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thelustybraavosimaid · 2 years

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Arya Month 2022: Parallels - Jon and Arya + Jaehaerys and Alysanne

Jaehaerys → Jon

YOUNG LEADERS

Though only ten-and-four, the boy king proved from the first that he would not be content to sit by meekly whilst others ruled in his name. (Prince into King—The Ascension of King Jaehaerys I, Fire and Blood)

"My lord, when I was looking through the annals I came on another boy commander. Four hundred years before the Conquest. Osric Stark was ten when he was chosen, but he served for sixty years. That's four, my lord. You're not even close to being the youngest ever chosen. You're fifth youngest, so far." (Samwell I, AFfC)

INNOVATORS

The wood south of the river was old forest, dense and overgrown; fine for hunting, poor for travel. He commanded that a road be cut through it, to connect King's Landing with Storm's End. The same road should be continued north of the city, from the Rush to the Trident and beyond, straight along the Green Fork and through the Neck, then across the wild trackless North to Winterfell and the Wall. The kingsroad, the smallfolk named it—the longest and most costly of Jaehaerys's roads, the first begun, the first completed.

Others followed: the roseroad, the ocean road, the river road, the gold road. (The Long Reign—Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Policy, Progeny, and Pain, Fire and Blood)

By the time the last withered apple had been handed out, the wagons were crowded with wildlings, and they were sixty-three stronger than when the column had set out from Castle Black that morning. "What will you do with them?" Bowen Marsh asked Jon on the ride back up the kingsroad.

"Train them, arm them, and split them up. Send them where they're needed. Eastwatch, the Shadow Tower, Icemark, Greyguard. I mean to open three more forts as well." (Jon V, ADwD)

NATURAL CHARISMA

"There will be no trials, no torture, and no executions," he announced to them. "The realm must see that I am not my uncle. I shall not begin my reign by bathing in blood. Some came to my banners early, some late. Let the rest come now."

Jaehaerys as yet had neither been crowned nor anointed, and was still shy of his majority; his pronouncement therefore had no legal force, nor did he have the authority to overrule his council and regent. Yet such was the power of his words, and the determination he displayed as he sat looking down upon them all from the Iron Throne, that Lords Baratheon and Velaryon at once gave the prince their support, and the rest soon followed. (Prince into King—The Ascension of King Jaehaerys I, Fire and Blood)

"The Wall will stop them," Jon heard himself say. He turned and said it again, louder. "The Wall will stop them. The Wall defends itself." Hollow words, but he needed to say them, almost as much as his brothers needed to hear them. "Mance wants to unman us with his numbers. Does he think we're stupid?" He was shouting now, his leg forgotten, and every man was listening. "The chariots, the horsemen, all those fools on foot...what are they going to do to us up here? Any of you ever see a mammoth climb a wall?" He laughed, and Pyp and Owen and half a dozen more laughed with him. "They're nothing, they're less use than our straw brothers here, they can't reach us, they can't hurt us, and they don't frighten us, do they?"

"NO!" Grenn shouted.

"They're down there and we're up here," Jon said, "and so long as we hold the gate they cannot pass. They cannot pass!" They were all shouting then, roaring his own words back at him, waving swords and longbows in the air as their cheeks flushed red. Jon saw Kegs standing there with a warhorn slung beneath his arm. "Brother," he told him, "sound for battle." (Jon VIII, ASoS)

BRILLIANT TACTICIANS

As the stormlanders proceeded from the east, Simon Dondarrion, Lord of Blackhaven, led a small host of marcher knights into the mountains from the west, to seal off escape from that side. Whilst the hunters crept toward one another, Jaehaerys watched them from the sky, moving them about as once he had moved toy armies in the Chamber of the Painted Table.

In the end, they found their foes. (The Long Reign–Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Policy, Progeny, and Pain, Fire and Blood)

The wildling archers shot as they advanced; they would dash forward, stop, loose, then run another ten yards. There were so many that the air was constantly full of arrows, all falling woefully short. A waste, Jon thought. Their want of discipline is showing. The smaller horn-and-wood bows of the free folk were outranged by the great yew longbows of the Night's Watch, and the wildlings were trying to shoot at men seven hundred feet above them. "Let them shoot," Jon said. "Wait. Hold." Their cloaks were flapping behind them. "The wind is in our faces, it will cost us range. Wait." Closer, closer. The skins wailed, the drums thundered, the wildling arrows fluttered and fell. (Jon VIII, ASoS)

RUTHLESS WHEN NECESSARY

Rego Draz, known as the Lord of Air, was the Master of Coin in King Jaehaerys's court. A starving mob chanced upon him, dragged him from his palanquin, and murdered him with a cobblestone. He was blamed, as a Pentoshi, for setting the Shivers upon Westeros.

"I would have the name of the men who did this. Speak now, and you will be well rewarded. Hold your tongues, and you will lose them." Many of the watchers slunk away, but one barefoot girl came forward, squeaking out a name.

The king thanked her, and commanded her to show his knights where this man might be found. She led the Kingsguard to a wine sinks where the villain was discovered with a whore in his lap and three of Lord Rego's rings on his fingers. Under torture, he soon gave up the names of the other attackers, and they were taken one and all. One of their number claimed to have been a Poor Fellow, and cried out that he wished to take the black. "No," Jaehaerys told him. "The Night's Watch are men of honor, and you are lower than rats." Such men as these were unworthy of a clean death by sword or axe, he ruled. Instead they were hung from the walls of the Red Keep, disemboweled, and left to twist until they died, their entrails swinging loose down to their knees. (The Long Reign—Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Policy, Progeny, and Pain, Fire and Blood)

"You will make a crow of him." She wiped at her tears with the back of a small pale hand. "I won't. I won't."

Kill the boy, thought Jon. "You will. Else I promise you, the day that they burn Dalla's boy, yours will die as well." (Jon II, ADwD)

USING BONDED COMPANIONS TO SEND A MESSAGE

In answer, King Jaehaerys descended the Iron Throne and bade Lord Rogar follow him. He led his lordship from the hall to the inner ward where Vermithor was being fed. A bull had been slaughtered for his morning meal and lay upon the stones charred and smoking, for dragons always burn their meat before consuming it. Vermithor was feasting on the flesh, tearing great loose chunks of meat with each bite, but when the king approached with Lord Rogar, the dragon raised his head and gazed at them with eyes like pools of molten bronze. "He grows larger every day," Jaehaerys said as he scratched the great wyrm under his jaw. "Keep your nieces and nephews, my lord. Why would I need hostages? I have your word, that is all I require." But Grand Maester Benifer heard the words he did not speak. "Every man and maid and child in the stormlands is my hostage, whilst I ride him, His Grace said without saying," wrote Benifer, "and Lord Rogar heard him plain." (A Time of Testing—The Realm Remade, Fire and Blood)

"So I did. Come here by me, lad. I want my folk to see you. I got thousands ne'er saw a lord commander, grown men who were told as boys that your rangers would eat them if they didn't behave. They need to see you plain, a long-faced lad in an old black cloak. They need to learn that the Night's Watch is naught t'be feared."

That is a lesson I would sooner they never learned. Jon peeled the glove off his burned hand, put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. Ghost came racing from the gate. Tormund's horse shied so hard that the wildling almost lost his saddle. "Naught to be feared?" Jon said. "Ghost, stay."

"You are a black-hearted bastard, Lord Crow." Tormund Horn-Blower lifted his own warhorn to his lips. (Jon XII, ADwD)

DON'T FLIRT WITH ME

[...] The queen's absence had been noticed, and His Grace would oft find himself seated next to some lissome maid or handsome widow at feasts, or riding beside them when hawking or hunting, but he took no notice of any of them. At Bandallon, when Lord Blackbar's youngest daughter was so bold as to seat herself in his lap and attempt to feed him a grape, he brushed her hand aside and said, "Forgive me, but I have a queen, and no taste for paramours." (The Long Reign—Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Policy, Progeny, and Pain, Fire and Blood)

A ragged cheer went up. Zei grabbed Owen by the hands, spun him around in a circle, and gave him a long wet kiss right there for all to see. She tried to kiss Jon too, but he held her by the shoulder and pushed her gently but firmly away. "No," he said. I am done with kissing. (Jon VIII, ASoS)

HOLDING SISTERS IN HIGH REGARD

Whenever lords and council members traveled to Dragonstone to consult with the young king, as they did from time to time, Jaehaerys received them in the Chamber of the Painted Table where his grandsire had once planned his conquest of Westeros, with Alysanne ever by his side. "Aegon had no secrets from Rhaenys and Visenya, and I have none from Alysanne," he said. (The Year of the Three Brides—49 AC, Fire and Blood)

Pay it, aye, thought Theon. Pay it with false coin. Jon Snow would see through the impostesure at once. Lord Stark's sullen bastard had known Jeyne Poole, and he had always been fond of his little half-sister Arya. (Theon I, TWoW)

RELENTLESS TRAINERS

One evening, after a day in which Jaehaerys had been severely tested and battered, Maester Culiper said to him, "Your Grace, why do you punish yourself so harshly? The realm is at peace." The young king only smiled and replied, "The realm was at peace when my grandsire died, but scarcely had my father climbed onto the throne than foes rose up on every side. They were testing him, to learn if he was strong or weak. They will test me as well." (A Surfeit of Rulers, Fire and Blood)

"His duties don't keep him from the yard. More days than not, he's out there fighting someone."

That was true, Sam had to admit. Once, when Jon came to consult with Maester Aemon, Sam had asked him why he spent so much time at swordplay. "The Old Bear never trained much when he was Lord Commander," he had pointed out. In answer, Jon had pressed Longclaw into Sam's hand. He let him feel the lightness, the balance, had him turn the blade so that ripples gleamed in the smoke-dark metal. "Valyrian steel," he said, "spell-forged and razor-sharp, nigh on indestructible. A swordsman should be as good as his sword, Sam. Longclaw is Valyrian steel, but I'm not. The Halfhand could have killed me as easy as you swat a bug." (Samwell I, AFfC)

SHARP TONGUE AND WIT

"The Faith will look askance at any king who thinks to rule without a Septon by his side," he announced. Jaehaerys had a ready answer. "We shall have no lack of septons. Septon Oswyck and Septa Ysabel will remain with us, and there is a young man coming from Highgarden to see to our library. His name is Barth." Mattheus was dismissive, declaring that Oswyck was a doddering fool and Ysabel a woman, whilst he had no knowledge of Septon Barth. "Nor of many things," the king replied. (A Time of Testing—The Realm Remade, Fire and Blood)

Slynt slammed a fist on the table. "I heard you! Ser Alliser had your measure true enough, it seems. You lie through your bastard's teeth. Well, I will not suffer it. I will not! You might have fooled this crippled blacksmith, but not Janos Slynt! Oh, no. Janos Slynt does not swallow lies so easily. Did you think my skull was stuffed with cabbage?"

"I don't know what your skull is stuffed with. My lord." (Jon IX, ASoS)

MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE, POSSIBLE

Here and there Poor Fellows appeared, gaunt unwashed fellows with long beards and great axes, to beg for the same clemency that had been granted to the Red Dog. This Jaehaerys granted them, on the condition that they agreed to journey north and join the Night's Watch at the Wall. Hundreds swore to do so, amongst them no less a personage than Rob the Starvling. "Within a moon's turn of being crowned," Grand Maester Benifer wrote, "King Jaehaerys had reconciled the Iron Throne to the Faith and put an end to the bloodshed that had troubled the reigns of his uncle and father." (Prince into King—The Ascension of Jaehaerys I, Fire and Blood)

"We need a loan as well. Gold enough to keep us fed till spring. To buy food and hire ships to bring it to us."

"Spring?" Tycho sighed. "It is not possible, my lord."

What was it Stannis had said to him? You haggle like a crone with a codfish, Lord Snow. Did Lord Eddard father you on a fishwife? Perhaps he had at that.

It took the better part of an hour before the impossible became possible, and another hour before they could agree on terms. The flagon of mulled wine that Satin delivered helped them settle the more nettlesome points. By the time Jon Snow signed the parchment the Braavosi drew up, both of them were half-drunk and quite unhappy. Jon thought that a good sign. (Jon IX, ADwD)

GRACEFUL

Tall and handsome, Jaehaerys moved with an easy grace, be it on the dance floor or in the training yard. (Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Their Triumphs and Tragedies, Fire and Blood)

Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast. (Bran I, AGoT)

Alysanne → Arya

OUTSPOKEN

After Prince Baelon the Brave avenged his brother Aemon's death on Tarth by driving the Myrmen into the sea, Jaehaerys named him the Prince of Dragonstone and the heir to the Iron Throne. While this was a popular decree amongst the smallfolk, Aemon was survived by a daughter, Rhaenys, who was with child when Aemon passed.

The most prominent dissenter was Good Queen Alysanne, who helped her husband rule the Seven Kingdoms for many years, and now saw her son's daughter passed over because of her sex. "A ruler needs a good head and a true heart," she famously told the king. "A cock is not essential. If Your Grace truly believes that women lack the wit to rule, plainly you have no further need of me." And thus Queen Alysanne departed King's Landing and flew to Dragonstone on her dragon Silverwing. (The Long Reign—Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Policy, Progeny, and Pain, Fire and Blood)

"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 I, AGoT)

STUBBORN

"We keep the old gods in the North," he told the queen. "When my boys take a wife, they will wed before a heart tree, not in some southron sept."

Alysanne Targaryen did not yield easily, however. The lords of the south honored the old gods as well as the new, she told Lord Alaric; most every castle that she knew had a godswood as well as a sept. And there were still certain houses that had never accepted the Seven, no more than the northmen had, the Blackwoods in the riverlands chief amongst them, and mayhaps as many as a dozen more. Even a lord as stern and flinty as Alaric Stark found himself helpless before Queen Alysanne's stubborn charm. He allowed that he would think on what she said, and raise the matter with his sons. (Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Their Triumphs and Tragedies, Fire and Blood)

"I don't want them," Arya said. "I want Syrio."

Ned ran his fingers through his hair. Any decent master-at-arms could give Arya the rudiments of slash-and-parry without this nonsense of blindfolds, cartwheels, and hopping about on one leg, but he knew his youngest daughter well enough to know there was no arguing with that stubborn jut of jaw. "As you wish," he said. Surely she would grow tired of this soon. "Try to be careful."

"I will," she promised solemnly as she hopped smoothly from her right leg to her left. (Eddard VII, AGoT)

PRO-WOMAN FEMINISTS

For three days [Alysanne] lost herself in the Citadel's great library, emerging only to attend lectures on the Valyrian dragon wars, leechcraft, and the gods of the Summer Isles.

Afterward she feasted the assembled archmaesters in their own dining hall, and even presumed to lecture them. "If I had not become queen, I might have liked to be a maester," she told the Conclave. "I read, I write, I think, I am not afraid of ravens...or a bit of blood. There are other highborn girls who feel the same. Why not admit them to your Citadel? If they cannot keep up, send them home, the way you send home boys who are not clever enough. If you would give the girls a chance, you might be surprised by how many forge a chain." The archmaesters, loath to gainsay the queen, smiled at her words and bobbed their heads and assured Her Grace that they would consider her proposal. (Birth, Death, and Betrayal Under King Jaehaerys I, Fire and Blood)

Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?" (Eddard V, AGoT)

ENJOY ACTIVE PURSUITS

It is written that the young king and queen were seldom apart during [the remainder of his minority], sharing every meal, talking late into the night of the green days of their childhood and the challenges ahead, fishing and hawking together, mingling with the island's smallfolk in dockside inns, reading to one another from dusty leatherbound tomes they found in the castle library, taking lessons together from Dragonstone's maesters ("for we still have much to learn," Alysanne is said to have reminded her husband) praying beside Septon Oswyck. They flew together as well, all around the Dragonmount and oft as far as Driftmark. (The Year of the Three Brides—49 AC, Fire and Blood)

...

And oh, how she had loved to fly. Silverwing carried her to Oldtown, to the Wall, and to a thousand places in between, and Alysanne saw them all as few others ever would, looking down from above the clouds. (The Long Reign—Jaehaerys and Alysanne: Policy, Progeny, and Pain, Fire and Blood)

"You ride like a northman, milady," Harwin said when he'd drawn them to a halt. "Your aunt was the same. Lady Lyanna. But my father was master of horse, remember." (Arya III, ASoS)

...

A bodkin could pierce even heavy plate. I'm going to learn to shoot a bow, Arya thought. She loved swordfighting, but she could see how arrows were good too. (Arya VII, ASoS)

DEEPLY CARE FOR THE COMMON PEOPLE

She understood the need for a castle between Snowgate and Icemark, she told Lord Burley, but the Nightfort was crumbling, overlarge, and surely ruinous to heat. The Watch should abandon it, she said, and build a smaller castle farther to the east. Lord Burley could not disagree...but the Night's Watch lacked the coin to build new castles, he said. Alysanne had anticipated that objection. She would pay for the castle herself, she told the Lord Commander, and pledged her jewels to cover the cost. "I have a good many jewels," she said. (Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Their Triumphs and Tragedies, Fire and Blood)

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. This Mycah was the worst; a butcher's boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya seemed to prefer his company to hers. (Sansa I, AGoT)

THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

"Above all else, a queen must know how to listen," Alysanne Targaryen often said. At Castle Black, she proved those words. She listened, she heard, and she won the eternal devotion of the men of the Night's Watch by her action. (Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Their Triumphs and Tragedies, Fire and Blood)

At Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table, and every day a different man would be asked to join him. One night it would be Vayon Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread stores and servants. The next time it would be Mikken, and her father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and how hot a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it might be Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from the library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her stories.

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. 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 II, AGoT)

MAKING FRIENDS WITH EASE

Neither prayer, sermons, nor readings from The Seven-Pointed Star could shake Alysanne Targaryen's conviction that the gods had meant her to marry her brother Jaehaerys, to be his confidant and helpmate and the mother of his children. "He will be a great king," she told Septa Ysabel, Lady Lucinda, and the others, "and I will be a great queen." So firm was she in her belief, and so gentle and kindly and loving in all else, that the septa and the other Wise Women found they could not condemn her, and with every passing day they clove to her side. (A Surfeit of Rulers, Fire and Blood)

Cat had made friends along the wharves; porters and mummers, ropemakers and sailmenders, taverners, brewers and bakers and beggars and whores. They bought clams and cockles from her, told her true tales of Braavos and lies about their lives, and laughed at the way she talked when she tried to speak Braavosi. She never let that trouble her. Instead, she showed them all the fig, and told them they were camel cunts, which made them roar with laughter. Gyloro Dothare taught her filthy songs, and his brother Gyleno told her the best places to catch eels. (Cat of the Canals, AFfC)

LACK OF TRADITIONAL VALYRIAN/TULLY LOOK

Her eyes were blue rather than purple, her hair a mass of honey-colored curls. (The Year of the Three Brides—49 AC, Fire and Blood)

It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring. (Sansa I, AGoT)

SLENDER, SMALL, PRETTY

Her childhood had been spent in the shadow of her brothers and her elder sister, Rhaena, and when she was spoken of at all it was as "the little maid" and "the other daughter." She was little, this was true; slim and slight of frame, Alysanne was oft described as pretty but seldom as beautiful, though she was born of a house renowned for beauty. (The Year of the Three Brides—49 AC, Fire and Blood)

"Wear this when you are here," the priest said, "but know that you shall have little need of it for the present. On the morrow you will go to Izembaro to begin your first apprenticeship. Take what clothes you will from the vaults below. The city watch is looking for a certain ugly girl, known to frequent the Purple Harbor, so best you have a new face as well." He cupped her chin, turned her head this way and that, nodded. "A pretty one this time, I think. As pretty as your own. Who are you, child?" (The Ugly Little Girl, ADwD)

...

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," she sang as she descended the wooden stair to the street. The handrail was splintery, the steps steep, and there were five flights, but that was why she'd gotten the room so cheap. That, and Mercy's smile. She might be bald and skinny, but Mercy had a pretty smile, and a certain grace. Even Izembaro agreed that she was graceful. (Mercy, TWoW)

LOVE OF ADVENTURE

In the North, Queen Alysanne grew restless with waiting, and decided to take her leave of Winterfell for a time and visit the men of the Night's Watch at Castle Black. The distance was not negligible, even flying; Her Grace landed at the Last Hearth and smaller several keeps and holdfasts on her way, to the surprise and delight of their lords, whilst a portion of her tail scrambled after her (the rest remained at Winterfell).

Her first sight of the Wall from above took Alysanne's breath away, Her Grace would later tell the king. (Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Their Triumphs and Tragedies, Fire and Blood)

"It won't be so bad, Sansa," Arya said. "We're going to sail on a galley. It will be an adventure, and then we'll be with Bran and Robb again, and Old Nan and Hodor and the rest." She touched her on the arm. (Sansa III, AGoT)

A TASTE FOR ALE

Lord Manderly entertained the queen lavishly. At the welcoming feast an entire aurochs was roasted, and his lordship’s daughter Jessamyn acted as the queen’s cupbearer, filling her tankard with a strong northern ale that Her Grace pronounced finer than any wine she had ever tasted. (Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Their Triumphs and Tragedies, Fire and Blood)

Arya sipped at her tankard cautiously, between spoonfuls of pie still warm from the oven. Her father sometimes let them have a cup of beer, she remembered. Sansa used to make a face at the taste and say that wine was ever so much finer, but Arya had liked it well enough. It made her sad to think of Sansa and her father. (Arya II, ACoK)

NEVER QUESTIONED WITS

No man ever questioned her wits. (The Year of the Three Brides—49 AC, Fire and Blood)

When they crossed the first stream, Arya turned her horse aside and led them off the road, following the twisting course of the water for a quarter-mile before finally scrambling out and up a stony bank. If the hunters brought dogs, that might throw them off the scent, she hoped. They could not stay on the road. There is death on the road, she told herself, death on all the roads.

Gendry and Hot Pie did not question her choice. (Arya I, ASoS)

BONDED ANIMALS

It was Princess Rhaena, legend says, who put a dragon's egg in Princess Alysanne's cradle, just as she had for Prince Jaehaerys two years earlier. If those tales be true, from those eggs came the dragons Silverwing and Vermithor, whose names would be writ so large in the annals of the years to come. (Sons of the Dragon, Fire and Blood)

Nymeria was waiting for her in the guardroom at the base of the stairs. She bounded to her feet as soon as she caught sight of Arya. Arya grinned. The wolf pup loved her, even if no one else did. They went everywhere together, and Nymeria slept in her room, at the foot of her bed. (Arya I, AGoT)

"He's not like the others," Jon said. "He never makes a sound. That's why I named him Ghost. That, and because he's white. The others are all dark, grey or black." (Jon I, AGoT)

ELOPEMENT AND STEALING

Alysanne went to Jaehaerys as soon as she learned of her impending marriage to Ser Orryn Baratheon.

The young king was as displeased as his sister was at the news. "They will be making wedding plans for me as well, I do not doubt," he deduced at once. Like his sister, Jaehaerys did not waste time with reproaches, recriminations, or appeals. Instead he acted. Summoning his Kingsguard, he instructed them to sail at once for Dragonstone, where he would meet them shortly. "You have sworn me your swords and your obedience," he reminded his Seven. "Remember those vows, and speak no word of my departure."

That night, under cover of darkness, King Jaehaerys and Princess Alysanne mounted their dragons, Vermithor and Silverwing, and departed the Red Keep for the ancient Targaryen citadel below the Dragonmount. Reportedly the first words the young king spoke upon landing were, "I have need of a septon." (The Year of the Three Brides—49 AC, Fire and Blood)

In doing so, Jaehaerys effectively stole Alysanne from Ser Orryn.

Jon makes an effort to save Arya from "her" marriage to Ramsay by politicking with Stannis, and later sending Mance south to Winterfell.

And word has come to us that Roose Bolton moves toward Winterfell with all his power, there to wed his bastard to your half sister. He must not be allowed to restore the castle to its former strength. We march against him. Arnolf Karstark and Mors Umber will join us. I will save your sister if I can, and find a better match for her than Ramsay Snow. (Jon VII, ADwD)

A grey girl on a dying horse, fleeing from her marriage. On the strength of those words he had loosed Mance Rayder and six spearwives on the north. (Jon VII, ADwD)

Jon is also accused of stealing Ramsay's bride.

Your false king lied, and so did you. You told the world you burned the King-Beyond-the-Wall. Instead you sent him to Winterfell to steal my bride from me. (Jon XIII, ADwD)

CLOSEST SIBLINGS

Both Jaehaerys and Alysanne and Jon and Arya have the strongest bonds with one another that began in early childhood.

Moreover, Alysanne was only two years younger than her brother, and the two children had always been close and strong in their affection and regard for one another. (The Year of the Three Brides—49 AC, Fire and Blood)

Arya gave back at him. Jon grinned, reached over, and messed up her hair. Arya flushed. They had always been close. (Arya I, AGoT)

NON-CONFORMITY

Jaehaerys respects Alysanne's abilities and breaks sexist conventions by giving her a place on his councils.

If certain members of the small council were taken aback when the queen began to attend their meetings, they voiced their objections only to one another...and soon not even that, for the young queen proved to be wise, well-read, and clever, a welcome voice in any discussion. (A Time of Testing—The Realm Remade, Fire and Blood)

...

With the able assistance of Septon Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, Lord Albin Massey, and Queen Alysanne—a foursome His Grace dubbed "my even smaller council"—Jaehaerys set out to codify, organize, and reform all the kingdom's laws. (Jaehaerys and Alysanne—Their Triumphs and Tragedies, Fire and Blood)

Jon respects Arya's own brand of femininity, even though it largely opposes societal norms for highborn ladies, and gifts her with her own sword.

Wary but excited, Arya checked the hall. "Nymeria, here. Guard." She left the wolf out there to warn of intruders and closed the door. By then Jon had pulled off the rags he'd wrapped it in. He held it out to her.

Arya's eyes went wide. Dark eyes, like his. "A sword," she said in a small, hushed breath. (Jon II, AGoT)

DIFFERENT ROADS, SAME CASTLE

"Send me to the ends of the earth and wed me to the King of Mossovy or the Lord of the Grey Waste, Silverwing will always bring me back to Jaehaerys." And with that she raised herself onto her toes and lifted her face to the king, and he kissed her full upon the lips whilst all looked on. (The Year of the Three Brides—49 AC, Fire and Blood)

"Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Who knows?" (Jon II, AGoT)

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