opinions-about-tiaras:

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:

racefortheironthrone:

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. 

poorquentyn:

Yeah, that’s probably my single biggest issue with the show right there, something that @racefortheironthrone has talked about before: the writers have the end in mind, but their means of getting there are increasingly muddled, contradictory, and IMO unsatisfying. And that really matters, because at the core of GRRM’s project with this series is the idea that the genre has been making things too easy and automatic for its protagonists, and that the heroes need to earn that status. 

In other words, GoT has become exactly the kind of fantasy story that ASOIAF was written to critique.  

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. 

Here you go.

I think so, yes. 

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Hey folks! With Arya III done, next on the list is Politics of the Stormlands Part III, which is bringing us closer to the end of the Seven Kingdoms series, after which will probably be an essay on the Great Councils of Westeros. Also, since people have been asking me, yes I plan to do blog posts about Season 7 of Game of Thrones but not a podcast, for a whole host of reasons. In the meantime, we…

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opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

He’s better on some aspects more than others, but it’s a fair critique. 

It’s a consequence of the series being like 90% high-octane politics and culture that strives to be as accurate to real human interactions and cultural ones as possible, in order to draw is into the world and engage us with it, and only 10% giant flying magic murder dinosaurs and ice zombies. The 10% stuff sometimes doesn’t mesh well with the other stuff.

Like, we’ll accept the dragons violating all manner of natural laws, because magic. We’ll accept the wights and Melisandre and all that stuff.

What we have trouble with is “a ten-year-long-winter in a premodern society. Really. How does literally <em>everything</em> not just die.” We’re less prepared to accept “magic” for that. Magic how, precisely?

But if the series were more traditional fantasy, we wouldn’t care. Like, in Forgotten Realms people don’t consider “how the fuck do the Drow live permanently underground” a big thing to get bent out of shape over, because that setting is just pure bullshit from top to bottom, and that’s part of its charm. ASOIAF is not like that. It’s brutally real much of the time, so we have different standards.

I think it’s the familiarity issue – giant dragons are not something we’ve come across, so while we know about weight/lift ratios abstractly it isn’t that visceral for us. On the other hand, we know what winter does to plant life, so that’s a higher bar to clear. 

He’s better on some aspects more than others, but it’s a fair critique. 

Ned in AGOT, Tyrion in ACOK and ASOS, Cersei in AFFC, Dany in ADWD. 

I don’t think the Westerosi nobility would look down on Summer Islander nobility, more than they would other foreigners. Nobility are nobility and have to be treated as such, lest the smallfolk get ideas that nobility can be disrespected, even if they’re not Westerosi nobles.