Mind: Blown. Daenerys might just be the Rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and Aerys' Heir.
This has only occurred to me like half an hour ago.
As we know, the Westerosi crown follows agnatic primogeniture as its law of inheritance.
According to agnatic primogeniture, the order of succession is:
0) King
- Eldest son of King
- Eldest son of the son of the King, and, in succession, any other sons by order of birth
- Second son of the King
In other words, the grandson comes before the uncle.
Here's the snag nobody's considering. Viserys, the uncle, was crowned King before the grandson, Jon/Aegon was born.
I'll try to keep it the simplest possible.
The rightful king of the Seven Kingdoms was Aerys. At the moment of his death, he had only two kids: Rhaegar and Viserys (Daenerys was still a fetus in Rhaella's belly).
Rhaegar was dad to Rhaenys and Aegon with Elia, but he annulled his marriage and possibly bastardised his first children. When he died, Lyanna was, unbeknownst to the world, pregnant with his kid (who had 50% chances of being a girl, mind you).
When news came of Rhaegar's death, Viserys immediately became the heir to Aerys, the Crown Prince. When Aerys was stabbed by Jaime, Rhaella crowned Viserys King of the Seven Kingdoms.
This was absolutely rightful: when Aerys dies, Rhaegar is already dead, and Jon hasn't been born yet - he literally doesn't exist, and as a fetus, has 50% chances of being a girl anyway. At the moment of Aerys' death, seven year old Viserys is the only possible heir to the Targaryen crown.
So, Viserys was king before Jon was born.
The timeline went like this: Battle of the Trident (Rhaegar dead) -> Aerys sends Rhaella and Viserys away to Dragonstone -> Aerys dies, Viserys becomes King -> Jon is born.
So, normally, the line of succession now would be:
Viserys -> Jon/Aegon, unless Viserys has a son, in which case the line would look like Viserys -> Viserys' son -> Jon/Aegon.
Now, grown up, Viserys explicitly nominated Daenerys his heir. Which would mean that the rightful Targaryen heir is Daenerys and not Jon.
One could argue that Viserys didn't know about Jon, but it's really, really unlikely that he'd nominate as his heir, as the head of the Targaryen house, a kid raised as a Stark by one of the Usurper's dogs, instead of his Targaryen born and raised sister, a sister he, even if in a twisted way, loved.
The fact is that Jon's birth, even with a better claim as son of Rhaegar, wouldn't dethrone Viserys. Kingship doesn't get revoked because a baby with a better claim comes along. And if Viserys elected Dany as his heir, that's a King's word - it's law.
To be honest I don't think we'll get any treatment of this in the show. The show seems to be going rather mindlessly in the "Jon's the rightful heir" route, unless all of this gets brought out next season. Which would make for some compelling political drama.
I'm sure though some discussion of this will get brought up in the books.
this would've been a crazy ending lol
