tell-them-the-north-remembers

[tell-them-the-north-remembers]

Bonus:

1.09 / 2.31 (55) / 2.35 (59) / 2.37 (61)

As much Mahidevran is tied to Allah right from the get-go, it's also fascinating how she embraces the idea of a heaven. It's heaven she calls her first pivotal, instantly groundbreaking encounter of the person she craves for, of that savior of hers at last. It's heaven she calls that clear, linear path leading to him that has graciously been opened for her, as both the seers and Allah himself have said their word, fate has already been decided in advance and Mahidevran is fluttered to follow along. It's heaven she calls falling in love with Süleiman, fully giving herself in to him like he has given himself in to her. It's heaven she calls the biggest epiphany of her life, one related to falling in love (that kind of epiphany is shared by other characters such as Süleiman, Ibrahim and Hatice), but also related to the son, to "the fruit of that love" (E61) thereafter, as at the time of the memory Süleiman had meant everything to Mahidevran (Mustafa is merely a portion of that meaning, the next stride in SS and Mahi's joint life), but the memory is recounted by her (and to us) right when Mustafa's significance in it has grown and is at the brink of becoming even bigger than SS's, in spite of Mahi's view on the Süleiman from the past still persisting as strongly as it was borne way back when.

Because Mahidevran goes through several "rebirths" in her life. Even at her earliest stage that's revealed to us, we see her as someone who has already reinvented herself by adopting the persona (she's already been named "Mahidevran"), behavior and beliefs attributed to a concubine who's too familiar with the ways of the harem she's thrust into. It's like she's been there since forever, like she's had her transition to her present self long complete, but it's during these moments where she (symbolically) says her last, most final goodbye to her past, we're thrown straight into yet another one of her "rebirths". The very idea of "heaven" predisposes a "life after death" by default, but the white horse bringing one to heaven's door especially is a concept for an afterlife in the show as well, it is what we literally see with Ayşe Hafsa on the verge of her own death in E61. Except Süleiman is riding the white horse (SS's presence is also felt during Hafsa's "ascension" through his monologue underscoring it, but he is calling out to her to not go without him instead) and brings Mahidevran heaven itself. The golden path of the castle leads to heaven's door. An apparent incompleteness seeps through just a bit in how Mahi frames her desire for Süleiman and it isn't filled until she's met him. She's Mahidevran now, and she's been her for who knows how long, but it's only with Süleiman she can become Mahidevran 'Gülbahar', claim that stable, full-fledged identity for herself. He is the missing piece. Yet she's is still alive. In spite of the hardships she had likely gone through and buried deep, she's still alive and she experiences a seemingly afterlife bliss, peace, absolute fulfillment while living (thus the previous "death" isn't really acknowledged or there; perhaps what was before, unnamed, has hurt - however, she persisted, that's what matters, doesn't it? but she's left without purpose or guidance and she has to get them, quick, and when she does get them, it's too good to even come from this life, from this world that has so far just been less than that; it's how she can not only live, but keep living: while getting something out of a life beyond, adding to her current life and completing it). So what else could she do instead of grasping onto everything that fulfillment grants her with all she has and is?

But, as if pointing to an impossibility to entirely reach and possess something from beyond life itself while still living, it's namely SS, the symbol of heaven himself, who 'killed' Mahidevran. And this time the "death" is too striking, too damning for Mahidevran to not acknowledge, two times in fact. Because it wasn't only the peace, security, piece of family that Süleiman took away, he also took away the only means she could live, the only means she could be (another reason why the supposed Edirne exile in E45 without Mustafa was that devastating; she would face another, complete cutoff from who she is while still grappling with the first). And this can't help but double the pain, the cause of which she's already able to verbalize: "Because of one single mistake... Because of a mistake I made because of love..." (referring to the poison), and that's already become specific: "He made me slave of that snake called Hürrem." (and she's not even talking overall here, I think this is a callback to SS having freed Hürrem but refusing to free Mahi in E45 - not to mention how she talks about her 'mistake' right before is also paralleling her speech to Valide in E45 - and Mahi apologizing to SS in E48.) Hence with the direct symbolic "death" now comes a direct symbolic 'rebirth', per her E46 line and the way she singles Mustafa out here, having started to put him in the place SS used to hold: "Only you exist in my heart." (vs. "I ripped off your father, my love for him out of my heart"). Now he is Mahi's heaven now... or is he?

When she's put in a position to dictate fates for a change, Mahidevran brings up the concept of a heaven ("paradise") yet again. Now, what she says while bringing it up is definitely also a standard way to demand submission from the concubines (it's almost mirrored by Gülşah as well as other harem servants saying similar stuff, along with Ayşe Hafsa herself), as well as it indicates her partial fondness for tradition as a whole (a parallel to Ayşe Hafsa again, down to Mahi starting that whole E59 speech with the words Hafsa used to announce Gülşah becoming the harem treasurer: "Everyone should know that... from now on...", and a contrast with Gülşah), but her lines are personalized through her both utilizing tradition as a barrier to prevent something like Hürrem from happening again (and using it at its full power to get back to her at last - when she moves on to speaking about what would happen if one doesn't follow the rules just when she sees Hürrem looking from above, it's like a warning not just to the concubines, but also to Hürrem herself - one she all but immediately follows through on by punishing Gül and attempting to marry Hü's cariyes off) and to ensure the concubines that it's only through tradition that they'll succeed under her reign, like she succeeded once. Like the harem was a heaven for her too once, it will be a heaven for them if they only do what's expected. It's their turn for bliss in that cycle Mahidevran already got her fair share of happiness and misery from. And it's not that she doesn't have another someone as a source of happiness now, it's not like Mustafa isn't her 'greatest treasure' that she doesn't value endlessly, but she's let go from that idealistic lens of her original heaven after its symbolic death, she's realized that life and fate are everchanging, so she doesn't attempt to wield it back, she can't, no matter how much she misses it. It's left solely for others to reach now and for her to "open the path" for them to do it (both as a ruler of SS's and Mustafa's harems and as Mustafa's possible future Valide), which solidifies her S02 "rebirth" as a whole. What she starts pointing towards with the reminder of her family from that point on is justice/retribution (which may even leave 'what's left of the heaven' behind at its worst - Mahi not wanting to come to Manisa with Mustafa, what's left to "overcome" during these last episodes) and peace in general (a fragment of the heaven, but one that demands work and patience as well and isn't just given to her so suddenly, one that directly aligns one's own wishes with those of the outside force). Both for her closest and herself. {What further signals Mahidevran's solidified "rebirth" is her "If you want to live together in peace", which turns out to parallel Efsun's own wish to make everyone live in peace and prosperity in E55. Efsun is the one character mirroring Mahi's E55 journey instead of contrasting it: looking up to a future of Mustafa becoming the sultan and her own advantageous part in it after moments of sadness, she even has the concubines nudging her to it all just like Valide was the one who reminded Mahi to stay strong for Mustafa. Except while Efsun truly meant it then (and the rest of her more ambitious wants come right over the surface and are immediately nipped in the bud), Mahi wanted anything but due to what had lingered for years. It's what she wants now though, as she seemingly finally gets what she dreamed of, and she would only continue wanting it and striving to assure it more and more, for it would emerge as a bigger, more lingering wish than the one to dominate through material possessions and abundance (a wish Efsun herself also expressed in E55 - wanting to move to a large chamber, have a bigger crown than Hürrem Sultan's, etc).}

[There is also the overall concept of "Süleiman's heaven" as he, as the decider of everyone's fates, is the one who chooses when to give it and when to take it away. "Heaven" here is both love and favor for each person that seeks it and it is devastating when they're denied it (i.e. Mustafa remarks several times about him "being kicked out of his majesty's heaven"), but it's also the strength they get from said love and favor, as well as happiness (this is why I included Mahi's E09 line here, even though she doesn't say "hEAven", but "hAven" as in "refuge", even though I genuinely thought she said "heaven" at first, ngl). It means so much to them as this is what they're first assigned value for, this is what allows them to keep on at first and for so long, but yet, that "heaven" can't help but be smashed to peaces regardless due to the impermanence and even shakiness of what SS offers (but heaven should be permanent, shouldn't it?) and go beyond Süleiman, in an attempt for that seeming gaping hole left by him to be filled. Thus everyone searches for ways to fill it. For example, Barbarossa tells Mustafa to "create his own heaven" in E105 and then both of them proclaim to go to their own "heavens": Mustafa to Amasya and Barbarossa to the seas. Hence forging a family of your own (and keeping them together) and a place of your own is a part of heaven (and it's something that even Süleiman also has and wants others to aim for - telling Ibrahim in E04 to "create his own heaven" as well - but of course, as far as he approves of it, as it's close enough to his orbit, as he's a part of it in some way), it's an ideal everyone seeks to an extent and it also overlaps with Mahidevran's whole deal, but Mahi is once again the one to let go of it first, no matter how long it took. She was symbolically the first to fall from "Süleiman's heaven", the first to realize that it can't be replicated in any way (it simply isn't the same) and the first to more or less relinquish the whole idea of a heaven while living in the first place.]

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littlefinger was able to get away w having a bastard daughter who looks suspiciously like catelyn stark bc all the vale lords noticed but immediately went oh petyr got the prostitute/peasant girl he could find who most closely resembled catelyn tully pregnant right around the time she married ned stark. extremely likely thing for petyr to do

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Stannis: Why did my brothers, The Party Kings, inspire so much love and loyalty while I, Guy Who Let’s A Witch Set People on Fire-

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balons ship is called great kraken bc hes a self-aggrandising greyjoy traditionalist eurons ship is called silence bc hes a scary guy who cuts out his crews tongues aerons ship is called golden storm bc of his incredible pissing ability victarions ship is called iron victory bc um hes ironborn his name is victarion and hes not particularly creative

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asoiaf tiktok has gone too far i draw the line at confidently giving incorrect etymologies for greyjoy names. 1. balon is obviously named after historical greyjoy king balon v wayyyy preconquest the greyjoys arent targaryen fanboys theyre ‘the way house greyjoy used to be’ fanboys they arent sucking off baelon. 2. even if he was named after baelon this spelling still wouldnt be stupid. houses that do seem to name their kids after targaryens often do exactly this and use a variant (alicent born while alysanne was queen, arys born while aerys was king) + the main house that uses unedited valyrian names is the freys (aegon and rhaegar frey) which people make fun of them for thats considered new-money gauche

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I love it when modern adaptations of old books opt to be loyal to the book's cultural context instead of the specific details of the characters/settings. Like if one character written in a specific era is depicted as being annoyingly obsessed with pocket watches, specifically as a way of illustrating that this man is a fashion-obsessed airheaded fop, it wouldn't make sense in the same way in the 21st century, pocket watches would be an extremely odd and interesting hobby for a modern young man, so it doesn't have the same context. Make that mf a sneakerhead.

Or a specific scene that's constantly used as an example for arguments of "I don't like [the book heroine] because she hates horses", when originally the point of the scene was that all this talk about horse breeds and some specific stud's ankle angles is also going over her head, and it's more of a "send help, car guys won't stop talking about cars" situation.

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so, one aspect of catelyn which i think is underrated (certainly the biggest adaptation loss which nobody talks about) is her, let's say superstitiousness, or better yet, let's call it genre-savviness, being one of the few adult characters open to magic and the supernatural in this fantasy world. we first meet her in the godswood, home of gods which are not truly hers, yet she is still very aware of their power. when she and ned talk of the deserter he killed, he hopes he won't have to go with the nw to deal with mance rayder, but she has even more fear of that idea bc there are worse things beyond the wall than just wildlings. ned scoffs and says she's been listening to old nan too much, but she's right. we already know from the prologue that she's right! and here she is, understanding the genre of their world better than her husband, who was actually born and spent his earliest years in this northern land of deep magic, listening to old nan's stories. same with the direwolves, where she was uncomfortable with them at first, but later believed in them as guardians from the old gods even after robb had lost his own faith. and once again, we know she's right even if she doesn't know the evidence to back up her instincts, bc summer and shaggydog did not fail bran and rickon and robb was almost certainly a warg like his brothers. (perhaps making it more fitting that she's the one brought back as a fantasy vengeance monster, not ned and robb, the most unbelieving dead starks.) and in her 2nd agot chapter, everyone focuses on her ambition in wanting ned to agree to the hand job (pun intended) and sansa's betrothal, and while she does recognize the value of their daughter being a future queen more than ned does, that's only her stated argument bc she thinks it's rational enough for ned to listen to. (if ambitious matchmaking were as important to her as to her father she never would have made those frey betrothals fandom loves to blame her for.) in her own head there's a deeper urge driving her. she keeps thinking of the dead direwolf with antlers in its throat, an omen which filled her with dread from the first she heard of it, before robert's arrival, and thinking of it again is what makes her desperate to convince ned not to refuse robert. she had to make him see. and really, she's not wrong, as jon snow would say. the dead direwolf was an omen of ned and robert getting each other killed. it's just one of those misread portents, with no way of knowing the danger to ned was in his loyalty to robert, not conflict with him. BUT the next time she's dealing with baratheons, she knows exactly what she's talking about. it's catelyn, not brienne, who sees the shadow slaying renly, and explains that it was stannis who did that through some dark magic. with no way of knowing how it was achieved and no prior expectation that such a thing were ever possible, she realizes with no hestitation that stannis was guilty and that his red witch was capable of pulling this off somehow. really, the only instinct of the supernatural she's wholly wrong about is her insistence that varys gathered his knowledge through some dark enchantment. however, though that might offend varys, given his own personal experience with a sorcerer, i'd say it's a reasonable assumption without knowing the dude had children moving through walls everywhere like oversized rodents. and imo it just shows she had a healthy respect and awe for varys's power which most other characters lack.

oh, oh, and let's not forget that she also believed in the curse of harrenhal, from her own childhood and the stories old nan told her kids. "and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and cursed. 'I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of that keep,' Catelyn admitted." sure, that wasn't enough to save robb, but he did not die from the curse of harrenhal. that doom was meant for his enemies from tywin lannister to roose bolton.

[tell-them-the-north-remembers]

so, one aspect of catelyn which i think is underrated (certainly the biggest adaptation loss which nobody talks about) is her, let's say superstitiousness, or better yet, let's call it genre-savviness, being one of the few adult characters open to magic and the supernatural in this fantasy world. we first meet her in the godswood, home of gods which are not truly hers, yet she is still very aware of their power. when she and ned talk of the deserter he killed, he hopes he won't have to go with the nw to deal with mance rayder, but she has even more fear of that idea bc there are worse things beyond the wall than just wildlings. ned scoffs and says she's been listening to old nan too much, but she's right. we already know from the prologue that she's right! and here she is, understanding the genre of their world better than her husband, who was actually born and spent his earliest years in this northern land of deep magic, listening to old nan's stories. same with the direwolves, where she was uncomfortable with them at first, but later believed in them as guardians from the old gods even after robb had lost his own faith. and once again, we know she's right even if she doesn't know the evidence to back up her instincts, bc summer and shaggydog did not fail bran and rickon and robb was almost certainly a warg like his brothers. (perhaps making it more fitting that she's the one brought back as a fantasy vengeance monster, not ned and robb, the most unbelieving dead starks.) and in her 2nd agot chapter, everyone focuses on her ambition in wanting ned to agree to the hand job (pun intended) and sansa's betrothal, and while she does recognize the value of their daughter being a future queen more than ned does, that's only her stated argument bc she thinks it's rational enough for ned to listen to. (if ambitious matchmaking were as important to her as to her father she never would have made those frey betrothals fandom loves to blame her for.) in her own head there's a deeper urge driving her. she keeps thinking of the dead direwolf with antlers in its throat, an omen which filled her with dread from the first she heard of it, before robert's arrival, and thinking of it again is what makes her desperate to convince ned not to refuse robert. she had to make him see. and really, she's not wrong, as jon snow would say. the dead direwolf was an omen of ned and robert getting each other killed. it's just one of those misread portents, with no way of knowing the danger to ned was in his loyalty to robert, not conflict with him. BUT the next time she's dealing with baratheons, she knows exactly what she's talking about. it's catelyn, not brienne, who sees the shadow slaying renly, and explains that it was stannis who did that through some dark magic. with no way of knowing how it was achieved and no prior expectation that such a thing were ever possible, she realizes with no hestitation that stannis was guilty and that his red witch was capable of pulling this off somehow. really, the only instinct of the supernatural she's wholly wrong about is her insistence that varys gathered his knowledge through some dark enchantment. however, though that might offend varys, given his own personal experience with a sorcerer, i'd say it's a reasonable assumption without knowing the dude had children moving through walls everywhere like oversized rodents. and imo it just shows she had a healthy respect and awe for varys's power which most other characters lack.

oh, oh, and let's not forget that she also believed in the curse of harrenhal, from her own childhood and the stories old nan told her kids. "and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and cursed. 'I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of that keep,' Catelyn admitted." sure, that wasn't enough to save robb, but he did not die from the curse of harrenhal. that doom was meant for his enemies from tywin lannister to roose bolton.

[tell-them-the-north-remembers]

what if you were SEVEN and had EPILEPSY in a society that DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS and your MOM (your only family) was MURDERED TWO DAYS AGO and everyone treats you like a HUGE BURDEN and DRUGS your food without TELLING YOU and your evil stepdad was POISONING YOU and you were TAKING AN IMPOSSIBLY PERILOUS ROUTE out of your home for the FIRST TIME and started HAVING AN EPILEPTIC FIT on the SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN

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a strap-on could have saved their marriage btw

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i miss the aborted alicole baby. would have had issues impossible to recapture in a lab setting god bless

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I’m sorry but forever laughing at Daenerys Stans saying GRRM is wrong in stating Drogo & Daenerys’s relationship was consensual and romantic and that it’s r*pe and wrong on account of the age difference etc (all true btw) and in the very next breathe saying Rhaegar & Lyanna is a romantic and consensual relationship because GRRM SAYS SO AND CLEARLY MEANT FOR IT TO BE THAT WAY!!!!

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Rhaena and Baela ❤️‍🔥

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For the benefit of Mr. Kite!!

There will be a show tonight on trampoline

Lastly through a hogshead of real fire

In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!!

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