#that does NOT mean they have the pull politically.same for doran and arianne who are popular in dorne but NOT outside of it

[atopvisenyashill]

#rightful#asoiaf#excellent analysis i am applauding your efforts#no but really i think the point is that no one is the  heir#it's all down to who enough people accept as the person in charge#and i can see them just saying screw the iron throne that was just some targaryen nonsense at the end of Everything 

lmao that is exactly my point in much less words. after the deaths of daenerys and aegon vi (which, no matter how you fall regarding their morality/heroism and legitimacy, it doesn’t seem likely either of them are living to the epilogue endgame. even putting the show aside, fans of both of them have been predicting their deaths since like, the 90s) and the deaths of all the legimtiate Baratheons, there is no clear heir to the Iron Throne left alive. You either have to acclaim a bastard line or a female line and even those are super far off houses and relations. 

edric storm seems like the natural heir for the stormlands but there’s a difference between making a castle raised bastard a Lord Paramount because there’s literally no heirs left and making that bastard the KING. and while some of the decisions regarding how the targs marry into other houses make no sense bc grrm doesn’t understand women’s roles in medieval era as well as he thinks he does (lol) i do think there’s a doylist reason for the targ women to constantly marry into nothingburger houses like the penroses or the plumms, as well as Distinguished But Not Super Powerful houses like Tarth or Velaryon and its to make it so there’s no obvious heir and the lords are all forced to reckon with the last 300 years of extreme bloodshed and their culpability in maintaining the systems that have frequently destroyed their houses, marched their sons off to useless wars, and eaten their daughters alive. its not about whose grandpa sat on that spikey chair, it’s about who is willing to step up and lead.

i have decided to break down all the wild potential female line claimants to the iron throne thru the targaryen line because why not let’s go:

obviously there's our "modern" targaryen daughters: daenerys, rhaella, shaera, and rhaelle. that one is easy to explain in part because it's mostly incest, lol. it goes like so (mind you, i'm cutting out male siblings that don't inherit for now) -

Aegon V + Betha Blackwood -> Jaehaerys II, Shaera, Rhaelle (also Duncan & Daeron)

Jaehaerys II + Shaera -> Aerys + Rhaella -> Daenerys

Rhaelle + Ormund Baratheon -> Steffon Baratheon. Steffon + Cassandra Eastermont = Robert, Stannis, and Renly.

so rhaella & shaera's lines are the same as their brothers, and rhaelle is the grandmother of the baratheon kings, which means like the targaryen main line, all of their lines will be dead or illegitimate as well (rip myrcella, tommen, shireen, aegon vi, and daenerys tho).

that leads you up from aegon v to maekar’s daughters, and since we are at a time period where no main character was alive, i made a little graphic to explain easier. let's start with daeron ii (since he's maekar's father anyway) and work backwards:

there’s several ladies in this grouping: rhae, daella, aelora, daenora, and vaella. we know ‘recently’ a targaryen married the evenstar, and timeline wise, it can only be Rhae or Daella, likely to selwyn’s grandfather. which means claimant number one is selwyn & brienne as king & princess of dragonstone claimant. hell yeah.

there’s two “dead end” branches next. maekar has a granddaughter, vaella, but given she’s described as “simple” it’s likely she never married. daeron & myriah, meanwhile, had no daughters but their son rhaegel had two, aelora and daenora. aelora married her brother aelor but aelora killed herself several years after aelor died (it’s a wild story but not relevant). no children. daenora married into maekar’s line tho, to aerion brightflame and had a son, maegor targaryen, who was passed over for aegon v. we do not know if he married or had kids bc it’s not listed and it’s not like there’s a cadet targaryen house anywhere so if he did marry, probably all daughters.

even further back is aegon the unworthy who had one daughter: daenerys. yes that’s right, our second claimant for king and princess of dragonstone is doran and arianne martell (and then, haha, elia and aegon vi AGAIN, love nobility family trees). and then technically, because the martells are normal and don’t die off every two generations, probably a few offshoot martell cousins. and a reminder that minus mysterious maegor, we have no living male line descendants potentially hanging around either. but back to the targ line.

viserys ii had naerys who married aegon iv so their line is the same. aegon iii, his brother, had three daughters.

daena has daemon blackfyre and given that he was legitimized, you could make the argument that the blackfyres have a claim lmao, so any female line daemon kids could be fair game. then you have elaena targaryen who had several legitimate children: viserys plumm, & robin, laena, jocelyn, and joy penrose. that’s right my esteemed readers our third claimant for king and prince of dragonstone is phillip & dennis plumm!

*loud boos bc they’re not even a great house or a house that used to be kings, they’re just some random nobles in the westerlands* shut up i’m not finished!!

through elaena, the only targ pulling her weight out here to populate the family tree, we have our fourth claimant as well: Old Penrose of the Parchments for King on the Iron Throne!

there’s no reason laena, jocelyn, and joy did not marry but we have no info on them so just know if they married some random landed knight, we also have some random dude walking around the stormlands who could be the next king of westeros.

then we get JAEHAERYS but to keep with ignoring men in this post, i entitled it “alyssa’s line.”

baby visenya, who was a stillbirth & jaehaera, who died before having children, are the two “dead end” lines from the dance. before them is viserys, who had helaena but helaena’s heirs are aegon ii’s heirs.

now, jaehaerys had daenerys, alyssa, saera, viserra, daella, and gael. daenerys died before having children as did viserra. gael & saera had no legitimate children. that leaves alyssa and daella. daella had aemma arryn, who married back into the targ family tree to have rhaenyra. alyssa also married back into the family tree and had three sons, viserys, daemon, and aegon. aegon died as a baby, we know viserys, but daemon had two daughters with laena velaryon: baela and rhaena. laena herself is also a distant claimant through the female line - aemon, jaehaerys’ first born son, and jocelyn baratheon had rhaenys, the queen that never was, who had laena. through baela we get our fifth claimant for king of westeros, the literal toddler montereys velaryon! rhaena is kinda tricky - she had no children in her first marriage, and six daughters in her second to garmund hightower but he was the third son and his oldest brother had six kids so it’s not likely the hightower line descends from rhaena however it would be really funny if it did so for the sake of making myself laugh i give you our sixth claimant to the seat of house targaryen, king leyton hightower and prince of dragonstone baelor breakwind. this puts a lot of people in the running tbh, bc leyton has a million kids. his daughters marry and have kids with an ambrose, a tyrell, a cupps, and a redwyne (and a mormont but jorah and lynesse have no children).

(it would require all the hightower male heirs to die [not likely, there’s three of them] AND mad maid malora as well to get to alerie but king and queen mace and alerie tyrell with willas as prince of dragonstone is so fucking funny to me. hey daeron how olenna’s ass taste now.)

before jaehaerys, we have aenys, who had rhaena the boss bitch & alysanne. alysanne’s line is jaehaerys’ obviously, and rhaena married her brother aegon the uncrowned. they had two girls, aerea and rhaella, but neither lived to see adulthood. maegor never had living kids, which brings us back to aegon, who had only sons, and visenya and rhaenys, who married their brother.

i actually had a point to this which is that there is just no one sitting on that fucking chair at the ending because there is no one left alive to sit on it that the lords would choose. they’re not crowning a penrose or a plumm and they’re certainly not crowning my girls arianne and brienne however hilarious i think that would be. i think “westeros breaks up along weird new borders” makes sense just due to that alone - the north will push for independence (maybe parts of the riverlands will want to stick with the north), dorne isn’t likely to be thrilled about some random ass king, the iron islands is…the iron islands, so the only kingdoms that might actually want to stick together are the stormlands, the reach, the crownlands, the vale, and the westerlands, but also, all of these bitches hate each other right now & a lot of them are gonna bite it so who knows.

anyways tldr female line targaryen claimants include these wild choices for King & Heir:

Selwyn and Brienne of Tarth

Doran and Arianne Nymeros Martell of Dorne

Any female line Blackfyres

Phillip and Dennis Plumm of the Westerlands (so minor we don’t even know where their seat is lmao)

Old Penrose of the Parchments

Montereys Velaryon of Driftmark

Leyton and Baelor Hightower of Oldtown

Through Leyton, who has a whopping 10 children, we have House Ambrose, Cupps, Redwyne, and of course, the fat flower himself, House Tyrell as claimants eight thru like, fifty.