#third of all why do people think every child there is aegons? aside from the single bowlcut kid we saw?

[aegoneggon]

ever since going on my tb fact finding mission I fear I have permanently altered my dash. I swear I see the 3 same anti-aegon topics on a loop.

[moonlitgleek]

How do you feel about Alicent Hightower? I used to feel some sympathy towards her, mostly because she's smarter than both Rhaenyra and her son, but she lost me with her cruel treatment of Aegon III in F&B. (Though tbh for someone who asked for peace twice, it felt OOC to have her be so petty and vengeful later on, it seemed that GRRM wanted to sideline her and couldn't find a better way to do so than turning her into a Hysterical Woman).

My feelings towards Alicent are complicated. Certainly, I’m not prone to thinking that a person who constantly refers to Rhaenyra as a whore, wishes for her death in childbed and lets her own husband rot while she plans a takeover is a good person. However, I’m somewhat bothered by how she gets discussed in fandom because more often than not, it’s Alicent’s desire to see her son succeed to the throne despite Viserys’ expressed wishes to the contrary that gets singled out as something to condemn. I get that it’s the root of a lot of Alicent’s actions thereafter, but of all the crappy things she did or said, wanting her son to be king is a weird thing to hold against her imo considering that any lady in her position would have had the same expectation. Alicent was not an outlier in either expecting or advocating for a son to come before a daughter of the same generation. It really did not matter who Viserys married; his wife was always going to expect her trueborn son to inherit ahead of his sister, though of course the way she went about it might have differed. Viserys I set up a a rather knotty succession debate then did nothing to resolve or mitigate it so a conflict over the throne on his death was always going to happen irrespective of the identity of his wife. It might or might not have been as bloody as the Dance of the Dragons, but it was assuredly happening.

That said, I disagree with your assessment of Alicent’s treatment of Aegon III being OOC. Alicent was not remotely a kind or a peaceful person by nature. I’m generally iffy on how much credit to give her for her peace offers considering she only proposed the idea of a Great Council when she was defeated and in Rhaenyra’s control - where was that willingness when she had control of King’s Landing after Viserys’ death and Rhaenyra’s loyalists were being thrown in the black cells and/or killed? The thing to note about Alicent’s peace offers is that her motives were purely personal; she tried to broker peace after the tide started turning towards the blacks and her children were in terrible danger.

Words of these plans [to kill Daeron the Daring and his dragon] soon reached the ears of the Dowager Queen, filling her with terror. Fearing for her sons, Queen Alicent went to the Iron Throne upon her knees, to plead for peace. This time the Queen in Chains put forth the notion that the realm might be divided; Rhaenyra would keep King’s Landing and the crownlands, the North, the Vale of Arryn, all the lands watered by the Trident, and the isles. To Aegon II would go the stormlands, the westerlands, and the Reach, to be ruled from Oldtown.

Rhaenyra rejected her stepmother’s proposal with scorn. “Your sons might have had places of honor at my court if they had kept faith,” Her Grace declared, “but they sought to rob me of my birthright, and the blood of my sweet sons is on their hands.“Bastard blood, shed at war,” Alicent replied. “My son’s sons were innocent boys, cruelly murdered. How many more must die to slake your thirst for vengeance?”

Alicent’s twisted logic aside, peace for her was explicitly tied to the safety of her own children, all of whom were in perilous positions at this point as far as she knew. But not only did Alicent dismiss the loss of Jace and Luke as inconsequential due to their bastardy, she deliberately misconstrued Luke’s death because Luke didn’t die at warbut was cruelly murdered by Aemond, and completely ignored young Viserys’ presumed death.Rhaenyra naturally rejected Alicent’s peace because why should she be interested in sparing her brothers’ lives when her brothers killed her sons? But Rhaenyra’s rejection of Alicent’s offer meant that the two factions continued to clash, and two of Alicent’s sons were killed by Rhaenyra’s supporters whereas Helaena committed suicide after a depressive episode suffered as a result of Daemon’s “a son for a son” vengeance. Alicent’s pleas for her sons’ lives were rebuffed and she ended up losing two of them as the third suffered permanent injuries. In that context, I find it logical that Alicent would be as uninterested in any scenario that spared Rhaenyra’s Aegon as Rhaenyra was in one that spared Alicent’s sons. Too, it is very in-character for Alicent to pursue vengeance; don’t forget that she had previously demanded that the 5-year-old Lucerys’ eye be put out as a punishment for him taking out Aemond’s eye, so the willingness to maim children as a form of vengeance and a statement wasn’t new to Alicent. The bad blood that turned this war into a circle of vengeance and violence long preceded Viserys I’s death.

I’d also disagree that Alicent’s vengeance was an attempt from GRRM to sideline her, simply because Alicent was not sidelined at this point. For all intents and purposes, she acted as a regent in her sons’s absence. She was the main political authority in King’s Landing prior to Aegon II’s return from Dragonstone. It was Alicent who negotiated the reclaiming of the Red Keep during the Moon of Madness. It was her who proclaimed a curfew, had the City Watch reformed and had the three pretender kings arrested. It was her who betrothed Aegon II to Cassandra Baratheon and accepted Corlys Velaryon’s fealty on Aegon’s behalf.It was her machinations, along with Larys Strong, that prevented Alyn Velaryon from attacking Aegon II on Dragonstone and succeeded in bringing him back to King’s Landing. Even after Aegon’s return, Alicent remained a power player in his court and a constant presence in his councils.

With his half-sister slain and her only surviving son a captive at his own court, King Aegon II might reasonably have expected the remaining opposition to his rule to melt away…and mayhaps it might have done so if His Grace had heeded Lord Velaryon’s counsel and issued a general pardon for all those lords and knights who had espoused the queen’s cause. Alas, the king was not of a forgiving mind. Urged on by his mother, the Queen Dowager Alicent, Aegon II was determined to exact vengeance upon those who had betrayed and deposed him.

Though years would need to pass before Morning grew large enough to be ridden to war, the news of her birth nonetheless was of great concern to the green council. If the rebels could flaunt a dragon and the loyalists could not, Queen Alicent pointed out, smallfolk might see their foes as more legitimate. “I need a dragon,” Aegon II said when he was told

“Your Grace,” the Sea Snake said, when the rump of the once proud green council had assembled, “you must surrender. The city cannot endure another sack. Save your people and save yourself. If you abdicate in favor of Prince Aegon, he will allow you to take the black and live out your life with honor on the Wall.”

“Will he?” King Aegon said. Munkun tells us he sounded hopeful.

His mother entertained no such hope. “You fed his mother to your dragon,” she reminded her son. “The boy saw it all.”The king turned to her desperately. “What would you have me do?”

“You have hostages,” the Queen Dowager replied. “Cut off one of the boy’s ears and send it to Lord Tully. Warn them he will lose another part for every mile they advance.”

“Yes,” Aegon II said. “Good. It shall be done.”

Alicent was not sidelined at all. The one decision she took that Aegon went against was agreeing to the betrothal between Princess Jaehaera and Aegon the Younger, and that can’t really be described as him going against her wishes because Alicent was negotiating in bad faith with Corlys Velaryon and had no intention of allowing Aegon to actually wed Jaehaera. Aegon listened to her in all else.

Finally, I wouldn’t characterize desiring vengeance as a sign of a hysterical woman, especially not in the context of the Dance where Martin had previously contrasted the reaction of men and women to the loss of a child, doubling down on his pattern of broken mothers in having both Rhaenyra and Helaena fall into depression and retreat from court in the aftermath of Luke and Jaehaerys’ death at the same time that Daemon and Aegon II swore vengeance. Because men get to act while women get to break. If there is a problem in Alicent’s characterization here, I’d say it is in her ultimate fate being an imprisonment where she “spent more time weeping than reading or sewing. One day she ripped all her clothing into pieces” which may be understandable in the context of the story but is also a part of a consistent problematic pattern in the narrative.

[samwpmarleau]

Why do people want Jon to be legitimate so bad? It's almost like they're buying into the stigma that being a bastard is bad and something to fix. And like you said, it's as simple as Rhaegar was married, Lyanna betrothed, and polygamy illegal. He's a bastard. And I really doubt Lyanna would be so naive (well her running away in itself is naive but different context imo) as to believe 'marrying' Rhaegar before her gods would somehow be noble or recognized.

Oh man. I have THINGS TO SAY.

For many people, I think he’s just a special snowflake and they want him to be legitimate so that he’s not “tainted” by bastardy or whatever and he gets to have Everything He’s Always Wanted™.

But also, I think it’s for how much of an identity crisis Jon has had with being a bastard and the irony that this scenario would bring to it. We’re inside Jon’s head so thoroughly and thus are keenly aware of how for his entire life he’s been at odds with his status, especially since he’s not the typical bastard. Catelyn is frigid towards him not because he’s illegitimate, but because Ned brought him home and has raised him alongside Robb, completely ignoring the shame it brings upon his wife.

Yet, Jon’s not the same as Robb — he has the same basic education, but he’s never been in line for Winterfell and by virtue of his very birth there was always an insurmountable divide between him and his siblings. Except for as much as Jon dislikes his place, he abides by it well — even when he’s presented with what he used to dream of (though note it says “later, when he was older, he had been ashamed of those dreams … even to dream otherwise seemed disloyal”), to become an actual Stark, he refuses it because he knows it would be a farce and that Winterfell belongs to Sansa, not him.

It stems too from him having no idea who his mother was. Obviously Ned can’t tell him the truth, but he doesn’t even tell him a lie. Was his mother a whore? A merchant’s daughter? Ashara Dayne? Wylla? Who was she? Jon (understandably) desperately wants her to be a respectable woman, but he’s told absolutely nothing about her so even that is merely a hope.

“Words won’t make your mother a whore. She was what she was, and nothing Toad says can change that. You know, we have men on the Wall whose mothers were whores.”

Not my mother, Jon thought stubbornly. He knew nothing of his mother; Eddard Stark would not talk of her. Yet he dreamed of her at times, so often that he could almost see her face. In his dreams, she was beautiful, and highborn, and her eyes were kind.

The sad thing here is that we know Jon’s mother was beautiful, highborn, and kind, but Jon doesn’t. And he thinks of this constantly:

I will ask him about my mother, he resolved. I am a man now, it is past time he told me. Even if she was a whore, I don’t care, I want to know.

He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never dishonor himself, not even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered, He fathered a bastard, where was the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her name.

Interestingly, his mentions of her fade as the series goes on, as he accepts who he is. He didn’t have any friends in Winterfell save (most of) his family, yet at the Wall he’s surrounded by people he considers not only friends, but brothers. Who actually like him. Then, where once he had thought he could never achieve any high position, he is elected Lord Commander. Sure, that command is of the Night’s Watch and not Winterfell, but the position has been held by many respectable men, and no one ranks higher than he does. He is in charge. People listen to him.

Enter that irony. For five books we have Jon slowly growing into himself, finding love (even if it’s dubious consent love) and friendship and honor and repute despite being a bastard, then we find out his parents were not only married but his mother was a Stark and his father was the Targaryen crown prince. If circumstances were different, Jon would have grown up as third in line to the Iron Throne behind Rhaegar and Aegon. But that could only happen if Rhaegar and Lyanna were married, 100% legally, and if they could prove it and/or anyone actually believed them — it’s not enough that they simply had him, because then he could only ever be a legitimized bastard, who may have come before the girls in succession, we don’t really have precedent to say, but may equally have come dead last after Aegon, Viserys, Rhaenys, and Dany (possibly even Rhaella?).

They also focus on the Prince That Was Promised prophecy, and claim that he must be legitimate because then that title wouldn’t fit. This despite the fact that Dany is likely the “Prince” That Was Promised — 

“No one ever looked for a girl,” [Aemon] said. “It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. … Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it.”

— and that Jon would still have princely blood even if he were a bastard. Both because Rhaegar lived and died as one, and because if everyone had lived and Jon were legitimized, he would then also be a prince, though not trueborn.

And we mustn’t forget that much of this bullshit has to do with people’s perceptions of Elia as well. Everyone and their grandmother says she would have been fine with it because she’s ~Dornish~ and Dornish people take ~paramours~ and so she wouldn’t care.

Never mind that the last time a Martell married a Targaryen, a Targaryen bastard set off five generations of war, the last of which occurred right on Elia’s doorstep and in which (probably) her uncle Lewyn earned his stripes.

Never mind that Rhaegar was not Dornish and by using the “paramour” excuse he would be disgustingly appropriating a culture to which he doesn’t belong.

Never mind that Rhaegar fathering a bastard, even an un-legitimized one, would present an extreme threat to Elia’s children. She’s Dornish, people are racist as hell towards her people (not to mention ableist towards her specifically), and love the Starks — what happens if Westeros decides one day they’re not into having a half-Dornish king and instead back Jon? What happens if Lyanna isn’t content with her son playing second fiddle?

What happens if Rhaegar decides Jon is a better choice, especially if he changes his mind about Aegon having the song of ice and fire, and either sets Aegon and Rhaenys aside or declares Jon his heir over Aegon? Brandon was betrothed to a Tully, Ned was warded with Robert in the Vale, and Tywin hated Aerys — that’s a ridiculously powerful bloc that could oppose Elia’s children, who would have only Dorne and maybe a handful of other houses in support.

Elia would never be on board with that. I could see her putting up with Rhaegar having a mistress, because almost every guy in this series has one, but not a highborn one, and not having a child on one. And the way he went about it? By abandoning a newly postpartum Elia who nearly died giving birth to an heir who looked exactly like him, running off with the 15-year-old only daughter of a Lord Paramount, not leaving so much as a note or letting Lyanna tell her family she’s all right, disappearing for over a year, not returning even when Brandon and Rickard were killed or when war broke out or when his wife and children were taken hostage, then being so overconfident about winning on the Trident that he lost in gruesome fashion.

He caused not only the downfall of his own house, but crippled the Starks (Brandon, Rickard, and Lyanna all die, then Benjen takes the black shortly after the war) and the Dornish (10,000 spears were extorted from Doran, Elia was raped and murdered, their children were brutally killed, Lewyn was killed in battle, Arthur was killed, and Ashara committed suicide), put the Baratheons and Lannisters in power, and ruined the prophecy as he’d interpreted it.

Had Rhaegar not been so politically braindead, none of that would have happened. So no, Elia would have hated him for that, not signed off on it. Fuck that noise. People often talk about paramours as though every Dornish person takes one and that it’s not cheating, which is simply not true. Oberyn had one, but Oberyn was not married, the occasional additional liaisons he took were not only approved by Ellaria, but they participated in those liaisons together, and he and Ellaria were in a committed relationship for 14-plus years. 

We also really don’t have that many examples of Dornish people taking paramours at all:

Ellaria

Neither she nor Oberyn were married, and they were both completely devoted and faithful to one another.

Old Lord Yronwood’s that Oberyn slept with

Which, incidentally, we don’t know that Yronwood was cheating at all. Perhaps Yronwood was a widower, or his wife was fine with it, or his wife joined in, we don’t know the details.

Lewyn

Hey guess what! He wasn’t married, and was completely faithful to her, exactly like Oberyn.

Daemon Sand

There were rumors that he and Oberyn were lovers (which, gross, on so many levels), but we have only the one mention and no proof. Arianne maybe counts here as well, depending on your definition.

Drinkwater twins

Cletus suggested Quentyn take one of them as a paramour after he was married, but again we don’t know the details of that hypothetical, and Quentyn rejected it anyway.

Many Dornishmen took women of the Rhoynar for paramours; however, presumably that would have been more for purposes of alliance and to permanently join the two races.

Sylvenna Sand

She was a whore in King’s Landing who was the paramour of Essie, who was also a whore, so yet again, no adultery there.

Now, the text often refers to mistresses as paramours, but they are used interchangeably outside of Dorne. Within Dorne, they’re a separate thing. And, as you can see from the above, no one except maybe Lord Yronwood was married.

Rhaegar was. With two small children. Lyanna was betrothed. Their affair was full-blown adultery, none of this “paramour” business. Once more I say: fuck that noise.

Also, like … GRRM once said Rhaegar was a “lovestruck prince” and Barristan said he “loved his lady Lyanna” (neither sentiment is one I believe), but we’re never told anything of Lyanna’s thoughts on the matter. I am baffled as to where people get the idea she would agree to a marriage with Rhaegar.

She wanted out of her betrothal to Robert because he was not faithful, why would she enter into polygamy?? Why would she agree to get pregnant at 15?? She’s compared to Arya constantly — can you see Arya ever doing all of that?? It makes no sense!

Not that they could even get married. The Faith prohibits polygamy, and we have no examples of people in the North (save beyond the Wall, which is not in the Seven Kingdoms) ever having polygamous marriages either. So even if there were some kind of “ceremony,” it would never hold up.

Anyway. People are dumb.