#admittedly i have to be honest and say the one part of the asoiaf timeline that i really can not wrap my head

[novembermorgon]

do you have a great bastard oc?

i don't ... but wouldn't that be something ! maybe i'll ponder it and get back to that thought anon . could be awesome . if you have any mom-house suggestions feel free to send em over and i can cook something up

[nossbean]

Myrcella / Sansa Anon Here: Like Jaime and Brienne are both Beauty and the Beast, Myrcella and Sansa have the potential to be both Cinderella and the Prince/Knight. Myrcella a bastard disguised as a Princess and Sansa is a Princess disguises as a bastard. When the Starks fell, the old man could have written Myrcella as one of Sansa’s Protectors since she knows how to survive Cersei while when the Lannister’s fell from power, Sansa would give Myrcella a home. For cherry on top, Myrcella could 1/2

2/2 inherit Jaime’s sword skills and her desire to pursue that could be a way to escape being her mother’s mini-me, only valued for her looks, and toxic family as well as an attempt to gain some control over her life. I had more articulate thoughts on this but I wrote them down somewhere I can’t recall. In canon, you already have Arianne set up for the fairy godmother role and Brienne as a subversion of the typical stepmother. Either way, less creepy than any potential in-canon Sansa ships.

Honestly, anon, you persuaded me with these first two, but the absolute joy is that you came through with even more! I do wanna quickly say though that I support folx shipping who they ship and in whatsoever way brings joy, we’re all here for the love of the characters and the story after all <3

I am as ever at the moment, very late to the party, but I’m so glad you came back to share all this! A lot of what you’ve said by way of potentials has lived rent free in my head. I’m very into the fairy tale elements you’re describing (particularly noting Arianne as fairy godmother, and Brienne as a subversion of the typical (boring, sexist) fairy tale stepmother...!) and the incorporation of major themes that could be present in Myrcella’s arc (I’m poss wearing my clown shoes, etc, but I do think there’s a chance some of those could come to bear in the remaining books, with or without Sansa, so let’s hope) Your note about Myrcella inheriting Jaime’s sword skills set off a different thought in my head, that it would be interesting for her to instead pick up a lot of the knight’s code and utilizing it to her whims and needs, though without the fighting/sword skills element. There’s resonance and balancing there, then, with parts of Sansa’s arc, and also with themes in Brienne’s arc, and is again, a repudiation of much of what Cersei (and Joffrey) thinks and believes. Though am also very much here for more sword wielding ladies.

Anyway, onwards with the rest of your Sansa/Myrcella galaxy-braining:

Also, we know Myrcella wasn’t scared of Joffrey so we could have had Myrcella getting in his face to defend Sansa and having a tense stand-off. Plus, it would be a more explicit sign of Jaime and Cersei not being soulmates and gender swapped mirrors as the cruel and cowardly Joffrey being Cersei if she was a boy and brave and clever would be Jaime as a girl.

ANON. I am SO INTO playing with aligning Cersei with Joffrey and Jaime with Myrcella explicitly! It definitely could be there for the taking (that note about where did Myrcella and Tommen get their sweetness, I WONDER) but whether GRRM will take it... Things seem to be pointing Tommen-ward atm when it comes to possibilities with Jaime and his children, which is, idk, to be expected to a degree I guess. BUT ALSO, as is on the record, I’d really rather a sharp veer towards Myrcella instead (Tommen can come too I guess but centring Myrcella would be grand)

And also just: a Myrcella who takes on her brother (and by extension, Cersei) *on behalf* of Sansa would have been fucking incredible, and would absolutely have been particularly satisfying for the resonance it would have for Jaime’s later arc. And there’s every possibility Myrcella could have stood up for Sansa, or even if we frame it more as “against Joffrey”, at least at first. Also what you describe as being possible later by way of role reversal of who protects who, yes thank you please. Deeply into how that shapes Lannister-Stark relations and also honestly the potential impact on LSH storylines, in the event Sansa meets LSH in around the same time Brienne and Jaime are confronting her (I mean, that would substantially alter the timelines, possibly, but still!) 

Also ALSO, Sansa being sapphic would better show the limits societal scripts have a person’s perceptions, agency, and ability to connect with others since her character is so influenced by storytelling, imagination, and societal roles. It would also expand her understanding of womanhood and femininity, paving the way to reconcile with Arya.

Into this, as well! Don’t really have much more to say than that, really XD Oh, only that Sapphic Sansa is very satisfying to say, hehe. Anon, I ask if you’ve read this excellent meta about Sansa? It’s a long read but a good one. 

admittedly, Myrcella did luck out with getting the sweet, age appropriate, and non-creepy Trystane Martell as her canon love interest.

My cynical take here is that it isn’t coincidence that Myrcella lucked out with Trystane being sweet and being part of a family who (mostly?) wants her safe and happy not just because of her proximity to the Iron Throne but for her own sake, only to be almost certain to lose him, heh.

Sansa/Myrcella it could be about forgiveness, chosen families, breaking the cycles of violence and revenge, hope for the future, the importance of female solidarity, re-writing the future to include everyone.

Just here to say I am a sucker for each and every one of these themes, thank you.

Physical doubling is another shared feature of both Myrcella and Sansa’s stories. Everyone comments on how much Sansa looks like her mom and Littlefinger plans to unveil her identity using her red hair. Myrcella also looks like her mom and has a double in her cousin. Both are hurt and almost killed while in care of someone they should trust, Myrcella during the Queenmaker plot and Sansa with her Aunt Lysa.

Sansa’s themes of identity, self-preservation, perception, longing for something beyond your childhood home, the power and consequences of shaping stories through truth and lies can easily be mapped onto Myrcella.

Your Jaime and Myrcella post reawakened my dormant interest in Myrcella and Sansa, since Jaime is tasked with returning Sansa.

Again, mostly am just here for all this, particularly the potential theme sharing and how they could help one another through 😍🤩

Reading all this, I feel like you hit on one of the major things that GRRM fails with on the regular in ASOIAF, which is that women and girls... often like one another? Even when they’re, like, different from one another? 😱😱😱 And even if he didn’t want to pursue a shippy route, to your earlier point, there was plenty of room for friendship and solidarity between Sansa and Myrcella when they were both in KL, even with Myrcella being younger. There could be an added element wherein Myrcella goes behind Cersei’s back somewhat to do this, given Cersei would undoubtedly put the kibosh on it had she been aware - which again, would have had resonance later for that Jaime and Myrcella mirroring angle. Buuut that would require GRRM to recognize the power of relationships between girls and women, and I admit I remain stuck on the idea that apparently no woman or girl in Brienne’s life ever did anything but mock/deride her until Catelyn came along. I invite you to imagine that a small part of my soul is always howling to the heavens: NO ONE????????? (though this is, happily, an easily retconned detail, so my clown nose is honking that there may be even a throwaway note about some girl or woman in Brienne’s past in Winds, anyway, I digress)

I DUNNO, I’m trying to, like, contribute to this excellence but mostly I’m just picking up everything you’re putting down...! 

And finally:

I don’t have a Tumblr, though I enjoy reading fic and people’s meta, so I forgot I sent that ask to be honest, haha.

Again, I’m sorry for how very, very late here, but I am so very glad you did...!!!!

[corinnaleala-blog]

Do you know if CORINNA LEALA has arrive in Edana yet? They’re the TWENTY NINE year old, LADY IN HOUSE LEALA. What if CORINNA CORA is a Lysander loyalist, I hear she can be UNYIELDING & ALOOF. But I also hear she can be INTELLIGENT & CARING and she has sworn to House Thadea, so we’ll have to simple hope and pray she arrives soon before rumours spread.

hello there, here i go again. actually haven’t done one of those in a bit lol but let me bring you The Sad Mom Friend ™. since i am a public information directory anyways, here i will link you to the blog’s index, where you will find info about house leala, corinna’s profile and timeline, some of her app, and the tags; pretty much, all that you will need to make sense of my baby.

however, if you don’t feel like reading a bible so much (i don’t blame yall i’m still embarrassed to have made the admins suffer thru 10 pages of app), bellow the cut is your way!

inspiration: demeter and kore from greek mythology, megara from hercules, sansa stark, jeyne westerling, the tully mamas & daenerys targaryen from asoiaf/got, mary crawley from downton abbey, brianna fraser from outlander

tw: mention of misogyny, pregnancy, mention of abortive intent, miscarriage/stillbirth, emotional abusive maternal relationship, non con relationship (unwanted arranged marriage), implicit depression and ptsd, parental death.

background

first, house leala. a small house, on the territory of the kingdom of rainer -- they are the closest bannermen, within riding distance of the capital, which has made them claim to be the most loyal of the people from the kingdom. their main wealth comes from lake asteria, both the lake itself, and the fertile grounds in its margins; the lake used to have diamonds in it, but now it is all gone, and only recently they have begun to culture oysters for their pearls, which has given a boost to the economy and the status of the house.

corinna was the first born daughter of the current lord leala and lady ellanor leala, nee rainer. there is always an enchantment when it comes to your first child -- children, in this case -- and with cora it was no different. her gender never proved to be a disappointment, and instead her mother, a woman of forward ideas, rejoiced and took the girl as the apple of her eye.

thus, cora grew up by her mother’s skirts, trying her best to both be the best shadow possible, and to please her lady mother. for most part, it seems she had achieved that: she was proficient in her studies on how to be a proper lady (although admittedly, she was a poor dancer); she did not have much interest in broader politics, but had a keen mind for the details and musts of how to keep a household and to care for the people; she was passionately interested in the idea of children, of becoming a mother, of caring for babes, even going out of her way to take care and raise her younger siblings.

because she seemed to be well rounded enough, cora’s faults were often overseen. she was able to get off unscathed after childhood mischief, she had freedom of speech and of thought, and her mother even fed her not so lady-like interests in the flora of the terrain around their house, and her adventures by lake asteria. she lived an ideal life, a life that not many of her gender could enjoy, even those of higher birth than her -- actually, she preferred not to be the daughter of a bigger house; while she was in love with terenthia, house rainer’s capital, she also saw that her rainer cousins had more put on their shoulders than she thinks bearable.

at the dusk of her puberty, her idyllic life took a fall, when she discovered herself pregnant, without a husband. the father (big wc!) had been a boy she cared for too much to burden with a heaviness like this, but she still wanted the child, desperately so. her parents weren’t so fond of the idea. all her life all she knew from her mother was that overwhelming love--now, it took a turn for the worse, for the opposite. when lady leala didn’t treat her unkindly, she simply ignored her -- which, for cora, seemed to be even worse.

still, she stood her ground and refused any discussion of termination of the pregnancy. tbqh she didn’t really think much through, all she could think of was that she would feel fulfilled and useful and everything would just work out in the end, when she saw her child. unfortunately, six months or so in, she went for a sail in the lake, and ended up in an accident that caused her to suffer a miscarriage (google says the term is stillbirth but). the pain and the loss left her in a deeply catatonic state, impairing her of thought, speech and of her warmth, leaving her traumatized enough to even now, still be fearful of bodies of water (a great loss for an avid swimmer as she was).

her mother took advantage of the momentum and shipped her off to marry an unknown lordling (an wc on the main!) to be honest, he probably wasn’t cruel or bad to her at all, but cora was scarred and never truly opened up to him, going as far as treating him with scorn and coldness. she didn’t get pregnant again--which was devastating to her, since she imagined a child could make her less lonely in the strange place; and also damaging to the match, since her husband needed legitimate heirs. after some years, the husband decided to divorce her, so he requested an annulment by non consummation, which she was more than glad to grant him (even if it meant she was lying, and that her future matches would be scarce).

she thought she knew maternal disappointment, but when she returned home after years married, now unmarried and “soiled”....hoo boy. the annulment was an offense for ellanor, who took it greatly; her health deteriorated and she became more cantankerous, finding every fault in her daughter, belittling and attacking. because they all thought if this continued lady leala would be dead within half a year, cora was sent to terenthia to serve as a lady in waiting for her cousin lyanna, alongside her sister elyse, who had already been there for over a decade.

there, corinna found some room to heal. she had her younger sister by her side after so many years apart, she had healthy companionship, more freedom and less judgemental eyes over her than she has had ever since she was a young maiden, and, of course, she had always loved terenthia. although she was far older than most of lyanna’s ladies, she found a place to fit in. she may still have had bursts of melancholia, and become quieter and sharper than she had once been, but she felt herself better, worthy of life, at last.

her mother’s death just a year ago changed that. the guilt came back strong, like a river flood, and corinna found herself obliged to return to leala keep so she could be of service, useful in any way possible. ever since, she has kept herself in mourning, and has yet to return to terenthia; instead she stays to aid her father and her brothers, and to run the household as her mother had taught her to, so many years ago.

personality and interests

cora had once been well known as vivacious, warm and curious. in some ways, she has had a change for the opposite after the unfortunate events in her life. 

she has an incredible amount of empathy, which mixed with her undying curiosity, is still an alarming feature (dangerous it was, may even still be). her goal is to help anyone in any way she can, but she is also familiar with taking charge and being an older sister so she can be a bit domineering and more insolent than she should; she is well intended, though, so the minute she notices she has been too harsh, she mostly falls into an anxious daze of guilt, which makes her seem either chilly or incredibly awkward.

she is also very very passionate and somewhat constant with her interests, like, she is still very much into botany, into technology and its uses to improve humankind and she is still unbelievably stubborn, sometimes way more than she should. she is also closed off -- which can be a contradiction when she is modern minded -- and politically engaged at all, which may make her seem too passive to live in a cut throat society as this.

plots

first, the plots i have mentioned on the app that are the most necessary for her characterization/background would be:

her best friend

her past lover/baby daddy

her ex-husband (and/or his family)

however, i am really really excited for everything that is thrown at me. friendships, enemies, maybe people who despise her because they think she’s too passive, people who are interested in her (romantically, sexually, professionally, platonically, idc)

corinna is especially very into female friendships, since she grew with the idea that women are no lesser than men in any way, and that women should have one another’s backs -- thus i feel she might fluctuate towards befriending women more, especially in a way that seems she is coddling/mothering them which is like cora 101, pretty much her modus operandi, like it doesn’t even matter who you are, cora is probably struggling NOT to behave like your mother (and failing lbr)