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Elia Martell and Rhaegar Targaryen ☀️ 🐉

“We’ve always imagined that the perfect image of the tourney at Harrenhal would kind of let you pick out all these figures in the stands, each with their different reactions when ‘the smiles died’. Jon Arryn and Robert and Lord Hunter joking a moment before what was happening dawned on them, Ned watching as Rhaegar was about to stop in front of his sister (who must have been seated quite close), mad Aerys glowering in the distance, Elia stiff-backed and trying to act as if nothing was wrong, Jon Connington probably looking vaguely sad (read: jealous), and so on.”

We’ve never actually gotten any indicator of Elia’s reaction to Rhaegar crowning Lyanna in the text (although we can imagine), so this is the first I’ve seen, as limited as it is. Stiff backed and trying to act if nothing was wrong. Oh, Elia. Giving nothing away, still playing her part and swallowing her humiliation as her husband disgraces her for all to witness. The dates we’ve been given tell us she was pregnant with Aegon at the time too. The argument that she might have agreed to this near unprecedented public display of humiliation has always been bizarre and baseless but this says all it needs to. Does this sound like someone who knew what Rhaegar was about to do? Someone relaxed and unfazed as her husband publicly announced his preference for another- in a world where it would ruin her- as she’s made to watch?

So we have official ASOIAF related art work as dictated by GRRM for The World of Ice and Fire. In the art depicting the Tourney at Harrenhal, we get our glimpse at Princess Elia at the head of the box under the Martell banner. It’s been debated which woman is Elia but I think I’m certain it’s actually the heavily adorned woman in the middle, with the man who would be Oberyn on one side, and possibly her friend and lady-in-waiting, Ashara Dayne, on the other.

It’s hard to make out detail (it’s clearer to zoom in yourself on the first picture) but she appears to have very delicate features and big, dark eyes. There was something very familiar about her garb and just her face in general. Am I wrong in thinking the artist drew inspiration from Eva Green’s Princess Sibylla, from Kingdom of Heaven, for Elia?

Same hooded red and orange cloak (House Martell colours!), pearls around her neck, yellow scarf that doubles up as a veil resting under her chin, what appear to be jewels adorning her forehead and an exquisitely embellished dress on Sibylla that is everything I’d imagine a Dornish princess wearing.

Even her face seems based on Eva’s. TWOIAF describes Elia as a “delicate beauty” as matched here, there’s the same kohl rimmed eyes and face shape. As a fan of the film, this is something I love and it gives us a little bit more to go on considering the limited information and descriptors we have of Elia in the source material.

As far as inspirations go, Princess Sibylla as Princess Elia Martell? Pretty damn beautiful and wonderfully fitting.

“india fantasy” by zara Kim on INPRNT

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I create a new prints site and here is my work on “INPRNT”.

There’s another piece of work, so check it out!

EOWYN AND ARYA COMPARING THEIR SWORDS

"Maria Perez, styled a Balteira, can be considered the most famous woman of medieval literature, about whom most has been written. Writers, painters and other artists have approached her from different perspectives. Her personality exercises a certain attraction and her figure grew over time until she became shrouded in the aura of legend.

Soldadeiras, it seems, were dancers who lived off their theatrical art and other services, receiving in return the soldada (salary), the noun from which the term soldadeira derives. They accompanied the jongleurs as they travelled from courts to noble houses, acting as companions, assistants and frequently as servants, dancing and singing to the sound of the instrument played by the jongleur.Their presence is proven by regulations that forbade, or limited, their access to court and military circles. 

There are no explicit references in the cancioneiros to the nature of their craft, although the depictions of them dancing in the company of jongleurs in the miniatures of the Cancioneiro da Ajuda are significant. The most common scene of these shows a woman playing ‘tarrañolas’ (Galician castanets), singing and dancing with arms held high, accompanied by the jongleur with the sound of the psaltery or the guitar. In the satirical genre close to 43 cantigas are dedicated to the soldadeiras (almost 10 per cent of the d’escarnho poems). Evidence of the close relationship that linked jongleurs, troubadours and soldadeiras in the same sphere of textual production, as well as the relevance of the soldadeiras in the tradition, is that this social group is the most written about in the Galician-Portuguese satirical corpus. Sometimes, soldadeiras remain anonymous; others appear with their names. Those recorded are varied, significant and almost always unidentifiable, able at times to correspond to the same person.

Maria Perez, a Balteira, is the most important soldadeira, both for the number of cantigas dedicated to her by poets and the high profile that she acquired in the texts.