How much power do legal wills have? Cersei ripped up Robert’s but Daeron honored his father’s commitments to the bastards. Rohanne would have lost her inheritance b/c of her father’s.

I’m a bit out of my depth here because my knowledge of legal matters are fairly limited and I don’t have enough historical knowledge to pull from. My only source of info would be the text and the examples we have of legal wills so if you want a more comprehensive answere, you might be better served checking with someone like @racefortheironthrone for that.

As far as the text goes, we have a few examples of wills, most of which are related to matters of inheritance which makes things murkier, but they are still informative. The most famous – and infamous – will in Westerosi historiography is the one left by Aegon IV Targaryen in which he legitimized all his natural children on his deathbed. While Daeron II might not have appreciated his father’s last spiteful act and the dangers it brought, he was in no position to rescind a royal edict because to do so would be tantamount to denying that his father had the royal authority to legitimize bastards. Daeron couldn’t very well claim that he inherited his royal authority from his father (which he was very conscious to emphasize, as evidenced by him crowning himself with his father’s crown, to counter the doubts cast upon his own legitimacy by Aegon) and simultaneously try to argue that his father didn’t posses the full authority of a king. And since legitimizations can not be rescinded in general, there was nothing Daeron could do. Note that the continuance of incomes bestowed on Aegon’s natural children through Daeron’s reign was not a part of the will. Daeron II simply chose to allow them to continue, honored the betrothal Aegon made for Daemon and additionally granted him a tract of land to build a castle on, probably in the hopes that the crown’s generosity towards his newly legitimized siblings, especially Daemon who was primed for an attempted usurpation by the machinations of Aegon IV, would curtail any thoughts of rebellions.

Technically the same circumstances should have applied to Robert’s will naming Ned regent to his heir. That was a royal edict presented by the Hand of the King who, by law,
speaks for the king in his absence. In normal
circumstances, that will should have installed Ned as regent, as the king
has the authority to choose the regent and Robert chose Ned. Cersei
planned a coup though. With the exception of Barristan Selmy (who
absolutely should have fought for Ned in that throne room but, well,
Selmy tends to ascribe to a very narrow view of a Kingsguard’s duty and has shown an inability to take a stand in morally complicated situations),
and Ned and his men who were promptly arrested and slaughtered
respectively, everyone present was either Cersei’s man, in her pocket,
or in Littlefinger’s. There was no one left to enforce Robert’s will
after the showdown in the throne room and no one to challenge Cersei after she destroyed the physical will and accused Ned of treason.

Also a royal edict is Robb Stark’s will in which he legitimized Jon Snow as Jon Stark and names him his heir, but this one has its own complications.
Between the fact that we don’t know where the written will is and that
all the witnesses are in no position to do anything with the
information; that Stannis Barartheon is in the North and that he
definitely does not recognize Robb’s authority as king to accept his
legitimization of Jon as a Stark and certainly not as the next King in the
North; that Jon is dead and about to be resurrected which is bound to
change a lot of things; that there are schemes aimed to bring Sansa and
Rickon back to the North with the explicit goal to install each as the ruler of
Winterfell by their own factions which will certainly conflict with the
edicts in the will; that, oh yeah, Jon is not biologically Ned’s son
which is known by Howland Reed (currently the host of Galbart Glover and Maege Mormont, two of the
witnesses of Robb’s will), almost certainly known by Benjen Stark and is bound to be
discovered by Bran Stark, I think it’s unlikely that it will be allowed to stand.

That leaves the two non-royal wills. The first one is the will left by Wyman Webber dictating that his daughter Rohanne had to marry within two year of his death or Coldmoat would go to her cousin. In normal circumstances Lady Rohanne might have had grounds to protest the unnecessary stipulation and argue that this will undercuts normal Andal-First Men succession laws but the cousin that was designated as heir in case she failed to meet her father’s conditions was married to her overlord’s sister so Lord Rowan was more prone to enforce Wyman’s will than to set it aside. Too, Ser Lucas Inchfield, her castellan and the man Lord Webber installed to “scare off unworthy suitors”, looked to use the will to corner her into marrying him so she wouldn’t lose her inheritance. It was pretty hard for Rohanne to challenge her father’s will without support from any side.

Lastly, there is the document Ramsay Snow forced Donella Hornwood to sign naming him heir to the Hornwood. Everything about this was made under duress and so should have easily been set aside but Ser Rodrik Cassel certainly seemed to give it weight when discussing the matter with Maester Luwin, despite the maester arguing that vows made at sword point do not count. But Cassel pointed out that Roose Bolton might not agree and try to press the claim. And while Robb probably wouldn’t have allowed the Boltons to appropriate the Hornwood if he’d survived, Roose’s treachery and alliance with the Lannisters meant that Wyman Manderly did have to concede the Hornwood lands that he seized after Lady Donella’s death to the Boltons on grounds of her marriage to Ramsay and her will.

It’s also worth mentioning that GRRM identified “will of the deceased” as one of the things that makes inheritance laws vague and contradictory, which suggests that this is one of the things that gives one a claim in succession. So I don’t think there is a clear cut answer, not in practice at least. It seems that, like inheritance laws, the acceptance of a will is as dependent on politics and force of arms as it is on legality. In a strictly legal sense, the king’s last will and testament should be binding as a royal decree otherwise his heir risks his own authority. But we’ve seen royal wills destroyed or ignored for the lack of an authority to enforce it. Vows made under duress shouldn’t count, but politics could force the recognition of a claim made through those vows. I think it’s mostly a case by case thing where the presence of an authority to either enforce or override a will, the political and/or military weight of the parties involved and the recognition of the authority of the testator and their right to make such a directive all play a part in whether a will is followed or not. At least that’s as far I can tell.

Re: Silverwing and the Wall.

I’ve read some of the theories about why Silverwing wouldn’t go north of the Wall no matter how Alysanna tried

and I have to say I’m fairly skeptical about them. There’s
the theory that Silverwing was reacting to an ice dragon or the Great
Other or something to that effect but if that’s truly what made her
refuse to leave the safety of the Wall, it doesn’t really bode well for
all the speculation that Dany and co will fly their dragons north,
perhaps even to the Land of Always Winter. It needlessly overcomplicates the upcoming narrative of the Second War for the Dawn to have the dragons refuse to go north of the Wall at all. Silverwing didn’t just resist flying north, she flat-out wouldn’t. How would that work with the current narrative? How would that work if we see ice dragons going south after the Wall falls? You can’t win a war when your main weapons refuse to go near the enemy.

Another theory that I find a bit more likely was
that it’s possible that the Wall interferes with the link between
dragon and their rider in the same way it interferes with the link
between a warg and their animal and makes it that a warg can not feel their animal if
they were on different sides of the Wall. My problem with this though is that Silverwing and
Alysanne were not on different sides of the Wall for that interference
to happen, and if we’re basing this conclusion on the fact that Jon
couldn’t feel Ghost when they were on different sides of the Wall, it’s
worth mentioning that neither Ghost nor Summer resisted or shown similar
reluctance as Silverwing to going beyond the Wall. Perhaps dragons are
more sensitive to whatever magic causes that interference, but I’m
leaning towards there being another reason.

My own theory revolves around the nature of the magic in the Wall being
repellent to certain species, one that are explicitly tied to ice and fire. The Others
are “the Sidhe made of ice” while the dragons are “fire made flesh” so if there are spells woven into the Wall
that prevent the Others from crossing to the other side, it could be that the same magic also keeps the dragons on their side of the Wall. For exactly what purpose, I’m not sure. It certainly creates some kind of balance and raises the stakes since the three heads of the dragons wouldn’t be able to simply do a preemptive strike and hit at the Others while the rest of humanity sits safely behind the Wall. Humanity is gonna have mystical fire-breathing dragons on their side but if they can’t be used unless the Wall falls, that’s a completely different ballgame. Perhaps the Wall needs to fall to allow for ice and fire to actually clash.

thomas4th:

prismatic-bell:

thedreamingbutterfly:

You hear all these “you’re not a real fan unless” and it lists a hundred things, but I met a dude today who saw my Deadpool pin and asked what my favorite story arc was, and I explained that while I loved Deadpool, I was new to Marvel (I only really got into it a year and a half ago) and hadn’t been able to find a lot of the comics. Instead of making a face or a derogatory comment, he just offered to send me all the stuff he had. That is a true fan.

I told the guy at the comic shop when I went in for Black Widow that I’d seen a few Harley Quinn panels on Tumblr and thought it looked badass but didn’t know where to start because my entire involvement in DC fandom was watching the Batman cartoon as a kid. This guy sitting at one of the tables playing Yu-Gi-Oh, wearing a comic shirt and carrying a definitely-hardcore-fan amount of swag, spins around and goes “dude! You’ve never read DC? Check out the back issues wall. They’ve got all kinds of Harley Quinn.” He then proceeded to explain how “New 52″ was a spinoff, and had some split opinions in the fandom, but either continuity is good as long as you pick one and stay with it so you don’t get mixed on what’s going on. 

True fans love to see other people loving the stuff they love.

See how easy it is to be “that cool person who helped me get into X” instead of “that asshole who made me feel bad for not knowing everything about X”?

IT’S NOT EVEN DIFFICULT TO NOT BE A SHITLORD. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. And you never had one.

I find it fascinating that Queen Alysanne tried to convince Alaric Stark of letting her arrange betrothals for his sons. On one hand, a Targrayen queen suggesting she arranges a betrothal for a Stark could be seen like such a bad idea considering the last time that happened, the poor Stark daughter ended up taking a dive out of the moon door along with her husband and children so the Starks have a BAD history with that. On the other hand, she smartly suggested to match his sons and made no mention of his daughter despite later growing close to her, carefully balancing her political goals with cognizance of recent tragic history. It was still daring to talk to a notoriously prickly man whose reception of her had been notably cold about betrothals to the south when that ended so devastatingly for who was probably his aunt.

joannalannister:

Fire and Blood Preview

Lord Alaric had lost his wife three years earlier. When the queen expressed regret that she had never had the pleasure of meeting Lady Stark, the northman said, “She was a Mormont of Bear Isle, and no lady by your lights, but she took an axe to a pack of wolves when she was twelve, killed two of them, and sewed a cloak from their skins. She gave me two strong sons as well, and a daughter as sweet to look upon as any of your southron ladies.”

yooooooo paging @lyannas 

Do the southern ambitions happen if Aerys is less Aerion Brightflame and more Baelor the Blessed or Rhaegal?

Erm, it isn’t like Baelor the Blessed or Rhaegal didn’t also come with their own set of problems that could have also spurred the coalition to form. In fact, it’s speculated that the seeds of what we call the Southron Ambitions coalition could be found in the reign of Aerys I and Aegon V, neither of whom were particularly violent or mentally unstable. So madness isn’t necessarily the only motivation for the alliance to happen.

That said, it is a bit unclear if the SA would have formed if Aerys was not mad. We still lack a great deal of context about the
Southron Ambitions coalition so it’s difficult to say with any degree of
certainty, though I’ve previously went with the assumption that it would still
happen even without Aerys growing mad in some au scenarios. But we really don’t know if the bloc formed
specifically in response to Aerys or if the main architectures of it
always had the plan to form an alliance. On one hand, there is plenty of reasons to find in Targaryen history pre-Aerys that could have easily inspired the bloc to form, some pretty recent like Aegon V’s attempt to curtail the traditional liberties enjoyed by the nobility in favor of the smallfolk, and “the madness” at Summerhall that left Westeros teetering on the edge of instability with royal succession nearing criticality. Too, the crown had not too long ago compromised the feudal contract in Aerys I’s reign and abandoned its vassals, leaving the Starks and the Lannisters to fend for themselves against Dagon Greyjoy’s attacks, all while Bloodraven ran an absolute monarchy and created problems that only helped assist the Blackfyre threat to continue as nobles dissatisfied with royal inaction and abandon of its feudal obligation and the Hand’s police state sought an alternative. So it’s not a surprise that the War of the Ninepenny Kings – which framed the power shift from the Iron Throne (which was represented in the field by only young prince Aerys) to the nobility whose levies rebelled the Band of Nine – engendered a cross-kingdom alliance that is speculated to have had the goal of protecting the lords against similar encroachments on their rights or abandonment from the crown.

On the other hand, while the lords of the SA coalition have met during the War of the Ninepenny Kings which marked several friendships being forged between people from all over the realm as per GRRM, the first visible sign of the forming of the coalition happened around 271 when Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon started their fostering at the Eyrie which was later supported by Brandon’s betrothal to Catelyn in 276. Looking at the timeline, it is possible that the senior statesmen of the coalition had noticed a certain volatility in Aerys that spurred them to close ranks. Rickard Stark first visited King’s Landing in 264 where Aerys came up with one of his fanciful plans to build a new Wall and claim the lands between the two Walls. While not necessarily a sign of madness, Aerys might have seemed prone to flights of fancy which have historically proven to be disastrous. More concerning, perhaps, was his accusation of Rhaella of infidelity and confinement of her to Maegor’s Holdfast in 270 which would certainly be enough to trouble the lords of the SA, not only because of the echoes of Aegon the Unworthy’s own accusation of Naerys which ultimately led to a lot of grief for Westeros, but because it might have cast doubt on his mental instability if he randomly decided that his wife’s fertility troubles were totally a result of her unfaithfulness. In 274, Aerys delivered a very convincing demonstration of his growing paranoia when he first beheaded Prince Jaehaerys’ wetnurse when the baby prince died then had his mistress and her family tortured to death for the same crime, followed by publicly burning Viserys’ baby gifts in 276 because he feared they might be cursed. So it certainly could be argued that Aerys’ growing madness did spark the formation of the SA or at least greatly influenced it. The political landscape was turbulent enough for them to seek safety measures against the crown. They certainly weren’t the only cross-kingdom alliance in the works, as shown by the agreement between the Princess of Dorne and Joanna Lannister to betroth their children.

However, it could be argued that this alliance was also affected by Aerys and Rhaella’s childbearing trouble and how that left Targaryen succession – and by association Westeros – in an uncertain position. By 271, the year of Ned’s fostering, it had been 12 years since Rhaegar’s birth, so Westeros was one bookish unmartial 12-year-old boy away from a succession crisis. The introduction of Robert Baratheon into the bloc –
when Steffon Baratheon’s involvement in the SA scheming remains unclear,since he wasn’t anti-Aerys at least publicly, though who knows about
privately – could have been a guarantee against a possible succession crisis and an attempt from the senior statesmen to induce the next-in-line to their teachings. That is a motive that is not dependent on Aerys’ mental health and that would probably remain true even if Aerys was not mad.

Bottom line is, the SA players did have sufficient motivation in Aerys’ increasingly erratic behavior to form their alliance which is probably also what spurred the thwarted Lannister-Martell alliance. But the bloc might have still formed regardless of Aerys’ personality, whether due to the uncertainty in royal succession which typically engenders political instability or due to the repeated encroachments on lordly privileges by previous Targaryen monarchs that the nobles wanted a guarantee against. We simply don’t have enough information to be sure.

Hi Turtle! Firstly: I really like how you phrase your arguments! Very neat. Secondly: This is not really about the reproductive duty discussion, but about how Cercei does resort to gain power through men – how will she deal with aging and being less in a position to manipulate men through sex? Eventually it will become hard to seduce those who only want her for her looks, even if she were to age beautifully (which her alcoholism might prevent). I cannot really see her cope well with that…

turtle-paced:

Thanks very much!

The answer is that she’s going to cope poorly, something that’s been anticipated by people in-universe and foreshadowed.

“And I was a piece?” She dreaded the answer.

“Yes, but don’t let that trouble you. You’re still half a child. Every man’s a piece to start with, and every maid as well. Even some who think they are players.” [Littlefinger] ate another seed. “Cersei, for one. She thinks herself sly, but in truth she is utterly predictable. Her strength rests on her beauty, birth, and riches. Only the first of those is truly her own, and it will soon desert her. I pity her then. She wants power, but has no notion what to do with it when she gets it.”

– Sansa VI, ASoS

Even before then, GRRM’s depicted the limitation of Cersei’s sexual manipulation of men.

“Must!” She put her hand on his good leg, just above the knee. “A true man does what he will, not what he must.” Her fingers brushed lightly against his thigh, the gentlest of promises. “The realm needs a strong Hand. Joff will not come of age for years. No one wants war again, least of all me.” Her hand touched his face, his hair. “If friends can turn to enemies, enemies can become friends. Your wife is a thousand leagues away, and my brother has fled. Be kind to me, Ned. I swear to you, you shall never regret it.”

“Did you make the same offer to Jon Arryn?”

She slapped him.

– Eddard XII, AGoT

The queen sipped at her wine. “Were it anyone else outside the gates, I might hope to beguile him. But this is Stannis Baratheon. I’d have a better chance of seducing his horse.” She noticed the look on Sansa’s face, and laughed. “Have I shocked you, my lady?” She leaned close. “You little fool. Tears are not a woman’s only weapon. You’ve got another one between your legs, and you’d best learn to use it. You’ll find men use their swords freely enough. Both kinds of swords.”

– Sansa VI, ACoK

In these cases, we see that when Cersei gets flat rejected, or faces the prospect of flat rejection…she’s got no other way of negotiating. Even as she tells Sansa that sexual manipulation is definitely the best way to deal with men, she has to admit that she’s got zero chance using that tactic on Stannis.

Lest we think she’s just eeeeeeevil and promiscuous (and therefore even more evil), AFFC shows us how this tactic hurts Cersei, too.

She almost slapped his face. Almost. But she had gone too far, and too much was at stake. All I do, I do for Tommen. She turned her head and caught Ser Osney’s hand with her own, kissing his fingers. They were rough and hard, callused from the sword. Robert had hands like that, she thought.

Cersei wrapped her arms about his neck. “I would not want it said I made a liar of you,” she whispered in a husky voice. “Give me an hour, and meet me in my bedchamber.”

“We waited long enough.” He thrust his fingers inside the bodice of her gown and yanked, and the silk parted with a ripping sound so loud that Cersei was afraid that half of the Red Keep must have heard it. “Take off the rest before I tear that too,” he said. “You can keep the crown on. I like you in the crown.”

– Cersei IX, AFFC

Not subtle – her crown, rather than a symbol of her own power, becomes the means of gratifying her partner at her own expense. She has sex she doesn’t want, because she feels she must, and loses her own agency.

Unlike Margaery, unlike Olenna, unlike Sansa, unlike Catelyn, unlike Dany, Cersei’s got a limited skillset in interpersonal negotiation. As she loses effectiveness in sexually manipulating others, so she loses political effectiveness and power. By ADWD she’s running out of options, and her fallback tactic is violence. It doesn’t bode well.