Was there any foreshadowing for Aegon living?

[RoamingRonin]

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Bronn complained of the gloom when he arrived, and insisted on a fire in the hearth. It was blazing by the time Varys made his appearance. "Where have you been?" Tyrion demanded.

"About the king's business, my sweet lord."

"Ah, yes, the king," Tyrion muttered. "My nephew is not fit to sit a privy, let alone the Iron Throne."

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"All this is obvious," said Tyrion.

"The only puzzle is what you might have offered for his allegiance. The prince is a sentimental man, and he still mourns his sister Elia and her sweet babe."

"My father once told me that a lord never lets sentiment get in the way of ambition . . . and it happens we have an empty seat on the small council, now that Lord Janos has taken the black."

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"People have called me a halfman too, yet I think the gods have been kinder to me. I am small, my legs are twisted, and women do not look upon me with any great yearning . . . yet I'm still a man. Shae is not the first to grace my bed, and one day I may take a wife and sire a son. If the gods are good, he'll look like his uncle and think like his father. You have no such hope to sustain you. Dwarfs are a jape of the gods . . . but men make eunuchs. Who cut you, Varys? When and why? Who are you, truly?"

The eunuch's smile never flickered, but his eyes glittered with something that was not laughter. "You are kind to ask, my lord, but my tale is long and sad, and we have treasons to discuss." He drew a parchment from the sleeve of his robe. "The master of the King's Galley White Hart plots to slip anchor three days hence to offer his sword and ship to Lord Stannis."

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"In the streets, they call it the Red Messenger," Varys said. "They say it comes as a herald before a king, to warn of fire and blood to follow." The eunuch rubbed his powdered hands together. "May I leave you with a bit of a riddle, Lord Tyrion?"

It's very subtle but the foreshadowing is there...

[Lost Melnibonean]

1 hour ago, RoamingRonin said:

It's very subtle but the foreshadowing is there...

Excellent citations. But I don't see the connection to the Tyrion-Varys exchange. 

[Bloodmane]

We ("the readers" as a group) somehow expected to be a living Aegon somewhere - just read a few discusions from this forum predating the release of the Feast. The smashed-head detail was the most invoked argument supporting this opinion. It's interesting that after the Feast the fAegon hypotesis gained much acceptance.

[aryagonnakill#2]

There is no foreshadowing for Aegon being Rhaegars son that I am aware of.  Only of someone claiming to be Aegon.  Along with this, there is definite foreshadowing of a fake.  When Jon talks about the Iron Bank he mentions princes springing up when people don't pay back their loans.

[The King in The Mount]

9 hours ago, Rattenhoofd said:

In my book it only counts as foreshadowing when it's actually reasonably possible for readers to deduce something from it.

 

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"Surely you did not think I'd forgotten about your sweet innocent, my lord? The queen most certainly has not."

"No," Ned pleaded, his voice cracking. "Varys, gods have mercy, do as you like with me, but leave my daughter out of your schemes. Sansa's no more than a child."

"Rhaenys was a child too. Prince Rhaegar's daughter. A precious little thing, younger than your girls. She had a small black kitten she called Balerion, did you know? I always wondered what happened to him. Rhaenys liked to pretend he was the true Balerion, the Black Dread of old, but I imagine the Lannisters taught her the difference between a kitten and a dragon quick enough, the day they broke down her door." Varys gave a long weary sigh, the sigh of a man who carried all the sadness of the world in a sack upon his shoulders. 

Varys doesn't mention Aegon, only Rhaenys.

Also:

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"If one Hand can die, why not a second?" replied the man with the accent and the forked yellow beard. "You have danced the dance before, my friend." He was no one Arya had ever seen before, she was certain of it. Grossly fat, yet he seemed to walk lightly, carrying his weight on the balls of his feet as a water dancer might. His rings glimmered in the torchlight, red-gold and pale silver, crusted with rubies, sapphires, slitted yellow tiger eyes. Every finger wore a ring; some had two.

"Before is not now, and this Hand is not the other," the scarred man said as they stepped out into the hall. Still as stone, Arya told herself, quiet as a shadow. Blinded by the blaze of their own torch, they did not see her pressed flat against the stone, only a few feet away.

The "You have danced the dance before, my friend" could be read as "Kill Ned like you did Jon Arryn" OR "Fake his death like you did with Jon Connington"
The same with "Before is not now, and this Hand is not the other,". It could mean "Ned wouldn't agree to flee like Connington". This is at least foreshadowing for Griff (and by proxy, Young Griff)

[Young Nan]

The first time I read ADWD I thought he had totally pulled fAegon from thin air, and I didn't like it, but on subsequent re-reads, I became a big supporter of the "fAegon is a Blackfyre" theory.  He was foreshadowed, just in very subtle ways: 

• Dead baby Aegon having a smashed, unrecognizable face
• Dany's visions in the House of the Undying: the "mummers dragon" and "slayer of lies".  
• Illyrio's statement to Tyrion while on the road to meet Griff:  "black or red, a dragon is still a dragon".  
• The Golden Company's broken contract - their word is gold, and they've never done it before, but Ilyrio says "some contracts are writ in ink and some in blood".  Their original mission was supporting the Blackfyre rebels, so it's really the only thing that would make them break a contract. 
• Illyrio tells Tyrion that he expected Dany to die on the Dothraki sea.  If he's such a big Targaryen supporter, as we're made to think, then why would he allow Dany and Viserys to spend years as beggars, and then place them in a situation that they were unlikely to survive?  This means they had a backup plan, namely Aegon.  
• The dragon sign at the inn- it was black, but washed up years later having turned red with rust

All of the above foreshadowed Aegon's coming.  

[BalerionTheCat]

A cloth dragon, amidst a cheering crowd, likely a fake Targaryen, in Daenerys visions in the House of the Undying. Illirio and Varys initial support of Viserys, obviously doomed from the start, having much more sense if someone else is expected to win the Throne. Aegon's corpse, with the head conveniently unrecognizable, keeping open the possibility of Aegon surviving the sack of KL... or someone else pretending to be him.

Yes, Aegon, true or false, was hinted from the beginning.

[Lord Varys]

The potential of that plot certainly was there from the beginning. Anyone suggesting Aegon's (alleged) return only reading AGoT would have had very little to go on, of course, essentially only the manner of his death and thus the potential of a return. But then, even a smashed in face doesn't necessarily make an identification impossible. There are other remarkable and potentially recognizable body features. I certainly think that I'd recognize a child I knew intimately even if its head had been smashed in.

And as long as we didn't know that something like that also happened during/after the Sack it is really tricky to predict a potential return.

Usually people/bodies are missing when impostors show up pretending to be this or that dead royal/noble. In Aegon's case there was clearly a body and possibly even a funeral of sorts. That wasn't the case with Prince Daeron the Daring in the series, or the Princes in the Tower in real world history.

The important point in AGoT that can be seen as a hint that Aegon is out there is that Varys and Illyrio might be up to something else and/or support somebody else which is indicated by the fact that they don't seem to be backing Viserys full-heartedly while still doing everything in their power to arrange the Dothraki invasion. They clearly have a plan for Westeros.

[finger]

I ask you, if Aegon were dead, why leave the doubt? He has to be alive.

Different questions are who or where he is. I don't know, but I could make risk some educated guesses.  I think Marwin is the link to the facts between ToJ and Starfall back inthe RR. It's he who'll reveal Jon's identity and bring up Aegon. Among other reasons, the rest of the possible witnesses are passing on. I also think that Varys' Aegon is the mummer's dragon, not the real one. This one might be the truth that Quaithe tells Dany she'll find in Asshai. Grrm has left it so obscured that we can enjoy guessing, or beyond the shadows, if you like better.

[BalerionTheCat]

14 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

There are other remarkable and potentially recognizable body features. I certainly think that I'd recognize a child I knew intimately even if its head had been smashed in.

That is one of the reasons I believe Aegon is fake. The true Aegon died in the sack of KL. If not Pycelle, at least one maester or nurse should know enough the baby the recognize a fraud. A sneaky bastard like Pycelle, working for Tywin, would not leave the slightest doubt unanswered.
The body had to be legitimate.

4 hours ago, finger said:

I ask you, if Aegon were dead, why leave the doubt? He has to be alive.

We, readers, don't need the doubt. But the in-story, characters need this doubt.

• If Aegon was dead, his corpse identified beyond any doubt. His return, real or fake would be impossible.
  Anyone pretending would be plain stupid.
• If Aegon body was not found. His mother and sister dead, but no word of the boy.Some would assume he escaped. And someone pretending to be Aegon, would be much more likely legitimate than in the current situation.

So I would conclude, the scheme GRRM used to dissimulate Aegon true fate lends much more in the fake than in the legitimate direction. If GRRM wanted a true Aegon, he would more likely have used the 2nd alternative. But anyway, the full scheme was already hinted in the 1st book.

[Lord Varys]

17 minutes ago, BalerionTheCat said:

That is one of the reasons I believe Aegon is fake. The true Aegon died in the sack of KL. If not Pycelle, at least one maester or nurse should know enough the baby the recognize a fraud. A sneaky bastard like Pycelle, working for Tywin, would not leave the slightest doubt unanswered.
The body had to be legitimate.

That point only hits home if Tywin allowed anyone a closer look on the bodies. I mean, did he have any reason to doubt that Aegon wasn't Aegon regardless of the way Gregor had killed him? And why would he even care? He wanted to demonstrate his allegiance to Robert with this whole thing and would thus not have cared all that much whether he had killed the real Aegon or a fake Aegon. All he wanted was to show the world that he was done with the Targaryens. Killing some guy that could have been Prince Aegon would also have accomplished that.

Not to mention that the need to identify the body would have revealed to more people how dreadful the children looked. Not to mention that it would have caused doubt about the identity of the boy if somebody had been needed to identify him. Such things easily backfire, and confirm people that the real prince is still alive.

Just compare it to the Boltons - they know for a fact that Bran and Rickon are alive, but claiming they are dead helps spread the tale that they are dead, and the more time passes the more difficult will it be for them to reclaim their birthright. In addition, they have a fake Arya playing the role of the real Arya which enables them to counter any claim by the real Arya should she ever show up.

It would be the same for the real Aegon - he would have great difficulties to prove his identity even if he is the real Aegon, and Tywin certainly is counting on that (if he ever had doubts that he has gotten the real prince - which I don't think he had).

Pycelle certainly wouldn't have known Aegon all that intimately because the boy was born on Dragonstone. But there certainly would have been servants of Elia, Rhaegar, and Aerys who may have been able to identify the child. But then, would they have told the Lannisters if the child wasn't the real boy? Actually, I don't think so. They would have told them what they wanted to hear, and what they wanted to hear would have been that the boy was, in fact, Aegon. Just as the Boltons wanted to hear from Theon and Tywin that Jeyne was Arya.

The simple fact is that the people in-universe don't care as much about royal and noble blood as some of the readers seem to be doing. Appearance is what matters, not the actual 'royal blood'. Cersei's children have royal blood as long as the king recognizes them as such, and Jeyne will remain 'Arya Stark' as long as powerful people think that this is a good idea. Whoever Aegon really is isn't very important, nor is it important whether the real prince died. The important part is that plays the role of the prince and king as best he can, and then he'll be the king.

The fact that Jon Snow was raised as a bastard rather than a prince will become a huge problem for him. It is easily to see how and why people eventually forsake a doomed pretender/king and suddenly believe he is bastard-born or a fake, but the same mechanism shouldn't work as easily to promote a Stark bastard who looks like a Stark to a Targaryen king. Bastards usually have to be recognized by their parents. If that doesn't happen then they are essentially nothing (which apparently was the case for the overwhelming majority of the unrecognized but legitimized bastards of Aegon IV).

[BalerionTheCat]

36 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That point only hits home if Tywin allowed anyone a closer look on the bodies. I mean, did he have any reason to doubt that Aegon wasn't Aegon regardless of the way Gregor had killed him? And why would he even care? He wanted to demonstrate his allegiance to Robert with this whole thing and would thus not have cared all that much whether he had killed the real Aegon or a fake Aegon. All he wanted was to show the world that he was done with the Targaryens. Killing some guy that could have been Prince Aegon would also have accomplished that.

Not to mention that the need to identify the body would have revealed to more people how dreadful the children looked. Not to mention that it would have caused doubt about the identity of the boy if somebody had been needed to identify him. Such things easily backfire, and confirm people that the real prince is still alive.

It was good for Tywin that anyone was believing Aegon dead. And he would insure that. The display in the throne room was for that. That doesn't mean you don't want to know the truth for yourself. Indeed, if Aegon was fake, and it was discovered, it could have remained a secret. Not very likely IMO. We don't know how many people saw the bodies before they were disposed of. Nothing suggests there were few. At least, there was enough time for many nobles to assemble in the throne room.

Elia and Rhaegar were dead. Their servants would have to find a new way of living, a new employment. Sooner or later they would have talked. If they kept silent, it could have been less by faithfulness to their former employer than for fear of elimination.

I said, it is "one of the reasons", there are others. None are definite proof. But they are all in favor of fake. We have just Varys and Illirio words for the legitimate. And their words are nearly worth a charge too.

[FireflySaint]

The only real foreshadowing I can think of is the baby's head getting totaled, but that seems pretty lazy and hardly counts if you ask me. I think most of the foreshadowing centered around "Aegon" suggests that he's a fake and a possible Blackfyre. Him being a Blackfyre would be such a lovely twist and I really hope that's the path GRRM will be taking with him. Too bad he's going to die terribly. 

[SFDanny]

It depends on what counts as foreshadowing. From the books themselves you have hints like the unrecognizable state of Aegon's head and the growth of information over the course of the series that there was rift between Aerys and Rhaegar, such as when we learn how Aerys used Elia and her children as hostages against Dornish betrayal. These foreshadow the reveal of the pisswater prince story about smuggling Aegon out. The biggest foreshadow outside the books was George's refusal to flat out say Aegon was dead. He would tell people Rhaenys was dead, but refused to say Aegon was dead or not. Many of us took that to mean he might be alive and spun theories about who could be Aegon. I argued with Ran about how we couldn't rule out the Darkstar as a candidate for a hidden Aegon until Ran finally asked George how old Ser Gerold was - his late twenties age ruled out that possibility. The main takeaway is that George knew someone claiming to be Aegon was coming back in the story - true or not.

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, BalerionTheCat said:

We don't know how many people saw the bodies before they were disposed of. Nothing suggests there were few. At least, there was enough time for many nobles to assemble in the throne room.

Actually, we have a pretty good impression how many people saw Aegon up very close. If even Kevan didn't a good look on Aegon - and he did not, according to the Epilogue - there is a pretty good chance that pretty much no one else did. The only people being close to Aegon and Rhaenys prior to presentation to Robert would have been Gregor, his men (if he had any with him when he killed Elia and the child), and Tywin's men who took possession of the bodies.

But we don't know if anyone had a good chance looking on the corpses after the presentation. We don't know if Robert took possession of the bodies thereafter or what happened to them. Presumably they were quietly cremated quickly thereafter to get rid of them.

The idea that anyone would have inquired whether the children were the royal children is a little bit far-fetched. Lord Tywin had presented them as the royal children, and no one would have contradicted Lord Tywin on that without good reason. Kevan says Rhaenys was recognizably the Princess Rhaenys but that doesn't mean anyone actually checked her identity. He (and possibly others) simply recognized the corpse by sight.

As to the servants:

Well, I didn't mean to say they would have been forced to lie, rather that they would have said whatever they thought Tywin or Robert wanted to hear, not what the actual facts. Neither Tywin nor Robert would have anyone forced to identify Aegon unless either had a good reason to suspect the dead boy may have been an impostor. So they would have been inclined to lay such suspicions of the mighty to rest - especially if they had realized that the questioners actually wanted to believe that Aegon was dead.

In addition, it would have been rather easy to lie if you had your doubts about the child being the real Aegon, and would probably have done so if you were loyal to either the Targaryens or Elia Martell.

In general, my point just was that the argument that Aegon must be real because nobody recognized his corpse as fake doesn't hit home. It completely depends on there being such an investigation, Tywin/Robert not being already convinced Aegon is dead, and people actually being there who could have identified a real Aegon because they were close to the child. And that point actually isn't clear yet. We don't know what happened to Elia's servants and the Targaryens servants in Maegor's Holdfast, but they could have been killed by Gregor/Lorch and their people, too, or they might have been able to flee in the confusion, only showing up long after the children had been laid to rest.

[BalerionTheCat]

27 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

In general, my point just was that the argument that Aegon must be real because nobody recognized his corpse as fake doesn't hit home. It completely depends on there being such an investigation, Tywin/Robert not being already convinced Aegon is dead, and people actually being there who could have identified a real Aegon because they were close to the child.

My point was, and I will remain on that, that either Varys found a really good match, in health and look in Flea Bottom, and at short notice. Or it was somewhat unlikely the substitution was not detected. I will not risk figures, but IMO much less than 50% of chance of deception. In any other story, would it be the truth, I would find the writing sloppy, without something more backing the plot.

[Lord Varys]

29 minutes ago, BalerionTheCat said:

My point was, and I will remain on that, that either Varys found a really good match, in health and look in Flea Bottom, and at short notice. Or it was somewhat unlikely the substitution was not detected. I will not risk figures, but IMO much less than 50% of chance of deception. In any other story, would it be the truth, I would find the writing sloppy, without something more backing the plot.

Well, one asks whether the Pisswater Prince story really was 'the truth' behind the 'true story' behind the baby swap. Do you actually take that at face value just because Aegon was told that story?

If Varys and Illyrio actually swapped the children then they most likely would have used a Lysene slave child with silver-gold hair and purple eyes actually resembling a Targaryen child with Valyrian features, not some child from Flea Bottom. But the story of a poor beggar's child dying instead of the royal prince actually looks as it it was part of a moral lesson. We have to see this in context. Aegon tells Tyrion the story, not Connington, Haldon, Lemore, or Illyrio. He most likely repeats the story either Illyrio or Connington told him at a young age when they first explained to him who he actually was. And you most likely carefully craft such a story to kill two birds with one stone.

Aegon believes now that some innocent Targaryen subject died for him. The point obviously being that he is now indebted to the smallfolk represented by that child, and his duty now is the ensure that stuff like that never happens again.

In addition, this is a much better tale to tell to a boy than that you actually had some of your mutilated future birds play the role of Prince Aegon.

If Varys swapped the children, he most certainly had a very convincing impostor at hand, not the blond baby next door...

[Lord Varys]

double post

[Lord Varys]

triple post

[purple-eyes]

IMHO grrm did not do very well in this aegon swapping plot. 

Varys can not predict mountain will kill aegon by making him unrecognizable. He can not predict they will kill elia too. 

Mountain's action came too conveniently so aegon is definitely fake.