Trying again. Why is it that the best inspiration strikes on the days when I have the least availability to address it??
they discuss the assassination attempt on Bran:
Robert discusses sending assassin after Danaerys:
Littlefinger suspected to be behind attempt on Bran's life, although he deflects it to Tyrion. His blaming a Lannister causes a Stark to act rashly (Catelyn).
Littlefinger is on the council that votes to send the assassin after Dany.
Ned at Chataya's brothel visiting Barra, Robert's newest bastard. Cersei later sends two Gold Cloaks
to kill mother and child. While at brothel, Ned has conversation with Baelish about Robert's other bastards.
"He gave Ned a sideways glance. "I've also heard whispers that Robert got a pair of twins on a serving wench at Casterly Rock, three years ago when he went west for Lord Tywin's tourney.
Cersei had the babes killed, and sold the mother to a passing slaver. Too much an affront to Lannister pride, that close to home."
Ned Stark grimaced. Ugly tales like that were told of every great lord in the realm.
He could believe it of Cersei Lannister readily enough . . . but would the king stand by and let it happen? The Robert he had known would not have, but the Robert he had known had never been so practiced at shutting his eyes to things he did not wish to see. "Why would Jon Arryn take a sudden interest in the king's baseborn children?"
The short man gave a sodden shrug. "He was the King's Hand. Doubtless Robert asked him to see that they were provided for."
Ned was soaked through to the bone, and his soul had grown cold. "It had to be more than that, or why kill him?"
Littlefinger shook the rain from his hair and laughed. "Now I see. Lord Arryn learned that
His Grace had filled the bellies of some whores and fishwives, and for that he had to be silenced. Small wonder. Allow a man like that to live, and next he's like to blurt out that the sun rises in the east."
Immediately after this visit and convo, Jaime attacks Ned and his men outside the brothel. Littlefinger escapes but turns out this was a setup from the beginning.
Varys: "I confess, I never dreamed the babe would be at risk
. A base born girl, less then a year old, with a whore for a mother,
what threat could she pose?"
Tyrion: "She was Robert's, that was enough for Cersei it would seem."
Littlefinger: "Chataya runs a choice establishment, I’ve half a mind to buy it.
Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I’ve found."
Base born child in a brothel, mother is a whore = no threat. Is this a hint of what was supposed to be a perfect hiding place? Varys knew the babe was at Chataya's and supposedly said nothing; Cersei found out via Littlefinger. Was Varys actually involved in hiding a woman and her child in a brothel during RR? Disguising a noble woman as a whore with her baseborn child that should fly under the radar? Baelish / discovered brothels are a a better investment / hint that he discovered the hiding place?
Cersei sold a commonborn servant mother of twins to a slaver = Free Cities. "He's still in love with the sister, the
insipid little dead sixteen-year old." - Cersei, AGOT, Bran II
Insipid: without distinctive, interesting, or stimulating qualities;
commonplace; pedestrian; run-of-the-mill
Ned and Cersei:
"I remember Robert as he was the day he took the throne, every inch a king." he said quietly. "A thousand other women might have loved him with all their hearts. What did he do to make you hate him so?"
Her eyes burned, green fire in the dusk, like the lioness that was her sigil.
"The night of our wedding feast, the first time we shared a bed, he called me by your sister's name.
He was on top of me, in me, stinking of wine, and he whispered Lyanna."
Ned Stark thought of pale blue roses, and for a moment he wanted to weep. "I do not know which of you I pity most."- AGOT, NED XII
What is a common practice for men who visit whores? They get drunk first.
AGOT 35, Ned: Ned is thinking of Lyanna and Jon while talking to a whore in a brothel, a whore who had birthed a bastard child of a king.
Ned and Petyr Baelish are riding to a brothel in KL. "The streets of King's Landing were dark and deserted. The rain had driven everyone under their roofs. It beat down on Ned's head, warm as blood and
relentless as old guilts." Ned thinks of Lyanna & Robert; he will never keep to one bed. "The girl had been so young Ned had not dared to ask her age. No doubt she'd been a virgin; the better brothels could always find a virgin, if the purse was fat enough." Barra's mother asks Ned to tell Robert to visit her and the baby. "Tell him how beautiful she is." "I will,"
Ned had promised her. Robert would swear undying love and forget them before evenfall, but Ned Stark kept his vows.
He thought of the promises he'd made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he'd paid to keep them." Barra's mother says she is faithful to Robert and will wait for him. ""I will tell him, child, and I promise you, Barra shall not go wanting." She had smiled then, a smile so tremulous and sweet that it cut the heart out of him. Riding through the rainy night, Ned saw Jon Snow's face in front of him, so like a younger version of his own.
If the gods frowned so on bastards, he thought dully, why did they fill men with such lusts?" Lusts that have to be sated by visiting
whores. "For the first time in years, he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if Rhaegar had frequented brothels; somehow he thought not."
Ned in the Black Cells thinks of Jon and feels sadness, guilt, and
shame. Ned's great anger at Littlefinger over hiding Cat in a brothel. Ned's great anger at Jorah Mormont for selling poachers to a Tyroshi slaver. Slavers = bound for Free Cities. Women sold into slavery often end up as prostitutes. Pillowhouses in Lys / Lyseni girls with Valyrian look. Illyrio's wife Serra came from a pillowhouse in Lys. Dany supposedly taken to Braavos as a baby. Braavos has no slavery. Dany speaks High Valyrian with Tyroshi dialect. Show!Daario's mother was a whore in Tyrosh.
ETA: Another parallel: Lynesse Hightower. Beautiful daughter of a noble house, unhappy with boring pedestrian life and marriage, ends up as a concubine in the Free Cities.
SO. MUCH. MORE.