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What Robert's actual feelings are (lifelong obsessing over the fact that Targaryens are still out there and out to get him, or even the fact that he counts his win against Rhaegar as empty) would say otherwise.

The skulls in the dungeon are the tell-tale hearts beneath the floorboards driving him insane.

sorry but i'm soo obsessed with robert keeping the dragon skulls in the dungeons after he wins. it's a sign of triumph, and a sign of continuity. what's left of the targaryens is bones. we will build our house atop the dead things that once made you gods

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every single time someone says something about Rhaegar being a neglectful father or fathering children solely for the PrOpHEcY I just. I JUST. Rhaenys went and hid under his bed. she ran and hid under her father's bed in the hopes that he would save her. the bed that was in a room above the nursery. ABOVE the nursery. do you understand? in the last moments of her life she ran to to her father for protection. she. ran and hid under Rhaegar's bed. she had to be dragged out from under it screaming to her last breath. okay. Okay? fuck doesn't anyone get it?

#fanon!Rhaegar being a soulless machine is insane #kids especially have the strongest vibes #what this toddler daughter got from the real Rhaegar was the feeling of safety #the love and care implied behind that someone you would instinctively reach for in such a moment #people in the notes going 'this is why RLJ is fake'PLEASE #other than of course the whole anullment from Elia and dumping his kids is made up of course #allow dude what he rarely is: complexitt #complexity* #he was capable of caring and in many ways for many people sounds more like it right #he was just a guy in his early 20s with more responsibilities and problems than he could carry #can think of few other characters caught in so many middles

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decided to do something different, so a little modern AU pool family day with baby Dany and baby Jon ☀️

Rhaella is fine, she took the picture 📸

anyways, drawing four characters is a hassle 😅 my god, the amount of layers lmao (also who are the babies? it’s me, im the babies)

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i find it funny how allicent says that viserys is "blind" when it comes to rhaenyra's sons and rhaenyra in general. of course he is not blind, he knows very well how his daughter is, he knows her son's aren't laenor's, he just doesn't want to punish her. does alicent really think that viserys would exile her, kill her for having bastard sons? what kind of father would do that? not one who loves his daughter like viserys does. and alicent doesn't understand being loved unconditionally, she doesn't understand how someone can just be loved for who they are, their flaws and mistakes combined. all her life, she did everything by the book, everything just right and that still didn't make anyone love her. and for her, it's rhaenyra's fault, because she is loved, even though she broke several of those "rules". and alicent, instead of realizing that maybe those rules are kind of stupid actually, just blames rhaenyra instead of admitting to herself that she is jealous. she envies rhaenyra for being free, and being loved even though she doesn't follow the stupid rules that alicent does.

alicent says that viserys is blind about rhaenyra but i actually think he is way more blind about her. she has been plotting treason (telling his children that aegon will be the king), spreading rumours about rhaenyra's sons, threatening rhaenyra and her sons with a knife???? and viserys never did anything substantial to make her stop.

the most ironic part of them all is that she complains about viserys being "blind" to criston cole of all people, who i have NO IDEA why was never punished. he KILLED a man in the royal wedding and nothing happened to him. and when harwin strong beat criston up, he was removed from his post as commander of the city watch, but criston beats a man to death in a royal wedding and nothing happens?? let's not forget that when the king explicitly forbade that luke's eyes be taken out after, criston still tried to do it, he only didn't do it because daemon stopped him.

viserys wasn't blind about rhaenyra. he just loved her the way that she was and wasn't going to do anything stupid to harm her. like a father who loves her daughter unconditionally would, but alicent wouldn't know anything about that, would she? and for her, it's rhaenyra's fault that she is loved unconditionally, not otto's fault for being a shitty father.

the irony is that i believe viserys was in fact blind about alicent. about her ambition for her sons and bitternes towards rhaenyra. he was also blind about criston cole, who murdered a man in her daughter's wedding and wanted to take his grandson's eye out, but didn't get punished for any of it.

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On one hand, I really hate the Disneyfication of the Starks. But on another hand, I equally hate that growing circle that despises the Starks and Targaryens in favour of their heroic and civilized Andal families who are just trying to survive the savage northmen and evil colonizers.

#either the North is this unmatched land of purity and grandness (opposing the Targs of course) #or their future will be blessed with the benevolence of Southern elegance to set these savages straight

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This isn’t commonly known but one of the rings of hell is actually being in a fandom wherein the popular bloggers have the worst opinions known to man that everyone else parrots

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Seasmoke, who had once borne Laenor Velaryon, took onto his back a boy of ten-and-five known as Addam of Hull.

Artist: artwins (twt/ig)

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I don't know why targ haters/ Rhaegar haters believe that Jon connecting to his biological father is a betrayal to Ned's memory but it's a bad take, imo. It's not a competition.

Jon will always feel closer to Ned than to Rhaegar AND Lyanna bc the former raised him for the first fourteen years of his life while unfortunately he never got to meet his biological parents. But it's not like Lyanna or Rhaegar simply abandoned Jon to Ned's care. The reason they weren't around to raise him up is because they died. Had they lived, they would have been the ones to raise their son.

When Jon finds the truth about his parentage it's very possible that he want to know more about Rhaegar and Lyanna and even want to connect with their legacies. And no, that won't be a betrayal to Ned's memory bc wanting to connect with your biological parents doesn't automatically mean that you love your adoptive one any less.

Jon doesn't have to choose, he is a Stark AND a Targaryen (he's more importantly a Snow but that's a conversation for another post). Connecting with the Targaryen side of his family and even embracing that identity if he wants to doesn't mean that he will have to cut ties with his Stark side of family. Especially since Starks and Targaryens aren't currently at odds and it's extremely unlikely they will be at odds at the end of the series.

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What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms… or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.

Jon Snow - and family that haunts him, because sometimes ghosts make for the best love stories.

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Are the Starks cursed for the sins of their ancestors?

The whole "Starks must stay in Winterfell, bad things happen to them when they leave South" is always posed in fandom as this shining badge of honor, as if it's because the North is this unmatched pinacle of the world to exist in (it's not).

We know the First Men desecrated indigenous lands, were almost anihilated by White Walkers for it, had to build a magical Wall and are tasked (burdened) with guarding it.

Meanwhile, they can't leave (though plenty of them are excited to see the world) without tragedy and death. Bran is targeted with a big destiny, has different dreams about his life, and gets his legs cut from under him to stay put, for example. It doesn't sound to me like a benevolent distinction from the gods.

#asoiaf #valyrianscrolls #ned stark #jon snow #arya stark #sansa stark #robb stark

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yeah overthinking prophecies is the mind killer but i have to say my piece re azor ahai, that is, if it's really meant to be one character, then the best narrative choice is dany. not only because she fulfills every word of the prophecy an entire book before we even learn of its existence. but also "no one ever looked for a girl," aemon tells us. in-universe her gender precludes her from being imagined as the saviour figure and on a meta level even the readers don't think the 16 year old girl with this much power (dragons) will be allowed to keep that power and fulfill an important narrative destiny as a hero of the story. the expectation is that the character will be brought low and/or surpassed by the classic warrior hero archetype of jon. which is why i think dany being AA is the most subversive choice. and would actually make jon the red herring.

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I find the women as victims so fascinating, it’s definitely not only a Got or Hotd issue, I read an essay in college(I hope to have a link) about this topic, it was something like giving the misogyny in our society men writers and general audience have problems to write or identify with female characters unless they make them suffer or being abused so then they can give them power and agency as a prize,that was the gist of the essay, and I think that’s exactly the problem with Sansa,Alicent,etc they had to make Alicent an abused bride child so them and the audience can sympathized with her when she wanted to gain some power at Rhaenyra’s wedding for example.

I also find this topic fascinating and the entire discourse over House of the Dragon really got me thinking hard on this.

Women as victims is a very fine line. Generally, as a whole, me personally, I really really dislike watching sexual violence in cinema or television. I don't like it, period. I think it is mainly torture porn and there are very few instances when I don't consider it one. That's why I had such a big problem with the Handmaid's Tale and I never watched it, for that very reason : seeing women in such horrendous circumstances being raped and beaten and victimised continuously in order to provoke feelings of horror and disgust to the audience is not my thing. It is not nuanced at all, and I hate that. I don't see anything empowering in that. I don't feel more feminist, I just feel broken. But ok that's the topic of the Handmaid's Tale, it's not for everyone.

Now let's go to more controversial adaptations. Alicent and Sansa are two women who weren't raped in the books. In the show they were. I don't understand why people like that, and what is so exceptionally feminist in drowning in despair at the thought of it. All these tumblrinas that are obsessed with Alicent wouldn't be so obsessed if she wasn't a ChiLD BriDe (she wasn't) and maritally raped by a reaaaally old Viserys with a rotting body. But being a victim of sexual abuse is not a personality trait. That's my problem here. This is not real life. This is fiction. In fiction, a character needs to have a purpose and an impact in the storyline and they should be judged for that impact. If a character is reduced to being a victim, they have no impact anymore. I don't care about them, respectfully. The writers really reduced Alicent to being a child bride and a rape victim, and now any chance of assessing her character and her choices is gone. She's a victim, plain and simple. How can you talk about a victim? How can you judge a victim? How can you think critically about a victim? You can't. The only thing you can do is cry at the thought of her being victimised and scream at everyone who tries to attack her, which is essentially what her stans do. This is very, very, VERY bad media. This is not nuance, this is the opposite. Since the very moment you present one woman as a victim and nothing more, she's not a person anymore. She has lost the quality of a person (in the philosophical sense), she's just an abused woman ( I repeat that this is not real life, we're talking about fictional characters here).

It's the very opposite of a female-centric narrative. It actually annihilates women by reducing them to their victimised womanhood. Dany was sexually assaulted too, but that's not the focus of her story. Nobody likes Dany because she was sexually assaulted. Being a woman or a rape victim is not a personality trait. Women are people, not symbols of martyrdom.

I do believe the choice of making Alicent and Sansa rape victims in the show is a misogynistic choice for the fact that it debases the characters, and ends all possible debate on a character's actual personality and choices, which is the very reason why I'm watching this medium, to see characters act and make choices. (Again I don't believe real life rape victims are debased, or have no value, people, I am talking about fiction here). Especially in Alicent's case the consequences are very damaging : the big antagonist of the show being reduced to a rape victim, the protagonist of the show who wasn't a rape victim suddenly doesn't feel very justified in what she wants. She's spoiled, she's entitled, she's a whore. Why?

'Cause this one wasn't raped.

Imagine the implications of that thesis. Do I need to spell them out? Don't we see them everyday in the tags? Alicent didn't choose this, she was raped, she was forced. Rhaenyra chose to have sex that wasn't allowed. She deserves to die. She is judged for simply having a personality. She is judged for being a real character instead of a moving hologram for Tumblrinas wallowing in self pity. How can you win this argument? There is no argument to be made here. One was raped, the other wasn't, so the one who was raped is in the right. The other can burn in hell because she wasn't raped so she's a self serving whore.

That's a really really nice female-centric and feminist narrative. Congratulations to the whole team.

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Dragons going extinct because of misogyny is actually crazy when you think about it and then hundreds of years later a little girl being the one to bring it back is so poetic like Dany really is the one.

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ASOIAF discourse about gender performance gets so insane because wdym Daenerys is a masculine character... Like she's the third most feminine POV character after Sansa and Catelyn. She's heavily associated with motherhood, marriages and romance. And I don't mean this in a negative way, Dany and Sansa are my favorite characters even though show Sansa was kinda ruined from s5 onwards.

Like yes Dany is going against misogynistic traditions by being a queen and a Khaleesi in her own right rather than as a consort. But breaking gender roles in a sexist society that doesn't let women into the same positions of power as men doesn't neccessarily make someone masculine, male-coded or whatever. She's not a tomboy, butch or even fight hand to hand like Arya/Brienne/Asha. Whether that's a good thing or bad thing for you is another thing but it's the truth.

This is pretty much the same for Rhaenyra too, except show Rhaenyra is actually slightly tomboyish in personality and was against the idea of dealing with motherhood and marriage before the time jump.

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I believe that Valyrians of old practised equal primogeniture, and the only thing an heir had to be was a dragonrider. Think about it. They practice incest, so the eldest (say, a daughter) inheriting meant that the firstborn son (say, the second eldest) would be a ruler anyway. Why overlook the dragonriding daughter for a dragonriding son when they'd both end up rulers anyway?

Also, in Old Valyrian, the world's "prince" "princess", and "heir" are all the same: dārilaros, as in, it isn't gendered. This is the biggest clue that they practised equal primogeniture in Valyria and likely gave that up in Westeros to please the misogynistic bastards there.

(Click for better view, from this site)

Also, they were in close proximity to the Rhoynar, and they are confirmed to practice equal primogeniture.

From what we know, Visenya was a warrior and this was accepted by her father and brother-husband as normal. She rode a dragon, which is, again, their normal. It's also heavily implied that Aegon wed Visenya to strengthen his claim to dragonstone, meaning she was the named heir of their father as the eldest no matter her gender.

The Targaryens conceeded a lot when they became Kings and Queens, one being their faith (as far as we know; they could have secretly worshipped the 14 flames of Old Valyria) and they had to have a literal contract written by Jaehaerys and the Faith to be able to continue intermarrying to keep the bloodline pure.

From this, we can extrapolate that Valyrians likely practiced equal primogeniture and it was Jaehaerys, whose best friend was a Septon, who began the trend of being a misogynistic piece of shit to the women of House Targaryen, what with how he disregarded a lot of what Alysanne said to him, disinherited Rhaenys, and allowed Lord's not of House Targaryen to choose the heir to the throne rather than let Rhaenys inherit. He also treated his daughters like absolute shit, calling Saera a whore and barely mourning Viserra, etc.

I definitely think that Jaehaerys, due to his trauma from Maegor, was slowly manipulated by Septon Barth and the men he surrounded himself with to see women as less than, and he alone planted the seeds of rebellion by giving the lords a choice in who would inherit after him when they never should have had the option because in the world of ice and fire the monarchy is absolute and the King's word is absolute law.

Jaehaerys' many mistakes gave the Hightowers a foothold and meant that the realm would undoubtedly be split when it came to the Dance because a previous king (jaehaerys) planted doubts. And also Otto schemed and plotted with alicent and likely the maesters and faith.

In naming Rhaenys heir, Jaehaerys would then have to answer the question as to why he took the throne when Rhaena and Aerea were still alive and the wife and daughter of the last King (Aegon). Jaehaerys was, in actual fact, a usurper if you looked at it at a certain point of view.

The Rightful line of succession should have gone like this going by cannon deaths etc

Aenys > Rhaena > Aerea (died)> Rhaella (if she gave up her septas's vows), or Jaehaerys > daenerys (she died young) > aemon > rhaenys > laena (dies) > Baela (jacaerys as consort) > their firstborn > so on and so forth

But it didn't. Because jaehaerys is a cunt, and so are the women hating, misogynistic andals + faith and maesters.

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Little doodle of Cersei and baby Joff

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Sansa. A Golden Child.

It simply breaks my heart that Catelyn creates such a rift between her children. And I'm not even talking about Jon right now. I'm talking about Sansa and Arya.

Sansa has always been Catelyn's golden child, the future queen and mother of rulers of all of Westeros. She admires her daughter, and in the later chapters, when Sansa is married off to Tyrion, it's as if Catelyn feels like she's losing her. She speaks of her in her thoughts in a similar way to how she talks about Bran and Rickon, whom she believed were dead.

Also, remember how Ned protested when Catelyn mentioned that Sansa could become queen. "Sansa is only eleven, and Joffrey..." Yes, Sansa is still a child who needs family, love, and care, and certainly not Joffrey. But Catelyn is only concerned about the fact that Joffrey is the heir to the throne, and her daughter could become queen. Sansa is hardly a child to her, just an extension of herself; she is captivated by the idea that her grandchildren will rule the Kingdoms.

Catelyn's initial thoughts about Arya are simply that the girl needs to learn some manners, and that's it. Right after Catelyn's chapter comes Arya's, which is filled with resentment and jealousy towards her sister. Yes, I think Arya was jealous of Sansa. She didn't give up trying to connect with Sansa, engaging her in conversation, inviting her to ride horses. But the Septa did everything to turn Sansa into a proper lady, and complained to Catelyn, fully aware of the scolding Arya would later receive for it. "Nymeria loved her, even if no one else did." Come on, would a child loved by her mother indulge in such thoughts?

Catelyn wanted the best for her children, but as a mother of daughters, she seriously messed up, let's be honest.