Are you tired of the age old debate about "which house is the best/worst"? Good for you! Now you have a new option! Support our new Other overlords!

 

What does she have to do with the Boltons though?

 

I thought the Baratheons were the best house of Westeros. What else could have given birth to our lord and saviour King Stannis?

 

Best House is House Manderly. The ending will be Wymar beating the Other's to death with his massive balls. And afterwards he is going to put on his chef's hat and make enough pies to feed all the hungry peasants in Westeros.

THE END.

 

Haha, reading A knight's watch, and suddenly I realize how poetic it actually is that Jon is still going back to the Wall, for the same purpose but with more incentive.

 

I can't recall if this fic has been mentioned before in the thread, but here it is anyway:

Realignment

The fic is only 3 chapters big so far, 16k words or so, but the way it goes about things is quite interesting to say the least. To just tickle at your potential interest, I'll reveal that Robert deals with Elia and her children quite differently than he did in canon.

I post it here today because I just saw a notification for the third chapter and it was particularly delightful.

 

Wow. I didn't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. Good rec.

 

It's very well-written, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Spoiler

That Ned chapter was almost to the point of bashing. I get that Ned did a bad thing with lying about Jon, but the way every character throws it into his face with a holier-than-thou attitude makes me angry. Someone needs to knock Robert and Elia off their high-horse, and quick.

I probably won't read any more of it unless the above happens.

 

Spoiler

Robert, at the very least, needs to shut up about this. At the beginning he says that he feels insulted that Ned thought a child would need protection from him but a few sentences later he says that only Elia prevented him from killing Jon, not caring a bit about the Night Watch oath, which makes it obvious that it wasn't that bad of a call on Ned's part.

It does leave a bad taste in ones mouth.

Elia's situation seems tragic, a really bad case of a stockholm syndrome that she wanted to succumb to, that she kinda forced herself into so that she would at least take some joy out of this situation and her children's wellbeing but under it lies a pretense that is needed out of fear for their lives. I mean, people around her are people who let her down before and people who have no reason to like her, and Dornish power seems oddly nonexistant in court, so, she really doesn't have any other choice but to cling to Robert's goodwill and endure his rather big flaws because, what other choice does she really have?

Robert, well, he was a douche in canon, and a crappy father/husband/king/everything but a general, really but at the very least he wasn't this malicious and in love with his own hatred as here.

It's well written and all but not much to enjoy here.

 

I don't mind it. Not that I am a fan of the bashing, but at least it's not the same overused tripe of Robert being a drunk asshole to everyone and shit at everything. It was a nice change, for once.

 

Is it bashing though? By that I mean unreasonable, bashing solely for the sake of bashing. I mean, the characters which interact with Ned (Robert, Elia and Aegon) have legitimate issues with Rhaegar's and Lyanna's actions, which ultimately led to a lot of grief and misery, not for just the people closely involved, but for the people of the Seven Kingdoms in general. Aside from Robert they don't talk shit to Ned, but Robert feels he has just cause, because Ned was supposedly his best friend, his brother in all but name and blood, and yet he kept silent on the extent of Lyanna's betrayal.

Had this Robert been someone who violently reacted towards Rhaegar's trueborn children, I'd say Ned's fear for Jon's safety would have been legitimate, but Robert's been anything but violent towards Rhaenys and Aegon. Sure, he had thought of killing the half-dragon, half-direwolf spawn once he found out about him, but so what? In the end, he did not act on it. And Aegon had his own thoughts, brief moments of madness, when he thought of killing Robert, but in the end chose not to, because Robert was more of a father to him than Rhaegar ever was.

I think you're missing the point. He's moved on from that. The hatred that once was doesn't consume him. He's not the same Robert who dreams of killing Rhaegar over and over in his dreams. He has a life now, with Elia and their children. It's just that Ned's presence at the moment provokes animosity from him, and that's what we see in this latest chapter. He's hostile towards Ned because he sees a friendship that was betrayed, cast aside, seen less worthy, because Ned wanted to preserve the image of his sister being some innocent victim in this, rather than a willing participant. Sure, she couldn't have predicted the actual extent and consequences of her actions, but you're a fool if you think that a child of a Lord Paramount can just abscond on her betrothal and live life as if it was a fairy tale, especially in a place like Westeros.

In keeping faith with his promise to Lyanna, to her 'secret', Ned did choose a side, even if he doesn't think so himself. The part where he states his inability to understand ("How can you say this? You loved Lyanna! Why would you kill something that was a part of her? Have you no compassion for a boy who was innocent in this?") why Robert would feel hostile at all towards the offspring of the woman that betrayed him with a man that was supposed to be family, albeit distant family, to me clearly shows that Ned is simply blinded by his bias for Lyanna. Perfectly understandable and natural, he did love her a great deal. It's just foolish to think that Robert would still feel that way after finding out about how she betrayed him. Yes, he feared what might happen, and did nothing but stay silent and wait for something to happen. Reactive rather than proactive, so to speak.

And his big flaws are what now? That he goes to brothels? To Elia, who is Dornish, that's not a big thing as it might be to another. I've not seen much mention of anything else. Not even drinking. He's nothing at all like he was when he's married to Cersei, as he is in canon, and he is legitimately happier here. Sure, he didn't set out to marry Elia for the sake of being happy with her or making her happy, but rather to replace Rhaegar... to replace what Rhaegar should have been, a dutiful and caring father, a loyal spouse... but in the end, he seems to have come to genuinely care for Elia, Rhaenys and Aegon.

He forgot Lyanna. He forgot about Rhaegar. He moved past all of that. And he found himself, surprisingly happy with the outcome of everything.

 

Really? You say one thing about Ned not fearing for the safety of his nephew and then you say the exact reason why he did what he did? Ned made the right choice in the end, Jon would be dead if Ned said the truth. Elia convinced him not to, but do you really think Elia would have been able to stop Robert if Ned went clean and told him? A hundred percent sure? Ned didn't take any chances. He did what he did to keep his nephew safe.

Ned did indeed choose a side, but in the end it wasn't just his sister side, it was family. He chose Jon in the end. He's known Robert for years, and he knows the thing Robert does when he's violent, angry, hurt.

 

Thoughts =/= actions

And considering Robert never killed children before, there was no previous experience which would truly give him a valid reason to fear Robert would kill Jon. Yes, Robert could grow enraged, no question about it, he's violent, certainly, but I've never read about him killing children.

Even in canon he never did so, Tywin ordered Clegane and Lorch to do so. Had it come to it, to Robert personally wielding the blade, or warhammer as it were, he wouldn't have killed Aegon and Rhaenys. It's a fundamental part of his canon character, to be perceived as the proverbial hero. Heroes don't slay children. It's why he spared the Greyjoys as well, foolish though it was.

 

We don't know if Robert would be able to kill children or not. For one so heroic, he surely hit his wife and roughed up Joffrey. He rewarded Tywin Lannister for ordering the deaths of Elia Martell and her children, and laid siege to Dragonstone, where Viserys and Daenerys were staying with their mother before going to Pentos. Plus, he ordered the murder of Daenerys and her unborn son.

It's not like I think of him as a villain, he clearly wasn't, but he wasn't a hero either, and I wouldn't put past him killing Rahegar's "dragon spawn".

 

While I'm not a proponent of hitting women in general, may I just remind you this is Cersei we're talking about? And Joffrey? Really? Granted, I have reader's bias.

Dragonstone was gonna get besieged no matter what may have awaited Aerys' children. And true, he did order the death of Daenerys and her unborn child. However, that's not quite the same Robert that was before he became King.

And yes, he's not a hero at all. Westeros has none. I should have probably phrased that one better. He wanted to be perceived as a hero.

 

He was going to take action to those thoughts and only Elia stopped him.

Seriously, he would have killed Jon. This is not even an argument anymore, it's stated right there, in that fic. That he would have killed a child.

 

It's really not. At the very least, it needs a beta. There are missing words, tons of grammatical errors (the constant changing between present and past tense is really hard to read), and a lot of the dialogue feels stilted and unnatural.

Sure, the story is a new and interesting take on events, but it's had to call it well-written when you have to stop every couple sentences to try to figure out what the author is saying.

 

I read that more as an implication that his time spent with Elia lessened his rages, helped him forget Lyanna, rather than Elia explicitly telling Robert not do it.

 

It's not quite bashing, i agree but it is maybe two steps away from it. So far, the exchanges have been quite one-sided and Ned seemed a bit flanderized, as he took the "wrong" side on every argument they had, like where he tried to defend Arthur Dayne and whatnot. I agree that Elia at least had just cause in saying what she did but having her, Robert and Aegon lecture Ned in the same chapter one after another did feel awfully preachy.

Yes, thoughts/actions but as Deadsirnait said, the story and Robert admits to Elia being the one thing that prevented Robert's thoughts from becoming his actions.

I actually think you are missing the point. The story is not really about Robert moving past his hatred but rather, his whole life, from the very start of the story has been absolutely defined by his hatred. Only, he doesn't express this with violent outbursts and drinking but with the pathological obsession of claiming ownership of everything that belonged to Rhaegar, by excelling and outperforming Rhaegar in it, and eroding Rhaegar from the lives of his family.

That's why he is nice to Elia and the children, that's why he does anything that he does. Sure, you might argue that he has come to love and respect Elia and the children, to a certain degree, but I would argue that it is unclear to what extent that is actually true.

It's also the reason why he is keeping so many of the old kingsguard around, just to make them miserable because of their roles.

Don't get me wrong, most of the old kingsguard (save Jaime, ironically) are actually scum and quite deserving of said treatment (I would go as far and say that I wish people would confront Ser Barristan with this at least once before the series end/he dies) and I agree with every bit of criticism hurled towards Rhaegar but by no means has Robert moved on with his hatred.

It may have receded a bit but his whole life is very much defined by it. It's been laying the tracks for most of his decisions for the past 15 or so years.

People handwave stuff like this with "she's dornish, she is okay with EVERYTHING" quite often but that's not really how this works. Yeah, Dornish people are more open regarding a lot of things and accepting but they have boundaries and breaking faith in a marriage is unacceptable there as well. They still follow the same religion, they have the same vows. They are more open towards behavior before the marriage and after but not for during. Oberyn and Arianna get away with their behavior because both are unmarried.

It's just that Elia has no choice but to be okay with it. I mean, if she were to object, what would that achieve? Would Robert stop? No, it would just lead to more conflict so, she goes along with it.

Dunno, I just don't have the feeling that Robert moved beyond anything. only, instead of having already gotten his revenge by killing Rhaegar and everyone else being dead or out of reach, here, he gets to continue getting his revenge every day by living, and yeah, he is happy with that. Still shackled to hatred though, at least those are my thoughts.

Edit: @ coleam: There was one time where a missing word interrupted the reading flow but otherwise I never had a problem.

 

Maybe I'm a bit more anal about it than you, but I noticed it several times per chapter.

The tense switching is what almost made me give up before finishing the first chapter though. In particular, this nightmare of a dialogue: