Emperor Claudius & King Bran
Suddenly we heard a great screeching above us. We looked up and saw a number of eagles fighting. Feathers floated down. We tried to catch them. Germanicus and Castor each caught one before it fell and stuck it in his hair. Castor had a small wing feather, but Germanicus a splendid one from the tail. Both were stained with blood. Spots of blood fell on Postumus’s upturned face and on the dresses of Livilla and Agrippina. And then something dark dropped through the air. I do not know why I did so, but I put out a fold of my gown and caught it. It was a tiny wolf-cub wounded and terrified. The eagles came swooping down to retrieve it, but I had it safe hidden, and when we shouted and threw sticks they rose baffled and flew screaming off. I was embarrassed. I didn’t want the cub. Livilla grabbed at it, but my mother, who looked very grave, made her give it back to me. ‘It fell to Claudius,’ she said. ‘He must keep it.’
—I, Claudius (Chapter 5) - Robert Graves
“The sooner the better,” Theon Greyjoy agreed. He drew his sword. “Give the beast here, Bran.”
The little thing squirmed against him, as if it heard and understood. “No!” Bran cried out fiercely. “It’s mine.”
“Put away your sword, Greyjoy,” Robb said. For a moment he sounded as commanding as their father, like the lord he would someday be. “We will keep these pups.”
“Lord Stark,” Jon said. It was strange to hear him call Father that, so formal. Bran looked at him with desperate hope. “There are five pups,” he told Father. “Three male, two female.”
“You have five trueborn children,” Jon said. “Three sons, two daughters. The direwolf is the sigil of your House. Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord.”
—A Game of Thrones - Bran I - George R. R. Martin
In the 1977 BBC adaptation of Robert Graves's I, Claudius, the scene where eight years old Claudius catches the wolf pup is called "A sign from the Gods."
The future Emperor Claudius catching a wolf pup that fell from the sky and Bran Stark and his siblings finding direwolves pups in the Summer snows, is maybe the strongest piece of evidence for King Bran that I have come across.
Read more about the influence of I, Claudius in GRRM'S ASOIAF here:
I, CLAUDIUS / GRRM / ASOIAF
yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton
