Near The End, [King Jaehaerys] Grew Certain [Alicent] Was His Daughter Saera, Returned To Him From Beyond

“Near the end, [King Jaehaerys] grew certain [Alicent] was his daughter Saera, returned to him from beyond the narrow sea.”

artist: @riotarttherite

I had the great pleasure of commissioning, in my opinion, one of ASOIAF fandom’s greatest artists on this gorgeous piece. I had never commissioned any artwork before and didn’t know what to expect, and this far exceeded my expectations. The attention to detail is beautiful and the overall piece conveys exactly what I was envisioning in my head, so I wanted to start off with a big thank you.

The idea for this art piece was originally a “what if” or AU where Saera either didn’t get caught at the brothel or was brought back from the Silent Sisters as was allegedly Jaehaerys’s plan (or if she had bonded with Balerion and gotten to stay! Would have loved that for her) so she stays in King’s Landing and becomes his caretaker in his old age instead of Alicent Hightower. As his daughter, she would have significantly more influence in being able to “speak for him” instead of a caretaker for another House, so although I do not take Saera as someone particularly obsessed with power, I do find it very interesting to imagine her deciding to cause chaos as the Old King’s mouthpiece. The streets of King’s Landing are burning as we speak! Even before Jaehaerys seemed to succumb to dementia, Saera did appear to have a strange influence over him, so once Alysanne passed away, it only makes sense that Saera would become the person in his ear. Not all that great for the smallfolk or even Lords of the realm, but great for drama and storylines. And Saera, of course! I’m sure she would have paraded everywhere, weighed down by jewelry and the finest wines. Perhaps she would have had a full menagerie, as she appeared to love animals. Definitely an elephant there somewhere.

As this piece was being worked on, however, I did think of a second meaning to the art that I also think is really neat. You could also view this as what Jaehaerys is seeing as Alicent is caring for him. He did believe her to be Saera in the end, as his mind was being lost. His Saera had come back to him, and although I do not like Jaehaerys and think he probably deserved worse, he most likely died happy at that thought, believing Saera was reading to him. So if you prefer to interpret this as viewing things through Jaehaerys’s mind, I welcome you because I love it at least equally to the first idea.

Lastly, the detailings are beautiful so I wanted to touch on them and give them the attention they deserve for the moment. I asked Riot to have a caring but sinister vibe, that she is caring for him for a plethora of reasons but certainly that includes self-serving reasons. I believe this was captured really well! I wanted it to be illustrated that Jaehaerys had lost his wits a while beforehand, so he has a vacant look, and Saera has the keys, showing that she is the real power behind the Crown. She has several expensive jewelry pieces (she has many from her lovers, but she doesn’t bother with them, leaving them to collect dust, only thinking gifts from the King are worthy to wear), but my favorite was one I specifically requested. Her jeweled bodice, which contains replicas of the King’s jewels that are present on his crown. Dare I say, she had her mother’s crown repurposed for herself? The intention is clear, Saera is effectively the Queen now, not in name, but Queen nonetheless. As for the general fashion, I told Riot that my favorite era of fashion was the Tudor era, more broadly 1300s- 1550s. As you can see, this was more than delivered and extremely beautifully inspired by historical fashion. GRRM doesn’t always describe his character’s outfits, and the GOT and HOTD outfits were often lackluster. This was exactly the type of beauty I was looking for. The dragon embroidery on Saera’s sleeves? Mwah!

Anyway, thank you so much for geeking out with me! The Saera/Jaehaerys dynamic is one of the most interesting dynamics to me. There’s simultaneously so little and so much there. It’s complex and layered, I can’t stop thinking about it. If you have been on my tiktok, you may have heard about my extensive theory regarding that dynamic, iykyk. If you ever want to talk about them, absolutely feel free to inbox me. More commission ideas coming this year definitely, at least a couple more of this dynamic, but I don’t know how a piece could be any more perfect <3

Aemond basically calling his mother a slur, Maegor remains on top as #1 mama’s boy I stay winning

“Robb owed me a smile that day” YOU ARE GAY!

since I just finished my big sansa embroidery project, I wanted to talk about the process of creating it and my inspiration

I was inspired by this piece that I stumbled across totally by accident. I was actually researching ptolemaic era egyptian weaving but found this 20th century embroidery and immediately thought of sansa. I created a sketch of sansa and lady in october of 2022 and then traced it on white cotton using a tracing pencil against my window.

I then began outlining my stitches with a chain stitch using a single strand of embroidery thread. I found that this was really nice for outlining while still blending my colors. For the cream colored thread on sansa’s dress I didn’t outline, which achieved a less blended and more distinct layered effect.

For the majority of the work, I used a technique called needle painting, where the artist uses a series of long and short stitches involving various shades of single strand embroidery thread. This technique was used for the entirety of sansa and lady’s figures.

The weirwood tree was a tricky piece for me to work on. Initially I used a technique of horizontal satin stitches to fill in the tree, but ultimately restarted and chose to do vertical chain stitches to imitate real tree bark. I used three shades of tan and cream, using a single strand of the darkest shade, two strands of the medium shade, and three strands of the darkest shade. This created an effect also similar to real tree bark, which I tried to capture in the second picture.

The final touch was adding sansa’s hairnet. I used a metallic silver thread and clear beads, basing it on the amethyst hairnet used to murder joffrey. While the amethysts in the book are black, I used clear beads to match her home of winterfell, where her jewels would match the snowflakes in the godswood.

and that's sansa and lady! It may have taken over a year and a half on and off, but I'm super proud and excited about everything new that I learned and improved with embroidery throughout the process. If you have any questions or comments, my asks and messages are always open, I absolutely love talking about embroidery!!

Bad news guys. This is how I’m about to be again.

i am going to waterboard him until he confesses to his crimes