Post by Weasel Pie on Jul 4, 2016 17:43:59 GMT
The only way I can see of marrying the two things, the screaming and then the weakness caused by that amount of blood loss, is if they performed the world's worst C-section on her. I'm no midwife, but I do know of some complications that could cause them to do something like that, but it just seems unnecessarily barbaric for the setting of this world and the 'knowledge' of Lyanna having a royal child, to have such inexperienced midwives attending her.
Accounts from our own history, and in particular the War of the Roses, do indicate that if a royal baby was being birthed, the emphasis was on having the child survive, above the survival of the mother. However, only the cruellest of midwives would adhere to this because the amount of women that could actually bring royal children into the world was limited and better to have a known, fertile, young woman capable of giving them more than one child was highly priced. So to destroy the life of a healthy young woman for the sake of a possible heir (remember they did not know the sex of a child until it was born) was a 50/50 and not the best of ideas. The child after all could turn out to be a girl and you've lost both mother and all possibility of future heirs, since girls do not inherit.
And it especially does not ring true because of the care and attention that was given to Elia during and after her two births. Why would Lyanna's live be worthless if she, like Elia, is the daughter of the highest lord of the north?
All that "lurve and protection" Rhaegar was giving her, yet bottom-of-the-barrel health care while she whelps his special snowflake. Heh.
The bolded... that the child could have been a girl... is my favorite argument against the KG being there in order to protect the heir. Remember they were also involved long before Aegon VI was killed at the Sack. And Viserys was still alive.