"Never. You will wed the king."

Okay, the title is a misdirection, as this isn't about Maggy's Prophecy. It's more on the Martells' misplaced loyalty to the Targaryens. But still! The tension between marrying the prince and marrying the king is relevant.

Prince Rhaegar was the eldest son of the king, and he married Princess Elia Martell.

Again: he was the eldest son of the king. He was next in line for the throne. When he became king, Princess Elia would have been his queen. Her son would have been the next king after that.

Who knows what kind of interactions the Targaryens had with the Martells before the rebellion? And really, who cares? That marriage joined House Martell of Dorne to the royal family. It meant their blood would become royalty. No other House in the realm could have given the Martells what they had with Prince Rhaegar.

AAAAAND then Prince Rhaegar ran off with Lyanna Stark. That was a crappy way to treat Princess Elia and their two children, but nothing could change that she was his wife and she DID have two children with him. Those children were still high up in the line of succession. King Aerys made everything worse and the realm went to war.

The rebels won the war and Prince Rhaegar never became king. Princess Elia and her children were killed in the Sack, and the lord who presented their bodies to the new king was rewarded for their murders. He was rewarded in the form of getting his daughter married to the new king.

Princess Elia would never become queen. Her children would never inherit anything. No, no, Robert Baratheon killed Prince Rhaegar and wedded the daughter of the man who orchestrated the deaths of Princess Elia and the children.

Elia Martell wedded the prince. Cersei Lannister wedded the king.

I can see how Elia's brothers would be enraged at the new regime.

In the period between Rhaegar running off with a younger lady and him dying on the Trident, Prince Doran and Prince Oberyn may have been asking themselves: IS this jackass prince coming back to his marriage to our sister?

But then after he died, they'd never know what he had intended to do regarding their sister and the children.

In the short period of time between Rhaegar's death and the Sack, Elia's brothers may have been telling themselves the Targaryens still had a chance to win the war, and if they did, then their blood was still next in line for the throne.

And then there was the Sack, and their blood ran red through the halls of Maegor's Holdfast.

Before Rhaegar died, Doran and Oberyn may have had some concerns about how he was treating their sister. After Rhaegar died, though, and after Elia and the children were killed in connection with the Targaryens' defeat, then the narrative changed. They'd never know what Rhaegar had intended to do...but from there, it wouldn't have been much of a leap for Elia's brothers to start telling themselves that of course Rhaegar was going to come back and make their sister his queen, but Robert Baratheon made that impossible.

The Martells' blood was supposed to become royalty, but Robert Baratheon killed their royal brother-in-law and joined his House to the Lannisters. Elia never had a chance to be queen, whereas Cersei went straight to queen. She got the position Elia should've had. House Lannister got the position that should have gone to House Martell.

After the losses their family suffered, I can understand how the Martells would look at the new Queen Cersei and hate her. From there, it wouldn't have been much of a leap for Doran and Oberyn to start telling themselves Tywin must have hated Elia the same way, and that's why he had to have her killed.

(I'm sure it didn't help matters that Joffrey looked like he fell straight out of the Lannister family tree, and his sorry ass became the next king.)

Now allow me a digression, on Tywin's relationship to King Robert vs. the Martells' hypothetical relationship to King Rhaegar. Tywin built up an undue level of power as the king's father-in-law...because the crown borrowed so much gold from him. That debt resulted from two factors: 1) Littlefinger was actively sabotaging the crown's finances, and 2) Tywin was the wealthiest man in the Seven Kingdoms. If Rhaegar had become king, it's highly improbable that he would've had such a toxic Master of Coin as Littlefinger. Even if he did, the Martells don't have nearly as much gold to throw around. So, even in the alternate universe where King Aerys II died peacefully and the Martells were the in-laws to the royal family, they would not have had what Tywin had with the Baratheon regime.

POINT IS. I can see how the Martells would be pissed as hell at seeing Cersei Lannister wed the new king. That doesn't mean Prince Oberyn's narrative of Tywin Lannister's motivation holds any more water than a fishnet. I can see how the Martells would come to view Prince Rhaegar as a martyr rather than a reckless philanderer. That doesn't mean the Targaryens were good to them, or that a new marriage alliance with the surviving Targs would benefit the Martells, or that restoring the Targs to the Iron Throne would provide justice.

After the war was finished and Robert became king, I can see how the Martells would start telling a certain tale. That doesn't mean their tale adds up.

Apropos of little, but I am annoyed that there's so much unknown about the tragedy at Summerhall. It's not even confirmed that Aerys was there. Da fuq?

Viserys the Third?

More like Viserys the Turd.

Deep Thoughts

Does anyone else get the impression that the Mad King viewed Viserys as his heir and Rhaegar as his competition? Because I think that mentality would explain his general pattern of behavior around his sons.

Then my question would be: when did he start to develop that antagonism toward Rhaegar?

Queen Rhaella and Prince Viserys were just as much a threat to King Robert as little Rhaenys and Aegon, and they were secure at Dragonstone for months after Robert’s coronation.

How’s this for a What If?

If Princess Elia and the royal rugrats had been living at Dragonstone at the end of the war, how much longer would they have lived?

I guess we’ll never know, as the Mad King held them hostage at the Red Keep.

That's not how any of this works.

There's this Martaryen apologia that keeps coming up. When I point out how the Targs screwed the Martells, the response is that of course the Martells don't dwell on how the Targaryens mistreated their family because the Targaryens died. Whereas the Lannisters are very much alive and benefitting from Tywin's war crimes, so they're the ones who need to be punished.

The more I think about this argument...the more nonsensical it gets.

As an explanation for the Dornish subplot, this is a non-sequitur at best. We're not reading a story in which the Martells "hate" the Lannisters and "don't hate" the Targaryens. We're reading a story in which the Martells are trying to restore the Targaryens to the position of the ruling family of the realm. They are putting themselves in mortal danger, and setting the realm to war---another war!---in order to orchestrate a regime change in favor of the Targaryens.

That requires a more positive relationship than just "we don't hate them because the ones who mistreated us are dead."

I've written on this before: the family connection either matters or it doesn't. If Tywin's been leasing castles in the Martell-Sands' heads because he got his daughter married to the king, then, what the fuck kind of sense does it make to install the Mad King's surviving children to the throne? Why would Prince Doran want to get his own children married to Prince Rhaegar's younger siblings?

Especially Arianne with Viserys! Here's to Viserys Targaryen, the third of his name, Lord of Ain't Shit Mountain, Embarrassment to the Realm. And to the gold Khal Drogo dumped on his head. Arianne is her father's heir, his only daughter, and she's gorgeous and healthy. Why the fuck would he squander her on some exiled prince who brings nothing to the table? How many times in the text does Viserys even mention the Martells?

Without his status as the Mad King's surviving son, why the fuck would Prince Oberyn be trying to rally support for Viserys as king, starting just after the rebellion when he was just eight years old? With his status as the Mad King's son, why the fuck would the Martells want anything to do with him?

Furthermore, if Aerys and Rhaegar's shittiness to the Martells doesn't matter since they died, then...why are the Lannisters still Enemy #1 after Tywin and his goons have all died? Revolting as she is, Cersei wasn't involved in the killing of Princess Elia and her children. If we're not punishing the children for the sins of the father, then what is the Martells' beef with the Lannisters now that Tywin and the relevant household knights are dead?

Shit; even the Martells wouldn't try to hide behind this "it doesn't matter what the Targs did to us 'cause they're dead now" excuse. Go to the characters and ask them to explain their support for Targaryen restoration, and they would answer that they had a great thing going with the Targs. Especially with Rhaegar. Ask them about Rhaegar being a craptastic husband to Elia and a failure of a dad to their children, and they would refuse to hear it. Rhaegar was totally their best friend! Everything was fine until Tywin ruined everything. It's all Tywin's fault! He's the bad guy! Let me tell you about 60 Unrelated Reasons why Tywin Lannister is Evil. That is, if Obara hasn't disemboweled you already.

The answer is that the family connection absolutely matters, in the same way that Family is Destiny to the entire Westerosi noble class. They want to restore the Targaryens to power because they want to restore themselves to a favored position which they never had. They want to believe the Targs love them and the Lannisters hate them. (Maybe even, the Lannisters hate them because the Targs love them.) They're not about to let some ugly facts get in the way of that beautiful story.

I don't see a question here, but I'm not above poking the viper's nest when I'm bored, so: okay, I'll bite!

If GRRM is trying to write Rhaegar as a tragic hero and R/L as some epically tragic love story, then, yes, he's doing a piss-poor job of it.

I don't think that's what he's doing.

I think he's intentionally writing a deeply frustrating story around the Martells. Whatever his initial idea of the Targs was in 1996...the story he's writing now is that dragons plant no trees.

He doesn't let the Martells acknowledge the Targs' mistreatment of their family because this is not a story in which they'll be vindicated or victorious. This is a story in which they are screwing themselves over. Which isn't exactly fun to read, but the pieces add up that way. The Targs are not the heroes the Martells need for their fairytale, any more than the Lannisters are the villains they need for that tale.

Especially Rhaegar. Seven Hells, are people actually saying "clearly Rhaegar was a good guy because the Martells don't blame him"? That is really...special. Nah, the Martells' refusal to hold the Targs, and especially Rhaegar, responsible for the injury done to their family is not an argument in favor of the Targs. It's 60% or more of the way the Martells are driving themselves off a cliff.

I don't have any firm opinions on why GRRM is taking so long to finish the Winds of Waiting. It's likely the result of many contributing factors, as the series involves many, many moving parts. But I doubt very much that he intends to write the Targs as the good guys Dany seems to think they are. They're a mix of hero and villain, like many other players in the game. Meanwhile the Martells' investment in the dragon is doubly tragic because where the Targs are actually heroic, they still don't reciprocate the Martells' loyalty. They hardly even see it.

A Song of Dead Lions and Distant Dragons

I haven't written here lately, but I still have Deep Thoughts(™) and people still interact with my earlier posts, so a thing just occurred to me:

If it totally makes sense for the Martells to support a Targ restoration because Aerys and Rhaegar died in the war while Viserys and Daenerys had nothing to do with throwing the princess to the lions...

...never mind that there's a considerable difference between "I don't blame you for your dad's and big brother's actions" and "I want to put you on the throne"...

(It's totally possible for one noble family to just, not have any interest in another noble family.)