Dispelling the notion of ASOIAF as nothing but a nihilistic gorefest one post at a time! Submissions welcome. Send quotes, meta, or headcanons. This is a book-canon only space.
New blog alert! I'm dedicating this blog to posting quotes from ASOIAF that challenge the popular notion that it's grimdark and cynical, glorifies war and violence and rape, and whatever else people (often those who have not even read it and are judging solely based on the HBO show or an out-of-context GRRM quote) have to say about it. The aim isn't to pretend it doesn't have its flaws, of course, but simply to demonstrate that it is a beautiful series with interesting things to say about a lot of things, actually!
Quotes that fit within the purview of this blog can be anything that the average person who hasn't read the series would probably be shocked to find out came from "the game of thrones books" (ugh.) Optimistic and idealistic moments, ones that showcase the love of the fantasy genre, interesting gender things, anti-war sentiment, funny moments, anything that shows sides of the series that are often left out of the discussion outside the fandom.
Other than the main series, quotes posted here can also come from other books in the universe such as Dunk and Egg and Fire & Blood, as well as from GRRM interviews and such.
You can submit quotes through the submission box or the ask box. Better URL suggestions are also welcome ;)
So the creator of this blog has abandoned it and left me, @amphipolitan, as the only admin. I'd really like to keep it going, although I already have an ASOIAF sideblog, @asongofsilks, and I'm a full-time writer and editor trying to get my own voice out there, so I may not always have the time or the spoons.
I want to hunt for some good metas and ASOIAF world-building and headcanons to post, in addition to the quotes. I think this could be a great place to come for all your ASOIAF positivity needs.
Please send me a submission! Posts can be anything, as long as it's book-canon and anti-grimdark: all the reasons you love your favourite character, recipes from the ASOIAF cookbook, a collection of hairstyles you think would suit the ladies of Westeros. (For headcanons, please be sure they're plausible and don't actually contradict the books. I reserve the right not to post it if it's too way-out.)
I know that blogs like @turtle-paced, @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly and goodqueenaly all have wonderful analyses that I'd love to showcase here, but it'll take some time to fish them out of my likes. Please hmu in the askbox if you have a link for an existing post you think should be included!
I also want to post some official book art, especially from before the hbo show came out! (Like the beautiful header and profile photo the Creator Of This Blog left us!) The focus for art on here would be to show characters and places the way GRRM described them rather than how they were portrayed on the show, so if you have any links for those, please send them my way!
Something that occurred to me while re-reading Fire and Blood recently was the possibility of Alysanne having some form of prophetic visions. None of this is hard evidence, but it’s interesting to speculate about.
Neither prayer, sermons, nor readings from The Seven-Pointed Star could shake Alysanne Targaryen’s conviction that the gods had meant her to marry her brother Jaehaerys, to be his confidant and helpmate and the mother of his children. “He will be a great king,” she told Septa Ysabel, Lady Lucinda, and the others, “and I will be a great queen.”
This passage comes after Alysanne has endured a war that sprang from the negative public reaction to the marriage between her older brother and sister. Yes, there were other factors at play, including the unpopularity of her uncle’s polygamous marriage. But the inciting incident for the Faith to lead the people against House Targaryen was the incestuous marriage between Rhaena and Aegon. After surviving the deaths her father and of two of brothers and the reign of her uncle that followed that, for some reason, Alysanne is confidently insisting on moving forward with her own incestuous union with her brother Jaehaerys.
On one hand, Alysanne is in her teens so this might be classified as an emotionally driven, forbidden love situation. It can’t be denied that she and Jaehaerys love each other deeply. But the calm and assertive way she deals with opposition shows that she’s not acting just on emotion. But it’s the bolded line above that makes me wonder if her union and role as queen is something she knows as a fact will happen. In the course of her story, Alysanne doesn’t really come off as arrogant, so for her to insist that she “will be a great queen” doesn’t align with the rest of her character unless she knows for certain for some reason, such as a vision showing her this to her.
It was his own surmise that, given the lack of any sightings of Balerion in Westeros, Princess Aerea had likely flown him east across the narrow sea, to the vast fields of Essos. The queen concurred. “If the girl were dead, I would know it. She is still alive. I feel it.”
This has always struck me as strange. Alysanne is presented as pretty rational and practical. How could she possibly think she would know if her niece were dead and base her belief in Aerea’s survival on the fact that she feels it? A possible explanation is that she’s so used to relying on her visions. In this case, she’s right. Aerea is alive in that moment, though headed for some dark times.
Queen Alysanne stayed beside the princess for the rest of her confinement, sitting by her bedside, reading her to sleep at night, and comforting her fears. “It will be fine,” she told her daughter, half a hundred times. “She will be a girl, wait and see. A daughter. I know it. Everything will be fine.”
She was half right. Aemma Arryn, the daughter of Lord Rodrik and Princess Daella, came into the world a fortnight early, after a long and troubled labor.
In this moment, it’s the “I know it” that stands out to me, just like the “I feel it” in the previous quote. She’s wrong about everything being fine, but she’s right on with the gender of the baby. Visions can be misinterpreted as seen with Daeron the Drunken and Daemon II Blackfyre, but there is still truth in them. Since we don’t get to be in Alysanne’s head in this book and only get her recorded words and deeds, we don’t know what she saw exactly or even if she has prophetic visions. But it’s interesting that she insisted that the baby would be a daughter specifically instead of just saying that the baby will be healthy or will survive or something more generic.
[Princess Daenerys] so enchanted Alysanne that for a time Her Grace even began to eschew council sessions, preferring to spend her days playing with her daughter and reading her the stories that her own mother had once read to her. “She is so clever, she will be reading to me before long,” she told the king. “She is going to be a great queen, I know it.”
“I know it.” There’s the certainty again.
This is a moment when Alysanne is wrong about something she was confident about. Just as she knew for a certainty that she herself would be a great queen (she was correct), she believes her daughter will also be a great queen (she is wrong). What’s interesting about Alysanne’s relationship with Daenerys and her insistence on equal primogeniture as far as the line of succession goes is that she NEVER insists that her older sister Rhaena should be queen regnant in her own right rather than Jaehaerys sitting the Iron Throne. It is only with Daenerys and with Rhaenys, the Queen Who Never Was, that that Alysanne tries to insist that the next in line shouldn’t be dictated by gender but who comes next in the order of birth. She also doesn’t try to convince her husband to have equal primogeniture throughout Westeros.
This makes me wonder if she had a vision of a great queen named Daenerys and wrongly believed that that queen was her daughter. The Queen Daenerys she saw would of course be the Daenerys of the core series who is now Queen of Meereen and may end up as Queen of Westeros.
Clothing descriptions within ASOIAF are an incredibly important part of the text in which GRRM often tells us a great deal about the character. Often it’s merely to indicate wealth or class discrepancies between characters or to symbolize aspects of their personalities, but with Theon’s outfits in ACOK, I think there was an intentional desire to show a transformation of sorts that coincides with the overarching themes of Theon’s character, namely his issues concerning his identity and inability to find who he himself is as a person. Let’s take a look at his outfit descriptions through this book!
“ While two thralls lit his braziers, Theon stripped off his travel-stained clothing and dressed to meet his father. He chose boots of supple black leather, soft lambswool breeches of silvery-grey, a black velvet doublet with the golden kraken of the Greyjoys embroidered on the breast. Around his throat he fastened a slender gold chain, around his waist a belt of bleached white leather. He hung a dirk at one hip and a longsword at the other, in scabbards striped black-and-gold. Drawing the dirk, he tested its edge with his thumb, pulled a whetstone from his belt pouch, and gave it a few licks. He prided himself on keeping his weapons sharp. “When I return, I shall expect a warm room and clean rushes,” he warned the thralls as he drew on a pair of black gloves, the silk decorated with a delicate scrollwork tracery in golden thread.”
The first in depth description we are given are the clothes he dons when he first arrives back at Pyke after his ten year absence, preparing to see his father for the first time in a decade. Theon is described by many other POV characters throughout the books as having a pronounced love for fine clothing, and we can see that here. He clearly takes a great deal of pride in his appearance and in the types of clothing he wears, silks and velvets and fine leathers and gold. He is also incredibly keen on displaying the sigil of his house, the Greyjoy kraken, and the house colors, black and gold, throughout the entirety of the outfit. This is not out of place among the outfits of other characters, many of whom are also keen to share the opulence of their noble house by dressing to impress. It is, however, out of place amid the Ironborn culture of the Iron Islands. Among the Ironborn, efficiency and appearing battle ready are far more important functions for clothing than flaunting colors or banners. Theon is reminded of this, quite unkindly, when he meets his father and is mocked for his outfit, being referred to as soft and a greenlander and feminine for the way he has chosen to dress himself.
This is a very interesting moment that shows Theon’s difficulty with being torn between the two cultures he has been raised in but also an interesting moment in which we see something that Theon has likely used as a shield of sorts in his adult life is quite ungently ripped away from him. He spent his first 10 years of life with his family on Pyke and the following 10 as a hostage/ward of the Starks in mainland Winterfell. In Winterfell, subscribing to the mainland norms of flouting house colors with finery and excess while also being sure to separate himself from the Starks as a Greyjoy by ensuring his outfits reflect such work as a way to keep him his own entity. Regardless of the complicated feelings he has for Robb and the other Starks, he does not want to truly be a Stark. So long as Theon feels tethered to his Greyjoy heritage he feels secure in himself. For the most part. That is shaken apart when he returns home. Two quotes from his father, Balon:
“Did Ned Stark dress you like that?” his father interrupted, squinting up from beneath his robe, “Was it his pleasure to garb you in velvets and silks and make you his own sweet daughter?”
And a moment later:
“His father slid his fingers under the necklace and gave it a yank so hard it was like to take Theon’s head off, had the chain not snapped first. “My daughter has taken an axe for a lover,” Lord Balon said. “I will not have my son bedeck himself like a whore.” He dropped the broken chain onto the brazier, where it slid down among the coals.”
In one conversation, we witness Balon literally tear away a means Theon has used to identify himself for years and burn it away, immediately othering him in the eyes of the Ironborn and beginning to cause serious self doubts in Theon’s own security in his sense of self that will progress throughout the rest of the book.
In addition to these aspects, this outfit I find interesting in general for the combination of delicate and sharp it exudes, quite perfect for Theon’s characterization. Silken gloves with embroidered designs on hands skilled at bladework for a sensitive young man who finds it easier to be prickly and unpleasant on a good day than address a single emotion.
“The dream had receded by the time Wex returned with the water. Theon washed the sweat and sleep from his body and took his own good time dressing. Asha had let him wait long enough, now it was her turn. He chose a satin tunic striped black and gold and a fine leather jerkin with silver studs…and only then remembered that his wretched sister put more stock in blades than beauty. Cursing, he tore off the clothes and dressed again, in felted black wool and ringmail. Around his waist he buckled sword and dagger, remembering the night she had humiliated him at his own father’s table. Her sweet suckling babe, yes. Well, I have a knife too, and know how to use it.”
This second description comes after Theon has taken control of Winterfell when Asha has answered his call for aid at last. This is a great example of how literal the being torn between both cultures is for him as we see him struggle with how he would prefer to dress himself in the mainland style he has grown used to versus the way he knows he is now expected to dress. Again, the gold and black coloration of his finer clothes versus the much plainer garb of the other Ironborn.
Theon likely does not like that he has no way to distinguish himself as a Greyjoy in this manner of dress, going so far as to blame Asha for this confusing tumble of thoughts. Nevermind the fact that Asha has no issue gaining the respect of the Ironborn without flaunting krakens on all of her outfits. This is of course because she has been on the islands her entire life and has earned their respect which Theon is as yet unable to grasp. To him this is all an unfair joke at his expense and we see him flashback to another moment he was made the butt of a joke, giving him further fuel towards his anger for his sister and his further weakening grasp on his self.
“Theon stooped to scoop a puddled cloak off the floor, shook off the rushes, and draped it over his shoulders. A fire, I’ll have a fire, and clean garb. Where’s Wex? I’ll not go to my grave in dirty clothes.”
At this point in the story Theon is feeling quite hopeless indeed, surrounded by northmen intent on taking the castle back, abandoned by his family, and it seems ready to die. He wears nothing else but the discarded cloak in this scene, naked underneath. He has no more to hide under, the description here is incredibly simple and for that I think as important. The sigils of his family no longer bring him comfort and security, after all, they have resigned him to his fate. He has no delusions now of how little the colors of his house ever really protected him.
Also a little tinfoily but he is still vain in his way, adamant that he does not want to die in dirty clothes. I think this is a subtle bit of foreshadowing as well for after he becomes Reek. In ADWD, Theon asks the Old Gods only for a sword and to die as himself, as Theon and not as Reek. Not wanting to go to his grave in dirty clothes in ACOK however is in line with this as well I think and as we know that Theon in ADWD has finally begun to develop/regain some small sense of his own personhood I think this could be hinting towards how he will eventually die if he does by the end of the series, as Theon and in his own skin/clothes once more.
“A brother of the Night’s Watch. It meant no crown, no sons, no wife…but it meant life, and life with honor. Ned Stark’s own brother had chosen the Watch, and Jon Snow as well. I have black garb aplenty, once I tear the krakens off. Even my horse is black. I could rise high in the Watch - chief of rangers, likely even Lord Commander. Let Asha keep the bloody islands, they’re as dreary as she is. If I served at Eastwatch, I could command my own ship, and there’s fine hunting beyond the Wall. As for women, what wildling woman wouldn’t want a prince in her bed? A slow smile crept across his face. A black cloak can’t be turned. I’d be as good as any man…”
Theon’s final description of clothing in ACOK, when Luwin is trying to convince him to take the black and I would argue the first time in this book Theon has been allowed to step slightly into who he himself is, no coincidence I think that there is imagery in this passage of Theon mirroring what Balon previously did to him by tearing his necklace away. Theon imagines tearing the krakens off of his clothing, forsaking his Greyjoy imagery and leaving him a blank , black slate. Only this time, this tearing away of something that brought him comfort brings him hope instead of embarrassment and confusion.
Theon does not truly care about being a Stark or a Greyjoy, he simply wants to belong somewhere, and somewhere he can live as an honorable man. A black cloak cannot be turned he says, the Watch would be a way for him to essentially completely start over and build himself from the ground up and he is eager to do so, imagining an entire life stretching out before him in which he finds peace and happiness with this choice.
I think this passage is again foreshadowing his eventual becoming of Reek. His mental state here is of a man already prepared to give up everything he has held as ‘him’ in order to continue living. When he is defeated and captured by Ramsay and is forced into Ramsay’s vicious torture and mental training into Reek, he is already susceptible to this kind of conditioning. Is being rebuilt into Reek not simply a more horrific version of the future he saw for himself in the Watch? Being transformed into a blank slate, conditioned to see himself as not even human eventually, and losing much more than only his sigil: his fingers, his teeth, his genitals, his name.
His final outfit description in ACOK set us up perfectly for when we see him again two books later, reborn and reshaped. I may have to do an analysis of Reek outfits once I begin my ADWD re-read to see what comes of those haha…
Jon Snow, of course, is probably the most famous bastard in the story. He's right up front — the bastard of Winterfell. Ramsay Snow is a bastard son of Roose Bolton. Ramsay grew up knowing he was a lord's son but completely disinherited, not part of the castle life, just living with his mother. When Roose’s son died, he was all that Roose had left, so there's a tremendous amount of anger and resentment.
The relationship between Roose and Ramsay is, in some way, a dark counterpoint to the relationship between Ned Stark and Jon Snow. In both cases, a noble father with a bastard son. Roose himself is a cold and calculating man, a dispassionate man. The treatment of the bastard son is very different. Ned keeps Jon Snow at Winterfell; he's raised with Robb and Bran. He's, for all practical purposes, one of Ned's sons. Ramsay gets nothing from Roose.
There are also some analogues here to the Tyrion/Tywin relationship.
this and the breastplate stretcher scenes are my favorite of robert's. i love that in his most intimate and vulnerable moments with ned, he acknowledges himself as a failure. here specifically he is openly ashamed that he did not act as a king should. ned, notably, thinks it is unkingly of him not to punish jaime lannister for the murder of five stark men, but has no opinion of him punching cersei in the head so hard it bowls her over and leaves a bruise over half of her face. as usual the thing that connects them more strongly than their shared childhood is a dead girl and a beaten wife (but a cold and frigid wife who's mean so it's understandable that robert beats her. charitable, almost! he never loved her. not the way he loves a dead girl who he can no longer remember very well.)
i also love how robert frames his own behavior. he is not sufficiently performing kingliness. i love that his reasoning for why he is failing at his station is similar to how sansa reasons out her own behaviors in accordance with her well-studied noble lady's courtesies.
finally rereading asoiaf and it’s mind-boggling to me when people complain about it being grimdark because… it’s so unreservedly and unabashedly about love. in all its forms.
there’s so much love in just the first chapters. catelyn’s love for bran that drives her to catch a knife with her bare hands, ned’s love for lyanna years and years after her death, arya and jon, even those little bonding moments between jon and tyrion. “the things i do for love.” like there is horrific cruelty and unimaginable suffering but the love is so apparent when it ruptures through. it makes me crazy.
« What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy. »
—Maester Aemon, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
«“Jon, did you ever wonder why the men of the Night’s Watch take no wives and father no children?” Maester Aemon asked.
Jon shrugged. “No.” He scattered more meat. The fingers of his left hand were slimy with blood, and his right throbbed from the weight of the bucket.
“So they will not love,” the old man answered, “for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty.”
That did not sound right to Jon, yet he said nothing. The maester was a hundred years old, and a high officer of the Night’s Watch; it was not his place to contradict him.
The old man seemed to sense his doubts. “Tell me, Jon, if the day should ever come when your lord father must needs choose between honor on the one hand and those he loves on the other, what would he do?”
Jon hesitated. He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never dishonor himself, not even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered, He fathered a bastard, where was the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her name. “He would do whatever was right,” he said … ringingly, to make up for his hesitation. “No matter what.”
“Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong. What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.
“The men who formed the Night’s Watch knew that only their courage shielded the realm from the darkness to the north. They knew they must have no divided loyalties to weaken their resolve. So they vowed they would have no wives nor children.
“Yet brothers they had, and sisters. Mothers who gave them birth, fathers who gave them names. They came from a hundred quarrelsome kingdoms, and they knew times may change, but men do not. So they pledged as well that the Night’s Watch would take no part in the battles of the realms it guarded.
“They kept their pledge. When Aegon slew Black Harren and claimed his kingdom, Harren’s brother was Lord Commander on the Wall, with ten thousand swords to hand. He did not march. In the days when the Seven Kingdoms were seven kingdoms, not a generation passed that three or four of them were not at war. The Watch took no part. When the Andals crossed the narrow sea and swept away the kingdoms of the First Men, the sons of the fallen kings held true to their vows and remained at their posts. So it has always been, for years beyond counting. Such is the price of honor.
“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.”
Some of the ravens were still eating, long stringy bits of meat dangling from their beaks. The rest seemed to be watching him. Jon could feel the weight of all those tiny black eyes. “And this is my day … is that what you’re saying?”»
« She gave the skull a mocking kiss. “This is a start, I’ll grant.”
“A start?” said Ellaria Sand, incredulous. “Gods forbid. I would it were a finish. Tywin Lannister is dead. So are Robert Baratheon, Amory Lorch, and now Gregor Clegane, all those who had a hand in murdering Elia and her children. Even Joffrey, who was not yet born when Elia died. I saw the boy perish with mine own eyes, clawing at his throat as he tried to draw a breath. Who else is there to kill? Do Myrcella and Tommen need to die so the shades of Rhaenys and Aegon can be at rest? Where does it end? [...]
“Oberyn wanted vengeance for Elia. Now the three of you want vengeance for him. I have four daughters, I remind you. Your sisters. My Elia is fourteen, almost a woman. Obella is twelve, on the brink of maidenhood. They worship you, as Dorea and Loreza worship them. If you should die, must El and Obella seek vengeance for you, then Dorea and Loree for them? Is that how it goes, round and round forever? I ask again, where does it end?” Ellaria Sand laid her hand on the Mountain’s head. “I saw your father die. Here is his killer. Can I take a skull to bed with me, to give me comfort in the night? Will it make me laugh, write me songs, care for me when I am old and sick?” »
« Arianne Martell arrived with Drey and Sylva just as the sun was going down, with the west a tapestry of gold and purple and the clouds all glowing crimson. The ruins seemed aglow as well; the fallen columns glimmered pinkly, red shadows crept across the cracked stone floors, and the sands themselves turned from gold to orange to purple as the light faded. Garin had arrived a few hours earlier, and the knight called Darkstar the day before.
“It is lovely here,” Drey observed as he was helping Garin water the horses. They had carried their own water with them. The sand steeds of Dorne were swift and tireless, and would keep going for long leagues after other horses had given out, but even such as they could not run dry. “How did you know of this place?”
“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. Sarella turned over rocks, brushed sand off the mosaics, and wanted to know everything there was to know about the people who had lived here.” »
« “A brave young boy with hair of gold,” his players chanted, as a woodharp and a fiddle began to play.
“If I am ever Hand again, the first thing I’ll do is hang all the singers,” said Tyrion, too loudly.
Lady Leonette laughed lightly beside him, and Ser Garlan leaned over to say, “A valiant deed unsung is no less valiant.”
“The dark lord assembled his legions, they gathered around him like crows. And thirsty for blood they boarded their ships …”
“… and cut off poor Tyrion’s nose,” Tyrion finished.
Lady Leonette giggled. “Perhaps you should be a singer, my lord. You rhyme as well as this Galyeon.”
“No, my lady,” Ser Garlan said. “My lord of Lannister was made to do great deeds, not to sing of them. But for his chain and his wildfire, the foe would have been across the river. And if Tyrion’s wildlings had not slain most of Lord Stannis’s scouts, we would never have been able to take him unawares.”
His words made Tyrion feel absurdly grateful, and helped to mollify him as Galyeon sang endless verses about the valor of the boy king and his mother, the golden queen. »
« Her teeth were crooked, which made her shy with her smiles, but she smiled now. “Did you truly cook a singer in a stew?”
“Who, me? No. I do not cook.”
When Penny giggled, she sounded like the sweet young girl she was … seventeen, eighteen, no more than nineteen. “What did he do, this singer?”
“He wrote a song about me.” For she was his secret treasure, she was his shame and his bliss. And a chain and a keep are nothing, compared to a woman’s kiss. It was queer how quick the words came back to him. Perhaps they had never left him. Hands of gold are always cold, but a woman’s hands are warm.
“It must have been a very bad song.”
“Not really. It was no ‘Rains of Castamere,’ mind you, but some parts were … well …”
“How did it go?”
He laughed. “No. You do not want to hear me sing.”
“My mother used to sing to us when we were children. My brother and me. She always said that it didn’t matter what your voice was like so long as you loved the song.” »
« By the time Meera returned, the sun was only a sword’s breath above the western hills. “What did you see?” her brother Jojen asked her.
“I saw the haunted forest,” she said in a wistful tone. “Hills rising wild as far as the eye can see, covered with trees that no axe has ever touched. I saw the sunlight glinting off a lake, and clouds sweeping in from the west. I saw patches of old snow, and icicles long as pikes. I even saw an eagle circling. I think he saw me too. I waved at him.” »
