Okay Tumblr, why does my dash end on page three? I guarantee that people have posted things beyond 3 hours ago but you’re not showing me a next button or letting me get past a specific point no matter what I try.

I know these questions are intertwined, but which one was the worst contribution to King Aerys I’s low popularity: the fact that King Aerys is an academic in contrast to the warrior king’s symbology or Lord BloodRaven’s choice of Hand and his Informant policy and watchmen?

warsofasoiaf:

I think the active failure to fulfill the duties of a king and the tyrannical abuses of power at the hands of Bloodraven were what killed King Aerys’s popularity. While his bookish reputation certainly didn’t endear him to the martial aristocracy, and plagues like the Great Spring Sickness can often be seen to be the wrath of the gods both in Westeros and in our own medieval past from Europe to China, Ser Kyle the Cat castigates the Targaryen kings in The Mystery Knight:

“At least [Houses Lannister and Stark] fight. What do the Targaryens do? King Aerys hides
amongst his books, Prince Rhaegel prances naked through the Red Keep’s
halls, and Prince Maekar broods at Summerhall.”

Ser Kyle is not holding Dagon’s rebellion against the Targaryens, he is holding their deliberate lack of action as their chief failure. Rebellions happen, but the Targaryens aren’t holding up their end of the feudal bargain. Bloodraven takes their taxes and provides no protection, and this infuriates the vassals who feel their oaths have been cheated. Similarly, the vassals dislike Bloodraven’s police state because it goes against their traditional rights, as Kyle the Cat explains again:

In King Daeron’s day, a man did not have to fear to speak his mind 

For Bloodraven to state that anyone expressing dissatisfaction with the crown’s failure to provide their feudal protective duties to be treason is to say that the Crown is beyond the suspicion or criticism of lowly vassals, and that they are not accountable for their own failures. At the same time, Bloodraven forbade peasants their legal right to move off their land during the long drought, stating that attempting to seek relief from the natural disaster was tantamount to treason, ultimately resulting in people, through no fault of their own, faced with the choice of staying on their parched lands to starve or moving to find relief and having a death sentence over their heads if they’re caught. That’s not going to endear anyone to Bloodraven.

Where is our Young Prince now? Where is his
brother, sweet Matarys? Where has Good King Daeron gone, and fearless
Baelor Breakspear? 

This line says it all. You can still have been a loyalist to Good King Daeron and his brave son Baelor Breakspear, the good of the realm, but now, when the king fails you, the traitor says that you are under no obligation to reward deliberate failure with loyalty. Thus, King Aerys’s unsuccessful domestic politics turned even Red loyalists from Redgrass Field either ambivalent, or into the waiting arms of the Blacks, hence why Haegon Blackfyre had so much success with the Third Blackfyre Rebellion, as he had a country steeped in Bloodraven’s neglect to support him in his quest for the Iron Throne.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

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@theredandwhitequeen

replied to your post

“I keep writing and deleting incoherent ragey posts about Elia, and how…”

Elia and her daughter deserved better in the books. The son survived and still deserved better.

Actually, I do not believe that Aegon is Elia’s Aegon I believe he is a female-line Blackfyre being passed as a Targaryen, being taught that he is a Targaryen. Also, I don’t have much gripe with how he is written. It pains me that he is so obviously doomed and is being used by every other character in the story, but  that’s not a complaint about the quality of writing or how he is depicted in the story, whereas with Elia, it very much is. Elia exists as a plot device with no personality and no presence in the story. She is a couple of throw-away line from Oberyn and Barristan, a vessel for her children, and a motivation for Oberyn and Doran, but who is Elia? We have no idea, but we know perfectly well how she died, because that is what the story is giving precedence to, while simultaneously not even making her death about her. Elia is a footnote even in her own demise.

I keep writing and deleting incoherent ragey posts about Elia, and how the show did not even bother to say her name during that scene, and just…… ughhhh

Look, Elia Martell is treated abominably in the books. She is an after-thought to pretty much everyone except her two brothers, she is a victim of Rhaegar’s search for the third head, Robert’s vengeful desire and Tywin’s typical misogynistic violence, she is sacrificed to advance the plots of male characters. I did not think it was possible to make this worse, but the show apparently took this as a challenge. And for what purpose? Giving us a contrived plot about Jon not being a bastard? Is that in any way significant to the plot, besides the implication that of course the savior has to be legitimate, or to sell a cheap romantic plot between Rhaegar and Lyanna?

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