She laughed again and shook the last drops from the pail. “Well, there you are. Is that water hot enough for you?”
“It will serve.” The water was lukewarm.
“I’d bring up more, but it’d just slop over. A girl the size o’ you, you fill a tub.”
Only a cramped small tub like this one. At Harrenhal the tubs had been huge, and made of stone. The bathhouse had been thick with the steam rising off the water, and Jaime had come walking through that mist naked as his name day, looking half a corpse and half a god. He climbed into the tub with me, she remembered, blushing. She seized a chunk of hard lye soap and scrubbed under her arms, trying to call up Renly’s face again.
Petyr was seated at the trestle table with a cup of wine to hand, looking over a crisp white parchment. He glanced up as the Lords Declarant filed in. “My lords, be welcome. And you as well, my lady. The ascent is wearisome, I know. Please be seated. Alayne, my sweet, more wine for our noble guests.” - Alayne I, aFfC
And the winner of the end of year raffle is here :) @yassineabouftass requested Benedar Belmore!
And since I love the Vale storyline and also had a lot of Vale-related requests, I decided to add some more characters :) @sol-martell requested Anya Waynwood and Lyn Corbray, and three anons requested Littlefinger (who technically didnt qualify since i drew him in november, but he fit the setting well).
So this is something one of my besties on Twitter, Mina, found. And since it’s ASOIAF, this may or may not be foreshadowing for a future Gendrya wedding.
Older here meant ten or twelve. Gendry was the closest thing to a man grown, but it was Willow shouting all the orders, as if she were a queen in her castle and the other children were no more than servants.
If she were highborn, command would come naturally to her, and deference to them. Brienne wondered whether Willow might be more than she appeared. The girl was too young and too plain to be Sansa Stark, but she was of the right age to be the younger sister, and even Lady Catelyn had said that Arya lacked her sister’s beauty. Brown hair, brown eyes, skinny … could it be? Arya Stark’s hair was brown, she recalled, but Brienne was not sure of the color of her eyes. Brown and brown, was that it? Could it be that she did not die at Saltpans after all?
In these paragraphs, Brienne compares Willow to Arya. Even though Brienne hasn’t met Arya and has no definite idea of who or how she may act in certain situations, the readers can tell that Willow and Arya are very similar, by age, personality, and physically. So there’s that…
And now this.
Inside, the fire crackled, and the common room was filled by the sounds of chewing, and Willow smacking children with her spoon. “One day that little girl will make some man a frightful wife,” Ser Hyle observed. “That poor ’prentice boy, most like.”
Ser Hyle basically theorizes that Willow will marry Gendry. Now, we aren’t aware of how close Gendry and Willow are but between the two of them, Gendry definitely has bigger shoes to fill in the future, seeing as he is still around and is still very much wanted for being one of the last legitimate king’s bastards. He and Arya will most definitely reunite in the future, and I doubt Willow would be relevant enough to be with Gendry by that time [I have faith in a gendrya book reunion because of @misseffie’smeta which is frankly a personal favorite].
As for my own two cents (bear with me as I have not gotten this far in the books just yet but I couldn’t care less about spoilers esp with gendrya, as I’ve already been spoiled of them therefore I’m basing these on very little and vague knowledge) I’d like to think that Willow and Arya’s striking similarities is what’s keeping Gendry from ditching her and the orphans. There’s no doubt he sees his long lost friend in Willow, and knows if there’s anything Arya would have done in a house full of orphans, it would be to take care of them and protect them, much like how she had stubbornly held onto Weasel despite Gendry’s opinions.
In other words, he could go so far with the BWB, killing Lannisters and Freys to avenge Arya. But he had already let her go, and doing that with Willow and the orphans would be leaving Arya all over again. He’d be making the same mistake, and he’s probably thinking if he had gone to find Arya instead that the girl would geld him for being stupid and leaving children on their own. His best course of action was to honor his friend in a way that she’d be proud of, and to make up for his mistake.
Lastly, the fact that he is literally surrounded by people who do nothing but remind him of Arya is probably also a factor to his drastic change in character. Give my son a goddamn break, George.
I am become a sour woman, Catelyn thought. I take no joy in mead nor meat, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once.
Day 4 - Birds Fly North | an Alayne Stone fanmix (by Tam)
“They have offered a hundred stags for word of her whereabouts, and a hundred dragons for the girl herself. If the girl can be found, she will be found.”
there’s a pain the west, a sinking feeling deep down in their chests. a little girl, a town with her name, her daddy died before she had came. to see the place and just how it laid to waste. the rain it came and did not stop
when she was just a girl she expected the world but it flew away from her reach and the bullets catch in her teeth. life goes on, it gets so heavy and the wheel breaks the butterfly. in the night, the stormy night, she closed her eyes… away she flies
but i kept my eyes closed, i’ll never know where the shadows are these days. i stood in the room of a house divided, ah, and it washed away from me. - back home what do i hold? for the maid or the mother i’ll be, if only the loom and a thread will hold. it is work too but as that i hear it, tomorrow i’ll mend it: the empty bones
i see the winter, she’s crawling up the lawn. i feel her breathing beneath my palms - but we’re all out of time, nothing left to decide. pack your things up quick, this one can’t be fixed. leave the rest of it behind
he said, “my lady looks perturbed - (the light is in your eyes, colleen.)“ i said, "whatever can you mean?” he leaned in and said, “you ain’t forgotten everything."
if the light takes you in will you know where you’ve been all this time, at the edge of a cliff you could almost just slip down the side. when there’s so much to do don’t you wish you could make up your mind? but it know it’s elusive, it grows and it burns you inside
my broken hearts, my fabulous dance, my fleeting song. my twist and shout. i am ice and dust and light. i am sky and here. i can hear people, i think you are near me now, and the world is so loud. keep falling. i’ll find you.
every week that goes by without tumblr s/pport addressing my multiple open tickets about this blog being marked as sensitive without explanation i will post a bad ipad drawing from when i read affc back in 2020 and my followers too will know a fraction of the pain i suffer at the hands of inept and entirely automated technical support (kidding, kidding)
Re-reading A Feast for Crows and Brienne might end up being my favorite character this time around. Other characters are praised as feminists but I think she’s the best example of feminism in GOT. She prefers and is better suited to more masculine roles, but she doesn’t mock women who are conventionally feminine (like Arya & the Sandsnakes do). She can see the value in Catelyn and Sansa and that they express strength and bravery in less apparent ways than some. She is good at fighting but is never cruel and she basically just wants to live as honestly and justly as possible.
friendly reminder that Sansa believes she is the only living Stark left when really the majority of her siblings are alive and she will more than likely never see them again ✿◕‿◕✿
[Transcription: citation taken from A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin. The quote reads: Aurane Waters seemed as bored as Cersei by all this prattle about septons. Seen up close, his hair was more silvery than gold, and his eyes were grey-green where Prince Rhaegar’s had been purple. Even so, the resemblance… She wondered if Waters would shave his beard for her. Though he was ten years her junior, he wanted her; Cersei could see it in the way he looked at her. Men had been looking at her that way since her breasts began to bud. Because I was so beautiful, they said, but Jaime was beautiful as well, and they never looked at him that way. When she was small she would sometimes don her brother’s clothing as a lark. She was always startled by how differently men treated her when they thought that she was Jaime. Even Lord Tywin himself…]
Yes, this is another “I love analyzing Cersei’s relationship with gender way too much” post.
First, though, a special mention to Prince Rhaegar, who must have been hot as hell if Cersei is still thinking about him ages after he died, despite the whole “I’m in love with my twin” thing. Jaime sure knows how to find blonde women who have a crush for dead princes. Anyway. Back to my favorite topic.
Every time I read the “Men had been looking at her that way since her breasts began to bud” I want to cry, because it’s such a terrible and common experience shared by women and afab people. The first time one feels sexualized against their consent is never a good experience. And the “Because I was so beautiful, they said, but Jaime was beautiful as well, and they never looked at him that way” just shows how young Cersei was, and how she didn’t understand why there would be a difference between her and Jaime. They were one and the same, why would they be treated any differently? And yet they were, and “She was always startledby how differently men treated her when they thought that she was Jaime. Even Lord Tywin himself.”.
In all honesty, is it surprising that Cersei wants to be recognized as better than all of the men in her life? If she wants Tywin to be known in history for being her father and not for his deeds?
Basically, this paragraph makes me want to cry, scream, and cheer Cersei from the sidelines, and I don’t know if I like this mix.
[Transcription: citation taken from A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin. The quote reads: My councillors. Cersei had uprooted every rose, and all those beholden to her uncle and her brothers. In their places were men whose loyalty would be to her. She had even given them new styles, borrowed from the Free Cities; the queen would have no “masters” at court beside herself. Orton Merryweather was her justiciar, Gyles Rosby her lord treasurer. Aurane Waters, the dashing young Bastard of Driftmark, would be her grand admiral.]
The “My councillors” honestly breaks my heart a bit all the times I read this.
Cersei just wants power and recognition. Cersei, fundamentally, wants to be a better version of all the men in her life. She wants to be better than Jaime (an easy task now that he can’t use a sword), better than Tywin, and she already believes herself to be far above Robert, Tyrion, and many others.
And these are her councillors. A terrible bunch of idiots, to be sure, but they’re hers and hers alone, she chose them for her reasons, she uses and manipulates them as she pleases, and they do whatever she wants.
And her father, Robert, hell, even her brothers, would have never thought that she was capable of having her councillors, of handling a council, the crown, all by herself. I mean, she doesn’t do these things well, but in this moment, in her head, she does, hence that is her reality.
Cersei believes to be on her way to show all these stupid men, who thought of her as a lesser being for being a woman, that she is better than them, and this is all I care about.
Those were the last words Rhaegar Targaryen ever spoke to him. Outside the gates an army had assembled, whilst another descended on the Trident. So the Prince of Dragonstone mounted up and donned his tall black helm, and rode forth to his doom.
