You told me you loved me.

And perhaps you did — in the way a man loves a shadow that does not speak too loudly or ask to stand in the sun.

You gave me soft sheets, gold coins, and locked doors, and said it was safety.

But I was always waiting.

Waiting to be seen in the light.

Waiting to be enough to walk beside you, not behind.

When you said “go,” I went.

I did not cry.

I did not beg.

I learned long ago not to.

You were the one thing I almost believed in — the clever man who held my hand in the dark but would never name me in the daylight.

You said I betrayed you.

But you betrayed me first when you let me become invisible.

I wanted to stay. But not like that.

So I found someone who said my name without shame.

Even if it was only power he saw in me, it was still more than nothing.

And when you found me there, on his bed, in his world, you strangled the life from me with your own hands.

You said you loved me.

But if you had, truly, you would have made a world where I didn’t have to crawl to survive.

You would have saved me, instead of leaving me to save myself.

And now, I am only silence.

But your grief will speak for me.

Forever.

"All my life, men like you have sneered at me. And all my life I’ve been knocking men like you into the dust."

Brienne the Beauty, they called me.

As if I needed reminding.

I stopped hoping for kindness a long time ago.

I never stopped hoping to be good – the only thing that mattered to me.

Not being wanted, not being chosen, but being right.

I studied every story of chivalry until my eyes burned.

I trained until my arms ached.

I learned to carry the sword not just with strength, but with truth.

And when I swore an oath, I kept it.

Even when it broke me.

Do I wish I had been someone else?

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t loved him.

But I did.

And even when he left, I stayed.

And that’s what I keep doing.

Not as a joke.

Not as a sidekick.

But as a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Not because I must.

Because someone has to.

Daughter, sister, noble girl of Winterfell.

They tried to make her a lady.

They taught her to sew.

To pray.

To curtsy.

From the beginning, Arya Stark chafed against the roles written for her.

She wanted a sword.

She wanted vengeance.

She wanted to be No One.

But this isn’t just a story of rebellion.

It's not even a story of vengeance, though for the longest time that was what drove her.

It’s the story of what it costs a girl to survive a world that keeps trying to erase her.

In Braavos, she traded her name for a mask.

She learned to fight without mercy.

To speak without self.

She watched a girl get poisoned and didn’t blink.

She buried names like offerings.

She killed without flinching, and (almost) without feeling.

She becomes No One.

And in doing so, nearly forgot what it meant to be Arya at all.

Except, she didn’t.

She couldn’t.

Because identity isn’t something you shed like an old cloak.

It stays in your blood.

In your list.

In the way you whisper a name before you sleep.

When she chose to leave the House of Black and White, she wasn’t just walking away from training.

She was refusing to forget.

“I am Arya Stark of Winterfell,” she said. “I’m going home.”

She clawed her way back to identity.

Not because it was safe, but because it was real.

Being No One was a lie.

Being Arya was dangerous.

But at least it meant she could feel again.

But home has changed.

And so has she.

There was too much blood between then and now.

The now was not a life to settle into.

So, she sailed.

Not because she was lost, but because she was searching for something even the maps didn’t name.

She was not No One.

She was not the girl they had raised, nor the woman they had wanted.

She was Arya.

And she made herself.

It’s funny, really. The gods—no matter the realm—always seem to want the same thing from women:
Purity. Sacrifice. Obedience. Silence.

Whether it’s a Septa muttering prayers in the Red Keep or a girl being told to pray to the Maiden for protection she’ll never get, the message is the same:

Be good. Be small. Be quiet.

The point is not piety. It’s control.

Because the Faith isn’t about holiness—it’s about hierarchy.
And religion, like politics, always has a body count.
In Westeros, as in our own histories, that body is often a woman’s.

Maiden. Mother. Crone.
If you don’t fit, you can always be a Stranger.
Or—a Monster.

Think Melisandre. Cersei. Arya.
Each deserves her own chapter, really—even more so than the Mother-archetype, Catelyn Stark.

Let’s begin with the keepers of the Faith: the Septas.

What their very relevant example shows us even today is this:

You don’t need to be wicked to harm someone.
You don’t need to be a villain to obey a monstrous rule.
You just need a framework that tells you you’re good—and someone to suffer for your virtue.

Religion—true religion, the kind people live and die by—doesn’t recruit monsters.
It recruits the kind, the loyal, the earnest.
It finds the people who want to do right, and it gives them a script.

And then it whispers:

“Here’s how you help.”

Even if that means shaming a child.
Even if that means burning a girl.
Even if that means ringing a bell while a queen walks naked through the streets.

Take Septa Mordane—sweet, stern, and painfully blind.

She didn’t think she was setting Sansa up for a political bloodbath.
She thought she was preparing a girl for her destiny.
She taught Sansa to pray, to curtsy, to smile when spoken to.
She thought she was preparing her for marriage and motherhood.

What she was really doing was marching her toward slaughter, wrapped in lace.
But Sansa—slowly, silently—found her own way.
She turned the path they laid for her into one no one ever saw coming.

Arya, of course, never even stayed on the path.
She slipped the leash before it ever tightened and carved her own story—as no one.

But that’s another chapter.

Septa Unella didn’t believe she was a torturer.
She believed she was a vessel of divine justice.
Stone-faced and bell-ringing, an icon of public shame.
She tortured a queen and believed she was serving the gods.
She whispered prayer while people rotted.
She never doubted.

Because she didn’t need to.
The Seven had spoken.

Maybe the gods really do have seven faces.
But none of them look like freedom.

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“You are my lady. You’ll always be my lady.”

You were supposed to die in season one—a decorative casualty of a world built on blood, steel, and spectacle. 

Your sugar-spun dreams of courtly nonsense—princes, braided hair, and happily-ever-after endings were never the kind of existence that should last long in such a world—or any world. 

The little dove was meant to break.

I, for one, wanted to throttle you!

And yet, you lived! And kept surviving…

Not by fighting, but by yielding just enough not to snap.

Not by burning it all down, but by learning when to bow, when to disappear, when to watch.

And somewhere between the embroidery and the bloodshed, you became the sharpest mind in the North.

Your arc was quiet, which is why so many missed it. Your transformation wasn’t forged in battle but in whispers behind closed doors. You passed through the hands of monsters—and emerged not untouched, but unclaimed.

Because here’s the thing they didn’t see coming:

The little dove grew talons.

And when the war was over, you didn’t plead or plot for the Iron Throne,

You carved your own.

You didn’t rebel with fire. Or vengeance. Or a thousand ghosts. You rebelled by remaining.

By becoming exactly the kind of woman the world tried to destroy.

Only smarter. Colder. More dangerous.

By the final season, you’d become what no one predicted:

Not a princess.

Not a queen’s consort.

A ruler.

Your story isn’t about triumph. It’s about tenacity.

You are every girl who swallowed fear and smiled anyway.

Every woman who learned to see the strings behind power—and pull them when it matters most.

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I’ve been having these amazing conversations with Hal lately on his blog about historical drama. We bounced around a lot of obscure references, mostly things only Hal has ever heard of, so I got tired and gave up trying to take notes.

I know I mentioned Hilary Mantel and we went on a bit about what made Thomas Cromwell so magnetic and why Mark Rylance didn’t pull it off so well. Then The Tudors came up, but we quickly abandoned it because it started driving me a bit mad, and not in the fun way. So, Hal threw in one of his effortlessly hilarious analogies with a random turn onto Game of Thrones avenue.

And then:

Listen Babs, why don’t you write something on that obsession of yours: female roles in Game of Thrones? It could be a series. The perfect excuse for your rogue Now TV subscription – consider it your Westerosi Writer’s Residency. Let’s make it count. You could start with the Sand Snakes. (Before I knew I was going to be made redundant and won’t be able to afford it, I took out a Now TV subscription and tied myself in for something like six months. I’ve been beating myself up for it ever since because I’m not even using it.)

I should confess now: I haven’t read the books. I’m not going to. I know they’re probably full of extra Dornish complexity and lost wolf siblings and maybe even a timeline that makes sense, but… anyway, I just won’t! I’m here for the televised version, in all its maddening, glorious, dragon-flamed imperfection.

The Sand Snakes, for instance? Hal is going to be disappointed because he even had a subtitle ready for them: The Avatars of Wrath. He was so excited about how cool it sounded, and I was even going to use it. But here’s the thing about the Sand Snakes: Glorious entrance. Gorgeous weapons. Gone in a blink.

I have read up on them and they probably deserve pages of analysis. But we’ll have to count them as a near miss and move on, because writing anything worthwhile about them would mean reading the whole book series, and if I do that, I’ll never get anywhere with this.

So, this is going to be about Thrones of Her Own—the women who changed fantasy forever by actually surviving the edit.

So who do I pick first? Decisions, decisions.
I think I’m just going to let the dragons, daggers, and deadly glances guide me.

Episode One: Coming soon.

I just need a bit more fire and blood in my bloodstream first.

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