- Pronouns
- He/Him
Don't use that language.
The Heir of the Dragon: A Rhaenyra Targaryen Quest
- Location
- United States
While I think taking both proposals to our father is the right thing to do just from a look of things perspective, can we subvote to favor one or the other? It'd seem a little silly to vote to take both to Viserys only for him to turn around and say something like "well, you've been to the wall, what do you think Rhaenyra?"
On the subject of the proposals itself - while the New Gift is somewhat maligned, as this update points out, the Watch is not sworn to the Iron Throne. Alysanne didn't give that land from one of our vassals to another, she essentially gave it to another state. Not that we couldn't have people who were essentially both our vassals and the Watch's vassals both, with the tithes from their land that's part of the Seven Kingdoms going to the Iron Throne and the tithes from their land that isn't going to the Watch, but this does seem potentially fraught.
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father
On the subject of the proposals itself - while the New Gift is somewhat maligned, as this update points out, the Watch is not sworn to the Iron Throne. Alysanne didn't give that land from one of our vassals to another, she essentially gave it to another state. Not that we couldn't have people who were essentially both our vassals and the Watch's vassals both, with the tithes from their land that's part of the Seven Kingdoms going to the Iron Throne and the tithes from their land that isn't going to the Watch, but this does seem potentially fraught.
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father
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[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father
Well, I doubt that he is going to do that. I would be hilarious, but I doubt it.
Somic
It's meow or never
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Honestly, I think it's fine. From an outside perspective, he has travelled with our retinue for a while. And from what we have actually seen of him, he seems like a cheery, laid-back fellow, seemingly without any pronounced negatives that could be picked up from a distance. It's fiiiine.
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
The New Gift was a mistake, but for now we are just the courier, not the Royal Authority.
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father
Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father.
- Location
- Pittsburgh PA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father, but also suggest a compromise: the lands are restored to the Umbers and the Mountain Clans, who are thereafter obligated to send a proportion of their tax to the Night's Watch, and the crown will send one-time help to aid in developing these lands, so that they can be put to use sooner.
- Location
- Europe
Azel, Rhaenyra is the heir to the throne. Saying that she'll bring the issue to her father's attention and also stating a preference for a plan isn't overstepping her authority and it is certainly not close to making a decision like you insinuate in your first post for some reason. There's no need to misrepresent what the vote options mean and I'm gonna assume you weren't replying to someone since you were the first person posting after the update.
I think it's also worth considering the optics of just kicking the issue upstairs as you so elegantly put it. It plays into the hands of certain nobles who'll seek to portray Rhaenyra as an indecisive woman who needs a man to make her decisions for her. Of course the king is the ultimate authority but approaching the king with a publicly stated position makes it clear that Rhaenyra has agency, beliefs and ideas, even if the king decides to do something else.
With that being said, my (approval) vote is:
[X] Promise to Take Lord Umber's Ideas to Your Father.
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father, but also suggest a compromise: the lands are restored to the Umbers and the Mountain Clans, who are thereafter obligated to send a proportion of their tax to the Night's Watch, and the crown will send one-time help to aid in developing these lands, so that they can be put to use sooner.
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father, but also suggest a compromise: the lands are restored to the Umbers and the Mountain Clans, who are thereafter obligated to send a proportion of their tax to the Night's Watch, and the crown will consult Lord Stark and send one-time help to aid in developing these lands, so that they can be put to use sooner.
Imperious
Without the sun of my life
I don't really see a point in stating our opinion on something the GM has explicitly told us we lack expertise in. As the saying goes: "Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."
If this was something we had some particular expertise in that would be one thing, but this is the sort of subject we were signalled pretty strongly on that we should hit the books some more before weighing heavily on it. Voicing an opinion just for the sake of voicing an opinion, as opposed to because we have some insight we want to share, seems somewhat daft.
If this was something we had some particular expertise in that would be one thing, but this is the sort of subject we were signalled pretty strongly on that we should hit the books some more before weighing heavily on it. Voicing an opinion just for the sake of voicing an opinion, as opposed to because we have some insight we want to share, seems somewhat daft.
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TsarinaGrogIV
Self-Proclaimed Crazy Bitch
- Pronouns
- She/They
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father
- Location
- Germany
The important part being heir to the throne. We have no political authority except whatever authority our father the king gives us and it is very important for us to recognize this if we want him to actually trust us with authority. I can tell from experience how the voter base of your average quest reacts when an envoy starts making proposals they were not asked for, or begins selectively reporting information because they think it's their place to make decisions.
Additionally, even if we already were queen right now, this would still be the wrong time and place to say anything beyond "I'll consider the matter." as we are talking solely with the First Ranger and Lord Umber. There is no Lord Commander of the Night Watch present, who is the only one who has the authority to talk about land that by law belongs to the Night Watch. There is no representative of the Hill Clans present, which is in of itself a large group of disparate people, so we'd be looking at a dozen or more people, who might have no idea what Umber is proposing here. And lastly, Lord Stark isn't here either, despite this being something that greatly impacts his bannermen.
We also just came up with these ideas on the spot, without talking with a single accountant or trader to see if any of this is actually feasible. We just got a wish list from the First Ranger and a vague plan by Umber to claw back the New Gift. How is the administration actually going to work out? Where are the peasants coming from to repopulate the land, given that the Watch needs their whole current intake in people to replenish losses and has no surplus to reclaim villages? How big are the taxes on the Umbers and Clans going to be and can they actually bear those long-term? Again, we don't even know if the clans are on board with this idea at all! They are not Umber bannermen, but a sworn to Winterfell, so I think Lord Stark would be mighty interested in hearing why we want to levy taxes on his bannermen without asking either them or him.
Just. Step back. Do this the proper way.
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father
Toaster cult
I Am An Imaginary Living Body
- Location
- Tokyo
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Promise to Take Both Proposals to Your Father
- Location
- Europe
I can also HIGHLIGHT IMPORTANT WORDS.
I don't get why you're talking about how voters react in some other quest like it has any bearing on Viserys' reaction to Rhaenyra having an opinion about a subject and stating that opinion to two fairly unimportant guys in the middle of nowhere. You're also for some reason implying that Rhaenyra is going to not accurately report to her father if she gives an opinion. Can you explain to me where that idea comes from? Rhaenyra hardly seems like the underhanded sort to me.
Now, your point about having the input of the actual Lord Commander, the Hills Clans and Lord Stark are absolutely valid. Before a decision is taken on what to do with the New Gift, the Crown absolutely should consult all the stakeholder. However, stating an opinion doesn't prevent us from doing that. In fact it can often be beneficial to stake out an initial position based on relatively little information in order to have an anchor to any discussion. Since you brought up your questing experience I can tell you from my job experience that it's actually a pretty good starting point from which to engage in some co-creation.
The rest of your post is basically just raising all the minor issues or questions below the level of abstraction in this quest that the kingdom will need to investigate before Viserys decides what to do but it's not something that should stop us from forming an initial opinion. It's also pretty convenient for you to throw so much shit at the wall that Teen Spirit would never approve of a write-in that engages with the frankly ridiculous amount of issues and non-issues that you raise.
- Location
- Germany
You are literally approval voting to only forward one of the proposals to Viserys.
- Location
- United States
While they're no directly related, I think they are linked, just by the nature of politics. Everyone has an incentive make sure any coalition they are part of is powerful enough to win, and doesn't want to go to war if they think they'll lose. Unless they think they're certain to effectively lose anyway, and it's better to die on a hill than in a ditch.
But once your coalition is a winning one, you have an incentive not to add more people, as this increases the amount of people to give war spoils to, and decreases the amount to take them from. In the limit, if everyone is essentially part of the same coalition, we have a normal succession. Additionally, everyone is incentivized to want to be as important as possible as they can to their coalition.
The two stable equilibriums to this are one in which one side is overwhelmingly favored, and the other consists of only those who think they'll die either way, or in which both sides are near evenly matched, so both sides think they are narrowly favored, but any defector would even if they turned the tide, be a Johnny-come lately to the now larger coalition.
If we are oppositional with the Velayrons, then we can expect that both us and the Velayrons will try to reach out to our siblings as a tie-breaker, and our siblings can expect us to be dealing with them in good faith because we need them against the Velayrons. If we are allied with the Velayrons, we can expect that our siblings will know that we don't need them and that they are in fact an unnecessary threat to our throne.
This isn't to say that we should become oppositional with the Velayrons expecting to ally with our siblings with nothing else to secure it - obviously alliances need to be sealed with marriages or at least something more concrete than the incentives I discussed. The criticism that this trades a potentially sure alliance for the possibility of making a future alliance that isn't even materially better is valid. And becoming oppositional with the Velayrons risks them allying with the Velayrons instead of us - which conceivably puts us at a massive dragon disadvantage.
On the other hand, we shouldn't expect Daemon to be inactive either - the worst case scenario for an attempted alliance with the Velayrons would be something along the lines of Daemon still marries Laena, and then they ally with our siblings (maybe Baela marries a younger brother), which would essentially be the same as the Daemon-Velayron-Westerlinh alliance scenario except we're up a dragon at the cost of our marriage.
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- Location
- Europe
I don't read the vote as not mentioning the other option, just putting our preferred option forward. I guess you could read it as you do but it seems pretty out of character of Rhaenyra to do so. I'd certainly be in favor of a write-in that makes that clear if that's how the vote is meant to be interpreted.