Rhaegar the Overrated

[astarkchoice]

2 minutes ago, Alester Florent said:

I didn't say he wasn't skilled, in fact I even said that he was!

But he may be less skilled than his reputation as more or less the most fearsome knight in Westeros suggests, because of the other factors.

Yeah hes fearsome but def deserving of his rep 

However that said stylewise i think pre w0t5k there were some dark horses that maybe could beat him!!!!!!

The greatjon: almost as big , minus the headaches and most importantly his son os almost as bigbas him.....meaning unlike ser gregor every day the greatjon gets to spar someone around his size and strength level so hes used to it!

 

Andrik the unsmiling: described as a giant of a man,  towers over vic so cant be much smaller than ser gregor. Depicted as using a heavy battleaxe which is probably better for  heavy armour than a sword esp when 2 big beasts get swinging! His house has a v.steel sword he can borrow for the duel and he doesnt get headaches. We can assume given the prevalence of the finger dance  among ironborn warriors hes probably had to take part thus will be quick/reflex wise too 

 

Strong belwas : disclaimer ONLY if he can be talked  into putting on armour 

[KingAerys_II]

I think he was only strong and brutal, in a duel it's necessary to use the brain, Ser Gregor is ill, he has something similar to gigantism, he has painful headaches and needs milk of poppy, he is not so exceptional, the Hound was able to face him, Sandor loses badly against Prime Robert

[astarkchoice]

1 hour ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I don't think Gregor is that skilled in the traditional sense of the word, but he makes up for it with his size. It's hard to beat a 7 foot ironclad monstrosity no matter who you are. And I don't think Oberyn would have beaten him if he didn't use a spear.

Id say hes probably decently skilled , probably more than most knights given his childhood seems to have just been training and brawling and the odd kill!

[Legion88]

....overrated. This guy died before the series even started and he's still one of the most overHATED characters in the series. This fandom don't know how to be normal about him. People refer to Barristan, Ned, Jorah, etc as unreliable narrators regarding Rhaegar, cause it's really based on nothing but the fact that they don't think of Rhaegar as the cartoon villain fandom wants him to be. George gives us these POVs thinking of this character whose existence is intentionally vague and people are like "well...this doesn't align with what I think, so they have to be wrong". Wtf?

I think a lot of people go into the books with preconceptions of the story and they're unwilling to change their minds.

Imo, i don't think that Rhaegar was perfect or something, but he clearly wasn't the "spawn of satan" and he wasn't a rapist. I think it's clear his relationship with Lyanna was consensual.

[kissdbyfire]

17 minutes ago, Legion88 said:

mo, i don't think that Rhaegar was perfect or something, but he clearly wasn't the "spawn of satan"

I didn’t see anyone claiming Rhaegar is the “spawn of Satan”. The point of the discussion here, as the thread title makes perfectly clear, is that he is overrated. He can still be good, and thought of as amazing; no demonisation there, just plain overrating. 

17 minutes ago, Legion88 said:

and he wasn't a rapist.

Probably not, but it’s simply impossible to know for sure at this point.

17 minutes ago, Legion88 said:

I think it's clear his relationship with Lyanna was consensual.

If you’re neither not George RR Martin nor can see the future there’s just no way for you to state this, let alone claim that it is “clear”. 
 

For my part, I don’t think Rhaegar was a rapist, and I do think his relationship w/ Lyanna was consensual. Still, I can’t be sure of any of that w/o more information.

Edited October 6, 2023 by kissdbyfire

[Legion88]

Mh it seems that some people here claim Rhaegar wasn't exactly a good fighter because he didn't beat Bobby B, the melee King (prime Robert was a monster, y'all)

Again, how exactly this dude is overrated? You all can't even admit he wasn't a fodder lol

Facts are Rhaegar injured Robert so severely he could not campaign after the fight, stated even by Ned. They started out on horseback and ended up on foot, sword versus hammer. It was a good fight :/

 

[KingAerys_II]

Rhaegar and Robert were similar in combat, he had to die for the plot,  he was not perfect, but he wasn't the imbecil some believe he was

Edited October 6, 2023 by KingAerys_II

[Craving Peaches]

1 hour ago, Legion88 said:

but he clearly wasn't the "spawn of satan" an

Who said he was the spawn of satan? Thread is titled 'Rhaegar the Overrated', not 'Rhaegar the Spawn of Satan'.

1 hour ago, Legion88 said:

cause it's really based on nothing but the fact that they don't think of Rhaegar as the cartoon villain fandom wants him to be.

Who wants Rhaegar to be a cartoon villain? Also, I have reasons why I think they would think like that, so saying it is based on nothing but a desire to have Rhaegar be evil is silly. Did you even read the OP?

1 hour ago, Legion88 said:

I think a lot of people go into the books with preconceptions of the story

I read the books without having seen any of the show, I didn't have any idea of who Rhaegar was until I read about him, so I had no preconceptions about anything.

Edited October 6, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[sifth]

Fun fact, before I started coming here, I had no idea Rhaegar was so disliked by the fans of the series. The books honestly make him out to be a pretty alright guy. Ser. Barristan seemed to love him and he's one of the most honorable people in the series.

[kissdbyfire]

19 minutes ago, sifth said:

Ser. Barristan seemed to love him and he's one of the most honorable people in the series.

It seems he’s getting there now, he’s becoming honourable at last. Earlier on in his life he was a skilled & dutiful hypocrite. 

[Lee-Sensei]

1 hour ago, KingAerys_II said:

Rhaegar and Robert were similar in combat, he had to die for the plot,  he was not perfect, but he wasn't the imbecil some believe he was

He died because he challenged a better and more experienced warrior. Rhaegar had his strengths. I don't deny it. But this was Robert's area.

[sifth]

33 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

It seems he’s getting there now, he’s becoming honourable at last. Earlier on in his life he was a skilled & dutiful hypocrite. 

Right, we're suppose to view Barristan as evil as well, despite literally being in the mans head and knowing he's a kind and honorable person. Heck Ned Stark loved the guy, despite both men fighting on opposite sides during the war.

[Alester Florent]

2 hours ago, Legion88 said:

Facts are Rhaegar injured Robert so severely he could not campaign after the fight, stated even by Ned. They started out on horseback and ended up on foot, sword versus hammer. It was a good fight :/

The wound Robert took from Rhaegar wasn't severe. It was a minor, temporary inconvenience. He sent his own maester to tend to Barristan, so he can't have needed serious medical attention, and he was back on the road quickly enough that he arrived in King's Landing soon enough after Ned that they were still (pretty much literally) mopping up the blood in the throne room.

Based on the comparative (lack of) need for rest and recuperation, it seems to have been rather less severe than the wound he took prior to his taking refuge in Stoney Sept, and that still didn't stop him from shagging around the town and killing six men.

[Lee-Sensei]

24 minutes ago, sifth said:

Right, we're suppose to view Barristan as evil as well, despite literally being in the mans head and knowing he's a kind and honorable person. Heck Ned Stark loved the guy, despite both men fighting on opposite sides during the war.

That's the weird thing about Barristan. He generally doesn't do anything personally bad. Definitely not by Westerosi standards. He just stands by and watches it all happen. If Joffrey and Cersei hadn't dismissed him, he'd have almost certainly stayed and served the Lannisters.

On Rhaegar... I definitely don't think Rhaegar's a monster and I think sometimes people undersell his talents, but his actions are hard to defend. He either comes across during the war as selfish, stupid or a dick. Or some combination of the three. For people that like Greek and Roman mythology, the backlash against Rhaegar is kind of similar to the backlash against Paris. That was actually written into the myths with everyone (his family, countrymen and allies, the Greeks and the gods) all expressin contempt for him. That's Rhaegar during the war though. I'm sure that he had successes of his own. He was supposed to be very well read and he was sometimes a really good jouster.

Edited October 6, 2023 by Lee-Sensei

[kissdbyfire]

25 minutes ago, sifth said:

Right, we're suppose to view Barristan as evil as well, despite literally being in the mans head and knowing he's a kind and honorable person. Heck Ned Stark loved the guy, despite both men fighting on opposite sides during the war.

Never mind. Don’t want to derail the thread.

Edited October 6, 2023 by kissdbyfire

[sifth]

27 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Never mind. Don’t want to derail the thread.

Sorry if I came off a bit rude in that last post. Been rather sick this week, so my minds basically been pudding, lol

[kissdbyfire]

22 minutes ago, sifth said:

Sorry if I came off a bit rude in that last post. Been rather sick this week, so my minds basically been pudding, lol

It’s all good. Hope you feel better very soon! 

[SeanF]

WRT Rhaegar, he seems well-regarded, by a lot of people, yet his behaviour seems so hard to defend.

Like most others, I don’t think he raped Lyanna.  But, crowning her Queen of Love and Beauty, and eloping with her were insulting both to his wife, and his vassals.  Doing nothing during the initial stages of the war was recklessly selfish.  And, assuming he married her bigamously, he was setting up a succession battle between his children by Elia, and his children by Lyanna.

[Craving Peaches]

8 hours ago, sifth said:

Been rather sick this week, so my minds basically been pudding, lol

Hope you make a swift recovery 

[StarkTullies]

6 hours ago, SeanF said:

But, crowning her Queen of Love and Beauty, and eloping with her were insulting both to his wife, and his vassals.  Doing nothing during the initial stages of the war was recklessly selfish.  And, assuming he married her bigamously, he was setting up a succession battle between his children by Elia, and his children by Lyanna.

I've been popping in and out of this thread, and though I might not have read all 9 pages of this, I haven't seen any claims of Rhaegar being evil or Satan (and certainly not in the original post).  This is about as "critical" as I've seen about Rhaegar, and I agree with all of it except for the eloping part- which I don't agree or disagree with- because we just don't know yet.

(The rest is a general statement, not a response to Sean F.)

Since this thread is saying that Rhaegar is not evil but simply overrated, the posts (by one prominent poster in particular) saying that he is the greatest because he can fight, he can sing, etc. etc... kind of lends proof that he is overrated.  That is what overrated means: not that he is bad, but just that people claim that he is the greatest great who was ever great when in fact, he was not.  Saying "he is a great fighter" as one of those proofs (and only during jousting, which is not fighting), when he died during the only actual fight he took part in, is a very strange argument.

Quote

"Loras is young," Lady Olenna said crisply, "and very good at knocking men off horses with a stick. That does not make him wise."

I agree with Olenna's viewpoint on the overall relevance of one's jousting skills.  His singing skills are just as irrelevant.