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.
Brandon was fostered at Barrowton with old Lord Dustin, the father of the one I’d later wed, but he spent most of his time riding the Rills. He loved to ride. His little sister took after him in that. A pair of centaurs, those two.
***
“You ride like a northman, milady,“Harwin said when he’d drawn them to a halt.“Your aunt was the same. Lady Lyanna.”
***
Horses… the boy was mad for horses, Lady Dustin will tell you. Not even Lord Rickard’s daughter could outrace him, and that one was half a horse herself.
The 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.
❛❛ What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy. ― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones.
so fond of characters who haunt their stories, who exist without actually existing at all. when a character is long gone, but persists in the actions and words of all the characters they have left behind. when everything to come unfolds because of them. when they are both dead and the beating heart at the very center of the narrative… that’s the stuff __
it’s like… all of this happened because of you, and you weren’t even around to see it
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
They were all staring at him, but it was Sansa’s look that cut. “She is of the north. She deserves better than a butcher.” He left the room with his eyes burning and his daughter’s wails echoing in his ears, and found the direwolf pup where they chained her. Ned sat beside her for a while. “Lady,” he said, tasting the name. He had never paid much attention to the names the children had picked, but looking at her now, he knew that Sansa had chosen well. She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. […] Shortly, Jory brought him Ice. When it was over, he said, “Choose four men and have them take the body north. Bury her at Winterfell.” “All that way?” Jory said, astonished. “All that way,” Ned affirmed. “The Lannister woman shall never have this skin.”— A Game Of Thrones, Eddard III
“Not my mother, Jon thought stubbornly. He knew nothing of his mother, Eddard Stark would not talk of her. Yet he dreamed of her at times, so often that he could almost see her face. In his dreams, she was beautiful, and highborn, and her eyes were kind.” –Jon Snow thought about his mother (Game of Thrones, Jon chapter)
In the end, everything will be back as it should be.
