X-Men #134 – “Too Late, the Heroes!” (1980)

written by Chris Claremont & John Byrne
art by John Byrne, Terry Austin, & Bob Sharen

The TV show was better…

The King-In-Utero: Let’s say a king (or lord) is married, has no children, and has younger siblings. He his wife gets pregnant, there’s much celebration, but then at about 6 months into the pregnancy… the king dies. Who inherits the throne? His younger brother? Or the fetus? How do you go about coronating a king who has yet to be born?

You’ve described a very good scenario for a succession crisis; the widowed queen and her family are going to fight like hell for the rights of the unborn child, but especially if the younger siblings are adult males, they would have a strong political claim. And then there’s going to be a lot of political drama over the health of the mother, the gender of the baby, whether the baby was born legitimate or secrelty carried into the birthing chamber in a warming pan….

Assuming a male child, they probably wouldn’t be coronated until they’re of age, or at the very least until they were no longer an infant, and there would be a Regency.

In valyrian names, is the ‘e’ in ‘ae’ silent?

Joannalannister recommended that I ask you: How insulting would it be if someone broke off negotiations for a betrothal in order to have another one arranged? Like, it’s really obvious that Family X broke off negotiations with Family Y to immediately begin negotiating with Family Z.

Good question!

There’s a couple factors involved.

First, how far along were the negotiations? If they were still in the preliminary stages, I think there’s a common understanding that everyone’s out there in the marriage market trying to make the best deal for their kid, so no hard feelings. However, if they were about to read the bans and suddenly someone jumps ship, there would be a lot of harmed feelings.

Second, what are the relative power and prestige of the three houses? As we see with the (admittedly extreme) case of the Freys, the Starks, and the Westerlings, a big part of the Freys’ grievance was that they were ditched for a much poorer and weaker house, but one with a more prestigous bloodline, hitting the Freys right in the sore spot. But while the Freys would no doubt be angry regardless, if Robb had married Margaery Tyrell, it would be much harder to kick up a public fuss about that.

Third, what are the previous relations between the various houses? In cases like the Brackens and the Blackwoods where two houses have a notable feud, any spat where one house gains at the the others’ expense is going to be viewed as personal, not business. (Think about how the Brackens and Blackwoods felt about Aegon IV’s mistresses, and then instensify it because you’re talking about more formal unions).

Fourth, how public and/or harsh is the break? Tywin and the Unnamed Dornish Princess’ conflict over marriage proposals between the Lannisters, Martells, and Targaryens got very ugly, escalating into open blood feud, in no small part because there was very little diplomacy in the way that people were turned down, so that the loss of a marriage alliance was compounded by a loss of public face.

What was the part of Roose Bolton in the Robert’s Rebellion? Did he command any troops? Ned seems to have believe that besides being creep Roose was a competent warrior.

He would have led House Bolton’s men, certainly, and was present at the Battle of the Trident (notably, he urged Ser Barristan be executed).

Hi maester steven! I just read a post about why were neither renly, stannis nor shireen addressed as prince/princess where they said that robert probably just didnt though about it. But jon arryn probably would, did he never mentioned it because he though a private family matter? Or did he thought it better to avoid confusion by having the baratheon houses be like separate branches? Or any other possible reason? Thanks!

So I discussed this here, in reference to a SoSpakeMartin here.

As for Jon Arryn, it’s possible that he was busy with other matters (like keeping Dorne from breaking away), or tried and failed, or just didn’t care as long as Dragonstone was securely held, and once Joffrey was born it didn’t matter very much.

Do you think Cap was acting a bit out of character in the first Civil War?

The Comic?

So I discuss it here, but yeah, the comic was a massive trainwreck and characterization was a significant (although not the only or largest) part of it.

Mike Millar thought that the Registration Act was so self-evidently the correct side that he switched who the leaders of each side were going to be: originally, Cap was supposed to be pro-Registration and Iron Man was supposed to be anti-Registration, but Millar thought that Cap’s moral authority was so strong that everyone would side with him, so he switched them in order to maintain dramatic tension.

This became something of a problem when the writers of the Civil War books (not just the main book but the spinoffs) disagreed with themselves both about what the Act – in some versions it was basically gun control, in others it was the Patriot Act, and still others it was the total abrogation of the 13th Amendment for anyone with powers – was but also which side was in the right. Hence, characterization for all characters tended to swing wildly depending on who was writing which issue.

Was the idea in DOFP supposed to be that Raven killed JFK, and framed Erik when he tried to stop her?

If I recall correctly, the idea was that JFK was a mutant, and Erik tried to bend the “magic bullet” to save his life. Which is bizarre for a whole bunch of reasons:

First, the “magic bullet” theory is bullshit. It’s based on a misunderstanding of the layout of the car that JFK and entourage were sitting in.

Second, even if we accept for the sake of argument that Erik found out that JFK was a mutant and that JFK was going to be assassinated (which is never explained) and where and when that would happen (ditto), why wouldn’t he just stop the bullet, something he’s clearly capable of doing?
Third, if JFK was a mutant, wouldn’t he have gotten way more involved when the Director of the CIA took a meeting with Xavier and found out that Shaw was behind the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Fourth, Magneto not dying would have changed U.S culture around conspiracies enormously, which would have had a significant impact on popular trust in government. We don’t really see any signs of this.

Are you looking forward to Thorn of Emberlain?

Yes.

Race for the Iron Throne Is In Print!

After meticulously editing for months on end, I am very happy to announce that the paperback edition of Race for the Iron Throne Volume II is now available on Amazon! Technically speaking, this is Part 1 of Volume II, because the physical manuscript turned out to be so long – turns out when you write long essays about each chapter in a doorstop fantasy novel, it adds up – that it would have been…

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