#samantha tarly's characterization

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Perhaps the boldest letter came from the irrepressible Lady Samantha of Oldtown, who declared that her sister Sansara (of House Tarly) “is spirited and strong, and has read more books than half the maesters in the Citadel” whilst her good-sister Bethany (of House Hightower) was “very beautiful, with smooth soft skin and lustrous hair and the sweetest manner,” though also “lazy and somewhat stupid, truth be told, though some men seem to like that in a wife.” She concluded by suggesting that perhaps King Aegon should marry both of them, “one to rule beside him, as Queen Alysanne did King Jaehaerys, and one to bed and breed.” And in the event that both of them were “found wanting, for whatever obscure reason,” Lady Sam helpfully appended the names of thirty-one other nubile maidens from Houses Hightower, Redwyne, Tarly, Ambrose, Florent, Cobb, Costayne, Beesbury, Varner, and Grimm who might be suitable as queens. (Mushroom adds that her ladyship ended with a cheeky postscript that said, “I know some pretty boys as well, should His Grace be so inclined, but I fear they could not give him heirs,” but none of the other chronicles mention this affrontry, and her ladyship’s letter has been lost.)

Fire and Blood, by George R.R. Martin, pg 640

[goodqueenaly]

Is Fire and Blood Volume 1 Worth It?

I got the following ask from a user who wished to remain private. I wanted to post my answer, but I respect that this person didn’t want their handle on the ask, so here’s just the text of the ask:

I've been following your series about F&B. I was on the fence about purchasing the book before it came out, and now... I'm still unsure. Is it worth it? It seems like a lot of the problems I have with the series as a whole are amplified and fleshed out in a gross way? If I can barely handle descriptions of it, is this book something I should pass on? 

Is F&B worth it? Like any number of questions revolving around something being “worth it”, the resounding answer is “it depends”. 

First off, what kind of reader you are will, I think, play a significant role in whether you think F&B is worth the purchasing. If you’re a casual ASOIAF reader who really only dabbles in the main novels, then you might not enjoy a book which has none of the main characters of the main novels and is not a novel in the traditional narrative sense (being instead a fictional historical work). If you’ve read “The Princess and the Queen”, “The Rogue Prince”, and/or TWOIAF and didn’t like the pseudo-historical style, then you’re almost certainly not going to enjoy F&B (even though it does deviate from the historical conceit on a number of occasions). If you don’t care about reading every piece of canon information, then F&B isn’t going to be valuable to you in that way. 

More to the point, and I think this is getting to the heart of the ask - is F&B worth it despite the rampant misogyny? I won’t lie, this book is extremely problematic in that respect. This is a book in which women are hypersexualized, victimized, abused, and killed to add characterization to male characters, or indeed for no reason at all. While there are a few moments of pushback on the sexism and misogyny of the narrative - Rhaena condemning Rogar Baratheon for killing Alyssa Velaryon, Alysanne calling out Jaehaerys for his forcing Daella to wed young, Samantha Tarly defying the High Septon - they are few and far between, and it can be extremely tiring to slog through the sex-obsessed, deeply misogynistic takes of Gyldayn to get to them.

There are also aspects of F&B that just don’t make sense. Many chapters, especially of the ones about Jaehaerys, feel like reboots every time, where characters bizarrely forget about their previous actions or the story decides to completely redo characterization for certain characters. Some of the worldbuilding and policymaking, while perhaps interesting to read about in a vacuum, doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, especially in examining it against the main novels. (That is a more general criticism of these imaginary history works, of course; because F&B, TWOIAF, and the novellas were written after the main novels (at least, the ones we have so far), you might naturally wonder why no one in those books mentioned any of the actions or characters that ostensibly form an important part of Westeros’ own history.)

Now, look: is F&B the worst book I’ve ever read? No. (I suffered through all three Prelude to Dune novels, I think I know a bad book when I see one.) There are good characters and moments in this book, and it’s not irredeemable in every respect. GRRM is a good writer, and he can create good characters; we still get Alysanne and Rhaena and Baela and Aly Blackwood and Sam Tarly and Jacaerys and Corlys and a whole host of others. It is still canon too - much as I may not appreciate some of its approach to canon - and so if you’re someone like me, who needs to know every scrap of ASOIAF canon, then it’s not a book you can ignore (at least, and still expect you will have a full grasp on what is canon). 

So, is the book worth it? Maybe. F&B is indispensable for me, as I said, because I need to absorb everything in this universe. That may or may not be the case for you. Your comfort level with this sort of material, your willingness to balance the good and the bad, your desire to take in any new canon material, your desire to even read a book in this format, all of these are going to affect whether F&B is worth it to you. If you’re going to get the book, though, it’s probably best to approach it in this way - that is, to acknowledge that it is deeply problematic at points, and to maybe think about why it’s so problematic and what this book says about the author and his own biases. 

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Samantha Tarly is one of my new favorite characters of the whole ASoIaF series. She rocks. Fight me about it.

I wonder how HotD will handle her. Probably as some shameless whore who disrupts Alicent's/Otto's grip on Oldtown.

[horizon-verizon]

His lord father’s young widow had other notions, however. Lady Samantha was the daughter of Lord Donald Tarly of Horn Hill and Lady Jeyne Rowan of Goldengrove, both houses that had taken up arms for the queen during the Dance. Fierce and fiery and beautiful, this strong-willed girl had no intention of giving up her place as the Lady of Oldtown and mistress of the Hightower. Lyonel was but two years her junior, and (Mushroom says) had been infatuated with her since first she came to Oldtown to wed his father. Whereas previously she had fended off the boy’s halting advances, now Lady Sam (as she would be known for many a year) yielded to them, allowing him to seduce her, and afterward promising to marry him...but only if he would make peace, “for I would surely die of grief should I lose another husband.” Faced with a choice between “a dead father, cold in the ground, and a living woman, warm and willing in his arms, the boy showed surprising sense for one so highborn, and chose love over honor,” says Mushroom. Lyonel Hightower capitulated, agreeing to all the terms put forth by Lord Corlys, including the return of the Crown’s gold (to the fury of his cousin, Ser Myles Hightower, who had stolen a good part of that gold, though that tale need not concern us here). A great scandal ensued when the young lord then announced his intention to marry his father’s widow, and the reigning High Septon ultimately forbade the marriage as a form of incest, but even that could not keep these young lovers apart. Thereafter refusing to wed, the Lord of the Hightower and Defender of Oldtown kept the Lady Sam by his side as his paramour for the next thirteen years, fathering six children on her, and finally taking her as his wife when a new High Septon came to power in the Starry Sept and reversed the ruling of his predecessor.

Fire and Blood, by George R.R. Martin, pg 581-582