#asoiaf deaths

[pendovah]

“Oberyn wanted vengeance for Elia. Now the three of you want vengeance for him. I have four daughters, I remind you. Your sisters. […] If you should die, must El and Obella seek vengeance for you, then Dorea and Loree for them? Is that how it goes, round and round forever? I ask again, where does it end?” Ellaria Sand laid her hand on the Mountain’s head. “I saw your father die. Here is his killer. Can I take a skull to bed with me, to give me comfort in the night? Will it make me laugh, write me songs, care for me when I am old and sick?” - A Dance with Dragons, The Watcher

[westerosiladies]

[a-chaotic-dumbass]

i think its so funny that cersei thinks of catelyn as a meek little mouse in her povs when its like. that woman bashed a man's head in with a rock. she grabbed a valyrian steel blade without hesitation. she traveled across westeros to form an alliance with renly only to steal one of his kingsguard too. she set jaime free from the dungeons and got him to swear to get her daughters back. even in her last chapter she shanked a mf with a knife before going insane. catelyn stark was more of a lioness than cersei im sorry to say

[0zeeraa0]

I will defend them with my life

[vintrage]

motherless, friendless, and damned

[greenbloods]

love how both tywin and ned are genre definingly different from the predecessors from their houses. lannisters have always been the clever house, from lann the clever swindling casterly rock to tyland lannister splitting kings landing's treasury. but tywin's 'low cunning' and use of brutal crushing military force to solve his problems which he employs in the reyne-tarbeck rebellion and the scouring of the riverlands and the red wedding is different from the historical version of house lannister. it's a new brand of lannisterism, tywin's version, and it is this version of lannister legacy that he passes on to his children.

ned on the other hand very much likes to distance himself from the stark features of the wild and the wolf's blood, which other starks like brandon and rickard and cregan and even lyanna are defined by, adopting instead an ethos of duty and honor more like the tully words or his foster father jon arryn. he does this because he thinks that it is this wolf's blood that killed them in the end. just like the lannister kids contend with their father's idea of a good lannister, the starklings contend with their father's idea of a good stark.

[ladyrunestone]

Let the kings of winter have their cold crypt under the earth, Catelyn thought. The Tullys drew their strength from the river, and it was to the river they returned when their lives had run their course. ~ Catelyn IV, ASOS

[tweedfrog]

The maester propaganda thing has gone too far let it go I beg you because why the hell did I just see a video that claimed Maegor actually was loyal to his family and all the bad things written about him were lies by biased maesters

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

Rhaegar Targaryen is easily one of GRRM’s best deconstructions of the genre and we don’t talk about it enough. He’s prince living in a world full of magic and wonder that has dwindled over time. His own family had a great monopoly on one of the most magical phenomena (dragons) to ever exist, but they lost this control over time and it was due to their own faults. But there’s an all encompassing hope that this magic, these dragons, will come back. They all live within the promise that it will all be back and with a huge bang. It’s all so romantic. Magical forces of ice and fire battling it out in a song.

Then there’s Rhaegar, a prince born for the sole purpose of being this song’s romantic hero. He already has his destiny mapped out and it will be a great one, greater than any other man who ever lived. It’s a song of ice and fire, and Rhaegar is its bard. You’d expect this to give him joy. Yet by all accounts, he was depressed as fuck. I think he’s unfairly earned the reputation of having an ego so big to think that he will be the hero….but that’s quite literally the point of his existence. He was born to be the hero. He paid the price at birth to be the hero. How can he revel and glory in this destiny when he has no say in it?

So it’s genuinely funny that when given the chance, Rhaegar immediately pivots to someone else taking on this burden. But how tragic for him that he cannot escape it too far. Because it will be none other than his own son who, under a “bleeding star”, is marked at conception for this great destiny without a say. More than his ego, Rhaegar is marked by the inability to escape this duty. His whole life is dedicated to fulfilling a duty he can never escape. He isn’t just a future king, prophecy dictates that the world’s survival is placed squarely on his shoulders. Even when he isn’t the hero, he’s now responsible for raising him…

…but then he makes one decision and it all comes crumbling like a pack of biscuits. He escapes this burden…but dies. And his successor dies too. And now the ones who will inherit his legacy are two people who never knew him. They never knew of his burdens, of this prophecy. But they too cannot escape its jaws. I think this does bring up some interesting questions about the nature of fate and destiny in the world of ice and fire. Can you really escape it? Rhaegar tried to, and paid the price for his defiance, but he never truly made it out because the burden instead jumped to the son (and sister) he never knew. Funny thing is that in a bizarre (and tragic, in its own way) twist of fate, this son was brought up entirely without the trappings of power that depressed Rhaegar. Rhaegar was a dazzling prince, Jon is a bastard. Rhaegar was marked by his great inheritance, Jon is marked by the lack thereof. Does fate say “well the first one got too depressed by having too much so let’s give the next one nothing?” Even Dany, who grows up a princess does not have the privileges that Rhaegar did. So how does upbringing craft a hero and the choices they make? Welll, GRRM had given us two versions of Rhaegar’s tragedy in Jon and Dany for us to see.

Rhaegar’s impact on the meta-narrative is honestly so massive. Like I’d put him right up there with Quentyn, Sansa, and Bran as one of the best genre deconstructions in the series and no one can tell me otherwise.

[llutik]

That night he dreamed of the feast Ned Stark had thrown when King Robert came to Winterfell. The hall rang with music and laughter, though the cold winds were rising outside. At first it was all wine and roast meat, and Theon was making japes and eyeing the serving girls and having himself a fine time…until he noticed that the room was growing darker.

[motrothi]

Catelyn Holding Robb

I was listening to "I Have Never Loved Someone" by My Brightest Diamond, and it made me sad about them. Go listen if you'd like to be sad too.

[death-of-cats]

just like the concept of “oathbreaking” is insufficient to cover the Kingsguard’s moral transgressions so too is “kinslaying” inadequate to describe what was wrong with Theon’s murder of the miller’s boys!!!!!!!! the lines that society draws to permit or condemn behavior do not reflect the true weight of the deeds themselves!!!!!!!! it’s easy to see in westerosi society but what if it’s true in ours as well!!!!!

[shebsart]

You've heard the stories of me,

You know what I can do

I take the ember's of man's anger

And there's nothing I can't spin them into

[daenerystargarycn]

hot take maybe but the only reason most show runners/producers/writers/etc. age up the (female) characters from book to show adaptation is to overtly sexualize them and not face mass amounts of scrutiny for it.

put 13 year old daenerys next to 30 year old drogo and the audience understands that daenerys is a victim to him and not an equal. put 22 year old emilia clarke as daenerys next to 32 year old jason mamoa as drogo and they’re seen as a budding romance with a tragic ending (by the general audience) due to their on screen chemistry.

flash forward to today, and now we’re dealing with 21 year old milly alcock playing rhaenyra from 14-19 and how her relationship with (28 year old fabien) a mid twenties criston is seen as -morally acceptable- and not a result of a degenerate pedophile taking advantage of and grooming his charge. “ser criston protects the princess from her enemies, but who protects the princess from ser criston?” rhaenyra was 14 when rumors started speculating that she slept with an almost 30 year old criston. a criston who had know her since she was 8 and had been her sworn shield since she was 9. obviously seeing a teenager in the early stages of puberty next to a fully grown man would emphasize rhaenyra being THE victim, as opposed to the show having an 18-19 year old explore her sexuality and seek out ‘consensual’ sex with her peer bodyguard. the discourse has even reached the point where certain stans try to paint the much younger woman as the perpetrator and aggressor of this event, who forced the unassuming man into having sex with her.

i’ll even take this a step farther, and bring up how if they had shown a 19 year old alicent abusing a 10 year old rhaenyra it would be identified and mutually agreed upon as a reprehensible act on alicent’s part. instead they’re of similar age, so people can attempt to paint the picture as two women of equal standing hating each other, and not a much older woman bullying a motherless child. once again however, some stans even go so far as to try and paint alicent as a victim of rhaenyra, and not the other way around. further cementing this is how both versions of alicent are younger than both versions of rhaenyra, AND how criston is still played by an actor who is younger than older!rhaenyra despite his character being the same age as daemon in canon.

they know exactly what they’re doing too, considering they aged alicent down to give her that innate compassion one typically feels when seeing children being abused on tv (something that can no longer be applied to rhaenyra). despite that never being her story; *she* was the abuser, and rhaenyra was her victim. criston’s victim. it’s a nasty cop out, and i wish more people would call out how sickening it is to flip the switch and attempt to make abusive individuals more sympathetic than the *actual* victims of said abusers.

[corvidfeathers]

people in westeros are always like. your fortifications and ramparts are no match for human rights violations gerald and his dirty boys. and every time it is true

[dedalvs]

Lexember (December 30th)

This is a truly startling and heartbreaking coincidence. The High Valyrian word for "cat" is kēli—with a long ē—named after my cat, Keli. I often create pairs of words to illustrate the difference between long and short in languages that distinguish vowel length phonemically. Back when I created the word for "cat" in High Valyrian, which would have been 2012, I decided to create another word using the Keli's name (which, by the way, her name is a word in Kamakawi—keli "tail"). Since it seemed unlikely the word for "cat" would ever show up in High Valyrian in Game of Thrones, I decided to use the short vowel version of her name for keligon "to stop". This word, in its plural imperative form, is part of Daenerys's famous speech in episode 304. Every time I hear it, I think of her.

I created all these images and scheduled them to go up back in November. I've got a list of which word is going to up when, and this is the word that happened to be scheduled for December 30th.

Late last night, we had to put my cat Keli to sleep. She had a blockage in her colon that we had been attempting to treat for a few weeks now—with some success. For a bit it looked like things were getting better. She started to lose weight, though, so we took her where she got a couple more medications. They didn't work, and especially over the last 48 hours, she seemed to get worse and worse. Yesterday she stopped eating entirely. On the 28th I spent the night with her, and then, outside taking a shower, I spent all day with her. I laid with her on the couch, and carried her to get water and use the litter box when she wanted it, because she was having trouble walking.

We got Keli after losing another cat, Okeo, who was very young (3 months) to congenital kidney failure. I was devastated. I felt like I had done something wrong. I wanted to prove to myself that I could take care of another cat, so after a few months, I went back to our local Banfield on adoption day, and in addition to many cute kittens, there was one cat who was much older (over a year) who had been brought out from the area with all the cages so everyone would see her first. She was clawing at the cage she was in and meowing an awful meow. She seemed so afraid. I asked about her, and the staff said she'd been there a long time. No one would adopt her, partly because she was all black, and partly because there were younger kittens there. I put my fingers in the cage to touch her paw, and that calmed her down. I called my wife then Erin to come bring the cat carrier, and we took her home. That was how Keli came to us in 2010.

I named her Keli because of her unusually long and vivacious tail. She loved thwapping it against things that were hollow so she could hear the percussive sound of it. She really liked it. We also did this thing where I would run my fingers down her tail and then hold it for a little bit. She'd tried to move it, but I'd hold it still, and then I'd let it go. After that, she'd thwap me with her tail, as a little punishment. It was a game we played. The last time we did it was yesterday.

Keli was my cuddle cat. She'd sleep with me, climb up on my lap, curl up next to me on the couch, and especially loved sitting between my legs. I'd pet her and she'd purr and purr and purr.

When it was timed, they asked if we wanted to be present. I said I wanted to hold her. She was so frightened and unhappy in that cage in 2010. I never wanted anyone to take her away from me. And so I held her in my arms and whispered to her until she was gone. And then I held her some more.

Keli was one of my very, very best friends. She's one of the best parts of my entire life, and I will miss her forever.