If things had sounded complicated before, they're about to get moreso. "He was..." What had Rhaegar been? Not blameless, certainly, but not guilty of what the story had said, either. Robert's Rebellion had been based on a lie, and by the time that had been discovered, it had been too late to do anything about it. Not that it would have helped; Robert would still have hated Rhaegar. But maybe he wouldn't have gotten so many people on his side as easily.

Although from Rhaegar's point of view, Ned would have been the enemy. He wishes he could talk to Ned, to ask him how he felt about Rhaegar when he found out the truth. If things might have been different somehow.

"I suppose he was, although really it depends on what side you were on." Both sides of his family had fought each other, because of a love of which he was the result, and he has to find a way to live with that.

"My father, my birth father, was the son of the king. There was a story in my family that my aunt, who was actually my mother although none of us knew that, had been kidnapped by him and held prisoner. Which is why the war started. The man she was betrothed to, Robert, got her family involved in an attempt to get her back. Robert killed my birth father, and determined to wipe out the rest of his family. The king was assassinated, Robert became the king, my uncle found my mother and she told him what had really happened."

It has to be confusing to someone else, especially someone not from Westeros, but it might help him start to make some sense of it. Which is what he needs. "It wasn't kidnapping. They loved each other and had run off together. But he already had a wife, so when he annulled that marriage in secret and married my mother, it looked like kidnapping. Then my uncle had to keep it a secret, so he claimed me as his son."

Hopefully that's not too confusing.