Virginia Woolf To Vita Sackville-West (c. October 1928)

Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West (c. October 1928)

Phoebe Bridgers, Moon Song

Franz Kafka (misattributed)

Leo Brynielsson, The Moon Has Fallen

Mitski, Happy

Richard Siken, Anyway

Richard Monckton Milnes, Lady Moon

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Hymn to the Moon

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) dir. Frank Capra

Rumi, Some Kiss We Want

George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Margaret Atwood, Owl and Pussycat, Some Years Later

A Tale of Two Daeneryses

This is a post I made on Reddit a while back, cleaned up and edited. Hope you enjoy!

This is your realm; remember them in everything you do. 

Today, I want to talk about Daenerys Targaryen. Not Daenerys Stormborn, Queen, Khaleesi, Unburnt, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons; the first Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of Aegon IV “the Unworthy” and Naerys Targaryen. She is the namesake for one of the series’ most important characters, yet we know rather less about her than we should. This essay will discuss what we know about Daenerys, and what the parallels between her and Dany could mean for the latter’s arc. 

Keep reading

I’m not into the whole Jon snow and who he’d date, I’m more into the Lannister or past targs. I read some good posts on mediaeval queens expressing their soft power in a clever way but was surprised to see you don’t feel that way. As someone who enjoys your posts I was hoping you’d elaborate on your no soft power comment regard asoiaf and mediaeval if that’s alright.

Soft power was coined as a concept in the 1990s and relates to the way modern day nation states use cultural mores, media power, and foreign policy to coerce other nations into agreeing to their demands.

It’s about economic strength, rather than military power. For example, the USA wields immense soft power via its films, TV, and music, all of which dominate globally.

Soft power doesn’t really have a place in discussion of medieval monarchy or queens.

Most women who ruled in their own right during the Middle Ages relied enormously on hard power to uphold their place at the top of the feudal system.

This does not mean they were never diplomatic, and they certainly used religion and arts to their advantage as well, but ‘soft power’ is generally misused in discussions about ASOIAF.

To enact change on the level that Dany does, for example, you must use military might. The threat of violence is necessary to prevent the former slavers from revolting, unless you intend to kill them all to begin with.

one thing that asoiaf fandom is guilty of, especially around the reddit incel parts, is that they don’t know how to properly formulate metas/theories because they start from the ending: meaning, they create a conclusion and then cherrypick from the text to give it legitimacy, letting their own confirmation bias go in the way. and this runs completely unchecked, too! i’d say that it is the standard of the so called ‘analysis’! if you make an assumption - say, ‘dany will go mad’ - then everything will be proof enough that she will. this is how we have takes like ‘dany destroying the institution of slavery means she will go mad and kill everyone on a whim’ - because you already approach her arc with this assumption.

ultimately, this was especially visible in how the show handled her “““““madness arc”““““. they retroactively gave every single one of her actions this dimension, calling it ‘foreshadowing’ and as such creating such mind blowing double standard that it should honestly be taught in school on how to NOT handle it. ‘ohhh everyone remember how she reacted coldly to her brother being killed? madness foreshadowed !!!!’ yeah, i do remember how she reacted coldly to her brother dying after he had abused her for years and threatened to kill her unborn child. honestly go and ask a pregnant woman how she’d react in such a situation, i can guarantee you that they would be ready to kill a motherfucker like this themselves.

show sansa fed her abusive husband to his own dogs, an act arguably even more extreme than dany reacting coldly to her abuser being offed - does anyone say that this is foreshadowing of her going mad? no, because the presumption of madness was never present. this is why this double standard exists in the first place.

So, this is pretty cool.

Someone on Reddit did some math wizardry on just how much trouble do Targareyen women have in having a healthy pregnancy and birth. MaesterLies had a few requirments for what would count against a healthy pregnancy:

no miscarriage,

stillbirth,

infant death or mother dying from childbearing complications in the 1st year after birth.

For twin pregnancies, both twins must be born alive and live past infancy for it to be considered successful (Naerys' 171 birth of Princess Daenerys and stillborn son is not "successful" since one of the twins died). Pretty much, no death for anyone involved.

So there are plenty of ways for a pregnancy to be listed as failure. Even then, Tagraryen women had a 76% success rate!

Rhaella is by and far the anomaly here (that and Aemma Arryn). I am gonna be biased here and say that the maesters were involved. Something footy is afoot. Both times a Targaryen queen suffers from a huge amount of pregnancy complications precedes a huge civil war?

Anyway, this definitely puts to rest the idea that the Targaryens suffered from a higher than normal amount of pregnancy complications.

SNOWSTORM SUMMER

↳ house targaryen: aemon & naerys // jon & daenerys

They were not the little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes. “I’m prince Aemon the Dragonknight,” Jon would call out.

The sister of King Aegon the Unworthy and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight was beautiful as well, but hers was a very fine and delicate beauty, almost unworldy. She was a wisp of a woman, smaller even than Dany (to whom she bears a certain resemblence), very slender, with big purple eyes and fine, pale, porcelain skin, near translucent.