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Rhaenyra vs. Baratheons


Jaak

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In Princess and Queen, Rhaenyra and the smallfolk of King´s Landing are worried to madness about the Reach army marching at Tumbleton. Yet even though it is left in control of the battlefield by retreat of the Blackwood´s Riverlands army, it itself retreats without marching on.



Princess and Queen don´t address the fate of King´s Landing after Queen fled at dawn with unaccountably small retinue. But in World, we learn that the Moon of Three Kings lasted just two weeks - and then Borros Baratheon arrives to take the city with his Stormlands army.



In Princess and Queen, Rhaenyra is not seen to worry about Borros. Nor does Unwin Peake consider to march east of Tumbleton and join Borros.



Now, imagine that the Queen had somehow managed to avert the riots (e. g. by allowing the people to exit the town and scatter to countryside if they felt unsafe, but not to enter or return till the danger passed) or suppress them.



What would she have done 2 weeks later when Borros&Army showed up? She did not have a large human army at hand (as demonstrated when she tried to suppress riots), and although dragons were alive, both riders were problematic... Would Rhaenyra have ridden Syrax to actually, personally fight Borros´ army, or allowed Joffrey and Tyraxes to do so?


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The Moon of Three Kings seems to be merely the name for the month in which there were three kings in King's Landing - Trystane Truefyre, Gaemon Palehair, and Aegon II - it is not necessarily the name for the entire period of time between Rhaenyra's retreat and Aegon's return.



Especially since it seems that Gaemon rose to 'power and prominence' only after Trystane had already been installed in the Red Keep. He is crowned/proclaimed during the riots, whereas Gaemon seems to be a pretender who could only gain momentum/popularity after the days of the Shepherd were over (he and his ilk seemed to be too zealous to accept/tolerate a king who ruled from a brothel).



I assume that Borros only assembled his troops and retook KL after Aegon II and proclaimed that he was alive and (not really) well, and that Rhaenyra was dead and Aegon the Younger in his custody. Thus I imagine the Moon of Three Kings was either December 130 AC, and Aegon II left Dragonstone immediately after Sunfyre's death, or January 131 AC.



The assumption that Borros was already on the march while he had no clue that Aegon II was still alive makes little sense. He was staying out of the whole thing, and just as the Hightower army he feared Rhaenyra would unleash her dragons against him. He could not know/foresee the riots and the Storming of the Dragonpit, nor the fact that Rhaenyra would try to imprison her own dragonseeds.



Even the Two Betrayers were reluctant to attack KL while they had three dragons of their own (Vermithor, Silverwing, Tessarion), against Syrax, Tyraxes (and, presumably, Caraxes, Seasmoke, and Sheepstealer).



As to the riots:



Actually, if you carefully reread TPatQ it becomes evident - at least in the way the story is presented in 'Dangerous Women' - that Rhaenyra imprisoning the population within the city had nothing to do with the attacks on the Dragonpit. Prior to Shepherd's mad rants, the other rioters (Ser Perkin's lot and others) overwhelm various garrisons of Goldcloaks, and long before the mad attack on the Dragonpit begins a bunch of city gates are both undefended 'and open to Rhaenyra's enemies'. That makes it clear that everyone who feared for his life and wanted to leave the city actually could do just that, before the rioters began to attack the Dragonpit.


'The gates are open! The gates are open!' should have been known all over the city in a heart beat, as an important cause for the original riots on the day before was the fact that no one could leave the city.


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