#ASoiaf meta

[rainhadaenerys]

Barristan's thoughts on Rhaegar and Daenerys

[goodqueenaly]

What do you think of Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen? I specifically ask about their political attitudes toward Daemon, Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra's children, their own children (Laenor and Laena), etc.

Corlys is a character I like; but I see him acting out of ambition rather than love. But I wonder how far his ambition has gone: did he suspect that Daemon killed Laenor? Did he really like Rhaenyra's children? Did he just support Rhaenyra in power or was he also afraid of her and what she could do to him?

These questions I also extend to Rhaenys. I feel like we got little from her (And she wasn't the only one, as F&B has a lot of issues), so it's hard to say to what extent she supported Rhaenyra because she was also a woman who had her rights taken away, or if it was just out of ambition (or both).

As I know that Fire and Blood has a lot of problems (even more in the Dance), I understand if I can't do a great analysis on these two. But I would love to know what do you think about them and their attitudes!

Sorry for any grammatical errors and thanks in advance for your response!

First off, and the ask somewhat identifies this issue, one of the major problems in relying on Fire and Blood to understand the personal feelings of any of the characters within that book is that the very nature of Fire and Blood severely limits such analysis. Because we are reading about Corlys and Rhaenys (and everyone else in the roughly century and a half of history the book covers) from the ostensibly objective historian perspective of Gyldayn, a figure who lived and wrote more than a century after Corlys and Rhaenys died, we can only experience these characters at arm’s length. We are not in their heads, nor are we in the heads of any individuals directly interacting with these figures; we can only glean elements of their personality via those historical anecdotes Gyldayn chooses to share, quite the difficult prospect. Although GRRM, via Gyldayn, does sometimes invent more personal moments for his characters despite the absence of in-universe sources for such moments or the practical implausibility of Gyldayn knowing about them - think of, for example, Cregan Stark’s conversation with Alysanne Blackwood - many figures are left frustratingly vague in terms of their internal characterization. 

Consequently, Corlys and Rhaenys are, along with (albeit to varying extents) every other character in F&B, something of an enigma, at least in terms of personal thoughts and feelings. Just as I once discussed with Daemon Targaryen (in the question of his love for Rhaenyra as well as his feelings toward her “Velaryon” sons), there is very little to extrapolate from the (themselves limited) actions we have taken by Corlys and Rhaenys to determine how they personally felt about many of the people and events around them. Corlys, so far as we know, never reacted to the rumor (I think true rumor) that Daemon had his son Laenor murdered (and indeed, given his open bounty on Qarl Correy, I don’t know that Corlys ever knew or suspected as much); moreover, even if Corlys and/or Rhaenys were part of the “court and commons” outraged by the news of Daemon and Rhaenyra’s hasty marriage, this anger could well have been simply the expression of grieving parents shocked at the indecently quick remarriages (to one another) of their sometime children-in-law, and not necessarily also a reflection of any particular suspicion of Daemon. Likewise, both Corlys and Rhaenys obviously acknowledged Rhaenyra as queen following the death of Viserys I - but whether they did so solely because either or both wanted to see their “Velaryon” grandchildren on the Iron Throne, or also (and not mutually exclusively) because either or both wanted to support the claims of a female ruler in lieu of Rhaenys not becoming queen in her own right, is unanswerable. 

On top of this, I think it’s important to note that for Westerosi aristocratic society, love and political ambition aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. This is a point I made when talking about whether Ned and Catelyn would have allowed their children to marry for love alone, and it bears repeating here; even the parents (like Ned and Catelyn) who most clearly care for and love their children are operating in a socio-political system that mandates marriages be made for the advantage of their dynasties, not simply the dictates of their hearts. Rhaenys and/or Corlys can well have loved their children while also using their marriage arrangements for political advantage - and indeed, may well have seen the latter as an expression of the former, with either or both parents working for the advancement of their children as a way of showing their care for their children. To be clear, I don’t want to say every politically ambitious parent in Westeros is necessarily a loving one - Randyll Tarly had clear ambitions with both of his sons’ would-be or actualized marriage arrangements and is simultaneously a horrible human being, and that goes even more so for Tywin Lannister - only that I don’t think we as readers should automatically equate “ambitious” with “unloving”.  

In that context, I think Corlys and Rhaenys are a bit of a mixed bag. The Velaryons certainly seem to have been willing to betroth Laena at a very young age, first to King Viserys and then to the son of the Sealord of Braavos - and in at least the former case, the apparent expectation that Laena would give birth to children sooner rather than later. I’m not saying that I consider Corlys or Rhaenys equivalent to, say, Unwin Peake (and his (unnamed!) daughter) - but just as I criticized that mega-creep Rodrik Arryn for not looking after his own daughter Aemma’s welfare in marrying her off at eleven to Prince Viserys himself, I think there is room for criticism of any Westerosi parent, Corlys and Rhaenys included, who participates in the disturbing pattern of shoving their daughter into marriage and childbirth at an extremely young age. Likewise, that Corlys and Rhaenys wished to have Laenor marry Rhaenyra despite Laenor’s own, almost certainly apparent unwillingness to do so is a reflection of their participation in that same socio-political system of dynastic continuity, and the unfairness inherent to that system; Laenor was no Loras Tyrell-esque third son whose elder brothers could wed and breed (or, indeed, a Daeron I-esque eldest son who could outsource the production of an heir to a younger brother), but the only male heir of a couple whose royal ambitions predated Laenor’s own birth. Still, while I hesitate to give Corlys and Rhaenys real praise for not marrying Laena to the Sealord’s son, given that the match seemed to be as politically hollow as it was personally disastrous, but I would like to imagine that Laena was more pleased to marry Daemon than she would have been that wastrel Sealord’s son (as indeed, her marriage to Daemon does not seem to have been facially unhappy); in that light, perhaps we can give a crumb of credit to the Velaryons for matching Laena with a more personally suitable husband. Too, I do think it’s worth noting a certain sense of fondness Corlys seems to have had, perhaps less to Rhaenyra’s elder sons as individuals as much as toward their identities as specifically Velaryons: when Jacaerys loftily declared that “[o]nly Targaryens ride dragons" (emphasis in original), Corlys supposedly  “grumbled at this, insisting that the three boys were Velaryons, yet he smiled as he said it, with pride in his voice”. 

Ultimately, and frustratingly, so much of Corlys and Rhaenys as characters is left to the imaginations of readers. Unless (and probably not until) GRRM writes a novella in their POV or interacting directly with them, they remain at arm’s length, sketched rather than fleshed out as personalities.

(Once again, this is not about That Other Show and please do not use this post to talk about That Other Show.)

[sarcasticsweetlara]

Aellisar Targaryen would be raised by Daemon, Rhaenyra and of course a wet nurse who would nurse him as a newborn.

Rhaenyra would tell him about Laena, her bravery and boldness.

Aellisar would be a mini-Laena, him being the image of his mother would make his father, stepmother and grandparents tear up whenever Aellisar did something Laena used to do often or said she wanted to do 🥹❤️

Aellisar would support his stepmother and she would give him a keep of his own for when reached to adulthood, and he would be there to guide his youngest siblings

Had Daemon and Laena's son survived

No one ever thinks about how things would have been if Daemon and Laena's son had survived, and it's interesting because many things would be completely different had this boy survived -because yes people, in the book their son was born but he was deformed and died within an hour-.

Let's say Daemon and Laena call him Aellisar -they wanted to create a new name- before Laena getting her fever and dying (as it actually happened in the book).

Daemon would have an heir, and as in the book Baela and Rhaena were four when this happened, and in the show their age difference would not be as big as many other pairs, he could easily marry his firstborn daughter to his firstborn son as is the tradition of the Valyrians. I think Daemon would still marry Rhaenyra as a way of getting close to the Iron Throne and protecting his children from the Greens, and of course, because he loves her, but in this case he would need to be more convinced, the actual reassurance from Rhaenyra that she nor her allies will ever try to harm Aellisar as he unlike his cousins would be the only boy with both Targaryen and Velaryon blood.

Rhaenys and Corlys would be overjoyed of finally having "another" more like the only grandson of their own, and would love to teach him about the Velaryon heritage of his mother, Corlys would probably think about making Aellisar his actual heir but he would still have problems with the fact Aellisar carries the name Targaryen while Luke is a Velaryon, though only in name because his strong looks obviously do not come from Corlys nor Rhaenys.

Now going back to Daemon and Rhaenyra, the time lap in which Aegon the Younger and Viserys II are small infants would make even more sense, it's true we could say that in the show they took the time to make Baela, Rhaena, Jace, Luke and Joff feel comfortable around each other, but if Aellisar is still alive, Daemon and Rhaenyra would also need to raise and be there for him in those first years, especially since his mother is not there. As Baela would marry Jace, and Rhaena to Lucerys, they would need to find a suitable bride for Aellisar, possibly an heiress since he would be the firstborn son of Daemon and they would surely want to give him a wife who would be perfect for him and also to keep him from wanting to claim Driftmark.

And the greens would be terrified, here it is a boy with pure valyrian blood with claims both to Driftmark and the Iron Throne who is in the team with the most dragons, sooner rather than later Aellisar will have a dragon and will be a competent fighter.

[ladystoneboobs]

so, one aspect of catelyn which i think is underrated (certainly the biggest adaptation loss which nobody talks about) is her, let's say superstitiousness, or better yet, let's call it genre-savviness, being one of the few adult characters open to magic and the supernatural in this fantasy world. we first meet her in the godswood, home of gods which are not truly hers, yet she is still very aware of their power. when she and ned talk of the deserter he killed, he hopes he won't have to go with the nw to deal with mance rayder, but she has even more fear of that idea bc there are worse things beyond the wall than just wildlings. ned scoffs and says she's been listening to old nan too much, but she's right. we already know from the prologue that she's right! and here she is, understanding the genre of their world better than her husband, who was actually born and spent his earliest years in this northern land of deep magic, listening to old nan's stories. same with the direwolves, where she was uncomfortable with them at first, but later believed in them as guardians from the old gods even after robb had lost his own faith. and once again, we know she's right even if she doesn't know the evidence to back up her instincts, bc summer and shaggydog did not fail bran and rickon and robb was almost certainly a warg like his brothers. (perhaps making it more fitting that she's the one brought back as a fantasy vengeance monster, not ned and robb, the most unbelieving dead starks.) and in her 2nd agot chapter, everyone focuses on her ambition in wanting ned to agree to the hand job (pun intended) and sansa's betrothal, and while she does recognize the value of their daughter being a future queen more than ned does, that's only her stated argument bc she thinks it's rational enough for ned to listen to. (if ambitious matchmaking were as important to her as to her father she never would have made those frey betrothals fandom loves to blame her for.) in her own head there's a deeper urge driving her. she keeps thinking of the dead direwolf with antlers in its throat, an omen which filled her with dread from the first she heard of it, before robert's arrival, and thinking of it again is what makes her desperate to convince ned not to refuse robert. she had to make him see. and really, she's not wrong, as jon snow would say. the dead direwolf was an omen of ned and robert getting each other killed. it's just one of those misread portents, with no way of knowing the danger to ned was in his loyalty to robert, not conflict with him. BUT the next time she's dealing with baratheons, she knows exactly what she's talking about. it's catelyn, not brienne, who sees the shadow slaying renly, and explains that it was stannis who did that through some dark magic. with no way of knowing how it was achieved and no prior expectation that such a thing were ever possible, she realizes with no hestitation that stannis was guilty and that his red witch was capable of pulling this off somehow. really, the only instinct of the supernatural she's wholly wrong about is her insistence that varys gathered his knowledge through some dark enchantment. however, though that might offend varys, given his own personal experience with a sorcerer, i'd say it's a reasonable assumption without knowing the dude had children moving through walls everywhere like oversized rodents. and imo it just shows she had a healthy respect and awe for varys's power which most other characters lack.

oh, oh, and let's not forget that she also believed in the curse of harrenhal, from her own childhood and the stories old nan told her kids. "and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and cursed. 'I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of that keep,' Catelyn admitted." sure, that wasn't enough to save robb, but he did not die from the curse of harrenhal. that doom was meant for his enemies from tywin lannister to roose bolton.

[winterprince601]

honestly, i don't blame anyone for not making the connection between rhaegar targaryen and jon snow. they are such different guys to me. you could organically stumble upon rhaegar playing a silver harp in a clearing in the woods, silently weeping into the flowing waters of a crystalline stream. jon is the teenage manager of a fast food chain who sometimes shows up to work dripping wet because he doesn't own an umbrella.

[knightingale]

The "Sansa reminds Sandor of his sister" motive that some people try to hitch to his character really just flies in the face of his actual attachments to her, doesn't it? Sansa reminds Sandor of himself. He sees the little boy who used to love knights in this girl who's been swept up by the same romanticism. He sees his abuser in her abusers, the much larger knight(s) beating on the helpless child. He sees how she is betrayed by every level of authority that should have saved her and remembers his father's neglect and Tywin and Robert's apathy for Gregor's crimes. He's protective of Sansa because he was Sansa.

And GRRM's design, that one of the strongest warriors in the series, a fearsome and cynical 6'8" guy who's "muscled like a bull" and has the face of death itself, sees himself in this soft and effeminate teen girl, and empathizes with her because he was an abuse victim too, is INFINITELY more compelling than "Oh yeah I bet she just reminds him of his sister," who he's never mentioned and who we know literally nothing about. Way to unnecessarily water down a character, you couldn't have ignored the black and white text more efficiently if you tried.

[meanlikeachild]

oh nothing, just thinking about how Robb chose duty over love when he refused to trade Jamie for Sansa and Arya and got killed and how Jon chose love over duty when he was going to desert the night watch to go save his little sister from her abusive husband and he too got killed. Theres just no winning, whatever you chose.

[readorsigh]

I die a little inside every time asoiaf fans don't know what colonialism is or use the word colonialism to describe every single military takeover or conquest that has ever happened.

[qyburn-in-the-black-cells]

no actually, rhaenyra hearing i’m a bastard from both her eldest sons and being unable to reassure them is so painful. luke might’ve couched the statement in insecurity about his abilities which she can soothe but there’s no way “it should’ve gone to ser vaemond” would’ve come out if he believed he was legitimate. with jace she says nothing because there’s nothing she can say. like alicent has nothing to say to aegon other than “you imbecile.” personal and political lives are one and the same in westeros. alicent first fails her children in the personal. rhaenyra first fails in the political.

[drakaripykiros130ac]

I saw someone asking why Alicent Hightower and Criston Cole seem to be getting more hate than Joffrey Baratheon or Ramsay Bolton ever did.

The answer to that question is very simple.

Joffrey and Ramsay were just cartoonishly evil, so to speak. They were fun to watch and read about sometimes. They made good villains, and they knew that they were villains (never attempting to hide it).

Alicent and Cole (and Otto as well), on the other hand, are the kind of people you meet in real life as well. The kind of people you absolutely can’t stand for their false piety, their hypocrisy, their gold digging, their double-standards, their constant judgmental attitude, and cruel intentions.

In other words:

Joffrey and Ramsay are TV/book villains.

Alicent, Otto and Cole are real life villains.

[angelwingtrap]

A bird of suspiciously human-like sentience and symbolic dreams have been trying to get Jon’s attention RELENTLESSLY for 5 books straight and he is utterly clueless.

Meanwhile Theon has one (1) divine experience and is like “ohh I see there’s some shit going on here…the gods have plans for me…the ravens and the trees speak…they know my name…wow there sure a lot of ravens in the heart tree today…I’ll take the cue from the tree and find strength in myself to become Theon again to fufill my purpose”

[jozor-johai]

Because the concept of "historical accuracy" gets brought up in regards to ASOIAF despite it being a fantasy series and therefore not requiring historical accuracy, I think it's really worth realizing the degree and manner in which GRRM is drawing from history. He consults historical texts to be sure, but what he seems to focus on is how the style of older historical texts delivers these tales as stories, and how much hearsay makes it into the documents.

GRRM likes stories, more than history for its own sake, which makes sense; he's a storyteller. This appreciation is how we get Fire & Blood, plenty of attention to tales told rather than representative history.

Emblematic of this is his response to his inspiration for Stannis: GRRM says that Stannis is inspired by Tiberius Caesar, but he qualifies that this is "in some part Tiberius from history, but to a greater extent specifically Tiberius from the TV series 'I, Claudius'" (my paraphrasing). He's open with the fact that, rather than trying to mirror history, GRRM is drawing inspiration from other stories and media about history.

And so we should not understand ASOIAF as a fantasy filter over a historical framework, we should understand ASOIAF as building on and responding to stories first, both fantasy and history—and especially where the two get confused.

So when people complain that his feudal model is more rooted in pop-history and has little actual functionality, I think that's fine; perhaps it's even the point, whether GRRM intends it to be or not. ASOIAF is not the real medieval era, but rather has roots in the fantastic way that medieval aesthetics have been developed.

This is also applicable to his oft-cited inspiration for the series as a whole structure, the War of the Roses. GRRM frequently says that the War of the Roses was the single biggest influence, but lately I've been wondering if what he really means is that the Henry VI + Richard III Shakespeare tetralogy is the biggest influence, because in truth the Shakespearean parallels we find often feel more informative for the text of ASOIAF than the strictly historical comparisons.

[naggascradle]

thank god for elden ring honestly because its really busted my eye open for grrm's thing for dualities in his writing. like you cant make me look at radagon & marika's dual natures and then have me turn back around and look at a series literally titled a song of ice and fire and not start noticing how much he plays this parallelism game here. the knights of the vale behind their gates of the moon to the dornishmen in sunspear. the dothraki and ironborn as cultures built on pillaging off of others while the dothraki way fears the sea and where horses cannot travel, the ironborn dislike being tethered to the shores for too long, or their shared aversion to spilling blood as a spiritual belief leading them to find ways to kill in a much more brutal fashion. the titular icy other who shall never be named to rhllor the lord of light and fire. the last children of the forest finally found so far north as the last dragons are hatched in the known world. robb stark has the world in his hands and loses it all for a nobody named jeyne. theon greyjoy who has nothing left and yet saves a nobody named jeyne in order to regain what little self he can. the ice covered wall to keep the wights out to the hot burning sea that holds the doom of valyria. you take the black and you take the white its all the same vows to guard the realm or guard the monarch, never have a family, but the difference is a matter of prestige and location. the blood of old valyrians being dragonlike and few of them left with an almost ethereal nature to them vs the blood of the first men passing down the chance to have the ability to warg and be connected with nature itself. following with that the exile of the last targaryens and distrust of their "mad" nature despite formerly being desired & seen as godlike, compared to the first men's descendants being mostly wildlings who are shunned and kept away from most of westeros. there's really nothing i love more than a good parallel

[rainhadaenerys]

From time to time, I see some people argue that Dany can't be Azor Ahai because Azor Ahai was a man who killed his wife and such a character can't be considered a hero. So Dany couldn't be Azor Ahai because she is a hero and because such a feminist character like Dany can't be associated with Azor Ahai.

I agree that Dany is a hero, and I agree that Azor Ahai killing his wife is not the most feminist story. But I disagree with the idea that this means Dany isn't Azor Ahai, because literally all the foreshadowing points to her, she fulfills every aspect of the prophecy. Just because we as readers might think there's a moral dissonance in Dany being Azor Ahai, doesn't mean that she isn't. Whether we as readers might not like her being Azor Ahai, whether we think it's not feminist for Dany to be Azor Ahai, it doesn't change the fact that GRRM wrote all the clues pointing to her.

Also, while some people may argue that it's not feminist for Dany to be Azor Ahai because the original Azor Ahai killed his wife, other people might argue that Dany being Azor Ahai is a feminist subversion, because everybody expects the prophesied hero to be a man.

[ladystoneboobs]

imo one of the biggest proofs of sansa's character growth post-agot (which seems to be overlooked) is this, where grrm makes sure we know how her perspective of the trident incident has indeed shifted. why else even say this? it's not what the tyrells wanted to know, they asked about joff's treatment of her in particular, and "he lied about the butcher's boy" means nothing without context (and even if she said the lannisters used that lie to justify killing mycah, i doubt olenna, at least, would care). but for sansa atp, joffrey's sins against mycah are worth remembering and reporting as his first crime (known to her), that incident is now recognized as evidence of joff's montrosity, the wrongs committed against mycah by joffrey personally (as in not even his death) are on par with sansa losing her wolf and being beaten by the kg. sure, she still has some classism remaining, but to say she cares nothing for the smallfolk, and is still the same girl disgusted by mycah's smellyness, who later repeated joffrey's lie about him weeks after the fact and blamed arya for lady's death more than joffrey, that's just demonstrably untrue.

[winterprince601]

unfortunately for jon snow, the role of "dead girl haunting the narrative" is already occupied by his mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, grandmother and step mother x2 so he's going to have to be forcibly resurrected :/