Realm: Better off with or without Robert's Rebellion

[Valyrian Lance]

Would the realm have been better off facing the second coming of the Others with or without Robert's Rebellion?

 

Pros: Less men lost in battles. More synergy in the realm to combat the threat.

Cons: Likely no dragons.

[Myrish Lace]

15 minutes ago, Valyrian Lance said:

Pros: Less men lost in battles. More synergy in the realm to combat the threat.

A realm without Robert's Rebellion doesn't mean a united, stable realm. Or even a Targaryen-ruled realm. If Jon hands over Robert and Ned, someone else might rebel down the line because the King is violently crazy and that doesn't work well for the nobility.

16 minutes ago, Valyrian Lance said:

Cons: Likely no dragons.

Nah, dragons are clearly an intervention of higher power, with Dany suddenly knowing what to do and how to sacrifice, so dragons will arrive.

I still have no idea what dragons are supposed to do against winter though. It works perfectly well for the Others to just sit tight, snag a piece here or there for a couple of years until the realm starves and freezes to death and few remaining defenders can't go anywhere because everything is buried in snow.

Dragons gotta eat something too, after all.

[Valyrian Lance]

1 minute ago, Myrish Lace said:

A realm without Robert's Rebellion doesn't mean a united, stable realm. Or even a Targaryen-ruled realm. If Jon hands over Robert and Ned, someone else might rebel down the line because the King is violently crazy and that doesn't work well for the nobility.

Nah, dragons are clearly an intervention of higher power, with Dany suddenly knowing what to do and how to sacrifice, so dragons will arrive.

I still have no idea what dragons are supposed to do against winter though. It works perfectly well for the Others to just sit tight, snag a piece here or there for a couple of years until the realm starves and freezes to death and few remaining defenders can't go anywhere because everything is buried in snow.

Dragons gotta eat something too, after all.

Your first comment certainly depends on when the story gets altered. Does Rhaegar never run off with Lyanna? Does Jon Arryn lay down? Does Rhaegar actually depose Aerys? Does Aerys find another solution to burning Rickard? I guess that is where your fan fic creative license can be used.

More synergy and stability does not mean perfect synergy and stability in my eyes. 

[Frey Kings]

I prefer it would've been the Stannis rebellion and Robert was left to starve to death at Storm's End

[Walda]

Robert's rebellion was 18 years earlier. While that rid the realm of a lot of young men, and in particular the ancient houses of the realm of a generation of heirs, it was a while back, and there had been things happen since then (eg. if you were to look at Dubrovnik (King's Landing on the show) 18 years earlier, in the seige... more savage than anything Gregor Clegane could have devised, in terms of destruction of property and displacement of people.)

For the last nine years, the King's peace has been kept, and everyone has known they live in a united realm,  a prosperous realm , with a ten-year summer. That is one handy legacy of Robert's Rebellion. Another is, Robert was a competent war commander, and while he wasn't good at counting coppers, he never neglected the defence of the realm.  He could have given Dragonstone to Joffrey (his heir, and in the tradition of the Targaryens, Dragonstone was the rightful property of the heir to the Iron Throne) but he gave it to Stannis, a seasoned and reliable battle commander who understood its strategic importance and the threats.

He could have made Tommen the heir to Storms End and all the Baratheon history, and maybe if he had another eighteen years, he might have. Storms End being the fortress it is, does not necessarily require as much competence as Dragonstone to hold (as long as its food stores are adequate.)  We never know Renly's real capacity as a battle commander, but people who knew him from childhood, Cressen and Donnal Noye, had a low opinion of his capacity, in spite of his evident understanding of strategy, excellent military education, relish in military duties, and first hand experience in the Siege of Storms End during Robert's Rebellion.

Robert is also building up the King's Fleet, and looking for the opportunity to kill the beggar king, and the Targaryen Princess, before she whelps. He does not underestimate the threat. Eddard Stark said he over-estimates them.

Another legacy of Robert's rebellion is that there are large numbers of men in the smallfolk that have been trained as soldiers as boys or young men, and large numbers of older smallfolk that have not forgotten what a war is, who carry candles with them everywhere, and walk in pairs, but one twenty yards behind the other, a legacy of never-forgotten lessons on identifying cover and not getting frostbite.  If you look at what happened in France 16 years after Napoleon,  there was the July Revolution, a lightning strike of a revolution that took about seven days, worked from the smallfolk up, and relied on the building of strategic barricades through Paris in a way that was learnt from Napoleon from men who had been conscripted into his army and because of their training in it were able to spontaneously organise into an extremely effective military force.  That kind of latent skill can only be a good thing in the face of the others. 

Another way that Robert's Rebellion might be a little like Napoleon's coup, is in the professionalisation of the army officer cadre. Robert wasn't going to allow SweetRobin to be the Warden of the East. He wanted Jaime Lannister, a commander of some merit. (It seems clear that Robert anticipated a threat from across the narrow sea in the last days of his realm). At the wall, they were still giving responsible posts to young recruits like Waymar Royce in deference to the family he came from, and blood weighed with Arys Targaryen too, but Robert tried to minimise the deadwood and avoid giving them command (a lesson that Stannis only learnt after granting the admiralty to Ser Imry and making Ser Alester Florent his hand).

The biggest mistake Robert made, was not making his will earlier, and expecting Eddard Stark to serve Joffrey and be a match for Cersei. Before the War of Five Kings, the realm was in the best shape for facing the rise of the Others and the Long Winter, better shape militarily than it had ever been in under Ayrs, in spite of Tywin being his hand.

And you are right, if Robert's Rebellion had not happened, there would have been no dragons. No dragons and no Jon - although perhaps Rhaegar or Aegon would become the Prince that was Promised, and perhaps one of them might have hatched a dragon somehow, too.

[Damsel in Distress]

On 6/21/2018 at 10:22 AM, Valyrian Lance said:

Would the realm have been better off facing the second coming of the Others with or without Robert's Rebellion?

 

Pros: Less men lost in battles. More synergy in the realm to combat the threat.

Cons: Likely no dragons.

As much as I hate the Starks and the Baratheons, the rebellion ensured the rise of the dragons.  The realm need Daenerys and her dragons to bail them out from the Others.  Daenerys needed to be born and get out from the shadows of her less competent brothers.  The main protagonists of the novels needed to be born under trying circumstances and be shaped by trials, and pass those trials.  Rhaegar never had to do that.  

Rhaegar and Viserys were incompetents.  Their little sister is the best choice to lead the realm when the Others come marching to the south.  Rhaegar, with so much riding on the result of the battle, agreed to fight Robert one on one.   Rhaegar was honorable but he was a fool.  

[BRANDON GREYSTARK]

Neither . As long as the was a symbol of continuity (Targaryens/ Baratheons ) and competent battle commanders to enforce it , the realm remained stable . That all ended with the rise of the boy kings( Joffrey , Robb and Renly ).

[Kandrax]

On 6/23/2018 at 6:24 AM, Walda said:

eg. if you were to look at Dubrovnik (King's Landing on the show) 18 years earlier, in the seige... more savage than anything Gregor Clegane could have devised, in terms of destruction of property and displacement of people.)

I think that you mixed it with Vukovar. Although Dubrovnik was damaged by shelling and between 88-114 civilians were killed, i think that people of KL would preffer it's fate than what happened to them when Tywin's forces entered city.

[Walda]

 

No, didn't mix it with Vukovar. Although Vukovar is also a good example of how much a town can recover in 18 years, and a better analogue for King's Landing in that it actually has some strategic significance. Dubrovnick  is the location the show used to represent King's Landing.

In '91, it got a lot of coverage on TV in Australia, before the horrors of Kosevo etc. because it was a tourist town, targeted for of it's large civilian population and World Heritage Old Town.

Because it was a tourist place, I had seen photos of it from friends who had went there in the seventies. And the first day of the bombardment of the Old Town, literally hours before I saw the news, I'd come across an old sepia-tint postcard of Dubrovnick Old Town from the 1930's, which I think now might have been from a great-grand aunt's honeymoon, but at the time I had no idea why it was where it was and was turning it over in my hands and wondering which living person would be able to tell me more about it, so when the same place was on the news that night, it was a shock.

When I saw it again, it was in the first 'Kings Landing' scene of Season 1 episode 1 in 2013 (because I held off watching Game of Thrones until I thought the 'trilogy' was completed. Silly me.) It blew my mind. I hadn't seen it since it was in flames in 1991, and of course the news was all about the even worse things that had happened since, and then the war crimes trials. Seeing it on Game of Thrones, in peace, with the blue sea, and the sun shining off the red-tile rooves, it felt like I was looking back in time, but hyper-real. More fantastic than a dragon to me. I actually paused and rewound a bit that point to see if it really was Dubrovnik. It was the most wonderful feeling, to see the Old Town still there (it's roofs, at least).

Unfortunately, the only footage from Vulkovar, that I can remember, was not of the town at all, but of roads in the countryside outside it, with trucks, and armed men in grey, yelling angrily at cameramen. Or in ditches in fields, firing. I guess because the town was under siege and all the international camera crews were behind the lines. Then afterwards, the insides of broken buildings. Unfortunately, there were lots of places in that war that had this kind of footage, and it was hard to tell one from another. And nobody I knew at the time had been to any of them.

 If you meant that the sack of King's Landing was closer to Vukovar because there were more civilian rapes and deaths - I don't know. It's circumstances make it difficult for me to believe that the sack of King's landing was anywhere near as savage. It couldn't have had the same level of destruction, of property because of the lack of modern artillery, but also because if there had been even a little razing of fleabottom, or an attempt to smoke civilians out of the Sept of Baleor, the whole of King's Landing would have burnt to the ground in a wildfire conflagration. 

If you consider how long the siege of King's Landing took, from the time the gates opened to Tywin's forces, to the time Eddard's forces took control, there simply wasn't a lot of time for rape, pillage and murder. The cavalry that raced to the Red Keep had barely enough time to rape Elia and kill Rhaegar's heirs before Eddard arrived. The foot that followed them had just enough time to march to the Keep by the closest road and secure it for Tywin, before Eddard's army marched in behind them. 

In a matter of a very few hours, Tywin and Eddard had come to terms to end the fighting, and Jaime had relayed essential information about the wildfire caches, which ensured the invaders would do no razing, at least.

There really isn't a lot of detail in the stories of the sack of Kings Landing. The main story we here is of Elia being raped and her children being murdered, and Aerys and Rossert being murdered by Jaime. Thing is, there doesn't seem to be enough time to do much more. 

The only specific allegation we have of more than that is the account Jorah gives Daenarys as she debates the morality of buying slaves:

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“Your Grace,” said Jorah Mormont, “I saw King’s Landing after the Sack. Babes were butchered that day as well, and old men, and children at play. More women were raped than you can count. There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him. Yet I have never heard of these Unsullied raping, nor putting a city to the sword, nor even plundering, save at the express command of those who lead them."

(ASoS, Ch.23 Daenerys II)

But I think we should consider his situation when he says this. Jorah is a man exiled from Westeros for enslaving people, who affiliated with the Dothraki the better to trade slaves, and he is trying to convince Dany (as he tried to convince Viserys) that she needs to purchase an army to take Westeros in blood and fire, which is why she should go to Astapor. He is, in fact, getting together the wherewithal for Dany to sack King's Landing. At least, that is what he claims they are doing there.

Arstan thinks they should look elsewhere. He has already told her straight up

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“there have been no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House.”

(ASoS, Ch.23 Daenerys II)

As Dany already knows that even the Usuper's dog found Jorah's selling a few of his own servants into slavery dishonourable enough to deprive him of his lands and Lordship, and his head if he came back. Dany might also be aware that Jorah helped put together her marriage offer, the one where her brother traded her for a Dothraki army.

The speech he gave about the sack of King's Landing was to convince her to go through with his plan to purchase between one and three thousand slaves from the Astapori. We can tell he was planning for it to be that many, because when he first suggested it he told her of the story of the Sack of Qohor and the three thousand Unsullied that prevented it. Then he ended with a call to action:

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It will take longer, yes … but when you break bread with Magister Illyrio, you will have a thousand swords behind you, not just four.”

(ASoS, Ch.08 Daenerys I)

and, as it turned out, one thousand was the amount the Astapori slave traders offered (500 if she paid double, and 2000 because they were generous, but 1000 was the number they would offer for the ships.)

Of course, there is a possibility that Jorah had a bit of a talk with the bean counters who took the inventory of her goods while Dany was learning about the Unsullied training regime, that the offer might have been so close to his estimate because he had pre-arranged it with them. Or it might be because he had been slave trading these past three years, and knew how to make an accurate valuation, thanks to his extensive and up-to-date slaving expertise. 

When he had first proposed purchasing slaves, Dany had not been slow to note one little problem:

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All I have of value is the crown the Tourmaline Brotherhood gave me.

(ASoS, Ch.08 Daenerys I)

His solution is to steal/commandeer Ilyrio's ships and goods, and go overland with her Unsullied and her Dothraki, rather than sail to Pentos.  She has her doubts, but he pushes them away with arguments that the Astapori might shower her in gifts for the sight of her dragons, as the Quartheen did. Arguments that Illyrio would be delighted if she marched on Pentos with a thousand Unsullied to augment her kahlasar of Dothraki and her three dragons. And if he wasn't, he'd be 'Xaro Xhoan Daxos with four chins', so why not test the friendship and see what Groleo, Arstan and Belwas were going to do about it? Dany might not have known enough about the ways of the world to see how specious those arguments were, but Jorah knew better.

From the first mention, it seems as if Jorah has always had plans to go to Meereen.

Dany knows first hand what it is to sack a town anyway, from when Drogo defeated Khal Ogo, and sacked the Lahzareen village where she 'rescued' Eroeh, and Mirri Maz Duur, taking them as her own slaves. Where she saw a boy whipped across the field and run down by her Kos, for fun (mirroring Gregor's sack of Sherrer). Where she heard the children screaming as they were burnt alive in their houses, where she rode among the fields of the dead, and saw the crops trampled and the stock slaughtered and left to lie, thick with flies. Dany isn't ignorant of what the aftermath of a sack looks like.

Perhaps she remembers what Jorah said to her at the time:

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“Most of Ogo’s riders fled,” Ser Jorah was saying. “Still, there may be as many as ten thousand captives.”
Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver’s Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne.
“I’ve told the khal he ought to make for Meereen,” Ser Jorah said. “They’ll pay a better price than he’d get from a slaving caravan. Illyrio writes that they had a plague last year, so the brothels are paying double for healthy young girls, and triple for boys under ten. If enough children survive the journey, the gold will buy us all the ships we need, and hire men to sail them.”

(AGoT, Ch.61 Daenerys VII) this was, presumably, one of the 'dire and frightening' things she had heard of Slaver's Bay before she ordered Groleo to turn towards it.

Jorah mentions it again after Dany kills Drogo, before she decides to cross the red waste:

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They were too few to defend themselves even against that unwarlike folk, and the Lhazareen had small reason to love them. She might have struck downriver for the ports at Meereen and Yunkai and Astapor, but Rakharo warned her that Pono’s khalasar had ridden that way, driving thousands of captives before them to sell in the flesh marts that festered like open sores on the shores of Slaver’s Bay. “Why should I fear Pono?” Dany objected. “He was Drogo’s ko, and always spoke me gently.”
“Ko Pono spoke you gently,” Ser Jorah Mormont said. “Khal Pono will kill you."

(ACoK, Ch.12 Daenerys I)

While her khalasar might have reason to fear death at the hands of Khal Pono, and her son, if he had lived, is it not more probable that he would have had Dany escorted back to Vaes Dothrak, to join the Dosh Khaleen? 

Perhaps Jorah's real fear was that Khal Pono would take Daenerys and her dragon eggs off his hands, leaving him to sell one hundred low value slaves for whatever he could get after Pono had glutted the market with his ten thousand Lhazareen captives.

Before they discover Illyrio has sent ships, when they were deciding where they should go after Qarth, Jorah thinks it is still too early to head West.

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Ser Jorah proposed that they journey farther east, away from her enemies in the Seven Kingdoms.

(ACoK, Ch.63 Daenerys V)

This being after Quhuru Mo has told Daenerys that Robert is dead, and there are four kings tearing Westeros apart.

Jorah didn't like her hearing that. Told her to ignore the sailor's tales, told her that really 'this changes nothing'.

The guy is just full of dodgy assertions.

Immediately after making his emotional appeal about how decently the Unsullied will sack King's Landing for her, he reminds her not to be overly concerned about her honour, like Rhaegar:

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Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.

When he approached her to make this appeal, Dany did a quick check of their situation because she is taking some care not to be stuck alone with him, given his propensity to molest her sexually when the opportunity presents.

So let us look at his account of the sack of King's Landing bearing in mind who and what he is.

First up, he says "I saw King's Landing after the sack"

He follows up with "Babes were butchered that day as well, and old men, and children at play."  He doesn't claim that he saw them butchered, or even that he was there that day.

He uses the plural form, but what he is saying might well be based on the facts we know. Two babes were butchered (Pisswater prince and Rhaenys), at least two old men (Aerys and Rossart), and two children (of Rhaegar, the babes), as they played in their nursery. At least, we could surmise that Rhaenys was playing hide and seek, or maybe just hiding, immediately before her murder. So it is possible that what Jorah is saying is just an amplification of what Dany already knows.

As a description of what he personally witnessed in the capital that day, the 'children at play' hits a false note for me. Why would children be at play in the streets of King's Landing at that point? Why would the women come out to line the streets with their babes in arms as the Northmen marched in to take the city? Far more likely, the welcoming party would have been armed Goldcloaks and Targaryen Loyalists. And they would have been long gone, before Jorah arrived, because Tywin's twelve thousand had got into the city first. 

The vanguard had to gallop up to the Red Keep in order to reach it before the Stark army. It seems more probable to me that the civilian population of the city would be cowering in Baelor's Sept, or the cellers of fleabottom, rather than getting in their way. 

His follow-up assertion that any man sent out to war with a sword or a spear will become a murdering rapist at the scent of blood, is really creepy, in the light of who he is. It almost sounds like a justification for who he is. If that were true, he would effectively be saying that Eddard's army joined a mass rape and slaughter of civilians as soon as they got through the King's Gate, simply because they were men that had gone forth in war with arms in hand.

It seems to me quite unlikely that this was the case, just because there wasn't enough time. Eddard arrived at the Red Keep only hours or even minutes after Tywin. They came to terms, they heard about the wildfire caches from Jaime, they sent out orders to ensure there was no razing, at least, for if there had been any attempts to smoke civilians out of Baelor's Sept or Fleabottom, they would be blown to the seventh hell, and the whole of King's Landing would have burnt with green flames for days, and nobody remembers anything like that happening.

So at the time the sack was supposed to have occurred, that time between the gates being opened, and Eddard (who deplores child-killing) taking the city over,  it seems to me that all the men of the foot had time to do was secure the gates and the streets they marched up. They didn't have even a quarter hour to leave their ranks to track down women to rape, or old men or babes to slaughter. It is possible Tywin's forces had killed civilians that attempted to block their way, or whom the loyalists used as human shields, but there is no mention of such.

If there was looting, raping, murder of babes and old men, it would have to have occurred later in the day, or at night, after the city was nominally in the custody of Eddard Stark. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for Eddard's ever-rankling hatred of the Lannisters, the reason he avoided King's Landing and Tywin for all those years afterwards. Perhaps he felt that Tywin had sullied his honour by organizing a systematic rape and murder and looting spree after handing command over to him, sullying his name and his command with dishonourable war crimes, which Robert should never have forgiven.

 One thing the Yugoslavian wars highlighted in real life,  is that systematic rape and murder takes time to plan and organise. It doesn't 'just happen' spontaneously. Of course, that might not be true in GRRM's world - we have Bronn telling Tyrion how fine it was to take a woman on the battlefield after a successful skirmish, there is the Dothraki at the Lhazareen village, the Brave Companions at the Saltpans, Gregor's crew at Wendish Town, demonstrating how quickly and spontaneously it can be done.  At least in Gregor's case, these things happen at holdfasts where unarmed villagers have crowed in for protection, rather than in a city where the soldiers have to break into and search each individual house, at some risk to themselves from armed Loyalists as well as from civilians attempting to defend their lives, virtue, or property.

It seems to me, too, that both armies would be near dead on their feet that day, from the days of forced-marching that had preceded. Tywin's army was fresher, and possibly better supplied, as they had not been fighting a long campaign far from home and marched there immediately after a bloody battle. But even they have been marching really fast for a really long time by then. If they had not been given a command to rape, murder, and plunder (and we haven't heard from anyone that they have) it seems to me that the balance of probability is  that the men might have preferred a hot meal and a good sleep on that particular night.

I know Lord Tywin has a fearsome and well deserved reputation for war crimes, going back decades. There is this comparison of Jon Connington's battle of the Bells, and what Lord Tywin would have done:

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His soldiers searched every hole and hovel, he offered pardons and rewards, he took hostages and hung them in crow cages and swore that they would have neither food nor drink until Robert was delivered to him. All to no avail. “Tywin Lannister himself could have done no more,” he had insisted one night to Blackheart, during his first year of exile.
“There is where you’re wrong,” Myles Toyne had replied. “Lord Tywin would not have bothered with a search. He would have burned that town and every living creature in it. Men and boys, babes at the breast, noble knights and holy septons, pigs and whores, rats and rebels, he would have burned them all. When the fires guttered out and only ash and cinders remained, he would have sent his men in to find the bones of Robert Baratheon. Later, when Stark and Tully turned up with their host, he would have offered pardons to the both of them, and they would have accepted and turned for home with their tails between their legs.”

(ADwD, Ch.61The Griffin Reborn)

But in the sack of Kings Landing, we know Lord Tywin didn't burn anything, because King's Landing still exists.

In the sack of King's Landing, Tywin took prisoners. Ser Alliser Thorne  and Ser Jaramey Rykker were two that chose the wall.  They were combatants, with command experience - very probably in command of men at the time. It seems to me that in the sack of King's Landing, Tywin's men had plenty of soldiering to do, and with the possible exceptions of Ser Gregor and Ser Amory, no time for rape and murder.

(I personally also have some difficulty working out how Ser Gregor got to the scene of the crime. It seems to me that Gregor has been copping the blame for a rape and a murder he was not able to have committed. Amory's explanation for Rhaenys' condition on death seems suspicious too. Like he had found her like that rather than inflicted the wounds himself, and just invented some story about it that doesn't tally.)

When they are in a besieged King's Landing, Cersei tells Sansa that Ser Illyn is there to kill them if Stannis sacks the city. She explains that the sellswords they are paying to protect them are likely to be the first to turn and rape them. While it is all rather creepy, I'm wondering where Cersei gets her notion of how sieges go from. If it is from Lord Tywin, that might be a hint that Elia and the babes were the work of Aerys loyalists, or at least, of some party with trusted access to the nursery, that got there before Tywin could. Although it seems kind of sick that Tywin would invent a story about Gregor killing her baby in front of her and raping her after, and wrap the children in Lannister cloaks and offer them as a token of friendship to Robert. I mean, even sicker to be in such haste to take responsibility for such sick crimes, that were not actually his crimes.   

Most of all, it is only in Jorah's account that we hear of 'more rapes than you can count' or mass murder. He is the only person who mentions the sack of King's Landing without directly alluding to Elia and the Babes, which is also odd. And Jorah says a odd things a lot.

TL:DR I doubt Jorah's version of the sack of King's Landing, and nobody else is claiming there was mass murder or mass rapes.

 

[Alexis-something-Rose]

Robert's Rebellion was a bad thing for what's coming, and that's the long night. 

I doubt Rhaegar would have been flip if a man of the NW had come to tell him that dead men rose at Castle Black and tried to kill the lord commander. (Of course, Mormont sent a man Tyrion really disliked, which that didn't help). 

This is where Robert's Rebellion hurts the most, I think. No one is prepared for what's coming, and that's not to mention the devastation of the Wot5Ks and the lasting consequences. 

[LucionLannister]

On the whole probably better. Yes, Ned and Robert probably would have had to die. But it probably would have been the straw that broke the camel's And the new lords of Winterfell and Storm's End would not be as capable of leading a war. Lord Benjen Stark would barely be in his teens; and the new Lord Stannis would have a difficult time winning even the Stormlords (Cafferen, Fell, Grandison) his cause. Something would have to be done.

Rhaegar probably would have returned to King's Landing and forced Aerys to abdicate; he implies to Jaime that its been a long time coming. And who would Aerys have to support him? Some of the Kingsguard (Gerold Hightower, etc.) may have wanted to prevent it out of honor, but others like Jaime and Arthur Dayne would have seen the wisdom in it.

And literally everyone who knew Rhaegar, or even of him, admits that he would have made a superb king. For a few lives the realm would be at peace, with a better king than either Aerys or Robert.