ASOIAF Resource Blog

Elissa Farman shared her brother’s blue eyes and long flaxen hair, but elsewise she was as unlike him as a sibling could be. Sharp of wit and sharper of tongue, she loved horses, dogs, and hawks. She was a fine singer and a skilled archer, but her great love was sailing. The Wind Our Steed were the words of the Farmans of Fair Isle, who had sailed the western seas since the Dawn Age, and Lady Elissa embodied them.

We know now that Lady Elissa made her way to Braavos after Pentos, though not before taking on a new name. Having been driven from Fair Isle and disowned by her brother Lord Franklyn, she took on a bastard name of her own devising, calling herself Alys Westhill. Under that name, she secured an audience with the Sealord of Braavos. The Sealord’s menagerie was far famed, and he was glad to buy the dragon eggs. The gold she received in return she entrusted to the Iron Bank, and used it to finance the building of the Sun Chaser, the ship she had dreamed of for many a year.

The scant writings she left behind show that even as a child Elissa Farman was convinced the world was “far larger and far stranger than the maesters imagine.” Not for her the merchant’s dream of reaching Ulthos and Asshai by sailing west. Hers was a bolder vision. Between Westeros and the far eastern shores of Essos and Ulthos, she believed, lay other lands and other seas waiting to be discovered: another Essos, another Sothoryos, another Westeros. Her dreams were full of sundering rivers and windswept plains and towering mountains with their shoulders in the clouds, of green islands verdant in the sun, of strange beasts no man had tamed and queer fruits no man had tasted, of golden cities shining underneath strange stars.

Hereby announcing that Targaryensource will be hosting Targaryen Thursdays during the month of November! The event will celebrate the one year anniversary of Fire and Blood. We encourage people to create something each Thursday in November for your favourite Targaryens. We thought it might be interesting to organise the event around the different major time frames of the book.

7 Nov: The Conquest

14 Nov: Sons of the Dragon

21 Nov: Reign of Jaehaerys and Alysanne

28 Nov: Dance of the Dragons (plus Aegon III’s Regency)

Those are just suggestions of course. You can create for whoever your favourite Targaryens are in whatever order you’d like. Please include the tag #targaryenthursdays so we can see your creations and reblog them and most of all have fun!

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Sam II, ASOS

“And then the world went mad.”

Synopsis: Gilly gives birth (Mazeltov?), Sam tries to do the right thing, Craster gets hit with a negative review bomb on Yelp, and Jeor discovers the limits of discipline.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

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Family Portrait: Jaehaerys the Conciliator & Good Queen Alysanne

I think Tywin is a misogynist and I don’t think Tywin would ever be truly satisfied with a woman as his heir. Cersei could be absolutely perfect and Tywin would still be disappointed in her as his heir, simply because she is a woman. Cersei says as much: “I could have been the heir he wanted, but I lacked the cock.”

Cersei is aware of her father’s disappointment: “Her father’s eyes had always been unsettling; pale green, almost luminous, flecked with gold. His eyes could see inside you, could see how weak and worthless and ugly you were down deep. When he looked at you, you knew.” This line is about Cersei herself, how Tywin made her feel “weak and worthless and ugly” in a society that does not value women, because Tywin does not value women.

This is (one of the reasons) why Cersei is so angry in AFFC, and why Cersei’s stated goal is to diminish Tywin, to make him a footnote in history: “He had been a great man. I shall be greater, though. A thousand years from now, when the maesters write about this time, you shall be remembered only as Queen Cersei’s sire.” Cersei wants to make Tywin look “weak and worthless” in revenge. Tywin’s way of life was built on a zero-sum game, and he trained his daughter so well in this philosophy that she even turns it back on him.

Cersei has been forced to believe that all of her value as a human being derives from her Lannister name and her Lannister blood, so much so that she keeps her Lannister name after marriage and she’s in an incestuous relationship that gave her double-Lannister-blooded kids. (Hello Lannister blood purity! The twins’ illicit relationship is a direct extension of Tywin’s poisonous ideology.)

Cersei is similar to Tyrion in this way, in that the condition of her birth was the disappointment, the ~~original sin~~ in Tywin’s eyes. Sure, occasionally Cersei was able to do or be something that pleased her father enough to earn a “secret smile,” but Cersei’s womanhood meant Tywin could never see her inheriting his continent-sized chessboard, regardless of whether she was trained. Remember, Tywin literally wanted to take Tommen away from her. Remember that Tywin would have married her off again, he would have sequestered her at Casterly Rock, taking her piece off the board until (if) he found something useful for her. Westeros uses women, and then discards them. Women are disposable in GRRM’s Westeros.

what IF Theon… grew UP… in The IRON Islands ??**?*?

just wanted to draw him in his native attire

—–

Are you a brother of the Night’s Watch … or only a bastard boy who wants to play at war?“    

For all that many of us talk about the possible effects of the paternity reveal on Jon’s arc in TWoW, the fact that his crisis of identity goes way deeper than his discovery of his true paternity often goes unappreciated. Being Ned Stark’s son is one of the pillars of Jon’s identity but so is his place as a man of the Night’s Watch. Being a Watchmen and the Lord Commander in particular was never an easy choice for Jon but it is still one that he kept making. It was a conscious decision on his part to lead the charge in the War for the Dawn at a personal price. His ADWD arc crystallized GRRM’s favorite theme of the heart in conflict in itself as it pitted Jon’s identity as a son of Ned Stark against his place as the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. It was a constant struggle between “let them say that Eddard Stark had fathered four sons, not three” and “I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls”.

While being Ned’s son is a source of fierce pride for Jon, his interest in the Night’s Watch has always been about finding a place that is his where he doesn’t have to be defined by his status as a bastard. He made the hard choice to keep his watch and be the first line of defense against the Others over and over. The Wall was his. But come TWoW, that won’t be true.

And so for all that we talk about Jon’s journey to define himself in light of his bastardy and the negative association it inherently gives his character in the eyes of Westeros, it strikes me that his upcoming struggle in TWoW will bring an unprecedented feelings of loss that Jon has never factored in before. There are several layers that make who Jon is: he is a bastard, he is Ned Stark’s son and he is a man of the Night’s Watch. The last two historically and magically tie Jon directly to the War for the Dawn, and he is going to lose them both in short order.

But Jon’s loss of identity and place might also be accompanied by a loss of self. We still don’t know what effect his death and resurrection will have on Jon, but I find myself increasingly fascinated by Ghost’s possible role in Jon’s identity crisis. It is a bit ironice that the one part of Jon’s identity that will probably end up reaffirmed in TWoW is being a warg. I say ironically because that is one part of himself that he never managed to embrace and indeed basically shut out completely by sequestering Ghost in his chambers and ignoring the direwolf’s warnings prior to his assassination. What’s interesting to me is that the connection to Ghost is both a danger and a saving grace for Jon. Jon’s last words indicate that he has warged into Ghost upon his death which offers some semblance of protection of Jon’s consciousness against the loss of memories and self other resurrected characters like Beric Dondarrion or Lady Stoneheart experienced, but the longer Jon stays in Ghost, the more the lines between man and wolf become blurred. Jojen kept warning Bran about Summer consuming him if he stays in the direwolf too long, and that’s when Bran still had a physical body to return to. Jon’s identification with Ghost will be deeper due to the absence of a physical body for Jon to return to, and due to the traumatizing nature of Jon’s warging. Jon was forced into Ghost and he will be forced out as well after a yet undetermined period of time that could see Jon either losing memories or struggling to separate himself from Ghost like Bran does sometimes.

Jojen told Bran to remember who he is to help him separate Bran the boy from Summer the wolf, but who is Jon? Who is the person Jon should remember to help ground him in his own memories and experiences? He is not Ned Stark’s son, neither is he the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch or a fighter for the dawn. Would he even be fully human by this point, or half a boy half a wolf? A fire wight powered by magic for a magical purpose just as he was born for one?

The Hammer and the Anvil. Voted for by my patrons! So glad I finally got the chance to draw these two dragon brothers, I’m really happy with the way they turned out! 

We do know what happened to Valyria.

To this day, no one knows what caused the Doom. Most say that it was a natural cataclysm—a catastrophic explosion caused by the eruption of all Fourteen Flames together. Some septons, less wise, claim that the Valyrians brought the disaster on themselves for their promiscuous belief in a hundred gods and more, and in their godlessness they delved too deep and unleashed the fires of the Seven hells on the Freehold. A handful of maesters, influenced by fragments of the work of Septon Barth, hold that Valyria had used spells to tame the Fourteen Flames for thousands of years, that their ceaseless hunger for slaves and wealth was as much to sustain these spells as to expand their power, and that when at last those spells faltered, the cataclysm became inevitable.

- TWOIAF

Septon Barth is always right about this sort of thing. Plus there’s this interesting bit about the origin of the Faceless Men in old Valyria:

“All gods have their instruments, men and women who serve them and help to work their will on earth. The slaves were not crying out to a hundred different gods, as it seemed, but to one god with a hundred different faces…and he was that god’s instrument. That very night he chose the most wretched of the slaves, the one who had prayed most earnestly for release, and freed him from his bondage. The first gift had been given.”

Arya drew back from him. “He killed the slave?” That did not sound right. “He should have killed the masters!”

“He would bring the gift to them as well…but that is a tale for another day, one best shared with no one.”

- Arya II, AFFC

Backed up by another TWOIAF line:

Some, wedding the fanciful notion of Valyrian magic to the reality of the ambitious great houses of Valyria, have argued that it was the constant whirl of conflict and deception amongst the great houses that might have led to the assassinations of too many of the reputed mages who renewed and maintained the rituals that banked the fires of the Fourteen Flames.

“I had another [son], once. Domeric [Bolton]. A quiet boy, but most accomplished. He served four years as Lady Dustin’s page, and three in the Vale as a squire to Lord Redfort. […] In the Vale, Domeric had enjoyed the company of Redfort’s sons.”

We clearly have very different opinions on Bloodraven’s story because I certainly don’t view it as any kind of validation or personal victory. Brynden Rivers went from Hand of the King and the de factor ruler during the reign of Aerys I to being sentenced to the Wall for a crime, losing his position, power, freedom and the woman he loved in one go. He was punished for what he has done, whether that’s being sent to the Wall for murdering Aenys Blackfyre or being hated for abandoning vassals to fend for themselves because he was too focused on Bittersteel and the Blackfyres.

Moreover, painting Brynden’s magical powers as some sort of a prize he gained for his actions is a misconstruction. First of all, magical powers aren’t inherently rewarding as poor Daeron the Drunken would tell you. They can be a burden and a curse. I know that some in fandom treat magic as an award to be given to the most worthy and a mark of distinction to denote a character’s specialness, but magic is not tied to morality or integrity in ASOIAF. Indeed this is a story where Euron Greyjoy is one of the flashiest magic users in the story and he is an absolute horror. Magic is generally not treated as a reward within the story but more of a struggle. Look at Bran Stark. Look at the Ghost of Hight Heart. Look at Daeron the Drunken and Daemon the Dreamer. How much did any of them enjoy their magical powers? How much is Brynden enjoying his? The guy has turned into a tree.

The sight of him still frightened Bran—the weirwood roots snaking in and out of his withered flesh, the mushrooms sprouting from his cheeks, the white wooden worm that grew from the socket where one eye had been. He liked it better when the torches were put out. In the dark he could pretend that it was the three-eyed crow who whispered to him and not some grisly talking corpse.       

One day I will be like him. The thought filled Bran with dread. Bad enough that he was broken, with his useless legs. Was he doomed to lose the rest too, to spend all of his years with a weirwood growing in him and through him? Lord Brynden drew his life from the tree, Leaf told them. He did not eat, he did not drink. He slept, he dreamed, he watched.

This is the Brynden we meet in ADWD, the one with the superpowers.This is not a triumph, it’s a horrifying fate. Brynden is no longer a person but a magical vessel. His memory, his personality, everything that makes him Brynden Rivers has faded, substituted by his function as a greenseer and a mentor waiting so long for the last greenseer, withering and fading and growing weaker as the years flew by - a mentor that will die, that has to die for Bran to come fully into his own. Bloodraven isn’t becoming a king via Bran because very little of the real Bloodraven’s consciousness still exists and even that part will eventually go into the weirwood network to join the rest of the singers as Bran takes his mantle.

Catelyn had never liked this godswood…

This is how we meet Catelyn Stark, our second recurring PoV character in all of ASoIaF, and the first thing GRRM shows us about her is that she still feels an outsider in her own home. The second thing he shows us is that Catelyn’s willing to push past her discomfort for the husband she loves.