#psychicpiratementality

[atopvisenyashill]

do you think there's sufficient evidence in fire and blood's text that rodrik arryn raped daella, even if non-violently and under the sanctity of marriage? i just scrolled through a bunch of reddit arguments on whether or not rodrik and daella's marriage was truly romantic, consensual, and egalitarian one and i know you're the only person who'll answer this question fairly.

I think that these questions about "is there a way to meaningfully consent in this situation where a teenager marries an adult" are like, fundamentally silly. The answer is just objectively no, and it doesn't really matter how you slice it. This is my most firmly "anti" stance and it's not one I'm ever willing to budge on; this is not to say that there isn't some level of romanticism going on in these relationships, but I think it's just goofy and disingenuous to pretend like being 15 and married to a man your father's age doesn't have a massive impact on your growth, maturity, and relationship with sex. Especially in this series where we often do follow these relationships to their very end points, whether happy or tragic, it's just like, supremely stupid to ignore the shady ways that they started out. The age and maturity gap is part of the dynamic! It informs it!

It's not to say these relationships don't have romanticism baked in; I tend to categorize them as "surprisingly healthy" "romantic and destructive" and "completely destructive." I think Rhaenys and Corlys fall under the first one, Dany and Drogo are in the second one, and Lysa and Jon Arryn are in the third. Rhaenys & Corlys aren't excused from having some clear issues in their marriage (hello the Marilda affair and succession issue!!!!) just because their marriage is more or less healthy and consensual, but at the same time, it's silly to pretend like there isn't a romantic element to Dany & Drogo's relationship - the argument here is simply that the destructive element far outweighs the romantic one (and also,,,,, Drogo is simply not a deep character, he doesn't have a character outside of violent warlord but that's a whole other rant). And of course, the Jon-Lysa marriage is just completely destructive to Lysa's sense of self, not to mention the crazy political ramifications of Jon freezing Lysa out.

Now this specific situation....I mean what romanticism is there even to speak about lmao?? first of all, can't point out enough how ddeeply deranged jaehaerys is about this whole thing:

Her sixteenth nameday was fast approaching, and with it her womanhood. Queen Alysanne was at her wit’s end, and the king had lost his patience. On the first day of the 80th year since Aegon’s Conquest, he told the queen he wanted Daella wed before the year’s end. “If she wants I can find a hundred men and line them up before her naked, and she can pick the one she likes,” he said. “I would sooner she wed a lord, but if she prefers a hedge knight or a merchant or Pate the Pig Boy, I am past the point of caring, so long as she picks someone.” “A hundred naked men would frighten her,” Alysanne said, unamused. “A hundred naked ducks would frighten her,” the king replied. “And if she will not wed?” the queen asked. “Maegelle says the Faith will not want a girl who cannot read her prayers.” “There are still the silent sisters,” said Jaehaerys. “Must it come to that? Find her someone. Someone gentle, as she is. A kind man, who will never raise his voice or his hand to her, who will speak to her sweetly and tell her she is precious and protect her…against dragons and horses and bees and kittens and boys with boils and whatever else she fears.”

She's not even 16!!!! Hardly an old maid even by their standards - remember that Catelyn and Brandon's betrothal was made when she was 12 but they didn't set a date until 282, when she was 17 going on 18!!! And there's just no reason why Daella should be rushed into marriage given how many older siblings she has; I mean it's not like they were rushing Lollys Stokeworth into marriage until after her rape during the riot and she was 33, and a lot of that is because she is "simple" and Tanda Stokeworth clearly wants to wait for a husband who is willing to care for her properly. Both Jaehaerys and Gyldayn try to absolve Jaehaerys of responsibility here but there's just no good reason to be threatening to send Daella to the freaking SILENT SISTERS just because she's 15 and doesn't seem interested in marriage. Goofy, silly, noxious behavior here. But moving on to Rodrik.

Queen Alysanne admitted, “but he is the sort you asked for, a kind and gentle man, and he says that he has loved our little girl for years. I know he will protect her.” To the astonishment of every woman at the court, save mayhaps the queen, Princess Daella chose Lord Rodrik to be her husband. “He seems good and wise, like Father,” she told Queen Alysanne, “and he has four children! I’m to be their new mother!” What Her Grace thought of that outburst is not recorded. Grand Maester Elysar’s account of the day says only, “Gods be good.” ...Nor was there a bedding. “Oh, I could not bear that, I should die of shame,” the princess had told her husband to be, and Lord Rodrik had acceded to her wishes. Afterward, Lord Arryn took his princess back to the Eyrie. “My children need to meet their new mother, and I want to show the Vale to Daella. Life is slower there, and quieter. She will like that. I swear to you, Your Grace, she will be safe and happy.”

There's a few red flags here and a few okay things here. I think it's very odd that Daella's excitement at being a stepmother is considered an outburst that Alysanne mislikes and that Grand Maester Elysar says "gods be good." Weird to me idk!! Also, sorry, don't care about the time period, it's weird that he says he's loved her for years (and Corlys is weird for the Rhaenys/Marilda stuff, make no mistake!!!) BUT he doesn't force a bedding on her and he mentions taking her to the Vale because it's quieter, which is honestly a nice thing for Daella, who hates large crowds and court in general. This feels, initially, not dissimilar to like, the Sansa-Willas thing; is it shady? Yes, objectively. But that doesn't mean it has to be an unpleasant marriage, and something strong can grow there. However...

And so she was, for a time. The eldest of Lord Rodrik’s four children from his first wife was a daughter, Elys, three years older than her new stepmother. The two of them clashed from the first. Daella doted on the three younger children, however, and they seemed to adore her in turn. Lord Rodrik, true to his word, was a kind and caring husband who never failed to pamper and protect the bride he called “my precious princess.” Such letters as Daella sent her mother (letters largely written for her by Lord Rodrik’s younger daughter, Amanda) spoke glowingly of how happy she was, how beautiful the Vale, how much she loved her lord’s sweet sons, how everyone in the Eyrie was so kind to her... In the Vale, however, her sister Daella was not doing near as well. After a year and a half of marriage, a different sort of message arrived at the Red Keep by raven. It was very short, and written in Daella’s own uncertain hand. “I am with child,” it said. “Mother, please come. I am frightened.”

Though the princess professed delight that her mother had come, and apologized for sending her such a “silly” letter, her fear was palpable. She burst into tears for the slightest reason, and sometimes for no reason at all, Lord Rodrik said. His daughter Elys was dismissive, telling Her Grace, “You would think she was the first woman ever to have a baby,” but Alysanne was concerned... She was half right. Aemma Arryn, the daughter of Lord Rodrik and Princess Daella, came into the world a fortnight early, after a long and troubled labor. “It hurts,” the princess screamed through half the night. “It hurts so much.” But it is said she smiled when her daughter was laid against her breast. Everything was far from fine, however. Childbed fever set in soon after birth. Though Princess Daella desperately wished to nurse her child, she had no milk, and a wet nurse was sent for. As her fever rose, the maester decreed that she might not even hold her babe, which set the princess to weeping. She wept until she fell asleep, but in her sleep she kicked wildly and tossed and turned, her fever rising ever higher. By morning she was gone. She was eighteen years of age. Lord Rodrik wept as well, and begged the queen’s permission to bury his precious princess in the Vale, but Alysanne refused. “She was the blood of the dragon. She will be burned, and her ashes interred on Dragonstone beside her sister Daenerys.”

So to break this down Daella

Clashes with Rodrik's oldest immensely with Elys being quite cruel and in my opinion incredibly out of pocket when Alysanne gets there for what seems to be no real reason

Her letters are all written by Rodrik or Amanda and they are all glowing

FInally sends her own letter in her own hand and all it says is "i'm scared"

Immediately backtracks and says the letter was "silly"

Has started crying at odd times, something she didn't do before

This feels bad. This feels suspicious. This feels like Daella is regressing mentally and her correspondence is being controlled by her husband. Like Elys and likely Amanda are not very understanding of her needs, or her fears. She doesn't profess any sort of love for Rodrik to her mother's face, and Amanda despite being "close" to her isn't here to comfort Daella as she's having a troubled pregnancy. Then she dies.

The marriage barely lasts long enough to establish any sort of romanticism and what's there is bleak and confusing. It doesn't even feel like a Stockholm-y Dany/Drogo situation, where Daella simply forces herself to love a husband that is cruel to her; Daella does not seem particularly close to anyone in the Vale and Alysanne seems so suspicious of the whole thing that she not only inters Daella on Dragonstone, she also seems to have raised Aemma herself. She doesn't seem to give a single shit about Rodrik's grief here. Maybe that's just Alysanne being Alysanne but the fact that Gyldayn straight up says she's blaming Jaehaerys and Rodrik due to "pride" and Gyldayn is a nasty odious misogynist, I think it's very likely that Alysanne picked up on some really bad vibes from the Arryn family and the situation Daella was in.

To me, this is a Jon/Lysa redux. This is "what happens if Lysa was sickly and Jon married her." There doesn't seem to be any real care put into taking care of her, there seems to have been an active conspiracy to isolate her from her mother, and Elys is cruel to her for no reason. There's no romantic elements here for me, not even of the "toxic twin flame" or grooming variety; Daella is forced to marry, Daella is isolated from her family and impregnated, and Daella dies. I think at best Rodrik was hoping to get his blood on the throne in a generation or two and what he wept for was not the loss of a wife he loved but the loss of station when he saw just how pissed off Alysanne was about the whole ordeal. There's just nothing in the text to convince me that Rodrik was genuine or that Daella had fallen in love with him.

[kingcunny]

how do you think viserys's reign would change if alyssa didn't die from childbirth and survived to see her son get crowned and become queen mother? would she have terrorized him into making decisions that appealed to her, up to including the succession issue and his choice of second marriage?

i think alyssa wouldve *tried* to keep control over viserys, and for the most part, day to day has him pretty wrapped around her finger. but as for the Big decisions, he is *king* now, and outranks her.

regarding viserys marriages, i think alyssa wouldve pushed for him being married to rhaenys. the throne was supposed to go to her, it keeps everything in the family. wraps it up in a neat bow. but after getting shot down for that, i think she would accept aemma as a counter offer. alyssa likes the idea of having her sisters daughter close, and ‘safe’ and at ‘home’… so obviously her death, in the exact same way her mother, alyssas sister, died… is very hard for her. she lashes out at viserys, blames him for what happened. even though alyssa was Also consistently putting pressure on the Both of them to have a male heir,…

viserys naming rhaenyra his heir would ‘fix’ things between him and his mother i think. alyssas whole problem with viserys was an he was an *embarassment* he wasnt *worthy* of carrying on his fathers name, thats why alyssa was pushing so hard for an heir that Would be worthy of her *sweet, brave, dead* brother. viserys might not have gone about it in the most traditional way, but he *did* in the end, give her a heir.

alyssa wouldve swept rhaenyra up to raise as her own. completely disregarding both viserys and daemon. and while i think viserys marriage to alicent *would* spark another fight between them, (alyssa wouldve wanted him to marry laena, for the same reasons as rhaenys) as long as viserys continues to support rhaenyra as his heir *hard look at her son* hes the king, he can make whatever dumb decisions he likes.

i dont think, in the end, things would change all that much. im of the opinion the ‘seeds of the dance’ were sown long before viserys. alyssa being alive during her sons reign just changes characterization and *how* things happen. but not *what* happens.

[atopvisenyashill]

what role do you think shiera seastar played in daeron ii's governance of westeros?

okay so first of all. shiera is roughly the same age/generation as all of daeron’s kids - the timeline is vague but the gap of years she could have been born in is like right at the tail end of rhaegal and maekar’s births to several years after. so i imagine that not dissimilar to daenerys, daeron takes more of a very distant brother/paternal role with her. a girl is not a threat the way a boy is, she’s young enough to be his own kid, and she's a motherless child, so it’s fine, she’s raised at court with his kids and he doesn't complain too much about it. i do wonder if part of shiera being raised at court is instigated by myriah and also what "raised at court" could even mean - Maekar is anywhere from like 4 to 10 when daeron becomes king (bloodraven is roughly around the same age as Maekar, maybe a year to four years older) which means Shiera is under 10 as well, as young as a toddler (i mean hell, if she's born at the tail end of Aegon's reign, she could be the same age as Valarr who is Daeron's grandson). So depending on when it is she's born, is she at KL or does Daeron ask for her to be brought to Dragonstone? I mean, how set up was Daeron's court at Dragonstone? It had to have existed at least on a small scale because Daeron takes the capital bloodlessly after Aegon IV dies.

SO. Anyways I think it's not likely she does very much at the beginning of his reign due to being around the same age as, at the oldest his second youngest son and at the youngest the same age as his first grandchild. Coupled with the fact that her mother is dead and foreign born, being from Lys, she likely lives the life of a typical lady at court but potentially without the pressure to marry. Yes, she's a bastard, but she's a legitimized one, beloved by the royal family, with a sister-by-law who comes from a culture that seems to believe if you have a bastard, you best act like a responsible parent for that child (not to say Dorne doesn't have it's own bastard based issues, see: Obara BUT I do think someone like Robert would not be allowed to just leave all his bastards all scattered about willy nilly. I think it's likely those children and their mothers have the ability to push for acknowledgement in a way a lot of bastards north of the marches don't). I also think the fact that Shiera's mother is foreign born would help ingratiate her with Myriah and Daeron's kids - we know Larra felt like an outcast, I think it's likely Shiera bonds with the royal family over feeling like she's culturally on the outs.

By the time she's an adult, the Blackfyre Rebellion is in full swing. So - does she take on a more advisory role when she gets older? I think it's possible. Here are some choice quotes:

"You've known queens and princesses. Did they dance with demons and practice the black arts?" "Lady Shiera does. Lord Bloodraven's paramour. She bathes in blood to keep her beauty. And once my sister Rhae put a love potion in my drink, so I'd marry her instead of my sister Daella."

-the Sworn Sword

Bloodraven proved to be a capable Hand, but also a master of whisperers who rivaled Lady Misery, and there were those who thought he and his half sister and paramour, Shiera Seastar, used sorcery to ferret out secrets. It became common to refer to his "thousand eyes and one," and men both high and low began to distrust their neighbor for fear of their being a spy in Bloodraven's employ. 

-The World of Ice and Fire

"You can know a man by his friends, Egg. Daeron surrounded himself with maesters, septons, and singers. Always there were women whispering in his ear, and his court was full of Dornishmen. How not, when he had taken a Dornishwoman into his bed, and sold his own sweet sister to the prince of Dorne, though it was Daemon that she loved? Daeron bore the same name as the Young Dragon, but when his Dornish wife gave him a son he named the child Baelor, after the feeblest king who ever sat the Iron Throne.

-the Sword Sword

We know very little about Shiera at this moment in time but I think it's not unlikely that for the middle part of Daeron's reign, when it seems Baelor & Valarr have taken the lead on going out and about in the kingdom, that Shiera was acting in some sort of advisory capacity (nothing official, similar to Elaena in that she's working behind the scenes rather than sitting on the council) and some people had a bit of an issue with it. I think it's not unlikely that as Daeron got older, he might have distanced himself from her but by that point she had an in: no i'm not talking about bloodraven i'm talking about Aerys. Aerys immediately made Bloodraven hand and while I give Daeron some shit for not getting Bloodraven under control, it's ultimately Aerys that really lets Bloodraven go crazy with his police state and I think Shiera has big hand in that, perhaps on par with Lady Mysaria. Or at least, I hope she does lmao, and I think it's interesting that both Mysaria and Serenei, Shiera's mom, are from Lys. Maybe Shiera being mentioned in conjunction with Mysaria and Bloodraven is nothing, but I think what's most likely is that as Shiera got older and started dabbling with more magic, she took up a sort of Court Sorceress role a la Melisandre, at the behest of King Aerys I himself - and why wouldn't he turn to her? It's likely they were raised together!

[atopvisenyashill]

how do you headcanon orys and argella's marriage worked out in the long term? it sucks that argella falls off the page after she marries, we don't even know how she reacted to her husband going mad . . .

okay so one thing about this timeline is it’s kinda perplexing to me. Orys is said to have a son, Davos, but Rogar is also around the right age to be their son! Rogar being Davos’ son is kinda weird to me timeline wise, because then Rogar should be younger, closer to Rhaena’s age than Alyssa’s? So I have always kinda figured that Rogar and his brothers were argella and orys' (and davos was a younger brother). which makes it like a HUGE missed opportunity for the Baratheon brothers rebellion him and Jaehaerys put down being some of Argella's sons backing Argella in a dispute over Rogar, Orys' beloved son! there's zero mention of argella after she marries but timeline wise, Rogar and his brothers have to be hers and orys' and Rogar had like, a lot of brothers which means those two had a lot of kids who all kind of sucked? this leads me to believe that not only was Orys very distant as a father but Argella was also quite distant as a mother.

i think it would just be like, very hard for Argella to reintegrate back into society; she was stripped naked and trussed up for Orys to rape to death, basically, by her own people. How do you even look anyone in the eye after that without losing your mind? Honestly it makes little sense to me that Argella doesn't have a blow up moment like Cersei is bound to have because what they go through seems similar to me; regardless of what they've done, they were horrifically betrayed and sexually humiliated by their own people in a clear attempt to break their spirits. Like Cersei, I think it would make sense that Argella would essentially play dead until she had the opportunity to strike back with all the rage and violence she's been sitting on.

Anyways, my feelings here aren’t like, positive. Argella’s situation - being publically and sexually humiliated, then married off to a man who sees himself as a “good guy” when he is in fact deeply noxious, and forced to have like half a dozen kids for him - is genuinely a nightmare scenario for me and the only way EYE would deal with that is just like…straight up killing myself 😅😅 i like to headcanon that Argella was actually helping and funding the Dornish side of the war and was partially responsible for getting her husband killed, personally, and absolutely hated every one of her sons for being so up their dad’s ass.

[atopvisenyashill]

considering the repeating trends between targaryen characters who share the same name (all aegons after the first one are tremendously cursed, all rhaenyses die painfully, all daerons except for daeron ii are battle-oriented), do you think there is significance that jaehaerys ii, the man who brought back sibling marriage after it nearly become obsolete like his namesake, married a woman whose name is one letter away from saera?

of course, other than bringing back sibling marriage and being a shitty dad, jaehaerys i and jaehaerys ii don't have much in common but i wonder if grrm ever bothers to characterize shaera, she would be like saera reborn.

ooo okay.

so first of all, yes, i do think there’s going to be a lot of parallels (or really obvious contrasts) between the two of them. i mean, there already IS - they both elope with their younger sisters and that marriage marks a forced return to brother-sister marriages, the beginnings of a devastating war are sown under their watch; jae1 rules for decades and is positively remembered as someone more scholarly but capable of handling a war or rebellion, also has a million kids, while jae2 only rules for a handful of years and is remembered as being like, an ineffectual nerd and he only had two kids. we have next to no information on shaera right now and this is something i’ve found a bit frustrating bc i’m not sure if it’s a case of she’s gonna be a big part of a dunk & egg book that he will never write so he stubbornly doesn’t want to share (which, goofy but valid) or he just genuinely hasn’t characterized this woman in his mind at all & when pressed he’s gonna act brand new about why that’s so annoying.

but in my heart of hearts….

shaera is such a WEIRD choice for a name like egg what in the FUCK were you TRYING to curse your kids so you named one after FUCKING JAEHAERYS and another this whack ass valyrian name SHAERA. like what is this 😭 whenever i look at those two i feel like. what am i supposed to DO with this man. first of all, jae2 was always doomed to be a freak bc a) look at his name and b) barristan likes him and barristan is a Targaryen regime apologist (i’m not judging i’m a ned stark regime apologist, we all have our crosses to bare). the characterization i like to cobble together is that jae2 is genuinely quite good at a lot of things but this is overshadowed by his just glaring defaults. forcing his YOUNG children to marry bc a woods witch told him too, after he knows damn well he & his siblings have pissed off so many people with their marriages & egg has been controversial to say the least, is just some crazy ass work. enabling this re-descent into focusing too much on magic & dragons to the detriment of everyone else…just insane. asking for fucking trouble the same as the great council issue is just asking for trouble from jae1. and boy does he get it! but it all comes after he gets to peace out and die so he never faces the consequences. probably significantly less martial than jae1; i imagine him being the kind of person who you notice constantly has a cold. i like to believe that he was outwardly very warm but just kinda like increasingly and incredibly passive aggressive. rhaella is his clear favorite child.

and again. shaera. i think it’s interesting egg chose a valyrian name for her and not the “targaryen related but andal in origin” names like alysanne and alyssa (also interesting he went for “rhaelle” imo). i wish we at least knew when she died. but i agree - i don’t want her to be an alysanne-esque buying into the romance of being a targaryen, but a more saera-esque wanting attention any attention, fully buying into the godhood idea of valyrian supremacy type as a way of matching jae2’s freak and explaining aerys’ own supremacy ideals. i’m deeply curious about what could Make Her This Way - it's not like, for example, Jaehaerys' daughters' derangement comes out of nowhere. Hell it's not like Aegon the Unworthy's behavior comes from nowhere. But I feel like right now we have this picture of Egg's court that is a lot more progressive, more concerned towards doing good than building power, which i feel like...you'd think that would give you some more well adjusted daughters and Yet look at Shaera....not to mention Rhaelle is also a complete mystery. So I think for me, I like the idea that as complements to each other, Rhaelle is very anti Valyria, fully taking on the Baratheon name and identity and positioning herself as Not A Targaryen because she's pissed at how her marriage went (regardless of how she feels about her husband) while Shaera is fully bought into the supremacy ideals. I'd honestly love if she's the aggressor between her and Jaehaerys; she seduces him, she convinces him to elope, she's pushing for them to undo a lot of Egg's reforms (which, note that they don't get massively undone until Tywin gets ahold of it, which again, so interesting to me that Jae2 was just very blase about this).

[atopvisenyashill]

why do you think targ nation fans favor daena and naerys so strongly? obviously, they would enjoy dany, rhaenyra, and alysanne because they're the most visibly "girlboss" and they probably prefer rhaenys because she was the more "conventionally feminine" of aegon's queens and appeals to the targcest shippers for being the more loved wife. but why daena and naerys?

imagine me deep sighing, taking a long drag of a blunt, coughing a bit too much, then saying "it's the madonna whore complex, that old bitch."

for naerys, it really is that simple - she is not just a clear madonna she's also pretty clearly meant to be in a conversation about madonna-whore dichotamies. i think the main problem with Those Insane Twitter Stans (which is a vibe - there's a LOT of those people on here too and they just completely took over reddit) is that they don't engage with Naerys any deeper than that. She is the perfect peerless madonna and no need to actually dig into how naerys may have felt about her reputation as the constantly suffering sweet queen. she did her duty and that's all that matters.

i do think daena also falls into this, but in sort of the opposite way, like how the rhaenyra-alicent discourse will get SUPER deranged. Daena is really easy to divorce from what happened to her because she has an ~aesthetic~ that is interesting on its own. I think they want to deal with the powerful parts of them and ignore the fact that the "Whore" in a lot of the Madonna-Whore groupings are/were deeply miserable in their lives, or engage with the fact that the men they loved share a lot of personal responsibility for putting them in danger. So I think a lot of the feelings towards Daena right now are glossing over the actual damage being in the maidenvault did to her + completely glossing over how she's likely very supportive of Daeron's stupid ass war in Dorne & the fact that her romanticization of him probably comes from her anger at Baelor.

[atopvisenyashill]

if you could erase one popular fanon interpretation from the asoiaf fandom forever, what would it be?

just one 😭😭😭😭

i would love to erase the entire concept of the key five. it’s so dismissive of literally every character outside of those five, but also of bran bc ya kno, no one ever focuses in on him bc they always bitch that he’s king, it’s just about a made up version of arya dany tyrion and jon they have in their minds with bran stuck behind the wall forever and ever so as not to challenge the special magical ness of arya jon or dany. it’s really poisoned the discourse imo which poisons the theorizing. it’s also just a stupid way of engaging with the series - part of the fun of all the au scenarios is like, you take one character out and the whole plot collapses. which feels like one of the points of the series - what is one boy’s to a kingdom? everything!! yeah OBVIOUSLY some characters get more focus than others but when the thesis statement of the series is that every life is important and worth saving, it’s so goofy to be like “anyways these five dudes are the only characters that are relevant.” do we remember what jaime was like in the draft 😭😭 there’s been some changes!!

[atopvisenyashill]

what kind of girlmoms do you think visenya and rhaenys would've been had they given birth to daughters (assume rhaenys lives long enough to make more of an impact on a hypothetical child)?

it’s so hard to say with rhaenys and i feel bad being like “she’d be fine ig” and then digging into all the ways visenya would traumatize a daughter aksjdjd but it’s so funny To Me how rhaenys (+ aegon) are seen as the Parents of the targaryen rulers when rhaenys has very little to do as a mother. We don’t even see her interact with other children like we see Visenya with Ronnel. Like, Visenya parents Aenys more than Rhaenys does, but Rhaenys is lauded as the Great Mother - but of course she is, she dies before she can show herself to be just as mediocre of a parent as everyone else, whereas Visenya lives long and struggles & has her failings and is pilloried for poisoning Aenys & usurping him & being an ungrateful witch, yada yada. It’s like how kids will resent their good parent but love their bad/abusive parent bc the bad parent is Fun but the good parent is actually parenting and making them eat veggies. Rhaenys gets to be the eternal fun parent because she died before really being a mother, and Visenya is the eternal bad parent because she did the actual hard work of trying to turn Aenys into a functioning person.

I go back and forth on Visenya girlmom. Her relationship with Rhaena is like, Soooooo bad but that makes sense - Rhaena is not HER child, a dynastic threat. Look at Cersei. She’s not a good mom but she actually isn’t terrible with Myrcella! I really think that speaks well of Cersei trying to spare Myrcella the pain she herself experienced, if giving Myrcella outlets for her own intelligence. Now I think Cersei would do very badly with a more tomboyish daughter (too much like her!!) but she’s not a BAD girlmom! She’s pretty adequate even despite her hang ups. Obviously a Visenya daughter would have the added stress of Visenya insisting on her marrying Aenys, but she'd have the freedom of a dragon.

On the one hand it's like, I think a lot of Visenya's "bad mom to Maegor" issues come from her wanting to get him on the throne and feeling (rightly imo) pushed out by Aegon. That's not as big of an issue with a daughter, because she has a guaranteed way to join her line with Rhaenys' - it's almost like a Daemon and Rhaenyra's boys situation. Daemon seemed mollified by the engagements of his girls to Rhaenyra's boys but would that be enough for Visenya? Simply to know that her grandson will be king one day?

Of course, you have the issue that Visenya knows is likely going to be an issue and thats can her daughter even have a child. There's an added stressor there that can't really be denied and if Maegor is anything to go by, Visenya is going to exacerbate it (because like....does she ever tell Maegor "yeah babe it's not super likely" or does she believe it's something she can get around and that's why she encouraged the marriages to Alys and Tyanna? we don't really know but To Me it feels like Visenya always sort of expected fertility would be an issue with Maegor).At the same time, we KNOW she put all sorts of pressures on Maegor but he was still completely devoted to her, and that tells me she was probably a strict mom, perhaps a "bad mom" but a loving one, one where her faults are easy to forgive - we don't get any sort of hint that Maegor feels about her the way Joffrey seems to feel about Cersei for example. So that lends itself to the idea that Visenya would be kind to a girl. BUT THEN AGAIN she's essentially relegating her daughter to her own fate - married to a male relative because her own claim will never come first, never be good enough. Visenya doesn't have a bad life but she seems to be (again imo) very frustrated and unfulfilled. Will a daughter resent this?

I'M NOT ANSWERING THIS WELL ALSJFDKL I think Rhaenys would be....probably a mostly normal mother. Not exemplary but not like, uniquely traumatizing. I think Visenyas has the potential to be traumatizing but I don't think that means she'd be a bad girl mom, just kind of a weird one?

[atopvisenyashill]

what do you genuinely think went down between alys harroway and tyanna of the tower?

so the thing about maegor's wives is that the only one that really gets a personality is tyanna herself. so i can completely throw in my own thoughts here and it's not contradicted by text because alys has just, absolutely no personality.

given the amount of cousins and women around Alys, I think there's a chance she was kind of a proto Margaery figure - a woman who knew how to play the game when it comes to "soft" power because she's had guidance from other women. I imagine her relationship with Tyanna is much more Cersei/Taena esque ie some real toxic yuri vibes going on, where Tyanna is mostly just attached to Alys because of Maegor but Alys genuinely likes Tyanna and does not see the betrayal coming. I think the witch connection here is interesting too - Alys and Tyanna meet while in Essos, and both Visenya and Tyanna are witches. I do wonder if Alys was looking for a witch to help with her fertility, or if she was looking for someone visenya-like to make Maegor feel more at ease - I can't imagine he's easy to live with. Tyanna I think was more or less in it for the power and figured Alys was easy to manipulate. And Alys isn't she just doesn't expect the manipulation to come from Tyanna. I don't think Tyanna went in trying to kill her - in fact, I think Tyanna likely tried very hard to keep her alive - but when she realized how erratic Maegor was getting, she had to give him a name and Alys was an easy one. Better Alys than Tyanna, or so she thinks.

[atopvisenyashill]

fandom ask game: house martell!

Personal involvement with this fandom: I would say i’m semi active, i’ve made a bunch of graphics of dornish characters & written about them a bit.

Sum your feelings for the franchise up in one sentence: Deserves better but what’s there is much more rich than people give credit for.

Favorite plotline: Arianne’s queenmaker plot line. unless i can count twoiaf bc then it’s the Martell-Targaryen marriages, i think maron handles the whole thing SO smartly

Least favorite plotline: Whatever the Sand Snakes are planning for the capital because i KNOW they’re gonna fuck it up BADLY bc they refuse to touch base with doran about anything (tbf he also refuses to tell them anything).

Favorite character: fuck. um. Doran?

Least favorite character: Areo Hotah. wait do i have to choose a martell. Tyene is just like heterosexual Lady Nym to me, I think Tyene should have been a little different.

brOTP: Arianne/Her Crew of Exes. rip arianne you would have loved challengers.

OTP: Oberyn/Ellaria

NOTP: Elia/Lyanna.

If I could change one thing about canon: We should have gotten a dornish pov before affc. it could be ellaria in king’s landing, moving the plot around a lil bit so arianne’s queenmaker plot happens in asos, like literally anything so that we get a dornish pov by asos.

[atopvisenyashill]

ooooh, thanks for your answer on the daella/rodrik question! redditors were driving me crazy with their reasoning of "well, rod was a nice guy and daella chose him over two younger, hotter guys so this MUST mean that their marriage was happy!" i didn't even consider how rodrik's younger daughter was writing daella's correspondences for her! girl was being straight up held hostage by the arryns!

as a follow-up question, do you think alysanne would've done something about the red flags at the eyrie had daella survived the birth of aemma?

its so goofy to be like "well she chose a guy similar to her dad and around her dad's age so that means everything was a-okay" as if marrying a man just like your dad isn't the reddest of flags.

also yes, even though i think alysanne is just wildly inept as a girlmom, i think there is enough hostility implied in her reaction to daella that she might have insisted daella comes back to kl for ~a change of pace or something similar. i think jaehaerys and her would fight about that a lot however and i think the first quarrel would happen sooner and probably last longer. even if she doesn't do anything (which seems unlikely - note that she risks an argument with rhaena over taking aerea back to kl, and she tries to visit saera twice), i do think she would be on track to start the first quarrel way earlier, and to stay angry way longer.

[atopvisenyashill]

you think the reason why grrm is reluctant to do gay incest is because he's like "oh, readers will assume i associate real lgbt ppl with incest and degeneracy and i don't want them to think that :( i shall commit myself to portraying same-sex relationships as realistic, humanizing romances :) none of the nasty, toxic stuff, i shall save that for the heterosexuals"

i'm not totally sure about that being a reason although then again...okay this might be a little all over the place but like on the one hand i feel like 'well he just writes whatever and doesn't think about the audience' but i DO think that part of his inability to hunker down and write the last two books is because he's kinda concerned about audience reception of what he's written. like, in context i'm sure a lot of what those two idiots wrote for the later seasons makes so much more sense, is in general much better, but the backlash being that crazy, imo, really has him sweating. especially because (iirc) there was already a lot of "now what are we doing" comments when he introduced the young griff and quentyn story lines seemingly out of nowhere in adwd. although with that said, he's been kind of handwavey of some of the misogyny criticisms so idk that he cares one way or another whether people think his queer characters are toxic or not lmao.

i've been of the mind that he essentially realized that gay people exist sometime in the mid aughts though alkjsfl. For Me, there feels like a bit of a change from the sort of subtextually playing around with gender roles and sexuality thing to more overt queer themes as the series goes on - JonCon being our first canon queer pov, the crazy toxic yuri going on with Taena/Cersei and how it's a lot more nuanced than some of his other similar pairings (*coughs*), Sweets being a rather significant minor character in Tyrion (and briefly Quentyn's) chapters. I think when he first started writing, he felt like the complexity of the Renly/Loras relationship was like..."enough" rep, that anything more would be inaccurate, only to come around to the idea years later that perhaps it's more accurate that more queer characters exist. and he's always prided himself on the accuracy, and defended the accuracy of what insane conservative culture war people would call "dei representation" ie the mere existence of queer people, of people of color, of queer people, in history. people will say arya or brienne are anachronistic, and he will fight them p hard on that and rightly. people will pretend like renly, loras, and joncon are anachronistic and he'll double down by giving loras and joncon two of the most well known romantic lines in the series. etc etc. so moving into f&b, i think the narrative focus on rhaena and her girlfriends, laenor and his boyfriends, and all the implied stuff about aegon the conqueror, the dragonstone polycule, daemon wanting to be viserys' wife, etc etc, i think that was him trying to branch out a bit and be like "okay so what characters do i have where it would strengthen the narrative if there was a level of queerness here" (because iirc, rhaena was stated to marry androw farman for love, like ANDROW himself initially in twoiaf, but he changed it to being for elissa later. i think he felt like having a lesbian queen here would be narratively interesting - and like, he's correct, rhaena being a lesbian is probably one of the better narrative choices of f&b).

but i also feel like....i know i say this a lot but he IS ultimately a white man named george who is pushing 80 and grew up in fucking jersey lmao. i don't want to knock him too much, like, i think he is much more self aware than people give him credit for, but i also think similar to his like, old timey old fashioned orientalism he is like Genuinely kind of afraid of writing a gay character aljsflkj

[atopvisenyashill]

it fucking sucks that like 50% of fire and blood volume I is weird sex rumors but I just realized that if grrm wanted to be truthful to how historians in the past smeared political figures they hated, there should've been more Gay Sex Rumors. it happened to julius caesar and marie antoinette. now I want f&b volume II to have the pro blackfyres claim that daeron ii's half dornish sons fornicate with each other and grrm will let the audience argue endlessly if this means baelor/maekar is canon.

No literally okay obviously i am more of a History Enjoyer than a History Understander but generally when you’re trying to smear someone you accuse them of a) incest or b) being gay and the targs are RIPE for that shit why WOULDNT their enemies accuse them of being gay incest motherfuckers???? WHY DID NO ONE ACCUSE RHAENA THE LESBIAN OF FUCKING ALYSANNE???? personally i think roose bolton should have been like “and you KNOW alysanne only outlawed prima noctus bc she was flicking her sister and wanted to be left alone to lez in peave by her CUCK brother” like come on. mushroom should have accused aegon and aemond of having a sick nasty affair!! why did people not focus in on rhaenyra and laena fucking more!!!! gyldayn quotes every single man in the realm who ever called rhaenyra a whore just to be like “well they’re probably being dramatic” YOU ARENT SLICK YOU RAGGEDY BITCH WHY DID I NOT GET THE DETAILS.

but anyways i’ve said before that rhaena being a lesbian was george actually realizing that People Are Gay kinda late in his life (i forgive him, he is after all just an old man from jersey named george) and trying to rectify his mistake of making asoiaf so het and i’m so serious about that tbh. george has always prided himself on being historically accurate especially when it comes to the incel crowd (for lack of a better term here) getting mad that Brown People And Women Exist. like, he’s very insistent that female warriors like arya brienne asha are not ahistorical, that women were vicious and politically active just like catelyn and cersei and rhaenyra and alicent etc etc so i do think that as the culture changed and people started more openly speaking of how gay people got along in history, george really started thinking about the way he’s portrayed queerness in his own story. i’m not saying i think we’re gonna get dick sucking on page but i AM saying i think he goes more hardcore about the queer subtext & probably we’re likely to see more queerness in f&b ii: 2 fire 2 blood the way we got all this subtextual stuff and main queer characters in f&b.

so yes. baelor and maekar WILL be fucking thanks!!!!!!

[atopvisenyashill]

how do you think viserys and daemon would be affected if alysanne allowed viserra and baelon to marry, even if it's just to give baelon's sons a mother figure? do you think she'd be a good stepmother to them and how would she react to the weird codependent vibes between the brothers?

(also, thanks for what you said about my url, it was magically randomized, lol)

I do think there are some issues here if Viserra gets pregnant, especially if it's a boy. If it's a girl, well, I'm sure she's going to push for Viserys (maybe Daemon) to marry her daughter over Daella's, which isn't a problem dynastically although it's sure to be suitably traumatizing for her daughter (given the age gap). If it's a boy, well, she's going to want her boy on the throne. This might not be a problem if she can ingratiate herself and her son with Viserys, especially if Viserys sees this brother as a more calm and suitable heir over Daemon - depending on when this brother is born, it's even possible he makes a play for Rhaenyra's hand too. I think it's not unlikely Viserra would push for a Rhaenyra-Her Son match in this scenario - she married Baelon despite "wanting to be queen" which makes me think Viserra more just wanted to have some sort of control over her life and felt Baelon could offer her that and being queen might offer her that as well. It tells me she's not unwilling to play the long game or else why would she marry a second son? It tells me she trusts the men in her family to keep her safe and give her agency more than random guys. I think it speaks to someone who is more than willing to accept an imperfect situation as a win. I almost wonder if she'd wind up teaming up with Corlys in some way here, because he's also someone who is willing to play the long game.

If she winds up never having any children and acts only as a stepmother...I don't think she'd have a problem with co-dependency. I think she could even encourage it, in a sort of imperfect imitation of what Jaehaerys did with Aemon and Baelon. After Baelon dies, I think there's a chance she gets a bit weird with Aemma because Aemma will one day be Queen while Viserra will never be anything at all. I almost wonder if this lends itself to a sort of Lady Sam situation, where Viserra attempts to seduce Viserys after Aemma dies (or even while she still lives) to avoid a loss in status and also because...he's closer to her age, lol, and he's not bad to look at. Of course THAT could go either colossally sideways if she has a kid with Viserys but if she never has kids again? Well well well, Rhaenyra is looking a lot better in this situation because the family tree is whittled down to just Rhaenyra and her descendants.

[atopvisenyashill]

top five canon romances in asoiaf

nedcat forever babeeeeee

renly&loras i love gay tragedy

sam&gilly a man who will claim a woman’s child by another man is a REAL MAN like omg can’t even begin to explain how romantic it is to me that he sends her & aemon to his parents, truly the dad that stepped UP

rhaenyra & harwin i love unethical non monogamy i love cheating i love secret relationships that aren’t very secret i love princess/sworn sword stuff under Very Specific Circumstances and this is one of them

michael/elaena IT WAS HER MARRIAGE FOR LOVE. SHE HAD HIS STATUE BUILT WITH A HARP INSTEAD OF A SWORD THATS TRUE LOVE

[atopvisenyashill]

what kind of weird sex rumors would be in a stark family tree history book?

So much "kids fathered by an animal" stuff. Probably a lot of rumors about wildlings, skagosi, or mountain clans being fathers as well. And obviously from there, re: the men, lots of skinchanging rumors, probably weird rumors about being like, hypermacho sex freaks (we already get that, imo, in f&b with alysanne and the book placing most of the blame for the practice of prima noctus on the first men rather than the andals or valyrians and never mind that the valyrians really took to that concept).

I think in a book that covered the she-wolves history, we're bound to get all sorts of rumors about how serena's kids are illegitimate and she was a crazy sex fiend, or that sansa was frigid and cold to poor jonnel, as a way of justifying their usurpation, and then even more about cregard and torrhen (serena's boys) being unworthy lil whoremongers. probably some crazy stories about affairs and sex parties up in the mountains.

i like to think there's some witchy rumors about the daughter of torrhen stark who married ronnel arryn - she's an outsider, she follows the old gods, she probably looks wildly different from a lot of the people there, and ronnel has a rival, jonos, who was probably looking to spread all sorts of rumors about her.