A Song Of Ice And Fire

And who chose those advisors? Who antagonised his wife to the point where it was in her favour to plot his death?

The fact that Robert was aware of his own flaws makes him less sympathetic to me, not more. He never had the strength of character to try to improve himself.

he was aware in the end and by that point everything move beyond of waht he can do, compared that to cersei "EVERYONE IS PLOTTING AGAINST ME, I MUST KILL EVERYONE!" she look like Aerys with tits(which is not a pretty imagine I must said)

He tried to be a parent to one of his bastards at the beginning of their marriage, Cersei threatened to kill her if he brought her to court.

@ninety No he did not run the realm well. Robert knows he was a shitty King and Ned doesn't deny that he was.

Robert explicitly didn't listen to Jon Arryn and left the realm in huge debt even though when he had come to the kingdom the vaults were overflowing with gold. And he deliberately left someone as corrupt as Janos in charge of the city watch which ended up with Ned losing his Regency and got him killed.

Everyone on his council minus Stannis and Jon Arryn were corrupt.

And not all of that was his fault, Varys and Pycelle at least were left over from previous kings.

There is a pattern I've noticed in ASOIAF and that is this. The people with the most power are the people who technically have the least. Neither Robert nor either of the Hands we've seen nor the Queen Regent have ever truly been in control. The real power has always laid with Varys or Littlefinger. In theory, Robert, Joff, Ned, Tyrion or Cersei could have had both of them beheaded at any time with no one giving a fuck. But they didn't.Because a puppet with a crown is still just a puppet.

I think that's a bit of a misreading. LF and Varys can only operate because people in power are ignorant of their true agendas. And they can only act on their agendas because the people in power allow them to. And, yes, when people like Ned, Renly, Joff, Robb, Robert, Tywin, etc. die, it's a pretty big deal that rapidly changes the political landscape. Obviously, there's limits to their power (something I don't think Cersei understood when she became regent, and part of her problem with how she deals with her court. That and the general sociopathy), but they do having a freaking lot of it, and it's because of that Westoros is such a shit hole. Honestly, if LF and Varys died, it wouldn't affect anyone around them but their co conspirators. Would change the story dramatically, and save quite a few lives.

And both Varys and LF are doomed to die because of their manipulations, probably because of their former puppets (Sans and Dany respectively, I'm predicting), so I'm not about to give them much more credit than anyone else.

edited 5th Feb '16 2:20:16 PM by RandomaNama

I'm not sure Varys will die.

But Illyrio who is the same class villain that LF will die in the same way. Killed by the gifts they gave to the girls they were manipulating. Dragons and the skills to play the game of thrones.

edited 5th Feb '16 2:44:01 PM by MadSkillz

At the very least he'll see the product of all his schemes swallowed in flame, which isn't much better. I mean, it's possible after Aegon's death (and, I'm guessing, the destruction of KL via wildfire) he'll buonce back, or possibly redeem himself and commit to the fight against the Others (though his magic hate makes it seem unlikely), but I think it's much more likely he'll die with Aegon or be broken by his failures.

I do like the theory that Daenerys blows up King's Landing while Varys is in the Red Keep and his fate is left ambiguous.

I think the Tywin poisoning theory is plausible (moreso the Oberyn one), but I think most obviously the reason why his corpse stinks like that is a combination of decomposition and symbolism of him/the Lannister regime being "rotting from the core" underneath a facade of perfection.

I think the problem with Aegon being legit (well, one problem) is there's a very clear indication of Illyrio having paternal feeling toward him and while I can't find a site for it right now, IIRC an earlier draft of a Tyrion chapter had Illyrio wanting to give Aegon a familial sword (presumably Blackfyre- not sure if named).

It just feels like it's too strongly hinted that Aegon is Illyrio's son for him to be the real Aegon.

edited 5th Feb '16 3:50:10 PM by Hodor2

Aegon isn't actually Aegon — he's actually Aegon's son

Stannis is right; Robert should have went all Cregan Stark on the small council.

Stannis is right; Robert should have cut off Balon's head.

Stannis for king.

edited 6th Feb '16 12:38:34 AM by SilentColossus

, : Both of these missed opportunities can be chalked up to Robert not really wanting to be king. Had he wanted the throne, and had a vision for reshaping the royal government, Balon, Varys, Pycelle, and all those Targaryen loyalists would be dead or squeezed to irrelevance.

But even Ned Stark isn't willing to use his position as Hand to shutdown whatever they're up to. Very good essay about it, somewhere.

And define loyalists. That Robert was merciful was a mostly good trait; otherwise the war would have dragged on for much longer as the remaining loyalists retreated to their lands and castles. Invading the Reach and Dorne would be a very costly campaign.

But the corrupt small council? There is no point in keeping them around.

Also, Varys would go before Robert could do anything to him, he IS that good, is like saying "If I kill all bad people and put all good people, everything will be ALL right" which is pretty much Dany wordview.

They're very good at making themselves look indispensable. Remember, even Tyrion didn't kill Pycelle when he had the chance.

Varys said it best - power resides where men believe it resides. Everyone believes Varys and to a lesser extent Littlefinger are pretty much Gods of Information and, in LF's case, gold. You want them on your side, not your enemies. Varys got outof dodge the second Cersei came to power and now he's murdered her uncle, all without being caught. Had he wanted to, he probably could have very easily killed her, the king and god knows how many other people.

No one ever really trusted Varys, except maybe Mad Aerys, and everyone kinda hates Littlefinger but people still believe that it's better to try and win their favor than earn their wrath.

It is not a matter of just killing the bad people, but the removal of the corrupt from power. Justice plays a part, certainly, but keeping them around is dangerous.

In the books, Littlefinger is seen as just an upstart from a pathetic, tiny noble house. They admit he is good with money, but other than that think he would be satisfied with lordship over a nice castle. No one thinks he is actually dangerous.

edited 6th Feb '16 2:13:50 PM by SilentColossus

Actually most people like Littlefinger. No one actually hates him.

Jaime even considers deposing Cersei and making Littlefinger the Hand of the King calling him the perfect Hand.

edited 6th Feb '16 2:42:25 PM by MadSkillz

Except for the lords of the Vale, many of whom don't like him because of his relatively lowbirth. So yeah, many like and trust him, but some think of him as an upstart. Or just a very common greed.

But most don't see him for what he is.

edited 6th Feb '16 5:23:43 PM by SilentColossus

@Silent I'm not sure they don't like him. They only opposed him because they think it should be them raising Robert and not LF because he's a glorified accountant.

But he pays Lyn to pretend to hate him.

Yohn Bronze Royce is against him but Nestor Royce is basically his lieutenant. Lady Anya Waynwood's debt was bought up by LF.

Lord Belmore, Ser Symond Templeton and Lord Redfort have changed their minds and switched to LF although we don't know why.

And Lord Hunter is going to be killed off by his youngest brother.

That's one of my least favourite changes from the book to the series. Littlefinger being Obviously Evil makes no sense.

The nobles in the books have every reason to keep him around (the genius with money) and no reason to think he's dangerous (he has no loyalties to any particular faction, appears to have very modest ambitions, and hides his scheming extremely well).

Saying they don't like/trust him because he's little better than a peasant is missing the point. For the same reasons, they assume he's not in anyone else's pocket, so they think he's Beneath Suspicion. They pretty much view him as the accountant: a pawn in the game who might be moved around by others, but not a player in his own right.

I've only read the books and I thought LF was pretty obviously evil.... Maybe it's the narration since I use audiobooks but he sounded like the smuggest shithead of all time.

Both he and Varys put on big smiles for everyone but Varys' are...um, "sweet." Petyr's are mocking, like he's laughing at everyone.

This is actually something I really liked when I went through AGOT again:

"The years had not changed him much. Petyr had [...] the same laughing grey-green eyes." ~ Catelyn

"He had grey-green eyes that did not smile when his mouth did." ~ Sansa

It's kind of funny that even Early Sansa could see through him better than her mother.

I love that line, one of the best in the first book, it resume very well petyr baelish.