#funhouseofthemind

@funhouseofthemind

Do you remember the first time you played pinball? Tell me a little bit about it:

“I pretty much lived in a roller rink when I was a kid, as I was a competitive skater for nearly 18 years of my life. I’d train 4-6 hours a day, 6-7 days a week and got one week off per year. The majority of my time was spent skating sessions and playing pinball. I’d challenge the adults in the rink to up my game. Granted they were 5 ball games, but quite often we would play all afternoon on one or two games. Great memories of Genesis, Funhouse,  Twilight Zone, Flight 2000, Hardbody, etc.” 

angst & post-angst 

The words made his heart squeeze painfully in his chest - what had happened that day, he never forgot, never stopped thinking about it. It was the wrong that he had spent so many years trying to right. Rumple still had Bae’s cloak, hidden away safe in his shop. 

He knew his son wouldn’t be happy to see him again, he knew he would likely still feel betrayed. But that never gave him pause - all he wanted was his boy back, he would spend the rest of his life groveling on his knees if that was what it took. 

This took me a long time, mostly because I really just…I wanted to get this right.  Well, and then there was a bit of a hiatus in there too, oops.  But, mostly I wanted to get this right.  So, let’s go into what is blog canon for Maege and Jorah (which is obviously subject to change when interacting with Jorahs!).

The Mormonts can be a pretty abrasive bunch - especially Maege.  Jeor even insults her while telling Jon he loves her dearly.  And everything he says is most certainly true: Maege is stubborn, snarky, short-tempered, and willful.  But that’s not all she is.  Maege raised wonderful daughters, she was a strong and independent woman who raised a daughter strong enough to make it onto Robb’s Kingsguard.  Her daughters are, from what we see, as comfortable wearing dresses as mail, and she seems to have been a very good mother.

My best answer for you, is that Maege likely stepped in after the death of Jorah’s mother, and became a second mother figure to him.  She likely helped teach him how to fight, how to rule, how to be a good lord and knight in general.  She even named one of her daughters after him, not too long before Jorah was exiled, more than likely.

And for her own part, I think Maege certainly sees him as the son she never had.  The son her brother ignored and squandered, and so she took him under her wing and - in her own brusque manner - taught him what he needed to know.

In verses where she lives to see Jorah and Dany come back to Westeros - where she sees Jorah in the North - there’s a lot for her to work through.  There’s her betrayal, as if he were her own son; her relief at seeing him alive and well; her mistrust of Dany but trust in Jorah; her resentment of her own trust in his judgment…There’s a lot going on, because their relationship is so much less about their blood tie and so much more about them making a fairly broken family into something functional.