#I’ve not seen a single person besides illiterate tg stans using that as a topic point

[danyseastar]

On the topic of Rhaenyra having bastards, I think it’s pretty obvious that if she was going to have to have bastards she’d need to find a man who was willing to have his kids passed off as another man’s and not be a snitch to that fact. It would also need to be someone who could be around her constantly without drawing suspicion. As her sworn shield, Harwin wasn’t a terrible choice to fulfill those exact needs. Rhaenyra was just unlucky in the looks department, something she had no control over and overall didn’t matter. There was no way to prove that her children weren’t Laenor’s, due to paternity tests not magically existing during that time. The definition of bastard is a child born to parents who are not wed to each other, with no legal father (and before someone pops up with ‘Actually!! They’d have to be proclaimed bastards to be legitimized!’ I am begging you to pick up a history book). Her children are trueborn, they were born during her marriage to Laenor and legally he is their father because he claimed them as his. One could spend their time arguing semantics over the matter, but it would be a waste of time.

Her children’s last name is Velaryon, not Waters, like it should be in canon if they were indeed bastards. They live and die as the trueborn children between Rhaenyra and Laenor. Bastardy is considered to be a legal status during that time, not a state of being. One either is a bastard at birth or is not a bastard at birth. Contrary to what a few in the fandom believe nobody besides Alicent and her direct ilk viewed them as bastards and therefore undeserving of their station. Even Septon Eustace refutes all of these claims, and he makes it very clear throughout his testimony that he HATES Rhaenyra. It was a tactical move by the immediate members of the Green faction to sully and ruin Rhaenyra’s reputation (something used time and time again during the medieval days because it was the easiest way to take down a woman vying for power), to prove that she was unworthy of the throne as opposed to the candidate they wanted crowned. It didn’t work, considering most of the houses supported Rhaenyra over Aegon despite these rumors.

Rhaenyra’s ‘bastard’ heir, Jacaerys Velaryon, was mourned deeply by members of both Team Black and Team Green and heralded by many as worthy of the Iron Throne, so please, continue spewing your biased rhetoric of the Greens being justified in starting an entire civil war, plunging the realm into chaos, over Rhaenyra having supposed bastards, when that never happened. The rumors didn’t matter. No one cared. The realm was not plunged into war because of them, it was because of Team Green’s lust and greed for power. The entirety of those rumors is a red herring. In all honesty, the only reason I believe GRRM made those boys potentially bastards is to prove to the reader that being worthy to rule does not rely on whether one is trueborn. Aegon was trueborn and unworthy to rule. Jacaerys was rumored to not be trueborn and he was worthy. It’s not GRRM’s fault that some individuals who consume his stories aren’t intelligent enough to understand that.