#jon the bastard boy?

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

“All justice flows from the king[…]”

- Eddard IV, AGOT

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice … that’s what kings are for.”

- Dany III, ASOS

Her breath frosted the air in small nervous puffs. “They say the king gives justice and protects the weak.” She started to climb off the rock, awkwardly, but the ice had made it slippery and her foot went out from under her. Jon caught her before she could fall, and helped her safely down. The woman knelt on the icy ground. “M’lord, I beg you—”

- Jon III, ACOK

Jon was fourteen, an old hand at justice.

- Bran I, AGOT

[saessenach]

What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms… or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

Jon Snow - and family that haunts him, because sometimes ghosts make for the best love stories.

[buildoblivionthenwewilltalk]

whose name is stark

[tiabwwtws-art]

cant get this post out of my head

[im-not-a-l0ser]

Richie: So, let me get this straight. Pete's brother, Ted, is in that box, stuck in some sort of time loop?

Tinky: Nyahahah, yep! The Time Bastard.

Richie: See, that's what I'm stuck on: the name. I've met their dad, he never left. Shouldn't it be like the Time Jackass? The Time Perv?

Tinky: ... I don't like this one anymore.

[ladystoneboobs]

no of fence to jon snow fans who for some reason care about his exact age, but these discussions just annoy me no end. not only bc there's no way any weirwood flashbacks bran has to rhaegar/lyanna will come with time/datestamps, but also bc there's always comments like this:

SEVERAL turns of the moon (ie, months)?! have these people never seen a human baby before or just have no concept of their ages? even if we take into account travel time from the toj to wf, meaning jon was not a newborn too fresh out the oven when catelyn and robb arrived, there's still a difference between a newborn and a 3mo and an even bigger difference between those infants and an older baby 5-7mo. there's very good reasons these lines were cut. whatever birthdates can be worked out internally for jon and robb from when they're first mentioned as 15 and 16 don't matter in the end, bc grrm doesn't care about a consistent timeline and the actual text of catelyn's pov and ned's convo with robert about cheating on her should outweigh any guesstimates about jon's official nameday wrt robb's. catelyn may not have cared for jon, but she would sure as hell have noticed his nameday if it came before robb's and made him ned's firstborn. if jon's birthday canonically came before robb's then either ned's cover story would not involve adultery (not impossible for him to sire a bastard before his wedding), or he'd just give jon a new nameday along with his new name to fit the adultery lie. it makes no sense for him to lie about one and not the other, undermining the big lie with a little public clue of his story not adding up. whatever else she was as a stepmother, cat wasn't stupid and a bastard who was actually the eldest son being raised alongside her trueborn heir could be an even bigger insult than whether he was born of adultery or not.

BUT, the unknowability of jon's true birthday is not the only reason this annoys me, it's bc this is all based on the assumption that jon must be older since rhaegar/lyanna ran off together before ned married cat, as if both boys must have been conceived asap as robb canonically was when his parents consummated their marriage. and that's not how human reproduction works! even if you don't understand how fast babies grow in the first year, you should know that people who get pregnant do so through ovulation cycles and a lucky sperm finding an egg and all that, not just immediately getting knocked up as soon as one has p-in-v sex for the first time. not unless you only know mean girls sex ed where if you have sex you will get pregnant and die. (even tho lyanna did die, there's plenty of canon examples where pregnancy did not lead straight to death. also examples of people who did not get pregnant right away and even some who are/were sexually active and childless without always having moon tea on hand.) we can't know how long lyanna was having sex before that sperm+egg match happened or even how long she was with rhaegar before losing her technical virginity. if they were married, doesn't it make sense to think they didn't consummate their relationship until the wedding night either? that's the only leverage there is to ensure a status as wife rather than just mistress.

and while i just said grrm doesn't care about exact timelines and a lot is still foggy surrounding the rebellion and esp rhaegar, there is one timemarker wrt robert's rebellion he voluntarily threw in, time and time again: that stannis was besieged at storm's end for almost a whole year. that siege, which mind you, did not match the duration of the entire war. it only started after robert won his battles at gulltown and summerhall, returned to storm's end, and then went out and lost the battle of ashford, leaving his homeland open to the reachermen. the same siege which only ended when ned made a detour there after the sack of king's landing, before going to the toj. even if lyanna may not have given birth that exact day ned found her, she could only be waiting in that bloody bed for weeks at the most, not months. so if rhaegar knocked her up the very same night he carried her off and jon was still a newborn when ned found her after the siege of storm's end had ended, wouldn't that mean lyanna was pregnant for well over a year? that's not how human pregnancy works either! so, maybe that's proof that jon and robb, whichever order they were actually born in, were actually very close in age as babies, much closer than if they were both conceived asap.

and really, jon's actual birthdate does not matter imho, when he was raised not just as the bastard to robb's trueborn heir, but with robb also known by catelyn and the world as ned's firstborn (which he was, in any case, as jon was ned's nephew by birth). what difference could a birthdate before robb's make (even were there some means of discovery) after ned, cat, and robb are all dead? if one is looking only at his birth parents then he's only a firstborn child on lyanna's side, but definitely a second son on rhaegar's side. maybe he was always meant to be a second son with a not much older half-brother! even if the aegon fka young griff is not in fact rhaegar's son, he'll still be known as aegon vi targaryen, meaning jon will never be known as any father's elder son. if i may reference mean girls again, it's not going to happen.

[eli-am-confused]

More terrifying but ultimately impossible predictions from Eddie in wake of most of his last predictions coming true.

I am so sorry about how bad the cropping on the third picture is I could probably fix it but that’s a morning Eli job not a 1:30 am Eli job.

3/3

This is the end of the comic.

Words under the cut

Picture one

Howard: So, when’s the wedding?

Eddie: Shut up Howie. One of those random predictions had to be false.

Howard: Eh, it was worth a shot.

Picture two (I put too many words here)

Howard: Too bad we’ll both die alone now. Why didn’t you predict I’d marry some cute military man huh? I thought I was your favorite older brother.

Eddie: Honestly I’m surprised even one of those came true, let alone three. Maybe I should’ve come up with more unbelievable shit.

Picture three (I’d like to write a formal apology to my phone at this time)

Eddie: Like Paul being cloned by the sketchy company he works for, or Jerry raising a secret kid in the forest where the kid grows far too fast and far too strong to be normal, or another family member we’ve totally forgotten about being forgotten because of strange inter-dimensional eldrich god magic dullshit.

Picture four

Eddie: at least those wouldn’t’ve had any potential of coming true.

Howard: Jerry with a mini me? Terrifying.

[imjustapoorwayfaringgeek]

some of my favs :3 asoiaf doodles

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Stupid TMA AU where Elias Bouchard is the bodyhopper and everyone is confusedly trying to understand how the workaholic master manipulator evil and definitivaly full Eye avatar upstart Jonah Magnus just became the weird unconfortable weed uncle that the Eye just sort tolerates.

[milesworld96]

IM SO PROUD OF THIS LIKE YYAALLLLLLL🤯🤯😩😩

I wanted to try drawing some new faces so yeah😋😋

[atopvisenyashill]

Rhaenyra and Jace parallel each other so much, I think if she had won history would have repeated itself with Jace's succession. They remind me of Arya and Jon's conversation about girls and bastards. Rhaenyra and Jace have one thing the other craves, she is trueborn and he is male. But she is a woman and he is a bastard so ultimately they face quite similar.

yes yes, i think it's interesting because as you say, they're both "outsiders" and by their very nature, they have a lot in common but because they don't quite have enough in coming, they never see eye to eye. i actually think a better comparison is jon and theon - jon and arya always see eye to eye and imo, both jon and arya understand well enough (even if they don't have the language for it) how being a woman and being a bastard work in different ways to marginalize them both, and i think they even have a bit of an understanding that a female bastard is going to be sexualized in a very different way than a noble born woman or a bastard boy.

but jon and theon, as far as we've seen them, are just incapable of seeing eye to eye. even though they are both part of an "out group" the other has what each boy desperately wants: jon has stark blood and theon has a noble name. jon has love and theon has status. they both see the other's faults intimately well but never take that nexxt step into realizing their faults are very similar. rhaenyra has the targaryen name, but jacaerys is a man. and because she's trueborn, she's incapable of seeing the position she's put jace in. but because he's a man, jace is incapable of seeing the situation rhaenyra was put in. they're in the same chapter but they're on a different page. not quite aligned and it makes all the world of difference.

[nightswatchdisbandmentera]

“What fire joins, none may put asunder,” came the echo, from queen’s men and Thenns and even a few of the black brothers.

Except for kings and uncles, thought Jon Snow.

[...]

“Will my lord be feasting with us?” Mully asked Jon Snow.

“Shortly.” Sigorn might take it as a slight if he did not appear. And this marriage is mine own work, after all.

- Jon X, ADWD

Something that makes me go absolutely feral about the whole Alys Karstark thing is the pure irony of it all. We know that marriages and inheritances are matters that need to be dealt with by the king. We see this play out in ACOK where Bran, in his capacity as Prince of Winterfell, has to deal with such matters: lands, succession, marriage, and justice.

Except now, there’s a terrible lack of kings up North. Robb’s dead, Bran fled, and Winterfell is now occupied by the Boltons who really aren’t the sort to mete out justice; in fact, they’re involved in the very acts of injustice that are presented to us.

So poor Alys Karstark needs to find a helper but the only person available is Ned Stark’s bastard son, Jon Snow. But big problem, he’s sworn to an order that prohibits him from wearing any crowns. Still she goes to him, kneels before him, and begs him to be her aid; she asks him to step in the place of the King in the North/Lord of Winterfell and do her justice. She even asks him to do so in his father’s name.

But here’s the kicker, Jon does have his father’s name: Stark. Jon can step in and be the King in the North. That’s because Robb legitimized him and named him heir. So Alys unknowingly sought her king, knelt before him, and asked him to help her. And he did! Her king gave her the justice she desired. Really, that’s what kings are for: justice. And Jon is already an old hand at that.

[adarkandmagicalforest]

if one more person claims that rickon 'most voted to be a red shirt' stark will be king over sansa being queen in the north, i will lose my whole fucking mind

sansas whole STORY has been about becoming queen, learning from queens, my girl 'when i am queen, i will make them love me'

sansa will be queen in the north, and if one more person says

'oh but jon -'

'oh but bran -'

'oh but rickon-'

'oh but a possible UNBORN BABY OF ROBB -'

SHUT THE FUCK UP

[qyburn-in-the-black-cells]

So here’s the thing with bastards in Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon/ASOIAF -

1 - While it’s clearly established why legitimising them into cadet branches (see A Storm of Swords) in universe has the potential to set up generational cold wars and animosity (see Blackfyres and Kar/Greystarks), GRRM uses almost every illegitimate character to deconstruct bastard prejudice (conniving, lustful, inherently untrustworthy, unbaptised original sin that would make an evangelical balk)

ex. Jon Snow. Just everything about Jon Snow.

ex. Addam Velaryon recruiting an army, flying to his death to protect his men and the Queen who’s tried to arrest (torture) him etc. ex. Jacaerys Targaryen is the only Targaryen adult in the room after the Battle of Rook’s Rest. From his management of feudal relationships to military strategy to the Sowing of the Seeds, Fire & Blood makes it abundantly clear that he is better suited to be a wartime king (and probably a king in general) than either Rhaenyra or Aegon or Prince Regent Aemond.

[dirtytransmasc]

self indulgent got concept.

Ned brings Jon home, Cat hates the boy, everything stays the same... until Robert Baratheon is charging through the halls of Winterfell looking for the babe, ready to butcher the poor thing where he lay helpless in his cradle.

in a matter of moments Catelyn learns three things:

The babe was never a bastard, Ned had only lied to her to protect Jon, and that she would die before she let Robert lay a finger on the babe she'd previously wished death upon.

cue Catelyn Stark snatching Jon from his cradle, holding him, protecting him, loving him as she would her own son, risking it all to keep him safe, all care for herself thrown to the wind.

like they say, what a mother's love holds no bounds, and what it makes her capable of had no limits.

[zoklaanogar]

a house of the dragon starter for @worthyheir.

the LORD COMMANDER of the QUEENSGUARD stands at attention , hands clasped behind his back as he watches his nephew ──── the CROWN PRINCE ──── flip through the many books documenting the history of house targaryen , searching for lineages with even TRACES of their blood. a WISE idea the prince had ; find those who may be capable of bonding to the riderless dragons dwelling beneath dragonstone. jon , however , had not forgotten the urging of both queen and prince to claim vermithor as his own , the MIGHTY dragon beneath their feet. one that may very well aid in securing their victory in this war.

viserys' bastard does not bring vermithor up , not wanting his dear sister and nephew breathing down his neck. a targaryen he may be by blood , but what business did a BASTARD have with a dragon?

" my prince , " jon murmurs , barely a whisper above the turning of pages. " it's late. you ought head to bed. "