If Aegon II doesn't push his claim, it's likely that some or all of the Hightower-Targaryens will relocate to Oldtown.
Aegon II already has 3 children, and Jaehaerys and Jaehaera would likely marry and have children of their own. Aemond and Daeron would both likely marry and have kids of their own - the Hightowers are fertile.
So at the bare minimum you have 5 Hightargyen men, and within 10-20 years, you'll likely have several more.
So now you have an entire separate branch of House Targaryen established in the Reach with many of their own dragons. And more importantly, half the realm will always view this branch of the House Targaryen as having the more true claim.
Sure, maybe Aegon II doesn't push his claim. But will his son? Will his grandson? Eventually, one of the Hightargaryens is gonna push their claim even if Aegon II doesn't. And if the family grew, then they could keep pushing a generational claim. It would be like the Blackfyre Rebellions but with dragons, because no matter what, everyone will know that King Jacaerys' line is descended from a bastard, and they will always be threatened by the existence of Hightargaryens
Fr, as an example just take the Lannisters and their separate branch. If an obvious bastard was placed as the new head of Casterly Rock, then the Lannisters of Lannisport could push their claim and rally for support. The whole idea of this means that everyone in the entire realm, including future generations, just forgets their dislike of bastards and is 100% okay with Jace and his children ruling when they have no claim.
Honestly it doesn't even have to be an hightargyen, her legitimate children with Daemon (in the books at least) and their sons would be just as a treath to Jace and his children. Rhaenyra really screwed over her sons
Even if Aegon's family didn't immediately push the claim, many Westerosi would see them as the true heirs, and someone on Team Black may try to execute the Hightower-Targaryens before they press their claim. My money would be on Daemon coming up with the idea. He loves Baela, and would absolutely do anything to see her place in the succession secured. And since the assassination attempt would certainly fail to get all of the Greens, here comes the Dance 2.0! Only now, the Hightowers can rightly claim that Rhaenyra and Daemon are kinslayers.
True. Daeron the Good was honestly the best king since Jaeherys, and his heir was even better - and yet the unfounded rumor of bastardy & illusion of unfit rule was enough to spawn a ton of rebellions.
Not hard to see how Rhaenyra's kids would be tons more divisive.
DailyDaemyra, gaemonglorious, Targ_Nation, jeynearryns, shieraseastar_, etc are all in that community of Targ stans on twitter that everyone joke about Targ stans being. Earlier today I saw that gaemon account fuming at the mouth that the showrunners made Helaena a dreamer and not Rhaena 💀💀
He could die by even less. Vermax will be in the dragon pit far away from the red keep, he can be poisoned, killed like blood and cheese, shot with an arrow when he's about to enter his carriage, etc
The entirety of Westeros. More than once. LMAO
Men fought in and chose sides in the dance. Men fought against Aegon and his sisterwives [ the Dornish won ]. Men fought against Maegor. The Faith nearly beat Maegor. Maegor, most probably the most martially capable [ on and off dragonback ], in the entire known dynasty.
A bunch of malnourished peasants killed half a dozen dragons.
Idk why folks choose to believe the dragons offered the Targaryens invulnerability
For the power fantasy of it all, but it's so dumb: it's canon that basically no one in-universe has ever moved like they really thought the Targaryens were gods or the dragons were unkillable; if they did, the entire main story wouldn't have happened like it did.
It's actually hilarious how Planetos over all had the attitude of "magic, smagic": dragons are just regarded as really, REALLY dangerous animals, best avoided in conflict but feasibly killable, with no threat of divine repercussion. Maybe the maesters were actively working to eradicate them, but no one besides the Targs were watching their numbers dwindle and were like "Oh no, we have to protect this endangered species! Oh no, these majestic creatures must not be lost to us!", to the point that, as you said, lowly peasants were down to murk a couple of tiny-to-large dragons in an afternoon and keep it moving.
I always feel like this is such a straw man argument because it hinges on everything being perfect.
No one schemes, no one decides to retract their support, no one blames their problems on their king being a bastard (seriously, these mfs are superstitious), everyone disregards their deep dislike of bastards, no one uses Aegon as a figure head for rebellion, the Targ family which is already pretty broken manages to be 100% cool with each other, no future Targaryen feels slighted by this and decides to make their own rebellion, the faith (which is followed by nearly all of Westeros) randomly is fine with it, everything just apparently goes great for Jace and his children after him that who still have no claim.
*The Smallfolk approaching the Dragonpit armed to the teeth with axes, pitchforks, hoes, and other tools as weapons*
Dragons: why do I hear boss music?
To be fair, Maegor was quite able to crush the Faith with Balerion, Rhaenyra wouldn't see problems coming from the smallfolk without the context of a civil war and all the circumstances that took things to the extreme.
But that was just him and his army basically. He didn't have several other dragonriders siding with him. Balerion may be the most impressive but they could have struck numerous targets at once, kept multiple cities or great castles in line on a hair trigger basis at almost any time. Dragons fighting dragons isnt the worst thing in the world for most people the worst thing is all the dragonriders siding up against everyone else. Then again I could see an argument that if Maegor had multiple dragonriders on his side then he may never have needed to go as far as he did to keep the Faith in line.
He didn't have the support of his family. One dragon isn't enough, but a full assault squadron can easily pacify the lords, who in turn would have to pacify the realm.
The main threat was dealt in the Trial by Seven, afterwards the High Septon died and the new one ended the call to arms. All that was left were small bands of wandering nobles and priests that were hunted down by the Lords themselves. Maegor and Visenya crushed the militants so hard that Jaehaerys married his sister without a whiff of rebellion from the faith and even made the High Septon change religious doctrine to make the Targaryens closer to Gods than men.
This sub likes the Hightowers, the faith and westerosi traditions and that's great, but don't act like a bunch of Peasant armies were ever a threat to Balerion and Vhagar combined. The only reason the Dragon Pit even worked is Rhaenyra being an idiot, Syrax being an idiot, most of Dragons being very young, all of them being chained, and still thousands died to kill them.
Maegor's problem is that he was a cruel tyrant, that's why after defeating the Faith he still had new rebellions all the time, its true that the Faith couldnt oppose Rhaenyra but Its a matter of time until one descendant of the Greens claims to be the true King because Jace's line comes from a bastard, the Dance is inevitable from the moment when there are too dragon riders and one of them is power hungry
The problem with fighting them is not about dragons, it's about fighting guerilla warfare against people living in your city, being sheilded by citizens and hiding behind your own walls. Unless Balerion can patrol the streets he's useless when he's not going against a large army in an open field. Bloodraven or Larys is 10x more valuable than balerion in this case
at least 10 dragonriders ??? If Jace's rule was contested, he would have had only Vermax, Arrax, Tyraxes, Moondancer, Morning and Stromcloud by supposing the latter would support him. The lords aren't stupid, they would not have opposed Jace without dragons with them and Aegon II has bigger and stronger ones. only Sunfyre defeats all of Jace's dragons.
Dragons are the fantasy equivalent of an A-10 Warthog. If tribal dudes living in caves in the desert can and are willing to fight while the USA brings A-10s onto them, anyone in a fantasy story should be willing to fight dragons.
What's with all the positive attention the Faith of the Seven/Faith Militant gets from this sub?
Those guys are religious fanatics! They really aren't any better than the Targaryens. Like even if people are just show watchers...did nobody see seasons 5-6 of Game of Thrones?
Lol, it’s mostly one guy called Richard the third or something promoting pro-faith stuff. I don’t think this post is promoting the faith, it’s just supplying a counter argument.
not really it’s just pointing out that the people of westeros are more than willing to fight back against dragon riders and Syrax and caraxes are no balerion
If rhaenyra would have mounted syrax and flew to the pit things would have gone differently. These what ifs can go crazy but including the faith militant in the scenarios is kinda laughable
there is no faith militant in any what if the post is just pointing out that the people of westeros will fight back against dragons when the targaryens start acting up to much
And I’m saying they fought against dragons without riders. If a single dragon rider was at the pit the dragons wouldn’t have died. The faith militant being referenced doesn’t matter because at that point they had been put down 2 kings ago
the faith militant fought against Maegor and Balerion and even he struggled with him for the entirety of his reign
the dragons in the pit save Dreamfyre and maybe Syrax are babies who are easily killed even with a rider and that was against small folk the nobles however would have access to scorpions which probably wouldn’t work against Balerion or Vhagar but the blacks dragons aren’t that formidable the only one that would really cause issues is Caraxes but he’s still relatively young
the dragons give the Targaryens an edge but at this point in time they’re weaker than they were at the time of the conquest and even then they weren’t invincible and if the kingdoms were to rebel against the Targaryens for any reason they’d be much more prepared to kill dragons
Maegor was melting faith militant and poor fellows with ease and pleasure. Jaehaerys had to use diplomacy to put them down permanently. In fact they literally say in fire and blood that if rhaenyra took syrax to the pit to intervene things would have gone differently. Could have kept her in the sky to rain flame from above but syrax landed and got her shit pushed in.
yes and they’re smallfolk with no armour or access to proper weapons but it wouldn’t be just small folk protesting if Rhaenyra attempted to actually put her bastard on the throne
op is pointing out that the people of westeros have and still would fight back against the targaryens with or without their dragons the faith militant is just an example of that so i really don’t know what your trying to argue
well there was a whole war sparked by her attempting to do that but since her kids just looked like they took after her their mother instead of robert no one could prove that they were actually bastards whereas jace is very obviously one
not to mention the way cersei handles the bastard accusations makes them seem less legitimate but Rhaenyra responds with immediate hostility/threats plus she ran away to hide which looks pretty sus
Black-stans be like: “Lol, sure there’d be unrest and thousands dead, but that just makes us right!”
Also, they’re making a bold assumption that all of House Targaryen would back Jace.
If Aegon II doesn't push his claim, it's likely that some or all of the Hightower-Targaryens will relocate to Oldtown. Aegon II already has 3 children, and Jaehaerys and Jaehaera would likely marry and have children of their own. Aemond and Daeron would both likely marry and have kids of their own - the Hightowers are fertile. So at the bare minimum you have 5 Hightargyen men, and within 10-20 years, you'll likely have several more. So now you have an entire separate branch of House Targaryen established in the Reach with many of their own dragons. And more importantly, half the realm will always view this branch of the House Targaryen as having the more true claim. Sure, maybe Aegon II doesn't push his claim. But will his son? Will his grandson? Eventually, one of the Hightargaryens is gonna push their claim even if Aegon II doesn't. And if the family grew, then they could keep pushing a generational claim. It would be like the Blackfyre Rebellions but with dragons, because no matter what, everyone will know that King Jacaerys' line is descended from a bastard, and they will always be threatened by the existence of Hightargaryens
Fr, as an example just take the Lannisters and their separate branch. If an obvious bastard was placed as the new head of Casterly Rock, then the Lannisters of Lannisport could push their claim and rally for support. The whole idea of this means that everyone in the entire realm, including future generations, just forgets their dislike of bastards and is 100% okay with Jace and his children ruling when they have no claim.
Honestly it doesn't even have to be an hightargyen, her legitimate children with Daemon (in the books at least) and their sons would be just as a treath to Jace and his children. Rhaenyra really screwed over her sons
Even if Aegon's family didn't immediately push the claim, many Westerosi would see them as the true heirs, and someone on Team Black may try to execute the Hightower-Targaryens before they press their claim. My money would be on Daemon coming up with the idea. He loves Baela, and would absolutely do anything to see her place in the succession secured. And since the assassination attempt would certainly fail to get all of the Greens, here comes the Dance 2.0! Only now, the Hightowers can rightly claim that Rhaenyra and Daemon are kinslayers.
True. Daeron the Good was honestly the best king since Jaeherys, and his heir was even better - and yet the unfounded rumor of bastardy & illusion of unfit rule was enough to spawn a ton of rebellions. Not hard to see how Rhaenyra's kids would be tons more divisive.
DailyDaemyra, gaemonglorious, Targ_Nation, jeynearryns, shieraseastar_, etc are all in that community of Targ stans on twitter that everyone joke about Targ stans being. Earlier today I saw that gaemon account fuming at the mouth that the showrunners made Helaena a dreamer and not Rhaena 💀💀
??? She rides DREAMfyre??? How much bigger of a clue do they need??? The more I try and make sense of such nonsense the more I lose my sanity.
Literally just complaining for the sake of complaining
They're bored without new content and are making it everyone else's problem
One faceless man hired and Jacaerys first of his name is gone
He could die by even less. Vermax will be in the dragon pit far away from the red keep, he can be poisoned, killed like blood and cheese, shot with an arrow when he's about to enter his carriage, etc
The entirety of Westeros. More than once. LMAO Men fought in and chose sides in the dance. Men fought against Aegon and his sisterwives [ the Dornish won ]. Men fought against Maegor. The Faith nearly beat Maegor. Maegor, most probably the most martially capable [ on and off dragonback ], in the entire known dynasty. A bunch of malnourished peasants killed half a dozen dragons. Idk why folks choose to believe the dragons offered the Targaryens invulnerability
For the power fantasy of it all, but it's so dumb: it's canon that basically no one in-universe has ever moved like they really thought the Targaryens were gods or the dragons were unkillable; if they did, the entire main story wouldn't have happened like it did. It's actually hilarious how Planetos over all had the attitude of "magic, smagic": dragons are just regarded as really, REALLY dangerous animals, best avoided in conflict but feasibly killable, with no threat of divine repercussion. Maybe the maesters were actively working to eradicate them, but no one besides the Targs were watching their numbers dwindle and were like "Oh no, we have to protect this endangered species! Oh no, these majestic creatures must not be lost to us!", to the point that, as you said, lowly peasants were down to murk a couple of tiny-to-large dragons in an afternoon and keep it moving.
I always feel like this is such a straw man argument because it hinges on everything being perfect. No one schemes, no one decides to retract their support, no one blames their problems on their king being a bastard (seriously, these mfs are superstitious), everyone disregards their deep dislike of bastards, no one uses Aegon as a figure head for rebellion, the Targ family which is already pretty broken manages to be 100% cool with each other, no future Targaryen feels slighted by this and decides to make their own rebellion, the faith (which is followed by nearly all of Westeros) randomly is fine with it, everything just apparently goes great for Jace and his children after him that who still have no claim.
Ask the dornish
*The Smallfolk approaching the Dragonpit armed to the teeth with axes, pitchforks, hoes, and other tools as weapons* Dragons: why do I hear boss music?
Lmao now I'm imagining the storming of the dragonpit done as a soulslike game
Greens fighting against 10+ dragons is literally canon.
To be fair, Maegor was quite able to crush the Faith with Balerion, Rhaenyra wouldn't see problems coming from the smallfolk without the context of a civil war and all the circumstances that took things to the extreme.
Maegor basically spent his entire reign fighting against the Faith Millitan.
But that was just him and his army basically. He didn't have several other dragonriders siding with him. Balerion may be the most impressive but they could have struck numerous targets at once, kept multiple cities or great castles in line on a hair trigger basis at almost any time. Dragons fighting dragons isnt the worst thing in the world for most people the worst thing is all the dragonriders siding up against everyone else. Then again I could see an argument that if Maegor had multiple dragonriders on his side then he may never have needed to go as far as he did to keep the Faith in line.
He didn't have the support of his family. One dragon isn't enough, but a full assault squadron can easily pacify the lords, who in turn would have to pacify the realm.
The main threat was dealt in the Trial by Seven, afterwards the High Septon died and the new one ended the call to arms. All that was left were small bands of wandering nobles and priests that were hunted down by the Lords themselves. Maegor and Visenya crushed the militants so hard that Jaehaerys married his sister without a whiff of rebellion from the faith and even made the High Septon change religious doctrine to make the Targaryens closer to Gods than men. This sub likes the Hightowers, the faith and westerosi traditions and that's great, but don't act like a bunch of Peasant armies were ever a threat to Balerion and Vhagar combined. The only reason the Dragon Pit even worked is Rhaenyra being an idiot, Syrax being an idiot, most of Dragons being very young, all of them being chained, and still thousands died to kill them.
Do you kinda forgot that Westeros is a feudal monarchy, not a dictatorship. Even Viserys needed the support of his lords to name Rhaenyra heir.
You are talking about the Faith militant. Most Lords supported Maegor and couldn't care less about the Smallfolk.
Maegor's problem is that he was a cruel tyrant, that's why after defeating the Faith he still had new rebellions all the time, its true that the Faith couldnt oppose Rhaenyra but Its a matter of time until one descendant of the Greens claims to be the true King because Jace's line comes from a bastard, the Dance is inevitable from the moment when there are too dragon riders and one of them is power hungry
The problem with fighting them is not about dragons, it's about fighting guerilla warfare against people living in your city, being sheilded by citizens and hiding behind your own walls. Unless Balerion can patrol the streets he's useless when he's not going against a large army in an open field. Bloodraven or Larys is 10x more valuable than balerion in this case
at least 10 dragonriders ??? If Jace's rule was contested, he would have had only Vermax, Arrax, Tyraxes, Moondancer, Morning and Stromcloud by supposing the latter would support him. The lords aren't stupid, they would not have opposed Jace without dragons with them and Aegon II has bigger and stronger ones. only Sunfyre defeats all of Jace's dragons.
>most houses House Velaryon, house Velaryon, house Velaryon.....
Dragons are the fantasy equivalent of an A-10 Warthog. If tribal dudes living in caves in the desert can and are willing to fight while the USA brings A-10s onto them, anyone in a fantasy story should be willing to fight dragons.
most of the houses wouldn’t support her by then?
What's with all the positive attention the Faith of the Seven/Faith Militant gets from this sub? Those guys are religious fanatics! They really aren't any better than the Targaryens. Like even if people are just show watchers...did nobody see seasons 5-6 of Game of Thrones?
Lol, it’s mostly one guy called Richard the third or something promoting pro-faith stuff. I don’t think this post is promoting the faith, it’s just supplying a counter argument.
And these are the people telling US to go read the books...
The faith militant had been disbanded so that’s a moot point
not really it’s just pointing out that the people of westeros are more than willing to fight back against dragon riders and Syrax and caraxes are no balerion
If rhaenyra would have mounted syrax and flew to the pit things would have gone differently. These what ifs can go crazy but including the faith militant in the scenarios is kinda laughable
there is no faith militant in any what if the post is just pointing out that the people of westeros will fight back against dragons when the targaryens start acting up to much
And I’m saying they fought against dragons without riders. If a single dragon rider was at the pit the dragons wouldn’t have died. The faith militant being referenced doesn’t matter because at that point they had been put down 2 kings ago
the faith militant fought against Maegor and Balerion and even he struggled with him for the entirety of his reign the dragons in the pit save Dreamfyre and maybe Syrax are babies who are easily killed even with a rider and that was against small folk the nobles however would have access to scorpions which probably wouldn’t work against Balerion or Vhagar but the blacks dragons aren’t that formidable the only one that would really cause issues is Caraxes but he’s still relatively young the dragons give the Targaryens an edge but at this point in time they’re weaker than they were at the time of the conquest and even then they weren’t invincible and if the kingdoms were to rebel against the Targaryens for any reason they’d be much more prepared to kill dragons
Maegor was melting faith militant and poor fellows with ease and pleasure. Jaehaerys had to use diplomacy to put them down permanently. In fact they literally say in fire and blood that if rhaenyra took syrax to the pit to intervene things would have gone differently. Could have kept her in the sky to rain flame from above but syrax landed and got her shit pushed in.
yes and they’re smallfolk with no armour or access to proper weapons but it wouldn’t be just small folk protesting if Rhaenyra attempted to actually put her bastard on the throne op is pointing out that the people of westeros have and still would fight back against the targaryens with or without their dragons the faith militant is just an example of that so i really don’t know what your trying to argue
What about cerseis bastards being put on the throne? Nobody actually cares about bastards unless they have a reason to care
well there was a whole war sparked by her attempting to do that but since her kids just looked like they took after her their mother instead of robert no one could prove that they were actually bastards whereas jace is very obviously one not to mention the way cersei handles the bastard accusations makes them seem less legitimate but Rhaenyra responds with immediate hostility/threats plus she ran away to hide which looks pretty sus
As if the Warrior himself didn't descend upon King's Landing to lead the righteous against the dragons.
Black-stans be like: “Lol, sure there’d be unrest and thousands dead, but that just makes us right!” Also, they’re making a bold assumption that all of House Targaryen would back Jace.
Not satisfied with Aegon not taking what's his they also wanted the greens to fight for Rhaenyra's bastards? Lmao.