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Is Robert to blame for Joffery being a bad king?


Varysblackfyre321

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On ‎06‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 11:22 AM, Ralphis Baratheon said:

I wondere why Joffrey was so obsessed with crossbows. Most young nobles want to be good with a sword and maybe as a Baratheon Joff wanted to emulate Robert and use a war hammer. Though I don't think Joff had the build to wield a war hammer. Tommen on the other hand seems to enjoy martial prowess and sparring. He gave Bran all he could handle in Winterfell and even tries to joust.  Tommen is more plump then Joffrey but sometimes plump children grow into muscular young adults. The Beetsbane just might be the one to carry Robert's war hammer into battle. Woe to (f)Aegon and everyone else had GRRM gone through with the five year plan. King Tommen Baratheon would have crushed them all to beet juice.

I still hope that the time span in the winds of winter will be 1 or 2 years at least. 

I mean danny will take at least a year in travels and arrangements to get to westeros...

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7 hours ago, BRANDON GREYSTARK said:

Everybody wants to blame Robert of everything . The Joffrey was a burgeoning psychopath  . Robert may not have been father of the year , but Joffrey did have other male role models Jaime , Barristan ,  Tywin even Tyrion . OR is Jaehaerys  and Shaera is the reason Aerys was a bad king .

Barristan would have never  really interacted with Joffery(being his father's glorified body guard), Jamie under the advice of Cersi distanced himself from all his children less suspicions be raised and was going under a downward spiral into darkness, Tyrion is leecher and a drunken dwarf. Joffery didn't respect any of them. He did respect Robert. And Robert needed to lay out an example for his heirs to follow. He failed to do so. The lessons he departed onto Joffery on what a king is and how to run a kingdom or war were genuily terrible.

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On 2018-01-07 at 0:37 AM, LordMilner said:

Yeah It's 50 50 for me. On one side I would believe the way he was raised made him so cruel but I also feel because his mother and father being brother and sister it could lead to some form of mental problems.

Well yeah, I suppose that's not unreasonable to look at things that way.

On 2018-01-07 at 4:55 AM, Sourjapes said:

I think that Robert was guilty of it in the sense that he clearly didn't do enough to correct it, though it is worth noting that not all kids needs to be corrected in the way that Joffrey did. Most don't, in fact. Joffrey was probably always going ot have extremely limited empathy and a penchant for selfish-ness and cruelty, but if Robert had more attentive he might have gotten an heir was vain and cruel but wise enough to have a stable rule.

People need more or less correction but I don't think that social ideas like honor, courtesy or civility comes from within the human mind. Some many have character traits more in line with them but all of them learn how to behave in society. So I'd say that Joffrey was nurture as opposed to nature and that he was thought that the king was absolute in power. The way I see it Joffrey could behave well as a crown prince but his knowledge of his social position and his future as an absolute king meant that he felt himself to be above social norms, customs and conventions. And we kind of know how that ended up.

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The boy was a born psychopath who couldn't be helped. You think even modern-day serial killers and monsters can be healed by good parenting or therapy? Can you tell that Tommen was taken care of pretty good? No, it's just that he doesn't have the same tendencies as his late brother. He likes kittens, not opening their belly to see their little ones. 

 

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On ‎1‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 9:22 AM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

I know this has been touched upon in other threads but I found it to be locked and I still wanted to share my thoughts. My view is that Joffery while probably would grow up to be a monster did not need to be a bad king.

He's shown he can be an intelligent guy. 

I feel if Robert had tried setting a good example for the boy Joffery's rule might have not been so disasterous.

 Like others have pointed out(and I tend to agree), a lot of what Joffery actually did can be seen as a more perverse version  than what he's seen Robert has done and or something he thought would win Robert's approval.

Such as killing the pregnant cat and presenting the carcass to Robert(who loves hunting), trying to kill Bran because Robert said crippled kids need to be euthanized, having his guards beat his wife which I don't know how often but I imagine domestic abuse would be something Joffery would see Robert commit in arguements with Cersi(which were frequent), especially when he was drunk(which was often).

His Idea of patience is weakness, the idea of a king having no responsibilty all that comes from Robert. 

What do you think?

 

It depends on what you mean by "bad king."

Some would say Robert was a bad king because he abrogated all of his responsibilities so he could drink and whore himself into an early grave, and yet the people loved him and his reign was (mostly) peaceful and profitable. It can be argued that Aegon V was a bad king because he tried to afford the small folk some measure of legal protection from their lords' judgement, and then stood helpless as his children abandoned their betrothals to the high lords. Some lords rose in rebellion, but again, the people loved him.

The baddest of all bad kings was probably Maegor the Cruel, but he built the Red Keep, put down the rebellions that arose during the reign of weak Aenys I (including the one by the Faith Militant) and essentially cemented the Targaryan hold over the six kingdoms, arguably leading to the peace and prosperity that followed. He is almost universally despised to this day.

So, was Joffrey a bad king? His reign was too short to say for sure, but history will say he successfully defended King's Landing long enough for the Lannister/Tyrell army to arrive, and some might argue that bold moves like executing traitorous lords showed the makings of a strong king...

But if you are asking whether Robert should be blamed for Joffrey being a bad person, then I defer to the discussion above.

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