Are the Maesters responsible for the incredibly small Great Houses?

[kissdbyfire]

40 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

and the same is also the reason why wives take the names of their husbands

Cersei Lannister sends her regards.

ETA: also, regarding Maege Mormont, I don’t understand why you assume she must have had a husband. I mean, even the Old Bear, when talking about her and her daughters never brings one up. Instead, he says the following:

ACoK, Jon I

Aye, Dywen says. And the last time he went ranging, he says he saw a bear fifteen feet tall." Mormont snorted. "My sister is said to have taken a bear for her lover. I'd believe that before I'd believe one fifteen feet tall. Though in a world where dead come walking . . . ah, even so, a man must believe his eyes. I have seen the dead walk. I've not seen any giant bears." He gave Jon a long, searching look. "But we were speaking of hands. How is yours?"

[sweetsunray]

2 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Cersei Lannister sends her regards.

 

If we go by Lord Varys' premisse, then we now must conclude that Maege Mormont married a Mormont Woot more incest. But Jeor doesn't know about it

[kissdbyfire]

1 minute ago, sweetsunray said:

If we go by Lord Varys' premisse, then we now must conclude that Maege Mormont married a Mormont Woot more incest. But Jeor doesn't know about it

Exactly. I just edited my previous post to add a quote where the Old Bear talks about it. 
And now it struck me, he is the old bear, he is a Mormont, it was him!!! And OMG, Jeor and Maege are secret Targaryens!

[sweetsunray]

1 minute ago, kissdbyfire said:

Exactly. I just edited my previous post to add a quote where the Old Bear talks about it. 
And now it struck me, he is the old bear, he is a Mormont, it was him!!! And OMG, Jeor and Maege are secret Targaryens!

Makes sense. We don't know who's Jorah's mother is really. Must be Maege! Alysane, Dacey and Jorah are siblings!

[kissdbyfire]

Just now, sweetsunray said:

Makes sense. We don't know who's Jorah's mother is really. Must be Maege! Alysane, Dacey and Jorah are siblings!

And cousins, yay. 

[Lord Varys]

10 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Cersei Lannister sends her regards.

They do make certain differences for the queens, since you don't call a queen 'Queen Husband's Name'. But you do call a lady 'Lady Husband's Name' in this world.

If Robert had remained the Lord of Storm's End and had married Cersei or Lya or whoever they would have all been 'Lady Baratheon'.

The fact that people do not forget a woman's birth family and bring that up occasionally when it is politically relevant doesn't change the fact that they left their own house and the protection of their own father/brother to enter into the family and under the protection of their husbands - that's what's expressed by the whole cloak stuff at the weddings.

You see with Alyssa Velaryon using the Targaryen colors as her own during her second wedding that marrying Aenys Targaryen before made her a member of that house, just as Cat became a Stark by marriage, etc.

10 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

ETA: also, regarding Maege Mormont, I don’t understand why you assume she must have had a husband. I mean, even the Old Bear, when talking about her and her daughters never brings one up. Instead, he says the following.

Oh, nobody doubts that Maege may have had a or multiple lovers, especially after she took over Bear Island in her own right. As a ruling lady she could have as many lovers as Tytos Lannister. But this doesn't mean that said lover was the father of her daughters, no? You can have extramarital affairs, after all. And the absence of Maege's husband - who is a pretty old woman during the series already - might indicate that the father of the Mormont is (long) dead by that time.

The ludicrous idea is the notion that multiple bastard children - and girls at that! - could just evade being branded bastards when nobody in the Seven Kingdoms can do this. No great lord nor any of the kings. If the Mormonts could do that, then the Starks could do it, too ... and then Eddard Stark would have done it with Jon Snow.

Jeor's story apparently took place after the man no longer ruled his house ... else he would have known for a fact whether his sister had had any lovers and, one imagines, he would have never permitted her to pass on bastards for trueborn children. In fact, if he or Maege had tried something like that, the Starks would have long taken Bear Island from them to install a more proper family there.

[sweetsunray]

Anyway George explained the names of wives already in the same SSM I already referenced:

Quote

You ask about names. Several different questions here. Maege Mormont is called Mormont because no one knows her husband's name, or even if she has one. There is all the talk that she beds with a bear. She prefers to keep her own counsel. Most of the ladies of Westeros do change their names when they wed, although usage varies. If the wife's family is significantly higher born than the husband's, she may use his name little, if at all. The Dornish have their own customs. The full surname of the ruling house of Dorne is Nymeros Martell, and the ruling princesses keep that in its female form. They do not take the name of their consorts.

So, nope... women do not automatically take a husband's name.

aCoK discussion about who's to inherit House Hornwood during the harvest feast in Bran's chapter reveals there's a lot of flexibility when it comes to the sirname - basically heirs with blood ties (legitimate or not) take on the name of the house they stand to inherit. Beren Tallhart's mother is née Hornwood and one of the suggestions is that he alters his name into Beren Hornwood and become Lord Hornwood. Larence Snow, who's Lord Hornwood's bastard son fostered at Deepwood Motte, is an alternative candidate. His name too would alter to Hornwood.

Bear Island is a remote island and seems to function and live mostly by itself. Despite there being the occasional harvest feast at WF and Cat having lived at WF for 15 years, being its Lady Stark beside her husband Lord Ned Stark, she never met Maege or Dacey Mormont before personally, though she met and spoke with Lynesse whenever Jorah and his wife came down to WF for feasts. We thus know that Maege and her daughters never bothered to cross to the mainland since Cat came north, didn't come to the feasts. And of course hardly anybody ever goes to Bear Island. It creates the right amount of isolation for Maege to do as she pleases, have daughters out of wedlock by any man of her choosing and name them all Mormont. Nobody's going to tell her she can't, not once she's Lady of Bear Island, nor would any Lord Stark if the Mormonts are staunchest allies and bodyguards. At the very least they don't create inheritance issues as House Hornwood did.

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

So, nope... women do not automatically take a husband's name.

They do not necessarily lose their birthnames ... but they do enter into the power and authority of their husbands and are seen and treated as their wives, bound to obey them. That reflects in them being reduced to the role of 'Lady Husband's Name'.

And while they certainly can continue to show the colors and arms of their birth house - as Cersei definitely does and encourages Joffrey to do, too - that doesn't change the fact that this is a man's world ruled by men whose history is already written by men. Which means it doesn't really matter how women viewed themselves in their homes and castles. The important thing is how the society they lived in viewed them ... not how they may call themselves in their homes.

I mean, there aren't any cases where the birth houses (or given names) of the average lady are mentioned when they are talked about in passing. Cat is Lady Stark, not Lady Catelyn Tully, Lysa is Lady Arryn, Donella Manderly is Lady Hornwood, Sybelle Locke is Lady Glover, Olenna Redwyne is, predominantly, Olenna Tyrell. And so on and so forth. The icing on the cake is Barbrey Ryswell who presumes to be 'Lady Dustin' simply by virtue of marriage, when there is no indication that she has so much as a drop of Dustin blood (she would have some, of course, as a noblewoman of the North, but there is no indication that she and her husband were particularly close cousins).

Her case - as well as Donella's status as de facto Lady of Hornwood after her husband's death (as well as Cat and Lysa acting as regents for their sons) - is ample evidence that wives are absorbed into the family's of their husbands and effectively transformed into members of those houses - and that their power and standing especially after the deaths of their husbands greatly hinges on the fact that they became a representative and shepherd of the family they married into.

But the names of the wives isn't the important issue. That is a side track - after all, Westeros isn't some sort of modern bureaucracy where there are legal regulations about names, meaning you can call yourself whatever you want without having to pay any fees or getting problems when you have to interact with non-existing bureaucrats.

The issue is the fact that children take the names of their fathers ... and that they are all proud of the names of their fathers as we can see with them always going on about the great lords and kings of the great houses. Nobody is ever proud about his maternal ancestry to the degree that wishes or demands to take the mother's name.

[Dorne being an exception there - although we have no idea how this works in detail.]

2 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

aCoK discussion about who's to inherit House Hornwood during the harvest feast in Bran's chapter reveals there's a lot of flexibility when it comes to the sirname - basically heirs with blood ties (legitimate or not) take on the name of the house they stand to inherit. Beren Tallhart's mother is née Hornwood and one of the suggestions is that he alters his name into Beren Hornwood and become Lord Hornwood. Larence Snow, who's Lord Hornwood's bastard son fostered at Deepwood Motte, is an alternative candidate. His name too would alter to Hornwood.

That kind of thing does nothing to explain the problem of the Waynwood/Oakheart cases where you have sons and grandsons descended from an apparent matriarch with invisible/absent husbands who gave all their offspring their names (apparently) contrasted against the issue of Rhaenyra's sons - who, more than anybody else, should have taken the name of their mother in light of the fact that they were all immediate heirs of the Iron Throne.

Changing a name when you come into a lordship or throne is different from the name you are given at birth. Especially if this is done by some council or due to deliberations to settle a troubled succession. We know of a Lydden pretending to be a Lannister, we know of the case you mention, and we can expect that who is chosen to succeed Gyles as Lord of Rosby is also going to call himself Rosby ... just as Bronn plays at being a Stokeworth (although that's not a great feat for a guy who doesn't have a family name of his own).

But this has nothing to do with the names given to the younger children and grandchildren.

All Rhaenyra's sons were Velaryons, just as all of Anya's and Arwyn's sons are Waynwoods and Oakhearts. If only a presumptive heir was given a particular name because his parents expected him/her to succeed to their mother's seat then why the hell is Arys Oakheart named Oakheart? He is a younger son who eventually joined the KG and will never rule. There is no need for him to go by the Oakheart name.

And why would Arwyn's or Anya's children not want to go by the names of their fathers - who, considering who those women are - cannot have been gutter knights or peasants? [In fact, if Arwyn or Anya had married below their station then we should be surprised that they were allowed to succeed to the seats of their fathers considering there would have been male members of the family around to challenge their claims if they had shown any weakness (think of Lady Webber).] Regardless of the rank and station of a father, we have yet to meet a son who went by his mother's name. Even Cersei's children call themselves Baratheon. Mace's children are Tyrells, never mind that Hightower is a more prestigious house, all things considered. It never crosses the mind of Cat's or Lysa's children to name themselves 'Tully'.

And then there is the great example of Harry the Heir - who goes by his father's Hardyng name, despite the fact that this a very humble name and he has Waynwood and Arryn blood on his mother's side. While proudly included the Arryn and Waynwood arms in his personal sigil, he doesn't go by the Waynwood or Arryn name ... despite the fact that he is the presumptive heir of the Vale of Arryn and has known that for a very long time (he was even Jon's acknowledged heir before Robert Arryn was born). People speculate he might change his name to Arryn should he ever rule the Vale. But the fact remains that he apparently couldn't go by the Arryn name while he was just the presumptive heir to the Vale.

Bottom line is - people outside Dorne go by the names of their fathers. And the Waynwood/Oakheart/Mormont example is just weird.

2 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Bear Island is a remote island and seems to function and live mostly by itself. Despite there being the occasional harvest feast at WF and Cat having lived at WF for 15 years, being its Lady Stark beside her husband Lord Ned Stark, she never met Maege or Dacey Mormont before personally, though she met and spoke with Lynesse whenever Jorah and his wife came down to WF for feasts. We thus know that Maege and her daughters never bothered to cross to the mainland since Cat came north, didn't come to the feasts. And of course hardly anybody ever goes to Bear Island. It creates the right amount of isolation for Maege to do as she pleases, have daughters out of wedlock by any man of her choosing and name them all Mormont. Nobody's going to tell her she can't, not once she's Lady of Bear Island, nor would any Lord Stark if the Mormonts are staunchest allies and bodyguards. At the very least they don't create inheritance issues as House Hornwood did.

That reads like fan fiction to me. There is a universal culture in the Seven Kingdoms from Dorne to the Wall to ostracize noble bastards and brand them with their names ... and you are honestly trying to push the idea that the Mormonts are untouched by all that, and that Maege could pull shit like that while Jeor and Jorah were still around (which they were until very recently, and long after even Lyanna Mormont's birth)? When the whole bastard thing is a thing both in Dorne and on the Iron Islands - both of which are truly different from the other regions?

That just doesn't fly. Eddard Stark would not confirm such a woman as Jorah's successor, nor would he allow any of Maege's bastards to serve as her heirs if she somehow seized control of Bear Island anyways.

And the way to legitimize bastards is to petition the king. If Ned doesn't have Jon legitimized as a Stark, Maege Mormont most definitely didn't do that with her daughters.

And of course this kind of thing would definitely create all kinds of succession issues assuming there are Mormont cadet branches around. Even female line descendants of the Mormonts could - quite rightfully, by the standards of the world they live in - claim that they have stronger claims to Bear Island than Maege's bastards. Keep in mind that Alyn Velaryon's claim to Driftmark was challenged even after he had been legitimized by Rhaenyra and been confirmed as the Sea Snake's legal heir. Even legitmization doesn't wash away the stain of bastardy in the eyes of the world. Not truly.

And Maege is not some woman anybody ever groomed to rule. She is a younger - actually, she has to be the much, much younger sister of Jeor (closer in age to Jorah than her brother) considering she still had a child in 290 AC! - sister of a ruling lord, a man who had a son of his own who succeeded him and who everybody would have expected to produce children of his own. Why should either her father, Jeor, or Jorah take any sleeping around and bastard shit from Maege? What the hell could be the reasoning behind that? Maege's succession to Bear Island is an accident.