JON SNOW APPRECIATION MONTH 2022 Day 21: Men In Jons Life Qhorin Halfhand

JON SNOW APPRECIATION MONTH 2022       ↳  Day 21: Men in Jon’s life → Qhorin Halfhand

“May the gods forgive me. Choose your men.” Qhorin Halfhand turned his head. His eyes met Jon’s, and held them for a long moment. “Very well. I choose Jon Snow.” Mormont blinked. “He is hardly more than a boy. And my steward besides. Not even a ranger.”

“Tollett can care for you as well, my lord.” Qhorin lifted his maimed, two-fingered hand. “The old gods are still strong beyond the Wall. The gods of the First Men… and the Starks.”

Mormont looked at Jon. “What is your will in this?”

“To go,” he said at once.

***

“Is your sword sharp, Jon Snow?” asked Qhorin Halfhand across the flickering fire. “My sword is Valyrian steel. The Old Bear gave it to me.”

Qhorin’s mouth tightened as he followed its flight with his eyes. “Here is as good a place as any to make a stand,” he declared. “The mouth of the cave shelters us from above, and they cannot get behind us without passing through the mountain. Is your sword sharp, Jon Snow?” “Yes,” he said.

***

Ghost’s muzzle was dripping red, but only the point of the bastard blade was stained, the last half inch. Jon pulled the direwolf away and knelt with one arm around him. The light was already fading in Qhorin’s eyes. “…sharp,” he said, lifting his maimed fingers. Then his hand fell, and he was gone. He knew, he thought numbly. He knew what they would ask of me. He thought of Samwell Tarly then, of Grenn and Dolorous Edd, of Pyp and Toad back at Castle Black. Had he lost them all, as he had lost Bran and Rickon and Robb? Who was he now? What was he?

Jon Snow Month 2022

Day 22: Parallels

Jon Snow and Brynden Rivers

Targaryen Bastards

[...] Lord Beron Stark, who made common cause with Casterly Rock to war against Dagon Greyjoy, Lord of Pyke, in the days when the Seven Kingdoms were ruled in all but name by the bastard sorcerer men called Bloodraven. (The Turncloak, ADWD)

“I do not drink to kinslayers,” said Ser Glendon. “Lord Bloodraven is a sorcerer and a bastard.” (The Mystery Knight)

Tyrion Lannister had claimed that most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it, but Jon was done with denials. He was who he was; Jon Snow, bastard and oathbreaker, motherless, friendless, and damned. (Jon IX, AGOT)

[...] He was a Snow, not a Stark. Bastard, oathbreaker, and turncloak... (Jon V, ASOS)

Marsh hesitated. “Lord Snow, I am not one to bear tales, but there has been talk that you are becoming too… too friendly with Lord Stannis. Some even suggest that you are… a…”

A rebel and a turncloak, aye, and a bastard and a warg as well. Janos Slynt might be gone, but his lies lingered. “I know what they say.” Jon had heard the whispers, had seen men turn away when he crossed the yard. (Jon III, ADWD)

Despite their Targaryen ancestry they don't share Valyrian look and have widespread non-Valyrian names (Jon is a popular name across the whole Westeros and Brynden is a common name in Riverlands)

Surrounded more by symbolism of their mothers' house

Inherited magical abilities of warging/skinchanging from their mothers' side of First Men ancestry that worshipped the Old Gods (and were looked down for this as well as for their bastard status)

How many eyes does Lord Bloodraven have? the riddle ran. A thousand eyes, and one. Some claimed the King's Hand was a student of the dark arts who could change his face, put on the likeness of a one-eyed dog, even turn into a mist. Packs of gaunt gray wolves hunted down his foes, men said, and carrion crows spied for him and whispered secrets in his ear. Most of the tales were only tales, Dunk did not doubt, but no one could doubt that Bloodraven had informers everywhere. (The Mystery Knight)

Lord Janos was red-faced and quivering. “The beast,” he gasped. “Look! The beast that tore the life from Halfhand. A warg walks among us, brothers. A WARG! This… this creature is not fit to lead us! This beastling is not fit to live!”

[...]

Lord Janos started sputtering again. “This, this is an outrage. We ought to hang this boy. Yes! Hang him, I say, hang him for a turncloak and a warg, along with his friend Mance Rayder. Lord Commander? I will not have it, I will not suffer it!” (Jon XII, ASOS)

Albinism

Six years ago in King's Landing, Dunk had seen him with his own two eyes, as he rode a pale horse up the Street of Steel with fifty Raven's Teeth behind him. That was before King Aerys had ascended to the Iron Throne and made him the Hand, but even so he cut a striking figure, garbed in smoke and scarlet with Dark Sister on his hip. His pallid skin and bone-white hair made him look a living corpse. Across his cheek and chin spread a wine-stain birthmark that was supposed to resemble a red raven, though Dunk only saw an odd-shaped blotch of discolored skin. He stared so hard that Bloodraven felt it. The king's sorcerer had turned to study him as he went by. He had one eye, and that one red. The other was an empty socket, the gift Bittersteel had given him upon the Redgrass Field. Yet it seemed to Dunk that both eyes had looked right through his skin, down to his very soul. (The Sworn Sword)

“He must have crawled away from the others,” Jon said.

“Or been driven away,” their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind.

“An albino,” Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. “This one will die even faster than the others.”

Jon Snow gave his father’s ward a long, chilling look. “I think not, Greyjoy,” he said. “This one belongs to me.” (Bran I, AGOT)

[...] Ghost did not count. Ghost was closer than a friend. Ghost was part of him. (Jon III, ADWD)

Ravens

He had seen the man once with his own two eyes, back in King's Landing. White as bone were the skin and hair of Brynden Rivers, and his eye—he had only the one, the other having been lost to his half brother Bittersteel on the Redgrass Field—was red as blood. On cheek and neck he bore the winestain birthmark that had given him his name. (The Mystery Knight)

Dunk knew he meant Bloodraven. Brynden Rivers was the Hand's true name. His mother had been a Blackwood, his father King Aegon the Fourth. (The Sworn Sword)

When he finally put the quill down, the room was dim and chilly, and he could feel its walls closing in. Perched above the window, the Old Bear’s raven peered down at him with shrewd black eyes. My last friend, Jon thought ruefully. And I had best outlive you, or you’ll eat my face as well. (Jon III, ADWD)

“Marked twice” (red birthmark on the right side of the neck and face & the burn scar on the right hand + almost/actually losing left eye for the second time)

“[...] The Mother marked Lord Rivers on the day that he was born, and Bittersteel marked him once again upon the Redgrass Field.” (The Sworn Sword)

[...] Brynden Rivers is an albino, with milk white skin and white hair, worn long. His eye is red — the one he still has, the right. At the Battle of the Redgrass Field, his left eye was put out by Bittersteel when they dueled. He seldom wears an eye patch, but prefers to display his scar and empty socket to the world. (So Spake Martin: The Great Bastards)

“[...] How is your hand?”

“Healing.” Jon flexed his bandaged fingers to show him. He had burned himself more badly than he knew throwing the flaming drapes, and his right hand was swathed in silk halfway to the elbow. At the time he’d felt nothing; the agony had come after. His cracked red skin oozed fluid, and fearsome blood blisters rose between his fingers, big as roaches. “The maester says I’ll have scars, but otherwise the hand should be as good as it was before.” (Jon VIII, AGOT)

[...] He could still hear wings, though the eagle was not in sight. Half his world was black. “My eye,” he said in sudden panic, raising a hand to his face.

“It’s only blood, Jon Snow. He missed the eye, just ripped your skin up some.”

His face was throbbing. Tormund stood over them bellowing, he saw from his right eye as he rubbed blood from his left. (Jon II, ASOS)

Though Maester Aemon said his wound was healing well, Jon bore other scars, deeper than the ones around his eye. (Samwell IV, ASOS)

“Less muscular, more cunning brother”

If you are going to include the Great Bastards in a group shot, Daemon and Bittersteel should both be taller and more imposing than Bloodraven, the scrawny one of the lot. (So Spake Martin: The Great Bastards)

“[...] The High Septon said all bastards are born to betrayal... Daemon Blackfyre, Bittersteel, even Bloodraven. Lord Rivers was more cunning than the other two, he said, but in the end he would prove himself a traitor, too.” (The Sworn Sword)

“The deserter died bravely,” Robb said. He was big and broad and growing every day, with his mother’s coloring, the fair skin, red-brown hair, and blue eyes of the Tullys of Riverrun. “He had courage, at the least.”

“No,” Jon Snow said quietly. “It was not courage. This one was dead of fear. You could see it in his eyes, Stark.” Jon’s eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast. (Bran I, AGOT)

Valyrian steel sword (won by their personal achievements)

Although he bears the Valyrian blade Dark Sister than once belonged to Aegon's Visenya, his favorite weapon is a tall bone-white weirwood longbow. (So Spake Martin: The Great Bastards)

[...] Yet the wolf sword actually seemed lighter than the blades he had wielded before. When Jon turned it sideways, he could see the ripples in the dark steel where the metal had been folded back on itself again and again. “This is Valyrian steel, my lord,” he said wonderingly. His father had let him handle Ice often enough; he knew the look, the feel.

“It is,” the Old Bear told him. “It was my father’s sword, and his father’s before him. The Mormonts have carried it for five centuries. I wielded it in my day and passed it on to my son when I took the black.”

He is giving me his son’s sword. Jon could scarcely believe it. [...]

“My lord, you honor me, but—”

“Spare me your but’s, boy,” Lord Mormont interrupted. “I would not be sitting here were it not for you and that beast of yours. You fought bravely… and more to the point, you thought quickly. [...]” (Jon VIII, AGOT)

Sacrificing the honour for the common good

The first act of Aegon’s reign was the arrest of Brynden Rivers, the King’s Hand, for the murder of Aenys Blackfyre. Bloodraven did not deny that he had lured the pretender into his power by the offer of a safe conduct, but contended that he had sacrificed his own personal honor for the good of the realm. (The Targaryen Kings: Aegon V, TWOIAF)

[...] “Do I have your word that you will keep our princess closely?” the king had said, and Jon had promised that he would. Val is no princess, though. I told him that half a hundred times. It was a feeble sort of evasion, a sad rag wrapped around his wounded word. His father would never have approved. I am the sword that guards the realm of men, Jon reminded himself, and in the end, that must be worth more than one man’s honor. (Jon VIII, ADWD)

The Lord Commander of the Night's Watch

[...] Yet after the sentence of death was pronounced, Aegon offered Bloodraven the chance to take the black and join the Night’s Watch. This he did. Ser Brynden Rivers set sail for the Wall late in the year of 233 AC. (No one intercepted his ship). Two hundred men went with him, many of them archers from Bloodraven’s personal guard, the Raven’s Teeth. The king’s brother, Maester Aemon, was also amongst them.

Bloodraven would rise to become Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch in 239 AC, serving until his disappearance during a ranging beyond the Wall in 252 AC. (The Targaryen Kings: Aegon V, TWOIAF)

[...] And Jon heard Samwell Tarly shout, “I know that bird! That’s Lord Mormont’s raven!”

The raven landed on the table nearest Jon. “Snow,” it cawed. It was an old bird, dirty and bedraggled. “Snow,” it said again, “Snow, snow, snow.” It walked to the end of the table, spread its wings again, and flew to Jon’s shoulder.

[...] He walked across the castle, wondering if he were dreaming, with the raven on his shoulder and Ghost at his heels. Pyp, Grenn, and Sam trailed after him, chattering, but he hardly heard a word until Grenn whispered, “Sam did it,” and Pyp said, “Sam did it!” [...]

“I had nothing to do with the bird,” Sam insisted. “When it flew out of the kettle I almost wet myself.”

Jon laughed, half amazed that he still remembered how. “You’re all a bunch of mad fools, do you know that?”

“Us?” said Pyp. “You call us fools? We’re not the ones who got chosen as the nine-hundredth-and-ninety-eighth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. You best have some wine, Lord Jon. I think you’re going to need a lot of wine.”

So Jon Snow took the wineskin from his hand and had a swallow. But only one. The Wall was his, the night was dark, and he had a king to face. (Jon XII, ASOS)

In love with the younger half-sister (or “half-sister”) and ready to fight a war for her

Bittersteel and Bloodraven both loved Shiera Seastar, and the Seven Kingdoms bled. (The Kingbreaker, ADWD)

He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell… I want my bride back… … I want my bride back… I want my bride back…

“I think we had best change the plan,” Jon Snow said. (Jon XIII, ADWD)

Targaryen November - Day One: Valyria

At its apex Valyria was the greatest city in the known world, the center of civilization. Within its shining walls, twoscore rival houses vied for power and glory in court and council, rising and falling in an endless, subtle, oft savage struggle for dominance.

Daenerys Targaryen Appreciation Month

Day 19 → Learning, Intelligence and Skills

Throughout the ASOIAF series, Daenerys has displayed the skills of horse riding, understanding multiple languages, negotiating, military strategy, creating alliances and dragon riding. These will be discussed under the cut:

Seguir leyendo

⌜When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. ⌟

Ah yes, another purple woman(?)

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HOUSE TARGARYEN by Denis Maznev