#meribald

[rosaluxembae]

ASOIAF Favourite Quotes #1

“Woof woof” *wags tail*

- Dog, A Feast for Crows Chapter 31 (Brienne VI)

Okay, it’s not a direct quote. I paraphrased. Maybe it was “arf arf” or “ruff ruff” but it was good regardless.

[napoleonicanimus]

Man, after rereading asoiaf and basking in it’s beautiful anti-war themes something about Daemon yelling that he’ll give no mercy to enemy soldiers (which are mostly conscripted peasants) to mass cheering and triumphant music really rubs me the wrong way.

[zetaaa]

Any good dog loves cuddles. And Dog is a very good boy.

(I wonder whom Brienne is thinking of)

[umbralsong]

The Parable of the Broken Man A Feast for Crows, Brienne V

"Ser? My lady?" said Podrick. "Is a broken man an outlaw?"

"More or less," Brienne answered.

Septon Meribald disagreed. "More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.

"Then they get a taste of battle.

"For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe.

"They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.

"If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world . . .

"And the man breaks.

"He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them . . . but he should pity them as well."

When Meribald was finished a profound silence fell upon their little band. Brienne could hear the wind rustling through a clump of pussywillows, and farther off the faint cry of a loon. She could hear Dog panting softly as he loped along beside the septon and his donkey, tongue lolling from his mouth. The quiet stretched and stretched, until finally she said, "How old were you when they marched you off to war?"

"Why, no older than your boy," Meribald replied. "Too young for such, in truth, but my brothers were all going, and I would not be left behind. Willam said I could be his squire, though Will was no knight, only a potboy armed with a kitchen knife he'd stolen from the inn. He died upon the Stepstones, and never struck a blow. It was fever did for him, and for my brother Robin. Owen died from a mace that split his head apart, and his friend Jon Pox was hanged for rape."

"The War of the Ninepenny Kings?" asked Hyle Hunt.

"So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war, though. That it was."

[xxlittle0birdxx]

Chapters: 17/? Fandom: Game of Thrones (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Podrick Payne/Sansa Stark, Tyrion Lannister & Sansa Stark Characters: Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Tyrion Lannister, Sansa Stark, Podrick Payne, Tywin Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Olenna Tyrell, Selwyn Tarth, Jon Snow, Tormund Giantsbane Additional Tags: Forced Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s04e02 The Lion and the Rose, Canon Divergence - The Purple Wedding, Jaime saving Tyrion, Eventual Pod/Sansa, The Quiet Isle, the wall - Freeform, Tarth, evenfall hall

Sansa brought her horse to a sudden stop, staring at a small figure crouched over a larger one.  She leaned forward, eyes narrowed, squinting. Sansa urged her horse forward a bit more.  ‘Arya?’ she murmured. The figure straightened up, twsiting to survey them. Sansa nudged her horse into a walk. It can’t be… No one’s heard a whisper of anything about Arya for three years. The person’s face swam into focus. She was taller, with the hint of womanly curves where she had once been all angles and planes. Her hair was shorter. But Sansa would never forget the face. Not until the day she died. She’d loved it. Sneered at it. Dearly wanted nothing more than to slap the cheeky grin from it when they were little. But it was a face she knew as well as her own. ‘Arya?’ Sansa shrieked, booting her horse into a gallop.  

[inlovewithquotes]

"Ser Quincy is an old man," said Septon Meriblad gently. "His sons and good-sons are far away or dead, his grandsons are still boys, and he has two daughters. What could he have done, one man against so many?"

He could have tried, Brienne thought. He could have died. Old or young, a true knight is sworn to protect those who are weaker than himself, or die in attempt.

-A Feast For Crows

[ididntcomeheretoeatfruit]

If I was GRRM, and I wrote in a one-off character in a book that was all about the consequences of war, and that character gave a monologue that then became very popular with some members of fandom ( emblematic of the themes of the whole series, some might say!), THEN the adapted tv series of my book cast a popular and beloved character actor to play that one-off character in a one-off scene that was SEEMINGLY going to AT LEAST do something close to what happened in book . . . Well I'd be pretty disappointed if they fucked it up.

But not surprised.

But maybe feel like "what's the point of it all anyway" and get very bitter about the whole damn book series and idk. Maybe not want to finish it at all lol.

(I've been listening to a bunch of podcasts about religion, and it made me think of Good Old Meribald. Too bad he didn't make it in to the show like he deserved!

Add it to the list!)

[grennseyelashes]

ASOIAF Septon Meribald's Top 10 Broken Men™

Cersei Lannister!!

Dany "I wanted to go home" Targaryan!

Theon Greyjoy :(

Lady Stoneheart <3

Tyrion Lannister :/

Jon Snow 2.0 maybe, uh ohh...

Euron Greyjoy???? Hmmm. Hard to say.

Varamyr Sixskins Zeroskins RIP

Arys Oakheart RIP also

Stannis very soon lol

[sierrabravoecho]

One of my favourite things about Brienne is that no matter how hard she tries she can’t escape Weird Road Trips With Men. She’s like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill. As soon as one ends she’s doomed to begin another. Cleos and Jaime. Creighton Longbough and Illifer the Penniless. Pod and Nimble Dick. Meribald and Hyle. Please free her

[chickren]

one of my favorite little veins of pure gold in brienne’s story is how, despite the way she feels like an outsider, she’s basically catnip to people who get to know her. people just kind of go crazy around her?

spend enough time with her and you’re essentially guaranteed to become obsessively convinced of the depth of her honor. you will also believe wholeheartedly in her sheer competence as a warrior. and you might start trusting her to complete outlandishly heroic tasks in defiance of what other people would call logic or common sense. almost like you’re under some sort of hallucinogenic influence

you start with renly who, whatever else he thinks of her, makes her his kingsguard.

next cortnay penrose is all: if brienne isn’t on your side, you’re on the wrong side. i’d rather die than join you

and you move to catelyn giving her the most important job in the world

and obviously jaime and pod being lowkey and highkey hero-struck by her. jaime throws quests and loot at her like a lovesick buffoon

and even hyle quits his fucking job defending her badassery

septon meribald, the elder brother, jeyne heddle. kinda loras. maybe gendry?

hell, you’ll never convince me that even thoros wasn’t starting to fall under her spell. five more minutes and she’d have had him

[death-of-cats]

Septon Meribald’s statement here strikes me as getting at something intrinsic to the essence of sacrifice in ASOIAF. A sacrifice's power comes from its voluntary nature. Seems like an important point in a world where so many religions practice human sacrifice.

[rosaluxembae]

I love Dog. He's my favourite character.

[jozor-johai]

Sometimes I think it's underrated how much of Westeros we see during wartime. Amidst all of the discourse back and forth over whether the brutality of ASOIAF has a "realistic" basis in real-life feudal history, I think the fact that we're seeing Westeros in a very atypical and specific circumstance should not go overlooked, and I think in that regard there are parts that are "realistic" to modern history, let alone feudal.

For instance, in regards to the complaints about how many women are sex workers in ASOIAF—I think that has more to say about the nature of the wartime economy.

War breaks out; as a result, the regular economy halts. This is the result of various blockades, as well as from the workforce being redirected away from production and towards standing armies—fewer farms are being maintained, and fewer still are making it across wartime boundaries. Another side effect, then, is the trouble when this economic situation interacts with the practical existence of a standing army: massive amounts of young men, either single or separated from their families, drawing disproportionately on the limited resources of the farmland around them (which is being worked at a less-efficient rate than usual to begin with).

The army—comprised of young men—creates a demand for sex that interacts with the overflowing supply of young women without stable income (since this is an incredibly patriarchal society and the men in their lives have been taken away from work for military service). Without better jobs available, and with the market right there, these women turn to sex work, which syrockets. But of course they would, and of course it seems like every smallfolk woman we meet in ASOIAF is doing it: because people have to eat and feed their families, and the fields to plow have been burned by war, and the people who would work them have either been taken for military service or killed by war. It's exceedingly likely that sex work wasn't as widespread before the war so the increase in the need for sex workers represents the failing economy—consider the overabundance of sex workers in ACOK King's Landing, which was under a trade blockade from almost all fronts.

Then, the pendulum swings back the other direction: this is an unsustainable economy and an unsustainable way to live, so there is a reactionary religious response demanding a return to the way things were before (pre-war, in effect, but never separating this from the "social ills" that war results in). The women are blamed for their behavior, despite being demanded by the men around them and made necessary by the economy, and so this reactionary response leads to a religious condemnation of the "wanton" behavior of women.

The religious response in particular gains traction because organized religion offers several very meaningful things that otherwise solve these problems. We see from Septon Meribald toting his goods that the Faith offers charity to the starving. We see with the Sparrows, and personally with Lancel how the Faith offers a sense of meaning to those disenchanted by this strife. We see from the Sparrows and the rise of the High Sparrow how the organized religion of the Faith also offers a means of returning power to the disenfranchised.

So GRRM is achieving something unnervingly realistic here, showing what happens to local economies under wartime and the lingering horror that is left behind—a scenario that is still true of modern war, even if Americans don't have to see it personally. GRRM lived through Vietnam, and the influence is obvious in how the invading American military practiced rape and forced dubiously-consensual sex work onto the local economy.

It's also realistic how organized religion gains traction in scenarios where disenfranchised peoples need sources of hope and methods of organizing to regain what little power is available to them, and how organized religion can leverage a desire for better times into moral condemnation that fuels its rise to increasing levels of de jure power. It will be interesting to see in TWOW and beyond where the trajectory of the High Sparrow leads these people (and what that says about GRRM's observations and interpretations about modern historical parallels).

[melrosing]

As someone absolutely not raised Catholic in any way, I would like to back all you guys up and confirm I also find Jaime and Brienne’s arcs extremely ‘ex-Catholic tries to recover the good parts of faith’ coded. The moment when Meribald introduces Brienne as a ‘Warrior Maid’ is so moving to me, the first time she hears her own identity expressed as something that can exist within the institution she was raised in 😢

agh why am I feeling teary over this too!! you’re so right. the quiet isle does feel like this place Brienne comes to clarify herself and rather than finding religious men who would put her down she finds people who help her define who she is beyond social parameters, and recognise both sides of her…. it’s something more like what faith should be about imo which is healing and learning to love ourselves as we are!!! agh!!

[visenyaism]

Sandor wrote the pink letter and is the hooded man, he came to winterfell with the Manderlies and is with Mance and the spearwives (he left the quiet isle during Brienne’s visit, she only saw him on the first day iirc)

you read a feast for crows and listened to septon meribald’s speech about broken men and the cycle of violence and saw the quiet isle and the effort they take to rehabilitate people from it specifically sandor clegane. and then you decided that he would sneak off of the quiet isle offstage and then fast travel slash break into Winterfell to do MORE violence like he’s fully back in it now and then commit an elaborate act of trickery to try and get Jon Snow,a kid he does not know, to come get him out?

[daenystheedreamer]

everyone attributes different characters to the Seven. Like they say Sansa's the Maiden, Dany's the Mother etc and EVERYONE seems to have different takes on who's who. What are your takes?

father septon meribald, mother masha heddle, smith gendry, warrior brienne OR hound, maiden brienne OR pretty pia, crone ghost of high heart OR thoros of myr, and stranger hound. selecting lowborn and misfit characters is important to my interpretation of the faith and its importance within the story.