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The Heir of the Dragon: A Rhaenyra Targaryen Quest

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Susano said:
I normally would say that, if Alicent is still our girlfriend by then, we could name one of our children Otto, but tbh, that's a goofy name to begin with. Yes, I know, it was the name of three Holy Roman Emperors in history, but I can think of East Frisia and pugs hearing that name. I am sure other Germans can relate.
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Meanwhile Danes are likely to think of a yellow rhinocerous with three horns.
 
Crown-wise, what about Aegon's crown in wartime, Jae's in peacetime?

Edit: also not something we need to do next turn b/c we might be pressed for slots, but there might be synergy between talking to Gwayne & requesting the City Watch job - like if Gwayne tells us that the Watch is still mostly Daemon's cronies or that there's a lot of corruption, we could use that to argue that more oversight from the crown (us) is necessary.

Talking with Gwayne is something I'd like to do as well because it seems polite to let him know about us and Alicent and because I think we should determine whether or not he's be willing to be the beard for us and Alicent - just so we don't have an emergency betrothal option without getting that first. Although those are both things we need to discuss with Alicent before Gwayne, and maybe it makes sense to earn our knighthood before requesting the job.
 
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I'm down to talk to Gwayne to try and make a real friendship there but it's too early to request the city watch command.

I expect we're not getting that much until after we get our knighthood and have proven ourselves a good bit, and we should take a few more speaking actions taking to council members, Strong and Tyland, to get a feel on them, hopefully nudge Otto from neutral to cordial.

Maybe even try to get a second captain on the city watch so we have more supporters there. Perhaps we should sneak into the city action soon to get a better feel for Kings Landing and the commoners, Rhaenyra is very inexperienced right now.

Of course - all of this conflicts with the training we need to keep up for the tournament and the studying we need to do to nail down our diplomacy, and the actual prep action we need to do for the progress.

All of which to say - we're not getting command without putting in the ground work before hand, and we don't have the time to put the groundwork in before the progress.

It's fine though, she's only 15 going on 16, we still should have a few years to really prove our ability to get on the council. Nobody wants to give someone they view as a child a small council position.

I think we should also be on the lookout during the progress and potentially sneaking into the city, for a candidate for whispers that Rhaenyra can back as her own man on the council. Viserys has held off there for a while, but it really is a necessary job and would give her great influence.
 
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I will say on the name thing, first there's a lot of rare name variants we could use if we wanted. Second, dude literally got passed over for succession in canon because his wildfire drinking father named him Meagor, it's a tainted name no one sane would use
 
Since we're on this subject. I'm probably going to make Rhaenyra's kids narrative as well with a few exceptions depending on the father. I want to keep dice to purely moments that they would make things more interesting.
 
Teen Spirit said:
Since we're on this subject. I'm probably going to make Rhaenyra's kids narrative as well with a few exceptions depending on the father. I want to keep dice to purely moments that they would make things more interesting.
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You'd think what possible rivals or heirs we have to contend with would fall under "interesting", but maybe I'm just too politics-pilled :p
 
I was assuming the city watch position is just a captain position or something - something a highborn but not terribly experienced son could attain, rather than the Lord Commander position. So I think we might be able to ask for it shortly after we get our knighthood. Or maybe it changes over time - ask for it early and we get an admin desk job since Viserys might not respect us as a fighter yet, ask for it after we get our knighthood and it's an captain position, ask years down the line when we have additional exploits and we can jump straight to LC. In which case, I think we want to be aiming to join as a captain - it let's us work our way up so we're not the rich kid being put at the top, but also means we already have some respect and authority going in.

In terms of nudging council opinion - I wonder if we could request tutoring on rulership from Otto or Lyonel, or if they'd consider it a waste of their time at this point. Or maybe like a scribing position in the Small Council? Although that feels like it would fit better for a scholar.
 
You know, jousting competitions are of course the absolute noble apex of tourneys in Westeros, both in Westeros and the RL high middle ages, but the melee is a thing - which, IRL, could also be held unmounted as well. And could indeed even include ritualized variants with blunt weapons. And participants would usually enter different tourney forms separately. So, just saying, we could enter tourneys as pure melee participants.
 
The Laurent said:
I kinda assumed we'd enter multiple categories in an attempt to completely wow people?
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Well, the last decision was about the lance vs the sword. We have mostly been trained in the sword, so the question was whether we should try to get ready for tourneys by focusing on the lance instead. We declined, so as to not inhibit our overall progress, so we are now mostly proficient with the sword, instead of training as a tourney knight. However, what I pointed out was there is in fact a tourney category specifically for the sword (or warhammer or whatever). So even without extra jousting training, we could participate in specifically that category.
 
No, TeenSpirit has only shown the sword on screen but clarified we've been training in all aspects. Tarly's option was to specificly neglect actual combat grade sword training in favor of tourney competitiveness.
 
Susano said:
Well, the last decision was about the lance vs the sword. We have mostly been trained in the sword, so the question was whether we should try to get ready for tourneys by focusing on the lance instead. We declined, so as to not inhibit our overall progress, so we are now mostly proficient with the sword, instead of training as a tourney knight. However, what I pointed out was there is in fact a tourney category specifically for the sword (or warhammer or whatever). So even without extra jousting training, we could participate in specifically that category.
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Well, from what I was understanding it was actually a question of, "Lance first" or "Everything mostly equally."

Like our Prowess describes us as a "Natural" at the Lance and Bow, so I was kinda assuming we were also getting Jousting Training, it just wasn't primary/the main and only thing we were doing.

But yeah, that is a point!
 
As far as the Small council:

King
-Hand
-Lord Commander
-Grand Maester
-Law
-Coin
-Ships
-Whispers

Whispers is the only unoccupied seat and Rhaenyra isn't experienced enough to serve in any of those positions regardless.

The Commander of the City Watch answers to the small council, (I think Law and Hand most of all), and has sometimes had an advisory position attending meetings, but is not a sitting councilor. But that's the best Rhaenyra can do in the short term.

I believe getting Gwaen his captaincy and further earning his friendship is a good step towards getting the command, but we should also further ingratiate ourselves with the other captains and small council to get the trust to become Commander.

And then, I believe Commander could be a step for getting the experience to eventually get a full seat, perhaps Law, and Gwaen would then be a good candidate for Commander.

And as I said previously, if we could support our own candidate for Whispers that'd be a major seat of our influence.
 
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Law wouldn't be a bad area to focus some studying on either, since IMO we want a firmer legal argument for our succession over a hypothetical brother than Viserys making an exception. Although that begs the question - do we want to try to build a relationship with Lyonel because he's the current Master of Laws, or ignore that because we hope to displace him eventually?

Tourney-wise, the fact that we're not focusing lance might not matter if we're sinking a Train action into it every turn in anticipation of an upcoming tourney to celebrate a younger sibling. I do think we want to compete in both.

OTOH, the we don't even know if the Queen is pregnant yet, so this might be premature.
 
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I would actually be in favor of taking conversations to improve our relationship with Strong to earn his support.

I actually think maybe he could be a candidate to move from Law to Whispers if we could get him in on a plan to use the Command as a stepping stone.
 
Parzival95 said:
As far as the Small council:

King
-Hand
-Lord Commander
-Grand Maester
-Law
-Coin
-Ships
-Whispers

Whispers is the only unoccupied seat and Rhaenyra isn't experienced enough to serve in any of those positions regardless.

The Commander of the City Watch answers to the small council, (I think Law and Hand most of all), and has sometimes had an advisory position attending meetings, but is not a sitting councilor. But that's the best Rhaenyra can do in the short term.

I believe getting Gwaen his captaincy and further earning his friendship is a good step towards getting the command, but we should also further ingratiate ourselves with the other captains and small council to get the trust to become Commander.

And then, I believe Commander could be a step for getting the experience to eventually get a full seat, perhaps Law, and Gwaen would then be a good candidate for Commander.

And as I said previously, if we could support our own candidate for Whispers that'd be a major seat of our influence.
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Daemon as Commander of the City Watch did sit on the Small Council but that was because he was Daemon. The Commander doesn't normally sit on the council but they can if the King desires.

I should note Viserys does not want a Master of Whispers.
 
Parzival95 said:
As far as the Small council:
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This is one of those things where Westerosi politics is completely underdeveloped for how much politics are the focus of the setting and stories. Because yeah, what you describe is the classical makeup of the Council... but the actual makeup is at the pleasure of the Monarch (or regent). Thus, the Commander of the City Watch can get a seat. People can get a seat without any portfolio whatsoever, like Prince Oberyn in canon. And so on and so forth.

Basically, we should not think we are restricted to those offices in order to get into the Small Council. Hell, for that matter, Viserys could declare that "Crown Prince(ss)" is a seat on the Small Council, the way we already sit at meetings (but are, technically, not supposed to speak).
 
I'm a bit wary of spreading conversations too thin - it seems like a better idea to pick 1 or 2 council members to focus on and let them advocate for us to the rest of the council. Not that we can't have a conversation here and there when relevant, but we don't have enough conversation slots to chat with Lord Beesbury every four turns or something because we haven't talked with him in a bit and he's still skeptical. We can raise opinion with other actions, like we did with the Vale intervention. We're also never going to be a diplomat, because every so often we'll get a "Defiant" option that we can't resist taking. Delegation is the soul of leadership. Not that we shouldn't study diplomacy, but we're not the Realm's Delight and sometimes it's better to have a really good hammer than a shitty multitool.

Otto or Lyonel is probably the best primary focus - I'd advocate for Otto, but Lyonel has his merits as well.
 
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hailcapital said:
I'm a bit wary of spreading conversations too thin - it seems like a better idea to pick 1 or 2 council members to focus on and let them advocate for us to the rest of the council. Not that we can't have a conversation here and there when relevant, but we don't have enough conversation slots to chat with Lord Beesbury every four turns or something because we haven't talked with him in a bit and he's still skeptical. We can raise opinion with other actions, like we did with the Vale intervention. We're also never going to be a diplomat, because every so often we'll get a "Defiant" option that we can't resist taking. Delegation is the soul of leadership.

Otto or Lyonel is probably the best primary focus - I'd advocate for Otto, but Lyonel has his merits as well.
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I mean, we haven't even done any diplomatic training, and we've literally never talked to a member of the Council deliberately who wasn't Otto Hightower so, uh...
 
Teen Spirit said:
Jousting is part of your regular training, same with bow and arrow.

I was hesistant to make Rhaenyra this skilled so quick but you guys have put in some very heavy training a number of times, and I figure if Barristan Selmy at 16, with trainers probably less skilled then a knight of the Kingsguard, can beat the pants of Duncan the Tall in a Tourney then we should be at least nearing that same ballpark.
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Imperious said:
You can also attribute Barristan's accomplishment, and ours, to our opponents being at the point where age has started to slow them down a bit. In order to be a Kingsguard you, nominally, have to be a great knight, but since service in the kingsguard is for life knights will continue to serve even when age is starting to take its toll on their fighting ability. Olympic athletes for example tend to retire very young because when competing at the highest level even minor differences can make it difficult to keep up when the people you'll be competing with train just as hard and are themselves also exceptionally talented.
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TBF Duncan the Tall was a great warrior and a hero who was essential to ending a couple of Blackyre rebellions (among other things) and just before his death he was in good enough shape to carry the royal children out of the Inferno that was Summerhall despite him being at ground zero when the experiment went south... Still, whereas he was terrific with a sword and with an axe, he was a pretty mediocre jouster, which is the main reason why he and Egg were regularly scraping by looking for an employer instead of entering the tourney tour ...

So even if Barristan Selmy was undoubtedly a precocious genius, to defeat Ser Duncan in a tourney is a little less impressive than you may assume...
hailcapital said:
If we can beat a Kingsguard at 15, if we keep our training there probably won't be many knights we can't beat when we're fully grown. We're beating Tarly half the time too, it sounds like.

Yo if we can get knighted at 16, we're tieing with Maegor and probably the youngest knight in the realm.

I'd guess that there will be a big tourney to celebrate the birth of our first half-sibling. Winning that as a mystery knight to earn our knighthood and crown our lady love would send a nice message.
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The Laurent said:
If we want to do training we'll need to take three actions, or rather we should take three actions, because it takes one action to set up the Progress and if we're doing the Progress we REALLY need to study Diplomacy first, dear lord. Training+Study+Prep Progress=3, which we CAN do.
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Hey, Hey, Hey... Remember that every one of our goals is a long-term project, we don't need to be the youngest king to ever be anointed, and honestly, we are already doing extremely well in the prowess department...

I would rather shift the focus a little to the rest of the stuff instead of that monofocus on training, to round up Rhaenyra's weakness now that we have time for it and no war on the horizon...
Teen Spirit said:
I will say on the name thing, first there's a lot of rare name variants we could use if we wanted. Second, dude literally got passed over for succession in canon because his wildfire drinking father named him Meagor, it's a tainted name no one sane would use
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Well, if we go for the way George did it for Valyrian names (mix together a few cool sounding particles and assemble them as you want) we are a little limited
There is nothing that prevents us from picking non-Valyrian names like Joffrey or Duncan for our children though...
hailcapital said:
I'm not sure I really get the point of the Visenya action. Like, I'm assuming she didn't do it (although it'd be really funny if learned the truth to try to clear her name and then she actually did do it). But even if she didn't do it, she was still party to Maegor's usurpation of Aegon the Uncrowned's throne. How much can her image really be rehabilitated?

I get that we've got the appellation "Visenya Reborn" but we're really only alike in that we're both female warrior's - she was a blood sorceress, we're basically a dragonrider paladin.
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Well, first of all, it increases our learning, synergizes well with other Viserys actions, and most importantly it is obvious the continuation of a chain side quest, and it tends to be something interesting at the end of those...
Susano said:
Basically, we should not think we are restricted to those offices in order to get into the Small Council. Hell, for that matter, Viserys could declare that "Crown Prince(ss)" is a seat on the Small Council, the way we already sit at meetings (but are, technically, not supposed to speak).
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Parzival95 said:
Whispers is the only unoccupied seat and Rhaenyra isn't experienced enough to serve in any of those positions regardless.
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Well, it was quite common for Kings to give both their heir and their wife a position in the Small Council, and canonically Rhaenyra and Alicent got a seat on the Small Council (even with the small ball to clock in), probably due to being the heir to the Iron Throne and the Queen respectively, and unlike Canon, our Rhaenyra gets along very well with Viserys and we are likely to avoid several of the worst mistakes she had in canon, so I think that our position in the Small council is assured as long as we are patient and we don't move out of King's Landing...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4weU22GrBVk&ab_channel=webseriespro
 
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Azel said:
Given that Viserys all but told us to talk with Beesbury, we should actually do so next turn.
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I agree... I wanted to talk with Lord Beesbury and Lord Strong next turn, and hopefully with Johanna to clean the air, but at some point we should also talk with Melos since, you know, our father have just lost a finger and that is quite worrying...
 
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