Madner Kami wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2019 6:52 am
The article fails to account for some Westeros-specific details. Bran legitimizes himself by virtue of having the support of all the current major players and time. As long as the current lords of the houses live, they will presumably support him and it stands to reason that this amount of time equals their remaining life-times. That alone is enough to create legitimacy, as proven by history. Just look at Augustus/Octavian, who managed to do exactly that. Everyone being in power at the time of his death, simply couldn't remember a time when Augustus was not the Princeps and thus, his children had the same legitimacy.
That focus works for Augustus at the end of his tenure, but not at the beginning. The process of creating the principate was rocky. You want to consider the Marcus Primus affair, the failure of Augustus to setup Marcellus as his heir over the objections of the stakeholders, along with riots in 22 and years following. Finally, there's Caepio's conspiracy, also in 22. We shouldn't view his reign with rose-tinted glasses - Augustus succeeded because he maintained a monopoly on military force, having assigned - essentially at gladius-point - all of the provinces with armies to himself.
Bran does not have that advantage. He has, in fact, no military of his own (Sansa is taking hers back to the North). None of his close allies do either - Bronn has himself only, and Tyrion's hereditary army (the Lannister one) has been obliterated. What happens when he tries to raise taxes? Or restrain Dorne from taking advantage of the vulnerability of the Reach (with which the Dornish banners have been in small-scale war for decades)? Or when the Ironborn almost inevitably attempt to leave?
The comparison to Augustus struggles on another account: Augustus was very careful to perform the role of a (Republican) Roman leader. From what we've seen, Bran needs to build personal relationships among the nobility, he needs to make speeches and public appearances to build legitimacy among the smallfolk and he needs to establish military ability - these are all core roles of Westerosi kings...and all things Bran is temperamentally incapable of doing.
Indeed, I think the Augustus example cuts the other way: Augustus' control was, at the beginning, very fragile,
despite the fact that he had massive military superiority, canny political insight, tremendous personal charisma, and a famous and politically popular name. Bran has essentially none of these things save his name, which is a liability, since no one in the South likes the Starks (remember the play Arya watched?).
Also, as far as we can tell, Bran is functionally immortal. The "original" Three-Eyed Raven is way over a houndred years old and if that is not enough, it is implied that this man, presumably Brynden Rivers, "imprinted" himself onto Bran Stark, likely creating a conglomerate personality that is neither Brynden Rivers nor Bran Stark or, at worst, taking him over completely given time. It stands to reason that King Bran will subtley take influence on future happenings and guide the election in a way that results with the next greenseer on the throne, again being a Three-Eyed Raven.
This, I think, is potentially interesting, but not what the show implied (it dwelt quite significantly on Bran's inability to have heirs, for instance). I'm not sure we can take for granted that Bran's supernatural abilities will be major factor - they are heavily tied to the wierwood trees - none of which now grow in the South. Indeed, in the books, the original Three-Eyed Crow is
grown through with those trees. Leaf puts it that "most of him has gone into the tree" as the cause of his immortality. Likewise, Bran's greenseer powers are explicitly phrases as 'looking through the eyes of the weirwoods.' It is possible Martin intends to give King Bran some trees, but the show has not - on that basis it seems perilous to assume that
any of Bran's supernatural abilities will be the keystone of his rule.
In practice, were I Tyrion or Bran, I'd make sure anyone who actually knew that the original Three-Eyed Raven/Crow lived so long gets dead and fast - should the Lords Paramount find out, the result is almost certain to be violence. Tyrion's appeal to them was directly based on the temporary nature of Bran's rule. No one signed up to give King's Landing to Leto II.
Speaking of which - I find the idea of Bran as a sort of Leto II-esque God-king an interesting one - albeit something the show very much did not lean into (Tyrion repeatedly describes Bran as a repository of history, not an immortal-all-seeing-demi-god). I don't address that critique here - but Frank Herbert did, and essentially concluded that rule like that was a
very, very bad thing, to be ended as soon as humanly possible, so long as it could be ended with permanence (thus the Golden Path to place humanity beyond the reach of any one omniscient ruler).