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Is there romantic love between Ned and Catelyn?


Alexander Leonard

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1 hour ago, Kittykatknits said:

They sleep in each other's arms with her head resting on his chest. He kisses her tears away and they repeatedly refer to each other as "my love."

Yeah, a parent would never kiss away their child's tears, nor tell the child "I love you." An older sibling would never allow a younger sib to fall asleep in his or her arms, much less express any kind of affection. I think you're equating ALL expressions of "love" with "romance." My definition is different; yours need not agree!

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7 hours ago, Kittykatknits said:

I really can't fathom someone reading Ned and Cat's POVs and came away without seeing romantic love. They aren't written as dutiful or merely affectionate. I mean....

Ned and Cat seem to think so:

Inside, Catelyn was waiting. She cried out when she saw him, ran to him, and embraced him fiercely.

Ned was lost. "Then how? Why are you here, my love? What is this place?"

"As you say, my lord." Catelyn lifted her face, and Ned kissed her. Her maimed fingers clutched against his back with a desperate strength, as if to hold him safe forever in the shelter of her arms.

He felt Catelyn tremble in his arms. Her scarred hands clung to him. "If," she said, "what then, my love?"

He wanted to drift off to a dreamless sleep in his own bed with his arms wrapped tight around his lady, Catelyn.

There was no way to soften the blow, so she told him straight. "I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is dead."

So when they had finished, Ned rolled off and climbed from her bed, as he had a thousand times before.

Ned kissed the tears from her eyes before they could fall. "Thank you, my lady," he whispered. "This is hard, I know."

 It was a stirring sight, yet it did not lift her heart. She wondered if indeed her heart would ever lift again. Oh, Ned....

. I have lost my Ned, the rock my life was built on

Winter comes for all of us, Catelyn thought. For me, it came when Ned died.

 She told herself that there had been no time, but the truth was that food had lost its savor in a world without Ned. When they took his head off, they killed me too.

Bones, Catelyn thought. This is not Ned, this is not the man I loved, the father of my children. His hands were clasped together over his chest, skeletal fingers curled about the hilt of some longsword, but they were not Ned's hands, so strong and full of life. They had dressed the bones in Ned's surcoat, the fine white velvet with the direwolf badge over the heart, but nothing remained of the warm flesh that had pillowed her head so many nights, the arms that had held her. 

They could do as they wished with her; imprison her, rape her, kill her, it made no matter. She had lived too long, and Ned was waiting

 Our children, Ned,, all our sweet babes. Rickon, Bran, Arya, Sansa, Robb . . . Robb . . . please, Ned please, make it stop, make it stop hurting . . . 

No, don't, don't cut my hair, Ned loves my hair. 

What about:

”Her loins still ached from the urgency of his lovemaking.  It was a good ache.  She could still feel his seed within her.”

 

 

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On 2/21/2019 at 12:00 AM, Alexander Leonard said:

A lot of people believe that romantic love grows out of Ned and Catelyn's political marriage. I beg to disagree. In the book Ned always starts their conversation by asking "Where are the children?" This indicates they have trouble finding something else to talk about, and they don't have shared interests. I think it is honor, responsibility and children that bind them together, not romantic love.

The Stark children are allowed to live dangerously - Bran's climbing shows that - so it makes a lot of sense for the parents to check up on them, and keep checking.

Although... what it actually reminds me of (faintly!) is Kingsguard. When Kingsguard meet, the Lord Commander begins with the same sort of formality: who guards the King? It says something about the preciousness of children I think.

If Ned was used to Cat taking on the responsibility for keeping the children safe, that might explain why he himself was so rubbish at it in King's Landing, when she wasn't there.

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