#sansa and lyanna

[esther-dot]

If Lyanna and Rhaegar marriage actually happened in books, it would have similarities with Sansa-Tyrion marriage. Marriage in south with southern lord/Prince. Plus no one from brides family there. Kingsguard presence. Tyrion wearing Targ colors especially rubies. Septon influence by groom's family.

(about this reblog)

I like how your mind works, anon!

I once wrote about how certain beats in Sansa’s story weirdly have Rhaegar hovering in the background which kinda makes it feel like we’re getting clues about Lyanna’s story:

(link)

I’m not actually dedicated to a R/L marriage because I’ve pointed out before that Jon being a Targ bastard who must go up against trueborn Targs is a fun development of his angst regarding his bastardy. It would kinda be fulfilling every negative trope about bastards except it would be the necessary and right thing to do.

Despite that thought, I don’t dismiss the possibility of some form of legitimacy either (Rhaegar being a dumbass means him taking a second wife, whether others would recognize it, feels plausible?) because that gives us the potential for some fun parallels. Either this:

Aemon Targaryen, Jon thought, a king's son and a king's brother and a king who might have been. But he said nothing. (ASOS, Jon X)

Or even better, an heir who rejects it all for love. That fits with the idea of Jon as the Prince of Dragonflies (meta) and works nicely with the assumed chain of events/Jonsa (short post).

[alaynasansa]

Sansa and Lyanna's love of songs is such a beautiful parallel

[befooremoonrisee]

the way in which jon and robb's futures are foreshadowed by the mother of the other: robb dying too young and becoming a ghost that haunts their siblings, a reminder of innocence and happier days, and jon dying and being brought back to life, a shadow of what he once was, a dark mirror to himself

[visenyaism]

that’s the thing about ned stark to me is that he loves his family so much. and fighting a whole war in their memory and then failing to save his sister created this trauma that is so central to his character that he simply cannot heal from it. and yet he so wholly and unquestioningly trusts the evil systems of his evil society to work that if everything HAD gone to plan and Lyanna had married Robert and gotten stuck in a tower in Storm’s End dying in childbirth against her will. WOULD it even have occurred to Ned to intervene.

[myastoned]

we always talk about lyanna/arya parallels but what about the lyanna/sansa parallels. What about the girl who believed in true knights so much she needed to become one. What about the girl who ran away for true love only for it to cause the death and destruction of everyone around her. What about lying destroyed at the feet of prophecy and songs and stories. What about having your girlhood taken away because you were a stupid little girl who didn’t know any better.

[wodania]

lyanna and her nieces, had she survived

lyanna talking to arya about swordsmanship, and lyanna gifting sansa a no-face doll (the starks are native and no one can tell me otherwise)

[imjustapoorwayfaringgeek]

i just wanted to draw head accessories but it turned out prettier than i expected lol

[ihaveastorminme]

This was the boy he had grown up with, he thought; this was the Robert Baratheon he’d known and loved. If he could prove that the Lannisters were behind the attack on Bran, prove that they had murdered Jon Arryn, this man would listen. Then Cersei would fall, and the Kingslayer with her, and if Lord Tywin dared to rouse the west, Robert would smash him as he had smashed Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He could see it all so clearly. That breakfast tasted better than anything Eddard Stark had eaten in a long time, and afterward his smiles came easier and more often, until it was time for the tournament to resume.

oh yes, Sansa Stark is in fact, her fathers daughter.

[esther-dot]

I don't think Ary@ had crush on Gendry. I think she regards him as her friend and part of pack. Bran crushing hard on Meera is visible. But I don't think Ary@ even think about Gendry in that way. We don't have Gendry pov to access his feelings. What do you think?

I confess, I did think Gendrya was a book thing. I read “My Featherbed” as their song, so I didn't think making it romantic was D&D pulling it out of their asses. To me, Arya and Sansa both have parallels to Lyanna, so it made a lot of sense that she would end up with Robert's son and Sansa end up with Rhaegar's as a way of providing some commentary and criticism of those men.

As in, Robert is told he saw only Lyanna's beauty not the iron beneath, and Gendry meets Arya in disguise and she kicks him and calls him names, so he knows her, not his own creation of a girl, or claim to her. That felt very deliberate to me.

Rhaegar kept poor Lyanna in a tower, far away from her home and family, and I think Jon will be instrumental in reclaiming Sansa's home and returning her to it.

I don't think the lack of Arya having an obvious crush means much as Arya is very young, their reunion was intended to be much later (I assume) at which point the romantic feelings would have kicked in. I guess that has all been set aside now, with the loss of the time skip, but I liked the idea because it allows canon to converse with precanon in a fun way.

[wylldebee]

Song of Ice and Fire AU where the Starks have these prominent canine teeth that are as sharp as a direwolf's. Some say it's the magic within the Stark bloodline dating back to when the First Men and the Children of the Forest lived in peace. Others say it's a sign of their kinship with the direwolves that has carried over even when direwolves died out. There's even an old tale about the time a Stark warged into a direwolf and mated with a real one on a dare. Either way, the Starks have these sharp ass fangs that are dangerous and oddly alluring. Special teething toys have to been made to survive the little years. Rickard had the "normal" Stark fangs. Think Luke Evans but bigger. He almost bit a man's finger off for insulting him. His sons Brandon and Benjen inherited his fangs. Despite being a cousin one removed from the Stark line, Lyarra Stark had the biggest and sharpest fangs. She could tear into a steak or a man's throat easily. One flash of her fangs as she feasted on a bloody steak and Rickard was instantly smitten. Her son Eddard and daughter Lyanna inherited her fangs (though Ned's were smaller, easily hidden, which fit with his quiet image). Robb and Bran inheritated Rickard's fangs like their uncles Brandon and Benjen. Rickon has Rickard's size but Lyarra's sharpness. Jon's is like Ned's but bigger, somewhere in between Ned and Lyarra's sizes. Sansa and Arya take completely after their grandmother. Headcanons underneath the read more.

— Rickon bit everyone when he was teething. A literal ankle biter. Ned still has the scars. — When Lyanna was rescuing Howland Reed she also bit one of the squires. Howland can still perfectly remember the victorious bloody grin on her face, fangs tipped with blood. — Robb and Jon used to practice snarling at each other when they were small. — Catelyn is into it. Like...into it. First Brandon then Ned. She's weak for the moments where Ned smiles wide enough he accidentally flashes his fangs. In their chambers in private she'll cup both sides of his face and trace his fangs with her thumbs and then it leads to sexy times and thus the Stark kids were born. — The Stark kids taught their direwolves how to snarl. — Instead of Nymeria biting Joffrey it's Arya. Nymeria just distracted him with her arrival. No direwolves die, not when Arya's fangs and lips are coated with blood and Joffrey bares the marks. Renly has to be carried out, laughing so hard he's wheezing. — Sansa kept her fangs filed to be more like a proper southern lady. It was painful but worth it (in her eyes). Come her time in King's Landing, she lets them get long and sharp again. Margaery is instantly in love (and highly aroused). (No seriously Margaery is literally shimmering in arousal all day every day. All Sansa has to do is flash her fangs and Marg is soaked.)

[green-aeggs-and-spam]

ASOIAF fandom try not to call teenage girls evil and irredeemable challenge (impossible)

[andthemoonsingswisely]

my pet peeve is when the asoiaf fandom does mental gymnastics to justify parallels between Lyanna Stark and any of the stark children besides Jon and Arya. Parallels aren't just the color of someone's clothes, or a hobby...they have thematic purposes and are meant to reveal things about the involved characters, conflicts, and motivations. Arya being Lyanna 2.0 in terms of appearance and personality is a parallel because it shows what Lyanna would have been like had she been alive outside of the few sentences said about her. Jon defending Samwell Tarly and Lyanna defending Howland Reed is a parallel because it establishes both of them as people who defend those who don't conform to society's standards, and lays the groundwork for R + L = J. Arya being the ghost in harrenhal and Lyanna being the KotLT in Harrenhal further add to the theme of history repeating and cement these two characters' shared motivation of justice, and their similar speech patterns and appearances which lead Bran to confuse Lyanna for Arya in the vision as well as their "wolf-blood" are parallels because these things are key in Arya reclaiming her identity as a Stark. Throwaway lines like Sansa "pleading" like Lyanna and being "dead before her time" aren't really parallels in the sense that they don't reveal any unique aspect to Sansa's character or how her motivations and conflicts are similar to Lyanna's; one could argue that Jon actually dying is as much of a parallel to Lyanna being "dead before her time" or that Arya, too, having her identity stolen and pretending to be "no one" is also her being "dead before her time" if that was all that was necessary to be a parallel. I'm not going to go through every Sansa-Lyanna "parallel" and explain why they're wrong, as there have been other posts doing the same thing. However, another "parallel" I've seen lately is between Robb and Lyanna: people claim that Robb and Lyanna both haunting the narrative is a parallel to which I have to say...if a character who was important to the plot died OF COURSE they'd haunt the narrative! the situation around them when they died, as well as their social position and personality + motivations are too different to make their deaths an actual parallel. Robb was a firstborn son who was a military leader who died as part of the Freys' revenge to him breaking an oath, Lyanna was a girl who couldn't openly practice sword fighting and who died in a tower after giving birth. Robb went into war after the Lannisters killed Ned, Lyanna didn't go into war, that was started by Robert after she went with Rhaegar. Personality-wise? It's not like they're nothing alike, but there are no significant similarities between them either. It's like taking any two random characters from the novel; if you tried hard enough, I'm sure you could find some similarity between them, but nothing that's enough to create a true parallel.

[amaltheas-garden]

Jon and Sansa will bring the story of Rhaegar and Lyanna full circle:

We have very few details on the relationship between Rhaegar and Lyanna, but what we do know is Lyanna was in an unwanted betrothal to Robert at the time she disappeared with Rhaegar. Whether she went willingly or not is up to speculation. Aside from Robert, most accounts agree that Rhaegar embodied the fairy tale prince-like character (prior to the war). Lyanna wept at the beauty of his music, and was crowned his queen of love and beauty before leaving her family forever. Her story ends alone in Dorne, dying in her bed of blood, abandoned by the man she thought would save her, begging to go home.

It's easy to see then, the parallels between Lyanna's ill-fated romance and the romantic dreams of her niece, Sansa Stark. Although the two share few similarities in personality and hobbies, both became enamored by princes who hide their darker nature, and lured them away from the safety of their homeland, before going to war with their families. However, Lyanna's story ended far from the North, dying in childbirth, whereas Sansa has escaped that fate (even more interesting considering Lyanna's book storyline is a near one to one of Sansa's in the original outline). And, if we recall the very beginning of A Game of Thrones, Robert proposes to Ned that they wed Joffrey to Sansa, joining their houses as he and Lyanna might have. There is a conscious effort on Robert's part to set the past right through the relationships of their children. So right from the jump Sansa is cast as the Lyanna stand in, though she too escapes her "Baratheon" betrothal, and is on course to run straight into Rhaegar's son (as per the girl in grey theory).

So where does Jon lie in all this? If we take the girl in grey prophecy to be about Sansa, we know the two will meet sometime in the near future. Sansa has already become disillusioned of her chivalric ideals of love and knighthood (that's not to say she doesn't believe in heroes and honorable knights, just that she's far more skeptical of surface appearance), and yet, it will be her bastard brother who will embody the traits of the hero Sansa has been searching for. Rhaegar appeared as the perfect prince, yet was the one to kill Jon's mother, and Sansa, in a similar situation, is seduced by the charm and beauty of Prince Joffrey, only to be exposed to his vicious cruelty, narrowly escaping his family (even more interesting to consider Lyanna, had she survived, would not have been Queen, as Elia was still his lawful wife, and would be considered a mistress to the King as there was no chance of her escaping Rhaegar now that she carried his child, similar to Joffrey marrying Margaery, while threatening to make Sansa his mistress). Jon on the other hand is the brooding, solemn, plain-featured bastard, sharing no traditional qualities with that of the typical hero. That is to say, he's about as far from Rhaegar as you could get. And yet, it is Jon who commits himself to defending and protecting those who cannot (Sam, the wildlings, Alys Karstark) because that's who he is. No songs are sung for the men of the Nights Watch, he doesn't gain anything by protecting those others might deem weak, unworthy, or exploitable, but he does it anyway. Jon does not look nor act the part, but the strength of his moral character is what distinguishes him as the unconventional hero of the story.

I would also draw a comparison between the legend of Azor Ahai sacrificing his wife Nissa Nissa and Rhaegar's "sacrifice" of Lyanna, to bring about the third head of the dragon he thought necessary to save the world. After reading @/stormcloudrising's phenomenal metas on Sansa's connection to Nissa Nissa/the Amethyst Empress, I believe the idea of sacrifice will appear again in relation to Jon's character arc. Many in the fandom have speculated that AA/NN and the Bloodstone Emperor/Amethyst Empress are one and the same, the former featuring the sacrifice of a wife, the latter a usurpation of a sister. Sansa already occupies the (false) position as Jon's sister, while Jon has refused to usurp her rights as heir to Winterfell. However, with Jon's parentage reveal, the opportunity of a Jon/Sansa romance becomes possible, potentially elevating her to the status of love interest. And, if we're going with the NN/AE are the same theory, it would mean she occupied the role of both sister and wife. As for Rhaegar, his prophecy obsession is what led to him endangering Lyanna, placing his need for the third dragon above her own safety, ultimately killing her. Jon spends a good chunk of ADwD with Stannis, a claimant to the title of AA/the Prince that was Promised, who similarly struggles with the question of sacrificing one life to save the world, "What is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?” (ASoS) To which we already know the answer, Everything. Stannis, like Rhaegar, will fail the moment he sacrifices Shireen to fulfill his "greater purpose". Daenerys is also a claimant to the title, and we will likely see a contrast between how she and Jon approach being Rhaegar's heirs and inheritors of the prophecy. Stannis will lose everything after Shireen's death, the same as Rhaegar when he left Lyanna to die, condemning House Targaryen to death in the ensuing war. Jon will likely face a similar decision of sacrifice upon discovering he could be the subject of prophecy that consumed his father and once honorable king. And just as he refused to usurp Sansa's claim, he will reject the sacrifice of a loved one (lover perhaps?) as prerequisite to fulfilling his role as AA/TPtwP.

Jon's character always comes back to his identity as a Stark. Discovering his true parentage will undoubtedly be a source of inner conflict, culminating in his decision between Stark and Targaryen (spoiler: its Stark). It's a classic case of sins of the father, and how Jon asserts himself as an individual outside of his father's tainted legacy. Jon being the hero to Sansa and helping her return home would effectively resolve the generational conflict caused by Rhaegar's "kidnapping" of Lyanna away from the North. Rhaegar caused immense amounts of pain to the Stark family through his one act of selfish cruelty, which Jon will rectify through one of loyalty and selflessness. And narratively, Lyanna's son being the one to save her niece and return her to Winterfell would just be so chef's kiss.

[blxkstar]

When the snow falls and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.

I made a playlist for House Stark, please check it out!

The North Remembers

We Know No King But The King In The North Whose Name Is Stark...

[wodania]

All of my art for my fundraiser project @asoiafpalestine excluding ocs and crossovers! The Elaena piece was made in collaboration with @/nataa_draws on twt, who designed the characters and composition!