#benjen stark
The Wolves and The Stags
In honour of the resurgence of my GoT obsession (brought to you by my housemates marathoning Game of Thrones) I felt the urge to do a little character design for every main player in a minor fic idea I had for GoT/asoiaf (as one does).
The premise is nothing groundbreaking: in the years shortly before Robert’s Rebellion, when Ned is off to the Eyrie to be fostered alongside Robert Baratheon, Lord Steffon Baratheon has his spare packaged and posted to Winterfell to be fostered by the Starks.
The eldest daughter of Lord Rickard—one Joanna Stark (named to honour Lord Tywin Lannister and his wife)—is a fast friend to the brooding Stannis (so they can suffer from eldest daughter syndrome together). The smallest of the Stark children, in the absence of their older brothers, designate Stannis the ‘honourary replacement’. (However, this still doesn’t stop Lyanna from cutting holes in the pockets of every set of trousers Stannis owns when he yells at her for trailing snow through his corner of Maester Walys’ turret… Joanna isn’t impressed with her little sister either, not when she’s the one who winds up stitching up every crudely cut pocket by the hearth that night).
When the direwolf corpse is found with a fresh litter of pups still trying to suckle, each of Lord Rickard Stark’s children receive a pup… and whilst Brandon ribs that it doesn’t bode well they’d found the direwolf impaled on the antlers of a mangled stag, the last remaining pup goes to Lord Stark’s ward, a stag of Storm’s End.
Honestly, I’m too lazy to write it, but I want to see how this scenario would affect events as they play out. Give Lyanna an older sister who’s her foil in many ways, give Ned another sister to love, and send the awkward and unloved Stannis Baratheon to Winterfell where its inevitable the Starks will envelop him into their own.
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LYANNASTARKAPPRECIATIONWEEK:
Day 4 → FamilyThe dragon prince sang a song so sad it made the wolf maid sniffle, but when her pup brother teased her for crying she poured wine over his head.
***
Benjen gave Jon a warm smile as he went by.
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Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the prince circled the field after unhorsing Ser Barristan in the final tilt to claim the champion’s crown. Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.
- Eddard XV, aGoT
Upper row: Horton Redfort, Jon Arryn, Robert Baratheon, Eon Hunter
Middle row: Brandon Stark, Lyanna Stark, Benjen Stark, Ned Stark
Lower row: Jon Connington, Arthur Dayne, Ashara Dayne, Elia Martell
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[Spoiler Alert]
Will Jon Snow become the new Spider-Man? Now that his Uncle Ben has died.
Game of Thrones Name Meaning: House Stark
◆ Stark:
The family name has German origin, means ‘strong’.
◆ Eddard / Ned:
Variation of the EnglishnameEdward, meaning ‘wealthy guardian’.
◆Catelyn:
Irishvariant of Caitlin/Caitlín also the version of Catherine (Greek origin) and means ‘pure’.
◆Jon:
This name is a shortened form of the name Jonathan/John, has Hebrew, Greek and Latin originsand means ‘God has given / God has pardoned / gift of Jehovah (God)’. Jón is also an old Norse common name still widely used in Iceland and the Faröe Islands.
◆Robb:
Abbreviation of the Germanic name (Hrodebert)Robert, means ‘famed; bright; shining’.
◆Sansa:
The name Sansa has Sanskritorigin and means ‘praise, invocation, charm’. Sansa is also similar to the LatinnameSancia which means ‘sacred’.
◆Arya:
The name Arya is an Unisex-name and means ‘friend, faithful’ in its Persian origin. The Sanskrit origin is ‘noble’. Arya was derived from an Indo-Iranian word meaning ‘noble’ or ‘Aryan’, ‘Lioness’ in Hebrew.
◆ Bran / Brandon:
The name has Celtic origins, it is either a variant of the Irishmasculine given name, Breandán, or descended from the Old WelshnameBrân, meaning ‘crow / raven’.
◆ Rickon:
The name is based on the old German name Ricard. It’s composed from the elements rík, rīc (power, ruler) and hard (strong, brave, hardy); hence, the ‘brave ruler’.
◆ Lyanna:
The meaning of the name Lyannahas Hebrew origin and means ‘God has answered’. In PersianLyanna means ‘the girl who has a beautiful face’.
◆ Benjen:
The name is based on the HebraicnameBenjamin which means ‘son of the right hand’.
◆ Rickard:
Just like the name Rickon,Rickard is another variation of the old GermannameRicard, meaning ‘brave ruler’.
◆Winterfell:
The capital of the Kingdom of the North has German originand meanswinter coat / winter fur.
What has always been true is that the Arya/Lyanna parallels work both ways. It’s extremely meaningful to Lyannato be paralleled with Arya in order to shed light on Lyanna’s inner world, in preparation for the reveal of a long held secret.
How it works is like this: because Arya defends Mycah against Joffrey, we can understand Lyanna’s defense of Howland. Because Arya never once strays from wanting justice for her brutally murdered friend, we can imagine what drove Lyanna to masquerade as the Knight of the Laughing Tree. And because Arya doesn’t think twice about any of this, we can understand Lyanna’s convictions.
Because Arya loves exploring and discovering new plants she’s never seen before, because she brings flowers to Ned out of love, we can understand Lyanna being “fond of flowers” as part of a curious and affectionate nature.
Because Arya is never impressed with Joffrey, we can understand Lyanna’s immediate assessment of Robert. Because her siblings react to news of Arya’s betrothals to unsuitable partners with “Arya won’t like that one bit” & “she never will, not Arya” & “[i]f he tries to lay a hand on her, she’ll fight him,” we can understand the gulf that opened between Lyanna and her family after her betrothal. Because amiable Elmar Frey looked down on Nan the serving girl and Arya resented him for it, we can see Lyanna judging Robert based on how he treats Mya/Mya’s mother.
Because Bran thinks Arya “wasn’t scared to get dirty, and she could run and fight and throw as good as a boy,” because he first assumes Lyanna & Benjen fighting are him & Arya, we can imagine Lyanna & Benjen’s relationship.
Because Arya is wolf-blooded and we see that written out, we can understand Lyanna as well.
That isn’t to say it isn’t meaningful to Arya, having Lyanna scattered through her story. Arya’s complex relationship with mentor figures is a post to itself, but in brief: legacies are passed down by people, to people, who then use them as a starting/turning point. Daenerys Targaryen understands the duality of her family’s legacy through the fragments of Viserys as her brother, king, and abuser; when he dies, she is the last, and she births dragons. Jon Snow is groomed for command in the Night’s Watch just like his uncle and ancestors before him, charged with protecting his homeland in the shadow of an eight thousand year old Stark dynasty. Tyrion is Tywin writ small. The last greenseer waited generations just to haunt Brandon Stark’s dreams.
Arya doesn’t have that. She has a direwolf, she’s a warg, and she has the North in her face. Wolf child, blood child; scattered yet meaningful pieces of a puzzle. By connecting her to Lyanna who came before her, it’s a lineage. It’s no longer an accident. Arya isn’t Lyanna any more than Daenerys is Aegon the Conqueror, or Jon Snow is any of his predecessors, or Tyrion is Tywin, or Bran is Bloodraven, or Edric Dayne is Arthur, or Arianne is Nymeria. These parallels to (pre-series) characters represent a benchmark to be surpassed, whether or not the characters realize it themselves, and in Arya’s case is no less.
Intentional parallels like this ask us: what if you were part of something - maybe even the culmination of something - that’s been brewing for a very long while now? What if who & what you are is so important, so necessary, that time would fold in on itself for you?
