Robert's Rebellion - Petyr Baelish and Varys

Robert's Rebellion -Petyr Baelish and Varys
Histories & Lore
Season 3
Short 10
Short information
Release date	February 18, 2014
Run time	6 minutes
Narrated by	Varys Petyr Baelish
Written by	Dave Hill
Chronological information
← Previous	"The Red Keep"
Next →	"The North"

"Robert's Rebellion - Petyr Baelish and Varys" is the tenth short of the third season of Histories & Lore. It is the fifty-third short of the series overall. It was released on February 18, 2014 in Game of Thrones: The Complete Third Season. It was narrated by Conleth Hill as Varys and Aidan Gillen as Petyr Baelish, and written by Dave Hill.

Premise

Petyr Baelish and Lord Varys debate the ramifications of Robert Baratheon's rebellion against the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen, and its impact on the realm.

Narration

Varys: For three hundred years, the Targaryen dynasty ruled Westeros. Wars were still fought, homes still burned and men still died, but compared to the chaos of what came before, the realm was stable.

Petyr Baelish: And boring. The Targaryens lied, killed, and thieved as much as other lords. They just had dragons to answer all complaints. Until they didn't.

When the last dragon died, it was only a matter of time before the Targaryens followed.

Varys: By "only," you mean another century?

Petyr Baelish: Which they wasted trying to replace their lost advantage: incinerating their own palaces to hatch dragon eggs, drinking wildfire to become dragons, and, let's not forget the Mad King's favorite, burning men alive so he could pretend to be a dragon.

Varys: We urged Aerys to pardon Brandon Stark. The boy had threatened Prince Rhaegar, but Rhaegar had stolen the boy's sister, and the boy was the eldest son of our Warden of the North.

Petyr Baelish: Who is the greater fool: a mad king or the man who reasons with him? Aerys saw knives in every shadow.

When you told him to treat the Starks with caution, you made him afraid and what he feared he killed.

Varys: I wouldn't have thought you of all people would bother with recriminations for Brandon's death, Lord Baelish. Not after your, shall we call it, "duel" with him?

Petyr Baelish: Brandon was as arrogant as he was stupid; like his father, Lord Stark, who answered Aerys' summon to the capital. They earned their fates. But the younger son, Ned, what was his crime? That Aerys ordered his death as well?

Varys: Unlike men, families do not die when you lop off their head.

Petyr Baelish: At the very least, you should have pointed out that loyal and dutiful Ned was living with Jon Arryn, a proud and over-righteous lord with an impregnable castle and no sons of his own. Perhaps you could have spared Aerys the "embarrassment" of revolt.

Varys: If only we'd had the foresight to consult you, Lord Baelish, but I suppose first we'd have had to know who you were.

Petyr Baelish: Nobody knew Robert Baratheon either, yet he claimed the right to sit on the Iron Throne.

Varys: He had Targaryen blood through his mother.

Petyr Baelish: A pretty dress for an ugly truth: it was war; and he could swing a hammer harder than the other options. When did you know you'd lost, Lord Varys?

Varys: When Robert Baratheon killed Prince Rhaegar on the Trident.

Petyr Baelish: Wrong. You lost the war when you let Ned Stark slip back into the North. Neither the Bloody Gate of the Vale or Moat Cailin in the North have ever fallen. They could have held out for years even if you'd killed Robert, but you let him slip through your fingers as well.

Varys: I told the court that Robert was hiding in the Stoney Sept, but the Hand of the King wasted too much time searching the city. Something about the glory of single combat. Then Ned Stark's army arrived to save the day.

Petyr Baelish: Too bad Lord Tywin wasn't Hand any longer. He would have simply razed the town and been done with it.

Varys: Perhaps. And perhaps the rebels would have found even more of the countryside flocking to their banners.

Petyr Baelish: I'd almost forgotten. You weren't always so loyal to the Lannisters during the war, were you?

Varys: I did my duty to the realm. When Lord Tywin showed up at King's Landing professing loyalty, I warned Aerys not to open the gates. Prince Rhaegar was dead, our army scattered. "The lion does not stir unless he smells meat."

Petyr Baelish: I admire your powers of persuasion, Lord Varys. Few could traffic on so many secrets to so little avail.

Varys: Grand Maester Pycelle told Aerys what he wanted to hear, that his old friend Tywin was there to save him.

Petyr Baelish: Then Aerys's "old friend" sacked the city, and his son stabbed Aerys in the back.

Varys: A regrettable though necessary action.

Petyr Baelish: As were the pardons the new King Robert bestowed upon the royalists: Mace Tyrell, Barristan Selmy, you.

Varys: King Robert wisely chose order over vengeance.

Petyr Baelish: Jon Arryn wisely chose for Robert. But Jon Arryn died, then Robert, then Ned. So ended their glorious revolution.

Varys: And Westeros has been burning ever since.

Petyr Baelish: Let it.

Varys: How Targaryen of you. One of the mad ones.

Petyr Baelish: Fire turns even the proudest oaks to ash, leaving newer roots space to climb.

Appearances

Individuals

• King Aegon I Targaryen, the "Conqueror"
• King Aegon III Targaryen, the "Dragonbane" (unnamed)
• King Daeron I Targaryen, the "Young Dragon" (unnamed)
• King Baelor I Targaryen, the "Blessed" (unnamed)
• King Maekar Targaryen (unnamed)
• King Aegon V Targaryen, the "Unlikely" (unnamed)
• Prince Aerion Targaryen, "Brightflame" (mentioned indirectly)
• Last dragon (mentioned)
• King Aerys II Targaryen, the "Mad King"
• Varys
• Brandon Stark
• Lyanna Stark (mentioned)
• Petyr Baelish
• Lord Rickard Stark (mentioned)
• Lord Eddard Stark
• Lord Jon Arryn
• Lord/King Robert Baratheon
• Lady Cassana Baratheon (mentioned)
• Prince Rhaegar Targaryen
• Lord Jon Connington (mentioned indirectly)
• Lord Tywin Lannister
• Grand Maester Pycelle
• ​Ser Jaime Lannister
• Lord Mace Tyrell (mentioned)
• Ser Barristan Selmy (mentioned)

Houses

• House Targaryen
• House Stark
• House Arryn
• House Baratheon
• House Lannister

Locations

• King's Landing
  • Red Keep
• The Vale of Arryn
  • The Eyrie
  • Bloody Gate (mentioned)
• The North
  • Moat Cailin (mentioned)
• The Riverlands
  • Stoney Sept
  • The Trident

Events

• Fire of Summerhall (mentioned)
• Robert's Rebellion
  • Abduction of Lyanna Stark (mentioned)
  • Execution of Rickard and Brandon Stark (mentioned)
  • Battle of the Bells
  • Battle of the Trident
  • Sack of King's Landing

Miscellaneous

• Dragon (mentioned)
• Wildfire (mentioned)
• Iron Throne
• Small Council
• Grand Maester

Cast

• Conleth Hill as Varys
• Aidan Gillen as Petyr Baelish

Behind the scenes

• This is the seventh of ten shorts on Robert's Rebellion.
• A point which might cause some confusion is that Varys says that "we" warned King Aerys, which some might mistake to imply that Littlefinger was also on the Small Council at the time. However, later in the short, Varys makes a separate jab that no one at court even knew who Baelish was at the time because he was still a minor lord living in the Vale, so this is not a change from the books.
• A rather large break with book continuity is introduced by this short. In Season 1 episode "Baelor", Maester Aemon stated that Aerys was his brother's son, not his brother's grandson. In the books, Aemon's younger brother Aegon V Targaryen became king (after Aemon refused the crown due to his vows), and was later succeeded by his son Jaehaerys II, a good but physically frail man who died after ruling only three years. King Aerys II and Queen Rhaella Targaryen were the children of Jaehaerys II. Aemon's statements in the TV series, however, seemed to skip Jaehaerys II. The TV writers later confirmed that Jaehaerys II has indeed been omitted from the TV continuity - they have not stated why, but possibly just to simplify the relationship between Aemon and Daenerys. The major problem this change introduced is that House Baratheon intermarried with House Targaryen in that generation: Aegon V's daughter (and Jaehaerys II's sister) Rhaelle Targaryen married the lord of House Baratheon, and their son was Steffon Baratheon, the father of Robert, Stannis, and Renly. Robert Baratheon's entire claim to the throne was based on the technicality that he had Targaryen blood through Rhaelle (though even this short points out that it was a pretext and he won the crown through warfare). Though no information was ever given on-screen, the prop of the book The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms in Season 1 does establish that Rhaelle Targaryen existed in the TV continuity as well and married a lord of House Baratheon, though she married Lyonel Baratheon and not his heir Ormund Baratheon (as she did in the books). Despite this, the Season 1 animated shorts even somewhat implied that in order to simplify the story, Robert's "Targaryen blood" came purely from Orys Baratheon, the founder of House Baratheon and rumored bastard half-brother of Aegon the Conqueror (which would be complicated, given that Orys is widely believed to have been Aegon's half-brother, but this was never proven). In either scenario, the Targaryen bloodline passed through Robert's father Steffon. In this short, however, Varys clearly states that Robert possessed Targaryen blood "through his mother" - Cassana Baratheon, born into House Estermont. It is unclear how to reconcile this new information. It is possible in the TV continuity that Cassana Estermont had Targaryen blood through her mother.
• The unnamed Hand of the King who failed to capture Robert, to whom Varys and Littlefinger refer, is Jon Connington. According to Connington's inner monologue in the fifth novel, as Varys correctly comments, he indeed wasted too much time searching for Robert because he wanted the glory of slaying Robert in single combat.
• Littlefinger comments that Tywin, had he been in Connington's place, would have razed the town, thus put an end to the rebellion. In the novels, it was Ser Myles Toyne, a former captain-general of the Golden Company, who said to Connington that Tywin "would have burned that town and every living creature in it". Connington, however, refrained from such act due to the aforementioned reason, and also because he did not want to gain the reputation of a butcher. Years later, in retrospect, Connington thinks Myles was right, although - as Varys comments - such cruel deed might have severely shamed the royal side in the war; more lords might have gone over to the rebels in protest.

In the books

• The short is adapted from the following chapters of A Dance with Dragons:
  • Chapter 24, The Lost Lord: Jon Connington relates the Battle of the Bells.
  • Chapter 61, The Griffin Reborn: Jon Connington relates the Battle of the Bells, commenting that Tywin would have entirely destroyed the Stoney Sept, but Connington conducted a house-to-house search instead, because he wanted the glory of slaying Robert Baratheon in single combat.

Gallery

Robert's Rebellion - Petyr Baelish and Varys