Can someone please explain

[TheLastStark]

And by having Ned show up at the ToJ they couldn't think that their side had lost at all. That would just be crazy. Obviously Ned is telling them everything, so how wouldn't they know right in that moment that Robert was a usurper?

How could the kingsguard have known there was a usurper...

Ethan Glover was Aerys's prisoner in King's Landing while Hightower was in kings landing. Ethan glover was in the party that rode up to the ToJ.

Figuring that Aerys was no longer on the Iron Throne would not take much...

Oh ok, yes that makes sense now, I didn't see what you were trying to point out with that quote. Thanks.

[corbon]

You have absolutely no proof that they even knew anything about the war. They didn't have facebook updates about it every minute, but for your convince they did know, justifying them staying.

Please try a little less of the accusing me of twisting analysis and 'wanting things' just because you haven't done the analysis to figure out things yourself. Or bothered to read around enough to know what you are talking about.

See below.

He did think himself the PtwP, then figured out it wasn't him before Aegon was born, i think even before he was married. Why not a bastard, does the prophecy forbid a dragon head being a bastard? Does a dragon rider even need to have Targaryen blood? NO according to GRRM, you know who he is I assume. Nothing says in the prophecy that the 3 heads NEED to be Targaryen, nothing. So again, why not a bastard?

Already answered. I'm rapidly losing patience with your style, but you get one last summary and see if you can respond in a more polite and organised way. Otherwise I won't be back again.

Summary: Its all about what Rhaegar thinks a dragon head should be, not what prophecy thinks. Rhaegar is the one 'creating' the 3 heads. Its a natural and automatic assumption for him to assume legitimate princes as a default, especially since thats an available option and is better personally and politically for pretty much everyone, especially those most important, the heads themselves.

“I looked for you on the Trident,” Ned said to them.

“We were not there,” Ser Gerold answered.

“Woe to the Usurper if we had been,” said Ser Oswell.

“When King’s Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I wondered where you were.”

“Far away,” Ser Gerold said, “or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our false brother would burn in seven hells.”

“I came down on Storm’s End to lift the siege,” Ned told them... and the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne dipped their banners, and all their knights bent the knee to pledge us fealty. I was certain you would be among them.”

“Our knees do not bend easily,” said Ser Arthur Dayne.

“Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought you might have sailed with him.”

“Ser Willem is a good man and true,” said Ser Oswell.

“But not of the Kingsguard,” Ser Gerold pointed out. “The Kingsguard does not flee.”

“Then or now,” said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm.

“We swore a vow,” explained old Ser Gerold.

Nothing in this conversation indicates that knew what was going on, just for your convenience they have up to the date info, they could very well have just found out that Visery's was at Dragonstone, but of course your argument(with absolutely no proof) is that they did know.

Yes there is, if you have the wit to read it properly instead of being rude about people's motives when they have actualy read and analysed it a lot better than you have it seems (and I'm not talking about me here).

The first thing Ned says is that he looked for them at the Trident?

They reply that they were not there, and woe to the Usurper if they were.

That tells us right there several critical of things:

- they know the significance of 'the Trident'

- they know they rebels won the battle there

- they now that the rebel is no longer a 'rebel', but a 'Usurper', which means he's been crowned King in Aerys' place.

And they know all that before Ned has said anything other than "I looked for you on the Trident".

They know. The proof is right there in the conversation, right at the start.

Then its a case of how and why they would/could have got news. As you say sarcastically say, but don't actually appear to have thought about at all, they don't have facebook updates to view and get instant updates in whas happening around the world. But they do know, so how and why would they have got news?

Whats just happened here?

A climactic battle in which the royalist forces narrowly lose, followed by a fast ride to the capital and the sudden sack of KL. Then a regime change and the Coronation of a new King, the foundation of a new dynasty.

So what sort of 'news' is going to get out from these events and how, and how quick/likely? ANd how does it get all the way put to an abandoned watchtower in the Dornish Marches?

Well, first you've got the Trident. Its clear KL got the news of the battle before Ned and the rebel vanguard arrived, because Aerys sent Rhaella and Viserys off to Dragonstone. Most likely the Royalists carried ravens and got out a message when the battle was clearly lost and/or Rhaegar killed a la Samwell Tarly's failure at the Fist of the First Men. Alternatively fast horsemen changing horses or some other form of speedy message.

But whatever way, the royalists have only a short time window in which to act, and with Rhaegar gone, its not at all certain that anyone in KL even knows how(where?) to get a message to the ToJ anyway. Or particularly cares to. But if they do, its likely to include a precis of all major events, including that Viserys and Rhaella have been sent to Dragonstone.

Heck, its not even clear that there is any point in send messages about the Trident to many places at all. I would have though that they would be looking for more details/clearer understanding of the situation rather than sending panicky messages to far-flung supporters who couldn't possibly haev cobbled together an big enough army to defend them fast enough anyway. I would guess an order was sent to Mace Tyrell and co to make haste to come defend KL, and probably another to Tywin, but that order either never went out, was intercepted, or ignored it seems. Or would have come too late to matter anyway. There isn't anyone else to send urgent messages to that could possibly help.

However, after the Usurper is crowned, the very first thing the new Dynasty is sure to do is send ravens to everywhere ravens will go, with commands to spread the news further, as well as kings messengers and town criers and all the other ways that important news is disseminated, with the huge news of the regime change. The Targaryen Dynasty is overthrown, Aerys, Rhaegar and Aegon dead, King Robert Baratheon, First of his name blah blah is the ruler of the realm etc. It may or may not include information about Viserys at Dragonstone, and how it is now treason to assist him in any way etc. I don't know. But certainly it would include the ascension of King Robert Baratheon, the downthrow of the tyranny of the Targaryens, and the death of Aerys and Rhaegar at least to reduce viable rallying points for the Targaryen-inclined.

And that would go out as far and as wide and as fast as humanly (or raven-ly) possible. Every town and every active keep should have that news with a week or two at most.

Which does not include a broken down and abandoned watchtower in the middle of nowhere mind you, but certainly would include whoever has been secretly supporting the presence of the ToJ.

At the same time I am certain, Prince Viserys' loyalists on Dragonstone would be sending their own ravens out wherever they could, denouncing the Usurper and calling on all true loyalists to rally to Dragonstone etc etc. And that message too would no doubt reach whoever is supporting ToJ.

So in a delayed fashion, its pretty clear that whoever was supporting ToJ probably sent a summary of all these events, including the deaths, the Usurper's crowning, the situation of Viserys etc etc to ToJ. This is after all, pretty important stuff, especially to the people at ToJ, and their secret supporters.

At the moment the most likely guess would be Starfall, but tats no more than a guess based on the limited information we know.

Shaw: Can you explain why the King's Guard chose to stand and fight Ned at the Tower of the Joy instead of protecting the remaining royal family members?

Martin: The King's Guards don't get to make up their own orders. They serve the king, they protect the king and the royal family, but they're also bound to obey their orders, and if Prince Rhaegar gave them a certain order, they would do that.

GRRM even says that they are bound to obey their orders, but you must know more than the writer, of course you probably already know the ending. Bottom line, they are given an order, they follow it.

Fix your 'bottom line' to match the response and the context instead of making up a paraphrase and then putting a context on that that does not fit what GRRM said.

Bottom line, they don't get to choose to ignore orders and GRRM isn't giving away key information to his mysteries before he's ready to.

If Rhaegar gave them an order they would follow it, we agree (unless its something like 'kill the king' and then they don't choose to disobey it, but must, by conflict with their first duty - but thats so fricken obvious that no doubt GRRM assumes that doesn't need to be explained and that nobody is so stupid as to blindly think that following orders from a prince supercedes the KG's base purpose and first duty of protecting the king!).

But my hypothesis (Rhaegar gave them an order and they did follow it, but later when circumstances changed it became superceded by a higher priority in their vows, their first duty) fits with GRRMs words, all of them, even the ones you conveniently ignore, and his purpose, yours does not. He says right there that they protect the king. They also obey orders. You ignore the first and make it only obey orders in your hypothesis, which goes against what GRRM said in your quote.

Everything you are saying is unproven just to make your point correct, you have NO proof that they knew everything that was going on. When Viserys flees, I doubt they said, "lets make sure every KG knows where we are going", but of course in your version of events they(the 3KG) knows everything that has happened before Ned arrives. Without proof that they did know about everything, your argument of "they didn't run to Viserys" loses its foundation, and therefore comes crumbling down.

Trident=>Usurper. They knew, proven in the text.

And I love that your only picked my quotes and nothing that stateofdissipation wrote about GRRM's interview, maybe because it would weaken your point even more?

This part answered PM, because I don't want to cross the line publically.

[TheLastStark]

Trident=>Usurper. They knew, proven in the text.

I'm going to start here. The word Usurper is not a title only given to someone that has overthrown/taken over a certain position of power(ie king), but becomes the title of someone once they make that claim.

Daemon Blackfyre was a rebel and usurper.^[11] ”

– Stannis Baratheon, to Ser Justin Massey

Now why would Stannis call Daemon Blackfyre a usurper if he never won the throne? It's because he made the claim to the throne. That is all that it takes to be considered a usurper. So the fact that the 3 KG called him that is no indication that he had already been crowned. And if what you say is true about the 3 KG knowing about what happened on the Trident, well this is from the wiki link on this site

It was not until the end of the war, around the time the Battle of the Trident was being fought, that Robert Baratheon proclaimed his intention to claim the throne.

So surely if they knew about the trident, they would of known about Roberts claim, and therefore known him for a usurper. And even if they did know about the Trident, there is no indication that that message would say anything about the rest of the royal family. That is a possibility but again nothing that indicates they knew where the royal family was.

Yes there is, if you have the wit to read it properly instead of being rude about people's motives when they have actualy read and analysed it a lot better than you have it seems (and I'm not talking about me here).

The first thing Ned says is that he looked for them at the Trident?

They reply that they were not there, and woe to the Usurper if they were.

That tells us right there several critical of things:

- they know the significance of 'the Trident'

- they know they rebels won the battle there

- they now that the rebel is no longer a 'rebel', but a 'Usurper', which means he's been crowned King in Aerys' place.

And they know all that before Ned has said anything other than "I looked for you on the Trident".

They know. The proof is right there in the conversation, right at the start.

Again, if the only proof is the word Usurper, then that is hardly proof that he was already crowned. A usurper is a person who makes the claim, that is all it takes to be considered a usurper. I would hope that the people who "analysed" this would have done the proper research of that word in particular and realized that using that word would only indicate knowledge of the Trident, not of any events past that. That would be using wit as you proclaim. He became a usurper when he made his claim, not before, not after, but when he made it. And that was at the battle of the Trident, not at KL. Maybe you should have done some research first.

Now lets move on to the sack of KL. Who is in charge of the ravens at every keep? The maesters, and seeing as the maester at KL was a Lannister supporter, and knew already that Tywin was going to sack the city, chances are that no messages got out about the sacking. Now of course someone could have gotten to the ravens, but then how many times do you think he could of rewritten the same message with all the same info and be able to send that many ravens out? What are the odds? Not really in that persons favor. I'm not saying that it's not possible, just not likely. Don't you think that someone of Tywin's intelligence would of sent soldiers straight to the rookery? Maybe, maybe not, we don't really know one way or the other, but the chances that someone got out a message during the sack just seems very improbable. So after Robert is crowned(and I don't know how long after the sack it took Robert to actually get to KL seeing as he was injured and I didn't see it anywhere) then that message would of surely gone out(most likely not including Viserys to keep Targaryen supporters from continuing to fight). To the ToJ? Most likely not. First to dragonstone, then assuming they even knew about the ToJ(or if anyone even knew that they were there because you say that there are people supporting the ToJ, which is likely but again no textual evidence that there was any support for them or that anyone knew where they were outside of Rhaegar(dead) and maybe some of his own men(who most likely died on the field with Rhaegar), but again nothing that supports the fact of supporters to the ToJ). So how long before the message received on Dragonstone is changed to a message to all supporters to come to the aid of the Targaryen prince, to the ToJ? vs the time Ned left KL(which sounds like before that message about Robert being crowned went out seeing as him and Robert argued about the dead children, and that was right when Robert got to KL) to go to Storm's End, to get to the ToJ? And then there is nothing indicating that they even sent a message to Dragonstone. I see 2 options for that, 1)they sent a message to Dragonstone to try and urge them to give up the queen and prince or be destroyed or 2) didn't send a message there so that they could try and sneak up on them and catch them of guard. I see both as viable answers and couldn't tell you which one they decided, but even then as soon as they sent out the message to everyone about Robert being king(Dragonstone included or not), the rest of the Targaryen supporters(assuming they knew where Viserys was) would be sure to send their own message to Dragonstone.

Again you are assuming that they found out way before Ned arrived, when in fact there is zero proof they knew a)the mad king was dead b)Robert was now crowned king c)Viserys was on Dragonstone. The calling of Robert a usurper shows that they knew about the battle of the Trident only, nothing after that. And even if they knew about a and b there is still nothing that shows they knew about Viserys still being alive and on Dragonstone. The conversation with Ned doesn't talk about facial expressions or the KG's tone when responding to Ned's remarks.

“Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought you might have sailed with him.”

“Ser Willem is a good man and true,” said Ser Oswell.

“But not of the Kingsguard,” Ser Gerold pointed out. “The Kingsguard does not flee.”

“Then or now,” said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm.

“We swore a vow,” explained old Ser Gerold.

Ned says that he thought they had FLED to Dragonstone with the queen and prince, and their response is that Darry is a good man. Not that they knew, just he is true to have stayed loyal even while losing the war. And then that he is not of the KG because the KG does NOT flee, "Then or now". Now the "then or now" comment is the only thing in this conversation that would entice me to think about Jon's legitimacy. The "then" part could mean that if they were at KL they would not have "fled" with the prince, but instead stayed with their king, and are "now" doing that(assuming Jon is legitimate), but nothing else. Everything else you "pointed" out is only an assumption, and as you can plainly read my assumptions make just as much sense yet disprove that they knew everything by the time Ned showed up. Again for all we know they found out mere minutes before Ned arrived. Unless you know the exact logistics and when messages were sent out vs when Ned left KL and then showed up at the ToJ, everything is speculation and assumptions. And my assumptions are just as logical as those "proving" that R+L were married making Jon legitimate. The only thing that gives me pause is Ser Arthur saying "Then or now", but everything else can have happened differently that your(and I mean the "analysis") assumptions. So in other words the "evidence" for is hardly conclusive and can very well be interpreted in an opposing opinion, which it has.

So as you can see, maybe you need some more "wit" and need to do some more research before you dismiss everything that I say. I have done some research into the words used and what they mean to the people of Westeros.

Already answered. I'm rapidly losing patience with your style, but you get one last summary and see if you can respond in a more polite and organised way. Otherwise I won't be back again.

Summary: Its all about what Rhaegar thinks a dragon head should be, not what prophecy thinks. Rhaegar is the one 'creating' the 3 heads. Its a natural and automatic assumption for him to assume legitimate princes as a default, especially since thats an available option and is better personally and politically for pretty much everyone, especially those most important, the heads themselves.

Nothing indicates that Rhaegar thinks the dragon heads need to be Targaryens. Only that the PtwP is of Areys and his queens(whatever her name was) line. Again, you are assuming he thought one way(the heads need to be Targaryen), when if he knew his history(which everyone says that he was a book worm and most likely knew a lot about history) would know that dragon riders don't need to have Targaryen blood, unless he assumed the "dragons head" ment Targaryen's by name not just blood and not actual dragons, but again no textual proof. Everything is just an assumption right now but yours is right and mine wrong? And you lose patience with mine because it doesn't agree with yours? Please show me proof of 1)his thinking style 2)what he read about the PtwP 3)why he thought he was the PtwP 4)what prophecy he read that says what the 3 heads of the dragon are(unless that is the PtwP prophecy which I think it is IIRC) 5)what changed his mind about it being about him. It's all about how Rhaegar and Aemon interpreted the prophecy, so you assuming he thought one way doesn't make it right and me wrong. If they thought dragons(real dragons not just Targaryens) were indeed apart of the prophecy, nothing indicates that he would need another legitimate son as a dragon rider. He already had himself a daughter and a son, that's 3 by my count, and seeing as Aegon the conquer had 2 sister dragon riders while conquering, why couldn't his daughter be one of the heads? Please answer those 5 questions with textual proof. Until then my "evidence" is just the same as yours and can't be dismissed just because they don't agree with yours.

[TheLastStark]

No rebutle? Gave up so easily? Or did you lose patience with another view point that makes just as much sense as yours(which you didn't even research yourself) and disagrees with yours?

[stateofdissipation]

No rebutle? Gave up so easily? Or did you lose patience with another view point that makes just as much sense as yours(which you didn't even research yourself) and disagrees with yours?

The only possible rebuttal is further invention...

They might go in to how honorable these three kingsguard were...

The proof of that is... These were no ordinary three,..

or the ever popular Hightower was a stickler for the rules because he did not judge Aerys for burning Rickard and strangling Brandon.

[TheLastStark]

Exactly, and I've seen him post other places today so I know he saw this.

[corbon]

No rebutle? Gave up so easily? Or did you lose patience with another view point that makes just as much sense as yours(which you didn't even research yourself) and disagrees with yours?

I have a limited amount of time and energy, which depends a lot on how not-internet-discussion (ie real life, I actually have one) things are going elsewhere. Dealing with your response requires considerable mental energy, particularly clarity of thought and expression, much more than some easier responses which just flowed like easy conversation so I chose to act on them first.

I will get to this, when I have the time and energy, but you are unpleasant to deal with (you made a clear effort to fix that in the last post which I appreciated, but then come back with this assholery) so I may just choose to drop things after that.

ETA: I take it back. I came now to do the reply but after your last reply below I'm done now. Not worth my time.

[TheLastStark]

I have a limited amount of time and energy, which depends a lot on how not-internet-discussion (ie real life, I actually have one) things are going elsewhere. Dealing with your response requires considerable mental energy, particularly clarity of thought and expression, much more than some easier responses which just flowed like easy conversation so I chose to act on them first.

I will get to this, when I have the time and energy, but you are unpleasant to deal with (you made a clear effort to fix that in the last post which I appreciated, but then come back with this assholery) so I may just choose to drop things after that.

Guess what everyone has a limited amount of time and energy. It takes me hours to respond to your post. And my unpleasantness comes from you NEVER showing "evidence" to support your POV, and then dismissing my views because you think you know more than I do. And that is exactly how you come off. Your "evidence" is flimsy at best, and have no logical logistics to support your assumption that the KG knew anything after the Trident. Everything you say is an assumption and mine is wrong just because. So just because you don't write sarcastically doesn't mean that you come off as respectful. Discounting my opinion because you think your right is being just as much of an asshole as being sarcastic. And whats worse is you still have NOTHING to show your POV is right and mine wrong, only assumptions, which by your logic makes everyone right.