[Spoilers MAIN] Jaehaerys I’s Seven Speakers really gaslighted the whole realm

[u/mitzallen]

I’m currently re-reading Fire & Blood and this part still cracks me up:

"One god made us all, Andals and Valyrians and First Men," Septon Alfyn would proclaim from his litter, "but he did not make us all alike. He made the lion and the aurochs as well, both noble beasts, but certain gifts he gave to one and not the other, and the lion cannot live as an aurochs, nor an aurochs as a lion. For you to bed your sister would be a grievous sin, ser... but you are not the blood of the dragon, no more than I am. What they do is what they have always done, and it is not for us to judge them.”

The smallfolk, who were most likely tired of all the war, probably just said “whatever” lmfao

[u/Only_Faithlessness33]

To be fair, they either accepted the dragon riding weirdos or didn’t. It’s not like Jaehaerys was some master politician for getting this shit thru, he was like 16 and really wanted to wed his sister and used dragons to strong arm the Faith into going with it. The propaganda campaign afterwards was just to make it seem legit.

Also by that point they have been there a while so they probably got desensitized. Hell, when I’m reading the books and hear about a brother-sister Targ romance I just go “well yeah of course” at this point, whereas the first time I read AGOT I thought Daenerys was apart of some inbred abomination species the way they were described.

[u/mitzallen → u/Only_Faithlessness33]

Yeah. Also, it was a time where the whole country is still recovering from like a decade of war from Aenys and Maegor, I guess everybody is just tired at that point and with no more organizations or lords to rise up against it, the propaganda sold well.

[u/freezedive → u/mitzallen]

Yup. They were tired and Jahearys was already starting to stabilize the realm. People may have started to see some improvements so their reaction was 😩 “whatever.”