#heart tree

[amoratearte]

#RhaelyaValentines2026

Day 1 — Book canon

A variant of Justin Sweet’s Rhaegar & Lyanna cover for the A Song of Ice and Fire 2024 Calendar.

“Love by the laughing tree”

[an-artist-who-loves-got]

Whitetree, Sam thought. Please, let this be Whitetree. He remembered Whitetree. Whitetree was on the maps he'd drawn, on their way north. If this village was Whitetree, he knew where they were. Please, it has to be.

(ASOS, Samwell III)

[littlefoxelf]

My Gnarled Heart (still alive, but just barely)

Photo (c)2026 by Heather Raven

[ilustrandocanciondehieloyfuego]

53_Juego de tronos_Bran VI

- Los dioses te ven, chico. Te han oído. Ese susurro entre las hojas es su respuesta.

—¿Y qué decían?

—Están tristes. No pueden ayudar a tu señor hermano allí donde va. Los antiguos dioses no tienen poder en el sur, talaron los arcianos hace miles de años. ¿Cómo van a velar por tu hermano, si no tienen ojos?

Bran no había calculado aquello. Le daba miedo. Si ni siquiera los dioses podían ayudar a su hermano, todo estaba perdido. Aunque quizá Osha no hubiera entendido bien. Inclinó la cabeza a un lado y escuchó de nuevo. Le pareció percibir la tristeza, sí, pero nada más.

[heartshapedsupremacybelief]

[agentrouka-blog]

something something jon thinking auburn haired val and ghost belong together meanwhile sansa literally looks like a weirwood with her porcelain skin and red hair

Red eyes, Jon realized, but not like Melisandre's. He had a weirwood's eyes. Red eyes, red mouth, white fur. Blood and bone, like a heart tree. He belongs to the old gods, this one.  (ASOS, Jon XII)

Ghost, who belongs to the old gods, visually only "belongs" with Val when Jon perceives her as red-haired and blue-eyed, instead of blond and grey-eyed. The Tully look.

The Tully look, blue eyes aside, is very intentionally created to resemble the heart tree, which is evident in the connection between Bran and these trees, who literally is in the process of becoming one if he does not stop. (Much like Brynden Rivers, a red-eyed albino with a red mark on his face, literally entwined with the tree.)

There is the visual parallel between mutilated Lady Stoneheart and a carved, sap-teared weirwood - they give her human sacrifices to slake her thirst for blood. They reside in a cave of weirwood roots much like Brynden. She had morphed into the personification of a very old magic.

And there was Sansa in the scene where the blood orange juice runs down her face and onto her white dress, or on the ramparts when she is bleeding and furious. Bereft. Murderous.

Clearly, these visual echoes have meaning. The tree as a person, as the faces carved into the weirwood, invites us to contemplate the connection between primal emotions (pain, grief, fury) that might inform the long memory within these magical trees that go back to a history even before the origin of the Wall and the Starks and the abnormal seasons. Centuries of feeding on blood.

Lady Stoneheart has given into those primal emotions, Bran is teetering on the edge, but we have seen Sansa pull away from it before. From self-destruction and from murder.

But that anger cannot be all that he old gods are.

"Your little one is with the gods now," the woods witch told his mother, as she wept. "He'll never hurt again, never hunger, never cry. The gods have taken him down into the earth, into the trees. The gods are all around us, in the rocks and streams, in the birds and beasts. Your Bump has gone to join them. He'll be the world and all that's in it." (ADWD, Prologue)

Varamyr's dying scene tells us this peaceful, almost joyful vision is true.

Ghost is a weirwood-colored wolf, blood and bone and he is life. A gift, a beast sent by the gods, who are the world and all that's in it. Jon's.

Ghost did not count. Ghost was closer than a friend. Ghost was part of him. (ADWD, Jon III)

And that part of him belongs to the old gods, and it belongs with...

They look as though they belong together. Val was clad all in white; white woolen breeches tucked into high boots of bleached white leather, white bearskin cloak pinned at the shoulder with a carved weirwood face, white tunic with bone fastenings. Her breath was white as well …  but her eyes were blue, her long braid the color of dark honey, her cheeks flushed red from the cold. It had been a long while since Jon Snow had seen a sight so lovely. (ADWD, Jon XI)

A carved weirwood face. More than anger and old pain, there can be life and renewal and beauty in that red and white color combination, and a weirwood's face does not need to be angry. Sansa drew back from anger, and so will Bran. So what can it mean?

There is a moment past crisis and grief. Recovery, renewal. The difficulty of reaching that place, and the necessity of doing so, and the destruction that follows the failure to do so, is a central theme in the books. So if Ghost visually belongs with a cheerful young woman with weirwood colors, we are being told something through that image.

It is an image that recalls Sansa in the middle of building her snow Winterfell. Flushed, joyful, creative.

There is probably a reason that the sigil Lyanna chose for herself as a mystery knight, to defend the honor of Howland Reed who had been to the Isle of Faces in the blue-watered Gods Eye, is that of a laughing tree. A sight so lovely.

[wpmorse]

[yaminotakemaru]

I can't anymore. I wanted to wait until my pc is back from the repairs.. but I can't wait anymore. I have to share this amazing piece of art. Look at it, it is fantastic. My dream came true. A commission by @swordmaid is the best gift ever. I still can't believe it.

LOOK AT IT. THE LIGHT AND COLOURING... AND THE EMOTIONS.

My ocs grawan and his betrothed Aleyna Dayne have looks that say "I'm madly in love" And the leaves and the tree.. I'm also in love. With the art and swordmaids skills. AMAZING. I CAN'T ANYMORE...

SO worth the wait, it's perfect. To have my ocs in her style. I wanted that for a long time. Thank youu again.

Thank youu 💕

Credit goes to @swordmaid

Ocs by me @tagarianblack

A song of Ice and Fire is own by G. R. R. Martin

DON'T COPY, USE OR STEAL IT.

BUT YOU CAN REPOST IT, THE WORLD HAVE TO SEE IT!!!