Your oc Serra Snow and this Ned is my roman empire:
You promise your sister to take care of her daughter, but instead to give your niece the freedom your sister wanted for herself; you distance yourself from her because you can't favor her for her gender and appearance.
Maybe she was confirmed as Ashara's daughter because Edric Dayne have silver hair? Could be that Ned resents her because he looks alot like Rhaegar?
It is tragic because now our Jon can't be with the Starklings for what she represents.
Reduced as a maid, not being able to have options, she's not under the education, protection of Ned, who canonically had certain expectations for his girls—he wasn't neglectful or severe.The picture of a woman with a sword is not in his head because he's still a patriarchal man.
You don't even send her away when you know how miserable she is, how lonely she is, but you don't send her away despite having the power to do it. You are selfish, Serra is still Lyanna's child, but you change nothing to make her living situation better.
The daddy issues and mommy issues must be insane for Serra, who has nothing, not even Ghost :( while your siblings have their own direwolves.
You hope your father gets you one, but no, no puppy for you because you are a bastard born out of love, you are not a true stark nor Dayne.
You have a father, but he's distant and doesn't elevate your position because it would be insulting to his lady wife and daughters.
You are not even named after a loved one, while your male counterpart is named after Jon Arryn.
You are a simple stain of your father's honor, the daughter of a woman whom Ned really loved but not enough to treat you with basic love and respect.
Your "step-mother" is cold, she's your lady and you are reminded of your place every day, but you have to be grateful because bastards can have it worse.
Your sisters ignore you because the lord and lady don't allow being around your siblings.
You can't be with the boys, neither; you just have dreams and your warg abilities.
The only thing you own is taken away from you, then you are to be sent away from Winterfell as a maid, again.
Then what are you are after? Just dirt, insignificant.
No warm goodbyes, nothing, you are just reminded again to be a servant to your masters.
You are bitter, resentful but you still help your "family" because it was everything you have ever known(Robb, Bran, Ned) then your savior, the man of your dreams comes and when he tells you you are meant to be with him, for glory, you chose him.
Can you imagine the mix feelings the Stark must have felt when they find out Serra was taken and confirmed as a Targ bastard?
A simpleton maid, insignificant, was important after all. And Ned must feel more guilty because he repeated the same mistakes he did with Lyanna.
you literally have their relationship exactly anon!!
i think for ned, in his patriarchal ptsd riddled mind, he promised lyanna that he would protect her. and so the first thing in his mind is a) get her away from robert and b) make her insignificant so no one sees as a threat. unfortuantely women with swords are threats, and if she were to ever find an army to support her or gods forbid she finds viserys across the sea, so she has to be insignificant.
and to him he doesn’t know how to raise a girl, that’s the women’s role and yeah catelyn is bad but it’s not like she’s abusive or anything so it’s fine. everything is fine. serra will be fine because a high ranking servant, that’s still a nice life and hey maybe she can marry a hedgeknight and they can have a little piece of land in the north. he’s already planned her life to have her comfortable but safe from robert.
and it’s interesting about the dayne’s because i do think that question is brought up more but i don’t know if it would ever be confirmed because like canon, ned shuts down any talk about her mother from catelyn and everyone else.
and to ned and even catelyn, high ranking maid is the best they can hope for serra because what is the other job for high born female bastards, mistresses of kings or prostitutes. they’ve given her the best that she can be of a woman of her status. (it’s never outright confirmed but catelyn also refuses to let serra go to king’s landing for fear she will be joffrey’s whore because that’s “just what bastards do” and that would be bad for sansa).
and maybe he should have sent her away to another house like the mormonts but to him he’s doing his best to “protect her” when really it is a selfish desire to keep her close.
and i will say so much of this is ned being neglectful within the system even if he thinks he’s doing great, but there is also euron manipulating everything. like the ghost thing, there is no ghost not because ned doesn’t give her one, but because ghost is dead. euron killed him. so serra feels isolated away from her siblings and ned, isolated and not a real stark, when really it was euron who is making her feel that way. remember he only benefits from her isolation and insecurity.
and the not being named after someone is super important and i’m glad you caught it! because i think ned feels that would be an insult. if he named her lyanna, that would just attract robert and he certainly doesn’t want that and if he named her lyarra after his mother, that’s insulting to his wife and daughters because why isn’t sansa named after her mother then. she can’t have a high ranking name for it may upset the social hierarchy, maids don’t have lady names after all.
and her lack of siblings is haunting because she practically never sees robb or theon because she might “corrupt them with her lustful ways” and the only way she can act around sansa and arya is subservient because they are her betters as “true ladies”. serra is also forced to basically dress like a septa in training, drab brown dresses of poor quality, plain head covering with no jewellery and forced to recite the seven. she has nothing, all she has is her necklace and compass. so of course it once again benefits euron to give her these gifts, he’s always telling her how special she is and how she deserves the nice things. so she wears it, sansa takes it from her, and then is further isolated from her family. once again, all according to plan.
and after all that ned reminds her that she’s to be sent away to serve another family as sansa isn’t here anymore, once again telling her that her only importance is to serve sansa. so she is at her most isolated which is when those dreams just get more and more intense.
and her helping her family is because she does still see them as family but once again it’s through euron’s encouragement. human warging is such a big no and also a cause of madness yet he’s encouraging her to do it, praying on her insecurities to finally be useful to her family. so she becomes more and more powerful but also vulnerable because she’s committed the ultra taboo in westeros, first human warging and then kingslaying aeron.
and the starks will all have interesting feelings about serra. first one is arya because for plot reasons arya ends up on dragonstone, so she now sees her sister cosplaying as visenya targaryen and her crazy pirate husband yelling about taking over the world. the others will also be something, especially when the news gets back to robb that the rightful queen of the seven kingdoms, his once insignificant bastard sister, is demanding he bend the knee or be destroyed.
and ned. well ned is just devastated in a way that is difficult to say in words.
thank you for your ask and interpretations!!!! i love all of them <3333
