If Corlys had accused Rhaenyra of adultery (after Laenor's death), do you think Viserys would actually go through with it and tear out the Sea Snake's tongue? Seems like the sort of thing that would turn into a shit show.
That's a good question. Viserys indulged and spoiled Rhaenyra, but also was notoriously conflict-averse, a hand-in-the-sand type. Which of those impulses would win out? I would imagine though, in that case, that a civil war would break out after Corlys flees.
Thanks for the question, Anon.
SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King
To add, I think this would have been a pretty impossible scenario anyway. Corlys wasn’t stupid, and he certainly would have realized that, as obvious as the “Velaryon” princes’ true paternity might have seemed, these boys had also been acknowledged by both Rhaenyra and the king as the legitimate sons of her and Laenor’s marriage, and so heirs to the Iron Throne. This was what Corlys had been working for since he himself had married the only child of Aemon, Prince of Dragonstone - a Velaryon to sit the Iron Throne and himself in a position of high royal authority. What would he gain by accusing Rhaenyra of adultery except at best dividing and undermining the black faction and at worst losing the direct royal access his “grandsons” had promised him and House Velaryon? Better to pretend he believed the fiction of their paternal ancestry and (so he imagined) reap the rewards when Jacaerys became Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.
