#sorry Stannis but it HAS to be a Stark
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Yeah it’s cool and all that Lyanna Mormont and Wylla Manderly are such vocal Stark loyalists. But it’s actually quite important that they share names with two of the most important women in Jon Snow’s life: Lyanna Stark - his mother, and Wylla - his wetnurse and rumored mother in universe. Such stunning loyalty from these two girls who are named after women so important to Jon just tickles all the key parts of my brain. These are the women who gave him life. And it’s even more poignant when we realize that by ADWD, when the girls are declaring their loyalty, Jon is the KiTN who bears the name STARK per Robb’s decree.
#jon snow#asoiaf#valyrianscrolls#lyanna mormont#->#lyanna stark#wylla manderly#<-#wylla the wetnurse#Lyanna couldn’t press her son’s claim and wylla had no power#so little Lyanna and young wylla step in for them#and do what they can with the little power they have#though they may not truly know what it means#I’m sorry but jon is like at the very heart of the gnc - however big or small#the conspiracy by itself is really about love - love the north has for the Starks and esp ned stark#but then we have Jon a product of love - lyanna’s wylla’s and ned’s#and he has been named KING#it’s why a stark comeback can’t be punitive vengeance#it has to be about restorative justice - the return of love to the north where fear and hate once ruled#let stannis do the avenging#but let jon bring love when all is said and done
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oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT
oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.
SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)
so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!
so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.
the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!
now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.
here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.
but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.
so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.
anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.
#using the tags as a footnote system here but in order:#1. quentin MAY not be dead according to some theories but in the text he is a charred corpse#2. arianne is great and i love her but to be honest. my girl is kinda dumb. just 2 b real.#3. faegon is totally a blackfyre i think it's so obvious it may well be text at this point#it's almost r+l = j level man like it's kind of just reading comprehension at this point#4. relatedly there are some characters i think GRRM has endings picked out for and some i think he specifically does NOT#i think stannis melisandre jon and daenerys all will end up the same. jon and dany war crimes => murder/banishment arc is just classic GRRM#but i think jon's reasoning will be different and it'll be better-written.#im sorry but babygirl shireen IS getting flambeed. in response stannis will commit epic battle suicide killing all boltons i hope#brienne will live but in some tragic 'stay awhile horatio' capacity. likely she will try to die defending her liege and fail#faegon will die there's zero chance blackfyres win ever#now jaime/cersei I do NOT think he knows. my brothers in christ i don't think this motherfucker knows who the valonqar is!!#same with tyrion i think that the author in GRRM wants to do a nasty corruption arc + kill him off but the person in him loves him too much#sansa i have no goddamn idea what's going to happen. we just don't know enough about the northern conspiracy to tell#w/ arya i think he has... ideas. i don't think she's going to sail off to Explore i am almost certain that the show doing that was a cover#because the actual idea he gave them was unsavory or nonviable for some reason. bc like.#why would arya leave bran and jon and sansa? the family she's just spent her whole life fighting to come back to and avenge?#this is suspicious this does not feel like arya this does not feel right#bran will not be king or if he is it'll be in a VERY different way not the dumbfuck 'let's vote' bullshit#i personally think bran is going to go full corruption arc and become possessed by the 3 eyed raven. but that could be a pipe dream#the thing is he's way too OP in the show so the books have to nerf him and i think GRRM is still trying to work out#a way to actually do that.#i don't think he told them what happened with littlefinger or sansa. i think sansa's story is vaguely similar#(stark restoration through the female line etc)#but the queen in the north shit is way too contrived frankly. and selfishly i hope she gets something different#being a monarch in ASOIAF is not a happy ending. we know this from the moment we meet robert baratheon in AGOT#and we learn exactly what GRRM thinks of the people who 'win' these endless wars of succession#and they are not heroes#they are not celebrated#and they are neither safe nor happy
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no of fence to jon snow fans who for some reason care about his exact age, but these discussions just annoy me no end. not only bc there's no way any weirwood flashbacks bran has to rhaegar/lyanna will come with time/datestamps, but also bc there's always comments like this:
SEVERAL turns of the moon (ie, months)?! have these people never seen a human baby before or just have no concept of their ages? even if we take into account travel time from the toj to wf, meaning jon was not a newborn too fresh out the oven when catelyn and robb arrived, there's still a difference between a newborn and a 3mo and an even bigger difference between those infants and an older baby 5-7mo. there's very good reasons these lines were cut. whatever birthdates can be worked out internally for jon and robb from when they're first mentioned as 15 and 16 don't matter in the end, bc grrm doesn't care about a consistent timeline and the actual text of catelyn's pov and ned's convo with robert about cheating on her should outweigh any guesstimates about jon's official nameday wrt robb's. catelyn may not have cared for jon, but she would sure as hell have noticed his nameday if it came before robb's and made him ned's firstborn. if jon's birthday canonically came before robb's then either ned's cover story would not involve adultery (not impossible for him to sire a bastard before his wedding), or he'd just give jon a new nameday along with his new name to fit the adultery lie. it makes no sense for him to lie about one and not the other, undermining the big lie with a little public clue of his story not adding up. whatever else she was as a stepmother, cat wasn't stupid and a bastard who was actually the eldest son being raised alongside her trueborn heir could be an even bigger insult than whether he was born of adultery or not.
BUT, the unknowability of jon's true birthday is not the only reason this annoys me, it's bc this is all based on the assumption that jon must be older since rhaegar/lyanna ran off together before ned married cat, as if both boys must have been conceived asap as robb canonically was when his parents consummated their marriage. and that's not how human reproduction works! even if you don't understand how fast babies grow in the first year, you should know that people who get pregnant do so through ovulation cycles and a lucky sperm finding an egg and all that, not just immediately getting knocked up as soon as one has p-in-v sex for the first time. not unless you only know mean girls sex ed where if you have sex you will get pregnant and die. (even tho lyanna did die, there's plenty of canon examples where pregnancy did not lead straight to death. also examples of people who did not get pregnant right away and even some who are/were sexually active and childless without always having moon tea on hand.) we can't know how long lyanna was having sex before that sperm+egg match happened or even how long she was with rhaegar before losing her technical virginity. if they were married, doesn't it make sense to think they didn't consummate their relationship until the wedding night either? that's the only leverage there is to ensure a status as wife rather than just mistress.
and while i just said grrm doesn't care about exact timelines and a lot is still foggy surrounding the rebellion and esp rhaegar, there is one timemarker wrt robert's rebellion he voluntarily threw in, time and time again: that stannis was besieged at storm's end for almost a whole year. that siege, which mind you, did not match the duration of the entire war. it only started after robert won his battles at gulltown and summerhall, returned to storm's end, and then went out and lost the battle of ashford, leaving his homeland open to the reachermen. the same siege which only ended when ned made a detour there after the sack of king's landing, before going to the toj. even if lyanna may not have given birth that exact day ned found her, she could only be waiting in that bloody bed for weeks at the most, not months. so if rhaegar knocked her up the very same night he carried her off and jon was still a newborn when ned found her after the siege of storm's end had ended, wouldn't that mean lyanna was pregnant for well over a year? that's not how human pregnancy works either! so, maybe that's proof that jon and robb, whichever order they were actually born in, were actually very close in age as babies, much closer than if they were both conceived asap.
and really, jon's actual birthdate does not matter imho, when he was raised not just as the bastard to robb's trueborn heir, but with robb also known by catelyn and the world as ned's firstborn (which he was, in any case, as jon was ned's nephew by birth). what difference could a birthdate before robb's make (even were there some means of discovery) after ned, cat, and robb are all dead? if one is looking only at his birth parents then he's only a firstborn child on lyanna's side, but definitely a second son on rhaegar's side. maybe he was always meant to be a second son with a not much older half-brother! even if the aegon fka young griff is not in fact rhaegar's son, he'll still be known as aegon vi targaryen, meaning jon will never be known as any father's elder son. if i may reference mean girls again, it's not going to happen.
#valyrianscrolls#asoiaf#asoiaf meta#robb stark#jonathan snowflake starkgaryen#i want him to succeed me as king in the north#jon snow#ned stark#lyanna stark#like this isn't prompted by anyone except that reddit post and its comments this has just annoyed me for so long#that's why i made that show!robb/show!jon coming of age gifset years ago bc narratively jon is always a second son#bc robb did everything first as elder bro and the only milestones jon will hit first will be the those robb can't since he's dead for good#(obviously starting with jon being first male stark to be brought back from the dead)#not that everyone interested in this debate thinks this way but it just feels tied to the idea of jon being a trueborn heir#not only was he never a bastard he was an eldest boy! eldest surviving boy with those pesky half-dornish sibs gone! point missed.#sorry i just dont think grrm means for a targ restoration with king jon any more than fake eldest boy kendall roy could win his succession#(c)lsb#i had to look up all the quotes on the big storm's end siege bc it makes me feel like i'm taking crazy pills#thinking what abt stannis starving for a year while others are like we just can't know how long rr was. was it even 9mons?#like yeah lollys's pregnancy doesn't add up but bc grrm really slowed the tl down postacok prob w/o really thinking#thats diff from repeatedly saying something lasted almost a year when he didn't have to give such a timeframe!
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im gonna finish adwd by the new year dammit
decided to start with davos chapters because FOR ME a davos chapter never misses (yall just have bad taste, sorry to say). gonna do this more like my got liveblogs, so this will probably be long because it’s all four davos chapters.
tldr of my thoughts on davos' adwd arc is:
davos is the common folk's superhero
manderly is RIGHT why is everyone discounting him as a loyal northerner when THEY MURDERED HIS SON MY GOD these people are asking to get baked into a pie
i am so so curious about the manderly family dynamics. i desperately want a longer and more intimate peek into that family!
wex pyke is iconic!!!!!
He had a sort of webbing between the three middle fingers of his right hand. Davos had heard that some of the lords of the Three Sisters had webbed hands and feet, but he had always put that down as just another sailor’s story.
love little details like this that really ground this story as a fantasy world!! just a trio of islands with people who still got webbing in their hands!!! i know this happens irl but usually that less "webbing between fingers" and more "fingers fused together" type thing - these people just have like, mermaid hands!
Those fingers do not lie. You are the onion knight.
they say this like he's batman omg THE COMMON PEOPLE'S HERO THE ONION KNIGHT
The galleys Oledo and Old Mother’s Son had been driven onto the rocks of Skagos, the isle of unicorns and cannibals where even the Blind Bastard had feared to land
RICKON AND SKAGOS MENTION
Part 30 in the epic love triangle of Salla, Stannis, and Davos, where Sallador begs Davos to come south with him and Davos refuses, going on his fool's errand to help win the North to Stannis' cause. Truly, whom else is giving me gay middle aged drama like this.
SISTER'S STEW. Damn I'm very hungry right now too.
The Manderlys are no northmen, not down deep.
CAREFUL MAN. I ENJOY YOU BUT BE CAREFUL SHIT TALKING THE MANDERLYS LIKE THIS.
It's funny that they say the Manderlys only came to the North "900 years ago" but you wouldn't say that Dorne isn't part Rhoynish just because the Rhoynar only came 1000 years ago. Like a hundred years isn't that much of a difference to discount the loyalty the Manderlys may have to the Starks!
The fisherman drowned, but his daughter got Stark to the Sisters before the boat went down. They say he left her with a bag of silver and a bastard in her belly. Jon Snow, she named him, after Arryn.
JON SNOW BABY THEORY. I know it's not true but I do wonder what happened to the fisherman's daughter that helped him. Did she have a bastard of someone else's? Was it just a rumor and her identity has long been forgotten, if she ever hears rumors about who jon’s mother is, what she thinks of them.
In this world only winter is certain. We may lose our heads it's true...but what if we prevail?
fuck i love ned so much
next chapter starts with a little tour of White Harbor, which is fun, getting to see a lot of the war refugees (bet Wyman feels stupid as fuck for leaving Lady Hornwood to die and not helping her escape Ramsay when he had the chance, Wyman you fucking jag off), then Davos just broods alone like "what am i meant for" FOR BEING A KING'S HAND YOU'RE JUST SERVING THE WRONG KING RIGHT NOW IT'S FINE YOUR KING IS STILL TURNING INTO A TREE BUT HE'LL BE BACK SOON
a slave revolt was raging in the east
DANYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
it’s interesting how “the last targaryen hatched dragons” and “there’s been several slave revolts” aren’t always connected as stories. probably just a comment on how slow news travels and how long the game of telephone going on is. i also love how when the men are talking about the targaryens that were in robert’s rebellion, a woman speaks up to be like “there was a girl too wasn’t there” AND she knows all about daena the defiant, very cute to me.
Robett Glover was in the city and had been trying to raise men, with little success. Lord Manderly had turned a deaf ear to his pleas. The Ryswells and the Dustins had surprised the ironmen on the Fever River and put their longships to the torch. And now the Bastard of Bolton was riding south with Hother Umber to join them for an attack on Moat Cailin. Some Hornwood men have joined them, and Cerwyns too. Ser Wylis, though, he's still a captive
just tracking northmen movements here
i love that the sloe eyed maid shows up all the way back in acok in a dany chapter, then we get to see what happened to it in a davos chapter all the way in adwd. once again, makes the world feel so connected, and the fact that it's davos, who understands the very specific pain of taking the risk to sail all the way to the east, only to die being tricked by a light in the Sisters......it's so good.
The knight wore silver armor, his greaves and gauntlet inlaid with niello to suggest flowing fronds of seaweed. The helm beneath his arm was the head of the merling king, with a crown of mother-of-pearl and a jutting beard of jet and jade.
the fact that the northerners never got any fit as sexy as they do in the books.....d&d when i catch you in these streets!!!
i forgot how infuriating that "robb actually killed all his own men by turning into a wolf" story is omg, the freys do have one thing and that's the AUDACITY because JEEZ the way they just keep going and going when even davos who doesn't know these people is like "hmmm wyman looks a little pissed off"
i am curious.....idk......robb turned into a wolf and murdered all his own men......sansa killed the king then turned into a bat and flew away...........am i cooking here?
i'm so interested in whether wynafryd is treated as heir apparent by wyman. wyman says she’s in on the plan, yet neither her sister nor mother are. this feels like a HUGE responsibility and secret he’s shared with her.
Davos asking for a book so he can keep at his reading...my heart...the little librarian in me started crying omg
king hon stark name drop…..the wolf den raised to defend against raiders….
I rose up from flea bottom to be a king’s hand and I learned how to read and write.
i’m sorry…..i’m crying again…..he learned how to read and write, on part with being the hand of the king….slight personal story but my great uncle dropped out of school in 6th grade to sell newspapers (he wasn’t a newsie, his dad has a truck, they did it together, which sounds slightly less like a dickens novel) but anyways he had very poor reading and writing skills and idk it’s just always something that gets to me about davos, that the reading is what he holds so dear, as dear as stannis’ favor!
PICTURE ME SCREAMING “ROBBEEEEEEEEEEEETT” AND RIPPING MY SHIRT OFF. NORTHERN POLITICS LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
i had to calm down i was so excited i was doing that thing where your eyes keep jumping down the page so you’re mixing up you’re reading.
They crossed the castle’s godswood, where the heart tree had grown so huge and tangled that it had choked out all the oaks and elms and birch and sent its thick, pale limbs crashing through the walls and windows that looked down on it. Its roots were as thick around as a man’s waist, its trunk so wide that the face carved into it looked fat and angry.
britney_yeah.gif
What Did I Just Say Up There. So stupid to think Wyman isn’t just as Northern as the rest of them. If we wanna start getting tacky with it, Wyman is so ready to get tacky with it. Sorry to Freys & Lannisters but I think the pies is a cooler war crime!
“PORRIDGE FOR THE DEAD MAN.” Garth the gaoler is a comedian actually omg promote him to court jester!!
The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.
Wex is soooooo fucking funny, like setting Theon up to feel up his own sister on Pyke & being way too pleased about it, then being the first to join up for Theon’s last stand and forcing a bunch of proud old dudes to die for that idiot but managing to survive by hiding literally inside the Weirwood, and then over dramatically throwing a dagger at the island of skagos on a map to show Davos where Rickon is. This kid is funnier than most adults i know lmao, Wex Pyke you’re an icon.
#rani liveblogs asoiaf#davos seaworth#wyman is gonna do so many war crimes in twow in so fucking excited for the north to get in on this bad behavior akskdj
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this love story has nothing romantic sorry this man is like stannis who would do anything for his prophecy and to be the hero of the story, he was so arrogant that he believed he would win the war that he would come back and make changes, he was so arrogant to believe that there would not be a war he thought that the starks were going to be fine with the position of lyanna's lover, that robert was going to allow it, many innocent people because of him, he did not think about lyanna's dishonor in an extremely sexist westeros, he did not think about the stigmas against the targaryen bastards, he manipulated, locked up a 15 year old girl in the middle of a desert and that girl died because of his prophecy and his irresponsibility and the consequences with jon are worse because he left an orphan child in the hands of an irresponsible uncle with an abusive wife. Rhaegar did not take measures in case she did not return because his god and hero complex was too much that it ruined the lives of Lyanna and Jon and that is not romantic.
I'm sorry English is not my first language
oh sorry I was actually talking about these:
#although 'irresponsible uncle with abusive wife' was funny AF i'll give u that#asoiaf#anonymous#rhaegar targaryen#lyanna stark
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1961's The WORLD of ICE and FIRE
I'm going to do it. I'm going to self-indulge!
The Roger Corman ASOIAF production post is mostly just a novelty, but since I'm me, I have a lot of FEELINGS and OPINIONS about this cast. Naturally.
Anyway. Here's how well I think the actors in my post would play their roles, from worst to best.
#19, Worst: John Ashley as Robb Stark
You know how Ben Affleck has a face that knows about emails? John Ashley has a face that knows about sock hops. Woefully miscast.
#18: Tor Johnson as Gregor Clegane
God love the big guy, but I've only ever seen him make this face. Also, despite his repertoire of roles suggesting otherwise on paper, he just doesn't seem like a mean guy.
#17: John Agar as Jaime Lannister
Another terrible choice. The only reason he's not ranked as worst is because his soulless performance would make viewers interpret Jaime as an absolutely irredeemable sociopath, which at least would be... uh, interesting, I guess.
#16 Robert Reed as Renly Baratheon
Renly, but only if he was the most boring Baratheon. Go ahead, try to picture Reed eating a peach. You can't.
#15 Dawn Bender as Arya Stark
Aw, she'd try. But I feel like her attempts at Arya's fire would mostly come off as petulance.
#14 Richard Carlson as Ned Stark
Sorry, what? I fell asleep for a minute there.
#13 June Kenney as Daenerys Targaryen
Kenney would try her level best, but you know Corman would do a terrible job incorporating her storyline with the main plot, so she wouldn't have much to do except lounge around on mildly offensive orientalist sets and talk to her force-perspective dragon puppets. (Stop-motion you say? What, you think American International is made of money?)
#12 Dolores Faith as Sansa Stark
Again, no knock to Faith, but as with Daenerys, I think a 1961 production would flatten Sansa's character away to nothing. She'd get to pine and wear some nice dresses.
#11 Anthony Dexter as Petyr Baelish
This guy can play oily like nobody's business (check him out in 1962's Married Too Young), but 5D-chess-level deviousness might be beyond him.
#10 Michael Dunn as Tyrion Lannister
Full disclosure: I'm plopping him in the middle because I've never seen him in anything! The only little person I've personally seen in Corman's movies is Billy Barty (playing an actual, literal imp), and Dunn was someone I found who was said to play much meatier roles. In general, I think the depth of Tyrion's character would seriously challenge 1960s casting directors who were used to casting little people in jokey roles or as something less than human. One of many problems they'd have with the source material, no doubt.
#9 Lon Cheney Jr. as Sandor Clegane
Here's another actor who would do the best with what he was given - which would be an essentially empty role. This Sandor would be a beast used only for jump scares, with too much rubber over his face to ever show an emotion.
#8 Glen Langan as Stannis Baratheon
Langan would be serious, but dull, with lots of droning sermonizing. In other words, perfect. Still boring though.
#7 Basil Rathbone as Tywin Lannister
Who better to play a role totally owned by Charles Dance than an actor who's even Charles Dancier? The only reason I'm not ranking this legend higher is because I do think he'd kind of sleepwalk through this role, especially at this stage in his career.
#6 Raymond Burr as Robert Baratheon
The future Mr. Perry Mason was damn good at playing hard-drinking, prowly, "beastly" men. See him in this fabulous trailer for 1951's Bride of the Gorilla (spoiler: Burr is the gorilla). Of course, for this production, he'd be about 10 years on from that virile role, but that's perfectly on brand for Bobby B.
#5 Michael Landon as Jon Snow
Landon's tortured James Dean era would be a great fit for angsty goth teen Jon, though he might have trouble keeping his feelings as hidden as Jon does.
#4 Allison Hayes as Melisandre
Should she be ranked this high? Eh, maybe not, but this woman is a goddamn B-movie bombshell goddess. Her Red Woman would be a little less mysterious, sure, but her perfectly arched eyebrows and bullet bra would do R'hllor proud all the same.
#3 Marie Windsor as Catelyn Stark
They didn't call her Queen of the B's for nothing. Windsor always did great with roles that call for strength and verve. She'd be a fantastic Cat, and - dare I dream it - an even better Lady Stoneheart.
#2 Jack Nicholson as Theon Greyjoy
Now this would be fun. If baby Jack Nicholson had half the presence and charisma he would show in later movies, his Theon would be legendary.
#1 Coleen Gray as Cersei Lannister
If I can get Tumblr to understand one thing, it's how much Coleen Gray would absolutely eat in the role of Cersei. She's beautiful. She's a schemer. She's a helpless victim. She's back for revenge. I challenge anyone to watch her insane, murderous, fierce, gorgeous, duplicitous performance in 1960's otherwise pretty terrible The Leech Woman and not come to the same conclusion. I'm serious. There would be no survivors. 👑
#asoiaf fan cast#old movies#mst3k#mystery science theater 3000#rifftrax#asoiaf shitpost#asoiaf meme#b movies#roger corman#cersei lannister#jaime lannister#tyrion lannister#tywin lannister#sansa stark#robert baratheon#stannis baratheon#renly baratheon#asoiaf
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Yesterday, I made a post about how fans of some characters will makes posts, come up with theories, and write fics where they take attributes of other characters and give them to their faves instead of writing about that character's actual personality. I listed a few characters who I see this happen the most with. I did not say they were the only ones or that all fans of those characters do this.
Now one of the characters I mentioned was Sansa Stark, and apparently some people had an issue with that. I did not disparage Sansa in any way or even say I hate aus with her, I was just criticizing some of her fans. Well some people really didn't like that criticism and have been reblogging my post, calling me a whiny brat, a Sansa anti, and just generally trying to say I'm wrong, stupid, and hypocritical. Well some people (namely @brydeswhale) asked for evidence, so here it is (I'm not including Alicent, Jason Todd, or Tim Drake, who I also talked about in that post, but I guess they didn't read that far):
First off: here's someone who is taking Lyanna's parallels with Arya and giving them to Sansa. I understand that you probably agree with the above post though, so I got some others.
Here is a Sansa stan, and a Jonsa, taking a quote where Jon is specifically thinking about Arya and instead claiming it's about Sansa, even though Jon notoriously thinks about her very little.
Moving on from Arya, here's someone taking a prophecy revealed to Daenerys in the House of the Undying and saying that it's actually about Sansa. Even though Daenerys has already literally fulfilled the Mother of Dragons part and is two-thirds of the way through completing the Bride of Fire part. Plus, it's Dany's vision, how is it related to Sansa exactly?
Again, taking Dany's vision and imagery (even Jon's too goddamn) and giving it to Sansa for no reason.
Once again, this quote is specifically about Arya and Jon's struggle with doing his duty and going to save his sister (Arya not Sansa) by bowing to Stannis. It's Arya's marriage to Ramsay that tortures Jon throughout ADWD while he outright dismisses Sansa's to Tyrion (disclaimer: I don't ship Jonrya, if you do that's all well and good, just not for me).
Once again, stealing from Arya. "Valiant Ned's precious little girl" is a line used by the Northern lords who are participating in the Northern conspiracy. A plot to overthrow the Boltons and save ARYA not Sansa, in their minds Sansa is far away and has no bearing on the situation ever since her marriage to Tyrion.
This is a little more indirect I guess, but still, this is completely forgetting about both Dany and Jon's arcs. Daenerys is ruling a fucking city in a treacherous time and Jon is Lord Commander of the Night's Watch when while the Others and wights are advancing. How are they not learning to rule again? And I'm sorry, but Sansa is not learning to rule in the Vale, she is doing tasks a high-ranking lady does, yes, but she isn't ruling and Littlefinger isn't exactly interested in helping her learn.
#anti sansa stans#anti jonsa#wtf is this fandom#i'm going to tag sansa again because#that's what you do when you talk about a character gd#sansa stark
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A Lion in the Garden -Tywin Lannister x Reader- (Part 19)
WARNING: Mentions of miscarriage
—————
My grandmother was arriving from Highgarden today, much to both Margaery’s and my happiness. It had been a long few months without her, especially when I’d been gone in Dorne and Margaery had been the only Tyrell—minus my father—in King's Landing.
I was waiting for her at the gates of the Red Keep, and watching her carriage come through the grand doors made me smile more than I had since winning at the tourney.
The horses stopped, and I instantly approached, watching my grandmother step down and look around with a sigh. She’d never been fond of Kings Landing.
“Hello, dear,” she said as I took her hand and kissed it.
“Grandmother. Welcome back,” I said, and she scoffed, linking our arms as we made our way toward the castle. Our slow pace was convenient, as my stitches had been taken out, but walking was a bit hard if I did it for too long. The maesters assured me that if I continued to take care, I’d be back to normal in about two weeks.
That naturally excited me, because though Tywin and I had continued to… well, enjoy each other, it would be nice to do so without cautious restraint.
“I’m not happy to be back. Dreadful city. Though, when I received that raven I knew I had to come,” she said, patting my hand gently as we went inside.
“I wouldn’t have sent for you under any other circumstance. Margaery loves me, but she needs you here right now, as I’ve been a bit too busy helping Tyrion Lannister manage finances and plotting with the Lord Hand on how to handle Stannis Baratheon should he somehow manage to defeat Robb Stark,” I explained, and my grandmother nodded.
“Yes I’m aware, you’re quite involved. Margaery needs someone who knows her experience, anyways, and as far as I’m concerned, you don’t,” She said, raising an eyebrow at me. I shook my head.
“No, I certainly don’t. It’s happened to you before?”
“It happens to plenty of us, dear. It’s never discussed, but it occurs far too often. It causes far too much pain,” my grandmother said, lamenting what had apparently also happened to her.
I felt my heart sink, and I had no clue what to say or do. All I could do was apologize.
“I’m sorry, grandmother.”
“It was all a long time ago. How has your sister been doing? Relatively, of course,” she asked quietly, not wanting anyone to hear us as we journeyed through all the damned stairs in the castle.
“Slowly but surely she seems to be improving. Though, she hasn’t been eating as much these days, and I believe she’s been spending less time with the king. Cersei made a passing comment about it the other day, asking if she was alright because Tommen had not seen much of her lately. I explained that she had been sick and was recovering, though Cersei clearly did not buy it,” I informed her, watching her nod and sigh.
“Margaery’s going to need to start going outside again if she doesn’t want people to whisper. We’ll keep her away from more tedious things of course, but she needs to maintain her relationship with her husband or else things are going to go very wrong,” my grandmother insisted, quite animated with her free hand.
“She’ll take it better from you.”
“Yes, I know.”
I looked around and sighed, a feeling of dread in my stomach. I felt so bad for Margaery that it often made me sick.
“Oh, I nearly forgot. You’re a bloody fool for going to Dorne with Jaime Lannister,” she said suddenly, though I realized it was most likely because I was struggling with the stairs.
“It was fun, grandmother, and both Myrcella and Tyrstane are safe. Plus, they’re to marry at the end of this week,” I said, watching her roll her eyes.
“Fun. You are utterly ridiculous, (Y/N). You love jumping into the wreck, don’t you?”
“It’s certainly my biggest flaw, grandmother.”
“The two children are quite eager, aren’t they? You’ve only been back for two weeks now,” she noticed, to which I nodded and laughed.
“Yes, they certainly are eager. They are both good people, though. Cersei gave me a genuine thank you when I brought her daughter home,” I said, making her laugh.
“That would've been a sight! She detests the whole pack of us, only the gods know why. Perhaps she doesn’t like the thought of her mother being replaced,” my grandmother guessed, laughing even more as she whispered the last bit to me.
“Oh please, grandmother, for the last time, I’m not-“
“Enough, (Y/N). Lord Tywin already told me the two of you kissed. I suspect you’ve done much more than that since then,” she scoffed, waving her hand at me in annoyance.
I remembered then, that Tywin had said she’d made him promise to marry me after bedding me. I thought perhaps she’d done it as part of her assumptions about us, not based on actual evidence. Though, I was not entirely surprised. Nor was I upset, somehow. If Tywin had truly wanted to keep it secret from everyone, he wouldn’t have told my grandmother a thing.
Perhaps he didn’t mind telling people because he thought… there might be something more to our relationship?
“We have not done more since then. And either way, I’m certainly not replacing Lady Joanna. Tywin has a special place in his heart for her,” I said, shaking my head.
“Try telling Cersei that.”
I sighed, knowing my grandmother was right. I hoped that someday Cersei would come to tolerate me, but I found the chances of that oddly slim. Then again, it seemed anything was possible now that I was in love with the man I’d hated for a lifetime.
—————
Olenna and Margaery were sitting together, and though Margaery felt bad for making her grandmother come to King's Landing, she knew it was what she needed.
“I know it’s hard, my dear, and I’m so sorry. You’re still young though, and it doesn’t mean you won’t be able to have children,” Olenna assured her, taking her granddaughter's hand from across the table. Margaery nodded and looked down, pressing her lips together.
“I just- I wonder if it was something I did. Or rather, something I didn’t do. I wonder if it was my fault,” She whispered, making her grandmother shake her head.
“No, my dear, it wasn’t any of that. Children die in the womb all the time, only the gods know why. I’ve gone through it too, and look where I am now. I have three wonderful grandchildren to make up for my disappointing son,” she said, making Margaery laugh for the first time since she had miscarried.
“What was it… what was it like, for you?” Margaery questioned, fidgeting with her hands.
“It wasn’t easy. I was a bit farther along than you, and your grandfather already knew I was pregnant. He was thankfully supportive, but it took me a long time to move on. You don’t have that luxury, my dear,” Olenna said, making Margaery look down once more and furrow her eyebrows with a distinct sadness.
“I don’t want Tommen to know. He’ll let it slip to Cersei and Tywin without even realizing the implications,” Margaery said softly, knowing that this was something she’d had to suffer through alone. A pain she would always have to keep a secret.
“Which means you’re going to have to resume public life much faster than you’d like to. You don’t have to be ambitious just yet, but perhaps you ought to stay with the king in his bed tonight, and walk with him in the gardens tomorrow,” Olenna suggested, knowing that if Margaery remained secluded for too long rumors would inevitably spread and her relationship with Tommen might be affected.
“What if he wants to… to…”
“Let him down gently. Tommen’s a sweet boy, if you tell him you just want to hold him, he’ll comply. He probably won’t think anything of it,” Olenna said, to which Margaery nodded.
“As for Cersei and Tywin, don’t worry yourself. So long as Tommen doesn’t know, Cersei won’t. Even if Tywin knew, he wouldn’t dare do anything, your sister would take his head,” she continued, to which Margaery smiled a bit.
“I feel bad for (Y/N). I’m worrying her, I know I am,” she said softly, making Olenna scoff and shake her head.
“Don’t even think about (Y/N), her feelings in this don’t matter. What matters now is you, my dear,” she assured her granddaughter, hand to her cheek. Margaery simply nodded, which Olenna took a sign to move on from the topic. The last thing she wanted to do was make the trauma and pain worse by discussing it too much.
“Now, tell me what I’ve missed, dear girl.”
“Kings Landing has been quite boring, I’m afraid. Besides a small uprising of religious fanatics, which were crushed quite promptly, nothing has caused any problems,” Margaery informed with a shrug. Olenna nodded.
“And what of your sister? Anything new?”
“Well, (Y/N) was the champion in the tourney, and she went to Dorne just before the wedding, though you already know both of those things,” Margaery said with a soft laugh.
“Believe me, when I learned of it, I was in the right mind to send down our best guards and retrieve her from King's Landing. Even more so when I heard that she’d accompanied Jaime Lannister to Dorne. Your sister is a complete idiot. It’s good to know I at least have one smart grandchild,” Olenna complained, a distinct aggravation in her voice. Meanwhile, Margaery found she could not stop laughing. She was extremely grateful you’d send for Olenna.
“I’m certain Tywin Lannister would’ve thanked you for doing it. I wish you’d been there, grandmother. He kept yelling for the match to stop while (Y/N) was fighting, and he was shaking. I would’ve sworn I saw a tear slide down his cheek when she was being choked. I’ve never seen a man look more terrified in my life,” she said softly, as if worried someone might hear what she was saying. Olenna nodded and sipped her wine, swallowing as she processed everything.
“Do you think he’s bedded her yet?”
“It’s hard to say, but if I could place my bets I would say yes. The day (Y/N) left for Dorne, Ser Elias came up to me and asked if I knew where she was, to which I responded ‘no, should I?’” She began, pausing for dramatic effect, “apparently she’d told him that she was spending the night in my chambers. I covered for her of course, but it was rather odd, and when I saw her later that day she looked unusually happy.”
Olenna merely nodded, and Margaery thought it was rather odd. She would’ve expected her grandmother to laugh. She did not know, of course, that a promise had been broken. Well, the Queen of Thorns would not let that stand.
—————
Tywin Lannister was making his way up the tower of the hand, returning from the King's chambers, where he had informed Tommen that he planned to lead 500 men to Winterfell to destroy Stannis. He expected to leave in a little over a week, though he knew you would not be happy with it and would most likely demand to come along. When he’d agreed to send 500 men, you expected he would send another to lead for him, such as Kevan. But, in all honesty, he missed battle just as much as you did. More than anything, he just wanted to leave King's Landing for a month or so.
Admittedly, he didn’t want to leave you. Dorne had been miserable for him, but he tried to rationalize how much he missed you by telling himself it was merely because he was worried about your safety.
While you’d been gone though, he had truthfully realized something else. It had been eating at him since you’d returned.
“Lord Hand, Lady Tyrell is here to see you.”
Tywin had reached his chambers, and was surprised when the guards said that. Had you really climbed all the stairs? He knew you were mostly healed, but it seemed a bit strenuous all the same.
Opening the door and going inside, he looked around and did not see you. Were you in his bedroom?
He ventured to find out, licking his lips somewhat anxiously at the thought of you waiting for him in bed.
However, as he pushed open the door, he found your grandmother sitting at the small table in his room. There was a distinct shock in his eyes, and it gave Olenna great satisfaction.
“Lord Tywin, how lovely to see you. I have a feeling the sentiment is not shared, though. You were expecting my granddaughter, I would guess,” she said, rising from her seat and clasping her hands together.
“I did not realize you arrived today, Lady Olenna,” he said sharply, standing straighter and making sure that the initial shock on his face was nowhere to be seen.
“Either way, the guards did tell you Lady Tyrell was waiting for you inside, and your first instinct was to come to the bedroom,” she noted, to which he scoffed and looked away from her. He would not tolerate this.
“And that is relevant, why?”
Olenna merely laughed, sitting back down and pouring herself some wine.
“You’ve broken your promise, Tywin,” she noted, looking over at him smugly. He raised an eyebrow, sitting down across from her.
“I have done no such thing.”
“Then would you care to explain why my granddaughter has dresses in your closet?” She interrogated, making Tywin suck in his cheeks for just a moment. He was backed into a corner now, was it better to admit it or continue to resist?
“I don’t blame you, Tywin. My granddaughter is quite beautiful, and I was aware that your restraint would tire eventually. I’d only like you to be honest with me so that I might be honest with you,” she said, watching Tywin pour himself some wine and take a rather large sip.
“I would like you to know that (Y/N) presented herself to me, and that I attempted to protest. I had every intention to maintain my promise,” he told her after a moment, watching as she began to laugh.
“Oh, she’s just like me, that girl. And, it’s quite a thing isn’t it? You attempted. Come now, Tywin, we both know that’s certainly not the same as maintaining it. You wanted my granddaughter, just as she wanted you.”
Tywin involuntarily fidgeted with the ring on his finger. The one you had given him.
“I’ll be honest, yes I did. And I don’t regret it,” he said sharply, trying to maintain his confidence before your grandmother.
“I’m glad, because now it’s time you actually uphold that promise. You recall just as well as I do what you vowed to do once you began to bed her,” Olenna remarked, watching the Old Lion look down into his lap.
“I need more time.”
“Perhaps you should’ve considered that before you decided to bed my granddaughter. I’m going to be frank with you, Tywin. My son intends to accept another marriage proposal for (Y/N) by the end of this week, and to have another one of her suitors end up dead will not look coincidental. If you have any intention of ever marrying my granddaughter, you ought to ask her now,” Olenna explained, watching fire ignite in Tywin’s eyes at the mention of another man marrying you.
“I still have time. Even if the proposal is accepted, I have until the wedding planning begins. Your son might be an idiot, but he’s not so stupid he won’t understand that marrying his daughter to me makes infinitely more sense than some boy from a liege house,” Tywin reasoned.
“Of course, but then it will create conflict. Whichever damn lord my son intends to give her to will naturally be upset that the engagement was called off, and perhaps even more upset at House Lannister. Should that liege house decide to try and do something to spite you, you would feel compelled to do what you’ve always done and destroy them. Now, when that happens, there’s a unique dilemma for House Tyrell. Not only would we be failing to protect a liege house, but we’d be marrying our eldest child to the person that committed the assault. You need to propose now, Tywin, that’s all there is to it,” Olenna said sharply, making sure that Tywin completely understood the repercussions of him deciding to wait. The lion would keep his promise or watch the woman he loved be married off, there was no debate or compromise.
Tywin sat there in silence, knowing your grandmother was right. It did have to be now, lest he hold his silence forever and be forced to see you married to some pathetic boy and swell with his children.
No.
It was time now, and Tywin knew it just as well as your grandmother did. And the truth of it was, he did want to marry you. He wanted to claim you as his wife and spend the rest of his years with you, even if they should be only a few. But there was an underlying fear in him, especially as he recalled what you’d said the night the two of you had laid together for the first time.
You weren’t ready to marry him either.
He doubted that in the last two months or so that had changed, and it made him beyond anxious.
“What are you thinking, Tywin? Men like you don’t usually stay quiet for very long,” Olenna said, interrupting his thoughts.
“I’ve already procured a ring for your granddaughter. I’ve been intending to give it to her since she returned from Dorne,” he replied after a moment, watching Olenna’s eyebrows raise with surprise. She certainly had not expected that of him.
“A ring?”
“She gave me this one as a testament of our good relationship. I’d like to give her one of her own as a testament to my devotion to her. As a testament of my- my love,” he explained while showing her the ring you had given him so long ago. Your grandmother smiled at him.
“How romantic of you, Tywin. I would not have expected it.”
“I am worried she won’t accept it,” he said, ignoring the previous comment made and pouring himself more wine.
“You’re worried she won’t accept your marriage proposal? Don’t be ridiculous, Lord Tywin,” she remarked with a scoff, believing the man to be exaggerating or unnecessarily nervous.
“Before she left for Dorne was the first time I took her into my bed. Before I did, I told her that you had requested that I did not bed her without requesting her hand shortly afterwards. In response, she said that she understood I was not ready to marry her, just as she was not ready to marry me. If her sentiments have changed in the last month or so, then I am unaware,” he explained, watching her nod.
“Let me ask you something then. Before that night, did you already want to marry her?”
“No. I felt our relationship was too young.”
“And since then your sentiments have changed?”
Tywin paused, nodding and looking away from Olenna’s satisfied smirk.
“Then naturally, Tywin, I don’t think it’s fair to assume that my granddaughter's sentiments are still what they were.”
“Even so, I don’t want to pressure her. She’s always expressed a desire to live her life the way she wants to, and I’m not going to take that from her.”
“She doesn’t have a choice, Tywin. It’s you or a liege lord. My son is clearly relentless, and I’ve already been trying to slow him down. She’s not getting any younger, and she does need to marry and have children,” Olenna said, despite wishing you didn’t need to. She’d enjoyed watching you grow into yourself, and had always dreaded the day you got married. Somehow, though, she felt you would thrive with Tywin Lannister for a husband.
“Even if she marries me, it’s important to consider that she-“
“She detests the idea of children, I’m aware. Perhaps it’s a good thing given that you’re so much older than she is,” she noted after a moment, leaving the bait out. Tywin had no clue it was a test.
“It’s not the idea of children that she detests, it’s losing her freedoms with it. She’s excellent with her younger siblings, and I have no doubt in my mind she would make an excellent mother. However, (Y/N) would kill herself if that’s all she was ever permitted to be,” he corrected, watching as a smile appeared on your grandmother's face. It reassured her, in a sense. It made her feel that perhaps Tywin truly did understand you, and it was not a lustful fling.
“And so, I will come to my next point. Something I have meant to speak with either you or your son about before asking (Y/N)’s hand in marriage. Something I am going to demand,” he began, standing up to assert a certain level of confidence and dominance in the conversation. Olenna remained unphased.
“You’re not in much of a position to make demands, Lord Tywin. Either you marry my granddaughter or somebody else will,” she said, raising both eyebrows at him to demonstrate just how genuine her statement was.
“Tell me, Lady Olenna, if your son found out I was not only willing, but actually quite eager to marry your granddaughter, what do you imagine he would say?” Tywin questioned, already knowing exactly what the response would be, of course.
“He would most likely jump up and down while clapping his hands together, the pathetic fool,” she mumbled, remembering just how excited Mace had been upon hearing Margaery would marry Joffrey.
“Precisely. Your son is more eager to marry (Y/N) to me than (Y/N) is to be married to me. Therefore, I am in the position to be making demands. Demands that he is not going to like, mind you, but demands that he will fulfill in order to marry his daughter to me,” Tywin asserted, making Olenna’s face twist with distinct annoyance. Gods, Tywin Lannister really was an insufferable cunt, wasn’t he? She had not a clue as to what you liked about him.
“You love and desire my granddaughter far too much to ever give her up, Tywin. Let’s not pretend that I’m a blasted fool.”
“Correct. I have every intention to take her as my wife, but your son doesn’t know that, and I would threaten to reject her should he not give in. Don’t look so annoyed, you’ll like this demand.”
“But my son won’t?”
“No.”
“Very well, what is it?”
“I will marry (Y/N) on one condition: she must remain head of the Tyrell army until she can no longer hold a sword. That is my demand,” Tywin said sharply, watching Olenna’s eyes widen.
“My son is not going to give into that demand easily.”
“Nevertheless, he will if he wants to see his eldest daughter married to the richest man in Westeros,” Tywin assured her, knowing the kind of man your father was. He would complain, and then he would do as he was bid.
“What if he does not? The one thing he’s quite unrelenting in is making Loras the new head once (Y/N) has been wed,” Olenna questioned, knowing just how strongly your father felt about the subject.
“He will.”
“Yes, you’re right. But hypothetically, what if he does not? Would you truly sacrifice marriage to my granddaughter over it?” She asked, genuinely curious now. Tywin did seem quite confident in the fact that Mace would accept his request.
“No, of course not. I would give (Y/N) anything on earth that she desires, and if she desires to be my wife, then she will be. It’s exactly why I am making this demand. She desires to fight, she desires to lead. So she will,” he said simply, knowing that any other man might’ve been blind to your misery as merely a wife and mother. But no, Tywin would not see you unhappy, even despite his concerns. He would rather watch the garden be overgrown than see it barren after he had cut everything back.
Olenna merely nodded at the man, rising from her chair with a distinct satisfaction. It was odd for Olenna to consider that Tywin Lannister, the coldest, most brutal man in all seven kingdoms seemed entirely enslaved to your wishes.
Just as he had been a good husband to Joanna, your grandmother was confident he would be good to you. Somehow, she got the strange feeling that deep down, Tywin Lannister was a romantic. She likened him to something such as ember, once soft and hardened after all these years.
Of course, he’d been rather harsh even as a boy, but it seemed those who managed to find a way into Tywin Lannister’s heart would have his utmost loyalty and devotion. So long as they did not do something that might remove that sentiment, anyways.
He was a small, sturdy fortress. Fiercely protecting the few that could fit within his walls, and easily repelling those that did not.
Yes, you would do well with Tywin Lannister for a husband, your grandmother had not a single doubt about it. And even more than that, you would be happy.
Olenna wanted to laugh at the thought. Two years ago, even she would not have been able to conjure up the thought of you marrying Tywin Lannister, for love especially. Yet, even now, at 28 years old, you continued to surprise your grandmother. She supposed you always would.
TAGLIST:
@cheyxfu @lemonscoffee @groovy-lady
@ladysindar @vesta-ro @exo-nova @paola-carter
@prettykinkysoul @nothing2113
@fullmoonshadowwrites @kishie8
@the-desilittle-bird @dianilaws @girlonfireice @muscari-fae @lostgirllulu @abigfanofgameofthrones @smalltownbigheart @frombloodandflesh
#tywin lannister#tywin lannister x reader#game of thrones#game of thrones x reader#house lannister#charles dance#tywin x reader#asoiaf#tywin imagine#a lion in the garden
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Robert Baratheon: I hate Targaryens. I’ll kill them all.😡🤬
Modern Reader: Says the one, who has TARGARYEN blood. Robert, I understand that you hate Targaryens after what happened to Lyanna and Ned’s father and brother. But it doesn’t mean all Targaryens are bad.
Robert Baratheon: Oh really? Name me a Targaryen who isn’t bad.
Modern Reader: Your, Stannis’s and Renly’s grandmother, Rhaelle Targaryen.
Robert Baratheon: …
Modern Reader: What? Don’t tell me you didn’t know. Your grandmother is Rhaelle Targaryen, also your father had Targaryen features: purple eyes and silver strands of hair. You know what, I can name good Targaryens, but it’ll take a time. So, if you hate all Targaryens, does it mean you hate your grandmother?
Robert Baratheon: No.
Modern Reader: Really? But you said-
Robert Baratheon: I don’t hate her. I got the point. Not all Targaryens are bad.😒
This scenario happened in Council Chamber, where was the a question what to do with Daenerys and her brother Viserys.
So, reactions to this dialogue? Ned Stark, Stannis Baratheon, Renly Baratheon and Lannisters who were also there.
Oh my dear 😅
No one can beat your reader in a battle of words. Like Robert just got punched in the face😂(Sorry dude. You deserved it.)
Other than Aerys, I don't think the Lannisters have a problem with other Targaryens.
I think Stannis, Renly and Ned agree with the reader.
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Discussions the other night on The Discord were making me think about the differences between show!Theon and book!Theon characterization and specifically led me to the thought of how show!Theon has a certain aspect of his canonical counterpart’s characterization reversed. That’s probably not the most accurate way to put it, but what I mean is like:
In the books, every time someone, specifically a Stark (especially specifically Robb), gives him shit, he kind of…just takes it. Put your sword away, Theon; let me humiliate and lowkey threaten you in front of half of my household guard even though you just saved my brother, Theon; why are you so proud of your insignificant war trophies, Theon? He doesn’t really respond or gives only a half-hearted retort/defense. For all the talk of him smiling in a disconcerting way, he kinda never really fights back, even when he’s being attacked with bullshit.
On the other hand, in the show, Theon’s always got something to say (especially to Robb) when he thinks they’re full of shit. “Put away your sword” à “I take orders from your father, not you.” “You have no right” à “to what? To save your brother’s life?” let’s have a row about it! “It’s not your duty, because it’s not your House” à oh now you want to know where Bran is? Sorry, don’t know, “it’s not my House.” Show!Theon, in those first seasons, doesn’t really take any shit, hostage or not.
Then Ramsay happens. Theon is obviously terrorized and tortured into submission, dehumanization, dissociation, etc in both cases. Then he gets out. That’s the plot.
After, show!Theon capitulates to accepting constant humiliation. He never fights it, he never really tries to defend himself, even when he should/could. The Starks are his sole purpose in life, with a slight detour to help out his sister, and that’s in parallel too, but not the center point here. There’s the occasional moment of dignity in how he handles the humiliation, true. Occasionally, he gets the bright spot – snipping at Euron at the kingsmoot, fighting side-by-side with Yara, that smile after the Dragonstone beach fight… But overall, he’s all too willing to degrade himself and to let others degrade/humiliate him, especially if they’re Starks (or “Starks” as with Jon).
In the books…even with all the misery and torture and submission that he’s forced into under Ramsay, he never quite loses that streak of defiance? From thinking that not matter what Ramsay does to him, he can’t take his sanity unless Theon lets him, to thinking smack about how ugly Ramsay and his crew are, to the bitter dark humor when he’s imprisoned and (once again) tortured, this time by Stannis. And yes, this is all very internal and externally he probably would seem just as broken and submissive, etc as show!Theon and I think initially when I watched the show, I just projected Theon’s ADWD defiance onto the show scenes because he could still be having those thoughts. But on re-watch…. The thing is, book!Theon has external moments as well. From insisting to the spearwives that Bran and Rickon weren’t his brothers so he might be a lot of things but not a kinslayer thanks, to insisting to Stannis, not without pride, “I saved the girl.” Even Stannis laughs at him, he insists on it.
It's just such an interesting (even if I hate the show’s choices, it’s still like interesting) thing how there’s this double reversal where show!Theon starts more aggressively defiant and comfortable in that defiance against power moves, humiliation and submission than book!Theon seems to be, but then after the Ramsay Thing (TM) these characterizations get, relatively to each other, reversed.
#theon greyjoy#its so....interesting yet distressing lol#how the book and adaptation version are the same and yet different#characters at the same time#asoiaf#game of thrones#meta#op
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do you have any miscellaneous thoughts about theon and asha's storylines in winds? (big question i know sorry, you can answer short as you like)
AKH no this is a v neat question and i will confess i have actually not read any of the winds preview chapters :o back in 2013/4 when i read the series for the first time i made the decision not to read them because i didn't want just a taste of the next book i wanted to be patient and wait for the whole thing
that said i actually struggle to envision where their storylines are going tbh!!! theon's arc concluding with saving jeyne and himself and reuniting with asha makes. sense. it is a very narratively satisfying end. what he does beyond this reunion is a mystery to me although i hope he gains some weight back and gets some good dentures and some warm wool and furs and experiences 🎶that feeling of sexual healing that makes him feel so fine 🎶 courtesy of his big sister but that's just my own personal wishlist!!!!!!!!!!!!
i want him to reunite w jon at the wall and i am. genuinely kinda scared that jon will behead him NNNNNOOOOOO JON!!!! this isn't super likely bc i think killing theon after All That™️ would be... idk it would be a very strange narrative beat i think. like grrm is obviously known for killing off characters but i do NOT think he does it nonsensically and i do NOT think he does it for shock value. i think a v clear theme in theon's entire arc post-acok is that he doesn't get to die. he needs to live with who he is, what he did, and what was done to him. he doesn't get an easy out. he needs to carry the pain over onward and through. so i don't see death in the cards for theon. i do think it will be interesting for him to meet jon again, this time both of them as dead men. and i would LIKE!!!!!! for them to reunite with cat. the three undead final remnants of house stark who the old gods refuse to let go of. delicious.
but in general i am extremely bad at predicting anything in asoiaf. like the story just feels too massive to me. i feel like i understand most of it in a way that i feel confident dissecting, but i have never had a sense of "oh i see where this is going" or "i have a good sense of what will happen next". like i've just never been able to sense the shape of it in that way.
PART OF THIS I TRULY FEEL IS BC GEORGE DOESN'T OUTLINE ANYTHING. AND IT'S LIKE WELL YES KING WE CAN TELL.
generally when i get This Into a series i feel like i have a sense of it and can make predictions based on my working knowledge of canon but i've never felt this way w asoiaf. i just feel like i'm along for the ride.
i'm very curious what will happen to asha because i have a sneaking suspicion the show's route of her actually leading house greyjoy might have some semblance of truth in the books... like i don't see vic, euron, and aeron surviving long enough to rule, so i think asha and theon being the only two left (i know theon dies in the show it's fucking stupid and george wouldn't do that) is pretty likely. especially since house greyjoy is already a big worm riddled house of usher situation. and especially since ironborn independence has been a futile suicide mission for generations. so that'll be interesting to see!!! i also wonder if theon might stay on the mainland and take the black. not exactly a CHOICE to take the black but i don't see a version of events where he gets to the wall and jon tells him "no hard feelings" and they hug it out and then theon gets to go home. UNLIKELY. HE KILLED AND RAPED A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE. TWO OF THEM CHILDREN.
so this answer is a whole bunch of nothing i'm sorry!!! i generally think that theon making it to stannis' convoy to reunite w asha will be a brief respite and not a permanent one and i do not see them ending the series together (here not implying romantically just like in proximity to one another). if they do make it back to winterfell and overwhelm the occupying bolton force i hope they find a bed 😎👉👉 and that theon has a panic attack and asha is like jesus christ i should've bought a dog off craiglist instead of picking one off the kill list at the local shelter this is too much work 😒
SORRY GOT DISTRACTED AGAIN ok i see asha making her way back to the iron islands and i see theon taking the black. what will happen between those things is a bif fat question mark for me but i hope at least some of it is lewd ✌️
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Its funny to me that the common thought I see repeated is that ‘sansa was disinherited!!! She cant ever get winterfell, plus the northern lords would never trust her bc she was married to a lannister!!’ As if George would just cosign that in his writing like yep sorry girls arent equipped to rule🤷🏻♀️ he continuously criticizes sexist ideologies thru out asoiaf
Sansa wasn’t disinherited, she was overridden in favour of Jon. And so were all of her living siblings btw, which will be all of them once they are found/come back home.
Plus, the content of Robb’s will is pure speculation. We genuinely don’t know what there is in Robb’s will. Maybe he has declared the eldest living son of Eddard Stark as the heir to winterfell and after all is said and done, that would be Bran Stark. Maybe Robb said that it will go to Jon Snow and Jon Snow only. Even then Sansa and her siblings will have a right to Winterfell by way of social custom, especially after the R+ L = J reveal. What if Jeyne Westerling is pregnant? Then what? The will goes to whack, stark siblings get pushed down in the line of succession and we finally put an end to this already tired and beaten debate. My boy Jon did not stand there and say Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa for shits and giggles, social customs and inheritance rights are important. Moreover, if Westerosi history shows us anything it’s that Sansa’s kids will still have a claim to winterfell even if she is expelled from the will.
On top of all of this, her marriage to Tyrion isn’t even going to last courtesy Mr. Lancel Lannister of the faith whose life she saved in a brave act of kindness. And that’s where it becomes funny to me too because what leg do they have to stand on now.
Though I doubt the fandom is saying girls can’t rule, they’re saying Sansa can’t rule. They can’t say girls can’t rule because then that punishes their faves Arya and Dany too. But all of that too is rooted in misogyny because to favour one type of woman win over another is deeply problematic (okays favouritism at best and excuses racism at worst). But yes, you’re right because George seems to be calling out this type of misogyny too. We have women leading Houses (the Mormonts), we have women leading (or having a very strong claim nonetheless and fighting for it) kingdoms (Asha and Arianne). Stannis asks for Shireen to be on the Iron Throne in case he dies fighting for it, so clearly women can be heirs and hold leadership positions in their own right.
In the end, yes the Westerosi culture can allow women leadership positions (though not easily and in very limited circumstances) and Sansa Stark is absolutely still an heir to Winterfell.
#I’m sorry if it looks cluttered and haphazard it’s because I typed all of this in 5 minutes after a round of good coffee#so I am vibrating at the speed of light and my emotions are clearly heightened#in any case#sansa stark#anti sansa antis#anti asoiaf fandom#couldn’t be bothered with the citations and the evidence and the footnotes because we’re beating a dead horse at this point#cannot keep having the same argument again and again#anon ask#edit: added some lines and corrected some grammar#anon asks t
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Hi! Were there any perspectives in the ASOIAF fandom that made your eyes roll? If there are, what made you say so? Thanks!
[mostly written in 2021, and posted very late. Sorry nonny!]
woof, this could open up a can of worms. I'm almost afraid this is a bait ask but I'm also very willing to run my mouth online about ASOIAF, and I love making fun of dumb theories, so let’s go!
Every time someone says that Jon and Dny are the song of ice and fire, my soul dies a little. Enough said.
I also hate the idea that parallels between ASOIAF history and the events of the books don’t matter. Not to state the obvious, but Westerosi history isn’t real. No part of it actually happened organically, GRRM has manufactured all of it, so everything must have been written with a purpose. I don’t buy that it’s just all world-building, because if parallels are obvious to us, they must be a thousand times more so for the man actually writing it all, and the army of editors who are probably helping him keep it straight.
There is absolutely no way that anything about Jonnel ‘One-Eye’ is a coincidence. Half-brother to Rickon Stark is obvious enough, but then we have his mother. Lynara sounds very similar to Lyanna (side note: a jonsa baby named Lynara would be adorable), but the real link is that she was born a Stark - all of the women on the family tree are listed under their maiden names. Her relation to her husband Cregan isn’t specified; it would have been so easy to have her be from another random house, or even a Karstark, yet what George wanted to convey is that Jonnel has a Stark mother, as well as a Stark father who happened to be heavily involved with the Targaryens.
Another fun thing linking Jonnel to Jon! Jon’s first relationship was with a red headed girl, who claimed that they were married because he’d stolen her. In the same conversation where she’s called half fish…
“You know nothing, Jon Snow. I’m half a fish, I’ll have you know.”
“Half fish, half goat, half horse…there’s too many halves to you, Ygritte.”
(ASOS, Jon V)
this conversation is already jonsa gospel as foreshadowing because of “half-fish”, but the horse part was always a little strange to me. As far as I remember, they didn’t have a prior conversation about her loving horses or riding particularly well, so that was seemingly out of left-field.
Well Jonnel’s second wife was a Ryswell - their sigil is a black horse’s head with a red mane.
pictured: the jonsa agenda winning again
The idea that Stannis will take Winterfell isn’t as personally annoying to me, all these dudebros have very detailed, tactics-based reasons to believe he’ll win I’m sure (something about a nightlamp?), but I just think it doesn’t do anything for the narrative, nor does it make sense with either his arc or Jon and Sansa’s.
Winning Winterfell will put Stannis in a position of strength, give him a base of operations in the North that’s not on loan from the Night’s Watch, and would probably lead to most of the Northern houses swearing allegiance to him, as Manderly has already promised to do. Why would a man in that position ever choose to burn his daughter, his only heir, alive? That is literally one of the few guaranteed book plots we have, so IMO speculation about Stannis all needs to work backwards from this end point; it’s ugly and horrible, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach reading it, but it’s the only ending to his arc that makes sense.
Kinslaying reoccurs time and time again in Stannis’ arc. Kinslaying for his own personal benefit, no less. In his first appearance in ACOK, he listens to Selyse suggest that he kill Renly, then stands by whilst Melisandre kills Maester Cressen, his surrogate father. Cressen raised him and loved him like a son; yet if he had killed Melisandre instead, Stannis would have lost the power she wields for his benefit, the main reason he has a chance at the throne. Later in the book, he implicitly allows his brother to be murdered so that he could gain the Stormlords that had rallied to Renly instead of him (anyone trying to argue that the shadow wasn’t technically Stannis so technically it wasn’t kinslaying will be put in the naughty corner for excessive pedantry). In ASOS, he’s willing to sacrifice his nephew, an innocent 12 year old under his guardianship. He says it’s for the realm, for duty, but really it’s for his destiny. What is the life of a bastard boy against a kingdom so close to his grasp?
It’s escalation. Each time so far he’s had a layer of deniability, but he’s not going to have that in the end. Ordering Shireen’s death himself, murdering his daughter in some desperate bid to secure victory over the Boltons, will be the final step off the cliff. Maybe he’ll have some military victories before that, smarter people than me have no doubt discussed the parallels to the Greek myth of Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia, but I have no doubt Stannis’ story is headed only towards tragedy.
….Turns out that I do have a lot of feelings about Stannis. But to get back to my original point, Jon and Sansa taking Winterfell back together, travelling through the North doing the work and proving themselves as worthy rulers, makes a lot more sense for their future roles in the story than Stannis winning it all for them. It’s also much more affecting and thematically resonant, so I refuse to believe D&D entirely made up that storyline.
I also inevitably end up rolling my eyes whenever I'm bored enough to go onto r/asoiaf, there's always a bad take right on the front page. One that annoyed me enough to go into @istumpysk’s inbox and kickstart my jonsa blogging was one asking what the point of R+L=J even is, because it never amounted to anything and just muddled up J/D being “the song of ice and fire”.
While it gets so close to the point that it’s funny, there’s no way the “song” is going to boil down to a relationship, let alone JD. I would almost buy Jon and Dænerys being the song of ice and fire if Jon actually were just Ned’s bastard, all ‘ice’. Hell, if he really wanted to make a relationship the song of ice and fire, he could have cut out the middleman and made Jon a trueborn Stark from the start - make them starcrossed lovers from warring families, truly ice and truly fire. Utterly boring, but thematically coherent at least. A major point of Jon’s character is that he is both - and something a lot messier than that besides, as a bastard.
It's not all bad on r/asoiaf though, when I went back to look for that post I saw another about how the Titan of Braavos is a Pacific Rim-style mech that will come to life to fight any dragons coming to the city, a theory that I will be championing from this moment henceforth.
Wait, nevermind, in that same thread someone said that Jaehaerys is the sexiest Targ name, so r/asoiaf is immediately cancelled again. That's another fandom perspective that makes me roll my eyes, the idea that Jaehaerys is in any way an acceptable name, especially as Jon's ‘secret’ name.
This 👏 is 👏 Targaryen 👏 propaganda 👏
Just look at it!! How do you even pronounce that? The hill I will most definitely die on is that this name is ugly.
#astra rambles#me throughout this ask: AND ANOTHER THING#my own stannis take does hurt me somewhat because for a while fanon stannis was /my/ boring little man#however then I read the books and didn’t actually like him much lmao#jonsa#anti stannis baratheon#anti house targaryen#anti daenerys targaryen#anti targaryen stans#just covering my bases#meta#within all the rambling at least#jesus this is long#I cut out another terrible r/asoiaf post I was ranting about because it’s seriously been a year since I started this
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Glad I’m not the only one who thinks Satin played a major role in Jon’s stabbing…..
Everyone knows the pink letter, everyone has a theory on who wrote it, well try this one on. In a Feast for Crows Ch. 17, Cersei is discussing the Nights Watch helping Stannis, and after discussion, Cersei and Qyburn decides to sent assassins to kill Jon Snow. Now I want you to think back on the very many times Cersei needed devious help. Who did she use? Littlefinger. Who just so happens has plans for Sansa to take the North. So bastard brother could be a inheritance issue depending on how the lords react to Stannis offer. Wartime male commander proven in battle? Or a female who never led troops? They would pick Jon. So who does Littlefinger employ? Whores. Whorehouses everywhere. Enter Satin at Castle Black. A male whore from oldtown who somehow just happened to find himself in Gulltown in the Vale before being sent to the wall. Sorry whores don’t leave a bigger nicer town to travel across the entire continent. His story is very suspect. Who knows how to read and write which is very very rare. Whores don’t learn how to read and write. Many nobles don’t even learn. So he becomes steward to Jon. Able to search, snoop, possible Sweetsleep Jon, if your wondering why light hurts him, his hands don’t work very good at times, and his sudden mood swings. So Satin arrives and finds the perfect plot already brewing. Bowen Marsh, and most importantly Clydas. Maester Aemon assistant and the only one trained to handle ravens at Castle Black. So they already control the information coming in from the entire North. How did they know Reek escaped and Arya? Well it would make sense to send a raven warning them. The pink letter is full of terms used by wildlings, who knows those but wildlings and Nights Watch who deal with them every day? Bowen Marsh is fully believing Jon is destroying the Watch and will bring doom upon them. But you can’t just walk up and kill Jon. The rest would kill Bowen and gang. You have to get him to flat out break his vows. Then you have the justification for stabbing him “for the watch”. So you read every letter that arrived, Satin overheard pretty much every conversation, write it in a very nice handwriting. Not blood, which flaked and blocky letters like the 2 Ramsey sent. Not Roose Bolton cause that letter would inflame the north against him and you cannot threaten to attack the watch in the north without repercussions. Not Barbrey Dustin or Mance since Roose would be guarding the ravens to prevent any word from leaking. Stannis is very short on ravens. The seal was smeared instead of the usual button of pink. It was designed to piss Jon off and get him to stand in front of everyone and break his vows publicly. Once he read it and said he was going south with a army, they can kill him and be in the right for doing it. Satin reports back to Littlefinger, who tells Cersei. Littlefinger gets trust, and one less problem to Sansa’s takeover. Cersei gets one less Stark for the north to rally behind. Since she knows Arya is fake. And as a added bonus, many people wonder how Sansa will flee the vale to go north, well she just got informed that Jon is Lord Commander of the Nights Watch, so I imagine she will watch for any ravens or news. Imagine the shock and horror when the completion letter arrives that shows Littlefinger had her brother killed. Might make her rush north. Or slay the giant in the snow. But either way the letter was written by Bowen Marsh desperate to stop Jon from destroying the watch, Satin the whore from Oldtown, who somehow wound up in the vale in Gulltown before coming to the wall, and Clydas, who controls all ravens.
As for the wildling terms used you write how you talk based on where you live. As for asking for the queen, princess, Val, Melisandre, how would anyone in Winterfell even know who Val is? Or that reek and Arya would go there to castle black? His wife was supposed to go to nightfort. But if your Bowen Marsh, you know who everyone is and he wants them ALL gone. Anyone associated with stannis, wildlings, and so yes he would demand they all be sent away to Winterfell, knowing Jon can’t do it. You threaten Val, wildlings ready to kill, threaten queen and co. And Jon is in a horrible spot, but can count on both groups to give him the troops to start revenge planning. He reads the letter out, declares he’s gone, they roar approval, and he is a traitor.
Edit: some guy asked about how satin can get there and be little fingers tool. Tin foil hat time. But Jon was never going to live. As for little finger and satin, little finger plans ahead. Far ahead. Honestly tin foil hat time, what was really in the letter from Lysa? In code. Really hidden and delivered at the perfect time to force Ned south? Who wants Ned dead? Who wants Jon dead? Ummm Lysa is totally bonkers and nuts. She can’t plan anything or fight her way out of a wet paper bag. But boss man little finger can. And Catylen is convinced he’s her true friend. That is littlefinger fingers all over it. And Catylen hasn’t made qualms about wanting Jon gone and wiped off the face of the earth. Go reread the first few chapters. She is daydreaming during lovemaking. About hot springs, family, everything but Ned. Oh she claims to love Ned, Ned is bitter over his brother. But not his sister who ran off and started everything? Brandon did what any brother would do. Cat forces him south, and somehow Benjen talks to maester luwin about Jon joining the Nights Watch. Why the hell would benjan not talk to Ned?!?!?! So yeah they knew Jon was going to the wall sooner or later. Luwin was telling Jon for a while how AWESOME the wall was. Why lie to Jon unless he has to go cause he is a threat. So there’s my two cents on that. She is terrified of Jon taking her kids inheritance. Why? Cause he is the rightful heir. Not robb
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hm, how could shireen win?
okay so i was actually thinking about stannis battle at winterfell and how he wins that but the thing is we don’t even know how he’s going to LOSE THAT age very well might have ALREADY lost but he also very well might have faked his death. but is he still going to lose even after faking his death? does he get run out because of the rickon plot? where the hell is shireen fitting into this bc if HE is the one to burn her, they’re not even in the same place right now! it’s possible he gains winterfell, sends for shireen, then winds up in a siege and burns her then? where the fuck is jon in all this?? still hanging out in ghost???? i hate guessing about this because it has to do with complex timeline stuff and i am so ass at that.
now regardless - what Stannis needs to win is a) more supplies to last the winter b) more fucking men and specifically northerners flocking to his cause and c) a stark in hand!! i do think, with rumors of several stark children flying about, that stannis is going to have a hard time keeping the attention of the northerners. and he NEEDS THEM here bc they’re the ones who are experienced with fighting and living in winter! and he NEEDS SUPPLIES bc the storms are getting worse, and everyone is already getting human sacrifice happy so if he wants to get control of that, he needs rations that are going to LAST. the easiest way to get all of these things is to take winterfell, but *tywin voice* can he hold it?? until ramsay is dead and the freys are dealt with, he’s fighting a very tricky and dangerous war against an enemy who does not fight fair. AND i think it’s not unlikely that the moment he tries to execute theon, bran (future bran, current bran, some combination? who knows) is gonna start screeching through the birds and the weirwoods to knock that shit off, that’s bran’s emotional support idiot thanks, and stannis is gonna have to deal with THAT too.
now how does shireen win? honestly….she just needs a single just one (1) competent guardian looking out for her. someone who doesn’t want to burn her, someone who is mentally aware enough to get her out of danger (sorry patchface). jon is generally anti burning people but he just got caesard and he’s gonna be living in ghost for a while. so she has her mom and melisandre.
her best bet is jon getting back to his body and back in control as soon as possible. from there….i mean again, it’s at winterfell with jon. he’s just the only adult besides davos who can keep her from being burned. i don’t know that winterfell will last through the long night but i do think being there is better than a lot of other places.
although if we’re talking “how does shireen win the war of five kings” again, this requires stannis to be a little less stannis. reaches out to robb with his intent to declare before robb is declared king, offers the men he’s been able to raise at dragonstone as backup to robb’s riverlands campaign. it’s fine if he tries to kill renly (he can cursed by the gods and just do it more lowkey ya know), but in that case he needs to reach out to dorne, offer shireen to trystane, so he has a little bit more backup here. he needs to get the tyrell’s before littlefinger - even if all he’s doing is cutting them off from the capital, and not making any sort of alliance - so when he and robb and maybe doran take the black water (with DAVOS in charge perhaps and not the idiots he originally had) the tyrell’s don’t fuck them from behind. he needs king’s landing, he needs to hold it. don’t ask me what the vale is doing right now.
once he wins, there will be questions about his heir - renly got merked, shireen is a girl. maybe melisandre is like “don’t worry we got this” or maybe stannis is like “did i stutter i said shireen is my heir” and that makes trystane prince/king consort, lmao. it’s possible he goes for a tyrell match up right away…..willas is old but that might be seen as a good thing, and mace gets his grandkid on the throne after all. or maybe shireen gets a brother and retires to highgarden/dorne to be left alone singing songs with patchface.
#sorry the fatigue and nausea got me today i’ve been sleeping mostly to everyone i’ve left on read 😭#i’m gonna try to rapid fire some asks tonight#asks#anons#twow speculation
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Operation Stumpy Re-Read
ADWD: The Turncloak (Theon V) [Chapter 41]
Ack, I'm sorry. I'm guessing all the Theon posts will require a read-more link moving forward. Too many plots, lies, and mysteries.
It's okay, I'm making a promise to myself to never deactivate.
"The gods of the north have unleashed their wroth on Lord Stannis," Roose Bolton announced come morning as men gathered in Winterfell's Great Hall to break their fast. "He is a stranger here, and the old gods will not suffer him to live."
Is the Breaker of Trees having difficulty with the snow? The gods unleashing their wroth on Stannis is silly, but I kind of want to believe it.
Don't worry, they haven't forgotten about Roose.
"The gods have turned against us," old Lord Locke was heard to say in the Great Hall. "This is their wroth. A wind as cold as hell itself and snows that never end. We are cursed." - A Ghost in Winterfell, ADWD
It's fun when you hate both sides.
+.+.+
Theon Greyjoy did not join the uproar. Neither did the men of House Frey, he did not fail to note. They are strangers here as well, he thought, watching Ser Aenys Frey and his half-brother Ser Hosteen. Born and bred in the riverlands, the Freys had never seen a snow like this.
The author would like you to know these Freys are out of their element.
+.+.+
The north has already claimed three of their blood [↓↓↓], Theon thought, recalling the men that Ramsay had searched for fruitlessly, lost between White Harbor and Barrowton.
On the dais, Lord Wyman Manderly sat between a pair of his White Harbor knights, spooning porridge into his fat face. He did not seem to be enjoying it near as much as he had the pork pies at the wedding.
Lol.
+.+.+
Elsewhere one-armed Harwood Stout talked quietly with the cadaverous Whoresbane Umber.
House Stout is a vassal of Lady Dustin's. We'll make note of this but hold off on declaring them Team Stark.
+.+.+
Last night, unable to sleep, Theon had found himself brooding on escape, of slipping away unseen whilst Ramsay and his lord father had their attention elsewhere. Every gate was closed and barred and heavily guarded, though; no one was allowed to enter or depart the castle without Lord Bolton's leave.
Already calling himself Theon, and daydreaming of an escape. Reek is mostly behind us.
+.+.+
The nearest thing to a home that remained to him was here, amongst the bones of Winterfell.
A ruined man, a ruined castle. This is my place.
She was looking at him the way she used to look at him at Winterfell, whenever he had bested Robb at swords or sums or most anything. Who are you? that look had always seemed to say. This is not your place. Why are you here? - Jon XII, ASOS
x
You can't be the Lord of Winterfell, you're bastard-born, he heard Robb say again. And the stone kings were growling at him with granite tongues. You do not belong here. This is not your place. - Jon XII, ASOS
+.+.+
He was still waiting for his porridge when Ramsay swept into the hall with his Bastard's Boys, shouting for music. Abel rubbed the sleep from his eyes, took up his lute, and launched into "The Dornishman's Wife," whilst one of his washerwomen beat time on her drum. The singer changed the words, though. Instead of tasting a Dornishman's wife, he sang of tasting a northman's daughter.
He could lose his tongue for that, Theon thought, as his bowl was being filled. He is only a singer. Lord Ramsay could flay the skin off both his hands, and no one would say a word. But Lord Bolton smiled at the lyric and Ramsay laughed aloud.
I'm not thrilled he's singing these songs, nor am I thrilled he's fashioning himself as a present-day Bael the Bard, but I'm going to trust it's nothing more than clues that it's Mance.
+.+.+
Lord Ramsay wanted his wife clean. "She has no handmaids, poor thing," he had said to Theon. "That leaves you, Reek. Should I put you in a dress?" He laughed. "Perhaps if you beg it of me. Just now, it will suffice for you to be her bath maid. I won't have her smelling like you." So whenever Ramsay had an itch to bed his wife, it fell to Theon to borrow some servingwomen from Lady Walda or Lady Dustin and fetch hot water from the kitchens.
✨ foreshadowing ✨
+.+.+
A few of the older men spoke of other snowstorms and insisted this was no more than a light dusting compared to what they'd seen in the winters of their youth. The riverlanders were aghast. They have no love of snow and cold, these southron swords.
Once again the author would like you to know these Freys are out of their element.
Remember when the show had the Dothraki fighting on horseback in the north during winter? They took away all of the snow and it was still the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
+.+.+
The air was thick and smoky and a crust had formed atop his porridge when a woman's voice behind him said, "Theon Greyjoy."
[...]
The woman smiled crookedly. "Do you take me for a whore?" She was one of the singer's washerwomen, the tall skinny one, too lean and leathery to be called pretty … though there was a time when Theon would have tumbled her all the same, to see how it felt to have those long legs wrapped around him. "What good would coin do me here? What would I buy with it, some snow?" She laughed. "You could pay me with a smile. I've never seen you smile, not even during your sister's wedding feast."
"Lady Arya is not my sister." I do not smile either, he might have told her. Ramsay hated my smiles, so he took a hammer to my teeth. I can hardly eat. "She never was my sister."
That's not what I was told!
Washerwomen. That was the polite way of saying camp follower, which was the polite way of saying whore. - The Prince of Winterfell, ADWD
If you're not a whore, what are you?
Anyway, Rowan calling Arya his sister wasn't a mistake. Rowan sees the Starklings as his kin.
Rowan grabbed him by the throat and shoved him back against the barracks wall, her face an inch from his. "Say it again and I will rip your lying tongue out, kinslayer." - Theon I, ADWD
She also has great respect for Eddard Stark, which is a little puzzling.
"Winter is coming …"
Rowan gave him a hard look. "You have no right to mouth Lord Eddard's words. Not you. Not ever. After what you did—" - Theon I, ADWD
Other than the Hooded Man, Rowan and Mors Umber are the only people to ever accuse Theon of being a kinslayer.
"—a turncloak and a kinslayer," Crowfood had finished. "You will hold that lying tongue, or lose it." - Theon I, TWOW
Because of that, plus her bizarre fondness for House Stark, many have speculated that Rowan is the daughter Mors Umber lost to the wildlings.
When Mors was young he was a fearsome fighter. His sons died on the Trident, his wife in childbed. His only daughter was carried off by wildlings thirty years ago. - Jon IV, ADWD
She dies, nothing will come of it. Could be a fun little easter egg though.
+.+.+
I was never beautiful like Sansa, but they all said I was pretty. Jeyne's words seemed to echo in his head, to the beat of the drums two of Abel's other girls were pounding. Another one had pulled Little Walder Frey up onto the table to teach him how to dance. All the men were laughing. "Leave me be," said Theon.
Seems like these women are creating a distraction.
+.+.+
The woman leaned close. Her breath smelled of wine. "If you have no smile for me, tell me how you captured Winterfell. Abel will put it in a song, and you will live forever."
"As a betrayer. As Theon Turncloak."
"Why not Theon the Clever? It was a daring feat, the way we heard it. How many men did you have? A hundred? Fifty?"
Fewer. "It was madness."
"Glorious madness. Stannis has five thousand, they say, but Abel claims ten times as many still could not breach these walls. So how did you get in, m'lord? Did you have some secret way?"
I had ropes, Theon thought. I had grapnels. I had darkness on my side, and surprise. The castle was but lightly held, and I took them unawares. But he said none of that. If Abel made a song about him, like as not Ramsay would prick his eardrums to make certain that he never heard it.
Theon figures this out relatively quickly.
Every gate was closed and barred and heavily guarded, though; no one was allowed to enter or depart the castle without Lord Bolton's leave.
↓
The man was just a singer, a pander with a lute and a false smile. He wants to know how I took the castle, but not to make a song of it. The answer came to him. He wants to know how we got in so he can get out. - A Ghost in Winterfell, ADWD
That's great, but I'm still troubled by Mance.
Does she never sleep? What game are you playing, priestess? Did you have some other task for Mance? - Jon IX, ADWD
+.+.+
He wanted to hit her, to smash that mocking smile off her face. He wanted to kiss her, to fuck her right there on the table and make her cry his name.
I think you need some quiet time in your kennel.
+.+.+
A battle was being fought in the yard; Ryswells pelting Barrowton boys with snowballs. Above, he could see some squires building snowmen along the battlements. They were arming them with spears and shields, putting iron halfhelms on their heads, and arraying them along the inner wall, a rank of snowy sentinels. "Lord Winter has joined us with his levies," one of the sentries outside the Great Hall japed … until he saw Theon's face and realized who he was talking to. Then he turned his head and spat.
Ryswells and Dustins are playfighting. Could be nothing.
Later:
More snowmen had risen in the yard by the time Theon Greyjoy made his way back. To command the snowy sentinels on the walls, the squires had erected a dozen snowy lords. One was plainly meant to be Lord Manderly; it was the fattest snowman that Theon had ever seen. The one-armed lord could only be Harwood Stout, the snow lady Barbrey Dustin. And the one closest to the door with the beard made of icicles had to be old Whoresbane Umber.
I'm not sure what is going on with these snowmen, but something here is important.
Lots of people believe it's a secret signal to Bolton enemies outside the walls. I have a few problems with that theory,
Walder Frey was one of the squires who built the snowmen.
He might have taken the guards for a pair of Little Walder's snowmen if he had not seen the white plumes of their breath. - A Ghost in Winterfell, ADWD
There's no visibility in these snow storms.
Outside the snow was coming down so heavily that Theon could not see more than three feet ahead of him. - A Ghost in Winterfell, ADWD
The snowmen become impossible to distinguish.
Huddled in their hooded cloaks, the guards outside were almost indistinguishable from the snowmen. Only their breath fogging the air gave proof that they still lived.
x
Outside the snow still fell. The snowmen the squires had built had grown into monstrous giants, ten feet tall and hideously misshapen. - Theon I, ADWD
Perhaps it's symbolism?
+.+.+
Beyond the tents the big destriers of the knights from White Harbor and the Twins were shivering in their horse lines. Ramsay had burned the stables when he sacked Winterfell, so his father had thrown up new ones twice as large as the old, to accommodate the warhorses and palfreys of his lords' bannermen and knights. The rest of the horses were tethered in the wards. Hooded grooms moved amongst them, covering them with blankets to keep them warm.
Sorry, this reminded me that I forgot to point something out in the previous Theon chapter.
We have to pay attention to hooded men with daggers for an upcoming Theon chapter.
Farther on, he came upon a man striding in the opposite direction, a hooded cloak flapping behind him. When they found themselves face-to-face their eyes met briefly. The man put a hand on his dagger. "Theon Turncloak. Theon Kinslayer."
"I'm not. I never … I was ironborn."
"False is all you were. How is it you still breathe?"
"The gods are not done with me," Theon answered, wondering if this could be the killer, the night walker who had stuffed Yellow Dick's cock into his mouth and pushed Roger Ryswell's groom off the battlements. Oddly, he was not afraid. He pulled the glove from his left hand. "Lord Ramsay is not done with me."
The man looked, and laughed. "I leave you to him, then." - A Ghost in Winterfell, ADWD
So many mysteries to solve, isn't this fun?
↓↓↓
But under the hood, his hair was white and thin, and his flesh had an old man's greyish undertone. A Stark at last, he thought. - The Prince of Winterfell, ADWD
x
He could feel his missing fingers cramping: two on his left hand, one on his right. And on his hip his dagger rested, sleeping in its leather sheath, but heavy, oh so heavy. It is only my pinky gone on my right hand, Theon reminded himself. I can still grip a knife. - The Prince of Winterfell, ADWD
+.+.+
Theon made his way deeper into the ruined parts of the castle. As he picked through the shattered stone that had once been Maester Luwin's turret, ravens looked down from the gash in the wall above, muttering to one another. From time to time one would let out a raucous scream.
Bran's still visiting.
+.+.+
He stood in the doorway of a bedchamber that had once been his own (ankle deep in snow that had blown in through a shattered window), visited the ruins of Mikken's forge and Lady Catelyn's sept. Beneath the Burned Tower, he passed Rickard Ryswell nuzzling at the neck of another one of Abel's washerwomen, the plump one with the apple cheeks and pug nose.
Is it known as Lady Catelyn's sept? How cute.
These wildling women will kill some of the men they're seducing.
"You killed a boy as well."
"That was not us. I told you."
"Words are wind." They are no better than me. We're just the same. "You killed the others, why not him? Yellow Dick—"
"—stank as bad as you. A pig of a man." - Theon I, ADWD
I hate everything about this, because it reminds me of Osha's show storyline with Ramsay.
Drennan lay half-naked in the gatehouse, in the snug room where the drawbridge was worked. His throat had been opened ear to ear. A ragged tunic concealed the half-healed scars on his back, but his boots were scattered amidst the rushes, and his breeches tangled about his feet. There was cheese on a small table near the door, beside an empty flagon. And two cups.
[...]
Osha. He had suspected her from the moment he saw that second cup. I should have known better than to trust that one. She's as unnatural as Asha. Even their names sound alike. - Theon IV, ACOK
+.+.+
Winterfell's inner wall was the older and taller of the two, its ancient grey crenellations rising one hundred feet high, with square towers at every corner. The outer wall, raised many centuries later, was twenty feet lower, but thicker and in better repair, boasting octagonal towers in place of square ones. Between the two walls was the moat, deep and wide … and frozen.
Are we learning this for a reason?
+.+.+
The woods, the fields, the kingsroad—the snows were covering all of them beneath a pale soft mantle, burying the remnants of the winter town, hiding the blackened walls Ramsay's men had left behind when they put the houses to the torch. The wounds Snow made, snow conceals, but that was wrong. Ramsay was a Bolton now, not a Snow, never a Snow.
No, he's a Snow. Bizarro Snow.
+.+.+
Stannis Baratheon is out there somewhere, freezing. Would Lord Stannis try to take Winterfell by storm? If he does, his cause is doomed. The castle was too strong. Even with the moat frozen over, Winterfell's defenses remained formidable.
Three characters have hinted at the same thing.
Would his brother be as bold?
Not likely. Stannis was a deliberate commander, and his host was a half-digested stew of clansmen, southron knights, king's men and queen's men, salted with a few northern lords. He should move on Winterfell swiftly, or not at all, Jon thought. - Jon VII, ADWD
x
We would be fools to march on Stannis. Let Stannis march on us. He is too cautious to come to Barrowton … but he must come to Winterfell. - Reek III, ADWD
The Freys and Manderlys are taking the fight to Stannis at the beginning of TWOW, but I think I know what happens afterwards.
+.+.+
He might prefer to cut the castle off from the outside world and starve out its defenders. Winterfell's storerooms and cellar vaults were empty. A long supply train had come with Bolton and his friends of Frey up through the Neck, Lady Dustin had brought food and fodder from Barrowton, and Lord Manderly had arrived well provisioned from White Harbor … but the host was large. With so many mouths to feed, their stores could not last for long. Lord Stannis and his men will be just as hungry, though. And cold and footsore as well, in no condition for a fight … but the storm will make them desperate to get inside the castle.
That feels somewhat important. Team Bolton has more food than Team Stannis, but they don't have a lot of it.
The Vale has lots of food.
+.+.+
Snow was falling on the godswood too, melting when it touched the ground. Beneath the white-cloaked trees the earth had turned to mud. Tendrils of mist hung in the air like ghostly ribbons. Why did I come here? These are not my gods. This is not my place. The heart tree stood before him, a pale giant with a carved face and leaves like bloody hands.
Make up your mind.
+.+.+
A thin film of ice covered the surface of the pool beneath the weirwood. Theon sank to his knees beside it. "Please," he murmured through his broken teeth, "I never meant …" The words caught in his throat. "Save me," he finally managed. "Give me …" What? Strength? Courage? Mercy? Snow fell around him, pale and silent, keeping its own counsel. The only sound was a faint soft sobbing. Jeyne, he thought. It is her, sobbing in her bridal bed. Who else could it be? Gods do not weep. Or do they?
Earlier we learned Jeyne never leaves her bedchambers.
Sour Alyn had been saying that Ramsay kept his bride naked and chained to a bedpost, but Theon knew that was only talk. There were no chains, at least none that men could see. Just a pair of guards outside the bedchamber, to keep the girl from wandering.
He's not hearing Jeyne. That's absurd.
Bran is the only one who can be heard through trees, so I have to believe he's hearing Bran crying.
+.+.+
There are ghosts in Winterfell, he thought, and I am one of them.
You're a ghost, but are you a hooded man?
+.+.+
Scraps were thrown onto the floor to be gobbled up by Ramsay's girls and the other dogs.
The girls were glad to see him. They knew him by his smell. Red Jeyne loped over to lick at his hand, and Helicent slipped under the table and curled up by his feet, gnawing at a bone. They were good dogs. It was easy to forget that every one was named for a girl that Ramsay had hunted and killed.
The author never forgets, Ramsay.
+.+.+
Two of Roose Bolton's scouts had come straggling back through the Hunter's Gate to report that Lord Stannis's advance had slowed to a crawl. His knights rode destriers, and the big warhorses were foundering in the snow. The small, sure-footed garrons of the hill clans were faring better, the scouts said, but the clansmen dared not press too far ahead or the whole host would come apart. Lord Ramsay commanded Abel to give them a marching song in honor of Stannis trudging through the snows, so the bard took up his lute again, whilst one of his washerwomen coaxed a sword from Sour Alyn and mimed Stannis slashing at the snowflakes.
There's another southron lordling in over his head.
Let's pray those hill clans and their sure-footed garrons press on all the way to the Wall, where they can wait for Sansa to arrive.
And please, for the love of god, pray for the Dothraki horselords. They're going to need it.
+.+.+
"Somewhere beneath us are the crypts where the old Stark kings sit in darkness. My men have not been able to find the way down into them. They have been through all the undercrofts and cellars, even the dungeons, but …"
"The crypts cannot be accessed from the dungeons, my lady."
"Can you show me the way down?"
"There's nothing down there but—"
"—dead Starks? Aye. And all my favorite Starks are dead, as it happens. Do you know the way or not?"
This is a reminder that Lady Dustin knows Theon is House Bolton's plaything, and might not be truthful with her words or intentions.
I personally don't buy this is a show, but you do you.
+.+.+
Only a shell remained, one side open to the elements and filling up with snow. Rubble was strewn all about it: great chunks of shattered masonry, burned beams, broken gargoyles. The falling snow had covered almost all of it, but part of one gargoyle still poked above the drift, its grotesque face snarling sightless at the sky.
This is where they found Bran when he fell.
That partly broken gargoyle poking through the snow is Bran.
Bran could perch for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well. It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way even Robb would never know. - Bran II, AGOT
I would feel a lot better if two gargoyles were poking through the snow.
+.+.+
No one had expected the broken boy to live. The gods could not kill Bran, no more than I could. It was a strange thought, and stranger still to remember that Bran might still be alive.
Bad news, Brynden.
+.+.+
He had always thought of the crypts as cold, and so they seemed in summer, but now as they descended the air grew warmer. Not warm, never warm, but warmer than above. Down there below the earth, it would seem, the chill was constant, unchanging.
The crypts are suddenly feeling a bit more inviting.
+.+.+
"The bride weeps," Lady Dustin said, as they made their way down, step by careful step. "Our little Lady Arya."
[...]
"Roose is not pleased. Tell your bastard that."
[...]
"Dressing her in grey and white serves no good if the girl is left to sob. The Freys may not care, but the northmen … they fear the Dreadfort, but they love the Starks."
Block out all the noise and tinfoil, and read it again.
She knows it's not Arya, and she's concerned Ramsay's going to blow it for Roose.
If she was secretly conspiring against House Bolton, would she talk like this? Would she want Jeyne silenced? Would she actively participate in this ruse?
+.+.+
The Freys may not care, but the northmen … they fear the Dreadfort, but they love the Starks."
"Not you," said Theon.
"Not me," the Lady of Barrowton confessed, "but the rest, yes.
Theon might be half-mad, but he's astute.
+.+.+
Old Whoresbane is only here because the Freys hold the Greatjon captive. And do you imagine the Hornwood men have forgotten the Bastard's last marriage, and how his lady wife was left to starve, chewing her own fingers? What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned's precious little girl.
Looks like I have to move House Hornwood to Team Stark.
+.+.+
No, he thought. She is not of Lord Eddard's blood, her name is Jeyne, she is only a steward's daughter. He did not doubt that Lady Dustin suspected, but even so …
"Lady Arya's sobs do us more harm than all of Lord Stannis's swords and spears. If the Bastard means to remain Lord of Winterfell, he had best teach his wife to laugh."
Do us. Do US more harm.
Totally unconcerned with the girl's well-being, it's only about the danger it poses to Roose.
+.+.+
"My lady," Theon broke in. "Here we are."
"The steps go farther down," observed Lady Dustin.
"There are lower levels. Older. The lowest level is partly collapsed, I hear. I have never been down there." He pushed the door open and led them out into a long vaulted tunnel, where mighty granite pillars marched two by two into blackness.
There's no way that was thrown in there for no reason.
Something is down there.
+.+.+
Shadows slid and shifted. A small light in a great darkness. Theon had never felt comfortable in the crypts. He could feel the stone kings staring down at him with their stone eyes, stone fingers curled around the hilts of rusted longswords. None had any love for ironborn. A familiar sense of dread filled him.
Not so inviting anymore.
+.+.+
"The ones on this side were Kings in the North. Torrhen was the last."
"The King Who Knelt."
"Aye, my lady. After him they were only lords."
How many times are we going to bring up the King Who Knelt? I'm starting to wonder if it will happen again ...
...
...
+.+.+
The stone eyes of the dead men seemed to follow them, and the eyes of their stone direwolves as well. The faces stirred faint memories. A few names came back to him, unbidden, whispered in the ghostly voice of Maester Luwin. King Edrick Snowbeard, who had ruled the north for a hundred years. Brandon the Shipwright, who had sailed beyond the sunset. Theon Stark, the Hungry Wolf. My namesake. Lord Beron Stark, who made common cause with Casterly Rock to war against Dagon Greyjoy, Lord of Pyke, in the days when the Seven Kingdoms were ruled in all but name by the bastard sorcerer men called Bloodraven.
Speaking of things that might happen again, I'm thinking Bran might sail across the Sunset Sea ...
...
...
I will never understand why Theon was named after a Stark. Did George forget Ned didn't name this one?
+.+.+
"That king is missing his sword," Lady Dustin observed.
It was true. Theon did not recall which king it was, but the longsword he should have held was gone. Streaks of rust remained to show where it had been. The sight disquieted him. He had always heard that the iron in the sword kept the spirits of the dead locked within their tombs. If a sword was missing …
There are ghosts in Winterfell. And I am one of them.
Sometimes the ghost is Theon, other times the ghost is Bran.
+.+.+
They walked on. Barbrey Dustin's face seemed to harden with every step. She likes this place no more than I do. Theon heard himself say, "My lady, why do you hate the Starks?"
If you were a Stark loyalist and confirmed Bran and Rickon might still be alive, would you be visibly uncomfortable? Would your face be hardening?
+.+.+
She studied him. "For the same reason you love them."
Theon stumbled. "Love them? I never … I took this castle from them, my lady. I had … had Bran and Rickon put to death, mounted their heads on spikes, I …"
"… rode south with Robb Stark, fought beside him at the Whispering Wood and Riverrun, returned to the Iron Islands as his envoy to treat with your own father. Barrowton sent men with the Young Wolf as well. I gave him as few men as I dared, but I knew that I must needs give him some or risk the wroth of Winterfell. So I had my own eyes and ears in that host. They kept me well informed. I know who you are. I know what you are. Now answer my question. Why do you love the Starks?"
"I …" Theon put a gloved hand against a pillar. "… I wanted to be one of them …"
"And never could. We have more in common than you know, my lord. But come."
That's not a lie. Theon was part of the war efforts, he'll know how many men from Barrowton assisted Robb.
I understand she hates Ramsay, but there's nothing about this woman that indicates she secretly supports the Starks.
+.+.+
"Lord Rickard," Lady Dustin observed, studying the central figure. The statue loomed above them—long-faced, bearded, solemn. He had the same stone eyes as the rest, but his looked sad. "He lacks a sword as well."
It was true. "Someone has been down here stealing swords. Brandon's is gone as well."
"He would hate that." She pulled off her glove and touched his knee, pale flesh against dark stone. "Brandon loved his sword. He loved to hone it. 'I want it sharp enough to shave the hair from a woman's cunt,' he used to say. And how he loved to use it. 'A bloody sword is a beautiful thing,' he told me once."
"You knew him," Theon said.
The lantern light in her eyes made them seem as if they were afire. "Brandon was fostered at Barrowton with old Lord Dustin, the father of the one I'd later wed, but he spent most of his time riding the Rills. He loved to ride. His little sister took after him in that. A pair of centaurs, those two. And my lord father was always pleased to play host to the heir to Winterfell. My father had great ambitions for House Ryswell. He would have served up my maidenhead to any Stark who happened by, but there was no need. Brandon was never shy about taking what he wanted. I am old now, a dried-up thing, too long a widow, but I still remember the look of my maiden's blood on his cock the night he claimed me. I think Brandon liked the sight as well. A bloody sword is a beautiful thing, yes. It hurt, but it was a sweet pain.
We just learned Brandon Stark had no problem dishonoring highborn girls he never planned to marry.
The crannogman saw a maid with laughing purple eyes dance with a white sword, a red snake, and the lord of griffins, and lastly with the quiet wolf . . . but only after the wild wolf spoke to her on behalf of a brother too shy to leave his bench. - Bran II, ASOS
Dot, dot, dot.
+.+.+
"The day I learned that Brandon was to marry Catelyn Tully, though … there was nothing sweet about that pain. He never wanted her, I promise you that. He told me so, on our last night together … but Rickard Stark had great ambitions too. Southron ambitions that would not be served by having his heir marry the daughter of one of his own vassals. Afterward my father nursed some hope of wedding me to Brandon's brother Eddard, but Catelyn Tully got that one as well. I was left with young Lord Dustin, until Ned Stark took him from me."
Unreliable narrator Queen in the North Barbrey Dustin.
Brandon probably did say that, but men say a lot of things to their side pieces.
+.+.+
"Lord Dustin and I had not been married half a year when Robert rose and Ned Stark called his banners. I begged my husband not to go. He had kin he might have sent in his stead. An uncle famed for his prowess with an axe, a great-uncle who had fought in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. But he was a man and full of pride, nothing would serve but that he lead the Barrowton levies himself. I gave him a horse the day he set out, a red stallion with a fiery mane, the pride of my lord father's herds. My lord swore that he would ride him home when the war was done.
"Ned Stark returned the horse to me on his way back home to Winterfell. He told me that my lord had died an honorable death, that his body had been laid to rest beneath the red mountains of Dorne. He brought his sister's bones back north, though, and there she rests … but I promise you, Lord Eddard's bones will never rest beside hers. I mean to feed them to my dogs."
Surprised to learn many side with Dustin on this one.
I think it's unfortunate he didn't bring back her husband's remains, but I'm not sure how realistic that was.
Eight men plus Lyanna were dead in the Red Mountains of Dorne, and a newborn baby was massively complicating things. I think we have to give Ned Stark and Howland Reed the benefit of the doubt here.
+.+.+
Theon did not understand. "His … his bones …?"
Her lips twisted. It was an ugly smile, a smile that reminded him of Ramsay's. "Catelyn Tully dispatched Lord Eddard's bones north before the Red Wedding, but your iron uncle seized Moat Cailin and closed the way. I have been watching ever since. Should those bones ever emerge from the swamps, they will get no farther than Barrowton." She threw one last lingering look at the likeness of Eddard Stark. "We are done here."
There is no way this woman is an ally. None.
Barbrey's dogs will not be eating Ned Stark's bones, but Ramsay's dogs might get to eat a Lord of Winterfell.
+.+.+
The snowstorm was still raging when they emerged from the crypts. Lady Dustin was silent during their ascent, but when they stood beneath the ruins of the First Keep again she shivered and said, "You would do well not to repeat anything I might have said down there. Is that understood?"
It was. "Hold my tongue or lose it."
"Roose has trained you well." She left him there.
Shiver me timbers! Roose didn't train him?
I don't know guys, I think what you see is what you get with this woman.
Final thoughts:
Let's ask ourselves the obvious, how did she know to check the crypts for missing swords?
The simplest explanation is Wyman Manderly, but that doesn't automatically mean she's on Wyman Manderly's team.
Putting that aside, what's more strange is one of the spearwives will ask to see the crypts.
"What do you want?"
"To see these crypts. Where are they, m'lord? Would you show me?" Holly toyed with a strand of her hair, coiling it around her little finger. "Deep and dark, they say. A good place for touching. All the dead kings watching."
"Did Abel send you to me?"
"Might be. Might be I sent myself. But if it's Abel you're wanting, I could bring him. He'll sing m'lord a sweet song." - A Ghost in Winterfell, ADWD
Figure that one out.
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