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Will someone follow Robb's will?


Helman Corbray

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21 minutes ago, Shierak Qiya said:

He was not a king.  Robb was a homeless boy towards the end of his life. 

Totally false. Robb was king of the North because the North named him as such. The North has split off from the Seven Kingdoms; actually the Six Kingdoms, because the Iron Isles have split off, too. Westeros is devolving into its original collection of warring petty kingdoms. The unified realm created by the Targaryen Dynasty is no more. It's over. Sure, Joffrey, then Tommen are calling themselves "King of the Seven Kingdoms", but they're only "kings" of what they can control. By the time of Dance w/Dragons, this amounts to ... the Crownlands.

It's up to the North whether the North will honor the Young Wolf's last will & testament (should it appear). Cersei Lannister has nothing to say about it. And King Stannis? Well, legitimating Jon Snow as Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell, was what HE wanted to do all along. So it's all good.

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Just now, zandru said:

Totally false. Robb was king of the North because the North named him as such. The North has split off from the Seven Kingdoms; actually the Six Kingdoms, because the Iron Isles have split off, too. Westeros is devolving into its original collection of warring petty kingdoms. The unified realm created by the Targaryen Dynasty is no more. It's over. Sure, Joffrey, then Tommen are calling themselves "King of the Seven Kingdoms", but they're only "kings" of what they can control. By the time of Dance w/Dragons, this amounts to ... the Crownlands.

It's up to the North whether the North will honor the Young Wolf's last will & testament (should it appear). Cersei Lannister has nothing to say about it. And King Stannis? Well, legitimating Jon Snow as Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell, was what HE wanted to do all along. So it's all good.

The north had no right to choose their own king.  They were standing on the soil of the kingdom of Westeros.  They will only have that right if they had all gone into exile on the other side of the wall and then chosen him as their king.  That or win the rebellion and force the ruler on the iron throne to recognize northern independence.  That did not happen.  Therefore, Robb was not a king. 

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19 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

The Freys trampled Robb's banner into the mud and stormed out. Says it all really. Did anything legally binding happen, or was it all 'We are betrayed!!!', and 'It's all over!!!'? The little we know of their communications is that Robb was sending them messages, offering alternate bridegrooms, and they were not responding (perhaps because they were in early negotiations with Tywin). Sounds like Robb was making all the running at this time.

Anyway, it doesn't make any difference. They offer to restore the alliance; there's no good reason to change any of the terms.

And that's all fine. But. They're not going to share any of that with Robb. To Robb, they have to show a false face, the face of the Freys who came back to his side. They are baiting a trap, and they want to appear totally, totally normal i.e. their usual rude, spiteful, grasping selves. Arya is a trophy; however lost she is, the totally normal Freys are not going to abandon their claim on her; it costs them nothing. For six hundred years, the Freys have never failed to exact their toll at the crossing - Robb should be surprised to get a refund for bad behaviour.

  • Robb offered bridegrooms, not brides.
  • We know any former betrothals were over and done with, including Arya's with Elmar.
  • The Freys never balk about Arya being wed to Ramsay Bolton.
  • We do have the conversation where Freys are sent to Riverrun to let Robb know that the marriage deal for Edmure and Roslyn is accepted, but that Lord Walder Frey demands Robb to be present and give Walder Frey a public apology. That is the "deal" as far as Robb knows. No mention of Arya, none whatsoever. And while absence of evidence isn't always evidence, not mentioning a re-engagement between Arya and Elmar while stipulating less significant portions of the deal (as far as Robb knows) shows that Arya isn't part of the new deal.
  • Robb doesn't ever bring up this alleged new betrothal to a Frey to his mother. Instead he tells her he believes Arya's dead. If a Frey engagement was an obstacle to Robb concering Arya as an heir at this point, then he would have said so to Cat. Telling your mother in a "wake up, stop lying to yourself, she's dead," (paraphrasing) isn't exactly something you say because you want to hold back on telling her "I don't want her Frey fiancé to become consort-lord of Winterfell.

Conclusion: to Robb, Arya's dead, and this is the belief he has when writing the will. However, Arya's the sole balm he has for his mother to help her accept and sign his will, without changing the outcome in his mind, especially when he disinherits Sansa. As @kissdbyfire proposes, it makes sense that Robb did not disinherit Arya, but instead kept her in the line of inheritance. Believing her dead, he can safely keep her as an heir, so his mother doesn't feel like all her remaining children after Robb are disinherited. He doesn't believe Arya can ever come into play, since he doesn't believe she's alive, and that Jon thus will be his one and only heir as long as he hasn't fathered children of his own yet. I don't think that's a secret to either Cat or the others who signed his will, given the fact that before the signing he only mentions "Bran and Rickon" to be dead and mentions Sansa's marriage to Tyrion, but leaves out any verbal motivation for Arya even though he believes her dead as well. They can read in his will that Jon is his heir, Sansa is disinherited, but Arya's left as a spare. He mentions the death of Bran and Rickon to motivate why he promotes Jon as his male heir, and motivates why he disinherits Sansa. He doesn't need to say anything about Arya, because the wording of his will still allows her or her children to be Stark heirs. (Personally, I do think that in the end Sansa may end up being Queen/Lady Stark of WF, and have a hard time imagining Arya in that status, but then I don't see Robb's will as a forshadowing of the ultimate fate of the surviving Starks)

And it might explain why LS is far more active in searching for Arya than she is searching Sansa. We know LS has the BwB inquire with their Frey captors about Arya's possible presence at the Twins, that the BwB (and thus LS) know what went down with the Hound, Arya and the Tickler at the Crossroads Inn, and that the BwB set up this same inn as an "orphanage" where wandering septons deliver found orphanse, and where Gendry is to stay at all time to identify Arya if she turns up. They probably inquire with every of the outlaws they hang for their massacre at Saltpans about Arya too imo.

We don't see anything remotely like it for Sansa, despite the fact that LS and the BwB already know that Joffrey died at the Purple Wedding, that Tyrion had a trial and escaped, and that Sansa disappeared since the Purple Wedding and that plenty of people are searching for Sansa and Tyrion. Sure, LS tries to intervene in people allied to the Lannisters in finding both Sansa and Arya, but the BwB's efforts and network is used in the hope to find Arya, not Sansa. This tells me that LS wants to keep both daughters safe, but believes Arya is of use to her.

 

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6 minutes ago, Shierak Qiya said:

The north had no right to choose their own king.  They were standing on the soil of the kingdom of Westeros.  They will only have that right if they had all gone into exile on the other side of the wall and then chosen him as their king.  That or win the rebellion and force the ruler on the iron throne to recognize northern independence.  That did not happen.  Therefore, Robb was not a king. 

Yes, because that’s how rebellions work. That’s why Robert was first KbtW when he and Ned and Jon Arryn rebelled (to cite a recent in universe example). Oh, wait... :lol:

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3 minutes ago, Shierak Qiya said:

They will only have that right if they had all gone into exile on the other side of the wall and then chosen him as their king.  That or win the rebellion and force the ruler on the iron throne to recognize northern independence. 

The child on the Iron Throne has his pudgy little hands full at the moment, and the military/political brains of the whole enterprise was found dead on the privy. The Iron Throne has named Roose Bolton as Warden of the North and Lord of Winterfell ... if he can keep it. They don't seem to be giving Bolton any additional support, however. House Bolton is near-extinct (two members left, and one a bastard) and has been hated for millenia by other Northerners. Stannis is moving on him, with support from nearly all the North, while Bolton has too many enemies crammed into Winterfell's great hall, along with all their animals.

And, as I noted earlier, King Stannis is good with legitimating Jon Snow and restoring Winterfell to him. Your legalistic arguments are interesting, but not convincing.

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8 minutes ago, Shierak Qiya said:

The north had no right to choose their own king.  They were standing on the soil of the kingdom of Westeros.  They will only have that right if they had all gone into exile on the other side of the wall and then chosen him as their king.  That or win the rebellion and force the ruler on the iron throne to recognize northern independence.  That did not happen.  Therefore, Robb was not a king. 

The Targaryens never conquered the North. Their king decided to unite with the Targaryen kingdom peacefully, like Dorne did at some point. 

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5 minutes ago, zandru said:

And, as I noted earlier, King Stannis is good with legitimating Jon Snow and restoring Winterfell to him. Your legalistic arguments are interesting, but not convincing.

This. What’s true in theory or on paper isn’t always true in practice. The IT can keep on saying Robb was a rebel yadda yadda yadda, but go ask Big Bucket, Flint, Norrey, Umber, Glover, Mormont, et al what they think about the Crown, the Lannisters, the Boltons & Freys. 

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6 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Sure, LS tries to intervene in people allied to the Lannisters in finding both Sansa and Arya, but the BwB's efforts and network is used in the hope to find Arya, not Sansa. This tells me that LS wants to keep both daughters safe, but believes Arya is of use to her.

Good analysis! Let me add that Lady Stoneheart actually knows that Arya was alive, because the Brotherhood w/o Beric told them so. She was with them. They know the Hound took her, and have been following him. Arya's trail is still warm! Best to follow it ASAP! But nobody has a clue about Sansa and where she might have vanished to. Absolutely no one. Another reason to look first for Arya.

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30 minutes ago, zandru said:

Totally false. Robb was king of the North because the North named him as such. The North has split off from the Seven Kingdoms; actually the Six Kingdoms, because the Iron Isles have split off, too. Westeros is devolving into its original collection of warring petty kingdoms. The unified realm created by the Targaryen Dynasty is no more. It's over. Sure, Joffrey, then Tommen are calling themselves "King of the Seven Kingdoms", but they're only "kings" of what they can control. By the time of Dance w/Dragons, this amounts to ... the Crownlands.

It's up to the North whether the North will honor the Young Wolf's last will & testament (should it appear). Cersei Lannister has nothing to say about it. And King Stannis? Well, legitimating Jon Snow as Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell, was what HE wanted to do all along. So it's all good.

Robb becoming king is dependent on winning the rebellion.  The Starks got their asses kicked.  They lost.  

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3 minutes ago, Thunder Bunny-3000 said:

Nope. he was still a King regardless of the outcome of the rebellion, just as Stannis, Renly, and Balon were Kings.

Yeah, to the people who swore allegiance to them they are kings. It’s called the War of the 5 Kings, not the War of the 5 Rebels. :D

 

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Just now, sweetsunray said:

The Targaryens never conquered the North. Their king decided to unite with the Targaryen kingdom peacefully, like Dorne did at some point. 

Torrhen knelt and not because he was blowing Aegon.  They were not equals.  The Starks knelt and they became part of the kingdom.  An independent kingdom choosing to kneel rather than face Aegon's forces.  They gave up the right to choose their own king from then on.  They have no right to decide whether to break away or not.  They do not have that right.  They don't have the right to choose their own king. 

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Seems some need to reread the books. Even Daenerys knows her father lost the throne. The Targaryens lost the throne, the overwhelming Ozymandias symbol of oppression they killed each other for generation after generation.

Quote

Some of her sellswords smelled as if they had not washed or changed their clothes since her father lost the Iron Throne, 

The throne is not something that is in anyway a good thing in this story. 

This is why Daenerys thinks she has to reconquer Westeros, to become the next Aegon the Dragon & Conquerer, because it isn’t “hers” or Targaryen “property”.  You can’t own the land. 

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5 minutes ago, TsarGrey said:

How is that known?

We aren't actually told in any detail, but we can assume that after the big fight and when Arya and Sandor were seen to have left, the Inn's owners and others who wisely fled returned. They would have found the bodies. They knew who was there and could deduce who survived. Sandor is pretty distinctive, and Arya being described as a scruffy boy - or maybe a girl - was a near-conclusive identification of her, too. When the Brotherhood folks finally got there, they could have learned the whole story.

Again, we are never explicitly told this (as far as I remember), but it seems pretty likely.

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1 minute ago, zandru said:

We aren't actually told in any detail, but we can assume that after the big fight and when Arya and Sandor were seen to have left, the Inn's owners and others who wisely fled returned. They would have found the bodies. They knew who was there and could deduce who survived. Sandor is pretty distinctive, and Arya being described as a scruffy boy - or maybe a girl - was a near-conclusive identification of her, too. When the Brotherhood folks finally got there, they could have learned the whole story.

Again, we are never explicitly told this (as far as I remember), but it seems pretty likely.

former stark men in the brotherhood  know Arya is alive, having previously had her in their possession with the intent to ransom her.  

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9 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Yeah, to the people who swore allegiance to them they are kings. It’s called the War of the 5 Kings, not the War of the 5 Rebels. :D

 

Sure they would want to think that. And they would be wrong. The north is part of Westeros. Robb would have to win his war to make it independent before they have the right to have their own king.  He was a criminal,. a rebel. Nothing more.  Until he wins.  Which didn't happen.  

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2 minutes ago, Thunder Bunny-3000 said:

former stark men in the brotherhood  know Arya is alive, having previously had her in their possession with the intent to ransom her.  

Yes. Like I already said:

24 minutes ago, zandru said:

Let me add that Lady Stoneheart actually knows that Arya was alive, because the Brotherhood w/o Beric told them so. She was with them. They know the Hound took her, and have been following him.

 

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