Best Blood Claim to The Iron Throne: Daenerys, Stannis or (f)Aegon

[Kyoshi]

Assuming the generally accepted Westerosi consensus of Tommen being a son of Robert and the Targaryens having forfeited their claim by exile, I would say the rightful "blood" heir is Tommen followed by Myrcella. And honestly, I much rather prefer Tommen to Staniss (granted that Cersei is shipped off to a place uninhabited by humans and is allowed to live out her days without wreaking further havoc).

Stannis on the throne means Melisandre burning people on a larger scale. again on a personal level, every time Stannis and Mel do the show with her proclaiming him as AA and Stannis unsheathing and parading his sword, I lose some respect for him. Off topic, I know, just had to say it.

[IRON BANK]

Targ blood lines Dany is more than likely closest.

[Faydra]

fAegon is out of the line of succession as he is a Blackfyre. As long as Dany is able to procreate her claim is better than Stannis'. If she dies heirless then the throne goes rightfully to the Baratheons.

[Jankmaster]

Is the local laws of places like Karhold different? Because Alys inherits before older male relatives from the line of her great uncle and his sons. Is it just the iron throne throne that on paper practices absolute agnatic primogeniture? By the way learned all this from CK2 great game with a great GoT mod!

[Maid So Fair]

Daenerys, because fake Aegon is fake. I don't begrudge Robert the right to rebel, but he had no right to really declare himself King and his dynasty should die with him.

[LordStoneheart]

Maid So Fair, love your post.

The Targaryens build the Iron Throne, it is theirs. But Dany will have to haul it back to Valyria because humans have no right to Westeros. Only the Children and the Others have that.

[OldGimletEye]

If you conclude that the rebellion against Aerys was justified, then I don't know how you conclude that the Targs are the rightful rulers of Westeros, unless you are a believer in the theory of Divine Right.

[LordStoneheart]

Honestly, If I can believe in dragons, I can believe in Divine Right.

[Kyoshi]

Is the local laws of places like Karhold different? Because Alys inherits before older male relatives from the line of her great uncle and his sons. Is it just the iron throne throne that on paper practices absolute agnatic primogeniture? By the way learned all this from CK2 great game with a great GoT mod!

I'm wondering the same thing because there are places like Dorne which base succession solely on birth chronology and completely disregard gender. But I've always believed that Daenerys had a better claim than Stannis since she is full-Targ, her parents were siblings and Stannis's blood has been diluted so to speak.

Additionally, I thought 'blood right' also factored names. Daenerys already carries the Targaryen name. Given that the Targaryens were considered something akin to god kings, bowing to neither gods nor men, Daenerys's husband could take her last name thus allowing their children to also take it and continuing the Targaryen name. Then again I could be arguing outside the limits of the disclaimer which nullifies my argument.

[Maid So Fair]

If you conclude that the rebellion against Aerys was justified, then I don't know how you conclude that the Targs are the rightful rulers of Westeros, unless you are a believer in the theory of Divine Right.

Because one King is not an entire dynasty. Robert had a legitimate grievance against Aerys (and possibly Rheagar from his POV) not against the Targaryens as such, who have created the seven kingdoms and ruled them for hundreds of years. He does not even make any changes to the government system, ruling from the same seat, sitting Aegon Targaryen's iron throne, having a Hand and a small council etc. It is even more problematic in his case because he derives his right to rule from being in fact RELATED to Targaryens. Can't have it both ways.

And if we're going with the right of conquest, the fact that his heirs (whether we are talking about Joffrey or Stannis) can barely hold onto the throne since his death triggers every other lord and his cousin into rebellion against the throne you can't really claim that either.

EDIT: Can someone clarify where this no female Targaryen can inherit under any circumstances ever notion comes from? It's certainly not what I got from reading TPATQ as Aegon and Rheanyra are sieblings with the same degree of relation to the old King. I simply took the ending to mean that the succession laws were brought more in line with the rest of Westeros, where a son comes before a daughter anyway. I would include male heirs within the immediate family (brother, uncle, MAYBE 1st degree cousin) who are legitimate Targs excluding females with slightly better claim but I think saying they can't inherit ever is a stretch. Am I missing something?

[OldGimletEye]

Because one King is not an entire dynasty. Robert had a legitimate grievance against Aerys (and possibly Rheagar from his POV) not against the Targaryens as such, who have created the seven kingdoms and ruled them for hundreds of years. He does not even make any changes to the government system, ruling from the same seat, sitting Aegon Targaryen's iron throne, having a Hand and a small council etc. It is even more problematic in his case because he derives his right to rule from being in fact RELATED to Targaryens. Can't have it both ways.

And if we're going with the right of conquest, the fact that his heirs (whether we are talking about Joffrey or Stannis) can barely hold onto the throne since his death triggers every other lord and his cousin into rebellion against the throne you can't really claim that either.

So you believe that the Targs are entitled to rule Westeros forever then? No matter what they do? Sorry, I don't believe that. I think that notion is utter crap.

And I am not going strictly with a pure theory of "right of conquest". That is why I specified "if you believe the rebellion was justified". Without the qualifier of "justification" you invite potential instability because normally a peaceful succession is desirable.

The bottom line is that Aerys was a Targ king. His actions were responsible for creating the rebellion against him. He was rightfully removed from power. When he was, the Targaryen claim to the throne was ended. The Targs can't come back and now say, "Oh Aerys doesn't count, please give us back the throne now."

[Kyoshi]

Maid So Fair, I think that they can inherit. This is why the Great Council was necessary. If female Targaryens couldn't inherit then the Great Council would not have been necessary and Aemon would not have been given a choice in becoming king, he would have just inherited by all the laws. It's just that they prefer that females not inherit given that they lose their names so to speak. The same reason Robb didn't want Sansa to inherit Winterfell: because she was Lady Lannister and no longer Sansa Stark.

Which makes Stannis's claim weaker given that he descended from a female "heir" who was never truly an heir. My understanding is that they try and keep the inheritance line as straight as possible, avoiding as many branches of the family tree as possible. Stannis came from a branch and Dany from a straighter line.

[Pigeon Pie]

Daenerys. Also I want to see someone try to tell her she can't have it because she's a woman. Good luck with that.

[devilrob6]

Stannis, because he has more Baratheon blood than Aegon or Dany.

[RuthBolton]

Stannis was next in line to the most recent king, who was accepted by Maesters for some joyful combination of bloodlines and conquest.

Daenerys is too busy having wet dreams about Daario while she roams the wilderness on the back of great Drogon.

FAegon, well, there's a big F there for a reason.

[Nictarion]

Daenerys. Also I want to see someone try to tell her she can't have it because she's a woman. Good luck with that.

I think her reply would be along the lines of Dracarys!

[Littlestfinger]

"Right by conquest" does not create legitimacy. What creates legitimacy in a society like Westeros is nothing but time.

Every noble house in post-conquest England, including the royal family, was established 100% by conquest - either at the time of the Norman conquest, or by being granted by someone whose claim began with the Norman conquest.

As of 1067 William had no legal right to sit on the throne. His right was purely by virtue of having the most powerful army. He could claim whatever he wanted about Edward the Confessor's desire for the succession but under English law Harold and only Harold had any right to claim the throne.

However by 1485 there was no one in England who questioned the absolute certainty that the only person who could legitimately claim the throne was the one with the best blood claim all the way down from William. Why? Because the Anglo-Normans had been in charge for 400 years. If some joker had shown up with a pedigree showing him to be a linear descendant from Alfred the Great or Harold II, he would have been laughed at. In 1067 such a person would not have been laughed at even though there's no *legal* reason the claim would be any less valid in 1485 than in 1067. And back to the Tudors, Henry VII's decendants were the unquestioned kings mostly because they had killed off almost everyone with a better claim.

(William and Henry were also both smart enough to marry the woman with the strongest claim from the old house and so merge the claims.)

That's where the Targaryens are in Westeros. Any claim to the Iron Throne has to derive from them because they've been in charge for centuries. How Aegon the Conqueror established that dynasty is irrelevant. No one in generations has ever known or even conceived of a king on the Iron Throne whose claim did not ultimately derive from Aegon, it simply isn't imaginable. Just like no one in Tudor England could conceive of a king whose claim did not descend from the Norman conquest even though the Norman conquest had no legal justification whatsoever. That's why Robert had the better claim over Ned even though Ned and Jon Arryn and Hoster Tully all commanded more troops - of the rebels, he had the best claim through the Targaryens. And that's why Robert is so set on exterminating the last Targs. He knows that as long as any of them are left his claim, and his heirs' claim, is only as good as his army.

It's the same with the Starks, of course. Why was Robb KitN and not Roose Bolton or anyone else? Because an ancestor of his thousands of years ago had knocked all his rivals over the head and made himself king by his sword. But that doesn't mean anyone could take that claim from Robb by "right of conquest". Roose did not become the legitimate Lord of Winterfell and KitN by killing Robb. He has no legitimate claim to those titles and doesn't even try to assert one. That's why Ramsey has to marry fArya to be Lord of Winterfell. The closest Roose can ever come is to be appointed Warden of the North since that appointment is at the discretion of the Iron Throne.

Would anyone seriously try to claim that Roose had gained the legal right to call himself KitN by right of conquest? Or that anyone else would have taken such a claim seriously? The KitN (if there was one) could never be anyone but a Stark as long as any Stark was left alive, no matter who killed whom or won what battle or war. But that Stark legitimacy was based on nothing but having held that position for such a long time.

So"right of conquest" is a red herring. From a legal perspective there's no such thing. What there is is a "right by my ancestors conquering 300 years ago", which may seem the same to modern eyes, but in a feudal society is absolutely not. And you cannot extinguish the previous dynsaty's claim by conquest. The only way to do that is to either kill off every single person from the previous dynasty, or hold the throne by naked force for so long that no one can remember thinking it could be any other way.

[LordStoneheart]

OGE, when you get down to entitlements, rights, and ruling, I'm pretty sure no one has the "right" or is entitled to rule over anyone. As much as I hate the expression and as horrible as it is, Might makes right. The strong ones grab the rule and people follow. When power is abused, sometimes its thrown out. The best case scenario is Targs taking back the throne and in a couple of hundred years they move towards a constitutional democracy and soon Queen Aelizaebyth II abdicates the throne, elections are held, and computers are invented.

but we don't have that kind of time. We have the medieval era GRRM has given us, and the Targs have the same amount of "right" as any other family. They just have the benefit of being badasses and much better than the Baratheons who have that icky Durrendon blood. :cool4:

[The Marquis de Leech]

From what I've gathered, Westeros has an absolute agnatic succession law, i.e. only males can inherit. It doesn't matter whether or not Stannis is a Baratheon, he's still the next in line to the Iron Throne. It's like Dany doesn't even exist. I'll also write off Aegon because of his unproven legitimacy, and my personal opinion that he's a Blackfyre. The Blackfyres have zero claim to the Iron Throne, seeing as how they were disinherited and exiled after their unsuccessful rebellions.

It doesn't matter how you spin it - both by blood and by law, Stannis is the rightful King of Westeros.

If we're dealing with the Baratheon claim, you are correct. If we're dealing with the Targaryen claim, Stannis' claim is through the female line - if Daenerys gets excluded, so does he.

[Kyoshi]

If we're dealing with the Baratheon claim, you are correct. If we're dealing with the Targaryen claim, Stannis' claim is through the female line - if Daenerys gets excluded, so does he.

Exactly. Excluding females simply because they are female actually damages Stannis's claim more than it does Dany's.