Behind Every Evil Person Is A More Evil Person - Tumblr Posts

“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

never get in between a woman and her blood magic baby

my commission from @wweskywalker

I don’t have as much to explain with this piece as my Saera and Jaehaerys commission because it’s Maegor and Visenya and their insanity is self explanatory, but I did want to take a moment to gush bc isn’t it so beautiful??? The thought struck me one day that normal mama’s boys get their mothers jewelry or otherwise provide for them, and Maegor tried to do the same, but what was the most special to him was not how the other boys acted. I imagine he would have started out by giving parts from the animals he hunted, and it spiraled from there. To him, there is no stronger and purer declaration of love and devotion than bringing a human heart to his mother (he brought Ceryse one too but she did not react as positively for some reason). Some have characterized Maegor as a sociopath, but I don’t think is true as it seems he does have loyalty and love towards his mother. He’s a horrible person, but I imagine he has never ending aim to please the people (or maybe it’s just one person) that he holds dear. I see him almost as some kind of twisted mutt. Of course, that’s not how Visenya views him, for to her he is her world. The original intention was for this to be set during the early reign of Aenys and certainly before the Trial of the Seven. The crown does sort of contradict that, but I love how Veronica draws jewelry so much and asked her to please please please deck them out as much as she could, so let’s just not think on it too hard. I don’t have a person specifically in mind whose heart this is, the gift was more important than the person who it came from. But my friend @theweirwoodfiles told me it could be the High Septon’s, if we were going with the Maegor being King timeline instead of Aenys.

What I *do* want to think on too hard is how beautiful the Valyrian fashion and jewelry is! When I think of Valyrian fashion, I think of the Byzantines. So the reference photos I gave Veronica were inspired by that, and I think she did a great job of making Visenya look luxurious and still representative of her family’s roots, what I imagine fashion looked like in the Valyrian freehold (maybe just a little more fancy, seeing as she’s Queen Dowager). Maegor’s dragon on his armor is a total Veronica original, I didn’t give her any references or anything, I just told her I love the dragon imagery that she displays in her art and she delivered ^_^