#its not quite 5000 words but i got it in under the deadline stumpy :P | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astradrifting · 3 years

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GRRM really created so many parallels and foreshadow using the DoD characters that honestly we could just figure the asoiaf ending by analyzing it. My favorite is the Aegon III-D@ny parallels, the fact that one of his closest allies was a face-scarred Master of coin Lannister who ended as Hand to Bran' parallel character just make it so obvious its funny.

Oh my god I didn’t even realise Tyland Lannister was initially on the greens’ side! I’m not super fond of Tyrion ending up as Hand, but you’re right that it’s so obviously meant to reference him. There’s so many parallels that it’s a little crazy. I don’t want to say that the second Dance will end exactly as the first did, it’d be a little too neat if history repeated entirely, but you can see so many echoes of it even in the show’s bastardised ending.

“The broken, shattered realm suffered for a while yet, but the Dance of the Dragons was done. Now what awaited the realm was the False Dawn, the Hour of the Wolf, the rule of the regents, and the Broken King.”

(TWOIAF, Aegon II)

I’m not sure what the False Dawn is going to parallel to, it refers to the period of time after Aegon II’s death but before Lord Stark got to King’s Landing, when people thought that peace had finally come. It kind of brings to mind the War for the Dawn, though personally I think that the threat of the Others will be resolved before the Dance is over. The Hour of the Wolf is obviously about House Stark’s rise back to power, and the Broken King is Bran - though if he actually becomes known as Bran the Broken I might end up committing violence ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The parts about Lord Corlys Velaryon are why I’m so hopeful that Jon’s book ending will be completely different from the show’s. He’s arrested for Aegon II’s death by Cregan Stark, even though Cregan had previously declared for Rhaenyra, because as TWOIAF puts it, “to kill a cruel and unjust king in lawful battle was one thing. But foul murder, and the use of poison, was a betrayal against the very gods who had anointed him.”

Corlys didn’t deny his guilt, and expressed no regret. “What I did, I did for the good of the realm. I would do the same again. The madness had to end.”

Cregan Stark declared him to be guilty of murder, regicide, and high treason, and he was sentenced to execution. But many spoke in his defence, even people who had fought against him in the Dance. Baela and Rhaena Targaryen, Corlys’ granddaughters and Aegon III’s half-sisters, convinced Aegon to issue an edict pardoning Lord Velaryon, which Alysanne Blackwood then convinced Cregan to let stand. Lord Velaryon was pardoned and even restored to his offices and honours, made one of the king’s regents and given a place on the small council.

Corlys’ words definitely could be Jon’s as well, a much more in-character declaration post-D@ny’s death than the drivel GoT tried to feed us. I was worried for a bit that this would be how Tyrion is let off scot-free, but Baela and Rhaena, who were vital to his release, are such obvious Arya and Sansa stand-ins, and they’re certainly not going to expend any effort in helping Tyrion. So Corlys’ circumstances more likely lays the groundwork for how Jon will be freed and remain in political power, while Tyland frankly inexplicably becoming Aegon III’s Hand after he was in favour of brutally killing him parallels Tyrion managing to fail up, as a way of reconciling the old regime with the new one.

This makes Tyrion becoming Hand more palatable IMO. Either Jon and Tyrion both should have been punished or neither should have been punished, not the travesty where Tyrion gets everything he’s ever wanted while Jon is exiled to a Watch with no purpose and a Wall that’s already half-collapsed, so what exactly can it protect against? I suppose they were afraid of seemingly rewarding Jon for killing d@ny, especially if pol!Jon had been revealed, but most people noticed how nonsensical his ending was, and it just led to ‘Bloodraven/Bran is the real villain’ takes anyway.

(Side note: Asha/Yara basically still being loyal to D at the end annoys me so much, and made no sense. Jon did more to help save her by giving Theon that pep talk than D@ny did. Maybe it was a leftover from her taking Victarion’s role in the story, but in no reasonable world is anyone going to listen to the Ironborn who brought the Fire threat over in the first place.)

Of course Tyland Lannister isn’t actually Hand for long, given that he dies barely two years later from Winter Fever, feared and hated, alone except for a maester and King Aegon. It might be an indication that Tyrion will face a similar fate, that he’ll die after he’s seemingly won, exactly what he threatened Cersei with:

“A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid."

(ACOK, Tyrion XII)

So that I can stop talking about Tyrion, here’s some facts about Rhaena and Baela that are obviously meant to reference Sansa and Arya, so much so that it feels a little bit like GRRM is winking and going “See what I did there? Huh? Huh? Did you see??”:

- their descriptions: “Rhaena was slender and graceful; Baela was lean and quick; Rhaena loved to dance; Baela lived to ride...” + “Baela was wild and willful”, “more boyish than ladylike”, and kept her hair cropped short as a boy’s

- Rhaena spent most of the Dance in the Vale, where she lived in relative comfort as the ward of Lady Jeyne Arryn. Baela was a dragonrider and so moved between Dragonstone and Driftmark, but was captured on Dragonstone when Aegon II descended upon it

- Rhaena was favoured to be queen after her brother, considered more qualified than her wild sister

- Baela liked to spend time with “unsuitable companions” she would bring to the Red Keep - including a comely juggler, a blacksmith’s apprentice whose muscles she admired (!!!), a legless beggar, a pair of twin girls from a brothel, an entire troupe of mummers once

- After her brother’s regents tried to marry her to a lord 40 years older than her, Baela escaped the Red Keep by climbing out of a window, trading clothes with a washerwoman, then walking right out of the front gate. She ran away to Driftmark and married her supposed cousin (though more likely he was her half-uncle), the legitimised bastard Alyn Velaryon, which might have had me worried about j0nrya if Alyn weren’t best known for being a daring sailor who went on many voyages, including sailing the Sunset Sea, until he was finally lost at sea during Aegon IV’s reign. Alyn’s mother was also called Mouse, for being “small, quick, and always underfoot.”

- another fun fact about Alyn: he’s a bad haggler, and had to agree to a high ransom and many concessions in order to get Prince Viserys returned to Westeros. This automatically disqualifies him as a Jon stand-in, because as we all know, Jon Snow can haggle like the best of fishwives.

- My absolutely favourite detail that has my jonsa heart singing - Rhaena was more dutiful than her sister and would have married a man that the king and council chose, saying that as long as he was “kind and gentle and noble, I know that I shall love him.” She was able to marry her first choice, whom the regents didn’t immediately approve of but that they ultimately accepted - Ser Corwyn Corbray, the brother of the Lord Protector of the Realm, a second son (!) whose late father had gifted him the Valyrian steel sword Lady Forlorn (!!!)

And as a treat for @istumpysk, some similarities between Rickon and Viserys II!

- the youngest child of their family

- separated from their older brother after they were forced to flee their home, trying to get to safety while their other brothers and mother were at war

- worshipped their oldest (half-)brothers, but were closer to the brother nearest their age

- spends the war stuck on an island, populated by people closely linked to their family’s origins - Skagosi are descended mostly from the First Men, while Viserys was on Lys, where the blood of Old Valyria still runs strong

- sought by/held hostage by a powerful and wealthy family, who will treat them well but whose intentions are dubious

- will be brought back from exile by an upjumped bastard/commoner from a port town who was raised to lordship and became their monarch’s chief admiral

- after they are returned, long after the wars and crises, is happily welcomed as the heir to their older brother’s throne (shhhhh just let me have this, let the baby live)

Thanks for the ask!

#astra rambles #asks #its not quite 5000 words but i got it in under the deadline stumpy :P #half speculation half 'my wildest dreams and hopes'#anti tyrion lannister #kind of #rickon stark #jon snow #sansa stark #arya stark #anti got #speculation #meta #dod 2.0 #dod parallels

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