Nowhere. By and large this argument seems to have been engendered by the thought that there is no way that Rhaegar had willingly accepted to marry a brown disabled/chronically ill woman so he must have been forced to (which is where this came from). It also appears that there is a subset of fandom that is basing this on the fact that arranged marriages inherently undermines agency ergo every arranged marriage is forced. But I have no idea why they choose to apply this to Rhaegar only and act as if that was Elia’s fault and so she had to bear the consequences.
This is literally the dumbest thing I’ve read for weeks. I haven’t met a single person who loves Rhaegar and disrespects Elia at the same time. Everyone thinks Elia is a tragic figure. And how desperate of antis to pull the racist card while nobody in Rhaegar’s fandom even mentions Elia’s looks and origins ? I haven’t read a single post of Rhaegar’s fans that use this argument. Why do you need to lie to make your point ? It’s worthless if you’re lying, do you even get that ? 😀 Nobody blames Elia for the failure of their marriage. People notice the difference between an arranged marriage and falling in love. Who said the rule applied to Rhaegar and Elia only ? Catelyn Stark often thought of her Brandon and Lysa Tully never stopped loving Petyr. What about Cersei and her love for Rhaegar ?
I understand that you need to justify your hate but at least be honest about it. Don’t blame George Martin for making Rhaegar the hero and the readers because they’re capable of understanding what the books are about.
You never saw this? Well, we did. It’s all over in our anon boxes. Why anon boxes, you may ask? Why, because it gives people like you the chance to say we send these messages to ourselves. Because it’s so filthy that even most Rhaegar lovers will likely become disgusted, so people don’t dare write it on their own blogs. They did try the unworthy wife card once upon a time, it didn’t work this well, so they’re now going anonymous.
Plus, I don’t know if you have noticed this but you’re only commenting on @moonlitgleek ’s own perceptions of why Rhaegar lovers do what they do. You don’t comment on the fact that people do write Rhaegar was “forced” into the marriage all over the place and insinuate that this gave him the right to do what he did. Why insinuate? The answer is the same: they don’t dare write it openly because that’s going to make them look bad.
So, as a Rhaegar fan, why do you think people write Rhaegar was forced into the marriage? I’m not talking about those who differentiate between arranged and due to love. Why do you think people like to pretend Rhaegar was so very much against the match arranged as 99% of the matches in his culture and family were?
@love-dragoneyes The biggest irony here is that the part where you quoted me literally links to an ask that contains my so-called lies. You copy-pasted my reply with the link included. Did it maybe cross your mind to click on it to verify my words? No? Because then you’d have met someone who loved Rhaegar and disrespected Elia. Referring to her as “that sickly woman” isn’t exactly ambiguous.
As for me “pulling the racist card”, one of the most popular arguments from Rhaegar fans is that Elia was alright with Rhaegar’s actions regarding Lyanna because she is Dornish. You literally can not divorce racial elements from that discussion. It wouldn’t exist if Elia was not Dornish. Also, how exactly am I supposed to take it when someone tries to argue that Rhaegar finally had a family with Lyanna as if he didn’t share two children with Elia? I’m not reaching here to make this about race. It is about race. The entire narrative bias that puts the responsibility of Rhaegar’s actions on Elia is about race. Again, not an ambiguous matter.
By the way, the issue I’m arguing here isn’t about someone blaming Elia for the failure of their marriage. It is about acting like this so-called forced marriage gives Rhaegar the right to do what he did. It is about not applying the same logic to Elia as well as Rhaegar. If any arranged marriage is forced, that means that Elia was forced to marry Rhaegar too, except Rhaegar still had power. Elia didn’t.
You’ve denied the existence of certain arguments blindly and on no basis other than that you haven’t personally seen it then you’ve used that to call me names. You’ve conveniently chosen to completely overlook the actual subject of discussion in favor of making broad claims you have no way of corroborating. But somehow I’m the one making stuff up. Okay.
Now I’d really like to hear your answer to Ramzes’ question about why people are framing Rhaegar and Elia’s marriage as forced.
I definitely do not think Tywin’s hatred would have been as strong if Joanna died birthing an able-bodied child or that he’d be so convinced that the baby killed Joanna. Thinking about Tywin’s possible reaction here made me think
of Tywin’s mother and how her death was also connected to childbirth.
The parallel isn’t perfect since Lady Jeyne Marbrand didn’t die in
childbirth but instead within a moon’s turn of birthing Gerion, but the
association between her death and Gerion’s birth is still there so this might still be a
useful reference to have when trying to hypothesize what Tywin’s reaction
would be. Tywin’s relationship with Gerion was notoriously stormy but I
personally think this was more because of Gerion’s tendency to mock
everything when Tywin had such a complicated relationship with laughter. We were never given the impression that Tywin held Gerion to blame for his mother’s death though. It might be because Tywin wasn’t as involved in the aftermath of his mother’s
death since he was already serving as a page in
King’s Landing at the time or that his resentment at the time was wholly focused on Tytos and his actions in the aftermath of Lady Jeyne’s death. Which is why I think that for Tywin the negative association between a baby’s birth and his mother’s death would be far heavier in Tyrion’s case than in Gerion’s but definitely no way near what occurred in OTL.
Perhaps the biggest difference would result from how an able-bodied son wouldn’t incur a widespread ridicule like in canon or bring forth all of Tywin’s issues so strongly. There would still be abuse because Tywin abused all his children to varying extents, and the association between his youngest’s birth and his own beloved wife’s
death might be too strong for Tywin to ever feel for his second son the way he
felt for Jaime
so I can see Tywim still pressuring an able-bodied Tyrion and emotionally abusing him until he proved his worth. But that might relatively abate if his youngest grew up to be as martially minded as Jaime and thus fit the masculinity culture of Westeros and Tywin’s own standards of acceptability.
Genna Lannister remarked in canon that Tyrion was
the most like Tywin which is definitely prone to tickle Tywin’s fancy if Tyrion is able-bodied. That hypothetical second son would be incredibly smart, potentially martially able and probably as capable as canon Tyrion which lends itself to the image of a healthy spare and that neatly solves Tywin’s problems of lacking an acceptable heir following Jaime’s Kingsguard indoctrination (though I think he’d still prefer Jaime as his heir, he might not be as obsessed or bullheaded about it). So while I don’t think Tywin would ever be kind towards his youngest, he’d probably find in him a far acceptable son and heir than in canon where Tyrion’s disability heavily overshadowed any good quality in Tywin’s eyes, though Joanna’s death would probably always be in the way of full acceptance no matter what.
Nowhere. By and large this argument seems to have been engendered by the thought that there is no way that Rhaegar had willingly accepted to marry a brown disabled/chronically ill woman so he must have been forced to (which is where this came from). It also appears that there is a subset of fandom that is basing this on the fact that arranged marriages inherently undermines agency ergo every arranged marriage is forced. But I have no idea why they choose to apply this to Rhaegar only and act as if that was Elia’s fault and so she had to bear the consequences. And I’ve argued before that we have to distinguish between the regular Westerosi arranged marriage (like Ned and Cat) and instances where one of the parties -usually the woman- was actively and deliberately forced into the marriage (like Lysa and Jon Arryn). Otherwise we’d be calling 99% of marriages in Westeros forced which in turn normalizes the truly coerced ones.
On a related note, people who bring up the case of “Rhaegar was forced into marriage and thus had a right to get out of it” often operate on
the false equivalency that this is similar to instances where
women want to get out of their betrothals or marriages. It is not. The politics of arranged marriage and how it limits free agency is a whole different beast when it comes to women, since it treats their very bodies as a commodity to bargain over. Women are taught that giving access to their bodies is a duty and Westeros enforces a power dynamic that heavily favors men and grants them a sexual agency that the women lack by and large, that gives men power over their wives. That puts the power of choice in the hands of men. A man can be made to marry someone but he can not be made to consummate the marriage. If he chooses not to, his wife can not compel him to. The opposite simply isn’t true. Men still have power even in situations where they are subject to the political power of others. They have options. Women don’t.
A regular higborn maiden is still subject to her husband’s sexual
choices. He gets to control her fertility. He gets to have conventional
rights to her body and her uterus. He gets to decide if and when they
have sex. He gets to have extramarital affairs with no repercussions.
Women who rail against their marriages are literally fighting for their bodily autonomy. For the right to decide what happens to their bodies. For their actual wellbeing.
Rhaegar isn’t the one disadvantaged by the patriarchy and Westerosi mores. Elia is. Rhaegar was supposedly forced into marriage? He could have chosen not to consummate it or father two children back-to-back heedless of Elia’s health considerations. He could have chosen to have a discreet mistress so as not to incur a political crisis or humiliate Elia so publicly. He didn’t. He chose to have Elia birth his prophetic figures. He chose to use her kinsmen for support first against his father and then against the rebels. He used her body, her connections and her kinsmen for his own agenda then left her behind as he incited a war that put her in danger. Rhaegar wasn’t powerless in this situation. He had all the power. But he most certainly didn’t have the right.
Don’t you love it when you go into awkward duck mode on unsuspecting people whose only fault was answering the phone when you were not expecting them to?
Except that a very large part of Tywin’s hatred of Tyrion is that Joanna died giving birth to him, and that extended to Elia–if healthy Joanna died in childbirth, then Tywin postulated that sickly Elia would too (which he did in canon, he was waiting for her to die). Like, Tyrion has a whole complex about it. Tywin would still be ableist, but with Joanna surviving and her lobbying for the match (and the match being a good one politically), I think it would go through.
We seem to have different views on the extent of Tywin’s hatred of Tyrion which I think was informed by a mix of extreme prejudice, a violent reaction to Joanna’s death and the fact that Tyrion’s birth brought many of the issues Tywin had wrt his father to the surface. Joanna’s death undoubtedly had a huge influence but focusing primarily on that in explaining Tywin’s reaction strips it of context. The text has repeatedly made a point of how easy it is to scapegoat Tyrion specifically because of his disability. He has been accused/suspected of being a murderer on three different occasions for no reason but being a dwarf. The tragedy of Joanna’s death was tied to Tyrion’s so-called monstrosity on several occasions
in a way that makes it clear that his disability is a large part of why he was blamed for it. I don’t think Tywin would have reacted as violently if the child Joanna died birthing was able-bodied. But she died birthing “a monster” so it has to be his fault. Just like he has to be the Valonqar because he is a monster. Just like he has to be Joffrey’s killer because he is a monster. It’s a foregone conclusion in their minds.
Then there is Tywin’s issue with how Tyrion does not fit the superior image Tywin worked so hard to project to the rest of Westeros. Tywin was obsessed with Lannister image and Lannister supremacy and, to his mind, Tyrion’s very existence visibly undermined that. Tyrion recalled all the issues Tywin had with his father through no fault of his own.
Think of how Tyrion was said to have been sent to punish Tywin for his arrogance, or how he was called
Lord Tywin’s Doom and Lord Tywin’s Bane across Westeros. Tyrion’s birth made Tywin a mockery across all of Westeros and publicly emasculated him which is way too reminiscent of Tytos and his own very public feebleness. Tywin’s steadfast belief that Tyrion couldn’t be his is a direct reaction to that. No, such a monstrous deformed child couldn’t have come from his seed. That suggests a weakness in him and Lord Tywin is not weak, dammit. Nope. Lannisters are perfect. Lannisters are superior. Lannisters don’t bring public ridicule to the family name like that feeble Tytos.
Those issues might have been exacerbated by Joanna’s death, but they remain all the same in the case of her survival. Tywin’s main issue with Tyrion was his dwarfism and that was a main reason for why he blamed Tyrion for Joanna’s death in the first place. Tyrion’s so-called monstrosity came from his dwarfism before it came from Joanna’s death. He’d have remained an ill-begotten twisted monster in Tywin’s eyes even if Joanna had lived. That reaction to Tyrion’s disability and that resentment of how it
compromises
Lannister image, Tywin’s image, would still be there no matter what.
Which brings me to Elia. First of all, I find it hard to attribute the act of equating Elia and Tyrion to Joanna’s death rather than their disability. In an instance where it’s so clear that it’s ableism that drove Tywin’s reaction, I don’t see how Joanna’s survival would temper that or prevent that automatic association between the two in Tywin’s head. Second, I really don’t think Tywin’s issue was “if healthy Joanna died then sickly Elia would” because Tywin didn’t give a fig about Elia and Jaime could always remarry if she died. Tywin’s concern was Jaime’s line so if the common thought was that a healthy mother bears healthy children but healthy Joanna birthed a feeble deformed dwarf that was thought likely to die, how would sickly Elia fare?
Tywin had a front row seat to Rhaella’s string of miscarriages and weak
children who died in their cradles and now his own healthy wife
delivered “a malformed” child that was believed likely to die soon.
I think that his thought process was that Elia’s health raises the chances of her having ill children which would “compromise” Jaime’s line and Tywin’s own legacy by extension.
Third, I have my doubts that Tywin would see the match as a good one politically.
The Martells have a ton of prestige and it’d certainly look great if
Tywin’s heir married a born princess just as his daughter married the
crown prince,
but not only was Tywin really racist, but I think that Dorne’s lesser economic and military power compared to the other kingdoms and the fact that Elia was some 9 years older than Jaime and chronically ill – which in Westerosi terms detracts from her worth as a marriage pawn since that would be seen as a detriment to producing healthy children – are things that would bring down the match in Tywin’s eyes.
“It was the cold,” Gared said with iron certainty. “I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold.”
– Prologue, AGoT
The prologue’s there to frame the conflict of the entire series, and it’s outright stated that the cold is the enemy. (And at the end of the book, Dany proclaims that the fire is hers. Bookends.) The ultimate antagonist in this series is an inhuman, anti-human force against which all humanity should unite.
The idea that people should work together to face threats greater than themselves recurs across the series. Whether it’s Ned telling Arya that she and Sansa will need each other, Catelyn imploring the Baratheon brothers to work together, or Jon and Stannis making common cause at the Wall itself, the idea’s there. The White Walkers are a problem bigger than anyone, and people should work together. The idea that at the business end of the series one of the protagonists will callously manipulate another protagonist into helping sort out the final showdown is just bizarre to me. Especially when the other option is one protagonist convincing another protagonist to lend a hand and a few dragons, nothing but good faith between them. Even the show has started to bear in this direction from time to time.
I think this theory is also pretty OOC for even the show versions of Jon and Dany. The show’s got its issues with showing us one thing and telling us another, but that theory pretty well denies that Dany could ever want to save the world because the world’s worth saving, and ignores Jon’s distress over deceiving Ygritte.
Given the options between “offscreen, Jon decided to give up on a good faith alliance with Daenerys and instead seduce her into offering her assistance,” and “the Jon/Dany romance writing did not come off altogether as convincing as intended,” I know which I find more plausible.
Oh it goes against everything in the book. It flat-out
ignores how Dany’s actions in Beyond the Wall echo
Stannis when he prioritized the Wall’s needs and came to their aid. That
little plot that branded Stannis as the king who still cared and that
marked his change from a king who demanded fealty to one who earned it and that ended up getting him more men after he lost his main body of support in the Blackwater.
The parallel is way too obvious to Dany. The show wasn’t at all ambiguous when they had Tyrion plead with Dany
not to go because of the risk to the political war nor was it ambiguous
when they had Dany choose to come to Jon’s aid even though she didn’t
even believe in the Others. But some people insist on being stuck in the first couple of episode when Dany was demanding fealty or bargaining for it and completely ignore the part where she pledged protection and manpower with no strings attached. It’s almost as if she cares about people or something.
Also, also, haven’t we thoroughly established how crippling bad faith negotiation is to the peace process? Or that it only lends itself to immediate but ultimately hollow victories that get torn down so easily? The Lannisters have been doing nothing but negotiating in bad faith throughout the War of the Five Kings, how is that working for them? Just a question…. what the hell happens when Dany discovers Jon has been manipulating her? Has raped her by deception?
What makes this theory refuses to compute even more is that it’s even worse than suggesting that
one of the protagonists will callously manipulate another protagonist into helping sort out the final showdown (which is I agree is utterly bizare). It’s that it is built on the idea that Jon would do that after Dany had already pledged to fight the Others. He didn’t need to seduce her and sleep with her to get her assistance. Meanwhile Jon goes on to give an entire sermon about good faith while negotiating with Cersei fully knowing that her agreement to the truce hinges on his word but refusing to lie to get her cooperation. So Jon was simultaneously a callous pragmatist that had no problem manipulating Dany into a sexual relationship even after he got what he wanted from her, but also a staunch proponent of good faith negotiation that he risked foiling the truce they needed so Dany could give her full attention to the fight north.
So which one is he? Because Jon can’t be both at the same time.
Sam speaks 