How long did Stannis know?

[Minsc]

Again, Robert could not be suspected to know, Stannis could. Important difference.

Stannis knowing makes Robert a target also in how at anytime Stannis could reach out and inform Robert.  So if they cannot reach Stannis the next best target would be Robert.

[bent branch]

Was Tywin hated before he had the dragon spawn killed?

I don't want you to think what I am about to say is aimed at you specifically, but your question gives me an opening to what I want to say. The idea that Stannis was hated is a gross exaggeration. Stannis was disliked. This is more along the lines of an annoying relative or co-worker. Similarly, Tywin was not the kind of guy you were buddies with. Tywin was stern and had little sense of humor. I doubt there were many people outside of his family who felt close to Tywin. This is similar to Stannis, only Stannis' brothers didn't like him either. However, we know that everyone, including his brothers, saw Stannis as competent and trustworthy.

We know that what Renly had to say about no one wanting Stannis was factually untrue. We know this because Eddard got himself in trouble from his plan to put Stannis on the throne. GRRM could have used Davos to show the parley, but instead he chose Catelyn. This was in part to help the reader remember that Eddard had died trying to put Stannis on the throne. Eddard didn't like Stannis, but he had no qualms about making Stannis king. Because of this everyone should be aware that Renly didn't know what he was talking about when he said no one wanted Stannis. Instead, some people think this is one of the true things about the story.

Additionally, GRRM gives us Catelyn's opinions of the two men. While she thought Renly was a clueless naif, she felt Stannis was competent. While Catelyn felt Stannis would not win any congeniality awards, she thought his word could be trusted. Additionally, she thought you would know where you stood with Stannis because he said what he meant. This characteristic is one that often makes people unliked, but it is also a characteristic that would be a good one in a Hand.

I honestly don't know if this everybody hated Stannis (and thereby making him unfit for anything) idea comes from people fanboying over Renly or if it comes from an inability to understand a complex story line, but either way it is an incorrect way to see Stannis.

[Light a wight tonight]

Stannis is bitter and jealous of Ned believing he took the Handship from him.

 

Stannis is bitter and jealous about damn near everybody and everything, especially early on in the story.

[Minsc]

Additionally, GRRM gives us Catelyn's opinions of the two men. While she thought Renly was a clueless naif, she felt Stannis was competent. While Catelyn felt Stannis would not win any congeniality awards, she thought his word could be trusted. Additionally, she thought you would know where you stood with Stannis because he said what he meant. This characteristic is one that often makes people unliked, but it is also a characteristic that would be a good one in a Hand.

Catelyn doesn't praise Stannis at all during the parlay.  In fact, she comes off disliking him just as much as she doesn't like Renly thinking both are completely childish.  The reason she realizes Stannis is telling the truth isn't because she thinks that Stannis is completely honest and his word can be trusted but because it clicks with information she has already gathered.  Nor is the trait of being a blunt asshole a good characteristic for a Hand.  The Hand has to work with a various number of people and if none of them like him then he very much cannot do his job.

So no, people don't really view Stannis as competent and trustworthy as that didn't figure into either of Ned or Cat's views on him.   Ned solely supported him because of Ned's rigidity in supporting who he views as the proper heir if that had been Joffrey he would have supported Joffrey.  In fact, when LF explains how the realm will bleed if he seats Stannis he doesn't even deny it rather just repeating Stannis is the heir.  Cat only recognizes the truth not because of Stannis' nature but because how it clicks with previous information while she also generally thinks of Stannis as a childish ass.  Meanwhile, the vast majority of lords just ignore Stannis' claims until Renly's mysterious death.

Moreover, it hardly only Renly that tells how no one likes Stannis but the mast majority of people that talk about Stannis mentions how he is generally disliked by many nobles.

[Dolorous22]

I think he was the first to suspect. Once Arryn died there wasn't much more he could do. Jon Arryn was a huge influence on the realm and his support meant definitive proof for Robert. Without Jon there was little he could do to convince his brother - it's not like he could send a blood sample to the citadel. The words had to come from someone Robert trusted. 

I don't think Stannis had to be afraid of anything to make the decision to retreat. He's a pragmatic guy and he wouldn't yield unless he had to. I suppose he held on until Robert had made his decision to grant Ned the title of HotK. If they were willing to kill the guy the King loved most of all they wouldn't think twice about killing Stannis. I don't think Robert would even be all that displeased if someone had.... 

[Damsel in Distress]

It's hard to pinpoint when Stannis began to suspect.  News travels slow and this is the kind you don't want talked about in public.  Months before Ned came to KL.  Stannis began to suspect, Jon Arryn investigates, Jon is killed, Robert goes to Winterfell.  Between 6-12 months before Ned arrived in KL.  That's a loose guess. 

[Lord Wraith]

Walda, I would assume that Jon Arryn was convinced, and that he was trying to build a case as quietly as possible. That's why he was inquiring into breeding practices. 

I agree. After all Jon Arryn wasn't about to start a war without the proper proof, or as close to proof as he could get in that age.

[Walda]

Building a case?

What kind of case?. for who?, of what?

In real life, as long as a man was married to a woman and had not been able to get a divorce a mensa et thoro from the church, for proven infidelity, any child born of that woman was deemed to be her husband's legitimate offspring. The only two conditions of exception were, if her husband was proven incapable of reproduction (ie. could not get an erection), or if he had no access to his wife (defined by extra quatuor maria "beyond the four seas" ie. had not been in the same country as his wife at any time in the ten months previous to the birth of the child that proved her infidelity).

This was Saxon common law, but the association of marriage with the assumption of paternity existed until the 20th century. Hence we have the children of the 19th century Countess of Oxford being referred to as the 'Harlein Miscellany'  (after the published version of her husbands famous collection of medieval manuscripts), and the lady herself heartily assuring a hesitant suitor of her youngest daughter, who feared that the girl might inherit the family's known propensity to imbecility, that there was "not one drop of Harley blood in Frances".

It is why who a man was officially married to was such a big deal, why the crime of adultery was treated as particularly heinous in women, and of no account in men, and it was critical in matters of inheritance. It is also why jokes about cuckolds and cuckolding were considered so hilarious in the late middle ages. IRL, the colour of a child's hair (or even of their skin) was not going to make any difference, if they were born of the body of the King's lawful wife, they were the Kings. There was often people on hand to witness the birth of a royal, to guard against claims the real prince was swapped at birth and such like accusations.

If the wife's infidelity was proved by the ecclesiastical courts, the offspring that proved the infidelity and (typically) subsequent offspring could be declared bastards, freeing the husband from any legal obligations for support and inheritance they would otherwise have had, but this was very difficult to prove even if proceedings were instigated as soon as the woman left her husband for her lover. 

In Westeros, there are ecclesiastic courts, as there were in real life, and also legal courts of the Lords and the King, as in real life.

Any 'case' that was being prepared would be taken either to the Septons, to find a way to put aside Cersei and have Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen declared bastards in spite of their father clearly being fertile (as Mya, Edric and Barra demonstrate) and also clearly having access to his wife (as nobody disputes).

In a real life ecclesiastic court, the problem Robert would have had was that he waited until Cersei had borne three children, and then another seven years, before doing anything about it. It was unlikely for the church to bastardise the children born before the date the divorce (not an actual divorce - just official recognition that the couple were leading separate lives due to irreconcilable differences) and the church were particularly resistant to men who were attempting to avoid the financial responsibility for children they had acknowledged as their legal progeny from birth. (and the church also took some trouble to track down the fathers of bastards and make them pay for the support of their children, and did everything in their power to prevent the woman and children being supported by the parish) .

While the church did not recognise actual divorce or allow remarriage while the separated partner was still alive, there were various complex procedures one could go through to get an annulment of the marriage - a legal procedure that established there never had been a real marriage. Tyrion's marriage to Tysha seems to have been annulled. However, when there were children to a marriage, annulments became very difficult to get, (offspring being a very strong proof that the marriage was genuine) and even if an annulment could be got, it did not mean the father could make his children illegitimate on the strength of it.

It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation that Henry VIII was able to get enough clout in the Church of England to divorce Katherine, marry Anne, and have Mary and then Elizabeth made bastards (although, in his last illness, Henry in his will named Edward, then in the absence of heirs of the body,  Mary, then, in the absence of heirs of the body, Elizabeth, as his lawful heir, and all three became monarchs of England in that order, notwithstanding the nine days queen, Jane Gray, who Protestants attempted to place on the throne instead of Mary). Putting aside a wife through the church was not an easy business, or cheap, even for him.

The other way to put aside a wife was by Royal decree, If Robert had taken this course, Cersei would be put on trial for treason (infidelity in the King's wife being a threat to the succession of the realm and therefore treasonous) and if found guilty, put to death, with at least one and more probably all of her children being declared bastards, and possibly put to death as well. But if Jon Arryn was attempting to convince Robert to take this course of action, he took his precious time, and kept his cards close to his chest - "the seed is strong"? Pretty cryptic, with Robert by his bedside all day, and him capable of speaking until Pycelle drugged him up the last evening.

I don't think Jon Arryn;s behaviour suggests he anticipated or was interested in starting a war. Even if Cersei's worst fears came to pass, and she was set aside and tried for treason, I am not sure that would be the consequence  - Tywin has shown a ferocious tendency to protect his family and  keep its power at court, but he is also very big on slut-shaming, and might consider sacrificing Cersei if it meant the family name was cleansed and she was punished and/or exiled but not killed.  Although it seems only Renly had a plan for putting Cersei aside, and he didn't have any idea that Joffrey or her other children were illegitimate.

Stannis is the only one who behaved as if war was the inevitable consequence - and he only started behaving that way after Jon Arryn's death - although he was aware that Jon Arryn did not communicate their suspicions to Robert.

I know that Ned believes, and GRRM writes in a way that strongly invites the reader to conclude, that Malleon and the golden hair of Cersei's children are immutable proof of illegitimacy and would rule Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen out of contention for the Iron throne if it were generally known, but there is a lot of other stuff in the books that suggests that this is not the case - the strange reluctance of Arryn and Stannis to share their knowledge with Robert. And that both Varys and Baelish claim to have known this fact perfectly well long ago, and done nothing about it. Even the secretive way Ned approached his find in Malleon, deciding not to consult Robert,  to the point of redrafting his will for him without his knowledge, and going to Cersei and telling her to flee with her children to Essos. This implies that Ned thought, as Cersei did, that Robert would kill Cersei (and the children) if he believed her children were not his, not merely put her aside or disinherit them. 

It is not at all clear that Malleon's descriptions of hair colour can be used as proof of legitimacy in Westeros (although the author is clearly doing all he can to help the reader leap to that conclusion). In real life, the only thing that would matter would be the legitimacy of the Royal marriage (which would be regarded as virtually indisputable, as Cersei had bourne an heir and spare for Robert, and more than half a dozen years had passed before anyone attempted to dispute them, and the people that attempted to dispute that claim were a) Not Robert and b ) Not disinterested but actively supporting Stannis' claim to the throne - and after Jon Arryn's death,  and Eddard Stark's, actually just Stannis, doing all he could to justify his claim to the throne, without mentioning Malleon or offering any kind of proof, or calling for any kind of trial or examination of evidence,  but simply declaring: "I declare upon the honor of my House that my beloved brother Robert, our late king, left no trueborn issue of his body"(ACoK, Ch.10 Davos I)

[Lost Melnibonean]

A case for Robert to believe. I doubt Robert would have given half a groat for Cersei's mens rea or any other legal mumbo jumbo. 

[bent branch]

I think Stannis would have been thinking long and hard since his marriage day, about Robert's bastards, and his own lack of trueborn sons.

I also think that Stannis had some kind of magical or prophetic tip-off that took him to Dragonstone. You can explain the taking of the fleet from the great ship-building docks of King's Landing to the more treacherous harbour of Dragonstone as his right and/or duty as the Master of Ships. You can explain his motives as fear or jealousy, his silence as self-effacing or self-serving. Maybe he started collecting sellswords and pirates after King Robert died (I'm guessing that it was actually Davos did the collecting, and it started before Robert died, or most wouldn't have had the time to get from where they were to Dragonstone). But the shadowbinder from Asshai, and the conversion of his wife, then himself, to the Red God - the turning away from his own Gods - where did that come from? I don't think he left because he was afraid or bitter. I think he left because he was looking for something, something he believed he could find on Dragonstone, or in Essos. with the right kind of prophet to guide him. Some kind of Excalibur - that his fancy red sword clearly isn't.

I'm not absolutely sure about the information Jon Arryn was seeking, either. Searching Malleon is not the most obvious way to discover that Cersei was cuckolding Robert. And Jon Arryn didn't need Malleon like Eddard did. He had seen more than one of Robert's bastards; Gerwen Baratheon and Tya Lannister might have married before he was born, but he was old enough to have made their personal acquaintance, and  the black haired progeny of the earlier Baratheon/Lannister marriage was also about the same age as his parents. He could remember people Eddard only saw as entries in a ledger, and instances that fell outside the official histories, too.

And it isn't like they have DNA testing. Malleon could only be used to establish the legitimacy of the people and progeny in it, most of whom were dead already. As long as Robert acknowledged Joffrey as his legitimate heir. he would be, and would be recorded in books like Malleon's as such, blond hair and all. Robert acknowledged Joffrey as his son to the bitter end (unlike his bastards, in spite of the pleasure he took in the company of Mya and Edric). Although Malleon helped Eddard justify committing the treason of throwing Robert's last will and testament into doubt, it has no legal standing, and offers weak and inconclusive proof of a concept quite alien to Westeros (that blood, not marriage, determines legitimacy).

Jon Arryn has his own concerns - a single puny heir, that might be Petyr Baelish's, multiple marriages, multiple miscarriages, and possibly some inherited degenerative illness from all the Targaryen blood in his own line. Apart from attempting to find out more about the fates of his own bloodlines, he might have come across something that roused his curiosity as to why Aerys wanted the heads and heirs of particular noble houses dead.

Pycelle carked it pretty fast after he decided to read Malleon, too. That book is like the Ringu of Westeros. The sort of book best burnt before reading. I wonder if Bolton burnt the only other copy of it at Harrenhal.

Petyr Baelish seems to have survived reading the title page, but he is the only person who seems to have survived more than a month after surveying it for the first time. Possibly because Varys' little birds didn't know he took a quick peek. I'm not so sure Petyr knew about Cersei's twincest, and doubt he would care, except in so far as it gave him a hold on her,  her supporters, or her detractors. Look at how quick he was to take ownership of the dragon-bone hilted Valaryian steel dagger (that was never his), when it suited his purpose. He is a great one for jumping in with a plausible lie, especially about Tyrion (another eg."He had a wife before you, did you know that?”
“He told me.”
“And did he tell you that when he grew bored with her, he made a gift of her to his father’s guardsmen?"(ASoS, Ch.68 Sansa VI))

It would be in keeping with Baelish to act as if he has known forever what he just found out now...that "Always keep your foes confused"(ASoS, Ch.61 Sansa V) speech is pure bs. What Baelish is very good at is involving himself in other people's elaborate schemes, the cuckoo that mimics its host species, and chucks the lawful heirs out of the nest while its foster-parents slave away feeding it. The jackal that drags off a leg of the Eland the Lion brought down. Admitting that the knowledge is new to him would be like implying that he was not ten steps ahead of the game.Deny it, and he still finds out whatever they have to tell.

Also, though Stannis had more reason than most to suspect Joffrey's legitimacy, even if he did not, he would still have ambition. He aspired to be more than the Master of Ships and Lord of Dragonstone. Renly had ambition too, and without any particular reason to suspect Joffrey's legitimacy or care about it, Renly stayed in King's Landing, dreaming up schemes of having Cersei set aside for Margarey and getting his brother killed in melees or hunts. As with all ambitious men, if one justification fails, find another. It seems to me that Stannis might have foreseen Robert's death at Jon Arryn's funeral, and decided to stay well away from Robert and keep his own kingly hands clean.

We know that he was not so honourable that he wouldn't kin-slay Renly, and Edric Storm too, if Davos had not got him off to the Stepstones. Stannis' justifications for killing these two show he can bend like a pretzel when it serves his ambition, that his Iron sense of Justice only makes his ambition blind, so blind that when he sees his own death, he mistakes it for Joffrey's. "I saw things in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning … burning, Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him into ash. Do you think I need Melisandre to tell me what that means? Or you?"(ASoS,Ch.54 Davos V)

 

Except Stannis does not mistake his death for Joffrey's. Let's look at that quote in context shall we?

"Your Grace," said Davos, "the cost..."

"I know the cost! Last night, gazing into that hearth, I saw things in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning...burning, Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him to ash. Do you think I need Melisandre to tell me what that means? Or you?" The king moved, so his shadow fell upon King's Landing. "If Joffrey should die...what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?"

Clearly Stannis is considering himself to be the king whose crown will consume him. He is still waiting to see if Joffrey dies before sacrificing Edric. This is one aspect of Stannis that most people claiming that Stannis is just ambitious miss. Stannis fully expects his course of action to destroy him, yet he feels compelled to follow that path anyway. Why would Stannis still reach for that crown if he his convinced it can only lead to his death?

[Techelles]

I don't really get the whole Stannis thing.  I may be misreading his character, but it seems like he'd talk to Robert the second he found out about it rather than wait for Jon to die and then run off.  

Maybe he wanted Jon to be the one to tell Robert, and then when he died Stannis felt unsafe.  But even then, after running away he'd have sent a letter to Robert, wouldn't he?  Or Ned?  Or someone?  Or done something.  Of course, he raised sellsails, but what the hell was that about?  That doesn't make any sense unless he thought Robert was likely to die so Stannis was going to have to fight for the realm soon - in which case, why did Stannis still not say anything?  Did he think it would be easier to prove the Lannister incest after Robert died?  C'mon now. . .

Stannis was planning to tell Robert after Jon Arryn died, but he definitely would have preferred that Jon do it. When it fell to him, he didn't want to move forward without being prepared. That's why he raised sellsails: not necessarily because he thought that Robert was going to die, but just because once the accusation was made, he knew that war would soon follow, and he wanted to be ready for that before open hostilities ensued. Just a good tactical decision. Mobilizing his troops beforehand would have given him a clear advantage. He could strike at his enemies immediately, if needed, or he could move to the defense of King's Landing before anyone else had time to act against it. But then Ned found out.