Trying and failing to sleep, thinking about ASOIAF characters and their lives and it strikes me – and will not leave me alone – where the hell are the women of the Iron Islands?
Yes, yes, we have Asha. We hear of their mother Alannys and a maternal aunt, but other than that I am not sure I can even think of any others. Possibly an old woman who works at Pyke who Theon asks to ready his room? I’m reaching.
Basically the entire Greyjoy family is male. There’s no discussion of potential ironborn brides for Theon or Victarion (if you don’t count Asha >.<’), everything is about the sons of this house and that house. Asha never mentions having any female friends. I don’t think there are any women at the Kingsmoot (except Asha) and I don’t think that’s ever even explained, though I would assume it’s because the women aren’t allowed to vote as they’re almost never Captains, but if that’s the case and it doesn’t even have to be mentioned…!
All that I can recall that we know of the Iron Islands and its opinions of women:
– Iron Island women ‘rock wives’ > all other women ‘salt wives’/thralls
– Women don’t have to have paid the iron price for jewellery, unlike men
– Insinuations that some things are more womanly and some things more manly; the men go off reaving, the women stay home with children (I guess?)
This is all so typical that I guess that’s why I didn’t question it sooner. Macho culture does not value women, except in rare cases where women (have to) slide into the male role and excel at it, as per Asha. Except that women do exist by necessity and I cannot believe that they are all just effectively chained inside their houses/castles.
Do the drowned men not have avid female followers (real life religious figures sure did)?
Even if they couldn’t vote, were women not trying to overhear/see what was happening at the Kingsmoot that could massively affect their lives?
Do Victarion and Theon not have other families trying to marry their daughters off to prominent Greyjoys?
Do the noble women not communicate between castles for some goddamn female company if they are for some reason incapable of leaving their homes?
Or has Cthulu’s influence somehow affected ironborn sperm so that only like one in ten babies is female?!
I don’t really understand how this is just happening. I basically cannot imagine the life of a (noble) ironborn girl, except transplanting any other Westerosi girl onto the Iron Islands, but surely their norms are not identical, are Ironborn girls allowed to have martial training? If they are, how is it basically just Asha out on reavings? I guess there’d still be needlework and maybe music, etc, but the (current) Ironborn seem so disdainful of such things that I just don’t know.
And this leads to the big question, and my one main hope of how this could end well: what happens when what seems to be so large a proportion of the male Ironborn population sails off with Euron? Like, my brain was first picturing the Iron Islands being almost empty.
Except the women are still there. They can finally emerge from wherever the hell they’ve been hiding. Realise how absolutely terrible it has been under the men and decide ‘fuck that shit, we can rule this place better’. Whoever remains to straggle home after the clusterfuck that is Euron’s plans for the Ironborn finds that the women are in charge now. Perhaps they’ve even released the thralls and agreed peace and trade agreements with the mainland. If they decide they want/need a Queen or Lady Paramount, it is Asha. The men can be stuck in their homes never to be heard from again now.
This is the only answer and subversion I am now willing to accept as to why I don’t even need the whole of one hand to list off every Ironborn woman I can think of, despite having four Ironborn PoVs, one of whom is a woman.
It seems like women are expected to help make ships – lowborn women seem to be expected to help build the ships (Theon doesn’t think its strange lowborn ‘Esgred’ helped build a ship) and it sems highborn women spin flax and sew canvas for sails (at least in the show). And you are correct – women would be in charge when the men are away.
We don’t see many ironborn women though, you’re right. Even in other canons like video games and the show, it’s almost all dudes.
@fightfortheftr (April 19, 2018): There have been a lot of inaccurate reports that the FCC’s repeal of #NetNeutrality will officially go into effect next week on April 23rd. That’s not true. It’s a bit more complicated than that. Ready? Here we go:
Its understandable many journos are confused by this. It’s legitimately confusing. The FCC order said it would go into effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, which would have been April 23rd. But, it still has to be approved by the Office of Management & Budget.
There was another FCC filing in the Federal Register that would imply the earliest the OMB could approve this (and its worth noting that approval is basically just a technicality) is actually April 27th, but its likely to happen some time after that, possibly even weeks after.
The most important thing for EVERYONE to understand is that nothing catastrophic or dramatic is going to happen immediately when the FCC rules go into effect. Telecom shills will immediately start saying “See? The sky didn’t fall, we never needed #NetNeutrality.“
They’re lying.
The ISPs aren’t going to immediately start blocking content or rolling out paid prioritization scams. They know Congress and the public are watching them. Rather, the death of #NetNeutrality will be slow and insidious. You might not even notice it at first.
And that’s the worst part. What will happen is over time ISP scams and abuses will become more commonplace and more accepted. They’ll roll out new schemes that appear good on their face but undermine the free market of ideas by allowing ISPs to pick winners and losers.
Over time we’ll see less awesome startups. Less awesome videos. Less diverse online content. And we’ll see more content that our ISPs want us to see. The Internet will be watered down and manipulated. It will change forever in ways that harm our democracy.
But it will take time.
So: don’t fall for ISP lobbyists talking points. They’re ALREADY claiming that #NetNeutrality was never needed since the sky hasn’t fallen, and the rules haven’t even gone into effect. But also don’t panic. The Internet is not going to die next week. Keep calm and keep fighting.
The Senate will vote in a matter of weeks on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to block the FCC’s repeal. Now is the moment to get engaged.
Also, libraries do more than let you take out books or ebooks. Many also have movies, music, sometimes video games, etc. Also other public services like employment skills training, English classes, classes for immigrants to learn about the country, exam prep, wifi, child care, playgroups, plenty of resources about community goings on or city help such as in the case of homelessness, not to mention people who book the library for other things like job fairs.
Text “RESIST” to 50409 to send an email to your Senators/Representatives! Tell them to vote for the CRA and give them details to persuade them on why Net Neutrality is so important and why it should be preserved. You can also call at 202-224-3121.
Script for phone calls:
Now get to it!! We only have until April 23rd to keep our Internet freedom otherwise.
And also, Renly must have been explained later by Cressen priv why
Stannis did it. And again, even if he loves Loras, why helping MACE? I
can’t get it.
…sigh. If you were empathetic to little Renly and fully understood his trauma we wouldn’t be having this conversation in this way. (I’m not saying you’re not an empathetic person in general, mind you. I don’t even know you. But for this situation.)
Children aren’t rational. Children don’t understand what’s best for them. You take your kid to the doctor and give him a shot, he’ll scream. He’ll hate the doctor, he’ll say he hates you. It doesn’t matter that it’s for his health, he’s in pain and he hates what’s causing him pain.
So, six-year-old Renly is starving and having to eat his pony and his dogs and his cats and rats, and why? Because Stannis is stubborn. Because Stannis is mean. Yes, Cressen is explaining it’s important to keep Storm’s End for Robert, that Stannis just wants Renly to be safe, but Renly looks at the Tyrells out there, so pretty and green and nice… and they have so much food… it smells so good, Stannis… please, I’m sure they’d be nice, Stannis, I’m so hungry… please, Stannis, please… Robert would do it, wouldn’t he? Why are you always so mean, Stannis?! I hate you! I hate you forever and ever!
And that sticks. Trauma sticks. Young Renly (who lost his parents as a baby, might not have even been weaned when they had to leave for the Free Cities) wasn’t rational enough to realize it was the Tyrells who were to blame, not rational enough to think his far-away hero Robert would have done the same as Stannis; instead, he focuses on Stannis as the cause of his pain, the one who’s telling him no, the one who makes his tummy growl at night. Yes, the war ended, he grew older, he consciously learned better, he knew the Tyrells were part of the loyalist enemies, he knew it had all been done for his best… But the child deep inside, his subconscious mind still feels that pain in his stomach whenever he looks at Stannis… and associates the Tyrells with luxury and food and pleasure. Pleasure he takes with both hands, never refusing to taste a peach. And Loras comes to be his squire when he’s about 16 or so, and shows him that the Tyrells are human, they aren’t some monsters, they’re real people, they’re kind and loving… He visits Highgarden, green and gold and soft and pretty like his dreams… and Mace is a good man, a good father, generous and kind, like the father he never had… supportive, so proud of Loras, so proud of him, willing to give Renly anything he needs, anything he wants…
Renly was:
as an infant, abandoned by his parents (not their fault that they never returned, but nevertheless)
at age 6, forced to live in suffering by serious and mean Stannis (per his child’s mind)
at age 7, abandoned by his brother Stannis and his caretaker Maester Cressen (when they left for Dragonstone)
raised by servants thereafter, the lord of his castle
and you wonder why he has attachment problems? Why he cares for strangers more than he does his family? Why he’s more materialistic than altruistic?
That’s what I mean by empathy. Don’t look at things how you would react to them, how you would think as an adult. If you can imagine being Stannis (age 19, starving, desperately trying to make it from day to day, to survive, to keep your men alive, because it’s your duty, because Robert charged you with this duty, even though you have that nagging thought about how you’re disobeying your king, wouldn’t it be easier to just give up… but no, you must go on, you have to, for Robert, for Renly, to spit in the eye of those damn Tyrells), if you can imagine being a traumatized barely-adult, then you can try and drop down even further and imagine being a traumatized child as well. I won’t say it’s not hard. (I mean, it’s not hard for me, but again, I don’t know you, and in my experience empathy is lacking among too many ASOIAF fans, or is very selective.) But if you work at it, enough, to be that little boy in pain feeling that nobody loves him and nobody cares, and then grow with that boy to the adult he became, then yeah, maybe you can get it.
Also – people have different values and ways of thinking. It’s entirely possible that even as an adult, Renly might think holding on to Storm’s End wasn’t worth it. Everybody has a line they’ll draw between what’s a commendable devotion to duty and what’s stubborn foolishness. I don’t doubt many would argue Stannis was very close to that line, or had even crossed it. I, personally, would have drawn the line at eating the dead. It’s possible Renly’s is elsewhere. He may look back on the siege and see it as a waste.
Mindset is absolutely right about the impact of childhood trauma, so add on that even as an adult he might disagree with Stannis about whether or not it was worth it? Yeah, no, he’s not gonna look back on this well.
Trying to decide on headcanon names for the men of House Whent, based on this family tree I made for the House. I proposed “Lewys” and “Osmund” as the sons of First Lord Whent in this short fic, but I’m not really wedded to either. “Lewys” I liked initially because it carried over the “w” sound of Walter and Wynafrei, and because it reminded me of Louis XII of France (another ruler who had only two daughters, the elder of whom married Louis’ successor as King of France), but“Lewys”/”Lewis” as a Westerosi name seems more Westerlander (the Lord of the Deep Den Lewys Lydden, the probable very very distant Lannister relation Lewis Lanster in the Windblown, little Lewys Piper from the western part of the Riverlands), and I don’t know that First Lord Whent would give his elder son a western name (especially when I tend to think Second Lord Whent was born before the Whents gained Harrenhal). “Osmund” I picked because there were riverlord inspirations for it (not only Osmund Frey, but Aegon I’s Hand Ser Osmund Strong, whose family of course would go on to own Harrenhal for a time) and because it fit nicely with “Oswell”, but again, I’m not 100% on board with it. Of course, I have no thoughts on First Lord Whent, except maybe something like “Walter” (the maybe-Ser Osmund naming his firstborn son after his dad, and giving him a strong symbolic claim to the lordship of Harrenhal to boot).
*sigh* names are hard
If you don’t mind taking Blood of Dragons as semi-canon, there are a few names in Riverlands houses that start with ‘Le’ – there’s a Leon Rivers, legitimate son of Luthor Rivers (son of Beslon Smallwood and commander of the City Watch of King’s Landing) and Pennei Piper, a Lew Piper, son of Robyn Piper and Doreth Mallister, a Lena Mallister (daughter of Lord Joscelyn and Belarra Bracken), a Lewys Piper (son of aforementioned Lord Joscelyn and Erena Lydden), and Leoman Piper (son of Patrek Mallister and Karyn Ashford).
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