~ don’t actually know when i’ll be back. i’ve been drawing a lot more so i’ll perhaps have that to share at some point, but my main focus is getting healthy again + finishing physical therapy bc i’ve got uni next year ~
“Yet even so, when Jaime was given his first sword, there was none for me. 'What do I get?' I remember asking. We were so much alike, I could never understand why they treated us so differently”
One popular opinion - almost stated as fact - that I come across frequently is that Jon Snow is a good person, a hero, a protagonist because he feels guilty/ashamed for even thinking of taking Winterfell and the implication is he would never be Lord of Winterfell as long as his siblings are around.
More recently, this train of thinking made me pause... Wait, why is Jon Snow a good person for being ashamed of wanting something he has as much claim to as his siblings? Is Jon's feelings of shame and guilt natural or the product of years of childhood trauma?
In my many discussion on here I have noticed how Jon Snow, and all bastards tbh, are in a catch 22 situation with respect to inheriting anything from their parents.
Specifically with respect to Jon Snow and the Starks – with everything being equal in terms of class, gender, disability etc. – and if only one Stark can be Lord/Lady of Winterfell, then based on age, knowledge and the experience to actually lead the North, Jon Snow would be the best candidate.
He is Ned Stark’s son and Winterfell was his home – where he grew up. He had the same teachers as Robb Stark and time and again we see Jon Snow use Ned Stark’s wisdom and political knowledge in how he helps Stannis Baratheon navigate the North.
Alys Karstark rode all the way to the Wall in the harshest of Winter because a son of Ned Stark was there. The Mountain clan chiefs accept Jon's word on the Freefolk because he is Ned Stark's son. Robb Stark names Jon Snow his heir, Lord of Winterfell and KITN because he is Ned Stark's son.
However, if Jon Snow did get Winterfell, then he would be called an usurper and that he is playing into how bastards are stereotyped as treacherous and untrustworthy. There would be folks saying that if Jon Snow accepted being Lord of Winterfell, then he would prove Catelyn’s prejudice right.
That’s the thing isn’t it. There is nothing at all wrong in bastards wanting everything that their siblings get. However, bigoted Westerosi society has deemed it that bastards should get nothing and if they demand or fight for equal rights, then they are ‘treacherous’.
The system is set up in such a way that it’s an unwinnable situation for Jon Snow as a bastard. Either Jon has to go along with the bigotry and respect the feudal patriarchal rules and take himself out of contention, letting one of his younger siblings rule the North.
Or he follows his ambitions and what he wants and becomes Lord of Winterfell, which means that he is an usurper, does not love his siblings and should feel ashamed. He turns into a bad guy. The villain who steals his sibling's birthright proving Catelyn's fears right.
And the reason often stated for why Jon Snow would give way to his siblings is this:
When Jon had been very young, too young to understand what it meant to be a bastard, he used to dream that one day Winterfell might be his. Later, when he was older, he had been ashamed of those dreams. Winterfell would go to Robb and then his sons, or to Bran or Rickon should Robb die childless. And after them came Sansa and Arya. Even to dream otherwise seemed disloyal, as if he were betraying them in his heart, wishing for their deaths. I never wanted this, he thought as he stood before the blue-eyed king and the red woman. I loved Robb, loved all of them … I never wanted any harm to come to any of them, but it did. And now there’s only me. – Jon, ASoS, XI
This is interesting because what Jon is feeling here is the effect of indoctrination and ingrained trauma from the discrimination he experienced all through out his childhood.
A young, innocent Jon Snow who did not understand why he was being treated differently, wants the same things as Robb Stark without shame or guilt – “When Jon had been very young, too young to understand what it meant to be a bastard, he used to dream that one day Winterfell might be his”
We see this in the other Stark children, when baby Rickon does not understand why Jon is not sitting with them at the feast –
It had been the night of the welcoming feast, when King Robert had brought his court to Winterfell. Summer still reigned then. His parents had shared the dais with Robert and his queen, with her brothers beside her. Uncle Benjen had been there too, all in black. Bran and his brothers and sisters sat with the king's children, Joffrey and Tommen and Princess Myrcella, who'd spent the whole meal gazing at Robb with adoring eyes. Arya made faces across the table when no one was looking; Sansa listened raptly while the king's high harper sang songs of chivalry, and Rickon kept asking why Jon wasn't with them. "Because he's a bastard," Bran finally had to whisper to him. – Bran, ACoK, III
Or Sansa treating Jon differently after learning what he was –
He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him anything but "my half brother" since she was old enough to understand what bastard meant. – Jon, AGoT, III
An older Jon – still a child – who has been mentally beaten down and forced to live as less than his father’s other children is now made to feel ashamed if he wants the same things as his brother Robb. He is made to feel disloyal, a traitor, a betrayer if he even dreams of wanting the same things as Robb or his other siblings. Just his thoughts alone - not even action - make him feel like he's done something wrong.
We see this trauma right there in his thoughts when he considers accepting Stannis’ offer of Winterfell –
He sat on the bench and buried his head in his hands. Why am I so angry? he asked himself, but it was a stupid question. Lord of Winterfell. I could be the Lord of Winterfell. My father's heir.
It was not Lord Eddard's face he saw floating before him, though; it was Lady Catelyn's. With her deep blue eyes and hard cold mouth, she looked a bit like Stannis. Iron, he thought, but brittle. She was looking at him the way she used to look at him at Winterfell, whenever he had bested Robb at swords or sums or most anything. Who are you? that look had always seemed to say. This is not your place. Why are you here? – Jon, ASoS, XII
This is why it’s fascinating when fandom cosigns this trauma and cheers for Jon Snow feeling ashamed and guilty about being Lord of Winterfell and makes it about him being a good person when it's more about the effect of years of bigotry and the acceptance of societal prejudice.
Then there are the Stark stans who weirdly have a lot of intense loathing for tertiary side character Rhaegar Targaryen and project this onto Jon Snow.
Entire essays on how Jon would hate that Rhaegar is his biological father, that Jon would feel guilty for Rhaegar’s actions, that Jon would agree with Robert Baratheon (Who would have murdered Jon in his cradle!), that Jon would reject the Targaryens, that the ONLY family Jon belongs to are the Starks, that Jon is a Stark and only a Stark, that Jon is only Ned Stark’s son and no one else’s and so on…
However, when it comes time to which Stark gets Winterfell, suddenly Jon transforms from a Stark to a Snow for the same group!! Suddenly he has to step aside and make way for the real Starks! Suddenly he now becomes Rhaegar’s son, not Ned Stark’s.
It’s almost like Jon Snow is just there as a vehicle to prop up other Starks instead of it being about Jon Snow's character journey and growth, self love and internal acceptance and overcoming the trauma from growing up living with bigotry.
The same as little Arya asking Ned if she can become a king's councillor and build castles and being told no, she has to be a wife, and Arya then having to learn self confidence and self love and accepting herself, overcoming the low self esteem from the conditioning where little girls are taught that there is only one right way to perform femininity and be a woman. Or Daenerys breaking boundaries as a female ruler or disabled Bran and Tyrion as future leaders.
GRRM literally lays it out for us in his original outline!
"Five central characters will make it through all three volumes, however, growing from children to adults and changing the world and themselves in the process. In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women. The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow."
As readers we are supposed to cheer for characters like Jon if he wants to reach up and grab as high as he can and aim for what he was denied as a bastard. Instead, popular fandom talking points are often about how Jon would only prove Catelyn right and Jon should rightfully step aside for his younger siblings, and Jon is a good guy and therefore he would never usurp his siblings etc.
Honestly, I am more interested to read how his siblings react if and when Jon does become Lord of Winterfell/KITN in the next book and that will be the real testament to their varied relationships with him.
asoiaf tumblr talking about teenage robb: guys stop being mean to him 😢 he’s just a boy who doesn’t know any better 💔 my poor innocent baby boy 😔 I just want to wrap him in blankets and kiss his forehead and protect him forever and ever <3
asoiaf tumblr talking about teenage dany: what the FUCK is wrong with her why is she always WHINING why is she so ENTITLED and IMPERFECT why doesn’t this literal child automatically know how to abolish the ancient institution of SLAVERY and singlehandedly rule over an entire CITY why is she still LEARNING and GROWING why is she so IMMATURE why can’t she just drop DEAD
asoiaf tumblr when robb causes the deaths of thousands of common people because of his endless war of vengeance, refuses to save his little sisters because feudal society deems girls to be worthless in war, and attempts to confine his mother in a castle against her wishes because she tells him things that he doesn’t want to hear: he’s just a product of his time guys 😢 you can’t blame him for acting in accordance with a patriarchal society 😢 it’s not his fault 😢
asoiaf tumblr when dany smashes the slave trade and fights for systemic change because one time she didn’t abide by the geneva convention or demonstrate an understanding of modern human rights: the true villain of the series. evil from birth. a tyrant in the making. emotionally unstable. a danger to herself and others. an irredeemable monster who deserves die an unspeakably violent death at the hands of someone she trusts and loves ❤️
and this is all so ironic considering that dany is the character in the series who comes the closest to grasping modern concepts of human rights (I know that “human rights” is an incredibly broad/vague/westernized term but just go with it for a sec). like how does she get the most shit for violating human rights when 99% of the highborn characters don’t even recognize the common people AS PEOPLE.
but dany turns around and crucifies 163 slavers who themselves crucified 163 ENSLAVED CHILDREN. and then stops. instantly hates herself for it. refuses to kill the rest of the slavers or kill their children or pull another red wedding (no matter how much her advisors urge her to do so) because she’s trying to build a better world for everyone. she’s so merciful to them that she almost ends up handing the power right back to the slavers until she realizes that she can’t build a new world if she’s constantly compromising with the old one.
(shoutout to redoorlemontree on twitter for this one 🙏)
I'm not sorry, upwards of 95% of Dany hate/criticism is just outright misogyny. The male characters of ASOIAF get infinite compassion, understanding, and justifications from all corners of the fandom. They're fussed over for being "complex" and "imperfect" and they're judged by their intentions rather than their actions.
The female characters, on the other hand, get examined under a microscope and criticized endlessly for not being perfect. They're stupid, they're immature, they're selfish, etc. Sansa and Arya are among the most visible examples of this, but I feel like nobody gets it worse than Daenerys Targaryen.
The level of hate Dany gets renders me speechless because, as you said OP, Dany is easily one of the characters who is most aligned with our modern values. In the world of ASOIAF, she's basically a far-left progressive because she cherishes all human life, from the lowest slave to the highest noble.
When she's confronted with the horrors of systemic slavery, she's so enraged by it that she abandons her plan to go back to Westeros (you know, the one thing people claim she ONLY cares about) and topples the slavery-based economy of Slavers Bay. There is no benefit for her to do this!!! She could have just fucked off when she liberated the Unsullied and got her army!!! The owning class in Yunkai literally handed her that option on a silver platter!!! But Dany says no because she can't bear the thought of people suffering while she takes the easy way out.
Again, it's just absolutely fucking insane to me that this teenage girl gets so much hate for making mistakes while trying to do the right thing. Meanwhile grown-ass men who don't view smallfolk as actual humans and start wars that get thousands of people killed get a hug and a pat on the back for being complex. Miss me with that sexist bullshit.
The cup has passed, and you must drink from it, like it or not.
The Stark in Winterfell is a title and duty passed down from one Stark to the next, symbolised as a cup being passed. A title and duty previously held by Ned, and briefly by Robb, who abandoned their post when they rode south, and has now been passed to Bran.
"You are your brother's heir and the Stark in Winterfell."
In a Clash of Kings, Bran drinks from his father's goblet at the harvest feast where he presides over as lord, symbolically representing the title, the cup, passing down, as it did from Brandon to Ned.
Bran took another sip of the spiced honey wine from his father's goblet, grateful for something to clutch. The lifelike head of a snarling direwolf was raised on the side of the cup. He felt the silver muzzle pressing against his palm, and remembered the last time he had seen his lord father drink from this goblet.
In parallel, the Song of Ice and Fire is a prophecy passed down from one Targaryen to the next, and is also symbolised as a cup. In a Game of Thrones, Dany has a vision of who she believes to be Rhaegar, but is revealed to be herself.
And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.
With Rhaegar and Viserys dead, Dany is the last dragon, and while she does not yet know it, it is her duty to defend the realm of men during the Long Night; much like it is Bran’s to defend the North and his people. She receives the song directly from Rhaegar when he speaks to her in the House of The Undying.
“He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door.
This song is symbolically referred to as cup by the Undying, who tell Dany to drink from.
drink from the cup of ice . . . drink from the cup of fire . . .
But what is the significance of the cup motif? Dany is an unlikely heir to house Targaryen and the Song: the female third child who was not expected to survive her ordeals.
If truth be told, I did not think Daenerys would survive for long amongst the horselords.
Similarly, Bran is a second son and a disabled child, who wasn’t expected to survive his disability.
No one had expected the broken boy to live.
Despite near death experiences, assassination attempts, betrayals and crossing perilous lands, both have survived where their archetypal predecessors did not. They go on a traditional hero’s journey, yet their subversive forms bring a new take on the hero’s role.
Dany fulfils the prophecy of Azor Ahai as part of the Song of Ice and Fire, her husband taking the place of the usual female sacrifice, subverting the gendered expectations placed on both the prophecy and the role of hero. Bran meanwhile goes on the journey of the Last Hero, but must use a magical strength in place of physical; this is subverting patriarchal expectations of male heroes.
It is not a coincidence that these two subversive heroes inherited their cups from archetypal heroes. Protagonists such as Ned, Robb and Rhaegar can be found across the fantasy genre, whereas Dany and Bran were, at the time of writing, unique subversions of patriarchal heroism. The cup is not just passing from one character to another, or one generation to the next, but from an old, conventional breed of hero to a new.
HOTU - "Viserys screamed as the molten gold ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth. A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him. Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman's name ... " -ACOK -Dany IV
I haven't post it in a while ...because of work and also because I didn't know how to draw this visions that Dany has in the warlock's chamber ...because they feel different from the first ones that she has ..when she enters in HOTU..meaning ...the first ones feels more like choices that she will have to make ...and these ones feels more like "destiny" ..I think ...meaning things that happened, happens and will happened without her choice....
It's really strange...because the first ones are like a game...she can choose to interact with the characters that she meets along the way ...but -she is warned by Pyat Pree - if she chooses to do so and enters one the rooms she will be trapped in HOTU. So she can choose to help the woman assaulted by the dwarfs , or the Wolf King surrounded by dead people , or she can remain in the house with red door together with Willem Darry....but in this visions that she has in the warlock's chamber ...she sits in a chair and feels like she is just registering what she sees without any input..like it wasn't her choice to kill Viserys by molted gold, or to sacrifice her unborn child, or to move to Bravoos in the house with a red door, or to have a flaming sword like Stannis...and so on and on...so all of those things that she is seeing here ...are other people choices that had or will have a great impact on her...and I really love how they are written...all of this visions...because it's like in real life ...some things we can choose some we can't but we are influenced by other people choices...and you have to find balance in your life between all of this...
Also what I find interesting is that the first visions feels like a game of cat and mouse...meaning ..the Undying Ones ...they don't know her...and they are throwing a lot of stuff at her ...trying to trap her...I mean ...she walks a long time on that corridor opening a lot of different doors ...with a lot of visions ...but she is interested in only some of them..😊it's really funny actually...how they are bargaining with her...maybe this...maybe the other...maybe she will forfeit for compassion ( vision with the woman and Wolf King) , maybe for power( vision with the throne room and Barbed King) , maybe for longing and peace( vision of the house with red door and Willem Darry) , maybe for knowledge ( vision with Singer and his wife) ...On a side note I think the strangest visions are the ones with Wolf King and the one with the Singer and his wife...I mean for us , the reader , the Wolf King vision is a foreshadowing of the Red Wedding...but for her , for Dany ...🤷♀️I don't know ...I don't think it's the same...why is it important for her to see the Red Wedding...and also she can choose to help...how ? she is a continent away when it happens...no...I think for her it's about another Wolf King ...and other dead people...and she will have to make a choice...to help the King or not ... Also the vision with the Singer and his wife..Rhaegar ...it's really strange ...because it's the only vision that finishes before she is leaving ...she finally decides to stay - she doesn't enter the room- but she wants to hear the song...but the characters are turned into mist and she doesn't hear the ending of the song🤷♀️strange ...right? I mean it feels almost like ...an oops moment...like Rhaegar when he tells her about " the dragon must have three heads" ...I don't know ...feels like he slipped away something that he shouldn't have...and the Undying Ones are ..like 😊"ooops you shouldn't have heard that" ..and they are turning Rhaegar into a mist before he finishes the song...really strange...
So....because of all of this thoughts ...I didn't know how to draw this visions ...this ones from the warlock's chamber ...but then I've noticed that ...in the text they are grouped as 3 visions...3 times ...and after each group of visions ..there is this interlude when the Undying Ones are saying " mother of dragons...daughter of death" etc...so I've decided to draw them like this ...so here they are ...the first 3 ...her brother Viserys and his golden crown, her stillborn child Rhaego and the death of her brother Rhaegar....
