Unwin Peake - How will his story play out from where we left off?

[Megorova]

13 hours ago, Canon Claude said:

Unwin's failure to kill the king wasn't due to his own mistakes; Aegon was saved by chance. If Gaemon hadn't died first and if Viserys hadn't thought to question Thaddeus Rowan, Aegon would be dead.

The poisoning was done by Larra and Viserys, and Aegon wasn't their target (they knew that Aegon doesn't eat sweets, and the poison was in apple tart). They wanted to get rid of Gaemon, as revenge to Aegon for making Viserys to send his dragon egg away to Dragonstone. Aegon took from Viserys something that was precious to him, thus Viserys retaliated by taking from Aegon his only friend. Thaddeus Rowan told the truth, Rogare-brothers paid him money for that poisoning, and they provided him with Tears of Lys. Though they were also set up by Larra. They were born by different mothers, and Larra's mother, Johanna Swann, hated Rogares. Because when she was captured by pirates and sold into slavery, Rogares bought her for their pleasure garden, and forced her to become a courtesan. And Viserys had a grudge against his brother, who abandoned him. So Larra and Viserys plotted together against Targaryens and Rogares. Unwin Peake, Thaddeus Rowan, and Rogare-brothers were scapegoats.

[Lord Varys]

14 hours ago, Floki of the Ironborn said:

I agree with you that Aegon is going to hold a grudge. He pretty much does nothing BUT hold a grudge for all the bad things that happened to him. But Canon Claude is correct, I think, that Unwin won't ever actually be brought down by proof in a trial. More likely, Aegon's going to want him to suffer and so abuses his power to have Unwin punished outside of the law. Which means that he's no better than Peake and is further proof of the Targaryens' unfitness to rule.

There is no unfitness to rule there, just a way to deal with men who deserve to die. And to be sure, Aegon III doesn't seem to hold all that many grudges. He visited only two trials against the Secret Siege conspirators, men he had personal connections to. He didn't give a rat's ass about the others. Peake, one imagines, he also does give a rat's ass about considering what he pulled.

14 hours ago, Floki of the Ironborn said:

The Targaryens are the antithesis to the Starks: fire vs ice. Ice preserves and endures, just as the Starks endured as Kings of Winter in the North for millennia. Were they perfect? Not at all. But the Starks are clearly the better rulers because they swing the sword themselves, they're invested in the people of the North, and they are cold rather than hot-blooded. The Targaryens are a fire which burns the world and leaves a memorable impact, but it took them just three centuries of power to bring it all crashing down.

Nah, that seems to be only in your head. There are cold-blooded Starks ... just as there are a cold-blooded Targaryens. The cold-blooded fellows usually succeed, because they don't ruin everything in a hot emotional outburst ... like those hotheaded, wolfblooded Starks do. We don't know any details about court intrigue and vendettas in the North, but we do know they knew how to do away with rivals and rebels and traitors. And we will see them do it again when they do away with the Boltons and the Freys in the coming books. Those people will all suffer and die at the hands of the Starks or their vassals/allies.

13 hours ago, Canon Claude said:

I mean, we do know the basics. We know that Viserys will rule the realm bitterly while Aegon broods; the broken king and a broken reign sort of thing. Baela is going to have a tumultuous relationship with her Velaryon husband until she kicks it, and then he's going to move on to her cousin. Rhaena will have six daughters with one of the Hightowers. The fact that this is all that's been said about them suggests to me that they won't do anything ground-breaking or major. Rhaena isn't going to die in battle fighting dragons, Aegon isn't going to become another Maegor or another Jaehaerys, it all strikes me as resulting in a very mediocre reign for all of them. Otherwise, why has nothing been said about it? And it's not like there's a mystery to hide; we're not talking the Summerhall disaster here. There isn't going to be some disaster that nobody bothered to talk about, nor will there be a huge economic boom, or else why would it have been dubbed a broken reign? 

You mean, we know the basics like we got the basics of the Old King's reign from TWoIaF? We didn't. We didn't know about Rhaena or Aerea, we had no idea about Rogar Baratheon's plots, about the troubles involving the marriage, we didn't know about the two Dornish Wars, about Alaric Stark, about the Doctrine of Exceptionalism or Elissa Farman. We pretty much knew nothing about the actual reign of Jaehaerys I.

And we know essentially nothing about the reign of Aegon III aside from the fact that the dragons died there and that the Nine Mages thing happened during this reign. That's it.

We also know that the Harrenhal situation must be sorted out, but we don't know how this happens (I expect a dragon war for that thing). And there are subtle clues when this will happen in since we know that Larys Strong is not going to be buried in Harrenhal soon, that the castle will only go to Lucas Lothston in 151 AC, indicating that Harrenhal was in the hands of Alys Rivers and her son around that time (historically, we know Harrenhal was never empty/lordless, it passed directly from Harren to Quenton Qoherys, from Gargon the Guest to Lucas Harroway, from Lucas Harroway to Walton Towers, from Maegor Towers to Queen Rhaena, and from Queen Rhaena to Bywin Strong.

It is not really conceivable that Alys Rivers/her son lose the castle in the late 130s/early 140s and then the castle is left as a lordless ruin until the king's brother comes up with the idea to make their master-at-arms the Lord of Harrenhal.

There is also the fact that Vhagar's remains and Dark Sister are not going to be recovered soon ... indicating the king didn't exactly have easy access to the shores of the Gods Eye. In fact, I imagine that Alys' son will wield Dark Sister during his campaign. Alys and her son will find Aemond's remains and reclaim the sword. And once they are done away with, Aegon III will give the sword to the Dragonknight in the 150s.

The fake Daerons should also show up during Aegon III's reign but even that is not confirmed so far. It is still possible that some of them only show up during the reign of the Young Dragon or Baelor the Blessed or later still.

Baela and Alyn having a stormy marriage, doesn't tell us anything about when and how Baela will die. I don't expect her to die in childbirth or some illness. Rhaena would have about 13 years to produce six children with her Hightower husband if she were to die in a struggle with Alys Rivers and her son. Even if they marry only around 140 AC it would still be about ten years for six children, which would be doable - especially if turned out that she had a set of twins.

As for Viserys, he cannot rule at his brother's side until he is in his twenties (at least six years away in 136 AC), since Tywin was the youngest Hand at twenty. We can expect Viserys to be Aegon's closest confidant even before that, his shadow issuing orders in the king's name in an unofficial capacity, etc., but there will other powerful people at court before Viserys rises to the Handship.

And doing away with Unwin Peake only turns Aegon III into 'another Maegor' in your mind. Most lords and people of Westeros wouldn't care about that. He is just one guy, and not exactly a very popular man. And it would just be the downfall of one ambitious, overreaching guy and his daughter, not the downfall of an entire house.

The reason why nothing has been said about the reign of Aegon III is that George hasn't yet written about that reign in detail.

13 hours ago, Canon Claude said:

That said, there's lots of room for character development, and there's a few curiosities, too. The fact that Aegon named one of his kids after Rhaena and not Baela is an odd sign to me; Rhaena is the one with the dragon after all, so you'd think that would stand in the way of their relationship. 

It already does, to a point, she lives on Dragonstone right now. But to be sure, the Dragonpit is there for a reason. They have started to rebuild it, and Morning was housed there while she and Rhaena still lived in KL. The building is large enough to house a couple of dragons more, even if the dome is never completely repaired. If Silverwing and the Cannibal were claimed by riders loyal to Aegon III they would be housed there when in KL, and the king shouldn't have that much of a problem with that. He would not suffer them in the Red Keep, of course, but we do know that his dragon eggs phobia must have disappeared, or else his daughter Elaena would have never been given a dragon egg.

If Alys' son has a dragon - as has been claimed in FaB - or if he eventually claims one of the riderless dragons available (Silverwing or the Cannibal) then Aegon III will need a dragonrider to counter that once Alys' son makes a move. A king as unpopular as he would have likely lost a campaign against a dragonrider who also happened to be the rightful king if Aemond and Alys were actually married (which is sort of tacitly confirmed by Gyldayn when he numbers Alys Rivers among the widows taking over after the Dance ... that indicates that it was later revealed/widely believed Alys and Aemond actually were married).

It is also pretty obvious that George is playing in the post-Dance era with the kind of challenges the Tudors faced after the War of the Roses - a new king rose after victory in battle and court intrigues/coups secured his throne, but there are rival claimants still out there and they come back to haunt them. Henry VII and Henry VIII had to deal with rival pretenders of various kinds. Aegon III will get fake pretenders in the false Daerons, and one really big challenge in a dragonriding son of Alys Rivers.

It would also fall into place rather neatly if the remaining adult dragons went down together in a last stupid clash, sort of a final ugly epilogue to the Dance. Those maesters who may poison the dragons seem to be targeting eggs and hatchlings (think of the worm that hatched from the egg of the second Laena Velaryon) - they would not have access to Silverwing and the Cannibal. And Morning is a fine and healthy dragon.

So we can assume, I expect, there to be a vexing and more and more challenging problem with dragon fertility at court, with there mostly sickly and monstrous dragons during the reign of Aegon III, but this not being a very big problem while Morning and the two other adult dragons are still around - who might be claimed in the late 130s and 140s. I don't expect Baela or Viserys allowing Silverwing to remain on her island - it was considered that Aegon II claim her back in 131 AC. The problem then was that the guy couldn't even make the journey, much less mount a dragon, but the new generation are mobile and can do that.

Then, when the adult dragons clash one last time, some will die, others might be crippled and injured and waste away quickly after that, like Sunfyre, leaving only those sickly last she-dragons we heard of, the last of which died in 153 AC.

13 hours ago, Canon Claude said:

True, Unwin never saw the sense in befriending Aegon rather than just using him as a figurehead, but that's not due to stupidity or incompetence. Tywin and Stannis never ever go out of their ways to make people like them, nobody calls them stupid. Unwin's failure isn't that he's too dumb, it's that he got too cocky and too ambitious. He'd successfully killed the Targaryen princess, a girl whom Aegon didn't even like.

Tywin certainly went out of his way to be liked by his king, Aerys II, no? It just didn't work out in the end. Stannis aspires to be king, he never felt the need to suck up to one because the last king was his brother already.

You mean the queen. Peake successfully arranged the murder of Queen Jaehaera. She wasn't a princess.

13 hours ago, Canon Claude said:

And to be fair, he did figure out that lesson eventually when he tried to make Aegon friendly with his daughter before the Cattle Show. And actually, that's another thing I like about Unwin as a character; he learns from his mistakes. What you use as examples of incompetence, I see as a learning curve. Owain Bourney's murder was clumsy (though it's not like he was alone in that, he was being backed up by House Hightower in killing Owain, so where's the incompetence?) and the Caltrops didn't make it work, but that's a different scenario. Unwin isn't in charge of the Caltrops, he's one member of many, and none of them have any real authority over each other. When the members get killed off, and Unwin is the last man standing after Second Tumbleton, he finds a limit to his ability when he can't rally the southern army. So, he conspires to take advantage of a surly boy king who is antisocial and emotionally dead inside. When that doesn't work, he plots to have the boy killed by a conspiracy which doesn't include him. It's almost like a reverse hero journey; Unwin goes from stabbing a rival in the eye at a war council to orchestrating an entire overthrow of power in King's Landing without setting foot in the city personally, and it almost worked. 

Daeron Targaryen and Hobert Hightower are shocked when Peake murders the Bourney fellow. He didn't do that with the backing of the people nominally in charge.

I'm not really sure what the point of the murder of Aegon III and Daenaera was. Yes, it would have made Viserys the new king, but Peake wasn't exactly his best friend, either. And they apparently had promised Viserys' hand to Cassandra Baratheon, so what exactly was the point behind that plot besides petty revenge and, one imagines, fear of what Aegon III might do when he finally ruled in his own right? Waters, Long, the Peake gang in the KG, the Fingers, etc. they could all reasonably expect their careers would end ... or perhaps even their lives.

Honestly, I think Peake and his people would suffer more if they had made Viserys king because he is smarter than his brother and, I imagine, much more calculating and resentful.

13 hours ago, Canon Claude said:

If Peake does nothing, they can't just touch him with impunity. Otherwise, how many nobles will see that as a threat against their own position. A whole noble house can die out just because the king holds a grudge? Kings who do that lose the support of their noblemen, in our history and in Westeros' history (Aegon IV, Maegor, Aerys II, Aegon II, Rhaenyra for that matter). And moreover, Unwin Peake brought 1000 soldiers and 500 mercenaries to a great council, why in seven hells would he ever be so careless as to openly rise up against a king looking for any excuse to kill him? That requires a level of stupidity that Unwin clearly hasn't sunk to in his entire life.

Nobody would care - just as nobody seems to have shed tears for the Darklyns and Hollards, the Reynes and Tarbecks (who didn't all deserve to die), the Lothstons, Toynes, Strongs, and Harroways, etc.

We are talking about just one man here. And as you pointed out, Peake knows what's coming for him already. That's why he took so many men with him to court when the new regents were appointed. Again, that was still an era when the king wasn't yet ruling in his own right. Once Aegon III is safely in charge of his own government he certainly can destroy Unwin Peake easily enough. It shouldn't even be that difficult.

I mean, the man is effectively already threatening his regents and Hand with the Kingsguard and, especially, Sandoq the Shadow, when he dismisses them. That was the reason they were with him when he confronted them. And before I forget - I expect Sandoq to become a proper Kingsguard and remain at court after Lady Larra leaves. He showed his unwavering loyalty during the Secret Siege, and I expect him to play a considerable role in doing away with the king's enemies in the future. This guy wasn't introduced for just that one big stunt.

[Megorova]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

And before I forget - I expect Sandoq to become a proper Kingsguard and remain at court after Lady Larra leaves. He showed his unwavering loyalty during the Secret Siege, and I expect him to play a considerable role in doing away with the king's enemies in the future. This guy wasn't introduced for just that one big stunt.

He showed his loyalty to his master - shadowbinder Larra Rogare. When Aegon and Viserys came out for a talk during the Secret Siege, it wasn't Aegon, it was Larra in shadow-glamour. It was Viserys and Larra, not Viserys and Aegon.