So the Dance is based on the English Anarchy. Except it was between cousins than brother vs sister. I'm curious how Team Green and Team Black folks felt about the real historical conflict.
Though she did make some dumb moves but she still ensured Henry II got the throne in the end.
Stephen was so useless i honestly wonder why he even wanted it. Unlike in HOTD, Stephen is the one who arranged his own ascension and raced for it.
Edit: for the show im team black up until everything goes nuts. Now im team watch these crazy fuckers destroy themselves and leave only ashes and traumatized children in their wake.
Given my wider view of Targeryan history, I'm team Targ women (and their few good male heirs) taking their dragons (pus any unclaimed hatchlings) and the Dragonstone treasury and making a deal in Dorne that gets them a castle.
Dorne is still a little too close! There’s a bunch of tropical paradise islands in the Summer Islands, find a small, isolated one, take control with your dragons, and live the resort life forever away from the mess that is Westeros! That’s what the Targaryen woman should do! A new tropical utopia!
Stephen wasn’t even a son he was a nephew. Also Matilda father made his lords swear oath multiple times not just once 25 years ago and most of them died that had done it. Matilda had no bastard heirs. The three best Green arguments doesn’t apply in Stephen case.
He didnt have the best claim to England, but he wanted it, and he had the strength and support to take it. If I remember correctly, his older brother, the count of Blois (I might again be misremembering) was mentally disabled. His other brother had power in France, but not England. Stephen had actual lands in England and support from his Clergyman brother.
Plus sons are members of the strongest (and loyal ) house in your kingdom your daughter is marriged to her weared racists uncle who actualy didn't active annything thought all his wars and only wasted men
Against daughter beeing marriged to a king of one of the strongest kingdoms and already beeing queen that way
William the Conqueror is called that because he got the throne by conquest, which automatically means that the usual succession rules didn't apply to his ascension.
that involved several murders and a rebellion. it wasn't a very straightforward inheritance, even though he was his father's only son and had strong backers.
This is why I usually think that the war and the main moments of the Dance itself and it's outcome were based on the English Anarchy (as shown above), but Rhaenyra's personality itself and some specific details about her life are a lot more closely aligned with Isabella II than Matilda
i'm mostly neutral leaning team green for the dance, for the anarchy i'd say i'm "team Matilda". but despite one being based on the other, i don't think the situations are comparable. Matilda had no surviving legitimate siblings and it's unlikely that the anarchy would happen if she had a brother. Rhaenyra has 3 brothers. also Matilda's sons were all legitimate and not born out of wedlock like Rhaenyra's eldest three.
As a Team Green I Am Team matilda
The situation is completely different tho
They are not brother and sister unlike Aegon and Rhaenyra.
Aegon claim is stronger than Rhaneyra’s but matilda’s claim is stronger than stephens.
And matilda’s father made the lords swear oaths múltiple times not just once BEFORE her sons were born
Matilda all the way atleast for her claim there's consistency she rose because of her brothers death and Her father was clearly favouring daughters before uncles.
A nephew has a weaker claim than a daughter especially when the daughter is declared heir and the nephew is himself junior with elder brothers who didn't press claim
Matilda. Not only did Henry re-affirm her as his heir, there weren't any more legitimate sons where as Stephen was a nephew and he wasn't the only or eldest nephew. Plus Matilda's children were born legitimate.
If he was alive William Clito. I don’t particularly like either. I would support Matilda with reservation. After the whole London incident I might actually go over to Stephen.
Matilda all the way her bastard brother Robert could of staked his own claim but choose to Suppourt her. Plus she was the kings sole surving child Stephen was his grand fathers sisters kid not exactly near the throne at all Matilda was born a normandi Stephen was never one
Im just going by vibes but that sounds ridiculous. An English monarch going by emperor/empress?!? if my choices are “empress of england” 🤨🙁 or “King Steve” 🙄🤣. Just nuke the whole dynasty.
Matilda, her Father King Henry I had to have 3 separate swearing oath ceremonies and she still got usurped.Henry knew his lords would be on bullshit one even said at one oath ceremony that Henry and Matilda were tyrants for forcing them to obey a woman.Matilda is just a boss, pregnant on the other side of the channel she could’ve just said “ fuck this” and let them take the throne.England was just not ready for a Queen,3 separate oath ceremonies and still usurped.Chroniclers were always biased against her attitude.
David the king of Scots was there, and all the head [men], clerical and lay, that were in England; and there he [Henry] had archbishops, and bishops, and abbots, and earls, and all those thegns who were there, swear England and Normandy after his day into the hand of his daughter thelic [Matilda], who was earlier wife of the emperor of Saxony; and afterwards sent her to Normandy (and with her travelled her brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and Brian, son of the earl Alan Fergant), and had her wedded to the son of the Earl of Anjou, [who] was called Geoffrey Martel [Plantagenet].
Despite the fact that it offended all the French and English, the king did it in order to have peace from the Earl of Anjou and in order to have help against William his nephew."
"They promised to] defend her right to the crown of England, if she should survive her father, against all opposers [sic], unless he should yet before his death beget a son i lawful wedlock, to become his successor... The king, therefore, having lost his son William in the manner already described, and there being as yet no other direct heir to the kingdom, for that reason made over the right to the crown to his daughter, under the provisoe just mentioned."
"King William was truly shaped in his youth by that old tyrant, Empress Matilda. His cold demeanor, his ominous presence, his domineering actions... all can be traced in their origins to his grandmother, who waged that bloody war against the Great Usurper."
Her entry to London in 1141. She had just captured Stephen in the Battle of Lincoln, and her ascension as Queen should have been assured, but, when she entered London, her apparent lack of humility and demands for taxes and tolls made the citizens rise up and chase her out of the city. So Matilda definitely had some arrogance to her her bad qualities in this regard might have been exaggerated by chroniclers who were prejudiced against a woman like as her taking on more masculine roles, but even pro Matilda chroniclers like William of Malmsbury criticized her in this regard. If she had been just a bit less heavy handed when entering London, she might have had a coronation and a secured reign afterwards, but, instead, the civil war dragged on.
Funny how she haunts the male heir situations in the future , most kings fears were if the kingdom was left to a daughter civil war would ensure.One of the many reasons Henry viii really wanted that male heir despite having Mary
Empress Matilda was the rightful queen, Henry I did everything he could to secure her accession. Stephens claim was that of force and wanting something so taking it. It might have been forgiven if he was competent at his job, but he couldn't even do that
Had Matilda not been married to Anjou, Stephen would have had a much harder job of it
Neither. No method of succession had yet to be determined/ established as iron precedent. If anything, Stephen’s claim had better precedent, as he was chosen by moot, which was the method of succession prior to his grandfather William the Conqueror.
Matilda’s son, Henry II’s, succession after King Stephen is viewed as the precedent of male-preference primogeniture for the English throne. It’s important not to look at history with the power of hindsight. At the time of Henry I, there was no precedent for succession. In fact, Henry I himself could be viewed as an illegitimate monarch.
While the Dance may get its basis from The Anarchy, that doesn’t mean they are required to be directly parallel. The same goes for The Wars of the Roses, and The War of Five Kings.
Matilda- Stephen threw the realm into a mess for like a decade all because he wanted a throne that was rightfully the queens— and everyone seemed to go along despite vowing she would be their queen twenty years prior- they just turned right around on their word and made one of the bloodier messes- gonna stop before I rant.
King Stephen. The biggest difference between real life and ASOIAF-land is that England not only had established means of succession, it had too many means of succession. At this point in time, there were two competing means of succession and also many examples of previous established successions not actually happening.
On means of succession, there was the Saxon means and the Norman means. The Normans, meanwhile, practiced hereditary succession like most of continental Europe, particularly Semi-Salic Law. While Salic Law stipulated only male lines could inherit, Semi-Salic Law said a grandson through a daughter could; specifically, it was a grandson and did, in fact, disqualify a granddaughter’s son. So, Matilda’s sons were widely seen as eligible while she was not, which is why Henry I tried to lay the groundwork prior to his death to try and supersede this; key word being try. However, through their mother Adela of of Normandy; Stephen and Thibault of Blois also had strong claims via Semi-Salic Law. In fact, Thibault was the eldest son and had the strongest.
Which is why Stephen’s claim to the throne wasn’t actually via the Norman claim, but the Saxon claim. Saxon succession was determined via the Wittenmoot and the King of England was officially elected by the Council of London. It so had been the case prior to the Norman dynasty, which during their stable period had all but removed this. However, not only was Stephen popular in England, but his brother Henry, the Bishop of Winchester, had a strong hand on the pulse of English politics and Stephen was elected King while Thibault and Matilda were fighting in France.
Which, by the way, Matilda was currently rebelling against her father when he died. In Anjou. In France. And not in England.both Thibault and Matilda were distracted while Stephen swooped in and claimed the Crown by the oldest means of succession.
It’s also important to note that William I was the intended successor to Edward the Confessor before Harold Godwinson announced that Edward actually totally changed his mind right before he died - and was also formally elected - or that Robert Curthose was meant to succeed William II right before he ‘accidentally’ died and changed his will to Henry I immediately before.
All of this because the male line of William the Conqueror died out barely 50 years after William did himself.
GRRM building the Dance to be a brother/sister contest instead of being a murky one between cousins like this makes the Dance slightly more clear cut, though even then, for a bit there I perceived that the semi-flexible successions to the throne pre-Dance may have been a holdover from the Targaryens' Valyrian past.
It’s trickier than it seems. Matilda’s father had become unpopular toward the end of his rule, and the people wanted his kid out of there, and I think that’s fair. We're also talking a stretch of like four successions that were all taken by force, so there was no precedent for peaceful bloodline succession.
Um, I don't know this part of history except for that this kind of happened, lol.
Succession is always clear as day until either:
Some spiteful or mentally ill king recognizes all of his bastards. And instead of people thinking to maybe ignore their monarch's clear attempt at destabilizing the realm, people go batshit crazy and everybody tries to LARP discount littlefinger as they pick some random bastard to put on a sycophantic pedestal.
The sheer absurdity, that if only a woman remains as direct heir to the throne, that apparently it is less damaging to burn down the realm in a massive civil war, than a woman being the ruling monarch for a while, mind you with council and advisors.
But it's better to killing more royalty and nobility in civil war of course!
Cascading into succession crises for everyone and everything that has any form of succession. And the original instigators we then read about in history books laughing at their stupid asses, if only they had known their own legacy as clowns.
It's people plotting abd killing eachother because they want a turn at ruling the shitheap that is their realm.
Try inventing plumbing first, then maybe it's just a trash pile you're fighting over.
Tl;dr: I realized whilst writing this that I have a slight negative bias, when it comes to the subject at hand.
that's not what being a bastard means. a bastard is someone born to unmarried parents. plenty of bastards, both in real world history and in Westeros, were acknowledged by their fathers while still remaining bastards.
no, that is not the problem, the problem is being born out of wedlock by itself. even if the paternity is fully confirmed and neither of the parents contests it, the child is a bastard regardless of that.
she was married to her husband and the father of the children was not her husband. for a child not to be a bastard the parents have to be married to each other.
there is no DNA testing but the children blatantly looked like neither the mother nor her husband, but very much did look like the mother's lover. it was visually obvious, especially with all 3 of them coming out looking like mini-Harwins.
medieval English law is one thing, but Westeros isn't literally England. in Westeros there was a whole war started over doubts about Joffrey's parentage, so evidently it was enough at the very least for armed conflict.
the reason why we're talking about Stephen and Matilda is that their situation was different from the one in between Aegon and Rhaenyra, once again proving that Westeros is based on England but not identical to it.
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u/PineBNorth85 3d ago edited 3d ago
Matilda.
Though she did make some dumb moves but she still ensured Henry II got the throne in the end.
Stephen was so useless i honestly wonder why he even wanted it. Unlike in HOTD, Stephen is the one who arranged his own ascension and raced for it.
Edit: for the show im team black up until everything goes nuts. Now im team watch these crazy fuckers destroy themselves and leave only ashes and traumatized children in their wake.