wenche | egregistration | in my restless dreams i see that town...

player info

NAME: eri
CONTACT:

klingoff
AVERSIONS: n/a

character info

CHARACTER NAME: Lady Brienne of Tarth
CANON: A Song of Ice and Fire
CANON POINT: A Dance with Dragons, aligned with Jaime in the nebulous space of surviving Stoneheart and healing up on the Quiet Isle
TOKEN: The Lothston shield that she's been carrying since Jaime lifted it from Harrenhal.

details

SUMMARY:

Brienne's character arc is focused on the deconstruction of oaths, chivalry, and duty via the examination of gender, ability, and culture through the framework of a rigid and unyielding patriarchy. What if you combined Sansa Stark and Arya Stark into one very unfortunate very tall woman, and sent her through the gauntlet of this examination?

Her character is an untidy pile of dualities, including primarily a topsy-turvy and messy take on Beauty and the Beast. She is introduced as a painful and pitiable contradiction through the eyes of her future liege lady as she whoops absolute ass during a melee in which she beats the hell out of every man there.

She is a romantic heroine who has committed the unforgivable sin of being too large, too ugly, too strong, and too awkward to deserve to get what she wants. She believes in the songs and the stories, but she has failed at playing a proper demure and graceful maid and excelled at more masculine talents like sword-fighting and martial tactics. So, failing to fulfill the role she's allowed, Brienne chooses to excel at the one she's not. At least then she knows the rejection is for the things she could never hope to change.

It has put her on the path we know well: a knight errant more noble than the divinely-knighted. She travels a war-torn countryside looking for an innocent girl whose mother to whom Brienne is sworn has long since died. And despite all her failings, Brienne seems lucky enough to make solid connections along her journey as the social political backdrop she populates shifts toward surviving war, disaster, and quite possibly a reshaping of the landscape right under her feet.

CALLING:

Vassal. She wants to serve a good lord or lady as their sword and shield.
Shield. Protect those who cannot protect themselves; even better if they are her lord/lady.
Servant. Despite her thinking about the above explicitly her actions betray her actual calling: Brienne often serves the under-served.

VALUES:

Glory. She grew up on grand tales of brave knights and beautiful maids. Heroic deeds and sacrifice are paramount.
Honor. She cares about keeping her word— it is the source of her worth in her perspective.
Kindness. Her principles are rock-solid, but her heart is soft as clay. This is revisited directly and thematically over and over again: emotional toughness is masculine and valued, and her softness is mocked and judged as weakness.

FLAWS:

Defensive. She's so shut down in defensiveness it can impede genuine attempts at connection and winds up ostracizing her further.
Stubborn. She thinks very rigidly, which can result in her being quite gullible and naive, stubborn and prickly, and outright aggressive in a way that can seem very out of character for her given her insecurities.
Idealistic. Is this a flaw? It definitely makes her life very difficult. It makes her value the norms and mores of her world, which all hurt her: she still wants to abide by the patriarchy, wants the respect of men who cannot even respect softness, wants to protect her name and her virginity. She creates a cage for herself that harms her every time she tries to move within it.

FEARS:

Inaction. Brienne cannot abide the idea of standing by. Even when it would be more sensible to choose a different path, her fear drives her into pain if she thinks she may take it and spare others from it.
Ridicule. Some of her deepest trauma is borne of humiliation and shame put on her by others at a very young age.
Failure. In the deepest recesses of her psyche, Brienne finds she has failed at not only her duty as her father's remaining daughter but also at most of the deeds to which she has set herself.

MOTIFS:

Duality. Beauty & beast; bear & maiden; lady & knight; sword & shield; sun & moon; son & daughter; oathkeeper & betrayer; innocent & protector; silver & gold; justice & revenge
Water & Islands. Baths; islands; solitude; squishers; she was born in the Stormlands; traipsing now through the Riverlands
Blue & Red. Her house crest; her armor; her kingsguard color for Renly; calling the Sapphire Isle home; her eyes (blame Jaime not shutting up about them for this); the rubies on her Lannister sword.
Songs & Stories. "Winter will never come for the likes of us. Should we die in battle, they will surely sing of us, and it's always summer in the songs. In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining." When she speaks to others for an extended period, she often draws on songs and stories. She is too shy to sing or dance, but she loves both deeply.

BONDS:

I'm sorry for this. George really packed a lot of connections into his blorbo...

Ronnet Connington. The most traumatizing experience of her failure as a woman, Ronnet shattered any hope she had left of being treated like a lady. He haunts her thoughts, and her dreams, and colors her behavior in the world.
Renly Baratheon. The first and possibly only young man who was ever remotely kind to her. Failing to save him and feeling him die in her arms has scarred her psyche deeply, left her guilty and bereft.
Hyle Hunt. Diet Renly Baratheon: a handsome, dark-haired knight with a quick tongue who treats Brienne like she isn't a freak in his efforts to woo her. But he also convinced a group of knights into a wager to see who could bed her while King Renly was mustering troops. They meet up again during her quest to find Sansa, and he starts in on trying to marry her because Tarth would be a huge get for a knight who isn't landed.
Catelyn Stark. A noble woman who rescued Brienne after King Renly's assassination, who Brienne swears to as vassal and lord after rejecting the idea of swearing to Catelyn's son. She does Catelyn's bidding regarding Jaime Lannister twice: once to escort him to trade for her daughters, and again to lure him to the ghast of Catelyn so that she can execute him.
Jaime Lannister. The man who started off in her eyes as no better than a beast who is now the most important figure in her life. She thinks about him nonstop. She has also betrayed him deeply to lead him to his doom. It's uhm. Complicated™️
The Brave Companions. Men who capture her and Jaime, threaten her with sexual assault and then cut off Jaime's hand. She eventually exacts her revenge on them in a fight that culminates in her metaphorically murdering their world's representation of ultimate chivalry.
Podrick Payne. A terrible squire, who has way more moxy than a little guy should and begs Brienne to teach him the sword. The boy she chooses to betray Jaime for when she sees Stoneheart's men fitting him for a noose.
Dick Crabb. Nimble Dick is a clever man who leads Brienne toward a red herring as she searches for Sansa in Maidenpool. They speak of myths and stories, a lot of thematic groundwork is laid, Brienne regrets being so mistrustful of him eventually, and she then buries his body with the gold she owes him at the foot of a weirwood tree. I'm sure that's fine.
The Riverlands. A war-torn region Brienne has seen horror after horror within. A fertile land that houses of the realm have been vying over for centuries, that holds mystical secrets, and which the winding rivers and streams mirror the winding confusion of the quest she's on to find Sansa and Arya Stark.
Harrenhal. The place she should have died, where Jaime revealed his deepest secrets to her and where he came back to save her as if she were a real maiden and not a mockery of one. A thematic connection to the Stark ladies, as she hauls around a very heavy shield picked up there.
Oathkeeper. "Black and red the ripples ran, deep within the steel. Valyrian steel, spell-forged. It was a sword fit for a hero." A Valyrian steel sword given to her by Jaime in pursuit of finding the tatters of his honor: Catelyn's daughter Sansa. She doesn't use it unless the odds are stacked desperately against her. It is her most prized possession, forged from a legendary blade once owned by Sansa's own father and house. The symbol of her and Jaime's honors, a symbolic dowry between them, and the representation of her holy quest.