Disillusioned with Targaryens (Rhaenys as an adulteress)

[Forever May]

Disillusioned with Targaryens after reading World of Ice and Fire

[This thread contains quotes from The World of Ice and Fire. So if you don't want "spoilers" from that then don't read it, I suppose, though it's just history. Although the actual topic is concerned with the Targaryen bloodline in general, not just that novella.]

Apparently, the history reads that Aegon the Conqueror married his eldest sister Visenya for duty (as was tradition) and his youngest sister Rhaenys for love. And then they throw this into the mix:

“Whilst no one ever questioned Visenya’s fidelity to her brother/husband, Rhaenys surrounded herself with comely young men, and (it was whispered) even entertained some in her bedchambers on the nights when Aegon was with her elder sister. Yet despite these rumors, observers at court could not fail to note that the king spent ten nights with Rhaenys for every night with Visenya.”

I don’t get why? I’ve been trying to work my head around this disheartening snippet. Albeit it is just a rumor, but are we not supposed to believe it? For all I can gather from a writer’s perspective, an inconvenient piece of information such as this does little to make Rhaenys’s character more “interesting” but does plenty to discredit the entire Targaryen Dynasty.

It seems to imply Rhaenys slept with another man every other week. And if that was true, what kind of man was Aegon to love and keep to wife such a harlot? That made me wonder if the snippet had been included in the story less to elaborate on the characters and more to spite polygamy. A way of saying, “Well if the man had multiple lovers then so could the woman.” The history continues:

“But though his father and brother, Maegor (who was Visenya’s child), were both warriors born, Aenys was made of different stuff. He had begun life as a weak and sickly infant and remained so throughout his earliest years. Rumors abounded that this could be no true son of Aegon the Conqueror, who had been a warrior without peer. In fact, it was well-known that Queen Rhaenys delighted in handsome singers and witty mummers; perhaps one of these might have fathered the child. But the rumors dampened and eventually died when the sickly child was given a young hatchling who was named Quicksilver. And as the dragon grew, so too did Aenys.”

Although Maegor ruled for some time first, he left no heir. So the entire Targaryen Dynasty came to descend from Aenys, the son by Rhaenys. Now we have a bloodline mothered by a harlot whom may’ve taken a different man to bed every other week and the sole shred of proof that Aegon was Aenys’s father appears to be him having a pet dragon (which is irrelevant, because even if Aenys was a bastard, he still had thicker Targaryen blood than the later dragon riders that succeeded him – meaning that if Targaryen blood does indeed have relevance to dragon bonding, Aenys had bucket loads of it either way).

So when I ask the question, “Do Dany and Jon even descend from Aegon the Conqueror?” The answer is the shrug of the shoulders and a vacant, “Maybe.”

I was trying to work out how thick the Targaryen blood actually is in Dany, percentage wise, which is why I was going over this and thinking on it. There were a lot of marriages to non-Targaryens, Hightowers and Velaryons, so on. But the whole task is sort of made pointless thanks to Rhaenys, because there’s no way of knowing if Aenys was 100% or only 50%. So I just gave up. It seems Dany has less than 15% in either case. It is not that thick. A lot of the time they married “cousins” from House Velaryon, we are talking about people with very thin Valyrian blood and it doesn’t really count as a Targaryen.

Consider, the children of a normal marriage are 1/2, following grandchildren are 1/4, then 1/8, after that it jumps back to a whopping 1/16, then after only a few generations you are suddenly 1/32 and don’t really share any significant blood with your House founders.

I mean, 1/64, 1/128, these numbers make you wonder if there is actually any point in having children to “carry on your genes” whatsoever. Because unless you’re snuggling up in bed with your own daddy for generations on end, your blood is watered down like a drop in the ocean. It is communities that live on, I see that now. Individual lineage and bloodline is a fantasy (the deduction I came to here was a justification of selfishness, by the way, nothing else and certainly not the opposite).

But I thought there was something different in House Targaryen. As disturbing as incest may be to some, it was a romantic ideal in itself to keep a bloodline so pure for so many generations. And then we read The World of Ice and Fire and realize that’s not really what happened. I don’t know why they chose to make Rhaenys a harlot and, as I surmised, it might be for something as dumb as spiting polygamy. There was more evidence that Rhaenys was a harlot if you read on, though it is mostly hypothetical. Chiefly she took steps to reduce the punishment for female adultery, which means nothing in itself but is suggestive of sympathy. You have to ask, why was she sympathetic to adulteresses? Was Rhaenys one of them?

In any case, whether Rhaenys was an adulteress or not, the snippet achieves nothing more than making Aegon look like a fool with horns, Rhaenys like a harlot, then undermines the entire Targaryen Dynasty that followed. I just wrote a huge thread opening a week or so back about Jon being Aegon the Conqueror come again, under the assumption that Jon was Aegon’s descendant. Now it just seems dumb and as though I presumed too much. Some things in A Song of Ice and Fire are like that (dumb). A lot of people take the impression that Martin has stuck to realism through and through (something I was really drawn to). He hasn’t. There’s no way a man such as Aegon whom believes in the purity of bloodlines so much that he marries his own sisters would then go on to tolerate the mother of his “heir” taking randoms to bed. And whilst a character such as Rhaenys might’ve existed in real life, you’ll find them short of a head before their days are done, something that Visenya would’ve made certain of (judging by her character as it is written, not by some fantastic notion of default rivalry between multiple wives) if not Aegon himself whom was being made a fool of.

Don’t get me wrong, A Song of Ice and Fire is still the best tale out there. And this isn’t Martin hate. Like I say in the title, it is just disillusionment. A harlot slew the romance in my awe just so the author could color in a piece of history with a cheap crayon. But no writing is perfect (except for my own, of course). So I’ll just wait and see how the story ends in hope it does some justice for some of these dumb things that happened and continue to happen (not singling out Dany and her oh-so-chaste-oh-oh-oh-again-Daario behavior in particular here, just casually waving my hand in the “general direction” of that thinly blooded Mother of Dragons sitting atop her comfy throne of pillows on high).

In conclusion, if The World of Ice and Fire wasn’t disappointing enough, worse is the reluctant admission that history oft repeats itself. And the Iron Throne as an inspirational symbol suffers for it, dragging the story down to the watery depths of Blackwater Bay. So since the history has been written the way it has, let’s all get ready for the reign of Daario’s bastards after poor Jon Targaryen whom looks like a proper fool for it. I don’t see that as a stable ending for the books (replacing a dynasty of Jaime’s bastards with Daario’s, that is, it will just incite further rebellion), but then I honestly wasn’t expecting Aegon’s story to end that way either. So…

All hail King Stannis Baratheon!

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Rhaenys_Targaryen

Yours truly,

Thow fayrest may that euer went

[JonCon's Red Beard]

tbh, it's known that Rhaenys was Aegon's favourite, but was he ever HER favourite? Maybe she didn't like Visenya and married Aegon to make her mad. Or maybe Aegon sucked in bed, who knows? No one can be that perfect.

Rhaenys avoided having kids by him for around ten years and suddenly have one with some random mummer? Doubt it. Those rumours were nothing but rumours based on Aenys being sickly. Once he got a dragon he got better :dunno:

[Forever May]

But if she was taking multiple men to bed, the truth is you can have no certain idea who Aenys's father was. Rumors can just be rumors and maybe Aegon was the father. By the quotes, there is probably a 9 out of 10 chance he was? In the end though, Martin has ruined the bloodline for the chance to use his crayons, as I said.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

But if she was taking multiple men to bed, the truth is you can have no certain idea who Aenys's father was...

I can't but she can. I see no reason why she would try to cuckold her brother. She only needed to take moontea after bedding those guys.

[Forever May]

So it all comes down to trusting the honor of an adulteress. That's a relief.

[JonSnowpoorbastard]

Wasn't that book technically written by a Lannister maester? I would think Lannisters have a motive to make the Targaryens look bad.

[Forever May]

The same thing appears in the wiki link at the bottom of the article. This is not a smear campaign, it's just the tale as told.

[GallowsKnight]

I can't but she can. I see no reason why she would try to cuckold her brother. She only needed to take moontea after bedding those guys.

Or have them spill their seed on her belly.

[Fire Eater]

So it all comes down to trusting the honor of an adulteress. That's a relief.

Except there is no proof she committed adultery.

[The Red Widow of Coldmoat]

So it all comes down to trusting the honor of an adulteress. That's a relief.

There's a pretty judgmental tone in this thread regarding the rumored infidelities of a fictional character. A fictional character who we don't really know much about as a character and only know about as a historical figure, mostly existing as a series of anecdotes. We also don't know the specifics of the dynamics or terms of Rhaenys's relationship with Aegon. If if Aenys weren't actually Aegon's son (a conclusion which seems to be largely based on his sickliness as a child - a parallel to a lot of theories about Sweetrobin Arryn, of course), he's still a Targaryen and has dragonblood.

[Hardtack]

Tyranny, insanity, succession wars, rebellions, and bloody conquests - and what finally turns you off to the Targaryens is loose women and the prospect that the dynasty might not be the product of incest? Why does it matter?

Incest isn't all it's cracked up to be, anyway. By all rights the Targaryens should be way more messed up than they are, but My Little Westeros: Genetics Is Magic intervenes to save the day once again.

[Kienn]

It amazes me how drawn into this bloodline stuff people get.

Do you wish your government was still a male line monarchy?

[Liz Stark-Targaryen]

This is not just a Targaryen thing.

Do you want to know what percentage of human females over the past half million years have pretended children sired by other men... were their husband/mate/partner's?

It's not insignificant. Probably rivals the number of "bastards" out there.

GRRM clearly hints at this throughout ASOIAF, in many different ways. But no, absolutely not just Targaryens. The Targs are under the microscope because they were the crazy royal House. But we have evidence (or at least hints) of cheating in every other major house.

[teemo]

I think it's just to show that GRRM thinks "pure bloodlines" and dynasties are really just a joke when you break it down....I mean, it's not surprising to me at all that Aenys might have had a different father. Doesn't really change anything for me. Standard. Maybe this should be moved to the TWOAIF thread? It would probably get more hits...it's going to get shoved to the bottom on here.

[OwlKnight]

Since Cersei will die after her kids, probably Tommen is just about to receive a one way ticket to the kittens heaven. Sounds like ser Robert will slice apart some of the sevens kinght up tp fight him and soon she will change the joy of freedoom for the nourn for her child.

[Liz Stark-Targaryen]

I feel sorry for Myrcella and Tommen. Poor kids.

[Lord Lannister]

So it all comes down to trusting the honor of an adulteress. That's a relief.

You always seem to come up with interesting topics May. In the case of Rhaenys, I really can't get too upset over her alleged adultery though. Aegon married and parented children with both of his sisters. Maybe my "screwed up situation" threshold has just been reached that any side action Rhaenys may have been getting when her sister got her loving once every two weeks just seems insignificant.

[Victor227]

It's just gossip. Unlike the stuff with Rheanyra, there's very, very, little to believe that Rhaenys actually sired a child by another man. Even if she had though, Aenys still would have been of the line of the guy who -sired- Aeogn the Conquerer. He was Rhaenys' brother after all.

[sj4iy]

I was told there would be no math.

In any case, how much of how little blood has never mattered in the first place.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

I was told there would be no math.

In any case, how much of how little blood has never mattered in the first place.

OT, but your sig reminded me of Michael Moore's comment about the Sony hack, telling that now they hackers run HW, "fewer Michael Bay movies and no more Transformers". :lol: