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What do people think about Rhaegar?


Alyn Oakenfist

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3 hours ago, Lyanna<3Rhaegar said:

Why would their marriage not be meaningful anymore because Elia couldn't have any children? Meaningless to who? Certainly not in the eyes of the faith.  Also, why would the marriage being meaningless have any bearing on a potential polygamous marriage? 

A proper marriage involves that the spouses live together, try to conceive and raise children together - neither of which Rhaegar did after he abducted Lyanna. Rhaegar effectively separated from Elia, he didn't live together with her and Lyanna, did he? Just as Maegor eventually reached a point where he was no longer properly married to Tyanna since he was no longer sleeping with her. And like Ceryse Hightower, Elia could no longer fulfill the basic function of a wife - producing (more) children after Aegon's birth which seems to be the reason why Rhaegar replaced her.

This is not a polygamous union where the spouses knew what was happening (as where the black brides, for instance, of Aegon's sister-wives) it is a case - like Maegor-Ceryse - where the woman, Elia, had every reason to believe she would remain the sole wife of her husband, Rhaegar, until one of them died, whether theirs be a fertile marriage or not. Instead, Elia - like Ceryse - was betrayed by her husband.

3 hours ago, Lyanna<3Rhaegar said:

Maegor did get to set aside his wife legally eventually though didn't he? Or was that not til after she died, I can't remember. Again though, I agree it probably was not a 3 way marriage like Aegon but I don't know that we can say for certain either way. 

No, he couldn't do that because Ceryse was a Hightower and the niece of the High Septon who officiated at their wedding. There was no way to set her aside. Instead, he took another wife. But he still effectively ended their marriage, abandoning her when he went into exile with his new wife. They eventually resumed their marriage after Maegor became king, went to Oldtown to break the Faith where he and Ceryse then had a second wedding and a second bedding, after which she was formally installed as one of his queens.

3 hours ago, Lyanna<3Rhaegar said:

In order to legally marry Lyanna, wouldn't it be necessary for him to either 1. Legally have a polygamous marriage or 2. Legally divorce Elia? In either case it wouldn't be considered adultery. For him to have cheated on Elia he would have had to either illegally marry Lyanna in some fashion or not marry her at all. 

The Faith of the Andals does not condone polygamy. Rhaegar married Elia in the Great Sept with another High Septon officiating there. If he took another wife in some way (by means of using a corrupt septon or by pretending to be somebody else, by forcing a septon to conduct the ceremony by threats of violence or other intimidation, or by taking stranger ways like some kind of First Men, Ironborn, or Valyrian ceremony) then this still counts as a betrayal of his true wife, Elia Martell.

In the Seven Kingdoms the only people whose polygamy was accepted were First Men and Targaryen kings, not princes. Maegor tried and was forced into exile. After he came back and stole the throne he could do it, but as a prince he could not despite the fact that he rode Balerion the Black Dread.

We can thus be very confident that nobody in Westeros actually condoned or accepted Rhaegar's notion of having two wives at the same time. And my guess is that he and Lyanna ran away and hid because they ran for their very lives - knowing that Aerys II, many other important people as well as the smallfolk woul see them dead rather than accept this madness. This would also be the explanation as to why Lyanna Stark didn't accompany Rhaegar to court when Rhaegar went back there - because he may have understood that this polygamy thing wouldn't fly, not even after he had convinced his father to accept it (which I expect that he did).

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4 hours ago, Crona said:

You have no proof Elia had consented to polygamy and basing this idea that Rhaegar is not cheater because of polygamy is a theory only. 

Exactly. We know the marriage vows of the Faith and they do not include the possibility of taking another wife. When Elia and Rhaegar married it was clear that their marriage would be as monogamous as those of all Targaryens since Jaehaerys I and Alysanne.

The Seven Kingdoms are about as tolerant towards bigamy and polygamy as the present day United States are (who also have Mormon freaks with harems but who are not acknowledged as being properly married). In monogamous states only the first marriage to you make is considered valid. Everything thereafter is invalid, and such would be the view of most people (Rhaegar sycophants aside) in the Seven Kingdoms, Elia Martell and her family included.

And one expects that especially the polygamy nonsense would be seen as a real betrayal. The Dornish tolerate paramours and the like, but not polygamy.

In fact, now that I think of it we can most likely see the fact that Doran Martell and Dorne especially had to be forced to support the Targaryens after the Lyanna affair as implicit confirmation that they knew that Rhaegar had made Lyanna his second wife - after all, if she was just Rhaegar's mistress or paramour Doran and Oberyn would hardly have ground for objection. Paramours are nothing that's frowned on in Dorne, and Rhaegar would even have pretext to have sex with other women in the fact that another pregnancy would kill Elia.

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5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

A proper marriage involves that the spouses live together, try to conceive and raise children together - neither of which Rhaegar did after he abducted Lyanna. Rhaegar effectively separated from Elia, he didn't live together with her and Lyanna, did he?

No, I suppose them not living together does make the marriage unorthodox but I took your first post to mean because she couldn't have anymore children the marriage was no longer meaningful. 

 

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

And like Ceryse Hightower, Elia could no longer fulfill the basic function of a wife - producing (more) children after Aegon's birth which seems to be the reason why Rhaegar replaced her

Where are you getting these stipulations from though? I don't recall the text ever saying a woman not being able to bear anymore children means the marriage isn't meaningful. And what do you mean but not meaningful? Elia had already produced 2 children, one of which is Rhaegar's heir. He didn't replace her because tradition or law or custom or anything else, that I'm aware of, dictates having more children. He needed another child to fulfill the prophecy. 

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

This is not a polygamous union where the spouses knew what was happening (as where the black brides, for instance, of Aegon's sister-wives) it is a case - like Maegor-Ceryse - where the woman, Elia, had every reason to believe she would remain the sole wife of her husband, Rhaegar, until one of them died, whether theirs be a fertile marriage or not. Instead, Elia - like Ceryse - was betrayed by her husband.

You simply don't know this to be true. We don't know it was a polygamous marriage at all, let alone what type of polygamous marriage it may be. 

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

, he couldn't do that because Ceryse was a Hightower and the niece of the High Septon who officiated at their wedding. There was no way to set her aside. Instead, he took another wife. But he still effectively ended their marriage, abandoning her when he went into exile with his new wife. They eventually resumed their marriage after Maegor became king, went to Oldtown to break the Faith where he and Ceryse then had a second wedding and a second bedding, after which she was formally installed as one of his queens

Gotcha. A small thing but if he wasn't allowed to legally end his first marriage & wasn't allowed to legally maintain a polygamous one then he didn't marry the second one in anyway that counts. She couldn't have been his new wife, only his mistress. 

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The Faith of the Andals does not condone polygamy. Rhaegar married Elia in the Great Sept with another High Septon officiating there. If he took another wife in some way (by means of using a corrupt septon or by pretending to be somebody else, by forcing a septon to conduct the ceremony by threats of violence or other intimidation, or by taking stranger ways like some kind of First Men, Ironborn, or Valyrian ceremony) then this still counts as a betrayal of his true wife, Elia Martell.

Right, so unless there is some way of setting aside Elia in the eyes of the faith, without forcing someone against their will, he couldn't have married Lyanna in the eyes of the faith - which are the eyes that count in Westeros. 

He couldn't have taken another wife barring that. There are only two options really - there is some way to set aside his first wife & marry another that we are unaware of (which just feels like cheating because if it's possible there should be some precedence for it) or he didn't marry Lyanna - much more likely. 

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

We can thus be very confident that nobody in Westeros actually condoned or accepted Rhaegar's notion of having two wives at the same time. And my guess is that he and Lyanna ran away and hid because they ran for their very lives - knowing that Aerys II, many other important people as well as the smallfolk woul see them dead rather than accept this madness. This would also be the explanation as to why Lyanna Stark didn't accompany Rhaegar to court when Rhaegar went back there - because he may have understood that this polygamy thing wouldn't fly, not even after he had convinced his father to accept it (which I expect that he did)

Possibly, but what I'm suggesting is that Rhaegar didn't attempt polygamy at all, but rather cheated on his wife & fathered a bastard with his mistress. 

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5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

fact, now that I think of it we can most likely see the fact that Doran Martell and Dorne especially had to be forced to support the Targaryens after the Lyanna affair as implicit confirmation that they knew that Rhaegar had made Lyanna his second wife - after all, if she was just Rhaegar's mistress or paramour Doran and Oberyn would hardly have ground for objection. Paramours are nothing that's frowned on in Dorne, and Rhaegar would even have pretext to have sex with other women in the fact that another pregnancy would kill Elia.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, & if so I apologize. It seems to me you are explaining why Rhaegar could not have married Lyanna in anyway that counted but then saying he married Lyanna & was attempting a polygamous marriage. How do you presume he did this, if like you state (& I agree) no one in the faith would marry them without being threatened & forced into doing it? Even then the faith wouldn't recognize the marriage. 

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35 minutes ago, Lyanna<3Rhaegar said:

Where are you getting these stipulations from though? I don't recall the text ever saying a woman not being able to bear anymore children means the marriage isn't meaningful. And what do you mean but not meaningful? Elia had already produced 2 children, one of which is Rhaegar's heir. He didn't replace her because tradition or law or custom or anything else, that I'm aware of, dictates having more children. He needed another child to fulfill the prophecy. 

As far as i can tell from nowhere, I don't really recall  Aenys and  Maegor's reigns all that well, so i don't really know if back in the day the Faith was allmighty, only the High Septon had the power  to both annul and  set asides  marriages, i do know that if that ever was like that it stopped with Jaeharys until... well maybe Tommen thanks to out good and  clever Cersei??

After Jaeharys while the annulment thing was still the High Septon prerrogative, the setting aside was entirely the King's. We've seen this with Daemon demanding his brother to set aside his marriage with Rhea Royce, with Aerys 1 council asking him to set aside his wife or with Robert and  Cersei possibly being set aside. In none of those instances the Faith has a say.

But the Faith still has the  prerrogative  again to annul marriages and  bethrothals. 

We're told that once the marriage is consumated, there is pretty much no way of getting an annulment, so that's a dead end for Rhaegar, the only other option is if either he gets Aerys blessing, ie a royal  decree  that no one has ever mentioned not even his KG who were day and  night  with him, or Rhaegar simply had to become King to get his way done, one way or another.

 

Nor we're ever told that a wife that can no longer have children is useless or can be displaced easily. That's a very weird headcanon with no basis on the books at all. A wife duty is produce heirs, that's not the same as produce the amount of heirs hubby desires. It's ofc implicit  that the more the better but it certainly was not Elia's duty to keep whelping the amount of dragonheads Rhaegar wanted, she had already given him  heirs,  nor the marriage could be annulled on that grounds as far as we can tell.

That's why i find incredibly unlikely a polygamous marriage.

 

55 minutes ago, Lyanna<3Rhaegar said:

Gotcha. A small thing but if he wasn't allowed to legally end his first marriage & wasn't allowed to legally maintain a polygamous one then he didn't marry the second one in anyway that counts. She couldn't have been his new wife, only his mistress. 

Definetely.

 

59 minutes ago, Lyanna<3Rhaegar said:

Possibly, but what I'm suggesting is that Rhaegar didn't attempt polygamy at all, but rather cheated on his wife & fathered a bastard with his mistress

Occam's razor agrees with you. The whole annulment and  polygamy thing, seems too much complicated and  at the end of the day almost impossible  to pull off. The simplest way is: cheating- have a kid- if for some reason you want the kid to be a prince  make him legit after you're king - dealing with the whole mess  when you have the power  to do something about it, ie not as prince.

 

 

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9 hours ago, frenin said:

As far as i can tell from nowhere, I don't really recall  Aenys and  Maegor's reigns all that well, so i don't really know if back in the day the Faith was allmighty, only the High Septon had the power  to both annul and  set asides  marriages, i do know that if that ever was like that it stopped with Jaeharys until... well maybe Tommen thanks to out good and  clever Cersei??

After Jaeharys while the annulment thing was still the High Septon prerrogative, the setting aside was entirely the King's. We've seen this with Daemon demanding his brother to set aside his marriage with Rhea Royce, with Aerys 1 council asking him to set aside his wife or with Robert and  Cersei possibly being set aside. In none of those instances the Faith has a say.

But the Faith still has the  prerrogative  again to annul marriages and  bethrothals. 

We're told that once the marriage is consumated, there is pretty much no way of getting an annulment, so that's a dead end for Rhaegar, the only other option is if either he gets Aerys blessing, ie a royal  decree  that no one has ever mentioned not even his KG who were day and  night  with him, or Rhaegar simply had to become King to get his way done, one way or another.

 

Nor we're ever told that a wife that can no longer have children is useless or can be displaced easily. That's a very weird headcanon with no basis on the books at all. A wife duty is produce heirs, that's not the same as produce the amount of heirs hubby desires. It's ofc implicit  that the more the better but it certainly was not Elia's duty to keep whelping the amount of dragonheads Rhaegar wanted, she had already given him  heirs,  nor the marriage could be annulled on that grounds as far as we can tell.

That's why i find incredibly unlikely a polygamous marriage.

 

Definetely.

 

Occam's razor agrees with you. The whole annulment and  polygamy thing, seems too much complicated and  at the end of the day almost impossible  to pull off. The simplest way is: cheating- have a kid- if for some reason you want the kid to be a prince  make him legit after you're king - dealing with the whole mess  when you have the power  to do something about it, ie not as prince.

 

 

Yeah exactly. Maybe Rhaegar had plans to make Jon legitimate after he became King in his own right. I doubt it though because I don't think this was about being the heir at all. I think it was about the prophecy & we really have no reason to think Jon had to be legitimate to fulfill that. 

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  • 6 months later...
On 1/22/2020 at 12:31 AM, frenin said:

I remember show Barri  B saying that they got too  drunk one night, i laughed my ass off  with that, but yes. No blood running through his veins so far, not really fond of him. Show Rhaegar is funny tho. But then again, show Robert>>>>>Book  Robert.

Are there really many differences between show Robert and book Robert? Maybe it’s just Mark Addys performance.

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Hmm..... He started the chain of events which started a civil war, which ended with him and his family crushed.... Because he can't keep it in his pants....So sure of himself that he's gonna win at the Trident but instead got hammered a dose of reality...

So, he's an imbecile like Obito.... But if it turns out that he did all that having known for sure of a higher purpose then I'll grudgingly accept that he's like Itachi......

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1 hour ago, frenin said:

Yeah, there many differences between them.

How so? Mark Addy although not having the physical structure of Bobby B, was too good and perfect on his role..... Every scene he was at was gold.....

That's how I imagined fat king Robert would be.... Then again I watched Season 1 before reading the books.... 

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7 minutes ago, Orm said:

How so? Mark Addy although not having the physical structure of Bobby B, was too good and perfect on his role..... Every scene he was at was gold.....

That's how I imagined fat king Robert would be.... Then again I watched Season 1 before reading the books.... 

I'm not talking about physical wise. But about character.

Show Robert is better than Robert in anyway, he's more conscious yet Realpolitik constrains him. Book Robert is simply a man too tired for this world that doesn't really care about fucking things up.

That and the fact that show Robert wasn't a rapist.

 

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1 minute ago, frenin said:

That and the fact that show Robert wasn't a rapist

The show watered down all the characters compared to their book counter parts..... Heck I can sympathize with show Cersei which I cannot with the book one no matter how much I try....

 

3 minutes ago, frenin said:

Show Robert is better than Robert in anyway, he's more conscious yet Realpolitik constrains him. Book Robert is simply a man too tired for this world that doesn't really care about fucking things up.

I remember in AGOT  Rob shares with Ned that he stays the throne out of fear of Joffrey and Cersei.... We didn't get that in season 1...

Are you basing show Roberts politicking based on the conversation he and Cersei had?

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3 minutes ago, Orm said:

The show watered down all the characters compared to their book counter parts..... Heck I can sympathize with show Cersei which I cannot with the book one no matter how much I try....

To each..

 

4 minutes ago, Orm said:

Are you basing show Roberts politicking based on the conversation he and Cersei had?

No, when Ned asks Robert to go after Jaime. 

Robert denies his request on the ground of him being heavily indebted to the Lannisters. In the books there is no motive like that, he just doesn't want to.

I don't believe that Robert's conversation with Cersei is about politicking, but about military and people. And in the books we're told that he at least knew about that.

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12 minutes ago, frenin said:

To each..

 

No, when Ned asks Robert to go after Jaime. 

Robert denies his request on the ground of him being heavily indebted to the Lannisters. In the books there is no motive like that, he just doesn't want to.

I don't believe that Robert's conversation with Cersei is about politicking, but about military and people. And in the books we're told that he at least knew about that.

I don't know..... Book or show Robert seems like a semi-decent quintessential midieval king..... He managed his rule in peace.... people remember it fondly.... So I don't get why you think he's incompetent in midieval politics?

I think we put too much on Robert for not dealing or identifying internal problems such as Cersei, Varys and Little-finger..... Which you would need to be a bit omniscient to deal with....

And if we go by military prowess... Who has a better resumé than him as a general/warrior?

 

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On 1/22/2020 at 8:24 PM, frenin said:

The last dragon  is as badass as you can get and the ¿Baratheon? doesn't seem to have the same ring.

The 'Demon of the Trident' is as badass as it can get.....

 

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5 hours ago, frenin said:

Yeah, there many differences between them.

Like what? He still hits Cersei, he still wants to kill Targaryens, he still calls Aegon and Rhaenys dragonspawn after the Lannisters kill them and he still orders the assassination of Daenerys.

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15 minutes ago, Lee-Sensei said:

Like what? He still hits Cersei, he still wants to kill Targaryens, he still calls Aegon and Rhaenys dragonspawn after the Lannisters kill them and he still orders the assassination of Daenerys.

Mark Addy makes Robert very entertaining to watch despite his many faults. "Bow ye shits! Bow!"

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59 minutes ago, Lord Lannister said:

Mark Addy makes Robert very entertaining to watch despite his many faults. "Bow ye shits! Bow!"

Bob is an entertaining man despite his faults.......

Mark Addy nailed that aspect.....

I don't know, maybe the effects of watching the show before reading the books....."WINE!"....

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52 minutes ago, Lord Lannister said:

Mark Addy makes Robert very entertaining to watch despite his many faults. "Bow ye shits! Bow!"

I agree. Part of the reason that I like the character is that Mark Addy sells him as a lovable, oafish, frat boy.

”Did you ever make the eight, Ser Barristan!”

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