Viserys should have been the king instead of Baelor the Blessed

[Lion of the West]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That isn't an argument. You will die, too. Does this give me the right to kill you?

Yes, its totally an argument, even if you don't agree with it. And yes I will die. But if I try to kill a lot of people I do think you have a right to restrain me from doing so.

What I wanted to say is that under the some kind of regime its entirly possible for many people to be killed despite there being peace.

Now peace tends to lead to less death and destruction than war, but that isn't my argument. The argument is that there are examples when war is necessary, not that the two are equals. I have never denied that peace is most often preferable to war, but I do react on the notion that its always preferable to war.

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People believe in all kind of crap, that doesn't mean it is justified.

Both of them are subjective. If this crap is important to people, its important to them, regardless of its importance to you or me.

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Which genocides were prevented by war, exactly? Give me an example. The Allies could have prevented holocaust we committed against the European Jews. But they actually did not. They did neither bomb the camps and gas chambers nor the train routes which were used to deliver millions of people to their graves.

I didn't say wars prevented genocide from occuring, for that work towards tolerance and inclusiveness is more important. I said that when genocide occurs wars stops them better than most other solutions known so far to mankind so far.

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Wilhelm II didn't really lead the war himself. He essentially became a puppet shortly after the war had begun. The War (and Germany itself) was more or less in the hands of the army and the other high-ranking people in the administration.

I agree.

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I'm pretty sure Hitler would be a hero of the German people (and a pretty successful statesmen in the eyes of many European historians) had he won the war and crushed the Russians.

To that I also agree, provided that the Third Reich would have survived his death given his rather special kind of leadership, which I don't doubt would have taken his down as far as statesmen goes. Fascism just isn't very compatible with productive management of countries to my knowledge. To much emotion and rejection of rationalism.

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Usually successful rulers who win wars enter are praised more on average than those who suck at the job and lose wars. The survivors of the peoples they subdue or destroy won't be their fans, of course, but even there people tend to consider such people as great enemy leaders, etc.

I agree to a degree, but the enemy's great leader is seldom considered a hero but more often a great villain.

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What about the Rule of the Six? I don't think many lords beat their lady wives to death. The common men did.

I think the Rule of Six was a mitigation over the, in my eyes, barbaric "right" of men to use violence on women. And I don't think that domestic violence is restricted to any single group in society. Its found across the social and economic spectrum or at least that's what I've read and heard on the subject.

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We don't know of any other things but what little evidence we have is that the Targaryens of the first generation - especially Aegon and Rhaenys, but Aenys, too, while the Faith had not yet denounced him - were very popular and loved by the smallfolk. Yandel makes it clear that the Conqueror seems to have had the easiest time on the Iron Throne.

Makes sense that a conquering warlord with the biggest dragon who wasn't mad like Maegor would be popular, or that people would be smart to show popular emotion to him. But like you said there's little information to go on right now so we'll have to see what October (?) brings with "Sons of the Dragon".

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Just because they were allowed to keep their lands and titles doesn't mean they actually had a lot of power in comparison to the Iron Throne and the king's favorites at court. Far to the contrary, actually. The Arryns, Starks, and Lannisters were once kings but now reduced to nothing but country lords, essentially. Decisions were made in KL and neither the Starks nor the Lannisters had the ear of any Targaryen king in the first century (the Arryns did).

The problem is that for everyone else beyond the former kings and raised Lords Paramount, nothing had really changed. Lord Marbrand had neither less nor more power than before the Targaryens came, same with Lord Karstark, Lord Peake or Lord Grandison. Just like you rightfully pointed out that the acceptance of the smallfolk is vital to a regime, so is also the acceptance of the nobility at large. 

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The love (or acceptance) of the common people is the deciding factor for any monarchy. If the people are against you - and you have no standing army to slaughter them by the thousands - you basically have no kingdom. Lords, on the other hand, can be replaced. The base of their power are their common people, too, and if the king has their love they are no threat.

I dare say that its a great deal harder to form such loyalty than it is for the common noble. The smallfolk interact constantly with their own lord but very seldom if every with their king. I don't for example recall Eustace Osgrey complaining, and he seems to like to complain, how hard it was to raise his smallfolk for the Black Dragon despite the smallfolk allegedly calling Daeron for "the Good".

But I will say that I will agree that without acceptance its hard to rule a people.

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Sure there were. Nothing indicates they were not welcome in the city. The Warrior's Sons even had a chapter of their order in the Sept of Remembrance.

Forgive me for being unclear but I meant the Poor Fellows were not running around to abuse people or do violence on them.

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KL would never have grown as quickly as it did if the Targaryens hadn't become popular in the entire Realm rather quickly after the end of the wars. There was no city there at first, and the prospect to prosper there would first have to be there (i.e. some people would have to go there and tell people that things are great there) before others jumped the bandwagon. And we know that a town grew around the Aegonsfort even while the Wars of Conquest continued, before Aegon even made the decision to make it his permanent seat.

I don't see the labor of love. I see the power of the dragons and how one dragon victory piled on another and people saw in which direction the wind was blowing. And like I said, there were many reasons to take a shot with a new start beyond love for the Targaryens.

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The men-at-arms are common people. It is entirely out of the question that a small elite conducts an all-out total war against a vast majority in the land just out of some weird loyalty to some new regime. Such loyalty could get them killed. Do you think the Lannisters, Starks, Arryns, and all the other lords are safe in their houses if their servant decide to pay them a visit in their bedchamber?

The men-at-arms are smallfolk who have taken the side of the nobility, and so far men-at-arms have shown little restraint when it comes do doing violence on other smallfolk.

And I wasn't talking about an all-out-war. I was talking about the nobility using selective violence to enforce their rule, not trying to kill as many smallfolk as they could.

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You are mistaken. The Dornish nobility submitted to Daeron I, and handed over hostages. They accepted the Targaryen rule. But their smallfolk did not. During Aegon's days the Dornish nobles did not submit.

Thank you for the correction.

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A holocaust would always be possible with the support of enough dragons, but just as Daemon Targaryen could teach you - 'we want to rule King's Landing, not burn it down'. The Targaryens could have cleaned the Iron Islands or the North of most its inhabitants but that would have been costly, cruel, and completely unprofitable enterprise. One that most likely would have led to a general rebellion like Maegor's mad and cruel rule did.

I agree with the ruling part but disagree with the rebellious part, as Westeros lacks the industralized infracstructure for a holocaust given how its a premodern society and the ideological goal wouldn't be to exterminate some ethnical group rather than force a political kingdom to surrender. Although it would surely have been as brutal as any other war.

What I mention is pretty much what Aegon actually did in Dorne, or at least tried to, in the Dragon's Wroth and there were no rebellions or other disturbance for Aegon and Visenya from the general population. As such I dare say that such actions in the North would have cost many lives but not much for the Targaryens. Provided that the same effective guerilla tactics would not have been possible in the North as they were in Dorne, in which case the North would also have been able to withstand the Targaryens forever more.

[Lord Varys]

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

Yes, its totally an argument, even if you don't agree with it. And yes I will die. But if I try to kill a lot of people I do think you have a right to restrain me from doing so.

What I wanted to say is that under the some kind of regime its entirly possible for many people to be killed despite there being peace.

Now peace tends to lead to less death and destruction than war, but that isn't my argument. The argument is that there are examples when war is necessary, not that the two are equals. I have never denied that peace is most often preferable to war, but I do react on the notion that its always preferable to war.

The point I was trying to make with this analogy was that some cruel totalitarian regime where thousands of people end up imprisoned or torture effectively can be seen as the state/power making a war against their own people. In that sense those would not be societies where I'd say there is peace.

If we take Syria as example right now - this clearly was and still is a very unpleasant regime to live in. But now things got worse, not better, thanks to the war. We could talk about surgical strikes against people who are clearly killing people but that usually is not how war is fought. Usually a lot of civilians die, too, civilians who may have lived (reasonably well) even in a totalitarian regime where a lot of people are treated very badly. This is all a tough call.

And quite honestly, if a mass murderer/serial killer or terrorist is hiding in an apartment complex in a land where there is no war we don't just bomb the place, accepting hundreds of people casualties as collateral damage as we (may) do in a war zone. Insofar as the loss of human lives is concerned those a clear double standards.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

Both of them are subjective. If this crap is important to people, its important to them, regardless of its importance to you or me.

The point is that people think it is worth dying for this or that doesn't make it reasonable to do so. In fact, to become a trained killer/soldier you actually have suppress a lot of your innate compassion that comes with our mirror neurons.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

I didn't say wars prevented genocide from occuring, for that work towards tolerance and inclusiveness is more important. I said that when genocide occurs wars stops them better than most other solutions known so far to mankind so far.

I honestly don't know where a genocide was ever stopped by war. A situation where this could work would actually give the side stopping it so much power that we would not call it a war but rather some sort of police intervention. A war means that you have to conquer a place and subdue the enemy. That means there will be fighting of some sort. And that's going to take time. Time that can (also) be used to continue or finish whatever genocide is being done.

And depending how powerful/determined the enemy is a war might in the end kill as many or more people were killed in the genocide.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

To that I also agree, provided that the Third Reich would have survived his death given his rather special kind of leadership, which I don't doubt would have taken his down as far as statesmen goes. Fascism just isn't very compatible with productive management of countries to my knowledge. To much emotion and rejection of rationalism.

Since he was already pretty old in 1945 I'd agree with you. But it is still pretty likely that we would have gotten some Nazi successor, establishing some sort of Franco-like fascism. If he had been killed during the attempt on his life in 20th July, 1944 we would have just gotten a somewhat toned down military dictatorship.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

I agree to a degree, but the enemy's great leader is seldom considered a hero but more often a great villain.

I actually was thinking about Rommel there. The British really like to paint him as this honorable foe they had to make the whole thing look more heroic (when in fact the guy was more a Nazi than many others in the military).

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

I think the Rule of Six was a mitigation over the, in my eyes, barbaric "right" of men to use violence on women. And I don't think that domestic violence is restricted to any single group in society. Its found across the social and economic spectrum or at least that's what I've read and heard on the subject.

Still, it is something from which the commoner women also greatly profited. 

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

Makes sense that a conquering warlord with the biggest dragon who wasn't mad like Maegor would be popular, or that people would be smart to show popular emotion to him. But like you said there's little information to go on right now so we'll have to see what October (?) brings with "Sons of the Dragon".

I was more referring to how Yandel describes Aegon in his section in TWoIaF. We have him hanging out with common people - sleeping at inns, and the like - and interacting with his common subjects throughout all those royal progresses which he did. Presumably you could go see the king when he was in Kayce, Fairmarket, Stoney Sept, and the like and lay your grievances before him. And since Aegon was essentially an impartial outsider you could most likely also get some real justice in a quarrel with your lord or the great lord of that region, even if you were a humble peasant or a merchant.

Another aspect is that Aegon and his sister-wives were essentially nobodies who conquered an entire continent. That makes them really special. They might be dragonlords and descendants of Old Valyria but they also pulled of a remarkable feat not many people would be able to do. And that should make them pretty adorable.

That certainly would have made him pretty popular. And Yandel also claims Aegon had the least problems ruling. All his successors had more problems, apparently even Jaehaerys I and Viserys I who clearly faced less large problems during their reign.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

The problem is that for everyone else beyond the former kings and raised Lords Paramount, nothing had really changed. Lord Marbrand had neither less nor more power than before the Targaryens came, same with Lord Karstark, Lord Peake or Lord Grandison. Just like you rightfully pointed out that the acceptance of the smallfolk is vital to a regime, so is also the acceptance of the nobility at large. 

That is actually not clear. I mean, we know the Osgreys once had some fancy title as Marhsalls of the Northmarch, indicating that the various greater houses of the Seven Kingdoms had pretty important positions in those kingdoms while their liege lords were still kings. That must changed after there no longer were any kings but Aegon. Each king would have some sort of council, government, bureaucratic, and military officials all of which no longer existed under the Targaryens.

In that sense a lot of lords would have lost a lot of power after the Conquest.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

I dare say that its a great deal harder to form such loyalty than it is for the common noble. The smallfolk interact constantly with their own lord but very seldom if every with their king. I don't for example recall Eustace Osgrey complaining, and he seems to like to complain, how hard it was to raise his smallfolk for the Black Dragon despite the smallfolk allegedly calling Daeron for "the Good".

That is choosing a monarch from amongst those entitled/able to make a claim. That is separate from opposing the system of such a rule itself. I'm not opposing Targaryen rule if I pick just another one of those pricks. If I oppose their rule in general then I choose neither of them.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

Forgive me for being unclear but I meant the Poor Fellows were not running around to abuse people or do violence on them.

We are in agreement there. But they were there, and Aegon went out of his way to placate the Faith. He knew they were a danger, and he probably correctly judged that a war with the Faith Militant could mark the end of his rule, especially if half the great houses or more would stand with them. One assumes the chances of that happening, say, in the first or second decade of his reign - when the memories of the Conquest were still fresh - would have been much higher then they were later during Aenys I's reign (when many of the men alive during the Conquest would have been already dead). But still, the Targaryens were nearly toppled by a movement that essentially consisted mostly of commoners.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

I don't see the labor of love. I see the power of the dragons and how one dragon victory piled on another and people saw in which direction the wind was blowing. And like I said, there were many reasons to take a shot with a new start beyond love for the Targaryens.

Well, they had no reason to believe Aegon would ever return to the place where he landed. Why the hell would they gravitate towards that place. The man was not there throughout the entire war.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

The men-at-arms are smallfolk who have taken the side of the nobility, and so far men-at-arms have shown little restraint when it comes do doing violence on other smallfolk.

Under stable circumstances, when there is no consensus amongst them the people in charge are abominations and tyrants that have to be killed. There might have been some lords in Dorne who stayed true to Daeron I (just as there might have been some men-at-arms who did) but this would be exceedingly difficult if all the people around you want to spill Targaryen blood.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

And I wasn't talking about an all-out-war. I was talking about the nobility using selective violence to enforce their rule, not trying to kill as many smallfolk as they could.

If there is a large movement this doesn't work. That's what's happened in Dorne.

11 minutes ago, LionoftheWest said:

I agree with the ruling part but disagree with the rebellious part, as Westeros lacks the industralized infracstructure for a holocaust given how its a premodern society and the ideological goal wouldn't be to exterminate some ethnical group rather than force a political kingdom to surrender. Although it would surely have been as brutal as any other war.

I was agreeing with your assessment on the effects a destruction of the North's key castles and granaries, etc. would have on the population in winter. They don't have to kill them all to ensure they all die. But such a move would not make them popular.

If they would actually want to hold and rule the land they would have to send men up there to keep the Northmen under control. And if they were determined to get rid of those it should work as well (or even better) than in Dorne because the North is a very hard place to live in if you aren't born there.

[Lion of the West]

17 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The point I was trying to make with this analogy was that some cruel totalitarian regime where thousands of people end up imprisoned or torture effectively can be seen as the state/power making a war against their own people. In that sense those would not be societies where I'd say there is peace.

Well, I am pretty sure that definition of war and peace isn't very widespread. And as such I'll have to reject this kind of rather peculiar notion of war and peace. War is in essence when there's organized violence by either a state or large organization going on, and most often when the involved's states military takes an active part. Oppression by a tyrannical regime is still peace if there's not organized violence between two, or more, parties.

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If we take Syria as example right now - this clearly was and still is a very unpleasant regime to live in. But now things got worse, not better, thanks to the war. We could talk about surgical strikes against people who are clearly killing people but that usually is not how war is fought. Usually a lot of civilians die, too, civilians who may have lived (reasonably well) even in a totalitarian regime where a lot of people are treated very badly. This is all a tough call.

I agree its a tough call. I never said the decison for war was easy or that it should be easy. And while many civilians would be alive if there was not revolt against Assad, if everyone just bows down to oppression then oppression will never end. Now I don't live in Syria so I can't say if it was right or wrong to rise against Assad, but apparently enough people thought that it was right, just like people thought it was right to rise against Khaddafi in Libya.

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And quite honestly, if a mass murderer/serial killer or terrorist is hiding in an apartment complex in a land where there is no war we don't just bomb the place, accepting hundreds of people casualties as collateral damage as we (may) do in a war zone. Insofar as the loss of human lives is concerned those a clear double standards.

I agree. If a mass murdereror is hiding in a building, then blowing the building appart along with the innocent inhabitants should be avoided as there would be better options. To allow the mass murderer to keep killing people so that we don't have to possibly harm someone is however not one of those options.

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The point is that people think it is worth dying for this or that doesn't make it reasonable to do so. In fact, to become a trained killer/soldier you actually have suppress a lot of your innate compassion that comes with our mirror neurons.

What is reasonable for us may not be reasonable for them. In America in th 1860s the issues of slavery, for or against, was very important while nationalism was very important in Western and Central Europe in 1914, and to fight for or against Communism was important in Vietnamn and the US in the 1960s. While causes shifts and changes, convictions can drive people a long way to do what they think is right and that includes going into war even when they could have not done so.

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I honestly don't know where a genocide was ever stopped by war. A situation where this could work would actually give the side stopping it so much power that we would not call it a war but rather some sort of police intervention. A war means that you have to conquer a place and subdue the enemy. That means there will be fighting of some sort. And that's going to take time. Time that can (also) be used to continue or finish whatever genocide is being done.

I can name several, here's just two examples; NATO stopped the Serbs in Bosnia and the RPF stopped the genocide in Rwanda. In both cases military violence was used to prevent further genocidal work. And it worked wonders to stop the Daesh from creating havoc in the Levant and Iraq, for which both Christians, Shia and Yazidis can be thankful.

Well you definition of a war don't really hold my weight to me as it seems that you are trying to mix the cards now when you are up against the wall. I've never seen anything close to the definition of war like the one you stated. Just because a war is fairly one-sided don't mean it isn't a war. And while time can be used to finish a genocide fact is that if you just look on the genocide will for certainly be finished and be done more throughly than with an armed force coming down to stop the genocide.

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And depending how powerful/determined the enemy is a war might in the end kill as many or more people were killed in the genocide.

That's positively horrible to hear that genocides should be allowed because we don't want to hurt the perpertrators even while they commit the most ghastly crime know to man. I must confess I am struck dumb by this.

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Since he was already pretty old in 1945 I'd agree with you. But it is still pretty likely that we would have gotten some Nazi successor, establishing some sort of Franco-like fascism. If he had been killed during the attempt on his life in 20th July, 1944 we would have just gotten a somewhat toned down military dictatorship.

True that a Nazi successor could have come. If Nazism had been able to suvive Hitler, we would likely have known it by the 1970s. The one positiv with a military dicatorship would have been that maybe and perhaps they would have surrendered faster than Hitler did and the war would have ended earlier with less loss of life and and destruction across Europe.

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I actually was thinking about Rommel there. The British really like to paint him as this honorable foe they had to make the whole thing look more heroic (when in fact the guy was more a Nazi than many others in the military).

True that! The rot certainly went deeper and affected many more post-war celebrities than is commonly known.

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Still, it is something from which the commoner women also greatly profited. 

I would be very happy if that was the case.

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I was more referring to how Yandel describes Aegon in his section in TWoIaF. We have him hanging out with common people - sleeping at inns, and the like - and interacting with his common subjects throughout all those royal progresses which he did. Presumably you could go see the king when he was in Kayce, Fairmarket, Stoney Sept, and the like and lay your grievances before him. And since Aegon was essentially an impartial outsider you could most likely also get some real justice in a quarrel with your lord or the great lord of that region, even if you were a humble peasant or a merchant.

I'll have to check this up.

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Another aspect is that Aegon and his sister-wives were essentially nobodies who conquered an entire continent. That makes them really special. They might be dragonlords and descendants of Old Valyria but they also pulled of a remarkable feat not many people would be able to do. And that should make them pretty adorable.

I dare say that dragon riders are not nobodies by any stretch. Escpecially when there were only three of them in the whole world.

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That certainly would have made him pretty popular. And Yandel also claims Aegon had the least problems ruling. All his successors had more problems, apparently even Jaehaerys I and Viserys I who clearly faced less large problems during their reign.

I wouldn't be suprised. The dragons were still new to Westeros and so the novelty of them in both fear and wonder would have worked its magic on the realm.

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That is actually not clear. I mean, we know the Osgreys once had some fancy title as Marhsalls of the Northmarch, indicating that the various greater houses of the Seven Kingdoms had pretty important positions in those kingdoms while their liege lords were still kings. That must changed after there no longer were any kings but Aegon. Each king would have some sort of council, government, bureaucratic, and military officials all of which no longer existed under the Targaryens.

While I can see some changes I don't see the great changes you seem to hint at. They still rule the same ammount of territory and so would need effectively basically the same system to keep things working.

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In that sense a lot of lords would have lost a lot of power after the Conquest.

Alright, some lords lost some honors and positions at their king's court. But they retained their lands and power of it. The basis of their power was still theirs.

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That is choosing a monarch from amongst those entitled/able to make a claim. That is separate from opposing the system of such a rule itself. I'm not opposing Targaryen rule if I pick just another one of those pricks. If I oppose their rule in general then I choose neither of them.

Not what I was talking about. I was talking about that Osgrey could rather evident raise his smallfolk as soldiers for Blackfyre against the Targaryens despite the fact that Daeron was called "the Good" also among the smallfolk. The grip the nobles hold on their lands seems by all accounts to have been very strong and very possibly stronger than what power the king could normally project beyond King's Landing. Which I dare say is the greatest flaw in the Targaryen's rule, that they didn't build a power base for a non-dragonriding monarchy when they had the chance.

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Well, they had no reason to believe Aegon would ever return to the place where he landed. Why the hell would they gravitate towards that place. The man was not there throughout the entire war.

Aegon scored victory after victory, and people knew that place was under his rule. There was very little risk of being burnt by a dragon while living in Aegon's own territory and by a fortress which was garrisoned by his men.

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Under stable circumstances, when there is no consensus amongst them the people in charge are abominations and tyrants that have to be killed. There might have been some lords in Dorne who stayed true to Daeron I (just as there might have been some men-at-arms who did) but this would be exceedingly difficult if all the people around you want to spill Targaryen blood.

If there is a large movement this doesn't work. That's what's happened in Dorne.

Except that we don't know. After the Dornish revolt broke out, Baelor just dropped the ball and went home, so to speak. If he had sent his armies into Dorne to take it by force we have no idea if the Dornish would be able to stand against him. I actually think they would not, not in the situation they would have been in after getting smacked around by Daeron two times already.

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I was agreeing with your assessment on the effects a destruction of the North's key castles and granaries, etc. would have on the population in winter. They don't have to kill them all to ensure they all die. But such a move would not make them popular.

It wouldn't made the Targaryens popular in the North, I agree.

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If they would actually want to hold and rule the land they would have to send men up there to keep the Northmen under control. And if they were determined to get rid of those it should work as well (or even better) than in Dorne because the North is a very hard place to live in if you aren't born there.

Well, Dorne was conquered once by Daeron and Baelor never tried to force the issue, so I say that odds are that the North would fall before the Targaryens of they had dragons, and could well have fall also without.

[The Grey Wolf]

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

Except that we don't know. After the Dornish revolt broke out, Baelor just dropped the ball and went home, so to speak. If he had sent his armies into Dorne to take it by force we have no idea if the Dornish would be able to stand against him. I actually think they would not, not in the situation they would have been in after getting smacked around by Daeron two times already.

I agree.

[Lord Varys]

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

Well, I am pretty sure that definition of war and peace isn't very widespread. And as such I'll have to reject this kind of rather peculiar notion of war and peace. War is in essence when there's organized violence by either a state or large organization going on, and most often when the involved's states military takes an active part. Oppression by a tyrannical regime is still peace if there's not organized violence between two, or more, parties.

Well, then what is civil war? Essentially just some people with weapons attacking the people who claim they have the (or a better) right to rule.

If war is people killing other people on a large scale then quite a few things are war. Not to mention that many ancient or primitive cultures also though they were going to war despite the fact that they were a nation.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

I agree its a tough call. I never said the decison for war was easy or that it should be easy. And while many civilians would be alive if there was not revolt against Assad, if everyone just bows down to oppression then oppression will never end. Now I don't live in Syria so I can't say if it was right or wrong to rise against Assad, but apparently enough people thought that it was right, just like people thought it was right to rise against Khaddafi in Libya.

Sure, but that brute fact doesn't mean that all of that was good. Real world politics are far too complicated for this venue.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

I agree. If a mass murdereror is hiding in a building, then blowing the building appart along with the innocent inhabitants should be avoided as there would be better options. To allow the mass murderer to keep killing people so that we don't have to possibly harm someone is however not one of those options.

Well, then it is good to fire guns in crowded cinema if you have a (pretty good) chance to hit some murderer? That is the kind of thing that's done when you bomb such a building (and hitting the correct one - if not, then it is as if you were shooting in a cinema when the guy you were trying to hit was actually in the theater down the block).

If we had precise instruments I'd agree with you up to a point.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

I can name several, here's just two examples; NATO stopped the Serbs in Bosnia and the RPF stopped the genocide in Rwanda. In both cases military violence was used to prevent further genocidal work. And it worked wonders to stop the Daesh from creating havoc in the Levant and Iraq, for which both Christians, Shia and Yazidis can be thankful.

But is the whole thing justified if you save some people - say, 50,000 or 100,000 and throughout the war you fight die a few a million, most of which will have had no hand in the genocide?

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

Well you definition of a war don't really hold my weight to me as it seems that you are trying to mix the cards now when you are up against the wall. I've never seen anything close to the definition of war like the one you stated. Just because a war is fairly one-sided don't mean it isn't a war. And while time can be used to finish a genocide fact is that if you just look on the genocide will for certainly be finished and be done more throughly than with an armed force coming down to stop the genocide.

I don't see a lot of bombing (raping, killing, and torturing) going on in a proper police intervention. That usually is a part of modern warfare, though, when there are actually troops on the ground. The chances that you kill/harm only the guilty even if you are fighting for a just cause and with the intention to save people aren't there. Some children don't deserve to be blown up just because they are ruled by some mad dictator.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

True that a Nazi successor could have come. If Nazism had been able to suvive Hitler, we would likely have known it by the 1970s. The one positiv with a military dicatorship would have been that maybe and perhaps they would have surrendered faster than Hitler did and the war would have ended earlier with less loss of life and and destruction across Europe.

That could have happened. For egoistic reasons I'm happy that all those people died, though, because that enabled me not to grow up in some military dictatorship. Not to mention that I'd have never been born if there had been no World War II.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

I'll have to check this up.

It is at the end of Aegon's section. But you can read the entire thing, it is not that long (unfortunately).

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

I dare say that dragon riders are not nobodies by any stretch. Escpecially when there were only three of them in the whole world.

But they were nobodies politically, confined to a small island in the middle of nowhere.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

I wouldn't be suprised. The dragons were still new to Westeros and so the novelty of them in both fear and wonder would have worked its magic on the realm.

Still, kind of odd. Their successors had even more dragons.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

While I can see some changes I don't see the great changes you seem to hint at. They still rule the same ammount of territory and so would need effectively basically the same system to keep things working.

Influence at the seven royal courts would have come with much more power, though. And possibly even incomes. Those houses were all pushed further down, essentially becoming backwater lords.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

Not what I was talking about. I was talking about that Osgrey could rather evident raise his smallfolk as soldiers for Blackfyre against the Targaryens despite the fact that Daeron was called "the Good" also among the smallfolk. The grip the nobles hold on their lands seems by all accounts to have been very strong and very possibly stronger than what power the king could normally project beyond King's Landing. Which I dare say is the greatest flaw in the Targaryen's rule, that they didn't build a power base for a non-dragonriding monarchy when they had the chance.

Did I ever said the smallfolk during the reign of Daeron II was as much on his side as I think the smallfolk might have been on the Targaryen side in the decades after the Conquest? No, I did not.

I gladly concede that there would have been smallfolk who liked Daemon Blackfyre. And quite a few men who didn't give a damn and just followed the lead of their lords.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

Aegon scored victory after victory, and people knew that place was under his rule. There was very little risk of being burnt by a dragon while living in Aegon's own territory and by a fortress which was garrisoned by his men.

Neither Aegon nor the dragons were ever there, though.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

Except that we don't know. After the Dornish revolt broke out, Baelor just dropped the ball and went home, so to speak. If he had sent his armies into Dorne to take it by force we have no idea if the Dornish would be able to stand against him. I actually think they would not, not in the situation they would have been in after getting smacked around by Daeron two times already.

I already conceded that this might have happened. After all, Dorne seemed to give in, too, when Daeron I returned and was then killed. But if the feigned submission then, they might have done so again. I mean, they could continue this 'we rebel as soon as you look the other way' game for a very long time. You cannot rule over a population if they don't want to be ruled by you. Even if you beat them into submission again and again. All you can get this way is a state of perpetual warfare and no peace whatsoever.

And a medieval society like Westeros cannot afford this kind of thing. 

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

It wouldn't made the Targaryens popular in the North, I agree.

Not just that, the people would have remembered it everywhere, and the fear of suffering a similar fate could easily enough have led to widespread rebellion. And the men raising against Maegor apparently didn't let the fear of Balerion stop them.

4 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

Well, Dorne was conquered once by Daeron and Baelor never tried to force the issue, so I say that odds are that the North would fall before the Targaryens of they had dragons, and could well have fall also without.

The Targaryens never conquered the North, either. Torrhen submitted. They never had to march up in that vast land actually take possession of it with an occupying army. That would have never worked in the long run, dragons or not. They might have been able to punish the Northmen, kill a lot of them, but if they would never have been able to force them to do homage to them if they were deterimined not to suffer their rule.

[Lion of the West]

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

Well, then what is civil war? Essentially just some people with weapons attacking the people who claim they have the (or a better) right to rule.

Civil War is war between groups within the same country, as contrasted with war between states or countries.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

If war is people killing other people on a large scale then quite a few things are war. Not to mention that many ancient or primitive cultures also though they were going to war despite the fact that they were a nation.

It most also be organized and most often between different soceties or states.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

Sure, but that brute fact doesn't mean that all of that was good. Real world politics are far too complicated for this venue.

I agree that its complicated. No great problem in the world has an easy solution to itself.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

Well, then it is good to fire guns in crowded cinema if you have a (pretty good) chance to hit some murderer? That is the kind of thing that's done when you bomb such a building (and hitting the correct one - if not, then it is as if you were shooting in a cinema when the guy you were trying to hit was actually in the theater down the block).

If we had precise instruments I'd agree with you up to a point.

Eh, no that's not even close to what I'm talking about.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

But is the whole thing justified if you save some people - say, 50,000 or 100,000 and throughout the war you fight die a few a million, most of which will have had no hand in the genocide?

Preventing genocide is to prevent someone taking the right to say that: "This group/nation/language speakers/religious group/whatever have no right to exist and so we'll kill them all based on them belonging to this group!"

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

I don't see a lot of bombing (raping, killing, and torturing) going on in a proper police intervention. That usually is a part of modern warfare, though, when there are actually troops on the ground. The chances that you kill/harm only the guilty even if you are fighting for a just cause and with the intention to save people aren't there. Some children don't deserve to be blown up just because they are ruled by some mad dictator.

That depends entirely on what kind of polce you've got, to start with.

And I am well aware that innocents dies in war and that is also, as I am sure you've noticed, I don't favor war as a universal solution to problems. I am just not ready to refuse the existence of the use of war in dire situations.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

That could have happened. For egoistic reasons I'm happy that all those people died, though, because that enabled me not to grow up in some military dictatorship. Not to mention that I'd have never been born if there had been no World War II.

No matter if it was Hitler or General Whatever who was in charge when the last bullet was fired, Germany was not going to be allowed to keep on going as before, with its rather special relation between military and politics, as it was already decided in 1943. See this link for more details.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference#Key_points

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

It is at the end of Aegon's section. But you can read the entire thing, it is not that long (unfortunately).

What can I say, military winners are always popular and Oldtown had no reason to feel bad towards Aegon given that they was never suffered his bad side.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

But they were nobodies politically, confined to a small island in the middle of nowhere.

Not really. Both the Storm King and the Regent of the Vale were all to happy to make suggestions to marriage into Aegon's family, something that Lord Nobody could hardly expect for his family.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

Still, kind of odd. Their successors had even more dragons.

Note that people only rose against dragons to a larger degree under a uniquely weak king and later when they had dragons on their own side. And as time passed dragons would have become more familiart to people, and familiarity breeds contempt.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

Influence at the seven royal courts would have come with much more power, though. And possibly even incomes. Those houses were all pushed further down, essentially becoming backwater lords.

Not really. We have precious few examples that lords as a rule lost so much and "backwater lords" is really taking it to far.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

Did I ever said the smallfolk during the reign of Daeron II was as much on his side as I think the smallfolk might have been on the Targaryen side in the decades after the Conquest? No, I did not.

No, I was giving you examples to illustrate my point.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

I gladly concede that there would have been smallfolk who liked Daemon Blackfyre. And quite a few men who didn't give a damn and just followed the lead of their lords.

I agree that there were smallfolk who liked Daeron, who liked Daemon and who didn't care a thing about any of them.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

Neither Aegon nor the dragons were ever there, though.

They knew that any attackers would be avenged by dragons and that by living at Aegonfort there was no chance that they would be targeted for a dragon conquest themselves.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

I already conceded that this might have happened. After all, Dorne seemed to give in, too, when Daeron I returned and was then killed. But if the feigned submission then, they might have done so again. I mean, they could continue this 'we rebel as soon as you look the other way' game for a very long time. You cannot rule over a population if they don't want to be ruled by you. Even if you beat them into submission again and again. All you can get this way is a state of perpetual warfare and no peace whatsoever.

Forgive me for not noticing it.

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

Not just that, the people would have remembered it everywhere, and the fear of suffering a similar fate could easily enough have led to widespread rebellion. And the men raising against Maegor apparently didn't let the fear of Balerion stop them.

Not after it became unbearable but I'll allow myself to stay silent on this until after I've read "The Sons of the Dragon".

On 2017-03-17 at 0:02 AM, Lord Varys said:

The Targaryens never conquered the North, either. Torrhen submitted. They never had to march up in that vast land actually take possession of it with an occupying army. That would have never worked in the long run, dragons or not. They might have been able to punish the Northmen, kill a lot of them, but if they would never have been able to force them to do homage to them if they were deterimined not to suffer their rule.

Strange then that Torrhen did submit and did not remain in the North, confident in his invincibility.

[Jon's Queen Consort]

On 14/3/2017 at 6:17 PM, Dorian Martell's son said:

I find it more than a little conceited that people assume they somehow know the story better than the author 

What do you mean?