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Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy Cast in House of the Dragon


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38 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It's worth reiterating the point someone made earlier about GRRM signing off on casting. In addition, GRRM has a relatively close hand in this production. Although he's not writing directly for it, one of his close friends, assistants and aides is, and Condal is a long-term fan of the series who's been in communication with GRRM about a possible Westeros project from long before any of these shows was a thing.

I don't think they would've went in this direction if GRRM was dead set against it. This seems like something maybe even Martin himself came up with because he considers the television adaptation of ASOIAF to be a mirror universe to his own literary work-the same, but fundamentally different. I can see him trying out things in the show he wanted to do/never got the chance with the books, especially one he is heavily involved in. 

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9 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Corlys Velaryon was proud of his three grandsons and viewed them as Velaryons, so it is quite clear he didn't care who the father was.

And if you consider how late Corlys Velaryon married - he was nearly forty in 90 AC at his wedding - and that he and his wife had just two children, it doesn't look as if he was particularly interested or invested in continuing his bloodline. He even postponed Laena's wedding for quite some time, further reducing the chance that he would have grandchildren.

It might be, but I doubt he didn't gave a damn about Rhaenyra's bastards inheriting the Velaryon property. That's why I see their betrothals to Rhaena and Baela as the solution for that.

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24 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

It might be, but I doubt he didn't gave a damn about Rhaenyra's bastards inheriting the Velaryon property. That's why I see their betrothals to Rhaena and Baela as the solution for that.

Agreed. He didn't mind them inheriting, but he did mind that the name Velaryon would end up going to people with no descent from him. The betrothals in theory solve that.

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10 hours ago, Sotan said:

I loved your whole post, but this part blew me away. I'm going to reread F&B now.

Corlys seems very modern considering the time/place he lives in, same for Laenor; gay nobleman/monarchs usually married and reproduced. The only one I can think of that eschewed marriage and had his male favorites around him was William Rufus of England-a son of Willian the Conqueror who succeeded his father.  As for Rhaenyra's sons, for all we know the boys received their hair color from their Arryn and Baratheon ancestors. There is just so much rich material here, no wonder they decided to adapt The Dance. 

Keep in mind that the Velaryons were a very large family at this point. Corlys' grandfather Daemon had at least three sons and quite few daughters, Corlys himself had at least two brothers and six nephews, and his nephew Vaemond had two sons.

There wasn't really a strong need to make the Velaryon clan even larger than that ... and Corlys' own priorities revolved very much around ships and yoyages and stuff. Which is the reason why he married so late and, presumably, also why he only had two children with his wife. If he is the father of the Hull boys then chances are pretty good that he and Rhaenys lived apart in the time he was at Hull overseeing ship-building there and having an affair with Marilda.

And to be clear - not every nobleman in an arranged marriage - be he gay or not - really tried to have children. Many noble lineages in the middle ages died out and titles and lordship had to be given out again because the line had faltered.

It can be a big problem if the king doesn't have an heir of his body - hence the reason why Rhaenyra needed children of her own to show that she was capable of the job a woman had to do - but lords who have brothers and nephews and cousins can take things more slowly. In the series you have Stannis lacking a male heir, we have King Aerys I and Baelor the Blessed deciding not to have children of their own, etc.

Of course, in the middle ages you also have the problem of high child mortality and stuff, something that's really downplayed/non-existent in Westeros, but the bottom line still is that the important thing about an arranged marriage is first the marriage and not so much the fact that it must lead to children. Jon Arryn was married three times and only produced a single sickly son very late in his life.

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

It's worth reiterating the point someone made earlier about GRRM signing off on casting. In addition, GRRM has a relatively close hand in this production. Although he's not writing directly for it, one of his close friends, assistants and aides is, and Condal is a long-term fan of the series who's been in communication with GRRM about a possible Westeros project from long before any of these shows was a thing.

I have no doubt that HBO said, "we need to vary things up here," but I also have no doubt that GRRM was consulted heavily in the process and helped them work out the logistics of how it would work with the Strong story (making the Strongs also black - which again has zero bearing on GoT since the Strongs are long extinct - would simply eliminate the problem). It helps that the Velaryons played zero role in GoT itself, so they don't need to explain any inconsistencies there. If they announced that they were casting an Asian actor for Cregan Stark or something along those lines, that would be a bigger question mark.

It also ties into some of the rumoured changes from the proposed Valyrian project, which would have had a much more multicultural Valyria, I suspect either a Valyrian middle/lower class with the all the variation you'd expect from a Rome-level civilisation but ruled over by the more monocultural silver-haired Valyrians we know, or maybe a situation where the Valyrian Freeholder houses had become mixed between the "purebloods" who practised inbreeding and families who had embraced greater change (with perhaps the rise of the Targaryens being helped by them being a minor house but one which cleaved to the pureblood way of things). It makes the worldbuilding more nuanced and less "everyone from here looks like this," and follows the general trend of ASoIaF's worldbuilding being pretty simplistic back in AGoT and then getting more complex with each succeeding volume.

Valyria as a gigantic metropolis must have been multicultural and cosmopolitic ... but the incest was still, to everything we know, the predominant marriage custom among the elite, not just the dragonlords but other important Valyrians as well.

This would still allow for diverse ethnicities to a point, though, since we do know from TWoIaF that a Valyrian dragonlord married a YiTish emperor. If that can happen, so can happen such a marriage in reverse, i.e. a Valyrian dragonlord taking foreign royalty to wife, from Yi Ti or Asshai or Qarth or Ghiscar or the Rhoyne or the Summer Islands, etc.

And with the incest in place the descendants from such a union would then also preserve the looks they acquired this way much longer than they would if they weren't continuously marrying siblings and cousins.

However, the idea of there being a rift between pure-blooded Valyrians doing the incest thing and others who don't bother with that would go against everything we know so far about Valyria. It is the blood of the dragon these people wish to preserve, not the purity of their race as such - they are not obsessed with their silver-gold hair or their purple eyes but rather their ability to bond with dragons. And back in Valyria they would know that the magic is not in suffering from albinism, basically, but in inheriting a specific talent - which can manifest in people of every ethnicity, basically, if they are descended from Valyrian dragonlords.

In that sense - my image of Valyria in that planned Valyrian show would be of an elite that is predominantly looking Valyrian in the dragonlord class, but not exclusively. And of course there would also be immigrants from all over the world who would acquire sufficient wealth and power to control and influence politics behind the scenes even if they were not, strictly speaking, part of the dragonlord class.

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1 hour ago, Daeron the Daring said:

It might be, but I doubt he didn't gave a damn about Rhaenyra's bastards inheriting the Velaryon property. That's why I see their betrothals to Rhaena and Baela as the solution for that.

It could be a solution but to our knowledge it is something Rhaenyra comes up with and arranges, not something the Velaryons insist upon or suggest. Jace and Luke are older than Daemon's girls, and those betrothals are only made after Daemon and Laena return from Pentos and are accepted back into the royal family by Viserys I. And the impression we also get is that those betrothals are an outgrowth of Rhaenyra's growing friendship - and apparent affair - with Laena Velaryon (of whom Rhaenyra supposedly was 'more than fond').

They basically grew so close that Rhaenyra decided to tie their families closer together by arranging marriages between her sons and Laena's daughters.

This certainly also has the effect that the Velaryon bloodline would be strengthened and that a King Jacaerys I would have a Velaryon-Targaryen queen in Baela at his side - just as Lucerys would have Rhaena as his lady if he ever succeeded to the lordship of Driftmark.

But this kind of thing wasn't clear back when Jace and Luke were born and didn't look Valyrian at all. If Alicent noticed that the children were, perhaps, not Laenor's, then Corlys would have noticed that, too. Yet he still insisted they be given Velaryon names showing that he saw those boys as his grandsons from the very beginning, not just after they were betrothed to their first cousins. This wasn't mandatory for them being part of the family.

And it isn't all that confusing or weird - Laenor seems to have been a very open gay man by Westerosi standards, and his parents did allow him shower his favorites with gifts at their castle of High Tide ... and they also never forced him to keep up appearances after his wedding. They didn't force him to live with Rhaenyra at court and later on Dragonstone. Instead, they allowed him to stay with them in their own castle. That suggests that they had known for a very long term that they were not likely to ever get grandchildren from their son.

And to be very clear about things - Corlys' heir up to 120 AC was his son Laenor. Corlys could not really expect to outlive his son considering how old he was when the boy was born, nor that he would ever have to settle his own succession. That would have fallen to Lord Laenor, ideally, who may have decided to hand Driftmark over to one of his sons when his wife ascended the Iron Throne ... or not, considering them not living together Rhaenyra's reign could have seen her husband serving her not as prince/king consort, but rather as Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark. Although it seems clear that Rhaenyra's plan to make Lucerys Velaryon Lord of Driftmark whereas Jacaerys would become Prince of Dragonstone and eventually succeed her on the Iron Throne was made back in the 110s after the children were born.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

It could be a solution but to our knowledge it is something Rhaenyra comes up with and arranges, not something the Velaryons insist upon or suggest. Jace and Luke are older than Daemon's girls, and those betrothals are only made after Daemon and Laena return from Pentos and are accepted back into the royal family by Viserys I. And the impression we also get is that those betrothals are an outgrowth of Rhaenyra's growing friendship - and apparent affair - with Laena Velaryon (of whom Rhaenyra supposedly was 'more than fond').

They basically grew so close that Rhaenyra decided to tie their families closer together by arranging marriages between her sons and Laena's daughters.

This certainly also has the effect that the Velaryon bloodline would be strengthened and that a King Jacaerys I would have a Velaryon-Targaryen queen in Baela at his side - just as Lucerys would have Rhaena as his lady if he ever succeeded to the lordship of Driftmark.

But this kind of thing wasn't clear back when Jace and Luke were born and didn't look Valyrian at all. If Alicent noticed that the children were, perhaps, not Laenor's, then Corlys would have noticed that, too. Yet he still insisted they be given Velaryon names showing that he saw those boys as his grandsons from the very beginning, not just after they were betrothed to their first cousins. This wasn't mandatory for them being part of the family.

And it isn't all that confusing or weird - Laenor seems to have been a very open gay man by Westerosi standards, and his parents did allow him shower his favorites with gifts at their castle of High Tide ... and they also never forced him to keep up appearances after his wedding. They didn't force him to live with Rhaenyra at court and later on Dragonstone. Instead, they allowed him to stay with them in their own castle. That suggests that they had known for a very long term that they were not likely to ever get grandchildren from their son.

And to be very clear about things - Corlys' heir up to 120 AC was his son Laenor. Corlys could not really expect to outlive his son considering how old he was when the boy was born, nor that he would ever have to settle his own succession. That would have fallen to Lord Laenor, ideally, who may have decided to hand Driftmark over to one of his sons when his wife ascended the Iron Throne ... or not, considering them not living together Rhaenyra's reign could have seen her husband serving her not as prince/king consort, but rather as Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark. Although it seems clear that Rhaenyra's plan to make Lucerys Velaryon Lord of Driftmark whereas Jacaerys would become Prince of Dragonstone and eventually succeed her on the Iron Throne was made back in the 110s after the children were born.

Altough you are mostly right, I can't agree with you on the matter of Corlys being totally fine with the Strong bastards inheriting Drifmark. I can't give you an example for someone who knew his descendant (who's about to inherit once) isn't his descendant, and his bloodline will be thrown away.

As we both pointed out above earlier, House Velaryon was pretty wide at that point. That means that it wouldn't be hard for Corlys to find a cousin with Velaryon blood to marry Lucerys, so the entire (very old) bloodline will not get throwed out the window. I doubt Corlys was just totally fine with all this.

You're right, it is not said that Corlys had any kind of word in the Lucerys-Rhaena betrothal. Nor is it said about Laenor, but you can imagine he had to accept such a thing. After all, it was about two (four) of his grandchildren, the children of his children, Laenor and Laena. With this, he might have seen the bloodline-problem solved the easiest way, without a scandal that wasn't seen in the previous few hundred years.

It might also be that Laenor didn't tell him and Rhaenys (if she ever know) at the beginning that the children aren't his.

After all, Rhaenyra's whole lie was believable by Westerosi man. I'm pretty sure many believed it (considering Aemma Arryn had brown hair too)

 

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16 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Altough you are mostly right, I can't agree with you on the matter of Corlys being totally fine with the Strong bastards inheriting Drifmark. I can't give you an example for someone who knew his descendant (who's about to inherit once) isn't his descendant, and his bloodline will be thrown away.

As we both pointed out above earlier, House Velaryon was pretty wide at that point. That means that it wouldn't be hard for Corlys to find a cousin with Velaryon blood to marry Lucerys, so the entire (very old) bloodline will not get throwed out the window. I doubt Corlys was just totally fine with all this.

You're right, it is not said that Corlys had any kind of word in the Lucerys-Rhaena betrothal. Nor is it said about Laenor, but you can imagine he had to accept such a thing. After all, it was about two (four) of his grandchildren, the children of his children, Laenor and Laena. With this, he might have seen the bloodline-problem solved the easiest way, without a scandal that wasn't seen in the previous few hundred years.

It might also be that Laenor didn't tell him and Rhaenys (if she ever know) at the beginning that the children aren't his.

After all, Rhaenyra's whole lie was believable by Westerosi man. I'm pretty sure many believed it (considering Aemma Arryn had brown hair too)

This isn't about bastards and stuff, it is about families being more than biology. Rhaenyra's sons are Laenor's sons, no matter who fathered them, just as Jon Arryn felt like a father for Robert and Ned - and they viewed him as a father, too.

These people can certainly be obsessed with bloodlines and stuff - but they don't have to. They do view foster siblings very much akin to biological siblings - Asha condeming Theon as a kinslayer for allegedly murdering the Stark children, for instance. And in that case we think about a two people having a gay son who, for all we know, had made it perfectly clear from the start that he wouldn't have children (or wouldn't have children with the woman he was forced to marry) then they would have gone with the children got.

I mean, chances are pretty good that Aegon the Conqueror also knew that Aenys wasn't his son (and Maegor, perhaps, too) yet he still raised them as his sons and handed his kingdoms to them.

I think we are supposed to read this in a manner that family is more than just blood, and that these people can go along and accept the concept of blended families. FaB also told us that the concept of adoption isn't unknown in Westeros, either. Jaehaerys I is advised to marry and adopt the sons of Elinor Costayne by her first husband, making them effectively his heirs, just as Sharra Arryn asked the Conqueror to name her son Ronnel his heir should he marry her.

Oh, and we don't know how Aemma Arryn or her father Rodrik looked like in the hair and eyes department. They could have been brown-haired and brown-eyed ... or not.

Also, Corlys not arranging the Alyn-Baela marriage after the Dance - and that only happening almost by accident with Baela avoiding the husband the regents chose for - also indicates Corlys didn't care much about his bloodline. Prior to FaB we all expected that this had been an arranged dynastic marriage to strengthen the Targaryen-Velaryon bloodline and help baseborn Alyn to establish himself as the next Lord of Driftmark. But it turned out to be very differently.

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3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Valyria as a gigantic metropolis must have been multicultural and cosmopolitic ... but the incest was still, to everything we know, the predominant marriage custom among the elite, not just the dragonlords but other important Valyrians as well.

This would still allow for diverse ethnicities to a point, though, since we do know from TWoIaF that a Valyrian dragonlord married a YiTish emperor. If that can happen, so can happen such a marriage in reverse, i.e. a Valyrian dragonlord taking foreign royalty to wife, from Yi Ti or Asshai or Qarth or Ghiscar or the Rhoyne or the Summer Islands, etc.

And with the incest in place the descendants from such a union would then also preserve the looks they acquired this way much longer than they would if they weren't continuously marrying siblings and cousins.

However, the idea of there being a rift between pure-blooded Valyrians doing the incest thing and others who don't bother with that would go against everything we know so far about Valyria. It is the blood of the dragon these people wish to preserve, not the purity of their race as such - they are not obsessed with their silver-gold hair or their purple eyes but rather their ability to bond with dragons. And back in Valyria they would know that the magic is not in suffering from albinism, basically, but in inheriting a specific talent - which can manifest in people of every ethnicity, basically, if they are descended from Valyrian dragonlords.

In that sense - my image of Valyria in that planned Valyrian show would be of an elite that is predominantly looking Valyrian in the dragonlord class, but not exclusively. And of course there would also be immigrants from all over the world who would acquire sufficient wealth and power to control and influence politics behind the scenes even if they were not, strictly speaking, part of the dragonlord class.

I mean, we know almost jack shit about Valyria in the details, and almost all we know is coloured by it coming through POV of the Targaryens or maesters friendly to the Targaryens. Also, what we know about the Valyrians in the books is different to what the situation will be in the MCU (Martin Cinematic Universe; maybe we need a less confusing acronym).

So there is a ton of wriggle room there to come up with stuff that is not even hinted at in the books so far, and that is as it should be, otherwise it's going to turn into a very boring world very quickly.

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40 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I mean, we know almost jack shit about Valyria in the details, and almost all we know is coloured by it coming through POV of the Targaryens or maesters friendly to the Targaryens. Also, what we know about the Valyrians in the books is different to what the situation will be in the MCU (Martin Cinematic Universe; maybe we need a less confusing acronym).

Not really in light of the fact that the Volantenes and Lyseni all just like Targaryens - as do the Velaryons in the books. Valyria as a city - the largest city in the world and home to a thousand different peoples and hundreds of religions, etc. - would have been diverse, but the ruling class are pretty much the same people. And they eventually send out their cousins and kin to found Volantis and Lys and the other colonies.

I'd agree that with the Doctrine of Exceptionalism the Targaryens get a little bit childish or superstitious in the sense that they connect their special magical abilities with their looks - which are exceedingly rare in Westeros but quite common in the Free Cities and even more so in Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer - but this wouldn't mean that by the time of the Doom most dragonlords did not look Valyrian. Rather that most of them did, but they also had dragonlords which looked somewhat YiTish, Summer Islander, Qartheen, Sarnori, Ghiscari, or even Sothoryi or Dothraki or Ibbenese.

Of course they can change things in the shows - they do that kind of thing. My point was arguing from the book knowledge that we have.

I don't really like imagining things there as this being too much like real world racism when we are not talking about a bunch of people being obsessed with looks but with certain magical talents and how they are best preserved and honed. That is the interesting fantasy element there, not the racist stuff.

Although, I guess, if one portrayed common Valyrians and their view of foreigners and immigrants and the like and had them mimicking the incest of their rulers then one could also deal with racism in that manner. In a culture where you usually marry a sibling or cousin it should be very difficult for new arrivals to become part of the old guard - even more so if the newcomers mimic the old guard and also start to marry in the family rather than intermarry with their fellow Valyrians.

For what it's worth I do like the setting of the Empire of Ash show with there being multiple factions ... but I'd not differentiate there between factions among the elite who practice incest and such who don't. Instead, I'd expect immigrants who rise to wealth and power become more Valyrian than the Valyrians themselves - insisting their children marry each other even if that was something they didn't do back home.

I generally don't like and don't see any reason to assume that the Targaryen incest is something special. It is what the entire Valyrian elite did, and the fact that they stick with that in Westeros and even after they lose their dragons is, to me at least, a strong sign that this is a defining element of their cultural identity - much more so than their language, their religion, and other customs like slavery. All that the Targaryens abandoned on Dragonstone before the Conquest ... but the incest they kept.

If that were portrayed to be just a rough guideline or a custom not popular with essentially the entire elite then pretty much the entire depiction of the Targaryens in ASoIaF collapses.

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5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Keep in mind that the Velaryons were a very large family at this point. Corlys' grandfather Daemon had at least three sons and quite few daughters, Corlys himself had at least two brothers and six nephews, and his nephew Vaemond had two sons.

There wasn't really a strong need to make the Velaryon clan even larger than that ... and Corlys' own priorities revolved very much around ships and yoyages and stuff. Which is the reason why he married so late and, presumably, also why he only had two children with his wife. If he is the father of the Hull boys then chances are pretty good that he and Rhaenys lived apart in the time he was at Hull overseeing ship-building there and having an affair with Marilda.

And to be clear - not every nobleman in an arranged marriage - be he gay or not - really tried to have children. Many noble lineages in the middle ages died out and titles and lordship had to be given out again because the line had faltered.

It can be a big problem if the king doesn't have an heir of his body - hence the reason why Rhaenyra needed children of her own to show that she was capable of the job a woman had to do - but lords who have brothers and nephews and cousins can take things more slowly. In the series you have Stannis lacking a male heir, we have King Aerys I and Baelor the Blessed deciding not to have children of their own, etc.

Of course, in the middle ages you also have the problem of high child mortality and stuff, something that's really downplayed/non-existent in Westeros, but the bottom line still is that the important thing about an arranged marriage is first the marriage and not so much the fact that it must lead to children. Jon Arryn was married three times and only produced a single sickly son very late in his life.

Valyria as a gigantic metropolis must have been multicultural and cosmopolitic ... but the incest was still, to everything we know, the predominant marriage custom among the elite, not just the dragonlords but other important Valyrians as well.

This would still allow for diverse ethnicities to a point, though, since we do know from TWoIaF that a Valyrian dragonlord married a YiTish emperor. If that can happen, so can happen such a marriage in reverse, i.e. a Valyrian dragonlord taking foreign royalty to wife, from Yi Ti or Asshai or Qarth or Ghiscar or the Rhoyne or the Summer Islands, etc.

And with the incest in place the descendants from such a union would then also preserve the looks they acquired this way much longer than they would if they weren't continuously marrying siblings and cousins.

However, the idea of there being a rift between pure-blooded Valyrians doing the incest thing and others who don't bother with that would go against everything we know so far about Valyria. It is the blood of the dragon these people wish to preserve, not the purity of their race as such - they are not obsessed with their silver-gold hair or their purple eyes but rather their ability to bond with dragons. And back in Valyria they would know that the magic is not in suffering from albinism, basically, but in inheriting a specific talent - which can manifest in people of every ethnicity, basically, if they are descended from Valyrian dragonlords.

In that sense - my image of Valyria in that planned Valyrian show would be of an elite that is predominantly looking Valyrian in the dragonlord class, but not exclusively. And of course there would also be immigrants from all over the world who would acquire sufficient wealth and power to control and influence politics behind the scenes even if they were not, strictly speaking, part of the dragonlord class.

Since our current sources tell us incest was a Valyrian, not desperate post-Doom Targaryen, custom, that indicates they avoided marrying even with other dragonriding families if they could help it, which might mean the dragonriding families weren't necessarily all that closely related to one another. You could pretty easily introduce some diversity among the dragonriding families and still give them all silver gold hair and purple and blue eyes.

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3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

This isn't about bastards and stuff, it is about families being more than biology. Rhaenyra's sons are Laenor's sons, no matter who fathered them, just as Jon Arryn felt like a father for Robert and Ned - and they viewed him as a father, too.

But they aren't really more than biology in this historical era. It's not the twenty-first century where people accept someone else as their bloodrelated kin. Being akin to the eachother was the strongest connection during medieval ages. And I get that Corlys Velaryon had a mind more opened than others had, and Laenor was even more of a modern guy, but it was Corlys' duty and responsibility to not let people inherit who aren't even akin to him and House Velaryon. Family pretty much was the ones who were related to you by blood. And even Theon knew that he wasn't a brother to the Stark children like a real brother would've been. Asha was an idiot to say that, since she tottaly agreed with his father in this matter, when Balon pointed out Theon became a Stark for growing up there.

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I mean, chances are pretty good that Aegon the Conqueror also knew that Aenys wasn't his son (and Maegor, perhaps, too) yet he still raised them as his sons and handed his kingdoms to them.

I don't like this theory, to be honest, nor do I think it's what actually happened, but if Aenys and Maegor weren't Aegon's, they were still his nephews. The bloodrelation was still there, no matter what actually happened. 

 

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I think we are supposed to read this in a manner that family is more than just blood, and that these people can go along and accept the concept of blended families.

For us, probably. For them, entirely not. They build their entire system on bloodrelations, and altough Jon Arryn was a fsther figure to Robert and Ned, they would've never inherited the Vale, no matter what. The lords of the Vale would've looked for someone related to him by blood, even from low-nobility, because Westeros is that much built on bloodrelations (far more than IRL medieval times).

 

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Jaehaerys I is advised to marry and adopt the sons of Elinor Costayne by her first husband, making them effectively his heirs, just as Sharra Arryn asked the Conqueror to name her son Ronnel his heir should he marry her.

Both never happened, and in both cases the offers were for the time the king doesn't have trueborn heirs (and both would've been pretty dumb moves, since there had been female relatives of the given king who could've inherited). Not to mention that Sharra Arryn made that proposal because she tought she could get a claim for his son that way for the entire realm.

 

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, and we don't know how Aemma Arryn or her father Rodrik looked like in the hair and eyes department. They could have been brown-haired and brown-eyed ... or not.

No we don't. But the fact that Rhaenyra protected herself with having ancestors wih this look and some people actually believed him makes me think they had brown hair.

 

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

 Corlys not arranging the Alyn-Baela marriage after the Dance - and that only happening almost by accident with Baela avoiding the husband the regents chose for - also indicates Corlys didn't care much about his bloodline

Isn't Alyn his son? I mean, it's pretty obvoius and hard to deny it, or argue against it. It rather shows me how he wanted his !!!son!!!! to inherit instead of a descendant of one of his brothers, or the twins.

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1 hour ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Since our current sources tell us incest was a Valyrian, not desperate post-Doom Targaryen, custom, that indicates they avoided marrying even with other dragonriding families if they could help it, which might mean the dragonriding families weren't necessarily all that closely related to one another. You could pretty easily introduce some diversity among the dragonriding families and still give them all silver gold hair and purple and blue eyes.

I guess that works to a point, but so far there is no racial diversity among the Lyseni and Volantenes. They are not asians or black people with silver-gold hair and purple eyes but they look exactly like the fair-skinned Targaryens.

As I said, I can see the dragonlords occasionally intermarrying with foreign royalty for political reasons. But the idea that the Valyrians as a people were diverse from the start isn't very likely. They were a backwater, isolated people of shepherds living in the shadow of volcanoes before they acquired their dragons.

And to be honest, I'd view the Valyrian looks as the traits of the people living in Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer - not as the distinct look of the dragonlords.

11 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

But they aren't really more than biology in this historical era. It's not the twenty-first century where people accept someone else as their bloodrelated kin. Being akin to the eachother was the strongest connection during medieval ages. And I get that Corlys Velaryon had a mind more opened than others had, and Laenor was even more of a modern guy, but it was Corlys' duty and responsibility to not let people inherit who aren't even akin to him and House Velaryon. Family pretty much was the ones who were related to you by blood. And even Theon knew that he wasn't a brother to the Stark children like a real brother would've been. Asha was an idiot to say that, since she tottaly agreed with his father in this matter, when Balon pointed out Theon became a Stark for growing up there.

Where do you get this that Corlys has a duty and responsibility to his bloodline? That is nowhere established.

And to be honest - Rhaenyra Targaryen is pretty much as Velaryon as the Velaryons themselves. Alyssa Velaryon, Corlys' great-aunt, was her great-great-grandmother, and considering that her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (Jaehaerys-Alysanne, Baelon-Alyssa, and Viserys-Aemma) married either siblings or cousins one certainly could make the case that Rhaenyra's Velaryon blood ran pretty strong.

These people were so heavily interrelated that you cannot really make the case they didn't have a claim.

11 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

I don't like this theory, to be honest, nor do I think it's what actually happened, but if Aenys and Maegor weren't Aegon's, they were still his nephews. The bloodrelation was still there, no matter what actually happened. 

Sure, but so would the case be with Rhaenyra's sons - they would be cousins to Corlys if they weren't Laenor's sons. And that combined with the fact that he clearly viewed them as his grandsons is all we need to explain why he stuck with them, and viewed the behavior of Vaemond and his other relations as a betrayal.

11 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

For us, probably. For them, entirely not. They build their entire system on bloodrelations, and altough Jon Arryn was a fsther figure to Robert and Ned, they would've never inherited the Vale, no matter what. The lords of the Vale would've looked for someone related to him by blood, even from low-nobility, because Westeros is that much built on bloodrelations (far more than IRL medieval times).

Of course, you don't just hand over a lordship to somebody who isn't bloodrelated. But you might do that if they are an official bloodrelation like Rhaenyra's Velaryon sons ... and also your cousins due to marriages in the past.

11 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Both never happened, and in both cases the offers were for the time the king doesn't have trueborn heirs (and both would've been pretty dumb moves, since there had been female relatives of the given king who could've inherited). Not to mention that Sharra Arryn made that proposal because she tought she could get a claim for his son that way for the entire realm.

I just wanted to illustrate that the concept of adoption is known in Westeros. And that means you can become part of a family not just by right of birth and blood but also by adoption.

11 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Isn't Alyn his son? I mean, it's pretty obvoius and hard to deny it, or argue against it. It rather shows me how he wanted his !!!son!!!! to inherit instead of a descendant of one of his brothers, or the twins.

Alyn may be Corlys' son or his grandson. We don't really know. But he only becomes the heir to Driftmark after Addam and Rhaenyra's sons by Laenor are all dead. But regardless who his father was - his mother was a commoner and that stain doesn't disappear just because he and Addam were legitimized by royal decree. Which is why it would have made sense for Corlys to marry Alyn to Baela or Rhaena ... but that doesn't happen.

When Corlys dies Alyn's succession to Driftmark is challenged by the other Velaryons. He still pushes through, but it was a contested succession - something that could have been prevented if Corlys had married his (grand)son to his granddaughter before his death.

A man focused on dynastic thinking and being interested in preserving and strengthening his own bloodline would have seen to that. Instead, Corlys Velaryon cared much more about the Targaryen bloodline considering his obsession with marrying Aegon the Younger to Jaehaera - which started when Rhaenyra was still on the Iron Throne.

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59 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:
4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, and we don't know how Aemma Arryn or her father Rodrik looked like in the hair and eyes department. They could have been brown-haired and brown-eyed ... or not.

No we don't. But the fact that Rhaenyra protected herself with having ancestors wih this look and some people actually believed him makes me think they had brown hair.

There are a group of readers who believe the boys are legitimate and that they received their hair and eye color from their Arryn ancestors. I hope the show gives us an answer. 

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13 minutes ago, Sotan said:

There are a group of readers who believe the boys are legitimate and that they received their hair and eye color from their Arryn ancestors. I hope the show gives us an answer. 

Oh, I think that's definitely a possibility. I just wanted to point out that we do not have a description of either Aemma Arryn or her father, Lord Rodrik.

What we do have is a description of Lucamore Strong as a blond bull, though, somewhat reducing the probability that Lyonel, Harwin, and Larys Strong were brown-haired and brown-eyed. But nothing concrete.

The show should definitely give us a version there. But not the truth since it is an adaptation and if George wanted to give 'a truth' there it would have been in FaB.

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4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, I think that's definitely a possibility. I just wanted to point out that we do not have a description of either Aemma Arryn or her father, Lord Rodrik.

What we do have is a description of Lucamore Strong as a blond bull, though, somewhat reducing the probability that Lyonel, Harwin, and Larys Strong were brown-haired and brown-eyed. But nothing concrete.

The show should definitely give us a version there. But not the truth since it is an adaptation and if George wanted to give 'a truth' there it would have been in FaB.

Lets not forget the pug nose George kept going on about. 

I wonder if they'll hire a black or biracial actor to play Harwin Strong, and make him, say, a cousin or half brother of the Strong siblings. That way the boys could be played by biracial actors.  It would be interesting to see Rhaenyra, Daemon and the rest of the the blacks (unfortunate name now lol) fight for the rights of these boys considering the setting and GOT's history with race. I just hope they don't make the Greens come off looking like Klan members. 

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Where do you get this that Corlys has a duty and responsibility to his bloodline? That is nowhere established.

It's not written down. It's the responsibility to continue your bloodline, because you are a Lord, when you inherit for being someone's descendant. After him, it was up to Laenor, who failed on this matter, but he likely did not want to have a conflict with the Targaryens and get into such a public scandal, ashaming his son for being gay and threatening himself with getting burned. Just as you pointed out before in a thread, Robert failed as a king for many reasons, on of them was that he was unable to make trueborn heirs. Once Laenor failed on this matter, it wad pretty much up to Corlys to do something. Not that he felt that he has to rush something, and Baela and Rhaena were little children when their parents arranged their betrothal. And as I pointed out above, Laenor surely had a word in this betrothal, and trough him Corlys too. 

Edit to this: Baela and Rhaena were four when Laena died, while Jake six, and Luke five. And the betrothal was made before her death.

Something not being mentioned does not mean it didn't happen. And again, this way the Velaryon blood was back in the main branch, so was the Targaryen blood, so Corlys pretty much accomplished what he might have wanted or was his duty, as the head of his house.

But I don't see any need of further talking, I feel like I wrote down how I imagine the situation. Sounds more logical to me than giving a damn about your blood and who one day will inherit what you built up yout whole life.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

And to be honest - Rhaenyra Targaryen is pretty much as Velaryon as the Velaryons themselves. Alyssa Velaryon, Corlys' great-aunt, was her great-great-grandmother, and considering that her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (Jaehaerys-Alysanne, Baelon-Alyssa, and Viserys-Aemma) married either siblings or cousins one certainly could make the case that Rhaenyra's Velaryon blood ran pretty strong

Yes, you're right, she might be if no Velaryon married another Velaryon cousin after that. But either way, that's not how this works, we both know that. And it's not only being a Velaryon, but also being Corlys'. If that thing mattered nothing for Corlys, I imagine he wouldn't have legitimised Addam and Alyn, but instead would've let some other distant Velaryon inheriting.

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34 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

And it's not only being a Velaryon, but also being Corlys'. If that thing mattered nothing for Corlys, I imagine he wouldn't have legitimised Addam and Alyn, but instead would've let some other distant Velaryon inheriting.

This is a good point. 

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16 hours ago, Daeron the Daring said:

It's not written down. It's the responsibility to continue your bloodline, because you are a Lord, when you inherit for being someone's descendant. After him, it was up to Laenor, who failed on this matter, but he likely did not want to have a conflict with the Targaryens and get into such a public scandal, ashaming his son for being gay and threatening himself with getting burned. Just as you pointed out before in a thread, Robert failed as a king for many reasons, on of them was that he was unable to make trueborn heirs. Once Laenor failed on this matter, it wad pretty much up to Corlys to do something. Not that he felt that he has to rush something, and Baela and Rhaena were little children when their parents arranged their betrothal. And as I pointed out above, Laenor surely had a word in this betrothal, and trough him Corlys too. 

Edit to this: Baela and Rhaena were four when Laena died, while Jake six, and Luke five. And the betrothal was made before her death.

Something not being mentioned does not mean it didn't happen. And again, this way the Velaryon blood was back in the main branch, so was the Targaryen blood, so Corlys pretty much accomplished what he might have wanted or was his duty, as the head of his house.

But I don't see any need of further talking, I feel like I wrote down how I imagine the situation. Sounds more logical to me than giving a damn about your blood and who one day will inherit what you built up yout whole life.

Oh, the idea is just that Corlys Velaryon had decades to come to terms with the fact that his heir was a homosexual. And he did do that in a proper manner, not by forcing his son to behave like he wasn't. In fact, if we look at Laenor's marriage, then this wasn't even the idea of the Velaryons. Viserys I's council came up with that after the king had rejected the proposal to make Laena Velaryon his second wife - something the Velaryons apparently did want.

But there is no indication that Corlys and Rhaenys spearheaded this idea that Rhaenyra should marry Laenor. That's something the Grand Maester and the king pushed and it very much seems Laenor was only willing to go through the motions of a wedding ceremony ... not to live with Rhaenyra as a married couple or, perhaps, father children on her. They may have done that for the prestige of Laenor getting as close to the Iron Throne as he, Prince Aemon's grandson, should, but not with the intention to actually commit themselves to go through the dynastic motions.

In light of all that this idea that old Corlys must have cared much about his own bloodline just isn't all that convincing to me. It would make sense if we had reason to believe Corlys very much wanted Laenor to marry Rhaenyra, wanted grandchildren from both his children, insisted on them doing their dynastic duty (like Viserys II forced Aegon and Naerys to marry, say). But that just isn't there.

So one can view this guy as more enlightened and less entangled in feudal and dynastic concepts. After all, he was also a very far-travelled guy, somebody who had seen half the world with his own eyes, who interacted with many different peoples and cultures firsthand.

16 hours ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Yes, you're right, she might be if no Velaryon married another Velaryon cousin after that. But either way, that's not how this works, we both know that. And it's not only being a Velaryon, but also being Corlys'. If that thing mattered nothing for Corlys, I imagine he wouldn't have legitimised Addam and Alyn, but instead would've let some other distant Velaryon inheriting.

The idea to legitimize the Hull boys only comes after Addam claims Seasmoke. It is both a gift to the Sea Snake (who had issues with Rhaenyra at that point because Rhaenys had died) as well as the recognition of Addam's prowess and an attempt bind those two bastards to Rhaenyra's cause. And with them it actually works pretty well, unlike with Hugh and Ulf and Nettles who aren't legitimized or properly ennobled.

But I guess we can assume that Addam and Alyn would have never been legitimized if neither had claimed a dragon.

That Corlys had the best interested of the Hull boys in mind after he bonded with them - and that he did - shouldn't be viewed through a dynastic or bloodline lense but rather by the fact that he was either their grandfather or father. He came to like them, just as he had started to loathe most of nephews over the Vaemond incident which caused them actually fight on the Green side during the Dance.

In general, Corlys becoming a father this late in life may have set up his brothers and their sons to expect that the really, really great lordship of Driftmark might one day pass to them. When Rhaenys gave Corlys Laena and Laenor such dreams would have died ... but then Laenor turned out as he did, and Laena only gave birth to girls. One can easily view Vaemond Velaryon as another Borys Baratheon, basically.

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