eidetictelekinetic said:I’m not one to miss “what if?” bait – what would have happened if Jaime had been allowed to fight at the Tourney of Harrenhal? (Great analysis of one of my favorite ASOS chapters btw!)

Okay, I’ll bite: what do you think would change from OTL if Jaime had been allowed to fight at the tourney at Harrenhal?

What would have happened if Jaime had been allowed to fight at the Tourney of Harrenhal? Hahaha hint taken

Taking the hint, what would have happened if Jaime had participated at the tourney at Harrenhal?

So what happens if Jaime is allowed to fight in the tourney of Harrenhall after being named to the Kingsguard?

indomitablerocinante said:What would have happened if Jaime had been allowed to fight at the Tourney of Harrenhal?

Aha, my scheme has worked! Answer below the cut:

So Jaime is probably right that, if he was allowed to fight at Harrenhal, he probably would have won, considering that he was one of the best tourney knights of his day and that Martin has established that being fired up by circumstances can inspire a jouster to greatness. This butterflies away the whole scene with Rhaegar crowning Lyanna the Queen of Love and Beauty, which avoids a scene but probably doesn’t prevent them running off. 

However, the more interesting question is who Jaime would have named instead. See, unlike @cynicalclassicist​, I’m not sure that Cersei couldn’t have been there. We know from the Knight of the Laughing Tree that Tywin didn’t go, but that “many of his bannermen and knights attended all the same,” and Cersei could have been escorted by one of them.

The trickier thing is whether Cersei would have had the opportunity, because here the text is somewhat inconsistent. In one place in Jaime II, it’s suggested that Jaime and Cersei did in fact overlap (if only briefly) at the royal court at the time that Jaime was made a knight of the Kingsguard, which was the same day as the Tourney:

Jaime’s investiture freed him from Lysa Tully. Elsewise, nothing went as planned. His father had never been more furious. He could not object openly—Cersei had judged that correctly—but he resigned the Handship on some thin pretext and returned to Casterly Rock, taking his daughter with him. Instead of being together, Cersei and Jaime just changed places, and he found himself alone at court, guarding a mad king while four lesser men took their turns dancing on knives in his father’s ill-fitting shoes.

The key thing here is that Tywin “returned to Casterly Rock,” so that he was at King’s Landing when he resigned. So if Jaime was invested at the tourney, “before the king’s pavilion, kneeling on the green grass in white armor while half the realm looked on,” how is it that Tywin (and thus Cersei) was not there if the investiture was what made him resign and take Cersei home?

So I think it’s possible that Cersei would have been able to be at the tourney, and if she had been there, absolutely Jaime would have named her Queen of Love and Beauty. As far as the outside world was concerned, Jaime would have been honoring (and promoting) his sister; as far as Jaime was concerned, it would have added the perfect tragic note to his story, giving the crown of flowers even as the sibling-lovers are parted by cruel fate. 

However, if Cersei wasn’t there, I think it probable that Jaime would have named either Queen Rhaella or Princess Elia, as both would have been proper for a knight of the Kingsguard to honor House Targaryen. (Whether Aerys would have seen the latter as a Dornish plot is another question altogether.)