#everyone else was only interested in that stupid outline for starkcest shipping but i was most intrigued by cat going beyond the wall

[ladystoneboobs]

so, one aspect of catelyn which i think is underrated (certainly the biggest adaptation loss which nobody talks about) is her, let's say superstitiousness, or better yet, let's call it genre-savviness, being one of the few adult characters open to magic and the supernatural in this fantasy world. we first meet her in the godswood, home of gods which are not truly hers, yet she is still very aware of their power. when she and ned talk of the deserter he killed, he hopes he won't have to go with the nw to deal with mance rayder, but she has even more fear of that idea bc there are worse things beyond the wall than just wildlings. ned scoffs and says she's been listening to old nan too much, but she's right. we already know from the prologue that she's right! and here she is, understanding the genre of their world better than her husband, who was actually born and spent his earliest years in this northern land of deep magic, listening to old nan's stories. same with the direwolves, where she was uncomfortable with them at first, but later believed in them as guardians from the old gods even after robb had lost his own faith. and once again, we know she's right even if she doesn't know the evidence to back up her instincts, bc summer and shaggydog did not fail bran and rickon and robb was almost certainly a warg like his brothers. (perhaps making it more fitting that she's the one brought back as a fantasy vengeance monster, not ned and robb, the most unbelieving dead starks.) and in her 2nd agot chapter, everyone focuses on her ambition in wanting ned to agree to the hand job (pun intended) and sansa's betrothal, and while she does recognize the value of their daughter being a future queen more than ned does, that's only her stated argument bc she thinks it's rational enough for ned to listen to. (if ambitious matchmaking were as important to her as to her father she never would have made those frey betrothals fandom loves to blame her for.) in her own head there's a deeper urge driving her. she keeps thinking of the dead direwolf with antlers in its throat, an omen which filled her with dread from the first she heard of it, before robert's arrival, and thinking of it again is what makes her desperate to convince ned not to refuse robert. she had to make him see. and really, she's not wrong, as jon snow would say. the dead direwolf was an omen of ned and robert getting each other killed. it's just one of those misread portents, with no way of knowing the danger to ned was in his loyalty to robert, not conflict with him. BUT the next time she's dealing with baratheons, she knows exactly what she's talking about. it's catelyn, not brienne, who sees the shadow slaying renly, and explains that it was stannis who did that through some dark magic. with no way of knowing how it was achieved and no prior expectation that such a thing were ever possible, she realizes with no hestitation that stannis was guilty and that his red witch was capable of pulling this off somehow. really, the only instinct of the supernatural she's wholly wrong about is her insistence that varys gathered his knowledge through some dark enchantment. however, though that might offend varys, given his own personal experience with a sorcerer, i'd say it's a reasonable assumption without knowing the dude had children moving through walls everywhere like oversized rodents. and imo it just shows she had a healthy respect and awe for varys's power which most other characters lack.

oh, oh, and let's not forget that she also believed in the curse of harrenhal, from her own childhood and the stories old nan told her kids. "and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and cursed. 'I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of that keep,' Catelyn admitted." sure, that wasn't enough to save robb, but he did not die from the curse of harrenhal. that doom was meant for his enemies from tywin lannister to roose bolton.