Ashara Rivers

Ashara Rivers is an ironborn reaver and daughter of a saltwife. She formerly served Asha Greyjoy before her death and how serves Asha's brother, King Theon.

Appearance and Personality
With platinum hair and gray blue eyes, and standing six foot tall, the emphasis is on striking when rightfully describing Ash as strikingly beautiful, with fair skin edging on the pale side due to the short hours of winter, sharp features, high cheekbones and a driven, determined look upon her face. Not particularly curvy, slim of waist and generally lean overall, just below 10 stone in weight. Not that any of those show through the garbs she usually wears, garbs many might say does not belong on a woman. Though only the very brave, very foolish or very drunk is likely to say so loudly. While not exactly having the style of a noble lady, she moves about with the grace and elegance of a shadowcat, but one does get the feeling that she might kill you just as quick without warning.

At the wedding between Rickon and Cass, she could, by appearances, be mistaken for lady of a prominent house, as Theon apparently found great joy in ensuring that she had been properly washed, perfumed and her hair elaborately arranged. While her gown was a fairly simple thing of black silk, the golden belt around her waist and other exquisite jewelry that only the goldsmiths of Lannisport are capable of producing was not. Though that may have been the only time she ever wore something ladylike. Usually, she wears the same furs and leathers issued to the scouts in King Rickon’s service.

Headstrong, confident and self-reliant. A free spirit that enjoys the privilege of mostly getting to do as she wants, since nobody powerful objects to that sort of thing. The other Ironborn considers her as one of them, only pretty to look at. She generally can drink, talk shit and eat like a pig as well as most men, and seems to enjoy it just as much. While she’s not above a little bit of flirting and teasing and appears to like it, she doesn’t seem very interested in anything more than that, some have speculated that she might prefer women, upon which she has implied that maybe she has a liking for both kinds, but that is at least as likely said to mess with a poor man’s head as it is likely to be true. Spending so much time with men on ships where squatting is done sitting across the railing has stripped away whatever sense of modesty and propriety she might have had, but she has also been long enough at Winterfell to realize that other people are unsettled by her showing it, so she plays nice with the soft greenlanders.

As far as her tastes goes, she can flirt and tease with just about anyone, but sweet-talking is just good sport not getting anyone anywhere with her. By her reckoning, a man not willing to take what he wants is too soft to have her, and she has a knife strapped to her leg if he is not so permitted. She has a liking for messing with the minds of those unsure about what to think about a female warrior. Or an Ironborn. Or a bastard. Or all those things at once. Of the things she values the most are the camaraderie among fighting men (and women), she’d like to get back on a ship one day, perhaps be captain, that she would like even more. Somewhat ambiguous about her beliefs, not particularly pious and having crossed paths with those worshipping drowned gods, old gods, the seven and the lord of light is enough to make a woman confused as to what is what. Especially in an age of dragons and other wonders plain for all to see.

History
Ashara was born on Blacktyde, her mother a salt wife taken by Qhored Blacktyde (a cousin of the main line) during the Greyjoy Rebellion. Her best memories were when she and the other children (boys mostly) would play Reavers, and practice sword play with sticks and do the finger dance, though not with real axes of course, mostly because the boys of Blacktyde were wusses. At four and ten, four years after her mother died, Qhored got himself drunk enough not to care that the young girl in front of him was his own daughter, and too drunk to take no for an answer. And too drunk and old to overpower her. He died choking upon his own manhood.

One might think that the reward for such a deed would be fatal, but Ser Sawane Blacktyde, one of the converts of the late lord Baelor and Qhored’s trueborn son, Ashara’s half-brother wanted to have some fun first, declaring that her mother was once Roslin North of the Riverlands, a noble lady in fact, Qhored had slaughtered half of them himself, and would have done the same to the other half if others didn’t beat him to it. Roslin was too pretty not to keep as salt wife. However, that left the interesting situation of her being the offspring of two nobles, a bastard, with the right to a trial by combat.

Deriding her for having no knight to stand against him, he circled the crowd edging them up and having a bit of extra fun before a certain, someone was getting her head hacked off regardless of pedigree. None could say whether or not he realized that she had gotten her hands on an axe before it hit him square on the forehead just as he had turned to see what the ruckus behind him was all about. And it turned out that nobody liked old Qhored that much anyway, saying nothing for Sawane’s godless ways, they just wanted to see blood, and by the good old ways, they decided, she had paid the Iron Price for her freedom. She had still killed Blacktydes though, so she better find a captain willing to take her away.

As it happened, that captain was Asha Greyjoy, having set sail from Old Wyk with such captains as would follow her when the Kingsmoot declared the Crow’s Eye king. Lacking the strength to fight for her claim like her other uncle Victarion, still having the loyalty of the Iron Fleet could, nor willing to support either of her uncles, she took to reaving from Lannisport to the Arbor, with about a dozen captains following Black Wind. Depending on the moods of the Crow’s Eye, they were sometimes tolerated at some of the Iron Islands, though she could usually find welcome at Fair Isle and other ports sworn to Castamere, or with her other uncle.

Due to the similarities in first names, the crew wanted something else to call her, and they unanimously agreed upon Rivers, liking that much more than Pyke, and there were three of those on the ship already. In time she grew to like styling herself as Ashara Rivers, and proved her worth at sea and in battle. When word reached them of the death of the Crow’s Eye, Asha set sail for Old Wyk, seeking to test the young king, this time with rich plunder from the Reach and Westerlands, a haul of particular note had been secured during a daring raid up the Mander reaching all the way to Highgarden.

However, young Euron did as Urron Redhand, and attacked her fleet with three times as many ships before she might arrive to the Kingsmoot, thus ensuring that he was crowned king (It is speculated that Victarion once again did not come so that he might declare the Kingsmoot invalidated when retaking the Iron Islands). Unlike his father, the younger Euron did not have any interest in letting her be as long as she did not oppose him directly, and pursued and cornered them. Ash remembers that battle vividly, she had shot all her arrows, most hitting their mark, felled Quellon the bald, King Euron’s best warrior by placing one in his throat, four captains tumbled across the railings to the embrace of the drowned god, her black feathered shafts sticking out of them. Another five men went down to her knife. Though in the end, she was captured, the king himself ordering her spared for reasons unknown. Not so with his cousin Asha, he chained her to an anchor and threw her into the sea.

The men guarding her did not think she might have more knives hidden on her, that became the death of three of them, before Ash jumped in after her almost namesake sister, though things went dark before she could ever reach Asha. She awoke on the shores, found by other survivors. By her reckoning she hadn’t been properly drowned, her mother believing in the seven and her father never giving a damn. With Asha dead, most of the survivors, Ash included, found their way to Winterfell and Theon’s service, reasoning this is what Asha would have wanted. The “rightful king” showed her considerable attention until he gave up. Since then she has served the cause of Winterfell and Theon ably enough, but there’s a distinct lack of longships in the North.

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