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What was Rhaegar Targaryen thinking?


NervousFiend

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Rhaegar Targaryen was a pretty smart man, He read alot and was a very intelligent and determined person, Commonfolk loved him, he was a respectful and honorable man, according to Ned.

So how is it that, Rhaegar Targaryen a person that is very smart runs away with a stark girl without thinking of the consequences?

Since he was the Prince and soon to be king, couldn't he somehow manage being with Lyanna stark without starting a war and losing his own life in the end?

What was he really up to? did he actually love Lyanna stark or was he up to something else?

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It's a good thing to question long-established assumptions.

My take: Rhaegar didn't kidnap Lyanna. Rhaegar didn't want to be with Lyanna. Rhaegar didn't plan on fulfilling a prophecy with Lyanna. Moreover, Rhaegar didn't even initiate the chain of events. It was Lyanna who didn't want to marry Robert, and she decided she could do something about it - and one of the very few people that could aid her was the Crown Prince. Think Alys Karstark. And what followed (although what exactly followed is one huge year-long blank spot), the affair and the child, wasn't planned by neither of them - it kind of happened organically. "Rescue romance", the trope is called.

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He believed himself to be the PTWP, and Elia was too physically frail to give him another child to be the third head of the dragon.  I know that someone mentioned he later believed his son to be the PTWP, but I don't know at what point he changed his mind.  

I'm also in the camp the Lyanna is the Knight of the Laughing Tree, and he seems to fall in love with her when his father sent him to unmask the knight.  So it could be a combination of fulfilling the prophecy and falling in love with Lyanna.  

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I think we've been intentionally left in the dark about his motivations and that most of the popular theories regarding said motivations will be proven to be incorrect, or at least mostly false.

none of the explanations on the table are perfect, not based on what we know (or think we know) about Rhaegar. I think the love angle is pretty contrived considering how little time R + L spent together, and makes their elopement pretty selfish in my opinion. Risk peace throughout the realm over lust? I dunno. He seemed like a good husband and father.

The "obsessed with prophecy" angle is compelling, but all we know about Rhaegar and his apparent obsession is second hand. One of his closest confidants Jon Connington makes no mention of Rhaegar's prophecy obsession and others who knew him seem to hold him in high intellectual regard. If he was so blatantly obsessed, the people of Westeros must be pretty air headed to have missed out on all the signs. On the other hand, the Others have returned, so perhaps he would have been right to be obsessed. He sure took a roundabout way of prepping for the doom though, if he thought the only chance of salvation was to abduct Lyanna Stark. 

We'll just have to wait and see.

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This issue seems to have become a hot topic of late on this board. I believe there are at least a couple of other recent OPs that address in one form or another what might have happened regarding Rhaegar's "abduction" of Lyanna. I can tell you what I believe likely happened (or did not happen), and then I will discuss some possible alternative that fill in the blanks.

At the most basic level, I do not believe that Rhaegar kept Lyanna from her family against Lyanna's will. I do not believe that Rhaegar raped Lyanna. I believe that they met at the tourney when Rhaegar discovered that Lyanna was the Knight of the Laughing Tree (TKotLT). I don't believe they necessarily fell in love then -- but I think Rhaegar admired what Lyanna did. I believe eventually they got married and decided to have a child -- who ended up being the character now known as Jon Snow.

So the question being raised by the OP is what led to Rhaegar running off with Lyanna. I admit, we don't know, but here is what I think are some possibilities -- based on some background facts.

Rhaegar believed in prophecy -- that he would be the father of TPTWP (whose song is the song of ice and fire), and his three children would be the three heads of the dragon (he told Elia that "the dragon must have three heads"). I believe that Rhaegar felt a responsibility to ensure the fulfillment of the prophecy (obsession is a little strong -- but personal responsibility is probably accurate) Elia could not give Rhaegar a third child. Lyanna did not love Robert and did not think Robert would be a faithful husband. Aerys was furious at the TKotLT and thought the action was treasonous. One final "fact" as background -- during DoD 1.0, a proposed marriage between a Stark and Targaryen was dubbed the "Pact of Ice and Fire."

So these "facts" lead to possible motives for Rhaegar and Lyanna to run off with the other. I am not suggesting that all of these are the case -- just that one or more may have been at play.

1. Rhaegar needed a woman to bear the third head of the dragon -- Elia could not. He admired Lyanna and thought her warrior skills and persona would be a fitting mother to a head of the dragon.

2. Once Rhaegar realized that Elia could not give him the third head and he started thinking about which woman he would have to bear the third head, he realized that it had to be Lyanna because she is Ice to his Fire (he would likely know about the historical Pact of Ice and Fire) -- and thus their child (rather than Aegon) would be TPTWP -- while presumably Rhaenys and Aegon would be the other two heads. In this case, Lyanna was the only noble Stark woman around, and thus Rhaegar would not choose another woman.

3. Lyanna wanted out of her engagement to Robert, and had some communication with Rhaegar in which he offered to marry her (for reasons 1 and/or 2 above). She decided that being the second wife to Rhaegar (especially as Elia might not have been able to risk a third pregnancy and thus perhaps Rhaegar promised he would no longer have sex with Elia) was better than being the only wife to Robert.

4. Rhaegar found out that Aerys was sending men to arrest Lyanna as TKotLT after finding out the identity as Lyanna. Rhaegar would have to rush to where she was which might make his "saving" her look more like a kidnapping even though it was really more of a rescue. Once they were together, they fell in love and decided to stay together, get married and have a child (for one or more of the reasons set forth in 1, 2 and 3 above). This possibility 4 explains why it would look like an abduction rather than Lyanna just slipping away from her guards and meeting Rhaegar at a planned place and time and disappearing. If this possibility 4 is not at issue, then perhaps Rhaegar and Lyanna for some reason could not plan a secret meeting and so Rhaegar had to get Lyanna away from her guards -- making it look like an abduction.

So to answer you question more directly -- why did Rhaegar take the risks he did to run off with Lyanna and stay away?

Perhaps he thought that fulfilling the prophecy was important enough to take this risk and never imagined that Brandon and Aerys would take the crazy actions they took which led to the war. Perhaps Rhaegar and Lyanna really wanted to be together and love sometimes clouds judgment. If the "rescue" outlined in 4 above is accurate, then Rhaegar would have been in a rush without time to plan -- and then events would have spun out of control before they knew what was happening in KL and then it was too late to stop the war.

A question that is just as relevant regarding why they ran off the way they did -- is why did they stay away so long. After all, if they had returned before Brandon went to KL, the war likely would have been averted -- so the real question is why did they stay in hiding so long.

The best theory I can come up with -- they were waiting for the baby to be born. Having the Crown Prince enter into a polygamous marriage with the daughter of a LP and fiance to another LP -- without the express permission of the King -- is a tricky mission to accomplish without fall-out. I suspect that they decided that the best way to force the King and Lord Rickon to accept that situation was to arrive in KL with a baby in hand. That way the King would be more likely to recognize the marriage -- and the Starks would be forced to make the best of the situation. 

But -- as with all of these types of questions -- I think the ultimate answer is that GRRM has not told us enough for us to be sure and we likely will find out in later books.

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i am sure it is a mixture of several factors. 

Just like dunk beat aerion: 

Was he so in love that he wanted to protect tanselle? 

Was he so noble a knight to protect a weak person? 

Was he angry at aerion due to his action in tourney? 

All of them, yet none of them. any single of them would not be enough for him to do what he did. 

All together, he beat a targ prince. 

Same with rhaegar. 

Was he mad in love to elope? 

Was he obsessed in prophecy? 

Was he so worried about his mad daddy so he had to hide? (If it is egg, I guess rhaegar will not hide for one year) 

All of them. None of them is enough for him to elope and hide for one year. 

All together, here you go. 

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By the way, the avatar of op is rhaegar from world book. 

I may not be a good judge for targ man's beauty. But I feel this rhaegar is not as beautiful as what we heard from the book. 

Compared to aegon, daeron, Tywin and even fool Frey in the world book, this rhaegar looks less cute than them. 

Am I the only one who think so? 

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55 minutes ago, UnmaskedLurker said:

4. Rhaegar found out that Aerys was sending men to arrest Lyanna as TKotLT after finding out the identity as Lyanna. Rhaegar would have to rush to where she was which might make his "saving" her look more like a kidnapping even though it was really more of a rescue. Once they were together, they fell in love and decided to stay together, get married and have a child (for one or more of the reasons set forth in 1, 2 and 3 above). This possibility 4 explains why it would look like an abduction rather than Lyanna just slipping away from her guards and meeting Rhaegar at a planned place and time and disappearing. If this possibility 4 is not at issue, then perhaps Rhaegar and Lyanna for some reason could not plan a secret meeting and so Rhaegar had to get Lyanna away from her guards -- making it look like an abduction.

Something that occurred to me while reading this (and others lately about Lyanna having an escort:

Say Lyanna slipped her escort (Men from Winterfell) and rode ahead to Rhaegar. She runs off with him and by the time her escort gets to where she was they hear she left with Rhaegar.

Do they run off and tell Brandon/ Rickard that she slipped away from them... or do they tell them that Rhaegar and his men took her by force and they couldn't do anything because he was the Crown Prince?

 

Now I know this is stretching it some, and I am not saying this is what happened. But I can see this, that if she had escorts they are probably in big trouble for Lyanna taking off on them. This would make sense why Brandon was so sure that she was kidnapped.

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Just now, King Viserys Targaryen IV said:

Something that occurred to me while reading this (and others lately about Lyanna having an escort:

Say Lyanna slipped her escort (Men from Winterfell) and rode ahead to Rhaegar. She runs off with him and by the time her escort gets to where she was they hear she left with Rhaegar.

Do they run off and tell Brandon/ Rickard that she slipped away from them... or do they tell them that Rhaegar and his men took her by force and they couldn't do anything because he was the Crown Prince?

 

Now I know this is stretching it some, and I am not saying this is what happened. But I can see this, that if she had escorts they are probably in big trouble for Lyanna taking off on them. This would make sense why Brandon was so sure that she was kidnapped.

But my question is -- how would they even know she was with Rhaegar at all?

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3 minutes ago, King Viserys Targaryen IV said:

Something that occurred to me while reading this (and others lately about Lyanna having an escort:

Say Lyanna slipped her escort (Men from Winterfell) and rode ahead to Rhaegar. She runs off with him and by the time her escort gets to where she was they hear she left with Rhaegar.

Do they run off and tell Brandon/ Rickard that she slipped away from them... or do they tell them that Rhaegar and his men took her by force and they couldn't do anything because he was the Crown Prince?

 

Now I know this is stretching it some, and I am not saying this is what happened. But I can see this, that if she had escorts they are probably in big trouble for Lyanna taking off on them. This would make sense why Brandon was so sure that she was kidnapped.

If you assume they are honest, then they will not say rhaegar and his men took her by force and they can not fight because he is prince. 

Because in this case, the truth is they saw lyanna ran away and disappeared. They did not even see rhaegar.  

If you assume they are liars, sure, they may say rhaegar kidnapped her or even lyanna kidnapped him like white fawn wenda. Or rhaegar came with a dragon and pick her up from the sky. 

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5 minutes ago, King Viserys Targaryen IV said:

The Small Folk would be excited as fuck that the Rock Star Rhaegar just rode through.

Maybe. Seems like a bit of a stretch that the guards preferred to lie to the Starks rather than admit that Lyanna slipped away from them. But if they thought they would be punished for letting her get away -- maybe saying that Rhaegar took her from them at sword point was perceived as their only option. 

Bottom line -- I have always struggled a bit to come up with a scenario that explains why Rhaegar is reported to have taken Lyanna at sword point when we are fairly certain that Rhaegar did not keep Lyanna away against her will. GRRM is much more creative than I am -- so I assume he will make it work no matter whether the "elopement" or the "rescue" or some other alternative is the ultimate explanation for what they were up when Lyanna ran off with Rhaegar.

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We don't actually know much about Rhaegar. Like, everything we know comes from biased sources, and even that info is ... there's just not much about him.

At the current time, there's multiple valid interpretations of Rhaegar. Was he just a melancholic, intelligent man who was bad at politics? Was he someone who was so obsessed with prophecies that he considered everything else unimportant? Was he just as mad as his father? We just don't know.

Which is intentional on Martin's part, I think.

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47 minutes ago, Queen Alienor said:

We don't actually know much about Rhaegar. Like, everything we know comes from biased sources, and even that info is ... there's just not much about him.

At the current time, there's multiple valid interpretations of Rhaegar. Was he just a melancholic, intelligent man who was bad at politics? Was he someone who was so obsessed with prophecies that he considered everything else unimportant? Was he just as mad as his father? We just don't know.

Which is intentional on Martin's part, I think.

Yeah, the mystery that is Rhaegar is one Martin's finer examples of world building. The guy has an entire mythology built around him both in-universe and here.
 

1 hour ago, purple-eyes said:

By the way, the avatar of op is rhaegar from world book. 

I may not be a good judge for targ man's beauty. But I feel this rhaegar is not as beautiful as what we heard from the book. 

Compared to aegon, daeron, Tywin and even fool Frey in the world book, this rhaegar looks less cute than them. 

Am I the only one who think so? 

As with everything related to the World Book, remember that the man who wrote it and chose the portraits for it in the series (Yandel) has strong reason to bias against Rhaegar. One of the few facts that can be agreed upon about him by every character is that he was the prettiest man ever.

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1 minute ago, The Mountain That Flies said:

Yeah, the mystery that is Rhaegar is one Martin's finer examples of world building. The guy has an entire mythology built around him both in-universe and here.
 

As with everything related to the World Book, remember that the man who wrote it and chose the portraits for it in the series (Yandel) has strong reason to bias against Rhaegar. One of the few facts that can be agreed upon about him by every character is that he was the prettiest man ever.

I am just saying if this is supposed to be very pretty, or just my weird view of man's beauty. 

Maybe most people indeed feel this portrait is the prettiest one in the book. I want to know other people's opinion. 

 

 

 

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