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g0lightly · 5 months ago

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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 🥹

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g0lightly · 2 months ago

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watching an (excellent!) video essay about the swan princess and it made me realize that movie (specifically the song “far longer than forever”) is probably the reason brienne/sansa is my OTP. i watched that movie over and over as a kid, played pretend as odette with my friends, sang the songs constantly … it was my entire personality for a significant swath of my childhood. cannot emphasize enough how much odette and derek shaped what i view as romance.

so when i heard the lyrics “i made an everlasting vow to find my way to you,” a little lightbulb went on over my head. like of COURSE i’m feral for a ship where one person makes an everlasting vow to find a way to the other person bc i am wired to see that as peak romance! the fact that they haven’t met / brienne has not been successful in finding sansa makes it even better imo.

i subscribe to the idea that pretty meris was born out of grrm’s scrapped post-five-year-gap vision for brienne, i find the idea of brienne being a bit of a broken man type character after years of failing to find sansa very compelling. i still think something like that could easily happen. my original draft of my longfic had sellsword!brienne rescuing sansa after a five year gap because of that theory, actually. it’s just so romantic to think of a rescue that rescues both people - one from a bad situation, the other from her own self doubt.

#Briensa brainrot posting

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g0lightly · 6 months ago

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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.

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g0lightly · 4 months ago

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Like so many things in Brienne and Jaime’s GOT arcs, i think this is a casualty of Lady Stoneheart’s removal from the show. Even though I don’t ship Braime, I still have eyes and can see that something is probably going to happen between them amid the pressure of that plot. If the idea always was for Brienne and Jaime to get together quickly then have Jaime go back to Cersei and die (i’m simplifying a lot here), I wish for the sake of both Brienne and Jaime as characters that they either would have done that earlier in the story or not done it at all. Because what we got felt rushed and like a disservice to fans.

I think that it would have made for a happier ending if Brienne and Sansa had fallen in love in the last season or two of GOT, and I’m not just saying that because they’re my OTP. In addition to everything outlined above about Brienne’s ending, I hate how Sansa is kind of alone as Queen in Winterfell at the end. Putting them together, even platonically since it’s unclear how old show Brienne is, could have fixed that. The thought of Sansa validating Brienne’s femininity and making her feel beautiful makes my heart sing and it’s SICK we didn’t get this in the show. Tarth would still be an issue but i’m convinced D&D gave it basically zero thought.

I’ll posit that if Brienne was going to hook up with anyone during the long night, it should have been Sansa. They both just want to feel loved for who they are and they both have a lot of love to give. And they are already quite devoted to one another. If Brienne became Lord Commander of Sansa’s Queensguard at the end of the series, she and Sansa would be the ones in charge of establishing the rules because the North doesn’t have a tradition of knighthood. Also, perfect task for the girls obsessed with knighthood!

If Jaime had to go back to Cersei and die because of rocks, at least Brienne could have been happy with a younger more beautiful kingslayer and mirror Jaime as a Lord Commander in love with a Queen! I’m just saying!

This is not the Brienne ending you were looking for

I have a longer “review” for the entire back end of the season/general ending, that I will post in a moment, but I wanted to spend a few more words on Brienne and why this ending is, overall, the worst possible ending she could get, regardless of whether or not you know her book backstory or rely only on what the show has told you.

Yes. From a certain angle, the one where Brienne isn’t much more than another powerful female character breaking gender norms, having her end up as the first female knight and first Lord Commander of the Kingsguard can be seen as a positive ending.

But if you look deeper, IMO, several things are established even just within show-verse that make her signing up to a celibate order for life short of a travesty for her character, and possibly reduces her to one of the less satisfying endings on the entire show.

1) Brienne’s struggle, even on the show, was not just about being a woman warrior. Brienne didn’t join Renly’s Kingsguard because of some deep seated desire to be a Kingsguard. She joined it because she loved him for being kind to her about her femininity when nobody else was (whether he was a bit of a prick behind her back, especially book-wise, is another matter), and knowing he could not love her in return, she thought this was the best she could do. When she talks to Pod about her past, she doesn’t mention “never having been happier” at swinging a sword. She mentions “never having been happier” at having boys dance with her and whisper in her ear that they wanted to marry her and take her back to her castles. When she gets mocked in the show by other characters is about her lack of femininity and her looks, not because she’s a woman who wants to fight. While I have no doubt Brienne genuinely loves what she does, no matter the circumstances that led her to it, serving others was always about settling, for Brienne, more than about empowering herself.

2) Brienne is not Arya. Besides the obvious (i.e. Arya actively fought against being a Lady her entire life while Brienne resigned herself to not being suited for that role), Arya is given agency, while Brienne’s is taken away. Arya rejected Gendry’s proposal because that was “not her”. Arya was given a choice and she took charge of her future and the woman she wanted to be. Arya has the opportunity to go back on her decision, in the future, if she wants to. Brienne didn’t reject other options because she really wanted to become a Kingsguard. Brienne was left with no other options because, once again, she was rejected by the man she loved and had to settle back into “her place” as a guard, because that’s the best women like her can aspire to. Which leads me to…

3) Brienne is the only heir to her House. Besides her father being brought up almost every season by other characters, and her status as a highborn Lady being emphasized several times, it was even established as late as this season that she’s her father only heir. By becoming a Kingsguard, she is not only forsaking her claim to Tarth, but essentially condemning her House to extinction. One needs to headcanon all sorts of caveats for this not to be the case (e.g. Bran’s Kingsguard will be different and allow its members to hold titles and lands, marry and have children; Brienne’s father will have another child who will inherit Tarth and so on), since the show has taken no care whatsoever to think about any of this. (But, meanwhile, manly man Gendry gets legitimized because he has a cock and made Lord of the Stormlands even though he doesn’t even know how to count… and Bronn, cutthroat sellsword, sits on the high council).

And this is without taking into account just how much her book arc focuses on romantic rejection, her feeling of failure towards her father for not being the heir he deserves, and the guilt, suffering and trauma she’s carried within her entire life because of this.

The show has never seen Brienne as anything more than another “gender defying” token character, without any of the nuances, layers and differences that George has imbued his “gender defying” characters with in the books. Brienne is not Arya. Arya is not Asha/Yara. Asha/Yara is not Brienne. They were three different, complex representations of women that did not fit societal norms for entirely different reasons and in entirely different ways. Yara and Arya, all in all, had endings that empowered them by putting them in charge of who they had wanted to be all their lives.

What set Brienne apart from the other two women was her longing for romantic acceptance and the fact that her LOOKS were the primary reason why it was not accessible to her. D&D might not have done it consciously (I am pretty sure they didn’t really think about Brienne much, or even read her chapters). And maybe this is GRRM’s endgame for Brienne too (I really want to believe this is not the case). But regardless of where this ending is coming from, if you cannot appreciate just how horrifyingly problematic this is, I don’t know what to tell you.

#game of thrones meta #asoiaf meta #Briensa brainrot posting

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