Robert's Rebellion - Jaime Lannister

"Robert's Rebellion - Jaime Lannister" is the sixth short of the sixth season of Histories & Lore. It is the ninety-fifth short of the series overall. It was released on November 15, 2016 in Game of Thrones: The Complete Sixth Season. It was narrated by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister and written by Dave Hill.
==Premise==
==Narration==
Jaime Lannister: Kingslayer. A word every man and woman in Westeros spits at me, though many can't name the king I slayed.
I understand. To them, I'm a symbol of everything they'll never have and a warning that'll never apply. So they can loathe me from the safety of their small lives. But when a dog goes mad, we put it down. Why not a king?
I was never supposed to be on the Kingsguard. Oh, as a boy, I dreamed of the white cloak like all boys. But I was heir to Tywin Lannister, Hand of the King. If he forbade the tides, the waves would cease.
Then I was fifteen, and my father was congratulating me on my new knighthood in the Red Keep. I wonder if that was the last time he was proud of me.
That night, there was a knock on my door, and I'd opened it to find my sister Cersei disguised as a simple serving girl. I hadn't seen her since my father took her to court when she was twelve. She had grown up. As had I.
She told me that my father planned to marry me off to Lysa Tully. But she could arrange for the king to raise me to the Kingsguard so I could stay in the city with her. All I had to do was agree.
I made the obvious objections. Our family, our father, Casterly Rock. Until she asked, "Is it a rock you want, or me?" Come morning, she had my consent.
I would join the Kingsguard for her. I would forswear my lands and title for her. I would forsake our family for her.
Soon, a royal raven commanded my father to present me to the King during the Great Tourney at Harrenhal to say my vows. My father erupted in fury.
He could not object openly, but he resigned the Handship and returned to Casterly Rock, taking Cersei with him. Instead of being together, Cersei and I exchanged places. Then, everything started to fall apart.
At Harrenhal, King Aerys made a great show of my investiture. I knelt before him in gleaming armor and swore the oath of the Kingsguard.
Once Ser Gerold Hightower raised me up and put the white cloak on my shoulders, a roar went up from the crowd. I admit, despite my father's anger, I was happy. And foolish.
That very night, Aerys soured, commanding me to return to the Red Keep to guard the queen and little Prince Viserys.
Ser Gerold offered to take that duty himself so I might compete in the tourney, but Aerys refused. "He'll win no glory here," the king said. "He's mine now, not Tywin's. He'll serve as I see fit."
That was when I understood. It was not my skill or valor that had won me this honor. The Mad King had chosen me to spite my father and steal his heir. I wanted to rip off the white cloak, but it was too late.
A Kingsguard serves for life.
So I upheld my oath, confined to the Red Keep where Varys could watch me and where the headsman could find me if my father displeased the king.
I served at the king's pleasure as he burned Rickard Stark alive and strangled his son, inciting the rebellion. I defended the king's honor against courtiers as his generals lost battle after battle with Robert.
I kept the king's secrets when his pyromancers hid caches of wildfire beneath King's Landing.
I gave the king counsel when my father's army was at the city gate, and Grand Maester Pycelle lied that my father had come to save him. Many forget that I also tried to defend the king from harm.
When the Lannister soldiers poured through the gates, it fell to me to hold the Red Keep as the only Kingsguard in the city. I knew we were lost and sent to Aerys, asking his leave to make terms.
My man came back with the royal command. "Bring me your father's head if you are no traitor." Aerys would have no yielding. His pyromancer was with him, my messenger said.
I knew what that meant. Aerys Targaryen was alone in his throne room when I found him, picking at his scabbed and bleeding hands. The fool was always cutting himself on the Iron Throne. "Burn them! Burn them!" he kept muttering.
Aerys had decided to let Robert be king, after all, over the charred bones and ashes of King's Landing.
He must have thought his pyromancer was near enough to obey him, but I'd killed him a few minutes before in the courtyard.
As I approached the throne, sanity flashed behind the King's eyes for a moment, just long enough to read the look in mine. His eyes grew huge, and the royal mouth drooped open in shock. He turned and ran.
A single thrust was all it took to end the greatest dynasty the world had ever seen. Beneath the empty eyes of the dead dragons on the walls, the last dragon king squealed like a pig and shat himself.
So easy, I thought. A king should die harder than this.
My father's knights burst into the hall in time to see the last of it, so there was no way for me to vanish and let some bragger steal the glory or blame. I knew at once when I saw the way they looked at me.
It would be blame. Lannister or no, I'd been one of Aerys' Kingsguard.
I commanded them to announce that the Mad King was dead and to spare all those who yielded. They asked me if they should proclaim a new king as well. I knew what they meant.
Would it be my father, or Robert Baratheon, or maybe the child Viserys who'd fled to Dragonstone?
A Targaryen boy king with my father as Hand to rule in truth. I thought of how Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon would howl at this end to their great heroic war, and I was tempted.
Then I glanced down again at Aerys, his life's blood oozing from the wound and pooling on the floor around him.
"Proclaim who you bloody well like," I said. I climbed the steps to the Iron Throne and sat on it with my sword across my knees, waiting to see who would come to claim the kingdom.
==Appearances==
===Individuals===
*Ser Jaime Lannister
*King Aerys II Targaryen
*Cersei Lannister
*Lord Tywin Lannister
*Lysa Tully
*Varys
*Grand Maester Pycelle
*Queen Rhaella Targaryen (unnamed)
*Prince Viserys Targaryen
*Ser Gerold Hightower (mentioned)
*Lord Rickard Stark
*Brandon Stark (unnamed)
*Wisdom Rossart (unnamed)
*Lord Robert Baratheon
*Lord Eddard Stark
*Lord Roland Crakehall (unnamed)
*Ser Elys Westerling (unnamed)
===Houses===
*House Targaryen
*House Lannister
*House Baratheon (banner)
*House Stark (sigil)
===Locations===
*King's Landing
**Red Keep
*Dragonstone
*Harrenhal
===Events===
*Great Tourney at Harrenhal
*Robert's Rebellion
**Sack of King's Landing
===Miscellaneous===
*Kingsguard
*Alchemists' Guild ("Pyromancers")
*Dragon
*Iron Throne
*King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men
==Cast==
*Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister
==Behind the scenes==
*This is the tenth of ten shorts on Robert's Rebellion.
*This short again brings up the inconsistency about exactly how old Jaime was when he was elevated to the Kingsguard. In Season 2's episode "The Prince of Winterfell" Tyrion says he was 17, but according to "The Kingsguard - Jaime Lannister" and to Jaime's entry in the Book of Brothers ("Oathkeeper") - he was 16. This short uses the number given in the novels, in which he was stated to be 15 when he joined the Kingsguard, not keeping track of prior changes introduced in the TV continuity.
*Cersei's actions in the short match those in the books, and if they don't make sense, it is simply an example of Cersei's short-sightedness: it seemingly never occurred to her that her father Tywin would be so furious at his firstborn son and heir abdicating that he would resign and leave the capital, taking Cersei with him.
*Jaime mentions that Tywin originally planned to make Jaime enter into an arranged marriage with Lysa Tully. Noble families usually try to marry their children into other powerful noble families to forge political alliances. The specific marriages and betrothals leading up to Robert's Rebellion, however, have led to a popular theory about "southron ambitions"—a phrase used by Barbrey Dustin to Theon Greyjoy in A Dance with Dragons—in which the Great Houses had turned against the Targaryens and wanted to build up political alliances for a looming confrontation with them.
**Arguments for the theory are that relations between the Targaryens and Iron Throne had worsened since the days of Aegon V, whose reforms were unpopular with powerful aristocrats, and who allowed his children to refuse vital political marriages (spurning the Baratheons, Tullys, and Tyrells). At the least, Aerys II's increasing insanity in recent decades made many of them grow wary. The argument that it was an outright conspiracy points to the fact that it is not very common for the Great Houses to intermarry, at least not within the last century; they usually marry into the great vassal houses in their own regions to bind them together (the Starks with the Flints, the Lannisters with the Marbrands, etc.). Arguments against the theory are that it was simply common sense for Great Houses to seek the most powerful prospective suitors from other Great Houses.
**It's also possible that these political marriages were intended, at least by some, to aid Rhaegar in siding against his own insane father.
**The originally planned betrothals were that Eddard's older brother Brandon would marry Catelyn Tully, her younger sister Lysa Tully would marry Jaime Lannister, and Lyanna Stark would marry Robert Baratheon - thus building up a Stark-Baratheon-Tully-Lannister alliance linked by marriage and blood. The Arryns would also probably be on their side because both Eddard and Robert viewed Jon Arryn like a second father and had been his wards for years. They may have even hoped against direct confrontation with the crown but to take it over, given that Tywin also wanted to marry Cersei to Rhaegar Targaryen. Of the remaining three Great Houses, with Rhaegar married to Elia Martell instead, Dorne was tied to the Targaryens; the Tyrells depended on the Targaryens for legitimizing their rule over the Reach, even without political marriages (such as over their rival House Florent), and the Greyjoys usually did not participate in mainland politics.
**Within a matter of months, these marriage plans were seriously disrupted: Jaime's appointment to the Kingsguard ruined a Lannister-Tully marriage pact, then Rhaegar's interaction with Lyanna Stark disrupted the Stark-Baratheon match.
**When the war broke out and Brandon was killed, the matches were reshuffled to bind together the rebels: Catelyn Tully married Eddard Stark while Lysa Tully married Jon Arryn, then after Lyanna's death Robert Baratheon married Cersei Lannister. Robert later hoped to finish binding the realm together by marrying his eldest son Joffrey to Eddard's daughter Sansa, explicitly to unite their families as he felt might have happened between himself and Lyanna.
*According to the novels, the unnamed "my father's knights" to whom Jaime refers, are Lord Roland Crakehall and Ser Elys Westerling.
*According to the novels, when asked if a new king should be proclaimed, Jaime was tempted to name either Viserys or baby Aegon (Jaime had no idea he was killed by the Mountain); however, when he glanced at Aerys's body, he thought "his blood is in both of them", namely that either of them might become a ruthless lunatic monster like Aerys. This reason is not mentioned in the short.
==In the books==
* The short is adapted from the following chapters of A Storm of Swords:
**Chapter 11, Jaime II: Jaime recalls how Cersei persuaded him to join the Kingsguard; his father's furious reaction and subsequent resignation; the killing of Aerys; what he said when was asked whether a new king should be proclaimed.
**Chapter 44, Jaime VI: Jaime recalls how he became a member of the Kingsguard, the short-lived joy he felt, and his great disappointment when he realized Aerys did it to spite his father and rob him of his heir.
==References==
===Notes===
Category:Shorts narrated by Jaime Lannister
 06
Lannister, Jaime
B.15F
Category:Shorts written by Dave Hill
fr:La Rébellion de Robert (Histoires & Traditions)
pt-br:Rebelião de Robert (História e Tradição)