Always interesting to see people portray Arya as a soldier or knight when she simply isn't one. Brienne fills the role of lady onight quite well, and I'm not trying to say there can't be multiple, except that there aren't. Arya's experiences see her accompanied by knights, but all of her training is related to espionage, information-gathering, and, at most directly violent, assassination. Her skillset falls under deception, persuasion, performance, identity assumption, stealth, ingratiating herself among strangers while looking like she belongs... This has also been her developing skillset since A Clash of Kings at the very latest.
All of Arya's connections to war and battle are about surviving it as a refugee. Why do people think that translates directly to participating as a combatant and soldier? Arya Stark's most terrifying skillset is making connections to people and then exploiting them. War, in terms of violence on the battlefield, is her trauma, not her triumph.
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ARYA STARK AND THE GODS ❦ BOURNE FOR THE GOD OF DEATH
Thirty different gods stood along the walls, surrounded by their little lights. The Weeping Woman was the favorite of old women, Arya saw; rich men preferred the Lion of Night, poor men the Hooded Wayfarer. Soldiers lit candles to Bakkalon, the Pale Child, sailors to the Moon-Pale Maiden and the Merling King. The Stranger had his shrine as well, though hardly anyone ever came to him. Most of the time only a single candle stood flickering at his feet. The kindly man said it did not matter.
"He has many faces, and many ears to hear."
The Many-Faced God, also known as Him of Many Faces, is a deity worshipped by the Faceless Men, a guild of assassins established in the Free City of Braavos. The tale of the guild's beginnings centers around a figure of unknown origins, the first Faceless Man, who heard the prayers of the slaves to their various gods of death and came to conclude they all prayed to the same god "with a hundred different faces", the Many-Faced God, and that he was "that god's instrument".
This belief came to be reflected in the Guild's temple, which has a large public sanctuary that contains idols of thirty death gods. The religious order refills its pool of black water with a poison, so that drinking from it leads to a painless death. Visiting worshippers light candles to their god, then drink from the fountain using a stone cup, then go lie in one of the alcoves. Others take advantage of special alcoves, called "dreaming couches", which have special candles that bring visions of the past, for a sweet and gentle death.
Followers of Him of Many Faces consider death to be part of the natural order of things and a merciful end to suffering. The guild will agree to kill anyone in the known world, for a price, considering this contract to be a sacrament of their god. The price is always high or dear, but within means of the person if they are willing to make the sacrifice. The cost of their services also depends on the prominence and security of the target.
The High Valyrian words associated with the cult and its assassins are valar morghulis, or "all men must die", and its traditional response, valar dohaeris, or "all men must serve". This philosophy runs deep. Members are made to forsake their identities for the service of the Many-Faced God, and may only assassinate targets they have been hired to kill. They are not allowed to choose who is worthy of the "gift" by themselves.
The Parallels of Περσεφονη and Princess Arya Stark
You had best run back to your room, little sister. Septa Mordane will surely be lurking. You'll be sewing all through winter. When the spring thaw comes, they will find your body with a needle still locked tight between your frozen fingers.
A Game of Thrones, Arya I
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As proof that I am working on this fic, and it is not dead in the water, I thought I would post some snippets of what I've got in my drafts! I've been hopping back and forth between chapters, and it's been slow going in part, also, because of real life things, including deaths and job changes and moving residencies, and that's about to get even busier, but as consolation to everyone who's been patient and a show of gratitude to those who have encouraged me, here's some bits and pieces as a teaser for what's coming (eventually).
There are excerpts from nine different NHAT chapters below: Jon II-V, Arya II-V, and Sansa II. Hope you like them, and please let me know if you do! I could really use the encouragement right now.
ARYA II
There was no man alive more of a frustration to Arya than Gendry.
The last time she’d laid eyes on the man, he’d been burrowed deep in the smithy at Harrenhal, chest bare and red and slick with sweat, beating a flurry of sparks so bright from the iron she’d had to turn away at risk of being blinded. Hadn’t said a word, even when she’d gone so far as to ask him nicely. How hot her own cheeks had burned at the humiliation, to plead for a kind word of farewell and receive not so much as a glimpse, not so much as a breath between swings of his hammer.
The last time he had deigned to look her in the eye, the night before her departure, he had called her a fool and a liar.
By now, part of her might’ve agreed. However, most of her was angry, still, too angry to waste precious time contemplating the hows and whys of Gendry Waters. Where would she even begin, if she tried? No, wiser to side-step thoughts of him entirely, a tactic which had panned out perfectly for Arya thus far. Of course, his absence had been a prerequisite for such success.
JON II
Arya did not arrive on time for supper. Jon stabbed a steady, mindless rhythm into the slab, metal puncturing meat. Squish. Bubble. Splatter - the prongs of his fork stuck in its side over and over. He couldn’t recall the last time the meat had beaten her to the table.
But why should he be upset? It was just a meal. He was not alone. The hall was not empty, nor the table. Even if the chair beside him was. Even if there was no one in his ear or at his arm. There was no reason he should be upset. Arya had not arrived on time for supper. What was there to be upset about?
Everything, he scoffed to himself. Suspicion bubbled in him like stew in a cauldron. The quiet murmuring from the hall, deceptively lax, like the hinge of a trap not yet sprung. The careful, docile expressions of her siblings. The extra horses in the stable. The greater quality of meat assembled. The lateness of a princess.
She wouldn’t leave without telling him. He knew that. But she wouldn’t stay without seeing him either. He found his glaring eyes drifting over to their kin, scrutinizing. Certainly, it was not suspicious, he reasoned to himself, that none of her siblings had acknowledged her absence, but neither was it... not suspicious.
ARYA III
When Jaqen's face had darkened the door of her lodging, she had not flinched. She'd ran forward, no words to spare and expecting none in return, sword raised to his neck. But he'd only stepped back in turn, and raised his hands in surrender, offering his throat, if that is what she wanted, laying his life at her disposal either way. She'd scoffed but, damn her curiosity, she'd let him continue, though she would not rest her blade, for even if he spoke like a man, moved like a man, and told her things that only a man could know, she knew better than to think that she could trust this Jaqen to be her Jaqen, or that hers was any worth accepting in the first place.
It had not been until Jaqen had disappeared entirely that she'd cocked her head and let her Needle fall, not to her side, but turning and trailing down, from the edge at his neck to the tip at his belly.
The face of the Kindly Man had looked more dead than she remembered.
The moment understanding had lit her eyes, a man had raised his hand, and Jaqen had returned before her. He had remained ever since, his face familiar. Somehow both a gesture of peace and a warning.
JON III
There was one place, though, where Jon had been more welcomed than Robb - at Arya’s side. It had been that way the moment she was born and their father had set her in his arms. Brown hair, dark eyes, a small scowl that transformed into a burbling laugh at his touch. From that moment, he had been determined to be so loving a companion, so warm a haven, that if nothing else, she would have no choice but to think him good, to think him hers. The gods had clearly sent her for him, or perhaps put him there for her, after all. She looked his kin more than their brother or her mother both.
And when Lady Catelyn’s nervous fingers had pried her daughter’s fist from his thumb and wrested her from his grasp, he'd reckoned he was not the only one who noticed. She would never speak of it to him if she did, of course, but she did not have to. The dread and jealousy in her eyes screamed without reserve, every time Arya toddled after him or shrieked his name in delight or showered him with kisses, all of which she did for him far more often than she did for any of her full-blooded siblings, or her spiteful Tully mother.
The only person in the family he may ever have come second to in her eyes was their father. But then Jon had given her a gift even Ned would never dared, had loved her in a way that he was too much of a lord and a husband and a grown-up to conceive. He never stopped giving thanks that she had sneaked out of lessons that fateful day, that conversation on the rampart, gazing down at the full-blooded boys clumsily swinging about. Her grousing, her keening envy, had given him that sword, planted it in his brain, and that sword had saved her, delivered her home. Where would she be without it?
ARYA IV
It spread out across her bed like a quilt, black as the night, lined with white fur and fixed with a red garnet clasp. Something tasted strange in the back of Arya’s throat at the sight of it. She furrowed her brow at the dark fabric, and the black ribbons tying off the ends of her braids.
"What's wrong?"
"What?" Arya blinked back innocently, but it was too late.
"You look almost ill." Jeyne ventured as she reached around and threaded the cloak through the gaps between Arya's arms. "Does it not fit right? We had it adjusted just yesterday."
"It fits fine," Arya replied quickly. The other girl looked unconvinced as she closed the clasp at the base of her neck, just under a high collar embroidered with a thick trim of white branches and leaves a burning red. Arya pretended not to notice her, eyes trained on how the bright weirwood colors stood out against the gentle gray, and beside the Braavosi tan that lingered still on the back of her hands.
JON IV
Jon had imagined himself like this when he was a boy: sat at the head of a high table above the room, with lords grandstanding and grovelling before him. Granted, he had not picture two silver-haired conquerors beside him, nor crowns atop any heads, let alone his own. Likely that was why some of those noble heads of houses wore such shakier smiles than he'd pictured, as if they stood before three great beasts, why others were so rigid they almost looked in pain. Perhaps they thought bowing before a bastard king was beneath them, that might be it. But what did it matter? Their knees still bent.
He had gotten used to being in big chairs, in front of the room, as a commander, but those chairs had been wood, and those rooms had been cramped, low ceilings and long rows of tables and benches. He was hardly used to playing prince in a metal-wrought throne, raised up for all to see at the center of a big cavern of brick and tapestry, music lilting and colors flashing across gleaming smooth floors. These walls were not built to retain heat. He was not used to the exposure, to the echoing. It did not seem a place for whispers.
ARYA V
Arya furrowed her brows, reached out to touch his shoulders, nearly as amused by his distress as she was exasperated. "Ser Dayne has promised himself in service of the queen, as a representative of the council. Even if he was in love with me, as you imagine, it would be ill-fated. He'd hardly have the time to court me between his travels across the bloody continent."
Jon scoffed at her assertions. "You are inexperienced in these matters." It was a dark and bitter laugh that escapes him then. "You are - you are borderline naive. Vows may strip you of your past, as may distance and time, but love remains. If ever true, it remains." His voice was hastening, as if he could not stop the words from pouring out. "And what is to stop him from serving the queen and demanding you as repayment for such loyal service?"
"Jon, you've served with the man," she insisted, bewildered. "You know him! He's a good man! You think him capable of such a thing? He would never. Especially if he was in love with me."
And at that, Jon went quiet, cringing back, face turning to stone, as if her words had been an insult, rather than a reassurance. He did not respond right away, steadying his breath.
SANSA II
But Arya was Sansa's sister, too, and she would not be made to quiet so easily, tears rising in her eyes. "You have no idea what you speak of at such length. Day and night, ever since the war ended, my mind has swarmed with worries, for her sake. Spinning with them, so much it feels I've lost my head completely!"
“Oh, well, I know where your head is at. The Sword of the Morning and the Night Wolf, what a song they’d make!" He snarled. "But Arya’s life is not a song, and I will not have you write her into one."
The accusation was as bizarre as it was strangely hurtful, her ears burning and throat closing up. She stammered, hand pressed to her chest in appall, but Jon was hardly pausing, let alone taking the time to justify his needling words.
"Lament as many of your own weddings as you will, whether or not you include the current to the stunted, lumbering beast responsible for much of your own sister's suffering, but I will not let your mistakes and your resentments give her cause to regret her own!"
Sansa's hand was in the air before she could even register her own intentions, but Jon saw her hooked fingers and splayed palm coming in time to step back, leaving his jaw clipped rather than claw marks across his face.
JON V
He bent to make their eyes level, clutching her face between his palms. "Don't listen to her." He growled, nearly into her mouth, then snapped back around to bare his teeth at the trespasser. "You… Get out. Go. Into the night. Disappear, before I deliver your ashes unto your god myself!"
Arya didn't even glance away from her cousin as the woman obeyed, too fixed upon his furious, spitting visage. "Is it true?" A note of hurt slipped in and she scrambled to rein it back. "Why didn't you tell me?"
Jon's vision was black at the corners as he turned back to her, as if the world was fading into shadow, sunk into despair, a spotlight on his beloved's paling face and probing gaze. "It was not… You know I would never lie to you." He had not lied. He clung to that fact. He had not lied with his words, only kept to himself what he feared she would not understand, or worse, understand and hold against him.
"But you did not tell me, when you should have," she snaps, hand rising to her temple, as if she could press the turmoil from her head. "Why? Why did you hide it from me?"
"I did not hide it from you!" He insists, grip tightening, voice vacillating between dismissive, desperate, and dangerous. He could not let her speculate further. "I have hid nothing! That woman is trying to drive a wedge between us. The gods know why, but you cannot let her."
♡♡♡♡
All of these excerpts are on their first or second edit, as well, so I'm sure things will change eventually. Again, thanks so much for reading, and please, please interact if you liked it!
Thinking about how Arya parallels Odysseus, using her wits to defy physically monstrous captors, repeated separation from her allies, sailing across the sea, isolated occultists who rely on transformation and poison luring them in and using a combination of coercion and magic to keep them under control, long, arduous journeys often misinterpreted as lighthearted adventures when the entire point is that our hero(ine) is desperate to get home to their family and loved ones after suffering through a war like none before.
Which got me thinking about connections between Arya and Jon, and Odysseus and Penelope, obviously... like, I'm thinking of Penelope putting off her duty to remarry until Odysseus, the only husband she wants, returns and Jon denying his duty to claim Winterfell until it's Arya, the only bride or blood he ultimately can't deny, on the line.
At the top she found a set of carved wooden doors twelve feet high. The left-hand door was made of weirwood pale as bone, the right of gleaming ebony. In their center was a carved moon face; ebony on the weirwood side, weirwood on the ebony. The look of it reminded her somehow of the heart tree in the godswood at Winterfell. The doors are watching me, she thought. She pushed upon both doors at once with the flat of her gloved hands, but neither one would budge. Locked and barred.
"Let me in, you stupid," she said. "I crossed the narrow sea." She made a fist and pounded. "Jaqen told me to come. I have the iron coin." She pulled it from her pouch and held it up. "See? Valar morghulis."
The doors made no reply, except to open.
❦ Arya I, A Feast for Crows
