Anonymous asked: Hi, as someone emotionally abused by a parent and who doesn't read Catelyn as abusive to Jon, what are you basing this on? Particularly considering GRRM has essentially said (with the exception of the incident with Bran caused by grief and sleep deprivation, which he calls a special case) that she wasn't abusive towards him?

This is a case where I think GRRM doesn’t get it. That scene with Jon and Catelyn by Bran’s bedside tells us a lot about what the usual interaction between the two is like, and has been for the years before this moment.

He reached the landing and stood for a long moment, afraid. Ghost nuzzled at his hand. He took courage from that. He straightened, and entered the room. Lady Stark was there beside his bed. She had been there, day and night, for close on a fortnight. Not for a moment had she left Bran’s side. She had her meals brought to her there, and chamber pots as well, and a small hard bed to sleep on, though it was said she had scarcely slept at all. She fed him herself, the honey and water and herb mixture that sustained life. Not once did she leave the room. So Jon had stayed away. - Jon II, AGoT

It’s not Bran’s illness he’s afraid of, it’s Catelyn. He’s afraid of Catelyn to the point where he doesn’t feel he can visit his comatose brother. That sort of fear doesn’t arise in a vacuum, nor is it a one-off due to Catelyn’s grief. That’s the previous status quo talking.

Something cold moved in her eyes. “I told you to leave,” she said. “We don’t want you here.” Once that would have sent him running. Once that might even have made him cry.

So, we know that Catelyn’s spoken to Jon a bit like this before, and that it has frightened him into leaving before - frightened Jon out of a room in his own home. It emphasises to him that it’s Catelyn who controls space in this house. Where he can go in his own home is dictated by whether or not she’s present in any given room (unless, presumably, his father is also present). No wonder he feels like an outsider in Winterfell.

The fact that her rebukes can make him cry is also quite telling, as we know Jon doesn’t burst into tears at the drop of a hat.

Also take note of the “we.”

That morning he called it first. “I’m Lord of Winterfell!” he cried, as he had a hundred times before. Only this time, this time, Robb had answered, “You can’t be Lord of Winterfell, you’re bastard-born. My lady mother says you can’t ever be the Lord of Winterfell.” - Jon XII, ASoS

From this we know that Catelyn’s spoken to Robb about how he plays with Jon. This sort of thing is aimed at Jon’s relationship with his siblings, as is the “we don’t want you here.” We get more in other parts of Jon’s PoV.

Robb and Bran and Rickon were his father’s sons, and he loved them still, yet Jon knew that he had never truly been one of them. Catelyn Stark had seen to that.

- Jon IV, AGoT

“I have no sister. Only brothers. Only you.” Lady Catelyn would have rejoiced to hear those words, he knew.

- Jon VI, ADWD

Catelyn doesn’t want her kids to see Jon as a brother, nor Jon to interact with her kids as their brother; while politically understandable, this mostly failed attempt at relationship sabotage is still emotional abuse.

Back to Jon II, AGoT, and here’s one of the big ones.

“Jon,” she said. He should have kept going, but she had never called him by his name before.

Yep. The woman who knows the name of every stable-worker in Winterfell has never addressed Jon by his name. This is flat out dehumanising and cannot be attributed to Catelyn’s emotions in the moment. That’s explicitly a pattern of behaviour that went on for years before this moment of grief, stress, and sleep deprivation.

I don’t think Catelyn had duties to Jon as a parent. But this isn’t cordiality, bare politeness, or absence in Jon’s life. Quite the reverse. We see from Jon’s PoV that Catelyn was very much present, making sure he knew what she thought of his life in Winterfell, and trying to make Winterfell as little of a home for him as she could manage.