Introduction: A Bride Fit for a King

There are discrepancies and mistakes in A Song of Ice and Fire. Inevitable in a series of this size. One such mistake – infamous for a time in the fandom – has to do with the child-bearing suitability of a particular pair of hips.

When Catelyn Stark first meets her daughter-in-law Jeyne Westerling, she describes her thusly:

“She was pretty, undeniably, with her chestnut curls and heart-shaped face, and that shy smile. Slender, but with good hips…”

When Jaime Lannister meets Jeyne – now a widow – a book later, his description conflicts:

“Jeyne was a willowy girl, no more than fifteen or sixteen, more awkward than graceful. She had narrow hips, breasts the size of apples, a mop of chestnut curls, and the soft brown eyes of a doe. Pretty enough for a child…”

Theories abounded for a time. Was this really Jeyne that Jaime met? Was it an impostor? A decoy?

As it turns out, it was a mistake. George R. R. Martin has said as much firsthand; secondhand reports confirm this, and later editions of A Feast for Crows remove Jaime’s reference to Jeyne’s hips entirely.

Both times, Jeyne is described in terms of her fertility and sexuality. She is either fecund or sterile, but there’s no room for her to be anything other than a vehicle for childbearing – and childbearing at the whims of her family, and those who rule her family.

We learn in Feast that Sybell Spicer, Jeyne Westerling’s mother, has been secretly dosing Jeyne with a posset to ensure infertility. She did this to keep the faith with Tywin Lannister, ensuring that no son of Robb Stark would ever be conceived. There is one particular drink in ASOIAF that is certain to prevent or abort any pregnancies: moon tea, a blend of tansy, mint, wormwood, and pennyroyal, washed down with a spoonful of honey. Another woman has been given moon tea in ASOIAF: Lysa Arryn, who as a teenager conceived a child with Petyr Baelish. Her father, Hoster Tully, angling for a betrothal to Jaime Lannister, had Lysa unknowingly drink the moon tea. Later on in life, Lysa suffered greatly from stillbirths and miscarriages. The unborn children of Jeyne and Lysa were snuffed out for the sake of their family’s power and prestige.

In this essay, I’m going to explore these two characters in particular – Jeyne and Lysa. We’ll talk about what they were forced to sacrifice for power’s sake; we’ll talk about who forced them to make those sacrifices. We’ll bring this into a bigger conversation about destruction of bodily autonomy for the sake of power; about the idea of the Neverborn, those not permitted to live, in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Jeyne and Lysa: Grail Maidens

“Forgive me . . . the blood . . . oh, please . . . Tansy . . .” – A Storm of Swords, the last words of Hoster Tully

Jeyne Westerling and Lysa Tully were both young when they fell for their true loves. Jeyne comforts Robb Stark when he is wounded in battle and learns of the deaths of Bran and Robb at the hands of Theon Greyjoy. When they consummate their young love, Robb marries Jeyne out of a kind of stubborn honor, refusing to bring a bastard into the world. Any fears of fertility are quelled by Sybell Spicer, Jeyne’s mother, who, in an attempt to create a greater alliance with Tywin Lannister, drugs her daughter with moon tea to prevent pregnancy.

Lysa’s tale is not so different. When Petyr Baelish is rejected by Catelyn at a dance, he drinks himself into a stupor; Lysa follows him to bed to give him comfort, and they sleep together – although Petyr believes she is Catelyn. Following Petyr’s ridiculous duel with Brandon Stark, he is grievously wounded; Lysa sleeps with him again, at which point she becomes pregnant with his child. Hoster Tully, her father, forces her to abort the child with moon tea, so as to preserve his daughter for a marriage to Jaime Lannister. (The Jaime marriage was, of course, off the table once Jaime was named to the Kingsguard; Lysa was wed instead to Jon Arryn).

Both women explore the archetype of a character most commonly known as “Elaine of Corbenic.” Elaine is a character from Arthurian myth, sometimes referred to as the Grail Maiden. The typical arc of her story is that she is the daughter of a Fisher King figure, prophesied to bear a child with Sir Lancelot. That child was to be Galahad, the noblest knight in the world. Elaine, using a magic potion, disguises herself as Guinevere and seduces Lancelot. They conceive Galahad, but Lancelot is furious that he has been duped. Later, there is a feast at Camelot; once again, Elaine manages to sleep with Lancelot, although Guinevere discovers this and flies into a terrible rage. Lancelot is driven mad with the force of his emotions and flees into the wilderness. Finally, years later, the mad Lancelot arrives in Elaine’s garden. She brings him to the Holy Grail, which cures him of his madness, and they live together for several years as husband and wife.

There are different versions of the story – T.H. White’s The Once and Future King in particular makes Elaine more of a human character, although she eventually commits suicide when it becomes clear that Lancelot will always love Guinevere best. The basic elements are always the same, though: a forbidden romance, Galahad’s conception, the madness or sickness of Lancelot, and the comforting presence of Elaine.

Lysa’s similarities should be immediately apparent. Obviously, Hoster Tully is a very literal Fisher King figure. His sigil is a fish. When we meet him in the main series, he is sick and weak, just like the Fisher King archetype; the land, too, suffers as the Fisher King weakens. Lysa plays the role of Elaine to Petyr’s Lancelot. The first time they sleep together, he is convinced that she is really his true love, Catelyn/Guinevere; the second time, he knows that she is Lysa/Elaine. She comforts him in times of madness.

Jeyne’s story is not as closely tied as Lysa’s, but she still bears elements of the archetype. She comforts Robb, the Lancelot figure, in his hour of grief, but Robb marries her rather than see her bear a bastard son. In doing so, of course, he cheeses off Walder Frey, who represents the interest of the Guinevere faction in the story.

Of course, you might notice one element is missing:

Galahad.

Neither Jeyne nor Lysa are permitted to bring their Galahads into the world. They are poisoned, drugged. Stripped of autonomy and dignity. To feed the Lion of Lannister.

Because for both women, the Lion is the enemy. For Lysa, she has to be kept in a state of virginal purity to be given to Jaime Lannister. Jeyne, too, has to be kept as much as maiden as possible to make her suitable for Tywin Lannister’s alliance. When Jaime Lannister meets Jeyne Westerling at Riverrun, he is meeting young Lysa writ double.

Who is Galahad?

“He has a song,” the man replied. “He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire.”

– A Clash of Kings, Rhaegar describing his son Aegon.

While we don’t have to view this through an Arthurian lens, I think GRRM is alluding to the Galahad story with Lysa and Jeyne. So we should linger for a time on who exactly Galahad is – and who that could be in ASOIAF.

In Arthurian tradition – particularly in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, which is the primary source for the Galahad story – Galahad is the purest, most noble of all knights, the only one worthy enough to achieve the quest for the Holy Grail. He is, of course, the bastard son of Lancelot and Elaine. He arrives at Camelot and takes his seat in the Siege Perilous, an unused chair at the Round Table set aside for the holiest knight of all. He draws a sword out of a stone (yes, this happens twice). On the quest for the Grail, Galahad smites all foes, making his way to the Grail with Percival. Galahad sees the Grail and, fulfilling the quest, asks that he be permitted to choose the hour of his death. His wish is granted. On the way back to Camelot, he is visited in a vision by Joseph of Arimathea, who gives him a rapture so incredible that he chooses to die then and there. He ascends into heaven flanked by angels.

Galahad’s deeds were prophesied by King Pelles (a Christian figure) and Merlin (a pagan figure). He was conceived to find the Grail. His conception, of course, is a matter of deceit. His father and mother cannot raise him together. In many depictions of the Arthur story, Galahad is portrayed as too perfect to be real, an unapproachably rapturous being from birth, someone who knows no way but the virtuous way.

What would this translate to in ASOIAF?

Well, you might see this as an analogue to The Prince /That Was Promised. These children grow up to be figures of hope and strength, attaining deeds which no ordinary knight could do. Galahad is a Chosen One in the purest sense, even more so than the flawed figure of King Arthur. King Arthur – who also draws a sword from a stone and does great, prophesied deeds – is ultimately a man, while Galahad never suffers from flaw or mar.

In broad terms, this Galahad-figure is the ultimate savior of mankind, the very best the human race has to offer. While I believe, as do many others, that Azor Ahai himself wasn’t exactly a nice dude, this savior-role certainly fits the Galahad mold. Fire & Blood gives us some more material to work with; when Aegon III lays his hands on a sick person and heals them, it is whispered that the true king has healing hands (or something to that effect). A crucial component of the Grail Quest is the laying-on of hands, sometimes on the Fisher King himself.

Now, I’ve written before about how I think Azor Ahai is more of a template than a single figure. You might want to read that whole piece to get a better sense of what I’m talking about, but I’ll quote from the conclusion here:

…there is no Azor Ahai, not really. There is only magic. But magic gets used certain ways throughout history in his world, and out of these commonalities there has emerged a narrative about the criteria to be a hero. But those criteria are descriptive, not prescriptive. That is to say – they are based on observations that people have made about the way magic seems to work, but they are by no means an actual strict magic ritual or ruleset.

Am I saying that Lysa and Jeyne could’ve given birth to Azors Ahai had they not been forced to drink moon tea?

No.

What I’m talking about is still a little more metaphorical than that. The moon tea forced them to lose the potential to raise a savior-child. It interrupted their story. The archetypes were broken. The story was broken. The Galahad-child was negated, was never born. The ability to choose to become Azor Ahai was removed. They were chained.

Why?

The Price of Power is Abomination

“My queen,” said Arstan, “there have been no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil.”

– A Storm of Swords, “Arstan Whitebeard” explaining slavery.

Time and again in ASOIAF, we are told of the terrible costs of magic (and power in general). Only death can pay for life. When the high lords play their game of thrones, it is always the innocents who suffer most. Prophecy and magic are swords without a hilt. Prophecy will bite your prick off every time.

This is true in legend and lore as well. When Azor Ahai forges his great and terrible sword, he must sacrifice his wife, the innocent Nissa Nissa. When the Children of the Forest called down the Hammer of the Waters, they did some big sacrifice – whether that was their own children or hundreds of male captives, none can say. Maester Pol’s treatise on Valyrian Steel revealed that blood sacrifices – “of slaves as young as infants” – were integral ingredients to the forging of the black blades. It took great sacrifice – Rhaego, Drogo, and Mirri Maz Duur – to wake Dany’s dragons from stone. Power takes sacrifice – and not just sacrifice, but the destruction of what should be.

Political power is no different. Think of the bodies of Rhaenys and Aegon lying mutilated before the Iron Throne. This potent image is at the core of Robert’s rotten reign: dead children sacrificed on the altar of political power. Dead children. It’s the heart of Ned’s story – protecting the bastards, protecting Jon Snow from Robert’s Targ-hate-boner, protecting Sansa from the crown’s wrath. Doran Martell sees the children play in the water gardens and is filled with sorrow, knowing what war will bring to these children. Hell, it’s the very center of Bran’s story: he is flung from the tower of knowledge so that the powerful may continue abusing their power. (It’s also why Shireen must certainly die by Stannis’ hand – another dead child on the road to power. Indeed, The Winds of Winter will see a LOT of dead children. Like, an uncomfortable amount. Get ready.)

In A Dance with Dragons, Maester Aemon gives Jon a curious bit of advice: “Kill the boy, and let the man be born.” This is the ultimate version of this notion of sacrifice. In order for The Man, the powerful leader who makes hard choices, to be full realized, Jon has to sacrifice his youth, his desires, his most natural state of being. Kill the child, and let the power flow.

So the neverborn children of Jeyne and Lysa are sacrificed on the altar of power. Hoster “preserves” his maiden daughter. Sybell prevents her daughter from becoming an enemy of the crown. For Sybell in particular, this is a family tradition: Sybell’s grandmother was Maggy the Frog, the witch-woman who gave Cersei the prophecy of the valonqar.

(That prophecy and Maggy’s magic are also associated with child sacrifice. Cersei and Melara Hetherspoon must cut their thumbs with Maggy’s twisted iron dagger; Maggy drinks their blood, and then speaks the knowing words. Quite literally, Melara Hetherspoon is drowned in a well not long after the visit to Maggy’s).

I have used the term “abomination.” In ADWD, we learn that, for skinchangers, there are particular criteria for being deemed an “abomination.” Varamyr lives them. He mates while skinchanged, he cannibalizes, and in the end he tries to seize the body of a woman – the ultimate Wrong, the most high sin. Varamyr is abominable, certainly. He quite literally eats babies. It’s hard to get worse than that. But through his abominable deeds, he gains power. He is a dark wizard, a sorcerer, made stronger by breaking the natural laws – much the same way Tywin Lannister became stronger by breaking the laws of guest right.

And much the same way Euron Greyjoy gains power. (You didn’t think I would write about abominations and magic without mentioning Euron, did you?) He is a predator, our pirate. He preys on his brothers, killing and raping them as he pleases. He preys on women, too. In The Forsaken, the excerpt from The Winds of Winter, Euron lashes his brother Aeron and his former consort Falia Flowers to the prow of his ship Silence. Falia’s tongue has been torn out; she is pregnant. Euron is preparing to commit atrocity upon atrocity – kinslaying, sacrificing a child, sacrificing his unwilling lover – to pursue power. He will sunder what should be to create what he wants.

The price of power is abomination. What greater abomination is there than the sacrifice of an innocent?

Why do you think there are no children in Asshai?

Poison, Black and Oily

“And there are no children in Asshai.”

– The World of Ice and Fire

Asshai is the capital of magic. I think that’s fair to say. There is no other place in the world of ice and fire that is so associated with prophecy and sorcery as Asshai. The legends of the Long Night and Azor Ahai stretch back to Asshai. No practice is forbidden in the city, no matter how depraved. (It almost sounds like a libertarian magic dystopia, doesn’t it?)

And there are no children there. Of course there aren’t – blood and water run thick with poison in Asshai. How could innocents survive in such a place? Food doesn’t even grow in the greasy lands of Shadow. Where magic is strongest, where power is purest, life itself runs cancerous and bleak. Quaithe urges Daenerys to pass “beneath the Shadow” – she may mean this literally, imploring Dany to come to Asshai, but it works metaphorically as well: Dany must embrace magic (and all the horror that magic brings, the Shadow of power) if she is to fulfill her destiny. The Targaryen dynasty is no stranger to the poison and horror of magic. Maegor the Cruel could only sire twisted, half-demon miscarriages, and he wasn’t alone in that. Other Targaryens too have tried to conceive children of human flesh, only to give birth to strange, unnatural creatures which cannot live.

That, too, is the price of power. The price of dragonriding, of the ancient magic of Old Valyria, which in turn can (I believe) trace its sorcerous lineage back to Asshai. The children of the Targaryens will always suffer, because this is the cost of their brand of eugenics-magic. If you weave spells into your bloodline, you better be ready for your bloodline to putrefy.

One last tie to old Asshai. Sansa’s hairnet, laced with poison, is woven with black amethysts from Asshai. Joffrey, in the end, is just a child, assassinated at the altar of his own marriage: maybe not an “innocent,” but still a child. Still a sacrifice, poisoned by the power of abomination. Sansa is made the unwitting bearer of this dark magic of Asshai, in much the same way Lysa and Jeyne are made the unwitting altars of their Galahad’s sacrifices.

Chains for the Bride

“Fool’s blood, king’s blood, blood on the maiden’s thigh, but chains for the guests and chains for the bridegroom, aye aye aye.”

– A Storm of Swords, Patchface the creepy clown.

Obviously, the destruction of the archetypal Galahad is abomination enough. But that neverborn child’s death is just a part of the systematic stripping of bodily autonomy away from the women of Westeros.

The political structure of Westeros places chains on the brides. Women are not free beings: they are bound to the wheel of blood and steel, the engines at the heart of the Seven Kingdoms. They cannot be permitted to choose freely, because to do so would cause the system to crumble.

We see this in almost every story in ASOIAF, but a few in particular stand out. Dany’s story in A Game of Thrones is the story of a girl who begins with no autonomy over her own body; she is meat to be sold at market, and little more. Throughout the story, she claims more and more power of choice, until in the end she steps willingly into the flames, freely giving of her body. Brienne faces these problems from a different angle: she is trapped in her body, a girl made to be a man (yet not permitted to be a man). Like Dany, her arc in A Feast for Crows ends with her choosing to put her body on the line for others – it is her choice to fight the Bloody Mummers, and her choice to sacrifice her honor to save Podrick (a child, for those of you keeping score on the child-sacrifice-o-meter). Catelyn Tully, too, reaches a moment of choice, where all the structure of society is stripped away and her hate and rage and fear all bubble up, bringing her knife to Jinglebell’s throat. In Cat’s case, of course, she sacrifices the innocent Aegon Frey.

The end-state for each character is a little different. But broadly, the goal is the same: autonomy. Freedom. Removing the chains of Westeros and finally acting as they wish. And in truth, that’s what ASOIAF is about: the power to choose, and the power in such choices. We are only what our choices make us. We can choose to sacrifice children; we can choose to sacrifice ourselves. But to have that choice stripped away is the ultimate abomination, the ultimate loss of freedom.

To roll this back to Jeyne Westerling and Lysa: freedom is at the center of their story. Jeyne is, of course, surrounded by the power of the Lion. Guards watch her at all times, and her mother is among them. She is to be sent back to the Crag, and to remain unmarried for two years to ensure that no one starts any gossip about the child of Robb Stark. She is un-free, chained in almost every way. Yet she still tries. She rends her garments, tearing her fine new dresses in a small act of autonomy and rebellion. We know that the prologue of The Winds of Winter will feature Jeyne in some way – it’s possible she’ll die there, trying to be free.

Lysa, of course, is a core tragedy at the heart of ASOIAF. She sacrifices everything for Petyr Baelish, trying to chase the love of her Lancelot. And as long as she operates within Petyr’s mission scope, she’s permitted to live. But at the end of A Storm of Swords, she threatens to sacrifice Sansa, to undo Petyr’s plans. In sacrificing Sansa, she would seize the autonomy that has been denied her. She chooses to sacrifice children. Of course, now that she’s breaking free of Petyr’s chains, he ends her life. Moon tea killed her Galahad; now the Moon Door kills Elaine.

Lyanna Stark herself is a great question mark amid the problem of chains. If she went freely with Rhaegar, went of her own choosing, became pregnant of her own choosing, and died of her own choosing, then we might reckon her as a free woman at last, giving of themselves by their own choice. Of course, we can see the reverse as well: if Rhaegar pressured her into becoming pregnant, sacrificing her in his tower (metaphorically), then she was, like so many other innocents, a bloody bundle on the steps of the throne of blades.

The Neverborn and the End of the Story

“Your Grace, I never knew you to fear Rhaegar.” Ned fought to keep the scorn out of his voice, and failed. “Have the years so unmanned you that you tremble at the shadow of an unborn child?”

– A Game of Thrones, Ned equating Dany’s unborn child to the Others (unintentionally)

In the original pitch letter for A Game of Thrones, GRRM referred to the Others by a curious word, a word that never popped up again in ASOIAF proper: The Neverborn.

The greatest danger of all, however, comes from the north, from the icy wastes beyond the Wall, where half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman Others, raise cold legions of the undead and the neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything that we would call “life.”

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been using the term “neverborn” pretty liberally throughout this essay. In particular, it refers to the children of Jeyne and Lysa, the un-Galahads, the innocents sacrificed on the altar of power.

The Others reflect humanity. I think that much is true. They’re probably evil tree spirits or something, definitely demonic and evil and all that. But they reflect humanity. Our dead are their soldiers. Our sacrifices are their sources of power. Our sins are their strength. Moreover, their soldiers are decidedly unfree. Above, I quoted Barristan Selmy when he said “the old gods and the new” consider slavery an “abomination.” What the Others do is pure abomination. They strip bodies of dignity and identity, reducing them to little better than sacks of meat. The worst of humanity – slavery mental and physical, the annihilation of autonomy – is the standard operating procedure for the Others.

To truly defeat the Others once and for all, we will need more than dragons and fire. We will need to reckon with the cost of power in our world, and recognize the way that feeds our dark, mirrored elf-selves. The child who was sacrificed (Bran) will need to confront the symbolic sacrificer. In my opinion, the series will end with forgiveness, as Bran lets go of the foundational trauma; as he confronts the golden figure nestled in the tower at the Heart of Winter. And as he sacrifices himself again: this time intentionally, giving of his body and falling from the tower so that the human race may live.

You know, maybe.

Conclusion

If that last bit was too much or a bridge too far, I don’t blame you. It’s pretty wacky. Let me boil down the big points from the essay as a whole, so you can screenshot this excerpt only and fwd it to your grandma:

Jeyne and Lysa are archetypal examples of the Grail Maiden, a figure who is supposed to conceive Galahad.

But in the story, their Galahads are deleted.

This is part of a pattern of abomination, and it is from such abominations that power (both magical and political) is drawn.

Moreover, there will always be abominable acts like this so long as women (people in general, too, but especially women) do not have body autonomy.

This stripping of autonomy is at the heart of ASOIAF, and is what Bran will have to reckon with in the final defeat of the Others.

Thank you for reading! Do not @ me.

Thanks

Big ups to:

LuciferMeansLightbringer, The Gray Area, and Aziz of History of Westeros – the episode of Between Two Weirwoods where we discussed Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn was a huge help in working through some of the ideas in the background of this piece.

Jeff/BryndenBFish for suggesting that I expand on that “why do you think there are no children in Asshai” mic-drop, and Matt/JoeMagician, Eliana/Glass_Table_Girl, Fat_Walda, hamfast42, MightyIsobel (basically all the mods on the /r/asoiaf mod team, really) for talking through some of these ideas with me.