#the dead ladies club

[atopvisenyashill]

is it okay that this lady is in the dead ladies club?

i simply wanted the excuse to talk about the moms. i'm not including ashara, elia, or lyanna in this, because the last two are plot relevant deaths and ashara's is left purposefully mysterious I think because we are going to get some sort of answer there (not even implying "lemore is ashara" here, i think the fact that we have conflicting info on her does mean something about her baby being relevant to the tower of joy, which means howland or bran/the weirwood hivemind are going to reveal that to us. will it be a huge reveal that shakes the earth? i mean, probably not, but i do think it will be relevant).

let’s gooo-

joanna lannister is a dead mom with some narrative weight to her. all three lannisters think about how different their lives might have been, define themselves by the gaping absence of her in their life, and the fact that jaime commits more violence in the riverlands, convinces himself it’s a job well done, and of all people it’s his MOTHER who comes to him in a dream just to be like “this is your conscious speaking, you’re a fucking idiot get your life together dude,” you really feel that this is a family that was wrecked by the loss of their mother at a young age. it Is noticeable that we don’t get much of an idea of her personality compared to the men tho.

can she stay in the dead ladies club? yes, i think this is a well thought out dead mom, i simply wish she had slightly more characterization than “loving mom & wife.”

minisa whent gets less characterization, i think bc we only have cat as insight into her, so i can sort of forgive that, esp since i do think it’s noticeable that for all cat is really fuckijg busy most of the time, she does think about her mother and wonder if she would have been happier with her mother around. lysa & edmure only get to be Like That because they really had no adult taking care of them except cat who was still all but a child herself, so you can feel minisa’s absence in the characterization of her children and the damage her death did to the tully siblings.

can she stay in the dead ladies club? yes, i think this is a well thought out dead mom, although once again i wish we had the opportunity to get information on the type of person she was outside of "loving mother." i do think that minisa and joanna are meant to mirror each other in this way though - they died so young that they are forever frozen in the minds of their children as these paragons of goodness, as a reminder of where their lives went wrong, and what might have happened if things had been a little less sad for them.

what’s interesting about loreza nymeros martell is that we don’t even know what her actual name IS or her age or when she died AND YET despite how little time we spend with characters that knew her, Doran names her as an influence on him and quotes her, and this scene - “this is your kingdom” in the water gardens - is usually pointed to as one of those scenes that are The Point Of The Series. the writing around her is certainly clunky but at least you can tell there was thought put into the kind of person doran’s mother was and how she might have influenced doran's life. i also think it's notable here that we know she was up to things besides giving birth - she was a lady at court, she was friendly with joanna and rhaella, she was attempting to engage her kids to non dornish lords so she was clearly very pro-Dorne Being Involved as opposed to having an isolationist bent. we know a decent amount about her personality, and we don't even know who she marries, which is honestly kind of funny - so many of these characters only think about their fathers yet doran only thinks of his mother.

can she stay in the dead ladies club? yes, but we are deducting points for not having arianne think about her at all and also still not knowing her name.

cassana eastermont is a question mark but to be fair,,,,,so is steffon and that is kind of the point of both of them. cassana and steffon were at court, and then died, so like the other siblings of this era, the baratheon boys grew up Without An Adult In The Room except for Maester Cressen. the tragedy of Cressen being helpless to keep his boys together, and dying in a vain attempt to save what’s left of stannis and renly’s souls, it doesn’t really work if any of them have a lot of fond memories that they dwell over of cassana or steffon. and no one has any real idea how aware steffon was of the whisperings of rebellion against aerys because they’re so absent from the narrative, it’s funny that their son then became the face of that rebellion despite steffon’s targaryen mother. BUT. yeah it does objectively suck that we don’t know what cassana was up to before she had her first baby and then she dies, bc at least we know steffon was alive and doing shit, we’re just fuzzy on what. cassana begins and ends as a wife and mother, that really sucks and i wish we had gotten a single person throwaway commenting about her.

can she stay in the dead ladies club? yes, but i think if we had some throwaway lines about her, as an example, fostering at Storm's End so Rhaelle had some female company (since she had no daughters, and only the one son) and her and Steffon met and married that way, so that we know she existed before becoming a mother.

rhaella targaryen is an interesting example because we not only have several characters who remark on her and knew her, we actually get a significant amount of characterization for her. she was clearly romantic enough to entertain fantasies of running off with bonifer hasty and yet pragmatic enough to not pull a stunt like that. "mindful of her duty" as it's put, but also rebelling against her brother-husband in ways by being openly kind to rhaegar and embracing rhaenys and elia. stubborn enough to crown viserys on dragonstone. a loving mother whose loss broke viserys' mind. but...like did she have to die in childbirth? did daenerys have to have no memories of her whatsoever? would it not have been perfectly within the plot george wanted if rhaella and ser willem darry were with her, and died of a fever at the same time?

can she stay in the dead ladies club? no, i think it's really annoying and dumb that rhaella dies on dragonstone giving birth to dany. i dont think it changes the plot in any way if rhaella had stayed alive for four or five years after dany's birth, and if dany thought about her mother from time to time. it is honestly one of the my Main quibbles with this series, that dany never thinks about the women in her family when she thinks of leaders and rulers, only the men.

lyarra stark is in my opinion the most egregious example of a woman in the dead ladies club. no personality, no in canon mentions of her, no idea when she dies, george didn't even think about her until twoiaf. there were theories and mystery surrounding her and the answer was "george did not think she was relevant" and it sure is fun and intersting to look at which dead characters are irrelevant and which ones get characterization (see comments about steffon vs cassana). i get wanting most of the grandparents to be dead by the end of robert's rebellion - a lot of the point is that the sets of siblings from the rebellion era are very isolated from their childhoods, signified by the losses of their parents and especially their mothers (as motherhood and childhood are kind of intrinsically linked together). but why did she have to die before the rebellion? why does ned never once think about her? why must it always be the mother who is inconsequential while the father makes history? to throw george's own words at him, the woman is important too!

can she stay in the dead ladies club? no, there's just no reason why she couldn't have lived to the rebellion, been the Stark in Winterfell alongside Benjen, and died during the war, either of grief, shock, or potentially even after an attempt at finding lyanna herself goes awry.

#motherhood #minisa whent #loreza nymeros martell #the unnamed princess of dorne #joanna lannister #cassana estermont #getting on my soap box #the dead ladies club #lyarra stark #rhaella targaryen #once again i say. bored at work.

[poorshadowspaintedqueens]

Two questions: 1) Considering how he wanted a super high match for his only son, yet is the lord paramount of the kingdom with such fickle loyalty. Do you think it would’ve been wise for Lord Hoster Tully to marry a riverlander girl to give him a second son and tighter connection? Especially after marrying a whent the first time. 2) why didn’t he remarry? If cateyln had to do the lady job at around 10, who did it after she and lysa left. It seems important.

This is a question I remember asking myself when I was planning out and writing The Death of Kings, since Hoster's choice to remarry had such a significant impact not just on Catelyn (who became de facto lady of Riverrun) but on Lysa, who was still very young when her mother died and lost a potential source of support and intervention.

Why didn't Hoster remarry? In ACOK, Catelyn speculates that, after her mother died in childbirth, specifically trying to have a second son after Edmure,

the life had gone out of Father. She was always so calm, Catelyn thought, remembeing her mother's soft hands, her warm smile. If she had lived, hos ddifferent our lives might have been. She wondered what Lady Minisa would make of her eldest daughter, kneeling here before her. (ACOK, Catelyn IV)

We are never given a concrete, in-universe explanation for why Hoster did not remarry. The implication is that he loved his first wife, Minisa Whent, and, since he already had one heir (and, depending on the timing, Brynden as well), he chose not to remarry. For a man with the political reputation that Hoster has in canon, that is definitely an odd choice. It's possible that, at the time of Minisa's death, there just weren't any potential candidates, but Hoster remained unmarried for the rest of his life, and we see plenty of examples of older men marrying much younger women to secure their successions (e.g. Jon marrying Lysa).

Now, if we take a step back, we can see a pattern in that generation: Rickard Stark, Tywin Lannister, and Jon Arryn are all widowers who chose not to remarry--or, in Jon's case, chose not to remarry until exigent circumstances forced him into it. Now, Rickard had three sons and a daughter, and we don't get any indication of when or how Lyarra Stark died. Joanna Lannister was the love of Tywin's life and we get plenty of information from his children about why he never remarried. But we don't get that for Hoster, and given how intuitive and perceptive Catelyn usually is, this does reveal that when it comes to her own family, she isn't the impartial observer. She can't be. There are questions other narrators might ask that she does not--about Hoster, about Lysa, about Edmure--because she has a very particular image of her family and never quite shakes that off.

The out-of-universe reason is, well, the Dead Ladies Club. GRRM has made the choice--for reasons of his own--to omit the mothers of many of the main players in Robert's Rebellion for a variety of reasons. Without Joanna, the Lannister family dynamics turn inward and become even more toxic. Without Lyarra, Ned is forced into the sole leadership role at Winterfell after Robert's Rebellion. And without Minisa, Hoster, perhaps unwittingly, smothers two out of his three children with unfair expectations, while the third only escapes because of how much she resembles her dead mother.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #house tully #hoster tully #catelyn stark #lysa tully arryn #the dead ladies club #lyarra stark #joanna lannister #rickard stark #tywin lannister #gender in asoiaf

[ladyofhimring]

Remember Them! The Dead Ladies Club.

                                Lady Stark. She died.

“The world needs our mothers.” —Liya Kebede

#preasoiafedit #asoiafedit #valyrianscrolls #lyarrastarkedit #housestarkedit #lyarra stark #pre asoiaf #asoiaf #house stark #asoiafwomensource #gotasoiafsource #forgottenasoiafladies #asoiaf graphics #the dead ladies club

[tyrramint]

I’m sorry, what shows over the past two years have actually been renewed? I legitimately don’t care any more if the show is “good” or if it’s “bad” because they’re all cancelled. I can go on and on with a list just off the top of my head with shows that have been cancelled recently, and maybe one? two? maybe? that have been renewed? Like. what is the point. I’m scared to start any new show because in all likelihood it’s going to be cancelled. And all the more power to campaigns to save shows; I have so much respect for the perseverance and dedication that takes, and I’m not trying to bring them down in the slightest, but I’m more saying to the point of that there shouldn’t. have to be. a new campaign to save x show every two weeks BECAUSE SHOWS SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE RENEWED. Fans should be able to have some *semblance* of hope that their show will be renewed, and the fact that we’re not even able to have that is ridiculous and speaks volumes about the landscape of show production right now. Every time I see that a new show was cancelled, it doesn’t even matter if I was a fan of it or not, I just still hurt for that fandom. It’s so draining, even if it’s not firsthand. There’s not even really a point to this post, I’m just tired of it. I’m so sorry for all of the shows you love that have been cancelled.

#should this be tagged as personal? should it not? who knows #personal #lockwood and co #the owl house #shadow and bone #julie and the phantoms #warrior nun #willow #first kill #infinity train #anne with an e #the mysterious benedict society #dead end paranormal park #a league of their own #inside job #the babysitter’s club #rise of the pink ladies #I am not okay with this #paper girls #there are so many more I’m sorry if yours isn’t on this list #like *so* many more

[bardsansa]

queen rhaella targaryen, shortly before the tourney at harrenhall, 281 AC

visenya and rhaenys, alyssa velaryon, the six wives of maegor, alysanne, aemma arryn, alicent hightower and rhaenyra i, helaena, jaehaera, daenaera velaryon, daena the defiant, naerys, myriah nymeros martell, aelinor penrose, betha blackwood, shaera

#ha ha ha idk how i feel ab this one. fashion wise it gets across the aerys dragoninsanity vibe. idk. i’ll draw more rhaella in the future fs #mine #my art #procreate art #artists on tumblr #digital art #procreate #asoiaf #valyrianscrolls #a song of ice and fire #rhaella targaryen #queen rhaella #queen rhaella targaryen #house targaryen #dead ladies club #roberts rebellion

[horror-lady-tournament]

Hello everyone, welcome to the Horror Lady Tournament: Video Game edition

In the previous tournament, multiple fucked up horror movie women faced off to see who was the best, and Carrie White won! (so she will just kinda. Remain the icon.) However, I was willing to do this again but with video games this time.

The roster is full now, but here were the rules for submissions!

Only characters that originate in a video game, please.

Only one character per game/franchise, sorry DBD girlies

They have to be at least a little morally wrong. Fran Bow is basically the moral ground line and it’s mostly because someone submitted her for the horror movie one so I was kinda pressured to include her even though she’s a stretch

No Poopy Pisstime or Painbow Fiends. I will accept Garten of Banban and I don’t really wanna explain why that’s ok but the others aren’t it’s a little complicated

Anyways, the starting 16 characters are…

Lady Dimitrescu, from Resident Evil

Fran Bow

The Nurses from Silent Hill

Charlie/The Marionette, from Five Nights At Freddy’s

Spooky, from Spooky’s Jumpscare Mansion

The Huntress, from Dead By Daylight

Mama, from Tattletail

Six, from Little Nightmares

HER, from IMSCARED

Uboa, from Yume Nikki

The Little Sisters from Bioshock

Amy, from FAITH The Unholy Trilogy

The Queen, from OFF

Karin, from Cooking Companions

Junko Enoshima, from Danganronpa

And Monika, from Doki Doki Literature Club!

And the characters submitted by viewers like you are…

Aya Drevis, from Mad Father

Misao Furukawa, from Misao

Beatrice Ushiromiya, from Umineko

Mary, from IB

Alice Liddel, from American McGee’s Alice

Patient 07/the Jammies Ghost, from phasmophobia

Sue Miley, from Your Turn to Die

Grimora, from Incryption

Lisa, from PT

The Sculptor, from Identity V

Daniella, from Hunting Ground

Venna, from Crowscare

Ellen, from The Witch’s House

Amanda the Adventurer/Rebecca Colton

Alice Angel, from Bendy and the Ink Machine

The Reaper Nurses, from Dark Deception

I hope you all have fun!

…And thank you all, for giving me a chance to compete!

#horror #horror games #polls #resident evil #fran bow #silent hill #five nights at freddy's #spooky’s jumpscare mansion #dead by daylight #tattletail #little nightmares #imscared #yume nikki #bioshock #faith the unholy trinity #off game #cooking companions #danganronpa #doki doki literature club #lady dimitrescu #the marionette #the huntress #uboa yume nikki #six little nightmares #amy faith #karin cooking companions #junko enoshima #monika #unreality #there is one person here i am doing a bit

[windswept-fields]

In honor of Trans Day Of Visibility, here’s a mecore edit because I am, in fact, trans

#shut up pretty boy #ryan gosling #the royal tenenbaums #the nice guys #taylor swift #dead poets society #dead meat #the darjeeling limited #danny gonzalez #its always sunny in philadelphia #debby ryan #the blues brothers #succession #barbie #kurtis conner #fight club #don’t worry darling #better call saul #wes anderson #grease #drew gooden #the grand budapest hotel #brennan lee mulligan #la la land #jimmy fallon #oh that’s not #markiplier #lady bird #watcher network #trans day of visibility

[la-pheacienne]

Can somebody explain to me how the so-called """"""feminists"""""""" of the fandom have made it their life's purpose to continuously hate on the TWO FEMALE KEY PLAYERS of A song of ice and fire, and rebrand that as feminism?

Like, we're talking about the two main female heroines of the story, a story that became popular precisely for having these two female characters, the exiled teen sex slave and the orphan little girl that suffocates from society's expectations. If you call yourself a """"""feminist""""""" and a member of asoiaf fandom and you hate/don't care for these characters, guess what you're certainly not.

How did we come to this? What happened to this fandom? It feels like a nuclear catastrophe going through the tags. All I see is an army of people who joined the fandom because the TV show got really popular, then started repeating the same slogans again and again without giving one fuck about the actual story being told. The five players, the five outcasts, the dwarf, the bastard, the cripple, the exiled sex slave and the non-conforming lady, these are the heroes of the story. These characters. This is why the story became popular. I don't understand how this horrible mutation happened in this fandom, I will never get over this.

#anti dead ladies club i guess? #asoiaf #got #rant #aspa rambles #fake feminism #this post is your old grandma coming back to her hometown after 50 years and being shocked and horrified by what they did to the place #daenerys targaryen #arya stark #bran stark #tyrion lannister #jon snow

[ludcake]

of all of its great innovations for asoiaf lore, the one great expansion to the mythos of the series that we must accredit to it is its vast expansion of the dead ladies club. before, we only had but a few women with barely a name and maybe a single phrase to make up a whole personality for; now we've dozens of women whose character we've no idea what gurm intended, beyond the inherent attractiveness of putting Guys Into Situations and maybe some implied drama. from a handful, we've an army. in this essay, i will posit that the combined might of the dead ladies club could murder the entire patriarchy-

#asoiaf #valyrianscrolls #dead ladies club #sabitha frey #jaehaera targaryen #helaena targaryen #argella durrandon #aemma arryn #so many others #.txt #fire and blood

[annikuza]

Tough love

#I want this white haired old lady DEAD #winx club #winx icy #winx trix #art #my art #doodle

[loonylooly]

ASOIAF 🤝 SJM

Generation of dead women that are important to the plot but have very little to no characterization and only serve to make the important characters sad over their deaths

#SJM has her own dead ladies club atp #like SJM has loads of women that aren't important aside from when they die #like.... Feyre's mom #Aelin's mom #Marion Lochan #Tamlin's mom #Rhys's mom and sister #Lyria #Should I go on? #it'd just be nice if we got a teensy bit of information on these women #a bunch of them aren't even named #Oh and Manon's mom #Listen i understand that sometimes you gotta have a character exist only to further the plot

[atopvisenyashill]

What would happen if Joanna Lannister, Lyarra Stark, and Minisa Tully all lived? How would they impact their children's lives?

Joanna’s children may still fall to generational curses, but dammit Joanna is gonna at least confront the problem instead of ignore it. Tyrion has a marginally easier life; I don't think she's going to just embrace him completely, but basically anything is better than Tywin. I think Joanna will insist on ending the incest, which puts Jaime in a better position, but for Cersei it kinda depends on the prophecy. the Joanna-Cersei question is always the most interesting to me because of how deeply Cersei hates most other women; can Joanna help Cersei calm a bit, convince her Tyrion is harmless, help her deal with being married to an awful man? Or does Cersei split on her own mother, too traumatized and mentally unwell to see the truth in her ownn mother's face? I can't say, but I think it would be fascinating to see Cersei deal with a female relative that isn't Myrcella. Regardless of all that, Joanna being at Casterly Rock during Robert’s Rebellion is an interesting change - does she hold a grudge against Aerys and urge him to join the rebels?

Minisa changes everything for Lysa. She would be much more well adjusted, looked after, and loved with her mother there, that even the feeling of being in Cat’s shadow may well be fixed simply by having a parent around who is kind to her. Edmure probably has a lot less “look at me im a real man” issues which is only a benefit because he’s already one of the better lords in the series. Cat is most affected by this - she doesn't get the sort of "lady of riverrun" training she got in the main series, but at the same time, she has a mother to show her how to be a lady. Is she still as headstrong? Still as dutiful? And with Minisa running around, does Shella Whent have a potential ally to hide out with in the Riverlands?

Ned is infinitely less lost after the war with his mother still there. We know the least about Lyarra than we do the others because Ned never thinks of her (and we also don't know whether or not Ned told Benjen about the Lyanna/Jon situation, or whether Benjen pieced it together) but she's a Flint and a Stark, so I think even if Ned doesn't tell her everything and she doesn't piece the truth together, it's possible she helps ease things when he gets home. Cares for Jon so he has a maternal figure around, pushes for him to be sent to her cousins in the mountains. Does Osha attempt to escape Winterfell alongside Lyarra? I think this is where Lyarra would affect things the most; we know Osha and Rickon went for Skagos to hide, but with Lyarra there, would she insist on sending them to the Flints of the mountains, somewhere much safer for them? Would she insist instead on traveling with Bran? Would she maybe even insist on going to Jon, to warn him of the Others, and get there to find her grandson already planning?

There's a lot of factors but I think the characters that would benefit the most from having a mother/grandmother around are Tyrion, Jaime, Cersei's grandchildren, & Lysa, & Ned and Jon, possibly Bran and Rickon. It's not to say they would fix everything, but having the Lords Paramount of three different regions all dead with their wives still alive and fighting is so interesting to think about during the War of Five Kings.

#valyrianscrolls #the dead ladies club #minisa whent #lyarra stark #joanna lannister #mothers and sons #mothers and daughters #asks #anons

[nogoodsheepstealing-greatgrandma]

#asoiaf art #valyrianscrolls art #elia fernandez #art reblog #elia martell #lyanna stark #catelyn tully #ashara dayne #cersei lannister #lysa tully #pre rebellion #rebellion era #ladies of ice and fire #dead ladies club

[ladyofhimring]

Remember Them! The Dead Ladies Club. 

The crannogman saw a maid with laughing purple eyes dance with a white sword, a red snake, and the lord of griffins, and lastly with the quiet wolf... but only after the wild wolf spoke to her on behalf of a brother too shy to leave his bench.

#preasoiafedit #preasoiafsource #asharaedit #housedayneedit #ashara dayne #pre asoiaf #house dayne #asoiaf #asoiafwomensource #gotasoiafsource #asoiaf graphics #the dead ladies club #forgottenasoiafladies

[hollowwhisperings]

The Sister-Wives of House Targaryen, in Westeros: Marriage & Motherhood, Crowns & Corpses.

CW: discussions of incest, fertility issues, & child brides. mentions of infant mortality, self-defenestration. spoilers for future events of the "House of the Dragon" live-action series, as presented in its source material "Fire & Blood".

KEY

Title NAME family name (if not targaryen), born DATE: age when first a bride/mother/queen/corpse

Queen VISENYA I, b. 29 BC: ?/41/29/73

Queen RHAENYS I, b. ~25 BC: ?/32/25/35

Princess RHAENA of Dragonstone , b. 23 AC: 19/20/×/50

Queen ALYSANNE, b. 36 AC: 13/16/12/64

Princess ALYSSA, b. 60 AC: 15/17/×/24

Queen HELAENA, b. 109 AC: 13/~13/15/21

Queen DAENA "The Defiant", b. 145 AC: 15/~25*/16/unknown

Queen NAERYS, b. 138 AC: 15/15/34/41~53

Princess AELORA of Dragonstone, b. 195~211 AC: ?/×/×/?

Queen SHAERA, b. 226 AC: 14/18/33/34~55**

Queen RHAELLA, b. ~246 AC: 12/13/19/38

*Daena's marriage with her brother was never consumnated: she had an affair with a targaryen cousin.

**an unexpected butterfly corrects: as a Queen Shaera is noted as remaining at court in 260 AC, Princess Shaera could not have died at Summerhall)

With these data points, the following averages can be made:

ages of siblings being wed (by force or elopement);

ages when first pregnant

life expectancy.

In some instances, specific women will be excluded due to being outliers to the group as a whole or split into contrasting groups to determine any effects of shared circumstances.

Marriage

The average Targaryen sister-wife was married at 13 years old.

If separated by how "willing" these girls are to wed their brothers, two groups are made:

Unwilling/Obedient: Visenya (unknown), Helaena (13), Daena (15), Naerys (15), Rhaella (12).

By Choice: Rhaenys (unknown), Rhaena (19), Alysanne (13), Alyssa (15), Aelora (unknown), Shaera (14).

The average age of the willing brides is [17.75], while the average coerced sister-bride is [13.75]. That said, even Westeros considers pregnant <14 year olds to be Too Young: that tilts the balance between "willing" & "forced" toward the latter. Thusly,

Most Targaryen Sister-Wives Did Not &/or Could Not Consent to their Marriages.

Motherhood

Due to their being outliers, Queen Visenya I, Queen Rhaenys I, and Princess Daena are excluded from this calculation: the Conquerors postponed pregnancy until they were done conquering; Daena's brother refused to bed her so she broke out from the Maidenvault to find someone who WOULD, her child being hers alone. Princess Aelora has no recorded pregnancies.

From 7 sister-wives, both the average & median age for a first pregnancy is at 16 years old.

This, while not ideal IRL, is "young but otherwise fine" by the standards of Westeros.

Where this becomes troubling is "in the family": only 5** of these mothers had a living parent to support them during their first pregnancies.

There is rarely a significant age gap between sibling-spouses and, being siblings, there would only ever be 2 grandparents available to support the couple.

For all but 5** of these first-time mothers, their pregnancies, births (& complications thereof), and eventual parenting of children was without true guidance.

Being wealthy and highborn, servants likely did the majority of "practical" parenting - feeding, hygiene, recognising illness or injury, attending to colic, watching for accidents, etc - but, as children grew older, the issue of Discipline would be raised. Many sister-wives found pregnancy difficult, almost all experienced miscarriages and stillbirths, and 3 sister-wives (Princess Alyssa, Queen Naerys, Queen Rhaella) ultimately died of pregnancy.

(More on the subject of Parenting in House Targaryen will likely follow in future posts)

Crowns

This is less relevant in this post than in another planned post, on the ages of kings, but only because there is little to no data on the deeds of Targaryen women outside their beds: only Queens Visenya I, Rhaenys I and Alysanne are written holding court (for the purposes of this series, note that Queen Rhaenyra I will be discussed & counted amongst Westerosi "Kings" and not as a "Queen", despite styling Visenya & Rhaenys as Queens in their own right but counting them amongst Queens-Consort).

Death

An average life expectancy for a Targaryen sister-wife is somewhat difficult to do due to the differences in their circumstances: most women exist only as listed in family trees, even within the Royal Line. Maesters (and, to briefly be a Doylist, the ASOIAF books as a whole) seldom mention any woman past the date of her last child's birth, disappearing entirely thereafter unless their death was particularly morbid or unusual. While it gives opportunity to thus claim that, say, Queen Myriah Martell's lacking a date of death must mean she still lives, an immortal hidden from the public eye, it also makes any calculations we CAN make even more unreliably accurate than those made thus far.

Firstly I will refresh memories by again listing Ages At Death, adding "Cause/s" thereof (if known):

Queen Visenya I, died of old age at 73.

Queen Rhaenys I, killed at 35.

Princess Rhaena, died of "old" age at 50.

Queen Alysanne, died of "old" age at 64.

Princess Alyssa, died of pregnancy at 24.

Queen Helaena, self-defenestrated at 21.

Queen Daena, apparently immortal (disappears from histories after revealing the father of her son, Daemon Blackfyre).

Queen Naerys, died of pregnancy aged 41~53 years.

Princess Aelora of Dragonstone, assumed to have unalived herself (details unknown).

Queen Shaera, **survived Summerhall and still lived in 260 AC. As she does not appear in any of Ser Jaime's flashbacks to the court of Aerys II, nor the stories recalled by Daenerys Stormborn, it can be assumed Shaera died prior to 281 AC, aged 34~55 years old.

Queen Rhaella, died either of pregnancy or the Storming of Dragonstone at 38.

Despite age and pregnancy being natural causes of death, the circumstances of each sister-wife & the nature of their being Targaryens (incestuous, royal, magically-adjacent) makes me hesitate to truly call any of these deaths "natural". Furthermore, Westeros canonically has moontea and other contraceptive methods readily available: if, however, the King has decided that he requires more children then it becomes Treason to prescribe or use any birth control. Even if the wife in question is long-past the ages where pregnancy is safe or reasonable (for the mother and for any children). Thusly, any queen who dies of pregnancy can, very technically, be considered as having been killed by her husband & king.

(Princess Baela's death by pregnancy is "natural" in the sense that it is "natural" to expect a safe & healthy pregnancy when your entire family is an incestuous phone tree designed by evil blood wizards who took "blood of the dragon" very literally /j?)

Despite common belief, human life expectancy has not hugely changed since historic times: the discrepancy comes from how overwhelming the statistics of infant mortality were. Generally speaking, if you survived childhood you could expect to live into your late 60's... unless there was drought or war or, say, a surprise dragon from beneath the floorboards to crush you while its rider makes a dramatic entry & exit.

"Old" age for Targaryen dragon riders is difficult to calculate because few lived long enough to die from age: the effects of blood magic, being born of centuries of incest, and dragonriding on a person's health can be guessed but is compounded by the effects of too many pregnancies from too young an age, surviving battle & resultant trauma, etc.

So, while the average life expectancy of a Targaryen Sister-Wife is 42.8 years (rounded) and the median is 38 years... the means & timings of these deaths are incredibly circumstantial. Such is the case with royalty in a feudal setting, and with any character known as a Targaryen.

Overall Patterns

It is notable that (with one exception) after the extinction of House Targaryen's dragons, all instances of siblings wedding each other are forced by parents or then-presiding kings. While not evident in this list, which excludes both the "otherwise-related" and "unrelated" consorts, there is a pattern of having a sibling-marriage every other generation (as sandwiched between marriages between cousins).

This generational trend would have been interrupted by the likes of Maekar I but for multiple unexpected tragedies (the Great Spring Sickness of 209 AC, the events in the Dunk&Egg novellas, Summerhall) resulting in the last Targaryen king being Aerys II, son of siblings Jaeherys II & Shaera, the brother-husband of Queen Rhaella.

Of 11 recorded instances of Targaryen sister-wives, all ended up directly positioned to take the Iron Throne: Princess Rhaena was Considered to succeed her uncle Maegor's usurpation but refused, favouring her younger siblings Jaeherys I & Alysanne; Princess Alyssa's eldest son was Viserys I, chosen heir of Jaeherys I over his cousin Rhaenys and her son, Laenor Velaryon; Princess Aelora was chosen as an heir by Aerys I but was dead before much could come of it.

Of the 16 officially recognised Royal Consorts (excluding Maegor's black brides, Princess Rhaena, & Prince-Consort Daemon but including Queen Helaena) in the Targaryen Dynasty, 9 were sister-wives though only 3 reigned longer than a decade (Rhaenys I dying exactly 10 years into her queenship).

Only 3 royal consorts were entirely unrelated to their spouses (Queens Alicent Hightower, Myriah Martell, & Betha Blackwood), with the remaining queens-consort being "cousins" (do not ask me how closely/removed: in Houses Targaryen & Velaryon, EVERYONE is everyone else's cousin several times over, while also being their own aunt and nephew simultaneously).

Conclusions

...are likely to be typed up in their own posts, as they occur to me, if i have not already, accidentally, presented them earlier.

NOTE: many ages used here are approximations, sourced via entries on the AWOIAF wiki & as extrapolated from crossreferencing timelines. to be Watsonian, the maesters can be wrong & write with varying objectivity; to be Doylist, GRRM is not a historian nor is his fantasy writing as historically accurate as may be assumed. Thanks are due to NobodySuspectsTheButterfly for correcting me on Queen Shaera's surviving Summerhall.

if you enjoyed this post or have found some missing zeroes or wandering decimals, do send a raven or reblog with a correction! i will add & note corrections as prompted.

#valyrianscrolls #women of house targaryen #asoiaf meta #queens of westeros #sister-wives of house targaryen #maths of ice & fire #dead ladies club #fire and blood #queen visenya targaryen #queen rhaenys targaryen #princess rhaena targaryen #queen alysanne #princess alyssa targaryen #queen helaena targaryen #daena the defiant #queen naerys targaryen #princess aelora targaryen #shaera targaryen #queen rhaella targaryen #into the dragon tunnels we go

[junuve]

completely deranged thought I had when writing my portal fic wip (you could argue all my portal thoughts are deranged but this one is special): since every personality core is a unique (albeit heavily modified) copy of caroline's data does that make GLaDOS and Wheatley's computersex scene actually Caroline on Caroline action??

the ghost copies of Carolines are fucking??? In MY portal fic!?? ....yes, actually

(and to clarify, yes, Wheatley IS also based off of Caroline. what that fact does to him is a fun lil subplot for the fic. but there are many more cores dealing with... similar situations. the Caroline infection spreads....)

#portal #portal 2 #GLaDOS #wheatley #portal caroline #i read a post at like 3am that inspired this but i cant remember where it went #OR DID I HALLUCINATE IT?? #a mystery.... but the carolines are real #nwk club #suggestive #suggestive text #the vengeful lesbian hydra is merely the many facets of one very evil dead lady....