Nov 10, 2022
Arianne Martell Week:
Day 3 - Political allies/friends
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Arianne Martell Week:
Day 3 - Political allies/friends
Arianneweek21: Friends
Hi, I'm mostly new here but always have been intrigued with your Jonsa theories. New crackpot content I cooked up myself because I think you might actually appreciate it -
1) We all know Waymar Royce as Jon foreshadowing, but have we ever mentioned that House Royce is ALSO descended from a Stark woman - JOcelyn Stark, whose unnamed daughter I just found out also married a Waynwood. This means Sansa has been romantically linked to an additional two men besides Robin descended from a female relative of hers who in more or less broad terms could be considered cousins - Waymar, and Harry, whose grandmother is Anya Waynwood. What about Jon, huh...
2) I noticed a pattern in Arianne's canonical romances that might mirror and/or foreshadow both Jon and Sansa's. She expresses a crush on Oberyn, her uncle, (we won't be getting into the incredibly gross hypersexualisation here or how her issues with Doran affect this, but they exist of course) but this is incredibly unrequited (actually, theory 3 notes that literally every uncle/niece | aunt/nephew relationship is a complete disaster, which does not bode well for Jonerice) -> very unrequited Jonerice and Creepyfinger. Her intended first time was supposed to be a threesome with Tyene - her bastard COUSIN whom she stresses she thinks of as a SISTER - and some dude who fell asleep and prevented it from actually happening -> a third member of the love triangle (Daeny) sleeping forever (dying). Her actual first time happens with Daemon Sand, a bastard, around the same age Sansa will be when reuniting with Jon, in turn probably still disguised as Alayne. She can't marry him, not only because of his status, but also since she was betrothed to Viserys, an insane abusive pretender king -> Joffrey! Daenerys! Instead, Arianne will most likely marry her cousin Aegon - also related to her via his mother and her father, like Jon and Sansa, he probably will die, and she will then go on to claim her birthright as Dornish Princess, have Daemon legitimized and marry him -> marry a cousin and a bastard. Like, that's just a lot of coincidences, right?
3) Literally every relationship between someone and their parent's sibling('s spouse) is straight up horrendous and amongst the worst in ASOIAF:
- Rhaena and her half-uncle Maegor the Cruel, forcibly wedded after he usurped her husband and daughters and Aegon II. died.
- Rhaenyra and Daemon Targaryen, straight up grooming and him ditching her for a little girl in the middle of a war.
- we don't know about Serena Stark's and Sansa Stark's marriages to Edric and Jonnel "One-Eye" Stark, but it does reek of stealing the girls' birthright by wedding them themselves.
- Creepyfinger is technically Sansa's uncle by marriage to Lysa, and she in turn is technically Joffrey's aunt twice over through her marriage to Tyrion. Those two ought to be self-evident.
Frankly, only genuine sibling incest and father-daughter incest is described even more disturbingly, versus genuinely loving in-universe examples of cousin marriage exist.
Like damn, with that track record, how could anyone honestly think Jonerice is the big love story of ASOIAF´? Don't make me laugh.
Sorry this was very long, I wonder what you make of these!
Hello!
1) I did not know that. I love it!
2) Andrey Dalt of Lemonwood did NOT fall asleep!
She and Tyene had learned to read together, learned to ride together, learned to dance together. When they were ten Arianne had stolen a flagon of wine, and the two of them had gotten drunk together. They shared meals and beds and jewelry. They would have shared their first man as well, but Drey got too excited and spurted all over Tyene's fingers the moment she drew him from his breeches. Her hands are dangerous. The memory made her smile. (AFFC, The Princess in the Tower)
The whole “shared first man” thing actually makes me think of Joffrey and Littlefinger, placing Tyene firmly into a category with Margaeryn and Lysa, who both have “shared first man with a sibling” themes, along with sharing with Sansa if their husbands are to be believed. Tyene’s association with poison and the faith, the sharing of jewelry and wine, and her dangerous hands just confirm the whole connection to Littlefinger and the Tyrell’s, as well. Also, the “lemon wood”, which is my horrible read of the phallic Giant’s Lance lemon cake Littlefinger has made for Sansa. Something will go wrong there for Littlefinger (which is another phallic metaphor thanks to Myranda, baaaaaah.)
(Do we know if Tyene maybe was the one who betrayed Arianne?)
Really like the rest, though!
3) Couldn’t agree more.
Thank you for sharing!
can you do doran/mellario and 9? thank you
For the prompt: Doran Martell/Mellario of Norvos, a memory.
“Ser Andrey has been sent to Norvos to serve your lady mother for three years.” (A Feast for Crows)
Andrey Dalt was not smiling, for once. In Mellario’s memory, he was always smiling, always ready with a quip or a jape, often at his own expense. He thinks if he laughs at himself before others could, then he would be safe from their contempt, Doran had once made the penetrating remark, about the boy Andrey Dalt had been.
Ser Andrey took a knee and said, solemnly, “I humbly commit myself to your service, my lady. Prince Doran –”
The Westerosi Common Tongue did not come easily to her tongue, rusting from years of disuse. “We need not speak of the reason you were sent here. I have been made aware of it,” Mellario replied, choosing and enunciating her words carefully.
The young man in front of her could not hide his surprise. He never could, even as a boy, she recalled. He was an open book compared to her husband.
“Rise, Ser Andrey. Do you consider it so very strange, ser, that my husband and I still maintain a correspondence with one another?”
He rose to his feet. Then, blushing and stammering, he replied, “No … no, my lady. It is not my place to think anything of it. Only … Prince Doran would have been too … too cautious … to reveal too much in his letters, I presume? Letters –”
“Letters could be intercepted? True enough. Our letters are not so easily deciphered by others, however. Their contents are safe from prying eyes.”
Later, as she watched him watching her nieces and nephews playing in the manse’s garden, the memory of Doran and herself watching Arianne playing with Drey at the Water Gardens came unbidden if not unwelcomed to her mind. Arianne was five, and not yet so very enamored with jumping into the pools and fountains as she would later become. They were playing their own version of monsters and maidens, she and Drey. They ran in circles, chasing each other around a blood orange tree, changing direction each time one of them shouted, “I’m the maiden!”
Doran was holding baby Quentyn in his arms, while Mellario called out to their daughter and her friend not to run too fast. “You’ll get dizzy, both of you,” she warned.
“We won’t!” Arianne and Drey replied in unison, their giggles ringing clear across the terrace.
Quentyn grabbed hold of his father’s hair and started pulling. Doran laughed. Arianne heard her father’s laughter and came running towards her parents and her little brother, pulling Drey with her, whose hand she was holding.
Mellario wrote to Doran, in the secret language they had agreed upon for their letters, reminding him of that memory. Be merciful to our daughter, however grave her mistake may seem to you. Remember your love for her. And her love for her father.
Her tears stained the page as she wrote the coded message that he would later decode as, Remember the love we had for one another, the love that brought her forth into this world.
She added, more forcefully, Remember your promise to keep our children safe.
ASOIAF fancasting --> People of Dorne: David Avery as Andrey Dalt
“The freedom that Prince Oberyn allowed his bastard daughters had never been shared by Prince Doran’s lawful heir. Arianne must wed; she had accepted that. Drey had wanted her, she knew; so had his brother Deziel, the Knight of Lemonwood.”
Looking every bit the part of a handsome desert knight, he definitely fits as a suitor for Arianne.
More fancasts from Dorne
House Words Wednesdays: House Dalt
Welcome to House Words Wednesdays! Each week, I take a House without known canon or semi-canon words and present what I think could make sense as that House’s motto. You’re free to suggest more as well, if your favored House has not yet been suggested; take a look at this link to see what has already been suggested, and shoot me an ask through Tumblr if you have another House you’d like to see.
House Dalt is a landed knightly House of Dorne, one of the principal Houses sworn to the Martells of Sunspear. It is unclear when the Dalts of Lemonwood got their start - either as First Men come over the not-yet-broken Arm of Dorne or adventuring Andals carving a petty kingdom with the sword - but the Dalts are not the only family to have recognized the advantages of establishing a seat under the lemon trees by the Greenblood. In ancient days, a number of First Men families began a curious elective kingship near Lemonwood, raising up a king from amongst their number (not unlike the driftwood kings of the ironborn) to be High King of Dorne - a system that worked quite well until an election dispute sent the kingdom into civil war and eventually divided the polity into several petty kingdoms. The Dalts don't seem to have been among the elected royals, but they might have been vassals in this kingdom, or might have taken advantage of the kingdom's breakup to make a realm for themselves.
In either event, the Dalts are not exactly the strongest power players in Dorne: Arianne acknowledges in her effective house arrest that Ser Deziel Dalt, the Knight of Lemonwood, might intimidate a petty lord, but does not have the strength to sway the Prince of Dorne, Still, I tend to think the Dalts were among the first to swear allegiance to the forces of Nymeria, and - along with the Santagars - long-time allies of the Martells: none very powerful families, perhaps they all huddled together for mutual protection, and jumped along with Nymeria for a chance at advancement when she offered it. That might explain why the heiress of Dorne counts among her closest friends not scions of Dorne's greatest families, but dynastically less important Andrey Dalt and Sylva Santagar. Certainly, Arianne trusted Drey enough to include him in her abortive plot to crown Myrcella (and saw him suffer for it as well, being sent to serve the absentee Princess Consort of Dorne, Mellario, in Norvos for the next three years).
Poor Podrick Payne correctly identified the sigil of the Dalts as lemons, and that's where I got the idea for their words: Sweeter Our Fidelity. A lemon might well be known for its sour taste, but the Dalts would want to emphasize that they are not marked by their harshly sour sigil; what matters is their loyalty. This would be an interestingly ironic motto if, as I suspect, the Dalts were vassals of the ancient Greenblood state, who took advantage of its collapse to seize power for themselves. More directly, Andrey Dalt has proven himself both sweet and loyal, gallantly addressing Princess Myrcella and his other companions during their mission and risking himself on what everyone should have seen was a very dangerous, foolhardy mission.
Do you like these words for the Dalts of Lemonwood? Let me know. One scion of next week’s family once identified the sigil of the Dalts, so next week we’ll give his House its own words.
The Queenmaker
Arianne Martell arrived with Drey and Sylva just as the sun was going down.
Garin had arrived a few hours earlier, and the knight Gerold Dayne called Darkstar the day before.
"It is lovely here," Drey observed as he was helping Garin water the horses.
"My uncle brought me here, with Tyene and Sarella." The memory made Arianne smile. "He caught some vipers and showed Tyene the safest way to milk them for their venom.”
Arianne watched Darkstar warily. If there was a handsomer man in Dorne, she did not know him.
"Forgive me, princess," said Garin softly, "but I do not like that man."
"We need his sword and castle," Arianne reminded them.
Dayne stepped forward.
“Crowning the Lannister girl is a hollow gesture. She will never sit the Iron Throne. The lion is not so easily provoked."
"The lion's dead. Who knows which cub the lioness prefers?"
"You don’t start wars with a crown of gold, but with a blade of steel”, said Darkstar.
They were interrupted by the arrival of Ser Arys and the Princess Myrcella.
Drey went to one knee before her. "Your Grace."
"My lady liege." Spotted Sylva knelt beside him.
"My queen, I am your man." Garin dropped to both knees.
Confused, Myrcella clutched Arys Oakheart by the arm. "Why do they call me Grace? Ser Arys, what is this place, and who are they?"
Arianne moved forward. "They are my true and loyal friends, Your Grace.“
"Why do they call me queen? Did something bad happen to my brother?"
"He fell in with evil men, Your Grace," Arianne said, "and I fear they have conspired with him to steal your throne."
"My throne? You mean, the Iron Throne? He never stole that, Tommen is . . ."
". . . younger than you, surely? That means the Iron Throne by rights is yours,"
The moon had crowned the Moonmaid as they set out from the dust-dry ruins of Shandystone, striking south and west. Drey had wanted a larger party, but that might have attracted unwelcome attention, and every additional man doubled the risk of betrayal.
They found the boat half a league downstream, hidden beneath the drooping branches of a great green willow. Arianne saw no one. Where is her crew? she wondered.
The door on the poleboat slammed open.
Out into the sunlight stepped Areo Hotah, longaxe in hand.
This was not supposed to happen. "Away!" she cried, vaulting back into the saddle. "Arys, protect the princess—"
"Yield, my princess," the captain called, "else we must slay all but the child and yourself”
...
...
Ser Arys Oakheart put his horse between Arianne and the crossbows.
"You will not take her whilst I still draw breath."
Suddenly, Darkstar turned horse against his own people, riding towards Myrcella. Arianne saw is sword moving to the girl’s face....
Arys rode headlong for the poleboat, his white cloak streaming behind him. Arianne Martell had never seen anything half so gallant, or half so stupid. "Noooo," she shrieked.
But Arys struggled to his knees beside his dying horse . . .
…and found Areo Hotah standing over him.
She heard Areo Hotah roar, "After Darkstar. He must not escape. After him!" Myrcella was on the ground, wailing, shaking, her pale face in her hands, blood streaming through her fingers. Arianne did not understand.
It was all over. Areo Hotah came to her. "Your father said I must bring you back to Sunspear," he announced. "I am sorry, little princess."
George RR Martin: A Feast for Crows Chapter 21 (The Queenmaker)- shortened
<<<PREVIOUS Arianne scene NEXT>>>
||A SONG OF SIBLINGS||
Andrey Dalt & Deziel Dalt, rivalry
Drey had wanted her, [Arianne] knew; so had his brother Deziel, the Knight of Lemonwood. […] Drey’s brother Ser Deziel Dalt had once aspired to marry her, but he was much too dutiful to go against his prince. (A Feast for Crows)
Drey made light of it, with copious grins and plenty of self-deprecating japes, but the truth was, the thought of Arianne as his good-sister cut him deep.
My good-sister. My brother’s lady wife. The mother of my nieces and nephews, not the mother of my sons and daughters.
“My, my, my! As if I was ever yours, or anyone else’s,” Arianne would scoff, Drey knew, if she ever suspected him of harboring those thoughts. And rightly so; he loved her all the more for it.
His brother Dez knew very little about Arianne, and she knew very little about Dez in return. And yet … perhaps that was an advantage in his brother’s favor. Arianne thought of Drey too much like a loyal companion, or a compatriot-in-arms. Not like a brother, no, but not exactly –
She knew too much of his weaknesses, his faults and his flaws. She even knew his most embarrassing and humiliating secrets, the things even his own brother had never known and would never know about Drey. Meanwhile, Dez … well, Dez must have seemed like a pristine blank slate to Arianne.
“We will not make fools of ourselves, unlike those Lannister brothers who competed for Queen Rhaenyra’s hand in marriage,” Dez proclaimed. “Our rivalry will be a courteous and friendly one, as befitting the descendants of many generations of gallant and chivalrous Knights of Lemonwood.”
“Princess Rhaenyra,” corrected Drey. “She was not yet queen at the time.”
“What were the names of her Lannister suitors, do you remember?”
Drey shrugged. “They were twins, as I recall. Who could remember their names, after all this time?”
That would be the fate of Princess Arianne’s suitors too, no doubt.
“The truth is,” Dez said, sheepishly, “she is not likely to wed either one of us.”