#her telling off all the courtiers her mother sent after her to cockblock her and imriel in the hunting lodge was badass

[hussyknee]

Reading Kushiel's Justice, the scene where Imriel and Sidonie start having anal sex, and came across "the head breached the tight ring of muscle". Brain screeched to a halt. Checked the publication date, remembered the internet fan experience of the mid-2000s.

Jacqueline Carey reads fanfiction, I know it.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

question from a non-book reader; i've been reading up on a lot of targaryen history since i got the world of ice and fire book. i vaguely understand the blackfyre rebellion and a lot of what i see on tumblr seems to side either with the targaryens or the blackfyres. but it seems to me that neither side was fully in the right since the targaryens overall weren't exactly known for being just rulers. that said, what is your opinion on the blackfyre rebellion? (1/2)

(2/2) did bloodraven genuinely commit tyranny and sins against the gods, or was aegor rivers the one who had the moral high ground in comparison?

…um.

I’m not sure if you’re confused because you haven’t read the books, or what, but sorry… no. The Blackfyre Rebellion happened because King Aegon IV Targaryen, Aegon the Unworthy (motto: “wash her and bring her to my bed”), always hated his trueborn son Daeron, considering him weak, hated Daeron’s mother Queen Naerys (and always tried to undermine her, including accusing her of infidelity through a proxy), hated the peace made with Dorne that was sealed with Daeron’s marriage to a Dornish princess (including trying and failing to start a war with Dorne by attacking them unprovoked with wooden “dragons”), decided to give Daeron one last stab in the back by legitimizing all his bastards on his deathbed.

One of those bastards included Daemon Blackfyre, born Daemon Waters, the son of Aegon and his cousin Daena the Defiant.

Aegon had knighted Daemon for valor in a squire’s tourney (age 12), and presented him with the Valyrian steel sword Blackfyre, the hereditary sword of House Targaryen and the Targaryen kings. (Blackfyre had belonged to Aegon the Conqueror, and when Aenys gave the sword to his younger brother Maegor at Aegon’s funeral – because Maegor was a warrior and Aenys was not, wanting them to rule together – it was widely considered to be a sign of Aenys’s weakness and Maegor’s strength.) Aegon IV giving Daemon the sword of kings, acknowledging him as his son, and then legitimizing him two years later, was considered by many to be his attempt to make Daemon his true heir and deny Daeron as falseborn, Naerys’s secret bastard.

Nevertheless, Daeron did not let his father’s duplicity preclude his obligations to his many bastard half-brothers and -sisters; including allowing Daemon to change his last name to Blackfyre, arranging his marriage to Rohanne of Tyrosh as Aegon had negotiated (though Daeron did not allow Daemon to marry his sister Princess Daenerys too), and granting a keep and lands along the Blackwater to the new House Blackfyre. Daemon even took his sigil the Targaryen arms inverted, a black three-headed dragon on red. And Daemon made it known that Aegon had given Daemon the sword because he was a warrior and Daeron was not, though Daeron did have two sons (out of four) who were highly martially talented.

Daeron’s rule soon stablized the excesses of the reign of his corrupt hedonist father; he was seen as just and good-hearted, and he was called “Daeron the Good” by both smallfolk and lords. Nevertheless, as time went on, those who opposed Dorne and its inclusion in Westeros, bound by two marriages to House Targaryen, found their figurehead in the handsome warrior Daemon Blackfyre. They looked at Daeron’s marriage to Mariah Martell, and his heir Baelor Breakspear, who though a warrior, also looked like his mother, with dark hair and dark eyes. They stewed at Princess Daenerys’s marriage to Prince Maron Martell of Dorne (oh noes a smelly brown man manhandling our white princess), and imagined a great love story denied to Daemon. (Though for all Daemon’s passion was supposedly cockblocked by his mean half-brother, he was still getting busy with Rohanne, producing at least 9 children in 12 years; and Daenerys never seemed unhappy in her marriage to Maron, who built the Water Gardens for her.) They got really angry at the Dornish courtiers who came to King’s Landing with Mariah, and supposed special treatment to Dorne. They brought up the rumors of Naerys and Aemon the Dragonknight, claiming that the weak Daeron was not Aegon’s son. We literally have the words of a Blackfyre supporter telling us this:

“Treason… is only a word. When two princes fight for a chair where only one may sit, great lords and common men alike must choose. And when the battle’s done, the victors will be hailed as loyal men and true, whilst those who were defeated will be known forevermore as rebels and traitors. That was my fate.” Egg thought about it for a time. “Yes, my lord. Only…King Daeron was a good man. Why would you choose Daemon?” “Daeron…” Ser Eustace almost slurred the word, and Dunk realized he was half-drunk. “Daeron was spindly and round of shoulder, with a little belly that wobbled when he walked. Daemon stood straight and proud, and his stomach was flat and hard as an oaken shield. And he could fight. With axe or lance or flail, he was as good as any knight I ever saw, but with the sword he was the Warrior himself. When Prince Daemon had Blackfyre in his hand, there was not a man to equal him…not Ulrick Dayne with Dawn, no, nor even the Dragonknight with Dark Sister. “You can know a man by his friends, Egg. Daeron surrounded himself with maesters, septons, and singers. Always there were women whispering in his ear, and his court was full of Dornishmen. How not, when he had taken a Dornishwoman into his bed and sold his own sweet sister to the Prince of Dorne, though it was Daemon that she loved? Daeron bore the same name as the Young Dragon, but when his Dornish wife gave him a son he named the child Baelor, after the feeblest king who ever sat the Iron Throne. “Daemon, though… Daemon was no more pious than a king need be, and all the great knights of the realm gathered to him. It would suit Lord Bloodraven if their names were all forgotten, so he has forbidden us to sing of them, but I remember. Robb Reyne, Gareth the Grey, Ser Aubrey Ambrose, Lord Gormon Peake, Black Byren Flowers, Redtusk, Fireball… Bittersteel! I ask you, has there ever been such a noble company, such a roll of heroes? “Why, lad? You ask me why? Because Daemon was the better man. The old king saw it too. He gave the sword to Daemon. Blackfyre, the sword of Aegon the Conqueror, the blade that every Targaryen king had wielded since the Conquest…he put that sword in Daemon’s hand the day he knighted him, a boy of twelve.” “My father says that was because Daemon was a swordsman, and Daeron never was,” said Egg. “Why give a horse to a man who cannot ride? The sword was not the kingdom, he says.” The old knight’s hand jerked so hard that wine spilled from his silver cup. “Your father is a fool.”

–The Sworn Sword

There is nothing to do with justice here. Nothing to do with ruling justly. There’s only hero-worship, glorification of violence, ableism, anti-intellectualism, misogyny, and Dornish racism. That’s what the followers of Daemon Blackfyre supported. They’re like Trump supporters, wanting to make Westeros great again.

And no bigger supporter of Daemon was his half-brother Aegor Rivers, aka Bittersteel. Aegor, “pissed off all his life”, was particularly mad at the court, because his mother Barba Bracken, Aegon’s mistress, had been sent away in disgrace after it was found that she and her father were talking up making Barba queen when Naerys had a health scare. (It was Daeron and his uncle Aemon, Naerys’s supporters, who made enough of a fuss about the scandal to get Aegon to send her away. Note also that Aegor’s grandfather was later executed along with his daughter Bethany, Aegon’s mistress, after she was caught sleeping with a Kingsguard.) While Aegor also received the legitimization given to all of Aegon’s bastards, he didn’t get all the benefits he felt he should have gotten – unlike his half-brother Brynden Rivers, “Bloodraven”, whose mother Melissa Blackwood (another one of Aegon’s mistresses), had always been popular at court (even with Naerys and Daeron), leading to Bloodraven remaining close with Daeron and his family even after Melissa was dismissed as mistress. Furthermore, Shiera Seastar (another one of Aegon’s Great Bastards), chose Brynden as a lover instead of Aegor, making him even more angry.

So, Aegor got close to Daemon, including getting betrothed to one of his daughters, and frequently urged him to press his claim to the throne, on the grounds of king’s choice, having the sword, being more fit than Daeron Falseborn. Do you see a moral high ground here? I do not. It’s further implied that Brynden was also close to Daemon at the time (see him telling Bran that “a brother I loved” is one of his ghosts), and was able to get away and warn Daeron when the Blackfyre plans went from idle talk to open rebellion. He was no tyrant – he probably didn’t even have an office at court at the time, though he did eventually become Daeron’s spymaster.

But yes, Brynden did kill Daemon and his two eldest sons, sniping them during the last battle of the first Blackfyre Rebellion. For which he was accused of kinslaying, and of using sorcery to get those accurate shots. The accusation of sorcery was probably slander (probably… a weirwood bow and weirwood arrows fletched with raven feathers might have had some mystical qualities), and as for the kinslaying… it was a battle where Daemon would have killed his half-nephews Baelor and Maekar if he’d had a chance, where Aegor fought Brynden one-on-one and took his eye out… and if the Blackfyres had won, do you think they’d just have packed off Daeron and Mariah and Aerys and Rhaegel? No, the falseborn weak Dornish half-breeds would have been executed or hunted down. You think they’d’ve left Daenerys and Maron and their children in peace? Nope, a war with Dorne would have been next on the agenda. Don’t talk to me about kinslaying. (Though whether Brynden considers himself to be gods-cursed could be a different matter.)

Now, after the first Blackfyre Rebellion, when Brynden supported killing all the rebel lords (Daeron elected to take hostages instead), after the death of Daeron’s heir Baelor, after the Great Spring Sickness when Daeron and Baelor’s sons died, leading to Daeron’s second son Aerys becoming king, and appointing Brynden as his Hand and master of whisperers… then you might get into questions of tyranny. (Which I consider a lot more debatable than some.) But it has absolutely nothing to do with why Daemon Blackfyre and his supporters rebelled in the first place. When Aegor Rivers formed the Golden Company, to support the Blackfyre cause in their exile in Tyrosh, did he give a flying fuck about tyranny or justice? No he did not, he just wanted to keep fucking with Bloodraven and put Daemon’s son on the throne of Westeros. (Not the gay son, though! That one, the heir after his older brothers died, Bittersteel ignored and kept his support from.)

The Blackfyre cause was never just. They were never in the right. I oppose them wholeheartedly, and I’m suspicious of anyone who chooses the black dragon over the red. I hope that clears things up for you.