Amph A Song of Ice and Fire Discussion Thread

I've come to find the Show thread quite amusing, as Show-gushers attempt to reason out what will happen in the season finale. Spoiler: any concept of logical plot development has been completely abandoned. The show runners only care about spectacle.

Also, on the annulment discussion from last week, the westeros.org couple have a rather good examination of the issue on their YouTube channel.

 

I haven't watched that video, but I can see the issues as plain as day.

If Rhaegar were to kidnap Lyanna or make her his official mistress, he'd anger three factions: Starks, Baratheons, Martells. Starks would be angry that their only daughter was 'defiled' and not given a proper marriage, ensuring it would be hard for her to ever have a good marriage, or trueborn children. Baratheons would be mad that their marriage contract to Lyanna was forcibly destroyed. Martells...well, actually, they'd be grumbly on some level that Elia was being 'cast aside'....but not too much. So long as Elia and her children were given proper respect and dues as Queen and royal heirs to the Iron Throne, Rhaegar finding another outlet to 'meet his desires' wouldn't bother them so much. This is a male-dominated, patriarchal society that believes boys will be boys, men have needs that must be fulfilled. Elia would die if she had another baby, so Rhaegar has to have limited, if any, sexual contact with her. The Martells, or anyone outside of the Baratheons/Starks, couldn't begrudge him taking a mistress, prophecy or no prophecy. The Martells probably be too upset about Jon being legitimized either...so long as Aegon and Rhaenys were higher in the line of succession. Legitimization might pacify the Starks a bit as well.

By annulling his lawful marriage to a good, dutiful wife, Rhaegar angers a huge part, maybe even all, of Westeros. Even the Starks, who value their honor and would probably be upset over what this was doing to Elia, Lyanna's honor aside. There's no evidence that Elia wasn't anything but a good, kind, dutiful queen. She gave Rhaegar two children, a male heir and a female for marriage alliances. She did her duty. She respected her husband. She's not scheming or conniving or doing anything to make anyone hate her. She'd have the full support of the commoners over some little Northern girl who decided to cozy up to the Prince. Elia had the full support of the Faith of the Seven as well, I'd expect. The marriage was consummated. It produced healthy children. There's no reason why the lawful union would be annulled. Bastards can always be legitimized. Anyone in Westeros who believes in the Faith of the Seven and the sacred vows of marriage would be disturbed by the casting aside of a good wife. Sure, the Targaryens don't always follow the laws of the land, but they follow some of them. Close incest was only accepted amongst the Targaryens because they were that weird 'foreign' family, not full Westerosi. There's not much brother/sister marriage amount the other Houses, if any at all. But even the Targaryens bowed to the Faith of the Seven in the end.

Flouting the rules of the Faith would hurt every House, great or small. The annulment would make any marriage contract among anyone else suddenly become unstable. Everyone would be more reluctant to marry their daughters to someone, in case it was annulled. Husbands might think it wise to cast aside wives who didn't produce enough sons. How would dowry be affected if marriage contracts were allowed to be broken on a whim? In actual history, one annulment by one king, Henry VIII, led to Protestantism, the Church of England...and a hell of a lot of pain and misery. Would Rhaegar be willing to destroy the country's religion just to marry some other girl, even though he could just legitimize their bastards and ensure Lyanna was well taken care of after their union dissolved? Would he risk angering the Martells, one of House Targaryen's closest allies? More on how this all plays out in 7x07 with Dany and Jon, since I read spoilers and know what's going on, so major spoilers down below:

Spoiler

Jon and Dany are going to have sex on the boat, intercut (or closely cut) with Rhaegar and Lyanna marrying and having sex. Apaprently, Rhaegar and Lyanna are being compared with the super epic, totally-not-forced relationship between Jon and Dany. They're being paralleled as two epic romances. So the whole lesson about why screwing over the Church with an annulment is being swept under the rug because they were in love and it's so romantic and Elia Martell who?

Which absolutely spits in the face of GRRM's deconstructed tropes about marrying for love in a medieval setting and epic romances and parallels to real-life historical events. Because status quo is god now and the masses don't care about such parallels.

 

So quick thoughts!

The Good:
*Yay Sansa and Bran sharing scenes! Doing these together! I needed that! Really badly! My sweet children...
oh yeah and Arya was there, too, but whatever.
*BEAUTIFUL cinematography of the Wall coming down. I was in awe
*Bye Littlefinger

The Bad:
*Aegon Targaryen?! Were D&D too lazy to read the books and realize there already was another Aegon still living, or were they implying Rhaegar decided to start the whole "three heads" cycle anew with Lyanna? Because damn...I wonder how awkward it would've been had he lived and knew Lyanna died in childbirth...
*Let's juxtapose Dany and Jon having sex while others figure out his true parentage, while also painting Rhaegar and Lyanna as being in love and romanticizing their relationship! So hot! So beautiful!
My god...let me fix a drink and I'll be back later

 

What was the White Walkers original plan for getting past the wall before they lucked into a Zombie Dragon?

Amazing.

 

That's part of the theory in that they knew to wait...

 

would the show runners really change such a big thing that will happen in the books? like for example how the wall comes down and jons targareyen name.

i havent read the books but i doubt the magnificent 7 catches a wight in the books to take back to kings landing
as for jons name there is no way that grrm would allow that to be anything other then he wanted

i think they will end up in the exact same places but will take a different route getting there.

but who knows maybe im way off since i haven't read the things and if thats the case sorry for intruding

 

He does not have any control over the show's direction or creative decisions, such as they are.

 

given his fetish over the character, though, it's undoubtedly part of the end game he's devised since the inception of the series, and one of the plot elements he would have communicated to the show runners. and it's not like it's something they (or anyone else in the world) would have particularly cared about, so idk why they would make it up.

 

Rhaegar would probably not have two kids named Aegon. If GRRM wanted to give Jon a Targ/Valyrian name, there are others.

 

That may be why Rhaegar was always so melancholy in the last year or two of his life. He became obsessed with prophecies, and he knew (or strongly suspected) that Elia and her kids would die, but he couldn't do anything about it. That's where Lyanna came in.

 

Rhaegar probably knew about prophecies from talking to the Ghost of High Heart, but as I said before, no one in ASOIAF ever interprets prophecies correctly and most of the time have no clue what they mean.

 

^ The dragon rider stuff strikes me as Martin's reasoning. There are already at least two other Aegons mentioned in the show; if it was their decision, I doubt the writers would want to muddle the waters even further.

 

I would bet that Jon's Targ name is intended as an "homage" to the character that they cut (the young man claiming to be Aegon, son of Rhaegar). I don't know how likely it is that Jon will even have a Targ name revealed in the books, given that the events surrounding the Tower of Joy are presented very differently (Ned's muddled fever dreams which are open to interpretation on how close to reality they are and guilty thoughts) and Bran is not and cannot be omniscient.

 

I would expect that the books will rely on Howland Reed, making Bran's SuperCrowVision(TM) unnecessary.

 

Eh, a constant theme in ASOIAF is the fallibility of memory (e.g., how Robert Baratheon remembers Rhaegar vs. everyone else, how Sansa remembers Sandor kissing her even though he did not, how Ned seems to know the outcome of the Tower of Joy in his "memories") and how memory is lost to time (e.g., everything about the Age of Heroes). I don't know if a character will show up and just spell it out for everyone. Straightforward exposition dumps aren't the way things are done. For example, the Knight of the Laughing Tree is probably Lyanna and that story is probably the beginning of her relationship with Rhaegar, but will anyone (Howland Reed) come right out and say it in the books? I doubt it.

 

I think it is obvious that Sansa will lead the Knights of the Vale to Winterfell at some point in the books. Like you said, the players will end up in the proper positions, but they'll take different routes to get there.

Speaking of routes, one thing has always bugged me about Ned's role in Robert's Rebellion. His journey at the end of the war went from Trident -> King's Landing -> Storm's End -> Tower of Joy. The question is, how did he know Lyanna was being held in the ToJ? Surely that was something Rhaegar kept secret, only telling the three Kingsguard who were stationed there, as well as the midwives tending to Lyanna herself. Jaime certainly wouldn't have known, Barristan was left wounded at the Trident, so he couldn't have told Ned anything. Does anyone know what the fates of the other two remaining KG were?

 

Littlefinger's plan is explicitly to claim Winterfell and the North in her name, thinking her legitimate brothers are all dead and likely knowing that Ramsay's bride "Arya" is not real, and unite the Vale with her through marriage to the closest Arryn heir. But who knows if his plans will work out at all?

 

Wasn't the child Rhaegar was holding in the vision that Daenerys had in the house of the undying named Aegon? And Rhaegar was with some woman (probably Lyanna) and he looks up at Daenerys and says he is the prince that was promised? Wouldn't that be where the show gets the name from?

And Rhaegar may have gone on and on about the prince who was promised and their kid would be like Aegon the conqueror and Lyanna choses that name when he is born for Rhaegar, cause isn't he already dead by then? So he wouldn't have picked, she did. And didn't the events at the Tower of Joy happened after his other kids died (or supposed to have died in the book Aegon's case) so if Lyanna had heard about that, she wouldn't be thinking there will be 2 of them alive cause he is supposed to be dead? She would think she is fulfilling Rhaegar's legacy. I don't care for the name and he will always be Jon Snow, Bastard of Winterfell, to me but I can see where they got the name from.

 

we don't need to do a bunch of mental gymnastics here. george foreman named all of his kids george. it's fine.

 

The prince that was promised has nothing to do with Aegon the Conqueror. It's most likely a variant of the Azor Ahai prophecy. And I'm not convinced the books will have a straight answer, or the prince/Azor Ahai is even just one person (Jon, Dany, Davos and Victarion can all fit).

 

How Does Volcano Arm Guy fit anything Even? No one even likes him.

The only halfway decent Iron Born character from the books is Evil John The Baptist.