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[Spoilers S07] “Robert’s Rebellion was based on a lie.”


Angel Eyes

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That makes Bran a liar, because the rebellion wasn’t built on a lie, since it started when the Mad King called for the heads of Ned and Robert and Jon Arryn refused to give them up. 

 

How much do you think Lord Rickard, Brandon, Ned, Jon Arryn and Big Bobby B are turning in their graves at that statement?

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It's not exactly a lie if you consider that the first act of war was Rhaegar "abduction" of Lyanna. It's unlikely that Brandon would have gone to King's Landing to insult and defy the crown's heir if he believed that Lyanna had gone with Rhaegar willingly.

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46 minutes ago, Zapho said:

I think it remains to be seen whether Bran was right or not. History gets written by the winners.

If I thought D&D were capable of grasping this simple concept, I'd agree with you, but Bran is now Expositiontron 9000. His visions and his conclusions from here on out are gonna be 100% correct all the time and be used in courts of law to convict former supergeniuses/jetpack riders that are suddenly too dumb to demand a trial by combat.

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1 hour ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

If I thought D&D were capable of grasping this simple concept, I'd agree with you, but Bran is now Expositiontron 9000. His visions and his conclusions from here on out are gonna be 100% correct all the time and be used in courts of law to convict former supergeniuses/jetpack riders that are suddenly too dumb to demand a trial by combat.

Littlefinger wouldn’t have survived a trial by combat anyway. But I digress. 

3 hours ago, The hairy bear said:

It's not exactly a lie if you consider that the first act of war was Rhaegar "abduction" of Lyanna. It's unlikely that Brandon would have gone to King's Landing to insult and defy the crown's heir if he believed that Lyanna had gone with Rhaegar willingly.

Was it? I thought the first act of war was Jon Arryn refusing to give up Robert and Ned.

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16 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

Littlefinger wouldn’t have survived a trial by combat anyway

Tyrion survived one, and almost did again, thanks to there being champions in trials by combat.

But yeah, on a more relevant note, yeah, there's a thousand bloody reasons for Robert's Rebellion, and most of them involve the Mad King, not Lyanna and Rhaegar.

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8 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

 

But yeah, on a more relevant note, yeah, there's a thousand bloody reasons for Robert's Rebellion, and most of them involve the Mad King, not Lyanna and Rhaegar.

I guess D&D forgot about that when they wrote the dialogue. 

What about the other question I had, about the dead lords turning in their graves at Bran’s words?

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1 hour ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

But yeah, on a more relevant note, yeah, there's a thousand bloody reasons for Robert's Rebellion, and most of them involve the Mad King, not Lyanna and Rhaegar.

Sure, but the ball got rolling with the alleged abduction and rape of Lyanna. If it turned out that someone who knew better fed lies about them to her family, the Mad King and who knows else it would be based on a lie.

I'm thinking of Varys. He doesn't really have a role anymore but he's kept around. It's been foreshadowed that he isn't to be trusted and that he will die soon. His hatred of magic might be a motive why he wanted to get rid not just of Aerys but also of Rhaegar. Rhaegar on the other hand was supposed to be planning to do something about his mad father on his own.

Anyway, maybe I'm dead wrong about this but I hope that there will be a great reveal about Rhaegar's plans around episode 2 - probably a Bran info dump but I'll still take it - and how Varys among others thwarted it. The last word he's going to hear will be Dracarys.

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3 hours ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

Yeah, I'm pretty sure way more than just Bobby B would be pissed at the implications that everything they fought and died for was for nought.

Would make sense though thematically if everything they fought and died for was for nought if your of the opinion that war is a generally a great folly. 

You know that rebellion at the beggining well it was freaking pointless and to drive that home we are going to show you the causus belli for the war was bullshit, that the person who won was a worse King than the person who would have been King and just to drive the point home in case your not paying attention we are going to put the same family that was over thrown back in charge. 

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2 hours ago, Zapho said:

Sure, but the ball got rolling with the alleged abduction and rape of Lyanna. If it turned out that someone who knew better fed lies about them to her family, the Mad King and who knows else it would be based on a lie.

I'm thinking of Varys. He doesn't really have a role anymore but he's kept around. It's been foreshadowed that he isn't to be trusted and that he will die soon. His hatred of magic might be a motive why he wanted to get rid not just of Aerys but also of Rhaegar. Rhaegar on the other hand was supposed to be planning to do something about his mad father on his own.

Anyway, maybe I'm dead wrong about this but I hope that there will be a great reveal about Rhaegar's plans around episode 2 - probably a Bran info dump but I'll still take it - and how Varys among others thwarted it. The last word he's going to hear will be Dracarys.

Interesting regarding Varys. I was suspecting the orchestrator was going to end up being Tywin and Pycelle if they go there was an orhestrator route. 

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9 minutes ago, jcmontea said:

Would make sense though thematically if everything they fought and died for was for nought if your of the opinion that war is a generally a great folly. 

Oh, I agree, that would be a good theme, but it's kinda undermined by the information at hand versus the limited information they present as the ultimate truth and SHOCKING TWIST.

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15 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

Oh, I agree, that would be a good theme, but it's kinda undermined by the information at hand versus the limited information they present as the ultimate truth and SHOCKING TWIST.

I could see that. Although one has to consider the audience. For 99% of the people watching what was presented was probably enough to get the point. 

I really like that theme as well. Its really all there. All the pieces are now on the board to make the case that the last 25 years of Westerosi wars have been pointless, a destruction of the continent due to Frost’s desire and hate from the original Fire and Ice poem. We shall see if they deliever. 

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7 minutes ago, jcmontea said:

I really like that theme as well. Its really all there.

As a whole, looking over all of aSoIaF, 'war is pointless' is a massive fucking theme, I just think Robert's Rebellion is not the shining example of this D&D seem to think it is, what with their 'BRAN IS SIGNIFICANTLY NARRATING BOATSEX GAIS THIS IS SO IMPORTANT' schtick.

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18 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

As a whole, looking over all of aSoIaF, 'war is pointless' is a massive fucking theme, I just think Robert's Rebellion is not the shining example of this D&D seem to think it is, what with their 'BRAN IS SIGNIFICANTLY NARRATING BOATSEX GAIS THIS IS SO IMPORTANT' schtick.

Why not?

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32 minutes ago, jcmontea said:

Why not?

Because deposing a madman who sees enemies in his shadows, tortures to death two men in a mockery of what counted as 'justice' at the time, and demanded the heads of two boys who had relatively little to do with it, and did a good job alienating every major ally he had.

He was a bad leader that in many ways deserved to be deposed, violently or not. I still think it has an anti-war air, but out of the many wars (like the war of the five kings, which started because Joffrey was like 'lol jk gonna kill Ned', Robert's Rebellion was in many cases a cause worth fighting for (which is what the pro-war camp would argue for).

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20 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

That makes Bran a liar, because the rebellion wasn’t built on a lie, since it started when the Mad King called for the heads of Ned and Robert and Jon Arryn refused to give them up. 

 

How much do you think Lord Rickard, Brandon, Ned, Jon Arryn and Big Bobby B are turning in their graves at that statement?

Bran isn't a liar as much as he is attributing the seed of the rebellion to the first action that sparked off the series of events that led to Jon Arryn calling his banners. What he is saying is that the event that sparked it all off, Lyanna's kidnap and rape, wasn't as it appeared to be and might have been avoided had the morons that were Rhaegar and Lyanna just, IDK, told people their plan instead of doing it all on the sly for no good reason. I mean, they must have presumed it was going to come out eventually. The entire thing is stupid and doesn't make sense.

If Rickard, Brandon, and Jon Arryn are spinning in their graves it's because Lyanna's actions were incredibly stupid and got half her family killed. If Bobby B is spinning in his grave, it's because Rhaegar stole the woman he was meant to marry and she went with him willingly, shattering his idealised vision of Lyanna. Ned won't be spinning in his grave because he probably knew all of this anyway, just after the fact, though Cat is probably spinning because she wasted all that energy hating Jon for no good reason and she's pretty angry that Ned didn't just tell her.

I hated the entire way that scene at the end of S7 was done, especially compared to when they did the exact same reveal at the end of S6. This whole thing that Bran needed Sam to come in and clear things up was stupid, especially since all he would have needed to do to put it together himself would be to just listen to what his Aunt Lyanna was saying. The worst thing about it was what they had Bran spell it out rather than showing us visually like they did with the Tower of Joy scene. You didn't need Bran to cry out, "Whoa! That's Jon! This is huge!" His expression as he watched the scene play out said it all and it was topped off by the baby's face - BOOM, cut to Jon. Much better.

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21 hours ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

Because deposing a madman who sees enemies in his shadows, tortures to death two men in a mockery of what counted as 'justice' at the time, and demanded the heads of two boys who had relatively little to do with it, and did a good job alienating every major ally he had.

He was a bad leader that in many ways deserved to be deposed, violently or not. I still think it has an anti-war air, but out of the many wars (like the war of the five kings, which started because Joffrey was like 'lol jk gonna kill Ned', Robert's Rebellion was in many cases a cause worth fighting for (which is what the pro-war camp would argue for).

Every war from a certain point of view is justified. It has to be to some extent for people to be willing to go out and risk their lives. This is why George has multiple viewpoints:

Having multiple viewpoints is crucial to the grayness of the characters. You have to be able to see the struggle from both sides, because real human beings in a war have all these processes of self-justification, telling ourselves why what we're doing is the right thing”

We start out thinking this was a just war to depose a madman as you say and his evil son who kidnapped and raped a noble girl. We then find out nope that evil son was not so evil and he actually loved that girl and she loved him. We then find out that that son actually wanted to depose his father himself so the prospect of acheiving the supposed aims of said just war “deposing the mad king” was there via peaceful means. We then also find out if you subscribe to the Southron Ambitions theory, that there had been a long running power play going on involving the rebellious families. And then the supposed noble side ends up sacking the capital city and viciously murdering and raping innocents themselves. So the whole thing becomes a whole lot murkier than just these good lords overthrowing a tyrant. Then you add in the fact that the war itself killed tens of thousands for what, to avenge two noble aristocrats? That the war set up a situation where future wars were a lot more likely since any aristocrat with an army big enough could put themselves forward as king afterwards once the idea of the rightful king and bloodline goes out the window and the whole excercise starts to look like nothing more than just a pointless bloodletting that had more negative consequences than positive and at its core was probably driven less by a conception of justice and more by desire and hate. 

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36 minutes ago, jcmontea said:

Every war from a certain point of view is justified. It has to be to some extent for people to be willing to go out and risk their lives. This is why George has multiple viewpoints:

Having multiple viewpoints is crucial to the grayness of the characters. You have to be able to see the struggle from both sides, because real human beings in a war have all these processes of self-justification, telling ourselves why what we're doing is the right thing”

We start out thinking this was a just war to depose a madman as you say and his evil son who kidnapped and raped a noble girl. We then find out nope that evil son was not so evil and he actually loved that girl and she loved him. We then find out that that son actually wanted to depose his father himself so the prospect of acheiving the supposed aims of said just war “deposing the mad king” was there via peaceful means. We then also find out if you subscribe to the Southron Ambitions theory, that there had been a long running power play going on involving the rebellious families. And then the supposed noble side ends up sacking the capital city and viciously murdering and raping innocents themselves. So the whole thing becomes a whole lot murkier than just these good lords overthrowing a tyrant. Then you add in the fact that the war itself killed tens of thousands for what, to avenge two noble aristocrats? That the war set up a situation where future wars were a lot more likely since any aristocrat with an army big enough could put themselves forward as king afterwards once the idea of the rightful king and bloodline goes out the window and the whole excercise starts to look like nothing more than just a pointless bloodletting that had more negative consequences than positive and at its core was probably driven less by a conception of justice and more by desire and hate. 

All this is fine:

However, the mere revelation that Rhaegar loved and married Lyanna isn't the thing that makes the war 'based on a lie'. After all, how were they to know Rhaegar was gonna depose Aerys? In fact, they don't even mention that in the show.

The truth is, while the pieces from the books are there, the show alone hasn't done much to convey it, and it seems they just want to make it all about Jon being the grand unifier rather than being one result out of thousands coming from Rhaegar and Lyanna's foolish closed mouths.

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24 minutes ago, Beardy the Wildling said:

All this is fine:

However, the mere revelation that Rhaegar loved and married Lyanna isn't the thing that makes the war 'based on a lie'. After all, how were they to know Rhaegar was gonna depose Aerys? In fact, they don't even mention that in the show.

The truth is, while the pieces from the books are there, the show alone hasn't done much to convey it, and it seems they just want to make it all about Jon being the grand unifier rather than being one result out of thousands coming from Rhaegar and Lyanna's foolish closed mouths.

Yes. The show is simplyfying things significantly 

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