#should i tag this as feudal system. that would be so funny

[arcadiiian]

a noble and their loyal vassal

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

Nope, you’re making a lot of sense! And I do not think that all kings and queens are bad. GRRM certainly doesn’t. We also see various characters who use the system to cause harm (e.g., Tywin), but we also have characters who work within the system to do a whole lot of good (as you mentioned Dany, plus Jon). I personally don’t think it’s a vain desire to want a position of power to do good. And I agree that that one does need some sort of power to enact positive change. And as we see with Dany, she equates her crown with justice and works towards that (which directly puts her at odds with like the vast majority of rulers we see in the series).

But what I was referring to (and maybe I ought to have been clearer) is that there are a lot of readers who think that attaining a crown or the throne is the highest peak of a character’s progression - or maybe even the only ending a character can get. Which I don’t necessarily agree with. I’m a Jon stan and my happy ending, for example, is him being far away from KL or the responsibilities of being king of the 7k.

From what I’ve seen over the years, a lot of fans are operating without thinking about what it means to be king or queen. To them, these are just fancy titles. Or they’re a prize someone gets for “suffering a lot”. GRRM says he was interested in Aragorn’s tax policy and to me it indicates that he’s interested in exploring how people operate within the intricacies of feudal power (and we can see that with Aegon V’s reign I think + Jon and Dany learning to lead in ADWD). Plus he also does explore how disenfranchised people get hurt by the cycles of violence. So when I use the very reductive “feudalism bad”, I’m just venting about how there are people who ignore the complexities of what it means to operate in this system for both the good and the bad.

There’s a huge disconnect when it comes to how people in this fandom perceive who is or isn’t deserving of power. I’ve seen a lot of people say Jon and Dany are undeserving of being in power because of their failures (I’ve also seen this applied to Tyrion). This has always been super funny to me because literally every single leader we see in this series fails one way or another. Kingship isn’t easy, but people think it is (or should be for certain people). That why you see people saying Aegon or Sansa will be successful where Jon and Dany failed…which rings alarm bells for me because how? People think they deserve the throne or crown more than anyone else, but why..? They’re still operating within this system that begets failure? Why and how are they different? You get what I mean?

(And it might sound contradictory but while I think J&D are excellent leaders and would do the world a whole lot of good if they were in power, I certainly don’t think it’s owed to them or that they inherently deserve it. A system that keeps a select privileged few in power over everyone else is flawed, no matter who leads it. Hope that makes sense).

And I definitely agree that GRRM is a romantic! That’s part of why I’m really excited to see how he tackles King Bran as an ending. Because while I do think this series does try to explore the rot within the system, that we’re going to have a kid be king at the end makes me think that GRRM has some romantic values he wants to explore. Just can’t tell what they are as of now; and this also puts me in a conundrum because I’ve always seen Harrenhal and the Iron Throne in the same light but while I think the IT will be destroyed, I’m not so sure Harrenhal will be as well (in fact, I believe it will be King Bran’s seat). And maybe part of the romanticism in the ending will be a cursed ruin being the site of regrowth and rejuvenation idk.

My initial tags were being reductive tbh, because I have many thoughts on this subject. But I just firmly believe that based on what we see in this series, no one is owed power. The Iron Throne has been linked to such a cycle of violence that I just vehemently believe that it cannot in any way be linked to a “happy ending”. For the good of the narrative, it gots to go.

Need asoiaf fans to be disabused from the notion that anyone “deserves” the Iron Throne. Not a single person deserves it, doesn’t matter how good they are. And I’d take it a step further and say that no one deserves to be king or queen or lord. We shouldn’t be equating kingship/queenship with a happy ending. This series does so much to criticize this awful system so it’s particularly jarring that people will go “I want my fave to get their happy ending and sit on the iron throne”. That’s…kind of antithetical to what the series has shown us so far I think.