#jaime lannister daughter imagine

[chloe-skywalker]

Consequences - Jaime Lannister

Jaime x fem!reader (niece/daughter)

Warnings: GOT

Word count: 744

Summary: Y/n likes to learn how to defend herself, and her uncle Jaime wants to help. Bonding time with at least one of his secret children. But will it last?

Authors Note: I think Jaime was screwed over. He deserved a happy ending but they had him go back to Cersei! Thats fucked he desevered better. And he would’ve been a good father, poor guy.

Masterlist

Game Of Thrones Masterlist

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“Now, what are you doing?” Jaime asked slightly amused at how he made the princess jump. He didn't mean to startle her, but he was curious when he saw her sneak off. So he followed his so called niece, to see what she was up to.

“Praciting.” Y/n answered her uncle not looking him in the eyes. She was ashamed, she knew she had no reason to be. But she wasn’t supposed to even be touching weapons. Her mothers orders. Y/n didn’t want to see the look of disappointment or appallment on his face that was on her mothers when she found out. “I’ll be going.”

“I didn’t say you had to leave.” Jaime spoke up confused on her actions, ready to flee as fast as possible.

Y/n turned around to face him, with a furrowed brow she asked. “Isn’t that why you followed me here?”

“No.” Jaime shook his head walking closer to her. “I just wanted to see what you were up to. I’m not telling you to stop, you were doing quite good with that sword.”

He couldn’t help but be proud of what he saw. She had no one to help or train her but she was good. He was definitely taking credit for it in his head. It’s in her blood.

“I’ve been told that if anyone found me here doing this again that I’d be punished.” Y/n grimaced remembering her mother’s exact words.

Jaime lifted her chin with his hand, making her look him in the eyes. He smiled hoping he could encourage her. “I won’t tell. Promise.”

With that Jaime decided that he was gonna help Y/n. He was going to be her teacher, he’d rather she know how to defend herself than not. It’s also an excuse for him to get to spend more time with y/n.

So from then on Jaime and Y/n would meet in the hidden quiet location they had found, and Jaime taught her how to use all kinds of weapons. Plus some hand to hand.

And it was all going well till a certain someone’s little birdies decided to tell the Queen. (Pyter Belish)

^     ^     ^ 

It was a cool day in KingsLanding, perfect for teaching Y/n some archery Jaime thought. He was on his way to her room to walk with her.

“So I was thinking today we could work on-” He stopped speaking as he shut the bedroom door behind him and didn’t see Y/n anywhere. “Y/n?”

“I don’t think it’s good for us to be doing this anymore uncle.” Y/n’s voice came out soft and Jaime swears he could hear it wobble as she spoke.

“But you love-” Jaime stopped in his tracks when he walked over to see her standing on the balcony. As she turned to look at him Jaime was floored. Looking at her face, seeing her split lip and bruised cheek, he was raging on the inside but he didn’t want to scare her so he approached her slowly. “What happened?”

Y/n could feel tears welling up in her eyes. She didn’t want her uncle to see her like this, that’s why she was hiding in her room. “I was spotted training the other day. . . Mother was not happy.”

Jaime cupped one side of her face gently. “Your mother did this to you?”

Y/n gave a stiff nod, biting her lip. “I do not want you to incur any punishment like I have or worse uncle Jaime. I think it best to not do the lessons anymore.”

Jaime pulled her into him, wrapping her up into a tight hug. Trying to comfort her, and make her feel protected. “No, no you love learning how to use a sword, throw knives, hand to hand combat, and I will not let you be defenseless or have something you love taken away from you.”

Y/n pulled back to look into Jaimes eyes worried for him. “What are you gonna do?”

Jaime smiled at her concern for him, brushing one hand through her hair. “Don’t worry about that, just let me take care of it. You just focus on what you wanna learn next.”

Y/n nodded resting her head against his chest. All the while Jaime was thinking about all the things he was gonna say, ripping into his sister. How dare she touch y/n like that. Jaime was not gonna let that slide.

Taglist: @gruffle1 @padawancat97 @misspendragonsworld @starkleila

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[melrosing]

how do you see an AU where Joanna survives and her relationships with her children?

been thinking about this ask whilst eating spaghetti

I think it's a mess with all three. first of all, supposing Joanna survives Tyrion's birth, she also survives to seal the deal with the Princess of Dorne in sending one of the twins off to Sunspear to be betrothed.

and whilst I kind of like 'jam growing up in Dorne' aus, I do think it would most likely be Cersei who gets shipped off. that's namely because in taking Cersei, the PoD reserves Elia for marriage to Rhaegar (I'm sure she was biding her time for that), and in the same fell swoop removes Cersei as her competition (Cers would probably have ranked quite highly before Tywin and Aerys' falling out).

obvs Joanna would be conscious of that calculation on the PoD's part, but 1) she may not necessarily have had the same ambitions for Cersei as Tywin did, and 2) at this particular point Joanna probably needs the betrothal of one of her children to a Martell more than PoD does; she wants the twins separated, but they're still very young at this stage so she would want them in safe hands - and she was once close to the PoD, possibly saw her as an elder sister/mentor figure of her own. so a Martell betrothal is the safest way she can do this, and Cersei would be the one the PoD would offer to take I reckon

so Cersei is forced out of her home at a young age, and I think that could be pretty interesting in terms of Tywin and Joanna's marriage for one thing. like, I assume Tywin would resent two women going behind his back to betrothe his daughter when he expressly had plans to give her to Rhaegar. is he able to put a stop to it?? I think Joanna would insist on it, but that would cause a bit of a rift because Joanna isn't explaining WHY and maybe it's the first time he feels she's crossed a line in her role as his wife.

I ALSO think that if Joanna were to survive Tyrion's birth, some part of Tywin would blame his son's disability on Joanna. in killing Jo, Tyrion martyrs her, but if she survived then it's like she's somehow responsible in Tywin's fucked up mind. bc I don't think he could fathom having had anything to do with his son's conception himself if the son wasn't what he'd wanted. so generally yes I see their relationship being worse and probably more distant with fewer visits from KL.

ANYWAY I digress but thinking about where this situ leaves Joanna and her relationship w her kids!!

JAIME starting with Jaime cos I think this would, relatively speaking, be the most straightforward. I think of the Lannister siblings, all the key Lannisters generally find Jaime the easiest to love and I don't think Joanna would be an exception. I think she's absolutely the kind of mother who would love her sons better, because as a woman she doesn't take such a complicated and visceral view of them as she does her daughter.

HOWEVER she would of course recall what happened between Jaime and Cersei. and I think she would low-key blame Cersei. I think Cersei, whilst charming in her own way, was no doubt a kid who could be angry and sour and difficult to handle, whilst Jaime sounds comparably quite affable and easygoing. so the first fucked up thing Cersei and Joanna's relationship is that Jo decides Cersei is the one who came up with the 'game' so that she can mentally forgive Jaime, because it's easier than reckoning with her son being less than perfect.

and I think the result with Jaime is that he resents Joanna deeply for sending Cersei away, and he dislikes that she keeps trying to acquit him of what they were both doing, and consequently distances himself from her. I imagine them as close before that, so this hits Joanna hard and she turns that resentment on Cers, again making their relationship worse.

possibly the relationship between them heals a little as Jaime grows matures and maybe realises how upset Joanna must have been at the time, but I think he is always angry for what she did to Cersei and doesn't forgive her that.

CERSEI I imagine Cersei stays in Dorne till she's maybe 12-13, and then maybe is made lady in waiting to Elia in King's Landing. and I think she spends the whole time hating Joanna. like I kind of doubt that Oberyn and Cersei would like each other much, and Cersei would always remember she was supposed to be Rhaegar's Queen, and Dorne sucks etc and where's Jaime, and also just like imagine how traumatic to be seven and sent away to some strange place for doing something you didn't even really understand was wrong. of course she'd hate Joanna

I think she only comes home to the Rock intermittently from Dorne, and Joanna is subtly antagonistic to her every time in case Cersei 'corrupts' her son again + Cersei is probably antagonistic in return because Joanna is the one who ruined everything, so it's all fucked. Joanna probably still tries to temper her daughter into the lady she thinks she should be, and Cersei is just not having it. it's awful

TYRION I feel like there's two Schools of Thought (lmao) on how Joanna and Tyrion's relationship would be: one where Joanna dislikes her son but is just more tactful about it than Tywin, and one where they're actually close and Joanna fancies him a bit of a mini-me.

I think it could be BOTH. I think Joanna, who no doubt cares a great deal about her public image and is still v much a Lannister who somehow had it in her to love a man like Tywin (to whatever degree she did), would be disturbed at having birthed a disabled child and would never quite shake that. it would haunt her forever.

BUT Tyrion is smart and funny and desperately wants to love her and be loved by her, and I think she would respond to that with a love of her own. I think she'd try to raise him up beyond what everyone else thought of him, and there'd be a lot of whispering in one another's ears. but she can't raise him up beyond what she, deep down, thinks of him, and that's a bitter truth in their relationship all Tyrion's life. I think she punishes him more harshly than she would Jaime, and is less willing to tolerate any shortcoming in Tyrion - he has to be better in every sense he can be. so there are darker periods in their relationship with Joanna is crueler to Tyrion, and it utterly fucks with his head because he knows how warm she can be when she chooses to be and he doesn't know how to win her love back, it's just like one day she warms again and things are nice once more but he always fears her turning cold again

and I think a big part of this is Tywin blaming Joanna for Tyrion - I think she'd find that hideously unfair, but perhaps also believe it a little.

ANYWAY long post and this is a huge amount of conjecture but long story short I think Joanna is fucked too

#ask #asoiaf #joanna lannister #cersei lannister #jaime lannister #tyrion lannister #long post

[morganas-pendragons]

Fruits Of My Labor | Aemond Targaryen

I was blasting Fruits by Paris Paloma when I wrote this and came up with this idea in the shower. This will contain MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS FOR WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILED, DO NOT READ IT. I did change two things in this as compared to Fire and Blood. 

Enjoy! I’m excited to see what you guys think. This is my first time writing for this universe other than for Jaime Lannister! 

Edit: This literally took me over a week because having a full time job is so time consuming lol 

You should have known better. You were a true born Velaryon, a daughter of the sea and a fearsome dragon rider. You were smart. Fierce. Deadly. 

But you were also a child. A child who had lost her older brother and sister and mother. 

Your cousins. Your life. 

Your family had been your livelihood for so long that you didn’t know how to live without them. Your mother’s comfort, your sisters compassion, your brothers steadfastness, your father’s loyalty. 

You’d take them in all their faults for even a moment if it took your focus off of what fueled you when they were no longer around: Your anger. 

And oh.. you were so prone to your anger. 

***

Blood and Cheese 

When word got back to you about the atrocities committed against Helaena Targaryen, you were furious. Fuming. It had been a long time since someone had been able to provoke you to such rage. 

You understood, and yet you didn’t. A son for a son. Did Rhaenyra not give any considerations to her half-sister? Aegon may be the subject of her ire, but Helaena Targaryen had done nothing to provoke being witness and victim to such levels of cruelty. 

You couldn’t imagine it. So you made Rhaenyra imagine it for you, while your mother stood in the back of the room and bore witness to the dragon fire that lay deep within you. 

  “The gall you have..” You murmur, drawing Rhaenyra and Daemon’s attention where they stand by the fireplace. “Do you realize what you just did?” 

  “They took my son.” Rhaenyra snaps, harsh and cold, the eyes of a grieving mother staring back at you. “Which is something you could not begin to fathom, seeing as how your betrothal ended so abruptly.” 

Oh. That’s wonderful. So now she’s going to use Alicent breaking off your betrothal against you as well? 

  “No, no I didn’t. But at least my children would have been legitimate,” You snarl. Daemon steps forward to intervene, as he always does when it comes to Rhaenyra, but you slamming your fist against the painted table stops him in his tracks. “Did you even consider the ramifications of this, Rhaenyra? Jahaerys was innocent!”

 “The Greens took Visenya and Lucerys from me. They killed my children. It is only fitting that retribution be paid through the loss of their own son!” 

  “Helaena will never be the same again because of what you took from her! You took your vengeance upon a girl who did not deserve it. She was sweet. Sweet, and good, and loved by the commoners. One of my dearest friends.” You jab your thumb at Rhaenyra angrily, eyes lit by the firelight of the candles around the painted table as the two of you stand off against one another. “You took her child away and ruined her. Whatever blood falls upon us now? That’s on you.” 

Rhaenyra is left to hear one final curse before you flee the room, Daemon’s hand resting upon her shoulder to prevent her from following you. 

Things are never quite the same after that. It’s only days later that Meleys is paraded through King’s Landing and your mother’s body lay broken and unmoving after the Battle of Rook’s Rest. 

There’s no one left to temper your anger. 

So, for the rest of the war, that is what fuels you. Your anger and your grief. 

If it gets the job done, who cares what it does to you? 

Anger always wins. 

***

The last time you saw Rhaenys Targaryen, she’d bid you goodbye with a kiss to your forehead and tucked her favorite cloak around your shoulders. It had always been two sizes too big.

She’d whispered affirmations about your future and how proud she was of you in your ear before she walked out the main doors of Dragonstone to Meleys.

You never saw her again.

***

She died less then 24 hours later.

Rhaenyra was the one who told you about Aemond’s involvement in it.

He’d played a hand.

He’d killed your mother.

***

You spent the days following your mothers death weeping, clutching the fabrics of your favorite cloak she often wore when you were a child in trembling fingers. You mourned her presence. Her comfort. You often wished you could join her just to be free of the Dance. 

To be free of him. 

You were a child, and children are impressionable. That was why you loved him. Even when you truly, deeply loathed him for all the pain he caused you and your family. 

  “My Lady? Are you well?” 

You don’t hear your Lady in Waiting call for you from across the room. There you sit beside the window, frail and well beyond your years, eyes cast upon the waters outside the castle while you linger inside the recesses of your own mind.

The Dance of the Dragons ended a long, long time ago. 

You are the only living survivor.  

Your memories are far more pleasant to live in because they are in all of them. Your family is not reduced to the ghosts you now know them as, but are flesh and blood and so very, very real. 

  “Forgive me, Theah... I was just remembering.” 

  “Remembering what?” 

You smile sadly. Something lingers in your eyes as you meet her gaze - she’s so young and so eager to live a life she hasn’t had the opportunity to greet yet - and you see the same lingering within her own that calls to you. It’s familiar. 

It was the same thing that drew you to Aemond. A desire for adventure, for freedom, for life. 

And well... The Dance kept you confined to your duties and kept you from being able to pursue it. 

  “Remembering a better time, sweet girl.” 

*** 

You remember it vividly. Watching from the scorched beaches while Daemon and Aemond take to the skies above Harrenhal, otherwise known as the God’s Eye, to engage in a fearsome battle neither will emerge from. You know it in your heart of hearts. 

A more innocent part of you that still lingers deep inside aches to go to him. To make him see reason, to convince him to surrender to Daemon and Rhaenyra and just... stop. 

To just let it go. The Green’s haven’t been able to do that once since the Dance started, to submit to the succession of Viserys the First would mean abdicating the throne. 

Otto would never let it stand. His lust for power and influence over Alicent had gotten Aegon the throne and plunged the realm into war over the true successor of the Iron Throne. 

The battle descending from the clouds above you is beautiful, in an incredibly tragic and devastating way. 

Daemon and Aemond are locked in a terrifying battle as they plunge from the clouds, Caraxes and Vhagar desperate to bring the other down first. You watch the dragon’s stomach be torn open. The other ripped at the throat. You can’t bring yourself to look away. These two had been friends once. 

You know there’s nothing you can do to prevent what is about to happen. They both brought it upon themselves. Aemond Targaryen brought this painful, agonizing end upon himself with his involvement in the Dance. 

Your breath catches as Daemon rises from his saddle and lunges across the gap to drive Dark Sister into Aemond’s other eye. There’s nothing you can do. You weren’t even permitted the ability to take part. 

The commoners had seen to that themselves.  They'd mercilessly killed all the dragons who remained in the dragon pit. The numbers were dwindling, growing fewer and fewer as the Dance progressed. Four had fallen. Tyraxes, Morgul, Dreamfyre, and Nightshade. 

When Rhaenyra wailed over the death of Joffery - barely a boy, thrown from Syrax for trying to flee to the dragon pit and rescue his birth right - you were simultaneously crying over the agonizing pain that seared through heart, body, and soul at the loss of your dragon. 

By that time in the Dance, you’d lost nearly everyone within the Blacks. All that remained was your father and Rhaenyra, who were at odds anyway. They had been ever since Rook’s Rest. 

Was this your curse? The last of your House, destined to outlive all the others? Is this what the fruits of your labor as the youngest child of House Velaryon had gotten you? 

It’s over before you realize it. 

This was where they fell.

***

  “What time could have been better? You spent so much of your life engaging in war. You are practically a veteran to it,” Theah absently remarks from your bedside. “I do not envy you. War is-” 

  “Debilitating. Agonizing. Crippling.. suffocating. War tore my Houses apart at the seams and took away everything and everyone I loved,” You interject. “I was thinking about when I was barely a woman grown, not longer after being betrothed to Aemond Targaryen.” 

  “Anything specific?” 

It’s always something specific with your memories with Aemond. They usually take you to the same two places: A little run down shack on the cliffs above the sea, not too far from Driftmark. 

The other is a field of endless wildflowers. 

  “The first time Aemond ever took me away on dragon back was not long after he’d claimed Vhagar. We’d disappeared in the middle of the night from the guards posted outside my door, and I’d guided him back to Driftmark to this little house my mother spent a lot of time in before she married my father. It was very out of the way.” You twist the ring on your finger as you speak, the fading memory of your mother’s face flashing in front of you as you do so. The ring is the last thing you have of Rhaenys. “We spent the night there. I told him I wanted to do it forever. That I wanted to leave behind duties and obligations to experience something I never really got to have. Not like my sister and brother did. My mother doted over me far too much.” 

  “And what was the thing you never got to have?” 

You smile wryly. “My freedom, sweet girl. As I am sure you well understand.” 

Theah goes quiet for several minutes. She was brought to you by Aegon the Third not long after the two of you had met. Once he’d read his mother’s last testament - found in her former chambers in the Red Keep after her death - and found your name written within, he’d sought you out and gave you a Lady in Waiting. It had been freedom for Theah. Being your Lady had gotten her away from the brothels. 

You’d thanked both Viserys and Aegon profusely after that. She may be the only soul left in this world sympathetic to your plight.  

You’d never anticipate them traveling from King’s Landing to Driftmark to see you.

  “Did you think it would last? Your betrothal?” Theah asks. 

 You did. Aemond didn't. He knew the Targaryen customs, he knew his duty. He knew Aegon didn’t want to marry Helaena. 

Alicent had also seen how much you meant to her son.

And that could not stand.

  “I would’ve burned down the world to hand its remains to Aemond Targaryen if he’d asked me to,” Something shifts in your gaze then, something cold and hard and unyielding that most have not seen in you before. It was something you’d only learned to embrace during the Dance of Dragons. “And then he betrayed me.” 

Theah furrows her brow in confusion. “What did he do?” 

Lucerys’ innocent face replaces that of your mother. Another soul lost to the war so many years ago, the first of many. Lucerys’ death had been what catalyzed the beginning of the Dance. 

All at Aemond’s hand.

  “He killed my sweet, innocent cousin. He killed him. Then he played a hand in killing my mother and I never forgave him for it.” You shrug. “That was the beginning of the end for something we’d never get to have anyway.” 

***

The minute Rhaenyra received news about Lucerys, you were quick to have the Maesters write a note that you would be hand delivering to Aemond yourself. You would not give him the satisfaction of being able to speak to you in person after the atrocity he’d just committed. 

Poor Luke. He was a boy. So good, so innocent, desperately trying to do his duty and do right by his mother. 

He wasn’t a warrior. He was a child. 

And Aemond had killed him anyway. 

You leave the note pierced through the center by one of your daggers inside of the shack overlooking Driftmark. When Aemond bursts through the door several hours after fleeing Storm’s End, he finds it and frantically opens the letter to reads the words written upon. 

Aemond,��

You have brought what follows the death of Lucerys upon yourself.

Kesan ilimagho līr iksin dōrī  āzma ezīmagon bisa vys.  Se kesan daor ilimagho ao skori aōha hoskagon maghagon aōha ropagon. 

He swallows the knot in his throat and presses his forehead to the paper.

I will not mourn that which was never born into this world. And I will not mourn you when your pride brings your fall. 

Aemond wishes he was brave enough to tell you like he did in this little house on the cliffs all those years ago. 

But just like the dreams of things that will never come to pass, his harbored desires for you die as he flees the cliffsides to Vhagar. 

The house on the cliffs is never occupied again. 

***

You know when you do find what little remains of him that this is what he wrought. There was nothing to be done. 

Nothing, you think, as you remove Dark Sister from Aemond’s other eye and throw it into the water. 

You don’t unchain him. His body will be found years later still confined to the chains that held him to Vhagar’s saddle. 

It’s... quite fitting, really. Aemond Targaryen - the one who sought freedom - dying confined to both his physical and metaphorical chains made quite a lot of sense. 

The thought of it almost made you smile, despite the tightness in your chest. 

You had wept profusely for your mother. For Laenor, for Laena. You refuse to give Aemond that same satisfaction, despite that part of you from your childhood that still wants to chase him forever. 

The childlike spirits of you and Aemond Targaryen run far away together in a field of wildflowers. Far away from war, from pain and suffering, and.. happy. You’re happy. 

Oh how you wish you could be there. 

You grimace and bend down to cup water in your hands. The air is thick with smoke and difficult to breathe in, but you’re more focused about keeping yourself together then falling apart as realization falls upon you. 

Aemond is dead. 

You should be fine with it. He hurt you irreparably. 

So why does looking at him hurt? Why does thinking about all the things you should’ve gotten to do, to be - as his wife, Aemond would’ve let you be anything you wanted if it meant you were free of your duties and obligations as a Velaryon - cut deeper then the sharpest knife? 

   “I would’ve brought this entire country to its knees for you,” You murmur. The water at your feet is tinged red now. The dragons corpses had been settled in it long enough to stain it red. “But you never could have done the same thing for me.” 

It will be quite some time before either is pulled from the water. You are quick to leave - unable to do so on dragon back, since almost all the dragons have been killed by now - by horseback to Driftmark. You and your father are the last Velaryons, and he had made it clear you were to not be directly involved on the fronts of the war anymore. 

It didn’t mean you wouldn’t send Alicent a parting gift first. 

***

  “Were you there when the Dowager Queen died?” 

  “Oh no, but I sent my regards. She got what she deserved. You reap what you sow.”

The regard in question: Aemond’s sapphire eye, taken out with your own fingers, and his sword - both recovered from the body that you left chained to Vhagar. 

You hadn’t been present for most of what happened after the God’s Eye. You’d gone straight back to your father in Driftmark, where he forced you to remain until the end of the war. Corlys was not about to let anything else happen to his family like it had Baela, Rhaena, Rhaenys, Laena and Laenor. 

He’d pass peacefully in his sleep some years later. 

When Alicent Hightower died around the same time, you lit a single candle and placed it in your window. You didn’t mourn her. You hoped she was suffering the same way she’d allowed you and your family to suffer. 

The flame flickered out, and the last of House Velaryon stood. 

*** 

Someone else has entered the room. You’re not sure who, given that your chambers are mostly off limits, and Driftmark is scarcely occupied these days. You pay no mind to it when Theah stands in the midst of your conversation to go and greet your guests. They must be important if your guards let them pass. 

It was only recently that you’d been declared unfit to rule Driftmark. It was never supposed to be yours anyways, but with the lack of heirs and the death of your House, it had gone to you anyway. 

With your passing would also be the end of House Velaryon, never to be remembered as anything other than the House dragged into the darkness with House Targaryen after effectively tearing each other apart. 

  “My dearest one,” Your eyes snap open. It’s been so long since you’ve heard that voice. “The years have been kind to you. You look peaceful.” 

  “The years kept me from you, Mother.” You whisper. “Especially when I needed you most.” 

Rhaenys is the one you keep seeing, both in your waking and dreaming moments. It’s cruel. It’s cruel knowing she’s the only family member to appear to you when so many others could be the the ones to guide you home. Out of this darkness and into the waking light. 

It would be so much better where you were going. 

  “I have waited so long for you to come home to your family.” Rhaenys murmurs, and you find yourself unintentionally leaning outward in search of her touch when her hands extends toward you. “I’m sorry to have left you behind.” 

It didn’t matter. You had sought vengeance for your mother’s death once and for all when the list of living Targaryens dwindled and left so few alive. 

No one ever did find out who poisoned Aegon the Usurper. 

In the corner, Theah stands frozen at the sight of who lingers in the doorway. “Your Grace,” She murmurs in shock, clearly unsure of what to do. “This is a most unexpected surprise. For both Targaryen brothers to be here-” 

Aegon the Younger holds up a hand. He’d only just recently been granted the time to read his mother’s last testament. After being present at the time of her death, it had taken decades for him to gather the courage to even go near the document she’d left behind for her sons. 

That was why he’d let Viserys read it first. That was what led them here. 

  “My Hand and I have come to express our thanks to the last Lady of House Velaryon,” Aegon remarks. “As our mother had asked of us. According to her last testament, she is also the last survivor of the Dance of Dragons who fought on the front lines of the war. We wish to extend our gratitude for all she's done since.” 

Behind her stands Rhaenyra. She’s the same age as she was when she was killed by Aegon, wearing your favorite hairstyle and dress that you’d thought always complimented her so well. You want to think her stare of longing is directed at you. 

It’s not. 

She’s looking at her sons. 

  “My boys. My beautiful boys,” She whispers, coming to stand beside Rhaenys. “Tell them I’m proud of them.” 

So you do. You tell Viserys and Aegon that you can see their mother, as clear as the last time you ever saw her, and that she is sorry for all the suffering they endured during The Dance of Dragons. That she’s proud of who they became and how they honor their family. 

You miss the single tear that falls down both faces at the confession. 

*** 

  “It’s coming.” Viserys the Second murmurs, crossing his arms over his chest as both he and Theah watch you from the side of the room. Aegon is quietly murmuring to you from your bedside. Ever since you’d told the brothers that their mother was proud of them, Viserys had known deep within him that you were not long for this world. 

  “What?” 

  “The end.” 

Aegon feigns a warm smile as he squeezes your hand. “Our mother spoke highly of you, My Lady,” He whispers. “I hope now that you can find some peace of mind.” 

You don’t answer him. You’re too busy reaching, reaching, reaching for your mother’s hand that you’ve so longed to ache for the last several decades that have passed since the end of the Dance. 

  “My love.” A whisper echoes in your ear as you sigh softly, the rise and fall of your chest slowing as Aemond slowly appears in your peripheral. He’s still the same age he was when he died. “Come home to us. Let me make it right.” 

A single tear rolled down your cheek.

  “Can we go to the wildflowers?” You whisper. “And the cliffside overlooking the ocean?” 

  “It’s beautiful here. There’s no pain. No pain, anger, no blood, no suffering... No obligations to our duties.” Aemond extends his hand. “Your mother is waiting for you in the house on the cliffside. A field of wildflowers awaits us. There’s so many to choose from. Come home.” 

  “Aemond...” 

  “I’m ready to love you the way you always desired. I just never knew how. I do now. And I regret every moment that has passed since I cast you aside.” His eye softens. There’s something about him that just seems... gentler. It’s an odd contrast to how you knew him when he was alive. “Come home.” 

Hm. You’d thought that the fruits of your labors over the last decades had rotted and died, leaving you with nothing. No legacy, no heirs, no one left to remember your name. There had been no point to all the fighting for you because you’d lost anyway. There was never a war to be won because it was always going to be lost. 

The Dance of Dragons had effectively torn apart House Targaryen at the seams. 

Maybe your fruits were ripe and you just didn’t know it. You know that all the people you love are waiting for you. That the current king on the Iron Throne knows you well - because his mother had taken careful care to write about you in her last testament - and his brother holds you in high regard. That your Lady in Waiting knows your story and all the horrors that fall upon it. About how you endured and survived, how resilient you became, how you spent the rest of your days ensuring people would not forget the name Velaryon. 

Your last wish for Westeros was to make sure people remembered. Not your name, but your mothers name. Your fathers name. 

They deserved the credit and legacy far, far more than their headstrong daughter driven by the anger that came from duty. 

  “I’m coming, Mother.” You whisper once again, eyes falling closed. “I’m coming, My Love.” 

Your hand falls limp in Aegon’s. No one will admit it, but something dies in both of Rhaenyra Targaryen’s sons that day. They’d had so much still to learn about the mother they barely remembered. To have someone who knew her first hand and had cared deeply for her had prompted them to pursue a relationship with the Heir to Driftmark. 

You knew their story, their mother, better than they ever would. 

   “The Realm has lost quite a woman today,” Viserys murmurs, swallowing the knot in his throat as he presses his hands to Aegon’s shoulders. Theah can’t help but shift uncomfortably. She feels like she’s intruding on a private moment she cannot comprehend. “May the Seven bring her the peace she was never able to find in this world.” 

When the Silent Sisters tend to your body, a single crown sits upon it at completion. 

People would know the Heir of Driftmark died today. 

And so the last of the Sea Snake’s line would cease. 

#Aemond Targaryen #Aemond Targaryen x Reader #House of the Dragon #HOTD #GOT

[tyriongirl]

Tyrion's Heterochromia as an Analog to Lann The Clever Stealing the Sun

This is inspired by this post by @jackedup180 and further conversation with them.

Tyrion does not fit the mold of Lannister looks (fully blond hair, fully green eyes, and, in Tywin's and the rest of abelist Westeros' views, able bodied) and instead is this mix of both blond and dark haired, eyes both dark and bright, supposedly not looking like a Lannister 'should' look.

Tywin clearly thinks Tyrion isn't "truly" Lannister, and this is strictly because of his looks and his highly hyper visible disability:

"[...] Men's laws give you the right to bear my name and display my colors, since I cannot prove that you are not mine. To teach me humility, the gods have condemned me to watch you waddle about wearing that proud lion that was my father's sigil and his father's before him. But neither gods nor men shall ever compel me to let you turn Casterly Rock into your whorehouse."

However, Lann's looks weren't "Lannister" either. In reality (or actually, imagined history / mythic past) Lann wasn't blond, even if that part of the story is being de-emphasized.

"The Lannisters were an old family, tracing their descent back to Lann the Clever, a trickster from the Age of Heroes who was no doubt as legendary as Bran the Builder, though far more beloved of singers and taletellers. In the songs, Lann was the fellow who winkled the Casterlys out of Casterly Rock with no weapon but his wits, and stole gold from the sun to brighten his curly hair."

[AGOT, Eddard VI]

Lann The Clever didn't fit the mold. There was no mold, and there still isn't one now. There's no 'right' way to be or look a Lannister. The story itself is only a legend, a myth, a tale with no actual or very little basis in history:

"Names such as Brandon the Builder, Garth Greenhand, Lann the Clever, and Durran Godsgrief are names to conjure with, but it is likely that their legends hold less truth than fancy. [The World of Ice and Fire, Ancient History: The Age of Heroes] "It is highly unlikely that such a man ever existed; like Lann the Clever [...] the Winged Knight is made of legend, not of flesh and blood." [The World of Ice and Fire, The Vale: House Arryn] "Lann the Clever supposedly lived to the age of 312, and sired a hundred bold sons and a hundred lissome daughters, all fair of face, clean of limb, and blessed with hair "as golden as the sun." But such tales aside, the histories suggest [...]" [The World of Ice and Fire - The Westerlands]

Tyrion's looks stopped Tywin from seeing that he was the essence of what house Lannister was about, before Tywin's bizarre "traditional"-made-up house values that didn't exist until him. Tyrion is a trickster, Tyrion does use his words as his weapon and assets, Tyrion can and have tricked his way into getting what he wants - as we can see with his first trial in the vale, and his deal with the mountain clans.

Instead of acknolwdging that, Tywin prefers to see it as a fault of Tyrion:

"He closed the shutters, frowning. "You have a certain cunning, Tyrion, but the plain truth is you talk too much. That loose tongue of yours will be your undoing." "You should have let Joff tear it out," suggested Tyrion."

[ASOS, Tyrion VI]

Tywin can pretend forever that Tyrion is not a 'true' or 'proper' Lannister ("this was the last time I will suffer you to bring shame onto House Lannister." ASOS, Tyrion I), but in the end it is clear that Tyrion is both a Lannister in values, deeds and character, and inherently Tywin's true and undisputed son:

"Now that's where you're wrong, Father. Why, I believe I'm you writ small." [ASOS, Tyrion XI] "[...] But Tyrion is Tywin's son, not you. I said so once to your father's face, and he would not speak to me for half a year. Men are such thundering great fools. [...]" [AFFC, Jaime V]

Also I just think being the og Lannister would be the cruelest and most fun revenge Tyrion could enact on Tywin <3

#tyrion lannister #tywin lannister #house lannister #meta #valyrianscrolls #lann the clever #mine #i took the basis from the conversation and rewrote it with text based close reading in a state of mania

[gulnarsultan]

Hello there. Sorry for disturbing you, I just got thinking and imagining something. It’s about Yandere platonic House Lannister and Modern Reader and possibly other Modern Readers.

In the Red Keep there’s a book that secured very good, because it’s an important treasure for House Targaryen. There are family portraits of House Targaryen and Modern Readers.

One day Rhaegar Targaryen called Lady Y/N Lannister to show her something. Y/N followed Rhaegar and both of them got to the library.

Modern Reader: My prince, what is exactly you wanted to show me?

Rhaegar Targaryen: The important treasure of my House.

Rhaegar Targaryen pulls out the book out of the shelf and opens it.

Modern Reader confused: A book?

Rhaegar Targaryen: Not a book, but our great, happy memories.

Once the book is opened they see family portraits:

Daenys Targaryen, Gaemon Targaryen, Lord Aenar Targaryen and Y/N L/N the saviour and a faithful loyal friend.

Lord Aerion Targaryen, Lady Valaena Velaryon, baby Visenya, Aegon, Rhaenys and Y/N L/N aka saviour and faithful loyal friend.

King Aegon the Conqueror, Queens Visenya, Rhaenys and Y/N Targaryen aka saviour and faithful loyal friend.

(There are Modern Reader, saviour and faithful loyal friend with Aenys’s family, Maegor’s family and Jaehaerys’s family)

Modern Reader: It’s her? Right? I’m surprised that she didn’t change.

Rhaegar Targaryen: She was immortal, but then she disappeared. No one knows why. It was mentioned, she traveled to Old Valyria to find Princess Aerea Targaryen daughter of Rhaena Targaryen and Balerion the dread. Both returned, but Y/N didn’t. King Jaehaerys commanded to find her, although it was impossible. The Valyria was still burning and not many returned. Princess Aerea Targaryen was sick, but she told them Great-grandmother, Y/N Targaryen stayed in Old Valyria, so princess Aerea and Balerion return safely. Although, our saviour and faithful loyal friend didn’t return.

Modern Reader looks sad at this, because she realised just how important was The Saviour of House Targaryen, then she noticed other portraits: It’s King Viserys 1, Queen Aemma Arryn and Rhaenyra Targaryen, right?

Rhaegar Targaryen: Yes, next to them is Princess Y/N The Great.

Modern Reader: She disappeared too?

Rhaegar Targaryen sighs: Yes, unfortunately. She was The Hand of the Queen.

Modern Reader: There are many titles to her.

Rhaegar Targaryen: Yes, that’s correct.

Modern Reader: Then what happened afterwards, if she solved many problems and made the realm prospered?

Rhaegar Targaryen: Blackfyre rebellions.

Modern Reader: Oh. My prince, I apologise for my question, but why are you showing me this?

Rhaegar Targaryen: Because I… feel like I need to. And I… think there is connection between you and them. That’s why.

Modern Reader pulls out a small portrait of House Lannister, where it’s her and Lannister family members, before Tyrion was born. And she placed the portrait to the book.

Lord Tywin Lannister, Lady Joanna Lannister, Gerion, Tygett, Genna and Kevan Lannister Cersei Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Y/N Lannister.

It’s noticeable that all Modern Readers look similar.

Rhaegar Targaryen: I’m sad, that we didn’t meet you first.

Sooo, what do you think about it? Sorry if it’s long and big, and maybe a little confusing. I just wanted to share it with you. So, your thoughts? As for me, I think other would notice similarities between Modern Reader Lannister (The tribute of Westeros, Problem-solver, The Brave), Modern Reader The Great and Modern Reader aka The Saviour and faithful loyal friend of House Targaryen.

An interesting scenario. Maybe if the loyal friends of House Targaryen are actually the reader's grand relatives. So it makes more sense for the reader to have the same similarities with them.

#got x reader #yandere game of thrones #house lannister #house of targaryen #modern!reader

[racefortheironthrone]

Do you think Tywin is overstating or just lying in ASOS when he says that he has not been able to find a wife for Tyrion? Even with how ableist westerosi society is I would imagine the heir-presumptive to Casterly Rock and the Wardenship of the West would still be a pretty good match.

I think Westeros is just that ableist, and its also a way for people to get away with socially snubbing Tywin Lannister:

"You asked me to reward you for your efforts in the battle," Lord Tywin reminded him forcefully. "This is a chance for you, Tyrion, the best you are ever likely to have." He drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. "I once hoped to marry your brother to Lysa Tully, but Aerys named Jaime to his Kingsguard before the arrangements were complete. When I suggested to Lord Hoster that Lysa might be wed to you instead, he replied that he wanted a whole man for his daughter."

"When I offered you to Dorne I was told that the suggestion was an insult," Lord Tywin continued. "In later years I had similar answers from Yohn Royce and Leyton Hightower. I finally stooped so low as to suggest you might take the Florent girl Robert deflowered in his brother's wedding bed, but her father preferred to give her to one of his own household knights.

Hoster Tully, a man desperate to wed off his "ruined" younger daughter, will not accept Tyrion as his future godson despite the potential that he might be the next Lord Paramount of the Westerlands. The Martells treat it as an insult, as do the Royces and Hightowers and even the Florents prefer not to. I think that a representative enough sample that we can say this attitude is sufficiently broadly held throughout Westeros.

Indeed, I think Willas Tyrell is a good example. Here is a man who suffers a relatively common tourney injury as a young adult rather than at birth, and despite the fact that it ultimately changes very little in terms of his capacities as future Lord of Highgarden, it's noticeable that he too has found it difficult to get hitched (although geopolitics plays a big role in that).

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #westerosi culture

[em-writes-stuff-sometimes]

I'm 99% sure that Daemon will want Rhaenar and Aelys to get married, Rhaenar is his heir and Aelys is his firstborn daughter, I don't see him agreeing to marry her to someone from another house, Daemon is the most pure-blood targaryen person to exist

Hello, @theprettiesthead! Oh, I definitely agree—Daemon will want his twins to marry and strengthen the Targaryen blood of their offspring. I haven’t quite made up my mind as to whether or not this will actually happen, however—his desires aren’t necessarily a foregone conclusion, after all! When I think of a grown-up Aelys, I tend to perceive her as someone who has very little regard for obeying commands. Even if her father demands she wed her brother, I don’t think she’s the type to just accept that and do as she’s bid. She’s her father’s daughter, and as we all know, her father ain’t the obeying type. I’m sure she loves her brother, but I don’t think she’ll grow up to be in love with him.

On the flip side, I have considered how pairing Rhaenar and Aelys would serve to foreground Cersei and Jaime’s twisted relationship. Imagine if there were a precedent in Westeros of high-born twins falling in love, marrying, having children, etc.? What would that do to validate Cersei’s world view that she and Jaime are ‘meant to be’? It would be a great way to provide background to their future and perhaps, in their minds, legitimise their feelings for each other. If the Targaryens can do it, why not the Lannisters? Little things like this help me to see how the actions I shape in this fanfic could have far-reaching consequences for the characters we first came to know through Game of Thrones.

No doubt that Rhaenar will marry a Valyrian; that’s a bare minimum for Daemon. But who is a mystery, currently. Remember—Babey’s not done having kids!

Thanks for the ask!

#fanfiction comments

[catofadifferentcolor]

Terrible Fic Idea #72: Game of Thrones, but make it Ptolemaic

There's something fascinating about the way the Ptolemys took over Egypt following the death of Alexander the Great - sure, anyone can conquer, but it takes an interesting mind to look around for ways to legitimate their rule and fall on sibling marriage as the solution. Yes, it was common among certain royal dynasties, but the Macedonian Greeks, from whom the Ptolemys descended, despised it. I would love a snapshot into how that first sibling marriage came to be.

It was this in mind I stumbled upon the idea for my next terrible fic idea: What if Jon and Robb were not of age with each other?

Aka: The Weirwood Queen Fic

Just imagine it:

Everything follows canon, with two exceptions: 1) Lyanna dies giving birth to a daughter at the Tower of Joy. Ned names the girl after their favorite Great-Aunt, Jocelyn; and 2) Catelyn loses the child she conceives on her wedding night.

(Robb is still born, but his birth date and the birth dates of all the other Stark children are pushed back two years.)

Now, it is one thing to return from war with a bastard when your wife has just given birth to a legitimate heir; it is quite another thing to return from war with a bastard after she miscarried. For this reason Ned choses to pass Jocelyn off as his brother Brandon's bastard daughter with Ashara Dayne.

Jocelyn's childhood is similar in many ways to canon, but not. Without her "twin" or any trueborn siblings to draw attention away, most of the castle dotes on young Jocelyn. Even once her cousins are born, Jocelyn remains the oldest of the lot, filled with the confidence that a child only has when they know they are loved. She loves her cousins in turn, but with the age gap they're never quite as close as canon, and she's more nursemaid for the younger ones than a playmate.

Catleyn, of course, loathes her, and begs for her to be sent away - which she eventually is. But instead of sending Jocelyn to the Silent Sisters, or across the sea, or marrying her off to a loyal man-at-arms stationed on the edge of Stark lands... Ned accepts widowed Rickard Karstark's offer for Jocelyn's hand. He's a loyal bannerman whose family has often wed Stark bastards and was notorious for his care and devotion to his first wife. It is the best Ned can do for her.

And so Jocelyn becomes the second Lady Karstark, which is awkward, as her stepsons are quite a bit older than her and her stepdaughter Alys is only six months younger, but Jocelyn thrives as a lady of a Northern House. Her husband is kind enough and largely allows her to run the house as she will, which is as best as she could have hoped for in a marriage.

By the time King Robert rides north two years later than canon, Jocelyn has given birth to a son, Brandon, and is pregnant with a daughter, Lyanna.

Canon continues apace, if somewhat delayed. Ned becomes hand of the king and loses his head. The North rises up, names Robb King in the North... and Rickard's sons Torrhen and Edward are killed by Jaime Lannister, for which Rickard kills two hostages. Robb still choses to execute Rickard Karstark.

Meanwhile, Jocelyn has been rallying forces to take Winterfell back from the Greyjoy's in the North. She succeeds, only to learn within the week that her cousin has made her a widow.

Jocelyn quietly rages. She'd never loved her husband, but she'd been fond of him. It's the hypocrisy that gets her most - because the Starks have always put family first, but she's known from the beginning that some family counts more than others, otherwise Ned would have never killed her uncle Arthur, or led her mother Ashara to throw herself off a tower, or allowed his son to think it fitting to kill her husband while they knew Jocelyn was preparing to take back his home for him.

And so what you have is Jocelyn continuing to rule Winterfell in her cousin's name but largely acting on her own, never outright ignoring Robb's commands while he's still alive but following the letter rather than the spirit of the order.

This continues for some time, with Jocelyn Queen of the North in all but name after the Red Wedding - holding off the Boltons and the Greyjoys - and gaining the respect of the North.

Into this enter Bran (as played by the Three-Eyed Raven) and baby Rickon.

After four or five years of playing Regent for Sansa, still held hostage in King's Landing, the last thing Jocelyn wants to do is give up power to her thirteen year of cousin who 1) spent the last five years beyond the Wall, letting her do all the hard work of ruling and 2) has no idea what the political situation is in the North. Most of the Northern lords feel similarly and insist Bran and Jocelyn wed, if only so Jocelyn can continue what she's been doing while Bran learns the ropes.

Jocelyn is even less happy about this, but goes along with it in name only, sleeping in a separate part of the castle.

This goes on for about two years, Bran making all sorts of subtle attempts to undermine Jocelyn's rule that - if they'd succeeded - would only have destabilized the North. Jocelyn is gearing up to have him declared addled by his trip beyond the Wall when she catches Bran - or, rather, the Three-Eyed Raven - trying to jump ship into Jocelyn's son seven-year-old son, Brandon Karstark, who with his Targaryen and Stark blood would make a better host.

Explaining to her bannermen just why she murdered her second husband is a challenge, but the evidence - that he was trying to kill her son - is rather irrefutable. Unfortunately, it leaves her in the same position as before, this time having to marry her her ten-year-old cousin Rickon to continue ruling the North.

Through all of this, it should be clear Jocelyn is doing this less out of desire for personal power - though there is a glimmer of that, especially when certain lords demand she give up her regency to man - then desire to stabilize the North. Ned and Robb had gone south, and it had nearly cost the North everything. All Jocelyn wants to do is keep the madness consuming the south from infecting the North too.

Meanwhile, Daenerys and Young Griff have joined forces in Essos, married, and begun their reconquest of Westeros. Amid the chaos, they succeed brilliantly.

They leave the North for last, attempt to replay the submission of Torrhen, but in a much weaker position than The Conqueror was - they have dragons, but winter is setting in and their martial might is largely exhausted by a decade of warfare. Regardless, Jocelyn tells Rickon to bend the knee, realizing the North can't survive on its own for long. For this they get many concessions - a break in taxes, the title of Prince of the North, and the betrothal of the Dany and Young Griff's son and daughter to Jocelyn's children Lyanna and Brandon Karstark respectively.

Jocelyn continues to rule the North, largely without the input of her third husband, who after his majority largely spends his time in Dany and Young Griff's ongoing military campaigns - putting down rebellions throughout their empire, pirates in the Stepstones, and the like - until he is killed crossing a river in Essos. The title of Prince of the North falls to Jocelyn's son, Brandon Karstark, who drops the Kar from his name and rules well - with the help of his mother.

Bonuses include: 1) Jocelyn never expressing anything other than familial fondness for any of her husbands, never sleeping with the second two, and largely being presented as an aromantic asexual who because of societal expectations forces herself to try to have romantic/sexual feelings for her first husband, fails, and then keeps her second two firmly in the baby cousins category; 2) An exploration of family dynamics in Westeros - specifically, what it means to be on the outside looking in as a bastard and knowing that your uncle and cousin don't seem to count the death of your mother, mother's brother, or husband as kinslaying, and being a woman allowed to hold the reins of power while the men are away and being expected to turn everything over to the first male claimant who shows up after you've done all the hard work; 3) The Three-Eyed Raven putting on a masterclass of how to be subtly creepy enough to cause everyone around him to think they're imagining things, when in reality it's worse than they imagined, and having been working even beyond the Wall to help bring about the Targaryen Restoration; 4) No one ever suspecting Jocelyn as being Rhaegar's daughter, and historians using the Valeryian looks her children have with their Targaryen spouses as proof Young Griff was really Prince Aegon; and 5) An exploration of the North, its traditions, and its religion, with Jocelyn somewhat inadvertently bringing about a revival of the last two through her desire to Damnatio Memoriae her late and unlamented Aunt Catelyn.

And that's all I have. I suppose its not as ptolemaic as it could be, but I was thinking of Cleopatra VII and her marriages to her two younger brothers as I wrote it, so. As always, feel free to adopt this plot bunny, just link back if you ever do anything with it.

Other Jon Snow Headcanons: Aelor the Accursed | Aegon the Adopted | Aegon the Undying | Aegon the Unyielding | Aemon the Adventurous | Baelor the Brave | Bastard of Winterfell | Daemon the Destroyer | Daena the Dreamer | Daeron the Desired | Dyanna the Defiant | Elia the Magnificent | Jon the Fair | Jon Whitefyre | King of the Ashes | Lady Arryn | Lady Baratheon | Lady Lannister | Lady Stark | Lord of the Dance | Maekar the Maester | People's Queen | Prince Consort | Prince of Summerhall | Queen Mother | Queen of Nightingales | Red Queen | Rhaegar the Righteous | River Queen | Shiera Snowbird | Visneya the Victorious | Weirwood Queen | Wolf Queen

More Terrible Fic Ideas

#plot bunny #fic ideas #game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #got #asoiaf #jon snow #jon snow is a targaryen #female jon snow #bran stark #rickon stark #arranged marriage #house stark #the old gods #three eyed raven #targaryen restoration #king in the north #queen in the north

[threewaywithdelusion]

GOT Fic

Feedback (and title suggestions!) welcome, as this is a work in progress! This is based off GOT, not ASOIAF, so we have Mad Queen Dany, sorry.

Jaime may have been reluctantly permitted into Winterfell by Daenerys Targaryen and Sansa Stark, with the help of Brienne’s shocking and unwavering faith in him. But that didn’t mean he had been welcomed. 

Everywhere Jaime went, he was watched with wary, distrustful eyes. Whispers trailed in his wake, words like Kingslayer and sister-fucker and Lannister hissed with equal venom. The wildlings, including that savage redheaded fucker who stared at Brienne wherever she went, watched him with open curiosity. His presence here had apparently done a lot to mend the rift between the wildlings, the Northerners, and the armies from Essos, gossip uniting them against a common enemy. 

It seemed the whole world hated a Lannister. 

Jaime had never felt so far from Casterly Rock. Here, he wasn’t Jaime Lannister, Lord Tywin’s hair and future Warden of the West. He wasn’t Jaime Lannister of the King’s Guard. He wasn’t even Jaime Lannister the fearsome knight, now that his fighting skills were mediocre without his right hand. A few days ago, he had watched Brienne teaching men in the yard, where she was eventually joined by Arya Stark, and had been dismayed to learn that he would almost certainly lose to the Starks’ youngest daughter. 

Jaime did his own training, sparring with Brienne in the yard and with Podrick Payne in a clearing in the woods, trying to strengthen his left arm. He ate meager rations of flavorless gruel, despairing at the thought of eating such terrible food for the next several years. He helped the blacksmiths distribute Dragonglass weapons, helped fortify Winterfell’s soot-stained walls for if (when) the army of the dead got past them, and tried desperately not to think of Cersei at every turn. Jaime was never allowed into the war room and he was never left alone. He felt a bit like a prisoner, constantly watched and never allowed near anyone of import.

That was why he was so surprised, after he’d been there a week, to walk into the bedroom he was sharing with Tyrion and Podrick and find Jon Snow waiting for him. 

The last time Jaime had seen Jon Snow, he’d been a mere boy, sat away from the high table and sulking about it. Since then, he’d been Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, King in the North, and was now Lord of Winterfell, despite his bastard origins. 

Jaime had never felt his fall in the world more acutely. 

“My Lord,” Jaime said stiffly. He had no idea what Snow wanted with him, but it couldn’t possibly be good. 

“Ser Jaime,” Jon Snow said, sweeping an arm at Tyrion’s bed. “Take a seat.”

Jaime stepped over his and Pod’s bedrolls and took a seat on Tyrion’s bed. Jon Snow shut the door and gave Jaime a long, unreadable look. 

He had brought no guards with him, but one of his hands was resting over the wolf’s-head pommel of his Valyrian steel sword. 

Jaime did not think that could mean anything good. “Am I being banished?”

“No.”

“Punished?”

“No.”

“Has Daenerys Targaryen decided she can’t forgive the man who murdered her father?”

Something in Snow’s expression twitched. “No.”

Jaime spread his hands. “Then I can’t imagine what I’ve done to deserve the honor.”

Jon Snow frowned. He opened his mouth several times, but no sound came out. 

Jaime sighed and began rooting around the furs on Tyrion’s bed. There was nothing under the pillow, or tucked between the bed and the wall, but a glance under the bed led Jaime to his prize: a skin of wine. 

Snow frowned as Jaime took a swig of it – it was disgusting Northern swill, strong and flavorless. 

“We’re on rations,” Snow said. “You’re not meant to have wine.”

“It’s not mine,” Jaime said. “Clearly your Queen has seen the wisdom in keeping my brother supplied with alcohol for as long as humanly possible. Here.” He held out the skin. 

Snow hesitated for a moment and then took it, gulping down half the wineskin and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“So?” Jaime asked. 

Snow took a deep breath. “How did you do it?”

Jaime waited, but that appeared to be all. “I’m going to need more than that.”

“You and Cersei,” Snow said, making Jaime stiffen all over. “How could you…”

The word sister-fucker rang in Jaime’s ears. 

“Fuck her?” Jaime asked angrily. “I assume you’re not asking me for instructions. I know the Night’s Watch requires you to take a vow of celibacy, but I don’t believe you’re an untouched maiden..”

Snow’s cheeks flushed red as he scowled. “That’s not what I’m asking. Of course I’m not! I meant, knowing that she was your sister, how could you feel… that way… towards her.”

Jaime forced himself to keep his hand off his sword. “I came here to fight the dead, not put up with Northern scorn. I know you’re the honorable Ned Stark’s son,” he said with venom and Snow flinched, “but that doesn’t give you the right to abuse me for my choices.”

“I’m not mocking you,” Snow growled. “I was just- forget it.”

Something about the look on his face, scared and ashamed, made Jaime sit up straight. He knew what men looked like when they were teasing him about Cersei. He knew intimately the disgust on their faces, the way they would look down on him, the way their mouths would twist like they had tasted something sour. He knew Euron Greyjoy’s leer as he said, “”. He even knew how his friends and family treated the subject — Tyrion mostly alluding slyly to Jaime and Cersei’s relationship, unless they were arguing in which case it was fair game, Tommen watching him with questions in his eyes, Bronn teasing lewdly but without making incest seem any worse than the other inclinations he frequently saw in brothels. 

And Brienne. Incredible, honorable Brienne, who had been revolted with his reputation as the Kingslayer and Oathbreaker but had never questioned or begrudged him his love for Cersei. She had repeatedly asked him to be a better man, to keep his oaths to her and to Catelyn Stark, and to do what was right. But she’d never once implied that he should leave Cersei or told him that he was wrong for the way he loved her. 

He wasn’t delusional enough to think that Brienne approved of his relationship. But she didn’t act like he was a monster for it, and that was much more than most people did. 

It was the thought of her stalwart loyalty that made Jaime speak up.

“Snow,” he said, before the other man could leave the room. 

Snow stopped at the door, shifting uncomfortably. He looked fearfully at Jaime and Jaime’s heart sped up as he recognized the mix of guilt-shame-longing on the other man’s face.

He really wasn’t being cruel. He was asking for himself. 

Jaime thought of Arya Stark, laying grown men flat on their back in the yard with the skinny little sword she claimed her brother had given her. He thought of Sansa Stark, cold and beautiful, sitting at the high table beside Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen and ruling like she belonged. 

Jaime supposed either of them could have appeal. But Arya Stark spent every moment she wasn’t training following Robert Baratheon’s bastard around the forge and Sansa Stark stiffened when men stepped too close. 

That was the first important bit.

“We both wanted each other,” Jaime said. “People may judge my choices, but Cersei was no wilting flower who would have let me take advantage. I didn’t force her and I didn’t dishonor her with other women.”

Snow stared at him for a long moment, then said, “I didn’t think you had taken advantage. From what Sansa says, Cersei is formidable and I’m sure she would not have tolerated advances she didn’t welcome. What I want to know is how you were able to overlook your blood connection to love her that way.”

Jaime frowned. Was he trying to overlook a blood connection for marriage? If so, he could only be talking about Sansa Stark. Maybe he planned to marry her to become Lord of Winterfell in a way a bastard could never manage.

“I mean no insult, but Lady Sansa has had four betrothals and two husbands and I’m not certain she’s interested in another.”

Snow looked like he’d just been slapped. “I don’t want to marry Sansa,” he hissed. 

Jaime raised an eyebrow. “Arya?”

She wasn’t nearly as beautiful, but Jaime couldn’t deny that he understood the appeal of a girl skilled with a blade. He would’ve already proposed marriage to Brienne if he wasn’t unworthy of her. He’d pried himself free from Cersei’s claws but she’d left only a tattered, bloody heart in his chest, struggling to beat without its other half. Brienne deserved a man with a whole heart, two hands, and enough honor to rival her own. 

Snow made a face like he might be sick. Jaime tried not to take it personally, though Snow was the one who had started the conversation about fucking siblings and was now acting like the idea was disgusting. 

“No,” Snow said emphatically. “Not Arya. No.”

The only other Stark Jaime had seen around Winterfell was the boy he’d paralyzed, who spoke eerie prophecies and acted too creepily composed for Jaime’s taste. But then again, the Starks followed the Old Gods. Maybe Snow didn’t mind that the boy acted possessed by forces beyond the Wall. 

Jaime had never been able to understand the appeal in men, either, but he thought of Brienne’s devotion to Renly Baratheon and decided not to mention that part. 

“Bran-”

“Stop talking,” Snow barked. 

Jaime snatched the wineskin off the bed and took a long drink. “Either explain what you’re asking or go. I’m not here to watch you look revolted at me, and if this goes on much longer I’m going to take offense and we’re going to find out how much Brienne’s training has improved my left hand.”

Snow nodded jerkily. He held his hand out for the wineskin, took a long pull, then sank next to Jaime on the bed. “It doesn’t matter who this is about. Please don’t try to guess. Let’s just say… it’s a relation on my mother’s side.”

That caught Jaime’s attention. As far as he knew, no one had ever been able to discover the identity of Ned Stark’s secret lover. Robert Baratheon had asked Varys once, in the early days of his reign, but even the Master of Whisperers had been unable to discover the woman’s identity. 

“Go on,” Jaime said. 

“She- I met her before I knew my parentage,” Snow said. “She was beautiful and fierce. I gave her my heart and my body, and then found out that she’s my…”

He trailed off, looking uncomfortable, and Jaime filled in the word sister. 

“It seems to me the damage has already been done,” Jaime said. “You already love her. You already fucked her. What could you hope to gain from staying away now?”

Snow looked miserable. “If I’d known, I wouldn't have let myself feel this way.”

Jaime snorted. “Knowing something is forbidden has very little effect on love. Letting yourself feel a certain way is a fantasy we tell ourselves to pretend we have any control over the matter.”

“I don’t believe that,” Snow said. “We’re not animals. My father always said that family and duty come first and we can choose who we love. He and Lady Catelyn weren’t a love match, but they did have true affection for each other.”

“Your father was an honorable man,” Jaime said. “Honorable to the point of madness, really. And yet, he fathered a bastard. If that isn’t evidence that we have no control over who we love, I don’t know what is.”

Snow flinched, but he didn’t contradict Jaime. 

“Look, you said you’d given this woman your heart. Did you stop loving her because you found out she’s your sister?”

Snow shook his head. 

“Did she stop loving you?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t know?” Jaime repeated incredulously.

“And I can’t tell her,” Snow continued. 

“Then why are we even having this conversation? You can’t lie to her to take her to bed — that would be dishonorable. And once she knows, she may not even want you.”

“I wouldn’t lie to her,” Snow said hotly. “I haven’t touched her since I found out. But she grew up… I don’t think she’ll be deterred by knowing we’re family. So I might have to be the one to walk away.”

“Why?” Jaime demanded angrily. “Society’s scorn? If you’d walk away over that, you don’t truly love her. Do you know what I put up with to be with Cersei? Even before the world knew, I had to watch her marry that pig Robert Baratheon. I had to guard his chamber door while he took her to bed and hear what they did together. I had to pretend that disgusting man was the father of my children and keep my distance from them so no one would ever realize he wasn’t. And ever since your father saw fit to announce our love to the world, I’ve been sneered at and disrespected and called every foul name in the book.  I endured it all — everything — because I love Cersei. She was worth it.”

“It’s not that,” Snow said quietly. “The world doesn’t even know we’re related, so I’m not worried about people’s reactions. At least not yet. It’s just… the possibility of children.”

“Children?” Jaime echoed, pulled up short. 

Snow glanced at him, then looked away. “There’s a reason we’ve had so many mad Targaryen kings. Every time a new Targaryen is born, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land. They intermarried, they all went mad, and the realm suffered for it. And — I’m sorry, I know he was your son — but you can’t deny there was something truly wrong with Joffrey. I’ve heard what he did to Sansa. I don’t want to have a child like that.”

Jaime’s heart ached dully. His children, his wonderful, beautiful children, were all dead. Tommen had jumped from a window as a result of Cersei’s machinations. Myrcella had died in his arms, right as he’d begun to hope he could be a real father to her. He missed them both so, so much. 

He missed Joffrey too, but differently. The boy had always had an appetite for cruelty and Jaime had feared what he would become. He’d loved Joffrey because he was his son, but he’d never managed the unadulterated love for him that Cersei had. 

Say what you would about Cersei, she had loved her children more fiercely than any mother in the world. 

“I don’t think intermarriage is the problem,” Jaime said quietly. “The Targaryens already had madness in their bloodline — of course it was going to be passed down. And Joffrey… I loved him, yes, but I realize he was flawed. He could be cruel and selfish and vindictive. And… I know where he got those traits from.”

Cersei had known as well. When Myrcella had died, she’d said I don’t know where she came from. She was nothing like me. No meanness, no jealousy, just good. 

There had been no similar words said for Joffrey. 

“As long as your lover isn’t mad, you don’t have to worry,” Jaime said. “Besides, I’m assuming she’s baseborn if she’s a relation on your mother’s side? The Targaryens and Joffrey were only problems for the realm because they sat on the Iron Throne. Your children won’t be a danger to anyone else.”

If possible, Snow looked even more miserable at that. He flinched violently, as if Jaime had slapped him, and Jaime’s blood ran cold. 

Snow wasn’t in love with Sansa or Arya Stark. Everyone knew Snow had been conceived while Ned Stark was fighting in the South, which ruled out any Northern ladies or wildlings as his relations. No love for a lowborn girl would put that look of fear on his face, and the only southern Lady present was Brienne of Tarth, who Jaime was certain hadn’t had a madly passionate affair with Jon Snow sometime in the last few months. 

The only highborn girl left as a viable option was Daenerys Targaryen. 

Jaime thought back and suddenly it seemed stupidly obvious. He’d heard the men whispering about Jon Snow riding one of Daenerys’s dragons. He’d heard the dirty jokes about how Daenerys had gotten the King in the North to bend the knee and give her his crown by spreading her legs. He’d seen her looking at him in the Great Hall as he walked away from her, trying to hide her hurt. 

“Who was your mother?” Jaime growled. 

Snow shook his head. 

“Rhaella Targaryen?” Jaime asked. 

Snow’s head shot up so he could look fearfully at the door, as if afraid of being overheard. 

Well he would be afraid if he was a Targaryen bastard, wouldn’t he?

“Rhaella Targaryen was your mother?” Jaime repeated incredulously. 

“No!” Snow snapped. He glanced at the door, lowered his voice, then said, “Lyanna Stark was.”

Jaime blinked. Ned Stark had fucked his sister? But no, Snow hadn’t been asking about being the mad child of an incestuous union. He’d been asking about producing such a child. About being in love with a woman. 

That meant Ned Stark wasn’t his father at all. And given the boy’s age and the fact that his mother was Lyanna Stark… 

“Your father was Rhaegar Targaryen,” Jaime breathed, horrified. 

Snow looked like a hunted thing. Only he wasn’t a Snow, was he? Was he a Waters? A Sand? 

“No one can know,” Jon said. 

It made sense now why he hadn’t told his lover. Daenerys Targaryen had never truly been in the line of succession for the throne, as Aerys’s third child and a girl. But Rhaegar’s son, even a bastard one, would have a fairly legitimate claim. 

He didn’t want to steal her crown. 

“Neither of you is entirely in the line of succession,” Jaime said, stretching the truth to ease the look of misery on Jon’s face. “She’s a woman and you’re a bastard. I’d say you have about equal claim.”

“No,” Jon said hoarsely. “We don’t.”

“I know you want her to sit on the throne, but speaking from a historical perspective, a bastard-“

“I’m not a bastard,” Jon said. 

Jaime stared at him. “What?”

“Rhaegar had a Maester annul his marriage to Elia Martell. He married Lyanna Stark under a weirwood tree.”

Jaime seized the wineskin and drank until it was empty. He was sitting beside a trueborn Targaryen son, a man who could possibly have ended the War of the Five Kings had he known his real identity at the time. A man who could cause a new war if he joined Cersei and Daenerys in vying for the throne. 

“You’re fucked,” Jaime said eloquently. 

Jon Targaryen laughed humorlessly. “Yeah.”

They lapsed into silence. Jaime didn’t know what Jon was thinking of, but he was remembering the honorable, lovable prince that had been Rhaegar Targaryen. He remembered the Mad King screaming, “burn them all!” Remembered the smoke of the burning Sept of Baelor and the cold look on Cersei’s face as she sat on the Iron Throne. Remembered Daenerys and her dragon setting fire to his army in the field, terrible and unstoppable, the smell of burning flesh permeating the air.

“You asked the wrong question,” Jaime said finally. “You asked me how I could still love Cersei, knowing she was my sister. I don’t think that’s what you’re wondering. You still love Daenerys, even though she’s your aunt. You’re wondering if loving her is going to doom you and everyone you love.”

Joffrey, eyes bulging as he died in his mother’s arms. Myrcella’s sweet smile before she was murdered for Ellaria’s revenge. Tommen, jumping from the window when he saw what his mother had done. 

Brienne’s Renly, killed before her eyes. Alton Lannister, Jaime’s cousin who he’d beat to death with chained hands in Robb Stark’s war camp. The army Tyrion had burned to death with wildfire. Catelyn Stark and her son, murdered at a wedding. Oberyn Martell’s failed vengeance for his sister. Jaime’s father, shot to death on the privy by his own son. Tyrion’s dead whore. All the innocents who died in the sept. 

How many had died because of his and Cersei’s sins? Because of Cersei’s thirst for power and his undying loyalty. 

“She’ll ruin you,” Jaime said hoarsely. “She’ll kiss you, and you’ll love her. She’ll bear you children, and you’ll love her. She’ll frighten you, and you’ll love her. You’ll give her all you have — your heart, your honor, your dignity, your life — and it won’t ever be enough. As long as she sits on that throne, there will always be enemies and there will always be sycophants and if you aren’t the one, you’re the other.”

He looked at Jon’s eyes, dark and frightened and pained. Stark eyes. Nothing like his father’s. 

Daenerys? She reminded Jaime all too much of the Targaryens of old. 

“Daenerys isn’t Cersei,” Jon protested. 

“No? Jaime asked wryly. “Because she’s beautiful, strong, and kind? Cersei was all those things once.”

“It’s not the same!”

Jaime pitied the boy. But he was what, four and twenty? Older than Jaime had been when he’d been thrust into the game of thrones by Cersei’s ambition and Aerys’s madness. 

“Aerys burns them in their homes, Cersei burns them in their septs, Daenerys burns them in their fields. Kings and Queens — they’re all the same. They want power and they’ll do anything to keep it. And when she’s destroyed all you care for, killed your children and wasted your honor and done the one thing you can’t forgive ��� you’ll love her still.”

Jaime still loved Cersei. He hated her too, perhaps in equal measure. But Cersei was part of him — not in the way she’d always said, we came into this world together and we’ll die together, but someone who had shaped who he was for so long that he didn’t truly exist apart from her. 

Jon’s face was a blaze of fury. “I think you should leave.”

Jaime stood and walked towards the door, ready to ask Tyrion to hunt down more wine for him to drink. 

“I’m not you,” Jon tried, when Jaime was almost to the door. 

“No,” Jaime agreed. “You aren’t.”

Jon slumped with relief and that was how Jaime knew, as an absolute certainty, that Jon was on the path to loving Daenerys the way he had loved Cersei — irrationally, unconditionally, and irrevocably. 

“You’re not me,” Jaime repeated sadly, looking at Jon Snow’s somber, despairing face. “Not yet. But you will be.”

And Jaime walked out the door. 

#game of thrones #game of thrones fanfiction #jaime lannister #Jon snow #daenerys targaryen #got season 8

[inthehoneymoonwithconnorrk800]

IMAGINE:

If Arya was a Lannister The image does not belong to me. Possible timeline and wording errors, sorry.

-Remember the baby who cried and struggled to survive, thinking it was a boy? Well no, it was a girl.

-The baby survived to Cersei and Robert's peace of mind, both of them finally agreeing on something.

-Cersei had a long list of names, preferably originating from Casterly Rock. Meanwhile, Robert was over the moon. It took about 30 days for him to finally choose a name, Cersei had never been so embarrassed of her lord husband (for the moment).

-The king named her Arya. It turns out that, in those thirty days, he was messaging his lifelong best friend Ned Stark, asking for advice on a good name and how to be a good father. Ned upon reading that the girl was born with black hair like her father and watery eyes (I don't know if Baratheon blue or brown like show! Robert, how do you prefer it?), without hesitation sent him several respectable northern names and one of them was Arya. The king loved it, it sounded like Lyanna. Actually, he planned to call her that but his Lannister wife gave him the most murderous look when he vaguely commented on it, to test the waters.

-Arya Lannister grew up with all the luxuries and attentions of her position. However, the years passed and so did the resentment between Robert and Cersei.

-Arya from an early age, was rebellious. That pleased Cersei, it reminded her of when she was a child, and instead of Tywin forbidding her something, Cersei granted it. So she learned to ride, to train with wooden swords and to know about war strategies. However, Cersei had her limits: like to know how to behave like a lady, to know how to sew perfectly, to present herself with other children of her rank, little things like that.

-Robert loved it, saw the wildness in her blood and imagined that Arya was the daughter he and Lyanna Stark might have had. Arya was teasing, mischievous and enjoyed roaming the halls of the Red Keep.

-Every time Cersei looked at her, she felt a sneer at her strong resemblance to her father. That was when she was about eight to nine years old. Her walk, her tone of voice, her expressions, it was something she couldn't stand. She let him drop out of her "boy" classes despite Robert's protest, following the advice her father Tywin had given her years before.

-"You should act, as well as x lady," "speak as a maiden should," and "is that the best attire you have, call your maids." It was Arya's day to day life.

-But Arya Lannister was proud. When lions do not fight, they hide and continue to fight from another perspective. She ran away, looked for hiding places, begged her father to oppose her mother (unsuccessfully).

To make matters worse, baby Joffrey arrived. He was blond and identical to his mother, to the point that he absorbed all her attention. Arya had annoyed him a little, but then she was glad, she could have more freedom to do what she wanted.

She made all the fuss she could that caught Tywin Lannister's attention. Annoyed, he traveled with Tyrion to reassure his first granddaughter. When it was hinted to become his ward, Cersei's denial was immediate (she knew firsthand her father's cruelty even to his own blood), then, the second idea was for Tyrion to serve as nanny, practically.

The king was amused and agreed to the deal. Not knowing the impact his uncle Tyrion would have on little Arya's life.

Quickly, Tyrion settled in and engaged in wry talks with the young Lannister. They both fled Cersei's wrath, sometimes with her uncle Jaime acting rather strangely around Arya.

When Arya bled, it was the worst day of her life. An ambitious and spiteful Cersei, a cold Tywin and a friendly Robert, were looking to see which would be her best match.

That was when Arya went from being a little girl to being a woman.

#cersei lannister #queen cersei #robert x cersei #got #game of thrones #asoiaf #a son of ice and fire #books #house lannister #lannister #house baratheon #baratheon #robert baratheon #bobby b #game of thrones headcanon #game of thrones imagines #tyrion lannister #tywin lannister #hear me roar #ours is the fury #what if...? #what if...? got #what if...? game of thrones #a song of ice and fire #arya stark #arya #arya lannister #king robert #king robert baratheon

[anxiousnerdwritings]

If Yan!Rhaegar fell for Joanna!Lookalike!Reader, how would Platonic!Yan!Cersei react? Would she be jealous or try to protect her sister? How would the Lannisters as a whole react to Rhaegar courting the Reader? I can see her family getting pissed when Rhaegar names Reader his Queen of Love and Beauty. I also like to think that in this timeline, the rest of the Targaryens are platonic yans for Joanna!Lookalike!Reader. They'll get her, whether through marrying Rhaegar or kidnapping. Thoughts?

(I finally found the original ask I was looking for! Thank you so much for resending it again along with adding more to it. I definitely plan to get to those ones too but I’ll start with this one first.)

First off, I imagine this being a complete blindside for Joanna!lookalike!Reader. Her mind would immediately be plunged into a panic. She can’t help but think that she’s accidentally stolen away her sister’s betrothal and how hurt and upset her sister must be at her. Only Cersei couldn’t care less about that, she’s upset at the idea that her beloved sibling, the only piece of her mother she has left is going to be married off. If it were anyone else than yeah she’d probably be jealous that they got Prince Rhaegar over her and complain about it here and there for a bit but she’d get over it. Not this though, this is completely different.

It’s one thing for Cersei to be betrothed and married off but for her and her family’s precious Joanna!lookalike!Reader to be betrothed and married off is a different deal. It’s a huge deal really. I think at first Cersei and Jaime would have more of a problem with this than Tywin would. That is until it’s made very apparent that Joanna!lookalike!Reader is actually the embodiment of his late wife. I could see Aerys having passed on the Cersei betrothal only to instead decide on Tywin’s youngest daughter for his son instead, maybe he saw how much she was growing into looking like Joanna than Tywin had caught on to yet. It would be yet another way for Aerys to get at Tywin, especially when it’s for sure that Reader is looking more and more like Joanna. Maybe it’s even Rhaella who is the one to point out how much the Reader looks like Joanna that garners Aerys’ attention.

It would be much more tolerable for the Lannister’s to go along with Rhaegar and the rest of the Targaryens taking an interest in and being involved with their Joanna!lookalike!Reader if she were the first and only wife of Rhaegar. Like instead of Elia it was Joanna!lookalike!Reader from the very beginning to the very end. They could deal with that even if it did bother them that there were other people just as attached to their darling than they were. But if Rhaegar were to instead choose Joanna!lookalike!Reader as his Queen of Love and Beauty while he was married to Elia and take to courting her now, House Lannister would be absolutely disgusted. How dare he do something like that to their precious Joanna!lookalike!Reader. They couldn’t care less about Elia and how this affected her and her children. Their only priority and care was towards their own. But the same couldn’t be said for Joanna!lookalike!Reader whose first thought would immediately be in regards to Elia and her children with Rhaegar and what this would all mean for them. She can’t help but be plagued with the realization that she would be breaking apart a family and that makes her sick to her stomach. Even more so if she and Elia were friends too, she’d feel like this was a massive betrayal not only as a friend but also as Rhaegar’s wife.

Joanna!lookalike!Reader would try to persuade Rhaegar, even pleading with him, to go back to Elia and to do right by her and their children. And Rhaegar may even try to but it just takes Rhaella’s assurance and encouragement, along with even Aerys in his ear and Rhaegar’s own wants of course, to keep him pining after Joanna!lookalike!Reader. He stands by his decision, this is what he wants. This is who he wants and nothing could make him happier. Maybe even Rhaegar and Elia have come to an agreement and Elia is another one encouraging him and is in support of him courting the Reader. Maybe since her last pregnancy took so much out of her, even almost killing her, maybe Elia and Rhaegar agreed that he needed another wife to give him what he needed in his endeavors concerning his prophecy. If Elia and Joanna!lookalike!Reader were friends before this than maybe Elia was even the one to point Rhaegar in her direction. Maybe he and Elia even spark up a poly relationship with Joanna!lookalike!Reader? It would certainly put the Reader at ease if Elia were to assure her that this whole thing with Rhaegar was okay and that she should go through with it. Especially if Elia were to say that this is what she herself wanted to happen.

Rhaegar and Rhaella would be very adamant to protect and keep Joanna!lookalike!Reader away from Aerys. Given how he was towards the real Joanna while she was alive it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Aerys’ interest in the Reader would definitely be creepy and certainly much more unhealthy than everyone else’s and that’s saying something. Also, if Joanna!lookalike!Reader were to marry Rhaegar in either scenario, Tywin would keep his place as Hand of the King to not only be closer to his child but to also ensure that the Kingdom was in fact being dealt with and taken care of the rightful way. Jaime would still become a Kingsguard, both of his own accord as well as Tywin and Cersei urging him into it to protect their beloved Reader.

If things go well enough and Rhaegar is more than good to their darling, proving himself and being a devoted husband and protector to Joanna!lookalike!Reader, loving and caring for her to no end, then House Lannister wouldn’t see any reason to interfere more than they already have. The biggest thing would rear it’s ugly head whenever the Reader fell pregnant, everyone would be on the edge of their seats. And you can bet the room the Reader would be in while delivering would be packed not only with her family but also Rhaegar and the rest of the Targaryens, the best Maesters around, Elia (probably Oberyn too), Lyanna (cause why not she and Joanna!lookalike are probably friends, Ned’s probably there too by default), and a few Kingsguard (mainly Arthur Dayne and Barristan Selmy). Everyone would be there with bated breath hoping, praying for the best outcome for both the Reader and the child.

If Joanna!lookalike!Reader were to die in childbirth especially, House Lannister would be devastated. They’d blame Rhaegar to no end and would retaliate, holding nothing but resentment and loathing for everyone involved. It wouldn’t be immediate but it will happen, no matter how long it took. Instead of Robert starting the great rebellion it would be them and there would be far more casualties this time around.

#anxious answers #yandere house lannister #yandere house targaryen #yandere cersei lannister #yandere rhaegar targaryen #yandere game of thrones #yandere game of thrones concept #yandere concept

[melrosing]

MBO Robert's Rebellion: Episode 7

for those keeping track, another minor amend to timelines - pushed this ep's events one year later than canon to give Duskendale room to breathe, and conflated Jaime's trip to Riverrun (which has no canonical date but was probably a couple years later than this) with the Lannisport tourney (canonically one year earlier than I have it here). the chronology around each event didn't seem to matter too much and also I really wanted to introduce the Tully sisters at this point, so Jaime's Riverrun visit seemed like the most natural way to tie them in with someone we've introduced already.

also, switched the victor of the Lannisport tourney from Arthur to Rhaegar as I had it the other way round in ep3!

mostly this is a big ole check in with the Robert's Rebellion generation and what kind of kids they are. Cers and Mags didn't seem all that relevant in the grand scheme of things but it felt weird to leave it out given that all goes down during the Lannisport tourney so whatever

Prev: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6

Next: Episode 8

title for this one: Cersei's First Homicide

One year timeskip ⏱We’re in the Riverlands, where a young Petyr Baelish (9) is punting Cat and Lysa down a calm, narrow river. Cat (13) and Lysa (11) lie back together at the prow, whispering loudly to one another in their secret language - this seems to be annoying Petyr, who doesn’t understand a word. He asks them not to speak it, which makes the sisters laugh - together, they rock the boat until Petyr loses balance and falls over aboard

Edmure (aged.... let’s go with 6) appears on the riverbank: Father wants them back at the castle. Petyr asks for a hand out of the river, which Lysa says he’ll only have if he says that he loves her. Petyr looks slightly aghast, and Cat, taking pity, offers him her own hand. Lysa’s turn to look put out

The trio make their way back to the castle; in the courtyard, Hoster Tully greets Jaime Lannister (11), who is acting as a messenger between Lord Crakehall and Riverrun. Hoster introduces his daughters (proudly mentioning Cat's recent betrothal to Brandon Stark), his son Edmure, and, irritably, Petyr - who looks like a drowned rat. Jaime says he does not know House Baelish, Petyr says he imagines there’s much and more the young lord of Lannister does not know - earning an abrupt dismissal by Lord Hoster to go clean himself up

Opening 👏 creds 👏

Meanwhile: Casterly Rock, where Tywin Lannister is hosting a tourney in celebration of Prince Viserys’ first name day. Rhaegar Targ (18) is in concert, playing a sad song on his lil harp. A young Cersei (11) weeps in the audience; her friend Melara teasingly nudges her - Cersei elbows back a little sharper, embarrassed. She casts a hopeful glance to Tywin Lannister, who sits nearby: Tywin returns her looks and nods

Tywin turns to King Aerys, sat beside him, and tries to say something; however Aerys is deep in conversation with one Steffon Baratheon, making a point to ignore his Hand. Meanwhile in the background: cameo from Tyrion Lannister (4), looking bored as hell

The tourney itself: standard scenes of men playing w sticks, concluding in a final face-off between Rhaegar and Arthur. Reminiscent of their first match in ep3, they charge, and Rhaegar wins this time - he’s at the top of his game. Arthur looks entirely unperturbed by his loss, and celebrates Rhaegar with the crowd. Aerys in the background, clutching Viserys like some kind of comfort blanket

Evening, in the Vale with Ned (14) and Robert (16). The two friends are walking down the streets of a nearby town. Entering what’s not quite a brothel, more like a seedy pub, Robert tells Ned he should have his first woman tonight. Ned declines despite Robert’s teasing, but Robert, undeterred, finds a girl for himself. Ned sits awkwardly with a pint of ale whilst Robert sits with a girl in his lap, and asks Ned if Lyanna’s anything like this one?? Ned makes no comment

Cersei and Melara, feeling v giggly and excitable, are sneaking out for their own excursion into the night, to meet Maggy thee Frog. They make their way through Lannisport and vanish into a dark wood on the perimeter

Aerys, in the gallery at the Rock. Aerys is looking upon a portrait of Joanna, and looks irritated to have been interrupted when Tywin approaches. Aerys notes that Cersei looks a great deal like Joanna; Tywin agrees this is true. Carefully, he suggests that they might announce a betrothal between Rhaegar and Cersei - we get the impression that Tywin has raised this many times, and now seeks a final answer. Aerys gives him one, and says that he has no intention of marrying his son to his servant’s daughter. On Tywin, who’s really this close to starting a job search on linkedin

Meanwhile: Cers & Melara. They find Maggy’s tent, and that whole thing happens with Cers getting her horrible little prophecy idk we know how it goes. Subsequently, Cersei trying to hold it together as they leave, and Melara attempting to laugh it all off. They enter a clearing with a well in the midst (!!!!), and Melara tries to console Cersei - a prophecy can’t come true if no-one speaks of it!! Cersei looks up - cogs turning behind her eyes. And anyway, says Melara, she knows she’s going to marry Jaime, so Maggy really is just a stupid old - oh shit Cersei has pushed her down a fucking well!!! I would say Cersei’s crime wiki starts here but well. there was that shit with Tyrion already

Melara screaming at the bottom of the well. Cersei looks as though she can’t quite believe what she’s just done. For a long moment she stands leaning over the edge, looking silently down at the desperate Melara, who begs her for help. Cersei lowers to the ground, leaning against the side of the well - she needs to sit with this for a bit

Ned, leading a drunken Robert back to the Eyrie. He looks annoyed with his friend, like he’s done this before, but this time it’s worse. Then Robert says something to make Ned laugh, and Ned struggles not to smile

Back with Cersei. It’s dawn - she’s somehow fallen asleep at the side of the well. She looks back over the edge: Melara is wide awake, still trying to call, but her voice is shaky and hoarse. Cersei looks down at her for a long moment, and then departs; we hear Melara croaking in dismay

Cersei sneaks back inside Casterly Rock, using some weird connection of tunnels idk. She enters her bedchamber, dresses down and climbs into bed

At Riverrun: Jaime walking with Catelyn and Lysa in the castle gardens, blathering on about swords and squiring. Lysa attempts an interesting comment on the subject, but it doesn’t seem to register with Jaime; Catelyn gives her sister an apologetic smile, and rolls her eyes sympathetically

Back with Cersei once more, on her way to breakfast with Genna; Genna notes that her niece looks tired lol. And then, unfortunately, she must break some bad news: King Aerys has turned down Tywin’s proposition, and will not marry her to Rhaegar after all. Cersei breaks down on the spot, but Genna wills her to stop her tears, and look strong when they present themselves, show the Prince what he’s missing. Cers puts on a brave face as she enters the hall, but catching sight of Tyrion sat with their uncles, some of the façade falls away

Riverrun once more, at table: Jaime is pestering Brynden Tully for stories, Lysa is looking dejected at his side. Hoster suggests that Brynden might have duties away from the table, which Brynden happy latches onto and makes a departure. A disappointed Jaime decides to attempt conversation with Catelyn instead; Lysa looks close to tears, and asks Hoster if they might invite Petyr to table. Hoster like. no lol

A feast at the Rock. Aerys holds up Prince Viserys for everyone to applaud him: Viserys like :-|

Aerys makes an announcement!! Rhaegar is long overdue a betrothal! Tywin and Cersei actually look hopeful for a minute before Aerys goes on to say that he’ll be sending his old friend Steffon Baratheon (little wave from Steffon) across the Narrow Sea to find the most eligible woman for their future queen. nice. What could possibly go wrong

#sparknotes robert's rebellion #asoiaf

[atopvisenyashill]

What if Ned and Catelyn were gender bent? And let's assume they still get married though this time they're betrothed from the get-go what happens? How does this change things? Who does Lysa marry now that she's the only Tully daughter? Does Littlefinger fall for her instead? Who does Robert want to marry if he's not friends with Ned? Who is Lyanna betrothed to?

i rewrote this answer ten times sorry.

firstly - we know who lysa was supposed to marry and that’s jaime. if the northern-riverlands alliance is already there with nedcat, hoster is gonna look at the westerlands and the eyrie, his powerful neighbors, for lysa. i imagine the jaime to jon arryn pipeline goes the same for her regardless of how the plot changes. however, lysa without a perfect older sister to feel inferior to is gonna be a vastly different person, and a petyr without an unattainable and perfect cat to get fixated on is also wildly different. maybe those two crazy kids try to run away when hoster & tywin start talking engagements, esp since jaime & cersei are ALSO plotting, but i canNot imagine petyr and lysa are particularly successful.

when it comes to robert, that is admittedly tricky - rickard sends ned to foster at the vale in part because robert is there, but benjen is several years younger than ned and that bond might not exist so seriously without ned there (and, if you want my opinion, the smartest thing to do in this situation is actually for brandon to marry cat and ned to marry robert, and use Lyanna's hand for someone else later on). there's also the debate over how in on the "southron ambitions" stuff Steffon, so Robert marrying Lyanna might have been more Robert's fancy and Rickard's political machinations than anything Steffon would have pushed for. Given Jon Arryn's mentorship of Robert, though, Robert would likely lean whatever way Jon Arryn leans, and Jon Arryn is very likely in on the southron ambitions shenanigans which means Robert is looking outside the Stormlands for a bride.

as for rickard - i don't know that I buy some of Barbrey Dustin's more tinfoil-y "the maesters are trying to control Westeros" ideas, but I firmly believe that the lords were getting some bad vibes from aerys and started making alliances through marriages to prepare for another civil war. rickard has the riverlands locked in, now he wants a wife for his heir. mind you, "most eligible bachelorette" for brandon has a lot of crossover with rhaegar and robert in previous asks - Mina and Jana Tyrell, Cersei Lannister, Elia Martell. Given that Rickard's maester, Walys, is a Hightower bastard, Walys might push Malora, Denyse, or Leyla for a marriage match as well. And mind you, this is the list for Robert as well, with the addition of Lyanna. Very likely when Rickard goes engagement hunting, Jon Arryn suggests Lyanna for Robert - Lyanna's options (if we're looking at the important families) include Jaime, Elbert Arryn, maybe Oberyn, Willas, and Robert. If I'm Jon Arryn, I'm probably wondering if I can get Elbert and Lyanna hitched (considering how often the Arryn line is wiped out, it's important to get your relatives hitched and having kids, lmaooo) and if I'm Rickard and I can't get the Tyrells to bite at either Brandon or Lyanna, I'm probably looking at a Hightower so I have some friends in the Reach, and Robert.

#i mean actually i'm looking at elia because if i can deny the iron throne a valyrian match and all of dorne that only benefits me BUT. #may not be thinking of it that way and may not be able to overcome anti dornish sentiment to htink rationally so. #valyrianscrolls #southron ambitions conspiracy #rickard stark #jon arryn #hoster tully #nedcat

[ladystoneboobs]

just thinking about how cat reminded ned he knew robert as a man, but not a king, and advised robb to treat theon as a hostage, not a friend, but she couldn’t take her own advice about thinking politically without bias from a shared childhood when it came to believing littlefinger. about how a close bond with a foster brother which ends tragically through trust betrayed is something robb stark had in common with both his parents. i mean, we know fostering was a very common practice in westeros, but did anyone do it as angsty and tragic as these people?

outwardly, one might think theon/robb was more like ned/robert, both being two dudes enjoying a bromance. however, while theon did have some qualities shared with robert like enjoying wine and womanizing (and i imagine robert also tried to be a rowdy bad influence on his younger, more honorable stark bro similarly to theon urging robb to kill jaime lannister and trying to regale him with tales of his sexcapades), i’d say in other ways theon’s position was vastly different because robert and ned were equals as guests of jon arryn. (equals both as high-ranking nobles, and both being wards, neither jon arryn’s actual son.) robert, if anything, would have had the higher status as he was a lord in his own right while ned was a second son unexpected to inherit, and even before robert was king being a cousin of the royal family would still mean something. 

but petyr baelish, otoh, even if not a hostage like theon, was of such a lower noble status than his host family at riverrun that nobody could be unaware of the difference, just as everyone remembered that theon came from an enemy family. this outsider status eventually led to feelings of rejection and resentment for both men which partly caused their betrayals of their foster families and attempts to supplant them. petyr helped start a civil war to avenge his thwarted love for catelyn and hoster tully’s scorning him as a suitor for either daughter, but also for his own self-advancement, ending up rewarded by the lannister regime with hoster tully’s title as lord paramount of the trident, a gift tyrion noticed he particularly savored. theon took the starks’ home by force and trickery, in a doomed attempt to hold winterfell for his own permanently. there the similarity ends, as theon never had littlefinger’s level of bitterness towards the starks, admitting his love for them after his betrayal, amid all his grief and regret. and even when he was trying to steal winterfell, he was still, in a twisted way, trying not just to replace the starks but prove himself like them, a worthy lord like ned, even as he was murdering ned’s people.

it’s this element of unrequited love or, at least, incompatible wishes that really unites catelyn/petyr, ned/robert, and robb/theon. robert, petyr, and theon all had some reason for dissatisfaction with their families of birth which made them even more inclined to be attached to their respective foster siblings. theon thought that robb was more a brother to him than either of his bullying greyjoy brothers, and even if ned wasn’t really a surrogate father, theon still cared about his ways more than his own father’s. theon remembers as a boy wishing to marry sansa so ned would accept him as a son, recognizing this to be a child’s fancy, but at 19 he tried to unite the families by making his father allies with robb, a plan which proved to also be at odds with the reality of his family circumstances. littlefinger was an only child born to a father of new blood, low rank, and meager holdings, making him ready to be awed and attracted by the tullys at rivverrun. infatuated with catelyn (who had rejected him at least once), and knowing that he too would never be wanted as a son-in-law by his foster father, he challenged brandon stark to a duel for her hand. this near-fatal event was born of romantic desperation and an idea as delusional as some of theon’s plans, considering his size and skill compared to his rival. robert was never close to either of his brothers, and especially not the one close to him in age, stannis. he repeatedly claimed, from his first scenes at winterfell to his last on his death bed, that ned was the only man he could trust, including his brothers. he further believed that he and ned were meant to rule together, and that they should be joined by blood and ties of marriage as well as affection. ned shared neither of these beliefs. despite all his own feelings of robert being “more than a brother” and joy at finally seeing him again, his own home and real family is proven to be what he valued most. he was happy living far away from robert for all those years, only seeing him during the greyjoy rebellion, wanting neither the handship nor the joffrey/sansa match. though he once lamely defended robert to lyanna, it doesn’t seem he really thought that match was very good either, pointing out that robert didn’t know lyanna as he did. lyanna herself did not return robert’s feelings at all. this lack of knowledge of the real lyanna and robert’s idea that her loss could be made up for by his sharing grandkids with ned through sansa/joffrey, suggest that part of his fixation on lyanna was just because she was ned’s sister, not unlike theon wanting to marry sansa because she was ned’s daughter and robb’s sister. (and ofc littlefinger is also using sansa to make up for his lost first love, grooming her as a replacement for catelyn, even while married to cat’s sister as his consolation prize tully wife.)

if the doomed desires link all three of these fostering cases, it’s the nature of the betrayals and their effects that distinguish them. robert did not intend to harm ned or any other stark and their relationship can be seen as a mutual betrayal. robert exploited ned’s friendship by dragging him unwillingly to court with the selfish aim of ned doing all his work for him, only to betray ned’s hopes for him as king by refusing to listen to his counsel anyway and still insisting on the murder of the last targs. and though ned’s loyalty to robert led to his doom, he thrice betrayed his duty as hand after learning the truth about cersei’s kids. first, by warning her, then keeping silent at robert’s deathbed, and lastly, choosing to permanently keep the secret by falsely admitting joffrey’s claim in an attempt to protect sansa. (that last act was another proof of ned’s ultimate loyalty on top of secretly raising lyanna’s son by rhaegar throughout robert’s reign.) though ned’s actions wouldn’t have happened without robert’s willingness to murder kids, his death causes ned to be forgiving and blame himself for both their fates. littlefinger’s betrayal is the most premeditated and heinous, he twice lied to catelyn to foment conflict with the lannisters, led her husband to arrest and execution, and the war he helped engineer ultimately cost cat’s life as well (even if that part was not his design), then he moved on to groom cat’s daughter, murder her sister, and poison lysa’s only child. but his lies to catelyn, and ned’s death after his promise of help, do not alter her opinion of him. even when doubting tyrion’s guilt she does not suspect the source of the accusation, refusing to follow her considerations to realize that if tyrion were innocent it meant littefinger was a liar because of what that would mean for her. theon set out intending to help robb by an alliance between their families but his father refused and he was forced to follow balon instead. however, the invasion of the north was ordered by balon, but the capture of winterfell was theon’s own choice. and his lies made it even more personally painful to robb by murdering two boys to pass off as bran and rickon for the sake of his own pride. robb was devastated by the loss of his home, the murder of his people, and the presumed deaths of his little brothers most of all. 

this is what sets theon/robb out as most tragic of all imo, a double inheritance of unfortunate foster brothers making the pain that much stronger in the next generation. unlike his father robb could not still love his foster brother the same way during his final days, and unlike his mother he not only had the painful knowledge of his betrayal but was made to believe the betrayal even worse by theon’s own lies and the boltons blaming him for the sack of winterfell. all of this came because robb sent theon to make an alliance which they both genuinely wanted and could have helped them win the war together. in that early-wof5k time, they were more in sync than ned and robert in king’s landing or catelyn and petyr during her betrothal to brandon, but it was a still an impossible dream fated to burst and only bring ruin.

#asoiaf meta #valyrianscrolls #catelyn stark #ned stark #robb stark #theon greyjoy #I should have been with him. Where was I? #catelyn tully #petyr baelish #robert baratheon #i'm incapable of not rambling when i do this #asoiaf #(c)lsb

[gulnarsultan]

Mad King Aerys 2 around Rhaegar and Elia Martell and their children be like 😒😒🥱👿

Aerys 2 around Targaryen Reader (Prince), his wife Cersei and their daughter Joanna be like 🤗🥰🥰

I can’t help but imagine that Aerys 2 would be a loving and caring grandfather to Princess Joanna, the same goes for Rhaella who also adores her granddaughter.

When Prince and Cersei with Joanna visit Kings Landing, everyone become happy. Aerys becomes a loving grandfather and doesn’t act like shit. Rhaella gets happy and smiles a lot to see her beloved son and his wife and her granddaughter. Viserys 3 gets excited to see his baby niece, the same goes for Rhaegar and Elia. Tywin, who’s known to never smile, smiles when he’s holding Joanna in his arms and to see Cersei and son-in-law. Jaime and Tyrion can’t help but smile and adore their baby niece. Jaime swears to protect Princess Joanna from any danger, the same goes for everyone. And Tyrion is happy to know that not only Jaime and Prince genuinely care about him, but also having a niece who gives him toothless smile just warms his heart and he is about to shed tears of joy. Tywin wanted his daughter to become a Queen, but he never thought that he made a great decision, because not only House Lannister is married to the crown, but also they have great weapons- big fire-breathing dragons and they have a beautiful Princess that binds two powerful Houses.

Then everyone gets to family dinner, yes all of them. The family dinner has two good news. First good news is that Rhaella is pregnant (Daenerys) and second good news is that Yandere Cersei is also pregnant. Tyrion makes a toast “For a new members of our family” and Prince agrees with that toast 🥂 and everyone else.

My goodness, this is so sweet and so good. I can feel the warm of this scenario. I feel like someone would say that the marriage between Targaryen Prince and Yandere Cersei Lannister remind of love between King Jahaerys 1 Targaryen and Queen Alysanne. Although many folks and lords hope that the children of Prince and Cersei won’t have tragically die.

Poor Elia and her kids.🥺

It's so cute.😍🥰Great. I think you are right. The marriage of Prince and Cersei has been compared to the marriage of Jaehaerys 1 and Alysanne. I hope they don't go through the same pain. The Lannisters and Targaryens pamper Princess Joanna. I think the Princess has two names. "Joanna Naerys" Targaryen.

#yandere game of thrones #yandere cersei lannister #yandere cersei lannister x reader #house targaryen #house of targaryen

[attonitos-gloria]

If the main tension in the last seasons of Game of Thrones was between Jaime and Dany, what would that look like? How would it have changed things?

friend, thank you for this ask. This is going to be very long heheh sorry in advance. writing Jaime's arc is the most satisfying part of IKTE for me so I'm very happy for this, thank you truly.

Jaime is a character traumatized by fire. Not the only one - but he is prominently traumatized by it, and indeed his entire reputation was built around the fact he has broken sacred vows because of a Targaryen king who used fire as a tool of intimidation and social controlling. More than any other character in the show, Jaime knows the political implications of fire as a weapon. And if the daughter of said king comes back from the ashes of House Targaryen to conquer Westeros and re-establish her father's dynasty... using fire-breathing monsters as her main weapon... do you get it 😭

(that scene of Jaime trying to get Drogon killed is so good - the way the camera focused on his face, on the fire and ashes and smoke and the people burning alive around him ! he was reliving the Throne Room he was a knight trying to kill the dragon he was trying to make it right and tyrion was THERE on the enemy's side but watching him ;-; they were so close of getting it right WHY NOT LEAN INTO THAT !! It was delicious!!)

You can argue that Jaime is barely aware of this, since, true to his Lannister name and blood and inheritance, he spends his life in denial about this trauma. I would agree with this statement, which is why I think putting Jaime between Dany and Cersei as political choices is more interesting than putting Jaime between Cersei and Brienne as love interests in the most bland way possible.

If Jaime is going to leave Cersei at some point, why not earlier, at the end of season 6 when Cersei pulled an Aerys against the Tyrells?? Their relationship already is, in a way, a coping mechanism against the institutional violence of knighthood; he is the knight and she is the queen, everything is justified because of that. Their idealized versions of each other only exist in their heads anyway. Imagine if the Sept of Baelor is the last straw in a relationship that has been in crumbles for a while now. All their children dead and Cersei the very embodiment of Aerys. (Forget the pregnancy plot. It was stupid.)

And then there are so many possibilities from then on when Daenerys arrives in Westeros. The show sets her up to be rejected. I can follow that. I truly cannot conceive, in show canon, a happy ending for Dany - and by happy ending I mean everyone loving her and welcoming her as their Queen. I think her dragons are an ethical problem that needs to be addressed; the show and books themselves already pointed in that direction. The Dance of the Dragons is a cautionary tale about this, the entire story of House Targaryen is about this. I do love Dany and I believe she is a good person at heart, but also. Consider. She has the canon equivalent of nuclear weapons. The dragons are useful to kill the true enemy (the Others) and you can argue that there is an ethical justification to use them to end slavery, but then what. Then what comes next. When the enemy is defeated and this woman is the only person in the world with weapons of massive destruction. What do you do with the weapons after the War is over - I cannot be the only person who thinks this is an issue like 😭 Jaime has reasons to be wary more than anyone - yes, even more than Sansa; Sansa has reasons to be concerned and to worry about the North, but Daenerys was coming with aid in the War, and I don't see any reason why Sansa didn't even >>try<< to be mildly diplomatic, except that the writers wanted the conflict to rise. I don't know; I'm grumpy about this, and it is very hard to make sense of Sansa's actions in season 8 for me, but I will stop myself right here because this isn't about her. This is about Jaime !!!

I feel like a lot of what we call Jaime's redemption relies on his romantic feelings for Brienne; even in the show, he leaves Cersei and goes North to fight for the living because it is the ~right thing to do~, but the subtext kind of says that he went for Brienne. And it's not that I don't ship them: I do! But falling in love with Brienne is not a redemption arc, doing things because Brienne would approve is not a redemption arc. It has been said before, by people smarter than me, but Jaime is not in a redemption story; he is in an identity crisis story. I feel like the show tried to give him an redemption arc only to pull the rug at the end going like "nope, sorry, people don't change" - and since said redemption relied completely on his romantic feelings for Brienne, it wasn't enough to knight her; he had to sleep with her. Since the point being made was that people don't change, that meant necessarily ending his affair with Brienne and cruelly breaking her heart so she would let him go back to Cersei. Because what else is there to say about Jaime Lannister other than which woman he chooses to fuck by the end of the story?

Do you get what I'm saying? Like, I know he is pretty. But the choice of framing Jaime's story as primarily a love story between two women, the good one and the bad one, is wild to me. Really? That is the most relevant thing about this man?

Did he change? Did he find a solution to the problem of knighthood? That doesn't mean loving Brienne (he did say "I have never slept with a knight before" to her, after all. The man literally wanted to fuck knighthood! in every meaning, layer, and way! okay Jaime). That means *becoming* what Brienne already is - a person who is willing not only to kill, but in fact, to die defending the vulnerable and the innocent. And I felt like the show shaped this like "will Jaime choose Brienne or Cersei?" And everything else was secondary to that, when I think the romance could really stay in the background and the knighthood crisis should come into focus on main stage. And because Dany and Cersei are meant to be each other's foils, both in their similarities and differences, I do like the idea of Jaime being stuck between these two Queens who are, each in their own way, Aerys, who made him who he is (a Kingslayer).

SO. There are many ways this could go about:

Maybe Dany demands Jaime to kill Cersei in exchange for royal pardon; this man, after all, killed her father in an act of betrayal. She forgave him way too easily in the show. All that tension! For nothing!!!! Do we want a grim ending? No problem. Maybe he does kill Cersei and then kills himself (favorite book ending, for me). Maybe he can't handle being confronted with the reality that his life is built on an empty lie. Maybe he looks at Cersei and sees wildfire and madness and Aerys, and there is no escape, and he does not know how to live with himself with or without this woman. This has always been the cost of knighthood: blood. It has been this way since Arthur Dayne knighted him. And he cannot stand the idea of serving the daughter of Aerys for the rest of his life; he would literally rather die. Maybe love can't save the day this time.

Or: maybe Jaime vows to kill Cersei and publicly and officially bends the knee to Dany, only to break his vows again and betray her, killing Dany instead, before she can set King’s Landing on fire. Or even better: after. After he sees her as Aerys' extension. Maybe Jaime is in a time loop, doomed to repeat this, doomed to kill the dragon. Do we want grim endings for everyone? No problem: this time, he actually suffers the consequences of high treason - he is sent to the Wall, he takes the Black; or he is exiled. You can get away with killing your Monarch once, but not twice. For once, he is not rewarded for an act of brutal violence and betrayal. No cathartic death for him: he only needs to live with the consciousness that he saved the world twice, but he had to sacrifice his soul twice to do it. And no one sings his praise. He's still the Kingslayer.

Are we tired of grim endings? We don't want Jaime to be the Kingslayer? Also, no problem. Because the memory of the War that traumatized him, the trigger for it, is embodied alive in the person of Jon Snow. The boy Jaime's heroes and brothers-in-arms died trying to protect. Maybe Jaime is tired of being torn between two Mad Queens and he decides to give his life to put Jon, Rhaegar's son, on the Iron Throne. He is not the Kingslayer anymore. Fuck that. He is the Kingmaker. Kind of like Criston Cole, but cool and less catholic. He could even be Hand of the King to Jon.

Or maybe it bothers you, as it bothers me, the fact that Jaime actually pushed a child out of a window, and that event is treated like a small detail in his story once he gets North. It was not a thing Cersei commanded him to do. Cersei did not take his hand and forced it to do it. Jaime tried to kill a boy. He permanently damaged Bran's body. Any attempt at redemption that does not address this is flawed. Maybe the only way to redeem Jaime is to make him Bran's ally because Bran is one of Dany's strongest narrative foils, right there with Cersei and Tyrion: some characters have magical attributes, things they are able to do; some characters have magical things happening to them; but Bran and Dany *are* magical in themselves. They carry the power along with them. And, by the end of the show, Bran is KING. He is one of the most powerful creatures alive - he can travel in time AND control people's and animals' minds/bodies - and he apparently has been PLANNING the whole thing (why do you think I came all this way, etc) all along. Does that even make sense? What is it about Bran that allows him to be powerful and in charge by the end of the story, to the point of allowing the destruction of a city in order to get what he wants, while Dany has to be sacrificed and is deemed too power-hungry? Why is Dany's inability to have children a problem, and Bran's assumed inability to sire children presented as a solution? And more importantly- what does Bran WANT? (To hell with that ableist "Bran has no feelings or desires and can't be tempted" bullshit). And given all that: if Bran and Dany are foils and parallels, what if Bran gets things done with Jaime's help? (Not necessarily as heroes). Because he kind of owes Bran. He is the man who put Bran on that wheel-chair and changed the course of Bran's entire life. And Lannisters pay their debts, or so we are told. Maybe we could even try to actually say something relevant about magic as a weapon and the people in power wielding it.

I feel like you could still pull something out of the fact that 1) Jaime's alleged last chance of honor (Sansa) is already antagonizing Dany and 2) His little brother sided with Dany after killing their father, and he actually forgave and forgot about that too easily in the show too. There is a lot of implied drama and nuance because so many relationships in Jaime's life are bridges to Dany. I just wanted to see it explored to the last of its potential.

Anyway. I'm rambling at this point. but the gist of it is that if Dany needs an antagonist in Westeros, a character to embody her rejection, Jaime is a better candidate than Sansa, imo. This man needed to be used in a political plot as a relevant, game-changing player at the end of the show. Some of those ideas I don't even like lol all they have in common is that they force Jaime to own his bullshit and stand up to something and put his skin in the game instead of running between Brienne and Cersei through 8 seasons, and I say this as someone who appreciates both Jaime/Cersei and Jaime/Brienne from a shipping perspective.

#got #jaime lannister #game of thrones #ask me stuff #long post