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Cersei's thoughts about Joffrey's betrothal to Sansa


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On ‎7‎/‎4‎/‎2018 at 5:18 AM, FictionIsntReal said:

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It's been fun guys, but I'm on vacay next week, so I'll drop out here.

Might I suggest you head to your local library and read up about actual attitudes and mores of the Middle Ages. It might help you understand Martin's characters better. Alison Weir is a very good source on the minefields that medieval ladies had to navigate in order to maintain their reputations.

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4 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Says Sansa:

So, nothing about breaking hymen. You get dirty and your ass hurts.

5 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Margy's brother had to swear in court and in front of the High Septon that Margaery was a maid even though she was legally wed married to Renly for some months.

That's the reason they bothered. Doesn't seem like a standard procedure.

6 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Queens who do not uphold the highest standards of purity and chastity before marriage and faithfulness to their husbands afterward lead to rumors that their children are not legitimate, which produces a succession crisis, which leads to civil war. It's not just about having a virgin bride; it's a matter of national security.

And yet we got Cersei, so it's obviously not very well checked.

8 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Exactly. He can't even rule on what he knows to be true over such a minor matter as this. There is no way he is going to rule that Joffrey is a raper. There would most certainly be a succession crisis if he did that because rape is a serious crime in the realm and no one wants a king who is a criminal. And there is plenty of uncontested evidence that points to Sansa being the one who is loose with her virtue: she willingly went off alone with the prince, she is drunk, sweaty, sore and her hymen is broken. Even Ned would agree that this is no way for a proper lady to behave, and although he would beleive her story, he would not be able to defend her actions.

It's a rapist, not a raper. Joffrey doesn't rap.

No, since hymens being broken are a normal occurence with young noblewomen, there would be just no sex ruled. Joffrey probably couldn't lie convincingly.

Also, if Sansa's hymen is probably not broken. If that's the case and Joffrey claims sex, Cersei is exposed.

13 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Septa M may have very well said something to Sansa afterward, but I doubt it. Sansa is her charge and she is supposed to be on top of these kinds of things, but she dropped the ball. She's lucky she wasn't dismissed, and if her lord was anyone but Ned she probably would have.

Nobody mentions Septa Mordane's failure. Because there was no failure. Nobody mentioned that Sansa did anything controversial. Because Sansa didn't do anything controversial.

15 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

Once the whole affair centered around Arya and Nymeria, the hows and whys as to what led up to this event were forgotten by everybody. Ned was out of his mind for four days worrying about Arya, and then he has to make sure she isn't executed for striking the prince. Once that danger was passed, everybody -- Ned, Robert, Mordane, Sansa, Arya -- just wanted to move on.

Sansa and Arya hated and blamed each other after that and Ned and Mordane were involved. If there was anything to criticize in Sansa's decision to go off with Joffrey, it would have come up.

16 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

What's most glaring about Cersei's behavior is not that she didn't go after Sansa in the end -- she played her hand as best she could -- but that there were no repercussions at all for the Hound. Cersei brought Sandor in specifically to guard the prince, at all times. We have mutliple points of text showing that the high road is dangerous, not safe for highborns, and even Ned and Robert don't leave without a tail, and yet Sandor apparently decided on a whim to take the whole day off and the prince was nearly killed as a result. If Cersei is this vengeful against the wolf that wasn't even there, why isn't she even slightly perturbed that the man who was supposed to be protecting her son, the heir to the Iron Throne, decided to go AWOL instead?

If there was any danger to Joffrey in this affair in the first place, she definitely wouldn't have done it.

 

Listen, this is discussing a fanfic. There are multiple arguments against your hypothesis, but more importantly there are no arguments for it - we've all read the books and that plot just didn't exist. It's like saying that the forest was full of alien spies and Sansa and Joffrey encountered them. And that it doesn't come in the text because the aliens wiped their memory out. From the narrative point of view it also has no right to exist: it's an incident in the past, Joffrey is dead already, there's enough of conflict between Sansa and Cersei, it wouldn't shed any new light on anyone's actions, it won't lead to any plot twist. It's fanfiction that has literally nothing to do with the actual text.

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1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Again, there is no text to support the notion that nobody thought this was odd.

Huh? So someone has to say, "that ride Joff and Sansa took sure wasn't odd" for it to be considered normal but the fact that nobody says it was odd means it was odd?

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

All we have is a lack of text showing that anyone expressed these thoughts around the POVs.

So because no one said there wasn't a giant flying on a unicorn means there was a giant flying on a unicorn?

 

1 hour ago, John Suburbs said:

Even if there is no reveal, there is no reason to dismiss it outright. Some things never come to light

Time out. Are you saying that even when there is no reveal you will still insist this fan fiction is real? And you call others arrogant...

 

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4 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Catelyn reads the letter from Lysa fingering the Lannisters for the death of her husband. Three novels later, we find out that was a lie. Shae appears to be Tyrion's paramour for two novels; turns out she was spying on him, and shagging Tywin as well. There is also the Purple Wedding, but we're still waiting for confirmation on that. How about the catspaw? Unfolded right before our eyes with all the character suspicions pointing directly at Cersei, and it turns out to be Joffrey, or someone else, but definitely not Cersei.

I'm sure you will come up with all sorts of excuses as to why each of these cases is different, but guess what? Every situation is different. Martin crafts his mysteries in different ways to fit different circumstances. I gave you several examples of things that Sansa sees in her POVs where she is completely oblivious to what is really going on. It's kind of a thing with her, and the Starks in general.

The plan does not hinge on Renly, Barry and Illyn showing up at camp. She could have made up any excuse in the world to cancel her plans. She wasn't expecting Arya's absence; if Arya had showed up Cersie would have cancelled on both of them.

Everything you mention (except Shae) was a mystery when it happened, and was constantly mentioned as a mystery.  I have no idea what Shae was up to, if anything, and given that both parties are dead, I doubt that we will find out. 

The incident at the Trident has been barely mentioned since, Sansa's role not at all, and nobody considers it a mystery.

The only interesting reveal of the incident was that Cersei wanted Arya's hand removed, and considering Cersei's malicious personality and the fact that it was mentioned by Oberyn as being the historical penalty for striking a royal, that didn't come as a great shock.

By the way, if Martin wants to violate the rules of proper behavior in medieval Europe to move his story forward, I am willing to let him.  Westeros is not, and never has been, in Europe, medieval or otherwise.  It's his creation, and he makes the rules.  However annoying that may seem to you.  

 

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On 7/5/2018 at 7:28 PM, John Suburbs said:

Sorry, went through all of this again but I lost it. I'll summarize:

One day's hard riding is plenty to break a hymen. They are fragile. [...] it's 99 percent certain she will be broke

Oh, so you're attaching numbers now with a precision of 1%! What's the expected probability of a hymen breaking in one hour of horse-riding of equivalent intensity? Please show your work.

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Joffrey does not have to declare he had sex with Sansa the moment he rides into camp. He just says something strange and shameful happened, and then they examine her.

Him saying strange happened is enough for them to call for examining the maidenhead of a pre-pubescent 11 year old?

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There is plenty of text that shows highborns are not to leave the column without guards. There is no text that shows what Sansa and Joffrey did was normal in the eyes of the crowd. So unless you can provide evidence, anything at all, that Joff and Sansa do not have to follow the rules common to all other highborns, all of the text points to the fact that they should not have been out there.

I agree, they're not supposed to leave the column. But both Stark siblings do so independently, and the lack of response from anyone indicates to me that it's a rule of very minor importance. Also, what we see of Joffrey indicates that he regards himself as above any rules.

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Cersei's men do not even know that the prince is out there. Just to comb the area of any suspicious characters. Not a difficult thing for soldiers. And the fact is that the odds of trouble are very low, but they would be zero with the Hound, so there is no excuse for him not to be there.

So they're out there to protect him, but don't know he's out there? That's way too dumb even for Cersei.

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Whether Aegon is real or fake, it is a perfect example of this kind of twist. Nobody raised suspicion about the state of Aegon's unrecognizable body in the throne room, no one suspect that he could still be alive, or that a fake could be brought up, or that JonCon did not really die drunk and destitute. If someone were to say that was a possibility, you would have the same response: no, because Martin would have raised those suspicions somewhere in the text already. You would have been wrong about that, just like you are probably wrong about this.

Aegon's fate wasn't a mystery in the early books. Readers were not intended to have any idea he might be alive, just like everyone else in Westeros (except Varys). Then he appears and other characters are uncertain whether he's the real deal. Jon Snow's parentage was a "known unknown" for both readers & characters from the beginning. You are saying this incident from the first book provides a mystery requiring an explanation, hence your theory. But none of the characters with the same information as us seem to regard it as one. Saying that because GRRM had Aegon appear out of nowhere means any out-of-nowhere theory is "probably" true is nonsense. I hereby proclaim that Joffrey really was Robert's biological son, even if Cersei mistakenly believes otherwise, and he just happened to look like a Lannister because genetics doesn't really guarantee that Robert's children would look the way Jon Arryn expected! If you disagree, you are probably wrong!

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The Hound is not Joffrey's servant; he answers to Cersei, and ultimately Robert. Joffrey can order him to do all sorts of thigs, but not to just take the day off so he can be with his girlfriend. That is a direct violation of his standing orders from the king and queen, who outrank Joffrey, and would at minimum be a firing offense.

The King didn't fire him, despite not being in on this supposed conspiracy. Even aside from Robert, nobody remarks on how strange it is that he wasn't fired.

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The woods are not super dangerous. There is in fact very little risk to Joffrey's person. But that is beside the point. Protocol dictates that the prince be accompanied by a guard whenever he travels, just as the king and the Hand are. Again, to say that Joffrey is immune from these rules just because no one states the opposite is ludicrous. He follows the same rules as all the other highborns in the story, even more stringent ones, in fact.

If it's merely protocol rather than something they regarded as vitally important, that would explain the muted reaction.

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On 7/5/2018 at 8:14 PM, John Suburbs said:

Robert couldn't even take Ned's side over Joffrey's abuse of a butcher's boy, even though he knows Joffrey is lying.

Ned doesn't take the side of the butcher's boy. He takes the side of Arya. By letting Ned decide the appropriate punishment for Arya & her direwolf both drawing the prince's blood, Robert effectively takes his side.

On 7/5/2018 at 8:28 PM, John Suburbs said:

Like I said, once it became about Joffrey, Arya and Nymeria, all the rest was forgotten. If someone breaks into a home intending to steal a TV set but ends up shooting the homeowner dead, does it matter why or how the intruder entered the home in the first place?

Prosecutors love to pile on charges in hopes of encouraging a more favorable plea, so that initial breaking & entering with intent to commit an additional felony would definitely be remembered.

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The only reason Martin would "drop a hint" would be to let you know something is up. Why would he do that when he could use it to some greater purpose later? Why didn't he "drop a hint" right after Cat read the letter from Lysa that she and Littlefinger were the real murderers of Jon Arryn?

Later in the first book Catelyn arrests Tyrion, who contradicts the story Littlefinger had told her about the knife. When they reach Lysa, she switches gears from blaming Cersei to blaming Tyrion, and Cat now distrusts her judgement. In the same book Cat recalls growing up with Petyr, how he was the first boy she & Lysa kissed, but Lysa would even let him use his tongue. We learn that Petyr dueled Brandon Stark for Cat's hand and nearly died. Ned schemes with Littlefinger to bring the Goldcloaks to his side and maintain control in King's Landing after Robert's death, but in one of the big twists of the book Littlefinger betrays him. At this point the reader would be justified in having a lot of skepticism of Littlefinger and what he has said earlier. We also hear in this book conflicting stories about where Sweetrobin was to be fostered. When Cat offers to foster him, Lysa threatens to throw her out the Moon Door. These are the initial hints, and we get to hear the reveal before Lysa dies.

On 7/5/2018 at 9:08 PM, John Suburbs said:

Have you been reading? Every single plan Cersei has hatched has been stupid: Robert's murder, Ned taking the black, Margaery... She is consistently misreading others and hatching hair-brained schemes that end up failing and it's only by the skin of her teeth that they don't blow up on her entirely.

The plan to have Ned take the black was actually a very good one. It would have worked if Joffrey hadn't thrown a wrench into it.

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On the contrary, his reputation as a lady's man would be ensured. At 12 years old, he had the charisma to drive women wild, to the point where they forget themselves entirely and jump his bones, even if it means ruining their chance to become queen.

This is just funny.

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Not pitifully poor plot devices that have no basis in characterization, historical fact or the author's own text. Only someone who had the most utter disrespect for an author would think they would stoop to such sloppiness.

You are the only person who thinks this. Your imagined explanation strikes everyone else as much less convincing.

23 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Exactly. And Joffrey and Sansa being allowed to do what even Ned and Robert are not is evidence of an obvious mystery at play.

Robert is older and has somewhat more of a sense of what's required of him than Joffrey. Also, he's more the center of attention. Robert doesn't like doing what other people tell him is reasonable, but he's much more capable of being persuaded than Joffrey.

6 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

That Cersei was plotting and scheming against the Starks from the very beginning, and using Sansa as a pawn. That Littlefinger was actually behind the catspaw, and many other things Joffrey did. That these crimes will come back to haunt them when they find themselves in weakened positions. That Sansa will have grown stronger and more resilient as time went by and will realize who her true enemies are.

Bran showed us Cersei & Jaime were scheming against the Starks even before this. I don't see what Littlefinger has to do with operation-shame-Sansa. He typically plots independently of Cersei and frequently at cross-purposes. Of course, Cersei also doesn't rope Joffrey into anything she wants kept secret. And Sansa already thinks of Cersei & Joffrey as her enemies (the latter of whom is already dead).

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Nobody was able to find Arya for four days. She is one little girl out in the big wide world. Nobody was able to find the BwB during the war, nor did anyone notice Gregor Cleganes pack of raiders -- 50? 100 men? -- as they trekked across the riverlands.

Beric was caught & killed multiple times during the war. People also noticed Gregor and reported as such during King's Landing. Their defenses just weren't organized enough to stop his raiding party. He's a known vassal of Tywin Lannister and can always draw back to the Westerlands. In order to pursue him and/or his holdings there, permission from the King is necessary.

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