#no. 6 would be princess nymeria; 7 would be aegon ii (he really jumped up on this list fjvbhehfeje thank you for your service tgc);

[gojuo]

What are your all time favorite characters from ASOIAF and F&B? 🙏

This answer is so unserious but my number one baby in ASOIAF is ELIA MARTELL!!!!!!! It's so unserious because all we know about her is literally one fucking line of being sweet and kind and clever and that's about it. She's already long dead before the story starts, but I really don't care. The way she is so loved by her brothers, by her nieces, her family, by her entire country, so much so that she is the reason why Dorne is even participating in this silly game of thrones... This deep-set love for her is made clear by how said love bleeds through the narrative all without the POVs of the people closest to her: Doran and Oberyn. It's so fascinating how cherished she is even though not a single POV character stops for a minute to think about her. Ned, Jaime, and Sansa are prime examples of POV characters that have, in some narrative way, a connection to Elia yet she's only a passing thought to them (not even so in Sansa's case). Yet it's so abundantly well-defined how loved and how important she was, even when we only have a maximum of 20 words written about her. It is deeply heartbreaking and compelling to me how this barely-there character, who has died long before the story starts, has this much of an impact on an entire kingdom. And you might be thinking right now, Melda, really? Elia’s worth to you is measured by how loved she was by others? Yeah, well, that's not the reason why I love her this much. I love her the most because she outplayed every single one of them all. She outplayed Tywin. She outplayed Aerys. She outplayed Robert and she did what Rhaegar could not do: she saved her son. She saw to it that the heir to the Iron Throne, her own baby, was whisked off to safety in the hands of her own best friend (Septa Lemore is 100% Ashara Dayne) all during a dynasty-ending continent-wide rebellion. Rhaegar destroyed his house. Aerys destroyed his house. Tywin and Robert put the nail in the coffin and believed they were building a new dynasty for the ages to come, but Elia still managed to outplay them all in the long-run. Her son is now coming back to put an end to the Baratheon/Lannister/Tyrell-dynasty and there will be no salvation for any of them. Elia won.

And that leads me to my second most favorite character in ASOIAF and that is YOUNG GRIFF aka AEGON THE SIXTH TARGARYEN!!!!!! MY BABY BOY DOOMED BY THE NARRATIVE HAUNTED BY THE NARRATIVE AND MOURNED BY THE NARRATIVE..... He will die but he will also forever be immortalized as Aegon the Sixth, The Last Targaryen King of Westeros, and no amount of Daenerys genocidal rage will ever change that. He will be loved by the people and he will be eternally mourned as the Last Targaryen. If only he hadn’t been under Varys’ care, if only he hadn’t been Rhaegar’s son, if only he hadn’t been meant for more… Then he could have embraced his mother’s Rhoynish/Dornish side fully and live in peace for the rest of his life, together with the last of his family. He really could have, but he was meant for much more. He was doomed the day he was conceived when that red star bled through the skies and foretold Rhaegar’s prophecy. Aegon never stood a chance against that. If only he still had his mother with him. Aegon is Elia’s living legacy. He is alive today because of her. She almost died giving birth to him, and then she died protecting him. He never mentions her, but what child doesn’t long for his mother? Her touch is all over him—from within her body he first took shape in, to her life-long best friend who took care of him, to her countrymen accompanying him, to her niece who he will marry, to her brother’s, his uncle, support of him—his mother is in everything surrounding him. The woman that saved him. His name is Aegon Targaryen but more than anything he is Elia s son. And Elia has been all but erased from history yet here her son comes back, not to just bring justice, not to just take back the throne, but to put it down in the history books that he was here, that he is alive, that his mother saved him, that his mother mattered. And he will die, he will, because this is not his Song, because after everything still he is a Targaryen, but he will die and he will forever be remembered as The Last Targaryen King of Westeros, Son of Elia.

Now this character was Mother to me long before I even knew what the fuck Mother was. She was everything to me in the first three books and she will always be one of my most favorite characters of all time: CATELYN STARK. Literally no words to describe how much she meant to me when I first read ASOIAF at my big age of 12 years old. I can’t even explain exactly what she means to me. It just immediately clicked, you know? It shocked me to find out the community vehemently hated her because Catelyn was nothing but sympathetic to me. I understood why she took her anger and humiliation out on Jon. I understood that this was not something to be celebrated but that this was something so very human, something so awful yet so true to reality. I just understood, you know? Her shame, her humiliation, her embarrassment, her outrage, her upset—I understood it all. And I loved her through it all. People like to pretend they would do better were they in her shoes, but that is a lie and everyone knows it. The pain she had to live through everyday put her between a rock and a hard place and the majority of people have the privilege of never having been put in that position. But the people who know, know. And the people who don’t know, will never know. But I knew. I did. I still do. She was so human to me. Like a real person. She wasn’t a made-up character to me, she wasn’t fictional, it was as if she was a person that was a part of my life back in the real world, outside of ASOIAF. I can’t even articulate exactly how, what, why and who she is to me. Just, as a person who existed in this world, who took up space, who was a mother, a daughter, a sister, just a person who lived… Catelyn Stark was everything to me in those first 3 books. Everything. Not a single character and their struggle and plotline had captivated me in the way hers had captivated me. I just can’t explain it. When she died it was like ASOIAF was over for me, like it didn’t matter anymore, I was done with it. Reading her death, experiencing it alongside her… Man, something in me changed, I swear. It was over, in every sense of the way. When Catelyn died, ASOIAF died…

… and then in the next book GRRM introduced to us ARIANNE MARTELL. I gave you 3 paragraphs of melancholy but that’s not gonna be the case for Arianne. Because she is the It Girl, she is an Icon, she is a Legend and she is The Moment. She’s going to win. She’ll have a lil detour of being Queen of the Seven Kingdoms but after that little stint she’ll go back to where she has always wanted to be: Ruler of Dorne. And she will continue to slay as she has been doing since those 2 little chapters in AFFC dropped until the end of time. MY QUEEN. Literally if she (and Oberyn and the Martells in general) hadn’t been introduced after Cat died I would have shelved ASOIAF for the rest of my life. But then Arianne came, she saw and she conquered my all and I’m still here. No sad little mournful lamentation on her character here like the rest because Arianne Martell is going to win. QUEEN.

Sunfyre. That’s my fuckin BABY!