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Who did Robert really fight at the Trident?


Scotty Blackfyre

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I came up with this theory a while back and I've not seen it pop up elsewhere but would be interested in knowing what you guys think;

So Robert fought Rhaegar at the Trident ... or did he?

We're told that Robert slew Rhaegar, smashing his war hammer into Rhaegar's chest plate sending the rubies encrusted on his armour into the ruby ford. Rhaegar's body was never found.

What if it wasn't Rhaegar? What if it was someone else using rubies to glamour as Rhaegar? Who would do that? Well I guess it would have to be someone who;

1. Loved/Cared for Rhaegar enough to fight for him.

2. Was close enough to him to have access to his armour.

3. Was at least 'capable' in combat.

4. Maybe someone who was known to the reader as possibly having impersonated a knight previously.

5. Was known to be mortally wounded after the battle at the Trident.

Well guys, my theory is that it was in fact .... LYANNA STARK!

Ned found Lyanna in a bed of blood at the Tower of Joy, there was a child there so everyone assumes that the blood is from childbirth but maybe Lyanna gave birth (R+L=J) months/weeks earlier. For whatever reason Rhaegar was AWOL at this time and so Lyanna impersonated him (similarly to how she impersonated the Knight of the Laughing Tree at the Harrenhal Tourney ... and defeated x3 knights), and led the Dornish forces at the Trident. It was Lyanna who actually fought Robert and was defeated. She managed to escape the battle and returned to the Tower of Joy but later died of her wounds ... imagine the irony, Robert unwittingly kills the woman he started the whole war to protect.

So what do think guys?  

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  • 3 weeks later...

It's a stretch at best .  I would seriously doubt that Rhaegar would allow the woman he either loves or needs fight in his stead especially if she is pregnant . 2 . There was somebody on the battlefield who Lyanna loved more than Rhaegar , Eddard . 3 . Fighting from horseback using a sword  is different from using a lance .

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  • 1 month later...

Do you know how long it takes for a woman to recover from childbirth? I do, and can tell you that you don't bounce back from it over weeks/months. The last thing a woman wants to do after giving birth, attending to her baby weeks or months after, is go fight a bloody war!!!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I firmly believed this on my second re-read. There is enough evidence to believe that Rheagar was not the man Robert slew - but several re reads later, I no longer subscribe to the theory. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy pondering it, though. 

 

Edit:

I don't think its possible for whoever impersonated Rhaegar to have escaped the battle. Whoever wore that armor died at the Trident and was most likely cremated. In Lyanna's case, I can't imagine how she would have gotten back to the Tower of Joy with mortal wounds or *why*. And I certainly can't imagine that she would have gone to battle just weeks after childbirth. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, if somebody went out to the Trident in Rhaegar's armor to rally his troops, perhaps because Rhaegar was dealing with Lyanna, his captured woman, and Robert strikes the man in Rhaegar's armor in the stomach and kills him, and then the enemy loots the scattered rubies from his armor, that strikes a fairly even comparison between Rhaegar and Achilles and whoever was in Rhaegar's armor and Achilles's cousin Patroclus, in the Iliad.

The trick there is that Rhaegar as Achilles already has a Patroclus - Jon Connington - his cousin by virtue of being Hand to his father. He stood in for Rhaegar as commander of the armies. He loved Rhaegar erotically as well as a friend and comrade in arms. And, of course, he is doomed to die. In the Iliad, Patroclus is stopped by Apollo as he approaches the Trojan camp - Jon Con is struck with plague just as he is about to return to his home in Westeros - and Apollo's arrows can symbolize plague.

This is actually kind of GRRM-my - to include a bunch of symbolism and reference that seems to match up to a well-known myth, but then splitting the parts of the myth up and putting them in different parts of the story, investing aspects of it in different characters, so that the story doesn't match up to the myth exactly.

Maybe it's that Jon Connington wished he could have taken Rhaegar's place. Maybe it's that after whoever died on the Trident died, and Lyanna died, Rhaegar went into mourning like Achilles went into mourning - and one way he could do that symbolically would be to "take the Black." Any theory that says that Rhaegar = Mance Rayder probably has a Patroclus imposter inside of Rhaegar's armor at the Trident.

Or maybe it didn't "actually" happen, but it's supposed to feel like it could have happened, since something like it happens a bunch of other times (one person putting on another person's clothes and fighting in the stead of the dead), or maybe it is supposed to feel that way because Robert is so far away from who Robert felt like then that Rhaegar also seems like more of a myth or an imposter than an actual person.

The question remains - if not Rhaegar, then whom? I don't think it would be just anybody, and I don't think it's Lyanna. Do Rhaegar or Lyanna have any other cousins who might have taken this role?

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If Rhaegar the Impostor at the Trident isn't Patroclus, maybe he is Mordred - the black armor fits, and Rhaegar has stolen Robert's wife, and when Arthur came to slay Mordred, he shattered his chest, and he had to do so by crossing back from France into Britain - so there's a "crossing." And also we learn the story of Robert and Rhaegar as we watch the story of Robert's familial treason issue him a mortal wound that kills him (again, splitting the story up and investing it in different characters or different situations).

So, Rhaegar isn't an imposter because he is not Rhaegar, he is an imposter because he is not the king and the true king had to put him down.

Introducing the idea of Mordred into the story brings us to Jon, presumably Rhaegar's son, Rhaegar reborn, who also may be slated to dress himself in black, break his oaths, take the family throne and incestuously marry the queen. And he was also killed in a somewhat similar way to Rhaegar - stabbed in the chest. But the story is split up and moved around there, too.

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Maybe the bed of blood was the effect of the Westerosi equivalent of "abortion by coat hanger"?

Maybe Lyanna had been eager to get rid of the dragonspawn in her but there also was a KG around - specifically to prevent such an event, and she had been left alone only when Rheagar's goons went all together to bar the way to Ned and his gallant companions?

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