pickledthoughts



Recent bookmarks

  1. Public Bookmark *

    Tags
    Summary

    The Ashford Tourney was meant to celebrate Lady Ashford’s thirteenth nameday. Five champions rode to defend her crown as Queen of Love and Beauty, while challengers from across the realm gathered beneath torchlight to test their skill, their honor, and their fortunes. Yet long after the banners were lowered and the lists cleared, the tourney would be remembered for something else entirely: the strange and unexpected tale of a brother and sister of House Waynwood.

    Against all expectations, Ser Wallace Waynwood of Ironoaks begins to rise through the lists, unseating champions and earning a name whispered across the meadow — the Green Knight of Ashford.

    At the same time, rumors swirl through the stands. Prince Baelor Targaryen, widowed and heir to the Iron Throne, is said to be searching for a new wife. And among the noble ladies gathered at Ashford, his attention seems to fall more than once upon Joanna Waynwood.

    The realm may be writing a love story.

    Joanna Waynwood intends to have no part in it.

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    195,976
    Chapters:
    18/24
    Comments:
    711
    Kudos:
    937
    Bookmarks:
    208
    Hits:
    24,950

    13 Jun 2026

  2. Public Bookmark *

    Tags
    Summary

    Most of Brynna Blackmont's skills are fairly useless as a Targaryen's prince's much younger, politically arranged second wife.

    Except maybe these.

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    112,128
    Chapters:
    21/21
    Comments:
    523
    Kudos:
    1,502
    Bookmarks:
    364
    Hits:
    41,871

    03 Jun 2026

  3. Public Bookmark *

    Tags
    Summary

    We can’t keep doing this, he likes to say, but he never ends it. He never meant for it to happen, you’re sure. You didn’t mean for it either. You’re falling asleep to the sound of him scribbling Needs further explanation on an essay he’s grading, your thighs still tickle from his beard, and you really don’t know how this keeps happening, it just does.

    He must be lonely, you figure. Or sad. Or going through some sort of mid-life crisis. You’ve seen the pictures of his sons in his office: the younger one, the lanky redhead, grinning in a boarding school uniform, and the older one, a carbon copy of his father, off on summer holiday adventures in his university jumper. Barely younger than you.

    And there’s the wedding ring he doesn’t take off. You tried reading the obituary in the library when you were supposed to be doing research and only got as far as “...passed thirteen months after a diagnosis of glioblastoma…” before you felt sick.

    You’ve felt that ring inside you while you’ve fallen apart on his fingers. You’ve licked the warm metal clean after.

    Series
    Language:
    English
    Words:
    28,424
    Chapters:
    4/9
    Comments:
    288
    Kudos:
    951
    Bookmarks:
    204
    Hits:
    15,717

    17 May 2026

  4. Public Bookmark *

    Tags
    Summary

    Baelor Targaryen has carried the weight of what he survived for so long he no longer remembers how to set it down.
    Lady Alysanne Darry has spent a lifetime being told her hands were never meant to carry anything at all.

    A political marriage between them should have been simple.
    It is anything but.
    A character-driven slow burn about trust, trauma, desire… and the ruin neither of them expected.

    Language:
    English
    Words:
    209,280
    Chapters:
    56/?
    Comments:
    2,990
    Kudos:
    1,296
    Bookmarks:
    173
    Hits:
    48,206

    08 May 2026

  5. Public Bookmark 86

    Tags
    Summary

    The Tourney at Ashford Meadow was meant to be a means of smoothing public relations for the Crown. In some ways, it was a success. In others, an utter, abject failure. For Jena - formerly of House Dondarrion, wife of Baelor Breakspear - it was a tragedy, ending in inconsolable loss.

    No one expected things to go the way they did. Yet, as so many witnesses to history would attest, no one ever does.

    Series
    Language:
    English
    Words:
    120,383
    Chapters:
    14/?
    Comments:
    244
    Kudos:
    325
    Bookmarks:
    86
    Hits:
    14,238

    26 Mar 2026