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Why Jaime?How did Stannis and Ned know?


par

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I don't see any reason why Stannis and Ned suspected that the Cersei children were the result of her incest with Jaime.

The fact that her three children were blonds while all the bastards of king Roberts had black hair could give a hint that Robert

wasn't the real father, but it does not mean in any way that the father was Jaime.

The fact that Jaime wasn't participating at the hunt when Bran fell, proved or even hinted, absolutely nothing.

So how did they know?Maybe its a mistake of the author?

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Cercei admitted it to Ned, yes, but why did Ned suspect it in the first place? And in the books Stannis clearly knew before Ned found out (and didn't get Ned's letter one way or the other). I totally agree that this is a weakness in the plot, and I have never heard a really satisfactory explanation. I suppose the fact that all three children look similar leads one to suspect a long-term relationship with a single father, but even still... it seems really improbable to me. If I found out someone I knew was cheating on her husband, the last thing that would jump into my mind next was "Oh, well, it must be with her brother." I would think about every other guy even remotely within her age range first. And although we don't necessarily have many candidates presented to us in the book because of conservation of characters, surely, living in King's Landing, there were plenty of possibilities? I think this is just one of those things where the plot needed Ned to figure it out, so he figured it out. I also never for a second bought that Cercei would just admit it to him either. But sometimes you got to cut an author some slack. It gave us a great story, so I'm willing to let it go.

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Cersei admitted it to Ned. Ned then wrote to Stannis and told him what he'd learned.

That's show only.

In ACoK, we find out that Stannis already knew even before Ned and Jon Arryn - Stannis was the one who actually pressed Jon Arryn to investigate the matter.

That said, I think Jaime and Cersei are much less subtle in their affections than they think they are. It's only because they are siblings that noone really connects the dots - but once anyone starts running through the potential lovers for Cersei, Jaime pops up almost immediately simply because they are acting like lovers.

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I don't understand why Varys or Littlefinger just didn't go ahead and tell Ned. Maybe he wouldn't have believed it coming from them. But yeah all the evidence is circumstantial and nothing could really be proven. If Ned had told King Robert would the pieces come together for Robert? Robert was always skeptical of how a boy like Joffrey could possibly be his son.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It had to be someone with reasonably easy access to Cersei, and probably a blonde, so Jaime is a natural suspect.

As Queen, Cersei was too much of a public figure for no one to notice her infidelity. If no one else, Varys and Petyr Baelish were likely to know. Bran found out by sheer accident, so what are the odds that others knew?

That said, I don't see how the hair color could ever be conclusive, although it is certainly a major factor in Ned's and presumably Stannis' suspicions. Hair color genetics simply do not work with anything close to that degree of certainty. When Ned concluded that Baratheons must always have black hair he was all-out wrong.

As for Stannis, it is now obvious that he does not need much of a certainty to pursue a path to power. He had conflicting predictions from Melisandre about Renly's future and simply decided to choose the one that did not deny him the Iron Throne. He had (and still has) little hope of surviving his military campaign in the North, yet he pushes on. Suspicions are plenty enough for him to make accusations, particularly if Petyr Baelish encouraged him.

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How could they NOT know?!?

Obviously, I've read all the books and more gets revealed about their relationship later, but we see from their very first scene that there is an especially strong connection between them. Robert insists on seeing Lyanna's grave, Cersei objects, and Jaime steps in to comfort his sister. Later during their conversation in the Tower, we know that Cersei is desperate for Jaime to become Hand and would have 'insisted upon it' if Jaime hadn't declined the position. There's also the great contrasting difference between Cersei's relationship with Tyrion and that with Jaime. It's not that she implicitly trusts and is over-familiar with Jaime because he's family -- she has shown that family can mean nothing, in Tyrion's case.

There's also Varys and Littlefinger's extensive network of spies. In medieval times, the queen had a very large train of maids, all of whom would be connected to other courtiers either through family or through their own romantic connections. The same goes for her household guards, who would stand by her doors and escort her wherever she went. This meant a queen had very little privacy. I think Jaime and Cersei were as good as anyone could be in hiding their affair, but I also think there must have been some bribary going on to keep certain key members of Cersei's train and household guards in check.

And there's also the fact that the children look so very like Jaime and Cersei. They have *nothing non-Lannister* about them. Joanna is Tywin's cousin who, like him, had the golden hair and emerald eyes of the Lannisters. This meant there would need to be a recessive gene from three generations back to appear in their kids.

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I never understood the certainty they had that Cersei's children weren't Robert's. Sure, "the seed is strong" but Lannister seed is surely strong as well. As far as i remember ALL of them that were described (with the exception of Cleos) were blond. Lannister seed is so strong that in every match except with the Freys, blond offspring result. As far as i can tell Robert and Cersei have the first Lannister Baratheon match. Why isn't it possible they their ASOIAF genetics result in blonds the same way Lannister/Freys result in brunettes? It never made much sense to me.

Then again, if they had genetic testing... there would be a lot of juicy misconceptions cleared up later in the series.

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I never understood the certainty they had that Cersei's children weren't Robert's. Sure, "the seed is strong" but Lannister seed is surely strong as well. As far as i remember ALL of them that were described (with the exception of Cleos) were blond. Lannister seed is so strong that in every match except with the Freys, blond offspring result. As far as i can tell Robert and Cersei have the first Lannister Baratheon match. Why isn't it possible they their ASOIAF genetics result in blonds the same way Lannister/Freys result in brunettes? It never made much sense to me.

Then again, if they had genetic testing... there would be a lot of juicy misconceptions cleared up later in the series.

I think it's more than hair colouring, though. They would have the same shaped face, the same eyes, the same nose, the same type of body, the same everything. I re-read the descriptions of Mycrella, Joffrey and Tommen yesterday and it just struck me how alike they were. Plus there is the fact that, as brother and sister twins, Jaime and Cersei are exceptionally alike in their facial features. If Cersei grew a beard, they'd be identical.

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"Cersei looked at him defiantly. "My brother is worth a hundred of your

friend."

"Your brother?" Ned said. "Or your lover?"

"Both." She did not flinch from the truth."

It's the letter that is "show only".

In the show, Stannis wasn't investigating with Jon Arryn. And he received Ned's letter. That's how he found out about the incest. He knows that Ned declared for him (see the conversation with Catelyn).

In the books, it's Stannis who pushed Jon Arryn into investigating. And Ned's letter didn't reach Stannis. Cersei managed to get the letter. Stannis doesn't know that Ned declared for him. That's why he considers Robb a traitor. Another incoherence of the show.

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I never understood the certainty they had that Cersei's children weren't Robert's. Sure, "the seed is strong" but Lannister seed is surely strong as well. As far as i remember ALL of them that were described (with the exception of Cleos) were blond. Lannister seed is so strong that in every match except with the Freys, blond offspring result. As far as i can tell Robert and Cersei have the first Lannister Baratheon match. Why isn't it possible they their ASOIAF genetics result in blonds the same way Lannister/Freys result in brunettes? It never made much sense to me.

Then again, if they had genetic testing... there would be a lot of juicy misconceptions cleared up later in the series.

The book about Westerosi nobility that Jon Arryn and later Ned read mentions two other Baratheon-Lannister couples. Ned concludes, somewhat hurriedly, that "the gold always yields before the coal".

Of course, that is not how genetics work. If recessive genes could never express themselves, they would hardly ever exist.

To be fair, Ned had other reasons to suspect something amiss and he did get a confession from Cersei later. But from a statistical viewpoint, a sample size of two is very unsatisfying, and his conclusion was all-out wrong.

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In the books, it's Stannis who pushed Jon Arryn into investigating. And Ned's letter didn't reach Stannis. Cersei managed to get the letter. Stannis doesn't know that Ned declared for him. That's why he considers Robb a traitor. Another incoherence of the show.

Do we know what became of Ned's letter? I don't remember learning that.

In any case, Robb is not Ned, and Ned himself could (and IMO would eventually) deny Stannis support even if he knew for sure about Cersei's kids.

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Well, I guess he just assumed that if the Queen had refused to have Robert's children she wouldn't spread her legs for just anyone, it had to be someone she had a certain affection for. And Jaime was quite the only person in the world she had a certain affection for.

I never understood the certainty they had that Cersei's children weren't Robert's. Sure, "the seed is strong" but Lannister seed is surely strong as well. As far as i remember ALL of them that were described (with the exception of Cleos) were blond. Lannister seed is so strong that in every match except with the Freys, blond offspring result. As far as i can tell Robert and Cersei have the first Lannister Baratheon match. Why isn't it possible they their ASOIAF genetics result in blonds the same way Lannister/Freys result in brunettes? It never made much sense to me.

Remember that GRRM has said that ASOIAF genetic is more magic than real, such as the fact that most of the great houses seem to have some common trait that all the children inherit (the Stark grey eyes, the Baratheon black hair, the Lannister green eyes and blonde hair, the Tully auburn hair and blue eyes...). And Robert and Cersei were not the first Baratheon/Lannister match, the big book Pycelle gives Ned said that there had been others, all resulting in black haired and blue eyed children.

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In any case, Robb is not Ned, and Ned himself could (and IMO would eventually) deny Stannis support even if he knew for sure about Cersei's kids.

Huh ?

Ned was all blind about declaring for Stannis. It even led him to refuse the only viable solution for him to cease Cersei : allying with Renly.

It's his blind support to Stannis that killed him.

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