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We Love the Women Fandom Hates: Catelyn Stark (Day 3: Lady Stark)
Third verse, same as the first. It's starting to occur to me that I don't actually have any icons on this account for this fandom. Spoilers killed Dumbledore.
Lady Stark
How do you solve a problem like House Stark?
Day 1 had us examining Cat's background before the start of the first book; tonight we're going to tackle House Stark, the Stark kids (and the not-so-Stark kids), and what leadership means for Catelyn's character. A lot of readers at first glance might not be inclined to think of Cat as a leader, because she's not technically the head of a great House at any point: the idea being that for Cat to be a leader Ned or Robb would have to be corrupt or ineffectual, or so the myth goes. The reality is that from the moment Ned's called to be Hand of the King in King's Landing, Cat steps up to bat to manage and lead her House and doesn't and can't step down again until House Stark's virtual disbandment. But what does House Stark entail, anyway?
There's the kids, of course. First and definitely foremost in Cat's life is her eldest son, Robb, her favorite and the one she's arguably closest to by far. Robb reminds her of herself and of Edmure and is, in a way, the closest to being a Tully of her Stark children: she's proud and protective of him, often frustrated with his reckless decisionmaking and has a hard time not seeing him as a child. It's through Robb that she has to act for the most part during A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, but act she certainly does: she interacts with his bannermen, she's the liaison with Riverrun, she negotiates with Renly Baratheon and Walder Frey, and though opponents speak of Robb as the military commander everyone addresses Catelyn as the politician. Robb is one of the Five Kings, but he's not one quite ready to be a King just yet -- he's still learning. Cat is his primary teacher.
Sansa and Arya are her daughters, of whom she's incredibly protective -- it's for their safety that she keeps Jaime Lannister alive as a prisoner and tries to broker deals to get them back. Sansa is an easier child to parent, and Arya finds Catelyn restrictive and hopelessly unwilling to understand (what rebellious child doesn't think so of their mother, really?), but Cat loves them both and is at the same time a little distant from them both. Septa Mordane is closer to being their primary parental figure and Arya obviously looks up more to Ned.
Bran is too young to have developed a complex relationship with his mother by the time he's parted from her, but Cat's love for him is far from insignificant too: she's the one who struggles the most when it's not certain if he'll die from his fall, she protects him reflexively and fearlessly alongside Summer when Joffrey's assassin comes to kill him, with no regard for her own safety. Though he bonds somewhat with his father, Cat is his protector and responsible for him more than any other guardian. The same is true of Rickon, but due to the events of the War of the Five Kings she barely gets to see him grow up.
Overall, it may be true that some of the Stark children get along better with Ned than they do with Cat -- which is often easy for kids, considering fathers are rarely in the position of having to say no as much as mothers -- but as a parent, guardian, and protector for them, she definitely shoulders the load largely on her own in ASoIaF.
Then there's the not-Stark children, Jon Snow and Theon Greyjoy. Jon Snow is a complicated relationship and represents one of Catelyn's character failings, as noted before: however, it's important to realize that the significance of raising your spouse's child from outside your marriage is much heftier in the setting of Westeros than it would in a present-day Western society. Jon represents Cat's embarrassment to the world in that Ned apparently fathered a bastard directly after meeting her -- even if he didn't in reality, which seems likely, it's the story he sticks to, and if she suspects otherwise she could never confirm it with Ned, who refuses to talk about it. She's aware of the invisible weight and possible mockery of public opinion with regards to Jon Snow, who Ned doesn't just pay to have raised outside Winterfell but is taken in among her own children. So on top of all this, Jon's not just a reminder of her social humiliation, he's a reminder of the huge divide between herself and Ned caused by Ned's stubborn secret-keeping and the love relationship they never really developed because of it. Cat isn't as kind to Jon as she should be, but she's a lot kinder than a lot of Westerosi highborn ladies would be towards their husbands' illegitimate children. The life Jon lives is much more privileged than the lives of the vast majority of noble bastards; Cat is in part responsible for that continuing to be true.
Theon, on the other hand, she bears no ill will towards and entrusts with responsibility as Robb's friend and the oldest "stepchild" in the family. Theon has his own issues, to say the least, but they largely center around his own feelings of displacement caused by his genteel-hostage situation and feeling inadequate to either Stark or Greyjoy standards, and his resentment centers around Ned's emotional unavailability, for the most part. Ned's emotional unavailability does more damage than fandom gives it credit for. Theon is fairly solid evidence that while Cat puts her blood children first, and understandably, it's not that she's incapable of caring about children that aren't her own.
House Stark is more of a responsibility than just raising children, of course, and it was even before the explosion of war and intrigue of the War of the Five Kings. She manages all of the staff and denizens of Winterfell that aren't expressly attached to Ned, then takes over management of all the remaining Stark people and holdings after Ned's death. Being the lady of a great house of Westeros means more than being a rich housewife: she's in charge of more or less everything that Lord Eddard doesn't have time for or, more likely, has to be away doing other things, whether they be military or King Robert's political demands, and can't attend to. Winterfell isn't dripping with officials and assistance like King's Landing is: the Starks don't have a small council out of their bannermen. Dealing with the Stark bannermen is also something that often falls to Cat in the series, as Robb matures and learns to keep them in line himself she has to bring her history with them and knowledge and experience to bear. This all accelerates to a frenzied speed with the end of A Game of Thrones.
It's all too easy to think of the War of the Five Kings, and the plot of A Song of Ice and Fire, as the story of a bunch of male leaders clashing plus Daenerys Targaryen who openly names herself queen. That's how Westerosi history would write it, after all, and how the family trees make it look. However, Lady Catelyn Stark is the political face, the strategic mind, and often the diplomatic voice of House Stark, on more of a level with characters like Renly and Stannis Baratheon and the Lannister siblings than Robb is capable of being at this stage of his life. Because she doesn't outwardly assume a masculine role, or aspire to, many assume even without realizing that she couldn't be as formidable a mover-and-shaker as the other people on that list -- but what they should ask themselves is, how would A Song of Ice and Fire have gone for the Starks and the Tullys if they hadn't had Catelyn at all?
Lady Stark
How do you solve a problem like House Stark?
Day 1 had us examining Cat's background before the start of the first book; tonight we're going to tackle House Stark, the Stark kids (and the not-so-Stark kids), and what leadership means for Catelyn's character. A lot of readers at first glance might not be inclined to think of Cat as a leader, because she's not technically the head of a great House at any point: the idea being that for Cat to be a leader Ned or Robb would have to be corrupt or ineffectual, or so the myth goes. The reality is that from the moment Ned's called to be Hand of the King in King's Landing, Cat steps up to bat to manage and lead her House and doesn't and can't step down again until House Stark's virtual disbandment. But what does House Stark entail, anyway?
There's the kids, of course. First and definitely foremost in Cat's life is her eldest son, Robb, her favorite and the one she's arguably closest to by far. Robb reminds her of herself and of Edmure and is, in a way, the closest to being a Tully of her Stark children: she's proud and protective of him, often frustrated with his reckless decisionmaking and has a hard time not seeing him as a child. It's through Robb that she has to act for the most part during A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, but act she certainly does: she interacts with his bannermen, she's the liaison with Riverrun, she negotiates with Renly Baratheon and Walder Frey, and though opponents speak of Robb as the military commander everyone addresses Catelyn as the politician. Robb is one of the Five Kings, but he's not one quite ready to be a King just yet -- he's still learning. Cat is his primary teacher.
Sansa and Arya are her daughters, of whom she's incredibly protective -- it's for their safety that she keeps Jaime Lannister alive as a prisoner and tries to broker deals to get them back. Sansa is an easier child to parent, and Arya finds Catelyn restrictive and hopelessly unwilling to understand (what rebellious child doesn't think so of their mother, really?), but Cat loves them both and is at the same time a little distant from them both. Septa Mordane is closer to being their primary parental figure and Arya obviously looks up more to Ned.
Bran is too young to have developed a complex relationship with his mother by the time he's parted from her, but Cat's love for him is far from insignificant too: she's the one who struggles the most when it's not certain if he'll die from his fall, she protects him reflexively and fearlessly alongside Summer when Joffrey's assassin comes to kill him, with no regard for her own safety. Though he bonds somewhat with his father, Cat is his protector and responsible for him more than any other guardian. The same is true of Rickon, but due to the events of the War of the Five Kings she barely gets to see him grow up.
Overall, it may be true that some of the Stark children get along better with Ned than they do with Cat -- which is often easy for kids, considering fathers are rarely in the position of having to say no as much as mothers -- but as a parent, guardian, and protector for them, she definitely shoulders the load largely on her own in ASoIaF.
Then there's the not-Stark children, Jon Snow and Theon Greyjoy. Jon Snow is a complicated relationship and represents one of Catelyn's character failings, as noted before: however, it's important to realize that the significance of raising your spouse's child from outside your marriage is much heftier in the setting of Westeros than it would in a present-day Western society. Jon represents Cat's embarrassment to the world in that Ned apparently fathered a bastard directly after meeting her -- even if he didn't in reality, which seems likely, it's the story he sticks to, and if she suspects otherwise she could never confirm it with Ned, who refuses to talk about it. She's aware of the invisible weight and possible mockery of public opinion with regards to Jon Snow, who Ned doesn't just pay to have raised outside Winterfell but is taken in among her own children. So on top of all this, Jon's not just a reminder of her social humiliation, he's a reminder of the huge divide between herself and Ned caused by Ned's stubborn secret-keeping and the love relationship they never really developed because of it. Cat isn't as kind to Jon as she should be, but she's a lot kinder than a lot of Westerosi highborn ladies would be towards their husbands' illegitimate children. The life Jon lives is much more privileged than the lives of the vast majority of noble bastards; Cat is in part responsible for that continuing to be true.
Theon, on the other hand, she bears no ill will towards and entrusts with responsibility as Robb's friend and the oldest "stepchild" in the family. Theon has his own issues, to say the least, but they largely center around his own feelings of displacement caused by his genteel-hostage situation and feeling inadequate to either Stark or Greyjoy standards, and his resentment centers around Ned's emotional unavailability, for the most part. Ned's emotional unavailability does more damage than fandom gives it credit for. Theon is fairly solid evidence that while Cat puts her blood children first, and understandably, it's not that she's incapable of caring about children that aren't her own.
House Stark is more of a responsibility than just raising children, of course, and it was even before the explosion of war and intrigue of the War of the Five Kings. She manages all of the staff and denizens of Winterfell that aren't expressly attached to Ned, then takes over management of all the remaining Stark people and holdings after Ned's death. Being the lady of a great house of Westeros means more than being a rich housewife: she's in charge of more or less everything that Lord Eddard doesn't have time for or, more likely, has to be away doing other things, whether they be military or King Robert's political demands, and can't attend to. Winterfell isn't dripping with officials and assistance like King's Landing is: the Starks don't have a small council out of their bannermen. Dealing with the Stark bannermen is also something that often falls to Cat in the series, as Robb matures and learns to keep them in line himself she has to bring her history with them and knowledge and experience to bear. This all accelerates to a frenzied speed with the end of A Game of Thrones.
It's all too easy to think of the War of the Five Kings, and the plot of A Song of Ice and Fire, as the story of a bunch of male leaders clashing plus Daenerys Targaryen who openly names herself queen. That's how Westerosi history would write it, after all, and how the family trees make it look. However, Lady Catelyn Stark is the political face, the strategic mind, and often the diplomatic voice of House Stark, on more of a level with characters like Renly and Stannis Baratheon and the Lannister siblings than Robb is capable of being at this stage of his life. Because she doesn't outwardly assume a masculine role, or aspire to, many assume even without realizing that she couldn't be as formidable a mover-and-shaker as the other people on that list -- but what they should ask themselves is, how would A Song of Ice and Fire have gone for the Starks and the Tullys if they hadn't had Catelyn at all?
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