A Song Of Ice And Fire

Robert being put on the throne was not "okay, time for anarchy". Aerys clearly had to go and thanks to Rhaegar kidnapping a Stark he wasn't a viable replacement. It's generally implicit that when the Royal Family starts kidnapping your daughters and roasting you alive that it's time for a new overlord.

Stannis, however, was the rightful heir if Joffery was illegitimate. If Joffery was legit then he would still be the rightful heir. In no world would Renly be the rightful heir, since Stannis had not gone mad or committed any atrocities.

There is a possibility of framing Stannis as illegitimate over his religious affiliation. Given how interwoven with (and subservient to) The Crown the Faith of the Seven is, they could pull a Anglican-style take that monarchs that don't believe in the Seven are ineligible to the throne.

But it doesn't seem to occur to anyone.

Because they can't go all "seven is the only religion" without pissing off the North and the Ironborn (though they're always angry). Heck, there's a Godswood in King's Landing.

The faith of the seven is nowhere near as powerful as say, the Catholic church was. The crown isn't so much subservient to it as everyone's decided to live and let live.

edited 10th Dec '17 9:15:06 AM by Sigilbreaker26

From what I've seen a lot of the royal legitimacy comes from the Seven (the High Septon crowns every King if I well recall) and all the Kings thus far has been at least nominally worshipers of the Seven. The sheer fact Knighthood, one of the most crucial aspects of Westerosi society, is a institution of the Faith already tells us plenty, plus all the High Septons who have been Hands of the King.

They can (and probably do?) claim the Seven is the faith of the crown, because there hasn't (nor there ever will be, they think) a King who worshiped any god but the Seven.

It has always been to me one of the weirdest aspects of whole shebang that no one seems to truly zero in the fact Stannis chose a pagan faith and abandoned the "true gods" and is claiming the throne. He even burned statues of the 7.

If during the War of the Roses Richard III burned a bunch of crosses and declared himself a proud worshiper of Shiva he'd have died within a few days.

edited 10th Dec '17 9:59:50 AM by Gaon

Tyrion zeroes in on this in early ACOK where Stannis has his letter of illegitimacy distributed and declares his support for R'hllor.

Still, it seems like way smaller of a deal than it should be.

"Robert being put on the throne was not "okay, time for anarchy". Aerys clearly had to go and thanks to Rhaegar kidnapping a Stark he wasn't a viable replacement. It's generally implicit that when the Royal Family starts kidnapping your daughters and roasting you alive that it's time for a new overlord. "

And went the next leader is murder and his child is mini caligula, why them people should follow whatever guy said is to be king? the baratheon allow of the precedent of rebellion and now they have to content the throne.

Robert's case is a damned if you do and damned if you don't affair. You can't leave the psychotic tyrant on the throne, but dethroning him opened a dangerous precedent which ultimately plants the seeds for the entire War of the Five Kings business.

It's much like Henry Bolingbroke's rebellion against Richard II. Richard II was clearly losing his shit, so Bolingbroke's rebellion has a lot of justification, but upsetting "the established order" opened precedence for the rebellion of Northumberland and planted the seeds for the borderline apocalyptic War of the Roses which annihilated most of English royalty and put an end to the Plantagenets.

Isn't the War of the Five Kings supposed to be the War of the Roses anyway? Major noble houses fighting against one another, only to be apparently ended by a supposedly unimportant heir coming back from across the sea to take their rightful place on the throne?

There is an implicit social contract that the ruler exists to protect the people below them in exchange for their service and the fact that Aerys decided to barbeque two of them instead was the breaking point.

Look up stuff like "race for the Iron throne", he can explain this stuff better than I can, but there is definitely not a correlation between what Robert did and what Renly did.

Thing is, that implicit contract was there for the nobles, nobody depose the targ for all the shit they put the kindoms before as pretty much only dynasty so far, so one the baratheon overthrowing the targ open the idea that everyone can do it.

Yes, there's an implicit social contract that the king not be terrible at kinging.

There's an explicit contract regarding who gets to be king after the previous king stops being king. Bringing up the former, which is so open to interpretation and so destablises the latter, is an absolute last resort. That's why wars are usually officially contested on the basis of "claim to the throne" (even if it's fabricated), with popularity merely being a way of establishing support — the alternative opens the idea in people's minds that being king is something that anybody with sufficient competence can do.

Robert's Rebellion didn't directly cause anarchy, and had he managed to hold the throne for more than ten years, and ultimately pass it on to an heir, rather than getting murdered and leaving behind an entire nest of cuckoos, stability might have been restored under a new dynasty. But it's no surprise that Robert's reign ending in chaos, so soon (relatively speaking) after the 300-year Targaryen dynasty was ended in the name of "fitness to rule", invited opportunism.

Was there ever any serious discussion of the possibility that Viserys rule through a regent? Or did they just decide after Aegon and Rhaenys were killed that they'd better finish the job? Or did the children being spirited away to Dragonstone make it all a moot point?

edited 10th Dec '17 11:20:49 PM by johnnye

It's a moot point, and Robert was absolutely committed to the idea that the Targaryen dynasty had to end. Remember that he agrees to the plan to murder Daenerys, who is a child (although he does change his mind about that at the very end), and he also seemed to more or less agree Tywin's decision to have Rhaegar's children murdered, calling them "dragonspawn" instead of children (thus dehumanising them). No way he would've settled for a regency; the best the Targaryens could hope for was exile, and even then Robert would have his goons keeping an eye on them, prepared to assassinate them if they'd try anything.

Well the thing with Dany was in the modern day, after she's had ten years to stew over Robert stealing her throne, so at that point assassination might well look like the only remaining option. I was more wondering about discussions that might have taken place during the rebellion. I certainly have the instinct that Robert was always in favour of killing them all, but:

(a) Why? Surely Ned had more reason than Robert to hate the Targaryens on principle; what happened to Robert to make him hate them so viscerally as to actively want to kill children?
(b) When did it first come up? At what point during the Rebellion did the mood swing from "we must remove Aerys" to "we must destroy the dragons"? After Rhaegar's death? Viserys was seven, there have been younger child-kings.

I just find it interesting that there must have been long, bitter and multi-sided arguments over all of this, but I don't recall seeing much of any of that.

edited 10th Dec '17 11:16:29 PM by johnnye

Well, assuming Rhaegar didn't rape Lyanna, only Ned would know that he didn't, and that takes a lot of the personal hatred out of it, but ignoring that, Ned doesn't want Robert to engage in a policy of killing Targ heirs because Jon is one.

As to why Robert hates them, well, his best friend's dad and older brother got toasted by one and the woman he loved ^note  (there is reason to believe that he might have fallen out of love had he married her but since he didn't Lyanna basically became Robert's The Lost Lenore) was kidnapped and raped by another who then fought Robert and nearly killed him personally. Robert was also more emotional yet less compassionate than Ned, so he transferred that hate to the entire family.

edited 11th Dec '17 1:45:46 AM by Sigilbreaker26

As far he care, Rhaegar rape his love over and over again and his demented father allow it, the targs have to die.

And yep, the problem with tkaing the targs is it leave the idea that every can be king by force of arms, it was bound to happen not matter what, in this way renly seen aware too while Stannis use legality in a time were none matters.

I recently researching things from Tad Willians books that Martin said being the greatest influence on a Song of Ice and fire and :

Caution,Huge Spoilers from Memory,Sorrow and Thorn series :

Is revelated on the last book that : the main prophecy was made for the villain,after discover that I totally on with Azhor Ahai being a villain,maybe a Joffrey,Ramsay,Euron type,as the prophecy was made on Ashai,that is know for Children Sacrifice and pact with Evil Gods,and remember that some visions have some sort of personal imput,like Melissandre said that someone's see what wants on the flames .

edited 16th Dec '17 6:31:13 PM by LoutishHelminthic

Hot take:

edited 22nd Dec '17 10:16:48 PM by MadSkillz

Saw that passage and figured you were going for the ol' "Ser Pounce is Azor Ahai"...

That isn't a theory. That's just canon.

This emplies that Martin plans to kill every Stark but Jon ?

I've just realized that Roose Bolton literally can't be a good father because of how much of a monster Ramsay is and always has been. If he helps him succeed he's being a bad father for letting someone so monstrous continue. If he tries to get him punished for his horrible evil he's a bad father because Ramsay would be executed

I don't see Jon living if he is the only Stark left. My money is on Sansa and Arya.

Also Roose being a good father would be executing Ramsay and having another kid. He has to be a good father and lord and head of house.

Well he could have raised Ramsey properly to begin with.