Knight of the Lemon Tree

Someone pointed out how extra gross it is that Littlefinger gave Sansa his mother's name as an alias while simultaneously thinking of her as his daughter and as Cat 2.0: mother, daughter and lover.

He never got over Ned Stark marrying Catelyn and having children through her. As if to overcompensate, he tries to make it as if Ned never existed and married Catelyn, stripping away the girl's identity as Sansa Stark. Instead she is his daughter described as having "my wits and Cat's beauty."

Note, not the daughter of him and some gentlewoman from Braavos of her cover story, but he slipped that he thinks of her as his and Catelyn's daughter, the coupling he always wanted. For all of his disdain towards songs and idealism, he is living a song himself. Like a number of songs of past deeds, it is one that engages in historical revisionism, but of his personal life. It's one that says Cat did love and marry him and have his children. Sansa is his family in every sense of the term.

Whatever role Sansa plays in the song, the Stark connection is severed. She is either his and Cat's daughter or Catelyn Tully reborn, his second chance.

sweet little sansa featuring lady

+ close up

Ned Stark

Jaime Lannister

Barristan Selmy

Varys

Thoros of Myr

That’s it. Every other time their deaths are mentioned, it’s with a sense of complete detachment or apathy at best. Kevan mentions that no one could stand to look at Rhaenys’s and Aegon’s bodies, but he never outright condemns or questions Tywin’s actions. Jon Connington would presumably feel appalled, but he hardly ever thinks of Elia or Rhaenys. 

How is this not a bigger deal in Westeros? Where is the horror, the outrage, the disgust?

Even if most people look down on the Dornish and Elia specifically for being disabled, it’s still the gruesome murder of a young mother and her two small children in the middle of the Red Keep that happened less than twenty years ago, that nobody was held accountable for. There are tons of characters who did or could have known Elia when she was still alive and should feel something regarding her death. Characters get so emotional over stuff that happened fifty, a hundred, a thousand years ago, to people they’ve never met. Why don’t Elia and her children inspire any kind of emotion in anyone but their family members and a handful of others?

And their deaths should have cast a much bigger shadow over Robert’s reign as king and his reputation as a person. He smiled over the corpses of babies and doesn’t get called bloodthirsty, heartless, or a threat to children by the general population. The only times it’s brought up is in relation to Daenerys and Cersei’s kids (and implicitly Jon), for plot reasons.

I can think of so many moments where this could have been interjected in story:

Catelyn, after learning about the stag and wolf that killed each other and seeing it as a omen, imagines Robert smiling over her kids’ bodies like he did Rhaenys’s and Aegon’s.

Sansa comparing herself to Elia while she’s trapped in the Red Keep, or one of her loved ones doing the same.

Arya thinking of how Amory Lorch killed Rhaenys after he attacks the Night’s Watch recruits.

Theon contemplating how he killed two innocent children for his own benefit, like Tywin Lannister did.

Sandor telling Sansa that his brother still reaps the benefits of being a knight, not despite but because of what he did to Elia and Aegon.

Lysa saying that she felt disgusted at Jon Arryn for going along with the murders, or that she feared her son could meet the same fate, or that she could never trust Robert or Tywin after what they did. (Or course that would require GRRM to give a damn about Lysa).

Someone sarcastically saying they can probably win Robert’s approval by showing him some dead children.

Someone bringing up the fact that Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen only exist and have the lives they do because Rhaenys and Aegon were murdered, and how they grapple with that knowledge. (I mean, Joffrey wouldn’t care, but still.)

Apart from how infuriating it is that so few people care about Elia or her kids, it’s poor set-up for future plots. The Martells are putting plans in motion to avenge Elia, but the readers only learn anything substantial about her when Oberyn shows up in ASOS. Jon’s parentage is set up from AGOT, but he never thinks of Rhaegar’s family and only thinks of Rhaegar once. It’d be one thing if Elia and children’s murders were clearly the elephant in the room that everyone was afraid to talk about openly, but no, they’re just not considered important. That really undermines the impact of Aegon’s invasion and Dorne’s desire of vengeance.