Arya Stark - Fancasts

Arya Stark - Fancasts

Age: 9 - 11

Appearance:She is small and skinny.She has a long face, with dark grey eyes and lustreless brown hair. She is pretty despite her long face causing her to get bullied.

Character: Snow White [Younger]

Actress: Raffey Cassidy

Movie: Snow White and The Huntsman [2012]

[She’s 9 during this book so good for her in the first book and start of the second. She is small and skinny. She has lustreless brown hair and a long ish face. She wear medieval/fantasy ish clothes.]

Character: Martina

Actress: Greta Zuccheri Montanari

Movie: The Who Will Come [2009]

[She was 8/9 during filming.She is small and skinny with a long face and lustreless brown hair.She wears both boys and girls 1940’s clothes.]

Character: Heidi

Actress: Anuk Steffon

Movie: Heidi [2015]

[She was 10 during this book so good for the second and third but still can be used for the first.She is small and skinny. She has lustreless brown hair and dark eyes but they’re not not grey.More than anything she is similar enough in personality and mannerisms to Arya.She wears 19th century clothes.]

Character [s]: Emily [Younger] & Jean’s Daughter & Danielle De Barbarac [Younger]

Actress: Anna Maguire

Movie [s]: David Copperfield [2000] & Saving Private Ryan [1998] & Ever After: A Cinderella Story [1998]

[She was an unknown age during these movies presumably 7 - 11. She is small and skinny. She has longer face in David Copperfield and has lustreless brown hair. She wear early Victorian clothes in David Copperfield. She wears 1940’s clothes in Saving Private Ryan but they’re still good for close ups. She wears medieval clothes in the Cinderella movie.]

Character: Marjorie Bruce

Actress: Josie O’Brien

Movie: Outlaw King [2018]

[Unknown age but looks to be around 8 - 10 years old during this movie. She is small and skinny with brown hair and a long ish face. She has dark eyes but they’re not grey.She wears medieval clothing.]

Character [s]: Jane Eyre [Younger] & Lucy Pevensie

Actress: Georgie Henley

Movie: Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [2005]

Show:Jane Eyre [2006]

[She is 9 during the Narnia movie so good for the first book and start of second. She was 10/11 years old on the Jane Eyre show so good age for Harrenhal onwards. She is small and skinny with lustreless brown hair and a long ish face. She wears medieval/fantasy clothes in Narnia and early 19th century clothes in Jane Eyre.]

Character: Gael

Actress: Arabella Morton

Movie: The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader [2010]

[She was around 10 during filming. She is small and thin with a long ish face and lustreless brown hair but does not have grey eyes. She wears fantasy medieval clothes. Her scenes are good for Arya as Salty.]

Character [s]: Ofelia & Ana

Actress: Ivana Baquero

Movie [s]: Labyrinth [2006] & Romasanta [2004]

[She’s 9/10 during Romasanta so good for the first 3 books. She’s 11 in Labyrinth so good for when she’s with the house of black and white. She is small, skinny with lustreless brown hair and a long face plus dark eyes put they’re not grey. She wears early 19th century ish clothes In Romasanta and she wears 1940’s clothes in Labyrinth.]

Character: Fanny Price [Younger]

Actress: Hannah Taylor-Gordon

Movie: Mansfield Park [1999]

[She was 11 during this movie so good for the house of black and white. She is small and skinny. She has lustreless brown hair and dark eyes although not grey plus a long ish face. She wears Regency ish clothes.]

Character: Mary Tudor [Younger]

Actress: Isla Merrick-Law

Show: The Spanish Princess [2019] [Season 1]

[Age unknown but she looks to be 9 - 11. She is pretty and is also small and skinny. She has a long face and lustreless brown hair. She wears 16th century ish clothes.]

“He stopped on a picture of his parents’ wedding day. There was his father waving up at him, beaming, the untidy black hair Harry had inherited standing up in all directions. There was his mother, alight with happiness, arm in arm with his dad. And there … that must be him. Their best man… Harry had never given him a thought before … His face wasn’t sunken and waxy, but handsome, full of laughter. ( Prisoner of Azkaban - Chapter 11)”

GRRM poetic writing ❤️❤️

And Arya…

He missed her even more than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn clothes, so fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had… yet she could always make Jon smile.  Jon III, A Game Of Thrones

If you expect fiction, especially so-called genre fiction, to educate you on politics, social issues and morality, you might just read too little nonfiction

Arya Lady of Harrenhal during the Long Night

At the bottom of my inbox there's an anonymous message from months ago that says “could you do Arya with Nymeria during the long night? Fighting together?”. I haven't replied yet and the reason is that when I think about this scene, the image of GOT 8x03 pops up in my mind. Will Arya fight through the Long Night, sword in hand? I'm not that sure.

Then the other day I came up with this idea that I proposed to you in a survey: “Winterfell falls, the northeners have to escape South, Harrenhal is the main citadel, Arya as lady of Harrenhal during the Long Night”. And I must say I'm surprised with the result. It won "I see where you are coming from, and I like it" with 33% of the votes.

But many, rightly so, have chosen "I'll wait for you to elaborate", so here we are.

A role

So Jon and Dany are the ones with the army and the dragons, Tyrion is the smart one with the experience and Bran is the one with the magical powers (sorry I'm simplifying, just to summarize). It's not hard to imagine that they'll find their place in the White Walkers storyline.

And Arya? Use the valyrian steel sword she doesn't have to slay the undead? Will Jon allow her to be on the front lines? Is Arya really stupid enough to think she can do it?

She will be at most 12/13 years old and the only sword lessons she has received are those of Syrio, she is not a great swordswoman, especially if she has to face adults on a battlefield. The things that the FMs are teaching her don't seem suitable for this kind of situations. I guess she could contribute by warging Nymeria and leading her pack, but if that is the case it wouldn't be necessary for her to be physically there.

Whatever this role is it must be relevant 'cause Martin counted her among the five key characters, one of the first to be created and then decided to waste a lot of ink by telling us about her.

Harrenhal

I start with the assumtion that the Battle for the Dawn will take place in the Riverlands, that it will not be possible to stop the White Walkers at Winterfell and consequently there will be an exodus of people from the North to the South. If you don't agree or you want an explanation about it, you can read my last post: Harrenhal during the Long Night.

And which of the main characters has a strong relationship with Harrenhal?

Thematic connections

The girl has a long and complex relationship with her mother's native land and a strong thematic connection with water that you surely have read about in other metas. Most of the major events in Arya's life take place here.

Not only the Red wedding, meeting Jaqen, the Weasel soup, the separation from Nymeria, but also Mycah's death in which she realizes for the first time that her father is not as powerful as she thinks, that the injustice of the world is deeper than she thought and that especially for the nobles the suffering of the smallfolk is totally irrelevant.

Harrenhal is the castle of which she becomes the ghost. And she really is the ghost of Harrenhal, standing in front of that Heart tree, probably like her late aunt years before, as she hears a voice from the trees reminding her of her real name.

Useful knowledge

Arya knows these lands directly, crosses them, lives them, knows their inhabitants, their opinions and sides in the war. It isn't a theoretical knowledge but a practical one. As Jon Snow recalls "The map is not the land, my father often said".

But it's even more intimate than that because Arya dreams of those lands every night, she sees them through Nymeria's eyes. The wolf is currently the only undisputed ruler in that lawless place. Do you remember the image of Harrenhal tormented by the tremendous howl of the wind and wolves outside the walls?

Arya also knows Harrenhal on all its levels. She physically scrubbed the floors of every floor of every tower and she scoured all the walls in search of an unguarded gate.

She has experienced the classes and roles that exist within the castle and its management. She had to deal with armigers, cooks and blacksmiths. She has worked her way up the chain of command from the humblest of servants to cupbearer and lord's messenger.

Skills and leadership

In the books we see her many times in positions where she is the person who has to make decisions, lead a group, organize little plans.

One of the main themes of her journey is justice, mercy, power and its abuse.

Then there are more or less direct parallels such as the one between Arya and Aegon the unlikely or the list of things that would make Aegon/young Griff a good ruler according to Varys.

Let's see some quotes in the books that tell us about these aspects of the character:

The one thing Arya could do better than her sister was ride a horse. Well, that and manage a household.

His father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know t

he men who follow you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know you. Don't ask your men to die for a stranger."

Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father's table and listen to them talk. She had loved listening to the men on the benches too; to freeriders tough as leather, courtly knights and bold young squires, grizzled old men-at-arms.

Whenever her father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, his great sword. “If you would take a man 's life, you owe it to him go look him in the face and hear his last words di lui,” she 'd heard him tell Robb and Jon once.

Can I be lord of a holdfast?

And here I stop because there are many others. If you are interested in this, there are meta only on this topic around tumblr.

An interesting that that connects Ned's teachings and those of the FMs is the concept that power and service are closely related.

Now let's see what FM training consists of: the ability to blend in with people, listen, gather information, learn many languages. We can add her natural ability to make friends and allies of all kinds.

This seems like the perfect package to manage a castle full of frightened people from all over the world (there will be people arriving with Dany as well), from every social class, every side of the war, who have nothing in common but the hope to survive.

Disconnected thoughts and possible parallels

This would be a very poetic situation that completes the parallel with historical Nymeria by placing Arya at the head of a group of refugees fleeing their destroyed home. In addition to giving her the possibility and the power to carry out the reflection on justice in a place that has seen so much injustice.

It's also funny how Lady Whent is introduced with great expectation right into Arya's chapters, where she thinks she can ask for her help. Yet she will never meet the Lady of Harrenhal.

And isn't it funny how she decided to name her direwolf after "some old witch queen in the songs"?

From the Alys Rivers wiki page: In 132 AC during the regency of Aegon III, a number of broken men and predatory outlaws began to gather at Harrenhal under the rule of a sorcerous witch queen. Mmmh interesting… this sound familiar, the Brotherhood without banners?

There is also Sharra, another witch queen of the Riverlands from the Age of Heroes.

Conclusions

In this place where Shagwell the Fool sang about Weasel soup maybe in the future there will be songs about Arya and the ten thousand wolves.

Thanks for reading. Mine doesn't want to be a theory that speaks of the character's endgame, but of its role during the Long Night. Let me know if I've given you something to think about, if I've convinced you, if you have other ideas on what this role might be. Or if you want to write a fanfiction with this plot.

Edit: I just discovered an old thread with a similar topic. I haven't read it yet, but I'll leave it here for the record.