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R+L = J v 86


Stubby

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Ned feels that way about Barristan as well, but we have seen Barristan alter his vows to his personal desires (what I call "Barristaning"). Ned may not have all the info (not a shock).

There are so many addional mysteries and inconsistancies about the ToJ, I just think its way too early to make a call on Jon=King.

The whole thing just doesn't make too much sense at this point.

What are these additional mysteries? And if doesn't make sense to you that's fine, but don't blanket it all as not making any sense when a lot of us have given textual and SSM evidence to the contrary.

And I'm curious as to your response about the incest of Aerys and Rhaella re: the Faith. You haven't addressed it. Jaeharys orders them to marry and *shock* they do, in the tradition of the 7. Where's the High Septon's outrage there?

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Southron Ambitions and Rhaegar's possible overthrow....

Have you followed the link in my signature, yet? Try reading it from an unbiased position, the lights may suddenly become blinding.

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Once Jon rides a dragon, all these R+L= J discussions to prove his legit goes right out the window.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by this sentence. Jon riding a dragon probably proves R+L=J, but it would not answer the question whether R&L were married. Even Targ bastards could ride dragons. My understanding is that the search for dragon seeds during DoD 1.0 was the search for Targ bastards to ride dragons. Or have I misunderstood your point?

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  1. You are going to need to produce something to support that assertion. As far as I know the faith of the seven is definitely against incest, finding it particularly abhorrent. Yet, Aerys and Rhaella were wed by them, as brother and sister.

. . .

Hightower is clearly in command.

I gave you supporting references for my timing interpretations. Try to find something that refutes it in the text. Don't go all visceral and say, "it can't be right, it just doesn't feel right."

. . .

. . .

Talk to Ned, they certainly did. The conversation is bounded by honor, Ned avoids direct confrontation, or direct questions about what they are specifically doing at the tower. He offers them a chance to surrender, and when they refuse, he even offers them a chance to go to Dragonstone. It is quite clear in the dialog. Ned does not know for sure that Lyanna is present during the dialog, and it does not make sense to him that the Kingsguard would be protecting her. He never brings it up, as far as we know. It is quite possible that things were said that are not in Ned's dream, but Ned's dream contains the salient points for his opinion of these knights. "They were a wonder, a shining example for all the world."

1) Martin said this: However, the extent to which the Targaryen kings could defy convention, the Faith, and the opinions of the other lords decreased markedly after they no longer had dragons. If you have a dragon, you can have as many wives as you want, and people are less likely to object.

The Faith of the Seven is important.

Plus, Jon Connington said that Aegon could only marry once and Vays made a big deal about him being raised in the Faith.

3) Command of what? Whent and Dayne are Rhaegar's bodyguards. Hightower goes to get Rhaegar. All three stay behind. Why? An order from Rhagar? Okay, then why are we talking about kingship? An order is sufficient. If protecting the King trumps, they should have headed to KL - they even specifically said that Aerys wouldn't have died if they had gone. If protecting the King trumps, at least one should have gone to Viserys since the baby's gender wasn't known yet. If protecting the King trumps, they should have run.

4) I read your post - it assumed Jon and Dany were 8-9 months apart. Where did you get that? I'm basing my birth time on the distance it takes to march to Storm's End and then ride to the ToJ. 2 months.

7) Ned heard Lyanna screaming from the tower - "Eddard!" Protecting the king is running at this point. That's the highest chance of success. Not dying.

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1) If you accept the Faith of the Seven is important than why are you ignoring the fact that the Faith is against polygamy? And 3 KG are followers of the Faith?

The Faith is against incest too. That didn't stop the Targs from practicing incest long after the last of their dragons died.

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3) Command of what? Whent and Dayne are Rhaegar's bodyguards. Hightower goes to get Rhaegar. All three stay behind. Why? An order from Rhagar? Okay, then why are we talking about kingship? An order is sufficient. If protecting the King trumps, they should have headed to KL - they even specifically said that Aerys wouldn't have died if they had gone. If protecting the King trumps, at least one should have gone to Viserys since the baby's gender wasn't known yet. If protecting the King trumps, they should have run.

Protecting the as yet unprotected king trumps. I guess that's the important distinction. They didn't go to Aerys because, so far as they knew, he was protected. Until Viserys, no supposed heir has been knowingly left unprotected by the KG. We don't even know for sure that there was some period of time during which both a. they knew that Aerys, Rhaegar, and Aegon were all dead and b. Jon was still in utero. We can guess, but we don't know for sure, and we don't know how long this window of time may have been, if there was one. Nobody was even on the way to Viserys, which is obviously very telling.

I'll say it again, an order cannot trump the protection of the sole heir of the dynasty, which Viserys is, unless there is someone else, not to a knight of the kingsguard. A suggestion otherwise has a steep burden of proof to meet and no such suggestion meets that burden, certainly not any of the ones you've made.

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The Faith is against incest too. That didn't stop the Targs from practicing incest long after the last of their dragons died.

True, but you choose your battles. All leaders do some things that irk their subjects. Do too many, you get overthrown. I'm sure the Faith didn't like the incest, but they won on other fronts like polygamy and legitimized bastards.

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4) I read your post - it assumed Jon and Dany were 8-9 months apart. Where did you get that? I'm basing my birth time on the distance it takes to march to Storm's End and then ride to the ToJ. 2 months.

I linked an answer a page back but I guess you didn't see it http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1040

All of which is a long winded way of saying, no, Jon was not born "more than 1 year" before Dany... probably closer to eight or nine months or thereabouts.

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True, but you choose your battles. All leaders do some things that irk their subjects. Do too many, you get overthrown. I'm sure the Faith didn't like the incest, but they won on other fronts like polygamy and legitimized bastards.

No they didn't. It was markedly decreased but that doesn't mean it full on stopped. The faith did not WIN anything. And "choose your battles"--so the faith is MORE okay with incest than polygamy?

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True, but you choose your battles. All leaders do some things that irk their subjects. Do too many, you get overthrown. I'm sure the Faith didn't like the incest, but they won on other fronts like polygamy and legitimized bastards.

They didn't even win on the front of legitimized bastards. Otherwise the Blackfyre rebellion never would have happened. Most such arguments involve the appeal to the compromise between Jaehaerys I and the faith. Aegon IV and Daemon were well after that. Aside from that, the rest of your post is total speculation. We don't know which concessions were made and we don't know whether Rhaegar particularly cared about those concessions even if they were.

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True, but you choose your battles. All leaders do some things that irk their subjects. Do too many, you get overthrown. I'm sure the Faith didn't like the incest, but they won on other fronts like polygamy and legitimized bastards.

That didn't stop Aegon IV from legitimising bastards. Also nothing in the text even intimates that polygamy is illegal -- uncommon =/= illegal.

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I am not sure I understand what you mean by this sentence. Jon riding a dragon probably proves R+L=J, but it would not answer the question whether R&L were married. Even Targ bastards could ride dragons. My understanding is that the search for dragon seeds during DoD 1.0 was the search for Targ bastards to ride dragons. Or have I misunderstood your point?

You're mistaken my full intent of that post, please read the rest of that post including Paper Waver's post. :)

My apologies for being snark about it, I wasn't trying to put down the discussions leading to 80+ version of R+L=J threads we have here.

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1) Martin said this: However, the extent to which the Targaryen kings could defy convention, the Faith, and the opinions of the other lords decreased markedly after they no longer had dragons. If you have a dragon, you can have as many wives as you want, and people are less likely to object.

The Faith of the Seven is important.

Plus, Jon Connington said that Aegon could only marry once and Vays made a big deal about him being raised in the Faith.

3) Command of what? Whent and Dayne are Rhaegar's bodyguards. Hightower goes to get Rhaegar. All three stay behind. Why? An order from Rhagar? Okay, then why are we talking about kingship? An order is sufficient. If protecting the King trumps, they should have headed to KL - they even specifically said that Aerys wouldn't have died if they had gone. If protecting the King trumps, at least one should have gone to Viserys since the baby's gender wasn't known yet. If protecting the King trumps, they should have run.

4) I read your post - it assumed Jon and Dany were 8-9 months apart. Where did you get that? I'm basing my birth time on the distance it takes to march to Storm's End and then ride to the ToJ. 2 months.

7) Ned heard Lyanna screaming from the tower - "Eddard!" Protecting the king is running at this point. That's the highest chance of success. Not dying.

  1. Jorah said that Daenerys could have more than one husband, too. That is stretching polygamy, somewhat (snicker). I want you to show a quote that says that polygamy is against the faith of the seven.

. . .

Hightower is clearly in command at the tower, in the dialog with Ned. (I will disregard your digression, for the nonce.)

SSM, and it has been quoted up thread, so I won't do it again.

. . .

. . .

That is Voyon Poole interrupting Ned's dream. Lyanna called Ned "Ned".

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Protecting the as yet unprotected king trumps. I guess that's the important distinction. They didn't go to Aerys because, so far as they knew, he was protected. Until Viserys, no supposed heir has been knowingly left unprotected by the KG. We don't even know for sure that there was some period of time during which both a. they knew that Aerys, Rhaegar, and Aegon were all dead and b. Jon was still in utero. We can guess, but we don't know for sure, and we don't know how long this window of time may have been, if there was one. Nobody was even on the way to Viserys, which is obviously very telling.

I'll say it again, an order cannot trump the protection of the sole heir of the dynasty, which Viserys is, unless there is someone else, not to a knight of the kingsguard. A suggestion otherwise has a steep burden of proof to meet and no such suggestion meets that burden, certainly not any of the ones you've made.

There's a couple of problems here, though. The KG specifically say that if they had gone to the Trident or KL, the King would be alive. So, it their view, the King was not suffiently protected. So, why didn't they go to KL or the Trident to protect him?

The other big one is they don't know the gender of the baby yet. So, for two months, they are only protecting the maybe-King. Viserys is also the maybe-King, yes?

Now, of course, men make choices and decisions and hindsight is 20/20, but that's the point I'm making:

These are human beings with heir own individual opinions about who is king, honor, what is protection, who deserves protecting, what their role is. It's Barristan and it's Jamie. To deny that is missing the whole point of the story. Everything is murky and so is the ToJ.

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There's a couple of problems here, though. The KG specifically say that if they had gone to the Trident or KL, the King would be alive. So, it their view, the King was not suffiently protected. So, why didn't they go to KL or the Trident to protect him?

The other big one is they don't know the gender of the baby yet. So, for two months, they are only protecting the maybe-King. Viserys is also the maybe-King, yes?

Now, of course, men make choices and decisions and hindsight is 20/20, but that's the point I'm making:

These are human beings with heir own individual opinions about who is king, honor, what is protection, who deserves protecting, what their role is. It's Barristan and it's Jamie. To deny that is missing the whole point of the story. Everything is murky and so is the ToJ.

Still with the 2 months?

If GRRM writes his story that you can go from KL to the Trident and back to KL again in 14 days, why is it so hard to believe that, in that same thought, the same distance can be covered (to SE and then ToJ) in the same amount of time? I've listed the stuff that would take some additional time, stretching it up to 3 to 4 weeks..

GRRM already admitted that his traveltimes might not be completely realistic.. He has also said not to point any mistakes like that out..

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There's a couple of problems here, though. The KG specifically say that if they had gone to the Trident or KL, the King would be alive. So, it their view, the King was not suffiently protected. So, why didn't they go to KL or the Trident to protect him?

20/20 hindsight. They don't know that Rhaegar is going to lose on the trident, and they certainly don't know that the Aerys is going to let KL fall like Troy or that Jaime is going to turn his cloak. That has zero relevance to what I said. Yeah, if they had known that Jaime, Tywin, and Pycelle were going to betray Aerys, then he wasn't sufficiently protected. They only know that in hindsight. This is a complete non argument.

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Now, of course, men make choices and decisions and hindsight is 20/20, but that's the point I'm making:

These are human beings with heir own individual opinions about who is king, honor, what is protection, who deserves protecting, what their role is. It's Barristan and it's Jamie. To deny that is missing the whole point of the story. Everything is murky and so is the ToJ.

I'm glad you came into that understanding; plainly stated by GRRM, we're not meant to know everything about what clearly happened at the TOJ yet, until in the later books.

We do know though, that Jon will know about his parents.

will Jon ever find out about his parentage?

Eventually, yes.

There's nothing wrong with a few sets of assumptions and theories, especially with the countless little clues, hints and foreshadowing of Jon being King in the end. GRRM wants us to know, he placed the clues and hints there for a reason, for a purpose, for us to know, or for us to think about the possibility (of Jon being King, thus he was born legitimate), so that later on in the books, it's only just light bulbs turning on.

We're giving unnecessary thoughts to counter GRRM's writing via some mindset of mass internet/forums/sns, to feel that in regards to foreshadowing, clues and hints early in the book series, that just because people now know, GRRM will pull the rug right under us and change midstream, I don't think he will do that, especially in regards to R+L=J.

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20/20 hindsight. They don't know that Rhaegar is going to lose on the trident, and they certainly don't know that the Aerys is going to let KL fall like Troy or that Jaime is going to turn his cloak. That has zero relevance to what I said. Yeah, if they had known that Jaime, Tywin, and Pycelle were going to betray Aerys, then he wasn't sufficiently protected. They only know that in hindsight. This is a complete non argument.

Besides, they had no way to find out the disposition of the remaining 4 KG before the Trident and Sack, and even if they did, they had no way to reach the locations in time to change anything.

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There's a couple of problems here, though. The KG specifically say that if they had gone to the Trident or KL, the King would be alive. So, it their view, the King was not suffiently protected. So, why didn't they go to KL or the Trident to protect him?

The other big one is they don't know the gender of the baby yet. So, for two months, they are only protecting the maybe-King. Viserys is also the maybe-King, yes?

Now, of course, men make choices and decisions and hindsight is 20/20, but that's the point I'm making:

These are human beings with heir own individual opinions about who is king, honor, what is protection, who deserves protecting, what their role is. It's Barristan and it's Jamie. To deny that is missing the whole point of the story. Everything is murky and so is the ToJ.

Here are some things we know: Ned considers Dayne to be the best knight he ever knew. Hightower was a stickler for the rules and would never judge the actions of the royal family, only do his duty. The ToJ was not in constant communication with the outside world. As long as at least one KG is with the king, the duty of the 7 KG to protect the king generally is satisfied (subject to limited exceptions where the king orders all KG to be somewhere else).

Here are some things we don't know for sure: how long it took Ned to get from KL to ToJ and when the 3 KG found out about the sack of KL (it might take a long time between the events and when the word got to ToJ).

The 3 KG did not go to the Trident because Rhaegar had 3 other KG with him at the time and Rhaegar is not the king in any event. They did not go to KL because Aerys had at least one KG with him and had much other protection--no reason to know that both Jaime and Tywin would betray Aerys, so he seemed safe. They were doing their duty given the knowledge they had at the time.

You keep harping on the notion that for two months they sat at ToJ prior to the birth of Jon without knowing the gender. We don't know that. We don't know that GRRM's conception of the timeline is the same as yours (he has acknowledged that sometimes the timeline will not match because he is not able to be that careful and precise in his plotting and writing), but even if it is, we don't have ANY information to know when the KG at ToJ found out about the sack or where Viserys was taken. If we knew that they had known for two months that the other royals were dead and Viserys was sitting on Dragonstone and Jon was not yet born, then your argument might have some weight. But we have no such knowledge. Based on the other surrounding facts, it is not illogical to conclude that Jon was born before or only shortly after they found out these facts. Once he is born, his safety as the rightful king becomes the KG's primary duty, but only if his parents were married.

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