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Varys didn't lie to Kevan


Falcon2909

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Some people think that Varys lied to Kevan by saying that Aegon is the real deal.   

However, this is not true. Why would Varys lie? No one else is in the room other than his little birds (who are mute). This gives no reason for Varys to lie.

 

BUT

 

I do think Aegon is fake. Though, Varys doesn't know this. He thinks Aegon is real. Because Ilyrio told him so. So, Illyrio lied to Varys that Aegon is real.

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Varys was the one who did or didn't smuggle the child out of KL. If he doesn't know, nobody knows. Unless Illyrio lost the real Aegon and kinda panic bought a new one so Varys wouldn't get mad. Which, admittedly, would be hilarious

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1 minute ago, Sondre said:

Varys was the one who did or didn't smuggle the child out of KL. If he doesn't know, nobody knows. Unless Illyrio lost the real Aegon and kinda panic bought a new one so Varys wouldn't get mad. Which, admittedly, would be hilarious

Nah I'm sure he didn't. It's another lie.

Illyrio did lose the real Aegon and so he replaced him with some Lyseni babe

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33 minutes ago, Sondre said:

Unless Illyrio lost the real Aegon and kinda panic bought a new one so Varys wouldn't get mad. Which, admittedly, would be hilarious

No you have got it backwards Illyrio thought he lied to Varys but Varys died long ago and its an FM playing Varys.  The FM got board of living double lives but nodbody leaves the FM so the next best thing was to play a spy master that way he was pretending to be a guy who's job involved pretending to be other people.

 

Very cathartic for the FM

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The speech which Varys gives to Kevan reads like a lie of omission.

Quote

“I thought the crossbow fitting. You shared so much with Lord Tywin, why not that? Your niece will think the Tyrells had you murdered, mayhaps with the connivance of the Imp. The Tyrells will suspect her. Someone somewhere will find a way to blame the Dornishmen. Doubt, division, and mistrust will eat the very ground beneath your boy king, whilst Aegon raises his banner above Storm’s End and the lords of the realm gather round him.”

 

“Aegon?” For a moment he did not understand. Then he remembered. A babe swaddled in a crimson cloak, the cloth stained with his blood and brains. “Dead. He’s dead.”

 

“No.” The eunuch’s voice seemed deeper. “He is here. Aegon has been shaped for rule since before he could walk. He has been trained in arms, as befits a knight to be, but that was not the end of his education. He reads and writes, he speaks several tongues, he has studied history and law and poetry. A septa has instructed him in the mysteries of the Faith since he was old enough to understand them. He has lived with fisherfolk, worked with his hands, swum in rivers and mended nets and learned to wash his own clothes at need. He can fish and cook and bind up a wound, he knows what it is like to be hungry, to be hunted, to be afraid. Tommen has been taught that kingship is his right. Aegon knows that kingship is his duty, that a king must put his people first, and live and rule for them.”

2

 Firstly Varys brags about how clever he is being in killing him. Pointing out how each party will assume the other is culpable. Rubbing Kevan's nose in how his death will affect the Lannister dynasty. By further destabilising the alliance with House Tyrell. 

But then Varys goes on to tell Kevan that Aegon will raise his banners above Storms End. Now. Varys does not at any time tell Kevan that Aegon is Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar & Elia.  Kevan says that he is dead, which means Varys now knows his goal of Kevan assuming he means Rhaegars son is achieved. But Varys still does not confirm this Aegon is Rhaegar & Elia's son, he simply answers that No he is here.  And he is! The boy called Aegon who will raise his banners above Storms end is here. Varys thrives on telling misleading truths. Just look at how he handles Ned's search for Lord Jon Arryn's killer. He tells Ned a true story about Hugh of the Vale, Which on the surface appears to imply this boy is the killer. But Whilst the tale is true Hugh did not kill Jon Arryn, LF however did and when we apply the story Varys tells Ned to him we see that it is also true.  A boy who arrived in KL with the Arryn household, and owes all that he has to Lord Arryn, that remained after Lysa took her household back to the Vale. And there are other occasions where whilst not technically lying Varys seeks to mislead. 

Varys has just demonstrated that he wishes to rub his outmanoeuvring of the Lannisters in Kevan's face. And he's doing it again by allowing Kevan to make the assumption that Aegon is Rhaegars so, because it makes it all for nought, If the dynasty his brother fought so hard to establish is crumbling and the Targaryen heir has returned then the last 17 years has been for nothing! Varys elaborates on how perfect Aegon will be as a King, again to run Kevan's face in it.  Pointing out how much better his charge is than Tommen in this regard.  

Yes, he goes on to kill Kevan, so why lie? But he has not lied, and he says an awful lot to Kevan which makes no sense if his purpose is merely to get him out of the way so Cersei can implode some more. I suspect that what Varys says to Kevan is in fact what he'd have liked to have said to Tywin. After all, it is Tywin who Varys knew personally and he says at the start that he purposefully chose a crossbow to emulate Tywin's death and that the brothers shared so much. So he is likening Kevan to Tywin and placing him in his brother's role here. 

The next clue to the lie of omission is that Varys has also killed Maester Pycelle. who is possibly nay probably the only person alive in the realm who could confirm that the bloodied corpse presented to Robert was indeed Aegon Targaryen; son and heir of Rhaegar. As he was the boy's physician and would have known the child's body by sight.  And birthmarks, freckling, moles, the shape of his feet, what his weight was, what side his penis fell on, if he had an inny or an outty, etc.  

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46 minutes ago, elder brother jonothor dar said:

No you have got it backwards Illyrio thought he lied to Varys but Varys died long ago and its an FM playing Varys.  The FM got board of living double lives but nodbody leaves the FM so the next best thing was to play a spy master that way he was pretending to be a guy who's job involved pretending to be other people.

 

Very cathartic for the FM

I believe you have the outline, but you completely forgot the innards of the story. The FM, now disillusioned with his own life, succumbs to the stress of having such a hard job as Spymaster is. This, complete with the fact that out FM is a family father of two loving girls, along with the horribly treatment of the little birds, makes the FM have a breakdown. Now he honestly believes that he is Varys, and has through Bloodravens magic acquired his memories too. So in all ways physically and mentally he is identical to Varys. It's just a nice little piece of world building from GRMM

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35 minutes ago, Wolf of The Wall said:

I really don't get it "Why would Varys lie? There was no one in the room besides his little birds" thing. We were there. We readers. Why would GRRM spoil such twist by revealing like that.

That's too meta for this book series. Character motivations aren't influenced by the readers in ASOIAF.

As for whether Varys lied or told the truth. I believe he told the truth to Kevan. I don't think it was a scheme on his part or anything like that. He didn't say it for Kevan, he said it for himself. He revealed a decade long scheme that he kept secret from everyone but presumably Illyrio and now he has a chance to tell it to someone else, as the plan is coming into fruition. It would be fitting that this scheming, calculating spider who never showed any real emotion finally unburdens himself to an enemy he respects.

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4 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

 

The speech which Varys gives to Kevan reads like a lie of omission.

 Firstly Varys brags about how clever he is being in killing him. Pointing out how each party will assume the other is culpable. Rubbing Kevan's nose in how his death will affect the Lannister dynasty. By further destabilising the alliance with House Tyrell. 

But then Varys goes on to tell Kevan that Aegon will raise his banners above Storms End. Now. Varys does not at any time tell Kevan that Aegon is Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar & Elia.  Kevan says that he is dead, which means Varys now knows his goal of Kevan assuming he means Rhaegars son is achieved. But Varys still does not confirm this Aegon is Rhaegar & Elia's son, he simply answers that No he is here.  And he is! The boy called Aegon who will raise his banners above Storms end is here. Varys thrives on telling misleading truths. Just look at how he handles Ned's search for Lord Jon Arryn's killer. He tells Ned a true story about Hugh of the Vale, Which on the surface appears to imply this boy is the killer. But Whilst the tale is true Hugh did not kill Jon Arryn, LF however did and when we apply the story Varys tells Ned to him we see that it is also true.  A boy who arrived in KL with the Arryn household, and owes all that he has to Lord Arryn, that remained after Lysa took her household back to the Vale. And there are other occasions where whilst not technically lying Varys seeks to mislead. 

Varys has just demonstrated that he wishes to rub his outmanoeuvring of the Lannisters in Kevan's face. And he's doing it again by allowing Kevan to make the assumption that Aegon is Rhaegars so, because it makes it all for nought, If the dynasty his brother fought so hard to establish is crumbling and the Targaryen heir has returned then the last 17 years has been for nothing! Varys elaborates on how perfect Aegon will be as a King, again to run Kevan's face in it.  Pointing out how much better his charge is than Tommen in this regard.  

Yes, he goes on to kill Kevan, so why lie? But he has not lied, and he says an awful lot to Kevan which makes no sense if his purpose is merely to get him out of the way so Cersei can implode some more. I suspect that what Varys says to Kevan is in fact what he'd have liked to have said to Tywin. After all, it is Tywin who Varys knew personally and he says at the start that he purposefully chose a crossbow to emulate Tywin's death and that the brothers shared so much. So he is likening Kevan to Tywin and placing him in his brother's role here. 

The next clue to the lie of omission is that Varys has also killed Maester Pycelle. who is possibly nay probably the only person alive in the realm who could confirm that the bloodied corpse presented to Robert was indeed Aegon Targaryen; son and heir of Rhaegar. As he was the boy's physician and would have known the child's body by sight.  And birthmarks, freckling, moles, the shape of his feet, what his weight was, what side his penis fell on, if he had an inny or an outty, etc.  

That is very good, explains it all perfectly.

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20 minutes ago, MostlyMoody said:

That's too meta for this book series. Character motivations aren't influenced by the readers in ASOIAF.

As for whether Varys lied or told the truth. I believe he told the truth to Kevan. I don't think it was a scheme on his part or anything like that. He didn't say it for Kevan, he said it for himself. He revealed a decade long scheme that he kept secret from everyone but presumably Illyrio and now he has a chance to tell it to someone else, as the plan is coming into fruition. It would be fitting that this scheming, calculating spider who never showed any real emotion finally unburdens himself to an enemy he respects.

 

Firstly, you do know these characters are not real people, right? I mean as much as each character has their own personality profile, It is one created by an author, he's called George R R martin. And as such everything which the characters say, do and discover is done so in order to tell a story to us the reader. A story which GRRM wishes to tell, he has a certain style of writing which is very immersive. But non the less everything in the books is there for the reader to evaluate. Varys is acting on GRRM's whim. His motivations are that GRRM wants us; the reader to read Varys's little speech, and it is then up to us to interpret why GRRM wrote that. 

There is a reason Villains reveal their plans to their victims. It is what we call plot facilitation. ie: the author has a bunch of information which they need to reveal to the reader in order to facilitate the plot going forward and the confession to the soon to be dead is a trope because it gives the creator of the story an opportunity to info dump for the reader/viewer whilst retaining secrecy from the other characters. 

Varys's doing this here has been done in such a manner that it is in keeping with his character profile. IE: he tells the truth, but misdirects the listener. It reveals more about Varys as a character than it does plot points though. So far Varys has remained quite aloof to us as readers. Because we don't have a direct POV from him, and his character profile is one of great secrecy and an astute player of the game. No one whom we have met in KL or Westeros knows his motivations only Illyrio. So; how does the author begin dropping breadcrumbs for his readers? Well here he has done just that, and it is hot on the heels of Illyrio letting small snippets slip to Tyrion in pentos too.  

So through this Epilogue, we learn Varys has strong feelings for Tywin, and not lovely dovey ones. He specifically targets his brother and uses the same murder weapon which was used on Tywin. telling us he thinks Kevan can be a Tywin stand in for him, by saying they share so much. he's equating Kevan with Tywin in our minds. I get the feeling Varys wishes he could have killed Tywin himself, but that they needed Tyrion for something, so they bought his loyalty by gifting him his freedom and his father, baited him with Shae's perceived betrayal and simultaneously burnt his bridges for him with his siblings and uncle & Aunt etc.  So after letting us know Varys specifically disliked Tywin Lannister, to the extent he would gloat to his brother about his plan to bring down their dynasty. All that they had worked for these past 17 years.  We also learn how Varys views Aegon, and if we as readers have paid attention this view does not align with the petulant boy Tyrion met on the Shy Maid. Which predicts trouble for Varys & Illyrio's carefully laid out plan. 

There are other snippets which hint at Varys's motivations and his and Illyrio's plans. You just have to read closely and connect the dots.  

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10 minutes ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

Firstly, you do know these characters are not real people, right? I mean as much as each character has their own personality profile, It is one created by an author, he's called George R R martin. And as such everything which the characters say, do and discover is done so in order to tell a story to us the reader. A story which GRRM wishes to tell, he has a certain style of writing which is very immersive. But non the less everything in the books is there for the reader to evaluate. Varys is acting on GRRM's whim. His motivations are that GRRM wants us; the reader to read Varys's little speech, and it is then up to us to interpret why GRRM wrote that. 

There is a reason Villains reveal their plans to their victims. It is what we call plot facilitation. ie: the author has a bunch of information which they need to reveal to the reader in order to facilitate the plot going forward and the confession to the soon to be dead is a trope because it gives the creator of the story an opportunity to info dump for the reader/viewer whilst retaining secrecy from the other characters. 

Varys's doing this here has been done in such a manner that it is in keeping with his character profile. IE: he tells the truth, but misdirects the listener. It reveals more about Varys as a character than it does plot points though. So far Varys has remained quite aloof to us as readers. Because we don't have a direct POV from him, and his character profile is one of great secrecy and an astute player of the game. No one whom we have met in KL or Westeros knows his motivations only Illyrio. So; how does the author begin dropping breadcrumbs for his readers? Well here he has done just that, and it is hot on the heels of Illyrio letting small snippets slip to Tyrion in pentos too.  

So through this Epilogue, we learn Varys has strong feelings for Tywin, and not lovely dovey ones. He specifically targets his brother and uses the same murder weapon which was used on Tywin. telling us he thinks Kevan can be a Tywin stand in for him, by saying they share so much. he's equating Kevan with Tywin in our minds. I get the feeling Varys wishes he could have killed Tywin himself, but that they needed Tyrion for something, so they bought his loyalty by gifting him his freedom and his father, baited him with Shae's perceived betrayal and simultaneously burnt his bridges for him with his siblings and uncle & Aunt etc.  So after letting us know Varys specifically disliked Tywin Lannister, to the extent he would gloat to his brother about his plan to bring down their dynasty. All that they had worked for these past 17 years.  We also learn how Varys views Aegon, and if we as readers have paid attention this view does not align with the petulant boy Tyrion met on the Shy Maid. Which predicts trouble for Varys & Illyrio's carefully laid out plan. 

There are other snippets which hint at Varys's motivations and his and Illyrio's plans. You just have to read closely and connect the dots.  

Shit my bad, I thought they were real people. Gosh I am stupid.

I interpret Varys' motivation differently. As you said, we won't know for certain unless we get his POV. But you are probably right, I am not as smart at connecting the dots.

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2 minutes ago, MostlyMoody said:

Shit my bad, I thought they were real people. Gosh I am stupid.

I interpret Varys' motivation differently. As you said, we won't know for certain unless we get his POV. But you are probably right, I am not as smart at connecting the dots.

 

So how do you interpret Varys's motivation? 

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2 hours ago, Wolf of The Wall said:

I really don't get it "Why would Varys lie? There was no one in the room besides his little birds" thing. We were there. We readers. Why would GRRM spoil such twist by revealing like that.

The speech to Kevan was for the readers, not any character in the book. At the end of feast, Littlefinger spells out his plan to Sansa in private at the Eyrie. The Dance epilogue was the same, where Varys spells out his plans to to Kevan. Now the reader is fully caught up on all the plans of the two secret factions in westeros

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6 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

The speech which Varys gives to Kevan reads like a lie of omission.

It could be a lie of omission, but it is Varys who brings up Aegon at first, not Kevan - Kevan only objects to Aegon being Aegon because Rhaegar's son is dead. And when Varys tells us that '[Aegon] is here' his voice gets deeper as it seems to be doing when he is telling the truth. We usually assume he is telling the truth when he makes it clear to Ned that the people around Robert suck at the jobs and are paper shields as well as (and especially) when his voice gets darker and he tells Tyrion the story of his own castration.

Now, this doesn't mean that is the whole truth. Perhaps the author just wants us to realize that Varys' real end game and master plan is Aegon, and not another as of yet unreaveled ulterior motive? We don't know yet, however it is pretty obvious that Varys' revelation about Aegon is supposed to be taken at face value both by the dying Kevan as well as the reader.

6 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

Firstly Varys brags about how clever he is being in killing him. Pointing out how each party will assume the other is culpable. Rubbing Kevan's nose in how his death will affect the Lannister dynasty. By further destabilising the alliance with House Tyrell. 

But then Varys goes on to tell Kevan that Aegon will raise his banners above Storms End. Now. Varys does not at any time tell Kevan that Aegon is Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar & Elia.  Kevan says that he is dead, which means Varys now knows his goal of Kevan assuming he means Rhaegars son is achieved. But Varys still does not confirm this Aegon is Rhaegar & Elia's son, he simply answers that No he is here.  And he is! The boy called Aegon who will raise his banners above Storms end is here.

Well, if the Aegon at Storm's End is going to raise a banner depicting a three-headed dragon, red on black, then this won't be his banner unless he actually is Rhaegar's son. There are some real lies in there that aren't just lies by omission. A fake Targaryen has no right to the Targaryen banner, and Varys would know that.

6 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

Varys thrives on telling misleading truths. Just look at how he handles Ned's search for Lord Jon Arryn's killer. He tells Ned a true story about Hugh of the Vale, Which on the surface appears to imply this boy is the killer. But Whilst the tale is true Hugh did not kill Jon Arryn, LF however did and when we apply the story Varys tells Ned to him we see that it is also true.  A boy who arrived in KL with the Arryn household, and owes all that he has to Lord Arryn, that remained after Lysa took her household back to the Vale. And there are other occasions where whilst not technically lying Varys seeks to mislead.

Varys only talks about Ser Hugh in AGoT. If you read and consider the entire paragraph it is pretty obvious he is not talking about Littlefinger at all. It would be fun if he did but that isn't the case.

Varys certainly also uses the truth to mislead people, but he also blantantly lies or twists the truth until it is no longer recognizable. When he talks about the three-headed dragon that was born at Qarth he clearly omits the fact that he also know that Daenerys Targaryen hatched three dragon eggs. It may be that he also heard the story about the three-headed dragon but it is also possible he actually never heard that rumor (and only omitted the better intelligence he had) but rather invented this story to prevent his enemies on the council from realizing the threat Daenerys posed as early as they could have.

6 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

Varys has just demonstrated that he wishes to rub his outmanoeuvring of the Lannisters in Kevan's face. And he's doing it again by allowing Kevan to make the assumption that Aegon is Rhaegars so, because it makes it all for nought, If the dynasty his brother fought so hard to establish is crumbling and the Targaryen heir has returned then the last 17 years has been for nothing! Varys elaborates on how perfect Aegon will be as a King, again to run Kevan's face in it.  Pointing out how much better his charge is than Tommen in this regard.

This actually seems to be part of Varys' explanation why Kevan had to die. He is a good man in service of a bad cause. Tommen is a bad/doomed/fake king regardless what Varys does or doesn't. And compared to Tommen (or Joffrey before him) Aegon was groomed to rule much better and by more compentent men than Cersei's brats ever were. Varys isn't lying when he says that he doesn't want to kill Kevan. The circumstances demand it.

If Varys wanted to rub any personal triumphs into Kevan's face he should have also added the whole 'Aegon is fake' thing to the story, if that's true. After all, the cockless eunuch is going to fuck everybody very hard if he can make the son of a common whore the new Targaryen king of Westeros.

6 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

Yes, he goes on to kill Kevan, so why lie? But he has not lied, and he says an awful lot to Kevan which makes no sense if his purpose is merely to get him out of the way so Cersei can implode some more.

It is not about Cersei, it is about Tommen. Tommen's government has to fail, and that means there can't be a guy in charge who has had some success in mediating the disputes between the Lannisters, the Tyrells, and the Faith, and is likely to continue to be successful in that regard. Kevan and Mace together could easily enough deal Aegon a killing blow by defeating him in the field.

6 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

I suspect that what Varys says to Kevan is in fact what he'd have liked to have said to Tywin. After all, it is Tywin who Varys knew personally and he says at the start that he purposefully chose a crossbow to emulate Tywin's death and that the brothers shared so much. So he is likening Kevan to Tywin and placing him in his brother's role here.

Varys would have had a different speech for Tywin. Tywin wasn't a good man in service of a bad cause. He was a bad man, period. And I'm not even sure Varys respected him enough to grant him some sort of explanation as to why he deserved to die. If he did it would most likely have been about how everything he tried to build is not going to survive him and how he failed to kill Rhaegar's son after all.

But Varys would most likely have just smothered him in his sleep or cut his through so he could drown in his own blood. Varys had access to the Tower of the Hand and would thus have had no problem to arrange Tywin's murder.

Kevan got the crossbow because Tyrion killed his father that way. This is for the benefit of Cersei as well as the Tyrells to make a connection there that ensures that people will draw the wrong conclusions. Cersei will believe Tyrion is behind it, the Tyrells might blame whoever they think was behind Tyrion's escape (we have no idea who they think was responsible for that) if they don't conclude that Cersei is responsible for the entire thing because Kevan was the guy who forced her to march naked through the city.

6 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

The next clue to the lie of omission is that Varys has also killed Maester Pycelle. who is possibly nay probably the only person alive in the realm who could confirm that the bloodied corpse presented to Robert was indeed Aegon Targaryen; son and heir of Rhaegar. As he was the boy's physician and would have known the child's body by sight.  And birthmarks, freckling, moles, the shape of his feet, what his weight was, what side his penis fell on, if he had an inny or an outty, etc.  

Pycelle is a dotering old fool. Some people might be willing to believe him if he said that Connington's Aegon wasn't Rhaegar's son assuming he ever had the opportunity to actually examine a naked Aegon (a very unlikely scenario if you ask me) but not all that many. After all, Stannis was also in the position to know that Cersei's children weren't fathered by Robert yet pretty much nobody believed that story, either.

You could have a valid point there if it was confirmed that Pycelle identified the dead Aegon as Rhaegar's son. But there is no hint that Pycelle ever confirmed that the dead Aegon was actually Rhaegar's son (by examining the faceless/headless infant corpse and looking for some birthmarks, freckles, moles, etc. the living Aegon might have had). If he had, Kevan would have known and would have remembered when he thought about Aegon in the Epilogue (not only in his death scene but also earlier in his apartments in Maegor's Holdfast when he himself thinks about the Aegon in the Stormlands).

In that sense there is no reason to believe Pycelle had any special knowledge about Aegon that could become dangerous for Varys' plans. Not to mention that the probability is not that high that Pycelle actually was the physician of Rhaegar's children. The Prince of Dragonstone resided on Dragonstone after his wedding to Elia of Dorne, and their two children were born there and lived there. We don't know when Elia moved from Dragonstone to KL (presumably at some time during the Rebellion) but there is no hint that this led to Pycelle getting involved with the caretaking of her children. Dragonstone would have had a maester, too, a man that may have accompanied Elia and the children to the Red Keep to die there during the Sack (explaining how it came to be that Cressen ended up accompanying Stannis to the island when Stannis became Lord of Dragonstone). Another possibility is that the maester of Dragonstone returned to Dragonstone when Aerys II sent Rhaella and Viserys to the island under the protection of Ser Willem Darry.

If Aegon or Rhaenys had ever been seriously ill during their stay at the Red Keep Aerys II may have commanded Pycelle to take a look at them, but there is no reason to believe he did. Pycelle definitely wouldn't have been involved in the birth of either Rhaenys or Aegon. Not to mention that the idea that Aegon actually actually had some birthmark as an infant which should allow anybody to identify him as an adult is pretty much a longshot. Usually it is pretty difficult to say whether the picture of this or that infant is actually this or that adult man.

Pycelle might have other dangerous knowledge Varys does not want him to repeat - perhaps also stuff about Varys own past and actions during the reign of Aerys II - but it is also not unlikely that Pycelle just had to go because Varys needed a quiet place to kill Kevan (and chose Pycelle's apartments for that purpose because he cannot enter Maegor's Holdfast) or that Varys sees Pycelle's murder as another move to ensure that King Tommen's government is weakened further. Pycelle was the last rational/competent man on the council after Tywin's death, a man who most likely honestly has the best interests of young King Tommen at heart (something that cannot be said of the likes of Mace or Tarly).

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2 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

So how do you interpret Varys's motivation? 

It's in the post you responded to the first time.

3 hours ago, MostlyMoody said:

As for whether Varys lied or told the truth. I believe he told the truth to Kevan. I don't think it was a scheme on his part or anything like that. He didn't say it for Kevan, he said it for himself. He revealed a decade long scheme that he kept secret from everyone but presumably Illyrio and now he has a chance to tell it to someone else, as the plan is coming into fruition. It would be fitting that this scheming, calculating spider who never showed any real emotion finally unburdens himself to an enemy he respects.

 

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4 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

There is a reason Villains reveal their plans to their victims. It is what we call plot facilitation. ie: the author has a bunch of information which they need to reveal to the reader in order to facilitate the plot going forward and the confession to the soon to be dead is a trope because it gives the creator of the story an opportunity to info dump for the reader/viewer whilst retaining secrecy from the other characters. 

Pretty much. People misinterpret that scene as confirmation that Aegon is a Targaryen because that is what Varys implies. It is not necessarily so. Books and movies are not the same as real life. Scenes are constructed with narrative purposes in mind. No killer in real life (except a sadist) will waste time in a lengthy discourse.

The point of that scene is that we can finally understand Varys and his motivations.

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10 minutes ago, Good Guy Garlan said:

You know what would be crazy? If Varys' real name was Aegon and he was talking about himself. 

That would mean Varys would be talking about the lords of the Realm gathering around himself and his banner. That would be a funny sight.

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