, to put it delicately.”

“I know what you’re talking about. Is there not a dress code at that court? Not that it matters, I mean, we all know about her nip slip-”

We’re still on that? She supposed the news cycle in the North was slower, allowing people like the two morons on the radio to focus their attention on something the South already considered old news. That would take some getting used to.

“You know, they said that picture was doctored,”

“Yeah right. At least Prince Jon knows what he’s getting in bed because there is a popular interview with her ex-lover Khal Drogo, he compared her to-”

“Could you turn it off, please,” Dany asked, not wanting to hear what came next.

“Gladly,” Jon answered.

She reached for the cigarette case without a second thought and slid one free, Jon lit it for her.

“So, tell me the truth. Are you really a spy for your brother?”

“What?” she choked on her laugh, not expecting that particular statement.

“The seductress of the south sent her to infiltrate the royal family and sell our secrets to foreign enemies,” he said with humor in his voice.  

“I can assure you I’m not. Whatever nefarious plans my brother has at work, he hasn’t included me in them. Not that I’d want to be a part of his scheming.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I’m not,” Dany laughed.

“Promise?”

“I, Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, first of her name, Princess Royal of the United Kingdoms of Westeros, and Lady of Dragonstone, promise that I am telling the truth. And when I make promises, I don’t break them.”

She lifted her cigarette back to her lips.

“I thought you were supposed to be in top secret wedding meetings all day.”

“We were in the middle of discussing the ceremonies and I needed to take a breather.”

“Let me guess, tradition?”

Dany groaned, “I’m going to be sick of that word by the time this is all over.”

“You get used to it.”

She wasn’t so sure. Her whole life was dictated by that word, and it wasn’t going to change anytime soon. But while the Northern traditions were a thorn in her side at the moment, 

She considered him for a moment, “You should come to them.”

“I don’t think I’d be of any help.”

“Yes you would. Right now, it’s me against Her Majesty and as much as we both dread it, it’s still our wedding.”

“What did you do to make Catelyn dislike you?”

“I merely suggested we re-evaluate a certain element of the ceremony and she acted like I insulted her entire life’s work.”

“As far as she’s concerned you did. Besides, if I showed up, there would be two people in the room she hates.”

“Exactly! Maybe she won’t even come. But it’s not her fault. There are so many rules about these weddings and she’s just trying to make sure everything goes smoothly. Now that I’m thinking about it, it would be more helpful if you weren’t first in line for the throne.”

“Not fair. That is all I have going for me,” he complained.

“Oh, whatever.” exclaimed Dany as she rearranged herself in the chair, folding her legs underneath her so she could lean on the arm and face Jon full on.

“You expect me to believe that you’re oblivious to the goo-goo eyes that get thrown at you everywhere you go?”

He threw up his hands in surrender.

“Oh my gods.” Dany shook her head.

“Okay, answer me this, if I wasn’t heir to a vast country who you happened to be engaged to and you met me at a bar, what would you do?”

Dany looked him up and down, trying to look like she was seriously considering his question. She already knew her answer, she’d admitted it to herself that night in the greenhouse. I wouldn’t hesitate to add you to my list. But hookups and marriage were different things with a common denominator and she didn’t want her answer misunderstood.

“Well?” he asked.

“Now I don’t want to answer it,”

It was his turn to roll his eyes at her.

A voice from the doorway called, “Your Highness”.

They both turned their heads. It was Ser Jorah and Dany sighed in relief even though she knew she was being dragged back into the wedding fray.

“Her Majesty wanted me to let you know the florist is here.”

Dany nodded and snuffed the butt of her cigarette into the ashtray. When she stood, she saw that her pants and blouse weren’t wrinkled and was relieved. 

“Have fun,” Jon said as she headed for the door.

Despite her best efforts, a chuckle and smile escaped her.

“I’ll try.”

[angel-deux-writes]

Now that Honor Compels Me is finally done, I wanted to do a round-up of all the things I remember that made me say “I feel like I need to tell someone what almost happened here” or “I should probably explain this later lol”, along with my reasons for cutting the last few chapters/what would have happened in them. It’s prob going to be very long, which I apologize for, but I’ll bold the headings so that you can skip to the parts you’re interested in!

I’ll reblog it and add more as I think of them, but for now: 

Dark Dany: VERY originally, like way back in the OG plotline from 2017, Dany was an antagonist, and Margaery Tyrell was Robb’s queen. Dany would have died fighting Cersei in Kings Landing, with the same result (Cersei was ALWAYS going to go out by wildfire lmao). I changed it both because a) it seemed like too many Conveniently Alive people for one story and b) after the shitty ending Dany got, I decided I would try my hand at writing a Dany I could actually root for! For years I’ve been a big proponent/fan of the idea that Dany is eventually going to be an antagonist in the books, but the way it was handled in the show was so irredeemably stupid (gassing her up and gaslighting/scolding her fans later who didn’t see it coming, making her switch at the drop of a hat for the majority of the general audience just for the sake of a twist, etc). I ended up really loving the version of Dany I created. I tried not to soften her TOO much, which is why I had her wrestle with herself even up to the very end (like thinking “I won” after the explosion in Kings Landing and hating herself for it). I didn’t want all the flaws that make me not support canon Dany to disappear just because I started to like her! I do think that writing this story made me like Dany more overall. I still don’t support her canon actions, and I also probably won’t in the books, but I came to find her more compelling as I wrote her. I’m a lot less afraid to write her now than I have been in the past, though I’ll continue to add warnings to all my stories that feature Dark Dany, bc yall Dany stans have been through enough. 

More Death: At various points Dany, Theon, Bran, and Arya were going to die. 

Dany was already pointed out. 

I had Theon die in the Long Night in the plot outline just out of laziness/in keeping with canon, until I remembered that Redemption = Death is stupid and I wasn’t gonna do it. 

Bran was going to die after warging into Drogon and being caught in the explosion of the Red Keep. That actually stayed in until a few weeks ago! I told a bunch of people that Bran was going to die! It was the plan all along! And then I realized that “somebody has to die” was a shitty way of looking at it, and I changed it. I think a lot of this process of changing things was me trying to write what I thought people wanted vs what story I actually wanted to tell. Sure it’s a little fairy tale ending this way, but it’s my story, and who cares? Happy endings are nice. Fuck off. 

Arya...I probably wouldn’t have ever actually gone through with it, because I am a coward, but there was an idea of a VERY heavy-handed “revenge is bad” message with Arya where Arya was much more savage and instead of turning back into Arya, she was turning farther and farther away from her. She couldn’t reconcile with the Lannisters, she rejected her bonds with her family. In the end she would be unable to let go of her list, would refuse to grow and change and realize that she had other things to live for, and she would have set off one of Qyburn’s traps in the Red Keep, igniting the whole thing, killing Drogon and Rhaegal (and Bran) and leading to the deaths of thousands. AGAIN I was like “that’s too dark” and scrapped the idea, but it was definitely toyed with. I love Arya as a character, so this plotline for her would have definitely been more a reaction to fans of her who seem to want her to hold on to that vengeful seed inside of her. 

Prophecies: Listen, I do not give a fuck about any prophecies. I really don’t. Every fantasy universe has some kind of involved backstory that some fans love to get mired in, but I am not one of those fans. Still, I tried to deliver on two of them lmao. 

Azor Ahai ended up being Jaime, with Ice/Oathkeeper and Maiden’s Heart being Lightbringer. Originally, I had Brienne killing the Night King, without any thought to the prophecy at all, but that was another case of “people will like it if Brienne kills the Night King” and I realized that I would like it better if it was Jaime. I’m not sure how it checks out literally, but I figured it worked with a) tempering in water = splitting Ice. b) heart of a lion = Jaime’s change of heart after the Highgarden Battle. c) Nissa Nissa = Brienne’s “maiden’s heart” breaking during the Highgarden Battle. It was Brienne who did the stabbing, but it was Jaime who made it happen, so I figured that made sense. I made sure to mention Brienne’s tears and all the smoke when Jaime was wounded, so he could be “reborn amidst salt and smoke” or whatever, and I had Bran mention a rebirth for him in the next chapter. Which was maybe a little on the nose, but IDK GUYS I FEEL LIKE IT CHECKS OUT! 

I know the show never dove into the Valonqar prophecy at all, and I think we all know that I absolutely HATE the idea of Jaime being the Valonqar, so I would rather not think about it AT ALL. But Bran AND Rhaegal were both kind of responsible for Cersei’s death in the end, so take your pick of which Little Brother actually did the deed! 

Deleted Chapters: I promise you, you are not missing anything with these deleted chapters. They were always messy, and no matter how many times I edited them, they felt too forced and “now let me explain the ending”. 

Sansa: Sansa’s chapter followed Jaime’s and was primarily about her going to Robb and Dany and the three of them talking about the future of Westeros. The Dany/Robb conversation about it was originally absent--the last Robb chapter was added to fill in the gaps when I deleted this and the other chapters--so this would have been the first time it was discussed. It then would have had a time jump and a wedding scene, which I could never make work! It was such a jarring time jump in the middle of a chapter, and I didn’t think the wedding was particularly exciting to write about lmao. 

Tyrion: Tyrion’s chapter would have been Dany being crowned and announcing to everyone that she and her people are going to be dismantling the monarchy and setting up a new government. I think I had her give a period of a few years in which she and Robb would rule, but they were going to be transitioning governments in that time. Kind of the same idea as in What a King Should Look Like. Bronn also showed up, DID in fact get a minor holdfast, and was mocked by both Lannisters for bowing out before he could have earned himself a better one. Olenna found some bastard daughter to legitimize and continue her house.

Brienne: Brienne’s arc was a lot more drawn out in the original draft, and I ended up editing it a few times and making it shorter. VERY originally, this chapter would have been her wedding with Jaime, at which she has the “wow he actually loves me, huh?” realization. Which I thought was funny as I plotted it out, but in execution it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, so I moved the realization to an earlier chapter. The original was also going to be Jaime giving up his name entirely, and Brienne cloaking him, but as we have discussed before, I am in fact a coward, so I just deleted the whole chapter lmao. In all seriousness, at this point the endings just felt like Return of the King, and Into the West was actually the chosen song for this chapter, because I knew even as I was writing it that I was doing Too Much lmao. 

Robb: Robb’s last chapter was essentially just a total wrap up chapter. Just Robb and Dany being sappy, Robb being happy he was still alive, and the two of them planning the future. They were at Riverrun for this part, i’m pretty sure, or it might have been Dragonstone? I had trouble even filling this chapter with enough words for it to be a full chapter, because it was basically just an epilogue. As the story progressed, this chapter felt more and more like I was just performing to the “Robb’s Alive” crowd, which I didn’t particularly want to do, because Robb being alive was always a feature, not the focus, of this story. 

That’s all the stuff I can think of for now! If anyone has any particular questions you can message me or inbox me about them and I’d be happy to talk about it! 

[sailorshadzter]

S7 AU, Jon demands to be brought to Winterfell first before sailing to King's Landing for the Dragonpit parley. He needs to see his lady wife. This way, he will remain King in the North indefinitely without bending the knee.

hi yes this is me continuing to apologize for how long it’s taken me to get to a lot of (most of lbr) prompts. anyways, i hope you enjoy this anon!! written as a companion piece to this piece i wrote recently. :)

as always, thanks for the request!

send me prompts

Laying there in his bed, with the dragon queen's violet eyes peering down at him, Jon knows things must change. Like the shifting winds of a winter storm, he must bend and twist to this woman's whims if he wishes to survive. This is a queen who's dangerous all her own- but to mix in the loss of her dragon, creatures she refer to as her children, makes her even more so. Grief wears her down and Jon can see it.

He knows what he must do.

When she slips her hand into his, he gives it a gentle squeeze back, as if it means something to have her hand in his. "We could do it together," she urges softly, almost urgently, almost as if she truly cares. They're both liars, he and this damned dragon queen.

"I can't do it without seeing my family." He says after a moment, daring to speak these words only when he rubs his thumb across her knuckles, as Sansa had once done to him. It conveyed a message that words never could- it had been true for him and now it's evident that it's true for Daenerys, too. "My sister, my brother, I must see them, Dany." His use of her nickname- one only her brother ever used- softens her. "I thought them dead all these years, I can't sail past Winterfell without stopping first." He longs to see Arya and Bran, of course, the little siblings he truly had thought lost to him. But... Sansa... He needs to see her, to hold her, to hear her soft voice speak his name in the darkness of his chambers. Jon clings to her hand, wishing the pale, soft skin belonged to Sansa instead. "Please."

After a long moment, Daenerys lets out the breath she's been holding, only so she might nod. "One night and then we must ride for King's Landing." She rules from his bedside and Jon breathes a sigh of relief, clutching her hand a little tighter in a silent gesture of thanks. "I should let you rest," she says after several long moments and she rises up from the chair which she's occupied all these hours. "Sleep well, Jon Snow." Daenerys smiles down at him and for a split second, she's a normal woman, but then it fades and he can see the fire that burns in her violet colored eyes.

A fire that frightens him.

[ x x x ]

The feast takes far too long and Jon is nearly bursting with anticipation when he returns to his rooms that night after arriving.

It has been an all day event, this celebration of the King in the North's return from Dragonstone, with a powerful ally at his back. Though the North is wary of the dragon queen, she's been accepted among their ranks... For now. One wrong move though and he's certain the people of the North will turn against her and he knows well they will not support her claim to the throne, especially so if she tries to dethrone him again. But, those are thoughts for another time, perhaps tomorrow would do. Right then, there was something far more important to think about.

Jon knows she's in the room before he pushes the door open- he can sense her, even now, after so many weeks apart. She's a piece of him, she's an imprint upon his heart and soul, he knows her perhaps even better than he knows himself. And so he's not surprised when she's throwing herself into his arms without a word, embracing him as she had longed to do down in the courtyard that very morning. "You're home." It's all she can whisper before his mouth clamps down over hers, his arms coming around her waist to draw her as close to him as he possibly can.

"Well, I promised you, didn't I?"

Her laugh is cut off when Jon kisses her again, this time a deeper kiss that stirs warmth into her belly. All these weeks without him, she's wished for this, she's dreamed of this. It almost doesn't feel real to have him in her arms once again. But when he tightens his grip upon her, it steadies her, it reminds her how very real the moment is. "I've missed you," she murmurs, her lips against his jaw, his neck, his earlobe. He's sliding a hand into her hair, uncaring of the pins he knocks loose in his need to feel her silky red strands between his fingers. "I was afraid..." Afraid you wouldn't come home. Afraid you would forget me. Words she's thinking, but too frightened to say.

"I'm home now," his voice is against the shell of her ear, his other hand trailing the length of her spine. I'll never leave your side again, those are the words he wishes he could say, but tomorrow he must leave again. "Stay with me tonight," he says instead, tipping his forehead against hers, his hand slipping from her hair to instead press against her cheek.

When she nods, he takes her by the hand and leads her to his bed.

For one single night, all is well.  

[fedonciadale]

I don't understand why people think Dany abolished slavery. Didn't she allow people to be sold into slavery and then get a 10% cut of it. Isn't she benefiting financially from slavery. And she doesn't care about smallfolk or women and children. Didn't she order a merchant's daughter to be tortured in front of her parents just to get some names. Didn't she allow rapists to get off scot free because they were her followers.

(2) Also I hate when people say that we condone slavery.  Dany won’t end slavery.  She’s not revolutionary.  She won’t end slavery in Lys.  She probably “freed” the unsullied because barristan told her that the westerosi won’t like it and she didn’t want to giver up her dragon.  She allowed slavery to continue and is benefiting from it.    

(3) Also people justify Dany crucifying the masters of mereen.  But in the same book we had Gendry join the Brotherhood because one of the reasons was because they gave the Hound a trial.  Nobody is doubting that the guilty should be punished.  But Dany doesn’t care about justice.  If she did, she would have followed barristan’s advice about giving trials.

Dear nonny,

this became rather long.... 

well, apart from the fact, that Dany is a perfect example for the PoV trap, she is also a perfect example for a fallacy that is a common trap for historians: Which is to deduce from results to intention. 

GRRM really has a very good understanding not only of grey characters, but also about how very weird the connection between intentions and results can be. He writes about people with good intentions who yet somehow manage to blunder (Robb), he writes about people with bad intentions who yet manage to do something good (argueably, Littlefinger poisoning Joffrey and freeing Sansa from King’s Landing - his intentions are far from pure, but at least Sansa is not executed for killing Joffrey).

There is the phenomenon in history, where you have good results that derive from people with selfish intentions. There is the phenomenon that you have very grey people who nevertheless are at the right place to do the right thing at the right time. Sometimes change only comes with violence and then after welcoming the change people realise that the change hasn’t been that good after all. It is very rare that change comes after a peaceful revolution, but it does happen. And we should really value these examples, because they show that it is possible to change things and not shed blood. I would argue that the East German Revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall is such a case.

So, the truth GRRM explores is, that ‘history’ and change is complicated. Heroes aka entirely good people do not exist, people can have good intentions and the results are disastrous and people can have selfish aims and yet may unintentionally do something good on the way. They are accidental saviours in a way. 

There are historical examples for this. Charlemagne wanted to be able to better communicate his orders throughout his realm and he instigated an educational reform whose consequences are still visible today (in the very letters we use). Frederick Barbarossa wanted to boost his power in Italy, gave a privilege to the lawyers of Bologna and boosted Roman law (with consequences that went well beyond what he wanted). 

Churchill was not a very nice man. And yet his decision to stand up against Nazi Germany was the right decision and he was the right man at the right place. 

The French revolution brought change if only in the way that the nobility never again ruled without the need for legitimization. And yet after twenty years France was ruled by a dictator who waged war on Europe….

So, if you ignore the PoV trap and the logical fallacy of the non sequitur of result  and intention, what people see is the following:

There is a society that practices slavery. They have horrible ideas and horrible customs: Sex worker slaves, military slaves that are brainwashed into killing machines that follow every order. And then there comes Dany. She is repelled by the “education” of the Unsullied, which is validated by Barristan’s remarks about free people and she buys them, sets them free and punish the slavers. So Dany arrives in Astapor, she buys Unsullied and suddenly it looks like slavery is abolished. Freedom is what Dany promises.

The result of Dany’s politics is good, isn’t it? She destroyed the existing system. That must mean that she abandoned slavery! Slavery is bad, someone who abolishes slavery must be good. That must have been her intention all along! So people deduce from the result (which is only a short term result like many results that are achieved by violence) to Dany’s intentions.

In that light, does it matter, that she used slaves in the first and second book? Does it matter that her personal slaves that were given to her never had a real choice? Does it matter that we never see her think that slavery in principle should be abolished?

So, this is the logical fallacy that has duped so many people into thinking that she is good.

Now, that the abolishment of slavery is not her intention does not mean that it could not evolve to be her intention and it doesn’t mean that nevertheless the abolishment of slavery could evolve to be the result of her actions. That is why we have Mereen and ADWD, the famous 'knot’/blot. We see in Mereen, that the destruction of the system did not work. That a peaceful transition is very tiring, complicated and hell of a work. And it bores Dany to death and we see her increasingly frustrated. That is why we see her more and more ready to use violence. As in the case of the wineseller’s daughter. We don’t know her name or her age, but we know that Dany orders her to be tortured (preferably in such a way that she doesn’t see it, she has empathy after all, even if she trains herself to lose it). Her impatience leads her to look for the tool that has served her so well until then: violence.

Now, we come to the next fallacy : Does it matter that she uses violence, when her intentions are so good (as we have ‘established’ by the fact that she ‘abandoned’ slavery).

I recently argued with a Dany stan about the fact that Dany is extremely violent. And they asked me, what I would have done. Well, apart from the fact that I do not live in Essos, I told them, that the very first thing I would have done, would have been to kill the dragons, so that I would not be tempted to use them. Because it is so easy, isn’t it? Just destroy the bad people…. They are slavers after all. They don’t deserve to live….. 

This is a very dangerous way of thinking, because a) why would we (and we are grey people as well, because humans are not ‘good’) have the right to condemn others to death? I am with Tolkien in this: I cannot give life to people who earn it, so I should not condemn to death either. and b) violence is not a solution. It often seems like a solution but it is not. So, the Dany stans accused me that I would do ‘nothing’ (because all my ideas involved slow and gradual work against slavery and that is simply not fast enough, in this they are like the person they stan) and c) where is the rule of law if people are just randomly put to death? If the world is not black and white how can it be right to kill People randomly just because they belong to a certain class. As the French said in 1789 and after: Les aristocrats à la laterne! (Hang ‘em all!). 

But violence breeds violence….

So, I think Dany’s actions are wrong in a number of ways. First of all her intention is not the abolishment of slavery. If it was she should have acted on this intention and freed her personal slaves… If it was she should have stayed in Essos. If it was nobody in Westeros should ever see her ass. And we expect her to come to Westeros in the books as well, don’t we?

Secondly, even if her intention was to abolish slavery she goes about it in a brutal and violent way, which may seem like an easy way, but history teaches us, that it never is an easy way. Therefore the abolishment of slavery does not work as we see in Mereen. And Dany allows for slavery to be re-established elsewhere than Mereen (although the masters were swapped) and then she profits from slave - selling in Mereen. So, you might cut her some slack about Astapor, because she can’t be everywhere, but getting money from slave selling surely crosses a line? If she was after the abolishment of slavery she should not do that. That is hypocritical.

Thirdly there is her attitude towards law. She is a law unto herself and she constantly makes her own rules. If you want to set up a new system you need a new constitution, but we don’t see her aiming at that. It is indeed one of the things where the Starks are a foil to Dany. They act within the boundaries of law (even if it is a law we might not approve of in every detail).

And last, she works to destroy the system from above, by putting herself on top, not by working from within. She is a ‘saviour’ from outside and she has little to no wish to learn about the culture she wants to improve. She might well laugh about the ‘floppy ears’ the Mereenese wear in her own mind, but she laughs into their faces. It’s insensitive and the behaviour of a White saviour.

This is why Dany is an accidental saviour, if she is a saviour at all. Her intentions are selfish rather than good, her methods are questionable, and she can’t be held accountable because she acts outside the law. So, she is a catalyst for change but that change isn’t necessarily good. The system goes 'back to normal’ only with Dany on top - not bound by any rules.

In this context, it is worth looking at how the acquisition of the Unsullied is worded and staged in ASOS :

"And here he waits." Ser Jorah and Belwas walked beside her to the litter, where Drogon and his brothers lay basking in the sun. Jhiqui unfastened one end of the chain, and handed it down to her. When she gave a yank, the black dragon raised his head, hissing, and unfolded wings of night and scarlet. Kraznys mo Nakloz smiled broadly as their shadow fell across him.                  

Dany handed the slaver the end of Drogon's chain. In return he presented her with the whip. The handle was black dragonbone, elaborately carved and inlaid with gold. Nine long thin leather lashes trailed from it, each one tipped by a gilded claw. The gold pommel was a woman's head, with pointed ivory teeth. "The harpy's fingers," Kraznys named the scourge.

Dany turned the whip in her hand. Such a light thing, to bear such weight. "Is it done, then? Do they belong to me?"

"It is done," he agreed, giving the chain a sharp pull to bring Drogon down from the litter.

Dany mounted her silver. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She felt desperately afraid. Was this what my brother would have done? She wondered if Prince Rhaegar had been this anxious when he saw the Usurper's host formed up across the Trident with all their banners floating on the wind.

She stood in her stirrups and raised the harpy's fingers above her head for all the Unsullied to see. "IT IS DONE!" she cried at the top of her lungs. "YOU ARE MINE!" She gave the mare her heels and galloped along the first rank, holding the fingers high. "YOU ARE THE DRAGON'S NOW! YOU'RE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! IT IS DONE! IT IS DONE!"

She glimpsed old Grazdan turn his grey head sharply. He hears me speak Valyrian. The other slavers were not listening. They crowded around Kraznys and the dragon, shouting advice. Though the Astapori yanked and tugged, Drogon would not budge off the litter. Smoke rose grey from his open jaws, and his long neck curled and straightened as he snapped at the slaver's face.

It is time to cross the Trident, Dany thought, as she wheeled and rode her silver back. Her bloodriders moved in close around her. "You are in difficulty," she observed.

"He will not come," Kraznys said.

"There is a reason. A dragon is no slave." And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver's face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard. The harpy's fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. "Drogon," she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. "Dracarys."

The black dragon spread his wings and roared.

A lance of swirling dark flame took Kraznys full in the face. His eyes melted and ran down his cheeks, and the oil in his hair and beard burst so fiercely into fire that for an instant the slaver wore a burning crown twice as tall as his head. The sudden stench of charred meat overwhelmed even his perfume, and his wail seemed to drown all other sound.   Then the Plaza of Punishment blew apart into blood and chaos. The Good Masters were shrieking, stumbling, shoving one another aside and tripping over the fringes of their tokars in their haste. Drogon flew almost lazily at Kraznys, black wings beating. As he gave the slaver another taste of fire, Irri and Jhiqui unchained Viserion and Rhaegal, and suddenly there were three dragons in the air. When Dany turned to look, a third of Astapor’s proud demon-horned warriors were fighting to stay atop their terrified mounts, and another third were fleeing in a bright blaze of shiny copper. One man kept his saddle long enough to draw a sword, but Jhogo’s whip coiled about his neck and cut off his shout. Another lost a hand to Rakharo’s arakh and rode off reeling and spurting blood. Aggo sat calmly notching arrows to his bowstring and sending them at tokars. Silver, gold, or plain, he cared nothing for the fringe. Strong Belwas had his arakh out as well, and he spun it as he charged.   “Spears!” Dany heard one Astapori shout. It was Grazdan, old Grazdan in his tokar heavy with pearls. “Unsullied! Defend us, stop them, defend your masters! Spears! Swords!”         

When Rakharo put an arrow through his mouth, the slaves holding his sedan chair broke and ran, dumping him unceremoniously on the ground. The old man crawled to the first rank of eunuchs, his blood pooling on the bricks. The Unsullied did not so much as look down to watch him die. Rank on rank on rank, they stood.

And did not move. The gods have heard my prayer.“Unsullied!” Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air … and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”   “Dracarys!” they shouted back, the sweetest word she’d ever heard. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire. (ASOS, Dany III).

So, there are so many important hints in this passage, first of all, Dany wants and army and she acquires an army (without paying for it), but most importantly, Dany still holds the scourge, that is a symbol of her ownership  when she gives the order to the Unsullied. She orders them to kill not only the slavers, but also the soldiers (who do nothing but follow orders) and teenage boys (unless you want to argue that a 13year old boy wearing a tokhar is not a child), at a moment they are still hers. And we should remember that the Unsullied are brainwashed to follow orders. We saw that when they did not act for their former masters.

So, Dany gives them freedom after she gave them the order to execute revenge fantasies. It is telling that the Unsullied do not repeat the shout for freedom, but just 'Dracarys’. It is telling that she first makes sure, that she really owns the Unsullied before she gives the order.

It is telling, that she carries out death sentences without trials, that she does not care for nuances. That she would not even spare teenagers. This is mirrored in her POV. It is only the ‘slavers’ who die, no word about the soldiers or others. For Dany it is her and the people she owns and them.

Seeing, that this is highly problematic, even if it would have been a lasting and roaring success (which it is not, remember the system returns) does not make me a slavery apologist. 

I do think, the situation would be different, if the slaves themselves had decided to rebell and overthrow the system and Dany had decided to support them. But then she would not be the one in charge...

Thanks for the ask!

[ladylaurelandash]

Gendrya FanFic Ideas

So, since I’m taking forever to write the current Gendrya fic I’m working on, I thought I’d post some ideas I’ve had and see if anyone wants to take them up. If not, cool, if yes, let me know, I can help with plotting. I’ve posted these on r/Gendrya already, but figured there’s more who might be interested her on Tumblr. Anyways, here they are, up to what I have. You can certainly change things and/or continue from what I have: 1. A Prince Gendry AU Everything the same at beginning of series, except Gendry is the eldest son of Robert and Cersei. Robert and family journey to Winterfell to ask Ned to be Hand, and to betroth Gendry to Sansa. Sansa does not like Gendry because he doesn't conform to her ideas about knights and princes (his hobby is blacksmithing which she thinks is dirty and unbecoming a prince), but likes Joffrey, because she thinks he is an ideal prince. Gendry thinks Sansa is shallow and stuck up. Gendry becomes friendly with the other Stark children, and Arya is particularly taken by him, especially when he makes her a sword at Jon's request (he makes Needle!). They bond over not pleasing their mothers (Cersei is not fond of Gendry as he looks like Robert). 

Gendry doesn't want to marry Sansa because they'd be miserable, but Robert insists his heir marry a Stark daughter. Gendry suggests Arya because they get along and perhaps a good marriage should start with friendship. Arya is reluctant at first, but Gendry tells her he doesn’t want a queen like his mother, supposedly a perfect lady, that he wants a queen he could trust to lead an army into a battle. He tells her they could rule as equals, so she agrees. Cersei dislikes the idea of Arya and Gendry together, and insists that Sansa and Joffrey are a better match. Two betrothals are then made, Gendry & Arya, and Sansa & Joffrey, with it acknowledged that Sansa and Joffrey's marriage will come first since Arya is so young. 

Privately, Gendry tells Ned his concerns about Jon Arryn's death, as he had started Jon Arryn on his investigation by asking about his bastard siblings. Gendry also tells Ned Joffrey is a cruel and the betrothal with Sansa should be set aside as soon as possible. Ned isn’t sure what to make of all this, but thinks well of Gendry so far, and tells Gendry he will look into these matters.

Everyone journey's to King's Landing as before, and everything happens as it did, just with Gendry involved. (For example, he’s not there when Nymeria attacks Joffrey, but went looking for Arya with Ned. He gets into an argument with Robert over cowing to Cersei’s demand that Lady be killed. After he comforts Arya when she’s upset about losing Nymeria.) Catelyn still arrests Tyrion, starting the war. 

After Robert dies at the hunt, for which Gendry is present, Cersei accuses Gendry of conspiring with Ned to kill Robert. During an attempted arrest of Gendry and Ned, Ned is killed. Gendry rides out of the city with Arya sharing his horse (he fights gold cloaks with a war hammer, she gets one with Needle), along with Renly, Renly's men and Barristan Selmy, the only member of the Kingsguard to follow Gendry. Joffrey is proclaimed King by Cersei, and Renly and Stannis both declare Gendry as king. 

The two uncles fight to control him and Gendry has difficulty getting things going because of it. Renly pressures Gendry to set aside Arya to marry Maergery Tyrell, while Stannis insists the betrothal be honored. Gendry and Arya marry a la Jaeherys I and Alysanne, and Brienne of Tarth is offered by Renly as Arya’s sworn shield and sword instructor. Meanwhile, Robb Stark has some successes fighting the Lannisters, as before, and is declared King in the North. Catelyn Stark rides to the Baratheon camp to make an alliance, but is met by an angry King Gendry and Queen Arya, who feel like the North has betrayed them and blame Catelyn for starting this war and getting both of their fathers killed.  2. Ned sends Gendry to Stannis AU

Ned sends Gendry to Stannis to keep him safe before shit goes down, so he and Arya don't meet when she goes with Yoren. Since Gendry is not with Yoren and Arya, the gold cloaks never come looking for him, and Yoren is able to bring Arya to Robb and Catelyn with little incident. Robb still abandons the Frey alliance for Talisa. But instead of going back to the Freys, Robb goes to Stannis, reasoning that since losing on the Blackwater, Stannis will be more willing to accept the same terms that Renly had agreed to. Stannis, at Melisandre's prompting, proposes a marriage alliance between a legitimized Gendry, and Arya. Robb accepts, assuming Arya agrees, and Stannis, his family and Gendry and Melisandre come to Riverrun. Arya eventually agrees, after her mother talks to her about duty and how they are only in this situation because Robb didn’t do his duty. Once the wedding is held, Stannis's men will come over from Dragonstone.

Stannis and Melisandre are super obsessed with Gendry and Arya having a son - they have plans for it, but only keep saying that House Baratheon needs male heirs. But Melisandre keeps talking about their children having king's blood from two different sources, Arya as a King's sister and Gendry as a King's son - take of that what you will.

Arya and Gendry try to deal with all this the best they can, both before and after the wedding. They bond over their love of weaponry, being outsiders and feeling like nothing more than pawns to their family. They begin to fall in love and do consummate their marriage. Aged up Arya to 15-16, because she'd be like 13-14 during all this otherwise. Gendry would be 18 still. Arya and Gendry have about a month together as a married couple before Stannis’ men make it from Dragonstone and the war must continue.  3. Viserion Lives AU (this is my least developed AU)

Viserion does not die during the wight hunt, but no one else does either. At Winterfell, after Rhaegal takes Jon as a rider, Viserion ends up taking Gendry. Why, since he's not a Targaryen? Well, he's the male line descendant of Aerion Targaryen, father of Aegon the Conqueror. That makes him and Jon the last male line descendants of the dragonlords. He (Viserion) takes to hanging out by the forge a lot, scaring most people, but Gendry and Arya. Dany begins to think about marrying both Jon and Gendry, as the dragon has three heads*. Arya does NOT like the idea sweeping up the two men she loves most (though in different ways, this is Gendrya, not Jonrya)

* @gizkasparadise (nymja on AO3) introduced this in her fic "Fury" and I love it because it makes so much political sense for Dany, especially after she learns Jon is Rhaegar’s son. 

[jonandtormundendgame]

It really upsets me whenever I see people complaining about Jon’s ‘loss of personality post season 5’. No. Shut the fuck up right now. All through season 6 Jon was showing PTSS (it’s no longer called PTSD anymore because it’s a syndrome, not a disorder, meaning that it’s continual healing that you’re undergoing to get better, not) symptoms so hard that yes, it’s hard to watch, he’s quiet and meek because he’s terrified. He died and came back to life and he’s no longer sure who he can trust other than Sansa and Davos and Tormund (Sansa being completely focused on getting their home and family back, and Davos having been the reason he’s alive again at all, so he’s fairly sure he can trust him to help, and Tormund because that man is arguably closer to Jon than anyone at this point.)

Then you have season 7+. That’s still PTSS symptoms that he’s showing, but a lot of you never point out, that he’s showing it in 100% the same way that Sansa has been showing her PTSS symptoms since season 2 (maybe late season 1 even). But now that I think about it, a lot of y’all hate Sansa too so maybe this is just willful ignorance.

Let me break this down for you since no one in this fandom seems to recognize PTSS symptoms and why they appear. Jon has PTSS because of being killed. That much is obvious. All through season 6 Jon cling to Sansa and Davos because of a lingering fear of everyone around him. He got KILLED, stabbed by men he called brothers, betrayed and had his uncle used as bait to do it. You know what, they could have just cornered him in his office and killed him there just as easy, so why didn’t they? Because they needed to make him feel like a fool first. They played to his emotions. Jon has always acted on his emotions on an instinctual level, letting them control his actions by what he Feels Is Right for not only the people around him, but to move forward with as few casualties as possible. They told him they found his uncle and Jon was fucking delighted at the idea of another Stark. At the idea that he might not be alone in this world when everything is falling to shit. He’s unsure what to do to move forward and he’s regretting everything that happened behind and hoping beyond hope that Stannis could save Winterfell and his sister. And he’s hoping for someone that will understand. So he’s delighted that they think they might know where Benjen is (btw, Benjen likely knows who Jon’s mother is, he was the only Stark in Winterfell when Howland Reed brought Jon home, and he’s not stupid, and so likely, Jon’s whole life, Benjen was probably one of the few people that treated him like he was actually family). So he’s tricked, and he’s killed.

Jon’s emotions get the best of him. That’s his first PTSS symptoms and why it happens: repress emotion as much as you can. It doesn’t work very well in season 6. He’s clinging to Sansa and Davos as well as he can. He flinches when Sansa and a lord start fighting. He’s terrified of anyone. He’s terrified of men showing anger. He’s afraid of Sansa getting into a fight and possibly getting hurt. He wants to run away. But he stands strong, and for the first time since he basically showed on screen in season 1, he doesn’t let emotion rule that decision. He doesn’t run. He wants to, but he stays with Sansa. He clings and hides behind her, but he stays.

Now, then you get to season 7 and Jon meets Dany. The first thing that they do when him and Davos land on Dragonstone is to take their weapons. They sieze their ship and men. They leave them both with no way to defend themselves or run away (I almost wish things had gone differently at Dragonstone, because people seem to forget that Davos lived there with Stannis for a fucking long time, plus he’s arguably the best smuggler alive, so I thought it would be kind of cool if Davos and Jon were able to escape using Davis’s abilities if something happened) and now Jon and Davos are stuck there.

Do I think that Dany/Jon is real? No. Not even slightly. I think Jon played the same ruse that Sansa played, not once, not twice, but at least three times. Pretend you’re absolutely devoted to them in all ways. Have Davos drop a comment here or there about how Jon thinks she’s pretty while her Unsullied are around. Make it seem like Jon is hard to warm up at first but is slowly falling for her. He’s doing the same thing that Sansa did again and again. He’s faced with someone who’s not bigger and stronger than him, but with so much more power than him it’s unreal. Of course he’s going to pretend he’s on board. You’d have to be blind not to notice how uncomfortable he is around her, nothing in this world could convince me Jon/Dany was real, but he banked on her not knowing him well enough and hoping that Tyrion had possibly told her how much he never smiles and always broods at things, hope she doesn’t realize how truly uncomfortable he is with her.

Now then, why bend the knee when she’s already pledged her help with this threat to them? Well first of all, he’s just woken up to find himself her captive again, and that’s gotta be more than a little jarring, and second: it would make her happy. Right now she’s angry at the loss of one of her dragons, and she didn’t pledge to help them out of LOYALTY, but pure anger and rage that they would dare hurt what’s hers. So, turn that anger and promise to help, into happiness, and a promise to help. Oh you’ll help me, that’s amazing because I love you with all my heart, and now she has a reason not to go back on that pledge.

Now, why is this NOT a stupid move? Because Sansa is the real ruler of the North and Jon knows that. Even if she’s not the Queen yet, Jon knows fully well that even with the North bending the knee to Dany, she will still keep them all together with a strength that Northerners possess in spades, and the ability to power through and understand that Jon’s basically got no choice if they want Dany’s help. Sansa should be able to understand because I’m fairly sure that’s where Jon learned this all from in the first place.

So basically, what I’m saying, is that you can hate the writing all you want, think there’s a million plot holes that could never be filled no matter how much you think of it (all true, the writing was shit and there were so many plot holes I’ve basically written the last two seasons off as a crackfic at this point because wtf) but what I’m saying, is don’t you dare say that Jon lost his personality. Don’t say that he became 100% irrelevant. Don’t say that Kit didn’t do an amazing acting job turning what could have been the worst writing ever into an amazing character arc of dealing with mental illness and PTSS symptoms I’ve ever seen in a show that wasn’t ABOUT mental illness. Don’t say that he’s bland and boring and has no life to him anymore.

Stop looking at PTSS symptoms in characters and deciding it’s shitty writing because it doesn’t match their previous personality. Newflash asshole, personalities change when we go through traumatic events.

[ashleyfanfic]

Hi! I know you did a fic rec list for jonerys modern AUs recently. I wondered if you had any Westeros AU recs? Whether it be Rhaegar lives or Jonerys meet differently or whatever else. I love all your stories btw. You are incredible.

Oh, Sure, I can do a canon-divergent ones! You might see some of the same fics, though.  Go South, Get Warm by @lawonderlandwriter​ An alternate route to Winterfell! After being resurrected, Jon Snow leaves for Oldtown to stay with the only person he can trust - Samwell Tarly. But after he receives a raven from his sister Sansa requesting help to take back their family home from the Boltons, Jon goes on a mission collecting allies in the South - the Tyrells of Highgarden, the Sand Snakes of Dorne, the portion of the Ironborn fleet commanded by Yara Greyjoy...and of course, the queen across the sea, Daenerys Targaryen. Jon and Daenerys build a quick rapport and she soon makes him the Lord Commander of her armies. Together they face the Lannister, the Boltons, Euron Greyjoy...and finally, the Night King. A Wolf In The Sand by @notpmahlem​ I did what I thought was right. And I got murdered for it. He died. He was resurrected. Coping with that betrayal, additional information upends him again and sends him to the last place anyone would expect him to go. In search of Dragons. The Masks We Wear by @jaqtkd​ King Robert is holding a grand Masquerade Ball to celebrate his son’s engagement to Sansa Stark and all the great families in the realm are invited. Jon Snow has mixed feelings about attending such an event but a chance encounter with a mysterious beauty is set to make his evening far more interesting. Victory Is In Your Veins by @fierypen37​ As he tries to return to the Night's Watch, Jon is taken and sold to slavers. A fighter sent to fight to the death in a pit worse than the seven hells. Meanwhile, Daenerys is recovering from betrayal in Qarth and planning her next move toward the home she longs for. The Ginger Wolf and the Copper Dragon by @lawonderlandwriter​ Shortly after his election as the 998th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, Jon Snow is visited by a wildling woman with news that will change his world forever. Winter Roses Series by fairytalelvr Completely AU from the end of the Rebellion! After Ned takes Jon from the Tower of Joy, he stops by King's Landing to see Robert crowned. There, they discover the former Queen had died in childbed. But while Prince Viserys escaped Dragonstone, the baby Daenerys was not born soon enough and was brought to the capital to face justice for her family's crimes. This story is about Robert allowing Daenerys to live in Winterfell, betrothed to Jon to sully her line, rather than disgrace himself by murdering a baby. Across the Sea by @lawonderlandwriter​ Lyanna goes into early labor and survives, afterward escaping to Dragonstone to hide with the last of the Targaryens. Upon Lyanna's arrival, Queen Rhaella summons the one man she knows she can trust to protect her newest and only surviving grandchild, the man who killed her husband, Jaime Lannister. When the queen dies after giving birth to her only daughter Daenerys, Jaime and Lyanna take the children to Essos to hide from the wrath of Robert Baratheon. *There will be quite a few early chapters dedicated to young Jon and Dany and their adventures in Essos but it won't take a terribly long time to get to teen Jon/Dany (about the age we meet them in Season 1 of GoT). *This will be from the POVs of Lyanna, Jaime, Jon, and Dany.**Lyanna is one of the heroines of this story so if you are not a fan of hers, you will not enjoy this fic. Also I'll remind everyone to read the tags. I don't have the Jaime/Lyanna relationship tag on here for funzies. It's part of the story. Warg Riders by @jaqtkd​ For years Queen Cersei has played her deadly game of thrones not caring who suffers under her rule. The north, battered and grieving claims independence, content to bide their time whilst they build their power. But then Daenerys Targaryen returns from exile and decides to pick a side. Her Life, Her Death by magicmoon111 Swayed by the powerful words of a dying queen, Stannis Baratheon takes in baby Daenerys Targaryen as his ward. In the North, Eddard Stark is ordered to raise Jon Snow to wed and dishonor the Targaryen princess, by bringing bastard blood into her line, and ending the Dragons forever. Across the continent, and across the Narrow Sea, the wheel continues to turn, and the Great Game commences. Thus begins a series of events that would change the fate of Westeros forever. Held Captive by @fierypen37​ Upon landing in Westeros, Daenerys makes a pact with the King in the North, with interesting results. Or, in which Robb lives as King in the North and Jon is given to Daenerys as a hostage of war.**Winner of 2017 Jonerys Fanfiction Award for Best Action** Together, We Collide by lustonmyfingers Five years after Robert's Rebellion, Daenerys returned from Essos after the death of her brother Viserys, to be raised at Winterfell, per Ned's request. She and Jon find themselves drawn to each other in a way that tests his desire to join the Night's Watch. Set during the last feast thrown for King Robert and his entourage at Winterfell. Jon, banned from the festivities by Cat, and Dany ducking out by choice on account of the Usurper, together, do some innocent flirting past the walls of Winterfell after Jon boldly carries her there atop his shoulder. They lie in the grass, talking and pondering the meaning of the red comet streaking the night sky. Before the flirtation gets out of hand, Jon tries to retreat, but Dany has something else in mind, as she attempts to change his mind about joining the Night's Watch. (Recent Import from FF, Originally Published: Sep 14 2017) You Can Never Be Mine by @muttpeeta​ Jon Snow knows it's wrong to covet what his brother has. He's never begrudged Robb Stark his title or his claim as the heir to Winterfell. But when Daenerys is taken in as Lord Stark's ward and betrothed to Robb, Jon's honor is tested in a way he never expected.

Built To Love by @frostbitepandaaaaa​ It was nearly as bleak as Dragonstone, and nearly as beautiful. She had resented leaving her home after so long a wait to regain it and so short a stay amidst its walls, but Tyrion had insisted. “For him to come here will be as though he is naught but a supplicant. And the same will be said of you if you travel directly to Winterfell. Best it is done somewhere in the middle.” This Jon Snow had better be worth it. (another arranged marriage fic no one asked for. based on a tumblr prompt.)

[vicleesi]

About GoT Episode 4:

First of all, I’m completely exhausted from turning a blind eye to the multiple flaws in the D & D scripts (and it was they who wrote this episode). The strength of Game of Thrones came right from the details thanks to the incredible world that George R. R. Martin created and D & D destroyed. So no, I will not spare you them.

- The beginning was good. I just do not understand why Jon made his speech without looking at the survivors of Winterfell.

- The party dinner was generally good. In these last seasons, Game of Thrones has managed to maintain a good quality in the interaction between characthers. Episode 2 was basically all that and it was good for me. The problem is when GoT starts off for the story  - which is already lost.

- Daenerys’s loneliness was well portrayed. Too bad the series prematurely killed Selmy Barristan, did not it?

- First failure of attention to detail that detracts from the series’ worldbuilding: Gendry Rivers, what? Is he from the Riverlands, by any chance? Bastard born and raised in King’s Landing is named after Waters. His name was Gendry Waters (actually it was just Gendry, since Robert never recognized him as his bastard son). Why change that, D & D? To be different?

- I wish Gendry good luck trying to persuade the Storm lords to bend over to a bastard who does not understand a thing about ruling a castle. But of course the series will not talk about that. At least they did not give Storm’s to Brienne or to Davos (by the way, when the Davos family will show up?)

- Leaving a bit out of order, but taking advantage of feudal politics, what’s going on in Dorne?” D & D mentioned a new Prince of Dorne who swore loyalty to Daenerys. Hi? What? When? Who? WHY??? D & D had the brilliant idea of ​​making the Martells exterminate each other and still reap the rewards of their genius. Dorne remains the worst arc in the series and quite possibly one of the worst book-media visual adaptations ever.

- They also mentioned Riverrun again. What happened to the Riverlands after the Freys all died? Where is Edmure Tully? Who controls Riverrun?

- Writers creating a whole scene by saying that Brienne is a virgin. Not necessary.

- There was not a crippled nephew of Daeron Targaryen. D & D creating Targaryens whenever they want, although there is a well-defined story in the books. (FIRE AND BLOOD)

- There was finally a scene between Sandor and Sansa. It only took 4 episodes to happen. Once again they put Sansa as the product of her suffering, justifying the idiot choices D & D made for her character. Nothing new, otherwise it was a totally forgettable dialogue (I already forgot).

- The Bronn Paradox: If Bronn is not serving Daenerys while the war is rolling, who guarantees that he will receive his castle in the end? Especially considering he was utterly disillusioned with the promises of the Lannisters to the point of being ready to kill his two best friends? In fact, did D & D forget that Jaime himself had offered Highgarden to the Bronn last season?

- Again, as for Gendry, I wish Bronn good luck in trying to establish his feudal dominion over the proud lords of Highgarden who did not even tolerate the right Tyrells, and the Tyrells were an old family and had already been entrenched in there for centuries. Of course, D & D do not care.

- The Paradox of the Wildlings: Why were they known as wildlings? Because they tried to conquer the Wall from time to time and were always looting the North in search of resources and riches. Because their land was a shit, where nothing grew and it was always winter, basically. Now the they finally made it through the Wall and gain access to the best lands, even more with the support of the Winterfell and Starks. What do they do? That’s right: they go back to their shit place because D & D have that same shit on their heads.

- What else is north of Winterfell and south of the Wall are lands with no one, thanks to the King of the Night.“ But the wildlings choose to go back to Castle Black and, by all means, beyond the Wall. Seven Hells.

- I will not even comment on Jon’s scene sending Ghost away.” If it was for him to appear that way, it was better for the wolf to have been m.i.a as before.

- Sam Tarly is a Night’s Watch man. Men of Night’s Watch should not have children. When will anyone say that? Did not Jon even mention it? What happened to Night’s Watch? Why is Sam still dressed in black? If he’s out, why did not he become Lord Tarly?

- The arc of Night’s Watch is going to be without conclusion anyway? Are they gone?

- The army of the living has lost only half its men? It was not what it looked like in episode 3. But okay, D & D create and describe armies whenever they think it’s valid - just like Night’s Watch, apparently.

- As they are doing this season, D & D cut important dialogue scenes because they do not know what to write. In the first episode they cut off Daenerys before she finished threatening Sansa. In the second episode they cut their scene together before Dany could answer the question “What about the North?”. At the end of it cut the scene Jon x Dany in the crypts. Now they cut the scene of Sansa and Arya discovering that Jon is not their brother. Why, man? What is the reason? I’m shocked that D & D did not cut Jon’s reaction to finding out that he’s a bastard of Rhaegar and Lyanna (yes, he’s a bastard, D & D, no matter how many fanfics they write).

- Arya in the first moment: we are a family! Arya in 2nd moment: left King’s Landing, goodbye Winterfell, until never again! and yes she left for good, she said she ain’t coming back!

That was the good part of the episode. Let’s go to the bad part!!

- So you want to tell me that Euron can hit three harpoons in a dragon in mid-flight?“

- So you want to tell me that Daenerys from the sky was unable to see the Greyjoy fleet hidden behind an islet?”

- So you want to tell me that Daenerys never considered the possibility that it was a bad idea to sail to Dragonstone as they knew Euron controlled the seas there?“

- So you want to tell me that Rhaegal was not killed by the zombie dragon brother in the apocalyptic Battle of the long night fighting for the fate of the men’s kingdom only to die in the next episode in a few seconds for Euron Greyjoy’s magical harpoons?

-So you want to tell me how easy it is to kill dragons like that?” It amazes me that Aegon conquered Westeros three hundred years ago.

- Daenerys should have flown directly to King’s Landing and fired at everything after the Rhaegal’s death. Fire and Blood!!

- Jaime returning to Cersei: hi? What the fuck? If it is to join her and not kill her right away, Jaime will be the greatest example of character assassination that D & D has committed since Stannis Baratheon.

- How did Team Dany know that Missandei had been captured? Euron made propaganda, sent in the email?

- Is Varys loyal to Jon Snow? REALLY? What does Varys know about Jon Snow? When did he meet Jon Snow? When did they share at least one scene together? They never talked. Varys never saw him rule. Where do the writers get these crazy ideas?

- Nonsense to be creating intrigue over the marriage between Jon and Daenerys. She will need to get married to have children and continue the dynasty. Who is she getting married to, Hot Pie?

- By the way, there have been marriages between uncles and nieces among the Starks. Brothers Jonnel and Edric Stark married their nieces Serena and Sansa Stark some 150 years ago to try to end a crisis of succession, since their father, Rickon, heir to Winterfell, had been killed in the conquest of Dorne. It would not surprise me if GRRM specifically placed these marriages in history just for this situation that was raised in the conversation between Tyrion and Varys. In fact, marriages between uncles and nieces were not exactly uncommon in our own history. In Brasil, Dom Pedro I was grandson of D. Maria I of Portugal, who was married to his uncle, D. Pedro III, precisely to avoid a dynastic crisis.

- Again the bullshit that Robert’s Rebellion was built on a lie. I imagine the Crazy King burning the Lord of Winterfell and his heir and begging for Ned and Robert’s head did not influence that at all.

- Dany is an emotional woman who’s going crazy. So we need a rational man to help her.

- Dany is an emotional woman who’s going crazy. So we need a rational man to help her!!

- Oh, excuse me if I repeated myself, but this nonsense does not go down. They disrespected Daenerys, disrespected her journey, disrespected even the “girl power” they tried to do last season (Dany, Olenna Tyrell, Cersei and the Martells). The mysoginism of these so-called D & D appearing once more to claim another innocent victim.

- Why did Cersei not kill Tyrion?

- Why did Cersei not kill Daenerys?

- Euron does not suspect anything after Tyrion reveals he knew Cersei was pregnant?“ Since Euron himelf knew only minutes ago?

- D & D really put an end to the apocalypse so we can have Cersei grinning in the last three episodes? Is this serious?

- Euron is Cersei’s puppy. Euron in the series is another completely character , they should have changed his name in the adaptation as they did with the Asha (Yara).

- No turning back with the Night King. D & D make us muggles.

- Finally: where’s the winter ??? It seems King’s Landing is in the tropics.

- Cancel this and the next two episodes. Let GoT finish in episode 3, at least so we would have something minimally satisfying. D & D continue to insult the viewer’s intelligence.

"At least the show’s songs never fails to please.”

*this analysis is not mine I translated from a brazilian friend

[minetteskvareninova]

How the GoT ends for to me

(Because I refuse to admit anything after 8x03 is cannon the same way many people refuse to acknowledge The Cursed Child.)

- Tyrion and all the other smart people (maybe Varys Davos and Sansa?) cook up the plan of the final attack

- First few weeks noone does anything, while Cersei plans the destruction of Targaryen forces. Daenerys takes a vacation to Essos, allegedly to deal with some made-up trouble, and Varys makes sure Cersei knows about that.

- Yara captures the Iron Islands, and Euron goes there to deal with her. Cersei lets him go, since she thinks she has time. Dornish attack him from back and Yara kills him herself.

- Bronn still comes North to murder Jaime and Tyrion, and they also offer him The Reach. However, they also ask him for something else - to go kill Cersei. Bronn obviously doesn’t want to risk his life for them, especially not by going against The Mountain, so The Hound offers himself to protect him, “to die for greater good when this c***t doesn’t want to”.

- Notherners pretend Bronn has been successful and maybe even have a fake funeral for Jaime and Tyrion. Bronn comes to King’s Landing as a Cersei’s man and meets up with her, bringing masked Sandor with him, claiming he’s the sort of man she might need. Cersei, desperate for some reliable lackeys, meets up with both of them, and they off both her and The Mountain.

- Ellaria Sand, as well as other prisoners, are given freedom, but Ellaria completely lost her mind in the meantime, which pisses off Daenerys, but people responsible for that are already dead, so there’s nothing she can do. Something happens to Quiburn, I don’t know what because I don’t give a shit about Quiburn. Maybe he survives and later tries with Dany to hatch eggs Drogon later lays? That would be cool. Golden Company just kind of fucks off? There’s noone to pay them and nothing to do, so I can’t imagine what they would do.

- Jon and Daenerys decide to get married after Sansa (of course, Jon still tells her) threatens to spill the beans, but their relationship has been soured ever since, so it’s just a political match, at least at first. Jon becomes Jon Aegon Targaryen, but everyone calls him just King Jon. Daenerys eventually has to return to Essos temporarily and will probably swing between continents for the rest of her life. In the meantime, Westeros is in the hands of Jon&co.

- I don’t know whether Jon would get over the incest thing, let alone whether this relationship would work in the long run. I guess so - these two just have a lot in common. At any rate, this would be a boring marriage, because Jon is overall a boring guy. Also, Daenerys has a baby. It’s a girl named Visenya (for Viserion). Yes, only one, because only one of her dragons has died. Maybe she decides to sacrifice one of her dragons for an heir? There’s a lot of story potential here, along with the future of dragons! At any rate, Ghost lives in capital with Jon, but if he wasn’t doing well down south, Sansa would take care of him as her new direwolf.

- At any rate, Jon is officially a Targaryen, but loves his Stark relatives and still calls them brother and sisters.

- Westeros is a complete mess after all those wars, anarchy and thugs everywhere. So the criminality has to be dealt with and it’s gonna be a lot of work.

- Stormlands are being ripped apart by power-hungry local lords, because their liege lord was long gone and Cersei had other things to worry about. Gendry is thus legitimised by Jon and given the title of lord of the Stormlands. Because he knows nothing about ruling, Jon sends Davos to mentor him and take care of the lords and various outlaws.

- The North is ruled by Sansa, obviously. She later fall in love with and marries Tyrion, but they only spend together a part of year, because he is in the Small Council and helps Jon rule. Jon seeks her advice a lot and when Daenerys returns, she has to admit Sansa is pretty good when it comes to administrative and court politics (especially since Daenerys considers the normal administrative stuff boring and focuses on big things). The two have kind of a frenemy relationship and work together for the good of the realm as The Queen In The North (a nickname, not an offical title) and The Dragon Queen, with King Jon as a peacemaker in case of a conflict. The North isn’t independent, but gets more authonomy than other lands, because they were the ones who had to fight the white walkers. Sansa and Tyrion have many children, who officially take their father’s name, but are so thoroughly northern people start to call them Lannistarks, which eventually sticks so much it becomes the official family name. They get a new sigil, probably something with a direwolf and lion.

- Arya Stark dates Gendry for several months, but when he is made the lord of Stormlands and asks her to come there with him, with the obvious implication of getting married there, she gets cold feet and with embarks on a journey with a few other people (Yara? They’d surely be besties. Tormund and wildlings? Maybe.) to the lands beyond former Wall, where they would explore whether Lands Of Always Winter are still there, what is the climate and wildlife situation there and most importantly, whether there is anything new to learn about the white walkers, since Jon is haunted by a possibility they might not be completely gone (since they are so mysterious and all). Bran helps them with all that exploration, warging into animals and going into past. In the end, she returns and decides she’s quite ready to settle, having seen and experienced in twenty years more than other people do in life, and marries Gendry, but doesn’t become a typical lady and still fights, helping her husband deal with outlaws and being sent by Jon on all sorts of secret missions.

- Jaime and Brienne get married and he becomes a stay-home dad, also taking care of the administrative in Westerlands and Tarth, while she is off being a knight. (I think Jaime’s old enough for retirement. Give him a break.)

- Varys stays Varys and is very smart and very useful as a spymaster, do you hear me D&D?! After he dies, his considerable wealth is given to the poor, probably trough some kind of charity organization.

- Missandei and Grey Worm stay in Essos and rule the cities in Daenerys’ absence. Missandei eventually earns considerable respect after dealing with all sorts of trouble and is treated as a second queen. She decides to not retire, unless Grey Worm dies (and maybe not even after that, because her queen needs her? IDK), since if she returned to Naath, she would have to leave him. You see, you can’t stay on Naath for long, because foreigners tend to get this illness called butterfly fever, and since Grey Worm isn’t from Naath... She visits the island several times, tho.

- The Unsullied generally serve untill they reach a certain age, then they are given lands and pension. Some of their training techniques are incorporated into a training regime for a new, elite unit, but most of them are deemed too brutal to be continued and so they just quietly die off.

- Dothraki divide into two groups - one returns to Essos, the other stays with their Khaleesi in Westeros and live of horse herding and breeding the way others might of cattle. They settle mostly in the Reach, because grass.

- It turns out Daenerys “breaking the wheel” meant breaking the cycle of the civil war by weakening the power of great houses and returning stability to Westeros (also end of hereditary monarchy and succession of the most worthy, like choosing your heir trough a testament or something never lead to civil war; that didn’t work anyway). One way was to modify administrative system, so that it’s more in control of chosen civil servants not belonging to any fraction. It’s not a democracy, but it’s a honest attempt to do better. Of course, after a few generations, civil war broke out again anyway, because some things never change, but the new system is still more egalitarian and generally an improvement.

- At any rate, the ending is happy for everyone involved and not bittersweet at all, but only in comparison with what they’ve already come trough; otherwise rebuilding the ruined nation is a difficult and somewhere down the line, they can always fail...

[kittenshift-17]

Hi I hope you're doing ok I just wanted to ask a question. What do you think of Daenerys from game of thrones,I'm sorry its really random right but I've always wanted to know.oh and those christmas stories are really great are you going to continue those or were they just a one shot ? And as always I love you and you're writing.

Christmas stories? You mean the 👀👀👀 side-eye ask-responses fics? Because they weren’t Christmas stories, so much as people sending those “inviting creators to share something in progress that they wanted to finish in 2019, but didn’t manage to” asks to me and me sharing snippets of WIPs. Eventually all of them will be completed fics and will be shared on the appropriate archives, but until then, they’re just sitting in my “In Progress” folder, waiting to be worked on.

As for you query about Dany, I’m very on the fence about her. Throughout the books and the early seasons of the TV show, she’s my least favourite character because she’s so far removed from all the other plotlines all the way over across the Narrow Sea. There are some sections in the middle where I quite liked her, and I confess that in Season 7, I was all for having her take over as Queen of Westeros.

Unfortunately, D & D ruined that. And though I can see WHY they had to play it that way from an author’s perspective (particularly since they’re not the original authors, essentially making the last couple of seasons a D & D version of fanfic, if you think about it), I didn’t like her by the end. She went too far (no matter how Cersei pushed her to get there) and honestly, she became too hell-bent on ruling the world. Early on, her acts of violence were all for the sake of rescuing the oppressed and championing freedom. She weeded out injustice and beat it back with fire and blood, and that was great. 

The continuity of that is where D & D (I beleive) were trying to take it all, but they forgot one uncomfortable thing.

When she overthrows the Khals, she rescues the men and women of the hoard and the vast number of peoples they enslave. When she overthrows the Masters of Pentos, she resuces the enslaved and downtrodden. When she overthrows the Salvers mutilating boys for their armies, she’s resucing future generations of boys from that fate. When she ‘overthrows’ Cersei, on the other hand, she rescues no one. She loses sight of doing it to protect the innocent and to help the down-trodden. Instead she roasts those very same innocent, frightened, downtrodden, terrified people of King’s Landing alive, and for what? 

Power. Revenge. 

There is a theme throughout her timeline that she defies those who look down on her and those who say no to her, and she does do ruthless things to the people who refuse to support her cause, but she was perceieved to temper it throughout those things as a champion for the weak because she herself had once been weak.

She loses sight of that when she faces Cersei. And in fairness, Cersei is a vicious cunt who deserverd far worse than was done to her throughout the series, but Dany lost it. The saying of the Targaryens being doomed to madness or greatness was supposed to fall on the line of greatness with her. Under her reign, I beleive Westeros could have been properous and happy. But D & D, just wanted to do a big scene with the dragon(s) I think. 

And okay, yes, being traded to the Dothraki for their army and treated like a common whore by Viserys made her brittle, and losing Khal Drogo hurt her deeply. Losing Viserion to the Night King, and Rhaegal to something so stupid as a lance in broad daylight when the beast could literally have flown in any direction to dodge it was just dumb. That broke her, I think. To couple it with the ‘betrayal’ of Jon’s true origins and the threat he then posed to her rule, and then losing Missandei to Cersei’s bitchiness definitely pushed her over the edge, I think. All of these things would certainly have fucked with her mental health, and it’s not unreasonable to state that she could’ve slipped into madness.

Which I suppose, is the point, in the end, isn’t it? She becomes the very monster she slayed so many times for the sake of her people, and she acts in the ways she has always done when the people in between her and her throne won’t bend the knee, and give her what she wants. The only thing that changes is that she loses sight of who is an enemy, and who is just a helpless victim.

And I empthaize with that. The longer you spend as a survivor, the less you recall the days of only being a victim. The longer you spend rising above your trauma, the less patience you have for those wallowing in their own. It becomes easy to forget that those other victims are scared and helpless and suffering, when you want them or need them to be strong, and brave, and valiant. By the time Dany reaches King’s Landing, most of her army is destroyed. Two of three dragons dead, her lover a traitor (and her nephew, ewwww) her friend captured and killed, and so all of these things could and probably should have broken her again, like the crying, broken, helpless girl who let herself be sold for an army, and raped like a helpless female dog. 

Throughout the series we watch her overcome the early trauma, and we watch the way she learns to solider on in the face of new traumas, too. They’re hurting. They’re like limbs being hacked off, I’d imagine, but she’s got to go on. She doesn’t have the luxury of breaking down in tears. She is Khaleesi. The Unburnt. The Breaker of Chains. She can’t just crumple. She’s got an army at her back relying on her strength and her guidance. 

She’s toughened, maybe a little dead inside by the end after all she loses.

So she has no patience for those victims still in the early stages of their trauma journey. The small folk of King’s Landing know suffering under Cersei, but they’ve seen everyone else who stood up to the Lannisters decimated in one way or another. Ned, beheaded. Renly, slain. Robb, beheaded. Catelyn, slain. Stannis, slain. The Tyrells, murdered. All three of Cersei’s children were killed, too, but just like Dany, she soldiered on. When all the other contenders have fallen beneath the mighty paws of the Lannister tyranny, what indiciation did any of them have that Dany would be any different? What else could they do, but follow orders or be beaten to death? Die on the outside of the gates by the hand of people claiming they want to protect you, or follow orders and scurry inside, beleiving that once again, the Lannisters will be the victors?

But Dany didn’t consider any of that, because everyone else she liberated hadn’t lived through battle after battle, war after war, watching their oppressors win. The Unsullied knew only how to follow orders, and being sold to a new Master meant doing only what they were told. The enslaved rose up against the masters because before Dany, only individuals had tried to fight back, not entire armies. When you are downtrodden and someone says, “Hey, if we all rise up, we can win” and it’s the first time anyone has tried, you are filled with naive hope and courage.

But the people of King’s Landing aren’t naive and courageous. They’d seen 5 kings rise and fall at the feet of the Lannister Queen, 6 if you count King Robert. Already, many had tried to rise up and overthrow her, and already all had failed. A new queen riding in, even on the back of a dragon, wasn’t enough to rouse them from their hard-learned slavery and acceptance. No one else had won before, so better to avoid trying again. Dany’s lack of understanding for that scenario - her unwillingness to heed what Varys and Tyrion tried to tell her to educate her about the way things worked in Westerous compared to Braavos - is ultimately what made her the monster she died as.

She refused to recall that others weren’t as brave as her; weren’t as hard-hearted as her; and she refused to recognize that the people she sought to ‘free’ had already been ‘freed’ five times over, at least, and still their tyrant queen stood tall. Dany’s impatience and her anger got the better of her thanks to the suppressed agonies she endured, and her unwillingness to see reason and understand that this time, things had to be different, was ultimately why she jumped into the role of brutal overlord doomed to die. 

I suppose, too, that when you flip the coin for madness or greatness, with only 2 Targaryens left on earth, you have to pick on, don’t you? Viserys was the mad one, and Dany the great one, but then Jon came along, and you flip it again, and to stay true to Jon’s nature throughout everything else, he must be the great one, so Dany has to be the mad one. 

So I suppose, in answer to your question on my thoughts about Danerys,  I’m... disappointed. She’s brave and brilliant and courageous in all she faces until excessive trauma makes her angry, makes her sloppy, and makes her foolish. She tries what she’s tried before and when it doesn’t work as it has every time before she throws a tantrum vile enough to end the world and to seal her fate, once and for all. I tolerated her until I liked her, and then I liked her until I didn’t. Now, I think of her as a tragic plot piece used, ultimately, to chart the course of valiant saviour to all right up until the Army of the Dead problem is resolved, a tool to batter down the walls without killing any more Starks in order to finally see Cersei dead once and for all, and then she’s tossed aside as being superfluous and in the way of the overall goal to see the Starks rise from the ashes of their destoryed family.

It’s hard to fathom in a tale with so many majoy players, but Jon Snow has always been the MAIN protagonist of the story; and everything else, including Dany, is all just circumstantial plot device to keep the story moving and to ultimately further Jon’s arc. That’s why he, alone, despite breaking every oath he took, and still trying to do what’s right, survives to the end, but gets no hero’s reward.

Based on what I know of G.R.R.M. from interviews he’s given and the overarching theme of this series as a whole, Dany’s end is fitting. You can’t stay a hero forever, you know? Eventually someone takes your hero’s crown or you become a tyrant to keep it, and someone else has to rise up and kill you, as you once rose up and slayed monsters, yourself. His whole schtick has always been that being a good person doesn’t mean you’ll get to live and doing the right thing for noble reasons will just get you killed sooner (Ned), but even those willing to do the wrong thing for the right reasons must pay their penance in the end. 

After all, valar morghulis.