two rivers folk

“How may I help you, Aes Sedai? You wish me to send a message for you via my pigeons? It will be my pleasure.” It was also wise to grant Aes Sedai any favors they asked, and a pigeon was a small favor.

“A message to each merchant you correspond with. Tarmon Gai’don is coming soon.”

He shrugged uneasily. “That is nothing to do with me, Aes Sedai. I’m a merchant…. But I will send your message.”

“Do you recognize this?” she said, fishing a leather cord from the neck of her dress.

His breath caught, and he stretched out a hand, brushed a finger across the heavy gold signet ring on the cord. Across the crane in flight. How had she come by this? Under the Light, how?

“I recognize it,” he told her, his voice suddenly hoarse.

“My name is Nynaeve ti al’Meara Mandragoran. The message I want sent is this. My husband rides from World’s End toward Tarwin’s Gap, toward Tarmon Gai’don. Will he ride alone?”

He trembled. He did not know whether he was laughing or crying. Perhaps both. She was his wife? “I will send your message, my Lady, but it has nothing to do with me. I am a merchant. Malkier is dead. Dead, I tell you.”

The heat in her eyes seemed to intensify, and she gripped her long, thick braid with one hand. “Lan told me once that Malkier lives so long as one man wears the hadori in pledge that he will fight the Shadow, so long as one woman wears the ki’sain in pledge that she will send her sons to fight the Shadow. I wear the ki’sain, Master Aldragoran. My husband wears the hadori. So do you. Will Lan Mandragoran ride to the Last Battle alone?”

He was laughing, shaking with it. And yet, he could feel tears rolling down his cheeks. It was madness! Complete madness! But he could not help himself. “He will not, my Lady. I cannot stand surety for anyone else, but I swear to you under the Light and by my hope of rebirth and salvation, he will not ride alone.” For a moment, she studied his face, then nodded once firmly and turned away. […]

Silence hung in the common room. They had not been keeping their voices low, and even the girl with the dulcimer had ceased plying her hammers.

“Well, Managan, Gorenellin,” he demanded, “do you still remember who you are? Do you remember your blood? Who rides with me for Tarwin’s Gap?” For a moment, he thought neither man would speak, but then Gorenellin was on his feet, tears glistening his eyes. “The Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai’don,” he said softly. “The Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai’don!” Managan shouted, leaping up so fast he overturned his chair. Laughing, Aldragoran joined them, all three shouting at the top of their lungs. “The Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai’don!”

Rhaegar is the perpetual heir to a failing dynasty, raised from birth to fulfill a cosmic destiny. He’s promised a great purpose as king, warrior, and prophetic messiah… but he dies before he can step into either role. From what we know, Rhaegar was burdened by his destiny, almost shackled by it. His whole existence was framed around this great inherited prophecy and the fate of the world. So what else was he to do but fall deeper into the mire?

Then there is Stannis, who begins the story as the true heir to what should’ve been Rhaegar’s throne. And much like Rhaegar, he too is told that he’s the chosen one. Rhaegar outwardly looks like the archetypal fantasy protagonist, yet Stannis is the one who actually acquires the trappings of genre. He gets his prophet-slash-wizard advisor. He gets the magic sword. He has the crown. And if Melisandre is to have her way, he will get the sacrificial beast as well.

Rhaegar dies as the Prince of Dragonstone. Stannis is introduced to us as the Lord of Dragonstone. Rhaegar could only read and dream about magic swords. But it is Stannis who achieves one of the most poignant mythical feats: pulling out a “magic” sword, like some grim counterfeit Arthur. It’s as if we’re watching another version of Rhaegar play out in real-time, only harsher and less romantic.

But here’s where these narrative brothers begin to diverge. Rhaegar occupies the same structural role among the Targaryens that Robert, his killer, occupied for the Baratheons. He is the glorified older brother, the beautiful and mythologized one whose greatness defines the family story. But Stannis? He’s the one left in the shadow of someone else’s glory. He’s not as romantic or dazzling as his brother was. Yet he’s the one who gets to play the messiah in this song.

And because Stannis is the one who actually goes through the motions of the savior, he gets to face some moral dilemmas that Rhaegar escaped. Because here’s my hot take: I think Rhaegar died choosing to leave duty behind. Our current timeline did not come to be because Rhaegar chose cold duty over humanity. Quite the opposite. He was doomed the moment he abandoned duty — offloading it onto his infant son — and ran for love. He — like all men, as Maester Aemon puts it — was fashioned for love by the gods. And he died for it. He’s still a walking catastrophe, but an altogether different tragedy from the one fandom makes him out to be.

Stannis is the inverse. He is duty personified. The Azor Ahai myth played to its absolute disastrous end. Because what is a hero willing to sacrifice in the name of righteousness and duty? What, or who, is he willing to burn if the world depended on it? Rhaegar runs and dies before he can truly make the monstrous calculations that prophecy demands. He is an incomplete messiah. He never lives long enough to be tested by the ugly logistics of salvation. Stannis, however, is what happens when that logic is allowed to run to its most bitter end.