The Incestuous Nature of the Targaryens is What Doomed Them

[Craving Peaches]

@Alester Florent, not directly related to the topic at hand, but where has the anti-peach gone?

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

22 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

Who, exactly, do Cersei and Joffrey get on with?

Joffrey seemed to like the Hound and Littlefinger, at least. 

[Lee-Sensei]

32 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

Who, exactly, do Cersei and Joffrey get on with? They have sycophants, but anyone who actually shows them affection? Cersei has Jaime, and I guess Falyse Stokeworth (though she doesn't like her) and arguably Taena (albeit Taena's motives are suspect)?

Joffrey seems to have no actual friends at all, which is something even Aerys managed. Even Sansa learns to despise him after getting to know him.

I don't think they have any. Not having friends doesn't necessarily mean that you're the problem. Some people just have trouble with that stuff, but Cersei and Joffrey are uniquely toxic people. It's much more likely that people don't get along with them, because they're monstrous people. I'm not going to blame Renly for that. Heck... even Tywin had Pycelle.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Lee-Sensei

[Alester Florent]

11 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

@Alester Florent, not directly related to the topic at hand, but where has the anti-peach gone?

I ate it.

Spoiler

I had been meaning to change the profile picture back after I changed my name back, but only just got round to it.

 

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Alester Florent said:

I ate it.

  Reveal hidden contents

I had been meaning to change the profile picture back after I changed my name back, but only just got round to it.

 

So Team Peach has triumphed then! 

[Alester Florent]

4 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

So Team Peach has triumphed then! 

I've still got my interests page. Just biding my time...

I certainly eat a lot more peaches now than I used to. Seeing your forum handle all the time reminds me to buy them. They are mostly flat peaches though: I find them to be a bit more reliable flavour-wise than the most widely-available round ones.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Alester Florent

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

4 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

So Team Peach has triumphed then! 

I believe it's official now;

 

[Craving Peaches]

5 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

They are mostly flat peaches though: I find them to be a bit more reliable flavour-wise than the most widely-available round ones.

As a peach connoisseur, I agree. The flat ones tend to be sweeter and you usually avoid the bitter taste you can get with dodgy round peaches.

[Odej]

1 hour ago, Lee-Sensei said:

You're just wrong on this one though. Objectively wrong.

I never imagined it would be necessary to explain to someone why Joffrey Baratheon is a monster. Much less why anyone with half a brain would do anything not to trap a beloved family member to him by a marriage.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Odej

[Lee-Sensei]

2 minutes ago, Odej said:

I never imagined it would be necessary to explain to someone why Joffrey Baratheon is a monster. Much less why anyone with half a brain would do anything not to trap a beloved family member to him by a marriage.

Kingslayer stew. 

[Craving Peaches]

11 minutes ago, Odej said:

I never imagined it would be necessary to explain to someone why Joffrey Baratheon is a monster. Much less why anyone with half a brain would do anything not to trap a beloved family member to him by a marriage.

Given I've had to explain how Aerys is a sadist to some people I can't say I'm surprised.

[Alester Florent]

51 minutes ago, Odej said:

I never imagined it would be necessary to explain to someone why Joffrey Baratheon is a monster. Much less why anyone with half a brain would do anything not to trap a beloved family member to him by a marriage.

He seems to get a bit of a pass because of his youth, but he is genuinely one of the most unpleasant characters in the series. Among major characters (i.e. excluding Gregor, Vargo, etc.), I think only Ramsay really surpasses him in cruelty. That Cersei is a moderating influence on him says it all!

[Lee-Sensei]

24 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

He seems to get a bit of a pass because of his youth, but he is genuinely one of the most unpleasant characters in the series. Among major characters (i.e. excluding Gregor, Vargo, etc.), I think only Ramsay really surpasses him in cruelty. That Cersei is a moderating influence on him says it all!

I think that's more of the show than anything. Personally, I think Cersei is worse than Joffrey in the books.

[Daeron the Daring]

1 hour ago, Craving Peaches said:

Given I've had to explain how Aerys is a sadist to some people I can't say I'm surprised.

Well, you really could make the argument that both Joffrey and Aerys should have been lifted from the burden of their own actions. I mean, I know it's not the right setting, but just because society still expected something from them that they simply did not have the capability to fulfill (one for being a fucked up child, the other for being mentally ill) doesn't really makes them capable of holding responsibility for what they were and did.

And don't get me wrong, I hate Joffrey or Aerys when I read what dey do and did. But I can't blame them, and I don't think we should.

3 hours ago, Lee-Sensei said:

You still haven't answered why every other House marries their vassals instead of their sisters.

Mostly the established religious boundaries. 

If you're looking for a real answer tho, you should ask yourself why the Tyrells isolate themselves from the Florents. Because they're the ones to do it among the houses of the Reach. It's because they are their competitors for their status and land-based belongings, along with their societal position in the established hereditary hierarchy.

There isn't an established rule saying that marrying your children off to great houses is haram, but there's a reason why you wouldn't want to hand out claims for smiles to people like Tywin Lannister, altough others may not give a single tought about challenging their overlord based on inherited claims: The perfect example would be Robert, who just couldn't care, to a point that, for example, he probably didn't even notice how he 'stole' Stannis' birthright, and gave it to Renly.

Just as there isn't an established rule saying that every marriage is an alliance, nor that it cannot be weaponized against you. From what I can tell based on the text, nobles were doing nobility stuff when the shitstorm hit the fan, and they got caught up in it. Hoster wasn't seeking allies in the sense you mean it, because he had no reasons to. He or his status wasn't endangered, and he didn't need 60000 men to his own for anything for the foreseeable future, nor afterwards. Nobody's planning in fear of the Crown Prince causing a continent-wide civil war for his heart's desire or anything infinitely bigger than that.

Now of course, we can talk of political alliances, which is very much a thing a noble in peacetime should and would pursue. I don't see a reason why he would do it, but it might just be a 'for reasons' cliché.

Either way, we can't come up with generic rules regarding this stuff, because what the (tactically) good thing is can vary from situation to situation. There may come a time when the strategically right thing for a Tyrell is to marry a Florent, and the Florent in charge just happens to not care about centuries old claims, or stops believing in them, etc.

I'm pretty fucking sure marrying into your vassal's house, into another fellow vassal's house, into your liege's house, and even marrying into your own family was sometimes the right decision to do, other times maybe not so much.

George was skilled enough to create a world that more often than not does not feel static.

7 hours ago, Lee-Sensei said:

Nah. Rhaegar, Lyanna and Aerys need to be blamed for the war. Not Brandon. As far as he was aware, his sister had been kidnapped and was being raped. I'm not going to victim blame him.

So we're not blaming an adult and sane man for threatening the king to kill his son and heir (based on assumptions), but we're blaming a clinically insane person for doing insane shit? 

On 9/11/2023 at 1:19 PM, Alester Florent said:

merely referred to the Targaryen preoccupation with "keeping the blood pure", something which is taken directly from the text itself. 

I don't think anyone's being racist here, but the thing Lord Varys, much more extensively than me is thinking about is that there isn't a metric this "keeping the blood pure" preoccupation (which is fairly common, but not the rule for Targaryens) is working with. Viserys III probably tought of himself as "as pure as it gets", if you were to ask him. The proof of that would be the dragon he rides, but lacking dragons, he'd make this assumption based on his looks, I'm assuming. And I think Daemon Targaryen, Jaehaerys I or Aegon I would think the very same thing, regardless of the much more diverse ethnic background they would have in Viserys' situation.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

1 minute ago, Daeron the Daring said:

And don't get me wrong, I hate Joffrey or Aerys when I read what dey do and did. But I can't blame them, and I don't think we should.

I mean, everybody is ultimately responsible for their own actions.

[Craving Peaches]

1 minute ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Well, you really could make the argument that both Joffrey and Aerys should have been lifted from the burden of their own actions. I mean, I know it's not the right setting, but just because society still expected something from them that they simply did not have the capability to fulfill (one for being a fucked up child, the other for being mentally ill) doesn't really makes them capable of holding responsibility for what they were and did.

And don't get me wrong, I hate Joffrey or Aerys when I read what dey do and did. But I can't blame them, and I don't think we should.

I disagree here, I think from what we see of Aerys he is aware of what he is doing and the effect it will have. I made a more detailed post about it here:

[Daeron the Daring]

39 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I mean, everybody is ultimately responsible for their own actions.

I know, I'm just smokin copium cuz there was this time I was like 8 and I was sleepwalking and I went to the bathroom while sleepwalking because I had to, except that I didn't go to the bathroom, because I went to the kitchen (just one door to the left, they are very close to each other), and then i took a piss on one of the chairs instead of the toilet, and then when I got confronted, I was like: "Mom, it ain't my fault, I was sleepwalking."

But it was my fault, and I'm selfresenting ever since. 

Edited September 12, 2023 by Daeron the Daring

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

Although this is an interesting detail; Joffrey was a minor when he became king, and couldn't rule in his own right until he came of age, which is why Ned, and later Cersei, were appointed as his regents. With that in mind, did he even have the authority to order Ned's execution?

[Craving Peaches]

15 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

The perfect example would be Robert, who just couldn't care, to a point that, for example, he probably didn't even notice how he 'stole' Stannis' birthright, and gave it to Renly.

That's because it wasn't Stannis' birthright, it was Robert's, and therefore Robert's to do with as he pleased. Stannis is a second son who is lucky he got anything (so is Renly). Under normal circumstances, Stannis would have been Robert's castellan or something. Benjen doesn't get his own castle, Garlan only gets one because the Florents rebelled, Loras doesn't get his own castle, Bran is told he will get to hold a castle in Robb's name, there is no discussion of Rickon getting anything, Kevan gets no lands of his own, Tyrion was going to have to make do with his wife's castle, etc.

[Daeron the Daring]

30 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I disagree here

No, I disagree.

15 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

That's because it wasn't Stannis' birthright, it was Robert's, and therefore Robert's to do with as he pleased. Stannis is a second son who is lucky he got anything (so is Renly). Under normal circumstances, Stannis would have been Robert's castellan or something. Benjen doesn't get his own castle, Garlan only gets one because the Florents rebelled, Loras doesn't get his own castle, Bran is told he will get to hold a castle in Robb's name, there is no discussion of Rickon getting anything, Kevan gets no lands of his own, Tyrion was going to have to make do with his wife's castle, etc.

Not how it works. There's the implication that Storm's End, and the overlordship of the Stormlands can't remain royal domains/ titles. 

Under hereditary law, it becomes a case of natural succession. And it's never Robert's to an extent that he can do anything to or with it anyway.

That's the assumption we should make, if we were to take a look at what automatically disinherited certain people in lines of succession in real life.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Daeron the Daring