I came across one of your tweets on Shiera and wanted to ask you about more of your thoughts on her. Her character and intentions are kind of difficult to fully pin down.
Yeah, honestly I only recently have felt like I'm cracking the shell of her. With Shiera, she is purposefully elusive but she is also clever, intelligent, and mischievous so there are certain clues that an astute reader can pick up on, once you understand the webs she was in.
Shiera being the last of the Great Bastards from the last mistress Aegon IV 'loved' (Serenei of Lys) marked her as particularly vulnerable: a girl, motherless (and her mother's family was poor/foreign so they offered her nothing), and the youngest piece on the chessboard. In fact Shiera's inclusion in the category of Great Bastards is interesting because it comes from two sources: 1) her mother's family previously having been royalty, though Serenei was nonetheless a controversial figure and regarded by some as a foreigner witch, and 2) Shiera's proximity to the other GBs, mainly Aegor & Brynden Rivers. In and of herself Shiera didn't have a House or an inheritance to uphold her, so she was completely reliant on her father Aegon IV (who was by her birth ill/grotesque). Perhaps there were people who took her in out of kindness. We don't know. The main point I take from this set-up is that Shiera was dependent on a father who was notably a predator to young girls. Being his daughter was not a deterrent either: one of the nine mistresses Aegon claimed to have loved was allegedly also his daughter (Jeyne Lothston, born to Falena Stokeworth, herself the very first of Aegon's favored mistresses). So, Shiera's later relationship towards men is informed by her girlhood experiences, I imagine.
This is where Aegor Rivers comes in and I'll take a second to characterize him because he's relevant through Shiera's life. Aegor is the son of Aegon's perhaps most ambitious mistress, Barbra Bracken, who really might have been Queen if Naerys had died in the childbirth of Daenerys Lateborn + her stillborn twin brother. But, Barbra's father was a little too loud about these plans, so when Naerys lived obviously Barbra & Lord Bracken had to go, for appearance's sake. And this is how Aegor was raised: at two weeks old, instead of becoming a prince, he became a discarded bastard among many. The humiliations for House Bracken piled up soon after (and you can argue that much of it was Lord Bracken's hubris contributing to his House's various defeats) with Aegon taking a Blackwood as a new mistress during a visit to see Aegor (Melissa Blackwood by all means wildly successful in the role), followed by Bethany Bracken's horrific execution. Aegor, later Bittersteel, grew to be a very stern man. I would call him spiteful. He took offense easily (again, he was raised in an environment full of simmering resentments) and was frankly unpleasant to be around. While Daemon Blackfyre's later ambitions were at least informed by his unique parentage/set of circumstances, Aegor's were I believe mostly stoked by those early humiliations in his life which had the effect of making him intensely sensitive to mockery. Later, this shared sense of disenfranchisement would bring the half-brothers very close together indeed, but in Daemon's early life when he was more of an optimist I would hazard that Aegor was just one worshipful younger boy among several, special in that they shared the King's favor. Brynden occupied that position as well (and naturally Aegor hated his ass for taking away like three of the crumbs Aegor regarded as rightfully his).
It's interesting because in AWOIAF & ASOIAF, Aegor/Brynden's feelings for Shiera are described as "they both loved [her]"/she was "beloved" of both, yet when Brynden himself is speaking to Bran he calls her "a woman I desired," which is just so physical and sexual. Aegor & Brynden are mirrors of each other. When Brynden says he has a brother he loved, a brother he hated, and a woman he desired... it's very important that Aegor felt the exact same way in reverse. They both loved Daemon B, hated each other, and desired Shiera. And I think this is crucial because whereas Daemon B & Daenerys Lateborn were half-siblings who had a puppy love, clearly never consummated, Shiera's half-sibling relationships to Aegor/Brynden were denoted by this unsatisfied greed and violence, both certainly consummated. (Sorry, I'm seeing now this is gonna be a long answer, lol).
Logistically Shiera and Aegor could only physically have been together when she was very young. That's what I believe happened, but how I map it out is this: Shiera was vulnerable to her father the King. Aegor, who both thought himself as deserving of certain status as a son of his father, and grew up around women who were 'ruined' by Aegon IV, was something like a little protector. I imagine that Aegor thought as the daughter of the King Shiera was a quasi-princess, like he was a quasi-prince, and that it was his right and duty to keep her. Aegon IV perhaps found Aegor's knightly preening puerile while being sort of amused by it anyway. So, Aegon IV left Aegor to it but he teased Aegor as well, which Aegor of course just loved. Basically the seeds of his insecurity which fueled his desire to unimpeachably own Shiera were planted there (and this is repeated in how Aegor competes with Brynden over 'owning' Daemon's legacy, but this post isn't about them).
But I also think that as a young girl, Shiera appreciated Aegor because of the protectiveness (possessiveness). She did not understand him as dangerous or volatile towards hers. We know that Shiera was highly educated, a polyglot and a voracious reader, so young Shiera must have been studious-to-scholarly. With Aegor it was an 'out of the frying pan into the fire' situation— he was, I would take an educated guess, her first sexual encounter with a man (assuming that no molestation by her father took place), only it was not the encounter she expected it to be. Shiera's sexual cruelty and routine discarding of lovers (which mimics Aegon IV— all of the GBs have elements of their father's character in them; this is helpful to understanding them) came later but the sort of playful mockery that inexperienced kids use to cover up their first-time nerves was nonetheless present. That enraged Aegor, who was highly sensitive to perceived insults. Following, instead of a consensual encounter unfolding, he instead used violence to dominate her. He raped her. It was a 'lesson' to never speak or act that way with him again. It informed Shiera's view of men for the rest of her life, Aegor doing what he'd purported to be protecting Shiera from.
One of the reasons I believe this is because 'teaching a punishing lesson' is what Aegor did with Brynden too, when he blinded him in one eye yet left him alive. Why not kill him? Well, Aegor wanted him to live in what he'd done. Actually the relief Brynden might have felt at being killed 'with Daemon,' or Shiera might have felt at being left alone instead of having the sex she was not ready for, was not something Aegor's pride could accept. Aegor enforcing his superiority required living victims, hence the rape/maiming, both permanently scarring acts. Yet, Aegor's desire for Shiera did not die after that— something I'll get into in a minute.
The second reason I believe this, is coded in Shiera's presentation. Mainly, her choice of dress, and her allegedly bathing in blood (Egg says this in The Sworn Sword).
Shiera was born with one dark blue eye and one bright green one, but the singers said that this flaw only accentuated her loveliness. [...] As to how to paint her... she was fond of ivory and lace and cloth-of-silver (but not gold, which she considered too vulgar). Her favorite piece of jewelry was a heavy silver necklace of emeralds and star sapphires, alternating. [SSM]
I know the above SSM gets so much play people are sick of it lol but let's parse it like we've never seen it before. Ivory and lace and cloth-of-silver are all standard 'pretty' fabrics but more importantly they are all silver or white. Not richly colored. Notably they are used in ostentatious wedding gowns, so QED Shiera dressed up like a virgin [no House colors, fabrics that readers would interpret as maiden-esque] who could at any moment get married and serve up her loyalty to a particular man, a particular faction, but she had not yet. She was teasing Court the way she teased Brynden: with marriage. Through her dress she announced that she was independent, not beholden to any specific husband or husband's politics, but nonetheless you should not discount her. To this point, I would also highlight her heterochromia, which is used in ASOIAF to indicate characters with complex factional loyalties such as Tyrion Lannister & Euron Greyjoy. Shiera's necklace mimicked her eye coloration; given the importance of personal sigils at the time (Bloodraven's albino dragon, Bittersteel's stallion with wings, Daemon B 'the Black Dragon') I would posit that this necklace was effectively the closest thing she had to a personal coat of arms, and it represented... herself!
This conversation about her dress is doubly important because it's so concentrated on her physical body. Literally, she was wearing it. Shiera's body was the site of desire, speculation, even what we might call her power. The fact that she never wore gold, imo, ties back to the Golden Company founded by Aegor, whose mottos included "beneath the gold, the bitter steel." No gold— no Bittersteel. Meanwhile, her alleged bathing in blood we know about from this line: "Lord Bloodraven's paramour. She bathes in blood to keep her beauty." If you put these together, you can see that the physicality between this very spiky trio included Shiera refusing to allow Aegor on her very skin, while she is tied to Brynden in a paragraph about her most intimate bathing practices. That Bloodraven is her lover and well-acquainted with her body is really in your face as a reader.
And I think all that's important because Shiera generally straddling the fence politically makes her avoidance of Aegor (he's "vulgar"!) vs her public kinky closeness to Brynden feel quite stark and unique for her. Again, that's because I believe the feelings she had regarding Aegor were intense, following his assault of her at her most vulnerable. It was so traumatizing that Shiera's carefully kept neutrality left the building when it came to Aegor.
Now that we are on page 70988 of this meta you might ask where I am even getting this political neutrality thing from. Okay, yeah. The Blackfyre rebellion era was politically fraught. Shiera isn't explicitly involved in this despite living in Court (wow already my point is made!). I have compared the Shiera/Aegor/Brynden triangle to Daemon B/Daenerys already but I want to highlight that all of these couples involved half-siblings. It's easy to forget, honestly. And crucially Daemon/Daenerys were not allowed to marry because it would have been legitimizing for Daemon. Of all Aegon IV's children, Daenerys was unique in that her trueborn parentage was not in the question. Daeron II, notably, was rumored to be fathered by Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, therefore a bastard born to a Prince and a Queen; Daemon was the bastard born to a King and a Princess (Daena) who some would argue had a claim to the Iron throne herself. Daemon was given Blackfyre by King Aegon IV along with a whispered promise that he could polygamously marry his half-sister Princess Daenerys— a TARGCEST union for a BASTARD who, legally under the Rule of Exceptionalism, probably did not have the right to do that. He was a bastard. Unless he was... legitimate? Which Aegon IV did decree on his deathbed, but certain moves to that were made in Aegon's life as well. So the Blackfyre argument can be summed as: if we're all bastards (except Dany), then Daemon is the bastard with the best claim, who the previous king favored, and if he married Daenerys, he would the most Targaryen male claimant of them all, because he would alone be the one observing Targaryen tradition (Daeron was married to a Dornish Princess). Note: Daeron also utilized Daenerys's legitimacy to affirm his own, by arranging her marriage i.e. acting as her father with all the rights that entailed.
Later, Bloodraven was given Dark Sister by King Daeron II and, potentially, a promise that he could marry his half-sister, Shiera. "Where does it say that in the text?" please ask yourself why the FUCK Brynden would believe, given that Daemon had been refused Daenerys, he would be able to have a marriage in that very forbidden configuration of bastard-born half-siblings? Given the exchange of Dark Sister, we know that Daeron was willing to extend quite a bit of privilege to Brynden in exchange for his service/loyalty. Why? Because 1) it was not easy to coax this out of Brynden, as he did indeed love Daemon, and 2) it sowed discord among the Great Bastards who now had two prominent factions within their group.
So, we know that Bloodraven had some sort of go-ahead to propose to Shiera. Or else he would not have done it. And Shiera said what? NO. She said this despite, on some level, having a consistent relationship with him i.e. loving him, liking teasing him, liking fucking him, whatever.
That's the political neutrality I am talking about. The structure of power was quite fragile at that moment in time (no dragons left, the merging with Dorne, the Blackfyre rebellions, etc.). Yet Shiera was seemingly not moved by these special privileges Lord Hand Bloodraven had, or not moved enough to marry him... but, also, I think she realized the political symbolism involved and would have no parts in it. That despite having seemingly 'chosen a side' when she rejected Aegor and accepted Brynden in her life, that was a personal choice which she was unwilling to put all her eggs in the basket of, because it'd tie her to Brynden's political position.
Bloodraven's motives were clearly not entirely pure either, when it came to Shiera. I mean. "Desired." Daemon, he loved. Aegor, he hated. Shiera? He DESIRED. Obviously Shiera was more than just the woman he loved, his equal, his ideal partner, ASOIAF is not a Disney movie, yes. Shiera had a specific status thanks to her desirability & high-ish birth. Like Daemon with Princess Daenerys, Lord Bloodraven's public love for Lady Shiera was also a means to advance himself. This use was unwanted, unfair, and something both of those women were not comfortable with despite having affection for the men in question. Ergo, these women were political players under zero illusions that their love lives were some private affair.
Now I am going to speculate wildly. You can agree or disagree. I think Bloodraven's whole deal with Daemon was he felt betrayed that Daemon would pick Aegor over him vis-a-vis aligning with Aegor's plan of honorable righteous rebellion to claim the Iron Throne, instead of following Brynden's plan of careful ladder-climbing. Here comes the speculation: his plan did not involve Daemon being King but rather Hand of the King, to Baelor Breakspear, whose brothers were all in someway unsuitable while Daemon was awesome and capable. Daemon's daughter Calla (half-Tyroshi) could marry Valarr, probably, instead of the Tyroshi woman Valarr did marry, Kiera (as a means of securing Tyrosh's military allegiance should Daemon rebel, hah). The Targ and Blackfyre lines would be tied together + smooth sailing to legitimization for the GBs + 🌈 peace on Earth 🌈 ! Brynden's plan was optimistic and hopeful, maybe Daemon had once agreed— but then Daenerys got married, Baelor unhorsing Daemon at her wedding tourney so he could not crown Dany his QoLaB & cause scandal, and Daemon just... lost faith in it. He thought he'd be exiled to the margins forever so he made common cause with Aegor whose bitterness he by then shared. Daemon remembered Aegor's kindness to Shiera, so he engaged Aegor to Calla, thinking him a good man. Calla represented many of the same things Aegor had liked in Shiera: an innocent quasi-princess whose cause he could outwardly champion, raising himself in the process, and she'd worship him.
All this to say: Bloodraven loved Daemon and the betrayal he felt manifested in a vicious desire to prove that his PlanTM was the better one, which would have worked & gotten Daemon everything he wanted, if only Aegor hadn't ruined it all like he ruined everything. In that lens, Bloodraven's situation as the ancestral Targaryen sword-wielding Hand of the King to Maekar was proving a point. Marrying Shiera would have done that, too (on the Daemon-being-denied-Daenerys front). He'd have had everything Daemon had ever wanted, but didn't have the patience or trust in Brynden to achieve. Of course it was to Aegor he was proving all this— by replacing Daemon with himself, which Aegor was also doing, as he was busy representing the rights of Daemon's children to sit the Iron Throne.
And Shiera knew all that because she knew Brynden and Aegor so well as competitive animals who could never let go. Likely there was an empathy between her and Brynden as the two people Aegor had raped/maimed. However, she did not want to be Lord Bloodraven's prize. She did not want to be possessed and thereby dependent. Nor did she want to be Aegor's, should he ever prevail. I do not think Aegor ever forgot Shiera. Her being Brynden's paramour only inflamed Aegor, I imagine. His marriage to Calla wasn't satisfying because it did not comes on the heels of a victory but rather a stunning defeat— he wanted Shiera, to 'win' and be the powerful Lord she clung to, the only man she ever truly submitted to, and rightfully so, in his mind; the perfect prize.
But not, I think, the perfect person. Her personhood did not interest him. Just that she was his.
My final thing is Shiera's sexual cruelty. I mentioned earlier that it's the part of her father she inherited. We don't really see too much promiscuity in the other GBs (the Black Pearl was an upper-class courtesan, true, but courtesans were not necessarily always prostituted nor does that title imply the sadism/domination Aegon IV seemed to employ over his partners; Naerys above all). Shiera's the only one. Men committed suicide over her. They were fiendishly devoted to her. Aegor's assault was about power, and Shiera's promiscuity was, too. Aegon IV's dismissal of Barbra/Lord Bracken/execution of Bethany were Aegor's very first humiliations in life, the things which cut him deep, and Shiera inflicted that very degradation on many others. I am not saying that she didn't get personal pleasure out of 'playing the field'; that if women get off on sadism, or just like, variety, they must surely have been 'broken' somehow; that monogamy probably did not attract her because of it's limitations; or that her sway over men was anything other than a two-way street which she didn't force on anybody. However, I do think these things are all in conversation. Ultimately Shiera and Brynden were both forever battling Aegor who was their shared demon, and they were so deep in it they couldn't (or wouldn't) get themselves much less each other out. That's a big part of their tragedy, I think. Both together and as individuals.
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