ASOIAF/GOT When did the Game of Thrones Saga End?

[Emperor Tippy]

Your argument is all over the place and just biased in favor in Rhae anyone who already supported Aegon wouldn't see it as moral failing, but as a necessary response. In fact they would probably be pissed if he didn't respond equally see World War 2 with the escalation of bombing campaigns. Second off the fact that she burned down a major center of the Faith would piss people off especially since her major backers are the North whom even after close to 3 centuries of United rule are considered as fairly heathen. Much less much earlier in the timeline.

Anyway Rhaenarys can justify her actions and spin it. Aegon can do the same for his actions and use the fact that she struck with such an utter escalation of force as a rallying cry, "Remember Oldtown". Burning down an entire city as her first action would cause all sympathy for her to dry up. I'm not saying it would necessarily or even likely cause her loyalist to defect or even just decide to sit out the war. Many would likely still fully support her. But as we have seen in real life unrestricted bombing campaigns rarely break someone's will to fight in fact often the cause them to rally and fight harder, and unlike with the conquest the other side isn't totally helpless to dragons outside of some theoretical golden bullet moment.

It's not a matter of spin, at least not really. It is a matter of capability.

Aegon has to keep a combat capable dragon in King's Landing. He has three; his, his wife's, and his brothers.

He has to keep a dragon with any substantial army that he fields.

That leaves one theoretical dragon to either conduct offensive operations or to defend another location.

Rhae on the other hand? She doesn't really have any cities or vulnerable bases of operation. Aegon can't torch Dragonstone. If he goes and burns the North then he gets a full blown religious war as the First Men go to town.

Then you have the question of what both sides need/want. Rhae just need the nobles to sit in their castles and do nothing. She already has the naval power, she already has the dragons, she already has an army, and she already has gold.

Aegon, on the other hand, needs those nobles to actively support him. His primary support base was just destroyed. No one has really actually declared for him yet, especially any of the great nobles.

In terms of legitimacy, Rhae is 1) the named heir, 2) the one who all of the nobles swore fealty to as the heir, and 3) the eldest child. Aegon didn't try and summon a Grand Council to name himself king, he just declared that he was king and basically expected High Tower support to keep his ass on the throne.

In this situation, the High Towers are gone. The leadership of the Faith is gone. The leadership of the Maesters is gone. And EVERY noble in the Seven Kingdoms has to way supporting him against the threat of a dragon coming along and burning their holdings to ash.

Rhae can make the, legitimate, argument that she is just punishing oath breaking. Her threat is "break the oath you swore and I burn your castle. Do nothing and I leave you alone.". Aegon's threat is "Kneel to me, give me your men so I can usurp my sister. Or I burn your castle."

In those circumstances, who exactly do you expect to openly support Aegon? None of the Lords Paramount are going to lift a finger to support him until they see someone else test the waters. And the first lesser noble to do so will get his castle torched. Who is willing to test Rhae after that?

If Rhae wants to win, she has to immediately go all in and prove that she is willing to go all the way. She needs to act before the nobles declare for Aegon, because once they have publicly supported him it is a lot harder to get things to go her way.

But by moving before they publicly declare, she gets the frame the issue how she wants.

 

[King Arts]

Yeah the new series seems to be going the grim derp route. So there is a tourney to celebrate the kings new son. And the knights participating in the joust end up having a melee and killing each other. People just shrug their soldiers. Most of the knights are high born there may be one or two commoners elevated to knighthood. But while a knight may be angry at being unhorsed and try to kill the other knight other knights, and guards would stop him. Even in the melee at tournaments deaths while they occasionally happened were an accident. If a Lannister kills a Hightower, those two noble houses would then become rivals bitter rivals. Their liege lord would not want to deal with that headache. The noble families probably don't want to start a fight. Now in a judicial duel yes it could be to the death. But tourney's death's were pretty rare, so all the guys hacking each other up is not historical.

 

[Skallagrim]

Yeah the new series seems to be going the grim derp route. So there is a tourney to celebrate the kings new son. And the knights participating in the joust end up having a melee and killing each other. People just shrug their soldiers. Most of the knights are high born there may be one or two commoners elevated to knighthood. But while a knight may be angry at being unhorsed and try to kill the other knight other knights, and guards would stop him. Even in the melee at tournaments deaths while they occasionally happened were an accident. If a Lannister kills a Hightower, those two noble houses would then become rivals bitter rivals. Their liege lord would not want to deal with that headache. The noble families probably don't want to start a fight. Now in a judicial duel yes it could be to the death. But tourney's death's were pretty rare, so all the guys hacking each other up is not historical.

Le gasp! Westeros is actually unrealistic? Say it ain't so!

 

[Circle of Willis]

It's not a matter of spin, at least not really. It is a matter of capability.

Aegon has to keep a combat capable dragon in King's Landing. He has three; his, his wife's, and his brothers.

He has to keep a dragon with any substantial army that he fields.

That leaves one theoretical dragon to either conduct offensive operations or to defend another location.

Rhae on the other hand? She doesn't really have any cities or vulnerable bases of operation. Aegon can't torch Dragonstone. If he goes and burns the North then he gets a full blown religious war as the First Men go to town.

Then you have the question of what both sides need/want. Rhae just need the nobles to sit in their castles and do nothing. She already has the naval power, she already has the dragons, she already has an army, and she already has gold.

Aegon, on the other hand, needs those nobles to actively support him. His primary support base was just destroyed. No one has really actually declared for him yet, especially any of the great nobles.

In terms of legitimacy, Rhae is 1) the named heir, 2) the one who all of the nobles swore fealty to as the heir, and 3) the eldest child. Aegon didn't try and summon a Grand Council to name himself king, he just declared that he was king and basically expected High Tower support to keep his ass on the throne.

In this situation, the High Towers are gone. The leadership of the Faith is gone. The leadership of the Maesters is gone. And EVERY noble in the Seven Kingdoms has to way supporting him against the threat of a dragon coming along and burning their holdings to ash.

Rhae can make the, legitimate, argument that she is just punishing oath breaking. Her threat is "break the oath you swore and I burn your castle. Do nothing and I leave you alone.". Aegon's threat is "Kneel to me, give me your men so I can usurp my sister. Or I burn your castle."

In those circumstances, who exactly do you expect to openly support Aegon? None of the Lords Paramount are going to lift a finger to support him until they see someone else test the waters. And the first lesser noble to do so will get his castle torched. Who is willing to test Rhae after that?

If Rhae wants to win, she has to immediately go all in and prove that she is willing to go all the way. She needs to act before the nobles declare for Aegon, because once they have publicly supported him it is a lot harder to get things to go her way.

But by moving before they publicly declare, she gets the frame the issue how she wants.

I legitimately do not understand why, instead of setting up all this trouble, Viserys I didn't just marry Rhaenyra to Aegon within like a week of the latter's birth. Seriously, the Dance would be way more understandable if the Targaryens had the same taboo on incest as everyone else. Now sure they'd hate each other and it would be a marriage from the Seven Hells, but mutual satisfaction clearly isn't a prerequisite for royal marriages & it would solve literally all of the realm's succession-related problems, prevent him from ever having to worry about choosing an heir since he'd have naturally set up a basis for joint rule, and allow the Targs to avoid pissing away their dragons - the foundation of their powerbase - in a completely avoidable & predictable civil war.

IIRC Martin got back into writing in the early '90s because he tried, and failed, to break into TV screenwriting. But the entire setup of the Dance reeks of one of the worst tropes found in shitty TV shows: that the characters are made to act like unreasonable morons and ignore very obvious solutions to their problems because the writer(s) have no idea how to get a conflict going otherwise. (Quite visible with late-season GOT itself, where we have Sansa and especially Arya aggressively putting on their best Mean Girls act against Dany even though they've never met before and, between the commonalities in Show-Sansa's and Dany's background and Arya previously looking up to Visenya for being a dragon-riding lady conqueror, they should logically have gotten along) Though I disdain TV Tropes, I do believe this is what they would rightfully call an 'Idiot Plot'.

 

[WolfBear]

I've got an off-topic question: Why isn't Game of Thrones on Netflix? Does anyone here know?

Also, this is somewhat off-topic, but I have discovered an atlas that includes maps from the Game of Thrones world:

Historical Atlas of Game of Thrones (100): Winter is Coming

Roughly seventeen years after Robert’s Rebellion overthrew “Mad” King Aerys Targaryen and Robert Baratheon became king of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, Robert requested Ned Stark, his old friend and Warden of the North, to come to the capital of King’s Landing to become Hand of the King (chief...

omniatlas.com

 

[Emperor Tippy]

I've got an off-topic question: Why isn't Game of Thrones on Netflix? Does anyone here know?

Because HBO owns the rights to it and is in direct competition with Netflix.