Growing Strong

Just a casual Game of Thrones/A Song Of Ice And Fire fan. I’m not the most devoted fan, although I’ve basically watched the whole show, and I’m most interested in the written histories of Westeros rather than the ASOIAF series itself. A Tyrell supporter through and through, also a fan of House Tully and House Stark. Critical of Show!Danaerys and House Targaryen. I’m a rarepair enthusiast with a heart for background characters that don’t get much aftention. Hope you enjoy my blog!

[starksvinyls]

hey, uh, psa for any discord server admin/mods:

discord is updating their guidelines and its uh…

yes, you read that right. even text, including FICTIONAL characters.

here’s the link so you can read the whole thing for yourself.

here is their full list of banned content:

you can’t even talk about your own abuse. what the actual hell???

[starksvinyls]

can’t share links to fics with underage characters engaging in anything sexually explicit, even with other underage characters.

can’t say an underage fictional character is cute if you’re over 18

and maybe i’m just being autistic here, but some of this sounds so vague that i keep thinking up examples and going “what about this???” like harry potter, or glee. literally any show or movie where the characters are teenagers.

i’m just…im flabbergasted. (but not really, look at the state of the world rn)

[evilwriter37]

Oh yeah, I kept meaning to make a post about this, because it is pissing me the fuck off. How fucking dare they say that fictional things on a page are just as bad or “harmful” as what happened to me. The problem with CSAM is not that it’s disgusting—the problem is that it harms REAL PEOPLE. Fictional lines on a page will never be the same fucking thing and I’m so mad at discord for saying that it is.

Also, oh no! Underage sex? That’s not a thing that happens! Hide all the sex from the children!

Discord is pulling a massive “think of the children” just to have purity and control.

And I’m so mad about it. (Also surprised I haven’t seen more about it, but yeah. Thank you, OP.)

[honora-antares]

repeat after me :

atyd is NOT canon-compliant.

One more time.

atyd is. NOT. CANON. COMPLIANT.

I can't believe people are STILL referencing a FANFICTION as CANON EVIDENCE!

if anything, every. single. fanfic is an alternative universe.

tag your works correctly for the love of rice, please. It's 2025.

if you're not certain if it IS, it's okay to ask your readers!

that's it, bye!ヽ(*´∀`)ﾉ

[moonlightdancer26]

I saw you were anti-ATYD, and I was absolutely thrilled to know I'm not the only one. I refuse to read it at this point. I'm a bit terrified at what I'll find

This is a safe space for people who have no idea why ATYD is as popular as it is and why it’s treated as actual canon when it’s legit just a fanfic 🫶🏼

[fiendishfyre]

One of the most annoying thing to happen to the marauders fandom is all the young dudes fic becoming extremely popular and everyone using it as canon material and not even reading the books or even watching the movies and only going by that fic. It's become so infectious, and inescapable. Like at this point the popular depiction of Remus and Sirius are so fanon. It's wild and wholly unenjoyable.

This is my opinion, skip if this doesn't vibe with you. But I'm allowed to complain.

[lazerblues]

Happy aniversary you dumb fucks @staff

[true-king-of-monsters]

Happy anniversary, you stupid fucks!

[homopower]

[backseat-burner]

happy anniversary

[dialupmodern]

happy anniversary shitheads!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[chalkboard-wolf]

Happy anniversary peebrains

[backseat-burner]

lmfao shoutout to whoever queued this in 2022 and destroyed my notifications today <3

[moringmark]

[runcibility]

I liked this post, scrolled for like another minute before I went “SHIT FUCK SHIT” and scrolled back to reblog it

[quadriviummuse]

I always reblog this one when I see it on my dash. When someone posts their own art, writing, or music here they are really hoping you will share it.

[riotarttherite]

“When Rhaenyra bestowed her garter on Ser Harwin, her new husband laughed and gave one of his own to Ser Joffrey.”

Laenor Velaryon and Joffrey Lonmouth for Pride Month  🌈

commissions | ko-fi

[riotarttherite]

#I WANT CRISTON COLE’S H E A D

THAT’S the right spirit

[riotarttherite]

Little Daemon braiding his mommy's hair 🫶

A commission for r0guesdelight on twt!

[riotarttherite]

Portrait commission for @atimeforroses , thank you so much!!!

L to R: Alys Arryn with Aelor, Aelora and Prince Rhaegel. Behind, Matarys, Kiera of Tyrosh and Valarr with Jena Dondarrion and Prince Baelor Breakspear. King Daeron II and his Queen Myriah Martell. Behind them Prince Maekar, his sons Daeron (the Drunken) and Aerion (Brightflame). Sitting in front of them Dyanna Dayne with little Rhae, Daella, Aegon (Egg), and Aemon. To their right Prince Aerys and Aelinor Penrose.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Bethany Bracken didn’t deserve to be murdered even if she did cheat on Aegon IV, but I am curious as to why you think Aegon lied about catching her in bed with Terrence Toyne. What would be the possible reason for him being so furious with her? He typically dismisses mistresses, not kills them. I think it’s possible that he just caught her flirting with Terrence one too many times and was overcome with jealousy. Then made up that he walked in on them in bed.

I think your alternate version of Bethany/Terrence makes sense. GRRM was trying to make a historical parallel with Katherine Howard and courtier Thomas Culpeper, who were never confirmed to have had an affair; Thomas and Katherine met in private several times and seemed to be close friends, but neither admitted to ever sleeping together (although there was likely some romantic attraction giving the content of their letters). The idea that Aegon himself found them in bed together is incredibly fantastical for 1) a young woman in a precarious position as mistress and 2) a Kingsguard who is sworn to serve his king faithfully no matter what; they would’ve had to have been even less cautious than Cersei and Jaime for the king to walk in on them having sex in presumably his own chambers/those he visited frequently. We know they had to have been more cautious than that if anything had really been going on because Aegon brought Bethany with him in 177 and the “affair” wasn’t discovered until the following year. It was noted that Aegon was growing “fat and foul-tempered” since he visited Stone Hedge, and he may have been getting more paranoid if the Morgil affair was any indication. He was an incredibly jealous person and may have feared some sort of plot against him (from Naerys and Da3ron sure, maybe from Lord Bracken and Terrence as well), so he made up the excuse that the two were in bed (with no other apparent witnesses?). Let’s also consider Bethany and the Brackens weren’t popular in court and owed their position to Aegon, so no one would really care if they were killed by his hand (in fact, I’m sure their enemies thought “they got what they deserved”) and thus were easy targets for his paranoia no matter what they actually did.

[atimeforroses]

To be entirely honest, I have a full tinfoil theory about Aegon IV setting Bethany and Terrence up to try them for treason and rid the court of Brackens. The idea that he found them naked and in bed together seems entirely too convenient for me. What feels much more likely—in my opinion, at least—is that Aegon was looking to punish Lord Bracken as his Hand for some offense (either minor or even invented, since anything major prior to the affair would be noteworthy) and was likely growing tired of Bethany and her obvious distress at his attentions. Add to that Terrence and Bethany having a friendship and possibly some unconsummated romantic feelings (I can’t imagine Bethany taking anyone to her bed after Aegon traumatizing her), and the fact that Aegon IV has proven himself fickle and capricious in the past, and suddenly it doesn’t seem far-fetched that he would ruthlessly rid himself of his Hand and his current mistress with the help of some scandal for sake of expediency. My personal theory for how the “affair” was discovered is that Aegon summoned Terrence and Bethany to his bedroom, had them seized and stripped by the Kingsguard, and proceeded to “discover” the affair and loudly proclaim it to get the gossip circling. All of Aegon’s pandering courtiers, especially those with reason to dislike the Brackens, would no doubt be happy to pile onto the “affair” and essentially invent the whole thing from the ground up. Aegon kills all involved parties as punishment for “treason” and neatly rids himself of “those pesky Brackens” in a single bout.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Dowry vs. Bride Price: Westeros and Tyrosh

Westeros has a dowry system, where a woman is given wealth (commonly in the form of portable property) by her father’s family upon her marriage; in medieval Europe the property is usually hers or her children’s to use, but in Westeros her husband has significant rights over it and can be the chief reason for their marriage. The most notable example is Walda Frey’s marriage to Roose Bolton, where the dowry was her weight in silver paid by her grandfather Walder to Roose. Furthermore, Lord Lyonel Corbray is even more “well pleased” with his second wife’s “immense” dowry than with the girl herself, as she is the daughter of a wealthy Gulltown merchant. Westeros is based on medieval Europe and is clearly patrilineal (lineage is traced from father to son) and patrilocal (the family resides near the husband’s parents); dowries were offered in such societies where land is valued more than manual labor, due to the concentration of land ownership in the hands of the few (the aristocracy). 

We don’t have many detailed instances of Tyroshi marriage, but the cases we do know about seem to indicate that Tyrosh has a system of bride price, where a man or his family give a woman (or, more specifically, her parents) property or service either just before or even during their marriage. Aegon IV explicitly promised some form of wealth to the Archon for Daemon to marry Rohanne of Tyrosh, which Daeron II had to pay for the marriage to take place; Yandel referred to the exchange as a dowry, but he is clearly looking at this situation from a Westerosi lens, as dowries outside of the Daemon/Rohanne marriage are only mentioned as being settled on women. Rohanne’s bride price may seem like a special case akin to Daenerys’ wedding to Hizdahr zo Loraq, where the bride is of a much higher status than the groom and so their union necessitates a reversal of custom, but Fire and Blood introduces another Tyroshi wedding that seems to follow the practice of bride service: that of Orryn Baratheon and the Archon’s daughter. We are most familiar with bride service from the biblical Genesis, in which Jacob serves Laban for seven years in order to marry Laban’s daughter Rachel (although Laban tricked him into marrying his eldest daughter Leah, so Jacob had to labor seven more years for Rachel’s hand). Orryn, exiled from Westeros for 10 years, took service with the Archon and within one year had married his daughter, although after the marriage he continued to serve the Archon until his term was over (in real-world societies including in ancient Jewish law, sometimes the service/price is not paid all at once and the groom enters a contract where he promises to pay what he owes). Orryn’s exile status meant that he had no family to pay bride price, so he needed to take bride service under the Archon to wed his daughter. Bride price/service occurs in societies where manual labor is more valuable than land, and we can infer Tyrosh, a heavily urban, small, “bleak and stony island” does not value land as the main source of economic wealth; rather, manual labor seems to be essential, whether through the institution of slavery (slaves are said to outnumber freeborn Tyroshi three to one) or from mercenary companies. According to an evolutionary psychology theory, bride price also originates from polygamy since there is a relative scarcity of unmarried women, and we know from Racallio Ryndoon’s dozen wives that some polygamy is practiced in Tyrosh.

Some inferences about how Tyrosh’s bride price custom and how that may have impacted Tyroshi-Westerosi relationships under the cut:

Keep reading

[atimeforroses]

As a cultural anthropology nerd, I STAN matrilineal/matrilocal Tyrosh!

[atimeforroses]

A Mini Meta Because I’m Salty

Dalton Greyjoy, Lord of the Iron Islands during the Dance of the Dragons, was only 20 when he was killed and died without any heir of his body, leaving a dispute for the lordship between the illegitimate sons of his numerous salt wives.

His eldest surviving son, Toron Greyjoy, was three or four when the Dance began and presumably five or six when the Dance ended. Toron Greyjoy’s mother, one of Dalton Greyjoy’s salt wives, was killed by Toron’s aunts and their husbands who were all vying for the Regency, had to see two of his aunts die when Johanna Westerling and Lord Leo Costayne invaded the Iron Islands in retribution for Dalton’s invasion of the Westerlands.

Even worse, a younger son of Dalton by the name of Rodrik Greyjoy was raised up as a rival to Dalton by some of the ironborn lords. Rodrik was, in turn, taken prisoner by the Lady Johanna Westerling, gelded, and made the fool of young Lord Loreon Lannister. This is a child who could be five at the most, if not younger, and all that Archmaester Haereg of the Citadel recorded of him is “A fine fool he proved, yet not half so foolish as his father”.

If anyone has need of me, I will be screaming into the void for GRRM to do some basic math when building family trees for his historical ASOIAF fiction, and adding the poor Greyjoy children to the list of characters to suffer needlessly at his hands.

[heiressofsytherin]

[elaena-archive-deactivated20210]

“The great love of her life was her cousin, Alyn Velaryon, the seafarer and admiral known as Oakenfist, to whom she bore a bastard son and daughter, Jon and Jeyne Waters. She married thrice in later years, twice at a king’s behest and once for passion. She gave birth to seven children, then declared that if seven was sufficient for the gods it would do for her as well.”

[sansalayned]

Cersei Lannister’s children + genderswap (requested by thegoldofwinterfell)

[doorianpavus]

The Wives of King Maegor the Cruel: Lady Elinor Costayne

Lady Elinor Costayne was a member of House Costayne and one of the many brides of King Maegor I Targaryen. Along with Lady Jeyne Westerling and Princess Rhaena Targaryen, she was one of the so-called “Black Brides”.

Elinor was married to Ser Theo Bolling and had already given her husband three children. Theo was arrested by knights of the Kingsguard, accused of conspiring with Queen Alyssa Velaryon to place her son, Prince Jaehaerys, on the throne, and was executed. After seven days of mourning in 47 AC, Elinor was summoned to wed Maegor. 

Along with 2 other women, Jeyne Westerling and Princess Rhaena Targaryen, daughter of his late brother Aenys, Elionor wed the King. The 3 women were deemed the ‘Black brides’ and they were chosen because they had been proven to be fertile. Elinor eventually became pregnant and gave birth to a stillborn abomination said to have been born eyeless and with small wings. She was one of the two wives who survived the king.

Tamsin Egerton as Elinor Coastayne

[doorianpavus]

The Wives of King Maegor the Cruel: Tyanna of the Tower

Tyanna of the Tower was a Pentoshi woman and was rumored to be the natural daughter of a Pentoshi magister who began as a tavern dancer and rose to become a courtesan. She was also said to dabble in sorcery and alchemy. The beautiful Tyanna became Maegor’s lover during his exile in Pentos; she was rumored to be Queen Alys Harroway’s paramour as well.

After Maegor was crowned king in 42 AC, his rule was challenged by the Faith of the Seven with a trial of seven. Maegor won but was grievously wounded. Twenty-eight days later Alys arrived from Pentos with Tyanna. The Dowager Queen, Visenya Targaryen, after meeting with Tyanna, gave the king over to her care alone, which troubled Maegor’s supporters. Tyanna married Maegor in the same year.

The Dowager Queen died in 44 AC. In the confusion after her death, Aenys I Targaryen’s widow, Queen Alyssa Velaryon, slipped away from Dragonstone with her children, as well as with the sword Dark Sister. Alyssa and Aenys’s second son, Prince Viserys, had been kept at the Red Keep as the king’s squire, however, and he suffered for her flight. He died after nine days of questioning at the hands of Tyanna of the Tower. 

Tyanna served as mistress of whisperers on her husband’s small council and was dubbed “the king’s raven”. When Queen Alys gave birth to a monstrosity in 44 AC, Queen Tyanna convinced Maegor that it was due to Alys having secret affairs. This led to the extinction of House Harroway. However, Tyanna eventually confessed her responsibility for the abominations that were born of Maegor’s seed, claiming she had poisoned his other brides. She was killed by Maegor’s own hand in 48 AC, her heart cut out with the sword Blackfyre and thrown to his dogs.

Eva Green as Tyanna of the Tower