HBO House of the Dragon - Prequel of one of the most recent cultural trainwrecks

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Funny thing about the Others & Wights - they seemed like a big threat, but now we now the source for their weakness is obsidian and something involving Valyrian weaponry, and techniques to being good against fighting them.

You don't even need Valyrian steel. Fire arrows for the wights and obsidian crossbow bolts for the Others will do. Which makes it even funnier that GRRM expects us to see them as a threat, when any lord with enough combustibles and dragonglass can eradicate the threat of the Others for good.

It just stuns me that people hail GRRM as some kind of pillar for the western fantasy genre, when the fantastical aspects of his world are as shallow as a puddle. Fucking Todd Howard has better dragon lore in Skyrim, and other fantasies like Warcraft, the Witcher, and Lord of the Rings have more compelling fantasy aspects. At least the leader of the Burning Legion had to be lured to a magic tree that explodes to kill him, and the One Ring had to be destroyed in the same place it was made. Meanwhile, the overarching threat in GRRM's world can be dealt with by some twat with an army that has enough combustibles and obsidian. The fact that Westeros by the time of ASOIAF even has their own Greek Fire equivalent that they can mass-produce, as well as an island right next to the capital with all the obsidian they could possibly need, makes this threat even more laughable.

 

[Jacques1194]

Just saw this meme on reddit. Even they know how Aegon's Conquest is going to go.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Just saw this meme on reddit. Even they know how Aegon's Conquest is going to go.
View attachment 6296420

This despite the fact that Visenya was the biggest supporter of Maegor's reign and challenged all who questioned it by telling them to face the king in combat.

FFS, I hate feminist retconning.

 

[ConsentAccidentVictimNo98]

I stan Visenya for her supporting Maegor. Maegor was a great king.

Actually, now that I think about it the main reason why people will end up hating him if HBO got their grubby little hands on him was because Maegor was being used by a woman and not because he was a bad king.

 

[Salt_Merchant]

Just saw this meme on reddit. Even they know how Aegon's Conquest is going to go.
View attachment 6296420

learns everything abour westeros

dies in dorne trying to force them to bend the knee despite their very words being how they dont bend the knee.

 

[Chunky Salsa]

The dorne thing was always retarded and demonstrated that Martin wanted to write a modern series with medieval costumes over anything authentic. The Dornish can apparently drink and eat sand to survive.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

The dorne thing was always retarded and demonstrated that Martin wanted to write a modern series with medieval costumes over anything authentic. The Dornish can apparently drink and eat sand to survive.

The Dorne plot(hole?) is that Martin desperately wants a Wales/Moorish Al-Andalus, except feminist version of it. I wouldn't call it """woke""", because he hails from the old guard of the socialist/hippie faction. Basically he made "the south" (Reach) a hedonistic France being a good region where Winter barely affects the region, while Dorne is never affected by Winter, being the most "freedom oriented place", yet least populous. Still, if you ask me, the Free Cities seem like the least worst place to choose, particularly the ones in the north.

The Others truly deserve to conquer the race of man in of "Planetos", since they have a passion for being hedonistic and never banding together. One may say "But they did 8000 years ago!". Well, yeah. That may as well have been a tale, and Martin can't stop writing about smut and food porn that it takes you off from perhaps the more adventure oriented things.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

The dorne thing was always retarded and demonstrated that Martin wanted to write a modern series with medieval costumes over anything authentic. The Dornish can apparently drink and eat sand to survive.

Dorne always struck me as a cheap Mary Suetopia given it's free sex climate, gender-neutral inheritance laws, and tolerance for bastards. Outside of the thing about bastards, most of it is unrealistic for a medieval society. That, and them beating back the Targaryens when the latter had dragons. An arid climate state would be easy to conquer with dragons; just burn the few places they can grow crops and blockade their ports with the Greyjoy, Redwyne, and Velaryon fleets. Then wait for a few months until they all starve to death. Or at least starve enough that they're willing to bend the knee.

It should've been the North that became hard to conquer. Dragons and southern armies are not used to the climate, and the land is so vast that just garrisoning it if you're not a native is going to be a pain in the ass. Have the Targs struggle to occupy the North, then have Aegon win by telling the Starks that he also wants to fight the Undead, which gets them to stand down and kneel, since this means the Starks won't have to face the Others alone, but with the full economic and military might of the continent. If anything, the Targaryens can give wildfire and dragonglass to the Night's Watch to help them stave off the threat of the dead. That would show that Aegon is capable of conquering through both diplomacy and force of arms, showing that he is a worthy king to rule Westeros.

 

[Chunky Salsa]

That, and them beating back the Targaryens when the latter had dragons. An arid climate state would be easy to conquer with dragons; just burn the few places they can grow crops and blockade their ports with the Greyjoy, Redwyne, and Velaryon fleets.

It's because Martin has no conception of how a medieval nation actually feeds itself, and assumes that they can just 'vietcong' it up with little to no issue. Despite the reality that without modern fertiliser, or technology, they could only ever grow food near rivers or easily (from the air) spotted oasis's. As you say, Dorne should have been the easiest thing in the world to conquer from dragon back, and even the Reach shouldn't really have had an issue. There are only a few ways to get from Dorne into the Reach. Sure, in modern times, you could theoretically do thunder runs with APCs and tanks raid out, and then vanish into the mountain or desert; but in medieval times you know what would happen?

You'd march your poorly armoured men, and your shit tier cavalry (Dornish horses literally cannot carry a man in armour according to Martin) and then you'll raid 1 or 2 villages. Then, because it's the medieval time, the ring of castles that anyone with a brain would build across the Dornish border, would wait patiently for you to try and go back to dorne, then they'd run you down, kill your men, take you captive and apply metal vices to your balls, and pull off your fingernails until you point out where all the Fremen Sietch's Hidden Oasis (tm) are. Then they'd go kill your whole family; and after a few goes of this cycle, Dorne would either learn to fuck off, or Dorne would run out of men. If anything, the Reach would be better suited to guerrilla tactics because of their large farms and mansions, and villas that could all be used to sequester away forces; their abundance of food means it's harder to starve out any partisans, and the miles and miles of forest makes rooting them out an exercise in tedium. The Dornish should fear the hundreds of excess sons of the Reach, rich in gold, poor in accolades, riding out to try and make their name by slaughtering the Dornish with their dogshit lack of armour, and donkey tier pretty boy horses.

 

[TheHarbinger]

Dorne always struck me as a cheap Mary Suetopia given it's free sex climate, gender-neutral inheritance laws, and tolerance for bastards.

This is essentially all of Westeros by the end of the fifth book and the end of the HBO show. Cersei is Queen Regent despite going full 9/11 on the commoners. Asha wants to be Queen at the Queensmoot and instead of being beaten to death for insolence is allowed to freely speak then sail off with valuable ships. Sansa wants to emancipate the North and become an independent ruler (which happens on the show). And now the prequel series are all centered on powerful women. Half of the potential HBO shows in the pipeline are driven by 'strong women'.

It should've been the North that became hard to conquer.

It always should have been the North being independent. Rhaegar trying to unit the North through marriage to Lyanna and it failing. But leading to the birth of Jon Snow who defeats the Others. GRRM just has no idea what he is doing so nothing makes sense.

It's because Martin has no conception of how a medieval nation actually feeds itself.

ASOIAF is like Anti-Dune. Whereas Dune had passages filled with ideas of terraforming and surviving in the desert. And how the climate on Dune would cause spice crops and production to fail because the worms needed arid conditions. It was a central part of the books. ASOIAF world building is like a parody of medieval worlds. I always laugh when King's Landing is 99% brothels and gourmet restaurants. GRRM's rotted brain giving us insight into his actual fantasies.

 

[Chunky Salsa]

ASOIAF is like Anti-Dune. Whereas Dune had passages filled with ideas of terraforming and surviving in the desert. And how the climate on Dune would cause spice crops and production to fail because the worms needed arid conditions. It was a central part of the books. ASOIAF world building is like a parody of medieval worlds. I always laugh when King's Landing is 99% brothels and gourmet restaurants. GRRM's rotted brain giving us insight into his actual fantasies.

I find the most retarded thing about Kings Landing, is that apparently almost everyone in there is a cannibal. The whole 'bowls of brown' thing that Martin came up with is a funny idea, but the only thing that makes sense is that people are just pathologically lying to the upper classes in the south about where their food comes from. There's no way that human meat makes up - as Tyrion says in Storm of Swords - a decent part of the Flea Bottom diet. At this point I just assume that all of the nobles haven't got a clue about how life is for the average person.

Tyrion being like "Oh yeah, the average peasant is a mentally retarded, cannibalistic subhuman goblin person, carrying every disease known to man, and constantly wants to rape everyone they meet." is meant to be this thing where he's honest, and upfront and can be counted on to know the working of the world. However all I can think, is that he's clearly insane. No society, not even Mordor could function if that were the case. Kings Landing should be a festering pustule of disease, and 24/7 riots.

But Martin has that issue with a lot of the cities he tries his hand at worldbuilding. A lot of the Free cities stuff is absolute nonsense. Most of those cities really shouldn't even exist. The Targaryans - greedy fuckers to a T - would have absolutely conquered them the second they got Westeros to heel. Let alone the nonsense 'flower wars' they take part in with each other. In isolation, sure, many cultures did that. However one of the biggest military powers on the continent is rabidly anti slavery to the point where they are happy making powerful enemies; and their next strongest opposition, uses eunuch limp wristed soldiers. Everyone else flatly uses dipshits, and flagrantly bad military tactics.

I could also rant for literal hours about the Dothraki, and how poorly Martin understood the Khans. I'm not exactly the most PC guy around - I am fact, very racist - but even I'm like "Come on man" with how Martin seems to be trying to portray them as raping, retarded, conan tier barbarians.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

I could also rant for literal hours about the Dothraki, and how poorly Martin understood the Khans. I'm not exactly the most PC guy around - I am fact, very racist - but even I'm like "Come on man" with how Martin seems to be trying to portray them as raping, retarded, conan tier barbarians.

You leave my boy Conan out of this shit. Howard wrote better fantasy in the snow than Martin ever has with his fossilized QDOS word processor. Conan was always portrayed as powerful and capable but not retarded about it because, as Howard took pains to note, among barbarians one big enough fuckup will get you killed. So you have to know how to fly by the seat of your pants.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

It's because Martin has no conception of how a medieval nation actually feeds itself, and assumes that they can just 'vietcong' it up with little to no issue. Despite the reality that without modern fertiliser, or technology, they could only ever grow food near rivers or easily (from the air) spotted oasis's. As you say, Dorne should have been the easiest thing in the world to conquer from dragon back, and even the Reach shouldn't really have had an issue. There are only a few ways to get from Dorne into the Reach. Sure, in modern times, you could theoretically do thunder runs with APCs and tanks raid out, and then vanish into the mountain or desert; but in medieval times you know what would happen?

George RR Martin has no conception of how a medieval nation functions logically, period. Otherwise Aegon II's ascent over Rhaenyra would not be questioned at all, since Rhaenyra's anointing as heir would contain a clause that would make any future trueborn sons of Viserys succeed over her. That, and Tywin Lannister would be considered damned to hell for all eternity by the Church/Faith for killing baptized royal babies and a royal princess like Elia Martell and her kids. Regicide is considered one of the gravest sins in the Medieval world, and when the Latin-speaking Medieval people saw the Byzantines kill their own Emperor during the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders cried out that ''the Greeks are worse than the Jews'' because the Jews, as much as everyone hated them, at least bow before the local king. Tywin would have lost all his lands, his vassals would have free reign to rebel against him, and the Westerlands would've been put under Interdict until Tywin confesses to his sins and performs a suitable act of penance.

Martin applies modern logic to medieval situations, and it just doesn't work. Guerilla tactics won't work against armed fortresses with crossbows and knights on patrol, and Medieval armies don't give a fuck if they have to slaughter an entire city if said city has supporters of the enemy. An American army would have problems if the people of a given city house insurgents against them, a medieval army would just respond to that by sacking or destroying the city. Dorne's conquest should've been one of the easier Targ conquests; much easier than conquering the Reach and the Westerlands which actually had a large army and lots of resources.

If it were me, I'd have it so that Dorne folds easily after Aegon I threatens their crops with dragonfire and blockades their ports with the Velaryon fleet, but the battle with the Lannisters and Gardeners would be where Queen Rhaenys should've died; have it so that more than a few Lannister and Gardener ballistae were present, and Mern IX has them focus fire on Meraxes. They got a lucky shot, hitting Meraxes multiple times, causing the dragon to fall back-first, flattening and killing its rider. That would then piss off Aegon so much, that he focuses his assault on Mern's army and burns the Gardeners down to the last man, ending the house for good. The total eradication of House Gardner gets Loren Lannister to bend the knee, not wanting his house to follow suit.

You'd march your poorly armoured men, and your shit tier cavalry (Dornish horses literally cannot carry a man in armour according to Martin) and then you'll raid 1 or 2 villages. Then, because it's the medieval time, the ring of castles that anyone with a brain would build across the Dornish border, would wait patiently for you to try and go back to dorne, then they'd run you down, kill your men, take you captive and apply metal vices to your balls, and pull off your fingernails until you point out where all the Fremen Sietch's Hidden Oasis (tm) are. Then they'd go kill your whole family; and after a few goes of this cycle, Dorne would either learn to fuck off, or Dorne would run out of men. If anything, the Reach would be better suited to guerrilla tactics because of their large farms and mansions, and villas that could all be used to sequester away forces; their abundance of food means it's harder to starve out any partisans, and the miles and miles of forest makes rooting them out an exercise in tedium. The Dornish should fear the hundreds of excess sons of the Reach, rich in gold, poor in accolades, riding out to try and make their name by slaughtering the Dornish with their dogshit lack of armour, and donkey tier pretty boy horses.

Any ancient or Medieval army worth its salt would be able to conquer Dorne. Shit, even those mobs of crusaders that took over the Holy Land during the Crusades would've been able to do it. Especially if the Dornish favor light armor and cavalry; that stuff is dogshit in a Medieval setting. Those guys would get utterly fucked by longbow archers and knights with heavy chainmail or plate armor. Much less crossbowmen who were very common among the Crusader ranks. Martin made Dorne invincible to conquest because ''hurr durr Afghanistan'' but in reality, the Spanish Moors whom he based the Dornish on were eradicated by a mix of small kingdoms that came out of the Spanish peninsula after the Christians were slowly retaking the place. You didn't need dragons to defeat them; just a good, old-fashioned army with a firm leader sufficed. Eventually, those kingdoms, Castile, Aragon, and Leon, unified to form the Kingdom of Spain, after they eradicated the Moors.

Martin really needs to brush up on his history lessons.

This is essentially all of Westeros by the end of the fifth book and the end of the HBO show. Cersei is Queen Regent despite going full 9/11 on the commoners. Asha wants to be Queen at the Queensmoot and instead of being beaten to death for insolence is allowed to freely speak then sail off with valuable ships. Sansa wants to emancipate the North and become an independent ruler (which happens on the show). And now the prequel series are all centered on powerful women. Half of the potential HBO shows in the pipeline are driven by 'strong women'.

And yet none of them earned it. Cersei's failures as a politician are many, Asha ran away from fucking dogs, and Sansa really didn't learn much from her experiences in KL. There's a difference between an actual ''strong woman'' who knows when to be decisive and when to listen to the men, and a ''STRONG WOMAN'' who just acts like a drunk fratboy with tits.

It always should have been the North being independent. Rhaegar trying to unit the North through marriage to Lyanna and it failing. But leading to the birth of Jon Snow who defeats the Others. GRRM just has no idea what he is doing so nothing makes sense.

Like I said, the North is the one kingdom the Targs shouldn't be able to conquer. Their southern armies and dragons won't do well in colder weather, which leaves them with only the Vale Knights who are trained to fight in the ice and snow. And that's not enough to occupy a kingdom that's as large as the other six kingdoms put together. Aegon should've struggled with them, only to get them to kneel by sharing his distaste for the Others with the Starks, and saying that what he's doing for Westeros is the same thing the Starks did for the North; uniting them against a common northern threat. Then have him give the Night's Watch a gift of wildfire and dragonglass to help with the undead threat, and the North yields to him, seeing that at least with Aegon ruling the south, they have an ally in case the Others knock down the wall.

ASOIAF is like Anti-Dune. Whereas Dune had passages filled with ideas of terraforming and surviving in the desert. And how the climate on Dune would cause spice crops and production to fail because the worms needed arid conditions. It was a central part of the books. ASOIAF world building is like a parody of medieval worlds. I always laugh when King's Landing is 99% brothels and gourmet restaurants. GRRM's rotted brain giving us insight into his actual fantasies.

ASOIAF works better as political thriller than a properly-built medieval world. It would've made more sense if the Dornish were already a part of the Targaryen Empire by the time of the Dance of Dragons; that way, some Dornish customs would propagate across the Targaryen realm, including gender-neutral inheritance laws. Nobles who would be partial to such laws would be Rhaenyra's main supporters, whereas the more traditional Andal and First Men houses would stick with male primogeniture and would support Aegon II.

That, and GRRM is from the Second Wave of feminists who were active in the late 90s and early 2000s. Which means they were all about sexual liberation and having lots of sex stuff in their work. It was, after all, the era when ''rape as drama'' was a common trope in fiction, while you also had lots of smut in more adult works. Which explains why ASOIAF is like a Medieval parody done by Porn Hub. Part of me thinks that if the modern feminists knew how GRRM actually thinks when it comes to women, they'd cancel his ass faster than you can say ''JK Rowling''. Especially given how some women in his world like Cersei seem to have a sort of penis envy, when they're not too busy being degenerate whores.

But Martin has that issue with a lot of the cities he tries his hand at worldbuilding. A lot of the Free cities stuff is absolute nonsense. Most of those cities really shouldn't even exist. The Targaryans - greedy fuckers to a T - would have absolutely conquered them the second they got Westeros to heel. Let alone the nonsense 'flower wars' they take part in with each other. In isolation, sure, many cultures did that. However one of the biggest military powers on the continent is rabidly anti slavery to the point where they are happy making powerful enemies; and their next strongest opposition, uses eunuch limp wristed soldiers. Everyone else flatly uses dipshits, and flagrantly bad military tactics.

There should've been a conquest of the Free Cities by kings like Maegor or Aegon I. Hell, given they have dragons and a whole continent's worth of armies, and the fact that the Free Cities sometimes support pirate factions like the Triarchy, the Targaryens and Westerosi should've responded to that by sending an armada to conquer them, backed up by dragons and houses with a lot of naval experience, from the Greyjoys, the Redwynes, the Velaryons, as well as the navies of wealthier houses like the Lannisters and Hightowers. They would land troops on Essos from houses with knights and good warriors, like the Starks, Tarlys, Arryns, Tullys, Reynes, among others, backed up by dragonfire just in case they come across a city they can't conquer through conventional means.

In real life, some news of Elizabeth I of England supporting Dutch pirates against the Spanish got King Philip II of Spain to invade England with a massive armada, that only failed because of bad luck and bad weather. The Free Cities openly sponsoring piracy should've gotten a response from the Targaryens outside of just some half-hearted military expedition. If Viserys from HOTD actually acted like a Medieval king instead of some modern hippie, he'd have sent a massive armada supported by many houses and dragons to conquer the Free Cities that supported the Triarchy, as a response to the Triarchy attacking Westerosi ships.

I could also rant for literal hours about the Dothraki, and how poorly Martin understood the Khans. I'm not exactly the most PC guy around - I am fact, very racist - but even I'm like "Come on man" with how Martin seems to be trying to portray them as raping, retarded, conan tier barbarians.

A lot of these steppe nomads were more cosmopolitan and complex than someone like GRRM would give them credit for. Turks and Mongols ran cities, empires, from the Ottoman to the Mongolian empires, many of their rulers were valued as wise and successful. So the Dothraki come off less as a representation of these horse-riding nomads, but as someone's stereotype of them would be.

If we made it more realistic to the actual Medieval world, someone like Khal Drogo would be conquering cities and towns, but he'd grow more cosmopolitan and civilized as he and his army settle down in these lands. Then you can have Daenerys, Jorah, and later, Ser Barristan, advise him on how to rule these places the way a Westerosi king would, especially since he's promised the Iron Throne to his son Rhaego, so ruling Essos in a manner similar to a Westerosi king would be practice. The result would be that Essos would be united by a new power that is almost the mirror image of Westeros, with a high king that accepts oaths of fealty as well as establishes a complex tax bureaucracy to ensure everyone pays their fair share. The bloodriders and khals would form Houses in the same vein as Westerosi nobles would, while also assimilating bits and pieces of culture from other cities they conquered. Imagine if they outlaw slavery because Braavos joined them, and they replace it with serfdom or peasant farmers swearing allegiances to lords with Dothraki blood instead. Then imagine they conquer Mereen and they add gladiatorial combat into the culture, mixed with jousting and melees brought in by knights from Westeros and the Golden Company.

 

[Chuckwagon]

I've stopped bothering to extensively keep up with ASOIAF/GoT content since the double-whammy of GoT's final seasons and the realization that Martin would never finish his work dawned on me, but I did check in on people's opinions of HOTD (including on here) from time to time out of morbid curiosity's sake and after playing rounds of CK2 with the AGOT mod (still a better ASOIAF/GoT experience than any of the few actual licensed games BTW). I do know that the showrunners/writers referred to the character of Alicent Hightower as a 'woman for Trump' in an interview, that they've supported shipping her with Rhaenyra in tweets, etc. so I wasn't all that surprised that the show has gone in a YASS KWEEN SLAY direction & since gained a reputation as another piece of shallow feminist tripe portraying Rhaenyra as some saintly girlboss standing up to the incompetent & wicked Patriarchy™. The Contrapoints skinwalker-of-a-skinwalker showing up isn't even that much of a surprise to me following the niggerization of the Velaryons. But is it true that the final episode,

Spoiler

Alicent turns out to not only be a hypocrite for having an extramarital affair with Criston Cole in violation of his oath of celibacy & her own religious beliefs, actually sells out her entire family (all her sons, even the unseen Daeron who's probably the nicest single combatant out of both sides of the entire Dance in the books, and also her father & brother) to Rhaenyra, caring only for the females of her house, based on a mix of cowardice (not wanting to fight a war, which she helped start and forced her sons into in the first place...) & some unrequited teenage crush on Rhaenyra from decades back, and that this is portrayed as both a 'humbling' sacrifice and a positive, redeeming moment for her by the writers??

Because hot damn, that's not only an abominably selfish low for the character (her book self was a standard 'evil stepmom' archetype but even that would've been an improvement over such a degenerate selfish cretin, at least Book Alicent loved and was fiercely loyal to her family) but a very revealing look into how the writers think. It's certainly a very modern mindset, to value some vague 'sisterhood' with other women and to want to go on a vague journey to 'free' & 'discover' yourself so much that you'd go and do that to your entire house. I suppose it's too much to expect degenerate modern writers to be capable of even imagining a 'conservative' character who actually appreciates and lives by virtues they consider old-fashioned, like chastity and loyalty to one's family even if it requires sacrifice on their behalf. And/or this is what they imagine all their enemies in the culture war are like, and they can't ever give them a W even just by being consistent supporters & practitioners of the conservative values they've been assigned because a 'woman for Trump' looking good or being satisfied with her lot in life in any way not only actually angers them but they're also subconsciously aware that it represents a threat to their own foundational belief that a woman can only ever be happy & free if she's a hedonistic slut with no belief in any power higher than herself.

As far as the discussion on the Reach and its being relatively sexually liberal compared to the rest of Westeros (sans Dorne which as I see others have said, is basically Martin's exoticist Mary Suetopia), I've always thought that region was based not only on France but specifically Southern France, or (as the people actually living there at the time would've thought of it) Occitania - they did not speak French but dialects of Occitan, closer to Catalan than French, and generally did not start regarding themselves as Frenchmen until after the Albigensian Crusade (which was aimed at not just extirpating the Cathar heresy but also breaking the autonomous power of the Occitan lords). Medieval Occitania was indeed a more generally prosperous place than northern France (or 'France proper' if you will) with great cities of its own like Toulouse and Arles, more socially progressive (quite a few of the famous powerful women of the Middle Ages were from there, ex. the English queens Eleanor of Aquitaine and Eleanor of Provence, and they were also more tolerant of Jews than the northern French), divided into highly autonomous lordships and the cradle of chivalric culture (the troubadours who wrote the earliest chivalric poetry, popularized the concept of courtly love, etc. came from Occitania and were heavily patronized by the Occitan nobility, pageantry like the Courts of Love came from Occitan courts, and so on). I could see how all of that matches up with the Reach on account of the existence of Oldtown, it being known as the home of chivalry in Westeros, etc.

Now as far as being sexual libertines second only to the Dornish goes, it's true that the Occitans were stereotyped as being soft libertines by the northern French. But that's just that, it was a slanderous stereotype which gained most of its popularity around the time of the Albigensian Crusade (when the French were going to war with the Occitans), and if you actually look at the history of Occitan queens and princesses - even ones which could at times be 'problematic' like Constance of Arles, or the two aforementioned Eleanors - it's manifestly an unfair one as whatever their other issues were, being a loose slut was not consistently among them, though these queens lived decades or centuries apart. In the most infamous case of royal adultery in medieval France, and the basis for the Accursed Kings series which was said to have inspired GRRM's creation of ASOIAF, the cheating wives were Burgundians: northern Frenchwomen and not Occitans, in other words. The center to the ideal of courtly love was that although the knight might yearn for his lady, he would never actually lay a hand on her.

I think Alicent & Criston maintaining such dynamics, pining for each other but being constrained from ever acting on them by their own religious piety & honor, would have not only fit better with the chivalric 'courtly love' ideal which one should think would be yuge in the Reach, but also served them better as characters; making them hypocrites who bang as soon as they can doesn't serve either character or the story as far as I can tell, the only thing it serves are the prejudices & hang-ups of the writers who can't seem to conceive of pious conservative types as being seriously committed to the ideals they profess (insert the 'Arachnophobe huh? You must secretly want to fuck spiders' meme here). There's certainly no indicator of them ever having a thing for each other in the source material, but apparently the showrunners for HOTD are cherrypicking what they want to put on their show via the 'unreliable narrator' excuse anyway, like how they've made Aegon a rapist & a child fighting pit enthusiast based on the writings of Rhaenyra's court fool Mushroom but won't even show Rhaenyra as fat because obviously not only can the Realm's Delight not have any physical imperfections, but her putting on some pounds after six pregnancies is Green propaganda (fat shaming, for shame!).

As an aside I will add that the Gardeners, the old royal house of the Reach, are one of the most sensibly written houses in Martin's work and that the way they died out was strange AF. The Reach houses seem to be the only ones that even try to treat their subjects as human beings and while the Gardeners did produce some notable warriors, their reputation is overall one of being friendly, agreeable and benevolent, absorbing rivals into their fold with strategic marriages/bribes/negotiations rather than open warfare and giving the Reach peace & prosperity; exemplars of their style of rule include Garth the Goldenhand and the Three Sage Kings who peacefully assimilated (and in some ways were assimilated by) the Andals. They were also famous for being fertile in a more personal sense of spawning tons of kids in each generation, and forging blood ties with pretty much every one of their vassal houses (from big ones like the Tarlys & Hightowers down to minor vassals like Houses Oldflowers and Uffering), with their last king Mern IX having at least four sons, two grandsons, one nephew, and an indeterminate but probably high number of brothers and cousins. And this entire millennial dynasty, famed for having no end of spares & cadet branches - gets wiped out in a single battle, the Field of Fire, while such a fate never befell the likes of the Starks who don't breed like rabbits and thus should logically have been more vulnerable to similar game-ending disasters? C'mon now. I must be whistling past the graveyard at this point, but realism should dictate that Mern leave at least one grandson (a page or squire still too young to fight, most probably) at Highgarden or something even as he marched against the dragons with the rest.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

As far as the discussion on the Reach and its being relatively sexually liberal compared to the rest of Westeros (sans Dorne which as I see others have said, is basically Martin's exoticist Mary Suetopia), I've always thought that region was based not only on France but specifically Southern France, or (as the people actually living there at the time would've thought of it) Occitania - they did not speak French but dialects of Occitan, closer to Catalan than French, and generally did not start regarding themselves as Frenchmen until after the Albigensian Crusade (which was aimed at not just extirpating the Cathar heresy but also breaking the autonomous power of the Occitan lords). Medieval Occitania was indeed a more generally prosperous place than northern France (or 'France proper' if you will) with great cities of its own like Toulouse and Arles, more socially progressive (quite a few of the famous powerful women of the Middle Ages were from there, ex. the English queens Eleanor of Aquitaine and Eleanor of Provence, and they were also more tolerant of Jews than the northern French), divided into highly autonomous lordships and the cradle of chivalric culture (the troubadours who wrote the earliest chivalric poetry, popularized the concept of courtly love, etc. came from Occitania and were heavily patronized by the Occitan nobility, pageantry like the Courts of Love came from Occitan courts, and so on). I could see how all of that matches up with the Reach on account of the existence of Oldtown, it being known as the home of chivalry in Westeros, etc.

Now as far as being sexual libertines second only to the Dornish goes, it's true that the Occitans were stereotyped as being soft libertines by the northern French. But that's just that, it was a slanderous stereotype which gained most of its popularity around the time of the Albigensian Crusade (when the French were going to war with the Occitans), and if you actually look at the history of Occitan queens and princesses - even ones which could at times be 'problematic' like Constance of Arles, or the two aforementioned Eleanors - it's manifestly an unfair one as whatever their other issues were, being a loose slut was not consistently among them, though these queens lived decades or centuries apart. In the most infamous case of royal adultery in medieval France, and the basis for the Accursed Kings series which was said to have inspired GRRM's creation of ASOIAF, the cheating wives were Burgundians: northern Frenchwomen and not Occitans, in other words. The center to the ideal of courtly love was that although the knight might yearn for his lady, he would never actually lay a hand on her.

Props for bringing up the Accursed Kings, the series by the jew Maurice Druon who influenced the other quarter jew GRRM. At least Druon seemed to be willing to write fairly about the history of France (from what I glanced), while Martin wanted to create his own world without caring for the level of depravity and only making certain characters be fair - and having them be killed by the depraved world. Also I did learn that the Occitanians were the subject where someone (forgot who) based his thesis about "Racisme" in 1897 as a concept in Nationalism, where they saw the basis in ethnic pride as something to part of their identity.

Otherwise, it seems like here we have another interesting case of parody: GRRM parodying another """free""" culture for a time, where he amplifies the Occitanians and their more lax support for the Jews and some customs to mean the Reach would be sexually free. Same thing above with the Dothraki, making the Monghols/Scythians/Comanche to appear like a joke in contrast.

 

[Chuckwagon]

Props for bringing up the Accursed Kings, the series by the jew Maurice Druon who influenced the other quarter jew GRRM. At least Druon seemed to be willing to write fairly about the history of France (from what I glanced), while Martin wanted to create his own world without caring for the level of depravity and only making certain characters be fair - and having them be killed by the depraved world. Also I did learn that the Occitanians were the subject where someone (forgot who) based his thesis about "Racisme" in 1897 as a concept in Nationalism, where they saw the basis in ethnic pride as something to part of their identity.

I'll try to summarize & keep my history-sperging to a minimum: but yeah, basically, the Occitans have historically been one of the bigger internal victims of the French Revolution & its consequences, alongside the Bretons & Vendeans. The centralist tendencies of the French revolutionaries meant the Occitans' vestigial autonomy (what was left after the Albigensian Crusade, the centralizing French kings of the Renaissance and finally Louis XIV) got eradicated very early on after the tumult of 1789, and the modern French state made serious systematic efforts to annihilate the Occitan language & regional identity among others (such as that of the Bretons). Also one of the most based French thinkers of the 20th century, Charles Maurras, was an Occitan who was fiercely proud of his heritage (the French left's attempts to drive said heritage to extinction was one of the reasons he hated them so much & why he made regionalism a big part of his ideology), and I believe his ideas about the Pays Réel or 'real country' vs. the Pays Légal or 'legal country' are very much applicable to many more modern countries than just France with country-appropriate adjustments (the American Pays Légal would be the deep state and DC, for instance).

Otherwise, it seems like here we have another interesting case of parody: GRRM parodying another """free""" culture for a time, where he amplifies the Occitanians and their more lax support for the Jews and some customs to mean the Reach would be sexually free. Same thing above with the Dothraki, making the Monghols/Scythians/Comanche to appear like a joke in contrast.

I find it especially silly & nonsensical in the context of the Reach, since the Reach is also supposed to be the main power-base of the most certainly 'cisheteropatriarchal' and 'heteronormative' (to use the Tumblrina terms) Faith of the Seven - Oldtown's Starry Sept being the original Vatican of Westeros (including at the time of the Dance of the Dragons) until Baelor the Blessed built his Great Sept in King's Landing, some decades after the Dance. So the Occitans aside, Martin making the Reach into the second most sexually 'free' region of Westeros is more like making the medieval Papal States into some sanctuary for sexual liberalism. If anything I would've imagined the Reachmen should have one of the most conservative attitudes toward sex & sexuality out of all of Westeros' nations, akin to Lazians or northern French crusaders (or for an example out of GoT/HOTD, like Alicent Hightower until the writers decided she should be a giant hypocrite).

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

I find it especially silly & nonsensical in the context of the Reach, since the Reach is also supposed to be the main power-base of the most certainly 'cisheteropatriarchal' and 'heteronormative' (to use the Tumblrina terms) Faith of the Seven - Oldtown's Starry Sept being the original Vatican of Westeros (including at the time of the Dance of the Dragons) until Baelor the Blessed built his Great Sept in King's Landing, some decades after the Dance. So the Occitans aside, Martin making the Reach into the second most sexually 'free' region of Westeros is more like making the medieval Papal States into some sanctuary for sexual liberalism. If anything I would've imagined the Reachmen should have one of the most conservative attitudes toward sex & sexuality out of all of Westeros' nations, akin to Lazians or northern French crusaders (or for an example out of GoT/HOTD, like Alicent Hightower until the writers decided she should be a giant hypocrite).

(Cheers for the history lesson, I appreciate it).

You know, once you start unravelling all those things like you, me, and everyone else at this topic (and others) are doing - you begin to see how shallow the worldbuilding is: despite it seeming to be very deep and fantastic (while being """deeply realistic""") - Martin borrowed a lot and at the same time did a very sloppy job at adjusting things that he "didn't like" about certain areas of the world, while making it stand out like a sore thumb. The hack writers for television make it even worse. That's when you see the fans of the series should take a step back and see how perhaps they have a rose-tinted glasses over their favourite series.

Also especially true for aspiring writers and to those who take it as a form of hobby - how careful you have to be: It seems GRRM has taken a liking to worldbuilding more than writing a plot, especially in his later years. It doesn't seem to be doing him much favors. How is it that someone that established something more focused on language work like Tolkien, or Robert Jordan managed to pull off something better? (Albeit I confess I never read Jordan's works so I cannot know much). Also I guess I see I can relate/maybe understand why it hurts to GRRM the idea of fanfiction - that someone could pull off something... better?

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

You know, once you start unravelling all those things like you, me, and everyone else at this topic (and others) are doing - you begin to see how shallow the worldbuilding is: despite it seeming to be very deep and fantastic (while being """deeply realistic""") - Martin borrowed a lot and at the same time did a very sloppy job at adjusting things that he "didn't like" about certain areas of the world, while making it stand out like a sore thumb.

As a historian, I find GRRM's continued line of how Westeros is a realistic depiction of the Medieval age to be absolute horse-shit; the way he builds his world, he just takes a dystopia, paints Medieval characteristics over it, and calls it a day. He does little in the way of research on how nobles and feudalism works, his world has too many godless people in an age when faith ruled supreme and the Church could burn you at the stake for heresy, and his idea of a kingdom holding off a superpower makes no sense in the Medieval context; a nation like Dorne which has light cavalry and armor would've been conquered easily by the likes of the First Crusade, which was just a mob of lords, knights, and peasants armed with swords, spears, crossbows and chain mail who marched on Jerusalem. Much less a continent-wide Targaryen army that has thousands of plate-armored soldiers and knights, which also has air support in the form of dragons acting as Medieval Fantasy F-16s.

When people took GRRM to task about women getting raped and abused in his books, he barks back and says that women had it like that back then, when in reality, people were harsher towards rapists back then. Some regimes like Byzantium under Empress Theodora simply executed rapists, whereas in other kingdoms, rapists were lumped alongside other criminals and put into suicide squads like the Forlorn Hope where they soak up enemy arrows and crossbow bolts at the vanguard of an army.

Then there's the fact that Martin can't decide whether or not the Targaryens are an imperial, Renaissance-style absolute monarchy or a Medieval monarchy that has to beg their lords for support and manpower after the Dance of Dragons. There's a difference between the two. Martin makes his Targaryen monarchs act like Roman Emperors who can execute nobles on a whim, like the Mad King, yet he still sells the Targaryen-ruled Westeros as a Medieval-era nation, when in Medieval times, kings were careful not to offend their nobles, and in some cases, nobles elected the king and even reminded him that they can replace him if he screws up. No noble would've fought for Aerys II after he barbecued the Stark lords for no good reason. Especially when Brandon Stark had a genuine grievance of Rhaegar Targaryen kidnapping his sister. If that's how Aerys acted, his lords would've deserted him and joined Robert in droves. Even the lords of the Reach and Dorne would've deserted him.

There's also the lack of consequence when someone actually hurts a royal. Jaime Lannister getting pardoned after shanking the Mad King, I can see that happening since Aerys was setting nobles on fire for no good reason, but Tywin Lannister sending his mad dog Gregor Clegane to kill Elia Martell and her royal children-children who were probably named in the Faith of the Seven-would've been a blasphemy that screams to God for vengeance. Innocent royals, a woman and her children, with the woman raped and murdered after being forced to watch her children die, that would've been the kind of sacrilege that would end with Tywin having a crusade declared on his ass. Royalty were considered sacred in the Medieval era, and if we applied that to Roman Catholicism, Tywin would have the Pope declaring war on him, freeing his vassals from their obligation to serve him. With the forces of the Pope backing him, Ned Stark would probably have the legal power and the military might to just arrest and hang Tywin and Ser Gregor for the deaths of Elia and her children.

As a fantasy fan, I just can't get behind the shallow aspects of fantasy that GRRM shits out. So the dragons are supposed to be smart, bordering on sapient, yet they still allowed some silver-haired incest mongrels to use them as weapons, even against each other. All the Targaryen dragons are descended from the original three, Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes, and to have Targs use dragons against each other makes me question their intelligence, because it's like you fighting your cousin just because some dipshit who's smaller than both of you, who's riding on his back, told him to fight you.

And I already went over how weaksauce the Others really are; the supposed final boss of the ASOIAF series, the existential threat against humanity, and it's a rabble of walking corpses and overrated abominations that some twat with enough men, wildfire, and obsidian can bury six feet under. Forget Arya Stark defeating the Night King, a dragonglass crossbow unit can shred the Others from afar while fire arrows or some wildfire trap can incinerate the Others' undead armies.

It's just so funny how works from my childhood, works which did not get the mainstream love that Game of Thrones did, handled this shit better. Warcraft 3 handled zombies better, Skyrim handled dragons better, LOTR handled magic better, hence why I'm disappointed that ASOIAF, despite being hailed as a modern fantasy masterpiece, handles fantasy elements like a drunk fratboy when compared to video games and books made for kids and teens.

The hack writers for television make it even worse.

The writers and GRRM have the same social agenda. It's just that the TV writers suck ass at hiding their biases, while GRRM at least hid it behind enough power politics, gore, and porn to sweeten the pot.

That's when you see the fans of the series should take a step back and see how perhaps they have a rose-tinted glasses over their favourite series.

That's how I see most ASOIAF fans who act like it's the next best thing since sliced bread. Sure, Season 1 of HOTD and Seasons 1-4 of Game of Thrones are good shows, but it's more due to the actors carrying the material rather than just the material itself. But there's still a lot of room for improvement, especially since the material when stripped to its basics is just barely above average, and the fans just can't admit it.

For example, Tywin in the books is a petty, rich asshole who, while being good at politics, is basically every ruthless rich white man that hippies like GRRM rail against. He had his dwarf son's wife raped by his soldiers because she was a commoner. Him slaughtering royal babies or killing his rivals at a wedding just cements it. But it's Charles Dance's performance which elevated Tywin from a hippie's punching bag to Machiavelli with an army, and it was that kind of compelling characterization which made people into fans of Tywin Lannister-ironically enough, something GRRM wouldn't like since he hated Tywin so much he had the man's dwarf son kill the guy in the shitter.

Also especially true for aspiring writers and to those who take it as a form of hobby - how careful you have to be: It seems GRRM has taken a liking to worldbuilding more than writing a plot, especially in his later years. It doesn't seem to be doing him much favors. How is it that someone that established something more focused on language work like Tolkien, or Robert Jordan managed to pull off something better? (Albeit I confess I never read Jordan's works so I cannot know much).

Other writers actually cared enough about the plot that they kept a structure and only allowed things to grow a certain level before they limit things and ensure that everything comes to plan. GRRM cares more about subversion and letting plot threads develop wildly without guidance, which is why his last two books on the main ASOIAF story is 30 percent story and 70 percent useless sidequest filler.

Also I guess I see I can relate/maybe understand why it hurts to GRRM the idea of fanfiction - that someone could pull off something... better?

Of course. At this point, some devoted ASOIAF fans could probably write a better version of the Winds of Winter or A Dream of Spring better than GRRM. Hell, some fans could probably rework the Targaryen Conquest, Dance of Dragons, and Robert's Rebellion to be better than the source material or the HBO shows.

As an aside I will add that the Gardeners, the old royal house of the Reach, are one of the most sensibly written houses in Martin's work and that the way they died out was strange AF. The Reach houses seem to be the only ones that even try to treat their subjects as human beings and while the Gardeners did produce some notable warriors, their reputation is overall one of being friendly, agreeable and benevolent, absorbing rivals into their fold with strategic marriages/bribes/negotiations rather than open warfare and giving the Reach peace & prosperity; exemplars of their style of rule include Garth the Goldenhand and the Three Sage Kings who peacefully assimilated (and in some ways were assimilated by) the Andals. They were also famous for being fertile in a more personal sense of spawning tons of kids in each generation, and forging blood ties with pretty much every one of their vassal houses (from big ones like the Tarlys & Hightowers down to minor vassals like Houses Oldflowers and Uffering), with their last king Mern IX having at least four sons, two grandsons, one nephew, and an indeterminate but probably high number of brothers and cousins. And this entire millennial dynasty, famed for having no end of spares & cadet branches - gets wiped out in a single battle, the Field of Fire, while such a fate never befell the likes of the Starks who don't breed like rabbits and thus should logically have been more vulnerable to similar game-ending disasters? C'mon now. I must be whistling past the graveyard at this point, but realism should dictate that Mern leave at least one grandson (a page or squire still too young to fight, most probably) at Highgarden or something even as he marched against the dragons with the rest.

Going off my own version of Aegon's Conquest where Rhaenys died fighting the Gardeners, I'd have it so that the extinction of that House was completed after the battle. After the Field of Fire, Aegon's host marches towards Highgarden, but the castle still has a formidable host guarding it. The battle exhausted Balerion and Vhagar, and Meraxes is on life support. Aegon doesn't have the manpower to just besiege the castle conventionally without losing thousands, so the remaining Gardeners in the castle, mostly grandchildren, cousins, and lesser sons of Mern IX, find their spine and tell Aegon to shove his sword up his ass.

But with Lannister gold in his pockets, Aegon has Visenya sneak in and speak with the Tyrells, the stewards of Highgarden, promising a hefty bribe as well as lordship of the Reach if they could help with House Gardener. Visenya convinces the Tyrell soldiers and retainers to turn against their Gardener masters. The Tyrells then lure the new Gardener king and his entourage into a meeting where supposedly, Aegon was ready to surrender and talk shop with them. Instead, they run into Loren Lannister and his men, as well as Visenya and her handpicked troops. The Tyrells then help the Lannisters and Visenya slaughter the Gardeners who went to the meeting, and the Tyrell retainers inside Highgarden assassinate what's left of the Gardener family, leaving nobody but them to inherit the castle, since the Tyrells were also part-Gardener thanks to past marriages.

The Tyrells Order 66-ing the Gardeners would be their way of proving to Aegon that they had the strength of will to seize the day, and that they could obey orders, no matter how distasteful. Aegon's hate for the Gardeners would be due to them killing Rhaenys, whom he dearly loved, and so, he has the Tyrells, the Lannisters, and Visenya eradicate them down to the last man, woman, and child. Once that is finished, Aegon grants Highgarden to the Tyrells, as well as a hefty bribe from House Lannister which he now controlled.

 

[Chuckwagon]

Going off my own version of Aegon's Conquest where Rhaenys died fighting the Gardeners, I'd have it so that the extinction of that House was completed after the battle. After the Field of Fire, Aegon's host marches towards Highgarden, but the castle still has a formidable host guarding it. The battle exhausted Balerion and Vhagar, and Meraxes is on life support. Aegon doesn't have the manpower to just besiege the castle conventionally without losing thousands, so the remaining Gardeners in the castle, mostly grandchildren, cousins, and lesser sons of Mern IX, find their spine and tell Aegon to shove his sword up his ass.

But with Lannister gold in his pockets, Aegon has Visenya sneak in and speak with the Tyrells, the stewards of Highgarden, promising a hefty bribe as well as lordship of the Reach if they could help with House Gardener. Visenya convinces the Tyrell soldiers and retainers to turn against their Gardener masters. The Tyrells then lure the new Gardener king and his entourage into a meeting where supposedly, Aegon was ready to surrender and talk shop with them. Instead, they run into Loren Lannister and his men, as well as Visenya and her handpicked troops. The Tyrells then help the Lannisters and Visenya slaughter the Gardeners who went to the meeting, and the Tyrell retainers inside Highgarden assassinate what's left of the Gardener family, leaving nobody but them to inherit the castle, since the Tyrells were also part-Gardener thanks to past marriages.

The Tyrells Order 66-ing the Gardeners would be their way of proving to Aegon that they had the strength of will to seize the day, and that they could obey orders, no matter how distasteful. Aegon's hate for the Gardeners would be due to them killing Rhaenys, whom he dearly loved, and so, he has the Tyrells, the Lannisters, and Visenya eradicate them down to the last man, woman, and child. Once that is finished, Aegon grants Highgarden to the Tyrells, as well as a hefty bribe from House Lannister which he now controlled.

On the other hand, pulling a Reach version of the Red Wedding to wipe out their beloved and long-reigning (the Gardeners are as old as, and Reachmen claim are even older than, the Starks) former overlords does not seem like it would result in the most stable of Lord Paramountcies. I'll give GRRM this, his depiction of the Freys becoming universally hated and their name turning into less than mud after such a betrayal of their overlords in the story is at least something that approximates to the historical reality, even if it's actually still undersold (I said as much in another post on GoT-related stuff long ago, but as a historical example, literally none of the big betrayals in the War of the Roses ended well for the traitors). Maybe people wouldn't lift a hand against the Tyrells (as they didn't canonically) as long as the dragons are around and their Targaryen overlords are undivided, but I can't imagine this house of 'upjumped' stewards would last long against their myriad vassals with stronger Gardener blood ties when the Dance of the Dragons or an equivalent event pops off in that alternate timeline, especially if they accrue a Frey-like reputation for treachery and grasping ambition. Back when GoT was putting out these short animated videos on the lore (the Tyrells' lore-vid being narrated by Natalie Dormer, Margaery's actress) it was implied that the Tyrell steward at the time lied to King Mern when the latter requested advice and got him & his house killed on purpose, which does give them some plausible deniability (even if it is still logically improbable that Mern would've dragged all of his numerous male relatives along to the battlefield), but they wouldn't have that in the scenario you outlined.

The memory of Ned Stark motivated large parts of the North to fight under Stannis' banner and go through hellishly icy conditions to avenge his family & save who they think is his daughter: and the Gardeners have sired many Neds throughout their history, whereas he was actually an exception to the norm in the North (many Stark kings were described as quite ruthless and even cruel sometimes, Ned's honor came from his upbringing in the Vale). Also, honor and chivalry are supposed to be taken very seriously in the Reach, which after all is described as the 'home' of chivalry even more-so than the Vale (where the first knights actually arrived). It would make for a lethal combination against the Tyrells if the Targaryen boot ever even slightly eases off the Reach's throat for any reason, especially since the Tyrells also have a habit of staying neutral in great wars like the Dance or the Blackfyre Rebellion (isolating them from support from above and potentially attracting the ire of both sides). It's trivial to imagine, for example, Ormund Hightower taking a detour to march his deathstack & Daeron the Daring on Tessarion (a character who, although canonically one of the nicest people involved in the Dance, could also be extremely pitiless in fighting those he deems dishonorable) against Highgarden to take out the Tyrells, with the expectation that if the Greens win he'll be made LP of the Reach and that even if they ultimately lose to the Blacks, at least the rest of the Reach will still thank House Hightower for ridding them of such a house of weaselly quislings with hands drenched in the blood of their old long-loved kings (while the Blacks wouldn't particularly miss a house that refused to support them despite owing everything to their ancestor).

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more inclined I am towards the conclusion that if one is going to do a rewrite from the Conquest onward, it would be much easier to just have the Gardeners survive through a grandson or whoever that bends the knee to A1 and remain LPs of the Reach like the Lannisters, Starks & Arryns were of their respective kingdoms. The situation with the Tyrells as LP strikes me as something that looked good on paper back when Gurm was just starting to write - they're comparatively lowly and dependent on royal favor to hang on to their newfound power, meaning they'd have to be loyal to the Targs by default and less likely to be able to organize their own support-base to challenge the Iron Throne, making them ideal puppet rulers for the strongest southern kingdom - but turns out to have a lot more hoops he needed to fit through (as if he still could, being fat) the more he wrote, especially once he decided the Gardeners should be one of the most overgrown houses. You wouldn't even have to change that much in the lore post-Conquest if people like Mace & his family were Gardeners rather than Tyrells, the Reach's reluctance to join big wars could be justified as the Gardeners not wanting to risk another Field of Fire that actually wipes them out instead of 'just' killing most of them; if anything it should actually be easier to both have the Reach sit such conflicts out and not have to explain why houses like the Hightowers, Tarlys, Rowans or Florents (actually the weakest of the major Reach houses with a Gardener claim, though they're the most openly antagonistic to the Tyrells) never took the chance to topple the Lord of Highgarden while the Targs & the rest of the realm were distracted.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more inclined I am towards the conclusion that if one is going to do a rewrite from the Conquest onward, it would be much easier to just have the Gardeners survive through a grandson or whoever that bends the knee to A1 and remain LPs of the Reach like the Lannisters, Starks & Arryns were of their respective kingdoms.

There's also the fact that lesser second sons of Mern the 9th would've logically stayed behind, as well as the female Gardeners. So what they should've done is a more timid, younger brother or cousin of Mern IX would be the new King Gardener, and he surrenders without a fight to save his skin and become Lord Paramount of the Reach instead.

On the other hand, pulling a Reach version of the Red Wedding to wipe out their beloved and long-reigning (the Gardeners are as old as, and Reachmen claim are even older than, the Starks) former overlords does not seem like it would result in the most stable of Lord Paramountcies. I'll give GRRM this, his depiction of the Freys becoming universally hated and their name turning into less than mud after such a betrayal of their overlords in the story is at least something that approximates to the historical reality, even if it's actually still undersold.

In my version, it's more the Reach houses being scared of Aegon after the Gardeners are gone, and by the time the Dance happens and the dragons die out, the other houses would've gotten used to the Tyrells, mostly thanks to marriage pacts and hefty bribes from the crown. That, and Aegon in my version conquered the Dornish, so that's one headache they took off from the Reach. I'd even have it so that the conventional part of the conquest of Dorne was accomplished by the Tyrells after them taking over Highgarden, which gains them the respect of the other Reach houses that have been worried about Dornish raiders for eons. The Tyrells and Targaryens put an end to that, which gains them the love and adoration of the Reach.