The Falcon Has Flown--What If Jon Arryn's Poisoning Is Delayed?

Another day, another A Song of Ice and Fire alternate-universe fan-fic from the Internet forum for you. This one is entitled "The Falcon Has Flown." It diverges from canon on the smallest of matters--Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King to the neglectful Robert Baratheon, agrees to see one more petitioner. It turns out it's the ambitious, loquacious Justin Massey. He's intent on getting some lands and keeps talking for an hour, delaying Jon going to lunch. This delays Jon getting poisoned by around a day or so, allowing him to send his sickly son Robert Arryn to Dragonstone to be fostered by Stannis Baratheon.

At this point he's aware that Robert's children aren't actually his, but he doesn't intend to tell Robert until after his son is safe on Dragonstone with Stannis, who also knows what's going on. Once "Sweetrobin" is safe, he thinks a confrontation with the Lannisters is coming and is counting on his protegee Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish to keep the Gold Cloaks on the right side.

Well, we all know how trustworthy Littlefinger is when there's the possibility of the rigid, hands-on Stannis becoming king. From the end-note in the first chapter, it's clear Jon Arryn is going to die before he can share his suspicions with Robert. I'm guessing that the events of A Game of Throneswill generally follow their canonical course rather than Robert flipping his lid, going after Jaime and Cersei with his warhammer, and starting a war with his evil-mastermind father-in-law Tywin Lannister.

However, once the War of the Five Kings begins, Stannis has an advantage he didn't have in canon--the sole Arryn heir as a hostage. In canon Yohn Royce led a group of nobles who wanted to intervene on the side of Robb Stark against the Lannisters, but Jon's wife Lysa managed to maintain the neutrality of the Vale, ostensibly to protect her son. With her son as a hostage and much of the Vale nobility wanting war with the Lannisters, Stannis might find himself with a very reluctant and difficult (but given his situation, welcome) ally. And then there's Littlefinger, Lysa's lover, who most assuredly does not want Stannis to become king. Treacherous doings are afoot...

The author says he updates slowly, but my experience with fanfiction.net and my own writing groups, having a lot of readers is a strong incentive to update more regularly. Prove my theory right by following and reviewing!

Stannis Isn't The Mannis Anymore... (SPOILERS)

So I watched Game of Thrones last night, and it was generally an entertaining episode. I liked what happened in Meereen, especially the dramatic return of Drogon and the incineration of a whole bunch of Sons of the Harpy.

However, there was one major aspect of the story I didn't like, and given its magnitude, it really put a dent in my enjoyment of the episode and the series generally.

Stannis letting Melisandre sacrifice his daughter Shireen. To be perfectly blunt, that's incredibly out of character and straight-up character assassination.

Here's a handy graphic showing what happened in the books, courtesy of @lenlovecraft on Twitter:

The creators have generally done a good job consolidating and simplifying a huge, complex book series into something that would work for television. I understand that even with a season per book, there's still a lot of material that would need to get left out.

However, there's a difference between that and giving a character a personality transplant. Stannis's overriding cause is the rule of law and dynastic legitimacy. His older brother Robert's "trueborn" children aren't really his and his actual children are all bastards, so that means Stannis is the legal king. Renly challenges Stannis for the kingship and refuses to back down, so Stannis kills him. He continues the war even after the defeat of his army on the Blackwater, even after one of his in-laws comes up with a peace proposal (marry Shireen to Tommen) behind his back, because of rule of law. He abandons his seat of power to defend the Wall because defending the kingdom against an external threat (the 100,000 wildings and the White Walkers driving them on) is another means of gaining legitimacy--instead of getting the throne to save the kingdom, he saves the kingdom to get the throne.

And should anything happen, Shireen is Stannis's heir. In the pre-released Theon Greyjoy chapter of The Winds of Winter, Stannis explicitly tells his henchman Justin Massey to continue the fight to seat Shireen on the Iron Throne even if Stannis himself is killed in the coming battle with the Boltons.

“It may be that we shall lose this battle,” the king said grimly. “In Braavos you may hear that I am dead. It may even be true. You shall find my sellswords nonetheless.”
The knight hesitated. “Your Grace, if you are dead — ”
“ — you will avenge my death, and seat my daughter on the Iron Throne. Or die in the attempt.” 

Does this seem like something a man who would kill his only daughter, his only heir, would say? Given his wife's fertility problems (all those miscarriages in jars), if anything should happen to Shireen, House Baratheon is dead.

People are claiming that Stannis in the books and Stannis in the show are not the same character, and that people who complain are "Book Puritans." However, are there any characters besides Stannis that get personality transplants like this? Every other character is generally the same as they are in the books, but Stannis, instead of being an atheist obsessed with the rule of law and justice (because in the absence of gods, justice must come from men), is now a crazed religious fanatic.

In the discussion on the alternate-history forum of the episode, someone posted a video in which the showrunners claim Renly would have made a great king (instead of a selfish narcissist who'd set a VERY dangerous precedent--do we want a civil war every time the king dies?). See 3:30 and 4:30, especially the latter. If they hate Stannis for killing Renly and have been character-assassinating him from the very beginning (I haven't watched much of the show pre-Season 4, but I remember complaints that he was too in the thrall of Melisandre), well, they're incredibly, incredibly petty. We're talking "Paul Verhoeven butchering Starship Troopers because he read one chapter in the book and didn't like it" levels of pettiness here.

However, some points in the showrunners' favor:

*I heard on Twitter that George R.R. Martin himself actually said to do this. It's confirmed in this video here. Martin is the creator of the book series and thus the ultimate authority on what's canon and what's not. However, Martin said it happens in a later book. If that's the case, what I think will happen is that Stannis's men who remained at the Wall get the letter claiming Stannis is dead and Ramsay is coming and decide to sacrifice Shireen unilaterally to call down some Red God juju lest they all get flayed alive. Another theory I've heard is that Melisandre burns Shireen to resurrect Jon Snow as the real Azor Azhai. Either way, Stannis does not do this and that's the important part.

*If Shireen must die, there's still a way to do it that's not so grossly out of character for Stannis. We've seen Melisandre work magic from the blood of Robert's bastard Gendry, who has the "king's blood" she needs. This she accomplishes by drawing blood with leeches. There might not be leeches in the North, but they could always do good old-fashioned bleeding. Shireen is eager to do this to help her father (per her pre-burning speech) and Melisandre praises her for her zeal. The first bleeding causes some kind of minor miracle, so Melisandre does it again and again. Shireen starts to weaken and sicken, but she's eager to help and it is working. Eventually Stannis puts his foot down, but Shireen is now really anemic and between that and the harsh conditions, dies.

That sequence would have all the tragedy of what happened without Stannis being so murderous and out-of-character.

Furthermore, this only happened because Ramsay's "twenty good men" plan actually worked, which is incredibly unlikely. Given Ramsay and his Northerners' knowledge of the terrain and Ramsay's sheer audacity I could imagine them doing something besides getting killed trying to kill Stannis (which I thought would happen), but they were way, way too successful. They get in and out of the camp (where they've never been before) without losing a man, they destroy the siege engines and the food specifically, etc. Ramsay is capable, but this is getting into Villain Sue territory.

So yeah. Poor story decisions (Ramsay the Ubermensch) breeding more poor story decisions (Stannis murdering his own daughter).

Still, it's mostly been a great show so far and I'm definitely going to watch the season finale.

A Different Weasel Makes a Difference...or Old Walder Dies Early

Here's another fun story from the alternate-history forum. The world of A Song of Ice and Fire is so complex and so many roads not taken that playing the alternate-universe game can go in some pretty cool directions.

So I present you with A Different Weasel Makes a Difference. It diverges from canon just before the War of the Five Kings breaks out, during the events of A Game of Thrones. Lord Walder Frey dies soon after wedding his eighth wife, making Stevron Frey the new Lord of the Crossing. Soon afterward, Jon Arryn is poisoned and Gregor Clegane unleashes his reign of terror in the Riverlands, kicking off what will become the War of the Five Kings. Or, as he calls it in the story, the War of the Eight Kings...

There are all sorts of interesting consequences. The change in the lordship of the Twins sets the butterfly wings a-flapping, spawning more changes from the canon timeline as the war goes on.

*A Mallister ship is lost to "unknown causes" in the Sunset Sea, alerting the Starks and their allies that the Greyjoys might be moving again. Consequently, Catelyn Stark is sent north as regent after Robb is hailed as king and the Starks make more preparations for possible attack from the sea, including reinforcing Moat Cailin.

*When King Renly Baratheon is killed by Stannis's shadow, his lover Ser Loras Tyrell impulsively leads a cavalry charge against King Stannis Baratheon's encampment near Storm's End. Sufficient to say, impulses have their drawbacks...

*Stannis's sorceress Melisandre unleashes her magic on an army-level scale, fueled by mass human sacrifices. It is terrible and it is awesome.

*The battle for King's Landing is a multi-chapter morass of mayhem called the Battle of the Four Armies. A nice little call-back to The Hobbit there... :)

*We have the morbid irony of the armies of Robb Stark--a secessionist from the Targaryen-created Kingdom of Westeros--enforcing Maegor the Cruel's laws against the arming of the Faith. It'd be like Polish rebels enforcing the laws of Russia, Prussia, or Austria-Hungary on their political enemies.

*The long-oppressed thralls of the Iron Islands get their moment of glory.

*Asha Greyjoy does something radical and totally awesome that changes the balance of power in Westeros forever.

*The Vale isn't nearly as peaceful as canon. Hint: Somebody definitely earns the title "the Mad Widow."

Although the fanfiction.net version of the story is behind that on AH.com, there's still a whole lot of material present and it's getting updated regularly. So check it out!

What The Storm Brings, Or Stannis Captures Viserys and Danaerys...

The alternate-history forum I've been a member of since high school has spawned another alternate-universe fan-fiction. Behold "What The Storm Brings," another story posted on Archive of Our Own. 

The gist of it is that the winds blow a bit differently after the Sack of King's Landing and Robert Baratheon's coronation as King of the Seven Kingdoms. The fleet of Stannis Baratheon takes Dragonstone as Queen Rhaella, the wife of the Mad King, goes into labor with Danaerys. In her dying delirium she mistakes Stannis for his father Steffon and makes him promise to protect her children. This promise Stannis makes, and he sticks to it in the face of his vindictive brother's fury. Fortunately Jon Arryn is able to calm things down.

There are only three chapters posted thus far, but the opening drops some significant hints...

Wind blows differently one fateful day and a king's brother arrives on Dragonstone just as a queen gives birth, only to make a promise to this dying woman. More than a decade later on the very island, a silver-haired girl grows up a prisoner in all but name, betrothed to her guardian's son and craving for the world she has never had the chance to see. Elsewhere, a wolf loses his head and war erupts through the nation, a stag wearing a wreath of roses sets his eyes on a throne of swords, the suns and the spears dream of vengeance, and a pride of lions struggles to keep a carefully built kingdom from falling apart.

or,


AU: Stannis Baratheon raises Daenerys Targaryen from infancy and nothing is ever the same again.

I'm getting a "Rapunzel from Tangled" vibe from Danaerys at the moment. Granted, Stannis is a much, much more benign guardian than Mother Goethel was, and he wouldn't deliberately deceive her or keep her ignorant the way Goethel did. However, I imagine Robert would forbid her from visiting King's Landing and might insist that she not leave Dragonstone, ever. Meanwhile, it looks like the events generally play out the same as canon--Ned is killed and this provokes a war, the youngest Baratheon brother Renly allies with House Tyrell to take the throne, the Martells plot and scheme, and the Lannisters are in charge.

I'd suggested that Danaerys be betrothed to Robert's firstborn for dynastic purposes--marrying her off to anybody else would give the resulting children a female-line Targaryen claim to the throne, much like the one Robert had--but it looks like silverandviolet isn't going for that. Some people were convinced Robert would be absolutely irrational on the issue and it looks like he is. Alternatively, he made the agreement and then broke it, perhaps with Cersei egging him on.

And some good news for Stannis--Robert makes a different marriage for him. No unpleasant Selyse to be found. Not going to give anything away right now though.

Another Song of Ice and Fire Alternate History: The King Nobody Wanted

The denizens of the alternate-history forum I have been a member of since high school include a fair number of fans of A Song of Ice and Fire in their number. And a world with as rich a history as Martin's has a lot of possible roads not taken, so it's no surprise that a lot of ASOIAF alternate timelines have been written and many of them have escaped from the members-only Alien Space Bat forum to places like fanfiction.net, which anybody can read.

Here's the newest one, "The King Nobody Wanted." It starts out with Robert dying of his wounds on the Trident soon after he kills Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. Now the cause of House Baratheon and the rebellion against the mad King Aerys are in the hands of Robert's unappreciated little brother Stannis, currently trapped in Storm's End.

Interesting tidbits in the story include:

*Robert's Rebellion lasts longer due to the machinations of, among others, the Queen of Thorns. Randyll Tarly shows what he can do when he doesn't have the credit-stealing incompetent Mace Tyrell to deal with. It's still going on as of the last update.

*Lyanna Stark survives the fever that killed her in the "bed of blood" in canon and so Jon Snow has a mother. A mother who named him Rhaegar after his father...

*Point-of-view chapters from the perspective of Jon Arryn and Balon Greyjoy, as well as lesser-known characters like Garth Tyrell and Tytos Clegane (Gregor and Sandor's father--since this was written before A World of Ice and Fire, I'm not sure if that's his canon name) along with favorites like Ned Stark. We even get a sympathetic POV from the young Janos Slynt, who hasn't turned into the vile scumbag he was in canon.

*This hasn't been posted on fanfiction.net as of today, but Cersei Lannister's wedding night is a heck of a lot more pleasant for everybody involved. Cersei is a nasty piece of work, but given how much of a lout Robert is, I don't blame her for hating him.

*A surprisingly endearing portrait of the young Viserys Targaryen, before years in exile and poverty warp his already fragile (he is a Targaryen, after all) psyche.

So sit back and enjoy another "what might have been" in one of the bloodiest deconstructions of epic fantasy ever written...

The Consequences of a Westerosi Kingsmoot...

In early December, I blogged about an interesting fan-fiction written by a fellow member of my alternate history forum entitled A Parliament of Fowls: The First Kingsmoot of Westeros. Catelyn Stark persuading Renly and Stannis Baratheon to put their feud aside and join forces with her son to fight the Lannisters has led to an entirely new political order in the continent, a full-blown elective monarchy. That had some very interesting consequences...

These consequences are being explored in the sequel, The Glory of Ice: Reign of the Mockingbird. As those of you who are into the series know, the mockingbird is the personal insignia of one Petyr Baelish, more commonly known as "Littlefinger." As one of the most devious political operators in Westeros, he managed to finagle his way to the Iron Throne by doling out all sorts of political favors and manipulating everybody. All is peaceful for the moment, with the notable exception of the Iron Islands falling into civil war while the united Westerosi army--led by the lords of the Vale Littlefinger had promised lands to--gathers to curb-stomp them. However, A Parliament of Fowls ended with Stannis Baratheon seeing the following vision in his sorceress Melisandre's flames:

Stannis stared deeper into the flames as they kept dancing. And little by little, they morphed and changed. Stannis saw things he never thought he would. He saw himself being paraded through the Seven Kingdoms as a hero. He saw the Wall and the war. That great second god the red woman kept harping about approaching the North with all his icy might. He saw death knocking at the gates of Castle Black and approaching the doors of Winterfell. Stannis saw steel clash on steel and the Iron Throne shake from the quake of the Seven Kingdoms breaking apart once more. He saw the four directions of the earth clash in an eruption not seen since the doom came to Valyria. He saw a field of flowers burn and the sun darken. He saw a wolf and a stag go east, a lion roar, and a kraken tangle with a titan sitting on a throne of blood and bone. And finally he saw himself in a cloak of crows.

The kraken is the symbol of House Greyjoy and the Titan of Braavos is Littlefinger's family crest, so I imagine the war for the Iron Islands is going to be nasty and Littlefinger is going to get thoroughly unpleasant. Silver Phantom 2 holds the theory that he's a full-blown psychopath, as elucidated in Matt Staggs' essay. I am generally skeptical of branding prominent evil people as psychopaths--I view the idea of "ponerology" as essentially a eugenicist conspiracy theory held by extreme leftists, and evil people like Hitler and Stalin have demonstrated the capacity for emotional attachment that would disqualify them from being true psychopaths--but Littlefinger doesn't have to be essentially a highly-functional brain-damage case to be a real scumbag.

(I hold that Littlefinger is psychologically normal but is essentially a much, much more powerful male version of Sansa Stark who learned that life was not a song and ended up embittered and generally nasty as a result. Psychopath or evil neurotypical, either way he's a highly dangerous man.)

Looks like it's the calm before the storm...

New Fan-Fic: Westerosi Elections?

My alternate-history forum features a sub-forum called "Alien Space Bats" where non-mundane points of divergence like supernatural intervention, time travel, etc. get discussed. It also features alternate histories of existing works. One of the most popular "AHs of fictional worlds" is George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.

I found one ASOIAF divergence particularly interesting and wanted to share it with you all, but the ASB forum is members-only. Luckily author Silver Phantom 2 has his own fanfiction.net account and at my suggestion, posted his chapters there. Now everyone can see it.

Behold, The First Kingsmoot of Westeros!

The gist of it is that Catelyn Stark manages to convince Renly and Stannis Baratheon to put aside their feud and join forces with House Stark and House Tully against House Lannister, with who is to be king in Westeros to be decided later. In the meantime, the invasion of the North by the Ironborn and some kind of undescribed treachery by House Bolton throw a wrench into things. The political situation mushrooms into an Ironborn-style Kingsmoot in King's Landing, with all the landed nobles voting. This being ASOIAF, all sorts of shenanigans break out, and the wild cards of the Others and Danaerys Targaryen have yet to be played.


Although dropping full-blown parliamentary governance into Westeros is a bit dubious in terms of plausibility, our history has the precedent of the Magna Carta and how House Romanov became rulers of Russia. The story is quite entertaining. There isn't much if any violence, but the politicking is fascinating and everything seems in-character so far.

Enjoy!