Small Questions v. 10106

[Nittanian]

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The hand was wrought of gold, very lifelike, with inlaid nails of mother-of-pearl, its fingers and thumb half closed so as to slip around a goblet's stem. (AFFC Jaime III)

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"I had a new hand made, of gold." (AFFC Jaime V)

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The weight of his golden hand had grown irksome. He fumbled at the straps that secured it to his wrist. (AFFC Jaime V)

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"What color is my cloak?"

"White," she said, "but your hand is solid gold." (ADWD Jaime I)

 

Edited July 22, 2019 by Nittanian

[Bael's Bastard]

@Ran

Did GRRM not know yet in AGOT that Robert had recent Targaryen ancestry (whether he had named her yet or not)?

I know Ned was focused on matches between Baratheons and Lannisters, but surely the much more recent Baratheon/Targaryen match would have been further evidence, assuming Steffon favored Ormund?

[SFDanny]

7 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

@Ran

Did GRRM not know yet in AGOT that Robert had recent Targaryen ancestry (whether he had named her yet or not)?

I know Ned was focused on matches between Baratheons and Lannisters, but surely the much more recent Baratheon/Targaryen match would have been further evidence, assuming Steffon favored Ormund?

Not Ran, but it would seem that the well known quote in A Game of Thrones would point to George having some idea.

Quote

Robert sat down again. "Damn you, Ned Stark. You and Jon Arryn, I loved you both. What have you done to me? You were the one should have been king, you or Jon."

"You had the better claim, Your Grace."

"I told you to drink, not to argue. You made me king, you could at least have the courtesy to listen when I talk, damn you. Look at me, Ned. Look at what kinging has done to me. Gods, too fat for my armor, how did it ever come to this?"

 

[Bael's Bastard]

2 hours ago, SFDanny said:

Not Ran, but it would seem that the well known quote in A Game of Thrones would point to George having some idea.

That came to mind. But IMO it isn't clear whether GRRM had already envisioned that to mean a Targ ancestor, or was referring to something more along the lines of Robert's warhammer.

From a writing perspective, it would be surprising to me to learn that Robert's own Targaryen ancestry wasn't thought of or brought up by Ned or any character in AGOT if GRRM already knew.

The hypocrisy of Robert's Targ hatred, the role his recent Targ ancestry played in Robert's accession, the added weight it lends to the black vs. fair hair findings, and implications they have for two of the central storylines of AGOT: who are truly children of Robert, and who gave birth to Jon? The dark hair won out in Robert's true children, and the dark hair won out in Lyanna's child.

There seems to me that there is too much potential for it to have never come up in Ned's POV if it was already known by GRRM.

[Lord Varys]

10 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

@Ran

Did GRRM not know yet in AGOT that Robert had recent Targaryen ancestry (whether he had named her yet or not)?

I know Ned was focused on matches between Baratheons and Lannisters, but surely the much more recent Baratheon/Targaryen match would have been further evidence, assuming Steffon favored Ormund?

No, it seems that Renly's references to second sons and elder daughters of Houses Targaryen and Baratheon marrying each other back in ACoK were only retconned into Renly doesn't really knowing or caring about his actual ancestry later in AFfC. And that means George had no proper family tree or picture when he was writing AGoT.

By the time of ASoS Rhaegar referred to 'cousin Robert' in a memory in ASoS - but that's not a precise term. The family tree could only have been fixed later (or not). It is possible Robert and Rhaegar were still rather distant cousins - say, fourth or fifth cousins due to a marriage about a hundred years before the Rebellion.

But it is quite clear that the Renly quote really causes a problem:

Quote

Renly shrugged. “Tell me, what right did my brother Robert ever have to the Iron Throne?” He did not wait for an answer. “Oh, there was talk of the blood ties between Baratheon and Targaryen, of weddings a hundred years past, of second sons and elder daughters. No one but the maesters care about any of it. Robert won the throne with his warhammer.”

Can anybody make sense of how Renly's quote could even make sense if it were, at one point, be considered correct? How do the present-day Baratheons get Targaryen blood through marriage if an elder Targaryen daughter marries a Baratheon second son? Wouldn't the first son continue the line? And if a second Targaryen son ever married an elder Baratheon daughter then we would have to assume that House Baratheon does not descend in unbroken male line from Orys Baratheon - but this is something that's very much indicated, reinforced even, by FaB (I'm thinking of Borros Baratheon's posthumous son).

In that sense we can, I think, take Renly's strange line there as evidence that George didn't really have a sketched family tree in front of him which included the Targaryen-Baratheon Renly referenced when he wrote those lines. And that's years after AGoT.

However, the Baratheons definitely were Targaryen relations from the start insofar as they are descended from Orys Baratheon, who was identified as the Conqueror's (alleged) half-brother as early as the appendix of AGoT.

As for speculations about the looks of Steffon Baratheon:

We have no idea whether Princess Rhaelle Targaryen - for who we don't have a description at this point - did favor her father Aegon V or her mother Betha Blackwood. If she had the same dark hair as her mother Betha and her brother Duncan it is hardly surprising that nobody - especially not Ned - thought about Steffon and his sons all having the black hair. We also don't know at this point whether Queen Shaera favored her mother or her father, considering that Aerys II, Rhaella, and all their children had prototypical Valyrian features it seems likely that Shaera also had the silver-gold hair, but that's not a given at that point. But if she had it, then Rhaelle could actually have had dark hair. It would be odd if Egg and Betha only produced one dark-haired child and four children with silver-gold or at least fair hair (I can't make out whether Prince Daeron is supposed to have blond or silver-gold hair in the TWoIaF illustration).

I'd find it interesting, by the way, if Rhaelle had had dark hair and purple eyes, and if Steffon had inherited her eyes - like Princess Rhaenys had her mother's hair and her father's eyes.

Insofar as Robert's claim is concerned it would be actually great if George flashes out some more when exactly and under what circumstances exactly the rebels/Robert decided that Robert wanted/should be king. Whose idea was that? Who argued for it? Was Robert properly proclaimed (or even crowned) king before Aerys II death (i.e. like the Conqueror during the Conquest or Daemon Blackfyre, Renly, and Stannis during their rebellions) or did they merely announce Robert would claim the throne after the Targaryens were deposed and destroyed?

That's all very vague at this point.

[SFDanny]

5 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

That came to mind. But IMO it isn't clear whether GRRM had already envisioned that to mean a Targ ancestor, or was referring to something more along the lines of Robert's warhammer.

From a writing perspective, it would be surprising to me to learn that Robert's own Targaryen ancestry wasn't thought of or brought up by Ned or any character in AGOT if GRRM already knew.

The hypocrisy of Robert's Targ hatred, the role his recent Targ ancestry played in Robert's accession, the added weight it lends to the black vs. fair hair findings, and implications they have for two of the central storylines of AGOT: who are truly children of Robert, and who gave birth to Jon? The dark hair won out in Robert's true children, and the dark hair won out in Lyanna's child.

There seems to me that there is too much potential for it to have never come up in Ned's POV if it was already known by GRRM.

While a reference to Robert's warhammer would be funny, it seems extremely unNed like particularly in the context. I realize the author has changed things as his story grew, but unless I see something in the way of evidence I see the quote about Robert having a better claim as far back as in AGoT as fairly strong evidence Martin knew Robert's backstory well enough when he wrote it to reflect a Targaryen ancestor for the Baratheons.

[Lord Varys]

13 minutes ago, SFDanny said:

While a reference to Robert's warhammer would be funny, it seems extremely unNed like particularly in the context. I realize the author has changed things as his story grew, but unless I see something in the way of evidence I see the quote about Robert having a better claim as far back as in AGoT as fairly strong evidence Martin knew Robert's backstory well enough when he wrote it to reflect a Targaryen ancestor for the Baratheons.

As I said above, Robert was always a descendant of an (alleged) bastard half-brother of Aegon the Conqueror. That in and of itself gave all Baratheons a claim long before George started to draw up the first family tree (assuming he did that only after he wrote the appendix for AGoT).

Renly's ludicrous statements from ACoK make clear that neither Renly nor George had a particularly good grasp of the Targaryen-Baratheon at that point - to put in mildly. And George wouldn't have known more details back in AGoT than he knew when writing ACoK.

Princess Rhaelle Targaryen enters the canon in AFfC, but we can make a case that George may have known that Robert and Rhaegar were closely enough related for Rhaegar to refer to Robert as his 'cousin' in ASoS. I daresay this can (but doesn't have to) imply that George already knew at this point that Robert had a Targaryen grandmother.

Renly's weirdo talk about Targaryen-Baratheon interrelations or Rhaegar going back 300 years to Orys likely wouldn't have been enough to allow him to use the term 'cousin'. It seems to be term that's restricted to first to, say, third cousins or so (although it might be more freely used to male line cousins sharing the same family - but that's not the case for the Targaryens and the Baratheons) since we don't hear anything about, say, Jaime or Cersei referring to Addam Marbrand as their cousin (which he should be to some degree in light of the fact that a Jeyne Marbrand was their grandmother.

[Ran]

I can't

16 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

@Ran

Did GRRM not know yet in AGOT that Robert had recent Targaryen ancestry (whether he had named her yet or not)?

I think GRRM knew that the connection was close by ACoK, but maybe the exact mechanics were not worked out until writing on ASoS. It's in early 1999 that he sent us his initial stab at the genealogy, which showed Ormund's marriage.
 

16 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

I know Ned was focused on matches between Baratheons and Lannisters, but surely the much more recent Baratheon/Targaryen match would have been further evidence, assuming Steffon favored Ormund?

Bear in mind that the hair color evidence in the genealogy is specific to Lannister-Baratheon crosses. Ned doesn't think to look at anything but that, and indeed, there's no evidence that the Baratheon black hair _always_ comes out across the centuries.

[namesarehard]

Why do they sometimes say "twenty-five" and sometimes "five-and-twenty"?

[Lord Varys]

For what its worth I made a thread about the Targaryen-Baratheon thing here. I don't think we discussed that particular thing in depth, especially not how things seem to have changed overtime and what we can draw from that about the meaning of certain plot-related concepts (and our interpretation of those).

[Megorova]

@Bael's Bastard

In ACOK Stannis wrote this (Davos I) - "All men know me for the trueborn son of Steffon Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End, by his lady wife Cassana of House Estermont. I declare upon the honor of my House that my beloved brother Robert, our late king, left no trueborn issue of his body, the boy Joffrey, the boy Tommen, and the girl Myrcella being abominations born of incest between Cersei Lannister and her brother Jaime the Kingslayer. By right of birth and blood, I do this day lay claim to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros."

Stannis' claim thru right of blood is based on him being Robert's legitimate heir (Robert's children are bastards, and Renly is a younger brother). Though prior 283, Robert wasn't yet King of 7K, thus at the time of Stannis' birth, Stannis had no claim to Iron Throne thru his brother. And yet, he did wrote in his letter about the right of birth, and about him being Steffon Baratheon's trueborn son. Thus Stannis did had a (small) claim over Iron Throne, even at the time of his birth, long before Robert became King, because thru their father, Steffon, they were bloodrelated to Targaryens. So, this letter is an evidence, that even in ACOK GRRM did planned that Lord Steffon was partially Targaryen.  

7 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It would be odd if Egg and Betha only produced one dark-haired child and four children with silver-gold or at least fair hair

It's not as odd, if Betha herself was partially Targaryen, and thus was carrier of Valyrian genes. If she was like Jon Snow, who had looks of his non-Targaryen parent.

I think that Melissa Blackwood was daughter of Mariah Stark, and then after Aegon IV legitimized his children, Melissa's daughter, Mya, who was half-Targaryen, could have married back into Blackwood family, and possibly her daughters were Melantha and Betha Blackwood. Melantha married back into Stark family of her great-grandmother (Mariah), and Betha married back into Targaryen family of her grandfather (Aegon IV). And Egg could have met his future wife at Winterfell, where Melantha was the Lady of House Stark, married with Lord Willam, and Betha was visiting her sister, when Dunk and Egg came there in span of "The She-Wolves of Winterfell" novel. If my guess is correct, then Egg's and Betha's children were 50+ % Targaryens, and less than 50% Blackwoods, so there's a higher probability, that majority of them were "blond".

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

6 hours ago, Megorova said:

Stannis' claim thru right of blood is based on him being Robert's legitimate heir (Robert's children are bastards, and Renly is a younger brother). Though prior 283, Robert wasn't yet King of 7K, thus at the time of Stannis' birth, Stannis had no claim to Iron Throne thru his brother. And yet, he did wrote in his letter about the right of birth, and about him being Steffon Baratheon's trueborn son. Thus Stannis did had a (small) claim over Iron Throne, even at the time of his birth, long before Robert became King, because thru their father, Steffon, they were bloodrelated to Targaryens. So, this letter is an evidence, that even in ACOK GRRM did planned that Lord Steffon was partially Targaryen.  

"By right of birth and blood" refers IMO to Stannis's blood relation to Robert, and to the fact that he is trueborn, as opposed to Joffrey, who is not related to Robert, and who is bastard born.  That the Baratheons had not yet claimed the throne at the time of Stannis's birth does not feature into this.

 

The quote about Robert's better claim from AGOT is more telling, I think, even if GRRM had not yet decided how recent the Targaryen ancestor was. That it referred to Orys Baratheon, however, seems unlikely to me, as that is rumored Targaryen ancestry from 300 years ago.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Rhaenys_Targaryen

[Loose Bolt]

There are things like salt and tools that are vital for survival. So my question is from where average person in the North buys those?

 

[namesarehard]

21 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

There are things like salt and tools that are vital for survival. So my question is from where average person in the North buys those?

 

Some in the far north, especially the wildings, are living near a stone age level of technology, using stone tools. Some smith bronze but they have to trade or steal for steel and iron. As for salt, they have to get it from food or sea water if they're close enough.

[Corvo the Crow]

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Edited July 30, 2023 by Corvo the Crow

[Adam Targaryen]

Which captain of the Golden Company had filed teeth?

 

One of the skulls has filed teeth. Who is this and why did he have filed teeth?

[Ser Leftwich]

53 minutes ago, Adam Targaryen said:

Which captain of the Golden Company had filed teeth?

 

One of the skulls has filed teeth. Who is this and why did he have filed teeth?

Maelys the Monstrous seems like someone who would have filed teeth, but that is just a guess.

[HexMachina]

5 minutes ago, Ser Leftwich said:

Maelys the Monstrous seems like someone who would have filed teeth, but that is just a guess.

Surely the filed teeth wouldnt be the part of his skull to remark upon...

Actually did Maelys’ body even get recovered by the GC? I’m sure it is mentioned but i don’t remember

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

20 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Surely the filed teeth wouldnt be the part of his skull to remark upon...

Actually did Maelys’ body even get recovered by the GC? I’m sure it is mentioned but i don’t remember

His skull ay least was, along with his twin's, as Connington seems them outside of the commander's tent:

The captain-general's tent was made of cloth-of-gold and surrounded by a ring of pikes topped with gilded skulls. One skull was larger than the rest, grotesquely malformed. Below it was a second, no larger than a child's fist. Maelys the Monstrous and his nameless brother. The other skulls had a sameness to them, though several had been cracked and splintered by the blows that had slain them, and one had filed, pointed teeth. "Which one is Myles?" Griff found himself asking.

As Jon can easily identify Maelys's skull and mentions the one with the filed teeth separately, it doesn't seem that he was the one to have done so.

 

Edit: We know only Bittersteel, Maelys, Myles Toyne, and Daemon Blackfyre as deceased commanders. The first three are not the one who had their teeth filed, so either it was Daemon, or one of the commanders who have not yet been named.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Rhaenys_Targaryen

[Corvo the Crow]

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Edited July 30, 2023 by Corvo the Crow