Whats your opinion of the Robert of the play? Do you agree with their take or you believe the young Robert was as bad as the old Robert?
I even heard that in the play Lyanna doesnt dislike him.
On any occasion in which that disgusting shit is named, the need to remember my eternal hatred is triggered. But let's proceed.
I didn't inquire much about Robert Baratheon's characterization**so tell me if i miss any information:
I don't like for his character to be presented as a poor victim of events and NOT because I believe that a violent and impossible to redeem character - here I explain why for me Robert is presented as unreedimable by referring to early medieval Italian literature - cannot at the same time be the victim of a strong trauma but because it deprives Robert of responsibility as part of the problem and whitewash is character.
I am fine with the idea that he suffer from PTSD due to the trauma of watching his parents lost their life in a tempest, cool, THIS IS NOT WHY LYANNA DID NOT CHOSE HIM NOR IS WHY HE HUMILIATED HIS BROTHER STANNIS DURING HIS MARRIAGE.
There is a reason for which we have this :
"Robert will never keep to one bed," Lyanna had told him at Winterfell, on the night long ago when their father had promised her hand to the young Lord of Storm's End. "I hear he has gotten a child on some girl in the Vale." Ned had held the babe in his arms; he could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his sister, but he had assured her that what Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that he was a good man and true who would love her with all his heart. Lyanna had only smiled. "Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature."
The girl had been so young Ned had not dared to ask her age. No doubt she'd been a virgin; the better brothels could always find a virgin, if the purse was fat enough. She had light red hair and a powdering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and when she slipped free a breast to give her nipple to the babe, he saw that her bosom was freckled as well. "I named her Barra," she said as the child nursed. "She looks so like him, does she not, milord? She has his nose, and his hair…"
(A Game of Thrones - Eddard IX)
This small piece is NOT there just to remind us that Lyanna was right, BUT THAT HE NEVER CHANGED NED WAS JUST NOT ABLE TO SEE HIS REAL FACE BEFORE UNLIKE ANYONE ELSE IN HIS FAMILY. Anyone else because this is what Jon says:
The king was a great disappointment to Jon.
His father had talked of him often: the peerless Robert Baratheon, demon of the Trident, the fiercest warrior of the realm, a giant among princes. Jon saw only a fat man, red-faced under his beard, sweating through his silks. He walked like a man half in his cups.
(A Game of Thrones - Jon I)
Now Robert's incel boyfriends will tell you that this and Arya's chatwith Sansa where Arya tease Sansa saying that Joffrey will be like his father are meant to show us the difference in Robert before and after the lost of his Lyanna but the truth is that are mean to show us that everyone saw the truth EXCEPT NED. Arya admit that Joffrey is beautiful but saw Joffrey's real color where Sansa could not, Lyanna saw Robert's beauty AND his true color where Ned could not.
Ned like Sansa before Sandor ignores what he does not like to see as Robert's violence and as Sansa is not able to see the worst side of the "Baratheon" man they think they love:
Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his heart.
Robert had loved her even more.
She was to have been his bride.
(A Game of Thrones - Eddard I)
"You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert," Ned told him. "You saw her beauty, but not the iron underneath. She would have told you that you have no business in the melee."
(A Game of Thrones - Eddard VII)
ROBERT WAS ALWAYS ROBERT and this other piece is here to show us AGAIN that he never changed.
"Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Shall we send her a wedding gift?"
The king frowned. "A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it."
Ned did not feign surprise; Robert's hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him.
He remembered the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert with the corpses of Rhaegar's wife and children as a token of fealty. Ned had named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince and princess were no more than babes, his new-made king had replied, "I see no babes. Only dragonspawn."
(A Game of Thrones - Eddard II)
I often see people say that Sansa should have understood that Joffrey was mad and violent when he attacked Arya yet Ned was way older and a war veteran when he saw Robert show no pity for two kids violently killed and did not understood what Lyanna knew.
If Robert incels boyfriends come to say that he was shocked by war, even awfull Tywin was rational enough to sy it was horrible, FRobert instead still agree.
If you instead mean that he and Ned seems to have a very "and historian will call them best friends, buddy, roomates, everything but lovers, histoooryyyy haaaates loooover" well,..ACCURATE!*** lmao
**this play, I want to remember, is not a canonical transposition - since as George himself said only the books are canon - but an interpretation aka is how writers imagine things to have gone (even if on several points it is obvious that they are correct: Lyanna IS the knight of the laughing three, Lyanna was NOT kidnapped but WANTED Rhaegar and Daenerys IS the prince who was promised).
***No, i do not think they are gay but they being gay and in love would actually make so much sense. Way more than Ashara and Elia.
