That’s an interesting what-if, isn’t it? If there’s no Lyanna incitement, and Aerys starts slaughtering people left and right, does Rhaegar still support his dad?
In OTL Rhaegar doesn’t have a lot of options and he says to Jaime Lannister that once he’s done putting the rebellion down, he’s going to call a Great Council (with the clear implication being that as a victorious prince, he’s going to finally deal with his crazy-ass old man) in order to set the realm aright. But if there’s no Lyanna incitement, I can’t help but wonder if Rhaegar doesn’t join the Rebellion. Because none of Robert, Eddard, Jon Arryn, or Hoster actually want to be king. I think of Rhaegar shows up at, say, Riverrun with a collection of lords and a small host personally loyal to him and says “Listen, my dad is nuts and has wronged you greatly. He must be removed. Support me for king and I can help make that happen; as a Targaryen I lend your cause a lot of legitimacy.”
Sadly Lyanna made that not possible aat all.
Jon Arryn is outraged that he’s been commanded to breach guest right
Does guest right actually work this way?
I mean… suppose Aerys wasn’t an insane murderer and asked a lord to yield up genuine fugitives from justice who had been granted guest right, knowing or not, by that lord. Can the guy really shrug his shoulders and go “sorry, guest right, nothing I can do.” It seems like either socially or legally there’d be some flex there.
I think with the issue of Rhaegar, there’s a problem of sunk costs – i.e, if you have to remove Aerys because he’s a genuine threat to the realm, can you trust that his son won’t act to avenge him?
As for guest right, keep in mind that Aerys wasn’t saying “send these people to me for trial b/c they’ve committed a crime,” he was saying “I want their heads in a bag now.” It’s almost exactly a parallel to Rhaenrya’s order vis-a-vis Nettles:
Well, it depends on whether you’re talking about Robert’s Rebellion or the Southron Ambitions conspiracy, because the former was a lot more ad hoc: they wanted to overthrow Aerys because:
- he’s ordered the deaths of Robert and Ned, so they are trying to preserve their own life and Jon Arryn is outraged that he’s been commanded to breach guest right and kinslaying taboos.
- he’s killed Rickard and Brandon Stark (which makes it a matter of revenge for Ned), Elbert Arryn (which makes it a matter of revenge for Jon Arryn), Kycle Royce and Jeffory Mallister (which makes it an issue of the feudal social contract), and all of this without trial, which makes it a massive breach in the feudal social contract.
Yes, Lyanna was there as an inciting incident and propaganda issue (and both Robert and Ned wanted to rescue her from her abduction), but if Lyanna had never disappeared and Aerys had just had another paranoid episode, the Rebellion would still have happened.
From King’s Landing came a raven bearing the queen’s message to Manfryd Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool: he was to deliver her the head of the bastard girl Nettles, who was said to have become Prince Daemon’s lover and who the queen had therefore judged guilty of high treason…
Maester Norren, keeper of the Chronicles of Maidenpool, says that when his lordship read the queen’s letter he was so shaken that he lost his voice…
“The girl is but a child, however foul her treasons,” said Ser Florian, that old knight, grey and grizzled and stern. “The Old King would never have asked this, of any man of honor.”
“These are foul times,” Lord Mooton said, “and it is a foul choice this queen has given me. The girl is a guest beneath my roof. If I obey, Maidenpool shall be forever cursed. If I refuse, we shall be attainted and destroyed.”
Mooton’s response is quite instructive, because the problem isn’t that a prisoner be handed over, but that the monarch is commanding that the recipient of the letter carry out the execution themselves while the prisoner is a guest under their roof.
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