alamutjones:

I have been thinking. About ASOIAF, and headcanons, and septs.

GRRM establishes Oldtown in the Reach as the centre of Seven-based religious life…but for somewhere as big as Westeros is, that doesn’t work. Even for somewhere the size of ENGLAND, it’s iffy to have just one or two (counting the Great Sept in Kings Landing later) key sites. There should be a Golden Sept in Lannisport, at least, because no WAY is the Westerlands letting the Reach get all the glory. A Sept of
the Sky  in the Vale to play off the
knowledge that this is where the Andals and their weirdo new faith made their first mark. DEFINITELY
something in Dorne, probably very unique given the syncretic nature of
Dornish life – there’s real blurring between “THE Mother” and “Mother
Rhoyne”, and depictions of the Seven there probably have her as a
water-bearer.

The kingdoms pre-Conquest were at each other’s throats so much; the
Reach being able to say “well, guess what, we’re closing the way and
we’re not gonna let your pilgrims through to Oldtown!” is a huge thing.
Pilgrims would potentially be a great source of income in any case, with
road tolls and needing accommodation/food every step of the way and
wanting to buy something to show they’d been on this spiritual journey
to the holy site. Why would the other kingdoms who did Seven-things NOT
want some of that action?

So, on that note, it’s time for some Rampant Uncontrollable Worldbuilding Only Dimly Related to Canon, which is my very favourite kind. This round is going to be all about septs – how they’re used, what they look like, and how that’s different from place to place.

Fellow ASOIAF-lings – @dknc3, @cosmonauthill, @indigoraysoflight, @mightyisobel et al, I may be looking at you – are welcome to tell me I’m a dumb-dumb, expand things or whatever you like. I’d love to know your thoughts.

So, here we go.

Dorne

As I said, Dorne’s got some serious syncretism going on in its art.
That, more than the architecture, is what stands out. The Mother is blurred an awful lot into
Mother Rhoyne, with a baby at the breast (either held or swaddled in a
sling across her chest…or she may be bare-breasted, which is something
no other kingdom would depict here, and something most of them find a bit scandalous!) and a jar of water balanced on her
head with the other hand. The Warrior’s always shown mounted – a sandsteed, naturally; they’re
extraordinarily good at creating lifelike horses – in scales and holding
a long spear/javelin. He’s not just a warrior, he’s a Dornishman, explicitly so. The Father probably has a turtle somewhere in his iconography – he may be standing on a turtle’s back, symbolically getting a boost from the Old Man of the River?

The Reach

The Starry Sept is absolutely and indisputably a Gothic cathedral, drowning in light. Think Barcelona, think Reims.
High vaulted ceilings, huge windows, stained glass in a riot of
colours. Stonework will be intricate, with floral and animal (mostly
birds, I want to say?) motifs everywhere, and some of the gargoyles are weird.

Smaller septs have stained glass too, if they can afford it. Those
that can’t afford glass still have big windows and wide doors that can
be thrown open to let the light in; they’re limewashed so they’re smooth
and white, and villagers bring cut flowers in.

These things carry across a bit to the depictions of the gods
themselves. The Maiden wears a flower crown, either sculpted into her head or an actual wreath that someone puts there according to how detailed the statue is. The Father…can sometimes
be oddly animalistic. Not so much in the Starry Sept itself (he’s just a
tall bearded man in the “official” one) but sometimes, in
little village septs, you’ll find a version of his face that has antlers
like Garth Greenhand, and no one can really verbalise why…

No, really. They can’t. Sometimes the Father has antlers, and that’s just how it is.

The Riverlands

Limewashing the walls continues as you go north into the riverlands, but they do something reachmen don’t. They paint their gods on those walls.
Not everywhere – there are sections left bare – but over the door, and
behind each altar, is murals all the way. This is an English thing in
the real world, usually referred to as a doom painting. This one has darkened a lot with age, so imagine much clearer, brighter colours. Catelyn’s sept at Winterfell also has a little of this, because of course
her sept is built to a familiar pattern from home; the limewashed
exterior looks very weird and raw when her sept is built, but over years
the white softens and it becomes part of the general background.

I also think there are aspects of Irish design in the riverlands, but
I can’t quite pin it down. The flowing lines of Insular/Hiberno-Saxon art (of which in our world the Ur-example is Celtic crosses and stuff like the Book of Kells)
recall the rivers, and they tend to use rounded Roman arches (and thus
have smaller buildings, thicker walls, somewhat smaller windows) compared to the Reach.

The Westerlands

The southern edge of the westerlands takes from the Reach and likes
stained glass, and there’s some bleed-over from the riverlands too on
that eastern border, but as you get further and further in they get more and
more crazily Byzantine, because I’m really fucking attached to my
Byzantine Westerlands. Usually pale/sandy stone, domed
roofs…and the inside is a blaze of shining golden icons. This blaze is mostly candlelight, as except on the Reach border windows tend to be quite small and aren’t a major design feature.

Some westerlands septs have no windows at all; they’re almost (or are entirely) underground, set into caves or mines in the hills. Casterly Rock’s personal sept is underground like this, and has a few minor callbacks to the Wieliczka salt mines in Poland.

I’m still working on the rest. I don’t have a lot for the Stormlands in
general (though I DO think they have the most ornate statues, in
beautifully carved and polished wood) and the few septs of the North and Iron Islands
present unique challenges because the Faith of the Seven is an
interloper there.

…
I have absolutely no idea how the Manderleys would combine Reach aesthetic (those
big windows) with the practical need to keep the cold out!

I entirely agree.