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How did Varys know Gregor would have beaten Aegon to an unrecognizable pulp ?


Gneisenau

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In order for the body swap to work, (f)Aegon would have to have been beaten into a unrecognizable state.



There are plenty of ways to brutal maim and kill people but very few would make them recognizable. For example Theon has gone through alot, but you could still barely physically recognize him.



I think in general into order to make somebody unrecongnizable you would have to use bludgeons to beat the body. Gregor uses a sword. Now accoding to Ned (?), Gregor apparently threw Aegon against a wall, but babies/people have fallen from large heights (which is comparable to being thrown against a Wall) and they were still recognizable.



Therefore either Gregor was in on the scheme, or Varys is lying.


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Gregor is stronger then most Westorosi and has the strength to use a two-handed sword, one-handed. Making him unrecognizable by throwing him against the wall is plausible. The baby is only a month or two old and I believe their skulls are still soft.



Also, Since the baby who would have been born during the Rebellion, who from Robert's side would have recognized him? All Varys had to do switch the baby with one of similar skin and hair color and it would be enough to fool anyone.


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If the swap did occur, I don't think many people would notice. Aegon was still a baby and most people that have seen him are dead. So I don't think Varys counted on Gregor beating fAegon (see what I did there?) to a pulp. He would have banked it on people not knowing what Aegon looked like dimple to dimple.



Plus, even if people found out the baby that was killed is a fake, what could they do? Varys would have sent Aegon across the Narrow Seas by then.


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Aegon was still a baby, you could swap my aunts baby with one that is vaguely familiar and I won't notice it. Neither would Robert, Tywin, Ned, Jaime...

Some people would argue that this baby had distinctive features. there's a SSM where he says Aegon looked Targaryen (presumably purple eyes and maybe silverish hair if he had hair at that age?)

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Perhaps because there was no pre planning and the story was cooked up later.



..... But just in case Aegon is who he says he is the lets try to rationalize a mistake. The Mountain is pent up on battle and exhilaration of the rape, he also happens to be something of a dullard. He goes in, finds his objectives and the brutalizes them. He isn't going to go out out of his way to confirm any "targ features" iff his main reaction to provocation and screaming is violence (look at his duel with Oberyn and you see him cut down a boy who was screaming, or him beheading his own horse). So I would wager a guess that he is not in the pocket of the Spider.... unless he is in the pocket of another.


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Most likely he didn't. If it was a decoy who died, he was probably counting on Gregor not recognizing him and that by the time somebody arrived who would, like Pycelle or a wet-nurse or one of Elia's maids, the real Aegon would be far away. However, since Gregor obliterated the fake's face, he was able to completely fool everyone into thinking Aegon was dead so they'd never be expecting him to return.



Alternately, if it was the real Aegon who died, his plan was initially to back Viserys and he later adapted it into the Aegon ploy when he found out that that body was unrecognizable. This also provides a useful explanation for why he killed Pycelle, as it is possible that, as the most likely person to have delivered Aegon, he could have provided information on some distinguishing characteristic that would prove that it wasn't the same person.


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I don't think he needed to know that - only that the war was basically lost and the child was in danger if left in King's Landing. In such a situation, the children had to die. Maybe not with brutalsmashrapegore as the method, but dead is dead. It does not have to be a bloody ruin. It's not like there were forensics experts to sit there and disprove it.


The mother and sister could not leave, or else someone would know for sure the heir escaped (and hunt him down). But an infant is probably quite unrecognizable to all but its own parents. Find a baby with the right sort of eye and hair colour, and who would really know ? The thing is, there were whores with Valyrian features (from Lys, mostly), and Varys could get hold of one's child with little difficulty.



But even if we think Varys needed to know that little detail, perhaps he did - through magic or prophecy? Other people have seen the future through weirwoods, or shade of the evening, or green dreams, and so on. Perhaps Varys has some talents in that regard, which he has not revealed.

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Perhaps because there was no pre planning and the story was cooked up later.

..... But just in case Aegon is who he says he is the lets try to rationalize a mistake. The Mountain is pent up on battle and exhilaration of the rape, he also happens to be something of a dullard. He goes in, finds his objectives and the brutalizes them. He isn't going to go out out of his way to confirm any "targ features" iff his main reaction to provocation and screaming is violence (look at his duel with Oberyn and you see him cut down a boy who was screaming, or him beheading his own horse). So I would wager a guess that he is not in the pocket of the Spider.... unless he is in the pocket of another.

But it is one thing to kill children, it is another to beat them beyond recognition.

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It's also another thing to rage out and behead you're own horse. Gregor is violent and reacts to events disproportionately .

Did Gregor in killing his horse make it unrecognizable ? The equivalent would like saying Gregor chopped his horse head, and them proceed to beat it with a bludgeon (because swords are terrible bludgeons), until it was unrecognizable.

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