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Cersei stared at him, aghast. She was just a child, my precious princess. She was so pretty, too.

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me the author making alfred say “darling boy” seventeen thousand times in this fic so I can read it later 🥺

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"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth…but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.

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Jon Snow and Arya Stark by EtceteraArt (Twitter)

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Baelor & Aemon

This part of the story is so absurd that I just love it 😭. I know that Baelor was unconscious almost the whole way, so the art is not canon, it was drawn for fun.

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Sansa and Arya Stark (Unfinished)

(A fanart I won't be able to complete 🥲 )

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Love these two 💕

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It was eight long days until Lysa Arryn arrived. On five of them it rained, while Sansa sat bored and restless by the fire, beside the old blind dog. He was too sick and toothless to walk guard with Bryen anymore, and mostly all he did was sleep, but when she patted him he whined and licked her hand, and after that they were fast friends. 

— A STORM OF SWORDS, SANSA VI

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"Pippin had liked [Boromir] from the first, admiring the great man's lordly but kindly manner."

My contribution towards @boromir-week Day 5, for the prompts "The People's Prince" and "Member of the Fellowship". I just wanted to highlight some moments that show Boromir's kindness, because I love him and his kind heart so, so much.

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When Elia had learned of the match their lady mothers had made, and their lord fathers had agreed to, she had been less than pleased to find herself betrothed to the Lannister heir. Jaime had still been just a boy when they had exchanged their vows in the sept at Casterly Rock. She wondered if he even understood the vows that he was making.

Ten years on, with his parents in their graves and Jaime proving to be a fair leader, Elia thinks that mayhaps her opinion is beginning to change. The boy becomes the man, and the man makes her laugh and blushes when she touches him. He looks at her as though her own hands had placed the stars and the moon into the skies.

Mayhaps the arrangement is not so bad.

Mayhaps she is falling in love with her husband.

***

A little while ago, I came across art of Elia and the Martells by @amaati and fell absolutely in love. The what-might-have-been potential of Jaime/Elia has been my pet rarepair ship for a long time, and so I commissioned this art from her! I am bowled over by how beautiful, delicate, and lovely it is. Thank you, amaati!

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Baby Stannis gently nursing an injured bird back to health when no one else would and naming her Proudwing until the bird loved him and perched on his shoulder and followed him around until he abandoned the her because Robert told him it was gay to have an animal friend who couldn’t do violence is still so evocative to me like I’m genuinely so so sad thinking about it

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I wish more than anything that we could have nuanced discussions about Dany and Mirri because it’s one of the most interesting, most pivotal moments in the entire series and boiling it down to “badass moment where Dany justly executes the woman who killed her child and does blood magic and reawakens dragons” or to “evil Dany moment where future destroyer of worlds burns her slave to death to acquire weapons of mass destruction” does it such an injustice.

It’s a moment of pain, delusion, hypocrisy, grief, magic, and rebirth. A teenage girl has lost, to her knowledge, her last blood relative and has been told she will never have another. She’s full of postpartum hormones. She has to cope with the fact that she traded her last relative for the life of the man she had to convince herself to love, her abuser and rapist, and it didn’t work. And it didn’t work by any fault of her own—it was Jorah’s. And she knows it was his fault but he’s her fucked up security blanket. Her only link to Westeros, the place she has been groomed to believe is her birthright and destiny.

She is 14. She is prepared to die. Fire cannot hurt a dragon, and she has been told her whole life she is the blood of the dragon, that she is better than the others. She must find out the truth. She condemns Mirri to a terrible, cruel death. But she is also willing to face that death. She tempts the gods to strike her down. If she lives, she is the blood of the dragon, she really must be destined to rule, and thus the execution, in her mind, would be justified. And if she dies, then perhaps she was wrong, and as punishment, she suffers the same cruel death as Mirri.

But she lives. More than just lives. She weds the fire. She awakens dragons from fossils. She puts her own life at stake to ask the universe if she really is the chosen one and the answer she hears is yes. So now she must live with that answer—even if she comes to find she does not like it. It weighs heavy on her. “This could be my home if I were not the blood of the dragon,” she thinks wistfully. She does not want to rule Westeros, but how could she turn back now? She bargained with her life and she was spared. She traded everything to receive this magic, this purpose, how could she ever go back? She can tell herself now that everything she does is justified because the universe told her so by allowing her to be reborn in fire with three baby dragons. If she looks back, if she stops her quest, what was it all for? What did she suffer being raped for? What did her brother die for? What did her baby die for? What did she execute Mirri for? What did she sack those cities for? What did the people of her armies give their lives for? How could she ever stop?

But it doesn’t change the fact that she condemned a slave to a painful death, violating her own principles. Mirri’s death was likely one of the most painful deaths that happens on page in the series. Mirri would not strictly have known that Dany was sold to Drogo at 13. All she knows is that her home was destroyed, her place of worship burned, her people raped and killed, and the survivors kept as slaves. And yet, even so, for all we know, she did try to help Dany. Drogo did not follow the instructions to treat his wound. Whether or not it’s fair to say she deceived Dany about the “life for life” and Rhaego is hard for me to say. Mirri didn’t want to do it. She did make it clear that it was a dark ritual. She was solemn. She warned Dany that Drogo’s death would be cleaner. Mirri never goaded Dany into saving Drogo. Mirri would have been perfectly content to let Drogo die and Rhaego live. She even offered to help make Drogo’s death as painless as possible—the very man who owned her as a slave, who ordered the sack of her village. Dany insisted.

Whether it was fair for Mirri to assume this 14 year old understood the cost, I can’t say. But it is worth noting that Mirri didn’t want to do it. She was not in a position to refuse. Dany even offered to free her, which, to Mirri, would highlight Dany’s power. It says to her that Dany has the ability to free her (which, in all fairness, if Drogo was alive and well, I don’t think she would’ve had that power, but that’s speculation and Mirri wouldn’t have known that). Even after this, Mirri still warns her. And I do believe based on that text that Dany truly thought the horse was the cost. But that’s just my speculation. What might have happened to the baby had Jorah not taken her into the tent? She thought to herself that Jorah had killed her child by bringing her in the tent, but after that, Mirri’s comments make it seem as though Rhaego would have died regardless. But perhaps it is the same as Tyrion telling Jaime he killed Joffrey. A lie meant to sting. Mirri was told that if she did the ritual, she would be set free. And the ritual was interrupted, and there she was, not freed, and then condemned to die.

Dany could not see things from Mirri’s perspective. She could not see the cruelty in her actions. How could she? She lost nearly everything. Her husband, her child, most of the khal, the survivors like Eroeh she had tried to protect. But Mirri was a slave, a slave Dany herself had claimed, who tried to help her. She did as she was asked and she did it with a kind attitude towards Dany. Mirri would have let Dany and Rhaego live. Mirri warned her. Dany insisted.

The fever dream Dany has when she’s sick after Rhaego’s stillbirth tells it best.

She’s running. She’s afraid of waking the dragon. Those are the words that haunt her as she runs. She’s trying in all her futility to run from the dragon. To the only thing she really wants. Home. Love. Warmth. Security. Peace. And it only gets further and further away as she runs towards it. She sees Drogo, now lost. The dragon will wake. Jorah tells her of Rhaegar, the last dragon, now lost. The dragon will wake. She sees Viserys, declaring himself the dragon, now lost. The dragon will wake. She sees her son, who would have been a dragon, now lost. The dragon will wake. She sees her ancestors, dragons of the past, now gone. The dragon will wake and she’s so terrified. She’s running from the inevitable. She feels the wings burst through the skin of her back. She sees the world, “and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings.” The dragon, the dragon is waking. She throws the door open and there before her is the last dragon. It is her.

Daenerys Targaryen wakes.

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Little dove 🕊️

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꣑ৎ [ danyweek day 7: alternate universe ]

princess daenerys stormborn targaryen, rhaegar wins au

— commission done by @/love98u on twt

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Her mother was three moons dead when Daenaera started running to the docks. Father was a captain, gone more oft than not. When he returned to find her there among the ships, he frowned: “Again. Go home.” Daenaera pretended not to hear. She kicked off the shoes and scrambled up the mast, settling herself on the crossbeam. The wind lifted her blue dress; she didn’t bother to smooth it down. “Come down!” She would not. Daeron would curse beneath his breath and turn to his work. Daenaera would remain above, perched like some strange bird, hours passing unmarked. Hunger meant nothing to her then. In those days men believed women brought ill fortune to their ships. A captain’s lady daughter running wild amongst the dockhands was unseemly. Yet the girl had but newly lost her mother. A spooked bird, would flied farther when cornered. At sunset, her shadow grown long as winter. Sometimes Daeron would look up at her small form against the sky. Sometimes she would gaze down at him. The distance between them might as well have been an ocean.

Commission art by 群青八木 on xhs

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DAENERYS TARGARYEN APPRECIATION MONTH 2022 || Day 15: Embodiment of hope & Day 20: Perspectives on Dany in ADWD 

“The best calumnies are spiced with truth,” suggested Qavo, “but the girl’s true sin cannot be denied. This arrogant child has taken it upon herself to smash the slave trade, but that traffic was never confined to Slaver’s Bay. It was part of the sea of trade that spanned the world, and the dragon queen has clouded the water. Behind the Black Wall, lords of ancient blood sleep poorly, listening as their kitchen slaves sharpen their long knives. Slaves grow our food, clean our streets, teach our young. They guard our walls, row our galleys, fight our battles. And now when they look east, they see this young queen shining from afar, this breaker of chains. The Old Blood cannot suffer that. Poor men hate her too. Even the vilest beggar stands higher than a slave. This dragon queen would rob him of that consolation.” (ADWD, Tyrion VI)

Viktoriya Novikova as book!Daenerys Targaryen