#failed robert's rebellion

[unseentravler]

Fic of the week

283 AC.

Rhaegar takes an uneasy seat on the Iron Throne.

His daughter has been born, accepted willingly by his wife, who stares down on her with kindness despite the whispers. The Usurper has been driven off to Essos, fleeing with the death of his so-called beloved. His father is dead.

He's gotten what he wanted-

So why does he feel so empty?

-

Amidst the red sands of Dorne, a She-wolf breathes her last, and a prophecy is fulfilled.

Visenya grows up knowing the love of her mother, Elia, the absence of her mother, Lyanna, and the cold indifference of her father, Rhaegar. And dreams of green eyes and black scale. With the Targaryen dynasty weaker than it has been since the Dance, enemies in the west, and a looming threat in the north, fate finds itself nestled firmly between the teeth of monsters as they scrape the land anew

This is the best GOT I have ever read. It's a fascinating take on a common AU, with fantastic characterization and storytelling, especially when it comes to Robert Baratheon. It is currently ongoing and updates regularly.

10/10 Highly recommend.

[la-pheacienne]

Continuing my post about Jaime and Rhaegar’s respective roles in the sack of KL, let’s talk about Jaime and Rhaegar’s last conversation which I didn’t mention in that post and it deserves its own analysis. I find it extremely funny how both (some) Lannister stans and (some) Targ stans seem to think that the last convo between Rhaegar and Jaime was actually like this :

"Jaime, a sack is about to happen very soon. Elia and my kids are in a high risk of getting brutally murdered inside the very capital by the orders of your father who has ghosted us for some time but is deep down an enemy planning all of this in secret. Meanwhile, my father is planning to blow up the entire city any minute now because reasons. I’m leaving you here, alone, to take care of all this and keep all these people, my wife, two kids, father and the people of the city, safe from harm. If you fail to do any of that at any point, you’re incompetent, a traitor and a coward. Now I have to leave to do my thing with the others, don’t forget your duty and your vows, bye".

While it was actually like this :

"Jaime, there’s a war, we are in a pretty tight position and I gotta go to battle taking some men with me. Unfortunately my father wants to keep you close because he believes Tywin will not turn against him this way, and he’s kind of insane so there is nothing we can do about it without risking an even bigger outburst. Give me some time to get out of this mess, and then I’ll come back and we’ll fix this. All this will be over soon, bye".

So the first reading of Jaime and Rhaegar’s last convo completely misses the mark in many ways.

Some Lannister stans are screaming crying throwing up that Rhaegar left a literal cHiLD with all tHiS rEsPoNSIbILIty he doesn’t give a FUCK about anyone how dare he what kind of tHOUGhT PrOCesS is that !!!! Some Targ stans say that Rhaegar gave specific orders to Jaime to protect his father, wife, kids and city against multiple and opposite threats and thus honor his vows, and Jaime failing to do that means he is basically a traitor and a coward. And incompetent.

None of this is correct, because this isn’t what Rhaegar asked him to do, at all. Rhaegar did not know, could not know, could not possibly conceive or imagine or suspect that a sack was about to happen at the orders of Tywin no less and that his family was in immediate danger in.the.very.capital. Nobody.knew. That is why this sack is so horrifying. Also he may have been well aware that his father was insane but not to the point that he could expect him to literally want to blow up his own city. That is a whole other level of insanity he very legitimately didn’t expect. Thirdly, Rhaegar had no power to take Jaime or his family away at this point (« I dare not » is not an epheumism. He literally dares not. We’re talking about Aerys here).

All he asked Jaime to do is wait for Rhaegar to come back and in the meantime try to keep his father at bay. That.is.literally.it. Rhaegar said : « Give me some time, I’ll come back and fix this » And Jaime did wait and he did hope that Rhaegar would come back, but Rhaegar didn’t come back not because he decided to go on vacation with his new chick but because he got killed. Nothing went according to plan, and Jaime had to take matters in his own hands.

So :

Rhaegar did not leave """""all that responsibility""""" to a """"literal child"""".  He left his father the king with the one member of the Kingsguard the king specifically wanted with him, and he told that member of the Kingsguard to literally, wait it out and be a KG. Apart from the fact that Rhaegar couldn’t take Jaime away because Aerys wanted him there, Jaime was not a random child, he was a member of the KG. Him staying with Aerys is technically what he was supposed to do as a member of the KG anyway, there is nothing abnormal or particularly stupid or outrageous or naive in this """"thought process"""", despite Jaime’s age. That order seemed both inevitable (it was Aerys’ order) and reasonable (Jaime was a KINGSguard after all), at the time.

Likewise, Rhaegar did not reasonably expect Jaime to go all Superman on both his father and Tywin’s men and save like the entire population of KL including his own family, all by himself. Again, what he actually told Jaime to do was literally wait for him to come back and try to keep his father at bay. He hoped Jaime’s presence would satiate his father until he comes back. That’s all. He did not know that Aerys would want to blow up KL, he did not know what Jaime would be forced to do and he did not expect the sack and the fact that his family would be murdered in the capital. He didn’t entrust Jaime with all these things simply because he wasn’t expecting these things. All these things were definitely not part of """the job""" Rhaegar gave him. Rhaegar’s GHOST saying to Jaime in his dreams "I left my wife and children in your hands" is manifesting Jaime’s guilt for not being able to save the family. It is a ghost in Jaime’s dream. This doesn’t mean that Rhaegar literally expected Jaime to prevent his father from blowing up the city and simultaneously protect his family from an entirely different threat that wasn’t even remotely a possibility then. Jaime failing to do all of the above by himself doesn’t make him a traitor, an incompetent loser or a coward.

The distortion of their actual convo led the entire fandom to engage in a strawman argument ad nauseam. Lannister stans are attacking Rhaegar for leaving "all this responsibility" to Jaime and Targ stans are attacking Jaime for failing to honor this responsibility, while "all this responsibility" was never part of their actual conversation to begin with because none them had the slightest idea of what was about to happen in the first place.

It is such a pity because this last convo between these two men is so tragic and haunting and beautiful, Jaime (grrm) describes his last visual memory of Rhaegar in an unusually poetic manner, and the fact that deep down he is still waiting and hoping for Rhaegar to come back makes me insane. « The day had been windy when he said farewell to Rhaegar, in the yard of the Red Keep. The prince had donned his night-black armor, with the three-headed dragon picked out in rubies on his breastplate ». « So the Prince of Dragonstone mounted up and donned his tall black helm, and rode forth to his doom ». « It is not Aerys I rue, it is Robert ». « I almost mistook you for Aegon the Conqueror ». « How much can a crown be worth when a crow can feast on a king? ». And instead of focusing on that and the symbolism of it all and that fact that it’s literally foreshadowing Dany’s or Jon’s « return » and their meeting with Jaime (Rhaegar will come back in the end in some form or another, all hope is not lost) we’re reiterating bad takes about a supposed conflict between them ad infinitum. It is boring, reductive and uninspired.

Be serious, read the text and stop spreading misinformation about either side. This is not a football game. We all love a fandom fight occasionally but it is important to actually engage with the themes of the story from time to time.

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

We don’t appreciate enough how GRRM made House Targaryen the poster children for his de/reconstruction of the fantasy chosen family trope, and we don’t appreciate how Jon and Dany are the main lens through which he does that. House Targaryen is fantasy on steroids—magic swords, magic look, magic lineage, perhaps the most magic pet one could have in the genre, and a magic destiny that’s specific to them and only them. There’s a foretold magical conflict and its main hero (as many would think), “the prince that was promised”, specifically has to be a Targaryen. This House’s history is so rich, but from a genre perspective, it is Aerys II’s reign and Robert’s Rebellion that’s the most interesting to analyze. Aerys isn’t special himself, but he is to sire the future savior of the world. Then Rhaegar is born and tragic as they are, all the signs point to him being the promised messiah. And Rhaegar becomes THE fantasy hero on steroids. He’s the perfect heir to House Targaryen’s legacy because not only is he to be the best of them, and many think he would have been had he lived, but he is the most perfect manifestation of House Targaryen as the personification of fantasy. There’s absolutely a point to him living and dying as the heir, the inheritor, the eternal symbol of what could have been of the Targaryen’s old glory.

Part of Rhaegar’s legacy extends to his son Aegon. Aegon had everything Rhaegar didn’t. A comet was seen at his conception—and this is an most important herald for the chosen one. So he is given a song, “the song of ice and fire”, and a king’s name to match his status as the new messiah. He didn’t live long but he inherited Rhaegar’s look in his youth too; the fantasy protagonist look. But Aegon died before he could be the hero.

You see Jon and Dany as chosen ones only works so well because of their House’s history, especially as (anti)parallels to Rhaegar and Aegon. They are the unexpected inheritors and challengers to their house’s legacy but in different ways.

Dany is the most immediate and obvious heir. There’s a beauty to her being the last of them and thus, the one bearing the entire house’s legacy. Dany is THE Targaryen. And in being that, she becomes THE hero. She’s got the hero’s look, the hero’s magic and destiny, and better yet, she got the hero’s sword and pet all in one. And, she’s legitimate! She is House Targaryen. But there’s a problem….shes a girl. And we all know House Targaryen’s history with girls.

Maester Aemon’s “no one ever looked for a girl” is quickly becoming my favorite Dany-related quote because it pretty much encapsulates her entire arc, especially as an inheritor to her house’s legacy. The hero they died knowing and expecting was the boy: first Rhaegar, then Aegon. But father and son are dead. Yet Daenerys lives. She inherits everything else they did and more! The Targaryens tried and failed to bring dragons back, but it was Dany who ultimately did it.

Now, Jon is Dany but flipped. From a meta point of view, he’s more fantasy protagonist than she is. He’s a boy, he’s got a big magic sword that he can swing about, and he’s perhaps fantasy’s most prolific trope in action—the magical hidden prince. But within this story, GRRM flips these two characters. Jon’s fantasy protag-ness doesn’t go away, it just morphs into something else. Unlike Dany, he may be a boy and he may have a sword, but he lacks literally everything else. He doesn’t have the look, his magic powers are from his other family, so is his magic pet, and his magic destiny has thus far developed outside his immediate association with House Targaryen. Dany is “what if Rhaegar was a girl?”, but we can’t even begin to ask these types of questions with Jon because there’s so much that precludes him from the fantasy hero role in story. He’s Rhaegar’s heir…but he doesn’t look like him…and he’s not even legitimate. So what do we do now?

GRRM destroyed his fantasy protag house and decided to build up again from the ground up, but did so by challenging the two most critical points—primogeniture and exceptionalism. With Dany, he makes a girl the Targaryen’s outward successor. This works really well because the Targaryens have a history of denying their female heirs. But now what’s left of them is a girl, and she is literally everything they could have hoped for. And she is a a reflection of her house, but her arc has at many times seen her be the antithesis of her ancestors. And I can’t help but think of the oncoming meta-textual showdown between her and Young Griff. On the surface Young Griff, a boy, is the preferred heir. But Dany is, in truth, the one.

Jon is interesting because, in my view, he challenges the Targaryen idea of exceptionalism. He’s easily the fantasy protagonist from the outside looking in. But he doesn’t have the Targaryen name, nor does he have the look. He has the blood, but what makes him special is that it is mixed with the other major fantasy protagonist house’s blood—he’s special in that he’s a hybrid. And this is interesting because if Aegon conquered the seven kingdoms because of a prophecy regarding him or one of his princely descendants, it’s quite the twist to have this messiah not even be a Targaryen prince (not in name anyway). That’s why all the hand wringing around “is Jon legitimate?” or “no one cares because he doesn’t look like Rhaegar” really isn’t the point. The point is for Jon to be the manifestation of the hero—the king—outside of that narrow framework. And if he succeeds, then GRRM would absolutely still be subverting prophecy and genre conventions.

There’s something to Jon and Dany being born as or after House Targaryen falls. House Targaryen has no crown, no throne, and their prophetic mandate has been usurped. But GRRM is so attached to them, and he certainly wants to rebuild them and hold fantasy to account. But to do so, everything we know about the Targaryens, everything the Targaryens knew about themselves, has to be challenged and put to the test by the personifications of all that a Targaryen hero couldn’t be: a girl, and a bastard.

[amaltheas-garden]

What's fun about the succession crises in ASOIAF is that grrm really tries to present a murky narrative of who is in the right for pressing their claim, which makes it fun knowing that most sides have at least some bit of evidence to support them, regardless of how we feel about the characters. Stannis, despite being viewing Rhaenyra as a traitor, names his only daughter heir, though for the same reasons the Greens saw Aegon as legitimate. Sons before daughters, daughters before uncles, bastards cannot inherit. Ned Stark, despite being loyal to a fault with Robert, went against his deathbed wish to see his "son" Joffrey inherit, and instead falls back on law and tradition, throwing his support behind Stannis. Renly decides that if Robert can win the throne through conquest, then why can't he? He'll worry about legitimizing his reign after he takes the throne. When Robert's Rebellion ended, maesters spoke about the connection between Houses Targaryen and Baratheon, Robert's Targ blood (I believe from his grandmother), though none of it really mattered in the end, with every Targ save 3 dead and far far away from the throne. Cersei is committing treason by placing bastards on the throne, though even for her it could be argued it was Ned's fault the Joff v Stannis v Renly conflict broke out to begin with when he revealed Joffrey's true parentage. Placing bastards above trueborn heirs breaks the strenuous social contract of sorts that maintains some modicum of peace amongst members of the ruling class. But then Joffrey goes and cuts Ned's head off--> definitely a poor move, resulting in Robb's rise as an independent King, echoing the start of Robert's Rebellion. And in Dorne, Arianne admonishes Criston Cole for usurping Rhaenyra in favor of her younger brother, though this only holds up legally based on Dornish law, when Dorne wasn't even a part of the 7K. Though Arianne views Rhaenyra's claim as stronger, she herself almost become a Criston Cole 'Queenmaker' figure, looking to crown King Tommen's elder sister *cough* pitting brother against sister *cough* Myrcella, in the hopes of provoking a war of succession amongst the Lannisters. And now with Aegon VI and Dany, both will have to claim Westeros through conquest, though both still fall back on the idea of being Rhaegar's rightful heirs, and the Baratheon dynasty as illegitimate usurpers. How the rest of Westeros will view their claims remains to be seen...

The point is, succession in ASOIAF is meant to be muddled and confusing and not clear cut. It's what makes the story juicy and HOTD just completely failed to deliver on those dynamics. Alicent seems to have crowned Aegon by mistake, the rest of the Green council are mustache twirling villains, the Andal law argument is never brought up, and Rhaenyra is consistently framed as not only the rightful heir, but a divinely ordained one. A Queen who must rule because she has a "higher purpose" in doing so than simple desire for power. Yawn.

[novaursa]

Could you write something about Robb Stark x Targaryen!reader?

For some background information: this would take place in an au where Robert's Rebellion failed and Rhaegar is king and is determined to mend the damage done from his father's reign and the rebellion and to get House Targaryen back in everyone's good graces. Years after the failed rebellion, Rhaegar visited the North with his family and discussed with Ned the possibility of an arranged marriage between Rhaegar's daughter and Robb and Ned reluctantly agreed. Maybe the plot could be about Robb and Targaryen!reader first meeting, getting to know each other, and their thoughts on each other.

(it also doesn't really matter to me who the daughter's mother is. It could be Elia, Lyanna, or someone else, but I would prefer if Rhaegar's daughter has a Valyrian appearance).

Bethrodal of Ice and Flame

- Summary: You are promised to Robb Stark, to mend the wound inflicted to the realm by events of the past.

- Pairing: targ!reader/Robb Stark

- Note: Robert's Rebellion has failed and Rhaegar rules.

- Rating: Mild 13+

- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff @alyssa-dayne @oxymakestheworldgoround

The Great Hall of Winterfell is alive with the warmth of firelight and the din of voices raised in celebration, but something else thrums beneath the surface of the merriment. It’s an uneasy peace, born of necessity rather than desire. You sit at the high table, your gaze drifting over the gathered lords and ladies, all feasting and drinking beneath the Stark banners. The air is filled with the scent of roasted meats and the murmur of conversations, but your thoughts are elsewhere.

Beside you, your father, King Rhaegar, speaks in low tones to your uncle, Eddard Stark. His silver hair gleams in the torchlight, a sharp contrast to the dark hues of the Northern lords around him. He’s regal and composed, as he always is, but there’s a careful politeness in his words tonight, a measured tone that speaks of delicate negotiations. You can see the rigid set of Eddard Stark’s shoulders, the tightness around his mouth. The man who was once your father’s sworn enemy now must play the role of reluctant ally.

“Lord Stark, I understand your reservations,” your father is saying, his voice smooth, almost gentle. “But your niece is a link between our houses. Her blood is both Stark and Targaryen. This union with your son would strengthen the ties between us, ensuring peace and prosperity for the North and the realm.”

Eddard’s eyes, grey and stormy, flicker to your lilac ones briefly. There’s something unreadable in his gaze—grief, perhaps, or bitterness. It’s no secret that he still mourns his sister, Lyanna, your mother, who died bringing you into this world. Your very existence is a reminder of the war that tore the realm apart, of a love that should never have been.

“The past cannot be undone,” Eddard says, his voice rough and low. “But what’s done is done. My son will do his duty, as will I. If this betrothal is what’s needed to secure the future of the North, then so be it.”

Rhaegar inclines his head, acknowledging the words without a trace of triumph. “I thank you, Lord Stark. Your son will be a good match for Y/N. And I hope, in time, you will see that this is the best path for all of us.”

Eddard’s jaw tightens, but he nods curtly. “We shall see.”

You turn your attention away, feeling the weight of their conversation pressing down on you. This is your life they are discussing, your future, and yet you feel like a pawn being moved on a board, your fate sealed by men who speak of duty and honor while ignoring the desires of your heart.

Across the hall, Robb Stark is speaking with his friends, his face flushed from the warmth of the hall and the wine in his cup. He glances your way, catching your eye, and for a moment, there’s something like uncertainty in his expression. You stand, smoothing the folds of your dress, and make your way through the throng of guests towards him.

As you approach, others fall silent, their eyes flickering between you and Robb. You offer them a polite smile, and they excuse themselves, leaving the two of you alone amidst the bustling crowd.

“Robb,” you say, his name unfamiliar on your lips. He’s taller than you remember, broader too. There’s a steadiness to him, a quiet strength that you can’t help but admire.

“Y/N,” he replies, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “I—well, I suppose we should get to know each other, shouldn’t we?”

You nod, feeling an awkwardness settle between you. “I suppose we should. We’re to be married, after all.”

He shifts his weight, looking around the hall as if seeking some escape from the conversation. “I’m not sure what to say,” he admits, a touch of color rising in his cheeks. “This isn’t…what I expected.”

You smile, a small, hesitant thing. “Nor I. But it seems we have little choice in the matter.”

He looks at you then, really looks at you, as if seeing you for the first time. “It’s strange, isn’t it? To be bound by the choices of others. But I—I want to do right by you, Y/N. I want to be a good husband, if you’ll have me.”

There’s an earnestness in his voice, a sincerity that touches something deep inside you. You’ve heard stories of the young wolf, of his prowess in battle and his loyalty to his family, but this—this is something different. This is a boy on the cusp of becoming a man, trying to find his way in a world that seems determined to shape him into something he’s not.

“I appreciate that, Robb,” you say softly. “And I will try to be a good wife. Perhaps, in time, we can find our own way through this.”

He nods, relief softening the lines of his face. “I would like that.”

The music swells, and the lords and ladies begin to take to the floor for the dance. Robb hesitates, then offers you his hand. “May I have this dance?”

You take his hand, feeling the warmth of his skin against yours, and allow him to lead you to the center of the hall. As the music begins, you move together, the steps familiar but strange with him as your partner. There’s a tentative grace to his movements, a carefulness that speaks of his desire not to misstep, not to falter.

As you dance, the hall fades away, the faces of the gathered nobles blurring into the background. For a moment, it’s just the two of you, spinning and turning in a world that is all your own. And in that moment, you think that perhaps, just perhaps, this union might not be the prison you feared it would be.

When the dance ends, Robb holds you close for a heartbeat longer than necessary, his eyes searching yours. “We’ll make this work, Y/N. I promise.”

You nod, the words you want to say caught in your throat. Instead, you offer him a smile, a real one this time, and squeeze his hand gently. “I believe you, Robb.”

And for the first time that night, you feel a flicker of hope, fragile and new, but there all the same.

[branwinged]

what's your take on rhaegar?

take as in, my opinion of his moral character? we don't have all the details for that, filling in the blanks involves a great deal of speculation. my read of him is based on what purpose he serves within the story.

i don't think much of him outside of what he means for dany. it's the way robb is not a character in his own right to me and exists only to serve catelyn and bran's arcs. which is why my opinion of rhaegar is mainly informed by that scene in agot, where dany dreams of him in his armour and lifts the visor to find that "the face within was her own", dany is clearly inheriting his narrative role (jon too in some capacity, but i'm not thinking of jon in relation to the targaryens before the reveal happens), it's for purely this reason i've never seen him as someone with no redeeming qualities. the memory of rhaegar shadows and informs everything she does (it is time to cross the trident) grrm writes her with shades of all her targaryen ancestors, because she's the last of them and embodies three hundred years of her house's glorious and terrible history. but rhaegar's particular echo is the strongest because that's the brother she would've married under slightly different circumstances, she imagines rhaegar as the ideal vision of the king in her mind whom she must emulate, he died and made her the prince that was promised. her entire character is constructed around him. he's not simply a strong influence in her life, she is him. they call her aegon the conquerer come again but she's been having visions of battling the others at the trident since agot, she's also rhaegar come again. she'll do everything he couldn't. it's just a bit inconceivable for a character like that to be revealed as a cold, unfeeling schemer. like, where's the heart in that? if everything rhaegar resembled was antithetical to dany's own beliefs and motives? aerys is already there to serve that exact role.

but what we learn about him from a number of contradictory sources is interesting. melancholy bard prince, born in grief, sang songs of doom and loss among the ruins of summerhall, presumably plagued by prophetic dragon dreams. he's framed as a character out of some song. all rebellion characters have that quality to them, there's a girl who dies trapped in a tower, another throws herself off a tower, the tourney at harrenhal episode is told to bran (and in turn, the readers) in the form of a song. they don't feel very real, or at least, they'll never get to be real the way our present day characters feel real because they're dead and their stories have been distorted and repurposed. robert's version is that of a king valiantly fighting for his abducted lady love, the version told to dany is that of tragic star crossed lovers torn apart by the realm. they're songs, and cannot be the whole truth. it's in the name. it was the year of the false spring and they all thought they were changing the world. rhaegar was going to call a great council and depose aerys, robert and ned where overthrowing a mad king to put an end to his atrocities. except rhaegar died having achieved nothing, robert ascended his throne on the corpses of children, then in fifteen years' time recreated the conditions for the start of another war. and lyanna simply traded one kind of gendered sentence for another. i'm not drawing a 1:1 equivalence between rhaegar and robert (and i do think it will be written as a romance with the truth somewhere between robert and dany's versions), but that she died either way is a pretty significant detail. she died in more ways than one! when they talk about her they recall a helpless maiden dead in some tower, not a girl capable of besting renowned knights.

like, it's very clear to me that the rebellion and its immediate consequences are meant to be read as a tragedy, caused not by the actions of a character(s) but as a result of the systemic failings of their world (which is why it's once again leading up to the burning of king's landing, where it all began, the city is symbolic of the very worst of westerosi feudalism). lyanna's death is less about robert and rhaegar and more about the way there was no escape possible for a girl like her—a theme that's carried over in sansa and arya's stories, except this time it will end with them getting to live the life lyanna wasn't allowed to, because this time they will change the world. dany's earnest dream of "to plant trees and watch them grow" is just that. it's the dream of spring.

[warsofasoiaf]

Did Roberts kill all Targaryen policy apply to bastards

Robert having a "kill all Targaryens" policy is overstated. He largely ignored Viserys and Daenerys in Essos after the lightest of consultations by Jon Arryn - only doing something after Viserys declared his intent to raise an army and attack Robert. He never bothered about Maester Aemon at the Wall. Rhaegar's children weren't killed by Robert's men or ordered to be done so; Tywin did it to secure himself with Robert in the aftermath of the Rebellion (you can easily criticize him for failing to punish Tywin, but that's not the same as ordering it done himself).

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[mariacallous]

“Don’t mention the word ‘liberalism,’ ” the talk-show host says to the guy who’s written a book on it. “Liberalism,” he explains, might mean Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to his suspicious audience, alienating more people than it invites. Talk instead about “liberal democracy,” a more expansive term that includes John McCain and Ronald Reagan. When you cross the border to Canada, you are allowed to say “liberalism” but are asked never to praise “liberals,” since that means implicitly endorsing the ruling Trudeau government and the long-dominant Liberal Party. In England, you are warned off both words, since “liberals” suggests the membership of a quaintly failed political party and “liberalism” its dated program. In France, of course, the vagaries of language have made “liberalism” mean free-market fervor, doomed from the start in that country, while what we call liberalism is more hygienically referred to as “republicanism.” Say that.

Liberalism is, truly, the love that dare not speak its name. Liberal thinkers hardly improve matters, since the first thing they will say is that the thing called “liberalism” is not actually a thing. This discouraging reflection is, to be sure, usually followed by an explanation: liberalism is a practice, a set of institutions, a tradition, a temperament, even. A clear contrast can be made with its ideological competitors: both Marxism and Catholicism, for instance, have more or less explicable rules—call them, nonpejoratively, dogmas. You can’t really be a Marxist without believing that a revolution against the existing capitalist order would be a good thing, and that parliamentary government is something of a bourgeois trick played on the working class. You can’t really be a Catholic without believing that a crisis point in cosmic history came two millennia ago in the Middle East, when a dissident rabbi was crucified and mysteriously revived. You can push either of these beliefs to the edge of metaphor—maybe the rabbi was only believed to be resurrected, and the inner experience of that epiphany is what counts; maybe the revolution will take place peacefully within a parliament and without Molotov cocktails—but you can’t really discard them. Liberalism, on the other hand, can include both faith in free markets and skepticism of free markets, an embrace of social democracy and a rejection of its statism. Its greatest figure, the nineteenth-century British philosopher and parliamentarian John Stuart Mill, was a socialist but also the author of “On Liberty,” which is (to the leftist imagination, at least) a suspiciously libertarian manifesto.

Whatever liberalism is, we’re regularly assured that it’s dying—in need of those shock paddles they regularly take out in TV medical dramas. (“C’mon! Breathe, damn it! Breathe! ”) As on television, this is not guaranteed to work. (“We’ve lost him, Holly. Damn it, we’ve lost him.”) Later this year, a certain demagogue who hates all these terms—liberals, liberalism, liberal democracy—might be lifted to power again. So what is to be done? New books on the liberal crisis tend to divide into three kinds: the professional, the professorial, and the polemical—books by those with practical experience; books by academics, outlining, sometimes in dreamily abstract form, a reformed liberal democracy; and then a few wishing the whole damn thing over, and well rid of it.

The professional books tend to come from people whose lives have been spent as pundits and as advisers to politicians. Robert Kagan, a Brookings fellow and a former State Department maven who has made the brave journey from neoconservatism to resolute anti-Trumpism, has a new book on the subject, “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again” (Knopf). Kagan’s is a particular type of book—I have written one myself—that makes the case for liberalism mostly to other liberals, by trying to remind readers of what they have and what they stand to lose. For Kagan, that “again” in the title is the crucial word; instead of seeing Trumpism as a new danger, he recapitulates the long history of anti-liberalism in the U.S., characterizing the current crisis as an especially foul wave rising from otherwise predictable currents. Since the founding of the secular-liberal Republic—secular at least in declining to pick one faith over another as official, liberal at least in its faith in individualism—anti-liberal elements have been at war with it. Kagan details, mordantly, the anti-liberalism that emerged during and after the Civil War, a strain that, just as much as today’s version, insisted on a “Christian commonwealth” founded essentially on wounded white working-class pride.

The relevance of such books may be manifest, but their contemplative depth is, of necessity, limited. Not to worry. Two welcomely ambitious and professorial books are joining them: “Liberalism as a Way of Life” (Princeton), by Alexandre Lefebvre, who teaches politics and philosophy at the University of Sydney, and “Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society” (Knopf), by Daniel Chandler, an economist and a philosopher at the London School of Economics.

The two take slightly different tacks. Chandler emphasizes programs of reform, and toys with the many bells and whistles on the liberal busy box: he’s inclined to try more random advancements, like elevating ordinary people into temporary power, on an Athenian model that’s now restricted to jury service. But, on the whole, his is a sanely conventional vision of a state reformed in the direction of ever greater fairness and equity, one able to curb the excesses of capitalism and to accommodate the demands of diversity.

The program that Chandler recommends to save liberalism essentially represents the politics of the leftier edge of the British Labour Party—which historically has been unpopular with the very people he wants to appeal to, gaining power only after exhaustion with Tory governments. In the classic Fabian manner, though, Chandler tends to breeze past some formidable practical problems. While advocating for more aggressive government intervention in the market, he admits equably that there may be problems with state ownership of industry and infrastructure. Yet the problem with state ownership is not a theoretical one: Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister because of the widely felt failures of state ownership in the nineteen-seventies. The overreaction to those failures may have been destructive, but it was certainly democratic, and Tony Blair’s much criticized temporizing began in this recognition. Chandler is essentially arguing for an updated version of the social-democratic status quo—no bad place to be but not exactly a new place, either.

Lefebvre, on the other hand, wants to write about liberalism chiefly as a cultural phenomenon—as the water we swim in without knowing that it’s wet—and his book is packed, in the tradition of William James, with racy anecdotes and pop-culture references. He finds more truths about contemporary liberals in the earnest figures of the comedy series “Parks and Recreation” than in the words of any professional pundit. A lot of this is fun, and none of it is frivolous.

Yet, given that we may be months away from the greatest crisis the liberal state has known since the Civil War, both books seem curiously calm. Lefebvre suggests that liberalism may be passing away, but he doesn’t seem especially perturbed by the prospect, and at his book’s climax he recommends a permanent stance of “reflective equilibrium” as an antidote to all anxiety, a stance that seems not unlike Richard Rorty’s idea of irony—cultivating an ability both to hold to a position and to recognize its provisionality. “Reflective equilibrium trains us to see weakness and difference in ourselves,” Lefebvre writes, and to see “how singular each of us is in that any equilibrium we reach will be specific to us as individuals and our constellation of considered judgments.” However excellent as a spiritual exercise, a posture of reflective equilibrium seems scarcely more likely to get us through 2024 than smoking weed all day, though that, too, can certainly be calming in a crisis.

Both professors, significantly, are passionate evangelists for the great American philosopher John Rawls, and both books use Rawls as their fount of wisdom about the ideal liberal arrangement. Indeed, the dust-jacket sell line of Chandler’s book is a distillation of Rawls: “Imagine: You are designing a society, but you don’t know who you’ll be within it—rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like?” Lefebvre’s “reflective equilibrium” is borrowed from Rawls, too. Rawls’s classic “A Theory of Justice” (1971) was a theory about fairness, which revolved around the “liberty principle” (you’re entitled to the basic liberties you’d get from a scheme in which everyone got those same liberties) and the “difference principle” (any inequalities must benefit the worst off). The emphasis on “justice as fairness” presses both professors to stress equality; it’s not “A Theory of Liberty,” after all. “Free and equal” is not the same as “free and fair,” and the difference is where most of the arguing happens among people committed to a liberal society.

Indeed, readers may feel that the work of reconciling Rawls’s very abstract consideration of ideal justice and community with actual experience is more daunting than these books, written by professional philosophers who swim in this water, make it out to be. A confidence that our problems can be managed with the right adjustments to the right model helps explain why the tone of both books—richly erudite and thoughtful—is, for all their implication of crisis, so contemplative and even-humored. No doubt it is a good idea to tell people to keep cool in a fire, but that does not make the fire cooler.

Rawls devised one of the most powerful of all thought experiments: the idea of the “veil of ignorance,” behind which we must imagine the society we would want to live in without knowing which role in that society’s hierarchy we would occupy. Simple as it is, it has ever-arresting force, making it clear that, behind this veil, rational and self-interested people would never design a society like that of, say, the slave states of the American South, given that, dropped into it at random, they could very well be enslaved. It also suggests that Norway might be a fairly just place, because a person would almost certainly land in a comfortable and secure middle-class life, however boringly Norwegian.

Still, thought experiments may not translate well to the real world. Einstein’s similarly epoch-altering account of what it would be like to travel on a beam of light, and how it would affect the hands on one’s watch, is profound for what it reveals about the nature of time. Yet it isn’t much of a guide to setting the timer on the coffeemaker in the kitchen so that the pot will fill in time for breakfast. Actual politics is much more like setting the timer on the coffeemaker than like riding on a beam of light. Breakfast is part of the cosmos, but studying the cosmos won’t cook breakfast. It’s telling that in neither of these Rawlsian books is there any real study of the life and the working method of an actual, functioning liberal politician. No F.D.R. or Clement Attlee, Pierre Mendès France or François Mitterrand (a socialist who was such a master of coalition politics that he effectively killed off the French Communist Party). Not to mention Tony Blair or Joe Biden or Barack Obama. Biden’s name appears once in Chandler’s index; Obama’s, though he gets a passing mention, not at all.

The reason is that theirs are not ideal stories about the unimpeded pursuit of freedom and fairness but necessarily contingent tales of adjustments and amendments—compromised stories, in every sense. Both philosophers would, I think, accept this truth in principle, yet neither is drawn to it from the heart. Still, this is how the good work of governing gets done, by those who accept the weight of the world as they act to lighten it. Obama’s history—including the feints back and forth on national health insurance, which ended, amid all the compromises, with the closest thing America has had to a just health-care system—is uninspiring to the idealizing mind. But these compromises were not a result of neglecting to analyze the idea of justice adequately; they were the result of the pluralism of an open society marked by disagreement on fundamental values. The troubles of current American politics do not arise from a failure on the part of people in Ohio to have read Rawls; they are the consequence of the truth that, even if everybody in Ohio read Rawls, not everybody would agree with him.

Ideals can shape the real world. In some ultimate sense, Biden, like F.D.R. before him, has tried to build the sort of society we might design from behind the veil of ignorance—but, also like F.D.R., he has had to do so empirically, and often through tactics overloaded with contradictions. If your thought experiment is premised on a group of free and equal planners, it may not tell you what you need to know about a society marred by entrenched hierarchies. Ask Biden if he wants a free and fair society and he would say that he does. But Thatcher would have said so, too, and just as passionately. Oscillation of power and points of view within that common framework are what makes liberal democracies liberal. It has less to do with the ideally just plan than with the guarantee of the right to talk back to the planner. That is the great breakthrough in human affairs, as much as the far older search for social justice. Plato’s rulers wanted social justice, of a kind; what they didn’t want was back talk.

Both philosophers also seem to accept, at least by implication, the familiar idea that there is a natural tension between two aspects of the liberal project. One is the desire for social justice, the other the practice of individual freedom. Wanting to speak our minds is very different from wanting to feed our neighbors. An egalitarian society might seem inherently limited in liberty, while one that emphasizes individual rights might seem limited in its capacity for social fairness.

Yet the evidence suggests the opposite. Show me a society in which people are able to curse the king and I will show you a society more broadly equal than the one next door, if only because the ability to curse the king will make the king more likely to spread the royal wealth, for fear of the cursing. The rights of sexual minorities are uniquely protected in Western liberal democracies, but this gain in social equality is the result of a history of protected expression that allowed gay experience to be articulated and “normalized,” in high and popular culture. We want to live on common streets, not in fortified castles. It isn’t a paradox that John Stuart Mill and his partner, Harriet Taylor, threw themselves into both “On Liberty,” a testament to individual freedom, and “The Subjection of Women,” a program for social justice and mass emancipation through group action. The habit of seeking happiness for one through the fulfillment of many others was part of the habit of their liberalism. Mill wanted to be happy, and he couldn’t be if Taylor wasn’t.

Liberals are at a disadvantage when it comes to authoritarians, because liberals are committed to procedures and institutions, and persist in that commitment even when those things falter and let them down. The asymmetry between the Trumpite assault on the judiciary and Biden’s reluctance even to consider enlarging the Supreme Court is typical. Trumpites can and will say anything on earth about judges; liberals are far more reticent, since they don’t want to undermine the institutions that give reality to their ideals.

Where Kagan, Lefebvre, and Chandler are all more or less sympathetic to the liberal “project,” the British political philosopher John Gray deplores it, and his recent book, “The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), is one long complaint. Gray is one of those leftists so repelled by the follies of the progressive party of the moment—to borrow a phrase of Orwell’s about Jonathan Swift—that, in a familiar horseshoe pattern, he has become hard to distinguish from a reactionary. He insists that liberalism is a product of Christianity (being in thrall to the notion of the world’s perfectibility) and that it has culminated in what he calls “hyper-liberalism,” which would emancipate individuals from history and historically shaped identities. Gray hates all things “woke”—a word that he seems to know secondhand from news reports about American universities. If “woke” points to anything except the rage of those who use it, however, it is a discourse directed against liberalism—Ibram X. Kendi is no ally of Bayard Rustin, nor Judith Butler of John Stuart Mill. So it is hard to see it as an expression of the same trends, any more than Trump is a product of Burke’s conservative philosophy, despite strenuous efforts on the progressive side to make it seem so.

Gray’s views are learned, and his targets are many and often deserved: he has sharp things to say about how certain left liberals have reclaimed the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt and his thesis that politics is a battle to the death between friends and foes. In the end, Gray turns to Dostoyevsky’s warning that (as Gray reads him) “the logic of limitless freedom is unlimited despotism.” Hyper-liberals, Gray tells us, think that we can compete with the authority of God, and what they leave behind is wild disorder and crazed egotism.

As for Dostoyevsky’s positive doctrines—authoritarian and mystical in nature—Gray waves them away as being “of no interest.” But they are of interest, exactly because they raise the central pragmatic issue: If you believe all this about liberal modernity, what do you propose to do about it? Given that the announced alternatives are obviously worse or just crazy (as is the idea of a Christian commonwealth, something that could be achieved only by a degree of social coercion that makes the worst of “woke” culture look benign), perhaps the evil might better be ameliorated than abolished.

Between authority and anarchy lies argument. The trick is not to have unified societies that “share values”—those societies have never existed or have existed only at the edge of a headsman’s axe—but to have societies that can get along nonviolently without shared values, aside from the shared value of trying to settle disputes nonviolently. Certainly, Americans were far more polarized in the nineteen-sixties than they are today—many favored permanent apartheid (“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”)—and what happened was not that values changed on their own but that a form of rights-based liberalism of protest and free speech convinced just enough people that the old order wouldn’t work and that it wasn’t worth fighting for a clearly lost cause.

What’s curious about anti-liberal critics such as Gray is their evident belief that, after the institutions and the practices on which their working lives and welfare depend are destroyed, the features of the liberal state they like will somehow survive. After liberalism is over, the neat bits will be easily reassembled, and the nasty bits will be gone. Gray can revile what he perceives to be a ruling élite and call to burn it all down, and nothing impedes the dissemination of his views. Without the institutions and the practices that he despises, fear would prevent oppositional books from being published. Try publishing an anti-Communist book in China or a critique of theocracy in Iran. Liberal institutions are the reason that he is allowed to publish his views and to have the career that he and all the other authors here rightly have. Liberal values and practices allow their most fervent critics a livelihood and a life—which they believe will somehow magically be reconstituted “after liberalism.” They won’t be.

The vociferous critics of liberalism are like passengers on the Titanic who root for the iceberg. After all, an iceberg is thrilling, and anyway the White Star Line has classes, and the music the band plays is second-rate, and why is the food French instead of honestly English? “Just as I told you, the age of the steamship is over!” they cry as the water slips over their shoes. They imagine that another boat will miraculously appear—where all will be in first class, the food will be authentic, and the band will perform only Mozart or Motown, depending on your wishes. Meanwhile, the ship goes down. At least the band will be playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” which they will take as some vindication. The rest of us may drown.

One turns back to Helena Rosenblatt’s 2018 book, “The Lost History of Liberalism,” which makes the case that liberalism is not a recent ideology but an age-old series of intuitions about existence. When the book appeared, it may have seemed unduly overgeneralized—depicting liberalism as a humane generosity that flared up at moments and then died down again. But, as the world picture darkens, her dark picture illuminates. There surely are a set of identifiable values that connect men and women of different times along a single golden thread: an aversion to fanaticism, a will toward the coexistence of different kinds and creeds, a readiness for reform, a belief in the public criticism of power without penalty, and perhaps, above all, a knowledge that institutions of civic peace are much harder to build than to destroy, being immeasurably more fragile than their complacent inheritors imagine. These values will persist no matter how evil the moment may become, and by whatever name we choose to whisper in the dark.

[eddardofthehousestark]

The Ned Stark tag is about to be the worst.

So many idiot "Cregan fans" will be going on about how Ned is a wimp compared to Cregan, when Ned actually fought in the wars he took part in, unlike Cregan who showed up after the Tullys and Blackwoods already did most of the heavy lifting. But honestly both of them made the right decision for the respective situations, Cregan did the right thing in the Dance and Ned did the right thing in the Rebellion. Hell, even comparing their handships is kind of stupid because both situations are completely different. If Ned was put in Cregan's situation, he would probably succeed, just like Cregan did. You put Cregan in Ned's position, and he would probably fail, just like Ned did. The two main reasons Ned really failed at hand was because he didn't fully understand the power of the hand, and because Cersei got help from God(GRRM) when it came to her assassination of Robert. Not because he wasn't "badass" like Cregan. The reason Cregan succeeded was because he entered the handship with the most intact army in the realm behind him, and was able to do some excellent clean up work for a couple of days. But even then he had to be talked out of continuing the war by smarter people who realized that his plans to siege the remaining Green loyalists were just horrible.

[naggascradle]

robert had to rebel because the red keep would NOT be able to handle these three queens at court together

funniest part of all the aus about robert's rebellion going differently is theon being like four or whatever during the rebellion and otherwise completely outside of it so every one of these aus have to account for the fact that balon greyjoy is going to be stupid as fuckkkk and revolt and then deal with Four Year Old Theon and where you get to move him if not winterfell. Its like a game of which boy around his age will theon be codependent on this time!

[dis-astre]

THE JUNE REBELLION: NOT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

i fear we need to talk about this since i've seen so many tiktok referring to the french revolution when talking about les miserables and it needs to be addressed (aka i'm going to get it out of my system once and for all so i can stop being bitter about it)

i mean, i see those kind of tiktok too much and i am annoyed so bare with me:

so, let's start with les miserables: when does it takes place ?

the chronology of les mis is very long, but the part everyone is referring to (and everyone's favourite part) is the barricades. the barricades takes place during the June Rebellion.

now what is the June Rebellion?

it's a two days rebellion that arise in Paris in an era of political and social instability.

in 1832. 43 years after the french revolution.

so it's safe to say, the plot of les miserables is not at all taking place during the french revolution. and this rebellion was a failure (a flop, as some might even say) and did not overthrow the government (sadly) at all for various reasons.

(see this post here about it, even thought pinpointing the reasons to why a revolution fails is, imo, a bit hard and i am in no way shape or form an historian)

now, for the French Revolution.

keeping it very simple, it starts in may 1789 and end on november 9th 1799 when napoleon did a coup and took the power (others (marxists mostly) might argue that it ended with the death of robespierre, soooo pick your poison). so right of the bat: the french revolution is not one big battle and boom, it's a long period of changes and instability.

i think what people refer to when saying "the french revolution" might be the 14th of July, with the Prise de la Bastille. i know it's a very important event as it is our national day (yay liberty) and it's historically the first big intervention by the parisians (as in the people as in the poor) in the revolution. personally i'm not crazy about this moment (i really really like the march of the women to Versailles in october 1789, insane) it wasn't actually that big of a battle but the repercussions were huge so good job. but here is the problem then, what would make you think this successful battle is the battle we see in les miserables?

[i'm gonna go on a personal mini-rant here but it seriously worries me that so many people, mostly Americans, have so little knowledge of this. i'm not saying you should know everything about french history (as a matter of fact you should not why would you do that to yourself) but it's like... basic knowledge. and what worries me the most is that they think a failed two days rebellion is the french revolution as if it was not an event that reshaped the entirety of the french political system and was a trigger to a lot of changes in europe???? i mean... look at that: ]

i know we have a lot of revolutions in french history but if you need to know one, know the French Revolution, at least just the fact that it was a years long event with successful battles and a successful outcome (not gonna go into the whole it's a revolution for the bourgeoisie thing even if... well it kinda is).

and if you have not read/seen les miserables with your eyes closed, you know that it is very not successful at all !

anyway, that's it !

to summarise:

French Revolution = 1789 / very long / successful outcome / successful battles / not in Les Miserables

June Rebellion = 1832 / 43 years after / two days long / failure / in Les Miserables

Recommendations of...

Movies during the French Revolution = Danton (Andrzej Wajda) / La Revolution Française I and II (Robert Enrico & Richard T. Heffron)

Musicals during the French Revolution = La Revolution Française (Alain Boublil & Claude-Michel Schoenberg, yes same dudes that made les mis the musical) / Les Amants de la Bastille (not good but definitely super fun to watch) / The Scarlet Pimpernel (Nan Knighton, haven't seen it but some of the songs SLAPS)

Now you can obsess on the french revolution correctly ! and it's all very good recommendations too ! yes !!!!!!

(some of my fav les miserables adaptations here too)

i'm done, thanks for sticking with me, i love you all and i will stop yapping now ! buh-bye!

[la-pheacienne]

Hi! Just dropping by to say that Elia Martell's death has one main narrative purpose, and that is to make us question the previously almost undisputed legitimacy of the new post-Targaryen order! Thanks bye

[dwellordream]

i still am fond of my fem petyr baelish AU idea from like 2021

important to note she is still very much a sleazy predator in this she's not magically nice and good just bc she is a woman

but essentially she is obsessed with catelyn and once cat is betrothed to brandon, does her utmost to get herself a northern marriage in the hopes of not being separated from cat. however petra's awkward weird girl attempt to seduce ethan glover (who she targeted bc he was one of brandon's good friends and also from 'only' a masterly house, which petra felt would be more feasible for her to marry into given her background) went horribly wrong and she round up humiliated.

hoster gets wind of it, decides she is a bad influence on his daughters and makes him look bad as her foster father, and plans to ship her back home to the vale. in a last ditch effort, petra convinces edmure (who is like 13 here) to elope with her and promptly gets pregnant by him.

hoster is enraged but at this point robert's rebellion is breaking out, and brynden supports the young couple and convinces hoster to let the marriage stand, bc edmure is threatening to run away and risk his life in battle if hoster has it annulled or sends petra away.

anyways edmure and petra end up having 2 kids: alayne and kermit (called kit purely bc it is close to 'cat'). alayne looks like petra but kit has the classic tully looks.

the marriage is pretty much dead by the time kit is born bc edmure realizes petra essentially manipulated him into the marriage and has never truly loved him, so he has a commoner mistress and whores around but petra dngaf as long as he doesn't humiliate her in public.

petra also resents the fuck out of him bc she repeatedly attempts to go north for an extended stay at winterfell (though catelyn is a bit warier of her and skeptical that petra ever had genuine feelings for her brother), and edmure repeatedly denies her this out of spite (and also concern petra might take his kids north and then refuse to come back to riverrun). so her and cat only actually meet like twice in between the end of the war and 298 AC.

also she is obsessed with getting a betrothal between one of her kids and one of the starklings, but neither ned nor cat is especially keen on this.

however she does succeed in convincing ned/cat to agree to have the stark kids stop over at riverrun for a visit on their way to KL, with the idea that she and edmure will send them along to KL once Ned has settled into his duties as Hand and things are more stable, so Arya and Sansa are not present in KL when shit goes down, and Petra attempts to declare a new betrothal between Kit and Sansa almost as soon as word comes of Ned's failed coup.

she is still obsessed with Sansa, yes, but attempts to mask her grooming with a cover of ‘concerned, supportive mother figure’.

[scotianostra]

On August 15th 1771 Sir Walter Scott the poet and novelist was born in Edinburgh.

Walter survived polio as a toddler which left him with a limp and he used a cane the rest of his life. He was the first author to have international fame in his lifetime and is credited with inventing the historical novel.

Scott used the great storytelling tradition of the Highlands to help bring back the Scottish identity that had been cruelly crushed by the British. His Waverly novels were very popular in Europe and America starting Romanticism and influencing American writers such as Thoreau and Twain.

As well as popularising the historical novel, his books more or less invented tourism in Scotland. A family holiday to Loch Katrine inspired Scott to write the epic narrative poem The Lady of the Lake; a romantic, stirring tale of secret identity, love and loss. It was a publishing phenomenon and readers flocked to see the landscape Scott had described. Thus when travel entrepreneurs such as Thomas Cook began selling packaged railroad tours in the 1840s, Scotland was one of the most popular destinations. Victorians who had grown up on Scott’s Waverley novels, and now technology made it possible to reach these areas

Scott was a prolific writer, publishing two novels a year. Readers around the globe devoured his tales of historic Scotland and its noble, heroic people.

Composers in particular found inspiration in his work, among them Gaetano Donizetti who was inspired to write the tragic opera Lucia del Lammermoor based on Scott’s novel The Bride of Lammermoor.  Franz Schubert was similarly moved, setting text from The Lady of the Lake to music to create his much-loved work Ave Maria.

When King George IIII visited Edinburgh in 1822 Scott was put in charge of the festivities. This was the first time a reigning monarch had made it north of the border in over 200 years and Scott masterminded a spectacular Scottish show in his honour.

He created a romantic - and, some argued, and still do argue, an unrealistic - vision of the Highlands on the streets of the capital with parades, gatherings of clans and swathes of tartan on display. King George himself lapped up this romantic symbolism, dressing in a kilt for the occasion and, like a 19th century influencer, prompting others to wear it too. It marked a turning point in the way the world saw Scotland, and the return of tartan to fashionable society following a ban enforced by the government in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion.

Scott’s influence in society allowed him to lobby on causes he held dear.Sir Walter Scott got involved in a number of political issues. Particularly, his interested in issues where the government was trying to impose things on Scotland. For example, the Bank of England wanted to withdraw the right of Scottish banks to print bank notes, it's testement to the man that he features on bank notes not just today, but going back to the days of smaller nbanks, like the Linen Bank in Scotland, The Bank of Scotland range of notes still carry his portrait. Scott He stirred up such a furore that the government backed down, so you have him to thank that your not carrying English bank notes around with you, imagine a life where we Scots couldn't have a good old moan about businesses in England refusing to take our money as payment!

Scott’s popularity as a poet was cemented in 1813 when he was given the opportunity to become Poet Laureate. However, he declined and Robert Southey accepted the position instead.

Having suffered a stroke in 1831, which resulted in apoplectic paralysis, his health continued to fail and Scott died on 21st September 1832 at Abbotsford, I hope to read and post more about Sir Walter Scott in just over a months time.

[novaursa]

rhaegar targaryen redemption arc 🙏🏻🙏🏻 thank you for your work queen ♥️ (he was fr a villain in the books)

The Crown of Winter Roses (Redemption)

- Summary: Rhaegar starts the Rebellion by stealing his sister, you.

- Pairing: sister!reader/Rhaegar Targaryen

- Note: I've blended in your request into this series, dear anon. I hope you don't mind. 🙂 And yeah, I as well blame Rhaegar for everything that happens in ASOIAF.

- Rating: Mature 16+

- Previous part: 2

- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff @alyssa-dayne @oxymakestheworldgoround

The years had weathered Rhaegar Targaryen, carving lines of age and regret into a once-youthful face. The sun was low in the sky, casting shadows across the courtyard of the modest estate they now called home. He stood at the edge of the training yard, watching the figures move before him: a young girl with silver-gold hair that glinted in the fading light, her sword flashing as she sparred with her teacher, her laughter ringing out clear and bright.

Daenerys. His daughter. His salvation.

She was everything he had hoped for, everything he had feared he would never deserve. Born in a time of chaos and loss, she had been the one light that had kept him from drowning in the darkness of his own guilt. He watched her now, so vibrant and full of life, a fierce joy burning in her eyes as she practiced the sword forms she had insisted on learning. It was not the way of the Targaryens to wield steel, but she had her mother’s stubborn spirit, and Rhaegar had not had the heart to deny her.

He glanced over at you, standing a little distance away, your gaze fixed on Daenerys with a look of quiet pride. You had forgiven him—gods knew why, but you had. Even after everything, after the lies, the betrayal, the war that had torn the realm apart, you had stood by him. It was your strength, your love, that had given him the courage to change, to try to atone for the past.

The rebellion had ended in blood and ruin. Robert Baratheon sat on the Iron Throne now, his rule uncontested. The Targaryens had been shattered, scattered like ashes in the wind. Rhaegar had fled with you, with Daenerys, to this distant corner of Essos, where no one cared about fallen kings or broken crowns. He had abandoned his claim to the throne, left behind the dream of prophecy and power that had once consumed him.

In the quiet years that followed, he had learned what it meant to truly live. It had not been easy. The weight of his sins was always there, a constant, silent companion. The faces of those he had lost, those he had failed, haunted his nights. He could still see Elia’s eyes, the terror in them as he left her behind, could still hear the cries of his children as they were torn from this world before they had even truly lived. 

But through it all, you had been there, your presence a balm to his wounded soul. You had been the one to pull him from the abyss, to remind him that there was still something worth fighting for, even if it was no longer a crown or a kingdom. And then there was Daenerys, the unexpected miracle that had brought him back to life. She had been born amidst the ashes of his old dreams, and in her eyes, he had found a new purpose, a new hope.

He watched as she parried a blow, her movements fluid, graceful. She was strong, not just in body but in spirit. She had inherited your fire, your fierce will, and every day he thanked whatever gods still listened that she had also inherited your heart. She did not carry the burden of prophecy, of expectation. She was free to be herself, to choose her own path. And that, more than anything, was his redemption.

Once, he had believed he was meant to be the savior of the realm, the hero of some grand destiny. Now he knew better. His role was not to save kingdoms or fulfill prophecies. It was to be a father, a husband, to protect and cherish the family that had somehow come to love him despite his failings.

Daenerys glanced over at him, her face flushed with exertion, her eyes bright. “Did you see that, Father?” she called, her voice full of pride and excitement.

Rhaegar smiled, the simple joy of that moment filling his heart. “I did, sweetling. You’re becoming quite the swordswoman.”

She grinned, a flash of white teeth, and then turned back to her training, her focus unwavering. He marveled at her resilience, at the strength she possessed. He had tried to shield her from the shadows of his past, from the darkness that had once consumed him, but she was wise beyond her years. She knew more than he wished she did, understood the burden he carried even if she did not fully grasp its weight.

As he watched her, he felt the familiar pang of regret, the ache of old wounds that had never truly healed. But it was different now. The regret did not consume him as it once had. He had found a way to live with it, to carry it without letting it destroy him. And that was because of you, because of Daenerys, because of the life you had built together here, far from the shadows of the Iron Throne.

He turned to you, his heart full as he looked into your eyes. “Thank you,” he said softly, the words carrying the weight of everything he felt, everything he could never truly express.

You smiled, that smile that had always been his sanctuary. “For what?”

“For this,” he gestured to the courtyard, to Daenerys, to the life that surrounded them. “For saving me. For giving me a reason to keep going.”

You stepped closer, your hand reaching out to clasp his. “You saved yourself, Rhaegar. I just reminded you that there was something worth saving.”

He pulled you into his arms, holding you close, the warmth of your body a comfort against the lingering chill of his memories. “I love you,” he whispered, his voice breaking with the intensity of his emotions. “I love you so much.”

You held him, your hand running through his hair, your touch gentle, soothing. “I love you too, Rhaegar. We’ve come so far, haven’t we?”

He nodded, his throat tight. “We have. And I will spend the rest of my life making sure that what we’ve built here, what we have, is never taken from us.”

You pulled back slightly, looking up at him, your eyes shining with unshed tears. “You’ve already done that. You’ve given us a home, a family. You’ve given Daenerys a life free from the chains that once bound us.”

He kissed you then, a soft, lingering kiss that spoke of love and loss, of gratitude and hope. When he pulled back, you smiled, and he felt a sense of peace settle over him, a peace he had never thought he would find.

Daenerys ran over, her training session finished, her face flushed with triumph. “Did you see, Mother?” she asked eagerly. “Did you see how I beat Ser Jorah?”

You laughed, reaching out to brush a stray lock of hair from her forehead. “I did, my dragon. You were magnificent.”

She beamed, and Rhaegar felt his heart swell with pride. This, he thought, this is what it means to be redeemed. Not the grand gestures of kings or the fulfillment of prophecies, but the simple, everyday moments of love and laughter, of family and home.

He watched as you and Daenerys began to talk, your voices mingling in the quiet of the evening, and for the first time in so many years, he felt truly free. Free from the shadows of the past, free from the ghosts that had haunted him. He had found his redemption not in power or glory, but in the love of his family, in the laughter of his daughter, in the warmth of your embrace.

And as the sun set below the horizon, casting the world in hues of gold and crimson, he knew that whatever lay ahead, whatever trials the future might bring, he was ready. Because he had found his way back to the light. Because he had found his way back to you.

[raventreehall]

kinda crazy that joffrey is set up as a comparison to aerys (if and how it's warranted or not can be debated i guess). like it's an obvious message—it's not the house that's in power that matters, it's hereditary monarchy and a violent, stratified, patriarchal society that's the core issue—but the way it reflects on the characters... ahhhhhh!!!! robert looking at the kid he believes to be his son knowing that when he dies the whole rebellion will all be for nothing, the next in line is just another aerys (and he thinks he gave birth to him). and jaime!!! his son is a reincarnation of the king he killed. he's sworn to protect him again AND to see him die again, knowing that joffrey's death is for the good of the realm just like aerys' was. OH and tywin too. aerys made a fool of him so he helped put robert on the throne and married his daughter to him just for robert to turn out to be an oaf, and then put his grandson on the throne over robert just for his grandson to turn out to be another aerys... snake eating its own tail moment, epic cringe fail