Game of Thrones: Speculate of Season 7 [spoilers for Season 6 allowed]

[Snupzilla]

@wintertime

Jamie is not a member of the Kingsguard any longer. But the question: “Who has the best claim to the throne?”, is missing the point entirely in any case.

No matter who ruled, we have seen desastrous results. The particular reasons were different each time, but the cause was always the same: the feudal system.

Jamie did get forced out of the Kingsguard in the show, but Cersei can interpret his oath to never accept a hereditary title as still intact since there really isn’t and precedence for leaving the Kingsguard outside of Selmy. Jamie has no desire to be king, lacks a powerbase within the government, and is or at least was in love with Cersei, so it’s not like he is going to fight her on it.

Most usurpers use some kind of legal and logical gymnastics to justify their claims in addition to “might makes right”, as it provides some legal legitimacy to their power. Cercei actually probably has a better case than some historic usurpers like Henry VII and Richard III.

[wintertime]

@Sam_Stone

The show makes it clear that there have been good and just rulers, and long periods of peace and relative prosperity. So it’s not the fault of the ‘feudal system’ in the show or books.

The show doesn’t make this clear at all. Yes, we hear about better times; but we don‘t know what caused them. Our own past shows that absolute monarchies can have those periods: Some of them had to do with the monarch, some happened despite them.

We don’t know enough about the fictional history of Westeros to address cause and effect, but we see its present days, and they show us the shortcomings of their social order.

Mad Aerys, for example, could not be removed by any legitimate way from the throne, even though he was unfit to rule, a murderer and a despot. His brutal injustice inflamed the civil war, and yet, plenty of houses still supported him.

Surely to further their own goals, but given the cultural indoctrination of the people in that world, many of his supporters might have actually believed that Aerys and his House had an irrevocable right to rule because … yes, why?

What made him the rightful ruler?

In the Complete Guide to Westeros on the extras to season 1, Robb Stark tells us what happened on The Field of Fire and later: After Aegon’s dragons destroyed the armies of the Reach and the Rock at the Field of Fire, the King in the North, Torrhen Stark, bent the knee and swore fealty to avert the destruction of Winterfell and the slaughter of his people.

This is how the Targaryens came to power: There was no vote of the people, there was no accord among the classes or agreement within the aristocracy, there was no finger of god pointing at Aegon while a voice from the heavens declared him the Anointed One; no, there were dragons, and a megalomaniac family willing to use them to burn towns and castles and people, and burn and burn as long as there was still resistance against their dominion.

And at another time we hear from Roose Bolton that their House bent the knee after the Starks had beaten them in the field and were threatening their continued existence.

Force is the foundation of the dominion of a few over the many in Westeros, and this is what we see in the series. Mostly.

Twice we witness a kind of vote happening among the aristocracy, each time a new King in the North is proclaimed. We don‘t know yet what this will mean for the north after Jon’s ascension, but we know what happened after Robb’s crowning.

Robb got entangled in the discordant demands of feudal and personal loyalties, and experienced their volatility in times of crisis. He failed to balance them three times – and each time he showed everyone that he was overwhelmed by the responsibilities of kingship, and the entire North had to pay for it.

No matter where we look: Joffrey, Renly, Stannis, Balon, Dany, Tommen - every ruler we have met showed us some of the problems within feudalism and monarchy.

Those problems have overtaxed the capacity of Westeros’ social order to deal with them adequately. An overachiever on the throne might have done better, but if a society needs brilliance in its leader, it’s doomed to fail eventually.

But back to the question: Who is the rightful ruler? As soon as every opponent is either dead or subdued, the question is mostly answered with lineage. And this means, we are dealing with the idea that you’re either born a master or a servant.

And this idea is as fundamentally wrong as its companion, legitimacy through force. Mercifully, neither the show nor the books have proven them right. So far.

I am not quite sure, why the preordained division of people is so popular in fiction and in the real world, but the older I get, the more I agree with Terry Pratchett:

“Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.”

[Peremensoe]

Good post.

@wintertime

Twice we witness a kind of vote happening among the aristocracy, each time a new King in the North is proclaimed.

Three times; Euron was acclaimed King of the Iron Islands as well, and the references to Kingsmoot suggest that this kind-of-vote was a longstanding practice there.

[wintertime]

@Peremensoe

Three times; Euron was acclaimed King of the Iron Islands as well, and the references to Kingsmoot suggest that this kind-of-vote was a longstanding practice there.

Oh yes, I forgot the Kingsmoot, thank you.

The problems of Westeros’ social order are interlocked: the legitimization of the order, the reach of authority within it and its setup.

Dominion is established by force but justified by birth right, which means that natural superiority or inferiority is the idea at the core of such a society.

In peace time, the hierarchical structure is inevitably rigid, social mobility is restricted, advancement is primarily awarded and not earned. The social rules are centered around privilege. The potential within the society is therefore barely uncapped.

Changes from top down can only be achieved by war, since such a society has not established any rules that permit peaceful transfer of power and authority.

Though even in times of (civil) war, the structure stays rigid but social mobility is greater and advancement by merits is easier.

But as long as the defining idea isn’t changed, the order snaps back into its ossification and wastefulness when the rules of engagement switch back to peace time mode.

We only know two characters who showed at times an interest in a different society: Jon and Dany.

Though Dany walks firmly the path of ruthless conqueress and empress; it looks like she has finally accepted the rules of the traditional game, and she shows little will to restrict her own power – quite to the contrary. Dany has learned all the wrong lessons in Essos.

And Jon might just have accepted the role of a king – even though he tells us that he failed. Though it’s not unreasonable for him to think he is going to need the authority attributed to this title.

Why anyone – including himself – should think, he is *able *to lead the North in times of a crisis is baffling: Lyanna Mormont words tell us that she supports Jon for the traditional but – mostly – the wrong reasons: loyalty to a liege lord and authority given by blood.

And the reasoning of the other Lords is even more confusing. The Starks failed the northern Houses right at a time when failure led to dire consequences. Jon failed at every step on his way from Castle Black to the meeting hall in Winterfell. He wasn’t the savior, he was saved - saved from the consequences of his very own decisions.

But he is going to be king anyway because he satisfies traditional expectations better than anyone else present, even better than the nominal heir of House Stark, who, as Lyanna told us, is not Stark enough.

We’ll see how northern loyalty will react to the information that Jon is half-Targaryen and his other half does not come from Ned. If this is going to undermine his authority, the reasoning will be as wrong as the one that gave him the authority in the first place.

Though, I suspect D & D didn’t mean to show us that. Jon’s actions in front of Winterfell seem to suggest that he was styled to be the opposite of the self-involved Ramsay, that he represents the honour and loyalty to family that his opponent lacks.

It also distinguishes him clearly from Sansa, who had not just given up on her brother Rickon but had chosen a strategy that could not save him and might also kill her other remaining family member, Jon.

I think, D&D wanted to show us that Jon deserves to be king. But if that’s the case, the reasoning is faulty: When Jon stormed toward Rickon, he abandoned his men, the north, the fight against the White Walkers. He knew very well that his army needed him, no one else had the authority to command them.

Davos and Tormund knew this very well, and that’s why the decision to send the cavalry after Jon made sense: they were doomed when they let Jon die without any attempt to support him. The army would not have had the moral to stand firm in a defensive position after such a desaster.

But Jon’s tiny force needed to execute the tactics from Agincourt to have any hope at all to win the battle – and we saw clearly that the change of plans was disastrous.

So, Jon put loyalty to family above everything else. Not unlike Robb. Is this the distinguishing mark of a king? If it is, it’s as detrimental for Westeros as naked egoism.

Anyway, so far, we have seen no one to be chosen because of ability – unless we seriously consider the notion that Jon and Dany – as Targaryens – are more able to rule, because … hm, some higher power will make it go their way, like it appears to be for Dany or because the natural order is such that a master race is preordained to rule the under-people? … I don’t know. But I hope we are not heading into that kind of fantasy territory.