#and Hubert looks like Littlefinger

[jade-masquerade]

Jonsa Halloween Day 2: singing to the stranger, begging for his kiss (colors)

Written for @jonsa-halloween Day 2: Colors

The hall was awash with color, and from her vantage point at the back, Sansa could see it all.  

 The flicker of flames from the candles fashioned by House Waxley illuminated on the stone walls, autumn scents of rich nutmeg and cinnamon-roasted apple and mulled spice floating on the air. Pumpkins, the largest of all those grown in Westeros she’d heard, adorned the tables, flanked by squashes and gourds for the smallfolk to take home after they’d done their decorative duties. Strings of sewn leaves that matched the colors of those outside stretched from sconce to sconce,

 And in between, the crowds themselves were a vibrant departure from the plain dark cloaks and furs of grey and black. Whereas usually house sigils provided the only bits of color in a sea of monotony, now there was nary a sigil in sight, unless one counted Ser Hubert Hersy wearing outrageously oversized white wings and holding a chalice in hand or Ser Uther Shett dressed as a seagull.  

 The costumes of many women were even more elaborate. The likenesses of Shiera Seastar, Princess Nymeria, and Sharra the Witch Queen filled the hall, interspersed among horned unicorns and mermaids and wood nymphs. Girls of all ages wore the floating fabrics of Lady Alyssa Arryn, tears of shimmering blue and silver painting their cheeks, even while they were all smiles. Sansa would have once envied them their extravagant appearances, spending years coveting the bright yellow and blue of one of the branches of House Flint and the pretty violet lilies of House Fenn, bored by the dull white and grey of House Stark.  

 She smoothed over the dress she wore now, all dyed grey, a simple bodice that fit her snuggly and a skirt of wool flaring outward from the waist. Alayne would have looked down at such a drab shade, and truth be told, Sansa would have too, but that was the color of freedom now, of anonymity. With her darkened hair and her unadorned silver mask, she thought even she herself would be hard pressed to recognize herself in such a guise.  

The most flamboyant costumes of those up on the dais caught her eye—huge hoop skirts, towering hats, and embellished cloaks made of velvet and satin and exotic furs. Across the hall, seated among them, Alyssa Stone dazzled in Alayne’s silk dress of mockingbird gold and her ornate mask imported from Braavos. They looked similar enough, and in the darkness with the ale flowing freely, Sansa knew anyone would be hard pressed to tell the difference, yet she still worried the deception would be discovered.

 “I would die to be a lord’s daughter, even just for a night,” Alyssa sighed weeks ago as they sat sewing the garlands of leaves after Sweetrobin’s host of Winged Knights had exited the room with the little lord, each taking a bow before Alayne as they did so. 

“Littlefinger isn’t a lord here, not truly,” Sansa had said, sharper than she should have. “He’s only regent for Sweerobin.”

 “Close enough!” Alyssa said. The handmaid snatched Alayne’s mask from her wardrobe, which Littlefinger had gifted her with earlier that morning, and held it up to her face. “It was your suggestion for the feast to be a masquerade, after all…”

 It had not taken much more convincing than that, the mere inkling of an idea, and so when they’d dressed earlier this evening, Sansa had let down her hair in simple curls and Alyssa pinned hers up in elaborate twists anchored by a golden comb inset with glittering black diamonds, and when they’d emerged from her chambers, no one had been the wiser.  

 Once Sansa had dreamed of harvest feasts and masked balls, and while she still did revel in the magic of it all, in those dreams she had danced, she had fluttered her lashes at the knights who drew here interest, and she had shared sweet kisses with them. She had never imagined she would instead be trapped beneath the watchful eye of a man who called her daughter yet wanted her for himself or be pestered by an intended suitor who saw her as merely a conquest, with whom there would be no love, only desire until his interest waned. In those dreams, she had been among her true family, and in the comforts of her home, and she had always been Sansa, never Alayne.

And so for tonight she decided to call herself Jeyne, a common enough name not likely to arouse any suspicions, the name of her closest friend from Winterfell whose memory still pulled at her heart. Sansa vowed she would find her someday, once she escaped this place. Jeyne had shared those same dreams with her, and Sansa remembered the faces she’d pull whenever her friend sighed over Robb, how they had tittered together over Lord Beric Dondarrion, and how Jeyne had once squealed when Sansa admitted she wondered how Ser Waymar Royce most liked to be kissed, earning a sharp glare from Septa Mordane.

 Now, though, those intentions seemed positively innocent. Sansa would be lying if she said she had not thought of far more than gentle kisses nowadays and if she denied being curious about the things Myranda spoke of. She craved the brief, easy whirlwinds of romance the older girl and her handmaids shared in hushed whispers, to merely experience what exhilarations of youth had been stolen from her when they took her father’s head and Cersei’s demands turned her captive. She wanted a single night where she did not have to play this game, a moment where she felt liberated, no longer the little bird kept in a cage. She knew it was silly, maybe stupid even, but she could not help but hope for a kiss and perhaps more with a man she found dashing, a man who cared little or not at all if she bore a bastard name, a man who wouldn’t laugh at her blushing the way Harry sometimes did when she pushed away his insistent hands or turned her cheek to him.  

 The feast cleared quickly despite the many rounds, and soon the musicians struck up “Fair Maids of Summer” in celebration of the true end of the season. Sansa watched a couple dressed as Jonquil and Florian take the floor, another garbed as Lady Shella and her Rainbow Knight soon following. Alyssa danced with Ser Harrold, and the fact that it seemed he couldn’t tell the difference only confirmed what a dolt he truly was. They would giggle about this later, Sansa knew; Alyssa had become a true friend in the time they spent together, as true a friend as Alayne could have anyway.

 Sansa herself set her sights on the handsome knights and men-at-arms seated at the long tables on the floor and below the salt. Some she recognized from the tournament where Sweetrobin had crowned his Winged Knights, but Harry had filled her sights then, and most of them wouldn’t have dared to look askance at the daughter of Lord Baelish or cross Ser Harrold by intruding on his betrothed. She was no longer confined though; now she was free to choose, and she eagerly drank them in.

 The seven sons of House Sunderland all equally striking, even dressed as the seven drunken oarsmen. She admired Ser Cadwyn Egen and his riot of blonde curls, Ser Osbert Woodhull and his sweet smile, and how Ser Robbett Ruthermont so tall she would have had to crane her neck to glimpse his face if he held her in his arms. And then there were some things about them she liked for no reason at all it seemed: the way Ser Symon Crayne wore the collar of his shirt open to expose his chest, how Ser Landon Hunter looked exceptionally good in his tight huntsman breeches, what it would sound like for Jace Stone, a bastard son from one of the Templeton branches, to whisper in her ear with his deep voice.  

 She avoided Ser Morgarth and Ser Byron as she made her rounds. Ser Byron was good looking enough, but Sansa didn’t trust him more than her arm could reach, and the risk of recognition there would be too great anyhow. There were plenty of others, who came from lands afar and would return there after this night, and it did not take long until she was swept into the throng by Walder Upcliff.

 He wore a high-necked cloak and a white mask, and she could smell ale already on his breath. She tried to engage him in cordial conversation, but Walder seemed far more interested in glancing down her dress than meeting her eye. With his leering smile and the way his hands dug into her hips to hold her closer than she would have liked, Sansa was grateful when the song changed, and he evidently lost interest in the slow, mournful rhythm of “Fallen Leaves.”

 She participated in dancing the steps of the next few songs, a reel and a quick number where she spun from one partner to another, laughing breathlessly.    

 “Ser Andar,” she said, looking up at the knight with whom she’d had the fortune to finish the previous song. Ser Andar was every bit the picture of gallantry and comeliness, with his wavy golden hair, broad chest, and hands that spanned her waist. “It’s so lovely to see you this evening.”

 He frowned. “Beg pardon, have we met?”

 “Oh, I’m Lady Elesham’s handmaid. Jeyne,” she said, catching herself. “I admired your performance in the tournament of the Winged Knights. It’s a shame Lord Arryn did not choose you for his guard. I can think of no one more deserving.”

 He did smile at that. No matter how stoic he was, it seemed he enjoyed flattery as much as anyone else.  

 “You’re so strong,” she said, running her hands along the muscles in his arms.

 “It’s only sword work,” he said. “It requires none of the great effort needed to tend your lady, I imagine.”

 She giggled, reaching up to touch her hair. She found herself not minding so much if Ser Andar found it fit to study the bosom of her dress, and she found herself very much wantonly wishing to draw his attention to the curves of her body there.

 His attention seemed elsewhere though, either that or he possessed a remarkable streak of honor that no other man could manage to compete with, for he steadfastedly maintained his gaze on some point over her shoulder.  

 “Excuse me,” he said as the last chords of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” faded, and he disappeared in the direction of one of Sweetrobin’s Winged Knights.  

 It was no matter, though. Sansa turned, and she whirled right into the arms of another.  

[gascon-en-exil]

Joining the Game Late: S2E5 “The Ghost of Harrenhal”

Synopsis

Renly faces death by CGI. Littlefinger and Margaery talk sense into Loras and get the measure of each other. Cersei plays coy about Stannis but is sitting on an arsenal of felfire wildfire. Tyrion gets called a demon monkey, and Theon gets no respect either but he does get an idea. Tywin is too perceptive for Arya. She also meets Chekov’s prisoner and orders a hit. Sam gets a history boner in addition to his regular boner. Bran actually understands how feudalism works, and Rickon understands...how to be a nutcracker. Dany witnesses a parlor trick by a blue-lipped illusionist and gets a marriage proposal that Jorah does not like and he is totally not jealous, shut up.

Commentary

This may be the first time that I’ve felt like too much has happened in an hour of this show to put down all my thoughts on it into 3-4 paragraphs like I’ve been doing. The pacing of this one is kind of exhausting, and I know as I start writing that I’m going to have to focus on at most two or three things or I’ll never be done.

Okay, so - Renly’s dead in the first scene. Seeing it previewed in YouTube videos did not prepare me for the knowledge that both Catelyn and Brienne would be witnesses and that his death’s impact on Brienne’s character arc would be this direct. Melisandre’s demon baby is positively loaded with religious symbolism as some kind of divinely conceived Antichrist figure (I assume this “birth” is unrelated to her earlier promise to give Stannis a son in the normal way, and the subsequent copulation), not to mention a touch of irony as getting a woman pregnant was something Renly couldn’t bring himself to do. The political fallout is immediate, but apart from Brienne’s grief the show doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on the personal ramifications. It’s a shame that Loras/Renly had so little screentime (and no real sex scenes or full nudity) to develop as a ship; normally I’m really into the gay lord/knight relationship as it often appears in Fire Emblem, but here there just wasn’t enough substance to go off. Admittedly there’s an interesting result to Brienne and Cat escaping together, with a scene of one woman swearing fealty to another, so there is that. Also worth noting how Brienne praises Cat for having “a woman’s courage” and the two of them are still in agreement that Brienne should get her violent revenge on Stannis, so gender and subversions of gendered expectations come into play on more than one level.

Let’s see...the ongoing murderous adventures of Arya now featuring one of the guys she saved back during the Gold Cloak raid, Tyrion’s investigation into a type of magical fire I can’t help but think of as felfire, the green demon-empowered fire magic used by warlocks in the Warcraft universe, Theon becoming the unloved captain of the Sea Bitch, more about Bran’s dreams, the Night’s Watch standing around in a blizzard looking constipated and not covering their heads while we get an exposition dump on Mance Rayder...ah, let’s talk about Daenerys. For the first time this season her storyline got more than one or two scenes, so it’s as good a time as any to give her the spotlight.

I’m not going to touch on the as-ever questionable optics of Daenerys the white queen surrounded by the only racially diverse set pieces in this show, or the suspect implications of, say, having her dress like one of the locals or her having to ward off her Dothraki followers from stealing everything in Qarth. I will say that her storyline might have read a bit better if they’d followed the logic that, with Valyria as this setting’s Roman Empire analogue, the Targaryens would have made more sense played by Italian or other southern European actors so they’d at least blend in better with the cosmopolitan faux-Mediterranean world that appears to comprise Essos - but perhaps that’s just me. I do like that Dany addresses the question I had last time about why Xaro would perform a blood oath to allow her into Qarth, and his drawn-out answer that he’s as ambitious as she is and has a political marriage in mind that he claims will benefit them both. Xaro also calls foul on Dany’s claims to care about the well-being of her khalasar and identifies her as a conqueror, which is entirely consistent with her motivations as restated in these same scenes. It makes me wonder again why so many people were shocked this past spring when she behaved like a conqueror in Season 8. I understand that the immediate setup may have been lacking, but the groundwork for a Daenerys concerned above all else with ruling the Iron Throne is already well-laid a season and a half in.

I’m going out on a limb here, but if I had to guess without having seen the seasons in between yet I would predict that it has to do with her fans getting too wrapped up in Jorah’s estimation of her “gentle heart” and her established hatred of slavery to pay much attention to scenes like those that finish off Season 1 or the one here with Xaro. Granted, Xaro is also perceptive enough to acknowledge that Jorah has his own biases; he’s romantically interested in Dany, and as such he’s less than thrilled with the idea of her getting what she wants by marrying another man. It’s too early for me to make this comparison in any depth, but if Edelgard from Fire Emblem: Three Houses took some design and characterizations cues from Daenerys (and, creator confirmation or not, I would say that there are enough similarities that it’s entirely reasonable to draw that conclusion), then that makes Hubert her Jorah equivalent. As it stands that’s an insult to both characters - Jorah has more than once functioned as a voice of morality but doesn’t have a ton of agency, whereas Hubert is delightfully evil and is doing all of Edelgard’s copious dirty work behind the scenes - but it’s still a notable parallel for a male retainer to a female ruler who has the hots for hers but is never going to get any. How this complicates Jorah’s ability to advise Dany going forward will be interesting to see.