Sep 21, 2025
Amerei ‘Gatehouse Ami’ Frey, Dilara Findikoglu SS26
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Amerei ‘Gatehouse Ami’ Frey, Dilara Findikoglu SS26
Rhaena, Myranda Royce, Gatehouse Ami and Alysanne Targaryen pinups from our stream with Kissed by Fire podcast. All drawn live on twitch.tv/sanrixian
The Real Housewives of Westeros: Wives & Widows Frey
I saw the Joke and Ran With It. Most of these women exist as Names Only, few having much in the way of Personal Biography. I have "Made Do", when plausible, by connecting them to Each Other &/or to Better Known Characters. As their ages are generally Not Given (or are of Ridiculous Range), feel free to HC them as the Reality TV Stars of Your Choosing: my knowledge of such shows ends with their having Fun Titles & Dubious Authenticity.
CW: spoilers on canoical character deaths (TWoW excerpts included), reference to the Red Wedding ("RW"), implications of infidelity (& thus in-setting slutshaming), mentions of canonical cousin-incest (& occasional debunkings thereof), casual speculation on Theories of Varying Degrees of Crackiness (largely shoved into As Yet Unposted "Footnote" Posts but I may have Missed Some).
The (As Yet Unwidowed) Housewives of House Frey
Merrett Frey and his family- from left: Amerei, Fat Walda, Little Walder, Merrett, Mariya Darry, Marissa
Spoilers, profanity, Jaime x Brienne. Game of Thrones. A Song of Ice and Fire. Re-Reread A Feast for Crows - Jaime IV
Close the Door and Come Here - 291: Re-Reread AFfC Jaime IV PODBEAN | ITUNES | STITCHER | PATREON | GOOGLE PLAY
Can you smell that Darry air? We meet more fun Freys, and ladies, let's face it, we've all been a Gatehouse Ami. Jaime's a great father figure, but Lancel has a rather strict view of what constitutes treason.
Close The Door And Come Here - Episode 291
featuring:
@chickren, @guileandsubterfuge, gdharpo
Lancel looked even thinner than he had at King's Landing. He was barefoot, and dressed in a plain, roughspun tunic of undyed wool that made him look more like a beggar than a lord.
Jaime: "Cousin, have you lost your bloody wits?"
Lancel: "I prefer to say I've found my faith. Will you pray with me, Jaime?"
Jaime: "If I pray nicely, will the Father give me a new hand?"
Lancel: "No. But the Warrior will give you courage, the Smith will lend you strength, and the Crone will give you wisdom."
Jaime: "It's a hand I need You should be sleeping with your wife. She gets moist between the legs every time someone mentions Lyle Crakehall. If she hasn't bedded him yet, she will soon."
Lancel: "If she loves him, I wish them joy of one another."
Jaime: "A lion shouldn't have horns. You took the girl to wife."
Lancel: "I am a sinner, with much and more to atone for."
Jaime: "What do you know of sin, coz? I killed my king."
Lancel: "The brave man slays with a sword, the craven with a wineskin. We are both kingslayers, ser."
Jaime: "Robert was no true king. What else did you do, to require so much atonement? Tell me."
His cousin bowed his head, tears running down his cheeks.
Jaime: "You killed the king, then you fucked the queen."
Lancel: "Do not think ill of the queen. All flesh is weak, Jaime. I am renouncing this lordship and this wife. I mean to take vows and join the Warrior's Sons."
Jaime: "Lancel, you're a bloody fool."
Lancel: "Will you pray with me, Jaime?"
Jaime: "Pray for me, if you like. I've forgotten all the words."
after A Feast for Crows, Chapter 40 (Jaime IV)
Grassroots justice
Not quite sure where this is going, but I want to do a little thinky on the role of the smallfolk in the Riverlands situation. Start from this conversation here:
Jaime pulled back his golden fingers and turned once more to Lady Mariya. “How far did Black Walder track this hooded woman and her men?”
“His hounds picked up their scent again north of Hag’s Mire,” the older woman told him. “He swears that he was no more than half a day behind them when they vanished into the Neck.”
“Let them rot there,” declared Ser Kennos cheerfully. “If the gods are good, they’ll be swallowed up in quicksand or gobbled down by lizard-lions.”
“Or taken in by frogeaters,” said Ser Danwell Frey. “I would not put it past the crannogmen to shelter outlaws.”
“Would that it were only them,” said Lady Mariya. “Some of the river lords are hand in glove with Lord Beric’s men as well.”
“The smallfolk too,” sniffed her daughter. “Ser Harwyn says they hide them and feed them, and when he asks where they’ve gone, they lie. They lie to their own lords!”
“Have their tongues out,” urged Strongboar.
“Good luck getting answers then,” said Jaime. “If you want their help, you need to make them love you. That was how Arthur Dayne did it, when we rode against the Kingswood Brotherhood. He paid the smallfolk for the food we ate, brought their grievances to King Aerys, expanded the grazing lands around their villages, even won them the right to fell a certain number of trees each year and take a few of the king’s deer during the autumn. The forest folk had looked to Toyne to defend them, but Ser Arthur did more for them than the Brotherhood could ever hope to do, and won them to our side. After that, the rest was easy.”
Martin, George R.R.. A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) (p. 510). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Here’s Jaime’s framework for pulling the rug out from under outlaw bands: both outlaws and nobles are dependent on the smallfolk. Nobles tend to think it’s the other way around, but realistically, the nobility needs to have a reliable population of commoners to grow their food, make their clothes, and maintain their castles. Many nobles are so accustomed to the smallfolk giving them tireless productivity and unflagging loyalty, they don’t see how their lifestyles depend on the common people far more than vice versa.
Meanwhile, outlaw bands also cannot exist without the peasantry on their side. Outlaw bands tend to be poor on infrastructure, liquid assets, and other resources. Their combat style relies on subterfuge rather than brute force. Common households give them hiding space so they can escape detection and capture by the nobles’ knights and men-at-arms. Commoners feed them so the outlaws can approach the nobles on their own terms. To neutralize the threat posed by outlaw bands, the nobility needs to have the peasantry on their side.
That’s where Jaime comes in and says: you don’t brute-force the peasants’ loyalty. The way to deny the outlaws their support system is by being nice to the smallfolk. Not just nice, but respectful. Ser Arthur Dayne was generous and communicative with the people supporting the Kingswood Brotherhood. He made them feel heard and appreciated. He showed them that the crown would allow them greater security and prosperity if they supported the crown’s interests. Without the shelter, food and discretion of the smallfolk, the Kingswood Brotherhood were vulnerable and easily defeated.
For a little digression, I want to ask: can anyone imagine Tywin Lannister taking this approach to law enforcement? Lord Tywin, the one who arranged the gang-rape of a young girl because she had the cheek to give her love to his son? Jaime had to learn that from Ser Arthur, and only when his father was far, far away, because Lord Tywin would’ve washed his mouth out with soap.
That much aside, if we look at Jaime’s leadership in his Feast/Dance arc, he’s already taken an interest in playing nicely with the smallfolk. He orders his soldiers to stay out of the fields, he has them stay in the village and use their own provisions at Pennytree, for example. He also executes one of the Mountain’s guys (ergo the crown’s forces now) for merely attempting to rape a serving girl. By demonstrating to his soldiers a zero-tolerance policy on rape, he’s making the women of the Riverlands much safer.
He doesn’t think of this as the way to disempower the outlaws, though. The fields are off-limits and the villagers’ pantries remain untouched because the commoners need to eat. The attempting rapist has to die because girls like Pia shouldn’t have to deal with that shit.
However, this is not to say Jaime doesn’t respect the danger posed by outlaws in the Riverlands. He’s not about to be lax with security at Castle Darry:
The castle gates swung open slowly. “My coz will not have room to accommodate a thousand men,” Jaime told Strongboar. “We’ll make camp beneath the western wall. I want the perimeters ditched and staked. There are still bands of outlaws in these parts.”
“They’d need to be mad to attack a force as strong as ours.”
“Mad or starving.” Until he had a better notion of these outlaws and their strength, Jaime was not inclined to take any risks with his defenses. “Ditched and staked,” he said again, before spurring Honor toward the gate.
Martin, George R.R.. A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) (p. 502). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Again, it’s not a matter of brute force, it’s about the balance of risk and benefit. Widespread hunger makes the army’s work more difficult. And he understands that his father’s warmongering has left a lot of Riverlanders with little to eat.
Not that the Lannisters are all alone in taking food out of peasants’ mouths:
“Can we starve the castle out?”
Ser Daven shook his head. “The Blackfish expelled all the useless mouths from Riverrun and picked this country clean. He has enough stores to keep man and horse alive for two full years.”
Martin, George R.R.. A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) (p. 555). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Here’s the contrast between Uncle Brynden and Lord Edmure Tully: when Edmure has frightened smallfolk, he brings them into the castle. Catelyn thinks it’s sweet of him to have that impulse, but when a castle is about to be under siege, you don’t want to increase the ratio of warm bodies to food stores. Then we have Uncle Brynden the Blackfish, who chases the inessential folks out of the castle AND scours all the spare food stores from the countryside to keep the castle out of the Freys’ hands.
In terms of giving the middle finger to the Freys and Lannisters, Uncle Brynden knows what he’s doing. In terms of maintaining relations with the smallfolk, though…the peasants don’t care about which family holds Riverrun nearly as much as they care about how they’ll feed their kids through the winter. When they’re going hungry, they’ll remember who emptied out their pantries. Jaime seems to think their chances of capturing the Blackfish are slim following the Riverrun surrender, and that may be true, but at the same time, I’m not sure how far Blackfish will get in a countryside that he made sure to pick clean of food.
And I don’t think the Freys are making themselves any more popular with the peasantry, either, but they’re not the ones who took the bread off hungry Riverlanders’ tables. Just sayin’, the smallfolk may not be real invested in the position of House Tully in the near future.
Surely, there’s a reason for Feast/Dance having so much to say about the realm, especially the Riverlands, going hungry following the war. Maybe it’s simply GRRM’s way of showing us how the Riverlands are a tinderbox and it’s about to get very ugly very soon. That much may be true, but then so much of our data on the Riverlands situation comes to us through Jaime’s consideration for the smallfolk. The part where he advises Ami and Mariya on how to keep the smallfolk on their side, especially, is noteworthy.
Will any of this play a role in Brienne and Jaime’s conflict with Zombie Catelyn and the Gang? I’m not sure what, if any, that role would be. I think it’s a factor that should be kept in consideration, though, until we get TWOW. They’re dealing with outlaws, depending on smallfolk, and Jaime has some well-tested ideas about how to interact with outlaws and with smallfolk.
Amerei ‘Gatehouse Ami’ Frey, Dilara Findikoglu SS26
Despite the house's banners combining the sigils of Lannister and Darry, an idea of Kevan Lannister, the house functions more as a branch of the Freys due to their numbers and Lancel's disinterest in his lordly duties.
