Tell me Veeky Forums. Why the oldest son, and not the best-fitted? The crown will suit me...

Because when you've got a few years on the others you can smother the little usurpers before they can take you in a fight, so you might as well to avoid kinstrife.

because ye's a fackin poofter ya soft cunt, now fack off

renly's more suited for life in a pillow house of lys than on the Iron Throne

this. Renly was too soft and immature, he would have been an awful king

It's nowhere near as strong as he is implying and other factors can be far more important.

you ar3 a man though

So find a picture of the actor who played Robert when he was in his twenties, though he also needs to be ripped and sexy.

Hahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is Getting Killed By A Shadow Real Hahahaha Nigga Just Light A Candle Like Nigga Turn On The Lights

What has Renly ever done to earn a throne? He sits in council and jests with Littlefinger, and at tourneys he dons his splendid suit of armor and allows himself to be knocked off his horse by a better man. That is the sum of my brother Renly, who thinks he ought to be king

kek

Because anything which isn't a clear rule will lead to an inevitable civil war. See, e.g., Game of Thrones and the giant power struggle that took place as soon as "oldest son" got called into question.

Tyrell swords will make me king. Rowan and Tarly and Caron will make me king, with axe and mace and warhammer. Tarth arrows and Penrose lances, Fossoway, Cuy, Mullendore, Estermont, Selmy, Hightower, Oakheart, Crane, Caswell, Blackbar, Morrigen, Beesbury, Shermer, Dunn, Footly . . . even House Florent, your own wife’s brothers and uncles, they will make me king. All the chivalry of the south rides with me, and that is the least part of my power. My foot is coming behind, a hundred thousand swords and spears and pikes. And you will destroy me? With what, pray? That paltry rabble I see there huddled under the castle walls? I’ll call them five thousand and be generous, codfish lords and onion knights and sellswords. Half of them are like to come over to me before the battle starts. You have fewer than four hundred horse, my scouts tell me-freeriders in boiled leather who will not stand an instant against armored lances. I do not care how seasoned a warrior you think you are, Stannis, that host of yours won’t survive the first charge of my vanguard

bc ur gay dude lol

Makes me want a peach.

There is only place for a head that bears a crown, and that is at the bottom of my basket. We will forge a new destiny, one without kings or lords, one where the will of the people is guided toward a singular purpose.

Tenly theirs a reason laws a fucking in place
Just fucking kill the lannisters with your brother than hash this out instead of causing a stupid fucking war for no reason and make everyone suffer

>one without kings or lords
Is there room for a little corporal perchance?

It would have possibly made sense if we were given much reason for Stannis' unpopularity. It mostly just seemed like Robert didn't like Stannis because Stannis kept telling him to stop whoring, so everybody just followed along with it to stay on Robert's good side. I mean Renly's war was basically just the Tyrells desperately trying to get something on the throne, but it never really addressed just how they made Stannis so unpopular since the only things he was really known for was fighting Ironborn

Because primogeniture is the most stable form of inheritance in a medieval society formed out of the descendants of warlords, where customs such as this is what keeps them from going back to fighting eachother.

And also Stannis would make a much better king than he is because winter is here and Westeros needs a stern and just ruler and not a useless, flamboyant faggot.

Because if inheritance of titles and land holdings were a judgement call, then every single time a noble died without SPECIFICALLY naming one of their children the heir, there would be a crisis of inheritance, and each such crisis almost inevitably leads to skirmishes or war proportional to the magnitude of the title and holdings in question. An astonishingly high number of things in the medieval world that make no sense otherwise were enshrined purely to prevent inheritance-crises and the conflicts that come with them. If the system of determining an heir is an autistically procedural flowchart, then there is no crisis... just a lot of people with titles who weren't the best choice. Plus, the first-born is always specifically groomed TO take the title, and recieves the best training available, so it's only an issue when he dies young or his retarded nature is too overpowering for even the best nurture. From a maintaining-order and maintaining-the-status-quo perspective, having not infrequent ill suited title-holding-nobes is preferable to constant open warfare every time someone with a title dies unexpectedly.

Stannis was a prick when he was on Robert's council. He tried to ban prostitution and (iirc) alcohol, was a bastard about making sure debts were paid and spending was kept minimal, and was generally unpleasant to everyone around him.

Politics is as much a game of popularity as anything else, Stannis made himself unpopular with the elite of Westeros.

Man, if stannis hadn't brought in mel the faith would back the fuck out of him
Also stannis sounds like he was fucking up littlefingers possible debt scheme so that would be a reason for why the more serious nobles don't like him

Stannis Baratheon and considers him to be uniquely stern.
The reason has to do with the way that his personality is perceived. For the Westerosi nobility, flattery is a hallmark of class status. To not engage in this absolutely crucial social custom is seen as an egregious error, at the least, and an affront upon all the other lordings, at the most – a crime which Stannis is guilty of committing time and again.
More than disengaging from social custom, however, the would-be king has a resolute moral code which grates against noble mores and threatens institutions that the elite patronize, particularly legalized prostitution. While the smallfolk in King’s Landing also utilize prostitutes and brothels, the nobility has better access and, more importantly, better means to afford such a service. But Stannis sees prostitution as a moral blight that needs to be stamped out.

Early in the series the faith is a pretty weak power base. Only after a long period of making life significantly worse for everyone who doesn't live in a castle and Cersi making a particularly dumb decision do they ever really gain influence

How would a Stannis-Renly alliance turnout

>Also stannis sounds like he was fucking up littlefingers possible debt scheme
He was. Stannis was the only one paying attention to that shell game.

Well Stannis easily could have gotten just as fucked up on the blackwater, but having that many more troops would have probably changed their strategy in the first place. It's kind of iffy

>Tyrell
The Tyrells are a bunch of know-it-all pretty boys/girls that think they are the golden children of Westeros.

Why do people keep on insisting Renly would have made a good king

Have you seen Euron clothing in episode 2

Even with the Blackwater Stannis still would have taken Kings Landing if the Reach hadn't arrived at the 11th hour to reinforce the city.

Which ia fucking bullshit, deus ex machina

Older mothers, the pill, bad maternal health and diet, xenoestrogens.

The only thing excessive gestational testosterone induces is hypertension and early heart failure. Read one goddamn book on human biology, you rampant fuckwit.

Wilfrid here may have only four teeth, seven bastard children, and the gout, but his is the true voice of the common man.

Renly didn't have the mettle to be king, and everyone would have known it, prince to beggar.

>le fat pink mast shitting brown water man XD

Can you take your reddit tier setting back there?

Shhh, user, you'll shatter his fragile ego if you tell him he isn't actually more of a macho manly man than his younger brother.

I bet if this was Stannis you would be fawning over him

Idiots think that looks are more important than smarts. Hail Stannis

>ban prostitution
Fucks up Littlefinger.
>makes sure debts are paid
Fucking with Littlefinger's plans to ruin everything.
>makes sure spending stays minimal
Fucking with Littlefinger's plans to ruin everything.

Unpopular or not, I wonder if there was some 20/20 hindsight going on after the fact and when everything went to shit.

He would have been a fine enough puppet King under the Tyrells, just like Robert was under the Lannisters.

With a Stannis-Renly alliance the Tyrells probably wouldn't have jumped in with the Lannisters, and Robb might've focused more on occupying Tywin.
King's Landing would've most likely fallen.

God damn george wanting to have a edgy series

Because you're based on the idiot who got himself drowned in a barrel of wine for blatant treason, and have about as much foresight.

Yea that's why he'd make a terrible king. He can't even settle this totally-his-fault disagreement through diplomacy. Stannis is the rightful king by all the laws of gods and men, and Renly would have been his heir. Instead he plays at war and lets men die for his vanity.

Also something about the knights of summer.

Really?

Underrated post

What was the guys name

Stannis offered to make him his heir. Why didn't he agree to an alliance, let his brother do all the hard work of actually winning the war, then get him assassinated? Nobody would mourn for Stannis.

Again Littlefinger went to Bitterbridge and brought/bought the Tyrells. To kill Stannis.

So Stannis is the enemy of le edgy ladder man. Who you gonna choose for you're leader.

>Kings are horrible and if you bend the knee to them you're pathetic
>Emperors are awesome and an empire is merely a more autocratic continuation of a republic
mfw I believe this unironically

That's a really good point. Pride? I guess?

Because Renly didn't want to wait and thought he will make short work of Stannis. He was playing war.

*guillotines internally*

Everyone look at this guy and laugh.

He has no idea what he's talking about, but he just pulled the first article on google scholar, read the abstract, and thought he knew all the effects of hormones on a foetus from that.

Here, why don't you actually do some reading, tard.

Low gestational testosterone makes you effeminate:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296090/
>The evidence supports a role for prenatal testosterone exposure in the development of sex-typed interests in childhood, as well as in sexual orientation in later life,

Lack of testosterone or insensitivity in utero causes you to have a pussydick
>Joe Leigh Simpson, MD
>Male pseudohermaphrodites are persons with a Y-chromosome whose external genitalia fail to develop as expected for normal males. Causes of male pseudohermaphroditism include cytogenetic abnormalities, teratogenic causes, defects in testosterone biosynthesis, and defects in androgen action.

Not to mention all the other reproductive and urological problems caused by improper hormones in the womb.

sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140422113439.htm
>A study has revealed how men's testosterone levels may be determined before they are born.
>testosterone is crucial for life-long health. Low levels of the hormone have been linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Samefag

Not an argument

You should do what the good Roman emperor's did. Don't pick from your sons, also pick from nephews and the sons of family friends. That way you can pretty much guarantee the guy who is running the country is well suited for it.

If any of them had secondborn sons, they would be worse.

Renly knew he would win is why. Stannis had no bargaining position. The Storm Lords were all under Renly's banner, as were the majority of Baratheon bannermen and the Tyrells. He was going to beat Stannis, and he knew that once he did he did most of the remaining Baratheon loyalists would come over to him anyway. There really wasn't a reason for him to *not* kill/capture Stannis and cannibalize his army before moving on King's Landing.

The problem, of course, was Stannis' ace in the hole shadow baby assassin.

Remember when Catelyn offered an alliance that would end the war quickly, as well as a semi-democratic election, and Renly declined because he's a power-hungry warlord?

Good times.

Then when they fuck up, you have no mechanism for succession other than 'which ever general can pay the army more', which leads to continuous civil war.

>MFW he thought he could kill his brother just by zerg rushing him

Stannis was playing 4-dimensional magical murder chess whilst Renly was still playing checkers. Then Tyrell Ex Machina anyway, fucking terrible.

>4-dimensional magical murder chess

Probably as good a description as any for the series as a whole.

If we ask for best-fit, we would choose Stannis.

People like to claim Renly would've made a better king than Stannis, but I really doubt that. Renly was charming and nice could've probably been an okay king with the right advisors, using his pleasant demeanour to rule over a feudal state, passing little to no reforms of worth. Stannis would be the king to centralise rule and bring Westeros into the equivalent of the early modern era, moving away from feudalism and its inefficent system.

At best, Renly would be a puppet of the Tyrells. From the books alone, Renly was a bit of a warmonger with a might = right POV. His men would be unhappy but he can easily submit or obey Stannis, win, followed by assassination or succeed him if no male kids.

Because the Tyrells would have made better rulers than Stannis, and that's what Renly's rule would have given us. Besides, he was young enough that they could have groomed him into something more proper.

>Tyrells
Tyrells are just Lannister with a Rose Motif. House Baratheon of Dragonstone and House Florent are the only good house

>just lannister with a rose motif
Except that they had a head of house with family advisors who weren't shit and heirs that weren't fucking insane.

>Except that they had a head of house with family advisors who weren't shit and heirs that weren't fucking insane.
They are supporting a sinking ship user. how is that not insane

>So we won't have to have a bloody civil war every fucking generation to figure out who the crown should go to.

Roose Bolton taught me a little bloodletting is healthy.

>Why the oldest son, and not the best-fitted?
Because its unfair for the eldest son, he is older, wiser, and has more experience, plus he was fucking first.

Just imagine being in a grocery shop line as soon as it opened, and the shop owner keeps attending everyone around you but not you. It feels unfair and shitty.

That's why OP. The best fitted fits somewhere else, he could be a commander, or the master of the economy of the realm, or whatever. He is the fucking best fitted, he has many qualities. The oldest son belongs on the crown.

>Stannis would be the king to centralise rule and bring Westeros into the equivalent of the early modern era

Seems unlikely. In ordinary times his rule would probably lead to civil war. He'd be a good king for the clusterfuck of nation, though.

Stannis has a lot in common with King Alfred, who while sour and pretty damn unlikable did not become the only British king to ever earn the title "The Great" for nothing.

I guess what we need to see from Stannis is that, while people do not love him, he earns the staunch loyalty of all under him.

A civil war seems likely, sure. But it'd be a war he could win, and with that, centralise even further. The nobles of the middle-ages didn't give up their land and levy without a sound, they put up a good fight.

There are a few fun historical examples of kings like that, like Gustav I of Sweden.

>he earns the staunch loyalty of all under him.
This, and this is pretty important. Stannis may be unlikeable on the outside, but the men he has are loyal to no ends and would give everything for him.

There aren't really any other options for them.

There are always options.

see: Dorne

Not acting is acting

Didn't Stannis say if they bend the Knee they would get clemency? They could have pulled a Vale or Dorne, but no they went out of their way and picked a sinking ship.

>low test faggot
>posts anime

Checks out

Except that didn't really happen. All the civil wars in the middle and late Empire were because the Emperor died before choosing a successor AND didn't have children as well. So it's not like a regular succession would have helped anyway, because it was already the back up in the Roman Imperial system.

> gay=effeminate
Rightio. All of Veeky Forums is effeminate then.

Lower testosterone in utero = lower testosterone throughout life (and other possible abnormalities) = less masculine secondary traits (IE fit, confident, active) = more effeminate = identifying more with women = super homo

They wanted someone they could control.

The Lannister/Tyrell power-block is tearing one another apart

This is the worst line of reasoning in the whole thread.

> posts on Veeky Forums
> believes being gay is the same as being effeminate
> Veeky Forums is ultra-gay
> user is gay and effeminate

I mean, I'm glad you aren't disputing this at all.

he was literally right though

Should the first guy who applies for a job opening be the one to get the job?