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- Mid-Atlantic
I'd say Laeron is at least tied with Qoren Martell for "most likely to accept Rhaenyra having Alicent as a paramour."
Well, that's a relief. I do hope the exact occasion doesn't arise, though.
The Heir of the Dragon: A Rhaenyra Targaryen Quest
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Though I will note that show Laenor is the kind of guy willing to give up everything, fake his death and fuck off to essos if he gets too miserable
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- Mid-Atlantic
Frankly yes. The Dornishmen aren't going to want to sign over their kingdom's independence just because their crown prince gets to sleep with the Targaryen amazon princess.
Heh.
All I know is, he seems like he's not a bad fellow, so if he's our husband we should at least make a good faith effort to make sure he's happy and reasonably safe, even if it's a political marriage.
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Mind, that name business is one of the things that speaks against Laenor, IMO.
Ideally, I would like us to have Targaryen kids. If we want to establish gender-neutral primogeniture (as is Visery's plan not just for us but also future generations), we really should establish ambilinearity, i.e. matrilinearity in our case.
Ideally, I would like us to have Targaryen kids. If we want to establish gender-neutral primogeniture (as is Visery's plan not just for us but also future generations), we really should establish ambilinearity, i.e. matrilinearity in our case.
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- Germany
Well. Duh. That's the case for every possible marriage.
The point is that we should see what terms and conditions we can hash out with Qoren since I think they will be quite good for both parties.
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Could you unpack that a little? Like, I'm not saying I disagree with any of what you say, but could you just say it over again with more words so I'm sure I understand what goes into this? Because I'm quite happy to establish gender-neutral primogeniture, but I'm not seeing how this is a problem with Laenor.
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
It's about patrilinearity vs ambilinearity.
1) As I understand it, Viserys' decision was not just about us, but rather that our heir should also be our firstborn regardless of gender and so on. It would in effect finally establish a true Targaryen order of succession, something that so far hasn't existed and was done rather ad hoc.
2) Now, of course, this would hold true regardless of naming conventions, but the two things do go together. If, hypothetically, we had female succession, but pure patrlinearity, then we'd end up with a lot of dynasty switches, even if it's just name changes.
But moreso than that - patrilinearity would still mark us as somehow less legitimate as a dynast and hence monarch. Like we only got on the throne through an exception, a technicality - but it's still meant to be male succession, as reflected in the naming conventions.
We'd still not be equal to male rulers in terms of legitimacy that way, and surely that equality in legitimacy has to be our goal - we are the monarch, no exceptions, no differences to a male monarch.
3) So equal primogeniture and ambilinearity need to go together, as a matter of legitimacy if nothing else - as they do in Dorne, in fact, as an example.
4) However, the canon marriage contract with Laenor made all of Rhaenyra's children with him Velaryons. The eldest would then take on the name Targaryen upon becoming Prince of Dragonstone, but it's still... very murky, I feel like. As I said in point 2, that still smells of making an exception due to circumstances, rather than regular legitimacy in our own right.
Of course, part of it is t hat this names mix-up is necessary because Laenor is heir of Driftmark in his own right, but that is then exactly what stands against him.
5) Thus, a marriage with a non-heir, with a contract clearly stating that our children will be Targaryens (basically in the Dornish fashion without calling it that), would be the best in t his regard. It would set a signal that a woman can pass down both the family name and the right to rule, points that do go hand in hand.
6) Of course, "unfortunately", OTOH, there is much speaking for Laenor (dragons, mostly) that could justify compromising on this matter in this specific case. But hence why I said "ideally".
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- Mid-Atlantic
I mean, we can just... negotiate the marriage contract differently? With the names and all? Or maybe the names are not as much of a problem as you seem to be making them out to be? I'm a little confused here.
No problem, my mistake.
Jaehaerys part of the Targaryen family tree is so confusing because he has so many children amd gran-children.
Orrrr it might bring us more "Rhaenyra gets her head bitten off."
Maybe, but following that logic we should never do anything dangerous.
And considering we choose the Martial-heavy protagonist, i don't think that is an option.
Agree with you abaout the show improving things with changing the ages, the book House of the Dragon is very bad with the ages of characters, even for George Martin standards.
Some characters in the books are WAY too young to be able to do what they do.
I mean, we could always take inspiration from Canon and recruit some Dragonseeds...
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Look, there's "get in a fight" dangerous, and there's "go pick a fight with a pride of lions while naked and armed with a rusty spoon" dangerous. I'm fine with the first kind, not so much the second.
Worth a shot, but the canonical dragonseeds were pretty hit-or-miss, mostly because of political reliability issues. Kind of a problem, and I'm not sure what the solution would be.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
As I have said, Laenor is heir to Driftmark in his own right, so there will be a naming conflict regardless. Which is what speaks against him.
Maybe when we become Mistress of Laws/Queen we could work on standardizing laws of succession in all the Seven Kingdoms? Using it as a way to estabilish the legitimacy of Rhaenyra succession and make a precedent for future generations.
The problems with canon was mostly that two of those Dragonseeds were witless brutes.
If we are lucky we can manage to find a dragonseed that isn't a complete asshole and bind him/her to us trough friendship/a political alliance.
The long term problem would be the creation of more dragonrider Houses beside the Velaryon and Targaryen.
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- Mid-Atlantic
Okay, but I'm sure we could arrange something.
I'd say that on the scale of "problems that could cost us some effort and difficulty to resolve," it's a lot lower on the list than "Laenor probably won't want to boink."
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Absolutely not. We do not fuck with established succession rules.
The Targaryens also didn't fuck with Dornish succession rules when they took that principality over, the Ironborn also kept their own succession rules excluding women from succession altogether, and we don't want to raise the ire of the whole realm by fucking with established Andal or First Men succession rules. "Standardization" is just a recipe for (quite justified) open revolution, there is no reason why different parts and peoples of the realm can't have different rules.
Frankly, it isn't our concern and it doesn't affect us. While of course Targaryen succession rules do. It would just be about us introducing (de facto, we won't actually name it that way of course) Dornish customs for ourselves. Including, ideally, ambilinearity.
Eh, as you say, just two of them. Really the bigger problem was Rhaenyra being such an idiot about Alyn and Nettles. That was absolutely on the canon version of us.
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That's a really hard thing to do. The problem is that Westeros is a huge area with a lot of different cultures and quite a few of them have different customs surrounding succession. Forcing everyone to adopt a standardardized set of inheritance rules means a lot of existing lords are going to be forced to disinherit someone, or accept an heir they don't want as their heir, and a lot of very specific plans and dynastic marriages will suddenly go up in smoke.
Despite all the huge problems with feudal inheritance squabbles, I think it still manages to be more trouble than it's worth.
If we're lucky, yes.
Well, the underlying reason we'd be doing it is because we (in that scenario) don't have the Velaryons on-side- it's something we almost certainly wouldn't do if we weren't kind of desperate. In that scenario, it's arguably to the Targaryen's advantage to spread around dragonrider houses a bit, especially if we make it a required custom that all the eggs have to come back to the Dragonpit. There being three or four newly ennobled houses that each have one dragon kind of makes them counterweights to each other, in a way that the Velaryons being the only noble house with dragons (apart from the Targaryens) does not.
Well, if you recruit four people and two of them turn traitor, you're probably either no better off than you would have been if you'd recruited zero people, or in some cases you may be worse off.
I think they're saying that currently, the difference between "she marrying into his family" and "he marrying into hers" is highly context dependent, creating situations like Rhaenys' children being Velaryons, while we'll likely remain a Targaryen no matter what. So they're suggesting some kind of rule or precedent where Targaryen Dynasty always trumps another family name, regardless of gender or marriage alignment. I .E. one can marry into the Targaryens, but they cannot marry out.
I have no idea if this would be practical or plausible at all, but it might be something to consider in the future to mitigate the dispersal of dragons. It won't completely solve that issue or anything, but at least the potential dragon conflicts will only be in between "real" Targaryens.
(Feel free to dispute me on any of this)
I have no idea if this would be practical or plausible at all, but it might be something to consider in the future to mitigate the dispersal of dragons. It won't completely solve that issue or anything, but at least the potential dragon conflicts will only be in between "real" Targaryens.
(Feel free to dispute me on any of this)
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
That logic doesn't always hold, though. If one side has one dragon and the other side two, then if both sides get two dragons it's probably still a better deal for the former side. It's basically the inverse of the logic of why you should always accept piece trades in chess if you're up in material (bar other considerations).
But what is more, well, those wild dragons on Dragonstone exist. There is always the concern that if we don't recruit them, then they (whoever "they" might turn out to be) might.
Yes-ish. You are right I am saying that about the situation - that is the distinction I'm making. But I'm not so much saying "the Targaryen name trumps all" but "the heir's name trumps all". Just like in Dorne - if you are the heir of a lordship there, then your family name will be carried on, regardless if you are male or female. So we could still marry off non-heir Targs to other families, if it is politically benefitial, but our children and our heir's children and their heir's children and so on and so forth would always have to be born as Targs.
Agree, that was an even bigger problem.
One that hopefully we can avoid in the Quest.
My reasoning was that it would be easier for the lords of Westeros to respect the Targaryen succession laws if they had the same succession.
Beside, Valyrians i think already had ambilinearity, the Targaryens simply adopted Andal customs after moving to Westeros.
That is a very good idea.
Having multiple dragonrider Houses checking each other power and competing for the favor of the Crown is a good idea for long term stability.
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Arguably, but you have to remember that you pay a sort of 'tax' for getting betrayed. First, because a traitor will often be able to strengthen the enemy by more than just arriving and joining their side. They bring with them intelligence on your actions, and their desertion from your cause costs you prestige and standing in several ways. Second, because a really sneaky traitor may cause you considerable damage on the way out.
Aren't there also unclaimed dragons in the Dragonpit? I don't recall exactly how many dragons exist.
No, it'd be the opposite effect. The Andals would see it as an attempt to force Valyrian culture on them, at their own great personal cost in many cases because it would disrupt the lives and plans of dozens if not hundreds of noble houses all over the Seven Kingdoms.
You generally can't force a bunch of people from a foreign culture to respect your culture by forcing them to adopt it against their will. It doesn't work.
Conversely, I'm pretty sure Jaehaerys didn't do the inheritance the way he did because he was trying to gain respect from the Andals; I think he just honestly wanted to favor his second-oldest grandson over his oldest granddaughter. He may have had some complicated argument for why he should do that because he was a fairly keen legal mind and so on, but I don't think it was about adopting Andal succession to gain their respect. I'm not even sure that IS how Andal succession works.
Ehhhh.
I'd actually much prefer to have a strict Targaryen family monopoly on dragons. But since that cat is already decisively out of the bag with the Velaryons having more dragonriders than the Targaryens do at the moment, the next best thing is to have several dragonrider houses that counterbalance each other, with the Targaryens maintaining primacy over them by some combination of "being the emperor means you are rich and can afford many dragons and can grant favors" plus hopefully "the Targaryens control the Dragonpit where all newborn dragons are raised."
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- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
It isn't. That's the thing about Rhaenys: Even by Andal customs she should have become monarch.
Andal and First Men succession law (which seem to be identical) have a person's daughter come before that person's brothers. It's the same succession rules as the 16th-20th century succession rules for the English/British throne (but not the nobility, though in Westeros it's also the nobility). So going by actual Andal laws, after Aemon's death, the spot as heir should have fallen to his daughter Rhaenys rather than his brother Baelon.
So Jaehaerys acted very much against Andal laws there.
By contrast, Ironborn laws exclude women altogether (French ultra-salic law), and Dorne has equal primogeniture.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Succession laws aren't set in stone for anyone. But yeah setting aside Rhaenys was very odd and pissed off the Queen to a huge extent
Actually, is it entirely out of the bag yet? If both Laena and Laenor are married back into the Targaryen family(or die), than we might be able to spin this as an exception, or otherwise ensure this situation never happens again. It might just be a bit premature to declare the cat permanently escaped, if we can capture it again. Am I forgetting anything?
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Let's see...
Currently ridden:
Caraxes (Daemon)
Meleys (Rhaenys)
Seasmoke (Laenor)
Syrax
In the pit:
Dreamfyre (Rhaena's dragon, later claimed by Helaena in canon)
Silverwing (Aysanne's dragon, later claimed by Ulf White, one of the Two Betrayers)
Vermithor (Jaehaerys' dragon, later claimed by Hugh Hammer, the other betrayer)
Vhagar (later claimed by Laena)
Feral dragons:
Sheepstealer (eventually claimed by Nettles)
Cannibal (never claimed, and killed many who tried)
Will be hatched before 120, so might already have, with riders that may not get born at all
Sunfyre (Aegon "II"'s dragon)
Tessarion (Daeron's dragon)
Vermax (Jaecery's dragon)
Will hatch soon:
Tyraxes (Joffrey's dragon, stated to have hatched "117-120")
Not hatched yet, and also with riders that may not get born at all:
Arrax (Lucerys' dragon)
Moondancer (Baela's dragon)
Morning (Rhaena's dragon)
Stormcloud (Aegon III's dragon)
Huh. So it seems Sheepstealer was the only feral dragon put to use, the others were from the dragonpit (Alyn got Seasmoke, orphaned after Laenor's death). But the logic still stands: If we don't use bastards for them, the other side might.
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- He/Him
Vhagar has been claimed by Laena. Also Vermithor and sliver wing are on dragonstone
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- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
As feral dragons?