Check-point One: Authors
Hello everyone!
Before we get into the actual checkpoint post, I want to reassure/remind everyone that Author sign-ups will still go on until September 18th. This is the first of three check-in posts that help me keep track of how our authors are doing with their stories. I will announce the end of Author sign-ups with a post on the appropriate ( Read more... )
Before we get into the actual checkpoint post, I want to reassure/remind everyone that Author sign-ups will still go on until September 18th. This is the first of three check-in posts that help me keep track of how our authors are doing with their stories. I will announce the end of Author sign-ups with a post on the appropriate ( Read more... )
Email: opalesse@gmail.com
Genre (het, slash, gen, etc): het, gen, femslash, slash (the last two background)
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Catelyn Tully/Eddard Stark, Lyanna Stark, Lysa Tully, Minisa Tully, Lady Stark, Alys Arryn, Elia Martell, Rhaella Targaryen, Rhaegar Targaryen,
Rating (so far): teen
Current word count: 1870
What you like about your story: Women in armour, doing mighty things, lots of plotting, trying to figure out how women would joust differently than men.
What you dislike about your story: searching through endless family trees to find more women!
Anything else?: I'm having the damnedest time trying to figure out how bastardy would work (if it even exists) in a matriarchy society. If you track through the female line, you always know who the mother is and you take her word unless it's an unlikely situation. (separated for years etc.) So bastards are rare, which puts a whole other spin on things.
How about sharing some of your story with us? (a sentence or two is plenty):
Lady Stark was always simply the ladywolf, or the Lady of Winterfell, for no one used her name. Lyanna joked that her mother had been born in a wolf pack and had never found use for a name other than that of her house. Lady Stark was every inch what Catelyn expected in a queen when she met her. Lady Stark was tall, with a long stern face and icy grey eyes that seemed to have brought winter down with her. She'd never rode a tourney, but her daughter, Lyanna ruled the lists with smile as wild as the mares she rode.
In sharp contrast, Queen Rhaella, ruler of all the Seven Kingdoms, was small and slight on her wooden chair. Scabs from the Iron Throne covered her wrists and Catelyn had heard tales that the queen was slowly going mad. If she was, Rhaella had been all smiles today and her beautiful son, Rhaegar, had been charming all the knights. Everyone thought he'd be King of Love and Beauty, because Elia Martell, his princess, was riding in the tourney, but Elia had looked more than once at Brandon Stark and Robert Baratheon, both strapping tough men, builders more than harpers.
That was what men were good for, after all, building, farming and music, keeping house and hall warm and snug until the women came home from war. Women gave life and women brought death, men were for the in between, trading and singing; raising children while the women fought and died.
Rhaegar was a good father and little Rhaenys, the future queen, played at his feet while Aegon slept in his lap. Catelyn glanced again at her mother, Minisa, Lady of Riverrun, and tightened her thighs on the horse beneath her. Lady Stark, the ladywolf, would have her eye on her. She could hear her mother's commands. Show well in the tourney and Brandon Stark, Lyanna's dear brother, with the hands that were so found of the blacksmith's hammer, might be hers. If the ladywolf found her worthy. She lowered the mask of her helmet.
To be Lyanna's sister, she'd win. Brandon, the great gentle wolf, would be hers.
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Maybe the concept could be like that of mamzerim under Judaic law--not children born out of wedlock, but children born of a relationship forbidden by the Seven/the old gods/the Drowned God/etc. In Judaism, such children are a) children born of a married woman's adultery or b) born of Biblically forbidden incest--like marriage to your aunt, granddaughter or father's second wife. A child born of a single woman and a single man is not a mamzer.)
Would that make the bastardy issue in your Westeros easier to deal with?
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She doesn't have a canon name. After much flailing I decided I'd just call her Ladywolf and make it a thing that she never goes by her first name. (probably only Rickard and the kids know it).
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