For me, Daenerys Targaryen represents hope.
Tag: got meta
Hi, I’ve been reading your Dany and Jon asks and I am really curious why you think the political!jon/ucl theory goes against the themes of the books? Thanks!
“It was the cold,” Gared said with iron certainty. “I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold.”
– Prologue, AGoT
The prologue’s there to frame the conflict of the entire series, and it’s outright stated that the cold is the enemy. (And at the end of the book, Dany proclaims that the fire is hers. Bookends.) The ultimate antagonist in this series is an inhuman, anti-human force against which all humanity should unite.
The idea that people should work together to face threats greater than themselves recurs across the series. Whether it’s Ned telling Arya that she and Sansa will need each other, Catelyn imploring the Baratheon brothers to work together, or Jon and Stannis making common cause at the Wall itself, the idea’s there. The White Walkers are a problem bigger than anyone, and people should work together. The idea that at the business end of the series one of the protagonists will callously manipulate another protagonist into helping sort out the final showdown is just bizarre to me. Especially when the other option is one protagonist convincing another protagonist to lend a hand and a few dragons, nothing but good faith between them. Even the show has started to bear in this direction from time to time.
I think this theory is also pretty OOC for even the show versions of Jon and Dany. The show’s got its issues with showing us one thing and telling us another, but that theory pretty well denies that Dany could ever want to save the world because the world’s worth saving, and ignores Jon’s distress over deceiving Ygritte.
Given the options between “offscreen, Jon decided to give up on a good faith alliance with Daenerys and instead seduce her into offering her assistance,” and “the Jon/Dany romance writing did not come off altogether as convincing as intended,” I know which I find more plausible.
Oh it goes against everything in the book. It flat-out
ignores how Dany’s actions in Beyond the Wall echo
Stannis when he prioritized the Wall’s needs and came to their aid. That
little plot that branded Stannis as the king who still cared and that
marked his change from a king who demanded fealty to one who earned it and that ended up getting him more men after he lost his main body of support in the Blackwater.
The parallel is way too obvious to Dany. The show wasn’t at all ambiguous when they had Tyrion plead with Dany
not to go because of the risk to the political war nor was it ambiguous
when they had Dany choose to come to Jon’s aid even though she didn’t
even believe in the Others. But some people insist on being stuck in the first couple of episode when Dany was demanding fealty or bargaining for it and completely ignore the part where she pledged protection and manpower with no strings attached. It’s almost as if she cares about people or something.
Also, also, haven’t we thoroughly established how crippling bad faith negotiation is to the peace process? Or that it only lends itself to immediate but ultimately hollow victories that get torn down so easily? The Lannisters have been doing nothing but negotiating in bad faith throughout the War of the Five Kings, how is that working for them? Just a question…. what the hell happens when Dany discovers Jon has been manipulating her? Has raped her by deception?
What makes this theory refuses to compute even more is that it’s even worse than suggesting that
one of the protagonists will callously manipulate another protagonist into helping sort out the final showdown (which is I agree is utterly bizare). It’s that it is built on the idea that Jon would do that after Dany had already pledged to fight the Others. He didn’t need to seduce her and sleep with her to get her assistance. Meanwhile Jon goes on to give an entire sermon about good faith while negotiating with Cersei fully knowing that her agreement to the truce hinges on his word but refusing to lie to get her cooperation. So Jon was simultaneously a callous pragmatist that had no problem manipulating Dany into a sexual relationship even after he got what he wanted from her, but also a staunch proponent of good faith negotiation that he risked foiling the truce they needed so Dany could give her full attention to the fight north.
So which one is he? Because Jon can’t be both at the same time.
Hi Turtle! Firstly: I really like how you phrase your arguments! Very neat. Secondly: This is not really about the reproductive duty discussion, but about how Cercei does resort to gain power through men – how will she deal with aging and being less in a position to manipulate men through sex? Eventually it will become hard to seduce those who only want her for her looks, even if she were to age beautifully (which her alcoholism might prevent). I cannot really see her cope well with that…
Thanks very much!
The answer is that she’s going to cope poorly, something that’s been anticipated by people in-universe and foreshadowed.
“And I was a piece?” She dreaded the answer.
“Yes, but don’t let that trouble you. You’re still half a child. Every man’s a piece to start with, and every maid as well. Even some who think they are players.” [Littlefinger] ate another seed. “Cersei, for one. She thinks herself sly, but in truth she is utterly predictable. Her strength rests on her beauty, birth, and riches. Only the first of those is truly her own, and it will soon desert her. I pity her then. She wants power, but has no notion what to do with it when she gets it.”
– Sansa VI, ASoS
Even before then, GRRM’s depicted the limitation of Cersei’s sexual manipulation of men.
“Must!” She put her hand on his good leg, just above the knee. “A true man does what he will, not what he must.” Her fingers brushed lightly against his thigh, the gentlest of promises. “The realm needs a strong Hand. Joff will not come of age for years. No one wants war again, least of all me.” Her hand touched his face, his hair. “If friends can turn to enemies, enemies can become friends. Your wife is a thousand leagues away, and my brother has fled. Be kind to me, Ned. I swear to you, you shall never regret it.”
“Did you make the same offer to Jon Arryn?”
She slapped him.
– Eddard XII, AGoT
The queen sipped at her wine. “Were it anyone else outside the gates, I might hope to beguile him. But this is Stannis Baratheon. I’d have a better chance of seducing his horse.” She noticed the look on Sansa’s face, and laughed. “Have I shocked you, my lady?” She leaned close. “You little fool. Tears are not a woman’s only weapon. You’ve got another one between your legs, and you’d best learn to use it. You’ll find men use their swords freely enough. Both kinds of swords.”
– Sansa VI, ACoK
In these cases, we see that when Cersei gets flat rejected, or faces the prospect of flat rejection…she’s got no other way of negotiating. Even as she tells Sansa that sexual manipulation is definitely the best way to deal with men, she has to admit that she’s got zero chance using that tactic on Stannis.
Lest we think she’s just eeeeeeevil and promiscuous (and therefore even more evil), AFFC shows us how this tactic hurts Cersei, too.
She almost slapped his face. Almost. But she had gone too far, and too much was at stake. All I do, I do for Tommen. She turned her head and caught Ser Osney’s hand with her own, kissing his fingers. They were rough and hard, callused from the sword. Robert had hands like that, she thought.
Cersei wrapped her arms about his neck. “I would not want it said I made a liar of you,” she whispered in a husky voice. “Give me an hour, and meet me in my bedchamber.”
“We waited long enough.” He thrust his fingers inside the bodice of her gown and yanked, and the silk parted with a ripping sound so loud that Cersei was afraid that half of the Red Keep must have heard it. “Take off the rest before I tear that too,” he said. “You can keep the crown on. I like you in the crown.”
– Cersei IX, AFFC
Not subtle – her crown, rather than a symbol of her own power, becomes the means of gratifying her partner at her own expense. She has sex she doesn’t want, because she feels she must, and loses her own agency.
Unlike Margaery, unlike Olenna, unlike Sansa, unlike Catelyn, unlike Dany, Cersei’s got a limited skillset in interpersonal negotiation. As she loses effectiveness in sexually manipulating others, so she loses political effectiveness and power. By ADWD she’s running out of options, and her fallback tactic is violence. It doesn’t bode well.
Hypothetically speaking, if a descendent of Dany and Jon (if they live that is, lol) is named Viserys and ascends the Iron Throne, would he be Viserys III or IV? Cause Viserys never sat the Irone Throne but, like, he was King, kinda? Same with Rhaenyra. In a world where women would get more precedence, would a Queen named Rhaenyra be Rhaenyra I or II?
The thing with Rhaenyra’s title was that:
When his grief had passed, King Aegon II summoned his loyalists and made plans for his return to King’s Landing, to reclaim the Iron Throne and be reunited once again with his lady mother, the Queen Dowager, who had at last emerged triumphant over her great rival, if only by outliving her. “Rhaenyra was never a queen,” the king declared, insisting that henceforth, in all chronicles and court records, his half sister be referred to only as “princess,” the title of queen being reserved only for his mother Alicent and his late wife and sister Helaena, the “true queens.” And so it was decreed.
–The Princess and the Queen
Aegon II declared that in all court records, Rhaenyra must only be referred to as “princess”, not “queen”. And for some reason, her son Aegon III didn’t change this decree when he came to the throne. (Perhaps it was some decision or compromise of the Green and Black coalition that made up his regency council, and Aegon III didn’t have the energy to deal with it and/or think it was worth arguing over. I hope Fire & Blood will clear it up, though I don’t really expect it to.)
Therefore, unless some future monarch decides to reinstate Rhaenyra’s title and dates of rule, a future ruling Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen would be Rhaenyra I, not Rhaenyra II. Mind you, in a future where there even exists a queen Rhaenyra (consider how England has avoided such unlucky regnal names as Richard and John, and how Westeros has avoided a Maegor II), such a queen might be the very one to reinstate the original Rhaenyra within the royal records, thus declaring herself Rhaenyra II.
Similarly, Viserys was only king in exile, and neither his claimed title nor his regnal number are currently recorded in Westeros court records. However, he always insisted on his royal titles:
Beneath an arch of twining stone leaves, a eunuch sang their coming. “Viserys of the House Targaryen, the Third
of his Name,” he called in a high, sweet voice, “King of the Andals and
the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector
of the Realm. His sister, Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone.”–AGOT, Daenerys I
As does Dany:
Whitebeard bowed his head. “It is not my place to question the words of Prince Viserys.”
“King,” Dany corrected. “He was a king, though he never reigned. Viserys, the Third of His Name.”–ASOS, Daenerys I
Therefore, if Dany re-establishes a Targaryen dynasty, she will certainly record Viserys III as her predecessor, between Aerys II and herself. And thus, if one of her descendants named Viserys comes to the throne, he will be Viserys IV Targaryen. Hope that helps!
(BTW, I’m still not sure why King Jaehaerys I didn’t record his elder brother, Prince Aegon, as King Aegon II, and cross Maegor off the list as an illegal usurper. I mean, maybe it’s because Aegon was never properly acclaimed as king, but still, why keep Maegor? Was it a law thing, that to declare Maegor was never truly king would cause too much trouble with invalidating certain laws and declarations he made? Agh, another unlikely hope for F&B…)
Aren’t you leaning a little hard (albeit consistently through this blog) on the technical legal determination of responsible age? It’s not like you flip a maturity switch at18. As specifically pertains to Lyanna, by puberty anyone should know that sleeping with a married person is flat-out wrong. Playing with swords & horses is less cute if it’s at the apparent cost of learning the political ramifications of royal marriages & liklihood of warfare. Her feelings can be excused, not acting on them
Wait, hang on a tic. Are you seriously arguing that it was on fourteen/fifteen-year-old Lyanna to a) understand the emotional implications and interpersonal power balances of a sexual relationship with someone not one, not two, nor even five, but nine years her senior, more than half as old again as she was, b) understand in full the legal and political implications of eloping with a married man and breaking her own betrothal in a charged and unstable political situation involving a king of questionable mental stability and a powerful bloc of nobles, without the aid of so much as a national newspaper, and c) police the marriage vows of a grown man possessed of a great deal more power and influence than her?
Those laws I keep referring to? One of the reasons I think they’re good is because they recognise that teenagers can consent – to each other. The age range where consent is possible is narrowest for young teens and more flexible for 16-17 year olds. They’re not there to stop teenagers having sex (because you’re right, there’s no “maturity switch,” but drawing a line is still necessary), they’re there to stop the experienced from preying on the inexperienced. And predation is what we’d call a twenty-three-year-old married man persuading an inexperienced, romantic fourteen-year-old to leave her home and family without consultation beyond maybe her kid brother and travel thousands of kilometres away with only him and his friends for company, completely and totally in their power, and impregnating her at the ripe old age of fifteen. That’s before we get into the issue where he’s the crown prince and what little power Lyanna has comes from her father – the very father that eloping with Rhaegar meant Lyanna could no longer appeal to for help.
Also, anon, if Lyanna was so immature that she didn’t understand the ramifications of leaving with Rhaegar, being too absorbed in her swords and horses to learn those lessons, she wasn’t mature enough to consent to him.
Hello! Do you consider Mellario to be part of the DLC?
The Castaway Women make me so so bitter. Especially, as you all probably expect, Alannys Harlaw, but also the others.
Because @joannalannister is RIGHT. We should have more information about them.
Alannys is the mother of two point of view characters and was the goodsister of two more for decades. They have nothing to say about her, even in memories. Where did she stand on the culture war? Does her family have a history of breakdowns when dealing with grief? What were her relationships like with her children before the Rebellion? What was her and Balon’s relationship like? What does she think of her intellectual brother? Did her breakdown happen right away or did it hit belatedly? Was it a process? How did she reconcile raising Asha to be bold with her duty to teach her to be a lady? Was she devout to the Drowned God? Would she be proud to see Asha as a captain or think this was a bit too far? Did she ever try to protect Theon from his brothers? Did she ever have a tense relationship with Euron like Balon did?
Lynesse is Margaery’s aunt and the daughter of the lord of Oldtown. Okay, I get it. We know the Mormonts. We know Jorah. They lived with her. None of these people are point of view characters, but they are important secondary ones (except the Mormonts who are more like minor secondary characters). Why can’t they talk about her? Did she try to make the best of Bear Island even while she didn’t enjoy it? Did she appreciate Jorah trying to make her happy? Was she ever particularly interested in Jorah? What did she think of the Mormont women? If she wasn’t capable of fighting, what did she do? Was Jorah selling slaves her deal breaker? How did she meet this lord she’s with now? Does she know her nieces and nephews? Has she heard from her family since she went north with Jorah? Did she ever really love Jorah at all or did he just think she did? How much did she know about the situation? Does she have children now?
Mellario is just as straight up inexcusable as Alannys is. We have Arianne and Quentyn as point of view characters and Westeros’ interactions with Dorne are IMPORTANT. Did she and Elia get along? How did she react to the Rebellion? How involved was she in Arianne’s education given that this was a Westerosi system she was unfamiliar with? What did she think raising her children would be like? Did she mentor Arianne? What did she think of the Sand Snakes and Oberyn and Ellaria? Did she ever have friends in Westeros? How did she feel about Areo staying with Doran? Has she ever returned to Westeros to visit her children? Did she have a history of mental illness or possible self harm? Did she and Doran ever try to reconcile? At this point I will settle for Arianne recalling stories or songs from her. ANYTHING.
I’m sure there’s more of the Castaway Women, but these three are bad enough.
Thank you, @blenderbender1811! You bring up really great questions, and at least some of them are questions that I feel like we should have answers to in the text, because our POV characters would have memories of various things here, but we don’t. To answer the question you sent me,
Hi! I’m going to take a rather circuitous route to answer your question, but I promise we’ll get there in the end!
First, for anyone who doesn’t know, the Dead Ladies Club (DLC) is a term I made up to criticize a very specific type of misogynistic writing in ASOIAF that involves the conspicuous and unjustified denial of humanity of various female characters who died during the generation or two prior to the beginning of the story. It’s not something I think GRRM is doing maliciously, but, to give one of my favorite quotes from @cosmonauthill, “Casual misogyny is still misogyny.”
This is my tag for it: #the dead ladies club
In addition to the DLC, there’s another group of background female characters in ASOIAF who aren’t, well, dead, but who are imo shafted by the narrative’s casually misogynistic writing. I’ve been thinking of these women as the Castaway Women.***
Like castaways on a deserted island, these women are “far away – not just physically far away, […] but psychologically far away, not in the present picture, a woman whose place (if she still has one) is very much not wherever she is being discussed,” to quote my friend @goodqueenaly. These women are background female characters who are still alive, but they are distant, rejected, discarded, isolated and left out of the main narrative. They’re often written rather two-dimensionally by GRRM, when they shouldn’t be two dimensional.
***In the past, I conflated these two groups and sometimes included this second group of “Castaway Women” as “honorary” members of the DLC, even though they’re not dead, but I personally don’t want to do that anymore. Using the “Dead Ladies Club” as an umbrella term to include background female characters who aren’t dead caused confusion, and it created a loophole for misogynists in fandom to attack my criticisms of GRRM’s Sacred Text, and I think it was counterproductive to the specific things I was trying to criticize with the DLC. So I think it was a mistake on my part to conflate these two groups, and I now try to think of these two groups as distinct. (If other people don’t want to make this distinction, though, it doesn’t bother me; I’m not the fandom police.)
The Castaway Women are women like Lynesse Hightower and Alannys Harlaw.
Who would you consider Castaway women? Are there more than Alannys, Lynesse and Mellario?
I can’t think of any others off the top of my head, but I would be happy to hear what other people think!
I will never not be hugely bitter about the lack of information we have about Alannys Harlaw. FOUR POINTS OF VIEW IN HER FAMILY. F O U R. Not to mention three for Mellario. There’s just no excuse for this.
I can almost (ALMOST) understand Lynesse because her family aren’t POV characters, but come on. Alannys and Mellario are the mothers of four POVs between them. I get Theon is a tool who doesn’t like to think of his family, but Asha cares about her mother. She saw her mom’s breakdown. Arianne was FOURTEEN when her mother left – we are not dealing with a little girl here. Asha was THIRTEEN during the Rebellion and SEVEN when the Targaryens fell – there is no good reason neither of them think about their mothers reactions to the events that shaped their houses. Heck, even if Asha wouldn’t have understood the politics that went on when Balon ascended to Pyke and rescinded most of his father’s reforms, Aeron and Victarion were surely present (more so Victarion than Aeron, who would have only been like 11 when Balon inherited). Why can’t they remember what Alannys said? Or Areo for Mellario and conversations her children wouldn’t have been privy to?
MULTIPLE POVS. THEIR CHILDREN AND ADULTS. WHY DOES NOBODY REMEMBER THEM?
And no, ‘it’s not plot relevant’ does not cut it for me. If we have time to watch a zillion sex scenes, we have time for them to think about their mothers for more than a line or two.
I can’t think of more off my head, but just these three are enough. I’m sure I’ll write more headcanon/meta about Alannys at some point because I find her endlessly fascinating, but George RR Martin’s characters should be thinking about them too.
Sorry if you’ve answered this before, but how do you think Hodor’s story will go down in the books? I’m guessing D&D didn’t come up with “hold the door” on their own, but I hope the actual book storyline isn’t as horribly ableist as that. How can this plot point be done properly?
There are a few things that would help.
First, not treating Hodor’s disability itself as a mystery (as opposed to why he started saying “hodor”). We don’t have to go deep into the realm of mystery and magic to find out that disabled people exist and why disabled people exist. They exist. They can be characters in the story just fine, thanks, no elaborate justification or origin story necessary.
Related to this is not treating Hodor’s disability as the grand tragedy of Hodor’s existence – it’s pretty fucking condescending, going “oh, how awful, he had to live as a disabled person.” Hodor has value as he is, regardless of the difficulties his disabilities impose. “Oh, but he could do so much more if he wasn’t – “ get bent, Hodor’s doing fine. Helped get three kids across some pretty forbidding landscape full of people who wanted them dead. He’s got a right to feel proud of his accomplishments, with none of the minimisation inherent in “but he could do so much more if he wasn’t disabled.”
The second thing that would help depends on what actually happens in the books. I think the book scenario’s probably going to be similar to the show scenario too, so the options I’m working with are A) Hodor sacrifices himself or B) Bran sacrifices Hodor.
With option A, Hodor’s agency is respected. It’s his decision to hold the door. His decision to sacrifice himself for his friends. That’s fine. Given what we’ve seen in book!Bran’s storyline, I don’t think this will happen.
With option B, it is absolutely necessary to look this horror in the face. Something the show failed to do. Show!Meera told show!Bran to warg into Hodor and hold the door. Which he did. But it’s apparently okay, since Hodor wasn’t warged right at the end. He’d only been moved into position against his will and left to die first. Afterwards, the great pals who did this to Hodor don’t even mention him.
What makes me somewhat optimistic in this regard is that from the very start, we’ve had people telling book!Bran things like “Hodor is a man, not a mule to be beaten,” and skinchanging into people has been treated by the narrative as an abomination. Consistently, across more than just Bran’s PoV.
Skinchanging into Hodor and ultimately forcing him to sacrifice himself will be, I think, Bran’s dark night of the soul – like I think Dany accidentally burning down King’s Landing will be, and Arya coming face-to-face with Lady Stoneheart’s vengeance on the Freys. When someone asks Bran why did you think it was okay to treat Hodor like that? referring not just to the final sacrifice but for his pattern of skinchanging into Hodor to walk around, there can be only one honest answer – Bran thought Hodor was worth less because of his disability.
Treating Hodor’s sacrifice not as a shocking moment but as an evil done to Hodor out of ableism would help a lot, in my opinion.
I’m seeing some discussion lately on how Ned is not a good guy for his intentions in unveiling the truth about Joffrey and taking him out of the throne is something that put his principles above the realm, above peace. I think I went back in time and the whole “was Ozymandias right?” discussions are back in a new form. “Peace from a lie or war from the truth?” What is your take on this, PQ?
There’s an implication in that argument that backing Joffrey’s claim is
the neutral choice, the default choice, the peaceful choice, but that
isn’t so. Ned lacks the ability to repack Pandora’s Box. War is coming no matter what he does with Cersei and her children, because both Renly and Stannis know about the twincest and are making plans to deal with it that 100% guarantee armed conflict with Tywin. Ned can affect the power balance in King’s Landing, and the role the Starks play in the war hinges on his fate, but he is not the prime mover as far as said war is concerned. Varys makes this explicit to Ned during his visit to the black cells: Robert’s brothers, and Stannis in particular, are the ones Cersei fears, and what she wants most from Ned (and Robb) is to stay out of the way.If war is inevitable, the question becomes what side Ned should take, and how he should deploy his power both within King’s Landing and in the North. Within the city, he needed to take direct control of the gold cloaks before moving against Cersei; holding her and the children hostage is the best chance he has of getting Tywin to back down. Bigger picture, I think declaring for Stannis publicly and forcefully, bringing both the North and in all likelihood the Riverlands in on his side, is the right move. Stannis is the claimant that fits Ned’s argument that the Lannister regime is illegitimate. He’s nearby, he’s a proven military leader, Ned respects him highly, and such a coalition could give Stannis the chance to swipe the “Robert’s Rebellion Reborn” narrative from Renly before the latter has a chance to get it going. Speaking of which, we know from Davos’ midnight meetings with Stormlords and the lack of several prominent Reach houses in Renly’s army that the youngest Baratheon brother didn’t have quite the stranglehold on the south that he thought. If Stannis strides into King’s Landing with the North and the Riverlands at his back, the Tyrells might face internal pushback and ultimately dip their banners meekly once more rather than lay siege to the capital and wait for Robb and the Blackfish to hit them from behind.
If Ned stays mum and backs Joffrey, not only is he helping the worst of the worst corrupt assholes in Westeros put a sadistic child on the Iron Throne, he’s also setting himself up to help them make war on Robert’s brothers. I fail to grasp the far-sighted beneficial wisdom of this scenario.
Was Tywin a shitty parent to Jaime? It is undeniable about Cersei and Tyrion, but I don’t really see how he mistreated Jaime as a child. The only moment that comes to mind is when Jaime tells him he will remain in the Kingsguard in asos. Thank you!
Yes. Tywin was abusive to all three of his children. Jaime had it the easiest, since he was more or less what his father expected him to be and didn’t chafe so much in the role, but when he was in Casterly Rock, he lived in an abusive household, and being the abuser’s favourite doesn’t mean he escaped unscathed.
Going to put this under a cut.
“Is there a man in your service that you trust utterly and completely?”
“Yes,” said Ned.
“In that case, I have a delightful palace in Valyria that I would dearly love to sell you,” Littlefinger said with a mocking smile. “The wiser answer was no, my lord…”The show seems to have taken Petyr’s stance on this re Ned but Petyr was wrong, as we see in the later books. Ned inspires loyalty. There’s a lot of men who would die for him before they ever thought of betraying him. The Liddle who Bran met is a prime example.
It shows when the Bolton’s are installed in Winterfell. The Northmen who ride with Stannis don’t just want the Bolton’s gone, they rise for the Starks. They rose for valiant Ned’s precious little girl, and they’ll fight for Rickon, for Bran, for whichever Stark returns to resume where Ned left off.
Ned’s legacy is the people who had faith in him, who were and are still loyal, even after his death. Petyr can’t grasp that because he doesn’t think like Ned does, but that’s not a fault in Ned, that’s a fault in Petyr, and others like him.
Sam speaks 