Everything You Did Brought You To Where You Are Now. Where You Belong: Home.

I get the feeling that before this is over he and Ceresi are going to get it on, at least once. He is her type after all. Why else cast an actor this attractive? He looks like Jamie does in the books. 

I can imagine Ceresi sleeping with him, thinking it’ll placate him (a callback to the Euron scene in episode one), only for him to immediately reply:

Harry: “That was all well and good, but you still need to pay the gold cloaks our salary. Our real salary.” 

I can’t wait for the memes if that happens. 

Don’t judge, but I ship this new character, Harry Strickland, with Sansa

You can appreciate BookSansa and ShowSansa at the same time too. 

you had an anon a while back who said that sansa was antagonistic at the end of the show, and i agree that she was at least unrecognizable compared to her book counterpart. she's sapped of the kindness and courtesy that defined her in the books. an example is how she tells edmure to sit down in the finale. book sansa would never humiliate her uncle like that.

That's kind of an unfair comparison because show!Sansa's story is also very different. The show veered away from her actual arc early on (nice!Hound, nice!Tyrion, no Vale arc, Ramsay... etc) and utterly de-emphasized her thematic connection to storytelling and idealism and romance.

Show!Sansa is consistent within the story the show chose to tell, more so than many other characters. She makes sense at the end, the stupid Edmure moment notwithstanding.

But she is very much a different character entirely from book!Sansa.

Gorgeous!

Your kiss of life has opened my eyes

The place where my heart breaks, you have mended

Your gift of love has given me life

My sorrow and heartache, you have ended…

Hey for all you haters on season 8 epsiode 5 of game of thrones, this was all Prophesies back in season 3 when did dany and bran had visions of king’s landing being destroyed and dragons flying over king’s landing. Don’t get salty just because its didnt go how your fan fix go 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Jon Snow....King Beyond the Wall.

Sansa Stark.....Queen of the North.

Bran Stark....King of Westeros (um okay)

Arya Stark....Queen of this ship.

Maybe Arya will one day be the Queen of a fantasy version of America?

The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

Sansa Stark, the Virgin Queen of the North

The Pride of Dijon by William John Hennessey, 1879 / "cowboy like me" by Taylor Swift

Madeleine de Saint-Nectaire and other heroines of the French wars of religion

Between 1562 and 1598, France was torn by civil and religious conflicts between the Catholics and the Protestants. During this period, women distinguished themselves as spies, propagandists, political leaders or negotiators. Some of them even fought weapons in hand.

Agrippa d’Aubigné tells in his Universal history of Marie de Brabançon, widow of Jean de Barres, lord of Neuvy. In October 1569, the lady found herself besieged in her home by the king’s lieutenant who had 2,000 men and two cannons. She personally defended the most dangerous breach with a pike in her hand. Shamed by her example, her soldiers fought bravely. Observers recounts that they saw her defending the breach several times with her weapon. She nonetheless had to surrender in mid-November, but was allowed to walk away freely by the king’s command. Another lady noted for her military acumen was Claude de la Tour, dame de Tournon who defended her city against the protestants in 1567 and 1570. They couldn’t, however, breach her defense and had to leave.

Ordinary women also found themselves on the frontline. The city of La Rochelle was besieged between 1572 and 1573 and the townswomen fought in the defense. Brantôme tells that the besiegers saw a hundred women dressed in white appearing on the walls. Some of them performed support functions while others wielded weapons. Their bravery was confirmed by another account who tells that the women acted as “soldiers or new amazons” and that their courage led a street in La Rochelle to be called the “Ladies’ Boulevard”. Agrippa d’Aubigné similarly shows the women fighting with sword and gun. Brantôme adds that he heard that one of these women kept at home the weapon with which she fought and that she didn’t want to give it to anyone.

Another valiant lady was Madeleine de Saint-Nectaire (c.1528/30-1588) who came from a prestigious military family. She married the lord of Miremont, gave birth to three daughters, but was widowed and had to defend her lands. Agrippa d’Aubigné tells that Madeleine led a troop of 60 cavaliers against her enemy Montal, lieutenant of the king. When she fought, Madeleine charged ahead of all others, with her hair unbound in order to be recognized by both friends and foes. In 1575, Montal lured Madeleine and her troops away from the castle and planned to seize the place. The lady returned, charged at the enemy and routed their cavalry. Montal was wounded in the ensuing fight and died a few days later.

Letters written by Madeleine have been preserved and reveal another aspect of her character. They show a modest, polite woman, who cared for her husband’s illegitimate children and treated them like her own. 

Bibliography:

Arnal J., “Madeleine de Saint-Nectaire”

Bulletin de la Société des lettres, sciences et arts de la Corrèze

D’Aubigné Agrippa, Histoire universelle

Lazard Madeleine, “Femmes combattantes dans l’Histoire universelle d’Agrippad’Aubigné”

Pierre Jean-Baptiste, De Courcelles Julien, Dictionnaire universel de la noblesse de France

Viennot Elianne, “Les femmes dans les « troubles » du XVIe siècle”

Daenerys is one of the best and most complex female characters in recent literature and television history. If she does turn out to be the secret antagonist of this series (depending on whose point of view you take), I will respect the series even more for taking this huge risk you typically don’t see when it comes to female characters, especially female characters in fantasy who are usually either all good or all bad. 

A really really good meta about Daenerys I found on twitter.

This is why I think Dany has always been one of my favourite characters, but I was never really sold on her actually getting the Throne once she got to Westeros, because it really revealed so much more about her motives that her storyline in Meeren sort of hid from me.