#in another world Jon and Daenerys would have been on this list. if the show hadn't made me hate them

[oveliagirlhaditright]

If all of your favorite shippings from different fandoms had a movie night together (yes, shippings, I think that's way more fun!), who would show up (there is no limit) and how would it play out?

Oh my gosh. This is a hard, but fun question. LOL. Though I’m worried the answer will end up more boring than you’re hoping for, but let’s hope not.

I’ll also probably only limit this to my top top ships, because I have way too many. Though there will still be a lot here! Also, let’s just assume that everyone will get along for some reason, even though some of them would have reason not to.

So, SoKai’s there (from Kingdom Hearts). Because of course they are. And while Sora and Kairi really are there to watch the movie--and cuddle, because they’ve earned it--Sora can’t help talking to everyone throughout and trying to get to know them, because he’s just a sociable person like that. And Kairi mostly joins in with that. But because of this, they probably have people telling them to shut up during it. Though RokuShi, Namiku, and probably NeShiki come to their defense.

Roxas and Xion (KH) are super into the movie, because they’re still kind of amazed at the existence of films in general. Since they were essentially babies in the Organization, who knew nothing about life. And while they know more now--like when Roxas had those false memories in the Virtual Twilight Town--they’re still amazed by the simple things.

Riku and Naminé (KH)... Naminé is drawing, of course. Probably things from the film. And Riku is by her side, just happy that she’s happy. But he (aside from Buffy) is probably the one person on edge, judging everyone because he doesn’t think some things are right about some of these people Lawlight.

Yes, Light and L (Death Note) are there... And they’re probably bored of the movie. It’s not clever enough for them. They’d much rather watch some murder investigation and try and figure it out--also, can I say what a miracle it is that L ventured out in the first place?--and this is when Riku begins to get uncomfortable and Buffy probably says something like, “Okay, if I hear one more thing about murder, some serious slayage is about to occur.”

So... Bangel (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). So, this is some happy-isa ending after Angel takes on Wolfram & Hart and doesn’t die. The curse is still a thing. But Buffy and Angel have decided to try and be together without it, since Buffy almost lost Angel. They’re happy to be together enjoying the movie, of course. And a lot of cuddling is happening. But not too much, because they can’t get too worked up. Because again: curse. Also, if they’re watching some crappy movie--which they probably are--Buffy pipes in every now and then to give the characters wittier lines than they actually had, and everyone actually appreciates her for that. Angel may also notice Naminé’s artwork, praise her for it, and begin drawing during the movie himself... He draws Buffy watching it, of course.

Jace and Clary from The Mortal Instruments. They’re doing more PDA than anyone... but still nothing too bad, that would anger most people. And Clary might have joined in on giving the characters better lines with Buffy. Buffy and Clary probably strike up a friendship. Jace is really the person annoying everyone during the film, because he can’t keep pointing out everyone’s stupid choices and the lack of logic... which is true, but come on my man.

Max and Logan from Dark Angel. So, bored with the movie--as I said above--L and Light begin trying to solve a case while everyone else is engrossed. Logan notices this and joins in as Eyes Only. He and L also become friends, when they realize how much they have in common... I want this to be a happy AU where Light isn’t Kira, or has been redeemed, but it’s probably not. And he’s now worrying that Logan could be a threat to him too, and probably plotting to kill him. Max somehow senses this and throws food at him, though she plays it subtle. Like, “Hey, stop making me waste good food to get you to stop glaring at my hubby.” Oh, and Max is making herself at home with all the food. Because our girl loves to eat, and to relax. She and L might get into a fight over the sweets, though. And our transgenic super-soldier girl would of course win.

Madoka and Homura from Madoka Magica. It’s probably at this point, that Homura also notices something is wrong with Light. And she wants to get Madoka away from this scene to protect her. Because of course she does. But Madoka turns her down. And for the most part, Homura will never do anything that Madoka doesn’t want her to do. Madoka probably is somewhere between bonding over drawing with Naminé and Angel, and asking if she can be friends with Buffy and Clary and try and say funny things, too. They agree, of course. So Homura is sandwiched between Madoka and all her new friends, and she really can’t complain about that at all.

Noctis and Luna from Final Fantasy XV are also snuggled together, and they write secret notes to each other during the whole thing. Because even though they’re now finally together in person, they’ve just sort of gotten used to communicating that way.

Zack and Aerith from Crisis Core are probably being disasters, who are trying to build a flower wagon while everyone else is watching a film. But, hey. That’s just them. Aerith also probably joins in on the ad-libbing the movie thing.

Meanwhile, Cloud and Tifa from Final Fantasy VII are really close to the screen--Cloud is in love with this movie--and Tifa is trying to help explain things to him. Why? Because On the Way to a Smile talks about how Cloud doesn’t even know some vegetables and fruits’ names, because he decided to try out for SOLDIER at a young age and then had his mind shattered because of Mako poisoning, trauma, etc. So... if they’re watching a movie about cooking or something, Cloud could seriously make a mistake like, “Oh, so they’re using sour cream for this baked good. I didn’t know you could do that. But I guess it makes sense.” Tifa - “No, Cloud. They’re using cream cheese.”

Neku and Shiki (The World Ends With You) are enjoying watching the movie close together. And Neku is quietly humming during a lot of the singing parts, which makes Shiki blush and her crush on Neku grow even stronger (he may even be singing to her). And no one cares, because Neku actually has a nice singing voice. During the film, Shiki might attempt to make clothes based on the main characters’ outfits, that everyone is then amazed by.

And maybe I’ll add Tidus and Yuna in from Final Fantasy X. Tidus is trying to convince Yuna to just have a good time with him and have fun watching the movie--and she wants to--but she also senses something is wrong. And is prepared to pull her pistols out to stop someone from doing someone heinous, or to perform a Sending if someone dies here... whichever comes first.

And what the heck, did I just write? LOL.

Some other pairings I love that weren’t featured here, because I didn’t know how to fit them in and this probably already has too many people: Zidane and Garnet from Final Fantasy IX, Percy and Annabeth from Percy Jackson, Will and Elizabeth from Pirates of the Caribbean, Raoul and Christine from Phantom of the Opera, Eren and Mikasa from Attack on Titan, Snow and Serah from Final Fantasy XIII, perhaps Clark and Lana from Smallville. And maybe even Yozora and Nameless Star from Verum Rex, even though them and Noctluna are cut from the same cloth, etc.:)

Thanks for such a fun ask!

[aboveallarescuer]

I love that Daenerys Targaryen has significant parallels with all the major ASOIAF characters (as well as with many of the minor and the historical ones too). I love that comparing and contrasting her with them almost always highlights her epicness and/or how special her place in the narrative is.

Daenerys Targaryen is not just a queen, she’s a queen regnant and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, i.e., a she-king. This means that she can be compared and contrasted not only with Cersei and Margaery or with Alysanne and the other Targaryen queens consort, but also (in fact, especially) with Stannis and Robb or with Aegon the Conqueror and the other Targaryen monarchs that succeeded him.

Daenerys Targaryen is not just a claimant to the Iron Throne like Stannis, Young Griff and Renly, she’s the only one of them who is a POV character.

Daenerys Targaryen is not just one of the POV rulers, she also happens to be the only POV ruler with power in her own right and who isn’t in a subservient position in any way (Jon is Lord Commander, but he’s also the king’s advisor and is running the equivalent of a penal colony, so the stakes are much lower than Daenerys ruling a city and dealing with opposition from half the world; Tyrion and Ned are Hands of the King; Cersei is queen regent, which means that her power stems from Tommen’s kingship). Also, Daenerys has the clearest parallels with Aragorn and her ADWD storyline was deliberately written by GRRM as a response to the lack of information from Tolkien about what makes Aragorn a good king. Finally, if one compares her ADWD storyline with Jon’s, one can see how many roles she occupies at the same time: the administrator (Jon), the monarch (Stannis), the most magical character linked to fire and prophecies (Melisandre) and the leader of the disenfranchised (Mance; note that Daenerys was forced to leave her homeland, was enslaved and currently doesn’t belong anywhere - that’s the exact same situation of many of the former slaves of Slaver’s Bay, who come from different places and have different races, ethnicities and backgrounds. Daenerys empathized with them right away because she is one of them. Her detractors may accuse her of being an outsider, but that’s because they prioritize the viewpoint of the Ghiscari slavers. The freedmen, like Daenerys, come from many different places and are outsiders to the noblemen too).

Daenerys Targaryen is an extraordinary conqueror and strategist. Aegon the Conqueror made the Westerosi bend the knee with the help of his dragons, 15-year-old Daenerys Targaryen overthrew the slave masters primarily thanks to her own battle plans, not her dragons. Robb Stark captured castles in the westerlands motivated by personal injury and his actions had local impact; Daenerys Targaryen conquered three cities motivated by her desire to abolish slavery and her actions had worldwide impact.

Daenerys Targaryen is not a typical member of her family, she is the main leader and representative of House Targaryen in a way that Jon/Bran/Arya/Sansa or Cersei/Jaime/Tyrion can’t ever claim to be. Their fathers Ned Stark and Tywin Lannister had large roles in the main story and, in the Starks’ case, their older brother Robb is more well-remembered than any of them (at least so far). Meanwhile, Daenerys’s father Aerys II was already dead before she was born and before the main story began, which allowed her to carve her own path outside of his influence. Moreover, her accomplishments are already greater than both of her older brothers’. She became the face of her family in a way that matches (in fact, even surpasses) Ned with House Stark and Tywin with House Lannister.

Daenerys Targaryen is not a typical mother, she’s both Mother of Dragons and Mhysa. Her motherhood is transcendental in a way that Catelyn’s or Cersei’s aren’t because it is not related to blood ties or to her fertility. Instead, it’s associated with her unprecedented feat of reviving an extinct species, with her ability to make up the magic as she goes along, with her leadership, with her revolutionary nature, with her compassion for thousands of people. Additionally, unlike the other major mothers, Daenerys is the only one who isn’t doomed to go “mad” despite all the losses and hardships she faced.

Daenerys Targaryen is a hero, which is especially clear when her actions are contrasted with House Stark’s, whose brand of “heroism” has been mostly to react to personal injury so far. Ned Stark participated in Robert's Rebellion because his father and brother were killed. Ned’s son Robb wanted Northern independence because his father was killed. Ned’s vassals want to start another war in the name of the Starks because of their loyalty and their outrage about the Red Wedding. Their motivations, sympathetic as they may be, have never involved the commoners. In contrast, GRRM had Daenerys empathize with the former slaves, start a war in their name and abolish slavery despite them not being associated with her through oath of fealty or blood relations or lands. She was specifically singled out by the author as the one leader who “wants equality for everyone”. It’s a stark contrast (pun intended) to the actions of the main family (at least as a unit) of the story. Sadly, it’s easier (for some fans) to root for the heroes mostly reacting to personal injury who never made any mistakes of large scale consequences since they never got to be in authority. Or for the heroes fighting against ice zombies (though, to be fair, Jon haven’t even faced them in ADWD, his main challenge was to conciliate the Free Folk and the Night’s Watch, so the stakes of his storyline are much lower when one compares his problems with Dany dealing with enemies from all over Essos raising armies to defeat her). It’s harder to do the same with the hero who takes an active stance against social injustices and who wrestles with hard questions about when political violence is justified (which never have easy, clear-cut answers) and all the negative ramifications that come with them.

Oh, and have I mentioned that Daenerys Targaryen is the character with the most overt clues of being Azor Ahai/Prince That Was Promised/Stallion Who Mounts the World? Like with the birth of the dragons, uniting all the khalasars and then leading humanity to victory against the Others will be two more unparalleled feats of hers among the characters of the current timeline. Additionally, as she becomes surrounded and influenced by prophecies, we get to see how Daenerys has a healthy relationship with them in contrast to other characters like Cersei and Stannis.

All these attributes and accomplishments are made even more remarkable when one contrasts them with what doesn’t necessarily make Daenerys Targaryen unique. Yes, Daenerys became the most powerful person in her world, but she also lived in poverty among lowborn people without the privilege of a castle or a formal education, which lends itself to comparisons with Davos and Melisandre. Yes, Daenerys is a queen, but she’s also a young girl who loves songs and stories and idealizes her family members, which lends itself to comparisons with Arya, Brienne and Sansa. Yes, Daenerys is a loving, compassionate mother, but she was also raised by her abuser throughout all of her formative years, which lends itself to comparisons with dysfunctional families like the Lannisters, the Greyjoys and the Cleganes. And so on.

Daenerys Targaryen has a very special place in the narrative, which I think should be acknowledged not only to appreciate her character, but also to understand why GRRM chose to isolate her from everyone else. Why would GRRM be confident that his readers would still be interested in Daenerys despite the fact that she doesn’t interact with any of his other major characters for most of the story? Is it merely because of her dragons, as her detractors say?

No.

It’s because, as the list above showed, Daenerys’s narrative importance and accomplishments are unmatched. They had to be. Daenerys’s character and storyline had to be connected to pretty much everyone else’s in significant, thematic ways in order for her to earn an entire continent, as well as her place as the Fire of ASOIAF. That is why Daenerys is guaranteed to have a major role in all the three main plotlines of ASOIAF. That is why Daenerys is so iconic and represents this book series in a way that no individual Stark could ever do. That is why Daenerys has to be so many things at the same time: a POV character and a claimant to the Iron Throne, a mother and the main representative of her family, the most powerful person in her world and a former slave, a ruler and a conqueror, a she-king and a young girl, quite possibly the story’s main hero and savior. That no other ASOIAF character can come close to her narrative importance or to her in-universe accomplishments is kind of the point because Daenerys had to encompass everything that is great about ASOIAF in order to carry her own storyline. And I'm excited for TWOW because, as she moves closer to Westeros, her importance will only increase more and more.

Daenerys Targaryen is like fine wine. She gets better and better the more time passes, the more you think about her and the more you realize how all the other ASOIAF storylines somehow lead back to hers. Dany’s storyline almost always looks that much more epic and greater in comparison to them because she carries her storyline on her own, so the author had to make sure she caught our attention.

[evax3]

what’s your opinion on parallels ppl like to draw?

like

sansa & lysa vs Sansa & Cat

Jon & rhaehar vs jon & lyanna

Aegon & Rhaehar vs Aegon & Elia

Dany & Aegon I vs Dany & Aerys

Arya & Lyanna vs Arya & Brandon

Sansa & Lyanna vs Sansa & Cersei

Arya & Cat vs Arya & Ned

Thanks so much for stopping by anon and for leaving this really cool question! I’m such a sucker for parallels and symbolism, so I do have a few opinions about these characters (Sansa, Dany and Jon under the cut – no opinions about Aegon) and had a lot of fun writing them down!! ❤️

Arya

What I really liked, and what stood out for me the most (in the show), is that after Arya accepted that she wasn't No One but indeed Arya Stark of Winterfell and came back to Westeros, she very much took on Ned's appearance. She gets dressed and wears her hair the same way Ned does, and shows confidentially that she takes right after her father, where her being the only one in the pack (beside Jon) who inherited the Stark-look (long face, brown hair, and grey eyes) wasn’t something she was actually proud of as a child. 

There are many more parallels between these two (the Baratheon friendship, the dislike of the southern culture and the people at court, their sense of loyalty, …) but what I like most is her understanding of the death sentence and how Arya has internalized Ned's teachings. The one who speaks the sentence must also carry out the killing. It is the opposite of what she is taught by the faceless men and in the end it is also one of the reasons why she realizes that she can never be truly No One. Which, I guess, is why she showed her face to every one of her kills that was on her list of names (at least in the show, but I'm sure it will be similar in the books).

I never thought much about the parallels to Lyanna, except that she also had the typical look from the north and was also much wilder than is expected for a noble-born woman. Probably it is one of the reasons why Ned encourages Arya’s nature instead of scolding her for it. But I think it says more about the relationship Ned had with either his sister and his daughter.

As for Cate I think the most striking parallel is probably their cunning. Which Sansa also inherited from her mother, and Ned unfortunately never managed to master, because he is too driven by honor. As women, all three are underestimated in this world, and yet (and perhaps because of this) manage to outsmart the men around them. For example, when Arya names Jaqen H'ghar as her third name in order to escape from Harrenhal, that was pretty damn clever and something that her mother would have done as well. 

Also, and sadly, their desire for vengeance is something that shapes and drives both characters (referring to Lady Stoneheart in the books) too. Because of that, I'm really curious if they will ever meet (if the next book ever gets published) and if there will be any revenge for Arya against the Frey's at all. 

Sansa

Just as Arya takes on Ned's appearance, Sansa does it with Catelyn's in the later seasons. I think this is particularly interesting because in the beginning, during her time in KL, she copied Cersei's hair and clothes, and later she copied Margaery’s. It shows her role models at each stage and it's particularly striking that at the end she takes on her mother's look, just as Cersei adapts that of her father Tywin. 

Even if the comparison between Arya and Lyanna is drawn much more often, I always found that Sansa and her aunt have much more parallels. The beauty of the two is something that is often highlighted in the story, emphasized, for example, as Rhaegar names Lyanna the queen of love and beauty at the tourney at Harrenhal, similar to Loras giving Sansa a rose at the Hand's tourney. I suspect that for both women this circumstance has led to their intelligence and other abilities being greatly underestimated, if not overlooked, in their very male-dominated world. 

Fortunately, Sansa has the chance to evolve into self-empowerment, which I think is the main focus of her journey, whereas Lyanna died way too early to achieve that. She was forced to marry a man she didn't want (Robert), (as was Sansa btw), so Lyanna saw the only way to prevent that in running away with Rhaegar. And I can imagine that early Sansa, the little romantic that she is, would have made a similar decision. 

I don't like that many say Sansa acts like Cersei in the later seasons because she admires her. I don't think that's the case at all. Cersei only acts out of self-interest (and sometimes, especially in the books, quite stupidly). Sansa, on the other hand, does what is right for her people. She combines her mother's strength with her father's understanding of the Northerners. 

She is cunning as Cate, which is not a bad quality per se, and develops an understanding when someone tries to manipulate her. At the same time, she always has the well-being of her people in focus, which Cersei definitely doesn’t. Which is why I think Sansa is a good queen and is just right to take Robb's place (the obvious choice if she were a man) and Cersei is absolutely terrible at her job.

Jon

I have to say, for Jon it’s almost the hardest to give an accurate answer, because the character (especially in the later seasons) differs a lot between book and show.  Regarding the show, I would say that Jon doesn’t have much in common with his birth parents, because he really is the reincarnation of Ned, the honorable fool, as he calls himself. Always trying to do the right thing, even if it goes against his heart’s desire.  

Rhaegar, on the other hand, does exactly the opposite in the plot for which we know him best. And even if his relationship with Lyanna is often categorized as incredibly romantic, it is one thing above all: selfish. Show!Jon couldn't be more the opposite.

Jon is a good leader, as Rhaegar was, or at least is praised to be. Both have melancholic tendencies, and at least book!Jon, has a tendency to sarcasm (at least in his thoughts) where it is said about Rhaegar , he often had an ironic undertone in his voice (according to Jaime)

Rhaegar is musical, interested in the fine arts, Jon doesn't really show interest in that. What they do have in common is a belief in something that is more than what the eye perceives. For Rhaegar this means believing in prophecies and such things, and Jon is not atheistic either, even if he lives out his beliefs in the Old Gods less than some other characters. Both of them are highly valued by their followers and I think also for both of them this is a quality that shapes their character a lot. 

Still, I have to say that for me the background of Rhaegar and Lyanna's relationship, the consequences especially for Elia and her children, but also for the whole country will always be in the spotlight.  

I've already read several metas that say book!Jon takes more after his birth father because his motives and actions are also less moral (e.g. only giving food to the people of the Free Folk who are willing to fight for the Night's Watch – a huge difference to the show version). Still, I would say Jon is more pragmatic than selfish, another area where Rhaegar would have needed to catch up if he’d been given the chance.

Daenerys

Whereas it was more difficult for me to think about Rhaegar's positive qualities in relation to Jon, I have to say that it was easier for me in relation to Dany. This might be because Daenerys is so frequently compared to Rhaegar as a compliment. Not only in her looks, but also with her intelligence, her determination and in the love that her people have for her. Ser Barristan calls him determined, deliberate, dutiful, and single-minded, all positive qualities that also apply to Dany.

As for Aerys, it's also hard to draw parallels. As I said in another post, I think the Targaryen madness is not really madness (being crazy) but more an obsession, whether it's about religion, dragons, or with Dany, her desire to liberate her people. What we know about Aerys, however, shows that he was indeed sick, paranoid, after his captivity. That is something different and not something I see or suspect with Dany. 

What I have found, though, are explanations about the young Aerys, which at some points apply to her:

In his youth, while not being the most intelligent, nor the most diligent of princes, he was described as having an undeniable charm. He was generous, handsome and resolute, although somewhat quick to anger. 

In the same paragraph, however, it is said that he was vain, proud, and fickle, qualities that made him easy prey for sycophants and sycophants. While Dany is proud, she quickly develops over the course of the story into a person who sees through the manipulation attempts of those around her and is clever enough to avoid them. 

There might be a possibility that through a traumatic experience (like for Viserys selling his mother's crown) her obsession finally drives her to take more drastic measures to achieve her goal. However, I think it's unlikely that Dany actually drifts into absolute madness like her father and burns down an entire city without thinking. She is much too reflective for that. Should she actually go completely ‘Fire and Blood’, then I think it will be a very conscious decision, rather than an impulsive one.

[une-nuit-pour-se-souvenir]

Aegon VI Targaryen = Viserys

When she opened it, she found piles of the finest velvets and damasks the Free Cities could produce … and resting on top, nestled in the soft cloth, three huge eggs.  (...) Another was pale cream streaked with gold.

Hypothesis: Aegon VI Targaryen = Viserion

“The cream-and-gold I call Viserion. Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not.”

What Viserys couldn’t do? Be crowned as the Kng of the Seven Kingdoms. In the show, Aegon VI does not exist. However, Cersei was crowned as the Queen of the “Seven Kingdoms and she employs the golden company. It is likely that Cersei’s story was based on Aegon’s.

Viserys was “crowned” though... a golden crown.

"You cannot touch me, I am the dragon, the dragon, and I will be crowned!"

Khal Drogo unfastened his belt. The medallions were pure gold, massive and ornate, each one as large as a man's hand. He shouted a command. Cook slaves pulled a heavy iron stew pot from the firepit, dumped the stew onto the ground, and returned the pot to the flames. Drogo tossed in the belt and watched without expression as the medallions turned red and began to lose their shape. She could see fires dancing in the onyx of his eyes. A slave handed him a pair of thick horsehair mittens, and he pulled them on, never so much as looking at the man.

Viserys began to scream the high, wordless scream of the coward facing death. He kicked and twisted, whimpered like a dog and wept like a child, but the Dothraki held him tight between them. (...)

When the gold was half-melted and starting to run, Drogo reached into the flames, snatched out the pot. "Crown!" he roared. "Here. A crown for Cart King!" And upended the pot over the head of the man who had been her brother. 

The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk to smoldering … yet no drop of blood was spilled.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.

Viserys is held down by the Dothraki preventing him from escape, while Drogo uphends the melted gold upon his head. Similarly, Cersei was held down in King’s Landing by the Dothraki preventing her from escape, while (Danerys upon) Drogon burned the castle upon her head.

Danerys usurps Viserys, despite him being the rightful king. More, she doesn’t believe Viserys is a true dragon because he was killed by fire.  It’s safe to assume she’ll justify her actions the same for Aegon. He burns with the rest, he’s no true dragon either.

Its in the House of Undying prophecies as well...

three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . .(...) Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . . 

There’s the gold and there’s the corpse... but also, a bride of fire.

She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step closer to the conflagration, but the brazier had not been hot enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she thought.

Danerys turns King’s Landing into Aegon’s funeral pyre. Evil.

What else? All of Viserion’s mentions are listed below... and some of them fit what we saw in the show.

A Clash of Kings

“The cream-and-gold I call Viserion. Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not.” (ACOK ~ Danerys I)

As said, Aegon will be crowned King of the Seven Kingdoms, doing what Viserys could not. If show!Cersei took over book!Aegon’s role... this fits.

How long the city had been deserted she could not know, but the white walls, so beautiful from afar, were cracked and crumbling when seen up close. Inside was a maze of narrow crooked alleys. The buildings pressed close, their facades blank, chalky, windowless. Everything was white, as if the people who lived here had known nothing of color. They rode past heaps of sun-washed rubble where houses had fallen in, and elsewhere saw the faded scars of fire. At a place where six alleys came together, Dany passed an empty marble plinth. Dothraki had visited this place before, it would seem. Perhaps even now the missing statue stood among the other stolen gods in Vaes Dothrak. She might have ridden past it a hundred times, never knowing. On her shoulder, Viserion hissed. (ACOK ~ Danerys I)

Vaes Tolorro, the city of bones , a city sacked by Dothraki and that they think is filled with ghosts. Six alleys coming together at an empty marble plinth. A city beautiful from afar, cracked and and crumbling up close. Similarly, King’s Landing, the city of ashes, after Danerys and the Dothraki are finished sacking it. Six dragon roads coming together at the capital. A city that Danerys believes to be beatiful from afar, but she’ll reduce to ruins once she comes close. Fits.

She wondered whether Aegon's Red Keep had a pool like this, and fragrant gardens full of lavender and mint. It must, surely. Viserys always said the Seven Kingdoms were more beautiful than any other place in the world. The thought of home disquieted her. If her sun-and-stars had lived, he would have led his khalasar across the poison water and swept away her enemies, but his strength had left the world. Her bloodriders remained, sworn to her for life and skilled in slaughter, but only in the ways of the horselords. The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them. Dany had no wish to reduce King's Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. (ACOK ~ Danerys I)

Not even subtle... Fits..

[Robert Baratheon] sent me poisoned wine, yet I live and he is gone. "What was the manner of his death?" On her shoulder, pale Viserion flapped wings the color of cream, stirring the air. (ACOK ~ Danerys II)

In the show, Varys tried to poison Danerys because she’s crazy. In the books, Varys is #TeamAegon. It’s likely Varys will try to poison her on his behalf. Fits, though the motive will most likely be another.

Drogon was curled up beneath her arm, as hot as a stone that has soaked all day in the blazing sun. Rhaegal and Viserion were fighting over a scrap of meat, buffeting each other with their wings as smoke hissed from their nostrils. (ACOK ~ Danerys III)

Aegon and whoever stands in for Rhaegal (Jon), fighting over something. It’s likely they’ll fight over north / vale / riverlands. This happens while Drogon (Danerys) soaks beneath the sun (Slaver’s Bay, Volantis, you know the warm places, etc). Speculation for book only, most likely Jon and Aegon will naturally clash in TWOW / ADOS, while Danerys is terrorising beyond the narrow sea.

A STORM OF SWORDS

Rhaegal and Viserion were the size of small dogs, Drogon only a little larger, and any dog would have out-weighed them; they were all wings and neck and tail, lighter than they looked. And so Daenerys Targaryen must rely on wood and wind and canvas to bear her home. (ASOS ~ Danerys I)

Most likely, just an introduction. Could indicate Danerys’ forces will outmatch Jon and Aegon separately though. In the show, this fit for #TeamJon.

"Well, how long does a dragon live?" She looked up as Viserion swooped low over the ship, his wings beating slowly and stirring the limp sails. (ASOS ~ Danerys I)

A dragon lives until you kill them. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly.. Fits.

So I see. Dracarys?"

All three dragons turned their heads at the sound of that word, and Viserion let loose with a blast of pale gold flame that made Ser Jorah take a hasty step backward. Dany giggled. "Be careful with that word, ser, or they're like to singe your beard off. It means 'dragonfire' in High Valyrian. I wanted to choose a command that no one was like to utter by chance."  (ASOS ~ Danerys I)

All three dragons are eager to fight. “three heads has the dragon”. The Dance of Dragons II.

"The warlocks in Qarth told you that you would be betrayed three times," the exile knight reminded her, as Viserion and Rhaegal began to snap and claw at each other. (ASOS ~ Danerys I)

Not even subtle. “three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . . (...) Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness.

Aegon and Jon, fighting over something. It’s likely they’ll fight as a north  faction versus south faction. Either against each other for the land, or against Danerys to defend each of their factions. Either way, these must be the root of their betrayals. This is speculation for book only, for TWOW / ADOS.

Her sudden laughter made Drogon hiss, and sent Viserion flapping to his perch above the porthole. "The ploy worked well."

The exile knight did not return her smile. "These are Illyrio's ships, Illyrio's captains, Illyrio's sailors . . . and Strong Belwas and Arstan are his men as well, not yours." (ASOS ~ Danerys I)

Viserion turning away from Danerys, once he hears her laugh and Drogon hiss. Similarly, Aegon turned away from Danerys, once Tyrion implies that Danerys wouldn’t take him seriously because she’s more powerful than him (Drogon is bigger than his siblings, he bullies them often). So Aegon takes Illyrion’s ships, captains, sailors, what have you, they are his and not hers. Illyrio is invested in Aegon, not Danerys. Much later, we have this...

I know she is strong. How not? The Dothraki despise weakness. If Daenerys had been weak, she would have perished with Viserys. I know she is fierce. Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen are proof enough of that. (...) Now, how do you suppose this queen will react when you turn up with your begging bowl in hand and say, 'Good morrow to you, Auntie. I am your nephew, Aegon, returned from the dead. I've been hiding on a poleboat all my life, but now I've washed the blue dye from my hair and I'd like a dragon, please … and oh, did I mention, my claim to the Iron Throne is stronger than your own?' "

Aegon's mouth twisted in fury. "I will not come to my aunt a beggar. I will come to her a kinsman, with an army."

"A small army." There, that's made him good and angry. The dwarf could not help but think of Joffrey. I have a gift for angering princes. "Queen Daenerys has a large one, and no thanks to you."

Aegon will not beg.... Viserys bristled. "Guard your tongue, Mormont, or I'll have it out. I am no lesser man, I am the rightful Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. The dragon does not beg." I’m not saying Aegon’s like Viserys. I’m saying Aegon is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. It is his by right, not hers. Fits.

Drogon raised his head and screamed, pale smoke venting from his nostrils, and Viserion flapped at her and tried to perch on her shoulder, as he had when he was smaller. "No," Dany said, trying to shrug him off gently.

"You're too big for that now, sweetling." But the dragon coiled his white and gold tail around one arm and dug black claws into the fabric of her sleeve, clinging tightly. Helpless, she sank into Groleo's great leather chair, giggling.  (ASOS ~ Danerys II)

Viserion’s behaviour is interesting. Might suggest Aegon tries to seek an alliance later after all. Speculation.

"They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi," Irri told her. "Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit me." She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.

"Did any of them try to burn their way free?" That was the thing that frightened Dany the most.

"No, Khaleesi. Drogon breathed his fire, but in the empty air. The slaver men feared to come near him." (ASOS ~ Danerys II)

Viserion tried to escape again. Fits.

"Remember. To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.

"Quaithe?" Dany sprung from the bed and threw open the door. Pale yellow lantern light flooded the cabin, and Irri and Jhiqui sat up sleepily. "Khaleesi?" murmured Jhiqui, rubbing her eyes. Viserion woke and opened his jaws, and a puff of flame brightened even the darkest corners. There was no sign of a woman in a red lacquer mask. "Khaleesi, are you unwell?" asked Jhiqui.

"A dream." Dany shook her head. "I dreamed a dream, no more. Go back to sleep. All of us, go back to sleep." Yet try as she might, sleep would not come again. (ASOS ~ Danerys III)

No idea.

Drogon flew almost lazily at Kraznys, black wings beating. As he gave the slaver another taste of fire, Irri and Jhiqui unchained Viserion and Rhaegal, and suddenly there were three dragons in the air. (ASOS ~ Danerys III)

A three way battle  “the dragon has three heads”. The Dance of Dragons II.

"Yunkai will have war," Dany told Whitebeard inside the pavilion. Irri and Jhiqui had covered the floor with carpets while Missandei lit a stick of incense to sweeten the dusty air. Drogon and Rhaegal were asleep atop some cushions, curled about each other, but Viserion perched on the edge of her empty bath. "Missandei, what language will these Yunkai'i speak, Valyrian?" (ASOS ~ Danerys IV)

In this chapter, Danerys threatens Yunkai, the yellow city, whose thematic are a lot of betrayals for... yes, that’s right... gold. The Wise Masters try to bribe her, Danerys steals their gold, Daario kills his boss for beauty (but he’s a sellsword, they only care about gold, and accordingly he dresses in... gold!). There are betrayals... for gold.

Drogon and Rhaegal keep together (alliance) but Viserion breaks away and goes to perch on the edge of the empty bath. Considering what the show did to “Aegon” (Cersei) and considering this, it reminds me of the King’s Landing summit where they agree to fight the Others together but then Cersei breaks faith and never shows up north. Fits, somewhat.

Something similar may happen in the books. The three dragons call a cease fire, but then Aegon shows them the middle finger and conquers King’s Landing (the empty bath) instead. Interestingly, the bath is empty, suggesting there’s nobody in power (maybe the Lannisters / Tyrells finally defeat each other and Aegon seizes the opportunity). Would fit perfectly. Aegon “betrays” for a gold, the golden crown of the Seven Kingdoms (Joff and Tommen’s crown is gold).

"Wise?" Dany sat crosslegged on a cushion, and Viserion spread his white-and-gold wings and flapped to her side. "We shall see how wise they are," she said as she scratched the dragon's scaly head behind the horns. (ASOS ~ Danerys IV)

This is all in the same “betrayal for gold” chapter, so it’s interesting. Maybe after that trolling, Aegon attempts a new alliance. After all...

Griff put a black-gloved hand upon Prince Aegon's shoulder. "Spoken boldly," he said, "but think what you are saying."

"I have," the lad insisted. "Why should I go running to my aunt as if I were a beggar? My claim is better than her own. Let her come to me … in Westeros."

Aegon grows bold, just like the dragons grow bold (this word is used) when they’re chained in the pits, and refuses to be beg. A dragon does not beg.

"When all the slaves have departed, you will open your gates and allow my Unsullied to enter and search your city, to make certain none remain in bondage. If you do this, Yunkai will not be burned or plundered, and none of your people shall be molested. The Wise Masters will have the peace they desire, and will have proved themselves wise indeed. What say you?"

"I say, you are mad."    

"Am I?" Dany shrugged, and said, "Dracarys."

The dragons answered. Rhaegal hissed and smoked, Viserion snapped, and Drogon spat swirling red-black flame. It touched the drape of Grazdan's tokar, and the silk caught in half a heartbeat. Golden marks spilled across the carpets as the envoy stumbled over the chest, shouting curses and beating at his arm until Whitebeard flung a flagon of water over him to douse the flames. "You swore I should have safe conduct!" the Yunkish envoy wailed.

The dragons go cray cray at Daniella’s “madness”. Maybe they rebel against her once she threatens to burn King’s Landing, unless Aegon surrenders. Speculation, but somewhat fits (Jon shanked her when she burned KL).

There’s something here for sure though, Danerys behaved abhorrently here with the Yunkai masters and at the show’s rendition of the dragonpit, trying the same dragon intimidating tactics and breaking safe conduct.

Daario upended the sack, and the heads of Sallor the Bald and Prendahl na Ghezn spilled out upon her carpets. "My gifts to the dragon queen."

Viserion sniffed the blood leaking from Prendahl's neck, and let loose a gout of flame that took the dead man full in the face, blackening and blistering his bloodless cheeks. Drogon and Rhaegal stirred at the smell of roasted meat.

"You did this?" Dany asked queasily. (ASOS ~ Danerys IV)

Daario IS NOT a precious cinnamon roll in search for love. Danerys is stupid.

Her captains bowed and left her with her handmaids and her dragons. But as Brown Ben was leaving, Viserion spread his pale white wings and flapped lazily at his head. One of the wings buffeted the sellsword in his face. The white dragon landed awkwardly with one foot on the man's head and one on his shoulder, shrieked, and flew off again. "He likes you, Ben," said Dany.

"And well he might." Brown Ben laughed. "I have me a drop of the dragon blood myself, you know." (ASOS ~ Danerys V)

Ben is a sellsword who betrays Danerys for... gold!, then reveals that he never betrayed her. Yeah right, LOOOL. As I said, Aegon might seek an alliance later, so Ben’s twice turncloak might alude to that. Would fit that scenario.

I was going to take you home! Her dragons sensed her fury. Viserion roared, and smoke rose grey from his snout. Drogon beat the air with black wings, and Rhaegal twisted his head back and belched flame. I should say the word and burn the two of them. Was there no one she could trust, no one to keep her safe? "Are all the knights of Westeros so false as you two? Get out, before my dragons roast you both. What does roast liar smell like? As foul as Brown Ben's sewers? Go!"   (ASOS ~ Danerys V)  

Dance of Dragons II. Seems to suggest the Jon and Aegon take arms against Danerys once she shows her true bitch colours. Again, suggested before.

There was no sign of Viserion, but when she went to the parapet and scanned the horizon she saw pale wings in the far distance, sweeping above the river. He is hunting. They grow bolder every day. Yet it still made her anxious when they flew too far away. One day one of them may not return, she thought.    (ASOS ~ Danerys VI)

Viserion running away from Danerys. Aegon turned away from Danerys once he grew bolder (a good word to use). Fits.

A DANCE OF DRAGONS

Viserion sensed her disquiet. The white dragon lay coiled around a pear tree, his head resting on his tail. When Dany passed his eyes came open, two pools of molten gold. His horns were gold as well, and the scales that ran down his back from head to tail. "You're lazy," she told him, scratching under his jaw. His scales were hot to the touch, like armor left too long in the sun. Dragons are fire made flesh. She had read that in one of the books Ser Jorah had given her as a wedding gift. "You should be hunting with your brothers. Have you and Drogon been fighting again?" Her dragons were growing wild of late. Rhaegal had snapped at Irri, and Viserion had set Reznak's tokar ablaze the last time the seneschal had called. I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them?    

Viserion's tail lashed sideways, thumping the trunk of the tree so hard that a pear came tumbling down to land at Dany's feet. His wings unfolded, and he half flew, half hopped onto the parapet. He grows, she thought as he launched himself into the sky. (...) She watched Viserion climb in widening circles until he was lost to sight beyond the muddy waters of the Skahazadhan. (ADWD ~ Danerys I)

Fits. Bye bitch. The Martells send their regards.

Dany did not want to talk about the dragons. (...) Down in the pit, Viserion had snapped one of his chains; he and Rhaegal grew more savage every day. Once the iron doors had glowed red-hot, her Unsullied told her, and no one dared to touch them for a day. (ADWD ~ Danerys IV)

The dragons craned their necks around, gazing at them with burning eyes. Viserion had shattered one chain and melted the others. He clung to the roof of the pit like some huge white bat, his claws dug deep into the burnt and crumbling bricks. (ADWD ~ Danerys VIII)

Viserion running away from Danerys’ shackles, likewise Aegon turning away from Danerys’ entrapments and going his own way. Fits.

"The white one is Viserion, the green is Rhaegal. I named them for my brothers." Her voice echoed off the scorched stone walls. It sounded small—a girl's voice, not the voice of a queen and conqueror, nor the glad voice of a new-made bride.

Rhaegal roared in answer, and fire filled the pit, a spear of red and yellow. Viserion replied, his own flames gold and orange. When he flapped his wings, a cloud of grey ash filled the air. Broken chains clanked and clattered about his legs. Quentyn Martell jumped back a foot.

A crueler woman might have laughed at him, but Dany squeezed his hand and said, "They frighten me as well. There is no shame in that. My children have grown wild and angry in the dark."  (...)

They’re not fans of Danerys anymore, not even “sweet” Viserion (he’s the nicest of the three dragons). Rhaegal especially never was, since he’s been biting her hand since before he could fly. Hopefully, they have become fans of each other. Me wants some quality time between the dragon bros, complaining about their shitty father mother.

"All I know of dragons is what my brother told me when I was a girl, and some I read in books, but it is said that even Aegon the Conqueror never dared mount Vhagar or Meraxes, nor did his sisters ride Balerion the Black Dread. Dragons live longer than men, some for hundreds of years, so Balerion had other riders after Aegon died … but no rider ever flew two dragons."

Viserion hissed again. Smoke rose between his teeth, and deep down in his throat they could see gold fire churning.

"They are … they are fearsome creatures."

No idea. Reminds me of that dumb cliff talk in the show tho. Instead of Quentyn being afraid and (later) being killed by Rhaegal, Jon was brave to pet the lizard.

I leave outside this post Barristan’s and Quentyn’s chapters, which have a lot of description. They’re basically about Viserion and Rhaegal breaking free. Of note, Viserion tries to run away from Quentyn (he just wants to be free :<) and Rhaegal kills Quentyn after he raises the leash against his brother (oooh).

[blacksunscorpio]

Scorp you're a genius! So relatable and I love how you don't judge others or anyone who comes to you for help. Keep it up! I just had to ask since I see that you make pop culture references to make analogies with astrology. You've mentioned GoT a few times and im a huge fan! Can you do a quick post on Game of Thrones characters and their potential zodiac signs? I'd love to hear your input! Thank you so much!!

Game of Thrones Characters & Their Zodiac Signs

Aries

Khal Drogo- Impulsive. Warlike. Bloodthirsty. Alpha. Conqueror. Hardcore athlete [did you see him on that horse?] Extremely sexual. Forceful. When he first meets Daenerys, he forces himself on her. Afterward, however, he is the first to go to war if he feels the people around him have been disrespected.

Aerys Targaryen- Impulsive, sadistic. Boastful. imperial. He would be the Emperor [reversed] in Tarot, lol. Not as good with being a tactician as he ought to have been. Cruel. Rage problems. The need to be the first and the best. Fire and blood, anyone?

Taurus

Maergery Tyrell - Classy, wealthy, sexy, laid-back, frank but with an air of elegance. Highgardeners have a love for the finer things in life. A love of fine wines and foods. Beautiful clothing and aesthetics. RICH RICH. Get on their bad side and they will take their time finding a way to subvert your authority.

Robert Baratheon- Love of luxury, bullheaded, strong, takes no shit. Fixed in his opinions of others, highkey jealous. In his youth, he enjoyed the gifts of Venus: Charm, wealth coming from the noble house of Baratheon, widely considered handsome by almost all in the 7 kingdoms. 

Gemini

Tyrion Lannister- Silver-tongued. HIGHKEY intelligent. Social. Charming. Great sense of humor. A freak [in the sheets]. Chatty. Always finds his way out of a sticky situation. Finds a way to use his intel to bolster diplomacy between his family and the families who hate them.

Little Finger- Cunning, quick-witted, works behind the scenes, manipulative, a  snake, jack of all trades. Top dog in the social circles of the 7 Kingdoms. There wasn’t a person who didn’t know of him and his... reputation. He singlehandedly, through his Machiavellian tactics, caused the events of Game of Thrones to unfold. 

Cancer  

Cersei Lannister- Protective, moody, caring [to her kids], motherly, cantankerous, jealous. A savage. People don’t give Cancer’s the credit they deserve in terms of what they’re capable of. Cersei is a prime example of the type of person who can show unrivaled levels of devotion to the one’s they love. “No one matters but us.” She can be cruel because she lets her emotions rule her actions. When her safety is threatened, she makes sure no one else feels safe either. She loves with a ferocity only rivaled by...

Catelyn Stark- Another mother who would die [quite literally] for her children. Fierce, Protective. Doting. JEALOUS. Let’s not forget how she treated Jon all because she believed Ned’s lie about him being a bastard. Followed her son into battle. Damn near lost her hands fighting off Bran’s would-be assassin. 

Leo

Jaime Lannister- Proud. Handsome. Princely. Funny. We seem him go from underdeveloped Leo [arrogant, selfish, bully, prideful, snob, loyal to no one but himself] to developed [Kind, helpful, warm, honest]. Fought bears for his friends. Skilled and proud fighter even without the use of both his hands. Unfortunately, his loyalty caused him to stay loyal to his twin towards the end, but such is the nature of a Leo. They’re hard-pressed to abandon those they truly care for.

Brienne of Tarth- LOYAL. Proud. Devoted. A bit of a flare for drama especially brandishing her sword. Brienne is the definition of Leonine traits. Hard to miss. Devoted to those who show her kindness, i.e Renly, Catelyn, Jaime, Sansa, etc. Always at the front lines in war screaming “STAND YOUR GROUND”. Unrivaled levels of bravery and courage. Not to be fucked with. A true Queen.

Virgo

Samwell Tarley- Intelligent. Scholarly. Methodical. Always with his nose in a book. Unproblematic king. Caught the things everyone else missed, especially when he was an apprentice in Old Towne. Figured out how to cure Jorah Mormont’s affliction on his OWN without any formal training. Genius.

Lord Varys- Remember, Virgo is also ruled by Mercury who is the most cunning of the planetary rulers. Varys always had a spy to collect intel on everyone. A tactician. Never lost his temper. Always had the scoop but didn’t partake in gossip for gossip's sake. Not afraid to be critical or tell those “in charge” his opinion. We can see this specifically when he critiques Aerys, Daenerys, and Robert. 

Libra

Davos Seaworth- a skilled diplomat. Davos is always seen seeking balance and fairness in the situations he finds himself in. The minute you see this man in a scene you know he’s going to give a moving speech and get someone out fo a sticky situation. He convinced the Iron Bank to support Stannis. Convinced Daenerys to entertain Jon Snow when they traveled to Dragonstone. Always breaking up a fight. He is in full support of law and order, especially when he called for Melisandre’s head after discovering her part in Shireen’s death [RIP.]

Rhaegar Targaryen- Had a love of music. Harmony. Balance. He brought two families together [Stark and Targaryen]. He was also blessed by Venus in my opinion because he was said to be extremely handsome. A fabulous singer. A fighter yes, but a lover first. Very good with diplomacy but not the best with defending himself against his cousin sign, Taurus [Robert Baratheon].

Scorpio

Daenerys Targaryen- Many see her as an Aries but I have to respectfully disagree. Daenerys is a Scorpio in my opinion. Remember, Scorpio is honorary fire. She was literally “reborn from the ashes”. A Phoenix, Scorpio’s final form. She went from a silent and meek girl to a skilled and commanding Empress. Unlike Arians, she did not jump headfirst into battle. It took many arrows in her dragons, many slights to her ego, copious council from her advisors, dozens of her loved ones lost for her to go nuclear. Like her father, she hungered for power, a very Scorpionic trait. However she, unlike her father, listened to reason [Jorah, Tyrion, and Barristan Selmy]. She had a long fuse until she didn’t, and then that’s when she rained fire and blood on everyone in King’s Landing. She was skilled at retribution and was unapologetic with it *cough* the Tarleys *cough*.. Unlike Arians who pop off at the drop of a hat, she gave her enemies fair warning if/when they crossed her.

Arya Stark- You already know what it is with this one. Arya is pretty much death [Pluto], personified. Stealthy. A tactician. VENGEFUL. I think we all fist-pumped when she served Filch Walder Frey his sons in that pie. Never forgets a slight. Keeps a list of people who’ve wronged her [All Scorpios can probably relate]. You never see her coming. She is “no-one”. She is the assassin that slips through the back. She may seem calm at first but trust that she has been planning your downfall for a while. LOYAL. The definition of a Scorpio.

Melisandre- Dark. Mysterious. Unafraid of the occult. So much of her life is unknown and I’m sure that’s how she preferred it. Even her Lord of light was mysterious. Strong supernatural abilities and highkey psychic. Knew immediately how many “eyes” Arya would “close.” Had ties to the underworld which is demonstrated with her ability to resurrect the dead. Came through at the clutch in the last battle wielding fire [Mars] with her witchcraft. It’s no secret that Scorpios are some of the most skilled in sorcery.

Sagittarius

Missandei- Exotic. From Naath which is an island just above the mysterious continent of Sothoryos. A world traveler. Lucky enough to escape slavery [until the end]. Jupiter's influence is here in my opinion because she is so kind and friendly. Also a polyglot and gifted with the ability to speak 19 languages. Her fire is seen at the end of the series when she tells her best friend “Dracarys”-- meaning “fire” in High Valyrian. She isn’t afraid to call wrath down on others.

Olenna Tyrell- Loud, unapologetically blunt, zero-filter, feisty. Olenna to me is the definition of Sagittarius. Always speaks her mind. Clap back queen. Will call you out. Was also quite promiscuous in her younger years. Very charismatic and extremely likable despite her penchant for saying whatever was on her mind.

Capricorn

Tywin Lannister- I can’t see the patriarch of the most notorious family in Westeros being anything other than a Capricorn. Methodical. Structured. Business-minded. Karmic [A "Lannister always repays his debts"] Cold. Cruel. Unfeeling. Like Saturn, he is the father figure. Basically ran the 7 Kingdoms for Aerys, [which was probably why the latter was so salty towards him.] Always has a plan. The man you want in charge if we’re strictly talking about law and order. Vindictive [had the mountain kill Elia because Rhaegar rejected Cersei.] He’s the ultimate son-of-a-bitch.

Jon Snow- Brooding hero that he is, Bae Jon Snow is without a doubt a Capricorn in my eyes. Duty-bound. Serious. A leader in his own right. Could also be cold and unfeeling in terms of distributing karmic justice. Lest we forget the “fetch-me-a-block” situation with Janos Slynt. In addition, the moment he was resurrected he took vengeance against the black brothers who betrayed him. Saturn, Like Pluto, is all about karmic justice. The beating he put on Ramsey after The Battle of the Bastards was one thousand percent a karmic beating. A proper lover as well, according to Ygritte, Jon also knew how to handle himself in the bedroom, a trait very akin to Capricorns.

Aquarius

Bran Stark- I thought about making Bran a Pisces, but then I changed my mind. Remember Uranus rules sudden insights and hardcore psychic receptivity. It also rules sudden and unexpected catastrophes or surprises/ sudden breaks. Bran suffered a literal “tower” moment at the beginning of the series which resulted in his psychic powers developing. Once he became the three-eyed raven, he became very detached from the world.

Grey Worm- Aquarius is also androgynous. Grey Worm is a eunuch. He is always down to fight for a cause though, specifically his queen’s. Cares about others, specifically Missandei, and was seen towards the latter season speaking up for the Unsullied against the slavers. Fierce combatant but also very detached. His job is his job.

Pisces

Jaqen H’ghar- Much like Neptune, Pisces’ ruler Jaqen has a mysterious and illusive personality. He wears “many faces”. Skilled at illusion and very very intuitive. Has a soft side though which is clearly seen with how he treats Arya. Hardly ever flies off the handle. Calm. Cool. Collected.

Hodor- Sweet and gentle giant, Hodor is a Pisces to me. Affected by psychic trauma, it’s revealed why “Hodor” is the only thing he can say. Calm. A bit of a baby. Caring. Easily adaptable [think of all the terrain he carried Bran through]

Eddard Stark- I don't care what anyone says, Ned stark to me represents the most developed form of a Pisces. Like the Hanged-Man in Tarot that represents sacrifice and which Neptune Rules, he willingly sacrificed his reputation as honorable for his sister, Lyanna. He later sacrifices himself for his children when he died at Joffrey’s [little bitch] command. He is wise. Though appears cold, he is actually a well of feeling and caring. Unfortunately, he also suffered from the naivety of Neptunian influence which is why he wasn’t very skilled at the Game of Thrones, which calls for more tactical ruthlessness. Pisceans however also have the rage of Poseidon flowing through their veins [which people like to forget]. This was displayed when he pinned Petyr Baelish to the Wall in King’s Landing for daring to dishonor Cat by inviting her into a Brothel. RIP, King Stark.

[brianwilly]

Game of Thrones did the thing that a couple of shows do where...it likes feminism.  It understood that feminism is important.  It wanted to be feminist.  It was cognizant of the fact that its setting was brazenly and intentionally misogynistic, and so it was even more important for its independent narrative to empower its female characters instead of mindlessly reinforcing the toxic beliefs of its own fictional world.  The whole point of the story, after all, was “this society is toxic, can our heroes survive it?” and so the narrative was voluntarily self-critical.

And so it knew to give us badass assassin Arya.  It knew to give us stalwart knight Brienne.  It gave us the pirate queen and the dragon queen and the Sansa getting revenge after revenge upon all the men who’d wronged her, and far more besides, and it talked big about breaking chains and how much men fucked things up and how great it would be if only women were in charge and et cetera et cetera.  And it’s, in fact, all actually really good that it had those things.  And because there were so very many moving parts of this story, it was super easy to look at those certain moving parts and think, yeah, they’ve done it!  They done good!

And it’s easy to forget and forgive -- to want to forget and forgive -- all the dead prostitutes that were on this show and the rapes used as motivation and fridgings and objectifications and the...y’know, whatever the hell Dorne was and Lady Stoneheart who? It’s easy to forget that this show actually played its hand a long time ago in regards to, like, what its relationship with feminism was going to be, and then kept playing the same hand again and again, to disappointing results.

Game of Thrones likes feminism.  It wanted to be feminist.  But its relationship with feminism was still predicated on some of the same old narratives and the same old storytelling trends that have disempowered female characters in the past, and so any progressive ideas it might have about women in its setting were nonetheless going to be constrained by those old fetters. As a result, its portrayal of women varied anywhere from glorious to admirable to predictable to downright cringeworthy.

New ideas require new vessels, new stories, in which to house them.  And for Game of Thrones, the ultimate story that it wanted to tell -- the ultimate driving force and thesis statement around which it was basing its entire journey and narrative -- was unfortunately a very old one, and one very familiar to the genre.

“Powerful women are scary.”

(Yes, I’m obviously making Yet Another Daenerys Essay On The Internet here)

So we have this character, this girl really, a slave girl who was sold and abused, and then she overcomes that abuse to gain power, she gains dragons, and she uses that power to fight slavery.  She fights slavery really well, like, she’s super hella good at it.  Her command of dragons is the most overt portrayal of “superpowers” in this world; she is the single most powerful person in this story, more powerful than any other character and the contest is not close.

But then...something really bad happens and oops, she gets really emotional about it and then she’s not fighting slavery anymore...she’s kinda doing the opposite!  This girl who was once a hero and a liberator of slaves instead becomes an out-of-control scary Mad Queen who kills a ton of innocent people and has to be taken down by our true heroes for the good of the world.

That’s the theme.  That’s the takeaway here.  That’s how it all ends, with one of the most primitive, archaic propaganda ever spread by writers, that women with power are frightening, they are crazy, they will use that power for ill.  Women with power are witches.  They are Amazons.  They will lop off our manhoods and make slaves of us.  They seduce our rightful kings and send our kingdoms to ruin.   They cannot control their emotions. They get hot flashes and start wars.  They turn into Dark Phoenixes and eat suns.  They are robot revolutionaries who will end humanity.  Powerful women are scary.

And let me emphasize that the theme here is not, in fact, that all power corrupts, because the whole Mad Queen concept for Daenerys actually ends up failing one of the more fundamental litmus tests available when it comes to representation of any kind: “would this story still happen if Dany was a man?” And the fact is that it would not.   And indeed we know this for a fact because “protagonist starts out virtuous, gains power in spite of the hardships set against him, gets corrupted by that power, and ends up being the bad guy” didn’t happen, and doesn’t happen, to the guys in the very same story that we’re examining.  It doesn’t happen to Jon Snow, Dany’s closest and most intentional narrative parallel.  It doesn’t happen to Bran Stark, a character whose entire journey is about how he embroils himself in wild dark winter magic beyond anyone’s understanding and loses his humanity in the process.  In fact, the only other character who ever got hinted of going “dark” because of the power that they’re obtaining is Arya, the girl who spent seven seasons training to fight, to become powerful, to circumvent the gender role she was saddled with in this world...and then being told at the end of her story, “Whoa hey slow down be careful there, you wouldn’t wanna get all emotional and become a bad person now wouldja?” by a man.

(meanwhile Sansa’s just sitting off in the side pouting or whatever ‘cuz her main arc this season was to, like, be annoyed at people really hard I guess)

‘Cuz that’s the danger with the girls and not the boys, ain’t it?  Arya and Jon are both great at killing people, but there is no Dark Jon story while we have to take extra special care to watch for Arya’s precious fragile humanity.  Dany has the power of dragons while Bran has the power of the old gods, but we will not find Dark Lord Bran, Soulless Scourge of Westeros, onscreen no matter how much sense it should make. “Power corrupts” is literally not a trend that afflicts male heroes on the same level that it afflicts female heroes.

Oh sure, there are corrupt male characters everywhere, tyrants and warlords and mafia bosses and drug dealers and so forth all over your TVs, and not even necessarily portrayed as outright villains; anti-heroes are nothing new.  But we’re talking about the hero hero here; the Harry Potters, the Luke Skywalkers, the Peter Parkers.  The Jon Snows.   They interact with corruptive power, yes; it’s an important aspect of their journeys.  But the key here being that male heroes would overcome that corruption and come through the other side better off for it.  They get to come away even more admirable for the power that they have in a way that is generally not afforded towards female heroes.

There are exceptions, of course; no trends are absolutely absolute one way or the other. For instance, the closest male parallel you’d find for the “being powerful is dangerous and will corrupt your noble heroic intentions” trope in popular media would be the character of Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequel trilogy...ie, a preexisting character from a preexisting story where he was conceived as the villainous foil for the heroes.  Like, Anakin being a poor but kindhearted slave who eventually becomes seduced by the dark side certainly matches Dany’s arc, but it wasn’t the character’s original story and role.  And even then?...notice how Anakin as Vader the Dark Lord gets treated with the veneer of being “badass” and “cool” by the masses.  A male character with too much power -- even if it’s dark power, even if it’s corruptive -- has the range to be seen as something appealingly formidable, and not just as an obstacle that has to be dealt with or a cautionary tale to be pitied.

And in one of the few times that this trope was played completely straight, completely unironically with a male hero -- I’m thinking specifically of Hal Jordan the Green Lantern, of “Ryan Reynolds played him in the movie” fame -- the fans went berserk.  They could not let it go.  The fact that this character would go mad with power because a tragedy happened in his life was completely unacceptable, the story gained notoriety as a bad decision by clueless writers, and today the story in question has been retconned -- retroactively erased from continuity -- so that the character can be made heroic and virtuous again.  That’s how big a deal it was when a male hero with the tiniest bit of a fan following goes off the deep end.

To be clear, I’m not here to quibble over whether the story of Dany turning evil was good or bad, because we all know that’s going to be the de facto defense for this situation: “But she had to go mad!  It was for the sake of the story!“ as if the writers simply had no choice, they were helpless to the whims of the all-powerful Story God which dictates everything they write, and the most prominent female character of their series simply had to go bonkers and murder a bajillion babies and then get killed by her boyfriend or else the story just wouldn’t be good, y’know?  Ultimately though, that’s not what I’m arguing here, because it doesn’t actually matter.  There have been shitty stories about powerful women being bad.  There have been impressive stories about powerful women being bad.  Either way, the fact that people can’t seem to stop telling stories about powerful women being bad is a problem in and of itself.  Daenarys’ descent into Final Boss-dom could’ve been the most riveting, breathtaking, masterfully-written pieces of art ever and it’d still be just another instance of a female hero being unable to handle her power in a big long list of instances of this shitty trope.  The trope itself doesn’t become unshitty just because you write it well.

It all ultimately boils down to the very different ways that men and women -- that male heroes and female heroes -- continue to be portrayed in stories, and particularly in genre media.  In TV, we got Dany, and then we also have Dolores Abernathy in Westworld who was a gentle android that was abused and victimized for her entire existence, who shakes off the shackles of her programming to lead her race in revolution against their abusers...and then promptly becomes a ruthless maniac who ends up lobotomizing the love of her life and ends the season by voluntarily keeping a male android around to check her cruel impulses.  Comic book characters like Jean Grey and Wanda Maximoff are two of the most powerful people in their universe but are always, in-universe, made to feel guilty about their power and, non-diegetically, writers are always finding ways to disempower them because obviously they can’t be trusted with that much power and entire multiple sagas have been written about just how bad an idea it is for them to be so powerful because it’ll totally drive them crazy and cause them to kill everyone, obviously.  Meanwhile, a male comic character like Dr. Strange -- who can canonically destroy a planet by speaking Latin really hard -- or Black Bolt -- who can destroy a planet by speaking anything really hard -- will be just sitting there, two feet on the side, enjoying some tea and running the world or whatever because a male character having untold uninhibited power at his disposal is just accepted and laudable and gets him on those listicles where he fights Goku and stuff.

In my finite perspective, the sort of female heroes who have gained...not universal esteem, perhaps, but at least general benign acceptance amongst the genre community are characters who just don’t deal with all that stuff.  I’m thinking of recent superheroes like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, certainly, but also of surprise breakout hits like Stranger Things’ Eleven (so far) or even more niche characters like Sailor Moon or She-Ra.  The fact that these characters wield massive power is simply accepted as an unequivocal good thing, their power makes them powerful and impressive and that’s the end of the story, thanks for asking.  And when they deal with the inevitable tragedy that shakes their worldview to the core, or the inevitable villain trying to twist them into darkness, they tend to overcome that temptation and come out the other side even stronger than when they started.  In other words?...characters like these are being allowed the exact same sorts of narrative luxuries that are usually only afforded towards male heroes.

The thing about these characters, though, is that they tend to be...well, a little bit too heroic, right?  A lil’ bit too goody-two-shoes?  A bit too stalwart, a bit too incorruptible?  And that’s fine, there’s certainly nothing wrong with a traditionally-heroic white knight of a hero.  But what I might like to see, as the next step going forward, is for female heroes to be allowed a bit more range than just that, so that they’re not just innocent children or literal princesses or shining demigods clad in primary colors.  Let’s have an all-powerful female hero be...well, the easiest way to say it is let’s see her allowed to be bitchier.  Less straightlaced.  Let’s not put an ultimatum on her power, like “Oh sure you can be powerful, but only if you’re super duper nice about it.” Let us have a ruthless woman, but not one ruled by ruthlessness.  Let us have a hero who naturally makes enemies and not friends, who has to work hard to gain allies because her personality doesn’t sparkle and gleam.  Let her have the righteous anger of a lifelong slave, and let that anger be her salvation instead of her downfall.

In other words, let us have Daenerys Targaryen.  And let us put her in a new story instead of an old one.

[tacitwhisky]

Feeling the blues now Game of Thrones has wrapped as a series? Don’t worry, I’ve got your jonsa recovery fic list right here. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the great fic out there, just the best of the best I’ve read. If there are any other fic you think should be on this list that I missed reblog and tag them.

Season 8 Fix Its (Pt 1 / Pt 2)

In Love and Death We Don’t Decide [Link] | @pardonmymannerssir | Her siblings arrive like leaves carried on a sudden breeze, alighting upon the placidity of her life and casting wide ripples before being swept away again. Their movements are cyclic, changing and shifting like the seasons, but one thing will never change: Winterfell is home.

Come out of hiding (i'm right here beside you) [Link] | @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth​ | After the death of Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow goes to live beyond the Wall, while Sansa Stark, the newly-named Queen in the North, marries a Dornish prince. Three years later, when Jon finally gathers the courage to return to Winterfell, he finds that while many things have changed, one hasn't: he's still in love with Sansa.

We are buried in broken dreams [Link] | @snowsinthenorth​ | Prompt: Sansa and Jon sleeping together before he goes to Dragonstone and when he comes back he finds out she is pregnant. A full on s8 fix-it fic at this point.

Essential Reading

The Cold Inside Our Bones [Link] | @xylodemon | 1,904 | The Wall is no place for a woman, but Jon looks at Sansa's gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes and knows he will not send her away.

At a Funeral [Link] | @justadram | 5,231 | There's something about the funeral that makes Sansa need Jon more than ever. Too bad she threw it all away.

What a Disappointment [Link] | @justadram | 7,836 | Sansa Stark and Jon Targaryen are married and neither of them is pleased about it. Set in a world where Rhaegar lives and Jon was raised in King's Landing as a legitimized bastard.

Tree of Hearts [Link] | @uchihabat​ | 7,239 | It was a secret, shameful thing. The more he denied it, the more unruly it had become within him: a sleeping dragon, around which he tread carefully. There was nothing good about his half-sister, he told himself, but her beauty. "I am not beautiful anymore," she told him through teeth clenched. "It is ugly inside my heart. I am ruined."

Subject: La Bamba [Link] | @ghost-of-bambi | 16,441 | Trust Margaery Tyrell to turn Sansa Stark's 21st birthday party into an exercise in matchmaking.

More fics under the cut.

Canon Divergent

From the fire we rise [Link] | TheEagleGirl | 2,367 | In another world, perhaps Jon would have been the heir to the throne. In this world, his father died on the trident, his mother in childbirth, no witnesses to their union. In this world, Jon is just the bastard prince, and in this world he still wants more.

Brine on the Tongue [Link] | @orangeflavoryawp​ | They pause, afternoon light shifting in through her window like an accusation – a slant of clarity against their panting forms. “Then leave.” (He doesn’t.) - Jon and Sansa. What breeds in a house of wolves.

Found In Forbidden Nights [Link] | @alienor-woods | 16,777 | In which Robb Stark still refuses to trade Jaime Lannister for his sisters, but Jon Snow decides if being an oathbreaker means he can tell strategy and politics to fuck off, then it's worth it to take matters into his own hands.

Jon of the Kingsguard [Link] | @tacitwhisky | Jon goes to Kingslanding instead of the Wall, there’s no war, and he becomes a knight of the kingsguard even as Joffrey marries Sansa. As Joffrey’s true colors inevitably show Jon is forced to choose between the vows of a knight and the duty of a Stark.

Southern Wolves [Link] | @tacitwhisky | Jon leaves the Wall to save Sansa from Joffrey. Together they wander the war ravaged Riverlands to try and return home.

Missing Scenes

A Cartography of Vulnerability [Link] | @subjunctivemood​ | 1,720 | Jon is the only one Sansa trusts to do this for her.

Stitch Up All Your Hopes [Link] | @subjunctivemood | Sansa is sick, but she refuses to rest.

'Cause I know that it's delicate [Part1 / Part2] | @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth | 4,865 | Set during "Book of the Stranger," immediately after Sansa arrives at the Wall. Jon goes to build the fire back up, and for a few minutes he stays silent, kneeling at the hearth, not looking at her. Finally he clears his throat. “I know,” he begins, “it’s not exactly what you’re used to.”

We can brave the dark [Link] | @thatgirlnevershutsup | 2,320 | When Arya dares Sansa to spend the night in the crypts, it’s Jon who comes to her rescue.

Modern AU - Short

Caught [Link] | @jonnsansa | 4,055 | The first time they sleep together, she's on a break from Joffrey and they're both a little drunk.

Like real people do [Link] | @thatgirlnevershutsup | 2,749 | For the Twelve Days of Christmas project, have an AU Sansa Stark and Jon Snow doing one of those “first kiss” videos.

Beans [Part1 / Part2 / Part3] | @justadram​ | Jon and Sansa never seem to be on the same page about their relationship.

Never knew I had it all [Link] | TheEagleGirl | 3,130 | Sansa feels bewitched. She’s never noticed Jon before last month. He was Robb’s silent shadow, outshined by Robb himself, or his friends Theon and Dacey.

Trust & Control [Link] | @jonnsansa | 4,444 | Sansa first sees him at the Tyrell fundraising gala. In a sea of drunk, happy people, he is the singular solemn one, standing as still as a statue against the far wall with a glass of untouched champagne in hand. Or: the 50 Shades AU no one asked for.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside [Link] | Tate | It starts at one of Robb's Christmas parties, with Harry Hardyng and a kiss Sansa's avoiding. The two that follow are another story altogether.

Modern AU - Long

Happiness throws a shower of sparks [Link] | @pardonmymannerssir​ | 14,115 | “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Sansa Stark says through a swollen, bloody lip, a pair of sunglasses perched on her nose that don’t completely hide a black eye.

Battlefield [Link] | @uchihabat | 17,264 | “God, we might as well just start a family together,” she blusters, half-joking but of course not joking at all. “We both want kids and we both don’t care how. We’re both single. We’ve known each other all our lives. It’s like a movie.”

I'm Feeling Younger, Every Time That I'm Alone With You [Link] | Tate | 19,872 | Jon's got a crush on Sansa, Sansa's got no idea; it's kind of about a production of "Florian and Jonquil" but it's also just kind of about Jon and Sansa.

Tipsy in a Red Push Up Bra [Link] | @tacitwhisky | 21,320 | Of course the first time Sansa Stark sees Jon Snow in God knows how long, the first time since they lost the house and she’d come to live with her aunt Lysa, it would have to be at a house party where she’s already tipsy on schnapps. And of course it would have to be the one time she’s wearing the ridiculous red push up bra Margaery talked her into buying.

Alternate Universe - Crossover AUs

The Seasons of My Love [Link] | @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth | 48,275 | Months after Ned and Robb are murdered, Sansa returns to Hogwarts for her final year of school. Far from home, she finds she must rely on family friend Jon Snow, now an Auror, to help keep her family together -- and perhaps to help solve the mystery of her father and brother's deaths.

Put a spell on me [Link] | TheEagleGirl | 2,346 | Somewhere along the line, this became less about release and more about him. Or, a Hogwarts au with lots of making out, saving the world from the Dark Lord, and feelings

Saskatoon Berry Pie [Link] | @justadram | 23,179 | When Sansa loses her family in a rail accident, she makes her way to Saskatchewan in search of sanctuary with her cousin, Jon Snow.

As Long As We're Going Down [Link] | @alienor-woods | 37,096 | Four years after Stannis Baratheon wins the Battle of the Blackwater, Sansa Stark finds herself summoned back to King's Landing to serve as a bridesmaid at Crown Princess Shireen's wedding. When King Stannis tries to marry Sansa off to his illegitimate nephew, Edric, she thinks quick and tells him she's already married-- to her bodyguard, Jon Snow.

Post Series

With the Wild Wolves Around You [Link] | @redbelles | 3,782 | Jon finds Sansa at the Vale after his Targaryen lineage is revealed.

And the Geese Are Headed North Again [Link] | @yekoc | 13,316 | In the dark and honest part of her that Sansa is no longer afraid of, she had thought that Jon would die, and she was no sadder than she was relieved. Seeing him now, she notes the absence of the relief and joy that marked her first glimpse of him at Castle Black. Instead, she feels a too-familiar grief: my brother is gone.

The world is still round, my compass is true; each step is a step back to you [Part1 / Part2] | @dialux | 3,655 | Endgame fic, where Jon goes south and he returns to Sansa only after the Long Night. Trust isn’t easily built after all that’s happened, but Jon and Sansa manage it well enough.

Jonsa Fic Lists:

Season 6 Fics  |  Season 8 Fix-It Fics (Pt 1 / Pt 2)  |  Jon in the South AUs  |  Kink Fics  |  Flash Fics  |  Bastard Sansa  | Crossover AUs  |  Married  |  Jon/Val

Follow me @tacitwhisky for jonsa fic recs, meta, and fanfic. I swear I’m good at at least two of those.

[lo-lynx]

No cock = no sexuality? Geldings in ASOIAF

TW: Rape, violence, sexism, racism

Spoiler warning: Spoilers for all A Song of Ice and Fire books

“Lord Crow is welcome to steal into my bed any night he dares. Once he's been gelded, keeping those vows will come much easier for him."- Val, A Dance with Dragons, Jon XI

First of all, this is a great quote by Val. Second of all, I’ve noticed that this idea of gelding/castration to reduce/remove male sexuality occurs relatively often in ASOIAF. Before I go any further, I feel like I should clarify that one’s genitalia does not determine one’s gender. A person with a penis is not necessarily a man, and a man does not necessarily have a penis. However, both in our world and in the world of ASOIAF people insist on thinking that and tend to place quite a lot of significance in specifically penises. I’ve written before on this blog about eunuchs, masculinity, gender etc, so in this essay I want to look at that issue from another angle, namely the assumption that no cock = no sexuality.

A while back when I was doing research for this essay about Vary and masculinity, I came upon this quote from the book Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond:

Why were men castrated? Several reasons can be advanced: control and domination, punishment, political reasons, need for special qualities or abilities, religious, sexual or erotic reasons, and medical or health reasons. Some ancient writers emphasized that eunuchs were easier to control. (…) In the United States in recent years there have been several movements to castrate, either literally or chemically, individuals involved in sex crimes, especially those involving adults with children. (…) How effective physical castration is in preventing sex crimes is debatable, in spite of public belief to the contrary. (Bullough 2002, 5-7)

Now, I think we can all agree that sex crimes should be punished. But this quote made me think about the practice of castration/gelding as punishment as it occurs in ASOIAF, especially since this quote states that the effectiveness of this is debatable. When doing research for this essay I searched A Search of Ice and Fire for the word “gelded” and got 55 results. Now, loads of those were about gelded horses, but 21 are about gelding people. Of those 21 results I judged 13 to be about how gelding was being used as punishment (mainly for sex crimes), six about how gelding would be used as preventive measures against sex crimes (and two I didn’t know how to categorise). I’ll go into some of these instances here, as I try to explore what gelding as punishment/preventive measure against sex crimes says about the view on masculinity and male sexuality in ASOIAF.

Now, first some background on masculinity and male sexuality. I’ve written EXTENSIVLY before on how from antiquity until modern times for someone to be seen as a “real man” their body and sexual behaviour has had to fit certain criteria. If you want to read more on that, go read my essay on Varys. But briefly: to be a real man according to (Western) society (from Ancient Greece until now) you have to act manly (be strong, in control etc), have a penis, testicles, have penetrative sex (preferably with women), and father children (or at least be capable of fathering children). So, if you’re castrated you can’t be a “real man”? Well, according to Westerosi logic, the answer is pretty much no. (See this and this essay) The consequences of these masculine ideals are quite clear in ASOIAF, as for instance researcher Shiloh Carroll have pointed out:

Martin rejects the idea that chivalry created an ideal society where men fought only to protect their women or in grand, bloodless tournaments, instead creating a society in which chivalry is a thin veneer over a violent, toxic masculinity that victimizes men, women, and children alike. Martin’s Westeros does not reward chivalry, does not even really believe in chivalry as more than a masquerade behind which ‘true’ masculinity- violent, aggressive, and misogynist- hides. (2018, 56)

As Carroll also points out, one of the clearest examples of this is the prevalence of rape in the story. According to her, it seems as if most characters in story believe that most if not all men are capable of rape (ibid, 93). It also seems clear that most of the time, such crimes are not punished. But let’s look at some instances where it’s at least on the table:

A former slave came, to accuse a certain noble of the Zhak. The man had recently taken to wife a freedwoman who had been the noble's bedwarmer before the city fell. The noble had taken her maidenhood, used her for his pleasure, and gotten her with child. Her new husband wanted the noble gelded for the crime of rape, and he wanted a purse of gold as well, to pay him for raising the noble's bastard as his own. Dany granted him the gold, but not the gelding. "When he lay with her, your wife was his property, to do with as he would. By law, there was no rape." Her decision did not please him, she could see, but if she gelded every man who ever forced a bedslave, she would soon rule a city of eunuchs.

(A Dance with Dragons, Daenerys I)

 ‘King Stannis keeps his men well in hand, that's plain. He lets them plunder some, but I've only heard of three wildling women being raped, and the men who did it have all been gelded.’

(Jon in A Storm of Swords, Samwell IV)

 ‘Well now,’ the serjant said, ‘naked steel. Seems to me I smell an outlaw. You know what Lord Tarly does with outlaws?’ He still held the egg he’d taken from the cart. His hand closed, and the yolk oozed through his fingers.

‘I know what Lord Randyll does with outlaws,’ Brienne said. ‘I know what he does with rapers too.’

She had hoped the name might cow them, but the serjant only flicked egg off his fingers and signalled to his men to spread out. Brienne found herself surrounded by steel points. ‘What was it you were saying, wench? What is it Lord Tarly does to…’

‘…rapers,’ a deeper voice finished. ‘He gelds them or sends them to the Wall. Sometimes both. And he cuts fingers off thieves.’

(A Feast for Crows, Brienne III)

Now, the two first people on that list are people we as readers tend to sympathise with and think are good people most of the time. Randyl Tarly much less so. But what these quotes do show are that gelding as punishment for rape is widely accepted, both in Westeros and Essos (even if Dany doesn’t grant that punishment in that specific quote it seems clear that she wanted to and would in other circumstances). It’s also interesting to note how, in the passage about Lord Tarly’s punishment of rape, it is also noted that the punishment for theft is the cutting off of fingers. One can see a parallel here, with in both cases the ostensible guilty body part being cut off (with rape the genitalia, with thievery the fingers). This attitude to punishment can be seen as playing into the so called “disability as punishment trope”. Researcher Mia Harrison describes that trope thusly:

The ‘disability as punishment’ trope is one of the oldest disability tropes, with its roots stretching back to biblical and mythological narratives. The trope is frequently used in classical stories where characters are blinded as direct or implied punishment for wrongdoing such as the biblical Zedekiah and Tobit, Rhoecus and Phineus of Greek mythology, and Peeping Tom in the legend of Lady Godiva. (Harrison 2018, 29)

Now, while one might want to punish rapists, one should remember that it’s not clear that sure castration actually makes people less likely to rape again. So, we’re really just punishing people with a disability, and by doing that essentially saying that a disability is a punishment.

Now, as I mentioned earlier in this essay, there’s also several cases of what I’ve called “preventive gelding”. The most prominent of these are of course the Unsullied, but I want to begin with a quote from Jaime III in A Feast for Crows when he talks with Ser Bonifer Hasty, who have been tasked with holding Harrenhal:

He was sober, just, and dutiful, and his Holy Eighty-Six were as well disciplined as any soldiers in the Seven Kingdoms, and made a lovely sight as they wheeled and pranced their tall grey geldings. Littlefinger had once quipped that Ser Bonifer must have gelded the riders too, so spotless was their repute.

So, here, similarly to the quote from Val that started this essay, a joke is made about gelding men to make them not rape people. The whole premise of the joke that Jaime remembers is that men cannot possible control themselves, and their sexual lusts, if they still have their genitalia. But, as I said, the most prominent example of “preventive gelding” in the books are the Unsullied. Here, I will once again quote Mia Harisson, because while she analyses the show, not the books, her point still stands, and I simply cannot put it better than she does:

The Unsullied are the most normalized example of eunuchs in Game of Thrones. Children are sold from a young age to the Unsullied slavemasters, with males being trained as highly obedient soldiers. Their names are taken from them, instead being replaced with that of vermin such as ‘Red Flea’ and ‘Grey Worm’, and their genitals are removed in the final stages of training. They are described as having ‘absolute obedience, absolute loyalty’ (…) The Unsullied body is systemized into fragments that are categorized as ‘useful’ (the parts of the body can be used to fight) and ‘useless’ (the parts of the body that cannot. The slave master demonstrates the systemization of the Unsullied body by slicing off the nipple of one of his soldiers while explaining that ‘men don’t need nipples’. The Unsullied challenge notions of ‘able-bodied heterosexuality’ by considering the sexual, able body as not simply unnecessary, but an obstacle toward obedience (…) The Unsullied do not embody a masculine identity- they are not considered men at all. This is not to suggest, however, that the Unsullied should be considered positive examples of non-normative identity representation. Instead, they present a clear idea of what should be considered the ‘acceptable’ queer or disabled body: docile, compliant, and useful only in the service of others. (Harrison 2018, 38)

So, the idea of gelding the Unsullied is that they will be obedient, and that their bodies can be utilized in the most effective way. It is also clear in the books that one of the so called “perks” of the Unsullied is that they won’t rape and plunder, for instance:

‘Your Grace,’ said Jorah Mormont, ‘I saw King's Landing after the Sack. Babes were butchered that day as well, and old men, and children at play. More women were raped than you can count. There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him. Yet I have never heard of these Unsullied raping, nor putting a city to the sword, nor even plundering, save at the express command of those who lead them. Brick they may be, as you say, but if you buy them henceforth the only dogs they'll kill are those you want dead.’ (A Storm of Swords, Daenerys II)

So, soldiers who won’t rape and plunder, sounds great, right? Well, the drawback is of course that the only way characters can see this happening is by pre-emptively gelding them. Now, this is hardly unique to ASOIAF, during antiquity slaves were also castrated because it was believed this made them easier to control (Bullough 2002, 6). During this time eunuchs were also often servants to women at court, perhaps most famously in harems (Llewellyn-Jones 2002, 34). In part this connection between women and eunuchs seems to have been because both women and eunuchs were considered “imperfect creatures and incomplete human specimens” since they lacked testicles (ibid). Both women and eunuchs were also seen as sexually available, due to their lower social standing than men, which was the case in Ancient Greece as well as in “the East” (for a longer discussion about sexuality during antiquity and how it relates to eunuchs, see my essay about Varys). It is important to note here, that the contemporary and Western view of harems as a space where women were locked up is not necessarily accurate to historical sources. As Llewellyn-Jones points out, harems could often just refer to groups of women, not necessarily places, or something that were out of bounds (note the similarity to the word “haram”). Women in these harems could also often have great influence over court life, in many ways similarly to the noblewomen of ASOIAF. But, in the Western orientalist fantasy, the idea of eunuchs guarding rooms filled with women just waiting to have sex with men, seems to have stuck.

I want to briefly touch on another aspect of this, which is the idea of the sexually (non-)threatening man of colour. Now, throughout history, people from outside of ones own ethnic group have generally been seen as threatening (I’m not even gonna provide a source for that). In the contemporary Global North, this figure of the dangerous Other is often seen specifically as the non-western person (Ahmed 2004). Specifically in contemporary US (as well as historical US of course), one of the forms this takes is the racist idea of the dangerous black man. In contemporary America (and across the world), one of the ways this becomes clear is of course in the racist killings of black people (so I hope you all have supported the Black Lives Matter movement in whatever way you can!). Another way is, as black feminist and scholar bell hooks has pointed out, the way black masculinity is portrayed in movies. The good black man, hooks writes, “not only accepts his subordinate status, he testifies on behalf of and exults in white male superiority. (…) [this] character shows no romantic interest in the white female hero. He is merely protecting.” (ibid, 108). Now, I am NOT saying that this the exact same as with the Unsullied. For one, the fictional space of Slaver’s Bay is not the exact same as the real-life United States (even if there are a lot of parallels between Slaver’s Bay and Reconstruction, as for instance Steven Attewell has pointed out) And Dany actively tries to change oppressive power structures. But I find it interesting some of Daenerys’ most loyal fighting forces, who is very clearly Eastern coded (even if they have different ethnicities) are described as completely incapable of being a sexual threat to her. This can be compared to for instance the Dothraki, who are constantly connected to rape and (sexual) violence. As others have noted, the way that the Dothraki are described often invoke Orientalist imagines of the ‘Other’ as sexually deprived, and dangerous (Carroll 2018, 121) While Dany have some loyal Dothraki followers who respect her as a khaleesi, as soon as she interacts with one that is not from her khalasar, she thinks that this person might rape her (i.e. A Dance with Dragons, Daenerys X). Now, one could argue that this doesn’t have to do as much with race/ethnicity as just the fact that most characters in ASOIAF seems to assume that all men are potential rapists. But the contrast between these Eastern men (the Dothraki and the Unsullied), and how they are portrayed, is interesting. The Dothraki are sexual, violent, and a threat to Dany and other women. The Unsullied are not sexual, and while they are violent, they are not a threat specifically to women. They’re just a weapon, controlled by others.

 So, in conclusion, gelding in ASOIAF seemingly takes place as a punishment for rape, and as a way to prevent rape. Both of these practices seem to assume two things; firstly, that being gelded works to prevent rape, and secondly, that this is the only (or at least the most effective) way to control male sexuality. The validity of both of these things can be questioned. For one, I would like to believe that it would be possible for men to not rape people without their genitalia being cut off. But also, genitalia are not necessarily needed for sex or sexual violence. People can get creative. The last point that I want to address here is whether this argument about masculinity and sexuality (and race/ethnicity) is something that GRRM believes, or if it’s just something his characters believes. I honestly don’t know. As Shiloh Carroll has pointed out (2018, 56), GRRM sometimes seemingly makes deliberate points about how medieval society wasn’t just filled with chivalry, but also (sexual) violence. Does that mean he believes that male sexuality is uncontrollable? Probably not. But since he tries to get the point across about the darker side of medieval society, and probably also pulls on historical ideas of geldings and eunuchs, it might come off like that. This is especially unfortunate, in my opinion, when it also plays into racialized tropes about the ethnic Other’s violent sexuality, that must be controlled.

 References

Ahmed, Sara. 2004. “On Collective Feelings, or the Impressions Left by Others”, Theory, Culture and Society, 20(1):25-42.

Attewell, Steven. 2015. “A Laboratory of Politics Part VI”, Tower of the Hand. January 15, 2015. https://towerofthehand.com/blog/2015/02/01-laboratory-of-politics-part-vi/noscript.html

Bullough, Vern L. 2002. “Eunuchs in History and Society”, in Eunuchs in antiquity and beyond, edited by Tougher, Shaun, 1-17. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales.

Carroll, Shiloh. 2018. Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.

Harrison, Mia. 2018. “Power and Punishment in Game of Thrones.” In The Image of Disability: Essays on Media Representation, edited by JL Schatz & Amber E. George, 28-43. McFarland & Company: Jefferson.

hooks, bell. 1996/2009. Reel to Real: Race, Class, and Sex at the Movies. New York: Routledge.

Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2002. “Eunuchs and the royal harem in Achaemenid Persia (559-331 BC)”, in Eunuchs in antiquity and beyond, edited by Tougher, Shaun, 19-50. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales.

Martin, George RR. 2011a. A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold. Harper Voyager: London.

Martin, George RR. 2011b. A Feast for Crows. Bentam Books: New York.

Martin, George RR. 2012. A Dance with Dragons. Harper Voyager: London.

[tomakeitbeautifultolive]

Hmmm, you know it's funny that you ask if I tag anything anti s8 Dany or anything to differentiate between Dany before and after S8. The honest answer is I really haven't. It's interesting cause on the surface it seems I've been easily able to dismiss S8 Dany to the point where she doesn't really exist in my pov of Dany, but for some reason the S8 version does. This may be personal to me though, I have a few theories why that is but the truth is IDK for sure WHY that's gotten under my skin. (1/?

The first reason/theory being that I didn't watch the last two episodes of the show in their entirety - once it was revealed what would happen I just watched certain clips from youtube and such. Therefore I didn't really watch the scene where Dany burned KL. I didn't watch Arya running through KL trying to save people. But I did watch Daenerys' murder scene like the masochist I am ugh. I really regret that. Because that's the iamge that pops up when I think of S8, not KL burning. (2/?)

The second theory/reason being that I, myself, am an abuse survivor and the abuse I survived was, for the most part, at the hands of a man. T throne room scene and the way it was framed/filmed really triggered me (which is a reason why I should've known better and not watched it at all, stupid past me). And perhaps, if I'm trying to dig deep, it maybe just confirmed a deep-seated trauma response in me where I just ... fear that all men are capable injuring or even killing their loved ones. (3/?

And the response of some people saying shit like "see, he HAD to do it" just ... really made that feeling worse. Which is ... really fucked up. And I should probably talk about that in therapy and work through that cause that is some HEAVY baggage. Thanks for letting me spill my guts on your page lol (4/4)

Oh, and a third theory/reason may be that as an abuse survivor I specifically bonded with Dany, not just because of her story, but also because of her characterization as an abuse survivor that wanted to prevent further abuse. And it may be difficult for abuse survivors who looked up to Dany to see her as an oppressor, especially since it was so abrupt and poorly done. It could be a combination of all of these really. Emotions are complicated. (5/5)

                                           .  .  .

Hi again, anon! First, it is my honor to have you spill your guts on my page. ♥

I unfortunately did suffer through the penultimate episode (I had a friend over that night and, bafflingly, she wanted to watch it). While I have not seen episode six in its entirely, like you, I am a masochist and I have watched the death scene. I had to know.

The scene absolutely hits you in the gut with a visceral reaction. An unforgivably vile scene that I wish I had never watched. As a life-long fan of true crime stories, the first place my mind went to was how women are most likely to be murdered by their romantic partner - and D&D saw fit to turn this cowardly, dishonorable, and deplorable act into an act of heroism?

Utterly disgraceful.

Please, please remember that behind Jon Snow's action in that throne room were two very real and very ignorant men who were not only grossly insensitive but completely lacking in any empathy or awareness beyond their immediate experience on earth.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss never, for one second, understood what a symbol of hope Dany was. Further, they have no remorse for all of the hearts they shattered in their pitiful attempt to turn the series into their 'Breaking Bad'.

After all, David Benioff said:

"Themes are for eighth-grade book reports."

Meanwhile, women all across the world found comfort and solace in this fictional character who showed them that it was possible not just to overcome the most heinous acts committed against you, but to come out stronger for it. To become powerful. Following season eight, I had many one-on-one conversations with abuse victims who shared stories similar to yours - and, as someone who is very lucky not to be a victim of physical abuse, I'm eternally grateful for this insight. I know how devastated and betrayed I felt - but it goes so, so much deeper for those who have, like Dany, encountered abuse. It, in fact, tops the list of reasons what D&D did to Daenerys is absolutely unforgivable and unjustifiable to me.

And I'm truly unsure as to how my words have gotten so twisted on Tumblr here tonight - but I must reiterate - I don't see Dany as an oppressor either, anon, no matter how hard the writers would've liked me to. Dany’s heel turn was the very first part of season eight canon that I rejected because it was so extreme, so over-the-top, and preposterous.

Now. There's a line in your ask that brought me to tears.

"I just fear that all men are capable injuring or even killing their loved ones."

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss took Jon Snow, the most chivalrous male character throughout the series, a character you probably put your trust in for that exact reason - and they saw fit to use him in a way that affirms that this suspicion you have about men is right.

It is cruel. It is devastating. It's not right.

The true tragedy of season eight is how much hope these thoughtless men robbed from their audience by failing to consider the implications of their choices and only how much they could 'shock' the audience.

Please, please know that the people who argue that Jon "had to do it" are simply looking for some depth in the shallow kiddie pool of season eight. And by the gods, anon, it’s just not there. If you don’t believe me, believe the millions of signatures on that petition for a rewrite.

If you see an argument like that again, I strongly urge you to look past Jon Snow and see the two careless men standing behind him known as David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, because they were the ones who put that dagger in Jon’s hand. Jon Snow’s actions in season eight were just another asinine attempt to subvert our expectations.

I know it’s not much, but if ever you need someone to talk to, I can be pretty good at lending an ear, so don’t be afraid to come off anon and say hi. I think there are a few gals/guys around here who might still vouch for me 😅 Regardless, I really enjoyed hearing from you, so thanks for the asks! ♥

[fierypen37]

Virtue a Veil, Vice a Mask Chapter 8

Chapter 8

 Jon cursed his lurching belly for the thousandth time. After falling into an exhausted sleep after dinner, he woke during the hour of the wolf to retch. Again. Even the fresh air above deck was no solace. Sleep was beyond him, thus he paced the deck. The damned sea churned beneath them, though the captain had been quick to reassure them that the weather was fine for sailing. The food was enough to turn his stomach—an overboiled pottage of grain and leeks. The berth bed was too small. Not that he minded sharing space with his wife. Still, he was unable to seek a more comfortable spot for fear of waking her.

His poor love. She suffered so much in her life. And yet, despite it, her heart shone bright and pure as a star. Gods, a festering rage boiled in his guts. He wanted rain fire and blood on those that had wronged her, exact every second of pain they’d inflicted on her tenfold on them. The love he held for her, so sweet and young yet, deepened into a fierce tenderness. A wave made the ship list drunkenly to one side and his thrice-damned stomach churned.

“Fuck,” Jon said, before retching up the remnants of the grain and leek pottage. He spit in the sea, rinsed his mouth with wine from his wineskin and spit again. The wine was weak and thin, more vinegar than any true vintage, but small sips washed the acrid taste from his mouth. Jon mopped the clammy sweat from his face on his cuff. The helmsman hummed some song in bastard Valyrian, another crewman cursed at a tangle of rope. Jon rested his chin on his folded arms, gazing at the waxing paring of the moon, falling now as dawn neared. The sky above was cloudless, stars shining cold. If he squinted behind them, he could make out the Ice Dragon. Ahead, he saw the Stallion galloping across the sky. The sharp salt smell of open water, the cool kiss of the breeze. Yes, if it wasn’t for his damnable stomach, then he could consider sailing to be pleasant.

Jon ambled along the deck, a fog of weariness blurring the edges of the world. The hours wore on as he walked. The moon sank toward the sea, the stars began to fade as dawn approached beyond the ship’s brow. A glory of colors: the black softening into indigo, then cerulean, seashell pinks and a brilliant limning of gold.

The captain approached him as the sun peeked over the horizon, a squat man with a long black beard.

“You’re up early, ser. Belly still troubling you?” he said in a thick Pentoshi accent, his voice sympathetic. Jon’s back went up regardless, disliking the implied mockery.

“Better today, ser. Thank you.” If the captain heard the ice in his tone, he chose to ignore it.

“A fine day for sailing,” he remarked, thumbs tucked into his belt.

“Indeed. My wife and I thank you for allowing us passage,” Jon said politely. The captain murmured something in reply, but Jon barely heard him. It felt as if his skull had been stuffed with cotton. He paused at the bucket of freshwater. Instead of risking waking Daenerys to groom, Jon finger-combed his hair, dashed ice-cold water on his face and rinsed his mouth.  

In their cabin, Daenerys had her back to him, bent straightening the bedclothes. Jon’s mind was wiped clean at the sight of her ripe buttocks in those leather trousers. Gods, she was glorious. Jon felt a tug low in his belly, the mild strain of their recent abstinence piquing his hunger all the more. She hadn’t yet done her hair in their usual complicated braids, it hung nearly to her waist in a thick wavy silver tumble. Starlight on the sea. He loved her hair. Combing it, tugging it as he thrust—The lurid imagining was broken by her turning at the sound of the door. She smiled, folding her cloak neatly.

“Good morning, Husband. Are you feeling better?”

Jon cleared his throat.

“Much the same, but I’ll be all right.”

Daenerys set aside the folding and cupped his cheek. Those lovely big eyes, long-lashed and the color of twilight. A concerned frown marred her brow. The burn of desire deepened into devotion.  

“You look tired. Did you sleep at all?”

“A bit.”

Daenerys made a low sound of sympathy, standing on tiptoe to drop a sweet little kiss on his nose. Jon wound his arms around her. It felt so right to have her in the circle of his arms. Like home. Daenerys nuzzled his chest with happy little sigh.

“I’m surprised to see you awake so early, Wife. Yesterday, I had to coax you from the bower like a yearling,” he teased.

Daenerys snickered, pinching his arse in reproach. Resting her chin on his chest, she peered up at him from beneath her lashes.

“Take it as a mark of how I esteem you, my dragon. I will seek you out before my morning tea.” Jon failed to stifle his grin at her casual endearment.

“‘My dragon?’” he repeated. A charming blush bloomed on the apples of her cheeks.

“Do you like it? You just have so many lovely names for me, I wanted to--”

Jon stemmed the surge of anxious words with a kiss. Mm, yes. That delicious yielding. She opened to him like a flower. The silky glide of her tongue, the eager little noises she fed him. Her arms wound around his neck, fingernails lightly scraping his neck. He was drunk on her, aflame with need. He would be her dragon. Her protector, her companion, her mount. Yes, yes, she could ride him as often as she pleased. A demented thought presented the image of just that: Jon tied to the bed, helpless and hard, ready for her to fuck at her leisure. Despite his mutinous stomach, despite his weariness, his cock had some very definite ideas of how to show his wife how he cherished her and any sweet name she wished to call him.

The pitch of the ship beneath their feet aided him a bit too strongly when he nudged her back. Daenerys staggered, catching herself against the berth bed with her elbow.

“Fuck. I’m sorry, love. The damnable ship--”

Daenerys shook her head in impatience, reaching for him.

“Come here, Jon.” That husky tone, the stern command had his stiff cock twitching. Hard and hungry and all hers. Jon fell forward into the cage of her arms, braced over her on the bed. The kiss was ravenous, a heated battle of tongues. Yes, he loved the teasing flicks of her tongue along the roof of his mouth. Jon angled his head, sucking gently of her tongue. Her fingernails bit sharp into the back of his neck, hips bucking against his. So sweetly responsive. Heat pounded thick through his veins. He could do this forever. Just kiss her. The heat and pleasure of it stunned and staggered him. Should he tell her she was his first kiss as well? Raised amongst guards and cousins, Jon had never even danced with a girl except at the occasional feast. Even then, there was always Uncle and Aunt Catelyn, watching with bright, avid eyes to see if a northern girl caught his interest.

Daenerys. He was fated to be hers and only hers. Jon smoothed his hands down her body, cupping the soft heft of her breast. Even through the smallclothes and tunic, her nipple pebbled beneath his careful plucking. Daenerys wound her legs around him, drawing his hips into the cradle of hers. As they kissed, they rocked together, aided by the ship’s roil. Yes. Yes. Even through their clothes, pleasure crackled like a stoked fire. Jon could scoop her up, fuck her hard against the wall . . .

No, no, no. Not even a hint of roughness today. Not after what she told him. Daenerys deserved his tenderness. All the pleasure her body could stand. Jon pulled back, breath heaving. His fingers fumbled with the laces of her trousers. With a husky laugh, Daenerys helped him, peeling off the butter-soft leather trousers. Jon pried her thighs apart, already salivating for the taste of her.

“Jon, wait. Wait. Are you sure? Your stomach--”

Jon grinned, nipping her thigh.

“Trust me Dany, your honey is all the sustenance I need.” Daenerys bit her lip, an over-bright shine to her eyes. His wife, his love. She was so surprised by pleasure, by care. Jon would change that, he resolved to himself. Lavish her with love and pleasure until she knew in her bones, in her marrow that she was worthy of it.

Jon bent to his task. He spent some time kissing the tender skin of her thighs, nuzzling her dark blond curls, breathing in the strong musky smell of her. Mm, her nether lips were swollen, flushed, and he’d barely kissed her. Daenerys carded her fingers through his hair lovingly. Jon’s heart gave a sharp twist inside him. Dany. He spread her open with his tongue, seeking more of that wonderful musky-sweet taste. Her cunt was so beautiful, a glass garden flower with petals in gradients of pink and red and scarlet. He wanted to overwhelm her with pleasure. Jon lapped at her nether lips alternating between broad and pointed strokes, listening to every catch of breath. He fisted himself, stroking roughly through his trousers. Yes, yes yes--

“Lighter, love. Gently,” she whispered. Jon kissed her thigh in apology. In his excitement, his strokers were too fast, too rough. He began again. Gentle on her sensitive little pearl of flesh. He licked in patient strokes, soft and slow, sliding one finger inside her, then another. Snug, plush flesh, slick with her honey. His mouth watered for more. Dany answered him with a broken litany of his name, begging for more. Oh fuck yes. Dany arched beneath him in climax, her muscles spasming around his finger. Jon groaned against her, easing her through it with gentle kisses. His cock ached, yearning for her. Dany’s dark violet eyes met his. Jon held her gaze as he kept at her, urging her on. Dany whimpered. He could feel the tension building and building again, quicker and sharper than before. Yes, almost . . . Daenerys’s cry was hoarse as she came again.  

“Seven hells,” Jon muttered. Gods, watching her writhe under his ministrations soaked his brain in fire. He had to, he had to—he fumbled with the laces of his trousers. His cock throbbed in the cooler air, the head seeping fluid. He stroked himself, to clear a little space. Her pleasure was paramount. Jon kissed her cunt messily, drenching his beard in her honey. Daenerys’ heels dug into his back, her hands tangled in his fistfuls of his hair. Riding his face.    

“Yes, Jon. My love, my dragon, my husband. I love you, I love you,” she said, hoarse and wrecked underneath him. Awkward with his left hand, Jon squeezed the base of his cock, overwrought. Desperate, Jon lapped at her pearl again, curling his fingers inside her. Once more, he needed her to come once more. The cadence of her breathing was harsh, gasping, tension quivering through her muscles. Yes love, yes Daenerys. Come for me. Come!

“Jon!” Daenerys arched beneath him. Her pleasure touched his like a match to a wick and he was ablaze with it. Heat and pleasure and glory. When Jon returned to himself, he was slumped against her thigh, come sticky on his hand, belly and trousers.

“Gods, Jon. You’re incredible,” Daenerys said, tugging him up to lay draped boneless on her chest. Jon hummed happily, his mind blank and empty. Though bare-arsed and sticky with sweat and come, Jon couldn’t convince himself to care, not with Daenerys warm and sweet in his arms, peppering his face with little kisses. They whiled away several minutes nuzzling and kissing. Sleep beckoned.

“Wait a moment, my dragon,” Daenerys crooned, wiggling free of his embrace. Jon grumbled, but rolled away, watching her as she rose to fetch a cloth from beside the ewer.

“Let me tend you,” she said. Tenderly, she washed him, adjusted his clothes, and tucked the blankets around him.

“Sleep awhile,” she said, kissing his lips. Jon fell into sleep with a smile on his face.

The warm scent of bread woke him. Jon stirred, cracking open one eyelid to find Daenerys sitting cross-legged on the floor, supping on toasted white bread and crumbly cheese. His stomach gave a long liquid growl.

“Good morning, slugabed. Hungry?”

“Ravenous,” he said with wink as he rolled free of the berth bed. Daenerys giggled. Jon sipped ginger tea and nibbled on the warm bread, grateful to feel it settle in his belly without a fuss.

“How long did I sleep?”

“Maybe a watch? It’s not yet midday,” Daenerys said. Jon nodded as he chewed. Missandei had performed her magic, twisting Daenerys’s hair into its usual intricate braids. Something was missing.

“Where is your wedding ribbon?” Jon asked. Daenerys gave a sheepish smile, wagging where it lay twisted around her wrist.

“I spilled tea on it this morning. I’m letting it dry.”

Jon nodded.  

“How do you feel?” Daenerys asked, a trace of anxiety marring her brown. Jon captured her hand and kissed the palm, as he had in the Red Keep. A lover’s kiss.

“Much better. Especially since I had my dessert earlier,” he said. Daenerys blushed, her gaze skittering away. Who knew he could turn a fierce dragons queen into a blushing maid? Still, Jon felt a hint of disquiet.

“What is it?”

Daenerys busied her hands with tidying their breakfast.

“It’s nothing.”

Jon stopped her, drawing her to sit directly across from him. He cradled her cheek.

“Tell me, love.”

Daenerys chewed on her lower lip. Such a distracting habit. Jon’s gaze fell to her lips. He hadn’t kissed her enough today. Not nearly enough. Her answer startled him.

“You’re just so . . . so generous.” From her tone, he gathered it wasn’t coin she meant. Jon frowned. Had he done something wrong?

“Is that bad?”

Daenerys’ hands tightened around his.

“No, of course not. I just . . . I feel selfish.” Now Jon did utter a snort.

“Though I haven’t known you long, I can say with confidence that you are not selfish. In bed, or out. Your people love you, that means you put their needs before your own. And with me . . .” Heat stung his cheeks. Gods, why was is so strange to speak of it when he’d fucked her with his fingers only a couple hours ago?

“You—You are exceptionally generous with me. Do you truly think I’m not enjoying myself?” There was a heartbreaking doubt embroidering her expression.

“My former husband--” Jon stoppered the words she was about to say with a gentle fingertip.

“Is dead,” he said with some savagery, “Ash. You are mine. And it is my joy to give you pleasure.”  With something like a sob, Daenerys fell into his arms.

“I love you,” she whispered against his neck. Jon stroked her back.

“I love you too,” he said, “no more talk of being selfish.”  

The day wore on. Jon sat with Daenerys in their cabin, his head pillowed on her lap. Their conversation meandered to simple things. Horses, food, music. Her dragons. The places she’d seen. Stories of King’s Landing and Winterfell and all the lands in between. Uncle and Aunt Catelyn and his cousins.

“When he fled Dragonstone after my mother died giving birth to me, Ser Darry took me to Braavos. There was an old house with a lemon tree outside the window. I loved that place best.” Jon luxuriated in the peace of having her to himself and the sweet sensation of her combing his hair.

“We should find a beautiful place and build a house. We can plant all the lemon trees you want,” Jon said drowsily.

“Yes, that’s a wonderful idea. I think--”

A muted hail of shouting. Stomping feet. Jon shot up straight, already reaching for his swordbelt. A warning quell of nausea roiled in his belly. Seven fucking hells. A moment later Grey Worm burst through the door, along with Missandei.

“Corsairs, Jelmazmo,” he said.

Jon cursed, tightening his belt. He’d heard Tyrion speak of corsair kings raiding supply ships from Dorne, or the Stepstones. Raquira should be too small and poor a target for such an attack. What bounty was salt and wool to a corsair? A horrible thought occurred to him.

“If would risk attacking a ship like Raquira, then it’s not gold they’re after,” he said. Grey Worm understood, his black eyes were afire. Daenerys reflected that look of hatred, twining her hand with Missandei’s.

“Slavers,” Daenerys said. His father’s words echoed in his head. It might be sooner than later when you raise your sword in anger. It is not an easy thing, to kill a man. He would honor his vows to protect her. Jon bent and kissed Daenerys hard.

“Stay here. Stay hidden. Keep your dagger close.”

                                                          ~

 The door shut behind Jon and Grey Worm with a thud. In answer, Daenerys’ heart thudded hard against her ribs. Before leaving for King’s Landing, her bloodrider Rakharo bemoaned that she only chose to take three bodyguards. A khalasar would be better, he said. She had scoffed, thinking three was too many for such a short and straightforward journey. Now bloodriders and husband both went to defend her from slavers. Missandei’s face was pale and drawn. She muttered something under her breath in the Summer Islander language, her own mother tongue. Gods, this was a horrific echo her first kidnapping when she was a child. Daenerys wound her arms around Missandei. They rocked together on the floor as the din overhead grew louder.

“I can’t lose him, Dany. I can’t! I’m so afraid,” Missandei wept, her tears hot against Daenerys’ neck. Her heart gave a sharp twist in her chest. It wasn’t even for herself that put her in such a state, but the thought of losing Grey Worm.

“It will be all right, Missandei. It will. We have strong and skilled friends to protect us. Grey Worm will come back. Jon will come back.” He must come back. The Valyrian steel dagger felt heavy in her hand, awkward. She had no skill with it. Daenerys missed her dragons so much it was dull ache beneath her breastbone. Wait, dragons . . .

“Missandei, come. We can help!” Daenerys said. Missandei’s golden eyes blinked at her.

“He—Help?” she asked, cold hands painfully tight on her shoulders.

“Yes, we can help Grey Worm and Jon. Come!”

                                                            ~

 The corsair ship was twice the size of Raquira. Jon saw immediately they had no chance to outrun her. The captain and crew were trained fighters. Maybe they could win free. The helmsman veered sharply to one side to avoid the boarding bridges, but two landed hard, hinged iron claws biting deep into Raquira’s rail. Jon’s gorge rose and he had to turn to retch over the side. Gods how he wished for land. A shield. Ser Barristan at his back. A dragon or three.

Black-clad corsairs bellowed as they crossed, wielding swords and spears and boarding axes. With nimble ease, they picked their way across the boarding bridges, some swung across on ropes. Jon and Grey Worm, Kovarro and Aggo and the crew stood near the mast, in a rough approximation of a shield wall. The two Dothraki shrieked and howled curses at the corsairs. Aggo’s whip cracked like thunder, the end coiled around a corsair’s ankle. A deft yank and the men fell shrieking into the sea. Another lash opened a man’s face, he fell to his knees, blood pooling in his upraised palms. Two crewmen with crossbows shot from the rigging overhead. The corsairs staggered at the assault.

It was enough. Jon picked out the brute picking his way across the boarding bridge. With a shout, Jon lunged. His sword stabbed true, through the man’s belly. Blood trickled hot down the silver-bright steel. The brute fell off his blade and into the sea. Jon took a half-step back, staggering at the roil of the sea underfoot. Another corsair thrust with his spear. Jon darted back, not fast enough to dodge the spear. The edge sliced a jagged line of pain up his thigh. Jon snarled. The corsair pulled back and stabbed his spear at Jon’s belly. Jon caught the shaft and sliced off the spearhead. Blinking dumbly at the stub of his spear, Jon hamstrung him with a terse hack. As he fell to his knees, howling, Jon silenced him with a slice across the throat.

A tangle of men advanced toward him. Jon jumped back. He collided with someone. He swiveled; sword raised. Grey Worm stared back at him. Together they picked apart the group as if they’d been born fighting side by side. With a swift nod, they stood back to back. Somewhere to his right, he heard Kovarro and Aggo. Their sharp Dothraki war cries cut through the scrum of men, punctuated by the crack of Aggo’s whip.

Time seemed to crumple and tear like parchment. At once it felt as if he’d been fighting days and only heartbeats. A bearded corsair falling to his knees with Jon’s sword in his throat. The sour taste of bile. Retching on another corpse he’d made. Blood slid down his sword to slick the braided hilt. Grey Worm stalwart and unstoppable at his back. Throbbing pain in his thigh, the back of his shield arm. His sword arm growing sore and tired. Thirst.  

“Fire! Fire!” a man shouted.

Jon looked up to find the deck of the corsair ship ablaze. Corsair and sailor alike stared dumbly at the orange flames licking at the mast and sails. Chaos erupted. The corsairs hurried back to the ship to quench the flames. Kovarro and Aggo gave chase, slaying many as they fled. Grey Worm uttered a harsh cry, almost a sob.  

“Missandei! Keligon! Māzigon aril!” Grey Worm shouted, frantic. {Stop! Come here!} Jon followed Grey Worm’s gaze and found Missandei crouched atop the helmsman’s lean-to, holding a bottle of rum with a burning rag stuffed in it. Gods, Missandei had started the fire. Clever. Frightened golden eyes found Grey Worm and Jon. She pointed.

“They have Daenerys!”

On the boarding bridge, two corsairs, and a flash of silver hair between them.

Jon moved without thinking.

Dany. Dany. Dany!

“Come, we free the khaleesi!” Kavarro said, hot on his heels.

The boarding bridge wobbled beneath their feet. Yards below, the sea churned dark and cold. Thick with floating corpses. Jon hauled Kovarro over the rail on the corsair ship. The fire roared from the bowels of the hold. The heat seared his skin. Jon ducked low, coughing. Tears stung his eyes.

“Dany! Dany!” he bellowed, choking on the thick black smoke. Where? Where? Where was she? The corsairs paid them little mind, they were focused on trying to lower their dinghies or to smother the blaze. Kovarro’s square hand on his shoulder, they minced forward. Kovarro murmured under his breath in Dothraki. If they were prayers, they sorely needed them.

A woman’s scream. Jon flinched as if struck.

“Dany!” he shouted.

From the tail of his eye, Jon glimpsed her, struggling in a corsair’s grip. The brute had a fistful of her hair, dragging her. Jaw set, Daenerys planted her feet and tried to shove free. Time seemed to slow. Through watering eyes, he saw the corsair trip, fall. Fall toward the maw of flames. A breathless instant teetering on the edge before the flames swallowed them. The corsair’s dying scream.

The world fell from beneath Jon’s feet. Gone. Gone!

A shriek tore free from him. Of rage. Of grief. Madness swallowed him. He would kill them. He would kill them all before he followed her into death! Hard hands held him, dragging him back. His breath sawed harsh in his ears, blinded by smoke and tears.

“Dany, Dany,” he wept. He sat down hard, curling into himself like a wounded animal.

“Jon? Jon? Talk to me. Are you hurt?”

It couldn’t be. Jon lifted his head. Daenerys knelt beside him, naked, soot-stained, but whole and alive.

“Alive?” he croaked. Gods, his throat felt raw, “How?” Daenerys’s answering grin looked almost sheepish. Aggo thumped a cloak onto her shoulders.

“Thank you, Aggo. I suppose I should have mentioned it. When Khal Drogo’s pyre burned and my dragons sang to me, I—I heard them. I wanted to join them. So I walked into the flames. And when the sun rose, I was unhurt. The Mother of Dragons.”

Goddess. Jon’s mind flailed, drowning in the truth of her. His wife was born of some god, surely. How could a mere mortal walk through fire unharmed and tame dragons? Jon’s mouth worked like a landed fish.

“Are you hurt?” she repeated, reaching for his hand. Her grip, warm and real, anchored him. Jon yanked her into an embrace, needing her warmth and solidness more than his next breath. A formless need wanted to drag her closer, kiss her, fuck her, remind himself that she was here and alive and his. Into her smoke-scented hair, he murmured: “I thought you were dead.”

“I’m so sorry Jon. I should have told you.”

Jon grunted, closing his eyes. She was alive. That was all that mattered.      

[moon-ruled-rising]

as the rain hides the stars

read the full story on Ao3...

iv. if i was a man, then i’d be the man

I’m so sick of running as fast as I can,

wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.

And I’m so sick of them coming at me again, 

‘cause if I was a man, then I’d be the man

-Taylor Swift, “The Man”

“The Falcon is en route,” The bodyguard reported.

Daenerys despised her code name. Falcon. Compared to the other code names of the family, Dragon, Eagle, Swan, and Raven, Falcon was terribly underwhelming. The falcon was a bird people trained to hunt for them. It was a bird for enjoyment, not a bird that commanded respect.

Stepping through the automatic airport doors, her eyes and ears were assaulted. The flash of cameras and the shouts of the paparazzi were much louder than she remembered. After six years in Essos, she supposed she’d lost her resistance to them. 

As the car door shut behind her, the security detail fell in line. Sir Jorah sat in the backseat beside her, with another in the passenger seat and an armed chauffeur. The sirens on the police cars started up and they pulled away from King’s Landing International Airport and into the busy streets.

The airport was located in the new city. An entrancing view of sleek and modern high rise buildings. Business headquarters, vegan restaurants, and clothing stores advertised themselves in the clear windows. The sun was absent, leaving room for the rainstorms that heralded her arrival. 

As they entered the old city, Dany remembered why she wanted to leave so bad. The air still smelled terrible and people crowded the streets. When Dany applied to the esteemed Braavos University, they were more than ecstatic to accept a member of the Westerosi royal family. Dany was just as excited to leave King’s Landing.

Studying overseas was the best decision. People cared less about what was going on in Westeros and weren’t phased when Dany and her security officers were out and about. Granted, there were still a few paps waiting outside her apartment but it was a much needed reprieve from her life in Westeros.

People stopped and gawked at the heavy vehicles maneuvering the narrow streets. Did they know Dany was back, or were they waiting on an official announcement from the crown? She missed being able to smile at people as she passed them and take in the sun, instead she was hidden away under an armored hood and tinted windows. 

She tore her gaze away from the saturated image of the world around her and looked at herself in the rear view. The bags under her eyes hadn’t improved and her skin was dry from the airplane air. She was in no shape to see her family again. They expected a perfect princess and the best she could give them was a tired college student. 

“Everything alright, Your Highness?”

The voice of Sir Jorah brought her back to reality.

“Nothing,” she assured Jorah, “It just feels weird to be back.”

“I know what you mean. A few years of people not giving you a second glance and now everyone’s on your arse.”

The chauffeur coughed to show his distaste for Jorah’s language, to which he muttered an apology. Dany chuckled. They had grown too relaxed while in Essos, too comfortable with each other. That would have to change.

Of course it hadn’t always been like that. When Jorah was first assigned to Dany, he took his duties with extreme seriousness, as they were drilled into him by years of experience. But when she had a breakdown while studying for her Essos Political Science class, he broke protocol and offered her solace. An odd friendship grew between them and soon enough she had Jorah trying to drink her under the table at college parties.

Despite people in Braavos not caring about Westerosi politics, they hesitated to befriend a royal. Probably afraid of the customs and rules that came with it. There was one girl in her Valyrian Studies class that managed to get over that fear, Missandei from Naath. Dany wished Missandei was with her. 

The motorcade came to the front gates of the Red Palace. It had once been a great keep built of red stone that looked over the whole city, but Dany’s ancestors had a great love for the grand mansions in Essos and had the Red Keep destroyed and replaced with a sprawling palace in red marble. It looked even more imposing than the original. Although Dany had only seen portraits of the old keep, she knew the pinkish stone couldn’t have put fear into the hearts of those that would steal it. 

Her ancestors knew what they were doing because the sight of it filled Dany with dread. Years of lessons and protocol, always in the shadow of her older brothers. She tasted freedom in Essos and was now expected to give all of it up to fit the family mold. She took a deep breath in an attempt to control the increasing speed of her heart.

The iron gate opened with the grace and opulence it commanded, allowing the princess through. The cars took their usual arc around the enormous fountain in the front courtyard. A silver scene of three dragons breathing water instead of fire. Come to think of it, Dany hated that fountain too. 

She slid out of the car, trying to move quickly so the paparazzi outside the gates couldn’t capture her dressed in leggings and athletic sneakers. Varys would have her head if even an inch of her body got published in something so casual. She added the dress code to her list of grievances. 

Petyr Baelish met her inside the doors, matching her brisk pace through the cavernous entry hall. Their footfalls echoed in the space, a haunting sound.

“Princess Daenerys, it is so good to see you again.”

“Wish I could say the same to you,” she deadpanned.

Baelish was never her friend and Dany was more than willing to take out her frustrations on him. 

He sighed and continued, “As I’m sure you know, the annual charity gala is tonight. The seamstress has already prepared selections for you to choose from and is waiting in your room. I suggest you hurry there.”

Dany rolled her eyes.

“It would also be in your best interest to know that the King of the North, Eddard Stark, and three of his children will be in attendance tonight,” Baelish reported.

“The King of the North?”

“Yes. And his three children. Crowned Prince Jon, Prince Robb, and Princess Sansa.”

“What are they doing down here?”

The North was an independent country. When Aegon the Conqueror sailed from Valyria he respected Torren Stark’s refusal to kneel, leaving them independent from the United Kingdoms of Westeros, but not without repercussions. The North was cut off from the rest of Westeros, no access to trade or military support. Members of the royal family hadn’t traveled south since the last long winter a hundred years ago.

As far as Dany was concerned they were a boring lot. Their names were rarely mentioned in the tabloids and they never did press interviews. They never appeared on TV and the paparazzi seemed uninterested. The complete opposite of the Targaryen family, whose faces were plastered on every magazine cover and nightly news editorial, who existed to be seen.

“The charity represented tonight is the champion cause of His Majesty, Eddard Stark. The palace extended an invitation to them and they accepted,” Baelish explained.

Dany hummed in acceptance of his statement, but she had the suspicion there was something deeper going on. Rhaegar learned from their ancestors to always have an ulterior motive, to never allow a stranger into your home unless the stranger had something to offer. That philosophy was one Dany lived by, although she employed it specifically for romantic partners.

Another set of footsteps entered the hall. The excited patter of little feet made Dany’s heart lurch. 

“Auntie Dee! You’re home.” 

Her niece and nephew, Rhaenys and Aegon, sprinted through the corridor. She bent down to hug them, giving them kisses on their foreheads. She didn’t want to let them go. The ache in her chest reminded her of just how much she missed them.

“How long are you going to be home this time, Dany?” Rhaenys asked, hope in her dark eyes.

“I don’t know yet, Your Royal Highness,”

“Longer than a day right?” Aegon begged.

“I think I can manage that.”

The children’s governess appeared from around the corner, red faced and out of breath.

“I’m so sorry, Your Highness, they saw your car pull through the front gates and took off. I told them that you’d want to be alone, but it appears they no longer listen to me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dany assured the woman.

“Do we have to go back to lessons?” whined Aegon.

“We’d much rather spend time with you!”

Dany laughed, “I’m afraid your lessons are more important than me. How else can you become the greatest Queen and Prince there ever was?”

The kids groaned, but didn’t protest when Dany took their hands and led them back up the stairs. The whole way back Rhaenys and Aegon filled her in on how well regular school was going and all of the friends they made. And she praised them for their wonderful jobs and promised to see them as soon as she could before handing them off to the governess.

As soon as she turned around, there was Baelish, looking rather upset at the distraction. 

“Your Highness, if you would please pick up the pace. Or you’ll go to the gala half dressed and Gods know we do not need another headline like yesterday.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Of course, she did know. Maybe drinking Red Priestess vodka all night was a terrible idea, but in her defense, she wasn’t buying the drinks. Braavosi custom dictated that it was rude to refuse a drink when someone else was buying. 

“I see. And the naked sunbathing incident with the Khal off the coast of the Summer Isles? That wasn’t you either?”

“What are you implying?”

“Your Highness, your exploits in Essos are not lost on Westeros. People talk and what they have to say isn’t nice.”

Dany rolled her eyes, “So what? Dragons don’t care about the opinions of sheep. Besides Baelish, if there was an issue here Rhaegar would’ve told me.”

She lied straight through her teeth. Of course Rhaegar said something about her behavior. And she was confident Baelish knew too. 

“Of course, Your Highness. Whatever you say.”

Baelish made a gesture for her to walk ahead of him as they approached her apartments. 

They hadn’t changed since her graduation from secondary school. She ran her hand over the painted walls. Scenes of courtyards, gardens, and ancient castles painted like they were straight from a medieval manuscript. She tapped her finger on the nose of a princess engaged in a dance with a prince, as she did every time she passed. The princess was supposed to be the fair Alysanne but there was a surprising lack of a dragon anywhere near.

The plush bed looked inviting and Dany could feel the exhaustion under her eyes. She had too much to think about and doubted sleep would come easily. When she turned the corner she laid eyes on Elia Martell, resting on the ottoman in the closet through another set of archways. She stood and opened her arms.

Dany ran to her sister-in-law, crushing her in a hug. Elia squeezed back and rubbed Dany’s back reassuringly. 

“I’m sure you know all about it,” Dany sighed into Elia’s chest. 

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” she warned, “but Rhaegar was very upset.”

“I figured.”

“Dany, how did this happen?”

“Elia, I don’t know! I wasn’t even drunk.”

The in-house seamstress was well prepared for Dany’s arrival. A rack of red gowns waited for her. Red was Dany’s favorite and she always wore it to important functions, much to the dismay of Varys. He claimed the color was too bold and harsh for a young, unmarried princess.

“Either way, there’s a stinking mess and it’s stressing Rhaegar out. If his hair wasn’t already so light, it would be turning grey. And who was that man you were leaning on?”

Dany ran her hand over the expensive fabrics. Velvets and silks, embroidered with silver and detailed in black. They were perfect for an evening amongst high born and elite.

“Daario Naharis.”

Dany selected the first dress and held it up to her frame. Dark red knit with a shimmer. Shape hugging with a slit up the back and low cut neckline. She stepped behind the privacy screen to try it on, slipping out of her regular clothing.

“You mean the Tyroshi tech millionaire?”

“His father’s the millionaire. Daario will just inherit all of it,” Dany called from behind the screen.

“Why do Rhaenys and Aegon have lessons? It’s summer.”

“I wanted to make sure it was just you and I today.”

The seamstress zipped up the dress and Dany stepped out and onto the fitting platform. As she turned about, her many reflections mimicked her and the sparkling dress she wore.

“What do you think?” she stuck out her right leg to accentuate the slit.

“It’s a little plain,” a voice said from the doorway.

Dany whipped her head around to see her best friend all the way from Essos.

“Missy!”

She hiked the skirt away from her feet and charged at her friend, wrapping her arms around the girl’s slim frame.

“What are you doing here? I thought you had a family emergency in Naath,” Dany questioned.

“That’s just where my flight connected. Elia called me a few days ago and told me I should be here.”

Elia gave Dany a playful glance.

“Well, it’s good you’re here. I need someone to agree with me on everything.”

The seamstress coughed and Dany left her best friend’s arms to try on the next option. A crimson A-line piece in chiffon, dark and flowy.

“Are you sure you don’t need someone to make sure your boobs stay in your dress?”

Elia snickered but Dany rolled her eyes.

“We get it! I made a bad decision and it came back to bite me in the ass. Add it to the list.”

Dany let out a strangled breath as the seamstress pulled the ties tight around her. The dress was supposed to flow, why did it need to be so tight? She stepped back up to the platform.

“I like that one,” Elia offered.

“Too sweet,” Missy and Dany said at the same time.

She stepped down and back behind the screen, the seamstress undressing her again.

The last time she tried on that many dresses was for Rhaegar’s coronation. They were still mourning for King Aerys so everyone was dressed in black. Dany remembered the dress she chose. Strapless, black a-line, covered in dark flowers that turned silver at the bottom. She remembered standing in the front row of the Sept, weighed down with silver jewelry and watching Rhaegar ascend the steps. And all she could think of at that moment was their father and how gaudy and disrespectful it all felt.

The seamstress pulled the ties of the next dress painfully tight and sent her off. The soft red satin pleated around her chest in structured pleats like a seashell. It hugged her hip and gathered into a burst, fanning around her feet. Dany did a few turns and twists, her many reflections copying her.

“That’s the one,” Missy praised.

Elia hummed in agreement.

On her way to change Dany said, “We can figure out the jewels later. We need to discuss my fall from grace.”

She wrapped a black silk robe around herself and walked straight onto the settee at the end of her bed, turned, and let herself fall. The thick duvet and memory foam mattress broke her fall. Missandei crawled up beside her and stroked her silver hair.

“Remember at Galazza’s lecture when she said that there’s no such thing as bad publicity?”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way for royalty. We try to keep our names out of the papers these days,” Elia stated as she appeared at Dany’s side. “The more invisible we appear, the more the public likes us. Although they seem to love when we dress up and spend time among them.”

Her dark hair fell over her shoulder. They used to have girls’ nights where they would watch sappy movies, eat popcorn, and braid each other's hair. They always watched a dated Dornish film about a Rhoynish prince disguised as a Meereenese pit fighter. Dany would always gush about the leading man and Elia said she went to school with him and they dated for a brief time. She wondered what Elia’s life would be like if it weren’t for the arranged marriage between her and Rhaegar. 

“I need a drink,” Dany pouted, sitting up.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Missy asked, the tone in her voice made it clear what she was referencing.

“If I’m going to get through this evening of ass kissers and sticks-in-the-mud, I’m going to need something stiff.”

“I think alcohol is the last thing you need,” Elia said sternly. 

“This is so unfair. If I were a man and that picture got out, this wouldn’t be an issue-”

“Dany,” Elia warned.

“-but because I’m a woman my boob is deemed offensive and-”

“Dany!” 

She looked to Elia, who never snapped at her, with wounded eyes.

“I know you’re upset and that’s understandable. But it’s our lives. So please, do me a favor, and deal with it.”

Missandei watched Elia with enraptured interest. She’d never seen someone put Dany in her place before. But then again, Dany was usually in the right. 

“How long am I going to be stuck here?”

“What?” Missy asked.

“We called Dany home because she needed a time out,” Elia explained to Missandei before turning her attention back on Dany, “And that’s indefinite for right now. You need to tell me more about this Daario.”

“We’ve been hooking up for a year and he wants to make it official.”

“Well I hope you told him no,” Elia gasped.

“Don’t worry about it Elia, he won’t be coming to Westeros anytime soon. And Rheagar would never let me formally date a Tyrohsi.”

“Why?” Missandei asked.

“The monarchy is already in a delicate position because we represent an outdated establishment. Allowing Dany to seriously entertain a foreign millionaire would make us seem unpatriotic.” Elia stroked Dany’s hair and tucked it behind her ear.

“Your Majesty, the hairdresser has arrived,” Elia’s assistant reported.

She sighed and got up, brushing the wrinkles out of her pants.

“I’ll see you two at the gala.”

Dany groaned and Missandei giggled, “You still have to find me a dress.”

[renlyisright]

Season 7 Episode 7 - Hey, We Won at Scheming, Who Would Have Guessed

Welp, I finished the master’s thesis before I finished the show. I can’t exactly say that I have grown up with these characters because most of them have stopped growing up for death-related reasons. Well, there’s the Stark kids who are still alive, and their careers are all on up-swing.

In this final episode of the season, we visit the ruins of the dragon pit, and they make me wonder just how large it must have been when the dragons were still super large.

The truce meeting is about to start, but Daenerys has brought her army to stand near King’s Landing, just in case. Both the Unsullied and the Dothraki. Euron’s massive fleet is protecting the Blackwater, against Daenerys’ fleet of… five ships.

The negotiators are allowed entrance, and are brought to the third hill of King’s Landing, and the one tourist attraction we haven’t seen yet, the Dragon Pit. Which is a big place, but sadly a ruin. Being a large pile of already-cut stone right in the city with no current use never helps any historical building, those stones can be put to a much better use.

As this meeting includes almost everyone of any importance, and also some sidekicks, there’s more reunions. Tyrion says that he missed Bronn. Bronn seems to have his business in order, bringing Cersei’s enemies to her and thinking of retiring with his reward if the negotiation ends with heads on spikes. But if Daenerys wins in the end...

Everyone arrives to the arena, and the Hound begins the game by threatening the Mountain. There’s clearly a duel being set up between these two death-cheaters, but as at any time either of them can be killed by, well, anything, I’m not holding my breath for a super smackdown between them.

Daenerys arrives fashionably late, and brings her two dragons to the dragon pit, and… how big exactly this place must have been in the beginning? Drogon’s wings almost cover the middle of the arena by themselves.

As Daenerys, Jon and Tyrion predicted, their enemies just laugh about the matter before seeing the evidence. After that, they present a bit of theater, as Cersei later reveals. Euron proclaims that he’s moving his fleet to the Iron Islands, away from the Dead, and Cersei gives a practised speech of accepting the truce.

So did they have intel of the evidence, or did Cersei make plans for the low-odds-event that the thing she has ridiculed every time it has come up is actually true. If so, that’s remarkably good planning, from her.

The showing of the evidence was quite a show, Jon used the one wight they had in great detail for everyone to see. Qyburn was especially interested… well, he has practised getting one almost dead man up and running, so searching this body for any clues for advancing the scientific understanding of life and death must intrigue him… Let’s hope he doesn’t create a new White Walker in the middle of the Red Keep.

Cersei asks Jon to promise to go back to the North and stay there. Jon can’t promise that, so the negotiation ends, just like that. Tyrion and Daenerys say that Jon should have just lied and not been so Neddy. But just because others do something universally agreed to be bad, it doesn’t mean you should too. Anyway, Cersei walks out and Tyrion goes to speak to him alone, as he matters the least if he gets killed.

But he doesn’t, even after coaxing Cersei to kill him for what he did. Cersei is too shocked to give the word, and it could also be that she simply can’t give people what they ask from her, it’s completely unnatural to her. She blames Tyrion for killing Tywin, which opened them for their enemies and brought about the dead of the rest of the kids. The legacy of Tywin Lannister… you know, if the only thing keeping everyone from attacking your family is their fear of you, that does not a good legacy make. The legacy of Ned Stark was the North supporting first Robb and then Jon out of respect to him, the legacy of Tywin Lannister was everyone piling up on the Lannisters once he was out of the way.

The result of Cersei and Tyrion’s discussion is that Cersei proclaims to join them in the fight against the Dead, while expecting nothing good to come to herself for that decision. Yes, what did we speak about lying just now?

Speaking of Ned Stark’s legacy, Jon and Theon talk about it. Theon betrayed his memory, but, as Jon says, he was more of a father to Theon than Balon ever was. And so they can use that bond to reconcile, and Jon can encourage Theon to take charge and take the lead of Yara’s men.

Symbolism, Theon is starting to change his weaknesses into strengths. This is symbolised by allowing the Ironborn he is fighting to kick him to the nuts, to no effect. Yes, this is symbolism speaking.

The man says to Theon “Stay down, or I’ll kill you”. When Theon has the upper hand, he bashes his head in with a rock for that mercy. I would say that the Ironborn have a specifically violent way to solve disputes, but… nope. Not specifically, not at all. But Theon gets to be the leader of the pride, and gets to go against the Ramsay-placeholder enemy to confront his trauma. Someone should invent better therapy methods.

In Winterfell, the winter continues to fall from the sky. Littlefinger tries to chaos things up, but his time’s up. There’s no room for him anymore in this new magical and thriller-pace world.

I read A Dance With Dragons last winter, and while I liked most of it, like the writing style, the characters, seeing more of non-royals, and the new locales, the ending was a disappointment. Or rather, that there wasn’t an ending. There’s more books to go (and I hope to get to read them), but this one just… stopped when the page count went over 1000. It had the same problem as the fourth one, people spent a lot of time going from one place to another, so that when they arrived the book was almost over (or in Victarion’s case, it was over), and the end result was just a list of cliffhangers. Like, imagine ending A Clash of Kings just before Blackwater, or last season before the Battle of the Bastards. It felt like the arc of the book was incomplete, and I wasn’t given a reason to care about the new side plots, like which of them will actually matter and which just padded the book until it had to end early?

The funny thing of course is that this show has now the opposite problem of jumping from one set piece to another without build-up or showing of the journey. And when you can’t keep up with this new world, you lose the game of thrones.

Littlefinger schemes a wedge between Sansa and Arya. He doesn’t want a trained assassin in the same castle as he is, now that he has supported Sansa to ladyship and is perhaps looking for a way to make her a queen as well… that was his weakness, stick to just getting power and you’d have much easier job, but no, you have to include getting a specific woman into your plans and that’s when you make mistakes. But it doesn’t matter anymore what he schemes, as magic has entered Winterfell.

Bran can cheat. He can see the past, and apparently can see exactly where and when he wants. So he traced Littlefinger’s steps, and found out all his betrayals. Many of them Sansa already knew, so the rest mustn’t have come as a shock. So the Starks, who value honesty and honor, now can see if they are betrayed or lied to. Once Jon gets to Winterfell, Bran can tell him what Cersei said after they left. Political intrigue, a corner block and most of the wall of the show, has suddenly become useless. The Littlefingers of the world can’t scheme anymore against the Starks. They have Won At Scheming.

The dagger, the dagger, is revealed to be originally Petyr’s. As I said earlier, the only way the revelation could matter anymore would be if it was someone’s who is still living, or someone’s whom we’d never think to order Bran’s assassination. And here we are, it was the Chaos Man. I’m not sure if the dates add up, how did he know of Bran’s fall so that he could hire the assassin, when he was in King’s Landing at the time? Maybe he wasn’t? And why use his own expensive dagger and lie that it was Tyrion’s, when a simple Lannister knife would have worked much better?

In the book the answer was different. Tyrion figured out that it was Joffrey, who stole his father’s dagger and gave it to the assassin. He never confirmed it with anyone, and anyway Joffrey died moments later. I can fully well believe it from Joffrey. But it’s been so long since Joffrey died that at this point one more evil deed to his name wouldn’t mean much. So the culprit is now Littlefinger, and wow, listing all his schemes like that tells how without him the status quo would likely be just where it was in the beginning. He has a lot of blood on his hands. Daenerys and the Dead would still be wild cards, though.

And so the king of the ash heap, Petyr Baelish, dies in the dark main hall of Winterfell, in the middle of the mess he’s spent years to create, without achieving his goals, without any allies and with absolutely nobody going to miss him.

As I have said, for being such a dark and gritty show, the villains don’t get any better ends than those who try to do better, and their legacies are usually worse.

Speaking of both the villains and those who try to do better, Cersei informs Jaime that nope, we are not going anywhere, she used the neat trick called lying. Euron went to get mercenaries with elephants (ooh!) from Essos.

This is enough for Jaime, who storms away, after telling Cersei to have the Mountain kill him for it if she so desires. In the end, she doesn’t, even after threatening him with that. But after listening to her lie and cheat for years, Jaime just says “I don’t believe you” and leaves. See, consequences.

Poor Cersei, losing everyone’s trust and being entirely alone at the end of the episode. Only her massive armies to keep her on the throne. Which is a funny thing, now that I think about it. She has managed to antagonize everybody, but because she has killed everyone in King’s Landing who has criticized her, she gets to still rule, because there is no one else in the city to take the crown from her. She’s taking advantage of the fact that no new important characters are going to be introduced at this point. Euron was the last one, in the season 6 of 8, and even he feels like he exists only as a mid boss so Daenerys’ invasion isn’t too easy, to be killed once fleets don’t matter anymore.

Of course Cersei takes advantage of the fact that her enemies are scary. New Targaryen invasion, with the Dothraki and Unsullied. Nothing like the good old rulers we have here in Westeros, who may blow up the most holy building on the continent to escape a trial and kill the servants of the main religion, but are at least… from the same continent?

It’s still weird that the Seven is the main religion, when it has been the most useless one in actual action. Did they ever do anything? When the Old Gods were driven from the South, were the Seven doing anything to support their believers? Well, did the Old Gods? Does the Drowned God? Well, if Euron’s fleet’s speed is a boon from the Drowned God, that would explain a lot.

The winter comes to King’s Landing as well. Snow will be next season’s color. Along with darkness, but if the scenery gets any darker I won’t see anything on screen.

A song of fire: Sam arrives at Winterfell, safe and sound. He must have found out about his father and brother on the way, but it’s not mentioned. He meets with Bran, and by giving him a hint of where to look, Bran sees the wedding of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. So they were legally married, and their child, Jon, is not a bastard, but the legal heir to the Throne, Aegon Targaryen. Boom. And there’s him and Daenerys being all Targaryeny.

Bigger thing than the heir business, is that Rhaegar is no longer sullied by the rape, which is the main thing he is remembered for. “He was a noble and great knight from the stories, a great prince, and a rapist whose horribleness brought about the rebellion.” But was that lie better than the truth? Or did someone, last generation’s Littlefinger, spin the story for the worst so a proper war could get started?

Anyway, has Daenerys fought all her battles so that she can give the throne to the rightful heir, who is not her, the Breaker of Chains?

A song of ice: Sansa and Arya talk, and remember their father’s words of working together: The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Legacy.

In the Eastwatch-by-the-sea, bad things happen. A dragon is a nuke option, and the Night King uses it gladly. Its power seems to be enough to destroy the Wall and remove the spells as well. And so the dead march to the lands beyond the Wall, bringing a new night with them.

After all the hype of the Wall, it couldn’t even put up a fight when the dead finally arrived. Beric Dondarrion and Tormund try to run to safety, and I can’t see if they succeed. But I’d presume that there would be a clearer shot if they died. And, well, we are talking of Beric Dondarrion here. He could always play dead.

But guess who from the Night Watch survived the apocalyptic event of the onslaught of the dead and the destruction of the Wall? And did it just by not being where the attack happened? My favourite watchman, Dolorous Edd. How does he do it?

By the way, Night Watch, Long Night, Night King, connecting these took too long for me.

[aboveallarescuer]

Dany and Barristan’s relationship

This is a list of all the passages from the books featuring key moments in Dany and Barristan’s relationship (including Barristan's chapters).

In my opinion, this is a relationship that deserves more appreciation than it gets. There are multiple reasons why it doesn't: most of us (myself included) wish we had gotten Missandei's POV instead of Barristan's; most of us (myself included) were more eager to see Dany and Tyrion finally intersect and interact with each other than to enjoy Dany and Barristan's dynamic; D&D chose to focus on show!Jorah's relationship with show!Dany, to the detriment of show!Barristan; Dany/Barristan doesn't leave room for shipping like Dany/Jon or Dany/Jorah or Dany/Daario or Dany/Drogo; certain asoiaf meta writers overfocus on the possibility that Barristan might betray Dany for Aegon (which I don't find likely) or harshly criticize Barristan (since his character development is inherently tied to Dany's actions, criticizing him is a convenient way to criticize Dany herself).

Still, Barristan is meant to be a foil to Jorah in that the former does what the latter was unwilling (or incapable) of doing: he respects Dany's authority and personal boundaries, he thinks that slavery is immoral, he always calls Dany by her rightful title, he praises Dany for her own sake (instead of relating her accomplishments back to a man), he admires Dany for caring about her people, he knows her well enough to realize that she's in love with Daario, he thinks of what she would do when she's away from Meereen before making his decisions and so on.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

She still clung to the hope that someone would come after her. Ser Barristan might come seeking her; he was the first of her Queensguard, sworn to defend her life with his own.

~

And she wondered how much the Yunkai’i knew about what her captain meant to her. She had asked Ser Barristan that question the afternoon the hostages went forth. “They will have heard the talk,” he had replied. “Naharis may even have boasted of Your Grace’s ... of your great ... regard ... for him. If you will forgive my saying so, modesty is not one of the captain’s virtues. He takes great pride in his ... his swordsmanship.”

He boasts of bedding me, you mean.

~

As the world darkened, Dany settled in and closed her eyes, but sleep refused to come. The night was cold, the ground hard, her belly empty. She found herself thinking of Meereen, of Daario, her love, and Hizdahr, her husband, of Irri and Jhiqui and sweet Missandei, Ser Barristan and Reznak and Skahaz Shavepate. Do they fear me dead? I flew off on a dragon’s back. Will they think he ate me?

ADWD The Queen's Hand

He stood beside the parapets of the highest step of the Great Pyramid, searching the sky as he did every morning, knowing that the dawn must come and hoping that his queen would come with it. She will not have abandoned us, she would never leave her people, he was telling himself, when he heard the prince’s death rattle coming from the queen’s apartments.

~

At his command, Quentyn Martell had been laid out in the queen’s own bed. He had been a knight, and a prince of Dorne besides. It seemed only kind to let him die in the bed he had crossed half a world to reach. The bedding was ruined—sheets, covers, pillows, mattress, all reeked of blood and smoke, but Ser Barristan thought Daenerys would forgive him.

~

He should have stayed in Dorne. He should have stayed a frog. Not all men are meant to dance with dragons. As he covered the boy once more, he found himself wondering whether there would be anyone to cover his queen, or whether her own corpse would lie un-mourned amongst the tall grasses of the Dothraki sea, staring blindly at the sky until her flesh fell from her bones.

“No,” he said aloud. “Daenerys is not dead. She was riding that dragon. I saw it with mine own two eyes.” He had said the same a hundred times before … but every day that passed made it harder to believe. Her hair was afire. I saw that too. She was burning … and if I did not see her fall, hundreds swear they did.

~

“They await the Hand’s pleasure below.”

I am no Hand, a part of him wanted to cry out. I am only a simple knight, the queen’s protector. I never wanted this. But with the queen gone and the king in chains, someone had to rule, and Ser Barristan did not trust the Shavepate.

~

“The black beast came once, why not again? This time with our queen.”

Or without her. Should Drogon return to Meereen without Daenerys mounted on his back, the city would erupt in blood and flame, of that Ser Barristan had no doubt. The very men sitting at this table would soon be at dagger points with one another. A young girl she might be, but Daenerys Targaryen was the only thing that held them all together.

“Her Grace will return when she returns,” said Ser Barristan.

~

Though he had assumed the title of Hand, Ser Barristan would not presume to hold court in the queen’s absence, nor would he permit Skahaz mo Kandaq to do such. Hizdahr’s grotesque dragon thrones had been removed at Ser Barristan’s command, but he had not brought back the simple pillowed bench the queen had favored. Instead a large round table had been set up in the center of the hall, with tall chairs all around it where men might sit and talk as peers.

~

“You had best guard that tongue, ser.” Ser Barristan did not like this Gerris Drinkwater, nor would he allow him to vilify Daenerys. “Prince Quentyn’s death was his own doing, and yours.”

~

“He offered her his heart,” Ser Gerris said again. “She needed swords, not hearts.”

“He would have given her the spears of Dorne as well.”

“Would that he had.” No one had wanted Daenerys to look with favor on the Dornish prince more than Barristan Selmy.

~

“...Duty brought Prince Quentyn here. Duty, honor, thirst for glory … never love. Quentyn was here for dragons, not Daenerys.”

~

The Dornishmen, Hizdahr, Reznak, the attack … was he doing the right things? Was he doing what Daenerys would have wanted? I was not made for this. Other Kingsguard had served as Hand before him. Not many, but a few. He had read of them in the White Book. Now he found himself wondering whether they had felt as lost and confused as he did.

~

Galazza Galare was attended by four Pink Graces. An aura of wisdom and dignity seemed to surround her that Ser Barristan could not help but admire. This is a strong woman, and she has been a faithful friend to Daenerys.

~

“If you truly think me wise, heed me now. Release the noble Hizdahr and restore him to his throne.”

“Only the queen can do that.”

~

“...Even your own young queen, fair Daenerys who called herself the Mother of Dragons … we saw her burning, that day in the pit … even she was not safe from the dragon’s wroth.”

“Her Grace is not … she …”

“… is dead. May the gods grant her sweet sleep.” Tears glistened behind her veils. “Let her dragons die as well.”

ADWD The Kingbreaker

“One guardsman amongst forty. All waiting for the empty tabard on the throne to speak the command so we might cut down Bloodbeard and the rest. Do you think the Yunkai’i would ever have dared present Daenerys with the head of her hostage?” 

No, thought Selmy. “Hizdahr seemed distraught.”

“Sham. His own kin of Loraq were returned unharmed. You saw. The Yunkai’i played us a mummer’s farce, with noble Hizdahr as chief mummer. The issue was never Yurkhaz zo Yunzak. The other slavers would gladly have trampled that old fool themselves. This was to give Hizdahr a pretext to kill the dragons.”

Ser Barristan chewed on that. “Would he dare?”

“He dared to kill his queen. Why not her pets? If we do not act, Hizdahr will hesitate for a time, to give proof of his reluctance and allow the Wise Masters the chance to rid him of the Stormcrow and the bloodrider. Then he will act. They want the dragons dead before the Volantene fleet arrives.”

Aye, they would. It all fit. That did not mean Barristan Selmy liked it any better. “That will not happen.” His queen was the Mother of Dragons; he would not allow her children to come to harm.    

~

“Daario might piss on us if we were burning. Elsewise do not look to him for help. Let the Stormcrows choose another captain, one who knows his place. If the queen does not return, the world will be one sellsword short. Who will grieve?”

“And when she does return?”

“She will weep and tear her hair and curse the Yunkai’i. Not us. No blood on our hands. You can comfort her. Tell her some tale of the old days, she likes those. Poor Daario, her brave captain … she will never forget him, no … but better for all of us if he is dead, yes? Better for Daenerys too.”

Better for Daenerys, and for Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen loved her captain, but that was the girl in her, not the queen. Prince Rhaegar loved his Lady Lyanna, and thousands died for it. Daemon Blackfyre loved the first Daenerys, and rose in rebellion when denied her. Bittersteel and Bloodraven both loved Shiera Seastar, and the Seven Kingdoms bled. The Prince of Dragonflies loved Jenny of Oldstones so much he cast aside a crown, and Westeros paid the bride price in corpses. All three of the sons of the fifth Aegon had wed for love, in defiance of their father’s wishes. And because that unlikely monarch had himself followed his heart when he chose his queen, he allowed his sons to have their way, making bitter enemies where he might have had fast friends. Treason and turmoil followed, as night follows day, ending at Summerhall in sorcery, fire, and grief.

Her love for Daario is poison. A slower poison than the locusts, but in the end as deadly. “There is still Jhogo,” Ser Barristan said. “Him, and Hero. Both precious to Her Grace.”

“We have hostages as well,” Skahaz Shavepate reminded him. “If the slavers kill one of ours, we kill one of theirs.”

For a moment Ser Barristan did not know whom he meant. Then it came to him. “The queen’s cupbearers?”

“Hostages,” insisted Skahaz mo Kandaq. “Grazdar and Qezza are the blood of the Green Grace. Mezzara is of Merreq, Kezmya is Pahl, Azzak Ghazeen. Bhakaz is Loraq, Hizdahr’s own kin. All are sons and daughters of the pyramids. Zhak, Quazzar, Uhlez, Hazkar, Dhazak, Yherizan, all children of Great Masters.”

“Innocent girls and sweet-faced boys.” Ser Barristan had come to know them all during the time they served the queen, Grazhar with his dreams of glory, shy Mezzara, lazy Miklaz, vain, pretty Kezmya, Qezza with her big soft eyes and angel’s voice, Dhazzar the dancer, and the rest. “Children.”

“Children of the Harpy. Only blood can pay for blood.”

“So said the Yunkishman who brought us Groleo’s head.”

“He was not wrong.”

“I will not permit it.”

“What use are hostages if they may not be touched?”

“Mayhaps we might offer three of the children for Daario, Hero, and Jhogo,” Ser Barristan allowed. “Her Grace—”

“—is not here. It is for you and me to do what must be done. You know that I am right.”

“Prince Rhaegar had two children,” Ser Barristan told him. “Rhaenys was a little girl, Aegon a babe in arms. When Tywin Lannister took King’s Landing, his men killed both of them. He served the bloody bodies up in crimson cloaks, a gift for the new king.” And what did Robert say when he saw them? Did he smile? Barristan Selmy had been badly wounded on the Trident, so he had been spared the sight of Lord Tywin’s gift, but oft he wondered. If I had seen him smile over the red ruins of Rhaegar’s children, no army on this earth could have stopped me from killing him. “I will not suffer the murder of children. Accept that, or I’ll have no part of this.”

~

Rhaegar had chosen Lyanna Stark of Winterfell. Barristan Selmy would have made a different choice. Not the queen, who was not present. Nor Elia of Dorne, though she was good and gentle; had she been chosen, much war and woe might have been avoided. His choice would have been a young maiden not long at court, one of Elia’s companions … though compared to Ashara Dayne, the Dornish princess was a kitchen drab.

Even after all these years, Ser Barristan could still recall Ashara’s smile, the sound of her laughter. He had only to close his eyes to see her, with her long dark hair tumbling about her shoulders and those haunting purple eyes. Daenerys has the same eyes. Sometimes when the queen looked at him, he felt as if he were looking at Ashara’s daughter …

ADWD The Discarded Knight

Daenerys Targaryen had preferred to hold court from a bench of polished ebony, smooth and simple, covered with the cushions that Ser Barristan had found to make her more comfortable. King Hizdahr had replaced the bench with two imposing thrones of gilded wood, their tall backs carved into the shape of dragons. The king seated himself in the right-hand throne with a golden crown upon his head and a jeweled sceptre in one pale hand. The second throne remained vacant.

The important throne, thought Ser Barristan. No dragon chair can replace a dragon no matter how elaborately it’s carved.

~

“Is it true?” a freedwoman shouted. “Is our mother dead?”

“No, no, no,” Reznak screeched. “Queen Daenerys will return to Meereen in her own time in all her might and majesty. Until such time, His Worship King Hizdahr shall—”

“He is no king of mine,” a freedman yelled.

Men began to shove at one another. “The queen is not dead,” the seneschal proclaimed. “Her bloodriders have been dispatched across the Skahazadhan to find Her Grace and return her to her loving lord and loyal subjects. Each has ten picked riders, and each man has three swift horses, so they may travel fast and far. Queen Daenerys shall be found.”

A tall Ghiscari in a brocade robe spoke next, in a voice as sonorous as it was cold. King Hizdahr shifted on his dragon throne, his face stony as he did his best to appear concerned but unperturbed. Once again his seneschal gave answer.

Ser Barristan let Reznak’s oily words wash over him. His years in the Kingsguard had taught him the trick of listening without hearing, especially useful when the speaker was intent on proving that words were truly wind. Back at the rear of the hall, he spied the Dornish princeling and his two companions. They should not have come. Martell does not realize his danger. Daenerys was his only friend at this court, and she is gone. He wondered how much they understood of what was being said. Even he could not always make sense of the mongrel Ghiscari tongue the slavers spoke, especially when they were speaking fast.

Prince Quentyn was listening intently, at least. That one is his father’s son. Short and stocky, plain-faced, he seemed a decent lad, sober, sensible, dutiful … but not the sort to make a young girl’s heart beat faster. And Daenerys Targaryen, whatever else she might be, was still a young girl, as she herself would claim when it pleased her to play the innocent. Like all good queens she put her people first—else she would never have wed Hizdahr zo Loraq—but the girl in her still yearned for poetry, passion, and laughter. She wants fire, and Dorne sent her mud.

~

Martell was dancing in a vipers’ nest, and he did not even see the snakes. His continued presence, even after Daenerys had given herself to another before the eyes of gods and men, would provoke any husband, and Quentyn no longer had the queen to shield him from Hizdahr’s wroth. Although …

The thought hit him like a slap across the face. Quentyn had grown up amongst the courts of Dorne. Plots and poisons were no strangers to him. Nor was Prince Lewyn his only uncle. He is kin to the Red Viper. Daenerys had taken another for her consort, but if Hizdahr died, she would be free to wed again. Could the Shavepate have been wrong? Who can say that the locusts were meant for Daenerys? It was the king’s own box. What if he was meant to be the victim all along? Hizdahr’s death would have smashed the fragile peace. The Sons of the Harpy would have resumed their murders, the Yunkishmen their war. Daenerys might have had no better choice than Quentyn and his marriage pact.

~

Ser Barristan watched them, thoughtful. What would Daenerys want? he asked himself. He thought he knew.

~

“This Ghiscari lordling is no fit consort for the queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“That is not for you to judge.” Ser Barristan paused, wondering if he had said too much already. No. Tell him the rest of it. “That day at Daznak’s Pit, some of the food in the royal box was poisoned. It was only chance that Strong Belwas ate it all. The Blue Graces say that only his size and freakish strength have saved him, but it was a near thing. He may yet die.”

The shock was plain on Prince Quentyn’s face. “Poison … meant for Daenerys?”

“Her or Hizdahr. Perhaps both. The box was his, though. His Grace made all the arrangements. If the poison was his doing … well, he will need a scapegoat. Who better than a rival from a distant land who has no friends at this court? Who better than a suitor the queen spurned?”

Quentyn Martell went pale. “Me? I would never … you cannot think I had any part in any …”

That was the truth, or he is a master mummer. “Others might,” said Ser Barristan. “The Red Viper was your uncle. And you have good reason to want King Hizdahr dead.”

“So do others,” suggested Gerris Drinkwater. “Naharis, for one. The queen’s …”

“… paramour,” Ser Barristan finished, before the Dornish knight could say anything that might besmirch the queen’s honor.

ADWD The Queensguard

You were the queen’s man,” said Reznak mo Reznak. “The king desires his own men about him when he holds court.”

I am the queen’s man still. Today, tomorrow, always, until my last breath, or hers. Barristan Selmy refused to believe that Daenerys Targaryen was dead.

Perhaps that was why he was being put aside. One by one, Hizdahr removes us all.

~

Despite all the queen had done, the sickness had spread, both within the city walls and without. Meereen’s markets were closed, its streets empty. King Hizdahr had allowed the fighting pits to remain open, but the crowds were sparse. The Meereenese had even begun to shun the Temple of the Graces, reportedly.

The slavers will find some way to blame Daenerys for that as well, Ser Barristan thought bitterly. He could almost hear them whispering—Great Masters, Sons of the Harpy, Yunkai’i, all telling one another that his queen was dead. Half of the city believed it, though as yet they did not have the courage to say such words aloud. But soon, I think.

~

Not for the first time, Selmy wondered at the strange fates that had brought him here. He was a knight of Westeros, a man of the stormlands and the Dornish marches; his place was in the Seven Kingdoms, not here upon the sweltering shores of Slaver’s Bay. I came to bring Daenerys home. Yet he had lost her, just as he had lost her father and her brother. Even Robert. I failed him too.

Perhaps Hizdahr was wiser than he knew. Ten years ago I would have sensed what Daenerys meant to do. Ten years ago I would have been quick enough to stop her. Instead he had stood befuddled as she leapt into the pit, shouting her name, then running uselessly after her across the scarlet sands. I am become old and slow. Small wonder Naharis mocked him as Ser Grandfather. Would Daario have moved more quickly if he had been beside the queen that day? Selmy thought he knew the answer to that, though it was not one he liked.

He had dreamed of it again last night: Belwas on his knees retching up bile and blood, Hizdahr urging on the dragonslayers, men and women fleeing in terror, fighting on the steps, climbing over one another, screaming and shouting. And Daenerys …

Her hair was aflame. She had the whip in her hand and she was shouting, then she was on the dragon’s back, flying. The sand that Drogon stirred as he took wing had stung Ser Barristan’s eyes, but through a veil of tears he had watched the beast fly from the pit, his great black wings slapping at the shoulders of the bronze warriors at the gates.

The rest he learned later. Beyond the gates had been a solid press of people. Maddened by the smell of dragon, horses below reared in terror, lashing out with iron-shod hooves. Food stalls and palanquins alike were overturned, men knocked down and trampled. Spears were thrown, cross-bows were fired. Some struck home. The dragon twisted violently in the air, wounds smoking, the girl clinging to his back. Then he loosed the fire.

It had taken the rest of the day and most of the night for the Brazen Beasts to gather up the corpses. The final count was two hundred fourteen slain, three times as many burned or wounded. Drogon was gone from the city by then, last seen high over the Skahazadhan, flying north. Of Daenerys Targaryen, no trace had been found. Some swore they saw her fall. Others insisted that the dragon had carried her off to devour her. They are wrong.

Ser Barristan knew no more of dragons than the tales every child hears, but he knew Targaryens. Daenerys had been riding that dragon, as Aegon had once ridden Balerion of old.

“She might be flying home,” he told himself, aloud. “No,” murmured a soft voice behind him. “She would not do that, ser. She would not go home without us.”

Ser Barristan turned. “Missandei. Child. How long have you been standing there?”

“Not long. This one is sorry if she has disturbed you.”

~

It was his failures that haunted him at night, though. Jaehaerys, Aerys, Robert. Three dead kings. Rhaegar, who would have been a finer king than any of them. Princess Elia and the children. Aegon just a babe, Rhaenys with her kitten. Dead, every one, yet he still lived, who had sworn to protect them. And now Daenerys, his bright shining child queen. She is not dead. I will not believe it.

Afternoon brought Ser Barristan a brief respite from his doubts. He spent it in the training hall on the pyramid’s third level, working with his boys, teaching them the art of sword and shield, horse and lance … and chivalry, the code that made a knight more than any pit fighter. Daenerys would need protectors her own age about her after he was gone, and Ser Barristan was determined to give her such.

The lads he was instructing ranged in age from eight to twenty. He had started with more than sixty of them, but the training had proved too rigorous for many. Less than half that number now remained, but some showed great promise. With no king to guard, I will have more time to train them now, he realized as he walked from pair to pair, watching them go at one another with blunted swords and spears with rounded heads. Brave boys. Baseborn, aye, but some will make good knights, and they love the queen. If not for her, all of them would have ended in the pits. King Hizdahr has his pit fighters, but Daenerys will have knights.

~

If the queen had commanded me to protect Hizdahr, I would have had no choice but to obey. But Daenerys Targaryen had never established a proper Queensguard even for herself nor issued any commands in respect to her consort. The world was simpler when I had a lord commander to decide such matters, Selmy reflected. Now I am the lord commander, and it is hard to know which path is right.

~

“I have the poisoner.”

“Who?”

“Hizdahr’s confectioner. His name would mean nothing to you. The man was just a cats paw. The Sons of the Harpy took his daughter and swore she would be returned unharmed once the queen was dead. Belwas and the dragon saved Daenerys. No one saved the girl. She was returned to her father in the black of night, in nine pieces. One for every year she lived.”

“Why?” Doubts gnawed at him. “The Sons had stopped their killing. Hizdahr’s peace—”

“—is a sham. Not at first, no. The Yunkai’i were afraid of our queen, of her Unsullied, of her dragons. This land has known dragons before. Yurkhaz zo Yunzak had read his histories, he knew. Hizdahr as well. Why not a peace? Daenerys wanted it, they could see that. Wanted it too much. She should have marched to Astapor.” Skahaz moved closer. “That was before. The pit changed all. Daenerys gone, Yurkhaz dead. In place of one old lion, a pack of jackals. Bloodbeard … that one has no taste for peace. And there is more. Worse. Volantis has launched its fleet against us.”

“Volantis.” Selmy’s sword hand tingled. We made a peace with Yunkai. Not with Volantis. “You are certain?”

“Certain. The Wise Masters know. So do their friends. The Harpy, Reznak, Hizdahr. This king will open the city gates to the Volantenes when they arrive. All those Daenerys freed will be enslaved again. Even some who were never slaves will be fitted for chains. You may end your days in a fighting pit, old man. Khrazz will eat your heart.”

His head was pounding. “Daenerys must be told.”

“Find her first.” Skahaz grasped his forearm. His fingers felt like iron. “We cannot wait for her.

~

“Daenerys signed that peace,” Ser Barristan said. “It is not for us to break it without her leave.”

“And if she is dead?” demanded Skahaz. “What then, ser? I say she would want us to protect her city. Her children.”

Her children were the freedmen. Mhysa, they called her, all those whose chains she broke. “Mother.” The Shavepate was not wrong. Daenerys would want her children protected. “What of Hizdahr? He is still her consort. Her king. Her husband.”

“Her poisoner.”

Is he? “Where is your proof?”

“The crown he wears is proof enough. The throne he sits. Open your eyes, old man. That is all he needed from Daenerys, all he ever wanted. Once he had it, why share the rule?”

Why indeed? It had been so hot down in the pit. He could still see the air shimmering above the scarlet sands, smell the blood spilling from the men who’d died for their amusement. And he could still hear Hizdahr, urging his queen to try the honeyed locusts.

ADWD Daenerys IX

At the base of the Great Pyramid, Ser Barristan awaited them beside an ornate open palanquin, surrounded by Brazen Beasts. Ser Grandfather, Dany thought. Despite his age, he looked tall and handsome in the armor that she’d given him. “I would be happier if you had Unsullied guards about you today, Your Grace,” the old knight said, as Hizdahr went to greet his cousin. “Half of these Brazen Beasts are untried freedmen.” And the other half are Meereenese of doubtful loyalty, he left unsaid. Selmy mistrusted all the Meereenese, even shavepates.

“And untried they shall remain unless we try them.”

“A mask can hide many things, Your Grace. Is the man behind the owl mask the same owl who guarded you yesterday and the day before? How can we know?”

“How should Meereen ever come to trust the Brazen Beasts if I do not? There are good brave men beneath those masks. I put my life into their hands.” Dany smiled for him. “You fret too much, ser. I will have you beside me, what other protection do I need?”

“I am one old man, Your Grace.”

“Strong Belwas will be with me as well.”

“As you say.” Ser Barristan lowered his voice. “Your Grace. We set the woman Meris free, as you commanded. Before she went, she asked to speak with you. I met with her instead. She claims this Tattered Prince meant to bring the Windblown over to your cause from the beginning. That he sent her here to treat with you secretly, but the Dornishmen unmasked them and betrayed them before she could make her own approach.”

Treachery on treachery, the queen thought wearily. Is there no end to it? “How much of this do you believe, ser?”

“Little and less, Your Grace, but those were her words.”

“Will they come over to us, if need be?”

“She says they will. But for a price.”

“Pay it.” Meereen needed iron, not gold.

“The Tattered Prince will want more than coin, Your Grace. Meris says that he wants Pentos.” “Pentos?” Her eyes narrowed. “How can I give him Pentos? It is half a world away.”

“He would be willing to wait, the woman Meris suggested. Until we march for Westeros.”

And if I never march for Westeros? “Pentos belongs to the Pentoshi. And Magister Illyrio is in Pentos. He who arranged my marriage to Khal Drogo and gave me my dragon eggs. Who sent me you, and Belwas, and Groleo. I owe him much and more. I will not repay that debt by giving his city to some sellsword. No.”

Ser Barristan inclined his head. “Your Grace is wise.”

~

Ser Barristan Selmy rode at Dany’s side, his armor flashing in the sun. A long cloak flowed from his shoulders, bleached as white as bone. On his left arm was a large white shield. A little farther back was Quentyn Martell, the Dornish prince, with his two companions.

The column crept slowly down the long brick street. BOMM. “They come!” BOMM. “Our queen. Our king.” BOMM. “Make way.”

Dany could hear her handmaids arguing behind her, debating who was going to win the day’s final match. Jhiqui favored the gigantic Goghor, who looked more bull than man, even to the bronze ring in his nose. Irri insisted that Belaquo Bonebreaker’s flail would prove the giant’s undoing. My handmaids are Dothraki, she told herself. Death rides with every khalasar. The day she wed Khal Drogo, the arakhs had flashed at her wedding feast, and men had died whilst others drank and mated. Life and death went hand in hand amongst the horselords, and a sprinkling of blood was thought to bless a marriage. Her new marriage would soon be drenched in blood. How blessed it would be.

BOMM, BOMM, BOMM, BOMM, BOMM, BOMM, came the drumbeats, faster than before, suddenly angry and impatient. Ser Barristan drew his sword as the column ground to an abrupt halt between the pink-and-white pyramid of Pahl and the green-and-black of Naqqan.

Dany turned. “Why are we stopped?”

Hizdahr stood. “The way is blocked.”

A palanquin lay overturned athwart their way. One of its bearers had collapsed to the bricks, overcome by heat. “Help that man,” Dany commanded. “Get him off the street before he’s stepped on and give him food and water. He looks as though he has not eaten in a fortnight.”

Ser Barristan glanced uneasily to left and right. Ghiscari faces were visible on the terraces, looking down with cool and unsympathetic eyes. “Your Grace, I do not like this halt. This may be some trap. The Sons of the Harpy—”

“—have been tamed,” declared Hizdahr zo Loraq.

~

“She needs a spear,” Ser Barristan said, as Barsena vaulted over the beast’s second charge. “That is no way to fight a boar.” He sounded like someone’s fussy old grandsire, just as Daario was always saying.

~

“Khaleesi?” Irri asked. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off my floppy ears.” A dozen men with boar spears came trotting out onto the sand to drive the boar away from the corpse and back to his pen. The pitmaster was with them, a long barbed whip in his hand. As he snapped it at the boar, the queen rose. “Ser Barristan, will you see me safely back to my garden?”

~

“Kill it,” Hizdahr zo Loraq shouted to the other spearmen. “Kill the beast!”

Ser Barristan held her tightly. “Look away, Your Grace.”

“Let me go!” Dany twisted from his grasp. The world seemed to slow as she cleared the parapet. When she landed in the pit she lost a sandal. Running, she could feel the sand between her toes, hot and rough. Ser Barristan was calling after her. Strong Belwas was still vomiting. She ran faster.

~

Drogon roared full in her face, his breath hot enough to blister skin. Off to her right Dany heard Barristan Selmy shouting, “Me! Try me. Over here. Me!”

ADWD Daenerys VIII

“Ser Barristan?” she said softly.

The white knight appeared at once. “Your Grace.”

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough. He was not wrong. Never trust a sellsword.”

Or a queen, thought Dany. “Is there some man in the Second Sons who might be persuaded to … remove … Brown Ben?”

“As Daario Naharis once removed the other captains of the Stormcrows?” The old knight looked uncomfortable. “Perhaps. I would not know, Your Grace.”

No, she thought, you are too honest and too honorable. “If not, the Yunkai’i employ three other companies.”

“Rogues and cutthroats, scum of a hundred battlefields,” Ser Barristan warned, “with captains full as treacherous as Plumm.”

“I am only a young girl and know little of such things, but it seems to me that we want them to be treacherous. Once, you’ll recall, I convinced the Second Sons and Stormcrows to join us.”

“If Your Grace wishes a privy word with Gylo Rhegan or the Tattered Prince, I could bring them up to your apartments.”

“This is not the time. Too many eyes, too many ears. Their absence would be noted even if you could separate them discreetly from the Yunkai’i. We must find some quieter way of reaching out to them … not tonight, but soon.”

“As you command. Though I fear this is not a task for which I am well suited. In King’s Landing work of this sort was left to Lord Littlefinger or the Spider. We old knights are simple men, only good for fighting.” He patted his sword hilt.

“Our prisoners,” suggested Dany. “The Westerosi who came over from the Windblown with the three Dornishmen. We still have them in cells, do we not? Use them.”

“Free them, you mean? Is that wise? They were sent here to worm their way into your trust, so they might betray Your Grace at the first chance.”

“Then they failed. I do not trust them. I will never trust them.” If truth be told, Dany was forgetting how to trust. “We can still use them. One was a woman. Meris. Send her back, as a … a gesture of my regard. If their captain is a clever man, he will understand.”

“The woman is the worst of all.”

“All the better.” Dany considered a moment. “We should sound out the Long Lances too. And the Company of the Cat.”

“Bloodbeard.” Ser Barristan’s frown deepened. “If it please Your Grace, we want no part of him. Your Grace is too young to remember the Ninepenny Kings, but this Bloodbeard is cut from the same savage cloth. There is no honor in him, only hunger … for gold, for glory, for blood.”

“You know more of such men than me, ser.” If Bloodbeard might be truly the most dishonorable and greedy of the sellswords, he might be the easiest to sway, but she was loath to go against Ser Barristan’s counsel in such matters. “Do as you think best. But do it soon. If Hizdahr’s peace should break, I want to be ready. I do not trust the slavers.” I do not trust my husband. “They will turn on us at the first sign of weakness.”

“The Yunkai’i grow weaker as well. The bloody flux has taken hold amongst the Tolosi, it is said, and spread across the river to the third Ghiscari legion.”

The pale mare. Daenerys sighed. Quaithe warned me of the pale mare’s coming. She told me of the Dornish prince as well, the sun’s son. She told me much and more, but all in riddles. “I cannot rely on plague to save me from my enemies. Set Pretty Meris free. At once.”

“As you command. Though … Your Grace, if I may be so bold, there is another road …”

“The Dornish road?” Dany sighed. The three Dornishmen had been at the feast, as befit Prince Quentyn’s rank, though Reznak had taken care to seat them as far as possible from her husband. Hizdahr did not seem to be of a jealous nature, but no man would be pleased by the presence of a rival suitor near his new bride. “The boy seems pleasant and well spoken, but …”

“House Martell is ancient and noble, and has been a leal friend to House Targaryen for more than a century, Your Grace. I had the honor of serving with Prince Quentyn’s great-uncle in your father’s seven. Prince Lewyn was as valiant a brother-in-arms as any man could wish for. Quentyn Martell is of the same blood, if it please Your Grace.”

“It would please me if he had turned up with these fifty thousand swords he speaks of. Instead he brings two knights and a parchment. Will a parchment shield my people from the Yunkai’i? If he had come with a fleet …”

“Sunspear has never been a sea power, Your Grace.”

“No.” Dany knew enough of Westerosi history to know that. Nymeria had landed ten thousand ships upon Dorne’s sandy shores, but when she wed her Dornish prince she had burned them all and turned her back upon the sea forever. “Dorne is too far away. To please this prince, I would need to abandon all my people. You should send him home.”

“Dornishmen are notoriously stubborn, Your Grace. Prince Quentyn’s forebears fought your own for the better part of two hundred years. He will not go without you.”

Then he will die here, Daenerys thought, unless there is more to him than I can see. “Is he still within?”

“Drinking with his knights.”

“Bring him to me. It is time he met my children.”

A flicker of doubt passed across the long, solemn face of Barristan Selmy. “As you command.”

Her king was laughing with Yurkhaz zo Yunzak and the other Yunkish lords. Dany did not think that he would miss her, but just in case she instructed her handmaids to tell him that she was answering a call of nature, should he inquire after her.

Ser Barristan was waiting by the steps with the Dornish prince.

~

Even here in her own pyramid, on this happy night of peace and celebration, Ser Barristan insisted on keeping guards about her everywhere she went. The small company made the long descent in silence, stopping thrice to refresh themselves along the way.

~

One of the elephants trumpeted at them from his stall. An answering roar from below made her flush with sudden heat. Prince Quentyn looked up in alarm. “The dragons know when she is near,” Ser Barristan told him.

[...] “Remain outside,” Dany told Ser Barristan, as the Unsullied were opening the huge iron doors. “Prince Quentyn will protect me.” She drew the Dornish prince inside with her, to stand above the pit.

~

“Ser Barristan will have summoned a pair of sedan chairs to carry us back up to the banquet, but the climb can still be wearisome.”

ADWD Daenerys VII

Khal Drogo had been her sun-and-stars, but he had been dead so long that Daenerys had almost forgotten how it felt to love and be loved. Daario had helped her to remember. I was dead and he brought me back to life. I was asleep and he woke me. My brave captain. Even so, of late he grew too bold. On the day that he returned from his latest sortie, he had tossed the head of a Yunkish lord at her feet and kissed her in the hall for all the world to see, until Barristan Selmy pulled the two of them apart. Ser Grandfather had been so wroth that Dany feared blood might be shed. “We cannot wed, my love. You know why.”

~

“As you wish. Bring your frog to court tomorrow. The others too. The Westerosi.” It would be nice to hear the Common Tongue from someone besides Ser Barristan.

~

“If it please Your Grace, we are all three knights.”

Dany glanced at Daario and saw anger flash across his face. He did not know. “I have need of knights,” she said.

Ser Barristan’s suspicions had awakened. “Knighthood is easily claimed this far from Westeros. Are you prepared to defend that boast with sword or lance?”

“If need be,” said Gerrold, “though I will not claim that any of us is the equal of Barristan the Bold. Your Grace, I beg your pardon, but we have come before you under false names.”

“I knew someone else who did that once,” said Dany, “a man called Arstan Whitebeard. Tell me your true names, then.”

~

“This is your gift? A scrap of writing?” Daario snatched the parchment out of the Dornishman’s hands and unrolled it, squinting at the seals and signatures. “Very pretty, all the gold and ribbons, but I do not read your Westerosi scratchings.”

“Bring it to the queen,” Ser Barristan commanded. “Now.”

Dany could feel the anger in the hall. “I am only a young girl, and young girls must have their gifts,” she said lightly. “Daario, please, you must not tease me. Give it here.”

The parchment was written in the Common Tongue. The queen unrolled it slowly, studying the seals and signatures. When she saw the name Ser Willem Darry, her heart beat a little faster. She read it over once, and then again.

“May we know what it says, Your Grace?” asked Ser Barristan.

“It is a secret pact,” Dany said, “made in Braavos when I was just a little girl. Ser Willem Darry signed for us, the man who spirited my brother and myself away from Dragonstone before the Usurper’s men could take us. Prince Oberyn Martell signed for Dorne, with the Sealord of Braavos as witness.” She handed the parchment to Ser Barristan, so he might read it for himself.

~

Daario and Ser Barristan followed her up the steps to her apartments. “This changes everything,” the old knight said.

“This changes nothing,” Dany said, as Irri removed her crown. “What good are three men?”

“Three knights,” said Selmy.

“Three liars,” Daario said darkly. “They deceived me.”

“And bought you too, I do not doubt.” He did not trouble to deny it. Dany unrolled the parchment and examined it again. Braavos. This was done in Braavos, while we were living in the house with the red door. Why did that make her feel so strange?

She found herself remembering her nightmare. Sometimes there is truth in dreams. Could Hizdahr zo Loraq be working for the warlocks, was that what the dream had meant? Could the dream have been a sending? Were the gods telling her to put Hizdahr aside and wed this Dornish prince instead? Something tickled at her memory. “Ser Barristan, what are the arms of House Martell?”

“A sun in splendor, transfixed by a spear.”

The sun’s son. A shiver went through her. “Shadows and whispers.” What else had Quaithe said? The pale mare and the sun’s son. There was a lion in it too, and a dragon. Or am I the dragon? “Beware the perfumed seneschal.” That she remembered. “Dreams and prophecies. Why must they always be in riddles? I hate this. Oh, leave me, ser. Tomorrow is my wedding day.”

~

She found Strong Belwas eating grapes, as Barristan Selmy watched a stableboy cinch the girth on his dapple grey.

~

Ser Barristan helped her up onto her sedan chair. Quentyn rejoined his fellow Dornishmen. Strong Belwas bellowed for the gates to be opened, and Daenerys Targaryen was carried forth into the sun. Selmy fell in beside her on his dapple grey.

“Tell me,” Dany said, as the procession turned toward the Temple of the Graces, “if my father and my mother had been free to follow their own hearts, whom would they have wed?”

“It was long ago. Your Grace would not know them.”

“You know, though. Tell me.”

The old knight inclined his head. “The queen your mother was always mindful of her duty.” He was handsome in his gold-and-silver armor, his white cloak streaming from his shoulders, but he sounded like a man in pain, as if every word were a stone he had to pass. “As a girl, though … she was once smitten with a young knight from the stormlands who wore her favor at a tourney and named her queen of love and beauty. A brief thing.”

“What happened to this knight?”

“He put away his lance the day your lady mother wed your father. Afterward he became most pious, and was heard to say that only the Maiden could replace Queen Rhaella in his heart. His passion was impossible, of course. A landed knight is no fit consort for a princess of royal blood.”

And Daario Naharis is only a sellsword, not fit to buckle on the golden spurs of even a landed knight. “And my father? Was there some woman he loved better than his queen?”

Ser Barristan shifted in the saddle. “Not … not loved. Mayhaps wanted is a better word, but … it was only kitchen gossip, the whispers of washerwomen and stableboys …”

“I want to know. I never knew my father. I want to know everything about him. The good and … the rest.”

“As you command.” The white knight chose his words with care. “Prince Aerys … as a youth, he was taken with a certain lady of Casterly Rock, a cousin of Tywin Lannister. When she and Tywin wed, your father drank too much wine at the wedding feast and was heard to say that it was a great pity that the lord’s right to the first night had been abolished. A drunken jape, no more, but Tywin Lannister was not a man to forget such words, or the … the liberties your father took during the bedding.” His face reddened. “I have said too much, Your Grace. I—”

“Gracious queen, well met!”

ADWD Daenerys VI

Ser Barristan wrinkled up his nose, and said, “Your Grace should not be here, breathing these black humors.”

“I am the blood of the dragon,” Dany reminded him. “Have you ever seen a dragon with the flux?” Viserys had oft claimed that Targaryens were untroubled by the pestilences that afflicted common men, and so far as she could tell, it was true. She could remember being cold and hungry and afraid, but never sick.

“Even so,” the old knight said, “I would feel better if Your Grace would return to the city.” The many-colored brick walls of Meereen were half a mile back. “The bloody flux has been the bane of every army since the Dawn Age. Let us distribute the food, Your Grace.”

“On the morrow. I am here now. I want to see.” She put her heels into her silver. The others trotted after her. Jhogo rode before her, Aggo and Rakharo just behind, long Dothraki whips in hand to keep away the sick and dying. Ser Barristan was at her right, mounted on a dapple grey.

~

Yesterday a wagon had been overturned and two of her soldiers killed, so today the queen had determined that she would bring the food herself. Every one of her advisors had argued fervently against it, from Reznak and the Shavepate to Ser Barristan, but Daenerys would not be moved. “I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.”

~

“Too many dead,” Aggo said. “They should be burned.”

“Who will burn them?” asked Ser Barristan. “The bloody flux is everywhere. A hundred die each night.”

“It is not good to touch the dead,” said Jhogo.

“This is known,” Aggo and Rakharo said, together.

“That may be so,” said Dany, “but this thing must be done, all the same.” She thought a moment. “The Unsullied have no fear of corpses. I shall speak to Grey Worm.”

“Your Grace,” said Ser Barristan, “the Unsullied are your best fighters. We dare not loose this plague amongst them. Let the Astapori bury their own dead.”

“They are too feeble,” said Symon Stripeback.

Dany said, “More food might make them stronger.”

Symon shook his head. “Food should not be wasted on the dying, Your Worship. We do not have enough to feed the living.”

He was not wrong, she knew, but that did not make the words any easier to hear. “This is far enough,” the queen decided. “We’ll feed them here.” She raised a hand. Behind her the wagons bumped to a halt, and her riders spread out around them, to keep the Astapori from rushing at the food. No sooner had they stopped than the press began to thicken around them, as more and more of the afflicted came limping and shambling toward the wagons. The riders cut them off. “Wait your turn,” they shouted. “No pushing. Back. Stay back. Bread for everyone. Wait your turn.”

Dany could only sit and watch. “Ser,” she said to Barristan Selmy, “is there no more we can do? You have provisions.”

“Provisions for Your Grace’s soldiers. We may well need to withstand a long siege. The Stormcrows and the Second Sons can harry the Yunkishmen, but they cannot hope to turn them. If Your Grace would allow me to assemble an army …”

“If there must be a battle, I would sooner fight it from behind the walls of Meereen. Let the Yunkai’i try and storm my battlements.” The queen surveyed the scene around her. “If we were to share our food equally …”

“… the Astapori would eat through their portion in days, and we would have that much less for the siege.”

Dany gazed across the camp, to the many-colored brick walls of Meereen. The air was thick with flies and cries. “The gods have sent this pestilence to humble me. So many dead … I will not have them eating corpses.” She beckoned Aggo closer. “Ride to the gates and bring me Grey Worm and fifty of his Unsullied.”

“Khaleesi. The blood of your blood obeys.” Aggo touched his horse with his heels and galloped off.

Ser Barristan watched with ill-concealed apprehension. “You should not linger here overlong, Your Grace. The Astapori are being fed, as you commanded. There’s no more we can do for the poor wretches. We should repair back to the city.”

“Go if you wish, ser. I will not detain you. I will not detain any of you.” Dany vaulted down from the horse. “I cannot heal them, but I can show them that their Mother cares.”

~

“To celebrate your nuptials, it would be most fitting if you would allow the fighting pits to open once again. It would be your wedding gift to Hizdahr and to your loving people, a sign that you had embraced the ancient ways and customs of Meereen.”

“And most pleasing to the gods as well,” the Green Grace added in her soft and kindly voice.

A bride price paid in blood. Daenerys was weary of fighting this battle. Even Ser Barristan did not think she could win. “No ruler can make a people good,” Selmy had told her. “Baelor the Blessed prayed and fasted and built the Seven as splendid a temple as any gods could wish for, yet he could not put an end to war and want.” A queen must listen to her people, Dany reminded herself.

~

The queen was framing her response when she heard a step behind her. The food, she thought. Her cooks had promised her to serve the noble Hizdahr’s favorite meal, dog in honey, stuffed with prunes and peppers. But when she turned to look, it was Ser Barristan standing there, freshly bathed and clad in white, his longsword at his side. “Your Grace,” he said, bowing, “I am sorry to disturb you, but I thought that you would want to know at once. The Stormcrows have returned to the city, with word of the foe. The Yunkishmen are on the march, just as we had feared.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed the noble face of Hizdahr zo Loraq. “The queen is at her supper. These sellswords can wait.”

Ser Barristan ignored him. “I asked Lord Daario to make his report to me, as Your Grace had commanded. He laughed and said that he would write it out in his own blood if Your Grace would send your little scribe to show him how to make the letters.”

“Blood?” said Dany, horrified. “Is that a jape? No. No, don’t tell me, I must see him for myself.” She was a young girl, and alone, and young girls can change their minds. “Convene my captains and commanders. Hizdahr, I know you will forgive me.”

“Meereen must come first.” Hizdahr smiled genially. “We will have other nights. A thousand nights.”

“Ser Barristan will show you out.”

~

“You’re hurt,” she gasped.

“This?” Daario touched his temple. “A crossbowman tried to put a quarrel through my eye, but I outrode it. I was hurrying home to my queen, to bask in the warmth of her smile.” He shook his sleeve, spattering red droplets. “This blood is not mine. One of my serjeants said we should go over to the Yunkai’i, so I reached down his throat and pulled his heart out. I meant to bring it to you as a gift for my silver queen, but four of the Cats cut me off and came snarling and spitting after me. One almost caught me, so I threw the heart into his face.”

“Very gallant,” said Ser Barristan, in a tone that suggested it was anything but, “but do you have tidings for Her Grace?”

“Hard tidings, Ser Grandfather. Astapor is gone, and the slavers are coming north in strength.”

~

Ser Barristan frowned at Daario. “Captain, you made mention of four free companies. We know of only three. The Windblown, the Long Lances, and the Company of the Cat.”

“Ser Grandfather knows how to count. The Second Sons have gone over to the Yunkai’i.” Daario turned his head and spat. “That’s for Brown Ben Plumm. When next I see his ugly face I will open him from throat to groin and rip out his black heart.”

~

“Please,” Dany said, but only Missandei seemed to hear. The queen got to her feet. “Be quiet! I have heard enough.”

“Your Grace.” Ser Barristan went to one knee. “We are yours to command. What would you have us do?”

“Continue as we planned. Gather food, as much as you can.”

ADWD Daenerys V

Ser Barristan remained. “Our stores are ample for the moment,” he reminded her, “and Your Grace has planted beans and grapes and wheat. Your Dothraki have harried the slavers from the hills and struck the shackles from their slaves. They are planting too, and will be bringing their crops to Meereen to market. And you will have the friendship of Lhazar.”

Daario won that for me, for all that it is worth. “The Lamb Men. Would that lambs had teeth.”

“That would make the wolves more cautious, no doubt.”

That made her laugh. “How fare your orphans, ser?”

The old knight smiled. “Well, Your Grace. It is good of you to ask.” The boys were his pride. “Four or five have the makings of knights. Perhaps as many as a dozen.”

“One would be enough if he were as true as you.” The day might come soon when she would have need of every knight. “Will they joust for me? I should like that.” Viserys had told her stories of the tourneys he had witnessed in the Seven Kingdoms, but Dany had never seen a joust herself.

“They are not ready, Your Grace. When they are, they will be pleased to demonstrate their prowess.”

“I hope that day comes quickly.” She would have kissed her good knight on the cheek, but just then Missandei appeared beneath the arched doorway.

~

Afterward, Ser Barristan told her that her brother Rhaegar would have been proud of her. Dany remembered the words Ser Jorah had spoken at Astapor: Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.

~

She turned to Ser Barristan. “Send riders into the hills to find my bloodriders. Recall Brown Ben and the Second Sons as well.”

“And the Stormcrows, Your Grace?”

Daario. “Yes. Yes.” [...]

When Ser Barristan told her that her captain desired words with her, she thought for a moment that it was Daario, and her heart leapt. But the captain that he spoke of was Brown Ben Plumm.

~

“These are not apples, Ben,” said Dany. “These are men and women, sick and hungry and afraid.” My children. “I should have gone to Astapor.”

“Your Grace could not have saved them,” said Ser Barristan. “You warned King Cleon against this war with Yunkai. The man was a fool, and his hands were red with blood.”

And are my hands any cleaner?

~

Daenerys looked at the faces of the men around her. The Shavepate, scowling. Ser Barristan, with his lined face and sad blue eyes. Reznak mo Reznak, pale, sweating. Brown Ben, white-haired, grizzled, tough as old leather. Grey Worm, smooth-cheeked, stolid, expressionless. Daario should be here, and my bloodriders, she thought. If there is to be a battle, the blood of my blood should be with me. She missed Ser Jorah Mormont too. He lied to me, informed on me, but he loved me too, and he always gave good counsel.

~

“I defeated the Yunkai’i before. I will defeat them again. Where, though? How?”

“You mean to take the field?” The Shavepate’s voice was thick with disbelief. “That would be folly. Our walls are taller and thicker than the walls of Astapor, and our defenders are more valiant. The Yunkai’i will not take this city easily.”

Ser Barristan disagreed. “I do not think we should allow them to invest us. Theirs is a patchwork host at best. These slavers are no soldiers. If we take them unawares …”

“Small chance of that,” the Shavepate said. “The Yunkai’i have many friends inside the city. They will know.”

“How large an army can we muster?” Dany asked.

“Not large enough, begging your royal pardon,” said Brown Ben Plumm. “What does Naharis have to say? If we’re going to make a fight o’ this, we need his Stormcrows.”

“Daario is still in the field.”

~

“Ben, I will need your Second Sons to scout our enemies. Where they are, how fast they are advancing, how many men they have, and how they are disposed.”

“We’ll need provisions. Fresh horses too.”

“Of course. Ser Barristan will see to it.”

~

“What of these Astapori?”

My children. “They are coming here for help. For succor and protection. We cannot turn our backs on them.”

Ser Barristan frowned. “Your Grace, I have known the bloody flux to destroy whole armies when left to spread unchecked. The seneschal is right. We cannot have the Astapori in Meereen.”

Dany looked at him helplessly. It was good that dragons did not cry.

~

When Daenerys finally turned away, Ser Barristan stood near her, wrapped in his white cloak against the chill of evening. “Can we make a fight of this?” she asked him.

“Men can always fight, Your Grace. Ask rather if we can win. Dying is easy, but victory comes hard. Your freedmen are half-trained and unblooded. Your sellswords once served your foes, and once a man turns his cloak he will not scruple to turn it again. You have two dragons who cannot be controlled, and a third that may be lost to you. Beyond these walls your only friends are the Lhazarene, who have no taste for war.”

“My walls are strong, though.”

“No stronger than when we sat outside them. And the Sons of the Harpy are inside the walls with us. So are the Great Masters, both those you did not kill and the sons of those you did.”

“I know.” The queen sighed. “What do you counsel, ser?”

“Battle,” said Ser Barristan. “Meereen is overcrowded and full of hungry mouths, and you have too many enemies within. We cannot long withstand a siege, I fear. Let me meet the foe as he comes north, on ground of my own choosing.”

“Meet the foe,” she echoed, “with the freedmen you’ve called half-trained and unblooded.”

“We were all unblooded once, Your Grace. The Unsullied will help stiffen them. If I had five hundred knights …”

“Or five. And if I give you the Unsullied, I will have no one but the Brazen Beasts to hold Meereen.” When Ser Barristan did not dispute her, Dany closed her eyes. Gods, she prayed, you took Khal Drogo, who was my sun-and-stars. You took our valiant son before he drew a breath. You have had your blood of me. Help me now, I pray you. Give me the wisdom to see the path ahead and the strength to do what I must to keep my children safe.

The gods did not respond.

When she opened her eyes again, Daenerys said, “I cannot fight two enemies, one within and one without. If I am to hold Meereen, I must have the city behind me. The whole city. I need … I need …” She could not say it.

“Your Grace?” Ser Barristan prompted, gently.

A queen belongs not to herself but to her people.

ADWD Daenerys IV

“They are very sweet, the both of them,” Dany assured her. “Qezza sings for me sometimes. She has a lovely voice. And Ser Barristan has been instructing Grazhar and the other boys in the ways of western chivalry.”

~

“Your Grace need only ask him. The noble Hizdahr awaits below. Send down to him if that is your pleasure.”

You presume too much, priestess, the queen thought, but she swallowed her anger and made herself smile. “Why not?” She sent for Ser Barristan and told the old knight to bring Hizdahr to her. “It is a long climb. Have the Unsullied help him up.”

~

No sooner had Hizdahr zo Loraq taken his leave of her than Ser Barristan appeared behind her in his long white cloak. Years of service in the Kingsguard had taught the white knight how to remain unobtrusive when she was entertaining, but he was never far. He knows, she saw at once, and he disapproves. The lines around his mouth had deepened. “So,” she said to him, “it seems that I may wed again. Are you happy for me, ser?”

“If that is your command, Your Grace.”

“Hizdahr is not the husband you would have chosen for me.”

“It is not my place to choose your husband.”

“It is not,” she agreed, “but it is important to me that you should understand. My people are bleeding. Dying. A queen belongs not to herself, but to the realm. Marriage or carnage, those are my choices. A wedding or a war.”

“Your Grace, may I speak frankly?”

“Always.”

“There is a third choice.”

“Westeros?”

He nodded. “I am sworn to serve Your Grace, and to keep you safe from harm wherever you may go. My place is by your side, whether here or in King’s Landing … but your place is back in Westeros, upon the Iron Throne that was your father’s. The Seven Kingdoms will never accept Hizdahr zo Loraq as king.”

“No more than Meereen will accept Daenerys Targaryen as queen. The Green Grace has the right of that. I need a king beside me, a king of old Ghiscari blood. Elsewise they will always see me as the uncouth barbarian who smashed through their gates, impaled their kin on spikes, and stole their wealth.”

“In Westeros you will be the lost child who returns to gladden her father’s heart. Your people will cheer when you ride by, and all good men will love you.”

“Westeros is far away.”

“Lingering here will never bring it any closer. The sooner we take our leave of this place—”

“I know. I do.” Dany did not know how to make him see. She wanted Westeros as much as he did, but first she must heal Meereen. “Ninety days is a long time. Hizdahr may fail. And if he does, the trying buys me time. Time to make alliances, to strengthen my defenses, to—”

“And if he does not fail? What will Your Grace do then?”

“Her duty.” The word felt cold upon her tongue. “You saw my brother Rhaegar wed. Tell me, did he wed for love or duty?”

The old knight hesitated. “Princess Elia was a good woman, Your Grace. She was kind and clever, with a gentle heart and a sweet wit. I know the prince was very fond of her.”

Fond, thought Dany. The word spoke volumes. I could become fond of Hizdahr zo Loraq, in time. Perhaps.

Ser Barristan went on. “I saw your father and your mother wed as well. Forgive me, but there was no fondness there, and the realm paid dearly for that, my queen.”

“Why did they wed if they did not love each other?”

“Your grandsire commanded it. A woods witch had told him that the prince was promised would be born of their line.”

“A woods witch?” Dany was astonished.

“She came to court with Jenny of Oldstones. A stunted thing, grotesque to look upon. A dwarf, most people said, though dear to Lady Jenny, who always claimed that she was one of the children of the forest.”

“What became of her?”

“Summerhall.” The word was fraught with doom.

Dany sighed. “Leave me now. I am very weary.”

“As you command.” Ser Barristan bowed and turned to go. But at the door, he stopped. “Forgive me. Your Grace has a visitor. Shall I tell him to return upon the morrow?”

“Who is it?”

“Naharis. The Stormcrows have returned to the city.”

Daario. Her heart gave a flutter in her chest. “How long has … when did he …?” She could not seem to get the words out.

Ser Barristan seemed to understand. “Your Grace was with the priestess when he arrived. I knew you would not want to be disturbed. The captain’s news can wait until the morrow.”

“No.” How could I ever hope to sleep, knowing that my captain so close? “Send him up at once. And … I will have no more need of you this evening. I shall be safe with Daario. Oh, and send Irri and Jhiqui, if you would be so good. And Missandei.” I need to change, to make myself beautiful.

~

When he was gone, Daenerys called Ser Barristan back. “I want the Stormcrows back in the field.”

“Your Grace? They have only now returned …”

“I want them gone. Let them scout the Yunkish hinterlands and give protection to any caravans coming over the Khyzai Pass. Henceforth Daario shall make his reports to you. Give him every honor that is due him and see that his men are well paid, but on no account admit him to my presence.”

“As you say, Your Grace.”

ADWD Daenerys III

“Your hinterlands are not precious to me. Your person is. Should any ill befall you, this world would lose its savor.”

“My lord is good to care so much, but I am well protected.” Dany gestured toward where Barristan Selmy stood with one hand resting on his sword hilt. “Barristan the Bold, they call him. Twice he has saved me from assassins.”

Xaro gave Selmy a cursory inspection. “Barristan the Old, did you say? Your bear knight was younger, and devoted to you.”

“I do not wish to speak of Jorah Mormont.”

~

“Oh most beautiful of women,” Xaro said, as they began to climb, “there are footsteps behind us. We are followed.”

“My old knight does not frighten you, surely? Ser Barristan is sworn to keep my secrets.”

~

She turned her back upon the night, to where Barristan Selmy stood silent in the shadows. “My brother once told me a Westerosi riddle. Who listens to everything yet hears nothing?”

“A knight of the Kingsguard.” Selmy’s voice was solemn.

“You heard Xaro make his offer?”

“I did, Your Grace.” The old knight took pains not to look at her bare breast as he spoke to her.

Ser Jorah would not turn his eyes away. He loved me as a woman, where Ser Barristan loves me only as his queen. Mormont had been an informer, reporting to her enemies in Westeros, yet he had given her good counsel too. “What do you think of it? Of him?”

“Of him, little and less. These ships, though … Your Grace, with these ships we might be home before year’s end.”

Dany had never known a home. In Braavos, there had been a house with a red door, but that was all. “Beware of Qartheen bearing gifts, especially merchants of the Thirteen. There is some trap here. Perhaps these ships are rotten, or …”

“If they were so unseaworthy, they could not have crossed the sea from Qarth,” Ser Barristan pointed out, “but Your Grace was wise to insist upon inspection. I will take Admiral Groleo to the galleys at first light with his captains and two score of his sailors. We can crawl over every inch of those ships.”

It was good counsel. “Yes, make it so.” Westeros. Home. But if she left, what would happen to her city? Meereen was never your city, her brother’s voice seemed to whisper. Your cities are across the sea. Your Seven Kingdoms, where your enemies await you. You were born to serve them blood and fire.

Ser Barristan cleared his throat and said, “This warlock that the merchant spoke of …”

“Pyat Pree.” She tried to recall his face, but all she could see were his lips. The wine of the warlocks had turned them blue. Shade-of-the-evening, it was called. “If a warlock’s spell could kill me, I would be dead by now. I left their palace all in ashes.” Drogon saved me when they would have drained my life from me. Drogon burned them all.

“As you say, Your Grace. Still. I will be watchful.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “I know you will. Come, walk me back down to the feast.”

~

Late that afternoon Admiral Groleo and Ser Barristan returned from their inspection of the galleys. Dany assembled her council to hear them.

[...] The ships are sound, then?” she said, hoping.

“Sound enough, Your Grace. They are old ships, aye, but most are well maintained. The hull of the Pureborn Princess is worm-eaten. I’d not want to take her beyond the sight of land. The Narraqqa could stand a new rudder and lines, and the Banded Lizard has some cracked oars, but they will serve. The rowers are slaves, but if we offer them an honest oarsman’s wage, most will stay with us. Rowing’s all they know. Those who leave can be replaced from my own crews. It is a long hard voyage to Westeros, but these ships are sound enough to get us there, I’d judge.”

~

“Those left behind in Meereen would envy them their easy deaths,” moaned Reznak. “They will make slaves of us, or throw us in the pits. All will be as it was, or worse.”

“Where is your courage?” Ser Barristan lashed out. “Her Grace freed you from your chains. It is for you to sharpen your swords and defend your own freedom when she leaves.”

“Brave words, from one who means to sail into the sunset,” Symon Stripeback snarled back. “Will you look back at our dying?”

“Your Grace—”

“Magnificence—”

“Your Worship—”

“Enough.” Dany slapped the table. “No one will be left to die. You are all my people.” Her dreams of home and love had blinded her. “I will not abandon Meereen to the fate of Astapor. It grieves me to say so, but Westeros must wait.”

Groleo was aghast. “We must accept these ships. If we refuse this gift …”

Ser Barristan went to one knee before her. “My queen, your realm has need of you. You are not wanted here, but in Westeros men will flock to your banners by the thousands, great lords and noble knights. ‘She is come,’ they will shout to one another, in glad voices. ‘Prince Rhaegar’s sister has come home at last.’”

“If they love me so much, they will wait for me.” Dany stood.

~

She received the merchant prince alone, seated on her bench of polished ebony, on the cushions Ser Barristan had brought her.

ADWD Daenerys II

“It has been so long,” she had said to Ser Barristan, just yesterday. “What if Daario has betrayed me and gone over to my enemies?” Three treasons will you know. “What if he met another woman, some princess of the Lhazarene?”

The old knight neither liked nor trusted Daario, she knew. Even so, he had answered gallantly. “There is no woman more lovely than Your Grace. Only a blind man could believe otherwise, and Daario Naharis was not blind.”

No, she thought. His eyes are a deep blue, almost purple, and his gold tooth gleams when he smiles for me.

Ser Barristan was sure he would return, though. Dany could only pray that he was right.

~

A shadow. A memory. No one. She was the blood of the dragon, but Ser Barristan had warned her that in that blood there was a taint. Could I be going mad? They had called her father mad, once.

~

In the purple hall, Dany found her ebon bench piled high about with satin pillows. The sight brought a wan smile to her lips. Ser Barristan’s work, she knew. The old knight was a good man, but sometimes very literal. It was only a jape, ser, she thought, but she sat on one of the pillows just the same.

~

“Your barber has served you well, Hizdahr. I hope you have come to show me his work and not to plague me further about the fighting pits.”

He made a deep obeisance. “Your Grace, I fear I must.”

Dany grimaced. Even her own people would give no rest about the matter. Reznak mo Reznak stressed the coin to be made through taxes. The Green Grace said that reopening the pits would please the gods. The Shavepate felt it would win her support against the Sons of the Harpy. “Let them fight,” grunted Strong Belwas, who had once been a champion in the pits. Ser Barristan suggested a tourney instead; his orphans could ride at rings and fight a mêlée with blunted weapons, he said, a suggestion Dany knew was as hopeless as it was well-intentioned. It was blood the Meereenese yearned to see, not skill.

~

Ser Barristan escorted her back up to her chambers. “Tell me a tale, ser,” Dany said as they climbed. “Some tale of valor with a happy ending.” She felt in need of happy endings. “Tell me how you escaped from the Usurper.”

“Your Grace. There is no valor in running for your life.”

Dany seated herself on a cushion, crossed her legs, and gazed up at him. “Please. It was the Young Usurper who dismissed you from the Kingsguard …”

“Joffrey, aye. They gave my age for a reason, though the truth was elsewise. The boy wanted a white cloak for his dog Sandor Clegane and his mother wanted the Kingslayer to be her lord commander. When they told me, I … I took off my cloak as they commanded, threw my sword at Joffrey’s feet, and spoke unwisely.”

“What did you say?”

“The truth … but truth was never welcome at that court. I walked from the throne room with my head high, though I did not know where I was going. I had no home but White Sword Tower. My cousins would find a place for me at Harvest Hall, I knew, but I had no wish to bring Joffrey’s displeasure down upon them. I was gathering my things when it came to me that I had brought this on myself by taking Robert’s pardon. He was a good knight but a bad king, for he had no right to the throne he sat. That was when I knew that to redeem myself I must find the true king, and serve him loyally with all the strength that still remained me.”

“My brother Viserys.”

“Such was my intent. When I reached the stables the gold cloaks tried to seize me. Joffrey had offered me a tower to die in, but I had spurned his gift, so now he meant to offer me a dungeon. The commander of the City Watch himself confronted me, emboldened by my empty scabbard, but he had only three men with him and I still had my knife. I slashed one man’s face open when he laid his hands upon me, and rode through the others. As I spurred for the gates I heard Janos Slynt shouting for them to go after me. Once outside the Red Keep, the streets were congested, else I might have gotten away clean. Instead they caught me at the River Gate. The gold cloaks who had pursued me from the castle shouted for those at the gate to stop me, so they crossed their spears to bar my way.”

“And you without your sword? How did you get past them?”

“A true knight is worth ten guardsmen. The men at the gate were taken by surprise. I rode one down, wrenched away his spear, and drove it through the throat of my closest pursuer. The other broke off once I was through the gate, so I spurred my horse to a gallop and rode hellbent along the river until the city was lost to sight behind me. That night I traded my horse for a handful of pennies and some rags, and the next morning I joined the stream of smallfolk making their way to King’s Landing. I’d gone out the Mud Gate, so I returned through the Gate of the Gods, with dirt on my face, stubble on my cheeks, and no weapon but a wooden staff. In roughspun clothes and mud-caked boots, I was just one more old man fleeing the war. The gold cloaks took a stag from me and waved me through. King’s Landing was crowded with smallfolk who’d come seeking refuge from the fighting. I lost myself amongst them. I had a little silver, but I needed that to pay my passage across the narrow sea, so I slept in septs and alleys and took my meals in pot shops. I let my beard grow out and cloaked myself in age. The day Lord Stark lost his head, I was there, watching. Afterward I went into the Great Sept and thanked the seven gods that Joffrey had stripped me of my cloak.”

“Stark was a traitor who met a traitor’s end.”

“Your Grace,” said Selmy, “Eddard Stark played a part in your father’s fall, but he bore you no ill will. When the eunuch Varys told us that you were with child, Robert wanted you killed, but Lord Stark spoke against it. Rather than countenance the murder of children, he told Robert to find himself another Hand.”

“Have you forgotten Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon?”

“Never. That was Lannister work, Your Grace.”

“Lannister or Stark, what difference? Viserys used to call them the Usurper’s dogs. If a child is set upon by a pack of hounds, does it matter which one tears out his throat? All the dogs are just as guilty. The guilt …” The word caught in her throat. Hazzea, she thought, and suddenly she heard herself say, “I have to see the pit,” in a voice as small as a child’s whisper. “Take me down, ser, if you would.”

A flicker of disapproval crossed the old man’s face, but it was not his way to question his queen. “As you command.”

The servants’ steps were the quickest way down—not grand, but steep and straight and narrow, hidden in the walls. Ser Barristan brought a lantern, lest she fall. Bricks of twenty different colors pressed close around them, fading to grey and black beyond the lantern light. Thrice they passed Unsullied guards, standing as if they had been carved from stone. The only sound was the soft scruff of their feet upon the steps.

At ground level the Great Pyramid of Meereen was a hushed place, full of dust and shadows. Its outer walls were thirty feet thick. Within them, sounds echoed off arches of many-colored bricks, and amongst the stables, stalls, and storerooms. They passed beneath three massive arches, down a torchlit ramp into the vaults beneath the pyramid, past cisterns, dungeons, and torture chambers where slaves had been scourged and skinned and burned with red-hot irons. Finally they came to a pair of huge iron doors with rusted hinges, guarded by Unsullied.

At her command, one produced an iron key. The door opened, hinges shrieking. Daenerys Targaryen stepped into the hot heart of darkness and stopped at the lip of a deep pit. Forty feet below, her dragons raised their heads. Four eyes burned through the shadows—two of molten gold and two of bronze.

Ser Barristan took her by the arm. “No closer.”

“You think they would harm me?”

“I do not know, Your Grace, but I would sooner not risk your person to learn the answer.”

When Rhaegal roared, a gout of yellow flame turned darkness into day for half a heartbeat. The fire licked along the walls, and Dany felt the heat upon her face, like the blast from an oven. Across the pit, Viserion’s wings unfolded, stirring the stale air. He tried to fly to her, but the chains snapped taut as he rose and slammed him down onto his belly. Links as big as a man’s fist bound his feet to the floor. The iron collar about his neck was fastened to the wall behind him. Rhaegal wore matching chains. In the light of Selmy’s lantern, his scales gleamed like jade. Smoke rose from between his teeth. Bones were scattered on the floor at his feet, cracked and scorched and splintered. The air was uncomfortably hot and smelled of sulfur and charred meat.

“They are larger.” Dany’s voice echoed off the scorched stone walls. A drop of sweat trickled down her brow and fell onto her breast. “Is it true that dragons never stop growing?”

“If they have food enough, and space to grow. Chained up in here, though …”

The Great Masters had used the pit as a prison. It was large enough to hold five hundred men … and more than ample for two dragons. For how long, though? What will happen when they grow too large for the pit? Will they turn on one another with flame and claw? Will they grow wan and weak, with withered flanks and shrunken wings? Will their fires go out before the end?

What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness?

ADWD Daenerys I

“Your Grace,” said Ser Barristan Selmy, the lord commander of her Queensguard, “there is no need for you to see this.”

“He died for me.”

~

Ser Barristan Selmy remained behind. His hair was white, and there were crow’s-feet at the corners of his pale blue eyes. Yet his back was still unbent, and the years had not yet robbed him of his skill at arms. “Your Grace,” he said, “I fear your eunuchs are ill suited for the tasks you set them.”

Dany settled on her bench and wrapped her pelt about her shoulders once again. “The Unsullied are my finest warriors.”

“Soldiers, not warriors, if it please Your Grace. They were made for the battlefield, to stand shoulder to shoulder behind their shields with their spears thrust out before them. Their training teaches them to obey, fearlessly, perfectly, without thought or hesitation … not to unravel secrets or ask questions.”

“Would knights serve me any better?” Selmy was training knights for her, teaching the sons of slaves to fight with lance and longsword in the Westerosi fashion … but what good would lances do against cowards who killed from the shadows?

“Not in this,” the old man admitted. “And Your Grace has no knights, save me. It will be years before the boys are ready.”

“Then who, if not Unsullied? Dothraki would be even worse. [...] When the Stormcrows return from Lhazar, perhaps I can use them in the streets,” she told Ser Barristan, “but until then I have only the Unsullied.” Dany rose. “You must excuse me, ser. The petitioners will soon be at my gates. I must don my floppy ears and become their queen again. Summon Reznak and the Shavepate, I’ll see them when I’m dressed.”

“As Your Grace commands.” Selmy bowed.

~

There were times when Dany wondered if that razor might not be better saved for Reznak’s throat. He was a useful man, but she liked him little and trusted him less. The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah the second. Would Reznak be the third? The Shavepate? Daario? Or will it be someone I would never suspect, Ser Barristan or Grey Worm or Missandei?

~

“Ser Barristan,” she called, “I know what quality a king needs most.”

“Courage, Your Grace?”

“Cheeks like iron,” she teased. “All I do is sit.”

“Your Grace takes too much on herself. You should allow your councillors to shoulder more of your burdens.”

“I have too many councillors and too few cushions.”

~

Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat.

~

No. Dany shivered. No, no, oh no. “Are you deaf, fool?” Reznak mo Reznak demanded of the man. “Did you not hear my pronouncement? See my factors on the morrow, and you shall be paid for your sheep.”

“Reznak,” Ser Barristan said quietly, “hold your tongue and open your eyes. Those are no sheep bones.”

No, Dany thought, those are the bones of a child.

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

Dany shifted uncomfortably on the ebony bench. She dreaded what must come next, yet she knew she had put it off too long already. Yunkai and Astapor, threats of war, marriage proposals, the march west looming over all ... I need my knights. I need their swords, and I need their counsel. Yet the thought of seeing Jorah Mormont again made her feel as if she’d swallowed a spoonful of flies; angry, agitated, sick. She could almost feel them buzzing round her belly. I am the blood of the dragon. I must be strong. I must have fire in my eyes when I face them, not tears. “Tell Belwas to bring my knights,” Dany commanded, before she could change her mind. “My good knights.”

Strong Belwas was puffing from the climb when he marched them through the doors, one meaty hand wrapped tight around each man’s arm. Ser Barristan walked with his head held high, but Ser Jorah stared at the marble floor as he approached. The one is proud, the other guilty. The old man had shaved off his white beard. He looked ten years younger without it. But her balding bear looked older than he had. They halted before the bench.

~

“Ser Barristan saved me from the Titan’s Bastard, and from the Sorrowful Man in Qarth. [...] So many people wanted her dead, sometimes she lost count. “And yet you lied, deceived me, betrayed me.” She turned to Ser Barristan. “You protected my father for many years, fought beside my brother on the Trident, but you abandoned Viserys in his exile and bent your knee to the Usurper instead. Why? And tell it true.”

“Some truths are hard to hear. Robert was a ... a good knight ... chivalrous,
brave ... he spared my life, and the lives of many others ... Prince Viserys was only a boy, it would have been years before he was fit to rule, and ... forgive me, my queen, but you asked for truth ... even as a child, your brother Viserys oft seemed to be his father’s son, in ways that Rhaegar never did.”

“His father’s son?” Dany frowned. “What does that mean?”

The old knight did not blink. “Your father is called ‘the Mad King’ in Westeros. Has no one ever told you?”

“Viserys did.” The Mad King. “The Usurper called him that, the Usurper and his dogs.” The Mad King. “It was a lie.”

“Why ask for truth,” Ser Barristan said softly, “if you close your ears to it?” He hesitated, then continued. “I told you before that I used a false name so the Lannisters would not know that I’d joined you. That was less than half of it, Your Grace. The truth is, I wanted to watch you for a time before pledging you my sword. To make certain that you were not ...”

“... my father’s daughter?” If she was not her father’s daughter, who was she?

“... mad,” he finished. “But I see no taint in you.”


“Taint?” Dany bristled.

“I am no maester to quote history at you, Your Grace. Swords have been my life, not books. But every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness. Your father was not the first. King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.”

Jaehaerys. This old man knew my grandfather. The thought gave her pause. Most of what she knew of Westeros had come from her brother, and the rest from Ser Jorah. Ser Barristan would have forgotten more than the two of them had ever known. This man can tell me what I came from. “So I am a coin in the hands of some god, is that what you are saying, ser?”

“No,” Ser Barristan replied. “You are the trueborn heir of Westeros. To the end of my days I shall remain your faithful knight, should you find me worthy to bear a sword again. If not, I am content to serve Strong Belwas as his squire.”

“What if I decide you’re only worthy to be my fool?” Dany asked scornfully. “Or perhaps my cook?”

“I would be honored, Your Grace,” Selmy said with quiet dignity. “I can bake apples and boil beef as well as any man, and I’ve roasted many a duck over a campfire. I hope you like them greasy, with charred skin and bloody bones.”

That made her smile. “I’d have to be mad to eat such fare. Ben Plumm, come give Ser Barristan your longsword.”

But Whitebeard would not take it. “I flung my sword at Joffrey’s feet and have not touched one since. Only from the hand of my queen will I accept a sword again.”

“As you wish.” Dany took the sword from Brown Ben and offered it hilt first. The old man took it reverently. “Now kneel,” she told him, “and swear it to my service.”

He went to one knee and lay the blade before her as he said the words. Dany scarcely heard them. He was the easy one, she thought. The other will be harder.

~

“Your Grace?”

She turned to find Ser Barristan behind her. “What more would you have of me, ser? I spared you, I took you into my service, now give me some peace.”

“Forgive me, Your Grace. It was only ... now that you know who I am ...” The old man hesitated. “A knight of the Kingsguard is in the king’s presence day and night. For that reason, our vows require us to protect his secrets as we would his life. But your father’s secrets by rights belong to you now, along with his throne, and ... I thought perhaps you might have questions for me.”

Questions? She had a hundred questions, a thousand, ten thousand. Why couldn’t she think of one? “Was my father truly mad?” she blurted out. Why do I ask that? “Viserys said this talk of madness was a ploy of the Usurper’s ...”

“Viserys was a child, and the queen sheltered him as much as she could. Your father always had a little madness in him, I now believe. Yet he was charming and generous as well, so his lapses were forgiven. His reign began with such promise ... but as the years passed, the lapses grew more frequent, until ...”

Dany stopped him. “Do I want to hear this now?”

Ser Barristan considered a moment. “Perhaps not. Not now.”

“Not now,” she agreed. “One day. One day you must tell me all. The good and the bad. There is some good to be said of my father, surely?”

“There is, Your Grace. Of him, and those who came before him. Your grandfather Jaehaerys and his brother, their father Aegon, your mother ... and Rhaegar. Him most of all.”

“I wish I could have known him.” Her voice was wistful.

“I wish he could have known you,” the old knight said. “When you are ready, I will tell you all.”

Dany kissed him on the cheek and sent him on his way.

~

“Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.”

“There is nothing to stay for,” said Brown Ben Plumm.

“Your Grace, the slavers brought their doom on themselves,” said Daario Naharis.

“You have brought freedom as well,” Missandei pointed out.

“Freedom to starve?” asked Dany sharply. “Freedom to die? Am I a dragon, or a harpy?” Am I mad? Do I have the taint?

“A dragon,” Ser Barristan said with certainty. “Meereen is not Westeros, Your Grace.”

“But how can I rule seven kingdoms if I cannot rule a single city?” He had no answer to that. Dany turned away from them, to gaze out over the city once again. “My children need time to heal and learn. My dragons need time to grow and test their wings. And I need the same. I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.” She turned back to look at their faces. “I will not march.”

“What will you do then, Khaleesi?” asked Rakharo.

“Stay,” she said. “Rule. And be a queen.”

ASOS Daenerys V

“Blood of my blood,” Dany told them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly, no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts too.

“That was wisely done,” Ser Jorah said as they watched from the front of her pavilion. “Let the fool ride back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no harm.”

“He does,” Arstan Whitebeard insisted. “Wars are not won with swords and spears alone, ser. Two hosts of equal strength may come together, but one will break and run whilst the other stands. This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men and plants the seeds of doubt in ours.”

~

“This challenge must be met,” Arstan said again.

“It will be.” Dany said, as the hero tucked his penis away again.

~

“Missandei,” she called, “have my silver saddled. Your own mount as well.”

The little scribe bowed. “As Your Grace commands. Shall I summon your bloodriders to guard you?”

“We’ll take Arstan. I do not mean to leave the camps.” She had no enemies among her children. And the old squire would not talk too much as Belwas would, or look at her like Daario.

~

“There’s the treacherous sow,” he said. “I knew you’d come to get your feet kissed one day.” His head was bald as a melon, his nose red and peeling, but she knew that voice and those pale green eyes. “I’m going to start by cutting off your teats.” Dany was dimly aware of Missandei shouting for help. A freedman edged forward, but only a step. One quick slash, and he was on his knees, blood running down his face. Mero wiped his sword on his breeches. “Who’s next?”

“I am.” Arstan Whitebeard leapt from his horse and stood over her, the salt wind riffling through his snowy hair, both hands on his tall hardwood staff.

“Grandfather,” Mero said, “run off before I break your stick in two and bugger you with —”

The old man feinted with one end of the staff, pulled it back, and whipped the other end about faster than Dany would have believed. The Titan’s Bastard staggered back into the surf, spitting blood and broken teeth from the ruin of his mouth. Whitebeard put Dany behind him. Mero slashed at his face. The old man jerked back, cat-quick. The staff thumped Mero’s ribs, sending him reeling. Arstan splashed sideways, parried a looping cut, danced away from a second, checked a third mid-swing. The moves were so fast she could hardly follow. Missandei was pulling Dany to her feet when she heard a crack. She thought Arstan’s staff had snapped until she saw the jagged bone jutting from Mero’s calf. As he fell, the Titan’s Bastard twisted and lunged, sending his point straight at the old man’s chest. Whitebeard swept the blade aside almost contemptuously and smashed the other end of his staff against the big man’s temple. Mero went sprawling, blood bubbling from his mouth as the waves washed over him. A moment later the freedmen washed over him too, knives and stones and angry fists rising and falling in a frenzy.

Dany turned away, sickened. She was more frightened now than when it had been happening. He would have killed me.

“Your Grace.” Arstan knelt. “I am an old man, and shamed. He should never have gotten close enough to seize you. I was lax. I did not know him without his beard and hair.”

“No more than I did.” Dany took a deep breath to stop her shaking. Enemies everywhere. “Take me back to my tent. Please.”

~

“You might have warned me that the Titan’s Bastard had escaped.”

He frowned. “I saw no need to frighten you, Your Grace. I have offered a reward for his head—”

“Pay it to Whitebeard. Mero has been with us all the way from Yunkai. He shaved his beard off and lost himself amongst the freedmen, waiting for a chance for vengeance. Arstan killed him.”

Ser Jorah gave the old man a long look. “A squire with a stick slew Mero of Braavos, is that the way of it?”

“A stick,” Dany confirmed, “but no longer a squire. Ser Jorah, it’s my wish that Arstan be knighted.”

“No.”


The loud refusal was surprise enough. Stranger still, it came from both men at once.

Ser Jorah drew his sword. “The Titan’s Bastard was a nasty piece of work. And good at killing. Who are you, old man?”

“A better knight than you, ser,” Arstan said coldly.

Knight? Dany was confused. “You said you were a squire.”

“I was, Your Grace.” He dropped to one knee. “I squired for Lord Swann in my youth, and at Magister Illyrio’s behest I have served Strong Belwas as well. But during the years between, I was a knight in Westeros. I have told you no lies, my queen. Yet there are truths I have withheld, and for that and all my other sins I can only beg your forgiveness.”

“What truths have you withheld?” Dany did not like this. “You will tell me. Now.”

He bowed his head. “At Qarth, when you asked my name, I said I was called Arstan. That much was true. Many men had called me by that name while Belwas and I were making our way east to find you. But it is not my true name.”

She was more confused than angry. He has played me false, just as Jorah warned me, yet he saved my life just now.

Ser Jorah flushed red. “Mero shaved his beard, but you grew one, didn’t you? No wonder you looked so bloody familiar ...”

“You know him?” Dany asked the exile knight, lost.

“I saw him perhaps a dozen times ... from afar most often, standing with his brothers or riding in some tourney. But every man in the Seven Kingdoms knew Barristan the Bold.” He laid the point of his sword against the old man’s neck. “Khaleesi, before you kneels Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who betrayed your House to serve the Usurper Robert Baratheon.”

The old knight did not so much as blink. “The crow calls the raven black, and you speak of betrayal.”

“Why are you here?” Dany demanded of him. “If Robert sent you to kill me, why did you save my life?” He served the Usurper. He betrayed Rhaegar’s memory, and abandoned Viserys to live and die in exile. Yet if he wanted me dead, he need only have stood
aside ... “I want the whole truth now, on your honor as a knight. Are you the Usurper’s man, or mine?”

“Yours, if you will have me.” Ser Barristan had tears in his eyes. “I took Robert’s pardon, aye. I served him in Kingsguard and council. Served with the Kingslayer and others near as bad, who soiled the white cloak I wore. Nothing will excuse that. I might be serving in King’s Landing still if the vile boy upon the Iron Throne had not cast me aside, it shames me to admit. But when he took the cloak that the White Bull had draped about my shoulders, and sent men to kill me that selfsame day, it was as though he’d ripped a caul off my eyes. That was when I knew I must find my true king, and die in his service—”

“I can grant that wish,” Ser Jorah said darkly.

“Quiet,” said Dany. “I’ll hear him out.”

“It may be that I must die a traitor’s death,” Ser Barristan said. “If so, I should not die alone. Before I took Robert’s pardon I fought against him on the Trident. You were on the other side of that battle, Mormont, were you not?” He did not wait for an answer. “Your Grace, I am sorry I misled you. It was the only way to keep the Lannisters from learning that I had joined you. You are watched, as your brother was. Lord Varys reported every move Viserys made, for years. Whilst I sat on the small council, I heard a hundred such reports. And since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises.”

He cannot mean ... “You are mistaken.” Dany looked at Jorah Mormont. “Tell him he’s mistaken. There’s no informer. Ser Jorah, tell him. We crossed the Dothraki sea together, and the red waste ...” Her heart fluttered like a bird in a trap. “Tell him, Jorah. Tell him how he got it wrong.”

“The Others take you, Selmy.” Ser Jorah flung his longsword to the carpet. “Khaleesi, it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love ...”

“Do not say that word!” She backed away from him. “How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was it gold?” The Undying had said she would be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were promised?”

“Varys said ... I might go home.” He bowed his head.

I was going to take you home! Her dragons sensed her fury. Viserion roared, and smoke rose grey from his snout. Drogon beat the air with black wings, and Rhaegal twisted his head back and belched flame. I should say the word and burn the two of them. Was there no one she could trust, no one to keep her safe? “Are all the knights of Westeros so false as you two? Get out, before my dragons roast you both. What does roast liar smell like? As foul as Brown Ben’s sewers? Go!”

Ser Barristan rose stiff and slow. For the first time, he looked his age. “Where shall we go, Your Grace?”

“To hell, to serve King Robert.” Dany felt hot tears on her cheeks. Drogon screamed, lashing his tail back and forth. “The Others can have you both.” Go, go away forever, both of you, the next time I see your faces I’ll have your traitors’ heads off. She could not say the words, though. They betrayed me. But they saved me. But they lied. “You go ...” My bear, my fierce strong bear, what will I do without him? And the old man, my brother’s friend. “You go ... go ...” Where?

And then she knew.

ASOS Daenerys IV

But when Mero was gone, Arstan Whitebeard said, “That one has an evil reputation, even in Westeros. Do not be misled by his manner, Your Grace. He will drink three toasts to your health tonight, and rape you on the morrow.”

“The old man’s right for once,” Ser Jorah said. “The Second Sons are an old company, and not without valor, but under Mero they’ve turned near as bad as the Brave Companions. The man is as dangerous to his employers as to his foes. That’s why you find him out here. None of the Free Cities will hire him any longer.”

“It is not his reputation that I want, it’s his five hundred horse.”

~

“I think we should attack from three sides. Grey Worm, your Unsullied shall strike at them from right and left, while my kos lead my horse in wedge for a thrust through their center. Slave soldiers will never stand before mounted Dothraki.” She smiled. “To be sure, I am only a young girl and know little of war. What do you think, my lords?”

“I think you are Rhaegar Targaryen’s sister,” Ser Jorah said with a rueful half smile.

“Aye,” said Arstan Whitebeard, “and a queen as well.”

~

“Daenerys, I am thrice your age,” Ser Jorah said. “I have seen how false men are. Very few are worthy of trust, and Daario Naharis is not one of them. Even his beard wears false colors.”

That angered her. “Whilst you have an honest beard, is that what you are telling me? You are the only man I should ever trust?”

He stiffened. “I did not say that.”

“You say it every day. Pyat Pree’s a liar, Xaro’s a schemer, Belwas a braggart, Arstan an assassin ... do you think I’m still some virgin girl, that I cannot hear the words behind the words?”

~

She felt very lonely all of a sudden. Mirri Maz Duur had promised that she would never bear a living child. House Targaryen will end with me. That made her sad. “You must be my children,” she told the dragons, “my three fierce children. Arstan says dragons live longer than men, so you will go on after I am dead.”

~

A stillness settled over her camp when midnight came and went. Dany remained in her pavilion with her maids, while Arstan Whitebeard and Strong Belwas kept the guard. The waiting is the hardest part. To sit in her tent with idle hands while her battle was being fought without her made Dany feel half a child again.

The hours crept by on turtle feet. Even after Jhiqui rubbed the knots from her shoulders, Dany was too restless for sleep. Missandei offered to sing her a lullaby of the Peaceful People, but Dany shook her head. “Bring me Arstan,” she said.

When the old man came, she was curled up inside her hrakkar pelt, whose musty smell still reminded her of Drogo. “I cannot sleep when men are dying for me, Whitebeard,” she said. “Tell me more of my brother Rhaegar, if you would. I liked the tale you told me on the ship, of how he decided that he must be a warrior.”

“Your Grace is kind to say so.”


“Viserys said that our brother won many tourneys.”

Arstan bowed his white head respectfully. “It is not meet for me to deny His Grace’s words ...”

“But?” said Dany sharply. “Tell me. I command it.”

“Prince Rhaegar’s prowess was unquestioned, but he seldom entered the lists. He never loved the song of swords the way that Robert did, or Jaime Lannister. It was something he had to do, a task the world had set him. He did it well, for he did everything well. That was his nature. But he took no joy in it. Men said that he loved his harp much better than his lance.”

“He won some tourneys, surely,” said Dany, disappointed.

“When he was young, His Grace rode brilliantly in a tourney at Storm’s End, defeating Lord Steffon Baratheon, Lord Jason Mallister, the Red Viper of Dorne, and a mystery knight who proved to be the infamous Simon Toyne, chief of the kingswood outlaws. He broke twelve lances against Ser Arthur Dayne that day.”

“Was he the champion, then?”

“No, Your Grace. That honor went to another knight of the Kingsguard, who unhorsed Prince Rhaegar in the final tilt.”

Dany did not want to hear about Rhaegar being unhorsed. “But what tourneys did my brother win?”

“Your Grace.” The old man hesitated. “He won the greatest tourney of them all.”

“Which was that?” Dany demanded.

“The tourney Lord Whent staged at Harrenhal beside the Gods Eye, in the year of the false spring. A notable event. Besides the jousting, there was a mêlée in the old style fought between seven teams of knights, as well as archery and axe-throwing, a horse race, a tournament of singers, a mummer show, and many feasts and frolics. Lord Whent was as open handed as he was rich. The lavish purses he proclaimed drew hundreds of challengers. Even your royal father came to Harrenhal, when he had not left the Red Keep for long years. The greatest lords and mightiest champions of the Seven Kingdoms rode in that tourney, and the Prince of Dragonstone bested them all.”

“But that was the tourney when he crowned Lyanna Stark as queen of love and beauty!” said Dany. “Princess Elia was there, his wife, and yet my brother gave the crown to the Stark girl, and later stole her away from her betrothed. How could he do that? Did the Dornish woman treat him so ill?”

“It is not for such as me to say what might have been in your brother’s heart, Your Grace. The Princess Elia was a good and gracious lady, though her health was ever delicate.”

Dany pulled the lion pelt tighter about her shoulders. “Viserys said once that it was my fault, for being born too late.” She had denied it hotly, she remembered, going so far as to tell Viserys that it was his fault for not being born a girl. He beat her cruelly for that insolence. “If I had been born more timely, he said, Rhaegar would have married me instead of Elia, and it would all have come out different. If Rhaegar had been happy in his wife, he would not have needed the Stark girl.”

“Perhaps so, Your Grace.” Whitebeard paused a moment. “But I am not certain it was in Rhaegar to be happy.”

“You make him sound so sour,” Dany protested.

“Not sour, no, but ... there was a melancholy to Prince Rhaegar, a sense ...” The old man hesitated again.

“Say it,” she urged. “A sense ...?”

“... of doom. He was born in grief, my queen, and that shadow hung over him all his days.”

Viserys had spoken of Rhaegar’s birth only once. Perhaps the tale saddened him too much. “It was the shadow of Summerhall that haunted him, was it not?”

“Yes. And yet Summerhall was the place the prince loved best. He would go there from time to time, with only his harp for company. Even the knights of the Kingsguard did not attend him there. He liked to sleep in the ruined hall, beneath the moon and stars, and whenever he came back he would bring a song. When you heard him play his high harp with the silver strings and sing of twilights and tears and the death of kings, you could not but feel that he was singing of himself and those he loved.”

“What of the Usurper? Did he play sad songs as well?”

Arstan chuckled. “Robert? Robert liked songs that made him laugh, the bawdier the better. He only sang when he was drunk, and then it was like to be ‘A Cask of Ale’ or ‘Fifty-Four Tuns’ or ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair.’ Robert was much—”

ASOS Daenerys III

“Give me all,” she said, “and you may have a dragon.”

There was the sound of indrawn breath from Jhiqui beside her. Kraznys smiled at his fellows. “Did I not tell you? Anything, she would give us.”

Whitebeard stared in shocked disbelief. His hand trembled where it grasped the staff. “No.” He went to one knee before her. “Your Grace, I beg you, win your throne with dragons, not slaves. You must not do this thing—”

“You must not presume to instruct me. Ser Jorah, remove Whitebeard from my presence.”

Mormont seized the old man roughly by an elbow, yanked him back to his feet, and marched him out onto the terrace.

“Tell the Good Masters I regret this interruption,” said Dany to the slave girl.

~

Arstan Whitebeard held his tongue as well, when Dany swept by him on the terrace. He followed her down the steps in silence, but she could hear his hardwood staff tap tapping on the red bricks as they went. She did not blame him for his fury. It was a wretched thing she did. The Mother of Dragons has sold her strongest child. Even the thought made her ill.

Yet down in the Plaza of Pride, standing on the hot red bricks between the slavers’ pyramid and the barracks of the eunuchs, Dany turned on the old man. “Whitebeard,” she said, “I want your counsel, and you should never fear to speak your mind with
me ... when we are alone. But never question me in front of strangers. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” he said unhappily.


“I am not a child,” she told him. “I am a queen.”

“Yet even queens can err. The Astapori have cheated you, Your Grace. A dragon is worth more than any army. Aegon proved that three hundred years ago, upon the Field of Fire.”

“I know what Aegon proved. I mean to prove a few things of my own.”

ASOS Daenerys II

“Tell her that these have been standing here for a day and a night, with no food nor water. Tell her that they will stand until they drop if I should command it, and when nine hundred and ninety-nine have collapsed to die upon the bricks, the last will stand there still, and never move until his own death claims him. Such is their courage. Tell her that.”

“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan Whitebeard, when the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the end of his hardwood staff against the bricks, tap tap, as if to tell his displeasure. The old man had not wanted to sail to Astapor; nor did he favor buying this slave army. A queen should hear all sides before reaching a decision. That was why Dany had brought him with her to the Plaza of Pride, not to keep her safe. [...]

“Inform the savages that we call this obedience. Others may be stronger or quicker or larger than the Unsullied. Some few may even equal their skill with sword and spear and shield. But nowhere between the seas will you ever find any more obedient.”

“Sheep are obedient,” said Arstan when the words had been translated. He had some Valyrian as well, though not so much as Dany, but like her he was feigning ignorance.

~

“A eunuch who is cut young will never have the brute strength of one of your Westerosi knights, this is true,” said Kraznys mo Nakloz when the question was put to him. “A bull is strong as well, but bulls die every day in the fighting pits. A girl of nine killed one not three days past in Jothiel’s Pit. The Unsullied have something better than strength, tell her. They have discipline. We fight in the fashion of the Old Empire, yes. They are the lockstep legions of Old Ghis come again, absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly without fear.”

Dany listened patiently to the translation.
“Even the bravest men fear death and maiming,” Arstan said when the girl was done.

~

“Tell her all their names are such,” Kraznys commanded the girl. “It reminds them that by themselves they are vermin. The name disks are thrown in an empty cask at duty’s end, and each dawn plucked up again at random.”

“More madness,” said Arstan, when he heard. “How can any man possibly remember a new name every day?”

~

Arstan Whitebeard tapped the end of his staff on the bricks as he listened to that. Tap tap tap. Slow and steady. Tap tap tap. Dany saw him turn his eyes away, as if he could not bear to look at Kraznys any longer.

~

She looked at Arstan. “You have lived long in the world, Whitebeard. Now that you have seen them, what do you say?”

“I say no, Your Grace,” the old man answered at once.


“Why?” she asked. “Speak freely.” Dany thought she knew what he would say, but she wanted the slave girl to hear, so Kraznys mo Nakloz might hear later.

“My queen,” said Arstan, “there have been no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House.”

“Yet I must have some army,” Dany said. “The boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking politely.”

“When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of Westeros will be with you,” Whitebeard promised. “Your brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love.”

“And my father?” Dany said.

The old man hesitated before saying, “King Aerys is also remembered. He gave the realm many years of peace. Your Grace, you have no need of slaves. Magister Illyrio can keep you safe while your dragons grow, and send secret envoys across the narrow sea on your behalf, to sound out the high lords for your cause.”

“Those same high lords who abandoned my father to the Kingslayer and bent the knee to Robert the Usurper?”

“Even those who bent their knees may yearn in their hearts for the return of the dragons.”

“May,” said Dany. That was such a slippery word, may. In any language.

~

Tap tap tap, Dany heard. Arstan Whitebeard’s face was still, but his staff beat out his rage. Tap tap tap.

~

Dany climbed into her litter frowning, and beckoned Arstan to climb in beside her. A man as old as him should not be walking in such heat.

~

“Bricks and blood built Astapor,” Whitebeard murmured at her side, “and bricks and blood her people.”

“What is that?” Dany asked him, curious.

“An old rhyme a maester taught me, when I was a boy. I never knew how true it was. The bricks of Astapor are red with the blood of the slaves who make them.”

“I can well believe that,” said Dany.

“Then leave this place before your heart turns to brick as well. Sail this very night, on the evening tide.”

Would that I could, thought Dany. “When I leave Astapor it must be with an army, Ser Jorah says.”

“Ser Jorah was a slaver himself, Your Grace,” the old man reminded her. “There are sellswords in Pentos and Myr and Tyrosh you can hire. A man who kills for coin has no honor, but at least they are no slaves. Find your army there, I beg you.”

“My brother visited Pentos, Myr, Braavos, near all the Free Cities. The magisters and archons fed him wine and promises, but his soul was starved to death. A man cannot sup from the beggar’s bowl all his life and stay a man. I had my taste in Qarth, that was enough. I will not come to Pentos bowl in hand.”

“Better to come a beggar than a slaver,” Arstan said.

“There speaks one who has been neither.” Dany’s nostrils flared. “Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and
I ... my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?”

Whitebeard bowed his head. “Your Grace, I did not mean to give offense.”

“Only lies offend me, never honest counsel.” Dany patted Arstan’s spotted hand to reassure him. “I have a dragon’s temper, that’s all. You must not let it frighten you.”

“I shall try and remember.” Whitebeard smiled.

He has a good face, and great strength to him, Dany thought. She could not understand why Ser Jorah mistrusted the old man so. Could he be jealous that I have found another man to talk to?

~

“Prince Rhaegar led free men into battle, not slaves. Whitebeard said he dubbed his squires himself, and made many other knights as well.”

ASOS Daenerys I

The squire Whitebeard, standing by the figurehead with one lean hand curled about his tall hardwood staff, turned toward them and said, “Balerion the Black Dread was two hundred years old when he died during the reign of Jaehaerys the Conciliator. He was so large he could swallow an aurochs whole. A dragon never stops growing, Your Grace, so long as he has food and freedom.” His name was Arstan, but Strong Belwas had named him Whitebeard for his pale whiskers, and most everyone called him that now. He was taller than Ser Jorah, though not so muscular; his eyes were a pale blue, his long beard as white as snow and as fine as silk.

“Freedom?” asked Dany, curious. “What do you mean?”

“In King’s Landing, your ancestors raised an immense domed castle for their dragons. The Dragonpit, it is called. It still stands atop the Hill of Rhaenys, though all in ruins now. That was where the royal dragons dwelt in days of yore, and a cavernous dwelling it was, with iron doors so wide that thirty knights could ride through them abreast. Yet even so, it was noted that none of the pit dragons ever reached the size of their ancestors. The maesters say it was because of the walls around them, and the great dome above their heads.”

“If walls could keep us small, peasants would all be tiny and kings as large as giants,” said Ser Jorah. “I’ve seen huge men born in hovels, and dwarfs who dwelt in castles.”

“Men are men,” Whitebeard replied. “Dragons are dragons.”

Ser Jorah snorted his disdain. “How profound.” The exile knight had no love for the old man, he’d made that plain from the first. “What do you know of dragons, anyway?”

“Little enough, that’s true. Yet I served for a time in King’s Landing in the days when King Aerys sat the Iron Throne, and walked beneath the dragonskulls that looked down from the walls of his throne room.”

“Viserys talked of those skulls,” said Dany. “The Usurper took them down and hid them away. He could not bear them looking down on him upon his stolen throne.” She beckoned Whitebeard closer. “Did you ever meet my royal father?” King Aerys II had died before his daughter was born.

“I had that great honor, Your Grace.”

“Did you find him good and gentle?”

Whitebeard did his best to hide his feelings, but they were there, plain on his face. “His Grace was ... often pleasant.”

“Often?” Dany smiled. “But not always?”


“He could be very harsh to those he thought his enemies.”


“A wise man never makes an enemy of a king,” said Dany. “Did you know my brother Rhaegar as well?”


“It was said that no man ever knew Prince Rhaegar, truly. I had the privilege of seeing him in tourney, though, and often heard him play his harp with its silver strings.”

Ser Jorah snorted. “Along with a thousand others at some harvest feast. Next you’ll claim you squired for him.”

“I make no such claim, ser. Myles Mooton was Prince Rhaegar’s squire, and Richard Lonmouth after him. When they won their spurs, he knighted them himself, and they remained his close companions. Young Lord Connington was dear to the prince as well, but his oldest friend was Arthur Dayne.”

“The Sword of the Morning!” said Dany, delighted. “Viserys used to talk about his wondrous white blade. He said Ser Arthur was the only knight in the realm who was our brother’s peer.”

Whitebeard bowed his head. “It is not my place to question the words of Prince Viserys.”

“King,” Dany corrected. “He was a king, though he never reigned. Viserys, the Third of His Name. But what do you mean?” His answer had not been one that she’d expected. “Ser Jorah named Rhaegar the last dragon once. He had to have been a peerless warrior to be called that, surely?”

“Your Grace,” said Whitebeard, “the Prince of Dragonstone was a most puissant warrior, but ...”

“Go on,” she urged. “You may speak freely to me.”

“As you command.” The old man leaned upon his hardwood staff, his brow furrowed. “A warrior without peer ... those are fine words, Your Grace, but words win no battles.”

“Swords win battles,” Ser Jorah said bluntly. “And Prince Rhaegar knew how to use one.”


“He did, ser, but ... I have seen a hundred tournaments and more wars than I would wish, and however strong or fast or skilled a knight may be, there are others who can match him. A man will win one tourney, and fall quickly in the next. A slick spot in the grass may mean defeat, or what you ate for supper the night before. A change in the wind may bring the gift of victory.” He glanced at Ser Jorah. “Or a lady’s favor knotted round an arm.”

Mormont’s face darkened. “Be careful what you say, old man.”

Arstan had seen Ser Jorah fight at Lannisport, Dany knew, in the tourney Mormont had won with a lady’s favor knotted round his arm. He had won the lady too; Lynesse of House Hightower, his second wife, highborn and beautiful ... but she had ruined him, and abandoned him, and the memory of her was bitter to him now. “Be gentle, my knight.” She put a hand on Jorah’s arm. “Arstan had no wish to give offense, I’m certain.”

“As you say, Khaleesi.” Ser Jorah’s voice was grudging.

Dany turned back to the squire. “I know little of Rhaegar. Only the tales Viserys told, and he was a little boy when our brother died. What was he truly like?”

The old man considered a moment. “Able. That above all. Determined, deliberate, dutiful, single-minded. There is a tale told of him ... but doubtless Ser Jorah knows it as well.”

“I would hear it from you.”

“As you wish,” said Whitebeard. “As a young boy, the Prince of Dragonstone was bookish to a fault. He was reading so early that men said Queen Rhaella must have swallowed some books and a candle whilst he was in her womb. Rhaegar took no interest in the play of other children. The maesters were awed by his wits, but his father’s knights would jest sourly that Baelor the Blessed had been born again. Until one day Prince Rhaegar found something in his scrolls that changed him. No one knows what it might have been, only that the boy suddenly appeared early one morning in the yard as the knights were donning their steel. He walked up to Ser Willem Darry, the master-at-arms, and said, ‘I will require sword and armor. It seems I must be a warrior.’”

“And he was!” said Dany, delighted.

“He was indeed.” Whitebeard bowed. “My pardons, Your Grace. We speak of warriors, and I see that Strong Belwas has arisen. I must attend him.”

Dany glanced aft. The eunuch was climbing through the hold amidships, nimble for all his size. Belwas was squat but broad, a good fifteen stone of fat and muscle, his great brown gut crisscrossed by faded white scars. He wore baggy pants, a yellow silk bellyband, and an absurdly tiny leather vest dotted with iron studs. “Strong Belwas is hungry!” he roared at everyone and no one in particular. “Strong Belwas will eat now!” Turning, he spied Arstan on the forecastle. “Whitebeard! You will bring food for Strong Belwas!”

“You may go,” Dany told the squire. He bowed again, and moved off to tend the needs of the man he served.

Ser Jorah watched with a frown on his blunt honest face. Mormont was big and burly, strong of jaw and thick of shoulder. Not a handsome man by any means, but as true a friend as Dany had ever known. “You would be wise to take that old man’s words well salted,” he told her when Whitebeard was out of earshot.

“A queen must listen to all,” she reminded him. “The highborn and the low, the strong and the weak, the noble and the venal. One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.” She had read that in a book.

“Hear my voice then, Your Grace,” the exile said. “This Arstan Whitebeard is playing you false. He is too old to be a squire, and too well spoken to be serving that oaf of a eunuch.”

That does seem queer, Dany had to admit.

[...] Ser Jorah saved me from the poisoner, and Arstan Whitebeard from the manticore. Perhaps Strong Belwas will save me from the next.

~

“Sit, good ser, and tell me what is troubling you.”

“Three things.” Ser Jorah sat. “Strong Belwas. This Arstan Whitebeard. And Illyrio Mopatis, who sent them.”

Again? Dany pulled the coverlet higher and tugged one end over her shoulder. “And why is that?”

“The warlocks in Qarth told you that you would be betrayed three times,” the exile knight reminded her, as Viserion and Rhaegal began to snap and claw at each other.

“Once for blood and once for gold and once for love.” Dany was not like to forget. “Mirri Maz Duur was the first.”

“Which means two traitors yet remain ... and now these two appear. I find that troubling, yes. Never forget, Robert offered a lordship to the man who slays you.”

Dany leaned forward and yanked Viserion’s tail, to pull him off his green brother. Her blanket fell away from her chest as she moved. She grabbed it hastily and covered herself again. “The Usurper is dead,” she said.

“But his son rules in his place.” Ser Jorah lifted his gaze, and his dark eyes met her own. “A dutiful son pays his father’s debts. Even blood debts.”

“This boy Joffrey might want me dead ... if he recalls that I’m alive. What has that to do with Belwas and Arstan Whitebeard? The old man does not even wear a sword. You’ve seen that.”

“Aye. And I have seen how deftly he handles that staff of his. Recall how he killed that manticore in Qarth? It might as easily have been your throat he crushed.”

“Might have been, but was not,” she pointed out. “It was a stinging manticore meant to slay me. He saved my life.”

“Khaleesi, has it occurred to you that Whitebeard and Belwas might have been in league with the assassin? It might all have been a ploy to win your trust.”

Her sudden laughter made Drogon hiss, and sent Viserion flapping to his perch above the porthole. “The ploy worked well.”

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys V

“I see a fat brown man and an older man with a staff. Which is it?”

“Both of them,” Ser Jorah said. “They have been following us since we left Quicksilver.”

~

The other man wore a traveler’s cloak of undyed wool, the hood thrown back. Long white hair fell to his shoulders, and a silky white beard covered the lower half of his face. He leaned his weight on a hardwood staff as tall as he was. Only fools would stare so openly if they meant me harm. All the same, it might be prudent to head back toward Jhogo and Aggo. “The old man does not wear a sword,” she said to Jorah in the Common Tongue as she drew him away.

~

A Qartheen stepped into her path. “Mother of Dragons, for you.” He knelt and thrust a jewel box into her face.

Dany took it almost by reflex. The box was carved wood, its mother-of-pearl lid inlaid with jasper and chalcedony. “You are too generous.” She opened it. Within was a glittering green scarab carved from onyx and emerald. Beautiful, she thought. This will help pay for our passage. As she reached inside the box, the man said, “I am so sorry,” but she hardly heard.

The scarab unfolded with a hiss.

Dany caught a glimpse of a malign black face, almost human, and an arched tail dripping venom ... and then the box flew from her hand in pieces, turning end over end. Sudden pain twisted her fingers. As she cried out and clutched her hand, the brass merchant let out a shriek, a woman screamed, and suddenly the Qartheen were shouting and pushing each other aside. Ser Jorah slammed past her, and Dany stumbled to one knee. She heard the hiss again. The old man drove the butt of his staff into the ground, Aggo came riding through an eggseller’s stall and vaulted from his saddle, Jhogo’s whip cracked overhead, Ser Jorah slammed the eunuch over the head with the brass platter, sailors and whores and merchants were fleeing or shouting or both ...

“Your Grace, a thousand pardons.” The old man knelt. “It’s dead. Did I break your hand?”

She closed her fingers, wincing. “I don’t think so.”

“I had to knock it away,” he started, but her bloodriders were on him before he could finish.

Aggo kicked his staff away and Jhogo seized him round the shoulders, forced him to his knees, and pressed a dagger to his throat. “Khaleesi, we saw him strike you. Would you see the color of his blood?”

“Release him.” Dany climbed to her feet. “Look at the bottom of his staff, blood of my blood.” Ser Jorah had been shoved off his feet by the eunuch. She ran between them as arakh and longsword both came flashing from their sheaths. “Put down your steel! Stop it!”

“Your Grace?” Mormont lowered his sword only an inch. “These men attacked you.”

“They were defending me.” Dany snapped her hand to shake the sting from her fingers. “It was the other one, the Qartheen.” When she looked around he was gone. “He was a Sorrowful Man. There was a manticore in that jewel box he gave me. This man knocked it out of my hand.” The brass merchant was still rolling on the ground. She went to him and helped him to his feet. “Were you stung?”

“No, good lady,” he said, shaking, “or else I would be dead. But it touched me, aieeee, when it fell from the box it landed on my arm.” He had soiled himself, she saw, and no wonder.

She gave him a silver for his trouble and sent him on his way before she turned back to the old man with the white beard. “Who is it that I owe my life to?”

“You owe me nothing, Your Grace. I am called Arstan, though Belwas named me Whitebeard on the voyage here.” Though Jhogo had released him the old man remained on one knee. Aggo picked up his staff, turned it over, cursed softly in Dothraki, scraped the remains of the manticore off on a stone, and handed it back.

“And who is Belwas?” she asked.

The huge brown eunuch swaggered forward, sheathing his arakh. “I am Belwas. Strong Belwas they name me in the fighting pits of Meereen. Never did I lose.” He slapped his belly, covered with scars. “I let each man cut me once, before I kill him. Count the cuts and you will know how many Strong Belwas has slain.”

Dany had no need to count his scars; there were many, she could see at a glance. “And why are you here, Strong Belwas?”

“From Meereen I am sold to Qohor, and then to Pentos and the fat man with sweet stink in his hair. He it was who send Strong Belwas back across the sea, and old Whitebeard to serve him.”

The fat man with sweet stink in his hair ... “Illyrio?” she said. “You were sent by Magister Illyrio?”

“We were, Your Grace,” old Whitebeard replied. “The Magister begs your kind indulgence for sending us in his stead, but he cannot sit a horse as he did in his youth, and sea travel upsets his digestion.” Earlier he had spoken in the Valyrian of the Free Cities, but now he changed to the Common Tongue. “I regret if we caused you alarm. If truth be told, we were not certain, we expected someone more ... more ...”

“Regal?” Dany laughed. She had no dragon with her, and her raiment was hardly queenly. “You speak the Common Tongue well, Arstan. Are you of Westeros?”

“I am. I was born on the Dornish Marches, Your Grace. As a boy I squired for a knight of Lord Swann’s household.” He held the tall staff upright beside him like a lance in need of a banner. “Now I squire for Belwas.”

“A bit old for such, aren’t you?” Ser Jorah had shouldered his way to her side, holding the brass platter awkwardly under his arm. Belwas’s hard head had left it badly bent.

“Not too old to serve my liege, Lord Mormont.”

“You know me as well?”

“I saw you fight a time or two. At Lannisport where you near unhorsed the Kingslayer. And on Pyke, there as well. You do not recall, Lord Mormont?”

Ser Jorah frowned. “Your face seems familiar, but there were hundreds at Lannisport and thousands on Pyke. And I am no lord. Bear Island was taken from me. I am but a knight.”

“A knight of my Queensguard.” Dany took his arm. “And my true friend and good counselor.” She studied Arstan’s face. He had a great dignity to him, a quiet strength she liked. “Rise, Arstan Whitebeard. Be welcome, Strong Belwas. Ser Jorah you know. Ko Aggo and Ko Jhogo are blood of my blood. They crossed the red waste with me, and saw my dragons born. [...] Now tell me, what would Magister Illyrio have of me, that he would send you all the way from Pentos?”

“He would have dragons,” said Belwas gruffly, “and the girl who makes them. He would have you.”

“Belwas has the truth of us, Your Grace,” said Arstan. “We were told to find you and bring you back to Pentos. The Seven Kingdoms have need of you. Robert the Usurper is dead, and the realm bleeds. When we set sail from Pentos there were four kings in the land, and no justice to be had.”

Joy bloomed in her heart, but Dany kept it from her face. “I have three dragons,” she said, “and more than a hundred in my khalasar, with all their goods and horses.”

“It is no matter,” boomed Belwas. “We take all. The fat man hires three ships for his little silverhair queen.”

“It is so, Your Grace,” Arstan Whitebeard said. “The great cog Saduleon is berthed at the end of the quay, and the galleys Summer Sun and Joso’s Prank are anchored beyond the breakwater.”

Three heads has the dragon, Dany thought, wondering. “I shall tell my people to make ready to depart at once. But the ships that bring me home must bear different names.”

“As you wish,” said Arstan. “What names would you prefer?”

“Vhagar,” Daenerys told him. “Meraxes. And Balerion. Paint the names on their hulls in golden letters three feet high, Arstan. I want every man who sees them to know the dragons are returned.”

[carbonitekisses]

I love you, I promise.

Summary: 

"We are the last Targaryens." She takes his face into her hands. "Stand by my side. And we will purge the world of all the evil, corruption, and pain that infests it. We will break the wheel. Together."

The air is thick with ash. Thick with death. Thick with hurt.

She bring her lips to his in a binding kiss.

In another world Jon Snow would have ended the kiss with steel and blood.

In this world he ends the kiss with an oath. It has become routine. Repetition makes it easier to believe. Easier to hide. "You are my queen now and always."

His lips burn in protest. 

They remember a promise he made to a woman kissed by fire...

"I'll protect you, I promise."

//

Tyrion is interrupted before he can convince Jon to kill Daenerys. What happens then? Sansa is summoned to King's Landing under threat of dragon fire for treason against the new queen of the seven kingdoms. Will Jon remember who he is and who he loves before it’s too late?

Also on AO3

(thanks to @tragedyofromance​ for looking it over!) This fits in @jonsa-week​ prompt for King’s Landing!

Valar morghulis...

The thin edge of Valyrian steel cuts through the charred flesh with ease. Bloody and gargled relief seeps down from the gash across the woman's throat. 

...but not like this. 

Arya dutifully closes the woman's murky eyes. Everlasting darkness is a solace compared to the hell that surrounds them. She digs her heels into the ground, pushes herself upright, and swipes the catspaw on her sleeve. It is of little use. The sleeve is more blood than fabric, now; a trail of mercy and corpses lengthens behind her with each step she takes towards the Red Keep.

Arya had detested Kings Landing from the moment she first passed its gates with her father and Sansa. The only joy she had found here had been with the brave Syrio Forel, water-dancing and chasing cats, exploring dungeons and little nooks and crannies. Yes, she despised the foul-smelling capital but she finds no joy in the destruction and bloodshed that has fallen upon the city and its people.

It is quiet. It is unnatural. Occasionally the silence is broken by cries or whimpers, human voices begging for help. She knows she cannot help everyone in her path. 

Help... Is that what I am doing? Arya grimaces when she sees the young man whose wheezing caught her ear. He is pinned, almost completely covered by a collapsed balcony. His head, the only exposed body part, is partially caved in. There is no hope for him. Arya unsheathes the dagger once more. Surely there must be some mercy in death. There must. 

By the time the Red Keep and Daenerys' forces come into view Arya's right sleeve weighs heavy with blood. She seethes when she hears how the Dothraki cheer, and sees how stoic and unrepentant the Unsullied stand under the overcast sky. I shut one hundred and twenty two eyes today. Her dagger only met skin when there was no chance of survival—and yet.

Brown, blue, green. Some of them she found underneath rubble. Some she found with their intestines out in the open. But most, most of the lives she returns to the Many-Faced God come from bodies with burnt skin and boiling blood.

That could have been my fate.

An elderly man silently cradles the husk of a young boy. A Dothraki man with beautiful hazel eyes kicks the man. The man quiets evermore. The man does not cry. He simply stares. At nothing. There is nothing. 

It might still be my fate.

The beast that flew above the city and rained fire all around her now lies atop a pile of crumbling wall stones. It flaps its black wings and roars in unison with the dragon queen's armies as her speech approaches its end. From where Arya is standing she sees Jon. His head of dark brown stands behind the head of silver. 

He's alive. Arya's left hand shakes and she grips the catspaw pommel even tighter. Jon survived. She sprints to her right with a new goal in mind. The long corridors that run alongside the sides provide sufficient cover. Not that it would matter overmuch; the men are in a frenzy, their faces never straying from their violet-eyed god. She has to squeeze between a collapsed portion of the ceiling and the wall. A particularly pointy slab of stone manages to rip through both fabric and flesh. Arya grunts and pulls her leg free. Just another scar to add to her collection.

She continues onward, only stopping to witness through a window how Tyrion Lannister yanks something—His Hand pin!—from his chest and throws it down the steps before being promptly taken away. A sense of foreboding urges her to move faster, to be by her brother's side. If Tyrion has abandoned Daenerys she cannot think that Jon will stay by his aunt's side for much longer; he will need protecting from the dragon queen. Arya's lungs burn from exertion. The air gains texture and color. She struggles to not cough and purge her lungs of the ash that continues to fall and thickens the closer she gets to Jon. 

The corridor ends and opens to a set of stairs commonly used by servants and those of lesser blood. Arya remembers they lead to a side entrance close to the landing where Jon and the silver queen stand right now. Arya lays a hand on the wall to steady herself. She's tired. So tired. Her tongue darts out to moisten her cracked lips. She laughs. I have no water left in me. The fire rid me of it. I am a dry river.

By the time she reaches the top of the stairs the laceration on her leg is pulsing and her throat is scratchy from the wracking coughs she was no longer able to hold in. The darkness of the corridor and side stairs lightens, and she steps into hues of gray and blue.

The ash covered floor muffles her feet well enough as she walks forward. She comes to rest at his side and examines him.

He shows signs of battle though nothing of great concern. A few splatters of blood here and there but no wounds of his own. She is glad of it. Life has taught her to be grateful for small blessings. Arya is standing mere inches away from him and they both watch as Daenerys Targaryen strides into the skeleton of what once was the Red Keep. Jon doesn't seem to notice Arya is there at his side. Unawares, he continues to glumly watch his aunt walk away. Arya hates it. 

"You're lucky." Jon twists around at the sound of her voice. He gasps her name but Arya does not stop speaking. It is time Jon listen for once. "You live. You breathe. No body can say the same of the thousands that died today."

A little bean of a thought sprouts in her mind: perhaps even the House of White and Black would see what happened here as overindulgence. 

Her brother stares at her as if he cannot believe she is there. He grabs her by the shoulders and his eyes search her body for sign of injury just as she did with him. His eyes grow darker with each cut, gash, and blow he sees. His hand slides downward and he retracts it in fear when it comes away bloody. "Your arm—"

"The blood isn't mine." It's the blood of the lives I returned to the Stranger. A small mercy—it is mercy. it is. is it? it is it is it is it is—for the people who your aunt could not do the justice of killing properly. 

He doesn't look any happier by her assurance. "What are you doing here, Arya?" A girl hears the reproach. A sister tries to smother the hurt. 

"The queen was on my list. I came to kill her. Daenerys got to her first."

"You shouldn't have come. What were you thinking?" His hands had returned to her shoulders and he shakes her. Memories tumble round and over and under her skull. Shake me some more, a girl pleas and in the fuzziness she thinks of an older man with eyes of the same grey... No, not the same grey. These are duller. Unknown to the known of the girl whose body I own. Arya Stark emerges once more, He's not father. He doesn't have his eyes. "You could have died. I could have lost you in the fire and not even known it."

He is desperate in his condemnation of me and my actions, Arya dully thinks of how even the imp seemingly denounced the dragon queen, But I am yet to hear him condemn the silver queen. Not even now, after everything. He still stands behind her, an accomplice to this massacre.

"I heard the bells. The city had surrendered. She didn't care; she burned them all." Arya Underfoot whispers, loudly, "She nearly burned me, too. The falling buildings nearly crushed me. It was such a close thing, brother." Pieces, fragments of shameful regret on Jon Snow's face. 

Jon says nothing. His hands, however, speak. A clenching and unclenching of dirty and bloodied fingers. A nervous tick. It began when they were children. Arya remembers how the bastard of Winterfell would push his feelings to the tips of his fingers since his tongue had been tempered to a bastard's silence. Scratch scratch. She can hear his blunt nails dig in hard enough to scratch the dirt off his palm. Scratch scratch scratch. It is a mocking and damning sound.

I should have done it sooner. Arya Stark's stupid dreams and memories of a bastard brother have clawed my eyes out. I was blind. blind. blind.

"You knew," she realizes. "You knew what she was and still you said, and continue to say, nothing against her. I know we haven't seen each other in years but this...I do not recognize this part of you. Sansa," here, his pupils contract, "thought you were playing the game of thrones. That you were afraid, trapped by the reveal of your parentage."

I thought the same. I believed you to be caught in a spiderweb of your own making.

"Because the only other option was that you-you..." had betrayed us. "Seems Sansa had too much faith in you—and so did I."

He doesn’t defend himself.

Arya’s heart shivers and her right arm feels sticky under the congealing blood. The garment is ruined. Sansa will have a fit. No, no she won’t. She’ll cry. Her sister never liked death. Even for Littlefinger Sansa Stark shed tears, venomous tears. I can’t let her see me like this. “You knew and you still tried to make us believe we were wrong in mistrusting her. Tried to make us believe we were paranoid.” The words that follow are quiet and bleeding, “You knew.”

You knew and, still, you cast us and the world into the fire. Just so your lover could satisfy her hunger for power. 

Finally he speaks but the words that follow... "Dany did—she—she freed the city from Cersei. She's the queen of the seven kingdoms now. And the North is part of those seven kingdoms." ...show Arya just how much her brother has changed. 

This is not the brother she knew. This is not her Jon. His hands feel foreign atop her shoulders. Arya pulls his hands off her and puts much needed distance between them. It wasn't Sansa who would end up betraying the family. The prejudice of childhood had blinded her not just to the virtues of a sister but also to the flaws of a brother. I should have played the game of faces with him instead.

"Try telling that to Sansa."

He avoids the obvious implication, instead he orders her to wait for him outside the city gates. Has he forgotten there are no gates to herald her departure? They, too, have fallen. Her stomach churns with worry. She grabs him by the elbow before he can leave. Jon might be acting the lone wolf but he is still her brother, he is still part of the pack. 

"Jon. She knows who you are. As long as you live you will be a threat to her."

"She is my queen," he says again. "I believe in her. Please, just do as I say and wait for me outsi—"

Arya interrupts him with a hug. Physical contact takes many forms. She has tried to learn them, the old (embraces like this) and the new (passion entangled limbs).

That old man was also hugging someone he loved. 

She cannot listen to him any longer. Her arms wind around him painfully, and it is her that is hurting. "I won't wait for you. I can't." She lets him go. "I need to warn Sansa. She needs to know what happened here. I need to be with her. With Bran. Goodbye, Jon."

Jon's mouth tightens slightly at the corners but he makes no move to join her. Arya now understands. He has made his choice. Her brother is a man grown. She cannot force him to leave. Her time is wasted here. There are others she can warn and protect, others who will listen. 

"Take care, Arya."

His whispered goodbye nips at her heels and chases her well after she mounts a white horse and leaves Kings Landing behind.

It is two days of hard riding before she finds a rookery inside a small and modest keep somewhere north of the capital. It is obvious the Dothraki passed through. Hundreds of horse tracks stamp the surrounding fields. Bodies and debris lay strewn under the sun. Inside, everything of value is gone and only lifeless vessels are there to greet her. She picks the keenest raven, and looks it straight in its coal eyes, "Bran, I do not know what you have seen, if you have mastered your powers and already know what happened. I don't even know if you're here. I could just be talking to a stupid bird. If you're here, please, guide this raven's wings and make it fly true."  

It is only luck, Arya thinks as she releases the raven, that they didn't burn the keep down. She watches the bird fly away, a little scrap of white tied to its feet. She waits until she can no longer see it in the darkening sky before she slumps against the stone wall.

It is only now that she allows her tear ducts to wash away the horrors she saw in Kings Landing.

It doesn't work.

She had forgotten she was dry.

Walking corpses, burning flesh, tearless cries, burning blood. 

She relives it all. 

She shuts her eyes, eyelids covering the light.

It makes no difference. The memories have burned themselves into her head.

They won't come out. I have to get them out before they drive me mad. Stinging pain pinpricks her scalp. A reminder, cruel, that she is not invincible. Arya Stark is weak. Exhaustion and hurt have seduced the strength of her muscles and mind. She hadn't noticed she'd been clawing at her head. Out. Out. Out. Out. OUT. OUT.

A sob claws its way out her chest and into the night. The cry is a bitter child, scared and angry at a world it is afraid of because it is so big and the child is so small.  

Daenerys Targaryen.

Daenerys Targaryen.

Daenerys Targaryen.

Daenerys Targaryen.

Daenerys Targaryen.

Daenerys Targaryen.

Daenerys Targaryen.

Crack. Crack. Arya Stark. The head hurts. The wall does not. A widowed fisherman. Red. This body's blood. This flesh is weak. Lord Frey. The teeth tear easily into it. Faces. Masks. How many? An orphan girl, nameless to the world. Maybe if the mouth bites hard enough, makes the wound wide enough, this body can crawl inside. Devour itself. Seek out an answer inside. There must be an answer. No one. Who am I? What the fuck am I? Kill me. Kill me. Oh, gods. Oh, nothing. Father. Mother. Robb. Help. Help. 

Please.

There is a face she hasn't taken. A corporal being she has not tested her craft on. No One wouldn't wear the face. No One only wants to hide the face. Take its power and stifle it until the world is cleansed. 

I was trying to be good. I was. I was. I swear it. I was, wasn't I? Yes. Yes. No. Never. The world won't let me. 

A tongue, loose and thirsty, licks the blood on the hand.

  Daenerys Targaryen.

 Is it a list if it is only one name?

 // 

"A raven comes, Lady Stark."

"What have you seen? Bran—"

"There are moments I feel like Bran. They are precious, that I know." Eyes turn white. Silence. Eyes of her brother. "And there are moments I wish I didn't remember. 'Tis wicked, that they should come like a plague now when it would hurt most."

"I'm tired, Bran. Just tell me. I don't care. Not knowing how Arya and Jon fare... if you know, spare me nothing."

He speaks. 

She wishes he hadn't.

//

At this point in his life Tyrion thinks it is as good time as any to admit that perhaps he overestimated his cleverness. Here, in a store room of little importance, perhaps he can be honest with himself before he meets the dragon's fire. 

I wanted power. I saw the power in Daenerys and loved her for it, thinking she could make me powerful, too, if only I was at her side as she conquered the world. 

Tywin Lannister's ghost laughs at him from wherever it is souls like his go to rest. "You proved me right, Tyrion. I called you an ill-made, spiteful little creature full of envy, lust, and low-cunning." Tyrion fists his hair in shame. "But even I am surprised; you exceeded my expectations. With you the great house of Lannister will vanish. Everything I worked for destroyed."

There is no wine or mead in the room. Nothing to dull and drown the voices of those he has killed or pushed into the path of the Stranger. His father is the first but more are to follow. Joanna, his mother. Shae, his lover. Varys, his friend. Cersei and Jaime. Sooner or later, he fears, they, too, will come to remind him of his failures. And none, none, have been as costly as what happened in Kings Landing. 

I wonder if all the people that died today will come and visit me as well? His not so clever mind will have a trouble being host to so many guests. How many died because I thought I could control her worst impulses?

"You were right, Varys," Tyrion says through a cluttered throat. He imagines Varys laughing at his cheap expression of remorse. "But it's a hollow victory, isn't it?"

Time passes. He has spent less than a couple hours in his makeshift cell when he hears the echo of heavy footsteps. They are getting louder and he knows they are coming for him. He tries to settle himself into a position of calm while fighting the instinct to cry and vomit. I am dying today. I am dying. Dying. Dying. Oh! Be calm. Death. Death. Be calm. Be proud. But there is no escape. Be calm. Death. Death.

The door opens and in walks Jon Snow. It isn't death, not yet, and Tyrion swallows his relief. His pride rears its head once more, foolish little man that he is. An Unsullied guard closes the door and leaves them be. Tyrion's eyes flick to Jon's swordless hip. 

"How gracious of you to visit me. I don't suppose you have any wine on you?" Tyrion stands and picks up a chair he had thrown during a particularly useless fit of desperation. He offers it, almost mockingly, a touch bitterly, to his guest. "Sit, Jon Snow. Tell me, has your queen told you when I am to share Varys' fate?"

Jon Snow cautiously steps further into the room but refuses the chair. Everything, from his grinding teeth to the curled toes in his heeled boots, tells Tyrion that the queen's lover does not want to be here. He is a man of contradictions, this Targaryen prince who looks more wolf than dragon. Tyrion is a man starving for—something. He wants to dig and see who this man-of-many-names is underneath it all. A final puzzle to solve, to prove his cunning, before he leaves the land of the living. Aegon Targaryen? Jon Snow? Neither? Both? 

His guest says nothing of his execution, preferring to frown at Tyrion's marked detachment from Daenerys. "She was your queen, too, not so long ago." With very little feeling he says, "I'm sorry it all had to end this way."

"You're 'sorry it all had to end this way'?" If Tyrion Lannister were a taller man there would be nothing stopping him from slapping away the vapid, mournful look that dresses Jon Snow's face. Instead, Tyrion can only stare at the fool standing before him. Bitterness that has been simmering now threatens to boil over and burn all within its reach. Perhaps not burn. There has been enough burning in this city. But he's had enough of the cold, too. What bad luck to not like any of the options laid out before you. This fool—this blind, northern fool—why does he live while Tyrion must die? "Such a delicate, and empty, turn of phrase. I should know, I've used them many a time. You can't even let yourself say out loud what Daenerys did."

"I won't try to defend Daenerys but—"

"A good man, a smart man, once told me that everything before the word 'but' is horse shit. Did you not hear her mention the North as part of her righteous liberation crusade?" Not even I can defend what she is, what she's done. So why are you? Although. Perhaps I'll prove myself wrong, maybe I'll grovel for my life when the time comes. I am no virtuous man.

"—she saw her best friend murdered by Cersei." He speaks over Tyrion, willfully deaf. "She has lost so much ever since she stepped foot on Westeros. Her dragons, her allies. What happened today won't happen again. She'll recover from this. I know she will."

"She destroyed a city after it had surrendered. Tell me: how will the people of Kings Landing recover?" Tyrion doesn't wait for an answer. He lowers his voice and icily says, "They can't because they're dead. How can you—" He clamps his mouth shut in frustration and stands, tilting his head in disbelief. "You were there. You saw it happen."

"Daenerys saved Westeros at great cost to herself. If it weren't for her and her armies we wouldn't be here right now, alive and breathing. The least we can do is stand by her side and help her through this. It's easy to be judge and executioner. Who hasn't done something they regret?"

"Everyone has lost people they cared about. Me. You. The countless and nameless commoners that die by no fault of their own in wars they did not wage. Loss does not absolve cruelty. If it did there would be no crime, only some bastardized imitation of justice."

Grey eyes widen in manic fury. There is little sense in his reaction. Sense was not invited to this tête-à-tête. 

"I thought better of you, Lannister." His family name is spit and anger. "I don't even know why I came here. I didn't want to."

"I noticed."

"You're a hypocrite. Who are you to judge her, to judge me?" Tyrion feels small under the darkness that is the man before him. "You helped her on her quest for the throne. You pushed me towards her. Beckoned me to Dragonstone with false intentions. And yet," Jon leans down. Down some more. Lower. Until he is of a level with Tyrion. The beast has found a wound. It bites. "Jealousy does not become you."

  That hurt. The truth often does.

 "You cannot have her so you betray her. You will not convince me to do the same." Tyrion breathes again once he retreats. Jon says, "I love her. She is my queen, and I love her."

Love. An opening. 

"And what of the love you hold for your family? For the Starks?"

An opening that Lyanna Stark's only child cannot cover or stitch closed, surely.

"Even a northern fool, especially a northern fool, like yourself must know they will not bend." The fur of the northern cape that hugs the fool's shoulders bristle. "They will not kneel."

—:—

"Does she miss me, terribly?"

Frostiness. A lighthearted jape not well received.

"A sham marriage and unconsummated."

—:—

"My birds tell me of an altercation. Jon Snow did not offer a warm welcome to our esteemed ally, Theon Greyjoy. I believe the King in the North said, 'What you did for her is the only reason I'm not killing you.'"

"Not unusual." They are no Jamie and Cersei. " They are the only wolves left."

"Curious—the only thing that stayed his anger was Sansa Stark. Such a power she holds between two men with betrayal and a dead almost-brother king between them. She might as well be here for how often her name and presence is invoked."

—:—

"They will be loyal to the throne. They have no choice."

Jon Snow is present once more. He looks more man than beast. A chink in his armor. Suddenly, the darkness is not darkness. It constricts and melts and congeals into the purple half-crescents underneath worried eyes. That is the gaze of a man near the edge—and the edge is all around him. 

Yes, the demon monkey can still play the game. His life might not be forfeit, not yet. He can work with the tie between siblings cousins. On every person there are strings that one can pull. Tyrion just needs time to pull them taut enough for Jon to snap, to move where Tyrion wants him. 

To do what his lovesick heart will rage against. 

To save Tyrion. 

To kill Daenerys. 

If Tyrion Lannister were a noble man, a good man, the safety of the realm would be the only motivation needed. Alas, this insignificant little room has reminded how much he values his insignificant little body, ugly though it may be.

"Why do you think Sansa—"

An Unsullied opens the door.

He is interrupted.

The dragon queen's nephew and lover has spent too long with the prisoner.

Interrupted. 

A shadow of Jon Snow gratefully backs out of the room. Escapes.

Interrupted. 

The imp's honeyed words of family, loyalty, and kinslaying are left unheard. 

Interrupted.

The ghosts never left the room. Now that Jon Snow is gone they all clamor for a share of Tyrion's diminishing time. 

Tyrion was interrupted and he knows he is not long for this world. 

He wonders what could have been if he had only had a little bit more time. 

The ground is cold as stone ground is and always will be. He sits on it.  

Interrupted, thwarted, by a common Unsullied guard.

Tyrion Lannister, the demon monkey, the imp, the son of Joanna and Tywin Lannister, laughs.

And the ghosts laugh with him.

[kitten1618x]

GoT Afterthoughts ep. 08x01 ‘Winterfell’ (Part 1)

Whew! I’m sorry this has taken so long. I’ve got two munchkins home from school with a stomach bug, and they’ve been cutting into my rewatch and write-up.

~

So, a few things before we kick this bad boy off... I have not read or interacted much with anyone (except writing up that post yesterday about the opening creds) and I have avoided the discord server (even though I’m DYING to gush) as to not skew my own perception of the episode. Those of you who follow my blog know that I am partial to political!jon, but here’s your heads up for anyone else that just stumbled onto this recap. And with that...

~

We begin the journey of our last season similarly to the way we began our very first: An excited Winter Town boy frantically scrambling to find a better view of the royal retinue marching on Winterfell—complete with the same musical score. Let’s call that strike one against Jon and Dany, as we all know what a farce that first royal couples’ relationship was.

~

This boy, as he shimmies up a nearby tree, very much reminds me of a combination of both Arya and Bran in the pilot — Arya even spies him and smiles, as she stands watching with the smallfolk (a nice book nod). Her face at initially seeing her big brother Jon makes my heart skip a few beats, and I kind of got the feeling she was going to call out for him, but changed her mind. She looks down then, and I’m honestly so worried for their reunion because they have both changed so much, and Arya isn’t the same little girl he remembers.

~

Her smile fades as Jon and Dany pass her by, and the Hound comes into view. Her feelings with Sandor have always been complicated, but we don’t have much time to dwell on that, because Gendry rounds the corner and there’s a different kind of smile lighting up Arya’s face now—and I’m so stoked for their reunion, because it’s what I deserve. WE ALL DESERVE THIS OKAY?!?!?!

~

And what do we have here? Ahhhh yes, the typical D&D ‘cock’ and/or (in this case) ‘balls’ banter via Varys and Tyrion as they once again travel together in another wooden box. You know, we damn well better get the payoff to the jackass/honeycomb/brothel joke this season, or I swear by the old gods and the new that I’m blowing up the Sept of Baelor... oh wait.

~

Missandei looks visibly uncomfortable at the impassive stares of the Northerners as they ride by. However, Jon did warn them about the North—which he reiterates to a rather annoyed looking Dany, who no doubt expected a much more warmer welcoming for coming to “save the North”—but it’s pretty clear there will be no Myhsa crowd-surfing here.

~

A screeching overhead sends the Northerners frantically running for cover as a smug-looking Daenerys smirks proudly at the fear her dragon children instill when they split the skies above. Let’s be real here — that was no coincidence. Remember this?

Dany is in complete control of Drogon, and let’s call a spade a spade: this was a cheap intimidation tactic driven by spite. And I honestly can’t even say I blame the girl, but it’s probably not the best way to make new friends, either—especially when they are all of the mindset that “a Targaryen cannot be trusted”. Just sayin’, Dany girl.

~

And we have Arya’s reaction to seeing Dragons for the first time as they soar high up over Winterfell and Sansa, who watches from the ramparts. Sansa’s reaction is quite similar to Cersei’s—as in, she really doesn’t have one. Someone please cue My Chick Bad by Ludacris!!

Jon and Dany enter the courtyard and Jon springs from his horse to bring Bran in for a signature Stark squeeze and a forehead kiss (another season one callback). He proudly admires how Bran has grown and is now a man, only for Bran to answer with some vague and emotionless three-eyed raven shit, before staring down Daenerys while Jon moves to Sansa’s open arms.

~

*Perhaps no one informed Jon about Bran going all sentient-being?

~

I’m sure most of you already noticed that while this is supposed to be the same hug scene we were shown in the HBO teaser, it’s not the same shot, nor the same angle. In the teaser, Jon makes this soft face and goes straight to Sansa’s arms...

But in the actual episode, Jon goes straight to Bran’s arms, and his expression is quite different...

And in the teaser the hug is much longer in duration, and Sansa doesn’t look up at Dany until the end—still not relinquishing her hold on Jon.

However, in the episode, we get a shorter version and a different angle, while Bran and Sansa simultaneously stink-eye Dany the entire time.

*please note Jon’s expression isn’t the same as it is in the hbo teaser—which begs to differ WHY they chose such a romantic shot of these siblings to hype the final season? I mean, I know why... do you? 😉

~

Annnnnnd moving right along. Jon asks where his darling baby sister Arya has gotten to, as to which Sansa replies “lurking somewhere” — which is an odd response, but I’m not gonna lie, it did make me chuckle a little. If I had to make a guess on this odd dialogue (other than the D’s just suck at dialogue sometimes), I imagine it serves the purpose of leading Jon to assume that the girls still have the same strained relationship of their youth.

~

Not one to stand by idle while getting eye-fucked from all directions (and not in a good way), Dany sashays over to be introduced to the stunning redhead Jon was hugging on, to learn she is (only) his sister (whew!), and the Lady of Winterfell. And with that said, I need to take a moment to address something to all the antis who will probably hop on this post (cuz I know y’all are there): Jon is NOT the Lord of Winterfell. Winterfell does NOT belong to him, not even as warden of the North, not even a little bit. He has no say, no ownership, no NOTHING on Winterfell. The only way he becomes the Lord of Winterfell is if he marries his cousin, Sansa Stark — which is just ONE of the many reasons WHY a marriage between them is advantageous. Tell your friends.

~

The tension kicks up a notch as the introductions proceed and Dany feeds Sansa platitudes of how beautiful she and the North are. Perhaps her words are meant to be kind, but after all she’s been through, Sansa is not here for the bullshit — remember how nice Miranda was in the beginning too? Besides, my girl’s jealousy is so thick, she’s almost GREEN. So, giving Dany a full-bodied once over, she haughtily replies “Winterfell is yours, Your Grace.”

~

Annnnnnd...

Before a full-blown catfight ensues, Bran throws some ice on the situation—and by ice, I mean ice dragon (harr harr harrrr). The wall has come down, and your dragon is one of them now, he informs Dany—whom of course is horrified by the news. (And probably by Bran too, as I assume she, like Jon, did not get the Bran is the 3ER memo).

~

We move into the Great Hall where we learn that Sansa has already made the intelligent decision to call all their banners to retreat to Winterfell as soon as they knew that the wall had fallen. Little Ned Umber isn’t really sure whom he’s supposed to address or how (bless his little heart), but in any event, he’s getting the horses and carts he needs to safely bring the rest of his people back to Winterfell. Jon tells the maester to summon the Nights Watch as well.

~

And of course you know little Lady Mormont has some shit to say. She’s not pleased with the turn of events and wastes no time voicing her opinion and stirring the ire of the Northerners. But hey,

(Sorry, I couldn’t help myself).

But more on that later, because Jon looks really nervous as little Lyanna throws shade — and his first instinct is to turn and share a look with his sister, errr wife, cousin!, Sansa.

~

I feel like he was looking to her for support, but she’s got none to offer at the moment. So, he pulls himself together and tries to calm the dissent by giving another rousing ‘we need allies and I brought them’ speech, and he actually says something VERY interesting here: “I had a choice: keep my crown or protect the north. I chose the north.” I mean, he ain’t lying, and the best place to hide something is right in plain sight, after all—and of course nothing about that statement sounds political or off at all, does it? I mean, because the Dany stans/jonerii insist that Dany agreed and was FULLY onboard to come north before Jon bent the knee, so why would he say that, then? Go on, tell me...

~

Tyrion decides to throw in his unwanted .02 — simultaneously backing up Jon and feeding Dany’s savior complex (the greatest army blah blah blah — gods, I cannot wait until everyone sees how useless the dragons will be against the NK, especially when using them to roast the wights puts their own soldiers at risk). His words aren’t met with any gratitude when he also drops the bomb that another enemy house of the North is also on its way to Winterfell.

~

Sansa is taken aback but recovers quickly. Armed with her signature snark, she asks how they’re expected to feed the ‘worlds greatest army’ — something she did not prepare for — chased by a sassy, “what do dragons eat, anyway?”

But wa-wa-wait, HOLD UP. Did Dany just— Did she just throw down the gauntlet?

~

Why, I believe she did, my friends! jskslkdlsksjsklslsljsllsl 😂😂😂😂

~

I can’t even with this episode, guys. It’s like I’m watching a medieval version of Melrose Place (google it, youngin’s) with Jane and Sydney throwing shots by the poolside!

Okay, okay, but all joking and snark aside, Sansa has got a valid point. She isn’t prepared to feed all these extra mouths PLUS two fucken huge dragons. I mean, winter is here, and where could they possibly find enough food to sustain everyone? It’s almost as if the show is making it a point to remind us about the lack of food and where did we last see wagons loaded with food? Oh right, I remember...

Put this one behind Northern Independence on the list of ‘Petty Things That Won’t Matter Because the AotD is Coming’ — you know, because who needs food to survive? And who the hell wants independence, anyway?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

~

Moving right along, and holy mother, maiden and crone, this is getting long and I’ve barely scratched the first 15 minutes of the show!

~

You know what? Nevermind, I’m just gonna go ahead and publish this, and post the rest tomorow when I finish it — I know y’all are thirsty anyway. lol Forgive the sloppiness, as I did this ALL on mobile, and my paragraph breaks kept disappearing and arrrrrghh tumblr!

~

*Some gifs/images mine. The others were taken from google. Thanks if it’s yours!!

[awolfhasnoname]

Dragon Rider

Part Two

Warnings: Swearing, fighting, mentions of the dead, usual GoT warnings

Words: 1.3K

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or gif(s) used below.

Sandor could see the impatience in Cersei’s eyes while they were all gathered in the Dragonpit waiting for the Dragon Queen to arrive. “Where is she?” Cersei questioned impatiently. “She’ll be here soon.” Tyrion muttered. “Didn’t travel with you then.” She pressed, but before Tyrion could respond a screech was heard over head. Sandor still didn’t think he would ever get used to hearing or seeing the beasts but couldn’t help the chuckle as he watched the shock on the faces of the Lannister twins and their guards.

Two dragons soared over head, roaring in anticipation as they began landing on the ruined walls of the Dragonpit.  Screeching in the direction of the enemy, warnings being sent as they guarded their riders before slowly lowering them to the ground. Daenerys was the first to reach the ground and all eyes fell on her as the strode up towards the Lannister, but Sandor’s eyes fell onto the second of the sisters. Her hair falling slightly onto her face as she stepped down turning to place a reassuring hand to the side of Rhaegal’s head. The beast seemed to lean against the outstretched hand before taking off again to circle above with Drogon, watching for any trouble that may occur to the Targaryen girls. Y/N followed her sister towards the gathering before glancing at Sandor as he passed her heading towards the steps, a slight smile pulling at her lips as she gave a small nod before taking her place by her sister’s side.

“We’ve been here for some time.” The Lannister woman practically spat at Daenerys. Y/N couldn’t help the growl of her tone “And now were here, so shall we begin.” Earning a hateful glare that could almost match her own. Almost. Tyrion and Jon went about explaining the issue at hand but Cersei didn’t seem to be paying attention to any of it, making quip remarks not taking any of it seriously. Jon tried to reason “Lord Tyrion tells me a million people live in this city. They are about to become a million more soldiers in the army of the dead.” Cersei still not being convinced she retorted, “I imagine for most of them it would be an improvement.”

Y/N had enough, practically stomping towards the so-called queen all eyes turned on her as her voice boomed through the empty ruins. “This is serious. Do you not care for your people at all? Are you so hung up on your pride that you will let millions die just so you may die with that crown atop your head?” She could feel the blood pumping through her veins, heat rising in her as Cersei responded. “I don’t think it’s serious at all. I think it’s a bad joke. The word of a usurper.” She stated turning her head to face the dragon queen, Y/N stepped forward, hand itching to reach for the hilt of her sword, opening her mouth to spit another retort before being interrupted by Tyrion. “There is no conversation that will undo the past 50 years, we have something to show you.” Y/N turned not noticing that Sandor had returned with the large crate.

She strode over taking her place next to Sandor as he placed the crate down, feeling his eyes on her while she did so. She met his gaze before a slight chuckle left her lips and his heart fluttered at the sound. “Lucky I let you live, I wouldn’t want to have carried this thing.” She joked, Sandor finally tore his eyes from her gaze and grunted in response. The pair each unbolted one side letting the metal fall to the ground, Y/N took out her sword whilst Sandor removed the top from the large crate. No movement, nothing stirred from inside the box. Sandor and Y/N exchanged a glance before she nodded, giving him the signal to kick the crate over. As he did a screech ripped through the air and the undead soldier tumbled out practically sprinting towards Cersei. Y/N took slight delight in the fear in Cersei’s eyes and on her face. Sandor quickly grabbed the chain pulling the undead beast back, it stood and immediately ran towards Sandor, Y/N was quick to put her sword straight through the wight cutting it in half.

Jon went about explaining to Cersei how to kill them, “…That is the fate of everyone in this world.” He finished before shoving the dragonglass blade through the wights chest. Y/N strode back to her sisters side.

The discussion continued and Cersei agreed to the truce on the condition that the Snow boy pledge to not fight in the upcoming wars between the Queens. Which the bastard refused, pledging his allegiance to House Targaryen.

“Then there is nothing left to discuss,” she spoke through gritted teeth, “The dead will come north first and when you’re finished dealing with them. We will deal with whatever is left of you.” Y/N stood, hand on the hilt of her sword as Cersei strode forward but Dany simply placed a hand on her sisters arm forcing her to sit. The group began to berate Jon for his choices, insisting he should’ve taken Cersei’s terms, Y/N had enough of the chatting. She stood and stomped straight over to Jon, anger and pain the only thing showing in her eyes. “Viserion died so that we could be here. If it’s all for nothing, then he died for nothing.” Her voice breaking on the last part of her sentence. She turned quickly on her feet in the direction of the exit, Rhaegal had begun descending towards his rider. As she waited for him to land a rough hand grabbed her, causing her to turn to the man in question. “It’s not safe to leave,” he grunted, causing her to scoff “It’s not safe anywhere,” turning back to see Rhaegal land near her as she continued softly, “But I think we’ll be alright.” As Rhaegal stepped towards the pair he noticed the hand wrapped around his riders’ arm and immediately let out a warning screech as his head leaned towards the tall man. Y/N just let out a laugh once again looking up at a wide eyed Sandor, “It’s okay, he won’t hurt you,” the mischievous glint returning to her eyes as she continued, “Unless I tell him to that is.” Turning back, she walked towards Rhaegal, climbing up onto his back, returning another smile to the brute of a man before the pair took off.

“Crazy bitch,” was all he could mutter to himself as a small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Well she has definitely been called worse.” He hears the soft voice and turns around in surprise. “Your Grace,” he mumbles seeing the dragon queen and the imp standing behind him, “If you’ll excuse me…” but she cut him off. “I haven’t seen her threaten many men and then let them live. I wonder what it is about you that made her decide to do so.” She stated looking him up and down. He could feel the slight heat of his cheeks at her words. “I don’t know you well ser Clegane, but Lord Tyrion seems to think you’re trustworthy, and I trust his judgement. Most of the time.” She gestured to the man beside her and took a step towards Sandor as she continued, “But I do know my sister and trust doesn’t come as easily to her. If broken there’s no way to mend it.” She turned back towards the group walking away from the brute, confusion clearly written all over his face. Tyrion takes this as his cue to step up to the man, “She’s telling you not to fuck it up.” He smirks before heading towards the exit to go after his sister.

Sandor just stands there, dumbfounded. Turning to watch the rider in the sky as Rhaegal circles over the Dragonpit with the beauty on his back. “Seven hells,” he mumbles and for the millionth time he wonders how he got himself into this whole mess.

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