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[Spoilers] The Princess and the Queen, complete spoilers discussion


chrisdaw

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After Laenor and Laena were dead, Corlys's heirs would have been his grandchildren by Laenor and Rhaenyra. Jace would take the Iron Throne after Rhaenyra, but Luke or Joff could take Driftmark. If they did not want to do that, he could have given Driftmark to either Baela or Rhaena, his grandchildren by Laena. Corlys and Rhaenys had enough heirs.

Lord Varys I completely agree with you, and I raised it earlier on the thread. But it seems Corlys discounted them as heirs for some reason. It is never explained like Jace'd mysterious promise to the Maid of the Vale.

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Well, I guess on the one hand Rhaenyra may have greater ambitions for her sons than to become Lords of Driftmark. She may intend to give other titles and honors to them, or they could just want to live the life of a royal prince at the Red Keep.



The offer to name Lucerys heir to Driftmark comes from Aegon's envoys. Rhaenyra and Corlys could do that all by themselves if they wanted to. But they don't do it, at least no yet.



Could be that Corlys knows that Rhaenyra's sons by Laenor really aren't his sons. Perhaps because his son told him that he never consummated his marriage to Rhaenyra. We don't know it. Then he may be reluctant to give Driftmark to Rhaenyra's children despite the fact that he is in her camp and supports her.



Then a legitimized Velaryon bastard as heir could be a good alternative for him, especially if naming Baela or Rhaena as heirs would greatly humiliating and/or antagonizing Rhaenyra's sons by Laenor. As daughters they would only have claims after all of Laenor's sons are dead. On the other hand, we don't yet know if Laenor or Laena were elder, so the succession could be confusing there as well as among the members of House Targaryen.



But my best guess is that Corlys partly jumped on the chance the dragonrider Addam of Hull gave him. To secure a dragon and thus a powerful future Lord Velaryon for his house. Later on Corlys literally risked his neck for the boy, there has to be a reason for that as well. Perhaps he was his son, we will never know that.


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I was really surprised that Alicent outlived Rhaenyra.

Alicent's fate may end being more cruel than Rhaenyra's. She's likely to outlive all her four children AND her three grandchildren. I'm sure she'll curse the day she decided to take the crown from Rhaenyra.

Another thought that just sprung to mind, I recall the text says Otto HIghtower had served three kings as Hand. Viserys I and Aegon II are the obvious ones. Is it Jaehaerys I?

I think it's very likely. Jaeharerys I dies year 103 and Viserys I marries Alicent 106. Once the Arryn queen dies, the lord best positioned to marry his daughter to the king would be the old one's hand.

That could also explain why all the members of the council agreed to the coup against Viserys I's wishes: they had been all appointed by Hightower. Old Beesbury would be the only other one coming from the time of the Old King.

sorry it's bullshit that USA residents can't read this. I can only imagine the outcry if only USA residents could read his work a week before the rest of the world.

You don't need to imagine. It happens every time. With tons of books. :P

Alyn seems to be an older man especially compared to Elaena. He is older than her father who was probably in his 30s when she was born since she is the youngest child.

That really bothers me. Elaena is 21 when she's freed from the Maidenvault, and Alyn would be past 55. GRRM says: "The great love of her life was her cousin, Alyn Velaryon, the seafarer and admiral known as Oakenfist, to whom she bore a bastard son and daughter. She married thrice in later years, twice at a king's behest and once for passion. She gave birth to seven children, then declared that if seven was sufficient for the gods it would do for her as well." When I first read this, I was expecting a nice love story across the ages and against the world. Now it's... somehting different.

Edit: if Alyn and Addam were Corlys' bastards, this is really going to be difficult to put in a family tree without making such a big mess of it :P

I'm trying it... and it's madness. I can't wait to see how the people doing the World Book are going to deal with this mess!

I'm seeing the theory; Rhaena of Pentos was given three eggs. The first time we see dragon eggs in the main series, it was in Pentos.

Excellent catch! Love it!!!

I'm liking this Aemond even before reading TPatQ.

Aemond is scum. Of the worst kind. A bloodthirsty kinslayer.

Arryk & Erryk probably died in 129AC as there is no mention of either after Orwyle visits Dragonstone to speak with Rhaenyra. I'm thinking that their epic duel was in Rhaenyra's presence and so when both of them died, she claimed both spots in the KG before letting the Greens know.

My bet is that they died fighting each other when Rhaenyra took King's Landing. I hardly doubt that Arryk died in Dragonstone, as he was traveling as a parlay, and harming him would be something huge (and the grand maester came back unharmed).
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Ran,



how did Addam die? That tidbit is not revealed in the story although it depicts the battle that apparently kills him.



Was Ser Otto Hightower Hand under Jaehaerys, Viserys, and Aegon? Did he really serve this long? This seems to be at odds with Maester Pylos's line about Ser Otto being raised for his learning but turning out to be a total sucker as Hand...


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Bloodraven's mother was Melissa Blackwood.

LV,

He died in the battle, as you say. More... well, the world book answers what exactly killed him. And has that nicely effecting bit about Alyn's response.

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The hairy bear,



Alicent outlives Rhaenyra, but I'm not so sure that she will outlive Aegon II or survive the war. And at least one grandchild of hers should survive the war as well: Jaehaera, the first queen of Aegon III.



On Rhaena of Pentos:



That's just a name, is it not? She was born there. She does not take the three eggs to Pentos, she is not even supposed to go there. Sure, that seems to be a hint to three other dragon eggs and their voyage to Pentos, but I very much doubt that Rhaena's eggs are Dany's eggs.



My guess is that she is still in the Vale at the end of the story:



1. She is not mentioned as being come to the capital with Joffrey Velaryon.



2. If she had come, Rhaenyra would not have had to go to Dragonstone to get additional dragon eggs. She would have had the three eggs of Rhaena.



3. The queen calls her ladies from Dragonstone to court after she has taken the city but Baela stays on Dragonstone either way. This could mean that neither Baela nor Rhaena were counted among the ladies of the queen.


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Did all of the great Houses participate in the war? How did they (not) participate?

Most chose sides but the tPatQ is very unclear about whether any of them did anything. Tullys are almost never mentioned(despite a lot of the fighting taking place in the riverlands), Arynns supposedly supported Rhaenyra but there was no mention of their armies in the field. Baratheon armies were also barely mentioned, despite them being close to KL and in a very good position to help either Hightowers(against the reach rebels) or KL (against the riverlords). The GreyJoy lord(I forget his name) is mentioned as being a very bloodthirsty man(despite being only 16) and yet the ironborn are never mentioned as taking part in any battle. The Starks seem to be either busy with something else or really holding back their strength - only 2 Northern houses march south(The Manderlys and the Dustins) and its a Dustin who leads them(a complete badass, though) and not a Stark.

Army sizes in general were also very small as compared to the Wot5Ks.

@Ran - The Stark Lord mentioned is Cregan Stark - is this the same one who fought the DragonKnight? Seems to me he would be pretty old by the time the DragonKnight is old enough to fight.

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Alyn and Elaena and Daemon and Netty did not marry. It would be extreme, I agree. Perhaps GRRM completely canceled the Velaryon marriage of Aegon III and lets him marry either Rhaena or Baela. Both or at least one of them could survive the Dance. They would at least have a Velaryon mother.

Elaena seems to be a very interesting character, so such a thing is possible. And gene testing apparently revealed that dynasties that practiced incest did marry grandfather to granddaughter. That's confirmed to have happened among the pharaohs - not only among the Ptolemies but also among the descendants/kin of Akhenaten and Tut-Ankh-Amun.

But she could not been his cousin then, of course. Another possibility is that Corlys Velaryon ends up remarrying and fathers a daughter. If we then consider Alyn as a legitimized bastard of one of his siblings it could work. But GRRM starts to use 'cousin' in the meaning of 'kinsman' in TMK it seems. Egg and Bloodraven refer to each other as 'cousin' there although they are granduncle and grandnephew and should actually be aware of that fact (I changed that in the recent translation for the German collection of the Dunk & Egg stories - yeah, we have such a volume: http://www.amazon.de/Der-Heckenritter-von-Westeros-Urteil/dp/3764531223/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385739319&sr=8-1&keywords=Der+Heckenritter+von+Westeros

Could be that Alyn's exact relationship to Lord Corlys is never revealed, though. Gyldayn does not uncover that particular genealogy, and then Elaena and her siblings might refer to Alyn simply as 'cousin' because their exact relationship is not even known to them.

Lord Varys, bear with me. My copy of the book will arrive in 4 days, so all the information I have is either from excerpts, or from the forum. But I have been calculating and thinking and I might have found an answer. Feel free to comment on it :)

This is not only about Alyn and Elaena, it's also about Aegon's Velaryon queen. IF Aegon still took a Velaryon as his second Queen, than there are two options.

(1) The first option is Alyn. Alyn, IIRC, was born in 116 AL. So when Aegon III becomes king, in the beginning months of 131 AL, Alyn would be either 14 or 15 years old. By this time, Alyn was no longer Alyn of Hull, but Alyn Velaryon. For him to have a legit child, he would have to marry. It would be safe to assume, I think, that he did not marry during the war, since it was a confusing time and there were other things more important. Also, Alyn would be 14 or 15 years old, and thus have been old enough for a year or two to have children. If Alyn had married immediately after the end of the war, (so in the first half of 131 AL, because as the Lord of the Driftmark, it would be important for him to marry and continue the line), his first child would have been born in 132 AL.

Aegon III had his first child, Daeron, in 143 AL with his Velaryon Queen. Since Baelor the Blessed is also stated to have been born in 143 AL (according to the wiki, but I'm not sure where the date came from), I can only assume Daeron was born very early in the year, and Baelor very late in the year.

For Daeron The Young Dragon to have been born in early 143 AL, Aegon would have had to marry his Velaryon Queen no later than early 142 AL. Any trueborn daughter of Alyn (who probably did not get married before 131 AL, and thus had his first child, if it was indeed a girl, no earlier than 132 AL) would be 10 years old at this point, give or take a few months. So this Velaryon Queen would be too young to have children.

Conclusion: Aegon's Velaryon Queen was not a daughter of Alyn, since Alyn could not have produced a child old enough to be ready to have children in 142 AL.

(2) Option 2 would be a daughter of Alyn's brother, Addam of Hull, later Addam Velaryon. When he died, in 130 AL IIRC, he was15/16 years old (having been born in 114 AL). He would have been old enough when he died to have had a child of his own. In the current Small Questions thread I asked the question whether or not the child of a bastard (if the bastard in case was married) would be made legitimate automatically if his father was being made legit, and the respons I got were all "Yes". So if Addam had a child when he died, this child would most likely also have been made legit.This possible child would have been born in either 128, 129, or 130 AL. This would have made the potential girl 14,13 or 12 in 142 AL. If she was 13 or 14 years old, she would have been old enough to marry and have children. So a daughter of Addam would be a possibility for this queen.

Since Addam and (after Addams death) Alyn became Lord of the Driftmark, there were no male heirs left anymore (all of Rhaenyra's sons died in the war, leaving Alyn as the only male heir). So Corlys had no further male living relative besides the legitimized Alyn. About Corlys' other possibilities of heir (the females) I'll talk below. But female Velaryons would have no sons named Velaryon, and the name Velaryon still exists in 300 AL. Also, we know Alyn Velaryon became the Lord of the Driftmark.

To continue, about the Alyn was Elaena's cousin issue, I'll raise you Egg and Bloodraven, just as Lord Varys mentioned. This was easier to draw out on paper, but I hope it will be logical on screen as well.

Aegon IV had Bloodraven for a son, and Daeron I. Daeron I had a son named Maekar, and Maekar had a son named Aegon V.

An unknown Velaryon (might have been Corlys) had sons Alyn and Addam. Addam (according to possibility 2) had a daughter. This daughter had Elaena for a daughter.

This yields the same results, with Alyn in the place of Bloodraven, and Elaena in the place of Egg. If Egg and Bloodraven refer to each other as cousins, it would only make sense that Alyn and Elaena, who would be related in exactly the same way as Bloodraven and Egg, would do the same. So in TMK kind of way, they would indeed be cousins. In other words, if Aegon III indeed married the daughter of Addam of Hull, Aegon's children would be related in the exact same way to Alyn, as Egg was to Bloodraven.

Corlys lost both his adult son and daughter and his wife was too old to give him more children. They may have agreed with Rhaenys that he needs bastards around.

Not only was Corlys' wife too old to have any more children, but she died as well, didn't she?

Addam and Alyn were born around the same time as the youngest children of Laena and Laenor. No reason at that point in time to produce bastards simply for the reason of having potential heirs around.

After Laenor and Laena were dead, Corlys's heirs would have been his grandchildren by Laenor and Rhaenyra. Jace would take the Iron Throne after Rhaenyra, but Luke or Joff could take Driftmark. If they did not want to do that, he could have given Driftmark to either Baela or Rhaena, his grandchildren by Laena. Corlys and Rhaenys had enough heirs.

So we've reached Corlys' heirs, as I mentioned above. Pre-war, the Driftmark would indeed have gone to Lucerys, since Jacerys would gain the throne through Rhaenyra. Luce was supposed to marry Rhaena, who was further down in the line of being heir to the Driftmark, so two heirs would be combined, which would clean up nicely. Should Luce not have had any children, Joffrey would have gotten the Driftmark. Should Joffrey also die early and without issue, Baela and Rhaena would be the obvious heirs (though I'm not sure which of the twins is the eldest, so I don't know which of them would get to inherit first).

Unfortunately, if Baela or Rhaena would inherit, their children, and thus their heirs, would take the last name of their father. If Rhaena were to inherit, it would mean that Lucerys was no longer around, and thus that Rhaena would most likely have remarried. It might have been important to Corlys to keep the Driftmark in the name of the Velaryons, not simply by blood, but thus by name. If so, he would rather, apparently, legimize bastards to give the Driftmark to, instead of keeping the Driftmark in the hands of his relative who would live under different names than the Velaryon name. And it seems that this is what has happened here. Perhaps a bit comparable to Robb wanting to legitimize Jon so Jon would come before Sansa in the line of succesion. Both Addam and Alyn seem to have been older than Rhaena and Baela. So this is a possible explanation to that.

But my best guess is that Corlys partly jumped on the chance the dragonrider Addam of Hull gave him. To secure a dragon and thus a powerful future Lord Velaryon for his house. Later on Corlys literally risked his neck for the boy, there has to be a reason for that as well. Perhaps he was his son, we will never know that.

Seasmoke was Laenor's dragon, and this is the same dragon Addam later rides. Perhaps Corlys believed (and hoped) that Addam had been able to tame the dragon because the dragon had recognized his Velaryon blood. If Corlys hadn't fully believed he was related to Addam and Alyn before (either because they were his sons, or because they were the sons of a dead brother of Corlys, or the sons of a dead nephew of Corlys), the fact that Addam was able to bond with Laenors dragon might have strengthened his believes.

I wouldn't say never. The world book provides a deal more information about the Velaryon family, and Addam and Alyn in particular.

It would be so cruel if the World book would take another few years. I really hope it will be released next year, and that it contains exactly how all of these Velaryons were related and which three Velaryon girls married the 3 Targaryen princes, since we only know of one Prince who married a female Velaryon, namely Prince Daemon. Aegon was already king when he married his Velaryon bride, so he wouldn't count as a prince.

That really bothers me. Elaena is 21 when she's freed from the Maidenvault, and Alyn would be past 55. GRRM says: "The great love of her life was her cousin, Alyn Velaryon, the seafarer and admiral known as Oakenfist, to whom she bore a bastard son and daughter. She married thrice in later years, twice at a king's behest and once for passion. She gave birth to seven children, then declared that if seven was sufficient for the gods it would do for her as well." When I first read this, I was expecting a nice love story across the ages and against the world. Now it's... somehting different.

Elaena is indeed 21 when she is released from the Maidenvault. I too once believed that she and Alyn had been of an age with each other, but then I read that Alyn had been an admiral during the Conquest, so I guessed he was 5 or 10 years older at the least. But apperently he was much older than Elaena (she having been born in 150 AL, and Alyn having been born in 116 AL, making him 34 years older). It would explain why Elaena, when she married for love, did not marry Alyn (as that would have made their children legitimate). The simple reason was that he was probably dead by that time, seeing as he was already 55 years old when Elaena was released from her prison. Since her marriage for love was the latest of the three, and Elaena had about 29 years to have 7 children, 5 of which came from the marriages. Probably, at the time of her last marriage, many years had passed and Alyn had died.

I'm trying it... and it's madness. I can't wait to see how the people doing the World Book are going to deal with this mess!

I've been trying as well. It's incredibly difficult indeed, especially since we don't have all the information. :)

Edit: Hull does not seem to be indicated on any of the Lands of Ice and Fire maps. Does anyone know where Hull is supposed to be located?

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So is dragonriding ability a crude form of Targ genetic testing, with Targ descendant status being confirmed by the ability? Or is it that being a Targ descendant just ups the odds, and that individuals with not a drop of Targ blood can also theoretically ride dragons?



(I know GRRM has said that the third head of the dragon need not be a Targ, but the Targ-descended dragonseeds in TPatQ with dragonriding ability are not "Targaryens," either.)


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So is dragonriding ability a crude form of Targ genetic testing, with Targ descendant status being confirmed by the ability? Or is it that being a Targ descendant just ups the odds, and that individuals with not a drop of Targ blood can also theoretically ride dragons?

(I know GRRM has said that the third head of the dragon need not be a Targ, but the Targ-descended dragonseeds in TPatQ with dragonriding ability are not "Targaryens," either.)

I got the distinct impression that GRR was making the point that "plebs" could ride dragons too... Classifying those that did so as "seeds" was just the Targs attempting to save face.

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So is dragonriding ability a crude form of Targ genetic testing, with Targ descendant status being confirmed by the ability? Or is it that being a Targ descendant just ups the odds, and that individuals with not a drop of Targ blood can also theoretically ride dragons?

It's clear from the story that people believe that you need Targaryen blood to do it, but the unclear origins of most of the "dragonseed" would suggest otherwise.

The story just forgets about the future Viserys II and acts like he's dead, which is weird.

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Most chose sides but the tPatQ is very unclear about whether any of them did anything. Tullys are almost never mentioned(despite a lot of the fighting taking place in the riverlands), Arynns supposedly supported Rhaenyra but there was no mention of their armies in the field. Baratheon armies were also barely mentioned, despite them being close to KL and in a very good position to help either Hightowers(against the reach rebels) or KL (against the riverlords). The GreyJoy lord(I forget his name) is mentioned as being a very bloodthirsty man(despite being only 16) and yet the ironborn are never mentioned as taking part in any battle. The Starks seem to be either busy with something else or really holding back their strength - only 2 Northern houses march south(The Manderlys and the Dustins) and its a Dustin who leads them(a complete badass, though) and not a Stark.

Army sizes in general were also very small as compared to the Wot5Ks.

@Ran - The Stark Lord mentioned is Cregan Stark - is this the same one who fought the DragonKnight? Seems to me he would be pretty old by the time the DragonKnight is old enough to fight.

only two northern houses wow i thought the north would march in full support of rhaenyra since they are also said to be friends with the queen who never was.

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