Great list, but surely there is some way we can blame Tywin Lannister for the war somehow? Scratching my head and can’t really think of one. Is he really innocent of any role in starting the war?
It’s a stretch, but you can blame Tywin for siding with Robert during the Rebellion 15 years ago. Robert may still have won, but the war would have been a lot costlier for everyone involved, and we wouldn’t have had the particular Baratheon + Lannister configuration at the helm.
Now that I think about it, an easier solution is to blame Tywin for sending the Mountain out to rape and pillage the Riverlands in response to Tyrion’s capture, which helped escalate matters to the point of no return, as this riled up both the Tully contingent (being lords of the Riverlands) and the Starks (whose matriarch is originally a Tully, and who’re already pissed about Bran, and then Ned’s capture, and then the beNedding).
Well, Tywin insisted that Robert and Cersei marry. Yeah, he probably didn’t know that their relationship would be so terrible that Cersei would only have her brother’s kids and not any true Baratheons, but that’s the best I’ve got.
Actually, if you want to go back even further in time, I think you could also put a good case for putting some blame on Maester Aemon Targaryen. If he had accepted the kingship after his father and two older brothers had died, then the crown wouldn’t have gone to his younger brother Aegon V (and thus not to Aegon V’s grandson, Aerys the Mad King).
Maester Aemon only joined the Night’s Watch after refusing the kingship, so that he couldn’t be used in a plot to usurp Aegon V. So Aemon wouldn’t have been breaking his vows to become king - he was only a Maester at that point, and AFAIK that’s not a bar to becoming king. I think Aemon would have been a good king, but who knows for sure? And maybe his descendents would have had a crazy one among them.
So, up until the Mad King, were the Targaryens generally considered good kings? I don’t mind a book spoiler here, if it answers the question…
Also, about how far back to go: I’m thinking from the point of the successful rebellion: the Mad King has just been killed a few minutes ago, and decisions from that point on are what I’m considering. Otherwise, yeah, you can probably go back far enough to blame the First Men somehow.
Until a true expert happens by: Some of the Targaryen rulers were very good. The bad ones tended to be insane…
It’s all Ser Barrister’s fault:
He failed to unhorse Prince R at the tourney, which let R crown Lyanna the queen of love and beauty and started this whole mess.
That still would have happened, the beginning circumstances just would have been different.
You know, I remembered after I posted this that the appendix in the first book had a summary of the Targaryen dynasty, and although it doesn’t go into detail, the names and nicknames of the rulers confirm the hit-or-miss quality of those kings. And then there was Cersei saying that there was an axiom that every time a Targaryen has a child, they roll the dice, or something to that effect.
Their ages in the books are pretty much in line with medieval Europe. A male noble was generally considered to be “a man grown” at 16; if he was a prince and was still a child when his father died, he would be crowned but the kingdom would actually be run by a regent (often his mother, usually another, older male relative) until he reached his majority at 16. At that point, the regency would end and he would take over.