Bael's Bastard

Sam swore by the old gods. If swearing by the "wrong" gods was enough to create a safety net to allow you out of the vow later, a lot more people would swear by other people's gods.

I don't know or want you to do anything. Just correcting a lie you posted.

I don't mean expecting to become LC. But he goes into the NW with the expectation that he would attain a place of honor, and expecting to be able to go ranging before he's earned anything. It doesn't make him a bad guy or anything, it's just something that he has grown out of with experience and knowledge.

GRRM explicitly said they correctly guessed the mother. As shitty as their adaptation was, it would be delusional to think they invented a different mother for Jon in the show. https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2019/05/20/an-ending/

Jon doesn't know who his mother is, thinks his father is Ned, and swore an oath to the NW based on that reality. The knowledge that his father isn't Ned, his mother is Lyanna Stark, his father is Rhaegar Targaryen, they were wed, would not create pointless new turmoil that is out of character for Jon. If anything, it would be the greatest escalation yet of the same turmoil he has already been experiencing all story, and all his life. He swore an oath to protect humans from the Others and the dead. He isn't suddenly going to put throwing his hat in the game of thrones above that, and he isn't suddenly going to throw the Starks away to be a Targ prince. But that doesn't mean he won't experience any inner turmoil or external pressure when he learns of it, and if others learn of it. He swore that oath before he knew who he was, but he swore it nevertheless, and now he knows far too much about what humans are up against to pursue anything else.

Amusingly, even as a noble bastard Jon begins the story relatively entitled. He rolled up to the NW expecting to run the place, probably not worlds different than Raymar Royce did. Even as a half noble bastard he was like that. Yet that's not the Jon we know now, and not a Jon we are ever likely going to see again, whether or not he or anyone else ever learns he is a royal bastard or the legitimate product of a royal marriage between Rhaegar and Lyanna.

Again, why characters that have been dead seventeen years did what they did in 282 AC, and if/how that will affect characters that are alive in 300 AC and beyond, are two completely different discussions. If it turns out that Jon is a legitimate son of Rhaegar and Lyanna, IMO it's not going to be anything Rhaegar intentionally plotted out like that ahead of time, and I doubt Jon will ever sit the Iron Throne because of it. There might be some readers that assume Jon will be a recognized Targaryen king on the Iron Throne and work backwards from there, but they are not in this discussion, and nobody is making their arguments here except those using them as strawmen.

@Frey family reunion RLJ simply means that Jon is the biological son of Lyanna and Rhaegar. RLJ theories take many different shapes and forms. Some RLJ theories hold that Rhaegar and Lyanna didn't wed. Some hold that Rhaegar and Lyanna wed. Some hold that Elia gave Rhaegar a "hall-pass" to wed and/or impregnate Lyanna. Some hold that Rhaegar never asked for Elia's blessing. Some hold that Elia never gave Rhaegar her blessing whether or not he asked. Some hold that Rhaegar set out to wed and/or impregnate Lyanna. Some hold that Rhaegar impulsively wed and/or impregnated Lyanna. Some hold that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna's bastard. Some hold that Jon is Rhaegar and Lyanna's legitimate child. Some hold that Jon will never sit a throne. Some hold that Jon will sit the Iron Throne. Some hold that Jon will never be learned by Westeros to be Rhaegar and Lyanna's bastard/legitimate child. Some hold that Jon will be learned by Westeros to be Rhaegar and Lyanna's bastard/legitimate child. The common denominator between them all is that Jon is the biological son of Lyanna and Rhaegar. Theories that Rhaegar and Lyanna wed and that Jon is their legitimate son were based on/contemporary with the releases of AGOT and ACOK, decades before the show, or its adaptation of Jon's parentage, so not sure what hot garbage you are going on about.

Every regular here has already torn your long winded fan fictions to shreds so many times, nobody has an obligation to keep doing it over and over again. No hard feelings, but it's clear you have written your own story in your head that nobody here paid or asked for. You have offered literally no proof for any of your baseless assertions about polygamy, and that's because there is none. Neither Jaehaerys nor the Faith ever accepted or imposed a ban on Targs wedding more than one wife. It wasn't something they did frequently anyway, but definitely something there's no evidence they agreed to be banned from. I am not interested in wasting time on verbose arguments based entirely baseless opinion with no support from the books.

Point? You think a 12-13 year old girl isn't capable of being a hypocrite, or changing her mind over time or based on her changing reality or other factors, or having completely different feelings or opinions about two different men?

A bunch of long winded bullshit you've already spewed over and over, which has no more support from the books this time than it did every other time. Maybe spend less time creating fan fiction and more time actually reading the books.

What Rhaegar believed he could do is the only thing that matters when discussing what actions he took and how he justified to himself taking them. Rhaegar grew up in a world steeped in two and a half centuries of Targaryen exceptionalism, and no hint that the Faith or Jaehaerys excluded polygamy from this exceptionalism. He had zero reason to think he as a Targ couldn't wed another wife for legal or religious reasons.

It's disingenuous to claim polygamy was an issue fiercely contested by the Faith when only one single High Septon in the history of Westeros actually made an issue of it, and in truth, that crusade was launched directly in response to Rhaena/Aegon incest. It's disingenuous to claim polygamy was an issue fiercely contested by the the Lords and Kings when the pious Lord Hightower, Storm King, and Queen of the Vale all tried to arrange a third wife for Aegon before the Conquest, and lords and knights tried to arrange another second wife for Aegon after Rhaenys died a decade into Targaryen rule. And a key part of the Jorah and Dany discussion about multiple husbands that you are conveniently ignoring is the meaning of "the dragon has three heads." When Daenerys asks Jorah if he knows what it means, he says the Targaryen sigil is a three headed dragon. When she says duh, but there are no three headed dragons, he reminds her that Aegon and his sisters were the three headed dragon, they in fact invented the sigil. This causes Dany to recall Visenya and Rhaenys, and that she is descended from Aegon and Rhaenys through their son Aenys and grandson Jaehaerys. You dismiss it as Jorah just trying to get in Dany's pants, but whatever his motivations, the content of the discussion is true and sound. Whether this is a correct interpretation of any prophecy or not, it is a correct recollection of the founders of her house, and her direct line in particular. Neither Dany nor Jorah speak of it as if it is a religious or legal transgression for a Targaryen. It also gives Tywin perhaps his greatest incentive to finally turn on Rhaegar once and for all. After knowing Rhaegar since he was three or four, knowing him for twenty years as Hand, voicing confidence in the King he would be, and spending nearly a decade plotting to wed his daughter to Rhaegar even after he already wed Elia, Rhaegar runs off and takes a second wife and it's still not Cersei? The Lyanna thing was probably gonna piss Tywin off either way, but IMO Rhaegar wedding Lyanna would enrage Tywin above all else.

Just shows you all aren't arguing in good faith, as you ignore precedent and relevant info for polygamy throughout the books, while completely fabricating a ban on Targ polygamy that literally doesn't exist or get hinted at whatsoever in the books. In the case of Daemon, this info was presumably written down by a maester closer to Daemon's own time, is passed along by a maester that lived through Summerhall and Robert's Rebellion, and repeated by a contemporary maester to Tommen, all over the last century or so. As in the case of Maegor, polygamy for Daemon would have just been a means to wed the wife he wanted while already/still married to a first wife. Not everyone wants to just be wed to multiple wives. Maegor was pretty much done with his first wife but couldn't get rid of her. Daemon's desired Daenerys. They didn't just have a polygamy fetish. Is it plausible Rhaegar thought he could create a legally and religiously binding second marriage, even if he expected massive consequences that he would have to somehow deal with? Absolutely.

We know polygamy was perfectly legal and acceptable for Targs to Westerosi. Even the single case that a single High Septon objected to, Maegor's first, could not be overturned by Faith or king. Neither secular nor religious law ever prohibited or criminalized polygamy for Targs. Period.

Some posters here imagine all sorts of overcomplicated scenarios to avoid just how simple it would be for Rhaegar to wed Lyanna while he was still married to Elia. It could be as simple as: 1. Rhaegar wanted or felt obligated to wed Lyanna for any reason. Rhaegar need not have set out in early 282 to wed Lyanna or become a polygamist or have new babies. It's possible, but I don't subscribe to theories that Rhaegar set out to find Lyanna for love or prophecy. I prefer the idea that Rhaegar set out to get out/hide Lyanna from danger he knew was coming at the hands of Aerys/his counsel/his soldiers, because he felt responsible for linking Lyanna and her family to him and his treasonous plots, which Aerys's lickspittles were filling his ears with. If they spontaneously hooked up at some point after the alleged abduction and she got pregnant, he might have felt obligated because of what would become of Lyanna as an unwed noble woman with a bastard, or perhaps just couldn't stand the idea of fathering a bastard, or any number of reasons. Rather than something Rhaegar set out ahead of time to do to fulfill prophecy, or satisfy his love, or copy Aenar, Aegon, or Maegor, it could be an extreme solution they pulled out of their asses in an extreme situation, perhaps even after her father and brother were slaughtered by his father, and the entire northern presence south of the Trident was wiped out around them. Either or both of them could have expressed to the other how nobody had done polygamy in 250 years and had dragons, and how the Martells, Baratheons, and Starks would rage, but still somehow convinced themselves/each other it was the best option. At that point it's just a matter of finding/getting an officiant or ceremony to do it. 2. Rhaegar knew or found an officiant or ceremony to wed him and Lyanna. There is no shortage of examples of nobles, especially Targaryens, finding officiants to wed them when their families or others would prevent them. It would be absurd to argue Rhaegar couldn't find someone to do it, whether or not they were resistant. All they needed was the want to wed (for whatever reasons), and the ability to find someone or something to wed them. It's that simple.

I agree, I come across it too often, and it clearly means something much different than how it is interpreted by those who take it and run with it without doing bare minimum research.

Ned thinks and/or talks about Rhaegar in his 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, and 15th chapters, so just about every single one of his 15 chapters.

One could argue that Rhaegar was reversing the order because Rhaenys, not Visenya, was his ancestor. We won't really know until/unless we find out what Rhaegar intended to name a third child. Personally, I'm not sold Rhaegar was going for naming his children after all three or the Targaryen Conquerors. Maybe he intended to have a third child named Aenys? Or Orys? Then again, we don't know if prophecy associates particular names or name components to the PTWP and/or the three heads of the dragon.

The only way I can see the Weirwoods "seeing the future" is in a scenario where what we are reading in ASOIAF is a past that has already occurred, which the Weirwoods have already witnessed at some point during their lives. Bran's vision and Jojen's greendreams, however, seem to be another matter.

That came to mind. But IMO it isn't clear whether GRRM had already envisioned that to mean a Targ ancestor, or was referring to something more along the lines of Robert's warhammer. From a writing perspective, it would be surprising to me to learn that Robert's own Targaryen ancestry wasn't thought of or brought up by Ned or any character in AGOT if GRRM already knew. The hypocrisy of Robert's Targ hatred, the role his recent Targ ancestry played in Robert's accession, the added weight it lends to the black vs. fair hair findings, and implications they have for two of the central storylines of AGOT: who are truly children of Robert, and who gave birth to Jon? The dark hair won out in Robert's true children, and the dark hair won out in Lyanna's child. There seems to me that there is too much potential for it to have never come up in Ned's POV if it was already known by GRRM.

@Ran Did GRRM not know yet in AGOT that Robert had recent Targaryen ancestry (whether he had named her yet or not)? I know Ned was focused on matches between Baratheons and Lannisters, but surely the much more recent Baratheon/Targaryen match would have been further evidence, assuming Steffon favored Ormund?

I agree that it was unnecessary to "defend" Winterfell with all those people. They could have lured the NK with a Winterfell virtually abandoned save Bran and a handful of others.

Who knows how/when she got to the Weirwood. But I didn't get the impression that she surprised the NK, and I'm not sure it was even her intent to surprise the NK. Yelling as she flies through the air is hardly covert. It might be giving DnD too much credit, but if Arya had any idea that it might be difficult to kill the NK, then the only way to surprise the NK would be to first let him believe he had stopped her.

I'm not sure if he has said anything more recent, or provided any new information about Dunk and Egg in general, or particular stories he has in mind. He doesn't seem to intend to get into them until at least after he finishes TWOW, if not ADOS.