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R+L=J v.164


SFDanny

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

The issue with Viserys as king was that this passed over Rhaegar's infant son.

Are there any details on this available? It has become popular among some people to claim that naming Viserys meant that Aerys disinherited every single offspring by Rhaegar forever.

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What there is is just WoIaF’s remark on it, but it seems to me that passing someone over is not necessarily the same as disinheriting them. Look at the Great Council of 101 — claimants who had been passed over in 92 AC still had a legal claim to put forward in 101. 

 

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55 minutes ago, Ran said:

What there is is just WoIaF’s remark on it, but it seems to me that passing someone over is not necessarily the same as disinheriting them. Look at the Great Council of 101 — claimants who had been passed over in 92 AC still had a legal claim to put forward in 101. 

Thank you. I am of the same opinion, though I wasn't familiar with the details from history. 

May I have another question? Are there any details concerning Rhaegar's duel with Robert? There is a discrepancy between the House of the Undying vision and Ned's account of the duel - the first has Rhaegar sinking to his knees in the water, the other refers to combating on horseback - but Ned is actually not a first-hand witness because he arrived only when Rhaegar lay dead in the stream. Is it possible that at some point, Rhaegar dismounted (e.g. if the wound that Robert sustained caused him to fall down from the saddle), and his chivalry basically got him killed, just like Daemon's?

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5 hours ago, Ran said:

Rhaegar was already dead when Aerys is reported to have done that, as I recall. The issue with Viserys as king was that this passed over Rhaegar's infant son.

And could be seen more as a slap in the face to Dorne. Didn't Aerys in his paranoia suspect Dorne for throwing the Battle of the Trident? 

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4 hours ago, JNR said:

That was a lesson Melisandre had learned long before Asshai; the more effortless the sorcery appears, the more men fear the sorcerer.

If you want to be tricky you could interpret it as "it was a lesson she learned long before the lessons she learned in Asshai". She might have been in Asshai, then left to learn a lesson, then came back to Asshai for more lessons. Yeah, I'm not really buying it either, but it's one explanation.

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7 minutes ago, Ran said:

@Lost Melnibonean

Yes, that seems to be a possibility.

@maudisdottir

No real explanation needed, as far as the app goes. I absolutely believe that Melisandre is not from Asshai... or rather, Melony is not from Asshai. "Melisandre", OTOH, seems to have her origin there.

I agree that an explanation isn't really needed either, but I was just pointing out that there are other ways to interpret the text. I also agree that "Melisandre of Asshai" doesn't have to mean that's where she's originally from, only where she is known to have emerged from at some point - where she came from before that isn't really important.

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4 hours ago, Ran said:

What there is is just WoIaF’s remark on it, but it seems to me that passing someone over is not necessarily the same as disinheriting them. Look at the Great Council of 101 — claimants who had been passed over in 92 AC still had a legal claim to put forward in 101.

I think we have to differentiate between anointing an heir and that heir actually taking the throne. Rhaenys and her children remain in the game until Viserys I is crowned king. Then they are still a powerful faction but they are no longer seen as real rivals to Viserys I and his branch. And we also have Viserys I making it clear to Rhaenyra that the king can change the succession how he sees fit when he forces her to marry Laenor.

Once a king is crowned it would be weird to view a prince who has been passed over - and his descendants - as being at the top of the line of succession. It is a pity that we don't know what happened to Aerion's son Maegor - if he ever made an attempt to take the Iron Throne we could guess how good the claim of a prince was who was passed over. Prince Duncan's children - if they ever existed - were most likely seen as too lowborn to ever sit the Iron Throne.

In that sense, Rhaegar's entire line is likely seen as being behind King Viserys III and his chosen heir, Daenerys, at least within the framework of legal argumentation. Now that Aegon has returned to Westeros, all he needs to do is prove his worth and claim by taking the Iron Throne from Tommen/Myrcella. Then everybody will worship no matter what Aerys II decreed once.

1 hour ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

And could be seen more as a slap in the face to Dorne. Didn't Aerys in his paranoia suspect Dorne for throwing the Battle of the Trident? 

One should note in that context that one version of the end of Elia and the royal children Yandel gives, is that Aerys II had them killed:

Quote

It is not known who murdered Princess Rhaenys in her bed, or smashed the infant Prince Aegon’s head against a wall. Some whisper it was done at Aerys’s own command when he learned that Lord Lannister had taken up Robert’s cause, while others suggest that Elia did it herself for fear of what would happen to her children in the hands of her dead husband’s enemies.

The Mad King was clearly the kind of guy who would kill his kin rather than allow them to fall in enemy hands. Especially if said king had little more use for that kin than serve as hostages against the in-laws of his late eldest son.

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25 minutes ago, LynnS said:

It would be a Reveal of Mass Destruction that would break the internet.  People will go crazy.  I look forward to it.

I'd be willing to bet some money on possibility that they are something along the lines of 'The Morning will come' or 'We bring the Dawn'.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

I'd be willing to bet some money on possibility that they are something along the lines of 'The Morning will come' or 'We bring the Dawn'.

I'll have to think about it. Will you take buttons for legal tender?

 

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22 hours ago, Ran said:

Rhaegar was already dead when Aerys is reported to have done that, as I recall. The issue with Viserys as king was that this passed over Rhaegar's infant son.

There is an interesting assumption built into this post:  that Aerys had to take some affirmative step to displace Aegon in favor of Viserys. I doubt that is correct.  It is more likely that Viserys, as the son of a king, came before Aegon, who was just the son of a prince, automatically.  

GRRM discussed the competing nature of these claims in his SSM on the Hornwood inheritance.  He called it precedence (the prince's son) vs proximity (the king's son).  And then he gave us an example of how it played out for House Targaryen:  when King Maekar died, Prince Maegor, as the son of an older but dead prince, had a claim, but so did Maekar's surviving youngest son, Prince Aegon (Egg).  Of course, Egg became king and Maegor did not. And this is consistent with the approach taken in several instances in real-world medieval history (e.g. when John became king of England in 1199).

Other arguments in favor of Viserys that came up at prior Great Councils included not being an infant and having more Targaryen blood.

So until we hear differently from GRRM, I would assume that Viserys became the heir automatically when Rhaegar died. Any effort to make Rhaegar's son the heir would have required an affirmative act by Aerys.  Meaning that Dany's claim is stronger that Aegon's (or that of any other child of Rhaegar).

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@The Twinslayer

We do know that kings name and anoint their heirs, even if there is a line of succession. King Aerys I named three Princes of Dragonstone throughout his reign. And he went strictly by the principle of primogeniture: first Rhaegel, then Aelor, then Maekar.

It is also pretty clear that Valarr and Matarys were seen as the ones next in line after Baelor Breakspear - in fact, the whole thing is pretty much confirmed for Valarr who becomes his grandfather's heir after Baelor dies at Ashford.

Proximity is also a strong principle, but it usually only wins the day if the royal (great-)grandchildren are far too young to rule in their own right.

The succession of Maekar was apparently as contested as it was because King Maekar himself never got around to name and anoint an heir after Aerion - then likely Prince of Dragonstone - died in 232 AC. Without public confirmation from the king the succession usually isn't as clear as one might think.

In that sense, your idea that there is a default setting on the succession unless the king intervenes doesn't make a lot of sense.

We see this very strongly with Tyrion - technically he would be the heir to Casterly Rock, but with Tywin not publicly acknowledging this fact people neither see nor treat him as such.

I'm with you that Dany's claim is rather strong due to the fact that her royal father named Viserys III his heir - who then was crowned the last Targaryen king on Dragonstone - and he, in turn, later named Daenerys Princess of Dragonstone and acknowledged her as his heir. Viserys and Daenerys are what's left of House Targaryen, both factually as well as because their father favored Viserys III rather than Rhaegar's children. It is rather likely that Dany is going to use that line of argumentation to push her own claim against Aegon's.

If we assumed for a moment Viserys III had succeeded his father as King on the Iron Throne as Aerys II had wished, then it would have fallen to Viserys III to name his heir, in turn. We don't know if he had chosen Daenerys if he had had no children of his own body, but if he had done so then she would have succeeded him in Westeros, just as she did in exile.

The contrary view would then be that Viserys III simply didn't know that there were still male Targaryens around - and that he would have named Aegon his heir had he known he was still alive. Or perhaps Aegon's followers are even going to claim Aegon had a better claim that Viserys III from the start, ignoring or dismissing the decision of the Mad King.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

 

Or perhaps Aegon's followers are even going to claim Aegon had a better claim that Viserys III from the start, ignoring or dismissing the decision of the Mad King.

I find this highly likely. People loved Rhaegar and hated Aerys. Plus Dany has a rather bad reputation on top of delineating from the Mad King, while Aegon can lean heavily on Rhaegar's romanticized history on top of his own inspiring backstory. 

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There's also the fact that the past precedents against women inheriting may be a point of argument. Even with Aegon III, where the straightforward approach is to see his claim descending from his mother, he also happens to have been the son of Daemon Targaryen, brother to the last uncontested king. If you're inclined to discount Rhaenyra, and all of Viserys's children by Alicent are dead but for a daughter, Daemon would have been next by proximity, and Aegon following him.

In any case, the general "default" in Westeros is primogeniture. The Targaryens sort of/kind of tried to establish that as far as the throne goes, women and the heirs of women cannot inherit, a rule that was followed by Viserys II at least. But whole proximity business raised its head in 92AC because of the specific situation where it was either a woman or an infant (or, later, a boy) vs. an adult. Had Laenor been 18 instead of 8 at 101AC, he may well have been selected over Viserys.

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43 minutes ago, ChuckPunch said:

I find this highly likely. People loved Rhaegar and hated Aerys. Plus Dany has a rather bad reputation on top of delineating from the Mad King, while Aegon can lean heavily on Rhaegar's romanticized history on top of his own inspiring backstory. 

Sure, but chances are that pretty much no Targaryen loyalists turning against Tommen and Myrcella is going to care about Dany all that much in the near future. She is the Queen of Slaver's Bay now, and welcome to it, as Mace Tyrell put it in the Epilogue. Nobody cares about the claims of absent people - and even less so, when they are under the impression that these people have no intention to ever come to Westeros (Dany's marriage to Hizdahr will be seen as a confirmation that she is going to settle in Meereen). And when they disappear/are rumored to be dead, they will become complete non-factors in the decision-making process of the people half a world a way.

Chances are, that Aegon will already have to sit (pretty) securely on the Iron Throne by the time Dany arrives - sort of like Aegon II sat there, when Rhaenyra learned that her father had died - (and also be married by that time, most likely to Arianne) or else they could resolve the entire issue by marriage or some other compromise.

Then Aegon's side will play the whole 'no female claimant under any circumstances' card and Dany the 'I'm the sister and true heir of the last crowned Targaryen king, Viserys II - and the daughter rather than the grandchild of Aerys II' card combined with the claim that Aegon might not actually be Rhaegar's son.

But one assumes she will have to have some justification as to why her claim is better than Aegon's should the man be the real deal.

From a strictly legal point of view the Targaryen succession would indeed go Aerys II > Viserys III (son and chosen heir of Aerys II) > Daenerys Stormborn (only sibling and chosen heir of Viserys III) simply because they are the only Targaryens left. Aegon is a wildcard stepping into a void and power vacuum. If he can prove he is who he says he is - by winning battles, etc. - he is likely to steal all of Dany's thunder.

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