Canon Claude

Renly talks a big game of liking Ned, but he still abandoned him because Ned wouldn’t give him what he wanted. He could have helped prevent the Lannisters from taking over, but instead he runs away south and spends his days feasting while the realm tears itself apart. He also mocks and derides Stannis for going to war against him when that’s exactly what he’s doing as well. And the people who cry foul over Stannis killing his brother conveniently forget that Renly was going to have Stannis killed too. Not that I’m going to defend Stannis either. I dislike almost all the Baratheons that we’ve gotten to know so far.

He’s hardly the first hypocrite to appear in this series. Hell, almost everyone is guilty of hypocrisy in this series, even your beloved King Renly.

Stannis never told Robert because he knew Robert wouldn’t listen to him. And that’s in character for the both of them. Neither brother likes the other, and Robert regularly dismissed Stannis’ concerns when it came to corruption or moral quandaries. And Stannis had the most to gain if Robert’s kids were proven to be illegitimate. The question isn’t why Stannis didn’t tell Robert. It’s why he didn’t tell Eddard Stark. After Jon Arryn died, Eddard is the only man who could tell Robert the truth about his kids. Stannis knew that, but I guess he let his resentment of Ned get in the way. Makes sense, really, because Ned is like a more palatable version of Stannis who balances Robert out.

A point of pride, presumably. The titles are symbolic anyway.

Wow, I forgot about that example. Tywin really was even more full of shit than I thought. It would have been so easy to deal with Rhaegar’s kids without killing them.

What are you talking about? Nymeria sent several kings to the Wall in golden chains. People get condemned to the Wall as punishment all the time. Hell, Aegon II was ready to send his nephew to the Wall BEFORE he came of age.

That was later, though, plus it wasn’t exactly a crazy stretch. He outnumbered his enemies and he’d taken them by surprise. Not exactly a Robb Stark situation.

How would anyone know that Jaime is a good battle commander? We never hear an account of him actively leading troops before the War of the Five Kings, and just four battles in, he gets captured and his army is annihilated.

And he also got the chance to take the black. He chose execution instead.

To be fair, Perkin the Flea and the men who conspired to kill Aegon II were allowed to take the black.

I personally don’t think he would, since he was determined to finally kill Tyrion once and for all. Moreso than even Cersei, I daresay. But I was wondering if anyone disagrees.

No, he would have done the same stupid rush into battle, except he wouldn’t be doing it to deliberately weaken every northern house but his own. Robb was smart to keep Greatjon by his side during the war. But he should have done the same with Roose Bolton. It’s hard to scheme and conspire when you have no independent command. In fact, I’d say giving Roose any kind of command separate from him was the single dumbest move Robb ever made.

Not to mention the fact that Roose did the exact thing that Cat and Robb were worried Greatjon would do. If anything, it should have been someone more reasonable and cautious, like Halys Hornwood or Medger Cerwyn.

So… given how many examples he’s inspiring, maybe Tywin wasn’t that smart after all?

Bittersteel Since Aegor was legitimized, and his half brother took a new surname, I always reckoned Aegor should have used “Bittersteel” as his new surname

Agreed. I honestly wish we’d gotten him earlier in the story. He’s a much better character than Balon. And it’s not like he would have clashed or overshadowed the other big bads. They’re all psychos in different ways. Joffrey is the spoiled brat to the worst extreme. Ramsay is a sociopathic sadist who’s too much of a brute to ever truly succeed, because he fools absolutely nobody about what he is. But Euron? He’s a psychopath, with a narcissistic megalomania. And we still don’t fully know how he’s so powerful or even if he’s as powerful as he puts on.

Depending on what the Others are like, they might be less problematic than human beings. I’m withholding judgment until we learn more about them.

I believe this. Same way that the Children of the Forest couldn’t defeat the First Men but the First Men didn’t want pay the cost of wiping out the Children, so they made peace. And besides, it’s not like all the Boltons were evil. Domeric seemed like a very decent person, and so was Barba.

Okay, come on. You’re complaining about Arwen and Aragorn’s incest on an ASOIAF board? Arwen might be incestuous, but she’s separated from Aragorn by at least two hundred generations, I’m pretty sure the dna has diluted a lot by then. And how did she “groom” Aragorn? He was an adult when they first met.

Presumably they didn’t want to slaughter the Bolton kids who were taken captive or surrendered then the adults died?

Not everything bad in Rhaena’s life was her own fault, to be fair. She was a lesbian born and raised in a patriarchal society which caused her to get married and have sex with her brother, then she was also raped repeatedly by her uncle. All while her mom and brother were in hiding and didn’t, to her mind, help her at all. Not to mention that she was also an introverted person who must have had some kind of severed trauma from the aforementioned stuff. It would have all been triggered by her beloved abandoning her and stealing from her. Not that any of that is meant to absolve her or how she treated Androw, to be clear. It’s just that she wasn’t a complete villain.

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that House Frey had the largest army.

Then again, he might have also gone out to fight Gregor and Tywin when they started raiding. Hopefully with a larger force, though.

As in what if Cregan Stark lived Ned’s life? He wouldn’t be the same Cregan that we knew. But for the sake of your hypothetical, I’d wager that he would have never warned Cersei. He would have immediately told Robert, be damned the consequences.

If that’s true, then I’ll root for the Others to win. To hell with obviously evil actions being justified by “the greater good”, I’m so sick of that awful trope.