Were Khal Drogo and and his Unborn Son Offerings for the Great Shepherd?

[Lost Melnibonean]

Was Khal Drogo an Offering for the Great Shepherd?

"Silver Lady," a woman's voice said behind her, "I can help the Great Rider with his hurts."

...

"I meant no wrong, fierce riders." The woman spoke Dothraki well. The robes she wore had once been the lightest and finest of woolens, rich with embroidery, but now they were mud-caked and bloody and ripped. She clutched the torn cloth of her bodice to her heavy breasts. "I have some small skill in the healing arts."

"Who are you?" Dany asked her.

"I am named Mirri Maz Duur. I am godswife of this temple."

"Maegi," grunted Haggo, fingering his arakh. His look was dark. Dany remembered the word from a terrifying story that Jhiqui had told her one night by the cookfire. A maegi was a woman who lay with demons and practiced the blackest of sorceries, a vile thing, evil and soulless, who came to men in the dark of night and sucked life and strength from their bodies.

"I am a healer," Mirri Maz Duur said.

...

... Dany ignored the bloodrider's outburst. This old, homely, thickbodied woman did not look like a maegi to her. "Where did you learn your healing, Mirri Maz Duur?"

"My mother was godswife before me, and taught me all the songs and spells most pleasing to the Great Shepherd, and how to make the sacred smokes and ointments from leaf and root and berry. When I was younger and more fair, I went in caravan to Asshai by the Shadow, to learn from their mages. Ships from many lands come to Asshai, so I lingered long to study the healing ways of distant peoples. A moonsinger of the Jogos Nhai gifted me with her birthing songs, a woman of your own riding people taught me the magics of grass and corn and horse, and a maester from the Sunset Lands opened a body for me and showed me all the secrets that hide beneath the skin."

...

"Why should you want to help my khal?"

"All men are one flock, or so we are taught," replied Mirri Maz Duur. "The Great Shepherd sent me to earth to heal his lambs, wherever I might find them."

...

Khal Drogo grunted. "The arrow must come out, Qotho."

"Yes, Great Rider," Mirri Maz Duur answered, touching her bruised face. "And your breast must be washed and sewn, lest the wound fester."

"Do it, then," Khal Drogo commanded.

"Great Rider," the woman said, "my tools and potions are inside the god's house, where the healing powers are strongest."

...

"There," Mirri Maz Duur said, pointing to the altar, a massive blue-veined stone carved with images of shepherds and their flocks. Khal Drogo lay upon it. The old woman threw a handful of dried leaves onto a brazier, filling the chamber with fragrant smoke. ...

...

"She will do no harm." Dany felt she could trust this old, plainfaced woman with her flat nose; she had saved her from the hard hands of her rapers, after all.

... She let the rags of her gown fall to her waist as she opened a carved chest, and busied herself with bottles and boxes, knives and needles. When she was ready, she broke off the barbed arrowhead and pulled out the shaft, chanting in the singsong tongue of the Lhazareen. She heated a flagon of wine to boiling on the brazier, and poured it over his wounds. Khal Drogo cursed her, but he did not move. She bound the arrow wound with a plaster of wet leaves and turned to the gash on his breast, smearing it with a pale green paste before she pulled the flap of skin back in place. The khal ground his teeth together and swallowed a scream. The godswife took out a silver needle and a bobbin of silk thread and began to close the flesh. When she was done she painted the skin with red ointment, covered it with more leaves, and bound the breast in a ragged piece of lambskin. "You must say the prayers I give you and keep the lambskin in place for ten days and ten nights," she said. "There will be fever, and itching, and a great scar when the healing is done."

...

"Drink neither wine nor the milk of the poppy," she cautioned him. "Pain you will have, but you must keep your body strong to fight the poison spirits."

...

Haggo followed the khal from the temple, but Qotho lingered long enough to favor Mirri Maz Duur with a stare. "Remember, maegi, as the khal fares, so shall you."

"As you say, rider," the woman answered him, gathering up her jars and bottles. "The Great Shepherd guards the flock."

[Lady Blizzardborn]

Interesting! Definitely plausible.

[Lost Melnibonean]

During my current reread, I'm thinking Daenerys was being willed into that tent somehow, whether Jorah carried her or not. Either MMD was offering Rhaego up to the Great Shepherd or the Dragon was having its due...

The Dothraki were shouting, Mirri Maz Duur wailing inside the tent like nothing human, Quaro pleading for water as he died. Dany cried out for help, but no one heard. Rakharo was fighting Haggo, arakh dancing with arakh until Jhogo's whip cracked, loud as thunder, the lash coiling around Haggo's throat. A yank, and the bloodrider stumbled backward, losing his feet and his sword. Rakharo sprang forward, howling, swinging his arakh down with both hands through the top of Haggo's head. The point caught between his eyes, red and quivering. Someone threw a stone, and when Dany looked, her shoulder was torn and bloody. "No," she wept, "no, please, stop it, it's too high, the price is too high." More stones came flying. She tried to crawl toward the tent, but Cohollo caught her. Fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back and she felt the cold touch of his knife at her throat. "My baby," she screamed, and perhaps the gods heard, for as quick as that, Cohollo was dead. Aggo's arrow took him under the arm, to pierce his lungs and heart.

When at last Daenerys found the strength to raise her head, she saw the crowd dispersing, the Dothraki stealing silently back to their tents and sleeping mats. Some were saddling horses and riding off. The sun had set. Fires burned throughout the khalasar, great orange blazes that crackled with fury and spit embers at the sky. She tried to rise, and agony seized her and squeezed her like a giant's fist. The breath went out of her; it was all she could do to gasp. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur's voice was like a funeral dirge. Inside the tent, the shadows whirled.

An arm went under her waist, and then Ser Jorah was lifting her off her feet. His face was sticky with blood, and Dany saw that half his ear was gone. She convulsed in his arms as the pain took her again, and heard the knight shouting for her handmaids to help him. Are they all so afraid? She knew the answer. Another pain grasped her, and Dany bit back a scream. It felt as if her son had a knife in each hand, as if he were hacking at her to cut his way out. "Doreah, curse you," Ser Jorah roared. "Come here. Fetch the birthing women."

"They will not come. They say she is accursed."

"They'll come or I'll have their heads."

Doreah wept. "They are gone, my lord."

"The maegi," someone else said. Was that Aggo? "Take her to the maegi."

No, Dany wanted to say, no, not that, you mustn't, but when she opened her mouth, a long wail of pain escaped, and the sweat broke over her skin. What was wrong with them, couldn't they see? Inside the tent the shapes were dancing, circling the brazier and the bloody bath, dark against the sandsilk, and some did not look human. She glimpsed the shadow of a great wolf, and another like a man wreathed in flames.

"The Lamb Woman knows the secrets of the birthing bed," Irri said. "She said so, I heard her."

"Yes," Doreah agreed, "I heard her too."

No, she shouted, or perhaps she only thought it, for no whisper of sound escaped her lips. She was being carried. Her eyes opened to gaze up at a flat dead sky, black and bleak and starless. Please, no. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur's voice grew louder, until it filled the world. The shapes! she screamed. The dancers!

Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent.

[Lost Melnibonean]

And there's this from just before she finds what she bought...

Dany turned to the godswife. "You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse."

"No," Mirri Maz Duur said. "That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price."

Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. "The price was paid," Dany said. "The horse, my child, Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and paid."

And after she saw what she had bought...

"You knew," Dany said when they were gone. She ached, inside and out, but her fury gave her strength. "You knew what I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet you let me pay it."

"It was wrong of them to burn my temple," the heavy, flat-nosed woman said placidly. "That angered the Great Shepherd."

"This was no god's work," Dany said coldly. If I look back I am lost. "You cheated me. You murdered my child within me."

"The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall trample no nations into dust."

[Lady Woodland]

Bump !!

Really good post, c'mon people, this theory has lots of good insight I completely missed deserves some further exploration. Makes a lot of sense to me.

[Osha13]

This is a cool theory. Great catch! One potential fault I can think of though, is that we don't know if Blood Magic is something that can be used to give sacrifices to the Great Shepard. The part where Drogo is on MMDs alter, I can understand that, however the Blood Magic aspect of it is something that I'm not sure of. Also, Dany was told that Death would have been cleaner in the first place, and even though this was a vague warning, she knew the price and should have known Drogo wouldn't come back the same as before. That was the lie that Dany told herself, that it would work when she already knew death would be cleaner. I think all of the rocks flying and dothraki fighting and not wanting to help Dany, was a result of some of them being pissed off that she let MMD touch their Khal in the first place. The initial bandaging was one thing, and even that didn't work out. But to let her perform blood magic on their Khal was the last straw for some of the dothraki.

[Lady Woodland]

I just posted on another thread considering if MMD foresaw the whole thing - there's just so many variables of what might have been.

Maybe MMD knew about tSwMtW prophecy & was able to manipulate it all with a bit of luck & timing. Rhaego might have actually been her initial intended victim all along just by offering her knowledge of the secrets of the "bloody bed".

if I remember that's one of the reason's Dany wanted MMD close by, her time was near. Although I doubt she saw the the dragon's hatching & Dany's real power happening.

[Maester Pedant]

It might have been intended as such by MMD.

I wonder, though, if the Great Shepard, the god of a notoriously peaceful people, would be interested in human sacrifice.

[Waters Gate]

There deffinatly are some interresting observations made here i agree. There is something to this idea of her eventually making Drogo a sacrifice, she deffinatly had the motive for it and there seem to be some hints to religious ceremony.

Not sure what it exactly changes for me regarding her chatacter though, it seems fairly clear that MMD had always wanted Drogon and Dany's child dead, the way in which she did it matters maybe somewhat less as there is few legic to the magic she uses anyway. I mean either she wanted to kill drogon and Dany's child or not, and she used blood magic or the Shepherd's faith for it, in the end it roughly boils down to the same, in truth i know an understand as few of blood magic as that other faith.

MMD might have been the kind of person that knew all sorts of magic from different religions or cults. In that respect the details of the magic are less clear anyways, much more clear is the effective result.

What intrigues me more about MMD is to what extend she might have been a catalyst for allowing Dany to hatch her dragons. it's kinda as if she is part of the recipe that allows the dragons to hatch, but the real question is why for me. if because she is a maegi, what makes her so potent and why her still really?

[Hanzo Hasashi]

ahhh nice catch/theory!

[Lost Melnibonean]

There deffinatly are some interresting observations made here i agree. There is something to this idea of her eventually making Drogo a sacrifice, she deffinatly had the motive for it and there seem to be some hints to religious ceremony.

Not sure what it exactly changes for me regarding her chatacter though, it seems fairly clear that MMD had always wanted Drogon and Dany's child dead, the way in which she did it matters maybe somewhat less as there is few legic to the magic she uses anyway. I mean either she wanted to kill drogon and Dany's child or not, and she used blood magic or the Shepherd's faith for it, in the end it roughly boils down to the same, in truth i know an understand as few of blood magic as that other faith.

MMD might have been the kind of person that knew all sorts of magic from different religions or cults. In that respect the details of the magic are less clear anyways, much more clear is the effective result.

What intrigues me more about MMD is to what extend she might have been a catalyst for allowing Dany to hatch her dragons. it's kinda as if she is part of the recipe that allows the dragons to hatch, but the real question is why for me. if because she is a maegi, what makes her so potent and why her still really?

A really hot fire (Drogo's pyre) and blood (MMD) seem to have been required to hatch the wee dragons but I don't think MMD herself was necessary. Her treason for Drogo's and Rhaego's blood for the Great Shepherd did fulfill part of a certain prophecy though...

[Caerl Targaryen]

This is a really good theory. And the evidence seems to back it up fairly well too. Nice job!

[ummester]

It might have been intended as such by MMD.

I wonder, though, if the Great Shepard, the god of a notoriously peaceful people, would be interested in human sacrifice.

I didn't think The Great Shepard was.

I agree with the OP that there is a Great Shepard inference in MMRs action's re Drogo - but read it kind of the other way around. Initially, MMR was trying to bring Drogo into the fold, help him, tell him to pray etc.

Drogo's wound likely went septic purely because he didn't follow the doctors orders. This caused MMR to realize she couldn't bring Drogo into the fold and she changed tact. From this point on MMR knew that Rhaego would be a threat to the world and decided to sacrifice Rhaego - not Drogo.

[The King in The Mount]

It might have been intended as such by MMD.

I wonder, though, if the Great Shepard, the god of a notoriously peaceful people, would be interested in human sacrifice.

The children of the forest are supposed to be peaceful and made blood sacrifices to the weirwood trees

[aryagonnakill#2]

LM, I agree MMD wasn't necessary to hatch the dragons, I believe she was necessary for Dany to survive the fire though. Only death can pay for life.

[oursisthefury69]

2 kings to wake the dragon should be the only thing neccessary for this theory

[nastydream]

Great theory,I think it's very plausible!

[Lost Melnibonean]

Something else to consider...

About my question. Melisandre, I hope I am not butchering the spelling, really seems to be evil to me. She births shadow babies, and talks very much of blood. This seems to be blood magic to me. Perhaps its not.

But if it is, then is it evil, for Mirri was evil. Or just a vengeful bitch like the terriorists.

Mirri Maz Duur considered herself a hero, and no doubt Melisandre feels the same. What they are in truth... well, that's for each reader to determine for himself. I don't intend to make it easy.

SSM, http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/ssm/category/Heraldry/P540

[oursisthefury69]

Something else to consider...

SSM, http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/ssm/category/Heraldry/P540

While your tossing down things to consider, you may want to consider my post 2 comments ago, as you have over 8000 posts and are even in the middle of now discussing Melisandre, and continue to construct this theory without mention of the 2 kings to wake the dragon notion, which is easily the most important thing in all 5 books when applied to a conversation of MMD's motiviations/purposes/ultimate effect. So ether you entirely missed that bit in the series while still posting as much as you have, or are going out of your wa to ignore the comment and introduction of the premise on some sort of spiteful grounds of being able to convey your concept without said quote

[Lost Melnibonean]

While your tossing down things to consider, you may want to consider my post 2 comments ago, as you have over 8000 posts and are even in the middle of now discussing Melisandre, and continue to construct this theory without mention of the 2 kings to wake the dragon notion, which is easily the most important thing in all 5 books when applied to a conversation of MMD's motiviations/purposes/ultimate effect. So ether you entirely missed that bit in the series while still posting as much as you have, or are going out of your wa to ignore the comment and introduction of the premise on some sort of spiteful grounds of being able to convey your concept without said quote

Oh my. No wonder yours is the fury. I don't have a problem with the two kings to wake the dragon idea being applied here. But I don't think Mirri Maz Duur was trying to wake a dragon.