Statistically, It Seems That The Targaryens Were Due For A Fall

[Orphalesion]

On 3/27/2019 at 8:09 PM, cpg2016 said:

I'm not sure.  I mean, we have Manetho, and he makes it clear that ancient Egyptians had a real sense of discontinuity in terms of their civilization.  Egypt was eternal, but the ruling dynasties were not.  The intermediate periods weren't "chaotic" necessarily, but they often featured rule by an outside group (Hyksos, Nubians) or a breakdown in central authority, as you say.  And that is sort of what matters - obviously people have been living in some kind of community near the Nile for thousands of years.  It's kind of silly to claim that that is one continuous political entity.  And for all its other faults, this article does make some effort to organize around ruling dynasties.  That being said, I agree with you in principle

But doesn't China, for example, that it is a continuous civilization all the way back to the time of the Yellow Emperor, yet it has seen many similar periods of foreign rule and the breakdown/weakening of central government?

[cpg2016]

9 hours ago, Orphalesion said:

But doesn't China, for example, that it is a continuous civilization all the way back to the time of the Yellow Emperor, yet it has seen many similar periods of foreign rule and the breakdown/weakening of central government?

Well that isn't a great example because the Yellow Emperor is fictional.  But in general, yes, it's the same concept in that the idea of the Middle Kingdom was not the same as the individual dynasties which ruled

[Lord Varys]

Didn't read the article, but Egyptian dynasties weren't like the dynasties we think about on the basis of the middle ages. Those 'dynasties' are not families and their descendants. Bloodlines do continue despite the fact that 'a new dynasty' begins just as there are (apparently, this is difficult to confirm) succession breaks within in a 'dynasty' where some guy completely unrelated to the previous king becomes pharaoh.

In that sense, it makes literally no sense to compare any Egyptian dynasties to any of the noble houses of Westeros - where continuity of blood (even if you are just a bastard or very distant cousin) is of paramount importance and the necessary prerequisite to be able to bear a noble or royal name.

[cpg2016]

On 4/4/2019 at 6:59 PM, Lord Varys said:

Didn't read the article, but Egyptian dynasties weren't like the dynasties we think about on the basis of the middle ages. Those 'dynasties' are not families and their descendants. Bloodlines do continue despite the fact that 'a new dynasty' begins just as there are (apparently, this is difficult to confirm) succession breaks within in a 'dynasty' where some guy completely unrelated to the previous king becomes pharaoh.

In that sense, it makes literally no sense to compare any Egyptian dynasties to any of the noble houses of Westeros - where continuity of blood (even if you are just a bastard or very distant cousin) is of paramount importance and the necessary prerequisite to be able to bear a noble or royal name.

That is true regarding the Egyptians.  I mean, they often are single families, but not always.  A lot of the time one dynasty leading to another is due to a "thematic" break - after all, our modern system of dynastic naming is based on the records of a scribe who has been dead nearly two and a half millenia, who himself was writing about kings who might have predated him by yet more time than that.

That being said, there is a middle ground.  Westeros takes the very extreme view, where any relation, at all, is considered a continuation of the dynasty.  In real world terms there would be distinctions.  The Capetians, Valois, and Bourbon were all closely related families, for example, and in Westeros would have all been Lannisters or Durrandons, I'm sure.  I just don't think it's entirely fair to compare Westeros to anything in our world.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, cpg2016 said:

That is true regarding the Egyptians.  I mean, they often are single families, but not always.  A lot of the time one dynasty leading to another is due to a "thematic" break - after all, our modern system of dynastic naming is based on the records of a scribe who has been dead nearly two and a half millenia, who himself was writing about kings who might have predated him by yet more time than that.

Yeah, those 'dynasties' aren't the same as what we would consider a medieval noble or royal dynasty.

1 hour ago, cpg2016 said:

That being said, there is a middle ground.  Westeros takes the very extreme view, where any relation, at all, is considered a continuation of the dynasty.  In real world terms there would be distinctions.  The Capetians, Valois, and Bourbon were all closely related families, for example, and in Westeros would have all been Lannisters or Durrandons, I'm sure.  I just don't think it's entirely fair to compare Westeros to anything in our world.

Technically most medieval royal dynasties - or rather: their dynastic names - are construction from later centuries. The Plantagenets, for instance, never named themselves Plantagenets until around the War of the Roses (when they were about to be replaced). Lancaster and York aren't family names but rather names of places and lordships. Also, older dynastic names like the Carolingians and Merovingians are simply named after the guy people see as the founder of that dynasty (in a sense George reflects that with the most recent dynastic name he created, the Durrandons from TWoIaF/FaB). 

In fact, if Westeros would be a more believable medieval setting if people weren't obsessed with family names - which is a very late phenomenon - but rather simply refer to each other with their given names and the names of the castles or cities they rule. That's how it was done.

As for the French kings starting with the Capetians - those were all the same family, just not in direct patrilinear descent. But if Westeros was properly medieval men would not prefer some name like Stark or Lannister to their own name. If the husband of a daughter or some descendant through the female line or some bastard branch would take over a lordship or kingdom he would use his own family name rather than taking on a name that's not his.

This apparent behavior in Westeros is very odd because it goes against the core of the being of a (noble)man. You don't just give up your name and the name of your father in a patriarchal, feudalistic society. And this is also part of the reason why I'm not so sure that Jacaerys Velaryon would have ruled as a Targaryen king or that it is a given Harrold Hardyng is going to call himself Arryn should he ever become Lord of the Vale.