The Bastard of Harrenhal: A Fan Screenplay

In the spirit of “show, don’t tell,” here’s my take on depicting Alys and the women of Harrenhal in a complex, realistic way. This scene is set some time after Daemon captures Harrenhal in 129 A.C., early in the Dance of the Dragons. Characters are as follows:

Alys Rivers, woodswitch, servant, occasional wet nurse, and bastard of House Strong, a striking woman of perhaps forty.

Tallis Brewster, head brewster and assistant midwife in the Castle at Harrenhal, friend of Alys’s long-dead mother.

Ellin Whitethorn, one of the head laundresses in the Castle, a friend of Alys’s since their teenage years.

Tansy Whitethorn, Ellin’s daughter and assistant, a maiden of about sixteen years.

We don’t often get to hear direct conversations between smallfolk, including servants, although I do think House of the Dragon made a good start of incorporating more midwives, handmaidens, and other servants into the narrative, and I’m expanding on that inspiration here - think Downton Abbey below stairs meets HotD. Alys’s main job, in my own characterization, is managing the still room where the castle’s herbs are processed and stored, providing them to both maester and cooks- the perfect job for a brewer of potions. In my imagining, this is part of a season that follows Alys’s perspective on the occupation of Harrenhal, paralleling Arya’s perspective in Season 2 of GoT.

Trigger Warnings: Pregnancy loss, abortion, domestic violence, sexual violence - These aren’t the sole focus of these women’s conversation, but there’s some substantial discussion of these themes in the second half of the scene. While we’re on this subject, I would like to emphasize that my discussion of these issues are not intended as monolithic or a personal policy statement, but rather an empathetic investigation of how lowborn Westerosi women might approach these issues.

Int. Harrenhal. Night.

(Alys Rivers enters the kitchen, her hair down, her gown carelessly half-laced over a rumpled linen shift, shoes slipped on over bare feet. At a table near one of the hearths, where a fire is still smoldering, Tallis, Ellin, and Tansy are drinking from tankards of ale and cider and snacking on nuts, cheese, and fruit.)

Tallis: Ah, there you are. I didn’t think we’d see you down here the rest of the night. You left soldier boy abed? 

Ellin: And him half your age, too.

Alys: He didn’t seem to mind.

Ellin: What do you see in soldiers, anyway? They’re such a nuisance. 

Alys: They’re obedient.

Tallis: I always hoped you’d grow out of your liking for fair-haired swaggerers, but if you haven’t by now, I suppose there’s no hope.

Alys: What fair-haired swaggerers?

Ellin: Well, there was that Tyroshi sellsword - 

Alys: That was twenty years ago, and he was Lyseni. He grew up in a pillow house.

Tallis: Well, in more recent history, there was that golden-haired prick from the Westerlands -

Alys: Ah, Tom Hill. He was a Lannister bastard. They’re all pricks. 

Ellin: And then there was that giant from the Iron Islands-

Alys: Mmmm. Irek? Arlek?

Ellin: I thought it was Urreg.

(They shrug.)

Tallis: And then, of course, there was your Northern singer.

Alys: Ah. Samwell of Stony Fell, singing himself all the way down to Dorne. It wouldn’t have mattered if Sam’s hair was as green as grass - it was his voice that did for me. 

Tallis: Notwithstanding the old wisdom that all singers are rogues, he was a better sort than most.

Ellin: Was he the father of your first babe? I never did ask you outright.

Alys: My second. He was supposed to come back up the road and see us on his way back up from the south, but I suppose there’s a thousand things that can befall a man out on the Kingsroad, or maybe Dorne agreed with him. And the babe never would have made it long enough for him to come home, poor mite. She was such a pretty babe, even if she could barely open her eyes. But the gods have been good enough that I’ve seen her milk-sister here live to grow up. 

Tansy: If it’s true what they say, that a babe gains character from the nurse along with the milk, then I was the lucky one.

Ellin: That would certainly explain your attitude of late. Our Alys has never been one to bend herself to the rules.

Tansy: How is it that you’ve welcomed your bastards, when most women are ashamed to bear them?

Ellin: Tansy-

Alys: No, Ellin, it’s a fair question. All children are a gift of the gods, girl. All life is a gift of the gods, short and frail as it is. The septons in their stony septs may not truly see it that way, and not even most of us who follow the old gods understand the truth of it. Most men will take honor over life, any day, especially if the life isn’t their own. But I was born a bastard myself, so I see it different.

Tansy: (gesturing at Tallis)  But you both helped Ros Fairtree when she fell with child last year. You brewed her moon tea and stayed up with her all night while it worked. 

Alys: So I did. I am not Ros, Tansy. And I knew her father would beat her, maybe even to death, if she came home with a bastard in her belly. If I’ve saved Ros Fairtree one more beating, I’ve done some good in this world, and if I saved her life, then it was a life for a life. I’ll take that over two lives lost. Would this world were a different place. 

Tallis: It ain’t, though.

Alys: No. (to Tansy) When I was just about your age, I realized that this world is an orchard planted for the profit and pleasure and power of men. So I decided then that I would take as much fruit from that orchard as I could gather, and if everyone saw the juice dripping down my chin and the stolen apples in my hands, so be it. Let them stare. But for every one of me, there’s two Ros Fairtrees. Most women do not have the protection of this castle or my mother’s ways…I don’t expect most women to do as I do. I suppose if my mother had been a highborn lady I’d be mistress of some castle now, probably being made a prisoner of one of these dragon princes. Which we are too, if we want to be honest about it. 

Tansy: Shouldn’t we support Queen Rhaenyra then? Maybe if we had a queen instead of a king, she would understand things like…like what happened to Ros. 

Ellin: Hush now, daughter. That’s treason if old Ser Simon or his grandsons hear of it. 

Tallis: And it’s music to the ears of Prince Daemon and all his handsome troopers, or at least that first part is.

Tansy: They say that Good Queen Alysanne did all kinds of good for the women of Westeros. She abolished the first night-

Alys: So she did, but I wouldn’t say every lord in Westeros gave it up overnight, though.

Tallis: No, but there’s far fewer such brides now than in my mother’s day, at least. Few enough hereabouts, and Tansy here is the safer for it. 

Alys: That’s as may be, but the Ros Fairtrees of the world are still with us, and as much as I took soldier boy willingly, I doubt every woman in this castle or village will get to make the same choice. As you say, soldiers are a nuisance, and now the realm is at war we’re like to be flooded with them. If this castle is ever taken by force-

Ellin: Surely the castle is too great for that? And besides, Ser Simon surrendered to Prince Daemon, and nothing was done to us. The Greens have even less reason to hate us, since our lord is one of them. 

Tansy: But now that the Blacks have the castle, shouldn’t we support them? Maybe Queen Rhaenyra will be another Good Queen, except better, since she rules and not her husband-

Alys: Do you truly think that it will change your station or mine if Queen Rhaenyra parks her arse upon the Iron Throne? The blood of kings is the blood of kings, no matter if crested or cloven, and it’s for the rights of their own blood that they fight. Always, always it is the smallfolk who suffer when high lords and princes play the game of thrones. There’s not a one of us in this kitchen who doesn’t have the blood of the First Men in our veins. We were here thousands of years before the Targaryens came, and we will be here long after they depart. We stick together, and we survive.