I am leaning in that direction now. 

Well, I think it comes down to my analogy to Jon Snow. As I said “For like Jon Snow, I think Daeron can be rightly criticized for having pushed for peace too fast and too hard, failing to build enough of a constituency behind his policy, and failing to pacify the hardliners who would lead a backlash against him.” Jon Snow as Lord Commander was also a force for good until his death, but that doesn’t mean his failure to sell his policy shouldn’t be counted against him.

Daeron had over a decade to sell the Dornish treaty and he failed, and there was a rebellion as a consequence. That has to be added to the ledger – compare the lives saved by the Treaty against the lives lost at Redgrass and beyond. 

Well, leaving aside the many many fictional historical figures (because folks in the Middle Ages LOVED their fanfic), I would have to go with the Chevalier de Bayard. 

Known in his own time as the “chevalier sans peur et sans sans reproche.” (The knight without fear and beyond reproach). I wrote about him here, but that short capsule doesn’t really do him credit. 

To begin with, he was unstoppable on the battlefield. He was the master of the impossibly successful cavalry charge, including charging up mountains and against Swiss pike in formation, but also completely revamped French infantry from a rabble into a disciplined fighting force. He was so brave that he became a continental celebrity in his own time, having single-handedly held the bridge at Garigliano against 200 Spanish knights and single-handedly saved France from the Holy Roman Empire at Mézières.

He was also, by all accounts, a good-looking, charming, and gallant man who effortlessly turned the heads of men and women both. When he surrendered to Henry VIII and Ludovico Sforza on two different occasions, both men were so bowled over by their mancrushes on him that they let him go without ransom. Was sent to Ferrara to help with the defenses of the city, and ended up staying eight months because both Alphonso d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia pretty much fell in love with him – Bayard would call Lucrezia a “pearl among women” and kept making excuses to visit her. Was wounded in the leg when he led the infantry in person on several assaults before the final successful taking of Brescia. He was quartered in the house of a local noble family, where he was healed by a noblewoman and her two daughters, who sang to him every night. When he was healed up, he refunded the ransom that the family had paid him as dowries for the two daughters. 

In short, if I didn’t know he was a real person, I would say that Bayard was a bad Self-Insert. 

Not if I wish you one first!

Tytos was described as having his heart give out. That’s the same description the Kindly Man gave about the insurance man’s death. What are the chances that Tywin had his dad whacked?

Tytos died in 267 AC, that was the same year Tywin dealt with the Iron Bank regarding the money the crown owed, so he likely visited Braavos to resolve that dispute. He could have made a stop at the House of Black and White. With gold being sent to the Iron Bank from Casterly Rock no one would be suspicious regarding Tywin sending gold to Braavos. 

Nope. Tywin might have hated the man, but he respected the position too much to have the Lord of Casterly Rock whacked. 

Heart disease is a real thing, and it’s a quite common cause of death. Tytos was a heavy dude toward the end of his life, a natural consequence for a man who liked feasting and drinking and having a good time and who wasn’t exactly hitting the training yard every day. So his death isn’t particularly suspicious.

Moreover, after the Rains of Castamere in 261, Tywin was the Lord of Casterly Rock in all but name and everyone knew it. He didn’t need to have his father killed in order to pay off the Iron Bank. 

RFTIT Tumblr Weekly Roundup!

Happy New Years, everybody! So as I start to write up the very last chapter in the Battle of Blackwater, and figure out when to schedule the live watching thing before I go off on vacation, I thought I’d throw up a New Year’s Day Tumblr Roundup as a little way of saying thanks for making 2015 the best year to date for Race for the Iron Throne! Simon Rumble Asks about the Dornish treaty. about…

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Actually, I deliberately picked the low-end estimates. Some sources say that the Caliph’s armies were 200,000 strong, and his navies included some 5,000 ships. 

Keep in mind, we’re talking about the Umayyad Caliphate at the height of its powers, controlling an empire that includes this:

(“Umayyad750ADloc” by Gabagool – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons)

So the Umayyads are throwing everything that empire can muster at Constantinople. 

Well, it’s kind of extrapolating in reverse – the historical practice was that you sent your son to the Church, and then the son often got a posting in the area so that he could provide religious services to the family, so you were getting something in exchange.

But because the Citadel doesn’t assign maesters to their own families, and seems to try to assign maesters to different regions, as a means of ensuring political neutrality, you need something to balance the books. 

Happy New Years to my Basque readers! 

What advice would you give Rhaegar regarding what to do with his father and Varys breathing down his neck? 

Bring the Southron Alliance into his plan to depose his father, even if that means accepting a more parliamentary model of Kingship. With House Arryn, Tully, Stark, Baratheon, and Martell on his side, and being fully capable of maybe bringing in the Tyrells and/or the Lannisters with the right offers, he could have made it a bloodless coup that enhanced national unity rather than dividing it.