Link Targaryen

96. Diaries

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Masterpost

ned to a certain extent recognises this when he sees arya’s disillusionment with society after the mycah episode (parallel to the howland episode) and he lets her keep + train with needle. I do wonder if the brothers + rickard found out about knight of the laughing tree (given jojen and meera’s surprise that bran hadn’t been told that specific story) and reacted badly, pushing lyanna away. and that’s why ned brings up lyanna to arya when he does, because he sees that if he does not act differently from his father he will lose arya like they lost lyanna.

ok but first you have to swear a holy oath that you mean the no hate thing 🫪

within the narrative: he was a pretty depressed individual who felt an immense amount of pressure to measure up to ideals of masculinity both within the monarchy that he was heir to and the prophecy that he thought himself the center of. but he was not delusional or crazy or even 'prophecy-obsessed' because 1) the prophecy that he believed in was real and he had full reason to believe and act on a prophecy considering that he came from a family that owed its survival to listening to a prophecy that sounded 'irrational' in the moment and 2) considering the apocalyptic nature of the prophecy, he was pretty tame in his response to it (in contrast to melisandre and stannis' religious crusade, for example), and all the text even tells us for sure is that he was aware of it. there is no solid proof that it motivated any of his actions -- from deciding to become a warrior, to running away with lyanna. I do believe that the aforementioned things were in fact partly motivated by his belief in the prophecy, but it was not even close to his sole motivation. imo, his decision to become a warrior came from his need to perform socially-expected masculinity, and his affair with lyanna stemmed from genuine love and affection. at the end of the day, these decisions can't be separated from the prophecy, because it is something that seems to have been central to his life, but it wasn't a singular, all-consuming obsession.

outside the narrative: his main meta role is to act as a foil to aerys and viserys in dany's story. unlike the other two, who were literal kings, rhaegar, though never crowned, is the one that dany considers herself the heir of. this means that he plays a largely positive and idealistic role in the story. the subversion of his character is that he is not the kidnapping, raping prince that we were led to think he was at the beginning of AGOT, and he is not like aerys or viserys. he is the representation of idealism whose story and goals both jon and dany will continue.

rhaelya: this post largely summarises my thoughts on rhaelya within the narrative, and what they mean to one another. also one of their obvious narrative purposes is that they are jon's parents -- making him both a targaryen and a stark. outside the narrative, they exist as one of the many ways to demonstrate the theme of the conflict of love and duty, and the human heart in conflict with itself, but primarily, their purpose is in relation to jon and dany's characters. both jon and dany play the parts of both rhaegar and lyanna at some point or the other in their relationships. jon is both in his relationship with ygritte, dany is also both in her relationship with daario. jon is rhaegar with arya and alys, and has parallels with lyanna in his foreshadowed relationship with dany.

as his pr manager: as far as I'm concerned, the worst thing he did was cheat on his wife, and this too, has to be situated in a world where marriages are explicitly symbols of an oppressive patriarchal institution that seeks to control women's bodies.

he was not responsible for the deaths of his wife and children. or in other words, I find that holding him responsible for the deaths of elia and their children requires judging him in ways that we do not judge most other asoiaf characters. elia and her children were supposed to be safe inside maegor's holdfast. the red keep is an incredibly secure castle, and maegor's holdfast is literally a fortress within a fortress. it is doubly defended by being at the heart of the red keep with a moat around it. the rebelling army was not supposed to reach king's landing in the first place, because rhaegar's army was thrice its size, and the only reason the army scattered was because he died. it's a bit ridiculous to seriously blame him for dying, or for not foreseeing his own death. now, he could have left more kingsguard to guard elia, but realistically that wouldn't have saved her from the lannister armies. he also was not in charge of the kingsguard, aerys was. he only got away with leaving arthur, oswell, and gerold at the tower because arthur and oswell were loyal to him over aerys. leaving three trusted knights at a tower in the middle of nowhere guarding a woman whom half the realm is looking for is also an obvious decision. elia was the wife of the crown prince, she obviously had a household guard, and targaryen soldiers, guarding the red keep. also, taking all the kinsguard except one, jaime (who was, again, aerys' choice), was an obvious decision because he was a crown prince going to battle. I've also seen the argument that since he started the chain of events that kicked off the rebellion, he is ultimately to blame for the sack of king's landing. this is like saying that brandon is ultimately to blame of the rebellion. because at the end of the day, it was brandon's rash decision to commit treason by calling for the crown prince's head in front of the mentally unstable king that got him killed. no one, let alone rhaegar and lyanna, expected him to do that. ned, catelyn, and hoster tully, all call it impulsive, reckless, and foolish. and even then, brandon is still not to blame for the rebellion. because it was aerys who killed brandon and called for the heads of ned and robert, throwing the realm into chaos. the reason why people blame rhaegar and lyanna is because robert used lyanna's name as a rallying cry for the rebellion. but it was never about lyanna or rhaegar. it was about survival. and finally, at the end of the day, the deaths of elia and the children are fully on tywin's shoulders. there was no precedent for actions so horrific and they solidified tywin's reputation as a ruthless and cunning and cruel man. blaming rhaegar for tywin's cruelty is like blaming robb for the red wedding.

calling him a groomer or a pedophile for the rhaelya age gap is like calling ygritte, an adult by our standards, a groomer for her romance with jon, a minor by our standards. if we don't villify ygritte for getting into a relationship with a 15 year old who is politically and socially less powerful than her and is also a virgin, why do we villify rhaegar?

it's not rhaegar's fault lyanna died in childbirth. again, he had no control over this, he was dead at this point. he never intended to abandon her at the tower, the presence of the 3 kingsguard (one of whom was his best friend) proves that. and the narrative also heavily implies that their relationship was consensual, so she likely chose to have sex with him and the pregnancy was a result of their love.

I've got so many more thoughts on rhaegar, but this is already pretty long, and I think I've covered most of the important bit. here are some of my previous posts where I've analysed him and his relationships and/or acted as his pr manager lol

Links under the cut

yeah. and you can even include "thing that reduces the barrier to doing the task" as a catalyst/enzyme

cause sometimes it really does take more energy to start the task than it does just to do the task

Day 2 parallels

Snowstorm and rhaelya

Down by 卡ber女士

at this settlement 20-30,000 years ago there lived a person who appears to have been a sort of sorcerer-grandmother-ceramics artist and her workshop was preserved very well in the sedimentary layers. her hut where she had her kilns was full of little sculptures of animals and people that seem to have been made to explode in the kiln on purpose, we're not sure why but nevermind. the relevant detail is that when you sculpt something with your hands and then fire it, your fingerprints can be preserved in the surface of the clay forever, so we have fingerprints of ancient ceramics artists that have survived for tens of thousands of years. and one of the major artifacts from Dolni Vestonice has a fingerprint on it that is so small it could only have belonged to a child

#snowstormweek2026 day 1 ✦ connections

“A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness…”

“The moon has kissed you and etched your shadow upon the ice twenty feet tall.”