#and also jon is afraid of her after she was dead he is not brave enough to have killed her nor appears to have considered it would've worked | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jackoshadows · 3 years

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“You,” Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, “will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be Knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon.” - Eddard, A Game of Thrones

My featherbed is deep and soft, and there I’ll lay you down, I’ll dress you all in yellow silk, and on your head a crown - Arya, A Storm of Swords

“Aegon has been shaped for rule since before he could walk. He has been trained in arms, as befits a knight to be, but that was not the end of his education. He reads and writes, he speaks several tongues, he has studied history and law and poetry. A septa has instructed him in the mysteries of the Faith since he was old enough to understand them. He has lived with fisherfolk, worked with his hands, swum in rivers and mended nets and learned to wash his own clothes at need. He can fish and cook and bind up a wound, he knows what it is like to be hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid. Tommen has been taught that kingship is his right. Aegon knows that kingship is his duty, that a king must put his people first, and live and rule for them.” - Kevan, A Dance with Dragons

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So this is an essay of sorts on my speculation/theory that Arya is going to end up as a leader of the North by the end of the series. I will split this into several parts:

Arya and leadership

Arya and Northern leadership

Arya and Nymeria

Skillsets

Importance of being a Warg/Skinchanger

Succession

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Arya Stark and leadership

“Know the men who follow you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.“ - Arya, AGoT

Arya has always been a leader rather than a follower. Just like Jon at the wall, she initially chafes at having to follow orders instead of doing what she thinks is the right thing to do. Despite Gendry and Hot Pie being older than her, she’s the one giving the orders and making the plans. She manipulates or forces characters into doing what she wants – getting Gendry to leave Harrenhal and forcing Jaqen to help her free the Northmen.

Arya took the lead, kicking her stolen horse to a brisk heedless trot until the trees close in around her. Hot Pie and Gendry followed as best they could. From time to time Arya glanced over her shoulder, to make sure the two boys had not fallen too far behind, and to see if they were being pursued - Arya, ASoS

Like most of our protagonists, Arya is ambitious and interested in being an active participant at the top. She wanted to become a King’s councilor and build castles. That entire little speech that Varys gives about the ideal candidate for ruling fits Arya to a T.

Arya has gone hungry, scrubbed and cleaned, cooked and kept house, sewed and mended clothes, bound up wounds, been hunted, been scared for her life – and done all this with limited protection. Just survived on her wits. Arya can wield a sword, is fluent in several languages and has studied with a Septa.

We also see war torn Westeros and the suffering of the smallfolk through Arya’s eyes in ACoK and ASoS. It doesn’t matter if it’s Stark or Lannister, the smallfolk suffer the same – Septon Meribald’s ‘Broken Men’ speech in AFfC embodies what Arya observes. After Arya frees the Northmen using weasel soup and Vargo Hoat betrays the Lannisters, there are reprisal killings, torture and rape enacted by Stark bannermen and the sellswords. The smith, Maester and the head maid are executed for merely serving Tywin – something on which they had no choice. Gendry points this out to Arya and she feels guilty for her part in all this.

“I hate this lot worse. Ser Amory was fighting for his lord, but the Mummers are sellswords and turncloaks. Half of them can’t even speak the Common Tongue. Septon Utt likes little boys, Qyburn does black magic, and your friend Biter eats people.”

The worst thing was, she couldn’t even say he was wrong. The Brave Companions did most of the foraging for Harrenhal, and Roose Bolton had given them the task of rooting out Lannisters. Vargo Hoat had divided them into four bands, to visit as many villages as possible. He led the largest group himself, and gave the others to his most trusted captains. She had heard Rorge laughing over Lord Vargo’s way of finding traitors. All he did was return to places he had visited before under Lord Tywin’s banner and seize those who had helped him. – Arya, ACoK

"It’s not a village, it’s only black stones and old bones. “Did the Lannisters kill the people who lived here?” Arya asked as she helped Anguy dry the horses.

“No.” He pointed. “Look at how thick the moss grows on the stones. No one’s moved them for a long time. And there’s a tree growing out of the wall there, see? This place was put to the torch a long time ago.”

“Who did it, then?” asked Gendry.

“Hoster Tully.” Notch was a stooped thin grey-haired man, born in these parts. “This was Lord Goodbrook’s village. When Riverrun declared for Robert, Goodbrook stayed loyal to the king, so Lord Tully came down on him with fire and sword. After the Trident, Goodbrook’s son made his peace with Robert and Lord Hoster, but that didn’t help the dead none.”

A silence fell." - Arya, ASoS

"Wolves, she thought again. Like me. Was this her pack? How could they be Robb’s men? She wanted to hit them. She wanted to hurt them. She wanted to cry.” - Arya, ASoS

The smallfolk in the Riverlands are caught between the Starks, Tullys and Lannisters with no good choices. And on the ground level, Arya sees this, understands this and acknowledges this. Her actions benefited house Stark and no one else. She understands the cost of war.

Arya is also very keen on justice. In that she not only thinks that characters deserve justice, but she wants to actively participate and deliver justice. She considers the execution of Dareon from the NW as a just one.

Dareon had been a deserter from the Night's Watch; he had deserved to die. - Arya, AFfC

“Guilty!” Arya shouted with the rest. “Guilty, guilty, kill him, guilty!” …

Arya could only think of Mycah and all the stupid prayers she’d prayed for the Hound to die. If there were gods, why didn’t Lord Beric win? She knew the Hound was guilty… - Arya, ASoS

Her father beat her so often and so brutally that she was never truly free of pain or fear until she came to us.”

“Did you kill him?”

“She asked the gift for herself, not for her father.”

You should have killed him.“ - Arya, ADWD

Arya drew back from him. "He killed the slave?" That did not sound right. "He should have killed the masters!" – Arya, aDwD

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Arya and Northern leadership

I would sooner my men die fighting for the Ned’s little girl than alone and hungry in the snow, weeping tears that freeze upon their cheeks. - Hugo Wull

The North has famously never had a female leader in House Stark. So is it possible for valiant Ned’s precious little girl to become the first Lady Stark to lead the North?

In terms of personality, Arya resembles some of the other female leaders/members of Northern houses. She is bold and forward like Lyanna Mormont and Wylla Manderly. She has trained with the sword and learned how to use a bow and arrow. She proactively engineers her own escape like Alys Karstark. Characters like Ygritte and Alys remind Jon Snow of Arya.

Arya venerates Ned Stark. She follows his advice as much as Robb, Bran and Jon do. Even more so. She executes a NW brother for desertion. And that is important for the Starks.

I should kill them myself. Whenever her father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, his greatsword. - Arya, ACoK

The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. - Bran, AGoT

“The Starks do not use headsmen. Ned always said that the man who passes the sentence should swing the blade, though he never took any joy in the duty.” - Catelyn, ACoK

“Rickard Karstark, Lord of Karhold.” Robb lifted the heavy axe with both hands. “Here in sight of gods and men, I judge you guilty of murder and high treason. In mine own name I condemn you. With mine own hand I take your life. Would you speak a final word?” - Catelyn, ASoS

The pale morning sunlight ran up and down his blade as Jon clasped the hilt of the bastard sword with both hands and raised it high. “If you have any last words, now is the time to speak them,” he said, expecting one last curse. - Jon, ADwD

Arya is one of the Starkiest Starks of the whole lot. She is also the only Stark to actually have the Stark look. She is stubborn and determined to do things the Stark way. She often uses her father’s advice to guide her way.

Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men who follow you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.“ - Arya, aGoT

Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father’s table and listen to them talk. She had loved listening to the men on the benches too; to freeriders tough as leather, courtly knights and bold young squires, grizzled old men-at-arms.- Arya, AGoT

Whenever her father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, his greatsword. “If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him go look him in the face and hear his last words,” she’d heard him tell Robb and Jon once. - Arya, ACoK

Now there are theories that it is future Bran who was communicating with Arya through the weirwood at Harrenhal, but she does gain strength from her father’s words when she prays to the Old Gods.

Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said. “But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.” “You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.” - Arya, ACoK

And while Arya is travelling incognito, GRRM keeps her connected to the North, house Stark and the Northern plot. She starts her journey from KL with a NW brother Yoren. She’s disguised as a boy like Danny Flint, Manderly requests a song about brave Danny Flint at Ramsay’s wedding with ‘Arya’. In the Riverlands, Arya’s plot intersects with her father’s bannermen, she participates in the capture of Harrenhal for house Stark and is there for Roose Bolton’s war council. She meets both Roose Bolton and Aenys Frey – our antagonists in Winterfell facing off against Stannis in ADwD. She meets Robett Glover – who is currently in White Harbor - when she lets him out of the dungeons. She gets Jaqen to help her father’s men.

“Vargo Hoat’s come back with prisoners. I saw their badges. There’s a Glover, from Deepwood Motte, he’s my father’s man. The rest too, mostly.” All of a sudden, Arya knew why her feet had brought her here. “You have to help me get them out.” – Arya, ACoK

Arya looked. She knew all of her father’s men. The three in the grey cloaks were strangers. Arya, AGoT

Twin towers. Sunburst. Bloody man. Battle-axe. The battle-axe is for Cerwyn, and the white sun on black is Karstark. They’re northmen. My father’s men, and Robb’s. - Arya, ACoK

Harwin?” Arya whispered. It was! Under the beard and the tangled hair was the face of Hullen’s son, who used to lead her pony around the yard, ride at quintain with Jon and Robb, and drink too much on feast days. He was thinner, harder somehow, and at Winterfell he had never worn a beard, but it was him—her father’s man. Arya, ASoS

“I bet there are Winterfell men too.” Her father’s men, the Young Wolf’s men, the direwolves of Stark. - Arya, ASoS

Arya is also involved in betrothals/marriage – first to Elmar Frey and then married off to Ramsay Bolton to hold the North. As a side note, her connection to all these bastards is indeed interesting - Elmar Frey, Ramsay Bolton, Gendry and Jon Snow. Is GRRM trying to say something here?

We now have the Northerners and Freys that Arya sees in Harrenhal transposed to Winterfell and ‘her father’s men’ rising up for Arya Stark.

Now, we can speculate and assume that these Northerners would have done the same for the other Starks, but that’s not the point here. In the books, GRRM has written this story to revolve around Arya. The mountain clans are marching for ARYA. The Northern houses are fighting alongside Stannis for ARYA. When lady Barbrey Dustin points out the anger of the Northmen at the treatment of ‘Valiant Ned's precious little girl’ she is talking about ARYA.

GRRM has Stannis wanting to rescue Arya for Jon. He has Mance trying to rescue Arya for Jon. He has Jon breaking his vows and dying trying to rescue Arya. A large part of what drives this plot forward is that it’s Arya, and her special relationship with Jon Snow influences a lot of what is happening south of the wall. The story only happens this way with Arya in the North. And that’s why it’s Arya’s story and not that of any other Stark. Superimposing this or that Stark in place of Arya to make a case for why they would be leader of the North makes no sense. GRRM writing in the marriage of Arya Stark to hold the North makes the case for why Arya is important to the North.

So, Arya has actively helped free Northmen in the Riverlands, engaged with important Northerners and Freys at Harrenhal and drives the plot to take down the Boltons in the North. With her leadership skills, her ability to wield a weapon and fight, looking like Ned, following in Ned’s footsteps and advice, her fierce personality, her loyalty to bannermen, her desire for justice and to help the weak and powerless, her huge direwolf - she would be like the Kings in the North of yore. I think the Northerners will be fine with Arya Stark being the Stark in charge.

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Arya and Nymeria

“What if the wolves come?” “Yield,” Arya suggested - Arya, ACoK

The direwolves are an important part of the books, and an important aspect of the Starks.They are as much a part of the Starks as Dany’s dragons are a part of her. They cannot be ignored as unimportant pets who will end up serving no purpose.

“He is part of you, Robb. To fear him is to fear you.” - Catelyn, ASoS

Ghost did not count. Ghost was closer than a friend. Ghost was part of him - Jon, ADWD

“Part of you is Summer, and part of Summer is you. You know that, Bran.” - Bran, ACoK

“Wolves and women wed for life,” Haggon often said. “You take one, that’s a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on, and you’re part of him. Both of you will change.” - Varamyr, ADWD

You have five trueborn children,” Jon said. “Three sons, two daughters. The direwolf is the sigil of your House. Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord…The direwolf graces the banners of House Stark,” Jon pointed out. - Bran, AGoT

“Roose Bolton has Lord Eddard’s daughter. To thwart him White Harbor must have Ned’s son … and the direwolf. The wolf will prove the boy is who we say he is, should the Dreadfort attempt to deny him.“ - Davos, ADWD

GRRM has mentioned several times that they are important.

The Lannisters are always likening themselves to lions, for example, and their motto “Hear me roar” speaks of a certain way of looking at life. But I think for the Starks it goes a little bit beyond that, especially in this generation, with these direwolves. It’s more than just a handy metaphor with them - GRRM, interview

"Wolves have been part of European folklore, of which America's descended, going back thousands of years. In Rome, Romulus and Remus -- there's always been this relationship between wolves and men." That relationship is seen time and again in Martin's series, and it's one that will Martin says will continue as the last two books are eventually released. Arya's wolf, Nymeria, in particular, will play an important role. "You know, I don't like to give things away." says Martin, a grin spreading across his face. "But you don't hang a giant wolf pack on the wall unless you intend to use it." - GRRM interview

The direwolves are important especially for Arya whose theme is ‘The lone wolf dies but the pack survives’ and there are constant mentions of the pack in her POV chapters. Nymeria is an alpha, a leader of her pack like Arya is a leader of hers.

“She says there’s this great pack, hundreds of them, mankillers. The one that leads them is a she-wolf, a bitch from the seventh hell.” - Arya, ACoK

Throughout ACoK and ASoS, Arya mentions the wolves in the Riverlands. They appear to be just ahead of her or behind her. In her chapters there are mentions of wolves eating people, of Roose going wolf hunting. It’s almost like the wolves are traveling with her. They even help her escape – the wolf howl giving the signal – from harrenhal. And it’s possible the pack was picking off Roose Bolton’s riders chasing Arya because they were following right behind.

She could hear the sound of her own breath, and the wolves as well, a great pack of them now. They are closer than the one I heard in the godswood, she thought. They are calling to me. - Arya, ACoK

Once, from the crest of a ridge, she spied dark shapes crossing a stream in the valley behind them, and for half a heartbeat she feared that Roose Bolton’s riders were on them, but when she looked again she realized they were only a pack of wolves. She cupped her hands around her mouth and howled down at them, “Ahooooooooo, ahooooooooo.” When the largest of the wolves lifted its head and howled back, the sound made Arya shiver. - Arya ASoS

Nymeria keeps amassing this huge wolf pack and Arya being a strong warg can sense this

She was no little girl in the dream; she was a wolf, huge and powerful, and when she emerged from beneath the trees in front of them and bared her teeth in a low rumbling growl, she could smell the rank stench of fear from horse and man alike. - Arya, ASoS

She dreamed of wolves most every night. A great pack of wolves, with her at the head. She was bigger than any of them, stronger, swifter, faster. And her brothers and sisters were with her, many and more of them, fierce and terrible and hers. - Arya, ASoS

In her wolf dreams she was swift and strong, running down her prey with her pack at her heels. - Cat of the Canals, AFfC

The wolf dreams also helps Arya connect to Bran, Jon and Rickon. We see Ghost able to sense the other direwolves and Bran trying to communicate with Jon.

Nymeria is a grey wolf and the stark sigil is a grey wolf on a white background.

“The rain had washed the guard’s blood off her fingers, she wore a sword across her back, wolves were prowling through the dark like lean grey shadows, and Arya Stark was unafraid.” - Arya, ACoK

“Arya had her father’s eyes, the grey eyes of the Starks.” - Reek, ADwD

What’s in a name? I have already mentioned in another post, the symbolism of the names for the direwolves and them being an indication of the future for the Starks. Arya’s direwolf is named Nymeria – a Rhoynish warrior queen who led her people to safety. Something that Arya may well do in the future when the North is under attack from the Others.

More importantly, Nymeria in Dorne changed the customs and rules of house Martell to follow those of Rhoynar and allowed for female rulers. Nymeria herself was the first female leader and was followed by her daughter. Nymeria changed the norm for Dorne and we could see the same happening with Arya Stark in the North.

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Skills and Education

Look with your eyes, Syrio had said, listen with your ears.- Arya, ACoK

Education at Winterfell:

Arya was mainly taught by Septa Mordane and received the same education as Sansa. She would have been taught history and about the Faith by the Septa, she can read and write, and is good with sums. She’s better than Sansa at managing a household. She can ride a horse like a Northman and is an excellent swimmer. She knows some high Valyrian. Besides the Septa, Arya also hangs around Ned Stark when he is teaching the boys. Many of his words of wisdom that she remembers is from when he is teaching the boys. She mingles with her father’s men, the cooks, the stable boys etc.

Kings Landing:

Water Dancing style of swordfighting from Syrio Forel.

Harrenhal:

Being incognito allows Arya to move around like a mouse or the ghost of Harrenhal and observe and learn things. She is privy to Roose Bolton’s war council and listens to them discuss the Northern campaign against the Lannisters. We get the first inkling of the Red Wedding in these chapters between Roose and the Freys.

Arya observes the different people, analyzes their movements and figures out how to approach them.

The night she was caught, the Lannister men had been nameless strangers with faces as alike as their nasal helms, but she’d come to know them all. You had to know who was lazy and who was cruel, who was smart and who was stupid. You had to learn that even though the one they called Shitmouth had the foulest tongue she’d ever heard, he’d give you an extra piece of bread if you asked, while jolly old Chiswyck and soft-spoken Raff would just give you the back of their hand. - Arya, ACoK

And as lords and ladies never notice the little grey mice under their feet, Arya heard all sorts of secrets just by keeping her ears open as she went about her duties. Pretty Pia from the buttery was a slut who was working her way through every knight in the castle. The wife of the gaoler was with child, but the real father was either Ser Alyn Stackspear or a singer Lord Lefford made mock of ghosts at table, but always kept a candle burning by his bed. Ser Dunaver’s squire Jodge could not hold his water when he slept. The cooks despised Ser Harys Swyft and spit in all his food. Once she even overheard Maester Tothmure’s serving girl confiding to her brother about some message that said Joffrey was a bastard and not the rightful king at all. “Lord Tywin told him to burn the letter and never speak such filth again,” the girl whispered. - Arya, ACoK

She aids in the escape of the near hundred Northmen imprisoned in the dungeons and even Roose is impressed enough to make her his cupbearer. And the next time, she conceives of, plans and executes their entire escape all by herself. She plans for the logistics – weapons, transportation, people, travel route, what to wear. She makes sure she is warmly dressed, takes the map from Roose’s chamber, uses her position of cupbearer to manipulate several men, manipulates Gendry into escaping with her, takes down the guard and leads them away. It’s an endeavor that showcases her intelligence, cunning, determination, ability to strategize and lead.

Arya also shows a lot of restraint and keeps her secrets. She doesn’t trust the Glovers or any of the Northmen in Harrenhal - and considering the Red Wedding, it’s a good decision.

Their captors permitted no chatter. A broken lip taught Arya to hold her tongue. Others never learned at all. - Arya, ACoK

Arya watched them die and did nothing. What good did it do you to be brave? One of the women picked for questioning had tried to be brave, but she had died screaming like all the rest. There were no brave people on that march, only scared and hungry ones. - Arya, ACoK

On the road Arya had felt like a sheep, but Harrenhal turned her into a mouse. She was grey as a mouse in her scratchy wool shift, and like a mouse she kept to the crannies and crevices and dark holes of the castle, scurrying out of the way of the mighty.- Arya, ACoK

Braavos:

Arya’s education here is not limited to killing for the Faceless Men. She is also educated in poisons and languages. She improves on her high Valyrian and is now fluent in Braavosi and other Essosi languages. She learns acting/mummery. Not showing emotions on one’s face, detecting emotions in another person.

“A man does not need to be a wizard to know truth from falsehood, not if he has eyes. You need only learn to read a face. Look at the eyes. The mouth. The muscles here, at the corners of the jaw, and here, where the neck joins the shoulders.” He touched her lightly with two fingers. “Some liars blink. Some stare. Some look away. Some lick their lips. Many cover their mouths just before they tell a lie, as if to hide their deceit. Other signs may be more subtle, but they are always there. A false smile and a true one may look alike, but they are as different as dusk from dawn. Can you tell dusk from dawn?”

Arya nodded, though she was not certain that she could. “Then you can learn to see a lie… and once you do, no secret will be safe from you.” - Arya, AFFC

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People skills

“I will remember, Your Grace," said Sansa, though she had always heard that love was a surer route to the people's loyalty than fear. If I am ever a queen, I'll make them love me.” - Sansa, ACoK

Arya’s ability to make friends wherever she goes highlights her people skills. And Arya is able to communicate and connect with people from all walks of life.

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. - Sansa, AGoT

She had loved listening to the men on the benches too; to freeriders tough as leather, courtly knights and bold young squires, grizzled old men-at-arms. She used to throw snowballs at them and help them steal pies from the kitchen. Their wives gave her scones and she invented names for their babies and played monsters-and-maidens and hide-the-treasure and come-into-my-castle with their children., Arya, AGoT

Cat had made friends along the wharves; porters and mummers, ropemakers and sailmenders, taverners, Brewers and bakers and beggars and whores - Cat of the Canals, AFfC

Her girls were nice as well; Blushing Bethany and the Sailor’s Wife, one-eyed Yna who could tell your fortune from a drop of blood, pretty little Lanna, even Assadora, the Ibbenese woman with the mustache. They might not be beautiful, but they were kind to her - Cat of the Canals, AFfC

She’s also loyal to her pack. She doesn’t betray Jon even to her father. She helps free her father’s men. Despite Gendry talking of leaving Lommy or Weasel behind, she refuses. And despite the odds, she tries to help Gendry.

It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that they had Gendry. Even if he was stubborn and stupid, she had to get him out. She wondered if they knew that the queen wanted him. - Arya, ACoK

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Importance of being a Warg/Skinchanger

She was the night wolf, no scraps of skin could frighten her. - Arya, ADwD

Since this is a fantasy series, magic is a big part of the story with a magical existential apocalyptic threat on the horizon. The North is the first bastion facing this threat. Jon and Dany both have magical pets and prophetic dreams. Bran is the 3ER. They are leaders or will become leaders by the end. Arya is a strong warg/skinchanger. Apart from Jon and Bran, she’s the only other Stark to use these abilities so far. As GRRM as indicated, having a direwolf is going to be useful in battle – we are going to be seeing direwolves involved in the battle for Winterfell for example. Arya is able to warg Nymeria from all the way over in Braavos. She skinchanges cats and sees through their eyes, when she is blind. She is deft with a sword, knife and decent with a bow and arrow (she could be better now using her FM senses). She would be an effective fighter to have against the Others and her warging skills could prove useful in battle.

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Succession

I’m not a lady, Arya wanted to tell her, I’m a wolf. - Arya, ASoS

And finally we come to succession. This is the hardest part and entirely speculation and we need the next book to get an inkling of where GRRM is heading towards. I am also basing all of this on Hibberd more or less confirming that King Bran on the Iron Throne is GRRM’s ending.

So of the true born Starks, Arya is pretty much last in line. With the inclusion of Robb’s will, we have 5 Starks left. Bran is the rightful heir to the North. Taking him out of the running, leaves Jon, Rickon, Sansa and Arya. Assuming Jon ends up North of the wall – in his dreams the Old Kings in the North in the crypts reject him, maybe foreshadowing that he doesn’t belong in Winterfell - that leaves Rickon, Sansa and Arya.

As for Sansa, again there is a plot significant reason for why GRRM has put an obstacle in her path, allowing for Arya to jump the queue. Sansa is currently married to Tyrion Lannister, a marriage that cannot be easily annulled (With an enemy regime in KL) or ignored like the show did. Robb Stark has most likely disinherited/removed her from the line of succession and named a legitimized Jon Stark his heir and Lord of Winterfell. If he has the support of the Northern houses who want an experienced, older Stark to lead them, Jon Stark could well be the next KITN over Rickon Stark. I don’t think a 7 year old Rickon would object to Jon in charge. So that makes it Jon Stark, Rickon Stark and Arya Stark.

Does Rickon have to die for Arya to become Wardeness of the North? It’s possible Rickon dies, but it’s also possible he doesn’t. It could be that Rickon does not want to lead the North – by the end of the book, he would be 8 or 9. Of course there’s the argument of a regent doing the job for Rickon until he’s ready. Or, he could just give way to his sister because he wants to. Something similar to Aemon refusing the throne and it passing to his younger brother Aegon.

Or we could have the traditional situation where Rickon becomes lord of Winterfell as next in line, while it’s Arya who is involved in running the day to day affairs. However, that would very much be status quo - with Rickon at WF and Bran down south in KL, it would be men ending up in positions of power everywhere once again, except maybe Dorne. If this happens, then Arya would be a leader of the North, but the Stark line would continue with the male line.

It’s possible Jon Stark as King could change things for the North. Jon treats the spearwives the same as the brothers of the NW, he respects Val’s abilities, he trusts in Alys Karstark. If Rickon refuses the mantle, it could very well be that Jon Stark relinquishes his position to his favorite person ever, Arya Stark, to be the next Wardeness of the North. Thus paving the way for Arya Stark to be the first female leader of the North like her hero Nymeria in Dorne.

It would be fitting for the character who introduced Jon Snow to equal rights for women.

“The Lannisters are proud,” Jon observed. “You’d think the royal sigil would be sufficient, but no. He makes his mother’s House equal in honor to the king’s.”

“The woman is important too!” Arya protested. - Arya, AGoT

Could King Jon reverse Sansa’s disinheritance after her marriage is annulled when KL is in friendly hands? Sure. But we don’t know how the Sansa/LF/Vale group will react to Jon as KITN and whether they will mount a challenge in Sansa’s name. And if Jon has to choose between Sansa and Arya as to whom he wants in charge of Winterfell, we know who it is he will think is more capable and will always choose.

I do think Winterfell succession will not be as clearcut as many Stark fans are hoping. Too many factions supporting the different Starks. GRRM loves to write about dysfunctional families and the Starks are not anything special in that regard. TWoW will tell us of whether there will be any kind of Stark civil war.

Is Arya too young for all this? I predict that by the time we get to the end of the books, about 5 years would have gone by. At 14, Arya would still need a regent – one of the many lords of the houses in the North. But I think considering her experiences, skillsets, a huge direwolf, Ned Stark’s wisdom and strong connections to the North, she will be an able leader. As GRRM said,

“[Arya is] older than some of the 40-year-olds in the book.” - GRRM

Either way, whether she gets Winterfell or not, Arya will end up as a leader in the North. Either she rules for Rickon and takes care of the day to day responsibilities or she does so in her own right as Lady of Winterfell/Wardeness of the North. She’s not going anywhere or sailing off on a boat. The show’s ending makes absolutely no sense for a character yearning for home in 5 books after going on the nightmare ‘adventure’ from hell. She will be in the North, in Winterfell, being a leader and continuing Ned Stark’s legacy. She will counsel her brothers and build and her people will love her just like they loved her father.

So in conclusion, I think there is enough story, character build up, characterization and set up for Arya to go North and take over as a leader of house Stark to face the threat of the Others along with Bran, Jon, Dany and Tyrion.

#Arya Stark #asoiaf #TWoW speculation

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spider-jaysart · 2 years

Note

top ten fictional characters? ships you'll never be over? and what crossover meeting of characters do you want more than anything?

@batboyblog

Top 10 characters that I love:

#1 Spider-man (My #1 favorite hero and character since I was very very little, especially after seeing the Sam Rami movies, I always loved his stories and always had thought his outfit was really cool, I also really loved the nerdy and funny part of his character. He was always so cool and fun to watch in fight scenes, with all the web swinging and flips and stuff, he's still my #1 favorite till this day)

#2 Starfire (She's such a sweet and caring character who's always there for her friends no matter what, she's my most favorite out of the whole team, she's also my most favorite female superhero. I instantly fell in love with her character when first watching the og Teen titans series on Cartoon network, I also always really loved her red hair and green eyes and she looks so cool when fighting with her starblots and the green lasers that come out of her eyes)

#3 Clementine (from the walking dead Telltale video game series, I loved her ever since I had met her in the first game, she was always very caring about others in the group and was so smart for her age, I also got to grow with her through all 4 games, seeing all her struggles and what she's had to go through that made her who she is today, she's a very strong girl now and still a caring person, even after all she's been through (she was also a little tough when she was younger but she's more stronger now as a person) and that's what I admire most about her. She's my #1 favorite female character in video games. Also you guys should definitely play the game it's a really great series that knows how to make players emotional, though I recommend getting the definitive edtion cause you'll get all 4 games and the dlcs without having to download it)

#4 Damian (I just really admire his toughness and bravery, it really encouraged me to be a little more tougher when I needed to be, same with Clementine it just really inspired me to see two very young characters who weren't afraid to speak up or stand up for themselves, also I just think he's a really cool character and is like my most favorite Robin out of the other Robin's)

#5 Grizz, Panda and Ice bear from We bare bears (I just love that series so much! I love all 3 of the bears personalitys, and they're always very caring and supportive towards each other like actual brothers and that's what I always really loved most about them! Also the show is really, really good, I definitely recommend checking it out, it's such a fun series with a lot of great episodes and it's such an underrated show. Also, there's a new spin off series from the show about there adventures from when they were just baby bears, it's called We baby bears)

#6 Moana ( I just love how she makes being in the water look like so much fun and refreshing, it really made me like being in the water a lot more and she's a very determined person when trying to reach her goals and is very brave for going that far, especially in the water, I also love her hair and her design!💕)

#7 Jon kent, when he was still ten years old (He's a very fun and sweet character, he's always so fun to read about! I really love his character, I would have loved to actually have grown with his character instead of him just magically becoming 17 years old and just suddenly become Superman, even as a 17 year old I feel he should still be Superboy, like him becoming Superman or something is something I would expect to see when I'm much much more older maybe, I would like to see him as his 10 year old self again, thats probably the thing I would like to see most from DC right now)

#8 Ellie Williams (from the last of us 1 specifically, I really loved how she could be a very fun and funny person despite the type of world she lives in, she really felt like great company when I played as Joel, the game was just better when she was always around and I like how she was able to get Joel to learn how to just laugh and be able to have a good time again and stuff like that, though in part 2 something felt missing from her character or something idk maybe it was because she was more older now and the second game was more of an angst story then the first one was)

#9 Vanellope (she's a very funny and cute character, I love how fun her design looks and I always loved the little candies she had in her hair along with her licorice hair band and her car is so cool and awesome!)

#10 The Powerpuff girls ( I loved watching that show a lot when I was younger, I loved how different the girls were from each other, they were very unique in they're personalitys and style and they each had 1 special power that was different from eachother, they're also very cute!💕 And I always loved seeing all 3 of they're colors when ever they flyed into the sky

Ships I will never get over:

Damijon (My otp💖 they just match so well together, they're dynamic is just so good👍✨💖 and they're so adorable together💖💖💖💖)

Robstar/Dickkory ( Starfire is the only person I will always see Dick with as the person he would want to have a future with, the person he would marry and raise a family together with. Also they're so sweet together💕)

Bbrae (this was actually my first ever ship when I started rewatcing some of the og Teen titans episodes a few years ago, I just always thought they were cute together and I guess I liked the opposites attract thing for them, like Beast boy as the funny happy guy who can make Raven the quiet introvert girl laugh, I just thought it was always really cute)

Timkon (last year during December I think, my sister told me she shipped it and then I started shipping it and thought it was a really cute ship)

And the crossover I would ever want the most is the Spidey cross over with all the 3 actors Tobey, Andrew and Tom and that has finally happened and I am so happy that it did, but if I had a second crossover I would want to see I would say Spider-man and the Supersons maybe? Idk I just feel like maybe some fun could be done with that😃

@batboyblog Thanks for the ask!😃 This was one of my biggest ones for me to answer! It was really fun!

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ladyofasoiaf · 4 years

Text

Jon ‘One Eye’ & Sansa Stark

In this meta I will try to point out the clues of Jon’s death- warging into his direwolf- coming back to life process.

Our main hint is going to be : ONE EYE motifs...

And interestingly this hint is always close to Sansa...

[Most of these clues etc have been already examined by many people but I will try to put them all in order to show the pattern..]

A GAME OF THRONES:

Waymar Royce

Waymar Royce appearence and story are very similar with Jon’s.

They look similar:

Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife.

[AGOT; Prologue]

Jon’s eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast.

[AGOT; Bran I]

They are both young men of Night’s Watch but they were not very welcomed by their other black brothers:

His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. “Bet he killed them all himself, he did,” Gared told the barracks over wine, “twisted their little heads off, our mighty warrior.” They had all shared the laugh. It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Will reflected as he sat shivering atop his garron. Gared must have felt the same.

[AGOT; Prologue]

“Yes, life,” Noye said. “A long life or a short one, it’s up to you, Snow. The road you’re walking, one of your brothers will slit your throat for you one night.” “They’re not my brothers,” Jon snapped. “They hate me because I’m better than they are.” “No. They hate you because you act like you’re better than they are. They look at you and see a castle-bred bastard who thinks he’s a lordling.” The armorer leaned close. “You’re no lordling. Remember that. You’re a Snow, not a Stark. You’re a bastard and a bully.”

[AGOT; Jon III]

Others are a very important part of Jon’s arc and story and Waymar meets with them in Prologue:

Ser Waymar met him bravely. “Dance with me then.” He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night’s Watch.

[AGOT; Prologue]

This phrase also reminds us Jon:

It is more than impatience, Jon realized. They are afraid. Warriors, spearwives, raiders, they are frightened of those woods, of shadows moving through the trees. They want to put the Wall between them before the night descends.

A snowflake danced upon the air. Then another. Dance with me, Jon Snow, he thought. You’ll dance with me anon.

[ADWD; Jon XII]

In Prologue, Waymar gets killed by Others:

Royce’s body lay facedown in the snow, one arm out-flung. The thick sable cloak had been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he was. A boy.

[AGOT; Prologue]

And Jon dies in ADWD:

Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …

[ADWD; Jon XIII]

But Waymar comes back to life as a wight with ‘ONE EYE’:

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him. His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye. The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.

[AGOT; Prologue]

So: A young man of Night’s Watch who looks like Jon dies and comes back to life with ONE EYE.

Let’s continue with the second book...

A CLASH OF KINGS:

Orell

Orell is Wildling who is also a skinchanger. His animal is an EAGLE.

Jon kills Orell in ACOK; Jon VI:

Jon nodded toward the one by the fire. It felt queer, picking a man to kill.

[...]

Jon’s man leapt to his feet, thrusting at his face with a burning brand. He could feel the heat of the flames as he flinched back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sleeper stirring, and knew he must finish his man quick. When the brand swung again, he bulled into it, swinging the bastard sword with both hands. The Valyrian steel sheared through leather, fur, wool, and flesh, but when the wildling fell he twisted, ripping the sword from Jon’s grasp.

[...]

“You ought to burn them you killed,” said Ygritte.

[ACOK; Jon VI]

But due to the magic of skinchanging, a portion of Orell’s consciousness remained in the eagle, which developed a fierce hatred for Jon.

And in ACOK; Jon VII he dreams of an eagle attacking him and people talk about vargs and skinchangers:

Then a sudden gust of cold made his fur stand up, and the air thrilled to the sound of wings. As he lifted his eyes to the ice-white mountain heights above, a shadow plummeted out of the sky. A shrill scream split the air. He glimpsed blue-grey pinions spread wide, shutting out the sun… “Ghost!” Jon shouted, sitting up. He could still feel the talons, the pain. “Ghost, to me!” Ebben appeared, grabbed him, shook him. “Quiet! You mean to bring the wildlings down on us? What’s wrong with you, boy?” “A dream,” said Jon feebly. “I was Ghost, I was on the edge of the mountain looking down on a frozen river, and something attacked me. A bird… an eagle, I think…”

[...]

“Skinchanger?” said Ebben grimly, looking at the Halfhand. Does he mean the eagle? Jon wondered. Or me? Skinchangers and wargs belonged in Old Nan’s stories, not in the world he had lived in all his life. Yet here, in this strange bleak wilderness of rock and ice, it was not hard to believe.

[ACOK; Jon VII]

So: There is a skinchanger who dies because of Jon but a part of him keeps living in his animal: eagle.

The interesting thing is that between these two Jon chapters (Orell and eagle dream) comes a very important Sansa chapter which has many parallels with Jon VI chapter...

An example of parallels:

[…] ‘All I ask is a flower,’ Bael answered, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o’ Winterfell.”

“Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious…

[ACOK; Jon VI]

Sansa lowered her head. “The blood frightened me.”

“The blood is the seal of your womanhood. Lady Catelyn might have prepared you. You’ve had your first flowering, no more.”

Sansa had never felt less flowery. “My lady mother told me, but I… I thought it would be different.”

[ACOK; Sansa IV]

For more, please check: Jonsa Book Hints: B5

In this chapter Sansa says she wants to be loved and Cersei warns her that “love kills too...” Next chapter is Jon with his eagle dreams and warging abilities:

A half smile flickered across the queen’s face. “[…]Robert wanted to be loved. My brother Tyrion has the same disease. Do you want to be loved, Sansa?”

“Everyone wants to be loved.”

“I see flowering hasn’t made you any brighter,” said Cersei. “Sansa, permit me to share a bit of womanly wisdom with you on this very special day. Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same.”

[ACOK; Sansa IV]

Let’s move on to third book...

A STORM OF SWORDS:

Orell and Wargs

In ASOS; Jon I, we learn the name of the Wildling that Jon has killed in ACOK; Jon VI:

“He slew Qhorin Halfhand,” said Longspear Ryk. “Him and that wolf o’ his.”

“And did for Orell too,” said Rattleshirt.

“The lad’s a warg, or close enough,” put in Ragwyle, the big spearwife. “His wolf took a piece o’ Halfhand’s leg.”

[...]

“What’s this?” he said. “A crow?”

“The black bastard what gutted Orell,” said Rattleshirt, “and a bloody warg as well.”

“You were to kill them all.”

“This one come over,” explained Ygritte. “He slew Qhorin Halfhand with his own hand.”

[ASOS; Jon I]

This Jon chapter comes after ASOS; Sansa I.

And these chapters have many parallels such as:

Sansa knelt at the feet of her future queen. “You do me great honor, Your Grace.” “Won’t you call me Margaery? Please, rise. Loras, help the Lady Sansa to her feet. Might I call you Sansa?”

[ASOS; Sansa I]

“I would be pleased to eat, Your Grace. And thank you.”

“Your Grace?” The king smiled. “That’s not a style one often hears from the lips of the free folk. I’m Mance to most, The Mance to some. Will you take a horn of mead?”

[ASOS; Jon I]

For more, please check: Jonsa Book Hints: C1

We also learn about Sansa’s new betrothed: Willas Tyrell..

Willas has a bad leg and so does Jon, in ASOS:

“Willas has a bad leg but a good heart,” said Margaery. “He used to read to me when I was a little girl, and draw me pictures of the stars. You will love him as much as we do, Sansa.”

[ASOS; Sansa I]

If the mare had gone down, he would have been doomed. “A lucky thing my leg got in the way,” he muttered.

He rested for a while to let the horse graze. She did not wander far. That was good. Hobbled with a bad leg, he could never have caught her.

[ASOS; Jon V]

Let’s keep reading...

In ASOS; Jon II chapter Jon’s eagle dream from ACOK comes true and Orell’s eagle attacks Jon’s eye:

He could still hear wings, though the eagle was not in sight. Half his world was black. “My eye,” he said in sudden panic, raising a hand to his face.

“It’s only blood, Jon Snow. He missed the eye, just ripped your skin up some.”

[…]

Can a bird hate? Jon had slain the wilding Orell, but some part of the man remained within the eagle. The golden eyes looked out on him with cold malevolence.

[…]

I will need to get this tended, he thought, but not just now. Let the King-beyond-the-Wall see what his eagle did to me.

[…]

The look Mance gave Jon was grim and cold. “What happened to your face?”

Ygritte said, “Orell tried to take his eye out.”

“It was him I asked. Has he lost his tongue? Perhaps he should, to spare us further lies.”

Styr the Magnar drew a long knife. “The boy might see more clear with one eye, instead of two.”

“Would you like to keep your eye, Jon?” asked the King-beyond-the-Wall. “If so, tell me how many they were. And try and speak the truth this time, Bastard of Winterfell.”

Jon’s throat was dry. “My lord… what…”

[ASOS; Jon II]

Jon almosts loses his ‘one eye’ and becomes Jon ‘One Eye’ Snow because of this attack..

After this eagle attack Jon chapter comes ASOS; Sansa II

And these chapters have many parallels such as:

Jon wheeled and followed Tormund back toward the head of the column, his new cloak hanging heavy from his shoulders. It was made of unwashed sheepskins, worn fleece side in, as the wildlings suggested.

[…]

“I wear the cloak you gave me, Your Grace.”

[ASOS; Jon II]

A new gown?” she said, as wary as she was astonished.

“More lovely than any you have worn, my lady,” the old woman promised. She measured Sansa’s hips with a length of knotted string. “All silk and Myrish lace, with satin linings. You will be very beautiful. The queen herself has commanded it.”

“Which queen?” Margaery was not yet Joff’s queen, but she had been Renly’s. Or did she mean the Queen of Thorns? Or…“The Queen Regent, to be sure.”

[ASOS; Sansa II]

For more, please check: Jonsa Book Hints: C2

And after the chapter of an eagle attacks Jon’s eye we learn in next chapter that Sansa’s betrothed Willas Tyrell flies EAGLES:

“Willas has the best birds in the Seven Kingdoms,” Margaery said when the two of them were briefly alone. “He flies an eagle sometimes. You will see, Sansa.”

[ASOS; Sansa II]

Why is Almost One Eye Jon and Sansa Stark being near to each other important?

Because the first Sansa Stark in Stark family tree was married with her half-uncle Jonnel ‘One Eye’ Stark:

So another Sansa being close to another Stark family member who almost had lost his one eye sounds interesting.

Well, Jon didn’t lose his eye but his face got scarred:

He had almost forgotten about his face. “A skinchanger tried to rip out my eye.”

Noye frowned. “Scarred or smooth, it’s a face I thought I’d seen the last of. We heard you’d gone over to Mance Rayder.”

[ASOS; Jon VI]

Who else has a scarred face? Sansa’s husband- Tyrion Lannister:

“I like your scar.” She traced it with her finger. “It makes you look very fierce and strong.”

He laughed. “Very ugly, you mean.”

“M’lord will never be ugly in my eyes.” She kissed the scab that covered the ragged stub of his nose.

[ASOS; Tyrion II]

Varamyr

What happens to this eagle later?

Skinchanger, Varamyr Sixskins, takes control of Orell’s eagle. Varamyr uses the eagle to scout Castle Black and spots Stannis Baratheon’s arrival at the Wall.

The eagle bursts into flames during the attack on Castle Black with Melisandre claiming she was responsible.

The skinchanger was grey-faced, round-shouldered, and bald, a mouse of a man with a wolfling’s eyes. “Once a horse is broken to the saddle, any man can mount him,” he said in a soft voice. “Once a beast’s been joined to a man, any skinchanger can slip inside and ride him. Orell was withering inside his feathers, so I took the eagle for my own. But the joining works both ways, warg. Orell lives inside me now, whispering how much he hates you. And I can soar above the Wall, and see with eagle eyes.”

[...]

“Banners,” he heard Varamyr murmur, “I see golden banners, oh . . .” A mammoth lumbered by, trumpeting, a half-dozen bowmen in the wooden tower on its back. “The king . . . no . . .”

Then the skinchanger threw back his head and screamed.The sound was shocking, ear-piercing, thick with agony. Varamyr fell, writhing, and the ’cat was screaming too.... and high, high in the eastern sky, against the wall of cloud, Jon saw the eagle burning. For a heartbeat it flamed brighter than a star, wreathed in red and gold and orange, its wings beating wildly at the air as if it could fly from the pain. Higher it flew, and higher, and higher still.

[ASOS; Jon X]

Melisandre burns the eagle. Who else got burned in the books?

Jon Snow in AGOT:

He had burned himself more badly than he knew throwing the flaming drapes, and his right hand was swathed in silk halfway to the elbow. At the time he’d felt nothing; the agony had come after.

[AGOT; Jon VIII]

And Jon burns himself in AGOT; Jon VII:

Jon tried to shout, but his voice was gone. Staggering to his feet, he kicked the arm away and snatched the lamp from the Old Bear’s fingers. The flame flickered and almost died. “Burn!” the raven cawed. “Burn, burn, burn!”

Spinning, Jon saw the drapes he’d ripped from the window. He flung the lamp into the puddled cloth with both hands. Metal crunched, glass shattered, oil spewed, and the hangings went up in a great whoosh of flame. The heat of it on his face was sweeter than any kiss Jon had ever known. “Ghost!” he shouted.

The direwolf wrenched free and came to him as the wight struggled to rise, dark snakes spilling from the great wound in its belly. Jon plunged his hand into the flames, grabbed a fistful of the burning drapes, and whipped them at the dead man. Let it burn, he prayed as the cloth smothered the corpse, gods, please, please, let it burn.

[AGOT; Jon VII]

This Jon chapter comes after AGOT; Sansa IV:

And these two chapters have many parallels such as:

So she went to the queen instead, and poured out her heart, and Cersei had listened and thanked her sweetly … only then Ser Arys had escorted her to the high room in Maegor’s Holdfast and posted guards, and a few hours later, the fighting had begun outside.

[AGOT; Sansa IV]

They took his knife and his sword and told him he was not to leave his cell until the high officers met to decide what was to be done with him. And then they placed a guard outside his door to make certain he obeyed. His friends were not allowed to see him, but the Old Bear did relent and permit him Ghost, so he was not utterly alone.

[AGOT; Jon VII]

Yet somehow it seemed colder with Jeyne gone, even after she’d built a fire. She pulled a chair close to the hearth, took down one of her favorite books, and lost herself in the stories of Florian and Jonquil, of Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight, of valiant Prince Aemon and his doomed love for his brother’s queen.

[AGOT; Sansa IV]

Yet he was trembling, violently. When had it gotten so cold?

[…] 

Metal crunched, glass shattered, oil spewed, and the hangings went up in a great whoosh of flame. The heat of it on his face was sweeter than any kiss Jon had ever known. “Ghost!” he shouted.

[AGOT; Jon VII]

For more, please check: Jonsa Book Hints: A10

What happens to skinchanger Orell and warg Varamyr after the eagle burst into flames?

The incident greatly affects Varamyr and supposedly kills the remnants of Orell inside the eagle.

After the defeat of the wildlings at the battle beneath the Wall, Varamyr has lost all his possessions in his madness from experiencing the eagle’s death; he has also lost control of his snow bear and shadowcat, but his wolves remain.

[Orell dying completely and Varamyr gets mad also reminds me another resurrected character Beric Dondarrion who also has ONE EYE and him dying for good to bring Catelyn Stark back to life... And like Varamyr, Lady Stoneheart loses her mind too... ]

Let’s move on to fourth book...

A FEAST FOR CROWS:

Jon is not even in this book?

But Sansa is and we learn few things about her crushes:

Waymar Royce:

She had fallen wildly in love with Ser Waymar, she remembered dimly, but that was a lifetime ago, when she was a stupid little girl.

[AFFC; Alayne I]

Grrm reminds us Waymar Royce aka the biggest foreshadowing for Jon in AFFC book via Sansa’s chapter...

Loras Tyrell:

Loras was another crush of Sansa and we learn that he got burned really bad in AFFC.

Like the eagle and Jon.

“Tell me,” said Margaery. “I command it.” Command it? Cersei paused a moment, then decided she would let that pass. “The defenders fell back to an inner keep once the curtain wall was taken. Loras led the attack there as well. He was doused with boiling oil.” Lady Alla turned white as chalk, and ran from the room. “The maesters are doing all they can, Lord Waters assures me, but I fear your brother is too badly burned.”

[AFFC; Cersei VIII]

More about Loras // Jon, please check: Jonsa Book Hints: A8

Let’s keep reading the fifth book...

A DANCE WITH DRAGONS:

In ADWD; Prologue Varamyr encounters with Others (just like AGOT; Prologue) and Varamyr’s body dies, but his mind lives on in his wolf One Eye.

And Varamyr also thinks about Jon and his direwolf..

So we have dead warg who kept living in his animal: A WOLF whose name is ONE EYE.

Varamyr could feel the snowflakes melting on his brow. This is not so bad as burning. Let me sleep and never wake, let me begin my second life. His wolves were close now. He could feel them. He would leave this feeble flesh behind, become one with them, hunting the night and howling at the moon. The warg would become a true wolf. Which, though?

[...]

“They say you forget,” Haggon had told him, a few weeks before his own death. “When the man’s flesh dies, his spirit lives on inside the beast, but every day his memory fades, and the beast becomes a little less a warg, a little more a wolf, until nothing of the man is left and only the beast remains.”

Varamyr knew the truth of that. When he claimed the eagle that had been Orell’s, he could feel the other skinchanger raging at his presence. Orell had been slain by the turncloak crow Jon Snow, and his hate for his killer had been so strong that Varamyr found himself hating the beastling boy as well. He had known what Snow was the moment he saw that great white direwolf stalking silent at his side. One skinchanger can always sense another. Mance should have let me take the direwolf. There would be a second life worthy of a king. He could have done it, he did not doubt. The gift was strong in Snow, but the youth was untaught, still fighting his nature when he should have gloried in it.

[...]

A sleeping direwolf raised his head to snarl at empty air. Before their hearts could beat again he had passed on, searching for his own, for One Eye, Sly, and Stalker, for his pack. His wolves would save him, he told himself. That was his last thought as a man. True death came suddenly; he felt a shock of cold, as if he had been plunged into the icy waters of a frozen lake. Then he found himself rushing over moonlit snows with his packmates close behind him. Half the world was dark. One Eye, he knew. He bayed, and Sly and Stalker gave echo. When they reached the crest the wolves paused.

[...]

The things below moved, but did not live. One by one, they raised their heads toward the three wolves on the hill. The last to look was the thing that had been Thistle. She wore wool and fur and leather, and over that she wore a coat of hoarfrost that crackled when she moved and glistened in the moonlight. Pale pink icicles hung from her fingertips, ten long knives of frozen blood. And in the pits where her eyes had been, a pale blue light was flickering, lending her coarse features an eerie beauty they had never known in life. She sees me.

[ADWD; Prologue]

Jon dies in his last ADWD chapter and his last word was his direwolf’s name: GHOST...

[ADWD; Jon XIII]

So we have a full circle:

It started with Agot; Prologue

and ended with ADWD; Jon XIII

Let’s not forget that Jon’s death was foreshadowed in ASOS; Sansa VI chapter.

Lord Petyr dismissed him with a wave, and returned to the pomegranate again as Oswell shuffled down the steps. “Tell me, Alayne—which is more dangerous, the dagger brandished by an enemy, or the hidden one pressed to your back by someone you never even see?”

“The hidden dagger.”

“There’s a clever girl.” He smiled, his thin lips bright red from the pomegranate seeds.

[ASOS; Sansa VI]

Next chapter was Jon:

Fore more about Jon’s death and Sansa; please check:

Jonsa Book Hints: C12 & E7

“Do not be so certain.” The ruby at Melisandre’s throat gleamed red. “It is not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear, but those who smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. You would do well to keep your wolf close beside you. Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark. Blood frozen red and hard, and naked steel. It was very cold.”

“It is always cold on the Wall.”

“You think so?”

“I know so, my lady.”

“Then you know nothing, Jon Snow,” she whispered.

[ADWD; Jon I]

In conclusion:

Jon’s death, him warging into his direwolf during his death and him coming back to life arc has been foreshadowed since AGOT; Prologue and its most obvious hints were given in ADWD; Prologue by echoing AGOT; Prologue.

The ‘ONE EYE’ motif seems like a key hint for his resurrection.

And Sansa is always close to this motif or she has some connections with this motif via other characters or her chapters.

A Sansa Stark being close to another ‘ONE EYE’ Stark is interesting because of the historical couple: Jonnel ‘One Eye’ & Sansa Stark in Stark family tree..

Even the hints of Jon’s death can be found in Sansa chapters.

All of these tell us that Sansa will be important in Jon’s past resurrection story.

Thanks for reading.

Some sources:

Waymar // Jon

Disfigurements

Jonnel / Sansa

Jon’s fate and losing an eye

#jonsa #jon snow #varamyr #orell #jonnel one eye stark #sansa stark #agot #acok #asos #affc #adwd #actually jonsa #jon snow x sansa stark #waymar royce #one eye #meta #mine

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anastasiabeaverhousen87 · 4 years

Text

Fever Dreams

NOTE: Sorry guys for the delay but work kept me from having free time but I was able to come up with this. someone requested a sick baby Danvers getting a fever after some stressful event and then being taken care by her sisters. Hope you like it, I now figured out I cannot do small stories or prompts. I kept writing until I saw the number of pages lol anyways, enjoy.

word count: 5937

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You were discussing some ideas with your boss, Regina, she laughs at something you said when suddenly she received a call. She holds up her hand signaling for you to wait for a moment so she can take the call.

Regina: “yes? , yes she is here. Oh, I see. Yes, I understand. Ok, I’m sending her downstairs right away. No thanks are needed.” - her smile fell and started at you with sorrow in her eyes. She walks to you and holds your hands looking straight into your eyes-

Y/n; “was that about me?” - you asked afraid of the answer.

Regina: “ y/n I need you to listen and don’t panic. There was a situation involving your sisters. I don’t know the details, but you are needed downstairs. Lena Luthor is here for you; you need to go with her. Don’t worry about work, please take off the time you need and don’t forget that whatever you need I’m here for you”

At the mention of situation involving your sisters, you pale and basically ran from your boss’s office to the reception area where Lena Luthor was already waiting for you, her face hard and imposing. Not really reflecting any emotion. So, you couldn’t really get how bad the situation was.

Y/n: “please tell me they’re are okay?” - you tear up not knowing what to expect.

Lena grabs ahold of you and hugs you hard and in very calm and soft voice for only you able to hear says: “they’re alive. They were taken to the DEO. Their condition is unknown, I came for you as soon as I found out. Come on sweet girl. We need to go”

You just nod and let Lena drag you into her car. Your mind and heart running a hounded miles per hour thinking of all worst-case scenarios possible. You are even dreading one them is dead or worse both and you are not being told the truth. You feel your anxiety rise and your hands are a tremble mess.

Lena notices but when you look at her, you schooled your emotions and try to look detached from your thoughts, you need to be strong for your sisters. You need to focus on them, and you can’t let Lena or anyone else worry over you on top of everything. So, you just swallow and bottle everything up.

Y/n: “I’m okay Lena, I just need to see them” - you say in a monotonous tone and hold your hands in your lap.

Lena: “I’m worry too sweetheart. But we are almost there” - she gives your arm a gentle squeeze and turns to look at her phone. You know she must be running all possible scenarios and outcomes in her head; Lena is a very analytical person. You take a deep breath and try to comfort her; Lena needs you too.

Y/n: “you know we are talking about the two most stubborn and powerful women we know. They are highly trained and one of them is basically indestructible. And the other is pretty much a ninja” - you give Lena a warm smile and you can see a hint of a smile on her and you grab her hand in yours.

You both arrive at the DEO and you are immediately received by Jon and lets you know what happened and the current condition of both Danvers sisters.

The mission was compromised, and Alex was taken out of the location unconscious, blood in the back of her head, a contusion and is currently in the intensive care unit because they are monitoring her heart. The worse of the attack was inflicted upon Kara. Somehow the unsubs got ahold of green Kryptonite lined spears and Kara was hit with 6 of them. She lost a lot of blood and she was currently in a coma due to the severity of the injuries and blood loss.

Lena asked to be able to see Kara and foresee the blood transfusion with the blood the DEO was able to get from Kara previously and she kept guarded in her lab for situations such as this.

You let her, not quite ready prepare to see Kara in such state. You also didn’t want Alex alone, so you asked to be taken to her. They were in different areas for their treatments and would take a while before they could be placed in the same room.

You are now siting next to Alex in the ICU, she has some bruises and cuts littering her arms and face. A bandage on the back of her head, she looks peacefully asleep. However, there’s a bunch of wires and tubes everywhere and they are keeping close watch on her heart rate and they have her under sedation. After a while of you holding your big sister hand, the door opens, and you can see Lena on the other side. you walk out of the ICU room to speak with her. She gives you a rundown of the status with Kara, and asks you if you want to see her while she stays with Alex. You nod and walk to your blonde superhero sister medical room. You steel yourself, prepare for what you are about to see and make sure you don’t show any anxiety or discomfort you sister can pick up on. They need to focus on healing, no worrying on their baby sister. You again put on a brave face and keep walking.

When you enter the medical wing where they have the sunlamps installed, you are face with the vision of your powerful and bubbly blonde sister, she looks so still and small in the bed, she is covered with a white blanket but you can definitely see bruises on her, bruises!!! She never bruises. She looks so pale, and there’s a bag of blood next to her arm, the transfusion they mentioned before. And you take a shuddering breath and walks further into the room, you place a gentle kiss on her forehead and sit next to her. You take her hand in yours, and you note she feels cold and she is never cold. She is quite the opposite; she is a furnace all the time. But her hands are cold, and she looks pale and she has bruises and cuts on her arms. You feel so sad and lost, she is supposed to be almost indestructible and somehow someone made sure to have available the one thing that could bring Supergirl to her knees, to hurt her …to kill her.

You push your worries and anxiety away and try to calm and look this the positive way, they are here. They are both alive and they will recover from this. You stay with Kara for a long time, you are not sure how long, but after a while you are being asked to step out so they can check on Kara and move Alex from the ICU to Kara’s medical room.

For the next two days you stay strong, keep a brave face and make sure to leave and get food and coffee for Lena and the team taking care of your sisters. You need to feel useful, make sure you don’t crumble under pressure and anxiety at looking at your sisters so beaten up. Alex woke up after 12 hours and she was very out of it for the concussion and looked terribly exhausted. Kara was doing better the sunlamps working their magic, but she did end up blowing off her powers and she was healing slower than usual, but on the mend. she was mostly recovered after 36 hours but was kept at the DEO anyways.

You walk into one of the labs Lena is working on some samples to bring her lunch. She’s been working nonstop on getting a suit or artifact to make sure Kara never gets affected by kryptonite like this again. She has her tablet on her hand and looks furious.

y/n: “knock knock… hi Lena, here I brought you lunch., I noticed you haven’t left this place so here. Salad, a chicken wrap and iced tea. Healthy enough right?”

Lena changes her demeanor instantly and covers her tablet, facedown on the table.

Lena: “Hi sweetie, you’re a Gods send, no I haven’t eaten so I’m starving. Thank you so much.” – she is about to dig into her food when there’s a phone call to one of the phones in the lab. She perks up immediately.

Kara: “Kara woke up from her nap, do you mind if I go and say hello? and then you can stay with her ill come back and eat lunch and you can have yours with Kara”

Y/n: “Of course, I don’t mind your dork, Ill stay here while you say hello and then we will switch spots.”

Lena almost runs into the med bay to see Kara and she forgets to lock and take the tablet with her. You notice the tablet and got curious, whatever Lena was watching seemed to make her very mad, so you decided to be nosy and took the tablet. It was a video, you hit play and what you see is the worst things you could’ve witness.

Is the footage from the mission, you can see how Kara is getting attacked by the spears, embedding into her skin like butter. She shouldn’t be hurt that easily and you see your sister bleed from different spots. Then there’s movement and lots of people getting hurt and all of sudden Alex and Jon run into the place Kara is kneeling and bleeding. Jon is now trying to control de attacker, Alex notices something and her eyes go wide with worry and gets in between whatever she is seeing and Kara. A sort of electric wave or shock hits Alex and she becomes airborne and then hits the floor hard, she is now unconscious on the floor. You can hear the most painful and devastating scream coming out of Kara, who is desperately trying to move to get to Alex the best she can with kryptonite om her body. She Is screaming Alex’s name and what follows makes your blood run cold.

[[Kara (voice from the video) “ Nooo Alex!!! Jon help her heart just stopped!”-Jon finishes to subdue the enemy and runs towards Alex and you cant look away from the footage. Jon is shouting orders and he is doing CPR and Alex. Some agent runs with a black box and looks to be a defibrillator and they began to work on getting Alex back. She is basically dead; she has no heartbeat. They shock her 4 times before you can see Jon’s shoulders sag with relief and then Kara goes limp next to Alex. ]]

You stop the video and lock the tablet. You have tears running down your cheeks, what you saw its just awful, you know your sisters are okay now, but they could’ve been killed, and they barely made it out there with their lives this time. how many times has this happened before? Are they always getting hurt like this? Would they die eventually on missions? Many scenarios began to pop up In your mind and how any day now you could lose them and become completely alone in the world. They are everything to you and now you just saw how bad things can get for them. You can breathe you feel like all air is leaving your lungs. So, you run, you don’t want for Kara or Alex finding out your saw that or that you need help, they don’t need to be looking out for you. You run to a led lined room and try to control your panic attack. You fall to the ground and pull your legs up towards your chest and try to control your breathing, you force yourself to steady your heart rate. You must control it; you need to shove it inside deep inside and don’t let it show. For them, you need to keep this from them. After a very long time you feel yourself drifting out from exhaustion and then you sit there alone until you can feel more normal.

You find a restroom and clean your face and then you look at your reflection, you look haunted and exhausted. You wash your face and try to compose yourselves. You leave the room and then you see Lena walking towards you.

Lena: “There you are! I’ve been trying to find you for almost an hour. Are you okay? Are you sick or hurt?” - Lena is looking at you from head to toes trying to see what’s wrong. You need to control it.

y/n: “I’m fine Lena. I was waiting for you, but I was starting to get sleepy, so I just left to walk it off for a bit and clear my head. I guess time slipped from me”

Lena didn’t press much, but you could see she didn’t buy it completely she looked suspicious of you but let it slide for now “Ok, that’s okay. Kara and Alex have been asking for you. Why don’t you go see them? They will be able to go home tomorrow”

Y/N: “Yeah totally I’m om my way and finally and can’t wait to have them home. Are you coming or what?”

You and Lena spend the afternoon with the Danvers sisters and Alex noticed something was off with you, so you tried to deflect and avoid getting any attention from them, they needed to focus on themselves. Not you.

Alex: “Kiddo you look tire why don’t you just jump in bed with me and sleep for a while? Come on!”- the red head pats the bed next to her and you want it so bad, to lay there and be comforted by your sister but you can’t. You need to show them you are strong and can be the one looking out for them this time.

y/n:”I’m not tired Alex, I’m okay. Do you need anything water, food or a snack?”

Kara: “Sweet girl stop, we are good. But you do look a bit run down. You been here for days and you haven’t slept or eaten enough. Just rest for a little; if not with Alex come on, you can sleep with me, Please? I really could use on of your certified hugs? - Kara gives you the best puppy eyes she can muster.

Alex “Hey, I asked first, and I want a hug too” – she pouts

You chuckle at her antics and you can see Lena looks quite suspicious of you and is looking more at you than any of the remaining Danvers in the room. So you walk to Alex and give her a hug and a kiss “I love you, but I will lay down with Kara because you still have burnt marks on your chest and I don’t want to hurt you”

Alex just pouts but she doesn’t really care about who you end up crashing on, she just wants you to rest and sleep for a while. So, you comply. Besides you lied, because you know Kara is always running hot, she hardly notices when you are running a fever and you can feel yourself getting a headache and you do feel a bit warm. But you think is just stress and if you sleep for a while it will go away.

Kara opens her arms and smiles broadly “Come on little one, jump in and give me some sugar”

You walk to Kara and get comfortable next to her and you inhale her scent, you can always find comfort in their smell and their touch. You let yourself drift off and then, you’re out like a light. You might be more tired than you pretended no to be.

The room becomes silent for a few minutes.

Alex: “Is she out?” - she asks Kara who nods in approval.

Kara is running her fingers through y/n hair and Lena walks towards Kara and y/n.

Lena: “She is out. Something is off with her. She’s been extremely quiet, not in a bad way but like she seems to be trying to avoid breaking down or look too preoccupied. She took into herself to run food and drink errands for everyone, trying to keep busy at all times. Even when she was siting with any of you, she would look a little detached.”

Alex: “she is deflecting, and she does looks exhausted. Poor thing. I bet it was awful on her getting both her sister hurt. She needs to rest too, and we will make that happened”

Kara just hums in approval; she is too preoccupied looking down at y/n running her fingers through her hair and hummin softly a song. Lena just keeps watching Kara make soothing strokes on y/n.

Lena: “well, I leave for now to make sure the fridge is stocked up and have your beds ready with fresh sheets. Alex, Kara and I think its better if you stay at Kara’s and Y/N for a few days. y/n said you can have her room, I will stay with Kara and even tough y/n said she was taking the couch, she is most likely than not be using you as her human teddy bear and sleep with you”

Alex: “ yeah, I guess that’s the best. I want to keep a close eye on y/n. make sure she really is okay. And she will feel better if she has us around for the next couple of days”

Y/n moves in her sleep and scrunches up her face in disapproval of the noises in the room.

Kara just hums and keeps the soothing patterns “Shh sleep little one. You’re okay”

Lena whispers “Ok I’m leaving I’ll be back in the morning to take you all home” – she then gives Kara a sweet kiss on her lips and runs down gently her fingers on y/n temple. –“Sleep good sweet girl”

Kara “Good night baby. See you in the morning”

Alex: “Good night Lena, thank you for everything. See you in the morning”

Lena: “None needed Alex, it’s my pleasure besides who kept everyone motivated and going was here our sweet y/n. She deserves the credit for keeping us sane and fed. Now she deserves a good night rest”

Alex and Kara nod and say goodbye and continue to watch over y/n during the night. In the morning Lena arrives early so they all can leave. But she is concerns when she sees that y/n still asleep.

Kara: “good morning my love. We are ready. I´ll carry the goober here I have pretty much all my strength back so I’m good to go. She woke up a little while ago to eat some fruit and a jell-O. But she pretty much passed out after that. She is completely exhausted”

Kara is now wearing pants and looks like she just took a shower. y/n is passed out on the hospital bed slightly snoring next to Kara.

Alex walks into the room also wearing DEO issued pants and carrying a small bag. “I’m ready to go”

They all arrive at the Danvers apartment and settle down for the day. Kara carries y/n to her own room to let Alex in y/n room rest for a while. Being human she is not at 100% like she is. Lena and Kara end up in the kitchen deciding on lunch and Alex is now napping for a little bit as well.

A little while after Kara walks into her room to check on y/n, she is still asleep which is now a bit worrisome.

Kara: “y/n baby. Wake up. Come on, just wake up for a little bit to eat something”

You began to stir in bed and give a cute yawn and waking up a bit more. You feel a headache and you don’t feel so good. But you remember what happened and notice you are in your sister room. You bolt upright.

y/n: “what happened? what time is it? Why I’m I in your room?- you look frantic.

Kara: “Calm down kiddo. We’re home. You were so tired, so we just let you sleep for a while. I brought you here to let you rest more. And Alex took your room. Are you hungry?”

y/n: “ohh ok, I guess I was more than tired than I thought. Yeah, I could eat”

You walk to the kitchen next to Kara and you see Lena there platting some food.

Lena “Hi there sleepy head, feeling better?” – Lena approaches you and gives you a peck on your cheek.

Lena frowns at the warm feeling on your cheek and touches your forehead and cheeks with her hands.

Lena: “Sweetie you feeling okay? You are a bit warm and your cheeks look a bit flush”

Y/n: “I’m good, just tired. I think I’ll grab a bite and sleep some more”- you sit on one of the chairs at the counter and slump yourself on the table.

Kara looks worried at you and she then looks back at Lena. “how warm, should I bring the thermometer?”

You just grunt- “No Kara, I’m fine I just need food and more sleep. I’m okay no need to worry. You and Alex are the ones that were attacked and are recovering. I’m just sleep deprived”

Kara: “y/n, don’t lie to me baby girl. Or I will go and get Alex to make sure you are really okay”

y/n: “NO!!!, don’t bother her with this. Let her sleep, she needs it. I’m fine but if it does make you feel better bring the thermometer but just let Alex sleep”

Lena and Kara look at you, confuse at your outburst. You seem to be a little on edge.

Alex: “No need to worry about me sleeping. I’m up. What’s this all about?”

Lena: “y/n feels a Little too warm and she seems tense”

You give Lena a dirty look – “No I’m not, and I’m FINE. I just need more sleep to feel better and that’s all”

Alex approaches you and feels your forehead and cheeks. She also puts her lips to your forehead, and you sigh in appreciation of having your sister near you. You rest your forehead on her shoulder and Alex just hold your near her.

Alex: “You are a little warm, but nothing too bad. I’m giving you Tylenol for the headache and mild fever. Just eat something first”. - she hugs you for a little bit more and kisses your head and sits down next to you.

After lunch Alex gave you Tylenol and the four of you ended up in the living room watching a movie. You avoided mentioning anything in regard the attack and the injuries your sisters sustain no wanted to let them know you saw what really happened to them. However, the movie you were all watching, was a Sci-Fi movie. Alex and Lena making remarks on how bad and unreal the effects were and you felt yourself tense at the images. There was one in particular, where a laser beam was aimed towards someone and you could see Alex being hit and then lying down on the ground dead. You couldn’t keep watching that it was all too raw. You could feel the anxiety and stress of those couple of days and you just turn into Alex to hold her close and hide your face in her neck, not wanting to keep watching or listening to the movie.

Lena noticed your demeanor change as well as your sisters. Kara got back her powers and could feel your heart rate increased and she paused the movie.

Kara: “You okay little one?”- she asks but you just shrug and hide further into Alex.

Alex is combing her fingers through your hair, but you nudge a bit to hard and you can feel Alex stiff a little and hiss in pain. You accidentally touched one of the burn marks on her chest. You sit up and release your hold on Alex.

You have tears in your eyes and feel so bad for hurting Alex: “I’m So sorry Alex. I, …I forgot you were still healing I didn’t mean it. I’m just tired. I think I´ll just go to sleep; I don’t feel like watching the movie anymore. I’ll get the air mattress so you can still watch the movie or whatever you want. And whenever you are ready you can take the bed Alex. Good night” - you rambled nonstop and try to leave as fast as you can, but Alex grabs you by your waist and pulls you into her and prevent from you to run way.

Alex: “hey hey none of that, you didn’t hurt me. It was an accident and I’m okay. Please calm down for a bit, take a deep breath. That’s it, deep breaths.” Alex holds you near and rubs up and down you back in a soothing way – “Don’t shut us out. You don’t have to pretend that what happened didn’t affected you and to be strong for us. We are okay, we are here with you and I know see us like that wasn’t easy for you. We know the risks but it’s different for you. So please let us in.”

And that’s too much for you to handle and you just break down completely all the fears and anxiety you been building up for days now comes out through Gut-wrenching sobs that tore through your chest and you cling to Alex like a lifeline. You try to follow Alex’s instructions, but you just can’t, you feel tightening in your throat and you take short intakes of breath. You starting to feel lightheaded and you faintly can hear her voice and now Kara’s, not sure who’s.

You feel your legs being swept from under you and you know its Kara strong and caring arms carrying you.

Alex: “Take her to the bedroom I’m getting her inhaler just keep trying to calm her down a little. Lena can you grab a cold compress and bring it to her room, please” – Alex says in a hurry and everyone moves.

Kara: “Little one, I know I know please try to take a deep breath”- and you try but you start to cough and try to take a breath, but you keep choking.

Alex: “I got it, here baby please take a puff” – you feel the inhaler being pressed to your mouth and try to get in the medication. You fail the first time and choke on air. “That’s Okay sweetie try again, here we go, breath in…” – this time you can get the medication in and you give rest to your burring lungs. A second time and you feel like you can breathe again.

Kara: “that’s it little one, slow but deep breaths. Just like that” – Kara soothing voices echoes through your head as well as Alex’s. You feel something cold being pressed to the back of your neck and forehead.

You feel the relief of been able to breathe properly and you began to calm down a bit. Your sobs turn into sniffling and you are limp against Kara. But then you are being moved one more time, you feel a second pair of arms, Alex. Her soft and firm arms are embracing you and you feel more relaxed now. You want to apologize for the outburst, but you feel so very tired you can barely keep your eyelid opens anymore.

Alex: “go to sleep sweet girl. We are here, you’re not alone and we are not going anywhere okay”

Kara” Just sleep baby.”- you feel Kara fingers in run through your head and neck. And then you are out like a light.

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You can see Alex lying on the ground dead, her eyes wide and void. No life in them. Just Gone. And Kara next to her barely alive, you run to her and put her head on your lap. Tears are running down your cheeks and you feel your chin trebling. Kara is so pale and cold; she is barely breathing. and you can see her eyes are so sad, she knows Alex is gone and now your about to lose Kara too. And then her eyes start to close. And you cant stand that,” Kara no, no, no,no,no please wake up. You can leave me, please hang on wake-up Kara”- but Kara is too weak and tries to give you a small smile “I’m sorry sweet girl…” and she is gone…

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y/n: “NOOOOOOOOOO!!!” – You bolt upright screaming and great tremor overtake you. Body wracked with an onslaught of sobs and tears. You try to move and then you feel arms around you.

Kara runs into the room followed by Lena who notices you are being cradled by Alex and you look to be completely out of out of it. Sweat pouring down your face and body. Your cheeks red and blotchy.

Alex: “her fever spiked, pass me the thermometer please”

Lena presses the device to read the temperature on you and when there’s a beep 104°F Everyone’s eyes go wide with worry.

Alex: “Kara take her to the bathroom; we need to lower her core temperature STAT”

You are mumbling incoherent things through choked sobs “No Kara, don’t leave, Alex dead. Please No…” -you keep crying and Kara takes you into the bathroom while Alex works on getting lukewarm water running in the bathtub, she steps inside and signals to Kara to lower you on her lap. You sister stripped you down to your underwear. You feel water on your body, and it feels like icy pricks all over and you try to move and scape the cold, but you can’t. you are being held down.

Alex: “y/n baby please calm down; you are going to be fine. I’m here. We need to bring your temperature down” -she keeps holding you and trying to sooth you while Kara keep pouring water down your head, back, neck and arms. You stay in the water for a very long time, you are not sure for how long.

y/n: “Why did you leave me Alex?” – you mumble softly and hide you face into the crook of her neck, Tears welled from deep inside and coursed down your cheeks.

Alex and Kara look at loss, obviously they know their sister is hallucinating from the high fever.

Lena: “I Noticed something was off since that day at the DEO and I couldn’t find her. I forgot my tablet at the lab, and she was there. I wasn’t sure if she saw the footage but guessing from how she thinks you are dead; I think she took the tablet and watch the video from the mission”

Alex nods and keeps trying to calm you down and bring down the fever “That’s okay sweet girl, I’m here. I’m here with you, I did not leave you” -she keeps her mantra of soft words and holding you. “Lena do you have the a FeverAll suppository.?”

Lena nods.

Alex: “Okay, Kara I need you to take y/n I’m going to dry myself a little bit. Take her into her room and change her into a clean set of under wear and just gently remove the excess water, don’t dry her completely. That will keep her cool enough. Don’t put any pajamas on her, maybe just a lose tank top. Lena if you could bring more cold compresses and water or if we have Pedialyte. And just leave the medication in her night stand I will administrate that in a moment”

Kara paces you in you bed and Lena walks in setting the things Alex requested on the nigh stand while touching your cheeks and forehead and you feel cooler to the touch. “She feels more cooler now, I’m going to leave the suppository here and the water. I´ll be in your room, so Alex and y/n have a little privacy for her to administrate the medication”

Kara: “poor baby, she hates those. But they better for her. Ok Love I’ll be there in a bit. I just want to make sure she is okay and comfortable after Alex gets here”

Lena: “Of course baby. Let me know if you need anything else”- Lena leans down to kiss your forehead and then kisses Kara and leaves the room.

Alex walks in and checks y/n temp. still a mild fever, but not in comparison to what it was before the bath in lukewarm water.

Alex: “She is definitely cooler now, but I need to administrate the fever reducer suppository. Lower her underwear and Can you move her to lay on her left side please, and just bent her upper leg towards her abdomen?”

You tense at Alex words; you really don’t like this kind of medication it’s too uncomfortable. You try to move away. Kara keeps you steady.

Kara: “I know you don’t like them, and you don’t need to be embarrassed, this will help you feel better soon.” – you just looked at her with glazed eyes and sniff, resigned you knew she is right. But still you don’t like it.

Alex put on a rubber glove and a bit of water-based lubricant on her finger to make things easier for you.

Alex: “This will be quick I promise sweet girl just relax take a slow deep breath through your mouth”-you feel Alex push your leg a little bit more into your abdomen and Kara holds you still. You take a deep breath and you feel the uncomfortable sensation of the intrusion of a foreign object being pushed into your body that way. Alex is very gentle and does a quick job and waits a moment to prevent the expulsion of the suppository and then removes her glove and goes to wash her hands.

Kara: “That was all. You did great little onel. Now close your eyes and relax, go back to sleep”

Alex returns to the room and you are almost asleep on Kara, but when Kara sees Alex walk back into the room she moves you so you can still be lying down on your side but this time near Alex. The red head in turn gathers you in her arms and begins running a hand up and down your spine so you can relax and fall asleep. You feel Kara move from the bed and you tear up.

Y/n: “Sissy can you stay too? Please, just tonight”- you don’t feel good and now you are definitely not trying to prove anything to anyone, you feel like shit and you want your sisters.

Kara: “Of course I can stay. Just let me go and say goodnight to Lena and I’ll be right back”

y/n: “okay”- you say in small voice and you began to move more into Alex. She holds you near and presses a cold compress to the back of your neck and face.

Alex: “Close your eyes baby, Kara will be right back. We are here and we are not leaving you sweet girl”- she keeps the soothing touches and you start to feel the heaviness of sleep and you are almost asleep when you feel the bed dip and a second touch on your temple.

Kara: “Lena says good night sweet girl and she promised to make chocolate chip pancakes in the morning, Yaaay” – Kara keeps her touch light and you feel her near, but not as close as Alex. They don’t want to overheat your skin and you feel their presence near you to be just perfect and you drifted-off into a dreamless sleep.

note II: all mistakes are mine, its late and I just finish this and post it like that. I need sleep.

#sickfic #baby danvers #baby!danvers #alex x baby danvers #baby danvers x lena #baby danvers x kara #alex danvers #alex danvers imagine #supergirl #supercorp #lena x reader #lena luthor imagine #lena x supergirl #lena luthor #kara danvers imagine #kara x reader #kara danvers

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sailorshadzter · 3 years

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a loyal lord.

She was not afraid to face Ramsay, nor even Joffrey, and so she is not afraid of the dragon queen. Not even Daenerys' dragons could frighten her, despite the flames that they belched and the shrieks that came as they streaked through the Northern skies. No, she was resilient as stone, like Winterfell, like her father; she was a Stark and so she could be brave. And yet... She was afraid. Not of Daenerys, not of her dragons, but of death itself. Of the army that would soon march towards Winterfell, towards her home and those she loves most. She is afraid, afraid to lose those she's only just gotten back.

"My lady?"

It's Lord Royce standing there in her doorway, head tilted as he takes a moment to observe her there behind the oak desk. If he notices the unusual paleness to her skin, or even the tired look upon her features, he mentions it not. Instead, he approaches the desk she sits behind and bows, as he would to a queen, as he thinks she's always should have been. "The men are prepared to keep the gates open until nightfall." It is the agreement she and the other lords have come to- keeping the gates open so late into the night could put they themselves into harm's way... But all she can think about those still coming to Winterfell for safety, closing the gates too soon could mean the death of innocent people. She knows she cannot save them all, though she wishes she could, but she is willing to do what it takes to save as many as she can.

"Thank you," she nods, unable to help but to let out a long, slow sigh. Relief rushes through her, warm and steady, and for a moment she can breathe easy. She locks eyes with her ever faithful lord and offers him a smile, which catches him off guard- but he finds himself smiling back. This was a young woman he would bend to, be loyal to, a young woman he knew would lead the North into a golden era, if only given the chance. "They say if not tonight, then surely by tomorrow," she speaks suddenly, her moment of relief fading as she's reminded yet again of what's to come.

"Aye, they do," Lord Royce replies, shifting back towards her. In that moment, she is not a lady, she is but a frightened young woman hoping that no one notices. "But all will be well," he goes on to say, offering her another smile, one he hopes she finds encouraging. "Fear not, my lady." As she stares up into the older man's eyes, Sansa has no choice but to believe him. His kind gaze is strong, steady, and it brings the once fleeting relief back.

Though she opens her mouth as if to reply, there comes a knock to the half open door, and Jon Snow is there, peeking through the crack. "Sorry to interrupt," he says as he slips inside, acknowledging Lord Royce with a nod. "But I thought I might have a word with the Lady of Winterfell," he casts those Stark eyes towards her and Lord Royce can't help but to notice the glimmer of a smile upon her face.

"My lady," he bows for her before he backs from the room, pausing only when he's stepped into the hall, just so he might look back one last time. By then, Jon has slid into place atop the desk, seated just to the right of where Sansa sits behind the desk. She's smiling as she looks up into his face, every trace of her fear gone as she basks in the glow of what one might call love. Lord Royce can only chuckle, shaking his head as he turns away, allowing the door to the solar to fully close, leaving the pair alone behind it.

He supposes it's wrong, the nature of the relationship between those two, but in a world such as theirs... One full of fear, of anger, of war... In a life that has been far too full of horror, of grief.... Of all people, Sansa Stark deserves any bit of happiness she can get. And so he walks away, content in knowing the lady he serves so willingly, can find a moment of joy in what could be their last, lingering hours in this life.

[ x x x ]

When the dawn breaks, they are alive.

Somehow, someway, they have survived. There was a cost, of course, lives had been lost and the horrors of war were not limited to a battlefield. Even now, hours later, he shudders at the memory of a white walker rising from it's icy grave, of the sound of tearing flesh, of piercing screams.

As night falls once again, they are raising their glasses in a toast to those who had died so they might live on. They, the survivors, feast and drink and celebrate, if only to avoid the empty feeling of loss, of guilt, of being the ones left behind. He watches, silently, from where he sits at a table with several others, as when they think nobody is watching, his lady and her half brother share the most tender of stares. Beside them, the cold but beautiful dragon queen seethes in silence, as if she too is aware of the warmth between siblings, as if she already knows she can never come between them.

The night goes on and when he rises up to finally head to bed himself, Lord Royce realizes his lady is no where to be seen. A quick scan of the room tells him that Jon Snow is also missing from the room, though his rowdy wildling companions still are raising their goblets in his honor. He slips from the room out the back door and the hall he steps into he finds to be empty aside from the great white wolf that lingers outside a door. The wolf does not cause him fear, he's grown used to him after all, for he never strays far from his lady.

Ghost raises those eerie red eyes to look upon him as he approaches, but does not raise his head from his paws, laying there on the floor in front of the door. The wolf is as used to him as he is with him, for which Lord Royce supposes he should be thankful. Pausing outside the door himself, it takes but a single moment for him to hear the voices, soft and somewhat muffled, passing through the thick wood. It's her of course, Sansa was there in that room with Jon Snow, who he can hear speaking lowly to her, words he's unable to make out. Now he understands, the wolf is their guardian. "Keep her safe," Lord Royce speaks softly, as not to alarm them inside the room, and leans down to pat the wolf upon his head. As if he understands, the wolf thumps his tail once against the stone floor, and closes his eyes again. Tonight, the wolf will keep watch.

And so he moves on his way, smiling to himself.

[ x x x ]

"My lady?"

Lord Royce finds her upon the battlements, staring forlornly out at the retreating back of Jon on horseback, leading an army away from Winterfell, away from her. She does not cast a glance his way as he approaches and it's only then that he realizes she's been crying. "He swears he will return," she whispers after a moment, voice breaking, her eyes closing as she sucks in a breath. In that moment, she is uncaring of what harm the truth might bring. In that moment, she is but a young woman full of heartbreak, full of anguish. A young woman who must, once again, watch the man she loves walk away from her.

"And so he will," Lord Royce replies without thinking, without hesitation. She turns to him then, widening eyes full of surprise, rosy lips falling open as if she means to speak, but cannot find the words. "If there is one thing that I know, my lady, it is that Jon Snow is a man of his word. If he says he will return, then return he will." She holds fast to his gaze and a moment later, her features soften, and to his surprise she's smiling.

"You're right," she says, feeling far more clear than she has in days. "You're right," she repeats, turning away again, only to see that Jon has finally disappeared from her line of sight. "Thank you, Lord Royce," she says after a few moments of silence, shifting slightly so she might face him again. "It seems as if you always know just what to say."

When she's gone, Lord Royce offers a silent prayer to any of the gods that might have been listening... A prayer to return Jon Snow to Winterfell, back to his lady, just so she might be happy once again. But until then, he would keep watch over her.

[ x x x ]

It's late when he hears the call at the gate.

He's already shrugging on his cloak when the knock on his door sounds; a man in Stark livery stands there to tell him Jon Snow has come through the gate, with Arya Stark and the others that went South, though just as rumors said, Daenerys Targaryen did not return with them. She was, as it was said, dead, her one remaining dragon gone off towards Essos, perhaps never to bother Westeros again. Perhaps, but not certainly.

"Do not tell our lady," he commands as he exits the room, the man on his heels.

As they descend down to the main hall, Lord Royce can see that the torches have already been relit, casting Winterfell into a hazy light. Tugging his cloak a bit closer, he steps out into the night and sure enough, already sliding down from his horse in the courtyard is Jon Snow. Others come through, such as the redheaded wildling Tormund, though young Arya Stark is nowhere to be seen. "Jon Snow," he greets as he approaches, uncertain if he's to bow to the man that surely is to be proclaimed King of the Seven Kingdoms. Though, Jon certainly seems not to care, for his eyes are wildly searching for one face and one face alone. "She is in her rooms," he says, knowing, understanding. Jon blinks, grinning, before he reaches out to clasp the older man on the arm before he darts away, through the freshly falling snow and up the stairs, disappearing through the main doors.

By the time he reaches her rooms, Lord Royce can hear their voices from within.

He pauses, only for a moment, so he might crack the door and peek inside. In the center of the room they stand, arms around one another, holding onto the other as if their lives depended upon it. Lord Royce smiles and lets the door close once again. He returns down the hall, shooing away the maids that approach, thinking they might bring food and ale for the newly returned King.

Stopping at the end of the hall, he sinks onto the guards bench, intent on ensuring they remain undisturbed. It takes only a few minutes for the white wolf to appear, settling himself at Lord Royce's feet, his intentions the very same. Reaching down, he pats the wolf's head and then sits back, knowing that his watch had begun again.

#jonsa #actuallyjonsa #jon x sansa #i love talking about jonsa through other characters #my usual is brienne or arya so this was fun!#plus i think lord royce would be faithful to sansa and would be hella supportive #also hello its almost 2am i need to be in bed #my writing #i wrote this

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hoaryoldbitch · 4 years

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bittersweet and strange (2/4)

@vivilove-jonsa made this lovely moodboard for my tale as old as time series! Thank you again! I feel so honoured that you decided to make this for me! 💕💕💕

Sansa feels different when she opens her father’s letter than she did when she started reading Robb’s, numb somehow. A scrap of yellowed cloth falls into her lap as she unfolds the parchment. Someone embroidered a blue rose on it, and the words “I’m so sorry.”

She meant to read the letter aloud to Jon, but as she skims the parchment, her eyes find words she should be able to understand, but they don’t make sense to her. She sees names: Jon, Lyanna, Aemon, Robert, even Catelyn. I’m sorry, she keeps seeing, so many times I’m sorry. Lies and truth. But at some point, they all start to blur in front of her eyes, start to blur into pain. Her father’s pain, her mother’s, Jon’s; she can feel it, almost as if it’s her own.

Jon’s hand is on the small of her back and he picks up the embroidered scrap of cloth, tracing the rose with his thumb. “Sansa?” he asks gently.

She pushes herself to her feet, almost crumpling the letter in her fist, until she remembers she has no right to do so. How does she tell Jon that his entire life has been a lie? Will he even understand? She starts walking up and down the room, feeling Jon’s eyes on her as she does so. He whines and growls. Seven Hells, she needs to calm down, her pacing is making him anxious.

She picks up her brush and walks back to the hearth to sit down next to Jon. Perhaps if she keeps her hands occupied, it will be easier to think. It is not. Her hands tremble, and her breaths grow shallow.

Jon sits down behind her, his thighs bracketing hers, and his hands slide down her arms until he’s covering hers. She leans back, allowing her back to find the solid support of his chest, but she almost immediately pulls back, hating herself for letting him soothe her when she should be the one comforting him.

Read it on AO3

Still, she lets him take the brush from her hand. She lets him lace the fingers of his free hand through hers and squeezes them before he releases her hand again. He’s gentle and patient as he brushes her hair, and he even starts humming under his breath. From time to time, he puts the brush down to run his fingers through her hair, to sniff a strand or kiss it or rub it against his cheek. She leans back against his chest again, takes his hand and holds it over her stomach, closing her eyes and humming tunelessly as he buries his face in her hair.

She wishes this moment could last forever, that her father’s letter didn’t exist–even if the truths that are revealed in it render the feelings that have started to blossom in her heart less vile–that the outside world wasn’t real and that they could stay like this, but she knows she has to disrupt it and tell him what she has just learned.

She explains to him that Eddard Stark was not his father, that Lord Stark never fathered a bastard, that he lied to all of them to protect Jon, whose name isn’t even Jon Snow, but Aemon Targaryen. She tells him that his mother was Lyanna Stark, that she wanted to fight for him, but that she wasn’t strong enough to beat the fever that took her.

She picks up the piece of embroidered cloth where he’s placed on top of the blanket next to his thigh and turns to kneel between his legs. “She made this, when she was still carrying you under her heart.”

He takes it from her, staring at it with a furrowed brow. “Pretty,” he mutters.

“Do you understand, Jon?”

He takes her hand, tracing her knuckles with his thumb, following the movement with his eyes. “Wolf-father lied. Not mine.”

When he glances up at her, she nods. “But you had a wolf-mother.”

His eyes drop to the cloth in his hand and mumbles: “Wolf-mother.”

“She was brave and beautiful, and she loved you, Jon. So much.”

“Dragon-father, bad man,” he continues. She can’t deny that. “Dragon bad, fire bad.”

“It can be, but fire is also warm, like you, it protects against the cold.” She cups his cheek and squeezes his fingers.

“Dragon man bad,” he insists.

“He was,” she agrees. “But you are a good man.” His eyes flutter closed under her touch and he shakes his head, almost imperceptible, but she feels it against her palm.

“Jon wolf, not man.”

“I think you are both,” she muses.

He opens his mouth, but closes it again and squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head and his fingers tighten on her hand.

She caresses his cheek. “What is it?”

He shakes his head more forcefully. Whatever is bothering him, it seems that he is not ready to tell her. “Wolf-mother dead,” he says as he opens his eyes. “Wolf-father also dead. Sad.”

She nods. “Very sad,” she agrees.

“Sansa not dead. Sansa here. Still pack?” he asks her.

She offers him a wide smile. “Still pack,” she confirms.

He wraps his arms around her waist to pull her into his lap, and she lets him, melting into his embrace.

Sansa resists the urge to brush Jon’s hair from his face as she rises from the bed. She’s managed to disentangle herself from his arms without waking him, she won’t risk it. She had to get up, she couldn’t sleep anymore, with all the worries and questions whirling through her mind.

She knows she should talk to Jon about Robb’s will, but every time she tries to think of the right way to tell him, to ask him what he wants, what he thinks they should do, she’s reminded of his words during their last conversation. “Jon wolf, not man,” he told her and he didn’t seem to agree when she insisted he could be both.

And then there is the truth revealed by her father’s letter. It saddens Sansa to think how his lies hurt both Jon and her Lady Mother, even if she understands why he had to do it. He could have told them at some point. Jon should have known. The question right now is: should anyone else know?

Robb’s will declared Jon his heir, but would the lords and ladies of the North accept him as their new king if they knew the truth about him? She’s afraid they wouldn’t. Would they choose her instead? Would they try to turn her against him? Would it mean war if Jon’s secret got out? So that means she has her answer to that question. No one can find out.

Jon is still asleep when Satin enters the room to tend to the fire and bring her a tray of food. Sansa likes him, and she trusts him, and she believes he must know Jon better than anyone else at Castle Black. She invites him to sit down at the table with her.

“Satin? There’s something I would like to show you,” she tells him. She hands him Robb’s will and eats her porridge while he reads it.

“Do you understand what it says?” she asks him. He told her he can read and write a little, so she can’t be completely sure of it.

“Your brother wanted Jon to be King in the North after him,” he answers with wide eyes.

She nods. “He believed my sister and my other brothers were dead, and our enemies forced me to wed one of their own.”

“The dwarf?” he asks her.

“Aye,” she answers. “Satin, you knew Jon before, before he became like this. What do you think he would want?”

Satin sits back and rubs at his beard. “King Stannis offered it to him. Winterfell and the lordship. The Wildling Princess was to be his wife.”

“He did?”

He nods. “And Jon refused him. He told Stannis ‘Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa.’”

She doesn’t try to hide her glistening eyes from him. She’s not ashamed of them, not with Satin. He’s kind and gentle. Oh Jon, she thinks. You belong there, too.

“He cares about his family,” Satin says softly. “He was murdered because he wanted to save his other sister.”

She balls her fists as all the untruths in those words overwhelm her.

Satin straightens his shoulders. “Do you think we should get her back, to help him?”

She understands what he means, but she doesn’t even have to think about the answer. “No.”

The girl Alysane Mormont and Justin Massey took to Eastwatch is not Arya. Seeing her won’t help Jon. Sansa wants to see her again, wants to tell her how sorry she is that she couldn’t protect her, but for the time being, it’s probably better if Jeyne stays away from Castle Black. “She’s safer at Eastwatch,” she tells Satin.

Satin taps his fingers on the table. “I understand you may feel as if you are betraying your brother’s will, as if you are betraying Jon by stepping up, but I don’t think you have another choice right now.”

“I just want him to be whole again,” she confesses. “Not just for him, but for me. I know that must make me very selfish… But I need him. I can’t do this alone.” Saying those words brings her more relief than she could have imagined.

Satin frowns. “I think you can, but I understand that you don’t want to.” He opens his mouth to say more, but closes it again, his eyes drawn to something behind her back.

“Sansa?” Jon suddenly calls out from the spot Satin is staring at. He groans and drags his hand down over his face when a naked Jon approaches them. “We’ll never get him into his clothes again!”

Sansa turns and holds out a hand to Jon. She lets him take it and rub his face against her palm. “Jon, will you please put on a pair of breeches for me?” she asks him.

She giggles at Satin’s mouth falling open when Jon obeys her without any complaints or objections other than a sullen face and a disgruntled grunt.

When Satin has left again, Sansa rises to her feet and returns to the fire, staring into the flames to think. Brienne said Jon isn’t fit to rule. Satin told her he defended her claim, that he gave up his own chance at becoming Lord of Winterfell for her. Could he ever forgive her if she took that chance away from him now? She would have to burn Robb’s will, or hide it, make Lady Mormont and Lord Glover take a vow of silence. Would they agree to that?

She doesn’t want to take anything from Jon, but Brienne is right. If Jon thinks of himself as a wolf, and not a man, he can’t be king right now, but what can he be?

His hand is on her arm, as if he’s there to answer her question, and she turns around to look at him. He rubs her arm, coaxing her to step closer to him and when she does, his other arm slips around her waist, his palm resting warm and comfortable on the small of her back.

He leans his forehead against hers and whispers her name. “Sansa.”

She closes her eyes. She should tell him to stop. It’s not as wrong as it was before, but it will only complicate things, and they can’t afford that.

“Sansa not sister,” he says slowly, softly, deliberately and intently. His words melt on her lips, and despite herself, she closes the final distance between them, trying to chase their truth and the flavour of their warmth, and then she is pressing the lightest of kisses to his lips.

His hands travel up her arms and shoulders until he is cupping her face and her own come to rest over his collarbones, grounding her. When he kisses her back, his fingers slide into her hair, and one of her hands finds the nape of his neck.

The slight shift makes their noses bump together and both of their lips part on a soft shared huff. He slants his mouth over hers, trying to deepen the kiss, and it’s as if she’s drowning or spinning into a darkness she wants to welcome. She wants to be swallowed up by his kiss and his embrace, ready to take the leap and surrender, but something pulls her back from the edge, and then she is pushing him away, as gently as she can manage.

His hands release her, and she immediately regrets it, almost begs him to touch her again, and he does, panting as he rests his forehead against hers like he did before. It’s only a fraction of what she craves, but it’s probably more than she deserves. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, not quite certain what she is apologizing for.

“Sansa want man, not wolf,” he gathers.

She almost tells him that he’s wrong, that he must be a man, that a wolf could never kiss her like that, but she bites her tongue and pulls back to look at him. “Oh, Jon.” She shakes her head. “That’s not it. I do want you. But things aren’t that simple.”

“Yes, simple,” he insists, placing her hand over his heart again. “Sansa.”

She takes his hand and mimics him, placing it over her own heart, smiling up at him. “Jon,” she whispers.

A grin pulls up his lips. “See? Simple.”

She shakes her head again. “No, Jon, you don’t understand. It’s complicated.”

#jonsa #jon x sansa #jonsa ff #jonsa fic #my writing #series: tale as old as time

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megashadowdragon · 3 years

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Love is the bane of honor

I think Aegon's role narratively is "don't put all your faith in perfect kings", especially not a kid. It's all about the pressure of being a hereditary ruler, the pressure of duty, of others' expectations being placed on a child solely due to his birthright, and of a life sacrificed to duty.

"He is here. Aegon has been shaped for rule since before he could walk. He has been trained in arms, as befits a knight to be, but that was not the end of his education. He reads and writes, he speaks several tongues, he has studied history and law and poetry. A septa has instructed him in the mysteries of the Faith since he was old enough to understand them. He has lived with fisherfolk, worked with his hands, swum in rivers and mended nets and learned to wash his own clothes at need. He can fish and cook and bind up a wound, he knows what it is like to be hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid. Tommen has been taught that kingship is his right. Aegon knows that kingship is his duty, that a king must put his people first, and live and rule for them."

What Varys has said is all about Aegon ruling for others. That implies serious self-sacrifice. But is Aegon truly fit for this? Note how Varys never speaks of love, it's all about Aegon being raised to fulfill his duty, and one that has been placed on him based on his supposed birthright by others, which to us readers is uncertain to begin with and could even become uncertain to Aegon himself at some point.

"Jon, did you ever wonder why the men of the Night's Watch take no wives and father no children?" Maester Aemon asked.

Jon shrugged. "No." He scattered more meat. The fingers of his left hand were slimy with blood, and his right throbbed from the weight of the bucket.

"So they will not love," the old man answered, "for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty."

We have here the literal kryptonite to Varys' expectations.

Aegon is still young and we have no indication he has any experience with women other than being raised by a septa, which considering the faith's tenants has served the opposite interest.

Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature

Arianne, a very intimidating woman, is coming to push herself onto Aegon, yet Aegon's entourage believed the support of Dorne was expected due to their existing blood ties to Aegon, not thanks to a new union between Aegon and a Dornish princess, a union which would also alter Doran's current plans which did not factor in Aegon at all.

A union to Aegon, from Doran's perspective, might also cast uncertainty into the master-strategist's mind; what will Dorne do when the real dragons come? And what if Dany's entourage sends a letter to Dorne along with Quentyn's body, telling them the prince was burned by the dragons he tried to steal? Would Arianne and the Sand Snakes believe it at all, especially if Arianne is trying to put herself between Aegon and Daenerys?

Daenerys on the other hand is preferred by Connington, who says the prince must hold off on any marriage as she may yet come, and he holds no found memories of Elia Martell, which might tarnish his view of Arianne no matter how "healthy" she might appear:

A bride for our bright prince. Jon Connington remembered Prince Rhaegar's wedding all too well. Elia was never worthy of him. She was frail and sickly from the first, and childbirth only left her weaker. After the birth of Princess Rhaenys, her mother had been bedridden for half a year, and Prince Aegon's birth had almost been the death of her. She would bear no more children, the maesters told Prince Rhaegar afterward.

"Daenerys Targaryen may yet come home one day," Connington told the Halfmaester. "Aegon must be free to marry her."

"My lord knows best," said Haldon. "In that case, we might consider offering potential friends a lesser prize."

Pushing lesser prizes onto Dorne is unlikely to be well received, chiefly by Arianne herself.

Connington is trying to shield the prince from doubt:

"I like the sound of that. My army." A smile flashed across his face, then vanished. "Are they, though? They're sellswords. Yollo warned me to trust no one."

"There is wisdom in that," Griff admitted. It might have been different if Blackheart still commanded, but Myles Toyne was four years dead, and Homeless Harry Strickland was a different sort of man. He would not say that to the boy, however. That dwarf had already planted enough doubts in his young head. "Not every man is what he seems, and a prince especially has good cause to be wary … but go too far down that road, and the mistrust can poison you, make you sour and fearful."

Yet Connington is joined by Tyrion's proposal, even if unknowingly, to wait for Daenerys:

"You do not need to win," Tyrion told him. "All you need to do is raise your banners, rally your supporters, and hold, until Daenerys arrives to join her strength to yours."

Tyrion sold the idea to Aegon as follows:

"I told you, I know our little queen. Let her hear that her brother Rhaegar's murdered son is still alive, that this brave boy has raised the dragon standard of her forebears in Westeros once more, that he is fighting a desperate war to avenge his father and reclaim the Iron Throne for House Targaryen, hard-pressed on every side … and she will fly to your side as fast as wind and water can carry her. You are the last of her line, and this Mother of Dragons, this Breaker of Chains, is above all a rescuer. The girl who drowned the slaver cities in blood rather than leave strangers to their chains can scarcely abandon her own brother's son in his hour of peril. And when she reaches Westeros, and meets you for the first time, you will meet as equals, man and woman, not queen and supplicant. How can she help but love you then, I ask you?"

The temptation is that of a mother figure and a rescuer who would fly to him like the wind, her brother's son, a boy becoming a man. Similarly, agreeing to this would place trust in his father-figure's plan. There is reassurance in taking this road, the one of parents he never had.

One way or another, Aegon must chose, at a time when war rages. But there is much room for doubt to keep him undecided, and if word reaches them that Daenerys has hurriedly flown away on her Dragon, could it be that Tyrion and Connington were right? Is the Mother of Dragons flying to the prince as fast as wind can carry her?

Aegon might hear the echo of Tyrion's words:

"Your father knew the dangers of being overbold."

The prince stared at the playing board. "My dragon—"

"—is too far away to save you. You should have moved her to the center of the battle."

Wait, and wait, and wait, but the war does not.

The death of duty

As the pressure mounts on Aegon to either keep on waiting for Daenerys or secure an alliance with Dorne, will Aegon break? And more importantly, if he does, how?

What if this is exactly what happened with Rhaegar? What if Rhaegar buckled under all the pressure that was on him? From prophecies to the duty of kingship.

"Lingering here will never bring it any closer. The sooner we take our leave of this place—"

"I know. I do." Dany did not know how to make him see. She wanted Westeros as much as he did, but first she must heal Meereen. "Ninety days is a long time. Hizdahr may fail. And if he does, the trying buys me time. Time to make alliances, to strengthen my defenses, to—"

"And if he does not fail? What will Your Grace do then?"

"Her duty." The word felt cold upon her tongue. "You saw my brother Rhaegar wed. Tell me, did he wed for love or duty?"

The old knight hesitated. "Princess Elia was a good woman, Your Grace. She was kind and clever, with a gentle heart and a sweet wit. I know the prince was very fond of her."

That answer from Jorah is fairly clear; Rhaegar married Elia out of duty, and maybe a hint of prophecy for all we know. He did not do so out of love.

Remember, Rhaegar thought he was expected to become a warrior. So we have another self-sacrifice for duty's sake:

"As a young boy, the Prince of Dragonstone was bookish to a fault. He was reading so early that men said Queen Rhaella must have swallowed some books and a candle whilst he was in her womb. Rhaegar took no interest in the play of other children. The maesters were awed by his wits, but his father's knights would jest sourly that Baelor the Blessed had been born again. Until one day Prince Rhaegar found something in his scrolls that changed him. No one knows what it might have been, only that the boy suddenly appeared early one morning in the yard as the knights were donning their steel. He walked up to Ser Willem Darry, the master-at-arms, and said, 'I will require sword and armor. It seems I must be a warrior.'"

And there is another hint that Rhaegar may have wanted to move away from the pressure of ruling, although a subtle one that remains to be cleared up:

Prince Rhaegar shook his head. "My royal sire fears your father more than he does our cousin Robert. He wants you close, so Lord Tywin cannot harm him. I dare not take that crutch away from him at such an hour."

Jaime's anger had risen up in his throat. "I am not a crutch. I am a knight of the Kingsguard."

"Then guard the king," Ser Jon Darry snapped at him. "When you donned that cloak, you promised to obey."

Rhaegar had put his hand on Jaime's shoulder. "When this battle's done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago, but . . . well, it does no good to speak of roads not taken. We shall talk when I return."

But love is the bane of honor, the death of duty:

"Swords win battles," Ser Jorah said bluntly. "And Prince Rhaegar knew how to use one."

"He did, ser, but . . . I have seen a hundred tournaments and more wars than I would wish, and however strong or fast or skilled a knight may be, there are others who can match him. A man will win one tourney, and fall quickly in the next. A slick spot in the grass may mean defeat, or what you ate for supper the night before. A change in the wind may bring the gift of victory." He glanced at Ser Jorah. "Or a lady's favor knotted round an arm."

So I posit that the fear of it all frightened Rhaegar into the arms of Lyanna, who similarly ran from a duty imposed on her in marrying Robert, and as the war began to rage on both escaped away from it all to the Tower of Joy.

Kill the boy and let the man be born

Many wonder what Arys Oakheart's narrative point was. He is a good example of a man who struggled between love and duty.

You know I have no other woman. Only... duty.

Which led him to his death:

Arys, my sweet knight, why did you do it? You should have yielded. I tried to tell you, but the words caught in my mouth. You gallant fool, I never meant for you to die, or for Myrcella...

I believe that as history seems to so often repeat itself in the world of Ice and Fire, Aegon will flee into the arms of love. But whose' love?

Come break of day, they were off again. Elia Sand led the way, her black braid flying behind her as she raced across the dry, cracked plains and up into the hills. The girl was mad for horses, which might be why she often smelled like one, to the despair of her mother. Sometimes Arianne felt sorry for Ellaria. Four girls, and every one of them her father's daughter.

Elia Sand, who bears the name of Aegon's mother, is similar in more ways than one to Lyanna Stark.

"We will see about that." Valena wheeled her big red around and put her heels into him, and the race was on, through the dusty lanes of the village at the bottom of the hill, as chickens and villagers alike scrambled out of their path. Arianne was three horse lengths behind by the time she got her mare up to a gallop, but had closed to one halfway up the slope. The two of them were side-by-side as they thundered towards the gatehouse, but five yards from the gates Elia Sand came flying from the cloud of dust behind them to rush past both of them on her black filly.

"Are you half horse, child?" Valena asked, laughing, in the yard. "Princess, did you bring a stable girl?"

"I'm Elia," the girl announced. "Lady Lance."

Lyanna was also a horse-rider:

Arya was breathing hard herself then. She knew the fight was done. "You ride like a northman, milady," Harwin said when he'd drawn them to a halt. "Your aunt was the same. Lady Lyanna."

And she was literally said to be "half a horse"

Horses … the boy was mad for horses, Lady Dustin will tell you. Not even Lord Rickard's daughter could outrace him, and that one was half a horse herself.

And similarly to Elia, Lyanna could fight:

"Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it.

And we have this in Bran's vision:

Now two children danced across the godswood, hooting at one another as they dueled with broken branches. The girl was the older and taller of the two. Arya! Bran thought eagerly, as he watched her leap up onto a rock and cut at the boy. But that couldn't be right. If the girl was Arya, the boy was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long. And Arya never beat me playing swords, the way that girl is beating him. She slashed the boy across his thigh, so hard that his leg went out from under him and he fell into the pool and began to splash and shout.

Elia can joust, and we all know that the Knight of the Laughing Tree is believed by many to have been Lyanna:

"I am almost a woman grown, ser," she responded haughtily. "I'll let you spank me, though... but first you'll need to tilt with me, and knock me off my horse."

"We are on a ship, and without horses," Joss replied.

"And ladies do not joust," insisted Ser Garibald Shells, a far more serious and proper young man than his companion.

"I do. I'm Lady Lance."

Arianne had heard enough. "You may be a lance, but you are no lady. Go below and stay there till we reach land."

Note the point earlier where Elia surprises Arianne by racing ahead of her? It is a very tempting hint that Elia will steal Arianne's place and become Aegon's love interest, one no one is pushing on him. Her playful and courageous nature might attract him, comfort him at a time of incredible pressure, just as Lyanna may have with Rhaegar before.

But Rhaegar in the end found his courage, and went into battle. He killed the boy to let the man be born. And died.

"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"

"That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him.

But the question, what bravery will Aegon be pushed into?

"Your father knew the dangers of being overbold."

I won't theorize on what Aegon might throw his courage at here, as the above might bring enough down-votes on its own. I'll just say that Elia, the lance-wielder, has a strong connection to Aegon already:

"Vengeance for Oberyn and Elia."

"Prince Aegon was Rhaegar's heir by Elia of Dorne"

"You raped her. You murdered her. You killed her children."

TLDR: Aegon's and Elia Sands' story parallels Rhaegar and Lyanna's, and will end tragically. “

#asoiaf #A Song of Ice and Fire

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turtle-paced · 4 years

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Revisiting Chapters: Jon VII, ACoK

Short ACoK chapters, short ACoK recaps.

The story so far…

After splitting up from the main body of the Night’s Watch on their recon mission, Jon has climbed a bunch of rocks and spared a prisoner. He hasn’t found the information they’re looking for.

Knowing People

After the scene is set with the squad camping before the descent to the Milkwater, Jon approaches Qhorin to have a chat about that last encounter with Ygritte. By chat he means unburden himself. He tells Qhorin pretty much everything, starting with the offer to defect.

What he gets, though, is information in return. Qhorin here helps us get an idea of who Mance Rayder is. A music-lover, to start with, which is already a good indication that Mance is a fan of stories and self-expression. Plus he liked women, and didn’t like taking orders. Qhorin thinks this was in his blood.

He’s got more general comments, too, applied:

“Only fools like Thoren Smallwood despise the wildlings. They are as brave as we are, Jon. As strong, as quick, as clever. But they have no discipline. They name themselves the free folk, and each one thinks himself as good as a king and wiser than a maester. Mance was the same.”

This does tell us a bit about the biases of the characters south of the Wall. After all, isn’t every person as good as a king? Or rather, isn’t the king no better than any other person? They’re all people. Order and obedience to social so-called superiors are framed as inherently good, rather a context-dependent virtue.

That said, it’s an idea Jon needs to be exposed to, as part of his arc. This will be built on throughout ASoS and ADWD.

Jon admits to sparing Ygritte, something which does not shock Qhorin. Qhorin prompts him to give his reasoning. It’s simple enough - Jon did not think that Ygritte needed to die. She was not evil, he was not acting in self-defence, and without her horn and her weapons, she didn’t pose a threat to their mission.

This part of the interaction confuses Jon.

“Then why did you command [Ygritte’s death] of me?”

“I did not command it. I told you to do what needed to be done, and left you to decide what that would be.”

Qhorin explains that too. “To lead men, you must know them,” he tells Jon. Ygritte’s death didn’t matter to him, for the reasons that Jon spared her. This was a test for Jon, to see what he would judge necessary and how he would react to the independence.

Third Eye

Jon settles down for a nap after talking with Qhorin. He watches Ghost leave before he does, and then once he falls asleep, he’s right into a dream sequence. Initially, it’s from Ghost’s PoV.

There were five of them when there should have been six, and they were scattered, each apart from the others. He felt a deep ache of emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. The forest was vast and cold, and they were so small, so lost. His brothers were out there, and his sister, but he had lost their scent.

Ghost’s PoV? Or Jon’s? What’s the difference, in this dream? Jon doesn’t feel anything particularly unnatural or wrong about sharing Ghost’s body in this state. While alien to the reader, Jon’s own subconscious does not seem to register this as anything out of the ordinary.

Jon then hears a voice addressing him. By name. Clearly recognising him within his wolf. Jon describes the power in the call and recognises his brother. But when he turns, he sees not a wolf, but a tree.

It seemed to sprout from solid rock, its pale roots twisting up from a myriad of fissures and cracks. The tree was slender compared to other weirwoods he had seen, no more than a sapling, yet it was growing as he watched, its limbs thickening as they reached for the sky. Wary, he circled the trunk until he came to the face. Red eyes looked at him. Fierce eyes they were, yet glad to see him. The weirwood had his brother’s face. Had his brother always had three eyes?

Not always, came the silent shout. Not before the crow.

This is enough context to tell us that the brother referred to is Bran. Bran depicted as a young weirwood, growing rapidly. Not only does this indicate that there might be some difference in the nature of Bran’s powers as compared to Jon’s - Bran being in the tree as well as having the connection to his wolf - it’s also clearly a representation of a young magic-user gaining a lot of power very quickly.

There’s something a bit more concerning going on in the fact that Bran’s tree smells of death and darkness as well as wolf, boy, and earth. What exactly this is and means is unclear. Bran himself doesn’t seem to think it’s an issue, though, as he says.

Don’t be afraid, I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eye. See? Like this. And the tree reached down and touched him.

Without further ado, this launches Jon not just into a wolf dream, but into a wolf. His wolf, awake and hunting in the moutains. Jon recognises the Skirling Pass immediately. When he looks into the valley below, however, he gets a bit of a shock. Below are thousands on thousands of people.

Their encampment had no plan to it; he saw no ditches, no sharpened stakes, no neat rows of horse lines. Everywhere crude earthen shelters and hide tents sprouted haphazardly, like a pox on the face of the earth. He spied untidy mounds of hay, smelled goats and sheep, horses and pigs, dogs in great profusion. Tendrils of dark smoke rose from a thousand cookfires.

This is no army, no more than it is a town. This is a whole people come together.

Before Jon can do anything else, he hears wings, and gets swooped by an eagle.

The Chase Begins

This understandably disturbs Jon’s sleep. His fellow watchmen also want an explanation for why, on this serious sneaking mission, Jon’s randomly started yelling for his wolf. Jon manages a barely-coherent explanation about his dream that includes the detail of a glacier he saw. Stonesnake, however, recognises that detail.

With that, things get a bit more serious. Qhorin gets Jon to recap the dream for him.

“Skinchanger?” said Ebben grimly, looking at the Halfhand. Does he mean the eagle? Jon wondered. Or me?

[…]

“The cold winds are rising. Mormont feared as much. Benjen Stark felt it as well. Dead men walk and the trees have eyes again. Why should we balk at wargs and giants?”

There is a quick, practical acceptance of the use of Jon’s talents. If there’s any freaking out (including from Jon), it’s kept internal. It’s just something that has to be dealt with. The group presses on, with no sign of Ghost. There is an eagle, though, staying out of bowshot.

And then they find Ghost, who’s been attacked by a large bird. Nobody comments on it explicitly, but given the end of Jon’s dream and the wounds they’ve now found on Ghost, this verifies what Jon dreamed.

This would also indicate to the Watchmen that the eagle still hanging around just out of bowshot is the eagle that attacked Ghost, and therefore probably a skinchanger. They’ve been spotted. So they decide to run. It’s a creepy sort of pursuit, given that their only known pursuer is an eagle.

All night they rode, feeling their way up the twisting pass and through the stretches of broken ground. The wind grew stronger. Sometimes it was so dark that they dismounted and went ahead on foot, each man leading his garron. Once, Ebben suggested that some torches might serve them well, but Qhorin said, “No fire,” and that was the end of that. They reached the bridge at the summit and began to descend again. Off in the darkness a shadowcat screamed in fury, its voice bouncing off the rocks so it seemed as though a dozen other ‘cats were giving answer. Once Jon thought he saw a pair of glowing eyes on a ledge overhead, as big as harvest moons.

In the dark and the cold, with unsteady footing, where the natural world may be as hostile as their pursuers, who are an unknown distance behind and who are tracking them from the air. Before dawn, Qhorin tells Squire Dalbridge (established earlier as an excellent archer) to hold off pursuit. The eagle is a priority target, should Dalbridge see him.

He’s staying to die, Jon realised.

But for all that, it’s only just after dawn when the remaining Watchmen hear the sound of hunting horns. They’ve got all the head start they’re going to get. The chase is now on in earnest.

Chapter Function

This chapter leads into and justifies Qhorin’s decision to ask Jon to go undercover with the Free Folk. Jon’s telling Qhorin that he was made an offer to swap sides lets Qhorin know that Jon’s got integrity and commitment to the Watch; Jon’s refusal to kill Ygritte and to admit this fact shows moral independence. When given an important decision, Jon was willing to make his own call, and questioning shows his reasoning. Jon also listens to what Qhorin has to say about Mance and about the Free Folk more generally. The combination is what allows Qhorin to make that request.

Politically, this chapter also reveals what the deal with the Free Folk is, and that deal is mass migration. Jon was expecting an army. There’s definitely military force there, but the substance to this reveal is that all the villages were empty because the Free Folk, as a whole, are doing something they’ve never truly done before - uniting. The why of that is left unclear, but ‘in the face of a greater threat’ seems reasonable in light of the spooky stuff the reader has also seen going on.

This chapter also advances the magical plot, waking Jon up to his powers as a warg, and showing Bran’s magical advancement. Instead of staying mysterious, though, the impacts of the magical on the mundane are immediately apparent and require immediate mundane response. The rules of magic may be mysterious, but magic can also have some very practical applications. Jon’s dream provides the military intelligence that the scouting mission were after in the first place.

Miscellany

“Shadows are friends to men in black,” Qhorin says, but it seems for all his experience Qhorin’s not an arctic camo expert.

Clothing Porn

As usual for a Watch chapter, everyone’s wearing black. Stonesnake has a ragged fur cloak.

Food Porn

Also as usual for a Watch chapter, food porn is limited. Salt beef, yum yum.

Next Three Chapters

Jon IX, ADWD - The Princess in the Tower, AFFC - Dany X, AGoT

#ASoIaF #valyrianscrolls #revisiting chapters #jon snow #a clash of kings

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theusurpersdog · 5 years

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So Game of Thrones ended on Sunday, and for now it’s going down as potentially the worst ending of any TV show ever. Some of the backlash has come from the more nonsensical elements, such as Bronn being on the Small Council, anyone in Westeros defending Daenerys (the show literally framed her like Hitler, come the fuck on), Tyrion deciding who was King while in shackles, etc. But the truth is, none of that would’ve mattered if the emotions rang true. And that’s been a problem since the show started; go all the way back to Winter is Coming and you’ll see that the Starks have always been sidelined - both as individuals and as a family - in favor of the Lannisters. George Martin is writing a character piece about the Starks and how they survive, and the show was never going to stick the landing when they fundamentally didn’t understand that.

I’m not the first to point this out, but man did it really bother me this episode. D&D really could’ve phoned in 95% of this story and just shown up to love the Starks and everyone would’ve been at least satisfied, and they just couldn’t do it. So many years of bad writing and idiot plots and plain stupidity hasn’t lost Game of Thrones hardly any fans, because the ones they had were deeply invested in the characters GRRM had created and were willing to overlook just about everything to see those characters have some sort of conclusion. That’s why their entire audience has turned against them now - they didn’t care about the Starks for 8 seasons, and GRRM’s ending required the audience and the writers care deeply for Jon, Sansa, Arya, and Bran.

For all of GRRM’s talk about wanting to break his reader’s hearts, and D&D’s version of his story as this GrimDark nightmare, GRRM’s story has a real, emotional heart to it. People debate whether it was a fantasy story with the false premise of a political period piece, or a political story with a touch of fantasy intrigue - but the truth is, this story is and always has been a character piece centered around the Starks and how they survive and rebuild after family tragedy. In number of povs and chapters, they literally overwhelm the series. Jon, Sansa, Arya, Bran, and Catelyn all are in the top povs as well as Ned, who is still competitive despite being in exactly 1 book of the series. Having the Starks as the center of the story, the point in which almost all the action revolves, is what grounds all of Martin’s series even as his povs reach 30+. Martin was being very serious when he said Arya, Sansa, and Bran were the heart of his series. You need them because they make it worth it.

So let’s break down how D&D ripped the heart out of asoiaf’s chest. The biggest problem the show had was something book readers have known for a long time, but didn’t fully realize until Sunday night: The Bran Problem. GRRM has stated multiple times that Bran is his hero, yet the show has never had any interest in his story. They made an entirely random decision not to include flashbacks or dream sequences, which immediately cuts out about half of Bran’s content. But not only did they take away his magical importance, they also stole his political importance. Bran was Robb Stark’s heir, Lord of Winterfell and first in line to be the King in the North. Yet they took Bran’s story away from him and gave the focus to Theon Greyjoy, a character more appealing to the tastes of David Benioff and Dan Weiss. So we never got to see the King of the Six (should be eight but whatever I’m just dying inside) Kingdoms acting in any leadership capacity. And, last but certainly not least, D&D took all emotion from Bran. And no, I don’t mean when he came back from beyond the wall a husk of a person. That was awful, but the damage was done seasons before. If you’ve read the books, you’ll know and love Bran Stark because this is who he is:

He sent sweets to Hodor and Old Nan as well, for no reason but he loved them

Bran was a sweet boy. Everyone loved him

The roots of the trees grow deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought, I'm not dead either

Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time

He is a sweet boy, quick to laugh, easy to love

Bran has always represented happiness and people coming together in GRRM’s story. Ned wants to bring him to King’s Landing because he’s universally loved and will ease the conflict between Joffrey and Robb, and just the thought of him being alive makes Jon bury his ego and reach out to his Night’s Watch Brothers. He is Meera’s little Prince, someone that Howland Reed’s children are willing to go beyond the wall and die for. He accepts food on the road beyond the Wall, and promises he’ll repay his debt many times over. He’s the boy who looks back into the past and just wants to see his dad again; who reaches out to save Theon, even when Theon took everything from him. He is Eddard Stark’s son, soft and kind and loving, brave when he is afraid, loyal and honorable, and he is a good person. He’s young, but he is fit to be a King one day.

But no, D&D didn’t stop at Bran. Let’s talk about Arya Stark, and the little girl who never was. Was there ever a character more suited to D&D’s tastes than a little murder girl hellbent on revenging her family’s killers? But was there ever a character further from Arya Stark? She is nine years old when Ser Ilyn takes her father’s head, of course she is brash and reckless and childish, wanting to avenge him. But she is all of those things because she is still a kid. Below the surface, she is very scared and very hurt. Unlike the show’s version of Arya, who is upset Joffrey died because she couldn’t do it herself, the Arya of the books has a realization that Joffrey dying means nothing because she’ll never get Robb back. Arya isn’t turning into an assassin because it would be cool, she’s running away as far as she can.

You can watch the season finale of Game of Thrones s4, and be right in concluding that Arya Stark leaves The Hound for dead in a ruthless move of brutality as she goes to pursue her dreams of being an assassin. Now read the end of A Storm of Swords, and you’ll find an Arya who refuses to let Sandor take a piece of her no matter how he abuses her, and goes to Braavos because she is so afraid that no one could love her anymore - and most of all she leaves because with Winterfell sacked and held by the Boltons, she genuinely thinks she has lost her home. Arya doesn’t make a well-adjusted decision to leave Westeros, she’s trying to keep her head above water before she drowns in grief. Disassociating from her pack is the only way she can cope with the unbearable amount of loss she has suffered, especially at such a young age. But GRRM’s version of Arya is fierce, brave, loyal, loving, and above all she loves her family.

Then there is Sansa, the most empathetic character in GRRM’s whole world. The unfailing hope and kindness in which she views the world are her defining character traits; she echoes GRRM’s own worldview, one where you can see the good and the bad in everyone, and choose to forgive - and if not that, still refuse to be cruel in kind. Sansa is the only one who looks at Sandor Clegane, looks at the ruin fire made of his face, and see that his eyes are why he’s so ugly - and then reach out to show him mercy. The girl who was beaten everyday of her time in King’s Landing, and still mourned Joffrey because he was a person and he died and she understood that it was still awful. She wishes knights who literally beat her bloody would fall off their horse, then feels bad and ashamed when they do. Sansa Stark is kind above all.

And the show took this character and made her cold. They tried to make her Littlefinger. Surprise! Nobody cares about the emotional well being and happiness of Petyr Baelish for a reason. Thankfully Bryan Cogman was there to run interference between Sansa and D&D, so she wasn’t fully the Ice Queen D&D wanted her to be, but goddamn how do you take Sansa “if I am ever Queen, I’ll make them love me” Stark and make her cold?!

The biggest problem with stripping the Stark kids individually of their emotions, is that they can no longer exist as the family GRRM created them to be. Without Arya, Bran, and Sansa’s emotional arcs, everything becomes meaningless. Who cares that Ramsay Bolton is the one to rebuild Winterfell in the show? Certainly not an audience that hasn’t been told to care.

You’ll notice a trend in the type of chapters that D&D decided not to adapt into Game of Thrones; think of all the chapters that are the emotional heart of GRRM’s story. Not the shocking character deaths, or dragons, or plot twists. The moments of intimacy between GRRM, his character, and you as the reader. The moments so small yet so impactful, the lines you remember not because they pushed the plot forward but because they honestly moved you in a way that you felt hope, longing, love? Those chapters are almost always either from Bran, Sansa, or Arya; and are always about their connection to their family. D&D adapted none of them. Here’s three great examples:

Done with Wooden Teeth

When Arya is a serving girl at Harrenhal during A Clash of Kings, it really sucks. Unlike the show, she is not cup bearer to Tywin Lannister; she is just like everyone else: abused, mistreated, underfed, miserable, and uncared for. She’s already at a pretty low moment in life, then the news breaks that Bran and Rickon were murdered by Theon Greyjoy and Winterfell has been sacked. And Arya doesn’t even have someone to grieve with; the one person she tries to tell, Elmar Frey, tells her nobody cares about a serving girl’s brothers when he’s just lost his Princess (the irony...).

The news that her family is dead almost breaks her:

As Arya crossed the yard to the bathhouse, she spied a raven circling down toward the rookery, and wondered where it had come from and what message it carried. Might be it’s from Robb, come to say it wasn’t true about Bran and Rickon. She chewed on her lip, hoping. If I had wings I could fly back to Winterfell and see for myself. And if it was true, I’d just fly away, fly up past the moon and the shining stars, and see all the things in Old Nan’s stories, dragons and sea monsters and the Titan of Braavos, and maybe I wouldn’t ever fly back

This is Arya giving up. Everything she’s done in this book so far has been to get back to Winterfell, or to Jon at the Wall. Her making the decision to fly away (which she’ll follow through on in A Storm of Swords) is a defeat, the acceptance that she’ll never get her family back.

If the chapter had ended here (it doesn’t), D&D still would’ve gutted it, because no Stark gets to react to Bran and Rickon’s death in the show. Not even a minute of screentime given to the Heir to the North and his brother dying; not a moment where their family can grieve the tremendous loss.

But Arya is a Stark, so before she gives up on her identity, she visits the Godswood:

“Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.

For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf

The Godswood is very important to the Starks for a couple different reasons. First, only the men of the North worship the Old Gods, and the trees is the connection they have to them. The Old Gods were who Ned went to for guidance, and every single Stark has huge moments of understanding in front of a Godswood (none of which made it into the show...). But, more specific to the Starks as a family, Bran speaks to his family through them and guides them toward home. So even though they don’t understand that Bran is calling to them, the Starks are drawn to the trees for help.

And the trees always answer them. The Starks get a real, physical response when they ask the Godswood for help:

Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white wind blows, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.

“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”

“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”

“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. “I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth.

In her lowest moment, Arya re-finds her strength by remembering she is a Stark, a direwolf who belongs to a pack. The Godswood gives her Ned as comfort, as a reminder of who she is and what she should do. There is an incredible emphasis on family here. It would be impossible to adapt this chapter unless the writers and audience fully understood just how committed to each other the Starks are - which is why they didn’t adapt it.

I’m Not Dead Either

When Bran finally leaves the crypts at the end of A Clash of Kings, he’s close to giving up on himself entirely. He spent three days inside Summer, and returning to the body he views as broken (”Bran the Broken” is something he calls himself when he feels upset, not the monikor he’d give himself as King) is really hard for him. And when he finally leaves the crypts, he comes out to a Winterfell that has been destroyed; Ramsay has set the place ablaze and killed everyone. Bran knows Ser Rodrik is dead and Maester Luwin is soon to be as well. He looks around him and sees all this destruction, all he smells is fire or blood. But one thing in Winterfell stands unharmed; Summer takes off running for the Godswood:

The air was sweeter under the trees. A few pines along the edge of the wood had been scorched, but deeper in the damp soil and green wood had defeated the flames. “There is a power in living wood,” said Jojen Reed, almost as if he knew what Bran was thinking, “a power strong as fire.”

After Bran says goodbye to Maester Luwin, and him and Rickon part ways with no idea where either is heading, Bran has one last moment to look on Winterfell and find hope:

Beyond, the tops of the keeps and towers still stood as they had for hundreds of years, and it was hard to tell that the castle had been sacked and burned at all. The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought, I’m not dead either.

Bran looks back at Winterfell, and because he’s able to see the unharmed Godswood and the Kings of Winter still seated on their thrones, he can understand it’s not dead, just like him. Again, a Stark is drawing strength from their connection to each other, and through a Godswood.

I Am Stronger Within the Walls of Winterfell

This next one, you’re probably thinking “but the show did adapt Sansa’s snow castle chapter”, and I’m here to tell you they didn’t. I could write an entire book on how that scene is the perfect example of how adaptations fail; they *technically* adapted it, with pretty much the same events, but it was completely stripped of its emotional impact and narrative importance. It is the perfect microcosm of why Game of Thrones was a bad adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as how D&D consistently missed the emotional beats the Starks were supposed to have.

The show’s version of this chapter somehow centers it around Littlefinger, while simultaneously underselling the fact that Lysa killed Jon Arryn (they sandwiched this episode and scene between Tyrion’s trial and Oberyn’s death, when this chapter ends A Storm of Swords. All of the climaxes in that book, and GRRM saved this one for last). The end product is a rather forgettable scene that most people overlook.

In the book, this chapter is everything. It is the best chapter in asoiaf, and the best writing of anything ever. Period. And it’s a chapter centered around Sansa’s relationship to her home, to Winterfell. Unlike the very small castle of the show, Sansa spends hours building a castle big enough that she can step inside and continue building details. The fact that she can stay outside for hours, while several onlookers get too cold and go back inside, is a reminder that she is a Stark.

And this chapter is centered around a Godswood. The tree never took root, because the Eyrie is too high for weirwoods, but the courtyard Sansa’s in was meant to be a Godswood. And since she doesn’t have a real one, Sansa builds her own inside her snowy Winterfell.

Being up in the mountains is also the first time Sansa’s seen true snow since she said goodbye to Robb in Winterfell, and just the thought of it makes her dream of home and of memories with Bran and Arya. She wakes up having dreamed of home, and thinks she’s sleeping next to her sister until she wakes up enough to realize she’s not in Winterfell.

When Sansa’s alone with no real connection to home, she finds the closest thing to Winterfell (the failed Godswood) and builds her own. She literally gains strength from it:

She wondered where this courage had come from, to speak to him so frankly. From Winterfell, she thought. I am stronger within the walls of Winterfell.

Her home and her family give her strength to stand up to her abuser, just as Arya was able to escape the abuse of Harrenhal and Bran escaped the Boltons.

There is way more than these three instances, but these are the best examples of D&D failing to adapt the Starks as a pack, or as individuals with feelings. Of course the ending didn’t feel right emotionally, because we had no explanation for what emotions led our Starks to their destinies.

I’ll probably make a post specifically about this in a couple days or weeks, but I can see GRRM’s ending stuck within D&D’s sloppy rush to the end:

The first time Arya leaves Westeros, she leaves because she thinks all her family is dead or taken, and that Winterfell is gone forever. At the end, she’ll leave because she is sure her family loves her, and that she has a room in Winterfell whenever she wants to visit Good Queen Sansa. Arya is also fast to make friends of all different people, and would start her own pack of rogues as she travels the world.

Sansa won’t be alone because she, like Arya, is good at finding her own pack. (And GRRM has built his world out so extensively, it’s honestly a joke to think we could be in a crowded room and recognize no one). Sansa’s friends are her people. She throws feasts constantly, and like Ned, always has a seat at the High Table for the small folk. She has many ladies in waiting, true friends of hers that help her write songs and stories, and sew dresses. She is a good and kind Queen, and visits the Wall constantly as she helps the Lord Commander resettle the Gift.

King Bran the Wise (or ya know, just not broken) rules from his Weirwood Throne on the Isle of Faces, at the heart of his kingdom. After Daenerys burns King’s Landing, he moves the capital since The Red Keep was a monument to Aegon’s Conquest - a symbol of tyranny King Bran is trying to move forward from. He fills his council with highborn and lowborn alike. He constantly talks to his siblings; Sansa waits for him at the Godswood, and Arya and Jon see him through Ghost and Nymeria.

Just because they’re far in distance, doesn’t mean they aren’t a pack. They all know the others are safe, and that they’ll see see each other soon. GRRM will invest the right amount of time explaining the emotional beats of this ending to make it feel right. He cares so much about the Starks. He wrote them a whole epic fantasy because he saw Bran finding pups in the snow. He loves them more than we do, guys.

The Starks are the Giants!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#game of thrones #Sansa Stark #Arya Stark #bran stark #asoiaf meta #if you're wondering why Jon wasn't included #it's because that boy was a whole mess #needs his own post to explain the unique injustice that was done to him

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alukardtheabysswalker · 4 years

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Sasha: Dead or Alive?

So I know I’m not a big figure of TMA theories, not even close, but I’d like to put my thoughts in one place and if you feel like reading a bit of narrative analysis of a very well written series then please, suit yourself. And of course, Spoilers ahead.

So, Sasha. With all that’s been happening in this season one gets the feeling that not only is her memory that is getting a lot of narrative attention but also her position. Now, I’m aware and even participated in theories regarding the possibility of characters in our story coming and going, knowingly or not, in and out of different universes and I’m sure that will have it’s own narrative pay off. But I want to focus a bit more on what we have right here and now. So I’m going to name all the points I think the story and narrative has given us thus far to believe our dear Almost Archivist could be either dead or alive. Bear in mind I am not that good at checking the many little details and much of this could be more gut feeling than precise data, but I’m listening to the podcast for the third time now and I feel like I have enough points to make a statement(pun very much intended) on the case. But if you want to provide more evidence feel free to do so! I am very much inviting discourse on the matter. Without further adieu, let's get to the point/s.

Alive:

Sasha’s initial role was a bit more heavy in the story. However given that her VA couldn’t keep working due to her own schedule they resorted to giving said role to Tim. You can see this change in narrative in the fact that Tim’s VA had to adapt a bit. Not only is he a producer of the show but now a very important character who was originally going to be the first tragic Death of the series, and now has to adapt his acting to a character that is scarred by the events that haunt him. Which he did marvelously btw. And with the tape presented in the second episode of this season you can see how they're adjusting the narrative to fit his tragic past and Sasha’s importance to the Archive. Hell when I was listening to S1 ending I was convinced Tim or Martin were going to be the victims of the attack. Narratively it all pointed to Sasha being the powerhose of the group. Which made it all the more hurtful when she was taken.

Speaking of said tape, in there she talks about how who you are is what you do and what you show to other people. She specially mentions Masks. Which if you paid attention to MAG 165 is kind of the whole theme. Faces being changed and with that memories, people, personalities. Maybe, as it’s been pointed out, she was not killed but was robbed of her face and she’s been wondering about, without even knowing who she is.

And on THAT regard we can look at what Not!Sasha said. She took her life. If you were to take this at face value (again, pun intended) it would mean literally killing her. But let’s think about that for a second. What the Not!Them does is take the lives of the people they attack. They put themselves in their place and change enough of R E A L I TY to fit themselves in. Photographs, memories, clothes, everything adapts to them, save for a few things, enough to make someone paranoid and afraid of them. Even Gertrude herself mentions how it is that they always seem to miss someone but I think it is rather the point that they do. If no one is aware of this supernatural identity theft then who is left to scare? Going back to our original point, what if Not!Them doesn’t kill their victims but instead take their lives? As in, everything else except killing them. There is also this proposal that every entity or at least many of them have their own dimension or pocket dimension. The Lonely has its misty shore, The Vast literally just casts you into an endless sky or the void of space, The Spiral has The Distortion trapping people inside of their halls, you get it. This leads to our next point.

This strange carrousel that appears as the Nightmare of many people fearing The Stranger gave us three very interesting bits of information to chew on: One, it shows what many people have theorized would be The Stranger’s or at least Not!Them's dimension. People who do not know who they are and are desperately trying to find out, even stealing other peoples faces, memories, names...their lives. Two, not only that but the creature that is controlling this IS Not!Them, Martin even calls them “It’s Goddess”, and mentions how it must have full control over it. Third, Jon rode one of these a few years ago. No this is not important to our conversation (I think) but I WILL chew on it because I love this adorable man and I wish I was as brave as him to get on a carousel at my age (25) because I’d love it. Anyway, going back to our second bit of info: Not!Them is dead. In a delicious moment of revenge Jon destroyed them and Martin asks what would happen to this place without them? Well, maybe the people that were inside were freed, at least for a moment, maybe with enough time to remember or search for who they were?

This all could mean that not only is Sasha alive, granted having been in a horrifying Nightmare for YEARS now but it may also mean that she is also finally free. There’s still the theory of other universes and I like to play with it because not only would resolve some stuff that looks to be narratively incoherent(tho nothing definitive there) but it would also explain a lot regarding Jon’s shifting memories of the events of the series. Again I am not that versed in this topic to bring it into question.

Finally it would seem that the story is focusing a lot on Sasha as an important entity(yes, still intended) not just as a deceased character with a potential role but as one that still can and will bring change to the story.

So, we seem to have a lot of reasons given to us by the story and how it is being told to believe that yes, Sasha is alive and important to the story. And here comes the dreaded buts/s.

Dead:

The most important fact that I want to point out in this regard is that The Magnus Archives takes death very seriously. Not only death in the real world, brought by cruel beings and people, supernatural creatures and evil systems that send people to die and be killed by the interest of others. But as probably many of you know the writers and producers of the show want death to be important, to have weight in the story. Both Jon and Alex have said so in QAs and you can tell just by listening to the show. When a character dies, they stay dead. Death is final and even people that “cheat death” must pay a high price, usually living miserable “lives” killing other people or regretting their so called luck in avoiding their final destination. Death makes every character aware of the danger they are in and when it is granted so easily it is shown as the result of corrupted, sadistic people and monsters (cough police cough acab cough). Therefore, bringing back a character from the dead would feel cheap, it would take the weight out of the story. That is not to say they haven’t faked deaths before, Trevor is a good example, and you have an Avatar of The End very much alive-ish after having a Satellite dropped on him (Man I love this podcast) but the key difference, to me at least, is that Sasha was The First. The important character that we were sure either wouldn’t die because of plot armor or the aforementioned narrative importance she was given. But no, everybody can die, and that makes everyone afraid and wary of their actions.

It would also make Not!Them less scary, less imposing which would rob them of their position as a horrifying monster. We either knew or suspected that they had killed and surely replaced Sasha, now we feared for what might happen to the rest of the team. In the end, they were not only very much dangerous but also yes, they killed Sasha in a gruesome way, now maybe even do the same to Jon. You could argue that being trapped in that hellscape of The Stranger is an equally fearsome destiny, but at this point we´ve seen Jon disregard said dangers and literally rescue TWO people from TWO different nightmarish dimensions. Yes it is stated as the almost miracle that it is and it is important to show Jon’s improvement and growth but it also robs them of their weight. Not completely of course, but as long as Jon is around they aren’t that scary anymore, and given that he is our protagonist well, he is always around. There is also that beautiful scene in which he gets a very much earned revenge. If Sasha was not dead then it kind of loses its value.

Now I am going to cheat a little bit because here I am going to take our previous points and turn them on their heads inserting an “Alive” point here. You could argue that of course it still has value. They don’t know that Sasha is alive and technically neither do we, killing Sasha or not this monster definitely tortured our crew and this is a well earned punishment. Plus it is very well written and presented. You could even make a point that, with the death of Not!Sasha comes the revival of Actual!Sasha. And getting this far after so many real deaths it could even make sense to have one narrative rebirth of a character that was robbed of her chance of glory. Which can fit in this established narrative of:”She could have been The Archivist! The Protagonist”.

And here comes the but: What if this is not about Sasha but instead Other!Sasha? Remember when I said I wasn’t going to take into consideration theories regarding parallel universes? Well I might have lied a little bit. You see, from the moment Jon played Gertrude’s tape regarding her successor I began to have this thought:”This is a theme of what ifs, of potential possibilities and different timelines”. Now, I have to say again that I’m not an expert on this topic, this is more of an analysis of what I think or feel I’m seeing the narrative of this season is heading towards. Maybe there is an alternative reality, with a different crew. One that might sound like our dear Archival Buddies but are actually very much different. On the surface, their masks if you will, they are our Sasha, our Tim, our Martin, but once we get to know them, to know about them, they are different people. There is this theory that the house cleaner that got trapped by the house on Hilltop Road is an alternative version of the nurse that worked close to said house. She mentions how her friends are different, how they almost don’t recognize her. But I mean, they didn’t reject her, they even helped her and recommended her that she make a statement at The Magnus Institute. What if there is another Sasha, but not quite the one we’d want. And even if Sasha was alive, if we disregarded all of this, what kind of person would she be after everything that's happened to her?

I’m not sure I can give you a conclusion here. We are after all barely in episode five of this 40 episode season and this might all be proven wrong next chapter, or the next, or all 35 that come after that, but I’ve seen many people talking about how they are completely sure that Sasha is definitely alive and kicking, and while I agree in many points I also have seen a lot of evidence, especially when it comes to the narrative, that would point to the contrary. It honestly crushes my heart to think that we have more than thirty weeks of content ahead of us and many people will keep the hope that this amazing character is still alive but would end up having said hopes utterly crushed by the end of it. But I can also see where you’re all coming from and can see why you would think that way, so I wanted to present what evidence and conjectures of my own I had on the topic. If you’ve gotten this far I want to thank you for joining me in this attempt at a presentation or...expose? Feel free to add any other points that you think or believe would favor one end or the other and I hope you had a good time while reading this. Love you all <3

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jackoshadows · 3 years

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Let’s be clear here. Sansa did not lie in front of everyone and side with Joffrey over her own sister because it was protocol or to save Arya or because she was afraid of the Lannisters. She did it because she loved her beautiful prince Joffrey and thought that he was right and she wanted to marry him and become queen and do shit like this:

"Go ahead, call me all the names you want," Sansa said airily. "You won't dare when I'm married to Joffrey. You'll have to bow to me and call me Your Grace. "

After Joffrey sadistically tortures Mycah and attacks her little sister Arya with a sword:

After they had gone, Sansa went to Prince Joffrey. His eyes were closed in pain, his breath ragged. Sansa knelt beside him. “Joffrey,” she sobbed. “Oh, look what they did, look what they did. My poor prince. Don’t be afraid. I’ll ride to the holdfast and bring help for you.” Tenderly she reached out and brushed back his soft blond hair.

Just sisters being sisters, am I right? Yeah, my sister would also have more compassion for the guy who attacked me with a knife! That’s really how siblings are with each other!

Even later, she still victim blames Mycah for what happened when it’s just Arya and Sansa in the room:

“It’s not the same,” Sansa said. “The Hound is Joffrey’s sworn shield. Your butcher’s boy attacked the prince. ”

Much later, when Sansa is now the target of Joffrey’s abuse, she realizes that what Arya did was right:

He’d owned a sword named Lion’s Tooth once, Sansa remembered. Arya had taken it from him and thrown it in a river. I hope Stannis does the same with this one.

AGoT Sansa was a vain, self-centered, spoiled, snobby, classist bully who didn’t give a damn that another child was being tortured or that Joffrey attacked her sister with a sword, or that her 9 year old little sister was alone in the woods for several days and being hunted down by Lannister men. It’s more important that one’s hair is shiny and brushed when appearing before everyone to lie about what happened!

Joffrey’s lie - that Arya and Nymeria attacked him without any provocation - only stands because Sansa refused to support her sister’s side of the story. Joffrey knows that what he did to Mycah is wrong and that’s why he changes the story and lies. Noble children mingle and play with the small folk all the time.

Put any character in Arya’s spot - Brienne of Tarth, Jon Snow, Robb Stark, Bran Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Catelyn Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Ned Stark, Renly Baratheon, Barristan Selmy - and they would have all done the same thing that Arya did and protected Mycah from Joffrey’s sadism. Brienne of Tarth would have applauded the fuck out of Arya for what she did - and Brienne is exactly the kind of knight that Sansa claims to love in her songs.

What’s the point of Sansa loving all these songs of chivalry and knightly valor when she can’t tell right from wrong and recognize that in this case it was Arya who was the brave knight standing up to a bully. Just like her aunt Lyanna did before her and stood up for Howland Reed against a bunch of bullies. Oh, but the parallels are really between Sansa and Lyanna, right? Sansa and Lyanna - they both cry for songs aww ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️! But it looks like only one of them really understood the themes of these songs.

Every person in that room knew that Arya was right and it was Joffrey who provoked the attack. But the one witness to the entire thing lies and says she does not remember and turns it into a he said, she said scenario that allows for Cersei to demand punishment in the form of a dead wolf and a weak-willed Robert to give in and order Ned to do it. The loss of the direwolf here is symbolic because Sansa chooses the Lannisters/future family over the Starks/current family.

Does anyone think that Catelyn Tully - Family, duty, honor - the embodiment of family loyalty, would have been okay with Sansa siding with Joffrey against Arya?

It should have been Catelyn in that scenario and not Ned. Ned was wrong to not confront Sansa about her lying. And no, he does not explain to Arya why Sansa lied - because Sansa lied for a selfish, petty reason. He wants Arya and Sansa to stop fighting each other and puts the onus for all that on Arya. What he should have done was give Sansa a similar talk and explain why what she did was wrong and that she too had to put in the effort to get along with her little sister.

‘The lone wolf dies but the pack survives’ should have been something that Ned told Sansa since it is literally her wolf that dies. But Arya is GRRM’s central character and hence gets the thematic line and little talk from Ned about unity being more important than division and strife.

So no, Arya is not responsible for Lady’s death and Nymeria is not going to be Sansa’s direwolf as recompense.

As for Mycah - Unlike her sister and her fans, Arya rightly places the blame for that where it belongs.

Arya screwed up her face in a scowl. “Jaime Lannister murdered Jory and Heward and Wyl, and the Hound murdered Mycah. Somebody should have beheaded them.”

#Sansa Stark #Arya Stark #Joffrey Baratheon #Mycah #Ned Stark #GRRM #The incident at the trident #Had enough of this both girls were innocent but really it's Arya to blame bs #Only one of them lied about something important

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agentrouka-blog · 4 years

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1 So, based on your latest posts, and because you take the time to explore things that have been on my mind lately: 1 Jon-Sansa reunion is foreshadowed in Jamie-Cersei meeting at the Sept over dead Tywin and Jamie's dream of his mother. 2. T-S wedding not annulled, T will press his claim. Horrible suspicion: Sansa forgot her bedding and her PoV is completely blurred. Her next PoV is when she escapes and she thinks she should tell T about her moodblood!

2 T never once denies that he bedded her. He thinks "I am not bedded" once but that's because he wants to be chosen and S doesn't want him. He did what Tywin wanted "bed her once". He'll probably press his claim to WF based on that. In Catelyn's chapter Robb says he'll take his head off for what he did. This foreshadow comes also in Ts chapters in ADWD. Please explore Ts chapters more! Nice catch the whore-wife thing!

Oh hi, anon!

OMG, you make an excellent point! I think that GRRM planned something quite like this with the 5-year-gap he ended up having to scrap. Now it makes sense! I’ll put in some quotes below that show the hints.

It might still happen now. Obviously, not involving the actual wedding night, but as a “completely blurred” experience that involves Sansa (and probably Tyrion) at a point in the future. A point where Tyrion doesn’t care about being nice anymore. But for now, let’s look at what might have been.

Here’s where the hints come in after their wedding in ASOS:

For their wedding night, they had been granted the use of an airy bedchamber high in the Tower of the Hand. Tyrion kicked the door shut behind them. “There is a flagon of good Arbor gold on the sideboard, Sansa. Will you be so kind as to pour me a cup?” “Is that wise, my lord?” “Nothing was ever wiser. I am not truly drunk, you see. But I mean to be.” Sansa filled a goblet for each of them. It will be easier if I am drunk as well. She sat on the edge of the great curtained bed and drained half her cup in three long swallows. No doubt it was very fine wine, but she was too nervous to taste it. It made her head swim.

They both drink a wine that Tyrion has provided for them. Arbor Gold, he says. A different chapter with Shae suggests something else.

“We should go back,” he said reluctantly. “It must be near dawn. Sansa will be waking.” “You should give her dreamwine,” Shae said, “like Lady Tanda does with Lollys. A cup before she goes to sleep, and we could fuck in bed beside her without her waking.” She giggled. “Maybe we should, some night. Would m’lord like that?” Her hand found his shoulder, and began to knead the muscles there. “Your neck is hard as stone. What troubles you?”

Tyrion could not see his fingers in front of his face, but he ticked his woes off on them all the same. “My wife. (…) He had come to his last finger. “The face that stares back out of the water when I wash.”(ASOS, Tyrion)

She mentions the dreamwine and he gets tense as a stone, the thought of his wife troubles him and he can’t stand the look of his own face. Hmmm… (That last one is also a Tysha hint, but I digress.)

The pivotal moment at the wedding night:

She climbed onto the featherbed, conscious of his stare. A scented beeswax candle burned on the bedside table and rose petals had been strewn between the sheets. She had started to pull up a blanket to cover herself when she heard him say, “No.”

The cold made her shiver, but she obeyed. Her eyes closed, and she waited. After a moment she heard the sound of her husband pulling off his boots, and the rustle of clothing as he undressed himself. When he hopped up on the bed and put his hand on her breast, Sansa could not help but shudder. She lay with her eyes closed, every muscle tense, dreading what might come next. Would he touch her again? Kiss her? Should she open her legs for him now? She did not know what was expected of her.

“Sansa.” The hand was gone. “Open your eyes.” She had promised to obey; she opened her eyes. He was sitting by her feet, naked. Where his legs joined, his man’s staff poked up stiff and hard from a thicket of coarse yellow hair, but it was the only thing about him that was straight. “My lady,” Tyrion said, “you are lovely, make no mistake, but … I cannot do this. My father be damned. We will wait. The turn of a moon, a year, a season, however long it takes. Until you have come to know me better, and perhaps to trust me a little.” His smile might have been meant to be reassuring, but without a nose it only made him look more grotesque and sinister. (ASOS, Sansa)

This feels rewritten, doesn’t it? The sudden break, the sudden reprieve. It could just be Tyrion’s creeping conscience making him change his mind. Or it could be Sansa’s mind rewriting the moment. As the series stands now, it can be both. But this issue between them is so heavily referenced that it will have to come up again in the future, one way or the other. It was always meant to be important.

This is at the end of the wedding night chapter:

“On my honor as a Lannister,” the Imp said, “I will not touch you until you want me to.” It took all the courage that was in her to look in those mismatched eyes and say, “And if I never want you to, my lord?” His mouth jerked as if she had slapped him. “Never?” Her neck was so tight she could scarcely nod. “Why,” he said, “that is why the gods made whores for imps like me.” He closed his short blunt fingers into a fist, and climbed down off the bed. (ASOS, Sansa)

That’s some violent imagery for a kindly refusal to rape her, isn’t it? We all know what Lannister honor is worth (a bucket of…) and we see that Tyrion does feel entitled to her, or he wouldn’t react with dismay at her suggestion that she may never want him.

The chapter is followed by an Arya chapter describing Stoney Sept, the Battle of the Bells, and this comes up quickly:

More recent battles had been fought here as well, Arya thought from the look of the place. The town gates were made of raw new wood; outside the walls a pile of charred planks remained to tell what had happened to the old ones.

(…)

“When the westermen came through they raped the Huntsman’s wife and sister, put his crops to the torch, ate half his sheep, and killed the other half for spite. Killed six dogs too, and threw the carcasses down his well. A chewed-up corpse would be plenty good enough for him, I’d say. Me as well.” (ASOS, Arya)

Tyrion used that ugly “smash your portcullis” metaphor just in the chapter before. That’s not subtle.

Let’s look at two angles at Sansa’s POV, keeping in mind the dreamwine. One of the biggest hints that something bad happened (or will happen) to Sansa is in a TWOW sample chapter, “Mercy”. Arya will be “raped” by a dwarf on stage, in a play that’s about the Purple Wedding. Mercy is likely to play Sansa’s character.

She had fastened the shutters back so the morning sun might wake her. But there was no sun outside the window of Mercy's little room, only a wall of shifting grey fog. The air had grown chilly... and a good thing, else she might have slept all day. It would be just like Mercy to sleep through her own rape. Gooseprickles covered her legs. Her coverlet had twisted around her like a snake. She unwound it, threw the blanket to the bare plank floor and padded naked to the window. Braavos was lost in fog. (TWOW, Mercy)

The Tyrion chapter with Shae and the dreamwine is followed directly by a Sansa chapter that opens thusly:

That was such a sweet dream, Sansa thought drowsily. She had been back in Winterfell, running through the godswood with her Lady. Her father had been there, and her brothers, all of them warm and safe. If only dreaming could make it so …

She threw back the coverlets. I must be brave. Her torments would soon be ended, one way or the other. If Lady was here, I would not be afraid. Lady was dead, though; Robb, Bran, Rickon, Arya, her father, her mother, even Septa Mordane. All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the world now.

Her lord husband was not beside her, but she was used to that. (ASOS, Sansa)

If only dreaming could make everyone safe and warm.

So, why would this have happened? Because Jesus-Jon Snow Needs a Virgin Mother Mary Magdalene.

Like many other female characters, Sansa is surrounded by biblical Mary imagery. “Lys”, in fact, is French for “lily”, the virginal flower that represents the Virgin Mary and, as a city name in Essos, the den of high-end prostitutes. Look for “lys”, it’s everywhere. Madonna-Whore is one of the biggest themes in the books, right next to the light and dark messiah represented by Dany and Jon. Sansa is currently still heavy on the “Maiden” aspect, but that was going to change. But with a twist. Mary is, after all, a virgin mother.

A woman who doesn’t remember having been raped is still a virgin, yes?

Starting in Sansa’s “sweet dream” chapter, we get a barrage of pregnancy and bastard allusions all through Sansa’s arrival at the Fingers, along with lots of food symbolism. She has a fluttery “tummy”, she can’t eat. After her Escape, she arrives by ship nauseated and is offered fruit by Littlefinger. She rejects the pomegranate, i.e. marriage to Hades, she rejects the blood orange, i.e. wrathful revenge, but she chooses the pear, i.e. the virgin Mary AND child.

So, Virgin Mary and the bastard child. Or, as the world would call her: the whore.

More hints with Lysa:

As Sansa stepped back, Lady Lysa caught her wrist. “Now tell me,” she said sharply. “Are you with child? The truth now, I will know if you lie.” “No,” she said, startled by the question. “You are a woman flowered, are you not?” “Yes.” Sansa knew the truth of her flowering could not be long hidden in the Eyrie. “Tyrion didn’t … he never …” She could feel the blush creeping up her cheeks. “I am still a maid.” “Was the dwarf incapable?” “No. He was only … he was …” Kind? She could not say that, not here, not to this aunt who hated him so. “He … he had whores, my lady. He told me so.”

So Tyrion “had” a whore. And Sansa has repressed the memory, making her a maiden in her own mind. But a maiden with child.

Littlefinger would have loved it, apparently.

I always anticipated that she would beggar the realm and destroy herself, but I never expected she would do it quite so fast. It is quite vexing. I had hoped to have four or five quiet years to plant some seeds and allow some fruits to ripen, but now … it is a good thing that I thrive on chaos. (AFFC, Alayne)

Thanks for the self-insert, GRRM.

There are plenty of allusions in all the chapters to rape, protective walls (around people’s hearts) and Jon, in particular, climbing walls, pregnancy, childbirth, Trauma, etc etc etc.

Tyrion’s first chapter after their wedding opens like this:

Nothing remained beyond the King’s Gate but mud and ashes and bits of burned bone, yet already there were people living in the shadow of the city walls, and others selling fish from barrows and barrels. (ASOS, Tyrion)

To make it short: “Wall” is a code for Sansa. There are people living in the shadow of the wall after a gate was destroyed. Hmm.

His marriage was a daily agony. Sansa Stark remained a maiden, and half the castle seemed to know it. When they had saddled up this morning, he’d heard two of the stableboys sniggering behind his back. He could almost imagine that the horses were sniggering as well. He’d risked his skin to avoid the bedding ritual, hoping to preserve the privacy of his bedchamber, but that hope had been dashed quick enough. Either Sansa had been stupid enough to confide in one of her bedmaids, every one of whom was a spy for Cersei, or Varys and his little birds were to blame. (ASOS, Tyrion)

This is the only snag in the theory. Tyrion corroborates Sansa’s version of events. Or so it seems. Maybe Tyrion also misremembers. Which fits with his Tysha repression. There not being a “bloody sheet” is a mystery, though, for another day. There’s a Tyrion scene with Shae in AGOT or ACOK where he, ahem, barely manages to “storm the castle” before he finishes. It may have played like that. If it did. We don’t know.

It doesn’t matter now. But anyway.

Another hint when Catelyn arrives at the Twins for the Red Wedding, describing Lord Walder Frey:

His chair was black oak, its back carved into the semblance of two stout towers joined by an arched bridge, so massive that its embrace turned the old man into a grotesque child. There was something of the vulture about Lord Walder, and rather more of the weasel. His bald head, spotted with age, thrust out from his scrawny shoulders on a long pink neck. Loose skin dangled beneath his receding chin, his eyes were runny and clouded, and his toothless mouth moved constantly, sucking at the empty air as a babe sucks at his mother’s breast. (ASOS, Catelyn)

My suspicion on what would have eventually happened to that bastard:

What does he want me to say? “That is good to know, my lord.” He wanted something from her, but Sansa did not know what it was. He looks like a starving child, but I have no food to give him. Why won’t he leave me be? Tyrion rubbed at his scarred, scabby nose yet again, an ugly habit that drew the eye to his ugly face. “You have never asked me how Robb died, or your lady mother.” “I … would sooner not know. It would give me bad dreams.” “Then I will say no more.” “That … that’s kind of you.” “Oh, yes,” said Tyrion. “I am the very soul of kindness. And I know about bad dreams.” (ASOS, Sansa)

Children starving in the winter is something we heard from Old Nan.

“The Others,” Old Nan agreed. “Thousands and thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their tears freeze on their cheeks.” Her voice and her needles fell silent, and she glanced up at Bran with pale, filmy eyes and asked, “So, child. This is the sort of story you like?”

I’m not sure if this would have happened, but there is plenty of precedence of decent young mothers suffering horribly: Helaena Targaryen, Elia Martell, countless unnamed civilians, even Gilly and her two rabbits that Ghost killed.

At this point, of course, it doesn’t matter because it happened differently. Since GRRM had to scrap the 5-year-gap for being unworkable, this plan had to change. Sansa has been in the Vale for way long enough to be certain that pregnancy, at least, is not a factor. This theoretical Lannister baby is a scrap in the bin.

Whether he will pick up this thread directly (by possibly even repeating it when the un-annulled marriage becomes a factor again) or transfer some of this onto Sansa’s storyline by another character, Sansa remains officially a maiden and will most probably become pregnant at some point in a way that recalls the Virgin Mary. It may straight up be Jon’s baby at this point, what with the time constraints. Not remembering is certaintly something that will come up between them. Or it may have either an uncertain or a more sinister “source”.

It’s going to be interesting!

Either way, thank you so much for the ask, it really inspired me!

#asoiaf speculation #asoiaf #sansa stark #Tyrion Lannister #rape #asks #my posts

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tgrlmls · 5 years

Text

WHY HER?

Game of Thrones, some over-analyzing scenes, characters and ships

Alright then…

I know that I am a little late to comment on the hot topic that was the Game of Thrones series finale extravaganza and anything that is “jonsa”. I have been very angry about the last two seasons for a long time, but it looked like everyone has said what needs to be said one way or another. But I love analyzing and I have loved and loved this show and its characters for so long I have the right to over-analyze it to hell… ok? Good.

So… let’s go to my beginnings. GOT shippervise beginnings. I have been waiting since Season 1 for Jon and Deanerys to meet. I was sure their story arcs would come together ok? And Kit and Emilia had some really cute pictures that were taken for magazines etc. Fan arts, theories, anything jonerys, I was all into them. Incest was the only thing that kept me openly shipping jonerys but I was intrigued and I was ready to accept that “well… they don’t know they are aunt and nephew…maybe that will cause them to be star-crossed lovers? The tragic but beautiful love story? Or maybe knowing the Targeryen traditions they will say “you know what? Never mind that related thing bygones “and be a power couple? I was open to all options.

Then came season 6 episode 4… THE REUNION…of Jon and Sansa…what? That scene was so beautifully acted and shot and the music oh my god feelings. But I said to myself that is sibling love. It is normal they have both been through a lot. It was poetic, in a platonic way. But that scene and a lot of scenes that season between them were so very well done. I found myself saying “oh please don’t ruin this by making Sansa trust Littlefinger and wanting more power please.” To their credit…they didn’t. But they toyed with this idea too much too long for my taste. Anyway, yay jonsa have platonic relationship and some Starks are content for a change so I was happy. But the big thing was coming right? Jon and Dany.

Then came season 7. Started nice enough. I liked the differences between Jon and Dany and their first encounter. Dany was interested that was obvious. She was curious about Jon. Jon was not on his knees by her beauty or her dragons. BUT then she kept him as a prisoner…and the annoying “bend the knee” scenes came. I mean this woman accepted Iron Islands to be independent over a conversation. And she was not helping thousands of people, unless they bend the knee. What was “Breaking the Wheel” exactly? That is a question that I still can’t find the answer to. Dany wanted to break the Wheel of great houses ruling the people, by coming there demanding they bend the knee to HER because SHE IS FROM A GREAT HOUSE?

Ok that is for another discussion but all these things and lack of emotion for me in Jon and Dany scenes made me a Jonsa shipper in season 8. And lack of wit and general lack of IQ from other characters like Tyrion made me a big Sansa stan. My girl was wise. She was right. But what broke my heart the most was the treatment of Jon.

My Jon, had a character. He was a leader. He didn’t want it, but he was good at it. He was a natural. He always tried to do what was right, by his conscience. My Jon, even if he was head over the heels in love with a woman would not be a doormat. He would not sit idly by when anyone is being burned alive. He was honarable, he was brave, he was just. He made mistakes, he failed but his intentions were always for the best. He left the woman he loved before because he was trying to do the right thing. And it was the right thing.

Anyway these issues aside, there are very interesting dialogues and acting choices in season 8 that does not make sense with what the writers were trying to sell us. And many scenes were analyzed in many great tumblr posts, probably this one had been too, but if I may, I want to over-analyze and ask my questions too.

That scene will be the “Why her?” scene or “Sansa betrays Jon’s trust and tells Tyrion his secret” scene and I can’t believe how the latter discussion can even be an issue with the way this scene was acted and shot.

So it begins “WHY HER?”

Let’s start with the beginning of the scene, shall we? Jon is leaving with Dany literally going to war, Tyrion -as it seems- seeks and finds Sansa, but she is so distracted and lost in her thoughts she doesn’t have have time for small talk she gets right to the point “Why HER?”

A very important thing to note here is that this is happenning very soon after Sansa learns that Jon is not her half-brother but her cousin. Of course we didn’t see her or Arya’s reaction to this. Hell we didn’t even properly see how Jon himself feels about this. Why would we care about these characters we loved for years learning such an impactful truth right? Sarcasm on. I mean they learn that truth right after they say they only need each other, we see the pack all together one last time and the scene cuts. Ok, sure!

But where I am getting at is that these characters are not robots and of course this information has someway affected them.

Sansa is watching the dragons all mighty powerful and scary here. But she is not afraid. She seems conflicted, and asks Tyrion why he is following Dany. She is trying to understand why Jon is following her as well maybe. Because Jon never gave her, or any of the Starks or the Northmen for that matter any reason other than Dany helped them with the Army of the Dead. Yes, but that doesn’t mean she’ll be a good queen. She didn’t help them because she is a great leader who cares about them and help them survive. No.

Tyrion:She loves your brother

Sansa:That doesn’t mean she’ll be a good queen

That is the thing that must be bothering actually. She agreed to help the North because she loves Jon.

And if it were not Jon and someone she wouldn’t fall for, she was going to refuse to help until that person bent the knee. Or maybe even after that. But again that was the stupidity of Season 7. So moving on to the scene at hand again,

Sansa looks sad here. Not plotting, not scheming, not angry…sad.

Tyrion: You seem determined to dislike her.

Yes she does and why is that? What reason Sansa Stark has to dislike Dany? Well, she made them bend the knee and took their independence? But that aside why is Tyrion and Jon are determined to like her? We will get to that in this same scene.

Tyrion talks about how a peaceful relations between North and the Iron Throne would be best for the people.

Sansa: Jon will be Warden of the North so good relationship seems likely.

She cuts Tyrion’s sentence as it looks like the “good relationships” part has triggered her somehow.

Tyrion stops and looks the other way almost apologetically

Tyrion:I don’t expect him to spend much time here going forward…

And Sansa cuts him again, more triggered and even more irritated than before

Sansa:Well I suppose it’s up to him.

Ok this one is really interesting, Sansa is very irritated about the relationship of Jon and Dany, this irritation right here is not about the North. She is angry at Jon. But this one, this anger right here is not because independence or anything political.

She says it’s up to him. Well the way the scene was acted,really leans into Sansa being jealous about Jon and Dany. She knows what Tyrion is implying. Jon will be in King’s Landing with Dany because of their relationship, the North and the IT will be in good relations because of that said relationship.

Sansa is very disturbed. It catches Tyrion’s attention, he asks her if she is alright, I mean look at her. She is on the verge of tears.

Many people argued Tyrion misreads this, I am not sure, it is possible but it also feels like he is somehow trying to console her, telling her she will be the real power in the North, that it is her word he is seeking of in this arrangements. He is trying to make sure Sansa has accepted these terms. BUT it is not for Dany’s claim. Tyrion is not afraid Sansa will oppose Dany and Dany will lose supporters. No he is afraid but for other reasons. Which we will come to.

Even Sansa realizes this, and asks him why he is concerned. Dany has everything right now.

She still has her armies, the northern armies, her dragons ...and JON.

Tyrion: She is your queen too!

Tyrion: You don’t have to be her friend, but why provoke her? How is that in the best interest of your family or the North..

Sansa: You’re afraid of her.

Tyrion is afraid. For Sansa, for the Starks. This is the first time Sansa realizes even the supporters of Dany are afraid of what she is capable of.

She comes clean to Tyrion, tells him what’s really bothering her.

Sansa: I don’t want Jon to go down there…the men in my family don’t do well in the Capital.

While it is true that North men were not able to fight with the schemings of southron Capital. The bigger part in this is “Sansa doesn’t want Jon to go.” She fears for his safety. He is going to the Dragon Queen’s war. It is dangerous. Cersei is dangerous. Dany is dangerous. And Jon is a big player in this game even if he doesn’t want to. He was born into this. Even if he was Ned Stark’s bastard he was still important he was made The King in the North, of course he was still a big player even after he bent the knee. But there was more. Jon was not a big piece in this game. He was the BIGGEST because of the truth of his lineage. So when Tyrion unknowingly brings this up, Sansa gets that there are even bigger things at stake here.

She doesn’t want Jon to leave but there is also something more on the line here. Jon is the true heir. Her expression is full of worry and sadness as she turns her head looking away.

Tyrion notices this of course asks her if she is alright. But he doesn’t get it. He starts to tell her about how he believes in Dany, trying to convince Sansa or maybe himself. Because how can you possibly believe in someone making the World a better place, with constantly fearing she will snap and burn people for some reason that is justified in her head at the same time?

She thinks about her options. She KNOWS this game, she saw first-hand. She lived the ramifications “when you play the game of thrones you win or you die”

And she decides to play the game actively. Trying to keep this secret was not going to protect Jon. Her father tried it. But Jon was sent to the Night’s Watch eventually. Now he holds so much importance even without this secret. And more importantly. Dany knows the secret. Her hand, Tyrion is even afraid of her, warning Sansa not to oppose her. How long will she be kept from unleashing her anger. How long till before someone calls Jon a King? How long till Jon opposes Dany because of something he doesn’t agree. We know Jon. Sansa knows Jon. (I mean real Jon, until he became a doormat, he must be there somewhere) trying to be passive will not have. They are in this game whether they wanted it or not. Ned tried to refuse to be in, he lost his life for it. His family almost lost everything. Jon tried to refuse to take a part of it but anywhere he went, anthing he did people followed him, chose him, put him in the game all the time. There is no middle ground.

Yes she betrays her word. She swore an oath and she broke it. Because “what is honor compared to a woman’s love” Or a man’s for that matter.

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