Amph Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon — Fire & Blood book spoilers must be TAGGED

Head smashing, apparently. Or maybe when someone has a point of order. Then head smashing

 

Princess should have known better. It's clear that, if she wanted to take part in the power struggle, she should have stayed in KL and strengthen her ties with the council and the military. She chose to go away and just wait to be called to rule.
If she didn't care about the throne I would understand, but we know she did care, so there is no in-universe reason for her to act like that.

 

In the book Rhaenyra was pregnant when she left KL for her fief of Dragonstone, and wanted to give birth on "home ground".

The show has Alicent turn "giving birth" into an opportunity to humiliate her - so that might play a part in it - "I'm not going through that again" so to speak.

 

Huh? This is not how medical politics works at all.

Firstly there is no ‘military.’ There are lords and bannermen spread throughht the realm. She doesn’t maintain their support more being in Kingslanding. Crowning someone is completely performative at this time unless you have the support to back it up - this is the reason why such a big deal was made of forcing the lords and ladies present to swear alligence and to get the public on side. In a world where these factions have dragons to get around on, being in Kingslanding has no real benefit. In fact, I’d argue that it’s ridiculous to be in a castle with rivals who could easily have you killed. Weren’t you lamenting why they keep Cole around, and now you want the people he’s most likely to kill to live in a palace with him?

 

@DarthPhilosopher
There are actual coups, in real life, that took place precisely because the legitimate ruler was away. But yes, to answer your loaded question, in case she wanted to get the throne she should have absolutely stayed in KL, it's obvious. Dangerous maybe? Sure, but by far the best shot she had. The alternative you suggest is basically giving up.

 

I will weigh in here to point out that in the Ottoman Empire, succession was very much about who made it to Constantinople first with their supporters to get crowned (though to be fair, these attempts would often also just devolve into open civil war). There were such hijinks involved in the succession of Bayezid II, father of Suleiman the Magnificent. Very briefly, the news of his father's death was suppressed in violation of Islamic law in an attempt to let his brother arrive for a coronation. This plan ultimately failed. I guess how much someone should be expecting this kind of behavior depends on the stability of the political system or lack thereof. I would expect, though, that as an atypical candidate whose authority had been threatened in the past, Rhaenyra would be more and not less aware of these types of threats.

I do agree that the dragons are a strange complicating factor. A key thing before was about the inability of news or people to move very quickly. The ability to fly somewhat obviates that, especially when Dragonstone itself is already very physically close to the capital. I agree that constantly removing herself seemed like she was making things more complex, but I can't be confident about exactly how much damage would have been done resultantly.

Regardless, I really don't see how thi regime would have sustained itself. The number of pointless deaths of senior nobility here is really off the charts. We've seen nobles handled roughly to secure succession in the real world (eg Mohamed Bin-Salman's house arrests of his multiple relatives). However, to openly murder a senior government official and another sitting Lord when there is no sitting monarch seems a bit wild. That is likely to spark hugely destabilizing resentments and isn't even really necessary in the first place.

 

Rhaenira is awfull as a politician; as Viserys once pointed out instead of strengh up her claim to the throne through marriage and political alliances she simply spent most of the time fooling around.
Heck the entire "Cristan Cole thing " was a political error she made.
Even Otto, her enemy warned she was doing something stupid by naming Cole to the Kings Guard. Look how it turned up to be.
When the news of Viserys death comes to Dragonstone

Spoiler

she will hold a meeting with her council and only then she will send the kids, yes the kids, ( Jace, Luce, Laena daughters ) to go after the Lords of Westeros to try to forge alliances.
Sorry but she wasted way too much time away from the "Game of Thrones".

A point of the books and the series will follow

Spoiler

is that many houses will hold a grudge against her because the way she dealt the marriage proposals ( episode 4). Spoiler, spoiler: next episode will deal with it and the consequences will be tragedic if they follow the books.

But it only happens because her lack of interest in keep good relations, visit the house, hold meetings with the lords and their families.

 

The whole Cole thing is bizarre to me on many levels. Besides having him indulge in such consequence-free ultra-violence, his grudge seems really extreme. Understanding his affections were spurned, he's made himself her chief political rival for some two decades now. Really?

 

I don't get how someone can claim that being physically there would give her no real benefit.

Anyway, it is unclear to me what weight the official designation of the heir by the king himself can have. And who is meant to enforce the king's will after he is dead. It looked like the king's word means absolutely nothing, and the heir would simply be chosen by whomever controls the guards, that is, I would guess, Queen's father?
It seems to be that way. So, if Queen's father is the one who's responsible for the transition of power upon the death of the king, then this means that (1) Princess never really had any practical chance, despite the formality of the official designation, and (2) the fact that in those conditions Princess would never become queen should have been clear enough to King for him to understand that Queen's father was not the right person for the task, because there was almost certainty that he'd do... what he ended up doing.

 

I mean, this is just something that the story we see onscreen never addresses. Given that Lord Strong was dead and could no longer serve as Hand, why invite back someone who had been unfavorably dismissed for assailing the reputation of the heir? Especially when her succession was still not entirely secure. It would seem like choosing someone--anyone else, really--would have been a better move. I wonder if the book gives us any insight on what the thought was here.

 

I read this comment earlier today and didn't get it until now. I need sleep.

 

I. . .still don't get it.

 

She and all of her family were likely to be killed the moment that Otto found out that the King was dead, and the odds are he would be the one to find out first.

If she were a man there would be no question about the coup catastrophically failing as soon as they found out. The fact that she is a woman at least means there would be some chance of a coup gaining momentum into civil war, but even then you’re asking her to remain living in a palace where the two most powerful people under the King actively want/ed her dead. Putting distance between her and her enemies the moment the King dies is her best chance of living to fight for her throne.

With Otto and the Queen being in the positions there are in she was always going to be on the back foot the moment the King died. In which scenario would she stand a better chance? In close quarters in the Palace, or from Dragonstone where she can use their dragons?

 

You are making a lot of stuff up, and I don't blame you, the show explained so little that we have to write the script on our own. What the show makes very clear, though, is that she had the strongest claim to the throne by far, and there was an official ceremony to highlight this. Now, it appears that it was all decorative, and ultimately all the power was in the hands of Otto (this, btw, is not really something I accept as reasonable, but it seems to be what the show suggests). Then, the king was an idiot not to see this coming, and if it was really this obvious, Princess and Uncle should have surely made a move to change this state of things while the king was still alive. At the very least they should have pointed out the fact that Otto represented an obvious challenge to a smooth transition of power, which would have been rather self-evident in the context of the raising tension between Queen and Princess.
They did absolutely nothing, and they fleed away.

As a side note, I actually struggle to buy that the coup was so inevitable, because it would seem for what we see that without the king's deathbed delirious statements Queen was expecting Princess to get the throne without problems.

 

I've yet to read the book, but from what I understand in order to change the story of a cold-hearted coup into a tragedy orchestrated by fate, they've just made everybody stupid, and the real tragedy is a good production marred by stupid writing.

I'm still enjoying it, though, but you have to avoid thinking about it as much as possible. They should have dumped the episodes all at once so the momentum carried us through without giving us time to think about the events that had just happened.

 

I mean you’re not fairly representing my points here.

The coup was inevitable, but not everyone knows that it was inevitable. We know it became inevitable because the Small Council was actively conspiring to ensure that the Princess didn’t ascend the throne. The Small Council is a fairly significant body when the King dies. Otto has personal reasons for doing this (he is adamant that his daughter and grandchildren will be killed if he doesn’t) and he knows that there will be at least some support for it in the realm. I don’t think there can be any doubt that if they were in the Palace Otto would have tried to have them killed the moment he discovered the King was dead. Any sensible person would not be anywhere near Otto in this situation.

We know, as the audience, that the Queen was personally not conspiring to prevent the Princess from ascending the throne until the night that the King died. But the characters don’t know that. The last time they were together the Queen literally tried to take cut out of the Prince’s eyes and sliced up the Princesses arm. Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t want to be living in a Palace with her.

The King is established as a well-meaning, but deluded, fool. He can’t see that Otto is going to protect the interests of his grandchildren and his daughter because he doesn’t believe that the Princess would kill his other children. That doesn’t even pass his mind and he probably doesn’t think, or doesn’t want to think, that it would pass Otto’s mind.

Not everyone is a rational actor. The Princess tells the King that he should send Otto away again. Then what? The King just agrees and slights his wife. His wife tells him that he needs to bring Otto back. Then what? He slights his daughter? The whole story is about the King accidentally creating a mess that he can’t get himself out of. His last dinner scene is literally him trying to mend two factions which he has inadvertently created, and even when the two people who actually love him agree to make amends, the whole mess has already gotten away from them.

 

Oh, I'll readily agree with this^.
Nobody seems to be, in this show.

 

@DarthPhilosopher : Among many points worth making the first I’ll offer is that’s an implausible interpretation of Otto.

If he was concerned about his daughter’s safety, the obvious move was to keep her from the throne. Instead he engineers a multi-year plan when she is still a teenager to make the King infatuated with her at the risk of a major diplomatic rupture.

Second, she was never at risk. The coup was viable precisely because women are political non-entities. She could be left alive pretty consequence-free.

 

I’m talking about Otto’s motivation in the years immediately leading up to the coup. Of course he was using her, against her own safety, to move his house into a position of power. Otto’s concern is the safety of his family at this point because it secures his house power.

How is she not at risk? Women are political actors in their own right and can have an influence through their own actions, even when all their primary avenues of power (through their husbands or sons) are lost to them. The entire Tudor dynasty / Catherine of Valois is testament to that.

 

It goes right back to the day Aemma died in childbirth, with her child dying too, and Daemon becoming heir apparent again.

From Otto's perspective "If Daemon is in power after Viserys dies (either as king or king consort), then I'm dead and so are all my descendants".

So, he tries two separate ways to keep Daemon out of power.

First - he backs Viserys's "make Rhaenyra his heir" play.
Second - he marries off his daughter Alicent to Viserys in the hope of producing alternative heirs (this is preferable for him since it places his bloodline on the throne - but there's always the chance of all Alicent's children dying in childbirth or infancy - which is why "Rhaenyra as heir" is being backed as well.)

Once Daemon marries Rhaenyra - the original plan goes up in smoke - so he has to kill off Daemon, Rhaenyra, and all their children, to survive (he thinks).

 

I know we’re all upset Ser Criston killed another person in seemingly cold blood again, but I think this is all to make people afraid of Alicent and give her more power. Potentially not with her blessing, but she’s Ser Criston’s lifeline so if he viewed that meeting as her losing the majority of her power since they were all conspiring behind her back, then what he did was in her best interest to make the small council think twice about going against her in the future.

He said some line about not tolerating people speaking out against the Queen, I’d have to go back to hear it again, I watch with people who don’t seem to understand that we shouldn’t talk while watching this show.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The question is not whether it is theoretically possible for a woman to wield influence. The substantive issue here is whether this threat is routine enough that she would be included in targeted killings to eliminate rival claimants to the throne. A survey of either real-world or ASOIAF history just makes this seems very unlikely. Women, like eunuchs, could span monarchs because they rarely accessed power directly and were never seen as legitimately able to do so. Much like Otto himself, their highest aspiration was to be a power behind the throne for an especially feeble/inept/dependent ruler.

There's a reason the Ottoman's took to killing all but a single son of emperor but had unlimited daughters. There are a few very famous purges of eunuch in Chinese history mostly because they weren't subjected to this. There was an entire war over the succession of Spain on the death of Charles II, and not one person thought his very much living wife was an important consideration at any time before, during, or after. She was just sent away. Unlike the ultra-violent world of the GOT television series, people usually didn't aim to kill one another purposelessly. Threats that could be more easily, effectively neutralized without bloodshed often were.

You are talking about someone whose position, at best, has not real job security. No matter how much a Hightower does, it could all end on someone else's whim. They could win a Super Bowl on any given Sunday and still end up driving off in a Hyundai. This is not the person you go out of your way to kill.