When is kinslaying ok? It is very weird that Maegor or Visenya get condemned when Aenys brings their empire to the brink but it is a ok for Daemon Blackfyre to kill two thirds of his family tree because Daeron maybe favors his in-laws.

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

I’d say the difference is that Maegor definitely killed his blood relatives in a physical and direct fashion, whereas Daemon didn’t. 

The kinslaying taboo seems like the sort of thing that will often be honored in the breach.

Morality aside, a strong taboo against kinslaying is an important method of social stabilization in a primogeniture inheritance system where there’s always going to be a temptation for younger siblings to murder their way up the family tree. The existing society has an interest in that not happening a lot.

But there are going to be wide gray areas. For example, it appears to apply only to close kin. Rhaegar and Robert Baratheon were actually quite closely related; they had a common great-grandfather, making them second cousins. That’s really close! But Robert killing the shit out of Rhaegar isn’t accounted kinslaying. This makes sense, because the way nobles intermarry a strong taboo against kinslaying even your extended family tree would quickly be entirely ignored because it would utterly remove violence as a means of conflict resolution, and a culture with a strong warrior caste doesn’t want that.

It also seems to only apply weakly if someone wrongs YOU first. If your kin are trying to usurp you, you may get side-eyed by the pious if you totally murder the balls out of them but likely not more than that. If you have something perceived as a “good reason” like your kin being crazed criminals or having cheated you of your inheritance or something, it is probably much more okay than it otherwise would be. The Brackens and Blackwoods are both close kin to each other, with many short-lived peaces between them sealed with marriage pacts, but you can bet your bottom dollar you had people in that feud killing their first cousins, their uncles, maybe even their-half siblings. But nobody looks upon them as unholy houses of dishonorable kinslayers.

There’s a lot of room for flexibility there.

What there isn’t a lot of room for is “I murdered my brothers because I wanted to inherit.” THAT is probably the kind of kinslaying that the taboo is meant to most strongly guard against.

Oh, it definitely doesn’t apply to extended kin – Rickard Karstark was full of it. 

I also don’t think it counts unless you are physically involved in killing them; Bloodraven is called a kinslayer but Baelor Breakspear isn’t, despite both of them fighting against Daemon Blackfyre, because Bloodraven shot Daemon and his sons himself, whereas Baelor just fought the Blackfyre’s army. 

Aegon II I think falls under the rubric because a dragon is essentially a personal weapon.