the craven slays with a wineskin

@hogs-in-your-house asoiaf sideblog old man objectifier and professional weirdo

[ludcake]

underrated character that gives me thoughts at the moment: lancel lannister. oh baby boy i want your pov so bad....... tell me how bad you were groomed tell me how you found salvation in religion tell me all about how much you despise jaime tell me how much you love the high sparrow. tell me about how the world is placed on your shoulders as the faith's pawn in house lannister tell me how you wanted to be a kingsguard how you want to be even better than that because jaime stained the white cloak. tell me how bad you've got the catholicism sickness.......

every single time i see someone say we need less povs in winds i die a bit because I WANNA EMPATHISE ON A DEEP PERSONAL LEVEL WITH MORE CHARACTERS i love arys oakheart local fuckboy i love seeing him see arianne and see him through arianne's eyes i love victarion greyjoy i love joncon i want lancel lannister i want to know what he's thinking give me his brain

[brothelqueens]

i dont care how much you hate viserys saying he ‘deserved’ his illness is straight up ableist

[the-sparrow-lion]

look i totally get why people dislike viserys but please hear me out.

the thing i love most about him is he tries *so hard* to be a good father, a good brother, a good king, a good husband. he tries endlessly to do what’s best for everyone, and ultimately ends up failing everyone because of it.

viserys thinks he’s doing what’s best for other people, and in a perfect world he would be. but he fails to see that it’s not a perfect world. the very system that’s “benefited” him all his life (and i use that word loosely because look at him, he’s miserable. like rhaenys said, he would have done much better for himself without the throne.) is skewed automatically against rhaenyra, against everything she will ever do. and he thinks that his word alone is enough to break down an ancient, corrupt, and oppressive system. but how can he do that when he is, arguably, the weakest targaryen? he may be king, but he’s in no way suited to it. his dragon is dead, his court fights over his affections. otto, the person he depends on most, is working in his own self-interest, in the guise of caring for viserys. and by the time he realizes that, otto has pulled enough strings that viserys, his family, and all he tries to uphold fall apart without him.

even during all that happened to aemma, he thought that he was doing the right thing. aemma would have died no matter what, right? why shouldn’t he try to save his son? but baelon dies anyway, and aemma is cut open without a word her way from viserys. all her pain and torture is for nothing. viserys is, ultimately, a product of the system that’s shaped and manipulated him, and he's been made to think the way he does. because of this, even as he tries to break the wheel for rhaenyra, he can only think in terms of that wheel. his efforts fall to shit because of that, and it's even seen on his body as the show progresses.

tl:dr i love viserys for the exact reasons most of you hate him

[thistoowillpasss]

[thistoowillpasss]

[the-sparrow-lion]

aerys targaryen and his queen aelinor penrose i like to think that other than his being asexual and her wanting children, they were at least friends and were able to make it work

[poorshadowspaintedqueens]

ooo what similar themes does ACOK have with Richard iii?

Well, as a starting point, the arguable protagonist of A Clash of Kings is Tyrion--a character who is most assuredly at least a nod to Shakespeare’s version of Richard of Gloucester. Richard, too, is the youngest sibling, and grapples with a visible disability (crooked back/withered arm) that people immediately associate with evil and moral turpitude. The main difference is that many of the things Tyrion is accused of having done are crimes Shakespeare’s Richard actually commits (lying, scheming for a crown, murder and more murder, particularly of his own family members), and I suspect Tyrion’s arc in the final two books of the series may end up veering far closer to Richard than prior instances. But A Clash of Kings works really well as both a contrast and a meditation on disability and morality.

[the-sparrow-lion]

what in the actual hell have i done

[turtle-paced]

lancel makes me sad

You and me both, anon.

[the-sparrow-lion]

same here :( he’s such a Teenager pre-blackwater. it’s physically painful to see him in feast/dance blaming himself for getting groomed. the kid is starving himself into hallucinations as a form of “repentance”— he really goes from being preyed on by cersei to being preyed on by the faith. it sucks to watch him go to these lengths all because he was brought up to see how great house lannister is. told to obey cersei in everything, blackmailed into spying for tyrion, being cersei’s new “favorite” just to fall out of favor and be discarded at the blackwater… and then the high septon takes advantage of his vulnerability while he’s wounded and suddenly he thinks everything is his own fault. and all he wanted was to be more like his favorite cousin. sorry for the word vomit but. god. i know he probably won’t survive the series but i still hope he does anyway.

[the-sparrow-lion]

larys richard iii alicent anne neville

i will elaborate (at some point)

[procyonblog-deactivated20230911]

[the-sparrow-lion]

my aemond post got 69 notes

nice

[the-sparrow-lion]

little thing i wrote for @babybatterup​… i hope this is what u meant lol

Aemond knows he’s not perfect. But it still hurts to think about. He was born the second son of a king who refused to recognize his eldest son as heir, instead favoring his sister, thirteen years his elder, as alien to him as his father was. At least he could take solace in knowing his mother cared, but her love choked him. All he wanted was to please her, knowing trying to please his father was futile. He’d lost his eye to his sister’s bastard, who she stubbornly attempted to pass off as legitimate, and worse, his father hadn’t cared, only wanting to know how Aemond knew of his nephews’ true parentage. Worst of all was when his mother had come to his defense and been seen as a madwoman by everyone. He was born to lose out on life, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t at least try to reach the levels of power belonging to his brother and sisters. Vhagar could attest to that. And so could you. When Aemond met you, he was smitten. He knew you would much rather prefer Aegon, though, so he tried to reel you in by being the best at everything. That worked about as well as you would think. Not to mention that he was wrong about which brother had caught your eye. When you confessed to him, he was shocked. He hadn’t thought someone so beautiful, and of such high standing, would care about him. He tries his best to please you, like he did his mother. The difference is that this time, your love wasn’t conditional. Sometimes, he starts to think about how much better you deserve, and will overcompensate like hell to make you think you’d fallen in love with a better man. You, of course, know that Aemond is the best man you could ever wish for, and love him as he is, no matter what. Every time you remind him of that when he starts to spiral, he’ll suddenly “get something in his eye” and have to leave. He hates crying in front of people, since he tries to be the best in his family to compensate for always being the afterthought. And that, to him, means staying rational and not showing his true emotions. You’re the only one he trusts even remotely to see him cry, because he knows deep down that you’ll always be there for him in these moments of “weakness”. The only time Aemond Targaryen doesn’t feel like a walking second-place medal is when he’s with you, and for that he’ll never leave your side.

[the-sparrow-lion]

i havent posted in forever but anyway. a lil sketch of roose and walda to start 2023 with :) ngl its wack that the sadistic weird leech guy’s marriage for his wife’s weight in silver is one of the happiest in asoiaf. i love them and i hope ramsay gets vaporized in twow so walda and roose can be the westerosi addams family in peace

[the-sparrow-lion]

qyburn

[the-sparrow-lion]

aerys my friend…

honestly hes really underrated, i think id be friends with him irl

[the-sparrow-lion]

when you start a shitty fanfic you’re probably never gonna finish:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

anyways. its gonna be the dance of dragons and aegon iii’s regency from tyland lannisters perspective. being that its the dance and my bros who read fire and blood know what happens to him, its probably gonna get violent. that being said, *technically* spoilers for later seasons of house of the dragon

[the-sparrow-lion]