@hernamewasriversong / hernamewasriversong.tumblr.com
ARYA STARK APPRECIATION MONTH 2022 ↳ Day 22: Soft moments
“Could you bring back a man without a head?” Arya asked. “Just the once, not six times. Could you?”
***
“Salty is known to Ternesio Terys and the men of the Titan’s Daughter. You are marked by the way you speak, so you must be some girl of Westeros … but a different girl, I think.”
She bit her lip. “Could I be Cat?”
“THERE HAS NEVER LIVED A STARK WHO FORGOT AN OATH. AND WITH HOUSE STARK, THE NORTH WILL FOLLOW.”
RESPECT FOR THE GREATEST HOUSE 🐺
“i was weary of war. i wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. i am only a young girl.” "you are the blood of the dragon. dragons plant no trees.“
Edit Request Meme: ASOIAF+Favorite Romantic Relationship:
Eddard Stark & Catelyn Tully
Requested by @keyleths
L Y S is one of the nine Free Cities of Essos. A mercantile city, Lys is built on a fertile island considered a paradise by Valyrian dragonlords. The sunny island is fertile with palm and fruit trees, and the surrounding blue-green waters are filled with fish. More than anywhere else in the known world, the blood of Old Valyria still runs strong in the Lyseni, who are regarded as beautiful. Even the smallfolk in Lys have the pale skin, silver-gold hair, and purple, lilac, and pale blue eyes of the dragonlords of old.
ARYA STARK APPRECIATION MONTH 2022 ↳ Day 12: Braavos
Only Braavosi were permitted use of the Purple Harbor, from the Drowned Town and the Sealord’s Palace; ships from her sister cities and the rest of the wide world had to use the Ragman’s Harbor, a poorer, rougher, dirtier port than the Purple. It was noisier as well, as sailors and traders from half a hundred lands crowded its wharves and alleys, mingling with those who served and preyed on them. Cat liked it best of any place in Braavos. She liked the noise and the strange smells, and seeing what ships had come in on the evening tide and what ships had departed. She liked the sailors too; the boisterous Tyroshi with their booming voices and dyed whiskers; the fair-haired Lyseni, always trying to niggle down her prices; the squat, hairy sailors from the Port of Ibben, growling curses in low, raspy voices. Her favorites were the Summer Islanders, with their skins as smooth and dark as teak. They wore feathered cloaks of red and green and yellow, and the tall masts and white sails of their swan ships were magnificent.
“War will make them old,” Catelyn said, “as it did us.” She had been a girl when Robert and Ned and Jon Arryn raised their banners against Aerys Targaryen, a woman by the time the fighting was done.
Catelyn II, ACOK.
You know when Ned was confronted about Cat capturing Tyrion and without skipping a beat immediately took responsibility for it to protect her?
Me (sobbing): And then- And then her last thoughts were “Ned loves my hair”!
My friend: All I said was how was your week.
♕ Daenerys Targaryen Appreciation 2018 → Free Choice: an ideal series ending
After the War for the Dawn is won and the Iron Throne of Westeros is destroyed, Daenerys turns her sights to her ancestral home of Valyria. With her dragons and mighty army, she reclaims it and rids the land of the stone men. There, finally home, Daenerys rebuilds the former slave nation into a New Valyria, a freehold like of old, but now really, truly free. Under Queen Daenerys’ leadership, the dragons that roam the skies of Valyria no longer symbolize fear and oppression, but hope and freedom for all.
everything asoiaf ♕ character tropes || Arya Stark
Sansa, Arya and Bran Stark + parallels | part 1 of 2 (in collaboration with @queen–of–thornsx)
Cersei: I love you. Jaime: Is that the wine talking? Cersei: That was me… Cersei: … talking to the wine.
asoiaf meme: [5/5] romantic ships ☰ ned and catelyn
“I had love enough for any woman, once I found the good, sweet heart beneath Ned’s solemn face.”
I’ve always been confused about how fandom commonly discusses House Tully, so here’s a post about it. It’s not the best post, but it could be worse.
So regarding Hoster’s favoritism—clearly Catelyn is his favorite, due to her dutiful nature. But people often also assume that Lysa was the second banana throughout her childhood, the eternal Jan Brady to Catelyn’s Marcia, and I don’t see much evidence in that way. All the envy we see from Lysa regards either Petyr Baelish’s affections or the effects of her forced abortion. The development of her resentment throughout her estranged adulthood is easily imagined, but as for her childhood at Riverrun, note first that Hoster wanted to contract for her a marriage equal if not superior to Catelyn’s, and second that anything construable as special treatment towards Catelyn seems to come from her being the heir presumptive (Lysa, who isn’t shy about airing her grievances, never indicates that she wished she were Hoster’s heir). Lysa would easily be aware of her father’s favoritism, but it’s hard to read her fate as an indictment of it, rather than as an indictment of the commodification of her body for dynastic politics. (More on her forced abortion shortly.)
Edmure is a better example of the bad effects of Hoster’s favoritism, insofar as he possibly never managed to please Hoster as well as Catelyn. Still, as of AGOT she hadn’t lived at home for 15 years. And even were he an only child, might he have still failed to fulfill the hypermasculine ideal that underpins his low moments? Might he have still been captured in a siege, strategically blundered inn a battle, failed his part in Hoster’s mythic Viking warrior funeral? He believes he would be loved better or more if he fulfilled his expectations better, and quite possibly, observing Cat helped create that suggestion. But did this sense of inferiority majorly motivate his decisions, or did they “merely” lend them emotional color?
As for Cat, her own favoritism of her kids could be discussed but I’d rather move on to this idea of the selfishness of her motherhood. I’ve often seen people claim that she only cares about her own family, but this would not then explain the horror she expresses at the death of Lyman Darry, or wanting to bury the dead men in the Vale mountains, or praying for peace and solace for those affected by battle, or interceding on Brienne’s behalf mid-attack for no reason other than her innocence. It would be less extreme (and therefore more responsible) to claim not that she only cares for members of her own family and none other, but that she does not care for the child of her husband with another woman conceived out of wedlock. I’m not sure why the two are so consistently conflated when, clearly, her lack of care for Jon does not logically entail that her care is limited to only Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran and Rickon, nor does one situation constitute a pattern.
This is not to say that selfishness makes up zero percent of Catelyn’s psychological makeup. It is to say that her level of selfishness is thoroughly common. Consider Rickard Karstark, who would kill Jaime Lannister to avenge his dead sons, House Tyrell, who would poison and backstab to get Margaery on the throne, Doran Martell whose ambitions for his children drove his own wife away, Lyanna Stark whose deathbed wish was likely for Ned to protect her son though it meant treason. It is a rare person who would not privilege their own children’s safety above others’, but Catelyn’s maternalism specifically is pathologized to an almost singular extent in fandom discussion.
And I feel that way about House Tully in general. To return to Lysa’s forced abortion, it is indeed a consequence of Hoster trying to do his duty as a father by securing the future of his family in the most honorable way he could think of. And it is indeed deeply regrettable, as the character himself regrets it literally to his last breath. At the same time, I would love to hear the argument that certainly, say, Rickard Stark would have done any differently in the same situation, given his comparable ambitions for his family and his conceivable understanding of what constitutes their well-being. (Incidentally, in addition to easily dislikable characters such as Tywin Lannister and Randyll Tarly, Rickard Stark himself raised a son with a sense of inferiority in none other than good old Ned.)
The downfall of “Family, Duty, Honor” is an intentional through-line in the Tully characters’ story, and it carries clear elements of indictment, but it is a thematic association helped along by circumstance. If Catelyn’s biggest mistakes are all related to her motherhood, it is because GRRM has chosen her to tell a story about a mother’s destruction, not because the potential for destruction is more endemic or unique to her motherhood than to anyone else’s anythinghood. In my view, through House Tully Martin exploits bedrock values that are widespread across his world. Whereas the Lannisters are grandiosely flawed and the Starks are deftly romanticized—the better to tell the particular stories he wants to tell there—the Tullys are thoroughly typical, making them the perfect vehicle for showing that the center could not hold.
