#tbc this is how HE sees it. i think saera and her other kids would see it different.

[atopvisenyashill]

I know the ep just aired but as a fellow Saera stan, do you have any headcanons on her relationship with Hugh? We got breadcrumbs from his lines about how he was told he was “just as good as her brother’s boys” but I’m always interested to see how other fans interpret these breadcrumbs

YES. I fully expect some of this to get Joss-ed it's fine.

Okay first of all, I have always loved the idea that Saera named all her kids after her, and so I have now added the headcanon that Hugh changed his name when he immigrated to Westeros for like Saergar to Hugh. We know I like funny stuff, but I suppose I’ve also always felt like Saera just loses it once she’s in Essos. She spent a year being subjected to some sort of religious abuse, after being forced to watch her father murder her boyfriend for having pre marital sex with her, and then becomes a sex worker herself (and that's not even getting into the sexual abuse she definitely experienced at Jaehaerys hands). For comparison, I kind of imagine the Sailor’s Wife, who is clearly working through some shit with her ritual, but crueler and sharper. She’s using her job as a sex worker to work through her own sexual trauma, and I bet some of it is not healthy or healing at all, it’s just retraumatizing herself. I think probably she became slightly more balanced when moved to Volantis and owned her own brothel, or at least, I hope she became slightly more balanced. I’ve always imagined that she very much parentifies every single one of her children, acting more like a crazy party loving sister than a mother, but most of them don’t mind that she does this because they have picked up on the fact she went through something god awful back home. Also, because she makes a lot of money for herself, I do imagine the fact that their mom is just a crazy rich lady is easier to swallow (being comfortable money wise always makes these things easier to swallow).

I like the idea that Hugh left because he wanted an identity that wasn't tied to the Targaryens and specifically to his mother's clearly insane mental state. He’s one of the handful of Saerlings that was born in Lys, so things were still shaky, they didn’t have their own place, they were living in the brothel, they would play in the tavern area while she took clients, and it bothered him that this was how they lived. So he sheds the name she gave him for one more Andal sounding, he comes to King’s Landing with a bit of money, an apprenticeship lined up, and a story about how his parents were simple Lyseni merchants who died before he could make any lasting memories of them.

I think he always felt very different from the rest of the his siblings. I like to imagine he is one of the oldest, at least the oldest boy, and very much felt a fatherly sort of responsibility towards his mother. I think he resented the fact that not only did none of his siblings share his worry over her increasingly deranged mental state, they seemed to think that owning her own brothel would work better for her, would help her. He thought she should completely leave sex work and retire somewhere simple, give up what he feels is a ~life of sin. It's not that he thinks his mother is sinful, it's that he thinks she's sick and being preyed upon by others. While everyone else was fascinated with her drunken rants about Westeros, Hugh was always horrified. Horrified at the stories she told of parents who did not take care of her, of daughters sold off to husbands at too young an age, of wars fought atop terrifying beasts in the sky. He wanted to save her, his fallen Madonna of a Mother, from the ghosts that haunted her.

When she moved the family to Volantis, he finally left. He couldn't take watching her self destruct anymore. It's not until his own little girl is sick and starving to death that he remembers how much being wealthy is a boon in times of strife. And suddenly his mother's stories of dragons aren't so terrifying...what if he's strong enough to protect Kat on his own? If he goes in with his eyes wide open to the kinds of people the Targaryens are...what if he can beat the demons that consumed his mother?