Post by markg171 on Dec 26, 2015 0:50:24 GMT
I thought that Oberyn Martell was there as well. If Brandon is acting as Lord Stark, then Oberyn can act as Prince of Dorne in his brother's place.
Couple reasons why I said Brandon counts as Lord Starl but not Oberyn (who was indeed there) for Prince of Dorne
- Brandon is Rickard's heir. If Rickard's not there, which he wasn't, Brandon is the commanding Stark, and as Rickard's heir he was a lordling himself. Him being Lord Stark is no stretch because he is. Oberyn on the other hand most definitely was not anybody's heir. We don't know when Oberyn's mother died and therefore when Doran became Prince of Dorne, so it's entirely possible that she was still ruling at this point. In which case her heir is Doran, not Oberyn. And if Doran is ruling, then Doran's heir is Arianne who's 5 years old at this point, and not Oberyn. Oberyn doesn't count at the acting Prince of Dorne because he's not even in line to be it (or at least so far down that he's not in contention). He has no authority to be commanding anybody beyond that he's a Prince of Dorne, but even then he's not still not as high on the social ranking as Brandon. Which leads to the next point...
- Oberyn was only 1 of at least 3 Prince/Princesses of Dorne at Harrenhal. We know for sure that Oberyn, Lewyn, and Elia were there. Which means that there were 3 Princes of Dorne present compared to the Starks where only Brandon would be considered Lord Stark... and Oberyn wasn't even the highest ranked: Elia was. Elia is Oberyn's older sister. So if anybody was going to be acting as the Prince of Dorne in Doran or his mother's stead, then Elia is the highest ranked one, not Oberyn. But that gets back to the above point that Elia still isn't in line for the Prince of Dorne title as it's either Doran or Arianne who are the heirs compared to Brandon. Brandon still outranks them.
- And finally, we don't actually know that there were any Dornish men even there who needed to be lorded over. All we know for the Dornishmen is that there was Elia (who's under the control of Rhaegar as his wife), Arthur (who's under the control of Aerys as his KG), Lewyn (who's under the control of Aerys as his KG), Ashara (who's under the control of Elia as her handmaiden), and Oberyn himself. There's no one for Oberyn to have been a lord over as far as we know, even before we get into the fact that he's not the highest ranked Dornishman there or even heir to Dorne. On the other hand, there's plenty of people for who Brandon had to have been a lord too. There's his 3 siblings who are under no one's control but his (Eddard is 18 so his wardship's done and Jon Arryn is not his lord anymore, just his friend), Howland Reed, and all the Hornwood, Mormont, Manderly, Stark, and Dustin men who were all there. We already know that Brandon must have been Lord Stark at Harrenhal because there were tons of Stark bannermen there. And it's the same with Robert and Jon Arryn: both had bannermen there to be lords too. Jon Connington and Richard Lonmouth for Robert, and Eon Hunter and Bronze Yohn for Jon. Brandon, Jon, and Robert all have lordly duties to attend to at Harrenhal, while Oberyn has none