Just a backup in advance of the detumblring
Interesting question!
I mean, there would still be a second Stark army in the field – namely, the ever-changing, ever-confusing Riverlands army.
The main difference is that rather than having one army of Northern and Riverlander horse, one army of Northern foot, and one army seemingly made up of Schrödinger’s cats, you’d have a Northern army of horse and foot and a Riverlands army of horse and foot.
Both could be the case. While usually hostages were too important to mistreat, there was a surprising number of medieval and Renaissance rulers who preferred the Keyser Soze method of interpersonal negotiations.
Modestly familiar.
Pre-colonial I know the big hits of from a World Civilizations level – the emergence of cities in the Indus Valley, the arrival of the Indo-Aryans and the creation of the Vedas and the Upanishads, the emergence of Buddism, etc. I have to admit I get a bit fuzzy about the ordering of some of the classical empires and then my memory skips to the Muslim conquest and the rise of the Mughals.
I’m more familiar with the Colonial period – in fact the most recent book on Indian history I’ve read was Jon Wilson’s really interesting revisionist history Chaos of Empire, which argues that rather than being characterized by “unity, order, and success,” British imperial policy from the EIC to the end was “rooted far more in violence than in virtue, far more in chaos than in control.”
Post-colonial, I’m broadly familiar with the independence struggle, partition, and Nehru’s spin on socialist economic and social policy. I have to admit that my knowledge of recent Indian political history is fuzzier after the 70s.
That can happen, but it’s more of a gradual thing:
“Anne the queen wears yellow, as she did when she first appeared at court, dancing in a masque: the year, 1521. Everyone remembers it, or they say they do: Boleyn’s second daughter with her bold dark eyes, her speed, her grace. The fashion for yellow had started among the wealthy in Basle; for a few months, if a draper could get hold of it, he could make a killing. And then suddenly it was everywhere, it sleeves and hose and even hair-bands for those who couldn’t afford more than a sliver. By the time of Anne’s debut it had slid down the scale abroad; in the domains of the Emperor, you’d see a woman in a brothel hoisting her fat dugs and tight-lacing her yellow bodice.”
Hillary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
If the nouveau riche instantly devalued fashion, they wouldn’t be a social threat to the old aristocracy – the terrifying thing for the nobility was the way that they could blur the lines between noble and commoner, pass among the former while still being the latter, confusing what ought to be the most basic (and to people’s thinking, natural) visual distinction.
But the ability of the nobility to fight back to declaring things out of fashion is that time and distance conspire against them: there’s no group DMs or Slack channels or (going prehistoric here) email listservs to coordinate these decisions – eventually, there will be women’s magazines and the like, but that comes along a bit later and has a bit of a problem of needing to sell to mass, and thus, common audiences – you have to write letters and for a lot of this kind of stuff you really need to get everyone together in person, and that can be difficult. (Versailles was such a help in that regard.)
Because of this, there was this liminal space, whereby a sufficiently fashion-forward/culturally capitalled bourgeois could penetrate aristocratic spaces and snatch up titled husbands and wives before being detected, which is why it became such a major topic of literature.
I think so, yes, albeit in a broader sense that’s more geared to the human cost of his metaphysical pragmatism (paging @poorquentyn).
But I do think it will happen not very far from his death.
See here.
I knew I’d answered this one before. See here.
Hey, y’all, @condedatorre especially. The clarification and definition of Princess of Dragonstone is actually on the wiki. 🙂 If you look at the article for Prince of Dragonstone, you’ll see Aerys I Targaryen’s heirs include “Aelora Targaryen[15]”, and if you check Aelora’s article, it says that “Aelora became the new heir to the throne for her uncle, King Aerys I Targaryen, following Aelor’s death.[4]” A bold statement without proof, yes? Nope! Those citations link to this thread on the forum, where Ran (Elio Garcia) explains:
The situations of the past are not congruent with those of the
present, really, so not relevant. For that matter, we’ve certainly
discussed the value of precedent… but another question would be
whether the precedents of the _Targaryen_ dynasty are necessarily in
place for the Baratheon dynasty. It may well be that over the 15 years
of Robert’s rule, it’s been made clear that there is a firm order of
succession, with Myrcella ahead of Stannis. The machinations of Cersei
and Tywin? One more sleight for Stannis to chew on? Mayhaps.
Having seen the Targaryen family tree from its early form, I don’t think
the Viserys II change made much difference – you’re assuming that
Daeron and Baelor had sisters back then…
As to Aerys’s heirs, Rhaegel _was_ his heir, and then Rhaegel’s son
Aelor, and then Aelora. These are all things George established before
“The Sworn Sword” or “The Mystery Knight”. (Yes, the mystery of Daenora
remains – something we brought up with George at the time and he
insisted on our leaving things as he had written them, so I assuming
there’s a reason why Daenora is not considered at all when it’s said
Maekar is the only possible heir remaining.)
Bolding mine. Later comments in the thread clarify Aelora’s status:
The Grey Wolf:
Are you saying Aelora was heiress to the Iron Throne after Aelor/before Maekar?Ran:
Yes. The text is explicit in running down through Aerys’s various heirs
before coming to Maekar, and explicitly links Aelora’s death with Maekar
becoming heir.The Grey Wolf: I don’t remember the text being that explicit but alright.
Ran:
I’m referring to GRRM’s write up on Egg which discusses the situation.
In the course of editing we ended up compressing things so it’s not
explicit there.And Elio additionally says:
Given GRRM’s response, there’s no error with the Aelora situation, or
the Daenora one. He seemed to have definite ideas about it that he did
not explain.And there the conversation stops, as they realize they’ve gotten way off topic from the thread’s main subject (an endless discussion of R+L=J, apparently).
Anyway. Regarding what Elio says about the explicit/edited text and Aelora’s status, I double-checked TWOIAF, and it says:
Don’t apologize!
The wiki is, of course, a fan-run creation, and while extremely helpful and accurate in the vast majority of areas, it is not ultimately canon. I’m not sure who worked on the Aelora article, but my guess, if I had to make a guess, is that the person was going on the fact that Aelora was married to her brother Aelor while the latter was Prince of Dragonstone. Now, we’ve never seen the title “Princess of Dragonstone” applied to the wife of a Prince of Dragonstone; the only two Princesses of Dragonstone in-canon are Rhaenyra (who was formally named and acclaimed as such by her father, King Viserys I, when he decided to treat her as his heiress) and our Daenerys (who, once she was in exile with Viserys, was at least arguably his heir presumptive, since after him she was and is the last of the legitimate, dynastic male line of Aegon the Conqueror). Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if the wife of the consort was known as “Princess of Dragonstone”, and indeed I’m hopeful to get clarification on this in the future.
In the course of that reign, His Grace had recognized a series of heirs, though none were children of his body; Aerys died without issue, his marriage still unconsummated. His brother Rhaegel, third son of Daeron the Good, had predeceased him, choking to death upon a lamprey pie in 215 AC during a feast. Rhaegel’s son, Aelor, then became the new Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the throne, only to die two years after, slain in a grotesque mishap by the hand of his own twin sister and wife, Aelora, under circumstances that left her mad with grief. (Sadly, Aelora eventually took her own life after being attacked at a masked ball by three men known to history as the Rat, the Hawk, and the Pig.)
The last of the heirs Aerys recognized before his death would be the one to succeed him to the throne: the king’s sole surviving brother, Prince Maekar.I can only assume that whatever was edited out was something that would have made it far more clear that Aelora was included in Aerys’s series of heirs, and was Princess of Dragonstone in her own right before she died. What’s left… sigh… I hope Elio eventually gets that second edition of TWOIAF he wants, or else Fire & Blood vol. 2 better have all the details. And as for Daenora being excluded from that title and status… I’m just going to assume there that it’s a Dunk & Egg thing, due to GRRM being both mysterious and insistent about it. Especially considering her marriage to Aerion and the evidence from TWOIAF that he returns as an antagonist in later D&E stories.
But seriously, somebody could just follow Elio’s w.org posts and get so many details that apparently didn’t make it into TWOIAF but still count. Sigh, it’s worse than the SSMs for obscure non-textual but apparently canon details. Also, I should note that this whole thing got off topic regarding women succeeding to the Iron Throne, where Elio is insistent that Yandel’s “iron precedent” is not necessarily all that iron, and well, he should know…
A very interesting development, although one that I think adds to my confusion about Bloodraven and Maekar.
As I’ve explored with Aziz over at History of Westeros podcast, everything leading up to Maekar becoming king speaks to Bloodraven and Maekar being fierce political rivals who are widely expected to come to blows the moment Aerys II dies, with “bloody war between Lord Rivers and Prince Maekar for the crown, the Hand against the heir.“
Aelora being named as Princess of Dragonstone ahead of Prince Maekar, would absolutely have been viewed by much of the political community and probably by Maekar himself as a direct attack on his rights as heir by Bloodraven, looking to extend his monopoly on royal power through what would have been a lifelong Regency. And yet, four years later, all is forgiven and Bloodraven remains as Hand for the whole of Maekar’s reign?
I’m not saying it’s impossible, but we’re getting absolutely no information about how this transformation occurred, and all the information we’re getting points the other way.
Just a suggestion based on Bloodraven’s Bloodraven-ness: might it have been a stunt to lure Blackfyres? “~Oh no, the Targaryen dynasty is so weak right now, we sure hope that no impressive Blackfyres try to come over because we’re totally not ready for them, they could take all of Westeros if they just tried~!” (Bloodraven hidden in the bushes with a large army/legion of Raven’s teeth).
A stunt he carried out for 11 years? Unlikely.
I just finished reading Tyrion I, ASOS on your blog and I couldn’t help but notice the way you brought up Bronn as a Social Climber and compared and contrasted him with Littlefinger. I find it interesting because unlike Littlefinger and others I never got the sense that Bronn was ACTIVELY playing the Game Of Thrones. Oh sure he’d take opportunities when they came by, but he didn’t try to manipulate people in order to get them. I’d like to know if you agree with my line of thought here. If I am right it would play to George R. R. Martin’s love of outsiders. The best player of the Game Of Thrones, the one who only goes up and never goes down, is the one who doesn’t try to play.
Social climbing and the Game of Thrones are not the same thing. Bronn doesn’t give a damn about who’s on top of the social order but rather how he can rise within it. And see how he has risen…
Yeah, that particular part of the campaign has GRRM’s thumb squarely on the scales, because it has to happen that way in order to set up Robb’s decision to go for Jaime or Tywin.
I mean, it’s technically possible to take successive castles by surprise – but it becomes increasingly unlikely with each castle, because word spreads fast. And it’s absolutely possible to ignore castles as long as you’re willing to live off the land and cut yourself off from supply lines, but that doesn’t seem to be what Tywin was doing, since these castles are described as fallen not bypassed.
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