moonlitgleek:

inkykate reblogged this post and said:

I hate that I’m a Rhaegar apologist, but, since this laid it all out there, I can’t help adding my two cents.

I don’t think Rhaegar’s decision to “run away” with Lyanna was him
abandoning the political narrative; I think it was the culmination of
it.

As the adult Crown Prince, Rhaegar had a significant amount of
influence, but his power would always be trumped by his father’s. He did
not get to chose who he married. Aerys did. And Aerys chose frustrating
Tywin’s ambitions over making a good match for his only adult child.
(And remember Viserys was only two or three when Rhaegar married; there
was probably little hope that he would make it into adulthood.)

For all her personal virtues, Elia Martell was not a good match.
Dorne is culturally and geographically isolated from the rest of
Westeros. Her brothers did not make matches that strengthened their
families ties in a substantial way to any of the other great houses.
Doran married a woman from Essos. Oberyn already had three (bastard)
daughters by the time Rhaegar and Elia were betrothed, making it highly
unlikely that as a second son with his reputation he would ever make a
good match. And, as Aerys would demonstrate in his distaste for his
first grandchild’s appearance, there is definitely some ethnic prejudice
towards the Dornish in Westeros.

Rhaegar marrying Elia gained the crown a firm alliance with only one of the seven kingdoms.

Now the hold of the Targaryen dynasty has been failing since the last
dragon died. To start, there were very few Targaryens left. Aerys in
his madness was fermenting the discord that already existed in the
realm. And men always want more power. After all, if the Targaryens were
now just men, then only the loyalties of other houses of the realm
could keep another Great House from taking the throne. And I think it’s
highly likely that Rhaegar realized he was standing on a political land
mine.

Even if the meeting at Harrenhal had been able to proceed as
planned, Rhaegar would have had to believe completely in the loyalty of
those men to betray his father – and not to use the chaos to usurp his
own claim. And, since Aerys was alerted to the possibility of a revolt,
then it’s unlikely he would have had any of that confidence to proceed
when the meetings fell apart. Worse for Rhaegar still – the tourney at
Harrenhal likely put into even sharper focus how mad his father was
perceived to be, how mad his father was, and how fractured the realm he
hoped to rule was.

I don’t think Rhaegar would have left the tourney feeling as though
not doing something was an option, but I think he would have realized
that the chance of the realm not falling into war were slim. Then Aegon
is born and Elia can no longer bear children.

This changes his perspective. Beyond “the dragon must have three
heads,” there was no guarantee that Aegon would survive infancy, or that
an accident wouldn’t take either of his children. Where his own mother
had miscarried and lost babes again and again, there was always the
possibility that he would one day have a living sibling. Worse, once
Aerys learned of her barrenness, Elia’s position at court could become
uncertain – while she had been used to insult Tywin, Aerys certainly had
no affection for Elia after. It would not be outside the realm of
possibility that Aerys would insist that Rhaegar take another wife or a
mistress to produce more potential heirs. And, if Aerys knew, he would
thus be involved in the process – and there would be no guarantee that
the women he would put forth wouldn’t seek to advance their own standing
and their own children by conspiring against Elia. (There’s also the
chance Aerys might make that leap to mistress or second wife himself.)

So: 1) Alliances for a common cause (usurping a mad King) are off the
table. 2) The crown needed allies to hold the realm together. 3) Elia’s
barrenness would eventually be known. 4) Viserys and Rhaegar’s children
are too young for marriage alliances to be effective. And thus, 5) if
Rhaegar would need to make another marriage alliance, he would need to
chose for himself.

And Lyanna’s the best choice for a second wife. Their connection at
Harrenhal aside, the Stark’s are an old house and wardens of the
largest territory in Westeros. Geographically, this would put allies for
House Targaryen on each end of the kingdom. Better still, Lyanna has
three brothers – one who is engaged to the eldest daughter of House
Tully and the other who fostered with Lord Baratheon at the Vale with
House Arryn. Essentially, the same alliances that ended Targaryen rule
could have been used to hold it together. And what Rhaegar would have
known of Lyanna’s character, if he did come to know her as the Knight of
the Laughing Tree, would have reassured him that she wouldn’t be likely
to conspire against Elia and her children.

It’s worth noting that Lyanna’s ‘abduction’ did not lead to any
Houses revolting. Instead it was the deaths of Brandon Stark, who was on
the way to his wedding to Catelyn Tully when he veered off to King’s
Landing to call Rhaegar out, and Rickard Stark, who either remained at
Winterfell or rode on to Riverrun following Lyanna’s abduction, that
preceded the rebellion. And it was King Aerys calling for Ned’s (who had
remained in the Vale) and Robert’s heads that led to Jon Arryn
condoning the calling of banners. In short, it was when Aerys unjustly
calling for an end of one of the great houses that caused the war.

Now, if this was the path that Rhaegar took, he misjudged three
things: 1) Brandon’s location and what that would mean for his ability
to reign in his temper, 2) the influence of the Small Council on Aerys
to minimize any of his reactions, and 3) Robert’s feelings for himself*
and Lyanna, in spite of the fact that he was going around fathering
bastards.

(*I don’t think this gets examined enough. Robert is Rhaegar’s second
cousin. Robert’s parents died looking for a wife for Rhaegar in Essos.
And so forth.)

I also don’t think that Rhaegar could sue for peace once the war
started. He needed to be winning if there was any hope for a Targaryen
dynasty after the war. And I also think that it’s very possible that
Lyanna was bedridden through much of her pregnancy – because she was in
danger of miscarrying from either a shock or illness. Because their
child, the embodiment of joining their houses, could have brought
stability and peace to the realm had it all gone more to plan.

Hi! I really appreciate the political outlook of Rhaegar’s marriage
to Elia but there’s also a lot I disagree with here. Allow me to
condense this into main points for clarity’s sake and so I don’t end up
arguing the same point at different intervals. God knows this is long
enough as it is.

Keep reading

moonlitgleek:

To tell you the truth, anon, my subscription to the Grand Northern Conspiracy lies in
the Northern part of it. It connected several scenes that I thought were
curious while reading ADWD (i.e: Old Flint going to the Wall himself or Barbrey
Dustin openly antagonizing the Freys) and gave significance to parts I missed
(i.e: the man from House Locke in the Merman’s Court).

But once we start talking about the Riverlands, there are so many parts I’m
skeptical of, and others I completely disagree with, Lady Stoneheart’s part
being among the latter.

The whole premise of Lady Stoneheart’s involvement in the conspiracy
is
based on the scenario that Robb’s will was hidden in Hag’s Mire and that
LS retrieved it and delivered it to Howland Reed in the Neck.
Regardless of how unlikely I find it that they just buried or hid the
will somewhere in Hag’s Mire instead of entrusting it to someone who
would make sure it reached the North and the rest of Robb’s bannermen,
the above scenario is still pretty much
impossible, imo, for the following reasons:

1. No incarnation of Catelyn Stark would EVER work for the benefit of
giving Jon Snow control of the North. She spent 14 years paranoid that he’d
usurp her children and seeing him as nothing but a reminder that Ned betrayed
her, and a threat to her children’s lives and inheritance. She adamantly opposed
the idea of him being named Robb’s heir. Her paranoia and distrust of Jon had become such a
main part of her that she preferred some lord from the Vale that she had no
knowledge of and thus no idea what he could do to Robb’s children
over
Jon who grew up with her children. It’s not a rational decision but
Catelyn could never be rational when it came to Jon. She wanted to deny
Jon Winterfell, even
in the case of Robb’s death without children part because of how rooted
her
fear of his legitimization went, and part because of how much she
resented him
and resented his survival and his supposed safety when her kids were
dying around her.

2. The speculation about this part is completely reliant on the idea
that LS somehow maintained Catelyn’s rationalism, even though we were
shown time and again that Cat loses her rationalism when her children
are in peril (her reaction to Bran’s fall and coma is to stop caring if
everything went to hell in Winterfell. Kill the horses, kill the
direwolves, just make it all stop. Her reaction to Bran and Rickon’s
supposed murder is to release Jaime regardless of the danger this could
pose to both Sansa and Robb). Reaching the conclusion that hey, Jon
loves her kids and Robb’s last wish was for his brother to succeed him
and all that requires a level of levelheadedness and rationalism that
even the living version of Catelyn Stark was incapable of. No way the
resurrected bitter version of her that wants the world to suffer like
she is suffering can do it.

3. The idea that Lady Stoneheart currently has bigger fish to fry
and that after all these betrayals, she could turn sympathetic to Jon because
he loved her family and her family loved him is very nice and appealing in theory, but it
goes against both Catelyn and LS’s characterization. Jon’s love for Bran and
Bran’s love for him didn’t mean squat to Catelyn when Jon showed up to say
goodbye to Bran. She only saw that he was fine and dandy while her own child
was in peril, and she cruelly told Jon that she wished it was him who fell. If
anything, Robb’s death would only serve to make Catelyn’s resentment of Jon
grow. Why should he get to survive while her son gets betrayed at every turn?

As for Lady Stoneheart, death and resurrection makes people lose part
of themselves. There’s no way she gained sympathy she never had in the
first place for Jon. The assumption that her blood lust was satiated
leaving her to recognize the important things, so to speak, has no
ground in
the novels. She is nothing but a creature of blood thirst and revenge.
She is
so consumed by it that she is quick to judge Brienne, a previously
trusted
friend and protector, even before her sham of a trial (Brienne gets told
that
she wants to hang her even before she is fully conscious). LS had no
qualms
about hanging a kid for the crime of being Tyrion’s squire. We have
every reason to believe that she is planning a second Red Wedding. None
of that points to the abating of her desire to spill blood. As Thoros of
Myr
tells Brienne:

“I do not doubt that kindness and mercy and forgiveness can still be found
somewhere in these Seven Kingdoms, but do not look for them here” (Brienne
VIII, AFFC)

The premise of the Lady StoneheartBwB story is that there is no kindness
there, no sympathy, no justice, only revenge and blood. Lady Stoneheart is
Mother Merciless. She is a mother, yes, but only to her children, Jon is not
included in that. There’s no way the trauma of the Red Wedding and seeing her
firstborn butchered in front of her, then being revived after several days of
death made Lady Stoneheart more sympathetic to Jon. The main part of LS’s
characterization is how unsympathetic and vengeful she is. If she couldn’t be
sympathetic to a child or to a friend who just saved the lives of a bunch of kids related to her men, if she begrudged Jon his health when her
own son was injured, there’s
no way she could be sympathetic to Jon, who is current nothing but a reminder of all the ill that befell her children.

(Oh and that prison break idea the conspiracy talks about? I’m afraid that
it will be a horror show tbh. Because I can’t predict if LS would see the
captive Northern lords as allies, or simply people who failed in their duty to
protect Robb and thus deserving of punishment. Let us hope for the former.)

4. Lady Stoneheart knows that Arya is alive, courtesy of Gendry and the
Brotherhood. She also knows that Sansa has escaped King’s Landing. And if she
is in contact with any Northmen like the conspiracy assumes, then she knows that
Bran and Rickon are alive. There’s no snowball chance in hell she’d be working
to usurp her own children to pass Robb’s throne to Jon instead. Wyman Manderly
and the other Northern lords do not have a personal reason to hate Jon like
CatelynLS does. They may have a motive to make him king because they know they are
headed to a war with the dead and with winter upon them, they can’t do with a
boy lord when the North is in shambles. But no matter which version of Catelyn we’re
talking about, she’d never have this point of view, not when the boy lords in
question are her own.

5. I find myself unable to imagine that any of Ned’s loyal bannermen would
see what has become of his wife and not at least try to put her out of her
misery.

6. The assumption that Harwin is the hooded man in Theon’s chapter is
incorrect. If we align AFFC and ADWD to get an idea of what the timeline is, it’d
be impossible for Harwin to be present for Brienne’s sham of a trial and
somehow make it to Winterfell before Brienne makes it to Jaime.

So yeah, I share your opinion on the Lady Stoneheart part. I think it’s more
wishful thinking because people want Catelyn to make her peace with Jon but the
speculation in the Riverlands part of the conspiracy has a lot of reaching and
ignores main parts of the story. There are some other parts that I’m skeptical
of (or rather of the reasoning behind them) but they can easily come to pass. The LS part, though, is one I’m quite sure isn’t
correct.