#they’re like tell me about your noble quest ser knight and he’s like *having a really good time in the provided robe* | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aboveallarescuer · 4 years

Text

Dany telling herself hopeful stories

As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile all* the book passages demonstrating either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and empathetic) or aspects of hers that are usually overblown (e.g. that she's violent and ambitious). Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take.

Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend Dany's character in analysis or even conversations.

*Well, at least all the passages that I could find.

Also, people may interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages, so I'm not arguing that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).

Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books!). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully cited, sometimes not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not including quotes that misrepresent Dany here because I couldn't find them on a quick glance and, frankly, I didn't want to find them. But we know that some people like to paint Dany in an overly negative light for taking pride at her ancestors (never mind the numerous double standards) or for not being completely aware of their history. And we know that she should be defended from these accusations. I interpret Dany as someone who, sometimes, needs to tell herself hopeful stories to keep going, especially for having had no family but an abusive brother. Her bias in regarding her relatives and Westeros in an idealized light and her enemies in an overly negative one is part of that pattern (which is contextualized by the universe she lives in, in which familial bonds are the most important ones). And so, I'm listing passages in which we see that pattern come up.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

She might have wished for colder, clearer water ... but no, if she were going to pin her hopes on wishes, she would wish for rescue.

She still clung to the hope that someone would come after her. Ser Barristan might come seeking her; he was the first of her Queensguard, sworn to defend her life with his own. And her bloodriders were no strangers to the Dothraki sea, and their lives were bound to her own. Her husband, the noble Hizdahr zo Loraq, might dispatch searchers. And Daario ... Dany pictured him riding toward her through the tall grass, smiling, his golden tooth gleaming with the last light of the setting sun.

Only Daario had been given to the Yunkai’i, a hostage to ensure no harm came to the Yunkish captains. Daario and Hero, Jhogo and Groleo, and three of Hizdahr’s kin. By now, surely, all of her hostages would have been released.

It makes no matter. By now the Yunkai’i will be marching home. That was why she had done all that she had done. For peace.

But none of those things had happened. Bells, Dany thought again. Her bloodriders had found her. “Aggo,” she whispered. “Jhogo. Rakharo.” Might Daario have come with them?

ADWD Daenerys IX

The boar was a huge beast, with tusks as long as a man’s forearm and small eyes that swam with rage. She wondered whether the boar that had killed Robert Baratheon had looked as fierce. A terrible creature and a terrible death. For a heartbeat she felt almost sorry for the Usurper.

ADWD Daenerys VII

“And my father? Was there some woman he loved better than his queen?”

Ser Barristan shifted in the saddle. “Not … not loved. Mayhaps wanted is a better word, but … it was only kitchen gossip, the whispers of washerwomen and stableboys …”

“I want to know. I never knew my father. I want to know everything about him. The good and … the rest.”

“As you command.”

How beautiful, the queen tried to tell herself, but inside her was some foolish little girl who could not help but look about for Daario. If he loved you, he would come and carry you off at swordpoint, as Rhaegar carried off his northern girl, the girl in her insisted, but the queen knew that was folly.

ADWD Daenerys V

The day might come soon when she would have need of every knight. “Will they joust for me? I should like that.” Viserys had told her stories of the tourneys he had witnessed in the Seven Kingdoms, but Dany had never seen a joust herself.

“They are not ready, Your Grace. When they are, they will be pleased to demonstrate their prowess.”

ADWD Daenerys IV

“One day I will want to return to Westeros, to claim the Seven Kingdoms that were my father’s.”

“One day all men must die, but it serves no good to dwell on death. I prefer to take each day as it comes.”

Dany folded her hands together. “Words are wind, even words like love and peace. I put more trust in deeds. In my Seven Kingdoms, knights go on quests to prove themselves worthy of the maiden that they love. They seek for magic swords, for chests of gold, for crowns stolen from a dragon’s hoard.”

“Ninety days and ninety nights without a corpse, and on the ninety-first we wed?”

“Perhaps,” said Dany, with a coy look. “Though young girls have been known to be fickle. I may still want a magic sword.”

“I saw your father and your mother wed as well. Forgive me, but there was no fondness there, and the realm paid dearly for that, my queen.”

“Why did they wed if they did not love each other?”

“Your grandsire commanded it. A woods witch had told him that the prince was promised would be born of their line.”

[...] “What became of her?”

“Summerhall.” The word was fraught with doom.

Dany sighed. “Leave me now. I am very weary.”

“Most queens have no purpose but to warm some king’s bed and pop out sons for him. If that’s the sort of queen you mean to be, best marry Hizdahr.”

Her anger flashed. “Have you forgotten who I am?”

“No. Have you?”

Viserys would have his head off for that insolence. “I am the blood of the dragon. Do not presume to teach me lessons.” When Dany stood, the lion pelt slipped from her shoulders and tumbled to the ground. “Leave me.”

ADWD Daenerys II

Dany shut her eyes and tried to think of home, of Dragonstone and King's Landing and all the other places that Viserys had told her of, in a kinder land than this ...

“Tell me a tale, ser,” Dany said as they climbed. “Some tale of valor with a happy ending.” She felt in need of happy endings. “Tell me how you escaped from the Usurper.”

“Your Grace. There is no valor in running for your life.”

Dany seated herself on a cushion, crossed her legs, and gazed up at him. “Please. It was the Young Usurper who dismissed you from the Kingsguard …”

“[...] I was gathering my things when it came to me that I had brought this on myself by taking Robert’s pardon. He was a good knight but a bad king, for he had no right to the throne he sat. That was when I knew that to redeem myself I must find the true king, and serve him loyally with all the strength that still remained me.”

“My brother Viserys.”

“Stark was a traitor who met a traitor’s end.”

“Your Grace,” said Selmy, “Eddard Stark played a part in your father’s fall, but he bore you no ill will. When the eunuch Varys told us that you were with child, Robert wanted you killed, but Lord Stark spoke against it. Rather than countenance the murder of children, he told Robert to find himself another Hand.”

“Have you forgotten Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon?”

“Never. That was Lannister work, Your Grace.”

“Lannister or Stark, what difference? Viserys used to call them the Usurper’s dogs. If a child is set upon by a pack of hounds, does it matter which one tears out his throat? All the dogs are just as guilty. The guilt …” The word caught in her throat.

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

“Your father is called ‘the Mad King’ in Westeros. Has no one ever told you?”

“Viserys did.” The Mad King. “The Usurper called him that, the Usurper and his dogs.” The Mad King. “It was a lie.”

“Why ask for truth,” Ser Barristan said softly, “if you close your ears to it?” He hesitated, then continued.

[...] The truth is, I wanted to watch you for a time before pledging you my sword. To make certain that you were not ...”

“... my father’s daughter?” If she was not her father’s daughter, who was she?

“... mad,” he finished. “But I see no taint in you.”

“Taint?” Dany bristled.

“Was my father truly mad?” she blurted out. Why do I ask that? “Viserys said this talk of madness was a ploy of the Usurper’s ...”

“Viserys was a child, and the queen sheltered him as much as she could. Your father always had a little madness in him, I now believe. Yet he was charming and generous as well, so his lapses were forgiven. His reign began with such promise ... but as the years passed, the lapses grew more frequent, until ...”

Dany stopped him. “Do I want to hear this now?”

Ser Barristan considered a moment. “Perhaps not. Not now.”

“Not now,” she agreed. “One day. One day you must tell me all. The good and the bad. There is some good to be said of my father, surely?”

“There is, Your Grace. Of him, and those who came before him. Your grandfather Jaehaerys and his brother, their father Aegon, your mother ... and Rhaegar. Him most of all.”

“I wish I could have known him.” Her voice was wistful.

“I wish he could have known you,” the old knight said. “When you are ready, I will tell you all.”

ASOS Daenerys V

“...Your war is in Westeros.”

“I have not forgotten Westeros.” Dany dreamt of it some nights, this fabled land that she had never seen. “If I let Meereen’s old brick walls defeat me so easily, though, how will I ever take the great stone castles of Westeros?”

“Why are you here?” Dany demanded of him. “If Robert sent you to kill me, why did you save my life?” He served the Usurper. He betrayed Rhaegar’s memory, and abandoned Viserys to live and die in exile. Yet if he wanted me dead, he need only have stood aside ...

“...And since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises.”

He cannot mean ... “You are mistaken.” Dany looked at Jorah Mormont. “Tell him he’s mistaken. There’s no informer. Ser Jorah, tell him. We crossed the Dothraki sea together, and the red waste ...” Her heart fluttered like a bird in a trap. “Tell him, Jorah. Tell him how he got it wrong.”

“The Others take you, Selmy.” Ser Jorah flung his longsword to the carpet. “Khaleesi, it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love ...”

“Do not say that word!” She backed away from him. “How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was it gold?” The Undying had said she would be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were promised?”

“Varys said ... I might go home.” He bowed his head.

I was going to take you home!

ASOS Daenerys IV

“Tell me more of my brother Rhaegar, if you would. I liked the tale you told me on the ship, of how he decided that he must be a warrior.”

“...He never loved the song of swords the way that Robert did, or Jaime Lannister. It was something he had to do, a task the world had set him. He did it well, for he did everything well. That was his nature. But he took no joy in it. Men said that he loved his harp much better than his lance.”

“He won some tourneys, surely,” said Dany, disappointed.

Dany did not want to hear about Rhaegar being unhorsed. “But what tourneys did my brother win?”

“But that was the tourney when he crowned Lyanna Stark as queen of love and beauty!” said Dany. “Princess Elia was there, his wife, and yet my brother gave the crown to the Stark girl, and later stole her away from her betrothed. How could he do that? Did the Dornish woman treat him so ill?”

“But I am not certain it was in Rhaegar to be happy.”

“You make him sound so sour,” Dany protested.

ASOS Daenerys II

“Yet I must have some army,” Dany said. “The boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking politely.”

“When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of Westeros will be with you,” Whitebeard promised. “Your brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love.”

“And my father?” Dany said.

The old man hesitated before saying, “King Aerys is also remembered. He gave the realm many years of peace.[”]

“Viserys would have bought as many Unsullied as he had the coin for. But you once said I was like Rhaegar ...”

“I remember, Daenerys.”

“Your Grace,” she corrected. “Prince Rhaegar led free men into battle, not slaves. Whitebeard said he dubbed his squires himself, and made many other knights as well.”

“There was no higher honor than to receive your knighthood from the Prince of Dragonstone.”

“Tell me, then—when he touched a man on the shoulder with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the weak’? Or ‘Go forth and defend them’? At the Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our dragon banners—did they give their lives because they believed in Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid for?” Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited for an answer.

“My queen,” the big man said slowly, “all you say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle, he lost the war, he lost the kingdom, and he lost his life. His blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the Iron Throne. Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.”

ASOS Daenerys I

“Did you ever meet my royal father?” King Aerys II had died before his daughter was born.

“I had that great honor, Your Grace.” “Did you find him good and gentle?”

Whitebeard did his best to hide his feelings, but they were there, plain on his face. “His Grace was ... often pleasant.”

“Often?” Dany smiled. “But not always?” 

“He could be very harsh to those he thought his enemies.” 

“A wise man never makes an enemy of a king,” said Dany.

“Along with a thousand others at some harvest feast. Next you’ll claim you squired for him.”

“I make no such claim, ser. Myles Mooton was Prince Rhaegar’s squire, and Richard Lonmouth after him. When they won their spurs, he knighted them himself, and they remained his close companions. Young Lord Connington was dear to the prince as well, but his oldest friend was Arthur Dayne.”

“The Sword of the Morning!” said Dany, delighted. “Viserys used to talk about his wondrous white blade. He said Ser Arthur was the only knight in the realm who was our brother’s peer.”

Whitebeard bowed his head. “It is not my place to question the words of Prince Viserys.”

“King,” Dany corrected. “He was a king, though he never reigned. Viserys, the Third of His Name. But what do you mean?” His answer had not been one that she’d expected. “Ser Jorah named Rhaegar the last dragon once. He had to have been a peerless warrior to be called that, surely?”

Dany turned back to the squire. “I know little of Rhaegar. Only the tales Viserys told, and he was a little boy when our brother died. What was he truly like?”

The old man considered a moment. “Able. That above all. Determined, deliberate, dutiful, single-minded. There is a tale told of him ... but doubtless Ser Jorah knows it as well.”

“I would hear it from you.”

“As you wish,” said Whitebeard. “[...] Until one day Prince Rhaegar found something in his scrolls that changed him. No one knows what it might have been, only that the boy suddenly appeared early one morning in the yard as the knights were donning their steel. He walked up to Ser Willem Darry, the master-at-arms, and said, ‘I will require sword and armor. It seems I must be a warrior.’”

“And he was!” said Dany, delighted.

I am still half a world from Westeros, Dany reminded herself, but every hour brings me closer. She tried to imagine what it would feel like, when she first caught sight of the land she was born to rule. It will be as fair a shore as I have ever seen, I know it. How could it be otherwise?

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys III

“The Arbor makes the best wine in the world,” Dany declared. Lord Redwyne had fought for her father against the Usurper, she remembered, one of the few to remain true to the last. Will he fight for me as well? There was no way to be certain after so many years.

“If you go west, you risk your life.”

“House Targaryen has friends in the Free Cities,” she reminded him. “Truer friends than Xaro or the Pureborn.”

“Illyrio believes in no cause but Illyrio. Gluttons are greedy men as a rule, and magisters are devious. Illyrio Mopatis is both. What do you truly know of him?”

“I know that he gave me my dragon eggs.”

He snorted. “If he’d known they were like to hatch, he would have sat on them himself.”

That made her smile despite herself. “Oh, I have no doubt of that, ser. I know Illyrio better than you think. I was a child when I left his manse in Pentos to wed my sun-and-stars, but I was neither deaf nor blind. And I am no child now.”

“Sellswords have their uses,” Ser Jorah admitted, “but you will not win your father’s throne with sweepings from the Free Cities. Nothing knits a broken realm together so quick as an invading army on its soil.”

“I am their rightful queen,” Dany protested.

“You are a stranger who means to land on their shores with an army of outlanders who cannot even speak the Common Tongue. The lords of Westeros do not know you, and have every reason to fear and mistrust you. You must win them over before you sail. A few at least.”

ACOK Daenerys II

It felt good to close her eyes and float, knowing she could rest as long as she liked. She wondered whether Aegon’s Red Keep had a pool like this, and fragrant gardens full of lavender and mint. It must, surely. Viserys always said the Seven Kingdoms were more beautiful than any other place in the world.

[...] Viserys had believed that the realm would rise for its rightful king ... but Viserys had been a fool, and fools believe in foolish things.

The Usurper will kill you, sure as sunrise, Mormont had said. Robert had slain her gallant brother Rhaegar, and one of his creatures had crossed the Dothraki sea to poison her and her unborn son. They said Robert Baratheon was strong as a bull and fearless in battle, a man who loved nothing better than war. And with him stood the great lords her brother had named the Usurper’s dogs, cold-eyed Eddard Stark with his frozen heart, and the golden Lannisters, father and son, so rich, so powerful, so treacherous.

“A gift of news. Dragonmother, Stormborn, I tell you true, Robert Baratheon is dead.”

Outside her walls, dusk was settling over Qarth, but a sun had risen in Dany’s heart. “Dead?” she repeated. In her lap, black Drogon hissed, and pale smoke rose before her face like a veil. “You are certain? The Usurper is dead?”

“So it is said in Oldtown, and Dorne, and Lys, and all the other ports where we have called.”

He sent me poisoned wine, yet I live and he is gone. “What was the manner of his death?” On her shoulder, pale Viserion flapped wings the color of cream, stirring the air.

“Torn by a monstrous boar whilst hunting in his kingswood, or so I heard in Oldtown. Others say his queen betrayed him, or his brother, or Lord Stark who was his Hand. Yet all the tales agree in this: King Robert is dead and in his grave.”

Dany had never looked upon the Usurper’s face, yet seldom a day had passed when she had not thought of him. His great shadow had lain across her since the hour of her birth, when she came forth amidst blood and storm into a world where she no longer had a place. And now this ebony stranger had lifted that shadow.

“The boy sits the Iron Throne now,” Ser Jorah said.

“King Joffrey reigns,” Quhuru Mo agreed, “but the Lannisters rule. Robert’s brothers have fled King’s Landing. The talk is, they mean to claim the crown. And the Hand has fallen, Lord Stark who was King Robert’s friend. He has been seized for treason.”

“Ned Stark a traitor?” Ser Jorah snorted. “Not bloody likely. The Long Summer will come again before that one would besmirch his precious honor.”

“What honor could he have?” Dany said. “He was a traitor to his true king, as were these Lannisters.” It pleased her to hear that the Usurper’s dogs were fighting amongst themselves, though she was unsurprised.

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys IX

She told herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the maegi had learned in Asshai. The night was black and moonless, but overhead a million stars burned bright. She took that for an omen.

AGOT Daenerys VIII

She was the blood of the dragon, she would not be afraid. Her brother Rhaegar had died for the woman he loved.

AGOT Daenerys VII

Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver’s Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne.

AGOT Daenerys IV

And sometimes she found herself wishing her father had been protected by such men. In the songs, the white knights of the Kingsguard were ever noble, valiant, and true, and yet King Aerys had been murdered by one of them, the handsome boy they now called the Kingslayer, and a second, Ser Barristan the Bold, had gone over to the Usurper. She wondered if all men were as false in the Seven Kingdoms. When her son sat the Iron Throne, she would see that he had bloodriders of his own to protect him against treachery in his Kingsguard.

#daenerys targaryen #dany passages #a dance with dragons #a storm of swords #valyrianscrolls #a game of thrones #a clash of kings

107 notes · View notes

alayne-stonecoldfox · 5 years

Text

Sansa and Songs

Sansa’s love of songs is shown early on in the books, and is a an important part of her character as well as her narrative.

Once, when she was just a little girl, a wandering singer had stayed with them at Winterfell for half a year. An old man he was, with white hair and windburnt cheeks, but he sang of knights and quests and ladies fair, and Sansa had cried bitter tears when he left them, and begged her father not to let him go. "The man has played us every song he knows thrice over," Lord Eddard told her gently. "I cannot keep him here against his will. You need not weep, though. I promise you, other singers will come."They hadn't, though, not for a year or more. Sansa had prayed to the Seven in their sept and old gods of the heart tree, asking them to bring the old man back, or better still to send another singer, young and handsome. But the gods never answered, and the halls of Winterfell stayed silent.

Many different characters comment on it

Lady Catelyn had said that Sansa was a gentle soul who loved lemon cakes, silken gowns, and songs of chivalry - Brienne

So the singer played for her, so soft and sad that Arya only heard snatches of the words, though the tune was half-familiar. Sansa would know it, I bet. Her sister had known all the songs, and she could even play a little, and sing so sweetly.- Arya

Sansa Stark, he mused. Soft-spoken sweet-smelling Sansa, who loved silks, songs, chivalry and tall gallant knights with handsome faces.- Tyrion

Her love of songs is at first tied to the way she wishes to see the world, her innocence, her dreams and her naivety. She has lived a happy and sheltered life, she is the beautiful daughter of a noble house, and has no reason to think her life would not be like the heroines of the songs she loves. This is her romanticised view of the world.

All she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs.

Be brave, she told herself. Be brave, like a lady in a song.

"It is better than the songs," she whispered when they found the places that her father had promised her, among the high lords and ladies. Sansa was dressed beautifully that day, in a green gown that brought out the auburn of her hair, and she knew they were looking at her and smiling.

Sansa insisted. "I don't want someone brave and gentle, I want him. We'll be ever so happy, just like in the songs, you'll see. I'll give him a son with golden hair, and one day he'll be the king of all the realm, the greatest king that ever was, as brave as the wolf and as proud as the lion."

This quote below is one of the first times Sansa instead associates songs with a negative connotation, but in an interesting way.

The young knight in the blue cloak was nothing to her, some stranger from the Vale of Arryn whose name she had forgotten as soon as she heard it. And now the world would forget his name too, Sansa realized; there would be no songs sung for him. That was sad.

She has just witnessed a young Vale knight die in the joust. It is described as :

“the most terrifying moment of the day came during Ser Gregor's second joust, when his lance rode up and struck a young knight from the Vale under the gorget with such force that it drove through his throat, killing him instantly. The youth fell not ten feet from where Sansa was seated.”

Sansa’s reaction is recorded alongside her friend Jeyne’s

Jeyne Poole wept so hysterically that Septa Mordane finally took her off to regain her composure, but Sansa sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching with a strange fascination. She had never seen a man die before. She ought to be crying too, she thought, but the tears would not come.

I love this part of the book. It’s Sansa’s first, very blunt, encounter with death, though it takes place in such a wonderful colourful atmosphere, a court joust, where she’s been having the time of her life and has always dreamed of being part of. It is even quoted by her as being ‘a song come to life’. The way it’s written seems like she can’t quite process what she’s just seen. The reality of the death. The only thing that registers with her truly in that moment is that he won’t be the one the songs are sung for, and that’s what she finds most tragic. It is a shallow take on it. She is still a young girl caught up in songs and not reality.

This passage happens in Sansa’s third chapter, when Ned has decided Ser Gregor is to be brought before the Kings Justice, and Loras volunteers to bring him in but Ned refuses to send him. Sansa doesn’t understand why, and says this to her Septa, and Petyr Baelish overhears

Her father's decision still bewildered her. When the Knight of Flowers had spoken up, she'd been sure she was about to see one of Old Nan's stories come to life. Ser Gregor was the monster and Ser Loras the true hero who would slay him. He even looked a true hero, so slim and beautiful, with golden roses around his slender waist and his rich brown hair tumbling down into his eyes.

Lord Baelish stroked his little pointed beard and said, "Nothing? Tell me, child, why would you have sent Ser Loras?"Sansa had no choice but to explain about heroes and monsters. The king's councillor smiled. "Well, those are not the reasons I'd have given, but …" He had touched her cheek, his thumb lightly tracing the line of a cheekbone. "Life is not a song, sweetling. You may learn that one day to your sorrow."

Again, a moment highlighted Sansa’s naivety and how she truly believes life would be like the songs, Ser Loras defeating Gregor because he is the handsome young knight and Gregor the monster. It is also the first introduction of the line “life is not a song sweetling” which will be echoed throughout Sansa’s chapters from this point on, as her innocent world view is shattered and her naivety chipped away. The line is impactful coming from Petyr Baelish of all people, as he was once also a young boy who’s world vision was crafted from songs.

"There's a song," he remembered. "'Jenny of Oldstones, with the flowers in her hair.'""We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky." She had played at being Jenny that day, had even wound flowers in her hair. And Petyr had pretended to be her Prince of Dragonflies. Catelyn could not have been more than twelve, Petyr just a boy.

Did you come with Lord Bracken and Lord Blackwood, the time they visited to lay their feud before my father? Lord Bracken’s singer played for us, and Catelyn danced six dances with Petyr that night, six, I counted.

He believed Catelyn Stark was being married against her will in an arranged marriage to Brandon Stark, falsely believing Cat loved him and he had taken her maiden head (he hadn’t, he was drunk and it was Lysa) and they were going to be together despite his lower birth, and he could fight for her hand, because that was how it happened in the songs where the gallant young hero’s always won. But that’s not what happened, and Petyr lost everything in that duel, his home at Riverrun, his ties with House Tully and what he thought was his true love, and from that point onwards he descended into bitterness, becoming a man of ruthless practicality. He recognises the same innocence in Sansa with a knowingness that it will not last.

Another key figure in Sansa’s narrative relating to songs is The Hound. From the beginning of her chapters he derisively refers to Sansa as a little bird who sings songs.

Some septa trained you well. You're like one of those birds from the Summer Isles, aren't you? A pretty little talking bird, repeating all the pretty little words they taught you to recite."

Tell me, little bird, what kind of god makes a monster like the Imp, or a halfwit like Lady Tanda's daughter? If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with."

A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face." He cupped her under the jaw, raising her chin, his fingers pinching her painfully. "And that's more than little birds can do, isn't it? I never got my song.""I . . . I know a song about Florian and Jonquil.”"Florian and Jonquil? A fool and his cunt. Spare me. But one day I'll have a song from you, whether you will it or no."

The Hound seems to resent Sansa’s innocence. He is a character that certainly knows how harsh the world is, and he see’s Sansa’s world views as foolish, and every chance he gets he seems to want to wake her up to the real world, whilst also acting as a protector. She brings out a lot of conflicting feelings within him, as he does in Sansa, as he does not fit her idea at all of what a knight was meant to be. His harsh demeanour is very confronting to her throughout her early chapters, culminating in a scene in her room where he seemingly planned on raping her, but could bring himself to do it, because as much as he hated her innocence, it touches him as well. He settles on wanting a song.

"Think I'm so drunk that I'd believe that?" He let go his grip on her arm, swaying slightly as he stood, stripes of light and darkness falling across his terrible burnt face. "You look almost a woman . . . face, teats, and you're taller too, almost . . . ah, you're still a stupid little bird, aren't you? Singing all the songs they taught you . . . sing me a song, why don't you? Go on. Sing to me. Some song about knights and fair maids. You like knights, don't you?"He was scaring her. "T-true knights, my lord."

I could keep you safe," he rasped. "They're all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them." He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. "Still can't bear to look, can you?" she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. "I'll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said." His dagger was out, poised at her throat. "Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."Her throat was dry and tight with fear, and every song she had ever known had fled from her mind. Please don't kill me, she wanted to scream, please don't. She could feel him twisting the point, pushing it into her throat, and she almost closed her eyes again, but then she remembered. It was not the song of Florian and Jonquil, but it was a song. Her voice sounded small and thin and tremulous in her ears.

This scene, as well as the entirety of the chapters that come after Ned’s death and covering the battle of the blackwater, references songs in a new dark way in Sansa’s chapters.

Perhaps I will die too, she told herself, and the thought did not seem so terrible to her. If she flung herself from the window, she could put an end to her suffering, and in the years to come the singers would write songs of her grief.

She called for the heroes from the songs, for Florian and Ser Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, but no one heard. Women swarmed over her like weasels, pinching her legs and kicking her in the belly, and someone hit her in the face and she felt her teeth shatter. Then she saw the bright glimmer of steel. The knife plunged into her belly and tore and tore and tore, until there was nothing left of her down there but shiny wet ribbons.

She heard it as she had never heard it before, and there were other sounds as well, grunts of pain, angry curses, shouts for help, and the moans of wounded and dying men. In the songs, the knights never screamed nor begged for mercy.

The deep moan of warhorns, the creak and thud of catapults flinging stones, the splashes and splinterings, the crackle of burning pitch and thrum of scorpions loosing their yard-long iron-headed shafts . . . and beneath it all, the cries of dying men.It was another sort of song, a terrible song.

They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They've never seen a battle, they've never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her father's head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.

Do you have any notion what happens when a city is sacked, Sansa? No, you wouldn't, would you? All you know of life you learned from singers, and there's such a dearth of good sacking songs.""True knights would never harm women and children." The words rang hollow in her ears even as she said them.

For those who remained, a singer was brought forth to fill the hall with the sweet music of the high harp. He sang of Jonquil and Florian, of Prince Aemon the Dragonknight and his love for his brother's queen, of Nymeria's ten thousand ships. They were beautiful songs, but terribly sad. Several of the women began to weep, and Sansa felt her own eyes growing moist."Very good, dear." The queen leaned close. "You want to practice those tears. You'll need them for King Stannis."

But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. "Life is not a song, sweetling," he'd told her. "You may learn that one day to your sorrow."

Sansa’s world view has begun to change as she is no longer naive and has suffered tragedy, and nothing is happening as she thought it would. She still seems to love songs, but now there’s a lot of melancholy attached to them.

The third key figure in Sansa’s narrative associated with songs, after Petyr Baelish and the hound, is Marillion. Her Aunt Lysa’s favourite singer who she encounters first at the Fingers during Petyr and Lysa’s marriage, where he attempts to sing to her and rape her.

"Marillion?" she said, uncertain. "You are . . . kind to think of me, but . . . pray forgive me. I am very tired.""And very beautiful. All night I have been making songs for you in my head. A lay for your eyes, a ballad for your lips, a duet to your breasts. I will not sing them, though. They were poor things, unworthy of such beauty." He sat on her bed and put his hand on her leg. "Let me sing to you with my body instead." She caught a whiff of his breath. "You're drunk.""I never get drunk. Mead only makes me merry. I am on fire." His hand slipped up to her thigh. "And you as well."

Luckily, he is scared off by Lothor Brune, who is asked by Petyr Baelish to watch over her that night. But Marillion and his singing factor again into one of the biggest moments of Sansa and Baelish’s story so far, as he plays his harp and sings to cover the sounds of Lysa’s attempt at killing Sansa by throwing her through the moon door.

“No." Sansa planted her feet and tried to squirm backward, but her aunt did not budge. "Not this way. Please . . ." She put a hand up, her fingers scrabbling at the doorframe, but she could not get a grip, and her feet were sliding on the wet marble floor. Lady Lysa pressed her forward inexorably. Her aunt outweighed her by three stone. "The lady lay a-kissing, upon a mound of hay," Marillion was singing. Sansa twisted sideways, hysterical with fear, and one foot slipped out over the void. She screamed. "Hey-nonny, hey-nonny, hey-nonny-hey." The wind flapped her skirts up and bit at her bare legs with cold teeth. She could feel snowflakes melting on her cheeks. Sansa flailed, found Lysa's thick auburn braid, and clutched it tight. "My hair!" her aunt shrieked. "Let go of my hair!" She was shaking, sobbing. They teetered on the edge. Far off, she heard the guards pounding on the door with their spears, demanding to be let in. Marillion broke off his song."Lysa! What's the meaning of this?" The shout cut through the sobs and heavy breathing. Footsteps echoed down the High Hall. "Get back from there! Lysa, what are you doing?" The guards were still beating at the door; Littlefinger had come in the back way, through the lords' entrance behind the dais.

Petyr comes in time to stop it. Of course, we know this is when he kills Lysa himself. Marillion is witness to all of this. Petyr decides to keep him alive for his own ends, sending him to the dungeons to be tortured into now defending their innocence.

"We have come to an agreement, Marillion and I. Mord can be most persuasive. And if our singer disappoints us and sings a song we do not care to hear, why, you and I need only say he lies. Whom do you imagine Lord Nestor will believe?""Us?" Sansa wished she could be certain.

"Lord Petyr has been kind enough to let me keep my harp," the blind singer said. "My harp and . . . my tongue . . . so I may sing my songs. Lady Lysa dearly loved my singing . . ."

Sansa most traumatic moment, the moment she almost died, was serenaded with a song. Now she and Petyr use that singer to cover the crime of Lysa’s death with Sansa being able to hear him from down in the dungeons where he sings at night.

The singer's voice was strong and sweet. Sansa thought he sounded better than he ever had before, his voice richer somehow, full of pain and fear and longing. She did not understand why the gods would have given such a voice to such a wicked man.

He would have taken me by force on the Fingers if Petyr had not set Ser Lothor to watch over me, she had to remind herself. And he played to drown out my cries when Aunt Lysa tried to kill me.That did not make the songs any easier to hear.

"Please," she begged Lord Petyr, "can't you make him stop?""I gave the man my word, sweetling." Petyr Baelish, Lord of Harrenhal, Lord Paramount of the Trident, and Lord Protector of the Eyrie and the Vale of Arryn, looked up from the letter he was writing. He had written a hundred letters since Lady Lysa's fall. Sansa had seen the ravens coming and going from the rookery. "I'd sooner suffer his singing than listen to his sobbing."

That night the dead man sang "The Day They Hanged Black Robin," "The Mother's Tears," and "The Rains of Castamere." Then he stopped for a while, but just as Sansa began to drift off he started to play again. He sang "Six Sorrows," "Fallen Leaves," and "Alysanne." Such sad songs, she thought. When she closed her eyes she could see him in his sky cell, huddled in a corner away from the cold black sky, crouched beneath a fur with his woodharp cradled against his chest. I must not pity him, she told herself. He was vain and cruel, and soon he will be dead. She could not save him. And why should she want to? Marillion tried to rape her, and Petyr had saved her life not once but twice. Some lies you have to tell. Lies had been all that kept her alive in King's Landing.

Marillion in his entirety really opens up a more troubling world view for Sansa to start to digest. He was beautiful and young and a singer, but he tried to rape her. He tried to aid in her murder. He was tortured into defending her and Baelish. She knows he will be killed. Sansa is conflicted by all of this, feeling haunted by his sad songs as she tried to sleep but can’t. He has given her a lot to think about regarding her survival but also her morality.

"My lady was too trusting for this world." Petyr spoke so tenderly that Sansa would have believed he'd loved his wife. "Lysa could not see the evil in men, only the good. Marillion sang sweet songs, and she mistook that for his nature."

Songs have been weaved throughout Sansa’s narrative consistently, alongside three men who enforce these links even more. The Hound who wanted a song, Lord Baelish who was once a lover of songs himself, and Marillion, the singer. I believe that songs will continue to play a thematic role in Sansa’s chapters, but i would say the dreams and innocence once associated with them in her mind is long gone.

The moment came back to her vividly. "You told me that life was not a song. That I would learn that one day, to my sorrow." She felt tears in her eyes, but whether she wept for Ser Dontos Hollard, for Joff, for Tyrion, or for herself, Sansa could not say.

As the boy's lips touched her own she found herself thinking of another kiss. She could still remember how it felt, when his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. He had come to Sansa in the darkness as green fire filled the sky. He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak.It made no matter. That day was done, and so was Sansa.

That day was done, and so was Sansa.

#sansa stark #petyr baelish #sandor clegane #asoiaf #got #long post #SORRY IT'S SO LONG #i just...LOVE. BOOK. QUOTES

500 notes · View notes