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description=A collection of metas (critical essays or analysis), gathered from across tumblr, about George R.R. Martin s book series A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) and its television adaptation Game of Thrones....;
keywords=valyrianscrolls,asoiaf meta,a game of thrones,arya stark,steven attewell;

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margaery catelyn if any comparisons need be made at all and it pertains to a portion of their reception see i ve seen demonization of cersei for her actions and yes she has done terrible things but rarely do i see the understanding in tandem with condemnation of tywin for the role he played in her situation in the first place and her development and her current views of herself and the world at large and oh boy have i seen vitriolic hatred of alicent the villain of the dotd the wicked stepmother to a rightful queen and again where is the understanding in tandem with condemnation of her father otto hightower who put her in her situation in the first place who was with her in king s landing for a significant amount of time at her ear not a great lady but hardly anyone in the world of asoiaf is and especially during the dance when all the players were ruthless and cruel i think it s especially difficult to analyze in alicent s case because her story has been so vague so far but knowing the societal structure that dominates westeros i ve made my interpretation and with hotd coming out there s the chance she will be much more fleshed out but my worst fear would be outcry that they re making her too sympathetic which would certainly be a take permalink tags alicent hightower otto hightower cersei lannister tywin lannister parallels the dance of the dragons house of the dragon valyrianscrolls july 15 2022 02 00 pm 130 notes via goodqueenaly source goodqueenaly mryoyo000 asked hi again i had another question i wanted to ask you about the waif s origin story that she tells arya in affc i was wondering if you would mind explaining the significance meaning of it sorry for such a broad question it stands out to me because it reminded me of some fairy tales especially cinderella three little men in the wood thank you have a great day goodqueenaly answered prefacing this discussion with the caveat that we don t know for certain what is true about this story since arya and the waif had already established the precedent of the lying game and since the waif herself said both that there was an untruth in it and that she lied about the lie for these purposes however i m going to assume that it is more or less accurate including arya s deduction that the house of black and white took two thirds of the family wealth not all of it you re certainly right that grrm loves his fairytale tropes it s barely scratching the surface to say that he has drawn inspiration from stories like beauty and the beast in the stories of both jaime and brienne and sandor and sansa snow white in the story of cersei and her fear of the younger more beautiful queen and little red riding hood whose story beats get twisted in sansa and sandor s meeting during the battle of the blackwater among many others for asoiaf indeed he uses cinderella s basic plot points for falia flowers as well the daughter of the household treated as a serving maid by her father s wife and the woman s daughters only to triumph over them when she marries a king but as he does with many other tropes plays with and subverts them having euron reveal his truly evil nature in his treatment of falia afterward the waif s story in that sense also borrows elements from the classic at least to a western audience appropriate given grrm s own background as a member of this audience telling of cinderella the waif s father s second wife fits the wicked stepmother trope all too well and if the woman s daughter isn t strictly a wicked stepsister she seems to be the child of the waif s father as much as the waif herself is and we get nothing of her character in the story there is certainly a sense of prioritizing the daughter of this second marriage over the daughter of the first perhaps grrm was also thinking of the grimms more violent second telling of the tale certainly compared to the disney film in which the wicked stepsisters are initially mutilated on their mother s advice in order to fit their feet into the all important slipper and later blinded as punishment for their treatment of cinderella certainly the woman s literally poisonous attempted murder of the waif and the father s willingness to have the woman murdered in turn reflect a distinctly non sanitized take on fairy tale tropes again because nothing is one to one between asoiaf and its sources of inspiration not all of the story beats of cinderella are found here the waif does not live happily ever after as the bride of a prince but is almost poisoned to death before being forced to spend the rest of her life working for a cult of assassins and she seems to have none of the sweet kind unfailingly good nature of the fairy tale heroine in universe the story underlines just how different the waif is from arya indeed they are almost polar opposites in their family upbringings the waif was born the only child of an ancient house my noble father s heir her sole sibling eventually being a stepsister and rival for her dynastic place arya may also have been born to an ancient house but she grew up in a happy relatively sizable family of five siblings mixing the children of ned and catelyn with the ostensible bastard son jon and as the younger daughter had no worries about being prepped to inherit winterfell the waif speaks of never knowing her mother who died when she was young arya by contrast deeply loved and misses her mother hates that she could not save catelyn from the red wedding and even seemingly named herself after her mother when prompted for a false identity in braavos the waif was subjected to the murderous ambition of her stepmother who sought to drive the waif out of the family inheritance in favor of her own daughter yet i tend to believe that the stark kids happy to be reunited with their loved ones will resist factional attempts to pit them against each other for control of winterfell with the obvious reminder that there is you know an apocalypse coming the father of the family has no problem seeking murderous revenge in turn against his second wife though this could not be farther from the truth about the relationship between ned and carelyn indeed arya so much believes in the love between her parents that she angrily defended it to edric dayne and included the same sort of parental love in her invented backstory as cat of the canals nor could we ever believe that ned would sacrifice his daughter to a cult of assassins for the sake of revenge rather we saw ned s willingness to renounce his firm beliefs about the succession and condemn himself to life imprisonment and though he might not have known it at the moment death for himself so that his daughter might be kept safe all of these contrasts emphasize that the house of black and white is not the place of arya of house stark this is a place which not only profits from dissension infighting and murderous ambition and revenge but indeed depends on these to form its market so to speak a far cry from the happy home of winterfell and its stark inhabitants where the waif treats the implosion of her family life as merely a new entry in the lying game arya has never stopped remembering or missing her life among her stark family members arya cannot give it all up as the waif did or rather as the waif had it decided for her that she would she belongs back with her family and back in winterfell of course the waif s story is full of ironies as well in the end the grand fortune of that ancient house the second wife might have hoped for her daughter to inherit all but disappears into the coffers of the faceless men only a third is left less even than what the second marriage s daughter would have gotten had the inheritance been divided equally the father is left back where he started dynastically speaking the single parent of a single daughter yet poorer for it arguably no better and perhaps worse off than he had been before only limited by our lack of insight into his personal view on the matter if the father s goal was to murder his second wife in revenge for what she had done to his elder daughter his actions simultaneously took that daughter s life as well the waif was forced to spend the rest of her days forsaking her entire birth identity and murdering others in the name of an assassination guild legally and spiritually if not bodily dead nor of course do we ever get any insight as to what the waif herself the actual target of that attempted murder thought of either the contracted murder of her stepmother or her own permanent confinement in the house of black and white in an act of revenge ostensibly taken in her name the waif has no input and no agency likewise while the father had his second wife murdered he seems to have done nothing to disinherit the child of his second marriage this daughter was in turn left precisely where the waif was her father s only heir and perhaps too young to remember her dead mother the stepmother s ambitions posthumously won out as her husband s elder daughter was effectively killed off and her own daughter was set to inherit all of these ironies add to the waif s characterization making her an outlet of narratively rich writing as opposed to simply an npc arya interacts with in her new environment on a practical level too the story provides more insight into elements of the faceless men s business model the faceless men aren t out to completely beggar their clients hence asking for two thirds of the man s wealth instead of all of it but they do ask for a considerable sacrifice at least within the means of the requestor the father in this story was probably a wealthy man the head of that ancient house in a society which has historically valued trade and commercialism over feudal land ownership and agriculture so the price was high in monetary terms but because the father was also a man in the midst of a succession dispute the price included the previous guarantor of his dynasty his elder daughter with again the implication that it would be the child of his targeted wife who would succeed him perhaps this pricing model was intended to imbue this killing with the divine approval of the many faced god if this man were willing to have his wife killed knowing that by his actions he would disinherit his older daughter and impoverish himself to some extent then truly this request must be the will of the many faced god and not simply human vengeance permalink tags arya stark the waif the faceless men themes references fairy tales cinderella valyrianscrolls july 15 2022 12 02 pm 441 notes via woodswit source turtle paced anonymous asked could have ned prevent his execution like explain better to sansa why they need to leave establishing more understanding relationship with her prior in general not warning cersei etc was there any way to counter littlefinger s involvement turtle paced answered plenty ned could do to avoid his execution as in canon and it goes further back ned was not locked into failure cleaning house in the small council well before that point was something he could and should have done or appointed more people to balance out the toadies shifting the balance of power in king s landing was well within ned s ability as hand even afterwards forget not warning cersei if ned had followed up on warning cersei hell if he d followed up more aggressively with stannis ned s hand of the king he can send letters like show up at court or provide a good explanation why not ned could have been weeks ahead of himself sansa s actions don t have much to do with ned s capture i don t think they result in her own yes because neither she nor arya could get on the ship planned to take them from king s landing but cersei was already planning to move against ned when sansa provided the info and ned told still more to littlefinger afterwards politically ned s fundamental mistake is that he doesn t realise that he is the boss between robert s inattention and robert s regard for him ned can do pretty much whatever he likes as long as it doesn t bother robert himself do we really think robert s going to go to ned whoa whoa whoa you can t just sack the treasurer and make that stick but even with everything it s simply ned s bad luck that he spends a bunch of critical chapters drugged as hell to manage the pain from his broken leg the author kneecapped him so he couldn t get away redwolf17 i ve reread the relevant chapter several times and as far as i can tell events occur in this order day 1 evening after nightfall robert brought back from the boar hunt mortally wounded makes his will naming ned lord protector renly offers swords to ned later that night littlefinger offers to buy the gold cloaks for ned instead he runs and blabs to cersei and buys the goldcloaks for her day 2 hour before dawn renly and loras flee the city dawn ned awakes to lannister men practicing threateningly in the yard below his window breakfast arya is given permission for one last dancing lesson sansa is denied permission to say farewell to joffrey ned does not explain why sansa cries and then runs to cersei one hour later pycelle tells ned that robert is dead ned has pycelle summon small council to the tower of the hand likely one of pycelle s servants or someone else informs cersei ser barristan varys and littlefinger arrive relatively quickly say 15 30 minutes ned learns renly is gone the meeting lasts for perhaps ten minutes before joffrey summons everyone to the throne room and the coup begins whatever grrm intended regarding sansa s role in the events of that day the words he put on the page give her very little time information to substantively affect the chain of events asoiafuniversity excellent factual addition i do wonder if he wanted her to be instrumental in some way to demonstrate the consequences of playing the game wrong and i think i ve seen things where he implied that she had a hand in it but as he s written it i don t see how it changes ned s fate cersei was always going to move against him and everyone was surprised when joffrey did what he did cersei wasn t secretly pleased because she knew it was a fucking idiotic thing to do so you can t say that the adults in this situation were meh about it they were shitting themselves too via woodswit permalink tags ned stark sansa stark cersei lannister the small council the hand of the king politics a game of thrones valyrianscrolls june 17 2022 02 00 pm 278 notes via allovesthings source allovesthings allovesthings i was thinking about the scene between varys and illyrio in the red keep that arya overheard and i really appreciate the irony of the master of whisper almost getting caugh in the exact same way he spies on other people arya is essentially being an accidental little bird for ned and it s both really deeply ironic if ned understood what arya was saying that might have screwed everything for them and foreshadowing for the fact that she is essentially learning to be a spy now maybe even better than him permalink tags arya sta...