#ask lyanna

[lyannatropes]

I'm actually a relatively new follower, are there any blorbos in particular you want to show off?

I have many a blorbos that I actually don't show off enough, so here is some of them!

My secret obsession and awful woman I think about all the time. Opal is the first character I ever played in a ttrpg (Urban Shadows), and she was an ex monster hunter on a vengeance after her werewolf girlfriend was killed. She is so bad and tragic I can't help but love her deeply.

My dear "Looks terrifying, is actually a cinnamon roll (unless you hurt her shadow pet then fucking run)" lady knight, Lucrezia. She's an outcast who gets along better with spirits than humans, and she has a special bond with a shadow spirit who uses animal bones like shells called Catena. She's also another character I played!

My "Was a dragon in a previous life, is reincarnated again and again as a human after a curse" sorceress and artefacts enthusiast, Alyssa. She's also a character I played in an Urban Shadows game, the dragon playbook was perhaps the most fun I ever had. She had so many badass moments that live rent free in my head. I don't have art of her on my laptop and that is tragic.

Since this is getting long, I'll lastly mentioned my necromancer and lady knight Lavinia. She can see spirits and travel to the underworld, but in doing so accidentally poked where she wasn't meant to and she is now haunted by a powerful spirit. She is in a throuple with two other necromancers, Maria and Artemisia.

[nedseii]

I love ur art so much!! Would u ever draw any of the starks as kids??? (Brandon, Ned, lyanna, benjen)

Tysm!! I tried to draw Brandon too but I hate every single attempt and I didn't want to keep you waiting so I hope you like these 🙏

[corviids]

could you please post the finished lyanna and rhaegar art? i saw it on twitter and i love it <3

here you go anon !! sorry about that <3

[atopvisenyashill]

Is Lyanna really as terrible as some people portray her as?

no, not even a little bit.

the absolute most important thing about lyanna is that when she dies she is only 16. i am someone who works with kids - i work in a library so i spend most of my days cleaning up after tweens and asking teenagers to please stop doing dumb shit- and the first thing anyone who has ever worked with kids and especially teenagers is that they may look like adults but they are NOT. they don’t understand boundaries, they have next to zero impulse control, and every bad thing that happens feels like the worst thing ever because it very likely IS the worst thing they’ve ever experienced bc they have not been alive that long!

and this goes for every single teen & tween character in this series, not just lyanna! shit, i am someone who feels an immense amount of sympathy for joffrey! on one side he’s got his mother telling him he can do anything he wants with no repercussions and on the other he’s got his father hitting him so hard that stannis thought joffrey was going to die. and then he is given unchecked power and told not to abuse it! EYE cannot even guarantee that i wouldn’t use unchecked power to do shady shit and i am a fully grown adult, not a traumatized, irrationally, and deeply vindictive 13 year old boy.

but honestly the most important thing about lyanna is that we have ZERO CONTEXT for what happens between her and Rhaegar. What we have is

Ned’s sparse & guilt ridden thoughts about Lyanna and one (1) comment about Rhaegar

Robert’s angry, entitled, and grief ridden outbursts about Lyanna and Rhaegar

Barristan’s incredibly romanticized, guilt & grief ridden take on their relationship

Meera’s second hand account of Lyanna, told to her by a father who is likely just as guilt & grief ridden as the others, who likely has his own view of Lyanna

What’s important to note is that our view of her is heavily filtered through the eyes of the men that knew her. Robert loves an idealized version of her that never existed. Barristan never actually knew her. Ned is not only viewing her under 200 layers of guilt and grief, but very obviously does not understand his sister, or why she made the choices she did, and struggles constantly with knowing that he will never know her the way he wishes he could, the way he thought he did. Given the way Meera describes Lyanna, I actually think Howland is our most accurate look at her but even that is buried behind years of grief & a fair amount of hero worship and affection (“that’s my fathers man you’re kicking howled the she-wolf” is a line that makes me WEEP for this exact reason; Howland sees Lyanna as his hero above all else!).

All of that to say - we don't even know what Lyanna did that was so terrible! Even if she was a grown woman capable of making rational decisions, we have no idea what her decisions were. She could have been lied to, misled, kidnapped, threatened, just as surely as she could have walked into the situation with open eyes. Even in the show, with a slightly aged up Lyanna - we get, what, just Sam's opinion on Rhaegar and Lyanna being in love because they got hitched? Completely ignoring the fact that we had several women in this series get married not because they were in love or willing but because someone more powerful decided on it and that was that, so there's still no evidence that Lyanna had enough information about the situation to make any sort of informed, consensual decision.

so no, i do not hold lyanna responsible for anything at all that happened regardless of how it happened because she was not mentally mature enough to understand what the hell was going on. a 15 year old is just not mature enough to think “if i run off with this married man, it’s going to cause a cascade of political issues that could have disastrous consequences.” what she’s probably thinking is “this man says he can help me and i am fucking miserable and no one else will listen.” it’s why we don’t throw 15 year olds who run away to meet up with old dudes they met online in jail when they’re caught (or theoretically why we don’t punish them at any rate). There is one person and one person only who is responsible for the massive fuck up that is the Elia-Rhaenys-Aegon-Lyanna-Jon mess and that is RHAEGAR, the person with the most amount of power who used it in the dumbest way imaginable and got himself, most of his heirs, his wife, and his teenaged mistress killed. The only other people responsible are the Kingsguard who kept Lyanna under lock and key while she lay dying and pleading for her brother to come save her.

[long-claw]

Lyanna starks haunts the narrative. You should see how jealous Elia's fans are from this fact. They want george and the narrative to care for her. They think it's unfair that Elia doesn't haunt it too when all that she is is a plot device, while lyanna is the woman of the prophecy and the mother of Jon, the promised one. It's not like I hate Elia, but someone dared to say that Elia deserved the flower crown at Harrenhall when it's lyanna's motif.

I can't wait until they see that even Arthur Dayne cared for lyanna more. He probably stayed by her side comforting her after Rhaegar's death. I wouldn't be surprised if he was attracted to her. Not to hate on Elia but to show them the truth.

i'm so sorry but you've come to the wrong place, yes i was crying over lyanna a couple hours ago but i've cried over elia too because what could you possibly have against a dead woman in asoiaf who's only crime was... being in an arranged marriage? not being lyanna?

in all seriousness maybe george and the narrative don't care about elia but i do. she watched her baby's head be caved in and then was brutally raped and murdered and i hate that that's the most important thing we know about her. i wish elia was as important as lyanna, but how cruel is it to sit and compare two dead women by how much they matter to the living men.

also i have no idea what you're talking about arthur dayne and you can say this isn't hating, but it feels kinda like hating to me 😭

EDIT: i've thought about it more and "i wouldnt be surprised if he was attracted to her. not to hate on elia but to show them the truth" is such a wild statement please don't come back 😭

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

Why do you think the tides have slightly turned from "Elia deserves better than Rhaegar" to shipping her and Rhaegar together? Like what is the psychology behind these people because I've seen some of them like/reblog anti Rhaegar posts while also shipping Rhaegar x Elia at the same time.

hey anon! my thoughts are a bit messy, but i’ve done my best to explain them coherently :)

so, rhaegar was the best man anyone could have when elia was alive, and most people want the best for their favs. he was considered the most handsome, didn’t have a bad personality, and he was crown prince—meaning elia was almost queen, which is often seen as the greatest role a woman can have. the narrative also treats rhaegar as a beautiful, tragic, haunting figure, and elia actually had this very aesthetically pleasing man all to herself at one point! she was married to him, had children with him, and her life was so close to perfect! but rhaegar just had to go and ruin it. 😠

for many elia stans, if rhaegar hadn’t fallen in love with another woman (they want him to have been a completely different character), then everything would’ve been perfect, and elia would’ve had the best, most desirable life. however, that’s not what happened—elia met a very tragic end, and as a result, these stans feel double the bitterness. because of this bitterness, they blame rhaegar for everything (even though it’s not logical to do so), but he’s just too ‘perfect’ to let go of. so, for years these stans have made rhaegar revolve around elia, filling his tag with posts about her out of bitterness. so, i do believe that this obsession with rhaegar x elia has always been there, but i think it’s become a more favorable stance on the elia stan side of the fandom because of a mix of reasons.

plus, rhaegar is one of the few canon relationships we know elia had, since she’s not much of a character. because of this, and the fact that most people don’t like to stray too far from canon, most elia stans are forced to focus on rhaegar, which has created an echo chamber. basically, if a sentiment about elia and rhaegar’s relationship becomes popular, then the whole elia stan side of the fandom will likely regurgitate the sentiment. (also, this desire to stick close to canon is likely why the elia x arthur ship was so popular. while it’s a total crack ship, it had good aesthetics, and since elia and arthur at least knew each other, it allowed the stans to create their perfect fanfiction whilst sticking it to rhaegar. but remember, elia was actually married to rhaegar and had children with him, so while arthur is cool, rhaegar was always ‘top dog,’ meaning arthur would never be able to match up to rhaegar to most elia stans. also, the arthur x elia crack ship is likely her second most popular ship, which just shows how little elia stans have to work with, so they’re always forced to eventually return back to rhaegar for a lot of things.)

however, even if the elia x rhaegar ship gains more popularity, these stans will never stop hating rhaegar because he wasn’t ‘perfect’—and he wasn’t perfect because he didn’t love elia. plus, rhaegar loving another woman and supposedly kidnapping her is what began the war that led to elia’s tragic death. that’s bitterness times 1000. and while i don’t actually blame rhaegar for the war, i do think that this is how an elia stan sees it. i also don’t view rhaegar’s complex relationship with elia as a bad thing—it’s actually a very realistic take on an arranged marriage between two decent people. but most elia stans will never be able to get over the fact that they almost had everything, which is why many have it out for lyanna, as they consider her a thief who ruined their ‘perfection.’

tbh, that might be why so many elia stans are so obsessed with the idea that rhaegar only got with lyanna because of the prophecy—they don’t want to believe that rhaegar actually loved a different woman and not their perfect self insert elia. that’s a bit mean of me… but i don’t know what else one would call the ‘elia’ elia stans have created.

now that i’ve laid all those thoughts out, i’ll try to explain why the tides seem to be turning… i think it may have something to do with the ‘targaryens are all evil and bad’ sentiment losing popularity. i think this shift has occurred due to a mix of factors, such as years of fandom fights and fandom cycles leading to the targs being more liked now than before. it helps that canon doesn’t actually condemn the targs/favors them quite a bit, and the influx of new targ fans from HOTD has also contributed. this combination of reasons seems to have shifted the way the mainstream fandom discusses all the targaryen characters, including rhaegar. so, with this shift, it’s only natural that some elia stans/elia x rhaegar shippers—who’ve always been there—are using this opportunity to push their agenda. while these stans still hate rhaegar and see him as the bad guy, they just can’t let go of him. and as the mainstream fandom moves away from the anti targaryen sentiment, these smaller corners of the fandom, which tend to be echo chambers, are also affected, which has therefore led to a rise in rhaegar x elia shippers and the ‘shifting tide’ that you’ve also noticed.

[hamliet]

Hope you are having a wonderful day! Just wanted to ask, what's your take on Rhaegar Targaryen? What kind of person do you perceive him as? GRRM has so many characters praise him but many of his actual actions were so shitty

Good question! My interpretation: he's a person.

No, but really. I think he is neither the conniving groomer many view him as, nor the heroic, romantic prince with a heart of gold. But I think he started out more as the heroic, romantic side than the other.

Do I think Rhaegar loved Lyanna? Yes, I genuinely do. I realize that take isn't popular but my guess is that it fits better with Martin's view of a Romantic world, and also fits better with Lyanna's character. That said, I also don't think Martin will ever clear it up and will leave the idea of whether this is love or not up for debate--because it can be debated. I guess I should say I think Lyanna and Rhaegar both believed they were in love and felt that way until they died. However--

However, love doesn't magically make the world better. This is the part where Martin's view takes a melancholy semi-deconstructionist look at Romanticism. Martin's MO in doing this, through other characters like Sansa, is showing us that fairy tale logic-- "knights are brave and faithful" "love saves the day" and "true power is kindness"--doesn't work on a daily level, but it doesn't mean there is no value to the ideals it teaches.

Idealism seems to be at the root of Rhaegar's character, honestly. He's kind of like Sansa, but if Sansa was still unwise as an adult with a lot more power and agency. Idealism of romantic love. Idealism of being a brave heroic king who fulfilled the prophecy to save the world. He fully believed in these things, and they made his life and the lives of everyone he loved worse.

Rhaegar is married to Elia and essentially ditches her and their two kids to run off with Lyanna, who is a teenager facing a marriage she doesn't want with someone who claims to love her but isn't faithful to her during betrothal, much less marriage. The tragedy of it is that Lyanna runs off with someone essentially doing the same thing to his wife that Lyanna didn't want to be done to her as Robert's wife.

Still, I think Rhaegar was probably genuinely fascinated with Lyanna when he found out she was the Knight of the Laughing Tree and promised not to reveal her. Thus, true love was all that mattered, right? Except... that's not how the world works.

But did Rhaegar really love Lyanna or was he just using her for the prophecy? Again, I think why can't it be both? I do think the prophecy idea played a role in Rhaegar's motivations to pursue Lyanna. He wanted a third child and thought he had to have one for the prophecy, but Elia could not have more children physically without killing her.*

So, my thinking is that grinding to determine whether his motives were prophecy or purely love miss the point and negate the tragedy of the situation. He loved Lyanna but yes, he also saw opportunity and assumed destiny would guide him. And that hubris ensured that both Lyanna and Rhaegar died.

Rhaegar is an idealistic man who believes so strongly in his sense of purpose--a purpose greater than himself that genuinely will save people--that he forgets to look down and look around him at the life he's actually living and the lives around him in favor of the potential lives he could save. His hyper-focus on prophecy is his tragic flaw that brings about his downfall and death of so many people, and it didn't need to happen this way.

In focusing on a dream idealistic forbidden romance and coming child, he neglects his living wife and children, who are then assaulted and brutally murdered. Instead of true love idealistically triumphing, he actually loses to the man whom Lyanna did not love but who was betrothed to marry her, since Robert kills him. In his belief that the prophecy would be fulfilled through him, he forgets that he is himself human and all humans have weaknesses and die.

Rhaegar had the best of intentions but the worst of the worst of implementation, in other words. Or maybe more accurately Rhaegar was all about theory, and he forgot practice and everyone around him paid the price, particularly the innocents like Elia, Aegon, and Rhaenys. The questions that stem from this drive many of our characters and are at the heart of the questions Martin wants his readers to ask.

And: his life wasn't entirely in vain, because his son Jon lives.

*(Aside--to his credit, Rhaegar does not force Elia to have sex and have another child even though he could have. Like, bare minimum yes, but it's also not a coincidence that we're told that Aerys the Mad King routinely brutally assaults Rhaegar's mother (and one of these attacks leads to Daenerys's birth) because in Westeros it's not assault if you're married. Side note: also not a coincidence that what isn't seen as assault but is leads to Dany while what is publicly seen as assault but isn't leads to Jon.

Even throughout Fire & Blood, we read about husbands who unquestionably love their wives having sex with them and conceiving kids strongly against medical advice--Robert and Alyssa, Jaehaerys and Alysanne, etc. Rhaegar doesn't do this, showing that he's trying to do less harm to others around him. But, he still humiliates Elia by taking off with Lyanna--and his actions do lead to her death and the death of their children. And even if they hadn't, there's an emotional toll. So, did he really do less harm, or more? These are the sorts of questions I think Martin wants his readers to ponder more than answer.)*

[whateverthought]

It's tragic love. You just don't WANT not CAN'T like Rhaegar x Lyanna. You think life is white and black and that as long as Elia is not loved by Rhaegar you should find fault in their love.

Whats tragic about it? What did Rhaegar see in this little girl? The only nice thing he ever does for her is naming her "Love and Beauty" at a tourney. Which, depending on Lyanna's situation could have actually hurt her? If Robert Baratheon had been a jealous, abusive man, seeing another man show interest in her could have caused her problems. Hell, if her father was an abusive man, he could have called her a whore and punished her for just the Thought that she was with the Prince, who she never met.

Other than that? What else is there? Stealing her away in the night? Something that started a War and put her siblings in harm's way? He took her from her Horrible Betrothement and then what? Put her in a tower?

We do know Rhaegar was obsessed with his Family History and the Prophecy especially. We do know Elia couldn't give him anymore children, just one short. We do know he knew about the Ice and Fire part and its 'importance'. We also know Lyanna hated that Robert, her fiance/betrothed, slept around even though they were 'together'. And we know Lyanna had a strong moral compass, or belief in Right and Wrong.

Saying you KNOW what I'm feeling is crazy. It's not my Black and White View that's causing me problems, its the established characterization that I'm hung up on.

I don't care if Rhaegar Loved Elia, personally I don't have enough on these characters to care.

[ladystoneboobs]

ya ever think about how the lannister sibs all have big secrets kept from each other, like huge life-altering experiences? jaime's is the most obvious, the most talked-about, with the full story of his kingslaying and everything he endured from aerys leading up to it. it's clear enough to me that brienne was the first he opened up to about that, including either sibling. they never asked, but unlike ned stark and the rest deriding him as kingslayer, their lack of curiosity is no offense in itself bc as tywin's other children they would never judge him for turning his cloak purely out of family loyalty. ned's assumption of jaime's motives is directly tied to his judgment of jaime, but it's the judgment that rankles jaime so. choosing your father's life over a king's is hardly the worst crime in itself. how can he explain all the other reasons without prompting when its not just about his crime but all his trauma too? is there any basis for that in his relationship with cersei, who always relied on him for comfort and consolation but seems less adept at providing the same to him? or even with tyrion, his only real male friend for years, but also his baby brother, the one he was meant to protect and take care of, who was only 10 at the time of the kingslaying? even to fully share all with tyrion years later, both adults, could be something of a role reversal, forever shattering tyrion's image of him as the strong invulnerable golden big brother by revealing his own broken inner child. jaime can't break out from those sibling roles and patterns, so neither can ever understand that part of him, never knowing the early life he had at court without either of them with him.

and tyrion, who trusted jaime more than anyone in the world before learning the truth about tysha, still could not confide in him freely even when all that trust was still intact. jaime must have heard some story of what tywin did to tysha to feel the need to confess his lie, but he def didn't hear it straight from tyrion bc imo there's no way he could still think confessing would help anything if he understood how scarred tyrion was by what he witnessed and esp not knowing that tywin ordered him to participate at the end. tyrion could reveal all that to bronn when they barely knew each other but not to his beloved brother, his first and best friend. how can the most abused child explain all his unknown abuse to the golden child, the big brother meant to protect him who couldn't always do so? how does he even begin to reveal the deepest trauma that happened to him when jaime wasn't in the room, esp when the story does start with jaime apparently trying to help him by fixing him up with tysha?

and then there's cersei and all her secrets. she always turned to jaime for consolation, or at least when he knew she needed it, but how many times did he not know? how personally could she confide in him as they grew older and their paths diverged? we know the first big secret was maggy the frog's prophecy, her first big scare, which came on the cusp of puberty, an experience she couldn't share with her twin bc he would prob just laugh and make a joke of it. in their first real scene together, in bran's pov, he mocks lysa's motherly fears and likens her to cersei. ("I think birthing does something to your minds. You are all mad." He laughed.) then he makes light of her marital discord, ("And whose fault is that, sweet sister?"), having no idea of the depth of pain she'd suffered from robert, beyond his infidelities. he later blames her for being robert's queen, not his, only thinking of how she managed to arrange his kg post, that power to forever tie him to her in secret, never grasping her lack of control in marriage, that "a queen is only a woman after all". in her pride it was hard to reveal all she'd suffered as a woman, but she also couldn't rely on jaime's response if he knew of her abuse, knowing he would kill robert and get himself killed too, only making her and their children's lives more precarious. she couldn't trust him to listen about securing the throne before dealing with robert or that as robert's victim it was her right to decide such matters, to choose his fate, not jaime's place to avenge her without her say-so first. all bc they were both too stuck in their idea of jaime as her sword, nothing more, with jaime determined to protect her and tyrion, always a bodyguard before he ever donned a white cloak.

something something tywin did his best to play his children off each other and the most effective thing he did to divide them was by setting jaime up as the golden child and family protector. the designated lannister sword only pointing at threats outside their house. a knight serving his family whose protection was always limited, who could never protect them from the person who first hurt cersei and tyrion and made them who they were at a distance from him, bc ofc he couldn't fight his own father, much less slay him with a sword.

something something maybe the reason that joff+marg+loras was a surer recipe for kingslayer stew than robert+cersei+jaime is all down to that tyrell lack of abusive structure. not that loras cared more about marg, was more willing to kill for her than jaime was to kill robert, but that there wasn't a chance of marg hiding her misery from him if/when her husband abused her in their shared household. it's not like he understood her to the point of mind-reading but when their previous royal marital household involved her bearding for his boyfriend then they prob had a pretty good basis of open communication. in that sense, the lannicest twins with all their sexual and physical intimacy still had less emotional intimacy than the tyrell queen and her kg brother.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Within Westeros people know Lyanna Stark was "abducted" and held at the Tower of Joy where she died, but from what? What do people think she died from? Also for R+L=J did Rhaegar not send at least one maester for the delivery since I thought only Ned and Howland Reed survived the seizing of the tower?

Your first question is answered here, but to sum up, most likely a fever. (People die from fevers and "chills" in ASOIAF all the time, they don't have modern medicine.) Because, well, Lyanna did die from a fever. And you don't have to tell people it was specifically childbed fever when all you're bringing home is bones.

For your second question, note that only Ned and Howland survived the battle for the tower. "They had been seven against three, yet only two had lived to ride away." This doesn't mention any non-combatants who might have been in the tower -- and note that Ned's thoughts about Lyanna's death actually do mention someone else:

Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. —AGOT, Eddard I

Bolding mine-- "they", there was at least one other person besides Howland who found Ned holding his dead sister. Many people suspect that person to be Wylla, who as a wet nurse was also very likely to be a midwife. Whether there was a maester there too, who knows? Maesters can't fix everything, and heck, we've learned from F&B that they seem to be especially bad at saving women from childbed fever and other complications of pregnancy.

[lyannatropes]

🔥 HOT TIEFLING SUMMER 🔥

starting from 🏄 OC in what they would wear to the beach/pool for Ipomoea!

[nedseii]

We’ve seen Rhaegar in your style (who looks amazing btw) but I’ve wondered if you drew Lyanna Stark too before? :o

Sheeeeeeeee

[martellspear]

"To the point of accusing people who dislike her [Elia] of racism" as if some people here don't have to deal with this:

Not to mention other violent and disgusting words:

[rise-my-angel]

'BuT NeD ThInKs PoSiTiVeLy Of RhAeGaR' Ned thinks of Rhaegar ONCE that he was a man unlikely to visit brothels. From this we can conclude that he was not a sex pest like Robert. How on earth does this inform of Ned's personal feelings though? Ned is comparing Robert and Rhaegar and thinking in factual terms. Its similar to how he thinks of Aerys killing his father and brother but not once does he express hatred against Aerys. But we do know what he would think of Aerys, its common sense. Even if we go by 'Lyanna was willing' idea, Lyanna still died because Rhaegar impregnated her at 15 and then left her imprisoned without proper healthcare. She died because of Rhaegar's actions. People who use this argument are usually those who don't understand Ned's character very clearly, he is a man who while suffering from ptsd, suppresses painful emotions and feelings.

Ned Stark is SO MUCH more complicated then those people will ever give him credit for. They are desperate to paint him as so easily black and white when he is the most "living in the grey area" man to literally ever exist. They also refuse to give any context to that scene.

Because it isn't really Rhaegar Neds thinking about in that scene, it's Jon. Ned is in a brothel looking for one of Roberts many bastards, and connecting Robert to Lyanna to Rhaegar he wonders if Rhaegar was like Robert in that sense. The question Ned is really asking, is if there is a possibility that there are more people out there like Jon. He's asking himself if he's sure that Jon is alone and comes to the conclusion that yes, Rhaegar probably didn't sleep around like Robert and this comes to the conclusion that the only secret child of Rhaegars is in fact, still Jon.

But it's like you said, Ned strongly buries his true emotions deep down. He is a very traumatized man who has never truly gotten past the point in his life where his sister died in front of him. Ned is still trapped in that room and the haunting smell of blood and roses. Ned was described as catatonic for a while after Lyanna died and he never truly came out of that emotionally. He keeps everything inside very deeply and is utterly haunted with that upcoming trauma once the main story starts. His every action in Kings Landing is rooted in that trauma of what happened to Lyanna and the deep fear of what will happen to Jon. Everything he does in Kings Landing is about that, Neds priority in the story, is Jon. That dicates everything he does in the main plot because he is deeply traumatized and terrifed of what will happen to his son.

There's even a strong argument to be made that had Robert never come to Winterfell and involved the Starks directly within the dealings of the Crown, that Ned wouldn't ever have let Jon join the Nights Watch. That agree or disagree with letting him, that a big reason he allows it, is out of the fear of Jon being anywhere near the people Ned's spent Jons entire life protecting him from. That Ned would rather Jon be in the Nights Watch, then hunted down and murdered by Robert.

Ned the entire story and half of his life has been burying very deeply rooted trauma of what happened to Lyanna, and has been motivated that same time to put Jon as one of his biggest priorities right up until his death. But because he keeps this all buried deep inside, its easy for people, mostly Rhaegar defenders, to paint him as black and white, a bad father, a mindless soldier with no autonomy outside of Robert, a selfish man.

Ned Stark is one of the best written characters in recent literature, theres a reason he's still remembered and talked about to this day, and it is certainly not because he is as black and white as Rhaegar stans desperately try to slander him as.

[westerosiladies]

How about Kristen Kreuk in Snow White as Lyanna, and Hanna Mangan Lawrence & Lucy Lawless in Spartacus as Margaery and Melissandre respectively?

Ooh, yes to all of that!

Kristin Kreuk

Hanna Mangan Lawrence & Lucy Lawless

I've actually used Lucy Lawless as a Melisandre fancast a couple times before; she's perfect for it. Hanna Mangan Lawrence is new to me though, and she's a perfect Margaery!

[novembermorgon]

Drawing Elia with the crown of blue winter roses and Rhaegar in the same week Lyanna was officially drawn with them is a pathetic attempt. Cry harder. Both are officially Lyanna's given by the author.

well if you had any semblance of understanding of symbolism or perhaps even a set of functioning eyes you might also see that the crown of blue winter roses leads up to the tower of joy where rhaegar put lyanna, that elia is not wearing the roses and that rhaegar's attention is fully turned away from the miserable looking elia implying that he is in fact not giving elia the crown of roses