How much prestige does a royal marriage get you a generation or two down the line? Would a Penrose hold themselves higher than say a Tully for having the blood of Elaena? Or the Baratheons compared to the Tyrell?

opinions-about-tiaras:

You have to wonder… what would the coalition have done if the Baratheons had not had an oh-so-convenient connection to Aegon V just a couple generations back?

There seems to be something of a broad consensus among the Westerosi nobility that if a king is cruel and unjust, you can make a moral, if not legal, case to rise against them and that this can be deemed acceptable. (It seems to hinge on whether or not the king can be successfully painted as abrogating their reciprocal oaths of justice and protection.)

But even people who take that tack often work to uphold the feudal order in other ways. Cregan Stark might have risen for the blacks, but he refused to countenance the poisoning of Aegon II even though that probably saved a lot of lives, because establishing the precedent that you can totally murder a king by stealth as opposed to honorable combat on the field of battle is not something you want to do.

But the Robert’s Rebellion coalition was founded with an explicit and ongoing case of Targaryen exterminationism in its platform by the guy it was named after, who just so happened to be able to put a fig-leaf cover over this by (rather hypocritically) being able to claim descent from another Targaryen only three generations back.

Would Robert have simply had to pull a Renly, and make an explicit claim of “I have the most swords so now I get to be king?” I mean, he already sort of is doing that; Viserys is the rightful heir to the throne and there can be no case made he ever committed any crimes against anyone in Westeros, but the Baratheon regime has declared him an exile and his life forfeit purely on the basis of “because I said so.”

Or would they have placed someone else on the throne to make a clean break from the Targaryens without even pretending to maintain continuity?

Or would the coalition have fractured once Aerys was dead?

racefortheironthrone:

Well, it got the Baratheons enough prestige to be acclaimed Kings of Westeros by the Tullys, Arryns, Starks, and Lannisters…

“
But the Robert’s Rebellion coalition was founded with an explicit and ongoing case of Targaryen exterminationism in its platform”

Ned Stark begs to differ.