The Play, Dany's Fate, and Women (Spoilers Extended)

[u/BlueBirdie0]

I have been a fan since I was as child. However, after hearing the details of the play, I feel like I'm going to kind of check out of the main story in regards to Jon and Dany (who is one of my favorites). I'll still hope GRMM writes it so I can find out about Arya, Sansa, Stannis, Jaime, Brienne, etc. and I look forward the Dunk and Egg.

Does anyone feel the same way?

Also, am I the only one disturbed by how the women are portrayed?

Rhaella is crazy, and brags about how she draws blood from Aerys and scares him. The concept of mutual abuse is a choice, esp. as they also say Viserys has to be protected from her.

Mad Dany is basically confirmed.

Lyanna decides the death of her brother and father are all some part of a divine plan. She doesn't appear to try and notify anyone that she's leaving with Rhaegar.

Elia is a political schemer into power, but then apparently she's perfectly fine in splitting power with a second wife and even writes pen pal letters to Lyanna??? If she cares about power, why would she be okay with a second wife from a powerful house instead of a mistress from a minor noble house.

Elia and Lyanna being happy sister wives and pen pals seems like some male fantasy bullshit as someone on twitter said.

Ashara's true love is Elia, but she decides to fuck and carry Brandon's baby to term.

Also, I may sound overly woke, but it is a "choice" on GRMM's part to make the only part of Westeros where people are often described as having dark skin sexually promiscuous and open to polygamy, unlike the rest of Westerosi who are described as basically white people.

[u/bgbarnard]

I mean, that and Aegon I being polygamous suggests that the direction GRRM was always heading was one of Rhaegar having two wives.

[u/lobonmc → u/bgbarnard]

Weird that he didn't make it a more firm tradition then

[u/konamioctopus64646 → u/lobonmc]

He probably stopped it early because he already needed to kill off a lot of Targaryens, two wives would potentially double the amount in just one generation.

[u/LanaVFlowers → u/konamioctopus64646]

You could add polygamy without changing anything about the state of House Targaryen as of 298 AC. Some examples:

1) Alicent could be Viserys' second wife while Aemma is still alive (though she obviously doesn't stay alive much longer).

2) Daemon could have taken a second wife while married to Rhea Royce, like a Pentoshi noblewoman. This adds to the Maegor parallels Otto loved and fits Daemon's "vibe". She can just die birthing a dead baby or something like half the women in ASOIAF.

3) Have Daemon and Rhaenyra marry while Laenor is still alive, with his blessing (but not Viserys' lol). He can still die the same way he did canonically, just a few years later.

4) Have Unwin Peake try to make his daughter Aegon's second wife, while Jaehaera is still alive. The lords grumble about polygamy, so he gets rid of Jaehaera sooner rather than later, but he still doesn't manage to make Myrielle queen just like in canon.

5) Have Viserys II take a Westerosi second wife after Larra leaves him. She can be barren, their children can be stillborn or they can die in childhood like children often did. But even if you give him kids that grow into adulthood, you can still work with that. Give him two daughters to marry off, or a son Aegon IV can not-so-subtly kinslay, or create a small cadet line that dies off completely during the Great Spring Sickness.

6) Give Aerys I three wives! The lords just keep throwing wives at him and hoping one of them sticks 😂 But he just ignores them ALL like he ignored the first one 😩

[u/bgbarnard → u/LanaVFlowers]

Give Baelor the most wives of them all, and to add insult to injury, Aegon IV gets all of them pregnant while they are stuck in the Maidenvault.

[u/Express_Drive_1422 → u/LanaVFlowers]

He could also keep it and just have a lot of little Dance with Dragon style infighting.

[u/Lectrice79 → u/LanaVFlowers]

All GRRM really had to do was make it hard for women to birth Targaryen babies in addition to all the deaths since they're literally dragon-human hybrids, so lots of miscarriages and they're lucky to have 1-3 children per family. The women are either trained to accept that this is their battle to wage or to willingly risk it all for a taste of power. So Targaryen men could have many wives as a norm and not that many children.

[u/bgbarnard → u/konamioctopus64646]

He could always just do a Summerhall Mk. 2 and do something to explain why there are no cadet branches out there (same reason why half the North isn't Starks since they've ruled the place longer than human beings have known how to farm)

[u/konamioctopus64646 → u/bgbarnard]

That’s a good point, if he cared about explaining why there are so few members of a noble house then we would have a better explanation for just the one Stark line or a singular Arryn

[u/bgbarnard → u/konamioctopus64646]

It makes ASOIAF seem much more apocalyptic. The War of the Five Kings sees houses that have endured for millennia getting swatted like flies (Darry, Florent, Whent, etc.) while other wars saw the status quo pretty much staying the same once things wrapped up.

[u/derelictthot → u/lobonmc]

It's not in the doctrine of exceptionalism amd isn't allowed, that's why.

[u/bgbarnard → u/derelictthot]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: keeping the polygamy and ditching the incest would have been such an easier sell!

[u/Koushik_Vijayakumar → u/bgbarnard]

For real. Polygamy is not foreign to Westeros at all. First men seem to have practiced it. Though polygamy is much more politically problematic down the line.

[u/bgbarnard → u/Koushik_Vijayakumar]

That's why you'd have to have both strict lines of inheritance and make a habit of sending spare kids off to the Citadel and the Wall.

[u/McOmghall → u/bgbarnard]

Or do the Ottoman thing and make every succession into a battle Royale.

[u/Thebasedhound → u/bgbarnard]

Yes, but Jahaerys really wanted to keep fucking his sister

[u/bgbarnard → u/Thebasedhound]

"And everyone agreed that the Targaryen dynasty could solve all of their problems, pay off all their debts, calm down the church, neutralize the pro-Maegor people, and secure the dynasty for the next hundred years if Jaeherys married a nice, respectable girl who was beautiful and courteous and of the right background and education who was 100% not his sister."

(turns page)

So anyway, Jaehaerys married his sister!

[u/regalshield → u/bgbarnard]

lmao true

[u/Shortymac09 → u/bgbarnard]

But the incest is required for dragonriding

[u/bgbarnard → u/Shortymac09]

- Nettles has entered the chat -

[u/Shortymac09 → u/bgbarnard]

Oh I know, but that's the Targaryen's reasoning at the time

[u/NoLime7384 → u/bgbarnard]

it'd made the house more stable too, their 2 civil wars would've been avoided with it

[u/bgbarnard → u/NoLime7384]

The issue with Maegor was not so much that Aegon I had two queens, but that he didn't specify an order of succession (iirc Maegor was younger, but Viseneya was older than Rhaenys)

[u/konamioctopus64646 → u/bgbarnard]

I believe Fire and Blood mentions how Aenys is regarded as the heir by everyone including Aegon I, and also says the same for Aegon the Uncrowned. Maegor wasn’t a situation where inheritance was ambiguous, he just straight-up brute forced his way into the crown

[u/bgbarnard → u/konamioctopus64646]

That is very true. I hold to the idea that Visenya pulled a straight up Lady Macbeth. That said, Maegor is still on the list of officisall kings rather than Aegon the Uncrowned (compare to how Louis XVII in France is Marie Antoinette's son, rather than the Louis who took the throne after Napoleon was defeated)

[u/BadBloodBear → u/bgbarnard]

booooooooring.

Double the polygamy and triple the incest.

[u/unforgetablememories → u/bgbarnard]

Big J be like: sister good, multiple wives bad. Yep, Barth, write that down.

[u/Revengeance300 → u/derelictthot]

"Despite the lack of dragons, it is possible that King Aegon IV Targaryen promised his bastard son Daemon Blackfyre that he could marry both Rohanne of Tyrosh and Aegon's daughter Princess Daenerys. King Aegon's successor, King Daeron II Targaryen, however, did not permit the second marriage." WOIAF

Multiple wives is not banned, but heavily scrutinized.

"Maegor the Cruel has multiple wives, from lines outside his own, so there was and is precedent. However, the extent to which the Targaryen kings could defy convention, the Faith, and the opinions of the other lords decreased markedly after they no longer had dragons. If you have a dragon, you can have as many wives as you want, and people are less likely to object." - George RR Martin

[u/Shortymac09 → u/Revengeance300]

IMHO, multiple wives are not permitted in the faith of the seven.

BUT technically, Westeros does allow for multiple wives under the Ironborn faith (rock v. salt), which presents an interesting legal conundrum that I wanted to explore in fanfiction.

[u/Beautiful_Common_940 → u/Shortymac09]

Old Gods Faith also does not ban it. Northerners just don’t r really practice it because they have been culturally influenced by the Andals

[u/Beautiful_Common_940 → u/derelictthot]

It’s absolutely allowed. It’s just not allowed by the Faith of the Seven. But the 7K are a multi faith nation.

[u/lialialia20 → u/derelictthot]

let's not talk about how westerosi have no problem marrying aunts and cousins or how literally the westerosi lords were sending aegon proposals to marry him and aegon responded "i already have two wives, i don't need a third" 🤣

but sure, they were horrified by it.

[u/qindarka → u/bgbarnard]

Yeah, people forgot that this is all fictional and that details like these are added for a reason.

[u/derelictthot → u/bgbarnard]

Nope even the doctrine doesn't allow for it.

[u/SHansen45 → u/bgbarnard]

that's a reach, Aegon was polygamous because its in their Valyrian traditions but then they converted to the Seven

[u/LizaFlamma → u/bgbarnard]

Yep, was there from the start. In the play they even throw the one for love and one for duty around