What If Robb Stark Got a Do-Over?

Today I've got another alternate-universe fan-fic from the world of A Song of Ice and Fire for your enjoyment. Both of them courtesy of the biggest alternate-history forum on the Internet, of course...

The first one is entitled "Robb Returns," written by the board member whose handle is Cymraeg (and who has a bunch of really awesome stories available for the Kindle). The gist of it is that the Old Gods send Robb Stark back to a year-ish before King Robert Baratheon comes to Winterfell to ask Ned Stark to become the Hand of the King. To the other denizens of Winterfell, Robb is acting quite strangely--he immediately hugs his sisters and younger brothers (whom he thinks are dead), acts disconcertingly hostile toward his foster brother Theon Greyjoy, and weapons-master Rodrik Cassel reports that he fights like a man who's killed.

Maester Luwin and Ned Stark soon suss out the truth and there's a chance to right the wrongs of canon. Goodies include...

*The touch of the Old Gods giving those who've been touched (first Robb and then Ned) red irises, like the sap of the heart trees. Fortunately for them it fades, but it's a cool little touch.

*An amusing bit about how...popular...King Robert and Tyrion Lannister were with the prostitutes and Winterfell's female staff.

*Ned, who'd kept his distance from Theon in the event Balon rebelled against and he'd have to kill him, actually tries to be the father-figure Theon needs.

*And best of all, Robb goes back early enough that Domeric Bolton, Roose Bolton's legitimate son, is still alive.

This story is of especial interest because my writing fan-fiction in Harry Potter and the Transformers movie-verse (you can see my page here) was inspired by reading the story "The Moment It Began," which gives the dying Severus Snape a do-over.

However, just because a character can avoid the mistakes of his canonical lifetime doesn't mean everything's going to be peachy-keen. Snape in "The Moment It Began" still had to deal with the petty torments of James Potter and his friends, the enmity of the Death Eater wannabes he's now spurned, and the war with Voldemort. Since a major trait of the ASOIAF universe is that (almost) everything that can go wrong will, I expect Robb and the Starks will have issues too. For starters, Roose has ordered Domeric to try to charm Sansa Stark, which might make things a bit awkward if King Robert wants to betroth Sansa to Joffrey. And Ramsay Snow is still out there, waiting to cause trouble...

Enjoy!

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.

A Warhammer Fantasy Vampire in Westeros?

The alternate history forum I've been a member of since high school has gone and done it again. There's a new A Song of Ice and Fire fan-fic out there. In this one, entitled "A Game of Fangs," a Warhammer Fantasy vampire (an original-character named Sybelle Von Carstein, specifically) and her immediate entourage due to a magical mishap end up in Westeros as the War of the Five Kings breaks out. I'm guessing in terms of the story timeline, it'd be early in A Clash of Kings.

Highlights:

*The vampire and her entourage materialize in the vicinity of Harrenhal and the first major character to encounter them is Arya Stark. The relationship between Sybelle and Arya is nice to read and sets an interesting path before Arya later on.

*Sybelle herself is an interesting character. She's undeniably ruthless and dangerous, but she's not malicious or sadistic. Yes, she's a magic-wielding vampire with imperial ambitions, but she's not gratuitously mean.

*Sybelle's arrival in the world and the magic she invokes to return to her full power causes all sorts of portents and freak occurrences to happen. Including some unpleasantness with Ned Stark's skeleton. :)

*Melisandre views Sybelle as an agent of the Great Other and things proceed accordingly. She's one of the few actual sorcerers in Westeros, so this is going to be fun.

*Sybelle's arrival causes enemies to become allies, but Sybelle herself becomes a cunning player in the Game of Thrones. This has some interesting consequences...

*We get POVs from characters who never got any in the ASOIAF canon, including Robb Stark and Sandor Clegane.

*Speaking of Sandor Clegane, he gets a very surprising Crowning Moment of Awesome.

The story is still ongoing, so hopefully it'll continue to be fun. Enjoy!

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...

Can Sean Bean Save Westeros? Let's Take a Look...

Found another A Song of Ice and Fire fan-fiction for your entertainment. It's entitled "Sean Bean Saves Westeros." The gist of it is that after Season One of the television series Game of Thrones wraps, Sean Bean (the actor who played Ned Stark) wakes up as Ned Stark in Westeros in the city of White Harbor in the North--soon after Ned Stark was executed. Now he has to pretend to be Ned Stark (resurrected by the Old Gods) to reunite the Realm in the face of the return of the Others and the coming Winter.

The writer seems to know Sean Bean's career and personal life very well and that's what makes the story at times really funny (an enthusiasm for soccer that leads to an amusing clash with Jaime Lannister) and other times somewhat poignant (he sings a rather sad Northern English song from our world and compares Ned's relationships with Catelyn to his own failed marriages and Ned's relationship to Arya to his relationship with his real-life daughters). The story is also setting up Renly Baratheon of all people as the Big Bad (at least before the Others show up), since between "Ned" with modern historical and military knowledge (Bean is depicted as knowing a fair bit about the historical Battle of Hastings) in command of the Northern host and Stannis's fleet, the Lannisters get neutralized pretty quickly but Renly still has his army of 100,000 heading (slowly) for King's Landing. And along the way, some of canon's villains get their just desserts.

So if you like fan fiction that's a little off the beaten path, you'll definitely like this one.

ASOIAF AU Fan-Fic: So Soars The Young Falcon

On my alternate-history forum, a gentleman whose handle is CDA started writing an alternate timeline set in the world of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. It's entitled "So Soars the Young Falcon" and diverges from canon at the Battle of the Bells during Robert's Rebellion. Instead of dying at Jon Connington's hands, Denys Arryn (Jon Arryn's cousin and heir at the time) kills Connington and the royal army routs. This brings the rebellion to an accelerated conclusion, which is both good and bad. No details due to spoiler reasons...

CDA wanted to explore the world of Westeros through the lens of the early modern period. Although Westeros is generally referred to as a medieval world, one writer has made the claim it has more common with Europe's early modern period (the age of Renaissance and Reformation). See this article here.

So on the macro level, this timeline features, among other things:

*An incipient proto-Columbus, preparing to follow in the footsteps of Brandon the Shipwright. Let's just say that Brandon did not sail off to his death and there's something on the other side of the Sunset Sea...

*A septon present at the Battle of the Bells has his faith tested by the carnage and becomes a reformer of the Faith of the Seven who challenges the established religious hierarchy. He's an analogue to John Wycliffe. We've also met the analogues for Jan Hus and John Calvin as well. The way things are looking we're going to get all the disruption of our world's Reformation, and that's before the devotees of the Red God come west in significant numbers and the Others start stirring. Oh boy...

This in addition to some different adventures for the canon cast, including Ashara Dayne, Sandor Clegane, Jaime Lannister, Ned Stark (whose wolf-pack expands significantly), Lysa Arryn, and the mysterious "Young Griff." It's a lot of fun.

The Lion of the North: Another ASOIAF Fan-Fic

Some of you might have seen the older blog post I wrote to promote "A Different Song," an A Song of Ice and Fire fan-fic depicting Ned Stark and the Northern cavalry interrupting the Sack of King's Landing. They discover Jaime Lannister has already killed Aerys the Mad King and together Ned and Jaime rescue Princess Elia Martell and her daughter Rhaenys from the vile Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch respectively. It's a pretty entertaining story so far, but the author is rather slow in updating.

Well, the same alternate-history forum that spawned "A Different Song" spawned an unofficial sequel/spinoff, "The Lion of the North." The author would rather not post it on fanfiction.net, so you can read it on Space Battles or (without reader comments) An Archive of Our Own. And he certainly keeps the updates flowing. The gist of it is that King Robert Baratheon and Tywin Lannister connive to kill Elia and her children (I think in this continuity Aegon survived, which he didn't in "A Different Song"), leading to a permanent breach between the Lannisters father and son. After Jaime is too argumentative, Tywin disinherits him and prevails on Robert to expel him from the Kingsguard. He leaves for the North with Ned and things go from there...

Although I really don't like some of the stuff that goes on in King's Landing (it involves bringing in Melisandre a generation early and giving her magical powers that canon does not indicate she has, making the whole situation needlessly complicated), the stuff following Jaime, Ned, Catelyn, and even the young Tyrion is really well-done. The most recent update is even pretty funny--kids (in this case Robb and Jon) say the darnedst things upon meeting dwarfs.

So check it out!

For Want of a Nail: Another ASOIAF Fan-Fic

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

This rhyme has been repeated for centuries as a lesson in the possible consequences of even the slightest bit of carelessness. And the writer on AH.com whose handle is TheScottishMongol has applied to the world of A Song of Ice and Fire with a fan-fic of the same name. 

Basically Catelyn Stark's horse loses a shoe on her way back to Winterfell from her visit to King's Landing and the resulting delay means she never encounters Tyrion Lannister at the inn. She never arrests him on suspicion of his involvement with the near-death of her son Bran and he makes his way to King's Landing, where he meets the new Hand of the King Ned Stark and discovers that Littlefinger has slyly accused him of involvement in the attack on Bran.

Now a man who's a great warrior but has little political savvy and a small man who casts a very large shadow are thrown together and some very interesting things result. These include a wonderful Crowning Moment of Awesome that I'll sum up in a few words--"Trial of Seven." Although the story misses some steps, it's a lot of fun and certainly worth a read.

If you liked this story, the second one is posted here.

A Roman Legion Arrives In Westeros...

Those of you who are fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and related fan-fiction have got another treat for you today.

It's entitled "A Legion For Westeros." The gist of it is that the Ninth Legion, thought lost in Britain (although some recent evidence have suggested it wasn't), materializes in Westeros when King Robert Baratheon is on his fatal hunt at the tail end of the first novel, A Game of Thrones. After some initial communication issues, King Robert and his entourage start to get on quite well with the new arrivals.

Much more of the story is posted on my alternate-history message board than has been posted (yet) on fanfiction.net. All I can say is that sorts of interesting changes in King's Landing result from this spanner being thrown into the works at a most crucial time.

And the legionaries haven't even gotten to King's Landing yet. :)

Jaime Lannister and Ned Stark, Friends? See "A Different Song"

A member of my message-board the other night started an alternate-universe Song of Ice and Fire fan-fic entitled "A Different Song." He's posted it on fanfiction.net, so people who aren't board members can read it and review it.

It diverges from canon around the time of the Battle of the Trident, in which Ned Stark becomes acquainted with the young Greatjon Umber. Rebel leader Robert Baratheon is wounded in his duel with Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen per canon and Ned takes the northern armies south to what he thinks is the undefended capital of King's Landing and his revenge on King Aerys II Targaryen for the hideous deaths of his father and brother. His scouts discover the Lannister armies approaching King's Landing and Ned heads south with his cavalry to try to delay them from entering the city, hoping to sow enough confusion for the rest of his troops to take them by surprise.

Only they arrive in King's Landing in time to witness the beginning of the infamous Lannister sack of the city. However, the Red Keep is under loyalist control and Ned heads there for a climactic encounter with none other than Jaime Lannister.

Only one kind of long chapter posted so far, but it's a lot of fun:

*Ned's interrogation of some Lannister bannermen with Jaime causes Jaime to realize his father Tywin intends to murder the entire royal family, including young children and Rhaegar's Dornish wife Elia Martell. Unlike in canon, there's now time to stop it.

*Ned takes on the infamous Gregor Clegane with Ice, a great-sword made of possibly-supernatural Valryrian Steel.

*A confrontation with the vile Amory Lorch, with the life of Princess Rhaneys at stake.

*Ned, faced with Jaime's desire to protect the rest of the royal family even though he's killed the king already, seems to have a softening attitude in regard to oaths.

And with several Targaryens still alive, Lannister common soldiers and nobles dead at the hands of the very angry Ned and his companions, and Northern soldiers in control of the Red Keep even though the rest of the city is falling to the Lannisters, the political situation is about to get really complicated.

I'm definitely keeping an eye on this one.

Ned Stark Lives: Another Cool ASOIAF Fan-Fic

Lately on my alternate-history message-board, what-ifs set in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire universe have been particularly interesting. One recent what-if was, "What if Ned Stark had taken the black?"

(That was the original plan, before King Joffrey "Baratheon" gave the impulsive order to cut off his head, throwing gasoline onto the Stark-Lannister feud that had already led to war in the Riverlands.)

The board member whose handle is Rhaegar I suggested a fan-fic entitled, well, "Ned Stark Lives!" The point of divergence from canon is that Varys overhears Littlefinger subtly suggesting Joffrey have Ned killed rather than exiled to the Wall and ensures that, thanks to his poisoning talents, Joffrey has a few days of severe diarrhea. This keeps him away from Ned's public "confession" and so Ned leaves King's Landing with, among others, Gendry and his own daughter Arya in disguise as a boy. However, crossing the war-torn Riverlands isn't easy, even with a warrior like Ned to help out.

Overall, it's a really, really interesting story. Things go (more realistically) happier for House Stark than in canon. And the story is so well-done that it even made me care for the vile Lannisters and Theon Greyjoy, who follows his canonical path to a certain point. Heck, even the sleazy Littlefinger gets a moment of glory. These are people whom I've criticized in very stringent terms to my fellow ASOIAF enthusiasts, so getting me to like them takes effort. And I rather like what the writer did with Roslin Frey, who seems rather less shallow than the other women of House Frey. Not only that, but more intelligent (she recognizes how dysfunctional their situation is). There's also a comic bit about how the Freys are seen by the other houses they're intermarried with--her Rosby relatives tease her by asking if her father (Walder Frey) is really her great-grandfather.

My main beef is that a lot of attention is devoted to Gendry/Arya. On top of the fact that he's in his teens and she's ten or eleven and the fact it takes up so much of the story, there's also the social/political problems with this relationship. Although Ned remembers his father being too controlling of his wild sister Lyanna (and her probable rebellion against his betrothal of her to Robert Baratheon by eloping with Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, which set the stage for Robert's Rebellion) and has shown a willingness to indulge Arya's tomboy ways by allowing her fencing lessons, Gendry is still a commoner even though his father is King Robert. Furthermore, as a daughter of the ruling Lord Stark, Arya is quite a useful piece in the political games that Ned, having been severely screwed by Littlefinger and other players, has gotten a bit more adept at playing. And on top of that, she's been promised to Elmar Frey as part of the deal that got Robb Stark's army a quick passage into the Riverlands to rescue Ned in the first place. Realistically Ned and Catelyn would find some gentle way to separate them or in the less likely event Ned is willing to let such a situation occur, he would probably find some way to raise Gendry's social position to make him a "worthy" match for a daughter of the Lord Paramount of the North.

(For example, Gendry does something really clever later in the first story to help the Stark armies return to the Ironborn-afflicted North without taking insane numbers of casualties. Why wasn't he knighted? Gendry gets knighted in canon by Beric Dondarrion anyway and the "upjumped smuggler" Davos Seaworth ended up Hand of the King, so it's not like this sort of thing doesn't happen.)

In any event, the sequel moves away (to a large degree) from the Seven Kingdoms proper to the Wall and the areas around it as the Others begin driving the wildings toward it like the Huns once drove the Germans against Rome. There's less room for teen/preteen drama and more room for Ned whupping up on the Others with his Valryrian steel sword. :)

Putting The Cart Before The Horse: A "Wastelands" TV Series?

I was having dinner the other night with my friend Brian, who was visiting from Los Angeles, and the television show Game of Thrones came up.  Each season of the show roughly corresponds to one book in George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy series.  This gives the creators plenty of time to develop the characters, the setting, etc.

That reminded me of how S.M. Stirling's "Emberverse" novels had been optioned for the purposes of a television series, with each season corresponding to a year.  Stirling said at DragonCon that short stories make good films and books make good miniseries--again, there's more room for character development and the like.  I own his book Island in the Sea of Time and there are two, perhaps three "break points" making for a four or six-hour miniseries.  Heck, I think there's enough material for making each book a television season a la Game of Thrones.

That got me thinking about the Wastelands novels.  Although Battle for the Wastelands takes place chronologically over maybe two months (just before harvest to just afterward), there's so much going on in so many different places that a lot would need to be cut to make it into a movie.  A television series would be much better.

However, to get a full TV season per book, even longer books like the ASOIAF ones need more material.  I've only read the first two ASOIAF novels and haven't actually watched the TV series, but based on the recaps, there's a lot of stuff that's not in the books.  A lot of it is tied with the new character Ros (the redhead prostitute at Winterfell) and the various people she's involved with in a professional capacity, plus in Season One we see an...intimate moment between Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell and I think we actually see King Robert Baratheon's fatal hunt.  And in Season Two, again based on the recaps, there's a scene involved Renly, Loras, and Renly's wife Margaery Tyrell and a scene where Littlefinger delivers Ned's bones to Catelyn Stark and proceeds to hit on her.


Of course, all this is putting the cart before the horse.  I need to get the novels as good as they can be and find a buyer.  Then they need to be successful--I've heard the average book sells only 1,000 copies.