#oh god the d&e tv show will be disappointing a whole ton of shippers when they actually see the tourney and the fair maid won't it 😅

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

how do you feel about j*nsas stealing and appropriating your theory Frankenstein style? I know I’d be pissed but on the other hand it’s funny because it’s still their strongest “argument” haha

It makes me laugh, honestly. Especially the way many shippers -- who have evidently never read The Hedge Knight -- place so much importance on the Ashford Tourney, the Ashford fair maid, and the Targaryen champion! Like, Lord's Ashford's daughter is so significant, she doesn't even have a name. And the whole thing with Valarr Targaryen was that he was a pretty awful jouster, and only held onto the position as the fair maid's champion out of nepotism, because nobody good actually challenged him. (Though his cousin Aerion threatened to, before deciding to bully someone else.)

And the most significant point, that Valarr didn't come out of nowhere, defeat all the other champions, and crown the girl queen of love and beauty -- lol, not in the slightest, he was a champion from the start, and the way the tourney was set up was that at the end of the third day, whoever were the final five champions would either choose to keep Ashford's daughter as the QOLAB or select somebody else to be. And either way, that never happened, since during the first night Dunk and Aerion had their altercation, Dunk never saw who any of the champions were on the second day because he was in prison, and the third day the fair maid/champion tourney was canceled and they held his Trial of Seven instead. There was no queen of love and beauty at the end of the story!

Like, this tourney does not compare in significance to, say, the Tourney of Harrenhal. Historically, the fair maid means nothing, the Ashford Tourney is only remembered for the Trial of Seven that ended with Baelor's death. And I only happened to think it was a bit of a funny coincidence that four of the first day's champions matched Sansa's suitors (that's how you know it was taken from me despite claims of independent creation, it was known as "the Fifth Suitor theory") and thought it might be an even more funny coincidence if Aegon ended up pursuing Sansa as a bride after (or in the process of) claiming the throne, which was a common bit of speculation in 2012 after Aegon was revealed to be alive (presumably) in 2011's ADWD. And the whole point I had was how futile said champions were in the face of Dunk's actions, and well, *cough*.

But it was always just a crack theory, a silly coincidence. That they've imbued it with such significance, well, um. Good for them I guess. It's certainly less worse than pointing to Sansa Stark daughter of Rickon and her half-uncle Jonnel -- when most likely that was a forced marriage to steal an inheritance like the uncles of Alys Karstark attempted with her, and Jonnel had no children with either Sansa or his second wife, died, and two successive brothers became Lord of Winterfell before the youngest had any children to succeed him. That is not a historical model you want to follow, I'm sorry.

BTW, this post of mine also getting appropriated by jonsas also makes me laugh (2 for 2 lol my god), because the point of that parallel was that Jon is indeed a hero from the songs -- since again, in 2011 immediately post-ADWD there was a fandom reaction pushing Aegon up as the actual PTWP and such. (Well. The ones who didn't decide Victarion was Azor Ahai lol sigh.) And that Sansa's words were the foreshadowing ones, I thought was significant, again in response to fandom decreeing her unimportant. It was not to make Jon specifically Sansa's hero or lover or anything where is that implied I have no idea oh shippers oh fandom sigh sigh sigh 😂😅