omnia causa fiunt

I'm Holly; I blog about redheads a lot.

[eloiscbridgerton]

HELAENA TARGARYEN & DREAMFYRE HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 3.07 – The Dragon in Winter

[elena-gilbert]

Criston Cole + Alicent's handkerchief HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 2.03 "The Burning Mill" 2.08 "The Queen Who Ever Was" 3.06 "Faceless Men"

[vhagar-balerion-meraxes]

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON S03E06 - “Faceless Men”

[trgtowers]

“everything you feel for me as your queen…” “i will not fail you.”

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 1.09 The Green Council

[kitnjon]

Jon x Sansa // Jago x Anne

And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.

[bookhousestark]

ARYA STARK APPRECIATION WEEK 2024 ↳ Day 2: Her pack

And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya's skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father's voice. "When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives," he said. "But there is no pack," she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. "I'm not even me now, I'm Nan." "You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you." "The wolf blood." Arya remembered now. "I'll be as strong as Robb. I said I would." She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth.

[jaeausten]

Daisy Ridley as Ophelia in Ophelia (2018)

[ravellasmallwood]

When she said that, it felt as though a giant hand were squeezing her chest. 

[bookhousestark]

ARYA STARK APPRECIATION WEEK 2024 ↳ Day 2: Her pack

And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya's skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father's voice. "When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives," he said. "But there is no pack," she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. "I'm not even me now, I'm Nan." "You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you." "The wolf blood." Arya remembered now. "I'll be as strong as Robb. I said I would." She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth.

[bookhousestark]

ARYA STARK APPRECIATION WEEK 2024 ↳ Day 3: Overlooked traits

Natural leader

They rode north, away from the lake, following a rutted farm road across the torn fields and into the woods and streams. Arya took the lead, kicking her stolen horse to a brisk heedless trot until the trees closed in around her. Hot Pie and Gendry followed as best they could. Wolves howled off in the distance, and she could hear Hot Pie's heavy breathing. No one spoke. From time to time Arya glanced over her shoulder, to make sure the two boys had not fallen too far behind, and to see if they were being pursued.

A Storm of Swords, Arya I

Fond of nature

"When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never saw before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion."

A Game of Thrones, Sansa I

Merciful

“[…] Do you want the water?" "Aye." The man swallowed. "And the mercy. Please."

When she came back, the archer turned his face up and she poured the water into his mouth. He gulped it down as fast as she could pour, and what he couldn't gulp ran down his cheeks into the brown blood that crusted his whiskers, until pale pink tears dangled from his beard.

A Storm of Swords, Arya XII

Feminist

"The Lannisters are proud," Jon observed. "You'd think the royal sigil would be sufficient, but no. He makes his mother's House equal in honor to the king's." "The woman is important too!" Arya protested.

A Game of Thrones, Arya I

Empathetic

She thought of Mycah again and her eyes filled with tears. Her fault, her fault, her fault. If she had never asked him to play at swords with her …

A Game of Thrones, Arya II

Left-handed

Arya took her right hand off the grip and wiped her sweaty palm on her pants. She held the sword in her left hand. He seemed to approve. "The left is good. All is reversed, it will make your enemies more awkward.”

A Game of Thrones, Arya II

Learned

It hurt that the one thing Arya could do better than her sister was ride a horse. Well, that and manage a household.

A Game of Thrones, Arya I

Observant

"Learn three new things before you come back to us," the kindly man had commanded Cat, when he sent her forth into the city. She always did. Sometimes it was no more than three new words of the Braavosi tongue. Sometimes she brought back sailor's tales, of strange and wondrous happenings from the wide wet world beyond the isles of Braavos, wars and rains of toads and dragons hatching. Sometimes she learned three new japes or three new riddles, or tricks of this trade or the other. And every so often, she would learn some secret.

A Feast For Crows, Cat of The Canals

[bookhousestark]

ARYA STARK APPRECIATION WEEK 2024 ↳ Day 6: Parallels → Rhaenys Targaryen

The mummers off the Ship showed her how a hero stands, and taught her speeches from The Song of the Rhoyne, The Conqueror's Two Wives, and The Merchant's Lusty Lady.

A Feast for Crows, Cat of the Canals

[bookhousestark]

ARYA STARK APPRECIATION WEEK 2024 ↳ Day 7: Foreshadowing → Reconciliation with Lady Stoneheart

"Stoneheart. Is that who you mean?" Lord Randyll had spoken of her, back at Maidenpool. "Lady Stoneheart." "Some call her that. Some call her other things. The Silent Sister. Mother Merciless. The Hangwoman."

A trestle table had been set up across the cave, in a cleft in the rock. Behind it sat a woman all in grey, cloaked and hooded. In her hands was a crown, a bronze circlet ringed by iron swords. She was studying it, her fingers stroking the blades as if to test their sharpness.

Brienne VIII, A Feast for Crows

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," she sang sadly.

Mercy, The Winds of Winter

[bookhousestark]

ARYA STARK APPRECIATION WEEK 2024 ↳ Day 7: Endgame speculation (insp)

"He was going to be a knight," Arya was saying now. "A knight of the Kingsguard. Can he still be a knight?" "No," Ned said. He saw no use in lying to her. "Yet someday he may be the lord of a great holdfast and sit on the king's council. He might raise castles like Brandon the Builder, or sail a ship across the Sunset Sea, or enter your mother's Faith and become the High Septon." But he will never run beside his wolf again, he thought with a sadness too deep for words, or lie with a woman, or hold his own son in his arms. Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?"

[bookhousestark]

ARYA STARK APPRECATION WEEK 2025 ↳ Day 3: Justice and Mercy

I should kill them myself. Whenever her father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, his greatsword. "If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look him in the face and hear his last words," she'd heard him tell Robb and Jon once.

A Clash of Kings, Arya VII

She knew what he meant. Arya went to Polliver and knelt in his blood long enough to undo his swordbelt. Hanging beside his dagger was a slimmer blade, too long to be a dirk, too short to be a man's sword . . . but it felt just right in her hand. "You remember where the heart is?" the Hound asked. She nodded. The squire rolled his eyes. "Mercy."

A Storm of Swords, Arya XIII

"And justice? Can that be found in caves?" "Justice." Thoros smiled wanly. "I remember justice. It had a pleasant taste. Justice was what we were about when Beric led us, or so we told ourselves. We were king's men, knights, and heroes . . . but some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all."

A Feast for Crows, Brienne VIII

"And are you a god, to decide who should live and who should die?" he asked her. "We give the gift to those marked by Him of Many Faces, after prayers and sacrifice. So has it always been, from the beginning... All men must die. We are but death's instruments, not death himself. When you slew the singer, you took god's powers on yourself. We kill men, but we do not presume to judge them. Do you understand?" No, she thought. "Yes," she said.

A Dance with Dragons, The Blind Girl

"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," she sang sadly. A foolish, giddy girl she'd been, but good hearted. She would miss her, and she would miss Daena and the Snapper and the rest, even Izembaro and Bobono. This would make trouble for the Sealord and the envoy with the chicken on his chest, she did not doubt.

The Winds of Winter, Mercy

[bookhousestark]

ARYA STARK APPRECIATION WEEK 2025 ↳ Day 6: Nature and the Animal Kingdom

 "When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never saw before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion."

Dense thickets of half-drowned trees pressed close around them, branches dripping with curtains of pale fungus. Huge flowers bloomed in the mud and floated on pools of stagnant water, but if you were stupid enough to leave the causeway to pluck them, there were quicksands waiting to suck you down, and snakes watching from the trees, and lizard-lions floating half-submerged in the water, like black logs with eyes and teeth. None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her horsey grin, her hair all tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for Father.

Sansa I, A Game of Thrones

She had Ned's long face, and brown hair that always looked as though a bird had been nesting in it.

Catelyn VII, A Clash of Kings

He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird's nest. 

Jon XIII, A Dance with Dragons

And how she smiled and how she laughed, the maiden of the tree. She spun away and said to him, no featherbed for me. I'll wear a gown of golden leaves, and bind my hair with grass, But you can be my forest love, and me your forest lass.

"I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns." "Nice, though. A nice oak tree." He stepped closer, and sniffed at her. "You even smell nice for a change."

Arya IV, A Storm of Swords

The green water was warm as tears, but there was no salt in it. It tasted of summer and mud and growing things.

Arya rolled headfirst into the tunnel and dropped five feet. She got dirt in her mouth but she didn't care, the taste was fine, the taste was mud and water and worms and life.

Arya IV, A Clash of Kings

The mud was nice between her toes, and she liked to feel the earth underfoot when she walked.

Arya V, A Clash of Kings

Arya looked up at the fleshless dead in their wet rotting clothes and said her own prayer. Ser Gregor, it went, Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei. She ended it with valar morghulis, touched Jaqen's coin where it nestled under her belt, and then reached up and plucked an apple from among the dead men as she rode beneath them. It was mushy and overripe, but she ate it worms and all.

Arya I, A Storm of Swords

[aryastarksource]

Arya Stark + Ned and Cat’s Little Wolf

[bookhousestark]

Every Arya & Lyanna parallel: → harrenhal

LYANNA

Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of beauty's laurel in Lyanna's lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.

—  A Game of Thrones, Eddard XV

The king was wroth, and even sent his son the dragon prince to seek the man, but all they ever found was his painted shield, hanging abandoned in a tree.

—  A Storm of Swords, Bran II

"The tourney Lord Whent staged at Harrenhal beside the Gods Eye, in the year of the false spring. A notable event. [...] "But that was the tourney when he crowned Lyanna Stark as queen of love and beauty!" said Dany. 

—  A Storm of Swords, Daenerys IV

ARYA

It wasn't Harren, Arya wanted to say, it was me. She had killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I'm the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate.

—  A Clash of Kings, Arya VII

Barefoot surefoot lightfoot, she sang under her breath. I am the ghost in Harrenhal.

— A Clash of Kings, Arya IX

I'm not an evil child, she thought, I am a direwolf, and the ghost in Harrenhal. She put her broomstick back in its hiding place and followed him from the godswood.

—  A Clash of Kings, Arya IX