#then a random kingsguard

[meanqueens]

alicent’s probably gonna be on the edge of her seat at all times wondering who rhaenyra’s gonna appear dressed up as next

[visenyaism]

in my mind lana del rey dating a swampboat tour guide is the same as alicent sleeping with criston . for some reason

maybe if he never left the dornish marches but criston isn’t a random. his whole thing is that he has been promoted out of obscurity into the kingsguard and then as the lord commander and then as the literal hand of the king. he clearly finds this agonizing in and of itself to an extent but also rankles under his treatment by everyone else born into this world as noble who presume that they can eject him back into obscurity because of his dornish ethnicity and lower class status. he’s not some guy he’s the accumulation of every violent reactionary act he’s ever done and their indelible effects on history. shot to death in a field so no one would sing of his death and yet in the white book they called him kingmaker. more importantly rhaenyra didn’t fuck exclusively cops for her entire life in fire and blood for you to call someone else lana del rey

[ai-manre]

The older I get the more I realize that the best way to enjoy any books or any piece of media is to do it far away from its rabid fandom. Be it asoiaf or SnK or ATLA, the fandoms have the absolute worst takes from people entirely divorced from the context, the tone, the literal and structural elements of a story. From things the author makes entirely too obvious. Because turns out most people actually have no reading comprehension and rather than try to learn they instead double down on their bad takes.

For example it's clear that GRRM:

- loves Arya, she's his favorite as he's admitted many times. There's a reason Jon or Bran see someone random and think "oh she reminds me of Arya". Arya is one of the most heroic characters in the books (in league with Dany and Jon) and her heroism will definitely lead to a great payoff

- loves House Targaryen. I think House Targ is his thesis of duty vs love, greatness and tragedy all in one. He's written so much of House Targaryen, and "it's got to end, even if it's with fire and blood". Fire is life, cold is the enemy, the dragons are fire and will bring hope. They have already brought hope to characters who know about them (Tyrion, Maester Aemon, Sam, even Jon).

- Dany is the grand hero, she might "pass under a shadow" but she will reach the light. Any lover of fantasy who is a feminist should seriously celebrate this. How often does a fantasy series like this have the chosen one be a female character?? Dany is the big damn hero!

- GRRM loves Tyrion. He's his favorite character to write. Tyrion might right now be going through his dark turn, but he is someone kind and caring at his core, and it will shine through.

- all the setup to Jon's parentage will matter! Lyanna clutching the winter roses even on her deathbed, Rhaegar dying with Lyanna's name on her lips, the Kingsguard saying "Ser Darry is a good man and true but not of the Kingsguard. The Kingsguard does not flee" matters! Jon's crypt dreams of Stark Kings snarling at him, Moqorro's dream of "dragons true and false" and Rhaegar's "a song of ice and fire" were all setup with a conclusion in mind. Not as redirections.

All the literal, structural story elements matter! GRRM's story isn't hidden in obscure use of "white hot knife" in two random instances across 5 books, his story is right in the text, plain to see and follow.

[crushingthebroken]

the fact ryan condal keeps hitting with the villain bat anyone who has a problem with rhaenyra and daemon's absolutely destructive behavior is beyond me

he turned corlys and rhaenys into simps who don't give a fuck that rhaenyra and daemon conspired to murder their son & daemon executed corlys's brother in the middle of the throne room for standing up for his family's blood right to driftmark to not pass to bastards who were being passed off as trueborn(a literal crime in westeros)

he removed all of rhaenyra's negative traits and made her out to be this tragic righteous angel who everyone should cheer for no matter what

no one cares about the random person daemon murdered to use as laenor's body double but we get 50 scenes of the serving girl aegon SA'd and she's coming back for season 2 - a character who does not exist in the books

vaemond is portrayed as a greedy and grasping fool instead of a man desperate to keep his family's seat in his family - westeros's world means blood is everything

daemon's crimes of murdering his first wife, grooming his niece/wife, being the westerosi equivalent of a neo nazi(except with valyria, a eugenicist oligarchy built on slavery and slaughter) are all brushed under the rug for "YAS MALEWIFE" (do you honestly think he would allow his wife's bastards to inherit ahead of his kids with her? nope)

meanwhile criston cole has his honor violated by rhaenyra who uses him like a glorified dildo - a sacred vow of the kingsguard that means death or castration for any who break it - and calls her a cunt one time and he's the worst man alive

corlys pimped out his 12 year old daughter to viserys and no one cares, but otto does it with alicent and he's somehow the most evil man alive next to criston cole

corlys in 1x10 was fucking hilarious

"rhaenyra was complicit in our son's death. that girl destroys everything she touches."

-minutes later-

"you have the full support of my fleet and house"

condal says the show isn't biased. and i'm the empress of austria.

[daenystheedreamer]

joffmarge demon children

the thing with the kids names is margaery is a) sane and self-actualised and b) has a rabid guard dog who will kill that blonde bitch if he so much as pokes her. so if joffrey goes "i want to name our three demon children maegor rhaenyra and aerion" margaery can say no. and really cersei wouldn't even fight her on that even though she fights her on everything. she would convince herself it was her idea all along. so the kids do have to have normal names. theyre definitely having a set of insane twins tho. anyway guys under the cut

eldest child and daughter PRINCESS CERYSE BARATHEON. hightower targ-adjacent looks from alerie which i see as ash-blonde hair blue eyes. mini cersei and cersei's fave except after she turned 12 cersei started hating her.

eldest son PRINCE ROBERT BARATHEON. i think it would be funny if he had black hair and blue eyes because olenna stockpiled renly semen or found some random who looked baratheon enough. i want this to happen because it would drive cersei insane. because yes it makes it look like the robert genes just skipped a generation and joff IS legit but SHE knows thats not fucking true. otherwise brown hair brown eyes with a strong build. cersei hates this boy beyond measure. he hates her back def a little misogynist but obsessed with mommy marge

PRINCESS TYA BARATHEON dirty blonde hair green eyes. they were sure it would be a son and cersei marge were fighting over naming him after tywin or loras while joff was like maegor >:) anyway turns out to be a girl and cersei is like oh of course we should name her after ms loras and marge is like oh no we SHOULD honour lord tywin. this is also me referencing tya of tya and gowen fame. after cersei drops ceryse as favourite girlgrandchild she picks tya but its just to torment ceryse. tya hates ceryse because when ceryse was in her mean girl era she would bully tya.

PRINCE LORENT and PRINCESS ALICENT BARATHEON twinsies :3 brown hair brown eyes or brown hair green eyes. cersei sees some kind of a reflection in alicent (sad scared insecure little girl) or maybe its more like she sees a trembling mouse and wants to stomp on it. lorent is mentored by loras and the rest of the evil kingsguard so he's not normal.

PRINCE LYONEL BARATHEON, brown haired and brown eyed. gets sent off to myrcella and trystane in dorne and ends up astoundingly normal. meets his dad after not seeing him for eight years and is like man we should kill this guy. meets all his siblings and is like wow you are all insane

PRINCESS JOANNA BARATHEON fourth and final kid, brown haired and brown eyed. cersei thinks a brunette named for her mother is the greatest insult margaery could ever make. dies young maybe in a freak accident maybe due to the red keep's general evil and cersei WILL be making a scene at the funeral and tormenting marge over it. might be what makes marge snap and kill her. alternatively PRINCE CERION BARATHEON and he's cersei's fave in the style of joffrey and when he dies she goes apoplectic. marge thinks they'll bond over it but cersei in fact gets worse

anyway these are some guys i made up for them. is seven too many... i like it for the faith allusion but would marge bother on more pregnancies once she's pumped out a son and heir. if so pick and choose which ones are fun.

[ghost-bxrd]

Dick is definitely the kind of Dragon Rider to randomly take common-folk kids for a ride on Nightwing, lol.

Sees random kid in the crowd looking at Nightwing in awe, goes "Hey, wanna come for a ride?"

Plus, NW is good at hovering in the air, so her rider has the habit of jumping off mid-air on to buildings or trees to land in some crowd a dragon can't land in, leaving NW basically parked in air watching with amusement

(Bruce and the Kingsguard Knights have almost gotten multiple heart attacks watching the crown prince just freaking leap off a dragon mid-air)

Dick would still have to be very careful of NW‘s moods because a dragon taking random people on rides (even with the rider present) is a big risk! Although with them bonded, Dick‘s fondness of children would definitely help keep Nightwing calm ✨

Also Dick, leaping off a dragon mid air while the guards are scrambling and having several strokes 😭😭😭

They have a system in place for who will have to tell Bruce when it all inevitably goes wrong one day xD (the rookie‘s always burdened with the job)

[alicent-archive]

crazy how Rhaenyra picking Criston for the Kingsguard one random afternoon partly to spite Otto has LEAD to Otto enduring every horror BECAUSE of Criston twenty years later.

[thephantomcasebook]

What’s the logic for HotD pretending that Alicent being in a relationship with Criston is the height of scandal. She’s the Queen Mother as far as Westeros is concerned she can retire. She did her job- bore several heirs, raised them, the heir now King is married with an heir of his own. If Alicent wants to do a soft retirement attended to by her long time bodyguard well that’s her business.

Because most people don't know history or understand aristocratic and noble traditions, spoken and unspoken, that exist not only in Westros but in actual real life.

When it comes to arrange marriages in aristocratic settings, it is genuinely understood by both participants that there is an unspoken contract that states that you're loyal to your spouse in public, that you are loyal to your family, and that you will do your duty to your family and your line of succession.

However, once that duty is discharged and or achieved that you are free to pursue other ends and relationships, as long as you follow the rules of the societal conventions.

And no, that is not just for men, it is for both men and women - so there is no "muh feminism!" in these arrangements.

Once a noblewoman gives birth to an heir, a spare, and a daughter of which to use to bargain for more connections to other noble houses, the wife is now free to pursue romance and dalliance's with other men, as long as she sticks to the unspoken social arrangements.

That means not making a spectacle of the Romance in public, being discreet in the affair as to not embarrass one's spouse, and to keep up the appearance of fidelity of the marriage, and you will never - EVER - takes sides against your spouse in favor of your lover.

This was and is still so common among the upper-classes that it is genuinely and widely accepted that the younger children of a Noble House or Aristocratic family are illegitimate children of random affairs had by the Lady of the House. It is not uncommon for aristocratic Great Ladies to have two or three children in the beginning of their marriage and then later in life - Late 30's to Mid 40's - to have more children, with the understanding that these children are not her husbands.

This is such an established rule in European Aristocratic Societies - Especially British High Society - that it is a cataclysmic social faux pas, black listing offense, to point out or comment on the likeness of younger children to their elder siblings or - if you're really fucking ignorant - their father.

With all this said, no one, and I mean no one, would blink in King's Landing or in any court in Westros, that Alicent and Criston are having an affair. The existence of Aegon, Aemond, and Helaena gives Alicent a free pass in the eyes of the nobility to pursue romance and intimacy with Criston. People would not at all be shocked by it, in fact, they'd probably expect it. And if Daeron is not Viserys son, that still wouldn't shock anyone at all. They simply just wouldn't acknowledge it at all. People don't expect Kingsguard to keep their vows and they certainly don't expect people in arranged marriages to stay faithful.

The issue with Rhaeynra is that she is not following the rules of society ... at all. She immediately jumped to having affairs and birthing bastards without doing her duty of producing legitimate heirs to both the Iron Thrones and to House Velaryon first. The reason nobody cares about illegitimate younger children is because they don't inherit anything, their presence doesn't usurp what is rightly the legacy of the Lord of the land or master of the estate. Having bastards and letting them steal the inheritance of the noble family you're supposed to be serving through contract with society and God(s) is spitting on the fabric and social contract of which everyone plays their part in.

Rhaenyra thinks that just because they're her children, that it gives her the right to break conventions that keep their society glued together. And we see at the end of the war just what happens when her direct actions breaks the fabric of that society and the fate that befalls her and Joffery.

The Alicent and Criston manufactured drama is based on the false assumption that them hooking up is a moral sin in the eyes of everyone, when, in reality, no one would care but Alicent and Criston from the torment of their own conscious.

Also that somehow Aegon, Helaena, and Aemond would somehow be shocked or angered by this is fucking laughable. Criston Cole is the closest thing to a father that Alicent's children have ever had. Criston and Alicent have been inseparable for eighteen years. The show already hinted in 1x09 that Aemond already knows about Alicent and Criston. All the Green kids probably suspect it if they don't outright know about how their mother feels about their pseudo-father.

In the end, it's a failure of the writers to understand the social rules of high society in medieval era Europe and to convey that to a really dumb normie audience that just assume that what Alicent and Criston are doing is evil and wrong, when - in reality - no one would blink at all at it.

Cause, unlike Rhaenyra, Alicent already did her duty to Viserys and House Targaryen.

[la-pheacienne]

Continuing my post about Jaime and Rhaegar’s respective roles in the sack of KL, let’s talk about Jaime and Rhaegar’s last conversation which I didn’t mention in that post and it deserves its own analysis. I find it extremely funny how both (some) Lannister stans and (some) Targ stans seem to think that the last convo between Rhaegar and Jaime was actually like this :

"Jaime, a sack is about to happen very soon. Elia and my kids are in a high risk of getting brutally murdered inside the very capital by the orders of your father who has ghosted us for some time but is deep down an enemy planning all of this in secret. Meanwhile, my father is planning to blow up the entire city any minute now because reasons. I’m leaving you here, alone, to take care of all this and keep all these people, my wife, two kids, father and the people of the city, safe from harm. If you fail to do any of that at any point, you’re incompetent, a traitor and a coward. Now I have to leave to do my thing with the others, don’t forget your duty and your vows, bye".

While it was actually like this :

"Jaime, there’s a war, we are in a pretty tight position and I gotta go to battle taking some men with me. Unfortunately my father wants to keep you close because he believes Tywin will not turn against him this way, and he’s kind of insane so there is nothing we can do about it without risking an even bigger outburst. Give me some time to get out of this mess, and then I’ll come back and we’ll fix this. All this will be over soon, bye".

So the first reading of Jaime and Rhaegar’s last convo completely misses the mark in many ways.

Some Lannister stans are screaming crying throwing up that Rhaegar left a literal cHiLD with all tHiS rEsPoNSIbILIty he doesn’t give a FUCK about anyone how dare he what kind of tHOUGhT PrOCesS is that !!!! Some Targ stans say that Rhaegar gave specific orders to Jaime to protect his father, wife, kids and city against multiple and opposite threats and thus honor his vows, and Jaime failing to do that means he is basically a traitor and a coward. And incompetent.

None of this is correct, because this isn’t what Rhaegar asked him to do, at all. Rhaegar did not know, could not know, could not possibly conceive or imagine or suspect that a sack was about to happen at the orders of Tywin no less and that his family was in immediate danger in.the.very.capital. Nobody.knew. That is why this sack is so horrifying. Also he may have been well aware that his father was insane but not to the point that he could expect him to literally want to blow up his own city. That is a whole other level of insanity he very legitimately didn’t expect. Thirdly, Rhaegar had no power to take Jaime or his family away at this point (« I dare not » is not an epheumism. He literally dares not. We’re talking about Aerys here).

All he asked Jaime to do is wait for Rhaegar to come back and in the meantime try to keep his father at bay. That.is.literally.it. Rhaegar said : « Give me some time, I’ll come back and fix this » And Jaime did wait and he did hope that Rhaegar would come back, but Rhaegar didn’t come back not because he decided to go on vacation with his new chick but because he got killed. Nothing went according to plan, and Jaime had to take matters in his own hands.

So :

Rhaegar did not leave """""all that responsibility""""" to a """"literal child"""".  He left his father the king with the one member of the Kingsguard the king specifically wanted with him, and he told that member of the Kingsguard to literally, wait it out and be a KG. Apart from the fact that Rhaegar couldn’t take Jaime away because Aerys wanted him there, Jaime was not a random child, he was a member of the KG. Him staying with Aerys is technically what he was supposed to do as a member of the KG anyway, there is nothing abnormal or particularly stupid or outrageous or naive in this """"thought process"""", despite Jaime’s age. That order seemed both inevitable (it was Aerys’ order) and reasonable (Jaime was a KINGSguard after all), at the time.

Likewise, Rhaegar did not reasonably expect Jaime to go all Superman on both his father and Tywin’s men and save like the entire population of KL including his own family, all by himself. Again, what he actually told Jaime to do was literally wait for him to come back and try to keep his father at bay. He hoped Jaime’s presence would satiate his father until he comes back. That’s all. He did not know that Aerys would want to blow up KL, he did not know what Jaime would be forced to do and he did not expect the sack and the fact that his family would be murdered in the capital. He didn’t entrust Jaime with all these things simply because he wasn’t expecting these things. All these things were definitely not part of """the job""" Rhaegar gave him. Rhaegar’s GHOST saying to Jaime in his dreams "I left my wife and children in your hands" is manifesting Jaime’s guilt for not being able to save the family. It is a ghost in Jaime’s dream. This doesn’t mean that Rhaegar literally expected Jaime to prevent his father from blowing up the city and simultaneously protect his family from an entirely different threat that wasn’t even remotely a possibility then. Jaime failing to do all of the above by himself doesn’t make him a traitor, an incompetent loser or a coward.

The distortion of their actual convo led the entire fandom to engage in a strawman argument ad nauseam. Lannister stans are attacking Rhaegar for leaving "all this responsibility" to Jaime and Targ stans are attacking Jaime for failing to honor this responsibility, while "all this responsibility" was never part of their actual conversation to begin with because none them had the slightest idea of what was about to happen in the first place.

It is such a pity because this last convo between these two men is so tragic and haunting and beautiful, Jaime (grrm) describes his last visual memory of Rhaegar in an unusually poetic manner, and the fact that deep down he is still waiting and hoping for Rhaegar to come back makes me insane. « The day had been windy when he said farewell to Rhaegar, in the yard of the Red Keep. The prince had donned his night-black armor, with the three-headed dragon picked out in rubies on his breastplate ». « So the Prince of Dragonstone mounted up and donned his tall black helm, and rode forth to his doom ». « It is not Aerys I rue, it is Robert ». « I almost mistook you for Aegon the Conqueror ». « How much can a crown be worth when a crow can feast on a king? ». And instead of focusing on that and the symbolism of it all and that fact that it’s literally foreshadowing Dany’s or Jon’s « return » and their meeting with Jaime (Rhaegar will come back in the end in some form or another, all hope is not lost) we’re reiterating bad takes about a supposed conflict between them ad infinitum. It is boring, reductive and uninspired.

Be serious, read the text and stop spreading misinformation about either side. This is not a football game. We all love a fandom fight occasionally but it is important to actually engage with the themes of the story from time to time.

[visenyaism]

In your mind Who was the father of Gaels stillborn child? A random Singer? A Kingsguard? One Of her brothers? Jaehaerys himself?

if i wanted to be messy i could say well isn’t it kind of weird daemon who was gael’s same age did get unceremoniously and unwillingly married off far far away to the vale right around that time as arranged by queen alysanne gael’s codependent mother herself.

but really i don’t think it matters the whole point to me if there even is a point beyond her single paragraph of flavor text is that she is so isolated and no one knows her at all for her whole life that even the circumstances surrounding her decision to end it are hidden and obscured until both of her parents die years later.

[balls-heheh]

This scene is good but it is stupid

I love the character dynamic and all but by Jesus the entire plan of it all. Now the whole reason Rhaenyra says she must deliver the message personally (queer) is because she wants Alicent to believe her. And the real reason the writers want Alicent and Rhaenyra to talk is for Rhaenyra and Alicent to realize that Alicent made a stupid mistake for making Aegon king.

However, the way they go about making this scene happen is stupid. Because Rhaenyra has little to gain and everything to lose, and her way of just flat out walking in public all the way up to the Sept is a risky move she can’t afford. What if Alicent agrees with her and says that she does want peace but then locks her up to stop the future war? What if she doesn’t meet Alicent but rather a Kingsguard who would surely recognize her? There’s just too many things that could go wrong.

Now I’m not against characters doing stupid shit so long as there are consequences for it. I hope something does happen to Rhaenyra because of this (not out of malice towards the character but out of hope that the writers aren’t just throwing random bullshit they think the audience would like).

Was this scene interesting? Yes. And it was so satisfying to see both their reactions of Alicent’s dumbassery. But the set up was just a quick scene and then boom, she’s in Kingslanding dressed as Alicent’s wet dream.

There are multiple ways they could’ve had this realization/exchange between characters. But they chose the gayest one and it was the end of pride month so.

Good for you ya gay bitches. But fucking hell.

[blackbyrenflowers]

The only asoiaf headcanon I have is that kingsguard Dunk and King Egg have this inside joke where Dunk would jokingly order Aegon to fetch his sword or do other squire things, and they'd laugh about it while some random noble who doesn't know Egg was his squire has a heart attack in the background over a lowborn knight ordering the king around.

[syndrossi]

Do you think you'll ever Jon and Rhaegar have a talk with Arryk and Erryk about twin stuff? Like maybe their fighting again and one (or maybe both) of them ends up talking to one of the Cargyll twins. I know this is totally random, but the latest chapter remineded me that there are two sets of twins in the castle. Alse Shadow is such a good name for Jon's hatchling!

Aw, that's a sweet idea. Or even Jon and/or Rhaegar being like "is this normal for twins?" about various things, because they're new to this! There's a whole category of "is it dragon bond, twin bond/sense, or weird magic stuff" when it comes to things that they can do (or things that happen to them).

We'll see if Arryk and Erryk are interested in the Princesguard. It's less prestigious than the Kingsguard for obvious reasons, but also generally more interesting, and the twins are fun company. (Both sets.)

[daenystheedreamer]

Top 5 extremely minor characters?🤔

oooo i gotta go with wenda the white fawn wylla manderly willow heddle of course. but wylla and willow DO have speaking roles thats not minor enough. i will be listing these in order of least to most minor

5. DANELLE LOTHSTON ms bathory and dragonseed tease... mentioned a couple times in relation to harrenhal and mentioned in d&e. this makes her a main character in my eyes compared to some of the minor minor minor characters of planetos

4. WENDA THE WHITE FAWN of the kingswood brotherhood actually mentioned in the main series more than once. branding merrett frey on the ass lmfao QUEEN

3. POXY JEYNE POORE mx joan of arc of westeros yasss. maegor executing her for being a witch when his mother is visenya and his wife is tyanna. lmfao. not mentioned in the main series but DOES get extensive (a scene.) coverage in f&b.

2. PRINCESS DAERYSSA only ever mentioned by sansa in AGOT and possibly intended to be a targ until grrm figured out his timeline. early instalment weirdness. serwyn of the mirror shield got retconned/mythologised into a kingsguard member and mentioned in twoiaf and by several characters in asoiaf but daeryssa never gets mentioned anywhere again. people's princess baby I remember you

finally URSULA UPCLIFF random coming of the andals character only mentioned in twoiaf not important to anything at all. witch who said she was wed to the merling king and fought on the side of the first men. won over by robar royce's "honeyed tongue" which may be about him being charismatic or maybe he got down on his damn knees and ate her pussy out like she deserved. had her head ripped off by torgold tollett (omg dolorous edd tease!!!) and he had to jump on her blood red horse to do it. and her name is probably either a reference to ursula littlemermaid (she's from house upcliffe which has the sea as their sigil and they're from WITCH ISLE.) or ursula k le guin either of which is iconic

[a-song-of-art-and-fire]

Ser Arys Oakheart, The Queenmaker

"I will not be remembered as Ser Arys the Unworthy. I will not soil my cloak."

Cut to Always Sunny title card: Ser Arys soils his cloak. My second take on the white knight, this one more focused on his time in Dorne. As I've said before, I think I'm in the minority for enjoying Arys' slightly random one chapter - I've always viewed the core idea of ASOIAF as a fantasy story told by the people usually pushed to the margins - eg instead of Robb Stark, avenging warrior hero, we get the story of his mother balancing worry and pride. I view Arys' chapter as the most literal take on this - we get "boring white guy in scary exotic orientalist locale", then he gets killed off and we see the much more complex story from the perspective of characters he wrote off as stereotypes. Of course the counterpoint to this gambit is that it puts a lot of pressure on you to not lean into any orientalism in the rest of the story which... well.

The mini is a Golden Company one, I love it for the mix of armour and fabrics. Kingsguard white, white, and more white is always a challenge to get looking good, but I'm happy with this one. A little bit of red Dornish sand on his cloak to tie him in to the setting.