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Heresy 237 The Ballad of Trouserless Bob Baratheon


Black Crow

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18 minutes ago, Tucu said:

At the time of the Battle of the Bells Aerys considered Elia a hostage; we are told that Aegon was born in Dragonstone and that Elia and his children where there when Rhaegar "kidnapped" Lyanna. So who moved them to KL and why? And we have this other bit about Elia

And yet we have Dany's vision in the House of Undying that places Rhaegar at Dragonstone with Elia when she gives birth to Aegon.

I'll go for a true vision on that one since Martin confirmed the identities of Elia and Aegon.

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26 minutes ago, LynnS said:

And yet we have Dany's vision in the House of Undying that places Rhaegar at Dragonstone with Elia when she gives birth to Aegon.

I'll go for a true vision on that one since Martin confirmed the identities of Elia and Aegon.

That could just mean that Rhaegar left after the birth of Aegon:

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Prince Rhaegar was not in the city to observe them, however. Nor could he be found in Dragonstone with Princess Elia and their young son, Aegon. With the coming of the new year, the crown prince had taken to the road with half a dozen of his closest friends and confidants, on a journey that would ultimately lead him back to the riverlands

 

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21 hours ago, LynnS said:

Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood run down his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark.

Compare with this rose with other hidden thorns:

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A Dance with Dragons - The Iron Suitor

"I have seen you in the nightfires, Victarion Greyjoy. You come striding through the flames stern and fierce, your great axe dripping blood, blind to the tentacles that grasp you at wrist and neck and ankle, the black strings that make you dance."

"Dance?" Victarion bristled. "Your nightfires lie. I was not made for dancing, and I am no man's puppet." He yanked off his glove and shoved his bad hand at the priest's face. "Here. Is this what you wanted?" The new linen was already discolored by blood and pus. "He had a rose on his shield, the man who gave this to me. I scratched my hand on a thorn."

"Even the smallest scratch can prove mortal, lord Captain, but if you will allow me, I will heal this. I will need a blade. Silver would be best, but iron will serve. A brazier as well. I must needs light a fire. There will be pain. Terrible pain, such as you have never known. But when we are done, your hand will be returned to you."

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A Game of Thrones - Tyrion VIII

A warhorn sounded in the far distance, a deep mournful note that chilled the soul. The clansmen climbed onto their scrawny mountain horses, shouting curses and rude jokes. Several appeared to be drunk. The rising sun was burning off the drifting tendrils of fog as Tyrion led them off. What grass the horses had left was heavy with dew, as if some passing god had scattered a bag of diamonds over the earth. The mountain men fell in behind him, each clan arrayed behind its own leaders.

In the dawn light, the army of Lord Tywin Lannister unfolded like an iron rose, thorns gleaming.

 

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Most of the small council were with the Hand outside Duskendale at this juncture, and several of them argued against Lord Tywin's plan on the grounds that such an attack would almost certainly goad Lord Darklyn into putting King Aerys to death. "He may or he may not," Tywin Lannister reportedly replied, "but if he does, we have a better king right here." Whereupon he raised a hand to indicate Prince Rhaegar.

Were this just rumors or Tywin has really been plotting to depose Aerys since Duskendale?

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5 hours ago, LynnS said:

Compare with this rose with other hidden thorns:

 

Does he count?

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Thorne was as prickly as his name, a spare, sharp-featured man of fifty, hard-eyed and hard-handed, his black hair streaked with grey

Specially combined with the reference of the blue flower growing in The Wall

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A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness

Also, is the "sweetness" in the vision a reference to quotes like this:

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he smelled as foul and sweet as flowers on a grave

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A foul, sweet smell rose from the wound, so thick it almost choked her

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There was a smell of death about that room; a heavy smell, sweet and foul, clinging. It reminded her of the sons that she had lost, her sweet Bran and her little Rickon, slain at the hand of Theon Greyjoy, who had been Ned's ward

 

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Wow!  Did you see this by @John Suburbs

R + L = J v.167 - Page 34 - General (ASoIaF) - A Forum of Ice and Fire - A Song of Ice and Fire & Game of Thrones (westeros.org)

Edit:  Geez, put your head down for a few minute and wake up 5 hours later...

I mean to say that I'm surprised to find someone else who holds the heretical viewpoint on RLJ and I feel like marching out the pipes and drums for John Suburbs.  

Actually, I think I will...

Rock the bagpipe! Scotland the Brave /We will rock you @ Switzerland - YouTube

I hope you'll join us here for further discussion! 

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9 hours ago, LynnS said:

Wow!  Did you see this by @John Suburbs

R + L = J v.167 - Page 34 - General (ASoIaF) - A Forum of Ice and Fire - A Song of Ice and Fire & Game of Thrones (westeros.org)

Edit:  Geez, put your head down for a few minute and wake up 5 hours later...

I mean to say that I'm surprised to find someone else who holds the heretical viewpoint on RLJ and I feel like marching out the pipes and drums for John Suburbs.  

Actually, I think I will...

Rock the bagpipe! Scotland the Brave /We will rock you @ Switzerland - YouTube

I hope you'll join us here for further discussion! 

That battle has been going on since February, maybe earlier. Too much "burn the heretic!" for me

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30 minutes ago, Tucu said:

That battle has been going on since February, maybe earlier. Too much "burn the heretic!" for me

I had some battles with the RLJ people on their thread in the past. They are a bit like the Catholic Church, not really open to discuss anything not fitting their view. Not worth the effort.

 

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1 hour ago, alienarea said:

I had some battles with the RLJ people on their thread in the past. They are a bit like the Catholic Church, not really open to discuss anything not fitting their view. Not worth the effort.

 

I once mentioned that a tower on the Prince's Pass was an odd place to hide considering that it is the main way into Dorne. Daggers everywhere!

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2 hours ago, alienarea said:

I had some battles with the RLJ people on their thread in the past. They are a bit like the Catholic Church, not really open to discuss anything not fitting their view. Not worth the effort.

No again, I didn't mean go over and fight with people.  I just thought to invite him to our current discussion. 

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If you listened to Martin's speech at Medill University, you'll know that facts are the basis on which all truths are founded.  Two people can look at the same facts and come to a different truth.  Opinions don't affect facts but facts should affect opinion.  He said that you can write the most eloquent analysis but if you get the facts wrong; you can't hope to arrive at the truth.  If you miss the smallest, insignificant, trivial detail and someone notices, your whole story will come into question.  People will wonder if the rest of the story is wrong.  He's addressing journalism students but says he applies these principles to his own writing. 

So ignoring the facts because they are inconvenient will not get you to the truth. 

I think Meera's greathelm is one of those small, inconsequential, seemingly trivial facts.\

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In other words as we've discussed on these pages so many times before, R+L=J is a deliberate red herring and the ballad if trouserless Bob Baratheon is a part of that red herring.

The question then is what is the red herring hiding ?

 For one thing, it obscures the meaning of the prophecy and misdirects attention to Jon away from Dany.   The song of ice and fire becomes about who will ride the dragons and who will sit on the iron throne.

I doubt there will be an iron throne at the end of this story and it already looks like Dany is going to lose at least one of her dragons.

If Rhaegar was a scholar of prophecy, then he knew the song of ice and fire was about the battle for the dawn and not the game of thrones.

The Wall is the ice dragon, the stone dragon.  The Wall belongs to Jon.  He is the rider on the Wall.

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A Storm of Swords - Jon VIII

Jon nodded weakly. The door swung open. Pyp led them in, followed by Clydas and the lantern. It was all Jon could do to keep up with Maester Aemon. The ice pressed close around them, and he could feel the cold seeping into his bones, the weight of the Wall above his head. It felt like walking down the gullet of an ice dragon. The tunnel took a twist, and then another. Pyp unlocked a second iron gate. They walked farther, turned again, and saw light ahead, faint and pale through the ice. That's bad, Jon knew at once. That's very bad.

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A Storm of Swords - Jon III

So many stars, he thought as he trudged up the slope through pines and firs and ash. Maester Luwin had taught him his stars as a boy in Winterfell; he had learned the names of the twelve houses of heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers sacred to the Faith; he was old friends with the Ice Dragon, the Shadowcat, the Moonmaid, and the Sword of the Morning. All those he shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the same stars, and see such different things. The King's Crown was the Cradle, to hear her tell it; the Stallion was the Horned Lord; the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their Smith up here was called the Thief. And when the Thief was in the Moonmaid, that was a propitious time for a man to steal a woman, Ygritte insisted. "Like the night you stole me. The Thief was bright that night."

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII

A sudden gust of wind set Edd's cloak to flapping noisily. "Best go down, m'lord. This wind's like to push us off the Wall, and I never did learn the knack of flying."

They rode the winch lift back to the ground. The wind was gusting, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan had told when Jon was a boy. The heavy cage was swaying. From time to time it scraped against the Wall, starting small crystalline showers of ice that sparkled in the sunlight as they fell, like shards of broken glass.

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon VIII

The road beneath the Wall was as dark and cold as the belly of an ice dragon and as twisty as a serpent. Dolorous Edd led them through with a torch in hand. Mully had the keys for the three gates, where bars of black iron as thick as a man's arm closed off the passage. Spearmen at each gate knuckled their foreheads at Jon Snow but stared openly at Val and her garron.

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A Game of Thrones - Jon III

"You won't learn anything from me," Jon told him. He had seen little of the dwarf since their journey ended. As the queen's own brother, Tyrion Lannister had been an honored guest of the Night's Watch. The Lord Commander had given him rooms in the King's Tower—so-called, though no king had visited it for a hundred years—and Lannister dined at Mormont's own table and spent his days riding the Wall and his nights dicing and drinking with Ser Alliser and Bowen Marsh and the other high officers.

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A Game of Thrones - Jon III

The largest structure ever built by the hands of man, Benjen Stark had told Jon on the kingsroad when they had first caught sight of the Wall in the distance. "And beyond a doubt the most useless," Tyrion Lannister had added with a grin, but even the Imp grew silent as they rode closer. You could see it from miles off, a pale blue line across the northern horizon, stretching away to the east and west and vanishing in the far distance, immense and unbroken. This is the end of the world, it seemed to say.

When they finally spied Castle Black, its timbered keeps and stone towers looked like nothing more than a handful of toy blocks scattered on the snow, beneath the vast wall of ice. The ancient stronghold of the black brothers was no Winterfell, no true castle at all. Lacking walls, it could not be defended, not from the south, or east, or west; but it was only the north that concerned the Night's Watch, and to the north loomed the Wall. Almost seven hundred feet high it stood, three times the height of the tallest tower in the stronghold it sheltered. His uncle said the top was wide enough for a dozen armored knights to ride abreast. The gaunt outlines of huge catapults and monstrous wooden cranes stood sentry up there, like the skeletons of great birds, and among them walked men in black as small as ants.

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A Game of Thrones - Jon V

"Not everyone," said Halder. "It's the builders for me. What use would rangers be if the Wall fell down?"

The order of builders provided the masons and carpenters to repair keeps and towers, the miners to dig tunnels and crush stone for roads and footpaths, the woodsmen to clear away new growth wherever the forest pressed too close to the Wall. Once, it was said, they had quarried immense blocks of ice from frozen lakes deep in the haunted forest, dragging them south on sledges so the Wall might be raised ever higher. Those days were centuries gone, however; now, it was all they could do to ride the Wall from Eastwatch to the Shadow Tower, watching for cracks or signs of melt and making what repairs they could.

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A Storm of Swords - Jon III

"Mules?" The earless man frowned. "Mules are slow."

"Slow, but more surefooted on the ice. The patrols often ride atop the Wall, and aside from Castle Black, the paths up there have not been graveled for long years. The mules are bred at Eastwatch, and specially trained to their duty."

 

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He had once heard his uncle Benjen say that the Wall was a sword east of Castle Black, but a snake to the west. It was true. Sweeping in over one huge humped hill, the ice dipped down into a valley, climbed the knife edge of a long granite ridgeline for a league or more, ran along a jagged crest, dipped again into a valley deeper still, and then rose higher and higher, leaping from hill to hill as far as the eye could see, into the mountainous west.

A snake impaled in a sword, but...

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"Death comes out of the dragon's mouth," Septon Barth had written in his Unnatural History, "but death does not go in that way."

 

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A Storm of Swords - Jon IV

He had once heard his uncle Benjen say that the Wall was a sword east of Castle Black, but a snake to the west. It was true. Sweeping in over one huge humped hill, the ice dipped down into a valley, climbed the knife edge of a long granite ridgeline for a league or more, ran along a jagged crest, dipped again into a valley deeper still, and then rose higher and higher, leaping from hill to hill as far as the eye could see, into the mountainous west.

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A Game of Thrones - Bran IV

Robb was seated in Father's high seat, wearing ringmail and boiled leather and the stern face of Robb the Lord. Theon Greyjoy and Hallis Mollen stood behind him. A dozen guardsmen lined the grey stone walls beneath tall narrow windows. In the center of the room the dwarf stood with his servants, and four strangers in the black of the Night's Watch. Bran could sense the anger in the hall the moment that Hodor carried him through the doors.

"Any man of the Night's Watch is welcome here at Winterfell for as long as he wishes to stay," Robb was saying with the voice of Robb the Lord. His sword was across his knees, the steel bare for all the world to see. Even Bran knew what it meant to greet a guest with an unsheathed sword.

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A Game of Thrones - Jon IV

"Do you ever find anyone in your dream?" Sam asked.

Jon shook his head. "No one. The castle is always empty." He had never told anyone of the dream, and he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet somehow it felt good to talk of it. "Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream." He stopped, frowning, embarrassed. "That's when I always wake." His skin cold and clammy, shivering in the darkness of his cell. Ghost would leap up beside him, his warmth as comforting as daybreak. He would go back to sleep with his face pressed into the direwolf's shaggy white fur. "Do you dream of Horn Hill?" Jon asked.

What strikes me about the quote mentioned by Tucu is that Benjen describes the Wall as sword and a snake.  You could say a sword without a hilt as Val and the horned lord describes sorcery.

It's also a sword laid flat across the land, something that has a meaning as we see in Robb's confrontation with Tyrion and Jon's description of the Kings of Winter in the crypts.

This suggests to me that the Stark's ancestral sword "Ice" is actually the Wall itself.  It's a sword without a hilt or the Ice Dragon without a rider.

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A Clash of Kings - Bran V

"Osha," Bran asked as they crossed the yard. "Do you know the way north? To the Wall and . . . and even past?"

"The way's easy. Look for the Ice Dragon, and chase the blue star in the rider's eye." She backed through a door and started up the winding steps.

We know from Melisandre that her power is growing at the Wall and so too is Jon's.  She tells him that he can access the power of the Wall if he chooses.  He can become the sword hilt in other words, the rider of the ice dragon.

I think there is a difference between waking dragons from stone which Dany accomplishes and waking the stone dragon which is the business Mel is about with Stannis.   Except that Ice doesn't belong to Stannis, he can't access it's power.  It belongs to Jon  .

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4 hours ago, Tucu said:

I once mentioned that a tower on the Prince's Pass was an odd place to hide considering that it is the main way into Dorne. Daggers everywhere!

I think this is important.  The Pass is aptly named.  I go back to Martin's comments about Hodor from the book "Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon".  He said the meaning was not so much hold the door asto  hold the pass from all foes. 

I think this was what Rhaegar and the Kingsguard were doing at the ToJ.  Holding the pass.  Why?  Because if Rhaegar knew that Aegon was important to the war for the dawn; he would have take steps to safeguard him. 

I think we can assume that Rhaegar had access to Aemon and Oberyn who also studied at the Citadel.  He might even have had contact with the Ghost of High Heart on his many visits to Summerhall. 

We have Ned's comment that he would rather entrust  child to a pit Viper than a Lannister.  Was he thinking about Aegon.  And we have this thought:

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard XV

He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the king as he had been in the flower of his youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting his horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. "Look at us, Ned," Robert said. "Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and me killed by a pig. We won a throne together …"

I failed you, Robert, Ned thought. He could not say the words. I lied to you, hid the truth. I let them kill you.

What does Ned mean by it.  He can't be talking about Cersei and Joffrey.  Robert was still on the hunt when Ned exacts a confession from her, tells her to flee actoss the sea because he is going to tell Robert the truth.

So he must be thinking of something else.  If he struck a deal with Arthur Dayne to conceal the truth of Aegon's existence;  that could be the lie, the truth that Ned kept from Robert.  The one that would kill him in the end when the conspiracy to replace him with Aegon begins.  

Protecting the life of a child may be one of the reasons that Ned considers Arthur Dayne to be the finest knight he has known.  They are on the same page when it comes to murdering children.

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Robert gets his vengeance at the Trident.  Was Ned also seeking vengeance?  Is this why he took 6 good men with him to the ToJ.  Did he mean to have his vengeance and put an end to it?  Is this where Lyanna finally died for him?

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On 7/31/2021 at 3:30 PM, Tucu said:

This quote from Jamie also has some interesting bits:

At the time of the Battle of the Bells Aerys considered Elia a hostage; we are told that Aegon was born in Dragonstone and that Elia and his children where there when Rhaegar "kidnapped" Lyanna. So who moved them to KL and why? And we have this other bit about Elia

Meanwhile Tywin ignored Aerys pleads even as he was probably well informed of the situation by Pycelle. And Varys was still fostering division by pointing traitors everywhere

The various passages quoted although perhaps not individually significant build up a bigger picture than suggested by the R+L=J legend. The abduction of Lyanna may have been the trigger for the rebellion, but it wasn't the cause of it; there was a much bigger game in progress and that has to call into question whether the ballad singers were indeed talking mince.

As for Trouserless Bob: He had finally realized that Robert was no mere outlaw lord to be crushed at whim, but the greatest threat House Targaryen had faced since Daemon Blackfyre. The Bob we're introduced to at the start of the story might well have degenerated into an alcoholic drunk, but back then... so perhaps we ought to listen more closely.

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15 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

As for Trouserless Bob: He had finally realized that Robert was no mere outlaw lord to be crushed at whim, but the greatest threat House Targaryen had faced since Daemon Blackfyre. The Bob we're introduced to at the start of the story might well have degenerated into an alcoholic drunk, but back then... so perhaps we ought to listen more closely.

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard IV

"Your gods have heard you," Ned replied, cool yet polite. "The prince grows stronger every day." He disentangled himself from the eunuch's grip and crossed the room to where Lord Renly stood by the screen, talking quietly with a short man who could only be Littlefinger. Renly had been a boy of eight when Robert won the throne, but he had grown into a man so like his brother that Ned found it disconcerting. Whenever he saw him, it was as if the years had slipped away and Robert stood before him, fresh from his victory on the Trident.

Could it be that Robert was as popular in his youth as Renly is now?

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard VI

"Yet it seems that he was not invited on these rides." Ned was not sure what to make of Renly, with all his friendly ways and easy smiles. A few days past, he had taken Ned aside to show him an exquisite rose gold locklet. Inside was a miniature painted in the vivid Myrish style, of a lovely young girl with doe's eyes and a cascade of soft brown hair. Renly had seemed anxious to know if the girl reminded him of anyone, and when Ned had no answer but a shrug, he had seemed disappointed. The maid was Loras Tyrell's sister Margaery, he'd confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna. "No," Ned had told him, bemused. Could it be that Lord Renly, who looked so like a young Robert, had conceived a passion for a girl he fancied to be a young Lyanna? That struck him as more than passing queer.

Could it be that the match between Lyanna and Robert was also popular at the time; such that Renly hopes to emulate it?

So popular and respected as true steel among the fighting men?

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A Clash of Kings - Jon I

"Aye. I was his man, a Baratheon man, smith and armorer at Storm's End until I lost the arm. I'm old enough to remember Lord Steffon before the sea took him, and I knew those three sons of his since they got their names. I tell you this—Robert was never the same after he put on that crown. Some men are like swords, made for fighting. Hang them up and they go to rust."

"And his brothers?" Jon asked.

The armorer considered that a moment. "Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he's copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day."

 

 

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1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Robert gets his vengeance at the Trident.  Was Ned also seeking vengeance?  Is this why he took 6 good men with him to the ToJ.  Did he mean to have his vengeance and put an end to it?  Is this where Lyanna finally died for him?

Ned's comrades at the ToJ are called his wraiths (in his fever dream?).

Rhaegar and six comrades search for the Knight of the Laughing Tree.

Ned and six wraiths enter the fight at the Tower of Joy.

Ned says: "Now it ends." He gets his vengeance for Lyanna.

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