R+L=J v100

[Ghost's Shadow]

Yup, the 'true prince' hiding under the cover of a bastard is a cliché.

In the same story you have Aegon, the 'hidden' (false) (bastard) prince and the not-so-hidden princess around. Not to mention Cersei's string of bastards on the IT.

Just let the man write his own story without throwing around all those 'but that's a cliché' and 'but he subverts every trope so he can't be doing that!' and 'but he kills off people just to shock us and so he will continue to do so'.

As FrozenFire says, everything's been told already, it's just how you do it. ;)

Happy 100th thread again, guys. I can't believe someone came in and claimed Aegon was in the ToJ, again. Grrrr. :P

[Lady Gwynhyfvar]

[...]

Ah, the ToJ nursery, right? :D

Advice to new people: ask away. You might want to read the reference guide, it does make things a bit easier.

Couldn't agree more, especially on the ritualised nature of the dialogue and honour.

The ToJ nursery returns! Another stop along memory lane... ;)

And I second the advice for noobs-- ask away! You're one of the main reasons the regulars continue to inhabit this thread :)

As for Ned's dream, I agree and lest we forget-- this is a work of fiction. Meaning the author conceived the scene and put the words on paper for a reason.

If they weren't managed, neither 3KG@TOJ nor all the "king" allusions to Jon make sense. Nor do the Jon-jokes work. Reason why Jon and Joffrey are not allowed to train at swords in the yard:

AGoT 07 Arya I

We know Joffrey is the bastard, so the young prince can't be a bastard or the joke is dead.

That is one of my all time favorite nods. Martin is so sly, I can just imagine him chuckling and rubbing his hands together as he wrote that.

We are talking about the same author who came up with notions such as Tower of joy, I'm of the night, Even those who lack a man's parts may still have a man's heart, Needle was Jon Snow's smile, right? Just to understand where all this it-is-too-much-of-a-cliché-for-Martin comes from. Also, what you call cliché has a much nobler sibling, the archetype - one of those little universal themes that have been structuring literature, epic, myth and psychology for about, well, 3000 years. As much as I love Martin's style, I find it unlikely he'll be able to wipe out the archetypal DNA of storytelling when Shakespeare, Dante, Euripides and Homerus couldn't. Every story has already been told and yet there are endless ways to tell it. Who cares for the destination when the journey has been amazing?

Well said, as usual :bowdown:

I find it precious in the extreme to use the cliche-bashing argument since Martin so clearly, and with good reason, is employing age old archetypes in his story. I consider his contribution to be his new and unique way of telling the story. Audre Lord said "there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us [...] there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt" Many other writers, from Bob Dylan to Chuck Pahlaniuk have expressed the same sentiment. But perhaps the most succinct (from a man who wrote extensively on the subject of ideas) is this from Mark Twain in his Autobiography:

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.

As you say, it's about the journey. As Twain might have said, it's about the kaleidoscope ;)

Yup, the 'true prince' hiding under the cover of a bastard is a cliché.

In the same story you have Aegon, the 'hidden' (false) (bastard) prince and the not-so-hidden princess around. Not to mention Cersei's string of bastards on the IT.

Just let the man write his own story without throwing around all those 'but that's a cliché' and 'but he subverts every trope so he can't be doing that!' and 'but he kills off people just to shock us and so he will continue to do so'.

As FrozenFire says, everything's been told already, it's just how you do it. ;)

Happy 100th thread again, guys. I can't believe someone came in and claimed Aegon was in the ToJ, again. Grrrr. :P

Couldn't agree more (as you can see above)

And I just have to say it... I find Aegon at the ToJ to be one of the more entertaining crackpots. For it's breathtaking lack of logic and evidence it wins a prize in my book :P

[BearQueen87]

Just read the past page and a half. Quick reaction:

Jon does not NEED to be a hidden prince. If it turns out that most of us are wrong (which I doubt) and R and L weren't married and Jon is still a bastard...then ok. It's not like I'm going to throw my books out the window and swear off Martin forever. The problem comes when people think that GRRM simple MUST break-all-the-tropes. But 1) story ain't over yet, you don't know how he'll break the hidden prince trope and 2) you cannot simply write a story with nothing but broken tropes because somewhere along the line, someone did it already.

I'm pretty much okay with any story GRRM wants to tell me, so long as he keeps telling me a story.

[Mithras]

Breaking all the tropes = predictable

The only thing George cares is unpredictability. Too much exaggeration has been made about George killing characters, subverting the tropes etc. Therefore, I usually do not agree with comments like "that is cliche", "George would never do that" etc.

[Ygrain]

'Sides, if you want to break a trope, you must first build it.

[UnmaskedLurker]

Breaking all the tropes = predictable

The only thing George cares is unpredictability. Too much exaggeration has been made about George killing characters, subverting the tropes etc. Therefore, I usually do not agree with comments like "that is cliche", "George would never do that" etc.

:agree:

The biggest trope and cliche seems to have become that GRRM only breaks tropes and never uses cliches--I don't think that is true, nor would I want it to be true. Tropes become tropes anc cliches become cliches because they make for good stories. As others have said, the real trick is to make the trope or cliche seem original and not trope-ish or cliche-ish.

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

Sure, if you're willing to exclude all but two cherry picked data points. It's like you're basing your theory on an FBI report where everything has been redacted except for Aegon smuggled from KL [several paragraphs later] KG at the ToJ.

Well, we're all working with limited information aren't we? I mean, there are huge gaps in what we know - otherwise we wouldn't be theorizing at all. We'd just be summarizing, and this wouldn't be so much fun. I'm sure I am willing to exclude more "data points" than you are, J. Stargaryen. And I'm not necessarily out to argue that Aegon's presence at the tower of joy is likely - only that it's something that should be given serious consideration, given the fact that Martin included the Young Griff storyline. The presence of the KG at the tower of joy has always seemed like the fly in the ointment when it comes to RLJ theories; it doesn't make a lot of natural sense, and explaining the KG's relevance to Jon seems to require a good bit of eisegetical work. Meanwhile, long since Ned's fever dream was published, Martin provides us with Young Griff - and the beginnings of an alternative history that could dramatically alter our understanding of events around the time of the Sack.

So my initial question was simply to wonder whether anyone had really stepped back to consider how the survival of young Aegon might impact more frequently rehearsed version of the story. And the Kingsguard issue looked like one piece that might be better explained if it could be connected to Aegon. What I'm seeing in responses here, generally, is that Jon's legitimacy is taken as so firmly established that Young Griff's Targaryen claim is not worth a serious look. Which is fine - I just thought I'd ask.

[BearQueen87]

'Sides, if you want to break a trope, you must first build it.

THIS.

At the end of the hidden prince trope, normally, the hidden prince would be revealed to everyone and everyone would bend the knee and the prince would take his rightful place as King gladly and oh, how the small folk and the nobles would cheer and waves banners and OH HAPPY HAPPY DAY!

Yeah, no. That's most likely not what's going to happen here. Even if Jon does eventually take a throne--and I think he will--it's not going to be a joyous occasion. It'll be--what's that word---bittersweet.

So my initial question was simply to wonder whether anyone had really stepped back to consider how the survival of young Aegon might impact more frequently rehearsed version of the story. And the Kingsguard issue looked like one piece that might be better explained if it could be connected to Aegon. What I'm seeing in responses here, generally, is that Jon's legitimacy is taken as so firmly established that Young Griff's Targaryen claim is not worth a serious look. Which is fine - I just thought I'd ask.

I also don't think that many of us here actually believe that Young Griff is really Aegon Targaryen, for what it's worth. Young Aegon didn't survive; he died in the Sack and this "Aegon" is a Blackfyre.

[Ygrain]

Well, we're all working with limited information aren't we? I mean, there are huge gaps in what we know - otherwise we wouldn't be theorizing at all. We'd just be summarizing, and this wouldn't be so much fun. I'm sure I am willing to exclude more "data points" than you are, J. Stargaryen. And I'm not necessarily out to argue that Aegon's presence at the tower of joy is likely - only that it's something that should be given serious consideration, given the fact that Martin included the Young Griff storyline. The presence of the KG at the tower of joy has always seemed like the fly in the ointment when it comes to RLJ theories; it doesn't make a lot of natural sense, and explaining the KG's relevance to Jon seems to require a good bit of eisegetical exegetical work. Meanwhile, long since Ned's fever dream was published, Martin provides us with Young Griff - and the beginnings of an alternative history that could dramatically alter our understanding of events around the time of the Sack.

Fixed that for you.

So my initial question was simply to wonder whether anyone had really stepped back to consider how the survival of young Aegon might impact more frequently rehearsed version of the story. And the Kingsguard issue looked like one piece that might be better explained if it could be connected to Aegon. What I'm seeing in responses here, generally, is that Jon's legitimacy is taken as so firmly established that Young Griff's Targaryen claim is not worth a serious look. Which is fine - I just thought I'd ask.

You're a couple of tens of threads late to the discussion where "Aegon at ToJ" was dissected (hence the "ToJ nursery" reference above), as well as in other threads. While it might seem to you that it fits "better" with the KG's behaviour, it doesn't fit with the rest of the story.

[Alia of the knife]

Refresh my memory. When Tyrion saw the statue of the young swordsman At Illryios, didn't he think later that YG resembled it?

[sabrecmc]

Actually, the hero, who is sometimes also a hidden prince, often is not the one to go on and rule or something along those lines. Instead, they are fundamentally changed by the journey. They defeat the (insert evil thing), but are transformed by the experience in such a way that they are leaders of a different sort. See, e.g., Frodo, Jesus, Moses, Luke Skywalker, etc.

[Alia of the knife]

The ToJ nursery returns! Another stop along memory lane... ;)

And I second the advice for noobs-- ask away! You're one of the main reasons the regulars continue to inhabit this thread :)

As for Ned's dream, I agree and lest we forget-- this is a work of fiction. Meaning the author conceived the scene and put the words on paper for a reason.

That is one of my all time favorite nods. Martin is so sly, I can just imagine him chuckling and rubbing his hands together as he wrote that.

Well said, as usual :bowdown:

I find it precious in the extreme to use the cliche-bashing argument since Martin so clearly, and with good reason, is employing age old archetypes in his story. I consider his contribution to be his new and unique way of telling the story. Audre Lord said "there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us [...] there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt" Many other writers, from Bob Dylan to Chuck Pahlaniuk have expressed the same sentiment. But perhaps the most succinct (from a man who wrote extensively on the subject of ideas) is this from Mark Twain in his Autobiography:

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.

As you say, it's about the journey. As Twain might have said, it's about the kaleidoscope ;)

Couldn't agree more (as you can see above)

And I just have to say it... I find Aegon at the ToJ to be one of the more entertaining crackpots. For it's breathtaking lack of logic and evidence it wins a prize in my book :P

[Alia of the knife]

I'm so glad you invoked Twain, because when I ffirst heard the description of YG, he sounded for all the world like Tom Sawyer, even down to the family dynamics.

Had a half brother, didn't know his father...

[mambru]

Oh heavens. Lyanna would absolutely care that her brother was killed. But she may not have been in physical condition to know what's going on and scream from her tower. If she's as sick as we think, she was probably in and out of it all. But of course she doesn't want Ned to die!

I agree that

1) Lyanna would NEVER have wanted Ned to be killed, and

2) Lyanna MAY not have known what was going on enough to scream for Ned. But 'may not' isn't "definitely DID not," which is how a lot of people are taking it on this and other topics. I mean, after the battle, Lyanna was clear-minded enough to understand her complicated situation, to the extent of exacting a lot of complicated promises from Ned about the salvation of Jon, the manner of his upbringing and the secrecy of it, as well as an incidental codicil about where she would like to be buried. And this was when she was CLOSER to death than when Ned first rode up to the tower. On that evidence, I don't think we can take it for granted that Lyanna was completely out of it and NEVER screamed for Ned while the KG were busily trying to kill him.

So IMO, the ToJ KG are NOT automatically exonerated from the charge of attempting to brutally kill a dying woman's brother under her window while she was desperately crying out for him. Which again, seems more to me like the way the KG would treat a prisoner than the way they would treat the respected mother of their supposed King.

[stateofdissipation]

the "secret hidden prince" is not a "trope" or "cliche," It is a "dead-horse trope"

A Dead-Horse Trope has gone way beyond being a Discredited Trope to where the very act of playing with that trope has itself become a trope.

The progression is generally:

Clever idea → Trope → Discredited Trope → Dead Horse Trope.

The general reaction to YG is a reaction to the dead-horse trope of the secret hidden prince. With YG there is at least a lampshade hung on it: Tyrion finds the story questionable.

The lampshade hung on prince Jon would have to be a blank look given by anybody he bothered to tell the story to.

[BearQueen87]

So IMO, the ToJ KG are NOT automatically exonerated from the charge of attempting to brutally kill a dying woman's brother under her window while she was desperately crying out for him. Which again, seems more to me like the way the KG would treat a prisoner than the way they would treat the respected mother of their supposed King.

I'm not necessarily trying to exonerate the 3KG, but they were not attacking Ned and the gang out of cruelty or lack of concern for Lyanna's mental well being. They have to protect the King. That is the first, primary, most important duty they have. And, yeah, I know you don't think Jon is legit so we're sorta at cross purposes here, once again. Do I think that the 3KG felt bad that they were going to have to kill Lyanna's brother? Yes. Do I think they stopped and thought really long and hard about the moral implications of doing that? Nope. Why? Because King Jon needs protecting, and We! Are! Kingsguard!

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

Breaking all the tropes = predictable

The only thing George cares is unpredictability. Too much exaggeration has been made about George killing characters, subverting the tropes etc. Therefore, I usually do not agree with comments like "that is cliche", "George would never do that" etc.

Agree and disagree. Clearly Martin cares about the quality of his story. That said, he does litter these books with self-parody, and there are so many allusions to key fantasy tropes that you can't help but appreciate his sense of humor. The list of red/flaming/magic swords in this story, for instance, includes everything from actual swords (reflecting torchlight, covered in blood, tinted by the steelsmith, actually aflame, etc), to comets, dragons, and sexual metaphors. Practically everywhere you turn there's a red flaming sword staring you in the face. George plays up the exaggerations himself. Yet through it all, he's still got a story to tell.

I also don't think that many of us here actually believe that Young Griff is really Aegon Targaryen, for what it's worth. Young Aegon didn't survive; he died in the Sack and this "Aegon" is a Blackfyre.

Sure, and I can understand that. I just wonder if that's being fair to Martin, who didn't have to include the Young Griff storyline at all - but did so anyway, and much later in the story than might have been expected if it were simply a distraction.

Fixed that for you.

You're a couple of tens of threads late to the discussion where "Aegon at ToJ" was dissected (hence the "ToJ nursery" reference above), as well as in other threads. While it might seem to you that it fits "better" with the KG's behaviour, it doesn't fit with the rest of the story.

Unfortunately, I think eisegesis is almost inevitable when it comes to explanations for the kingsguard presence - which is why I used the word. Even accepting Martin's word that they were given "orders," he really has provided no information at all regarding what those orders were or how they were justified. And that comment about "orders" was given in an interview, not in the text itself - so, strictly speaking, that too may fall under the heading of eisegetical interpretation.

Re: Earlier discussions - If there were particular comments made in the threads you mention that you think would be helpful, let me know. I may take a look.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

Refresh my memory. When Tyrion saw the statue of the young swordsman At Illryios, didn't he think later that YG resembled it?

He called him the Warrior reincarnated or something like that. But I think that's all.

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

Refresh my memory. When Tyrion saw the statue of the young swordsman At Illryios, didn't he think later that YG resembled it?

No, I think that that is just something readers did.. Not Tyrion..

But readers made that "connection", between Aegon and the statue, because Illyrio said the statue is of him at the age of 16, and Tyrion originally guesses Young Griff to be 16, even though it turns out that Tyrion is wrong (the appendix lists Young Griff as aged 18).

[BearQueen87]

Sure, and I can understand that. I just wonder if that's being fair to Martin, who didn't have to include the Young Griff storyline at all - but did so anyway, and much later in the story than might have been expected if it were simply a distraction.

You're right, Martin didn't have to include fAegon's storyline at all. Except I think fAegon's story--specifically his backstory of being "the hidden prince" who was whisked away into exile until such time as he could heroically return--is what was supposed to happen with Jon and the 3KG. But Ned and his 6 stopped that from happening. So it's a "here's what was supposed to happen but didn't cause...life." It's also just a way to understand Varys and his endgame.