There’s this tired, baseless argument that is bandied around certain areas of the ASOIAF fandom regarding Rhaegar’s treatment of Elia. That for a man as gentle and as chivalrous, there must have been a reason for him to mistreat his wife so, and that too in such a public manner. That he had found true happiness elsewhere that his marriage failed to provide and that justified everything that came with it. The oft drawn conclusion is that Elia was the problem: she was either a wicked, unfaithful woman that drove him to the arms of a fourteen year old or a dull, insipid wife that couldn’t inspire any feeling in a man, so of course he had to go get the kind of woman he deserved. But the text already addressed that argument way back in “A Storm of Swords”.
“But that was the tourney when he crowned Lyanna Stark as queen of love and beauty!” said Dany. “Princess Elia was there, his wife, and yet my brother gave the crown to the Stark girl, and later stole her away from her betrothed. How could he do that? Did the Dornish woman treat him so ill?”
Daenerys is Rhaegar’s most ardent and blind supporter (aside from Jon Connington). I almost take her as a stand in for the Rhaegar adoring readers here. She (understandably to a degree) idolizes her brother, views him through the most rose tinted of glasses, even going so far to romanticize his supposed kidnapping of a betrothed teenager- at sword point, no less. And yet, so appalled, even she cannot rationalize his impossibly cruel humiliation of a pregnant Elia at Harrenhal. She cannot reconcile the Rhaegar of Viserys’ gushing stories and the Rhaegar who publicly disgraced his wife for every major lord in Westeros to witness in favour of another. Her only explanation, like some readers, is that Elia must have been to blame.
From “Princess Elia”, she becomes “the Dornish woman” who must have ill treated her gallant and devoted brother. From the butchered mother who pleaded for her son’s life as Daenerys remembers her in AGoT, she becomes the stranger who helped bring her humiliation and suffering upon herself. She must have been the cruel, unloving spouse who practically left him no other choice but to find affection elsewhere. For her idealized version of Rhaegar to hold up, Elia must become the villain. Yet that is dashed in the very next line.
“It is not for such as me to say what might have been in your brother’s heart, Your Grace. The Princess Elia was a good and gracious lady, though her health was ever delicate.”
Barristan Selmy, the Targaryen loyalist and vice president of the Rhaegar fan club, firmly states that Elia was in fact a good woman (in a later book also describing her as “kind and clever, with a gentle heart and a sweet wit”, someone that Rhaegar actually liked). She had done nothing to provoke Rhaegar’s mistreatment of her, a worthy spouse in every way, crushing Daenerys’ argument of a mean Dornish wife. There is no mention of affairs or discord as fans like to speculate. And when Daenerys then wonders if things would have been different if she had married Rhaegar instead, making him happy where poor, deficient Elia could not (once again putting the blame on her shoulders to absolve her brother, not dissimilarly to fandom), Barristan replies:
“But I am not certain it was in Rhaegar to be happy.”
If it was simply not in Rhaegar to know happiness or contentment, no woman could have succeeded where Elia apparently “failed’. The onus is not on Elia, she was not the source of his discontent, she was not fundamentally lacking in pleasing her husband. His issues were his own and Elia was not to blame. And so his actions at Harrenhal, abandoning her and their newborn baby as she lay in her sickbed, absconding with another woman to Elia’s homeland, leaving her defenseless to die- they cannot be laid at her feet, with her bizarrely being made responsible for suffering a spectacle of public shame and humiliation at the hands of her own husband.
Every facet of this argument is debunked in no more than half a page yet still Elia is vilified by Rhaegar fans who know there is no other way to justify his choices. She was not some evil thorn at the saintly Rhaegar’s side, not some scheming shrew, waiting to be exposed. Elia is the price paid for his so called love story, Rhaegar and Lyanna’s grand romance came directly at her expense and she- along with her infant children- suffered the horrific consequences of his choices.
It’s clear that, just like those who cling to this argument, it’s Daenerys who doesn’t truly know or understand her brother here. Not when he’s still so deeply buried in this twisted romantic narrative that absolves him of any wrongdoing. His actions are what led us here, and so his actions must be the ones to examine. And if the only way to maintain your pretty illusions of Rhaegar is to make a villain out of Elia… Well. I think that tells you all you need to know.
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
kianamaiart
theartofmadeline
