#briensa brainrot posting

[g0lightly]

Virgin “Sansa is going to end up with Aegon VI/Jon bc a Targaryen won the Ashford Tourney but she’ll be rescued by Sandor Clegane who is like Dunk bc he’s not a knight and he’s tall” theory

vs

Chad “Sansa will end up with Brienne, who is hinted to descend from Dunk *and* the Targaryens, instead of a traditional marriage because Dunk’s moral impulse to protect Tanselle disrupted the tourney from concluding as planned” theory

Bonus points for the fact that one of the three Targaryen princes involved dies and so does the House Hardyng jouster. Everyone expects Sansa to end up with a man but she and Brienne are so perfect for each other that it makes for the kind of well-supported twist that i actually think might happen.

(To be clear i really like this theory this is just my interpretation of it!)

[g0lightly]

one of my fav things about the potential of a future briensa romance (on an age appropriate timeline please and thank you grandpa grrm) after jaime is doomed by the narrative is that brienne would simply be in love with a younger, more beautiful kingslayer that her original kingslayer made her find!!! the daugher of the man jaime always wanted to best!!!! another maiden-coded character!!!! you bitches are so connected!!!!!! like yes briensa my otp but the existence of br*ime (no shade, just censoring bc this isn't exactly a shipper post for them) makes it so much richer

sansa realizing she accidentally has things in common with the kingslayer (namely, ppl accusing her of being a kingslayer and being in love with brienne) is so funny to me like it's literally this in my mind:

[g0lightly]

help! i found sansa + brienne parallels to true knighthood via barristan selmy + sandor clegane (mostly) planted in ACOK and i can't get up!

as i have previously written, brienne and sansa both keep blood-stained kingsguard cloaks that come into their possession during ACOK. analogous to maiden cloaks, i read these cloaks as symbolizing two idealistic characters facing the brutal reality that the "protector" institutions they have looked up to (knighthood, primarily) their entire lives do not live up to their ideals. while marriage is certainly an institution that has failed to protect both of these characters, i don't read cloaks as an inherent marriage symbol. if we get sansa putting sandor's former cloak on brienne after she gets the hound's helm from lem that's another story but at the end of the day i think it's significant that sansa wrapped herself in sandor's cloak; he simply dropped it as he did with his kingsguard duties, he did not put it on her as is done in a marriage ceremony.

while the brienne parallels to barristan are more obvious, there is also a very direct parallel between sansa and barristan in ACOK i just noticed that knocked me off my feet a bit: both sansa and barristan plead with the cruel king they were sworn to in order to stop that king from executing dontos hollard because they recognize that he is defenseless. when dontos was a child, barristan plead with king aerys to spare him when he executed the rest of house hollard. of course, barristan was sworn to aerys as a knight and sansa was sworn to joffrey as his betrothed; i think this just drives home the potential for brienne and sansa to wield their complementary abilities for their own cause like a nontoxic version of cersei and jaime (the subject of a forthcoming essay that examines wuthering heights and arthurian allusions in asoiaf).

this connects to a more obvious parallel between brienne and barristan that is set up when we meet brienne through catelyn. i've always thought there has to be some significance to the fact that brienne's place on renly's kingsguard was originally meant to go to barristan selmy, a character who is presented in-universe as the closest thing to a living true knight. as is the nature of true knighthood in this series, however, it's debatable if this can apply to him given his service to aerys while he abused rhaella. through catelyn and later jaime (via loras) we learn that renly made a few assumptions when he gave the blue knight position to brienne:

renly assumed that barristan had gone on to serve robb as king in the north instead of himself; in reality, we know that barristan went off to essos where he took on a false identity to serve dany out of loyalty to house targaryen.

renly thought that brienne would not live long, given her willingness to die for him, implying that he believed her position would be open for someone he'd see as more worthy in the future. once again, in reality we know that actually renly died and brienne lived on, guilty that she did not have the chance to die for him as they both seemingly wanted.

i believe this sets up two major themes for brienne's character: 1) that a true knight's loyalty cannot be bound by the powers that be 2) brienne's connection to death/the stranger. as i also touch on in the post linked above, i think that brienne is foreshadowed to become the next hound after lem (an idea explored in my fic!) which is another stranger-coded persona connected to the idea of true knighthood. sandor clegane is also the person who fills the vacancy that barristan leaves.

similar to what sandor does with his own cloak during the battle of the blackwater, barristan throws his white cloak at joffrey's feet during his dismissal scene and Sansa later kneels before it to plead for her father's life. given that sandor was barristan's replacement, i read the cloak that sandor leaves with sansa as an extension of the cloak that barristan abandoned in front of sansa when she plead for ned's life. extrapolating from this, i think that brienne will ultimately be a balance between sandor and barristan in her knightly capacity (even if she is not a knight). this also means that both sansa and brienne have a bloodstained cloak that was (symbolically) supposed to belong to barristan.

both barristan and sandor literally as well as metaphorically gave up their white cloaks (in front of sansa fwiw) with the intention to serve someone they felt they owed their service to but ultimately end up serving that person's younger family member. though barristan set out to serve viserys, he winds up serving daenerys. though sandor set out to serve sansa, he winds up serving arya. as we know, grrm likes to do things in threes -- i think there's a good chance that brienne serving sansa in catelyn's stead will be the third iteration of this pattern. and because this would be the third iteration, i imagine there will be some sort of twist such as brienne turning on lady stoneheart if she endangers sansa (another idea explored in my aforementioned fic).

additionally, it is emphasized time and time again in brienne's POV chapters that she takes her oath to catelyn even more seriously because she is dead. this provides another mirror to barristan, who is forced to re-evaluate his service to aerys' usurper after his unprecedented removal from the kingsguard. he takes on a new identity and exiles himself to essos to renew his oath to house targaryen, though not to the targaryen he expected to serve. if brienne takes on the hound's identity and serves sansa, that would certainly rhyme nicely with barristan's trajectory.

i think the role of the stranger/death is important because brienne has to kill the idea of what a knight is supposed to be just as sansa has to kill the idea of what a lady is supposed to be (RIP lady, that's the real meaning of her death imo). when lem tells brienne that the hound (meaning himself) will kill her and when brienne tells jaime that the hound will kill sansa, what if that is setting up brienne and sansa letting their ideal knight and lady selves die to become something they get to define for themselves? this would also provide a contrast with cersei and jaime, who served as mentor figures to sansa and brienne respectively in the role that they want to fulfill (queen for sansa, knight for brienne). both lannisters show their respective younger idealist counterparts the dark side of the future they initially want for themselves.

obviously i do ship brienne x sansa assuming things happen on an age appropriate timeline; tbh i thought they had chemistry on the show and now i'm spiraling about their parallels in the books which are also sending their characters in a much more compelling direction. but at the end of the day i don't think these textual allusions have to be romantic! same goes for plenty of other ships involving brienne and sansa that i won't name here bc 1) i appreciate some of them thematically 2) i don't want to invoke the shippers' wrath! sometimes characters are important in each other's arcs (i 1000% believe this will be the case for brienne and sansa) but that doesn't equal a romantic endgame. however i also fully believe that brienne as sansa's true love and true knight would be a beautifully subversive yet text-supported culmination of several main themes in the series (yet another essay on this to come). grrm has not been the best with wlw stuff in POV format but fire and blood has (perhaps foolishly) given me a hope that something like this could be done well 🥹

[g0lightly]

Sansa's (possible) attraction to Mya Stone mirrors Jaime's attraction to Brienne

As part of my Briensa brainrot posting, I want to establish one of many parallels between Sansa and Jaime that may be relevant later. I think the text may be setting up Sansa’s attraction to women, specifically gender-nonconforming women like Mya. The way Sansa describes women’s appearances versus men’s appearances is more similar to straight male POV characters than to other female POV characters, as this post does a fantastic job of demonstrating. Specifically, I’d like to point out that the way Sansa thinks about Mya in her men’s clothing mirrors the way we initially see Jaime think about Brienne in hers. 

[Mya] could be pretty, if she would dress up like a girl. Alayne found herself wondering whether Ser Lothor liked her best in her iron and leather, or dreamed of her gowned in lace and silk. - Alayne II, AFFC

As the above post also points out, Sansa has to contextualize her potential attraction to a woman — an unconventional woman at that — through the eyes of a man as it’s not ladylike to have such thoughts about other ladies. Later in this chapter she repeats this question to Myranda Royce, excited to have an older girl to ask such a question.

“Do you think Ser Lothor likes [Mya] as she is, in mail and leather?” She asked the older girl, who seemed so worldly-wise. “Or does he dream of her draped in silks and velvets?” “He’s a man. He dreams of her naked.” She is trying to make me blush again. - Alayne II, AFFC

Sansa is so curious about this that I have to wonder if Ser Lothar is indeed the one with a crush. Mirroring Jaime, she goes from imagining her unconventional crush in her men’s clothing to imagining her in the kind of clothing she understands to be beautiful. And then she’s prompted to picture her naked.

He amused himself by picturing her in one of Cersei’s silken gowns in place of her studded leather jerkin. As well dress a cow in silk as this one.  - Jaime I, ASOS

Afterward, Jaime jokingly (or not so jokingly) asks Brienne to remove her clothes to prove that she is a woman. This is a much more cruel and direct sequence of thoughts/interactions than what we see with Sansa and Mya, though that’s fitting of Jaime and Sansa’s characters at these very different places in their respective arcs. Nevertheless, both are characters used to being valued for their conventional beauty (and their ability to conform to gender roles) attempting to understand their own interest in unconventional beauty that does not conform to gender roles.