#making king’s landing look a bit more faith of the seven-y when jaehaerys literally had a septon as an advisor is just not one of them

[atopvisenyashill]

Saw someone compare Catelyn and Alicent as “abusive andals who force their religion on others” and like, completely disregarding the vastly different situations those two are put in, it’s such a ridiculous complaint!!

Firstly, Aegon the Dragon converted to the Faith of the Seven even before his conquest! Yes, both he and Jaehaerys carve out exceptions for Valyrian incest behavior, but it’s like the equivalent of going “well i think catholicism is a little high strung can we be church of england instead.” Even before he starts the Conquest, Aegon has clearly started converting House Targaryen and likely House Velaryon, to the Faith:

Lord Aegon and his sisters took counsel with them, and visited the castle sept to pray to the Seven of Westeros as well, though he had never before been accounted a pious man.

Aegon even counts his reign to have started not with his first battles, but with his anointed crowning:

Three days later, in the Starry Sept, His High Holiness himself anointed Aegon with the seven oils, placed a crown upon his head, and proclaimed him Aegon of House Targaryen…perhaps for that reason, it was thus coronation, rather than the Aegonfort crowning or the day of Aegon’s Landing, that became fixed as the start of Aegon’s reign.

The Targaryens landed on a continent of people whose ancestors, by and large, came to westeros specifically to flee Valyria, decided to follow in Valyria’s footsteps by conquering with their dragons, but in an attempt to show they weren’t the Freehold, assimilated into the dominant cultures of Westeros. There’s several instances of Aegon purposefully tying himself to Andal religion over anything Valyrian when he’s building King’s Landing:

A makeshift sept constructed out of the hulk of a cog in the Blackwater served the common people, and soon a much grander sept was raised on Visenya’s Hill…Aegon decreed there should be room enough for the city to expand within those walls, and that seven great gatehouses would defend seven gates, in honor of the Seven.

Rhaenys the Conqueror does this as well when she sits the Iron Throne, clearly attempting to align the Iron Throne’s justice with that of the Faith:

After deliberating with the maesters and septons, Rhaenys declared that, whilst the gods made women to be dutiful to their husbands and so could be lawfully beaten, only six blows might ever be struck—one for each of the Seven, save the Stranger, who was death.

It’s not explicitly in the text, but the fact that Visenya’s building about the Kingsguard comes in the same chapter of Fire & Blood (and I believe on the same page in TWOIAF), and she picked 7 men to make up the Kingsguard, points to a similar, “we are tying our dynasty to the Faith of the Seven” reasoning.

This is like, the one major concession the Targaryens make to the rest of the continent and given that a peasant uprising happens when they attempt to drift too far from the Faith, it’s an important concession bc religion is important to the people of Westeros. Alicent isn’t oppressing Valyrians for being religious when The Seven are already baked into the establishment of King’s Landing and the Iron Throne - it’s not like she disowns Aegon or Helaena for incest marrying, does she? In the show, she’s even the one that pushes for it.

Secondly, there is no evidence that Catelyn is crueler to Jon for believing in the Old Gods, nor is there any indication that she begrudges her own children their faith in the Old Gods. In fact, Catelyn not only understands their faith, she encourages it, and even seems to believe the direwolves were sent by the old gods to protect her Northern children. We see this first after Summer saves her and Bran’s lives:

The wolf was looking at her. Its jaws were red and wet and its eyes glowed golden in the dark room. It was Bran's wolf, she realized. Of course it was. "Thank you," Catelyn whispered, her voice faint and tiny. She lifted her hand, trembling. The wolf padded closer, sniffed at her fingers, then licked at the blood with a wet rough tongue.

Emphasis is mine - she doesn’t just thank Summer, she holds her hands out as a sort of peace offering, which Summer gladly accepts. And there’s several instances where she’s insistent Robb keep Grey Wind with him:

The wolf. The wolf is not here. Where is Grey Wind? She knew the direwolf had returned with Robb, she had heard the dogs, but he was not in the hall, not at her son's side where he belonged.

Despite her initial reluctance - during a time of incredible stress, I might add - Catelyn comes to see the direwolves as a favorable omen, as accepting of the direwolves as protectors as she is of her children worshiping the old gods.

“These scars . . . they sent a man to cut Bran's throat as he lay sleeping. He would have died then, and me with him, but Bran's wolf tore out the man's throat." That gave her a moment's pause. "I suppose Theon killed the wolves too. He must have, elsewise . . . I was certain the boys would be safe so long as the direwolves were with them. Like Robb with his Grey Wind. But my daughters have no wolves now."

Yes, she does often associate her children with her Faith when she’s praying, but this is no different than Robb, Sansa, or Ned praying in the godswood - she is simply looking to a higher power to give her peace and answers. Notice she even associates Jon with the Faith!

Not even a cricket could be heard, and the gods kept their silence. Did your old gods ever answer you, Ned? she wondered. When you knelt before your heart tree, did they hear you?

…the Father's face made her think of her own father, dying in his bed at Riverrun. The Warrior was Renly and Stannis, Robb and Robert, Jaime Lannister and Jon Snow. She even glimpsed Arya in those lines, just for an instant.

There is no sense of “I just wish my pesky northern daughter and her stupid northern bastard brother were more southern” in her thoughts, merely that, while worrying after all the men she knows that are fighting a war, she sees them in the Warrior’s face, and then sees her lost daughter as well.

The only “these northern gods are weird” moment we get is her very first chapter, where she’s a little unsettled being in the godswood. But note that the godswoods of the North are way different than the ones in the South, something she literally spells out:

The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers.

The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil.

It’s a creepy place her husband goes to pray whenever he’s executed someone, but it’s a creepy place whose power she clearly respects!

And anyway, in this scene, what disturbs her more is that she feels the old gods have sent an ill omen, and here, in the middle of their power, she’s worried about what it means for her family, which is a very normal reaction to have, and she’s not the only one who is worried:

Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the talk in the yards; a direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in its throat. Dread coiled within her like a snake, but she forced herself to smile at this man she loved, this man who put no faith in signs.

A Baratheon king on the way to see the Starks to ask Ned to be Hand after the last one was killed, just after her children find a direwolf dead of an antler in its throat. Yeah, she’s unsettled as she walks into a site of power for the same gods that sent that omen.

Trying to paint either of them as somehow evil for believing in the Faith of the Seven is odd. It’s fine if you’re like “Well I’m just critical of Fantasy Catholicism in general”, that’s a valid reading and clearly GRRM shares that feeling of “faith is great but organized religion is just as corrupt as every other huge organization.” But Catelyn is not pledged as a Silent Sister or Septa, she doesn’t even belong to a particularly religious family (the most pious Tully we hear of is all the way back during Maegor’s rule, Lucinda Broome Tully, as a matter of fact). Cat simply has faith and clings to it when she’s upset, something like 80% of the characters in this series do.

As for Alicent - again, you can make the argument that her family is super entangled in the Faith of the Seven a la the Medicis, and while you can argue that her religion is part of what pushes her to help kickstart the dance, due to Seven/Andal belief in male primogeniture, the First Men and Valyria also practice male primogeniture.

(the only Westerosi ethnic group that doesn’t is Dorne, and while the First Men believe a daughter should come before a brother, plenty of uncles usurp or attempt to usurp their nieces amongst the First Men - look at Alys Karstark. It’s a belief that’s clearly half theoretical, because all of Terros is fueled by violent patriarchal standards, it isn’t exclusive to the Southron lords).

Alicent making King’s Landing more outwardly Seven looking when the Targaryens have been ostensibly in the Faith for going on five generations now, is not really a crime you can ascribe to her. Rhaenyra’s marriage to Daemon is done in the fashion of Old Valyria, but like, even Rhaenyra has a Maester on her councils because including those involved with the Faith is important to the smallfolk of Westeros - so important they start two separate peasant uprisings when the Targaryens, and later the Lannisters, drift too far from their religion. The misogyny ingrained in the Seven and the Andal culture is not solely the responsibility of these two random women.