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Bran: a rightful heir?


Martyn Bull

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Dany took the iron throne by force from Cersei, so for a short time, she's Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Dany's heir would be John, so when he killed her, he was the rightful heir of the iron throne. Wouldn't Bran be Johns heir? So when John "abdicates" the throne should actually have passed to Bran.

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Several things

1. She was never accepted as Queen by the realm. Heck Rhaenyra had a more significant reign and she isn't counted. She sacked Kings Landing, that doesn't automatically make her Queen. This is why coronations are done, to make a show of your legitimacy and have Lords publically swear allegiance

2. If we assume Dany was Queen and her heirs are legitimate its unclear how it would go. It most definitely wouldn't be Bran as he has no Targaryen blood. Jon outranks Dany and renounced his claim taking him out of succession, making her heir technically who she legitimised in Episode 4. Gendry, the great grandson of Rhaelle Targaryen and we are back in the Baratheon line. 

3. There is no claim through marriage only by blood. Jon's claim comes from his father's blood. His mother's blood gives him a weak claim to the North as Eddard has 3 living children still. Were the situation normal the Starks could have married Jon to one of his cousins to create a Stark Lord. Bran can't just jump into the Targaryen line anymore than Dany can jump into the Stark line

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6 hours ago, Martyn Bull said:

Dany took the iron throne by force from Cersei, so for a short time, she's Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Dany's heir would be John, so when he killed her, he was the rightful heir of the iron throne. Wouldn't Bran be Johns heir? So when John "abdicates" the throne should actually have passed to Bran.

Assuming everything you've said is correct, Sansa is older than Bran. So shouldn't she be Jon's heir?

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6 minutes ago, Apoplexy said:

Assuming everything you've said is correct, Sansa is older than Bran. So shouldn't she be Jon's heir?

I think boys are preferred to girls when it comes to inheritance of titles in Westeros. Bran is Robb's heir, not Sansa as Lord of Winterfell. The rules might be different for the Iron throne, in which case, yes, Sansa would be the heiress. 

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4 minutes ago, Apoplexy said:

Assuming everything you've said is correct, Sansa is older than Bran. So shouldn't she be Jon's heir?

Only in Dornish inheritance law I guess that's true.

In Andal and Royal Targaryen inheritance law ; Younger son > older daughter.

11 minutes ago, AryaNymeriaVisenya said:

Several things

1. She was never accepted as Queen by the realm. Heck Rhaenyra had a more significant reign and she isn't counted. She sacked Kings Landing, that doesn't automatically make her Queen. This is why coronations are done, to make a show of your legitimacy and have Lords publically swear allegiance

 

Yeah this. Daenerys's coronation never happened and no one swear fealty to her on the throne room, she wasn't the queen. This is exactly like the vision she has seen in the House of the Undying, she gets close to the Iron Throne but never takes it, she is always destined to be a conquerer not a ruler.

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5 minutes ago, RYShh said:

Only in Dornish inheritance law I guess that's true.

In Andal and Royal Targaryen inheritance law ; Younger son > older daughter.

Yeah this. Daenerys's coronation never happened and no one swear fealty to her on the throne room, she wasn't the queen. This is exactly like the vision she has seen in the House of the Undying, she gets close to the Iron Throne but never takes it, she is always destined to be a conquerer not a ruler.

Fair enough. There should have been an great IF in the original post. What happens if Jon claims the title after murdering Dany. He certainly has a strong claim. Let's say the council accepts this, who's then his heir if he chooses to abdicate? The thought came to me when I tried to imagine how GRRM might land on Bran (if it's true that this is from him). Although it's true that whoever can take and keep the throne by might is the King/Queen. All the Kings/Queens we have seen have constructed some kind of argument on why they were the rightful heir. 

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Ugh, yes in theory that would have potentially worked but if Jon had specifically nominated his matrilineal line to be his successors for his southron claims based on him incorporating the Iron Throne under his crown in the North... but it's a messy way of going about things.

In the North, Jon was chosen as king essentially through conquest. His exile would make Bran the rightful King in the North, but as he has been made "King in the South" the title passes to Sansa. In comparison, Jon's claim to the Iron Throne was based on his paternal line, not his maternal line. Jon disqualified for the throne and Daenerys dead, it would fall to whoever has the closest relation to them on the Targaryen side. Gendry could make a claim as could, at this point, a great deal of lords who married the descendants of Targaryens at some point.

So, no. While it is feasible for Jon to elect his mother's family as his heirs there would be a lot of contention as to who has the best claim out of the surviving female lines of both Targaryen and Baratheon. Hence why they just decided to scrub the whole royal line and elect a king. 

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9 minutes ago, Faera said:

Jon's claim to the Iron Throne was based on his paternal line, not his maternal line. Jon disqualified for the throne and Daenerys dead, it would fall to whoever has the closest relation to them on the Targaryen side. G

But IF he hadn't turned down the throne. Cersei made a presedence that the throne could be inherited the matrilineal way. 

I agree that the southern Lords wouldn't necessarily allow the same person to be King in the North and of the Iron throne, so the theory would require that Sansa becomes Queen of the North (or if Bran gets that title, Sansa would be his heir). 

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5 minutes ago, Martyn Bull said:

But IF he hadn't turned down the throne. Cersei made a presedence that the throne could be inherited the matrilineal way. 

 

Cersei's tenuous claim to the throne probably came more from being Robert's wife not as Tommen's mother. Otherwise, since people would argue Daenerys's rule was illegitimate and she never was officially recognised as queen, then if Cersei's line counts Tyrion could press a claim, then after him the Lannisport Lannisters. 

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5 minutes ago, Faera said:

Cersei's tenuous claim to the throne probably came more from being Robert's wife not as Tommen's mother. Otherwise, since people would argue Daenerys's rule was illegitimate and she never was officially recognised as queen, then if Cersei's line counts Tyrion could press a claim, then after him the Lannisport Lannisters. 

I would rather say it was because the throne had passed through two underaged Kings with her as the defacto monarch, that it was possible for her to inherit Tommen. But it's kind of made a presedence for that the throne can move outside of the King's House. And, yes - Tyrion for sure has a strong claim inherited from Cersei in this theory. 

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Jon's claim would be be as the legitimate heir through Aerys II and Rhaegar. Gendry is the last known person with Targ blood after Jon (and he has Baratheon blood).By rights it should be Jon if not Gendry.

 

I can see Bran as king making sense if we had much more plot to build up to it. Would need a few more events to transpire.

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The problem with establishing who Jon's heir would be is that the show was never clear on succession laws/rules. 

If Dany's claim was by conquest, then it's unclear who her heir would be, unless she names one. Jon seems like the likely candidate, but it's a free for all since she was murdered. As for Jon's heir, well, he was never king, so we are still stuck with the question of who Dany's heir would be.

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Jon and Dany's "legitimate" heir to the iron throne is whoever is the next highest-ranking descendant of Aegon the Conqueror. Bran & Sansa aren't descended from any Targaryens at all, so he's not eligible (although it's quite likely at this stage that there aren't ANY other descendants of the Conqueror except Dany, Jon, and various bastards like Gendry or exiles like Brown Ben Plumm. What happens next isn't legally clear - we know that at the time of the Conquest there were Westerosi lords descended from Aegon's recent ancestors, but it's not clear if that would legally count or not.)

Ironically, you have hit on an interesting issue that arose periodically during European feudalism. When one person inherited multiple different titles, those titles *should* have continued to follow the same rules after their deaths, potentially splitting back up along different lines. But sometimes, the heir to one title would also demand the other titles even if they had no independent claims to them. IIRC the Italian Wars of the 16th Century played out this way, with a French king claiming the previous king's holdings in Italy had passed to him even though the new king had no personal inheritance claim to those holdings.

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1 hour ago, Martyn Bull said:

But IF he hadn't turned down the throne. Cersei made a precedent that the throne could be inherited the matrilineal way. 

Absolutely not: Cersei was not related to the monarch through her mother, which is what "matrilineal" means.

Joanna Lannister has no royal blood. Cersei has no claim.

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11 minutes ago, A Manwoody Grown said:

Ironically, you have hit on an interesting issue that arose periodically during European feudalism. When one person inherited multiple different titles, those titles *should* have continued to follow the same rules after their deaths, potentially splitting back up along different lines. But sometimes, the heir to one title would also demand the other titles even if they had no independent claims to them. IIRC the Italian Wars of the 16th Century played out this way, with a French king claiming the previous king's holdings in Italy had passed to him even though the new king had no personal inheritance claim to those holdings.

It wasn't a coincidence I hit this. I think it's quite apparently that GRRM uses this as inspiration for a lot of the conflict in the novels. I didnt know much about the wars in Italy you mention, but the same were true for mist of the monarchies of Europe in the period. In 1066 England was invaded twice by pretenders that meant they had inherited "throne". One of them, William won. 

Another point is that the Victor wouldn't simply deny anything the King he had deposed had done. The Victor needed the people to believe in the power of "the Crown", so they would rather tell the story where they we were the rightful rulers, and to keep the peace, accept most of the laws the deposed monarch had made. 

My impression is that GRRM is quite inspired by what happened in Europe from let's say around 1000 to 1700, and a lot of that history are bloody wars, civil wars and conquering based on unclear inheritance rules for the throne. However, each war usually made inheritance a little clearer. 

 

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56 minutes ago, CrypticWeirwood said:

Absolutely not: Cersei was not related to the monarch through her mother, which is what "matrilineal" means.

Joanna Lannister has no royal blood. Cersei has no claim.

Perhaps matrilineal was the wrong word, but Cersei "inherited" the throne from her son. Thus having the throne passing from Baratheon to Lannisters through Joffrey and Tommen. You might think that she has no claim, but what does the realm think? I can't recall anyone really saying that this is questionable. Not even Dany, her major issue with Cersei is that she inherited the throne from the "usurper". 

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17 hours ago, Martyn Bull said:

I would rather say it was because the throne had passed through two underaged Kings with her as the defacto monarch, that it was possible for her to inherit Tommen. But it's kind of made a presedence for that the throne can move outside of the King's House. And, yes - Tyrion for sure has a strong claim inherited from Cersei in this theory. 

It would still be House Baratheon. She might identify as a Lannister, but for all intents and purposes as Robert's wife she's a Baratheon. Robert's line is the legal one, not the Targaryens. That's where she derives her power from, although she was only allowed to become queen because there was no one who was up to the task of challenging her for it. 

And that leads us back to Gendry. 

 

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