Fanfic / Winter Roses

Winter Roses is a A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones Alternate Universe Fic series written by Fairytalelovr.

After Ned retrieves Jon from the Tower of Joy, he stops by King's Landing to see Robert crowned. There, they discover that former Queen Rhaella Targaryen had died in childbirth. But while Prince Viserys escaped Dragonstone, the baby daughter Daenerys was not born soon enough and was brought to the capital to face justice for her family's crimes. After a debate over what to do with her, Robert allows Daenerys to live in Winterfell and betroths her to Jon to sully her line, rather than disgrace himself by murdering a baby.

No spoiler tags, so read at your own risk!

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Tropes:

• Adaptational Jerkass: While Catelyn wasn't exactly loving and accepting of Jon and her paranoia of him usurping her own trueborn sons as the true heir to Winterfell based solely on him possessing more "traditionally" Stark physical traits is explicitly noted to be pretty baseless in the books and show (although it wasn't helped by her own worries that Ned might have secretly favored Jon due to his intense secrecy over the identity of his mother), she's a lot worse towards him here due to her jealousy at him being betrothed to Dany, even though Dany's been deposed and only got betrothed to him to degrade her.
• Attempted Rape: Joffrey tries to rape Daenerys, which Cersei puts him up to.
• Back from the Dead: Jon is murdered by mutineers led by Alliser Thorne when he tried to protect the Lord Commander from them. Melisandre brings him back two days later.
• Bond Creatures: Jon bonds with his direwolf Ghost and the dragon Rhaegal.
  • All of the Stark children, plus Ned and Benjen, have bonds with their own direwolves.
  • Maester Aemon becomes the third head of the dragon when Rhaellion bonds with him.
  • The Starling children have bonded to their own dragon eggs and the direwolf pups from Lady's litter.
• Calling the Old Woman Out: Robb, Sansa, and Arya are not at all happy when they learn just how deep their mother's resentment of Jon goes. Robb outright calls her worries of Jon usurping his rightful place as heir of Winterfell paranoid delusions, Sansa vocally disowns her, and Arya threatens to let her know "how sharp a wolf's fangs can be".
• Disowned Parent: The Stark kids disown Catelyn after they learn the full extent of their mother's mistreatment of Jon and Dany. Sansa's disowning of her mother especially stands out considering how close they used to be and the way she punctuates it by addressing Cat by name.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Every other Northern noble, even the ones that hate the Targaryens, are angered when Joffrey attempts to rape Daenerys.
  • The other Tullys, when they still believe Jon is Ned's illegitimate son, find Jon's presence an insult. But they still are not cool with Catelyn's treatment of him and find her worries that he'll be like a rebellious Blackfyre preposterous.
    "Be sensible, Catelyn!" Hoster snapped. "You should have ignored him, let servants care for him, leave him with a limited budget, obviously, never let him have as much or as good as Robb, but you descended below the acceptable!"
• For Want Of A Nail: Being an Alternate Universe Fic, this is all over the place.
  • The first major one is that Rhaella went into labor and died giving birth to Daenerys at Dragonstone, with Robert begrudgingly deciding to spare the baby princess while stripping her of her royal title and having her raised at Winterfell and betrothed to Jon. Aside from Dany's presence influencing the Stark kids, Jon is given the Blessed Isle and the Midnight Fortress as a result, making Catelyn hate him even more and mistreat him openly.
  • Ashara and Arthur Dayne faked their deaths. Ashara, who is in disguise as Ella, becomes a governess to Sansa and Arya. Once Ned's marriage is annulled due to Catelyn's religious vows, he is free to marry the love of his life. Ashara's political acumen ensures that Ned can navigate the Court as Hand much better than in canon, to the point where Varys helps them. She also helps him escape King's Landing when Cersei tries to have him arrested.
  • Jon participates in the War of the Five Kings as a King himself.
• Good Stepmother: Ashara to the Stark kids, especially Sansa and Arya. She effectively mediates their arguments and helps forge a better relationship between them, and her influence also helps Sansa realize much earlier on that Joffrey is a massive Prince Charmless who she shouldn't want to marry.
• Humiliation Conga: Catelyn starts to suffer this once Ned is made aware of her systematic, lifelong mistreatment of Jon. She's sent back to Riverrun and forced to come clean with the rest of her family about her actions, which gets her harshly reprimanded. Then her father forces her to join the septas once it becomes clear that Ned will not take her back. Then her ex-husband gets remarried to his Old Flame and her daughters clearly have taken well to their new stepmother. Then she finds out the truth about Jon, meaning all her actions and subsequent loss of her status was All for Nothing.
• I Shall Taunt You: After Ned sends a proclamation of Jon's real heritage, Lysa Tully is absolutely relishing in rubbing the fact that Catelyn (whom Lysa had always resented to some extent) threw away her status and future over nothing in Catelyn's face.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite all the changes to the timeline, Dany still ends up in Essos, meets Khal Drogo, earns the respect of the Dothraki, and hatches dragon eggs. It seems that Dany is destined to be the Mother Of Dragons.
  • Viserys still dies due to causing undue distress to his sister. By fire too boot.
  • Jon is still murdered by mutineers at the Wall, and brought back by Melisandre.
• Marry the Nanny: Ashara/Ella is Arya's and Sansa's governess when Ned proposes marriage.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Alliser Thorne murders Jon because he thought he'd be serving House Targaryen by freeing Daenarys from an unhappy marriage. Benjen makes it perfectly clear to him how much he's harmed House Targaryen by revealing Jon's true identity. Thorne is left horrified and wishing for death.
• New Old Flame: Ashara and Ned finally marry.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Cersei convinced Joffrey to try to rape Danaerys because she thought that if he managed to impregnate her, it would make Robert remove Dany as a threat to the throne. Instead, Joffrey fails and his actions become public knowledge, the incident makes many of the northerners hate him and become sympathetic to Dany, and Robert gives House Starling a thousand men and raises them to a major house as compensation.
• Nun Too Holy: Catelyn becomes a septa but she retains her nasty, elitist personality. She resents her reduced circumstances and prays to the Seven to visit misfortune on Jon, his family, and Ashara. She also orchestrates the kidnapping of two noblemen, plunging Westeros into war.
• Sadist: The poison nearly used to kill Jon as a baby and also the children of Ashara and Ned along with Robb's is noted by Lord Varys to be an extremely cruel way to kill a child. In all the cases, the culprit was Littlefinger.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Tyrion has always been on the outs with his family, but when Cersei threatens to have him killed because he argued against making an enemy of the Starks, he leaves and joins House Starling for good.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Daenerys has had to endure a lot of disdain from Northern Lords due to her father's actions. They've mostly gotten over it by the time she gets married to Jon though.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Because of changed circumstances, Lady doesn't die at the Ruby Ford, and Drogo isn't killed by Miri Maaz Duur.
• Spotting the Thread: A magical variant with Daenarys. She goes to Dragonstone to verify whether 'Aegon Targaryen' is truly her nephew or not. She notes that she can't feel any magic coming from him, and the dragons pay no attention to him at all, which is rather strange for a real Targaryen.
  • Both Arthur and Jaime note that there's only one entrance and exit from the Maidenvault, where Elia and Aegon where hiding at the time of the Sack, so it would have been impossible for her to sneak her son out of King's Landing without anyone noticing.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Catelyn gets several, two from Jon, one from Dany, another from Ashara, and one from Arya, the last of which actually deeply hurt her.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Ned was willing to accept Catelyn would never love Jon, but finding out the true extent of her mistreatment of him (to the point of wishing he would have died) drives him to send her back to Riverrun.
• Undying Loyalty: Ayla has this for Lyanna even though the latter has been dead for nearly two decades. She fed Jon from her own breasts and moved to the North from Dorne in order to look after him. When Catelyn turned her out of Winterfell, Ayla returned in a couple of years as a laundress. Later, she follows Jon and Dany at their keep, the Midnight Fortress.
• Vicariously Ambitious: What fuels Catelyn’s envy over Jon and Dany’s marriage. To the point of refusing to accept that in the interests of not appearing to be treasonous against the Crown, no Lord would betroth his heir to the deposed Targaryen princess.
• Wicked Stepmother: Catelyn, even worse than in canon. It is fueled by her envy of Jon's good fortune in being given a princess for a wife (albeit a deposed one), titles, and lands.