The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives, her father once told her. Ever since, Arya Stark had been forming new packs everywhere she went. When the time came when she wished to form her own pack of children, she passed their grandfather’s words onto each of them.
And Arya … he missed her even more than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn clothes, so fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had … yet she could always make Jon smile. He would give anything to be with her now, to muss up her hair once more and watch her make a face, to hear her finish a sentence with him. – Jon Snow, A Game of Thrones
rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman’s name.
In no particular order: 2. Rhaenyra Targaryen (The Princess and the queen/ Fire and Blood / The World of Ice and Fire)
You still have friends in the North. If you’re ever in trouble, light a candle in the highest window of the broken tower. But who… You’re not alone.
““It may be that we shall lose this battle,” the king said grimly. “In Braavos you may hear that I am dead. It may even be true. You shall find my sellswords nonetheless.” The knight hesitated. “Your Grace, if you are dead —” “— you will avenge my death, and seat my daughter on the Iron Throne. Or die in the attempt.””
— Stannis Baratheon, The Winds of Winter (via octeviae)
Game of Thrones + Female Characters // John William Waterhouse
House Stark Appreciation Week | day 6: one event / period ⟶ The era of the Kings of Winter
Song and story tell us that the Starks of Winterfell have ruled large portions of the lands beyond the Neck for eight thousand years, styling themselves the Kings of Winter (the more ancient usage) and (in more recent centuries) the Kings in the North. Their rule was not an uncontested one. Many were the wars in which the Starks expanded their rule or were forced to win back lands that rebels had carved away. The Kings of Winter were hard men in hard times. ― The World of Ice and Fire.
A SONG OF FIRE & BLOOD || TARGARYEN WOMEN
“When will I wed the prince?“ she asked. "Never. You will wed the king.” “I will be queen, though?” asked the younger her.
“Aye.” Malice gleamed in Maggys yellow eyes. “Queen you shall be … until there comes another, younger and more beautiful, to cast you down and take all that you hold dear.”
… “Will the king and I have children?“ she asked. “Oh, aye. Six-and-ten for him, and three for you.”
"Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds,” she said. “And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.”
GOT Ladies | Fashion + Houses
A Feast for Crows — Arya I
Seven, Brienne thought again, despairing. She had no chance against seven, she knew. No chance, and no choice.
She stepped out into the rain, Oathkeeper in hand. “Leave her be. If you want to rape someone, try me.”
All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.
The histories carved into the Talking Trees tell us that these “Years of Shame” (the period of widespread slave trade between the Summer Isles and the Freehold of Valyria) endureed for the better part of two centuries, until a warrior woman named Xanda Qo, Princess of Sweet Lotus Vale (who had herself been enslaved for a time), united all the islands under her rule and made an end to it. As iron was scarce and costly in the isles, armor was little known, and the long thrusting spears and short stabbing spears traditional amongst the Summer Islanders had proved of little worth against the steel swords and axes of the slavers, so Xanda Qo armed her sailors with tall bows of goldenheart, a wood found only on Jhala and Omboru. … To give her archers a solid platform from which to draw and loose, Xanda Qo built ships larger than any previously seen in the Summer Sea–tall graceful ships cunningly fit together without so much as a single nail … These “swan necks” won them the sobriquet of “swan ships.” Though it took the best part of a generation, the Summer Islanders, led by Princess Xanda’s daughter (and eventual successor) Chatana Qo, the Arrow of Jhahar, ultimately prevailed in what came to be known as the Slavers’ Wars. Though the unity of the isles did not survive her own reign (for the Arrow wed unwisely and did not rule as well as she had fought) slavers even now will flee at the sight of a swan ship, for each of these proud vessels is known to carry a complement of deadly archers armed with goldenheart bows. (The World of Ice and Fire)
asoiaf meme (minor characters): xanda qo, princess of the sweet lotus vale (1/5 queens)
“Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.” Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. "Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her.“
”Lyanna was beautiful,“ Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya.
“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.“ — A Game of Thrones, Arya II
