An Explanation for Dragon Riding, the Meaning of Azor Ahai, Lightbringer and Everything Else

[chrisdaw]

Skip the blue text to get straight to the theorising.

 

This will be by necessity a very long topic spread over multiple replies. It will cover the AA feats, most major prophecies, the meaning of much of the ASOIAF history, why Valyrians were able to ride dragons, much of the character arcs of Dany, Euron and Jon and the ending to the series on the Others and War for the dawn side of things. It will be big and so wide ranging because it has to be, the prophecies are context sensitive, if I just gave the meaning of the prophecies directly without providing the context the meanings would make no sense. It's not ideal to me to write it in this sprawling chronological way, but in my experience it is the best (though not at all good) way to get people to follow. Persevere, have you the perception it will be worth it.

 

I will not go into other characters, arcs, happenings and the political ending side of things except where I must in explaining the above. And I won't evidence or detail it.

This topic is maybe the fourth or so go at this. I'm remaking it because I know I can explain it better. More evidence, more focus, and hopefully finish everything I intend instead of getting bored/exhausted and leaving loose ends. I will draw from everything, I will try and put spoiler tags in where appropriate, if I miss something which I probably will it's an honest mistake, but if you're not wanting spoilers you shouldn't read any further just due to the nature of this topic.

 

I will brush lightly on theme and writing technique where I feel it's necessary and/or blatant, but I'm not really going to sink my teeth into things from that angle often, simply because I've found people don't tend to respond to it well. Hard textual quotes and correlation, lining them all up in a row and showing how they all point the same direction in my experience has been the most effective way to make the case.

 

THE SECOND LIFE

To begin, the first thing I must convince you of is that people are able to second life dragons. This is the cornerstone piece of information from which almost all the answers to all ASOIAFs mysteries branch. There is no irrefutable evidence of it, nor could there be, as GRRM isn't ready to reveal it yet, and when he does everything begins falling into place. But there is a very large amount of evidence for it, and in taking the realisation forward it provides the context for well over the majority of things.

 

The second life as a term and concept is introduced in the Varamyr prologue.

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Haggon's rough voice echoed in his head. "You will die a dozen deaths, boy, and every one will hurt … but when your true death comes, you will live again. The second life is simpler and sweeter, they say."

When the skinchanger dies as a human they can skinchange an animal and live inside of it.

Varamyr died and became a wolf. That is not a theory, that is a fact of ASOIAF. Humans can die and become animals. And this is not an in-universe unknown first time happening. The second life is a known quantity. Haggon told Varamyr of it. Varamyr denied Haggon his own second life by skinchanging his Greyskin, his wolf companion.

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None of them had been as strong as Varamyr Sixskins, though, not even Haggon, tall and grim with his hands as hard as stone. The hunter died weeping after Varamyr took Greyskin from him, driving him out to claim the beast for his own. No second life for you, old man. Varamyr Threeskins, he'd called himself back then. Greyskin made four, though the old wolf was frail and almost toothless and soon followed Haggon into death.

In the chapter Varamyr considers other options to take as a second life, he rues not being able to take Ghost.

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Mance should have let me take the direwolf. There would be a second life worthy of a king. He could have done it, he did not doubt.

What to take from this is that there's a choice of what to second life, if you can get it, or at least Varamyr believes so. And obviously the more powerful the animal the better for the second life, if one covets power. Varamyr in the end attempts to take an actual human, he fails but seemingly wasn't far from it, and ends up in his own alpha wolf One Eye. One Eye is still a wolf, he doesn't talk like a human or anything like that. Same as with skinchanging, the animal's instincts remain dominant to the extent the skinchanger is able or willing to overpower them.

What people presume, probably correctly, is that the Varamyr chapter is preparing the reader for Jon surviving by skinchanging Ghost. But, take the implications even further. Varamyr died and became a wolf. He believes he could have done so with a Direwolf. He very nearly did with an actual human. So what is there to say the same can't be done with a dragon? That what GRRM is really preparing us for with this concept and chapter is just that.

The answer is he is, it can, it has in the series, and there's plenty of evidence for it. But don't take it in a portion, take it as a whole, with all the implications and reach. The Varamyr chapter and the second life concept are seeding, so that when GRRM comes with the reveal it makes sense, it won't feel as if he plucked it from out of nowhere.

 

DROGO SECOND LIFED DROGON

Drogon died but took a second life inside of Drogon, he currently lives on inside Drogon in precisely the same way Varamyr does One Eye. I think many people already believe Drogo lives on in Drogon in a quasi, nominal, perhaps symbolic way. And not without reason, the text creates this impression. So in a way what I'm proposing here is just a hard and fast, locked down reason for a vagueness GRRM has cultivated.

And so the ways GRRM has formed this relationship between the human character and dragon character, Drogo and Drogon.

The first is very obvious, name association, one little letter on the end the difference.

 

Colour association. Drogo has olive skin and that is noted fairly often. However the strongest colour association with Drogo the text makes is black, for the colour of his braid. His braid uncut for having never lost a fight is a symbol of his ferocity, and it is noted forever as being black, midnight black. Drogon is black, his egg as black as the midnight sea and his fire is black.

 

Character traits align too. Drogo was very much an alpha male, particularly large, strong, imposing and ferocious. Drogon is the biggest and boldest of the dragons.

 

Being a Khal, Drogo was free ranging. Particularly Drogo has an affinity with the Dothraki Sea. So too does Drogon.

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Drogon hunted far afield, but when he was sated he liked to bask in the sun at the apex of the Great Pyramid, where once the harpy of Meereen had stood. Thrice they had tried to take him there, and thrice they had failed. Two score of her bravest had risked themselves trying to capture him. Almost all had suffered burns, and four of them had died. The last she had seen of Drogon had been at sunset on the night of the third attempt. The black dragon had been flying north across the Skahazadhan toward the tall grasses of the Dothraki sea. He had not returned.

He escapes there. Given free reign he hunts there. Dragonstone is the name Dany gives the hill east of Vaes Diaf, in the Dothraki Sea, where Drogon makes his home.

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The hill loomed larger down here. Dany had taken to calling it Dragonstone, after the ancient citadel where she'd been born. She had no memories of that Dragonstone, but she would not soon forget this one. Scrub grass and thorny bushes covered its lower slopes; higher up a jagged tangle of bare rock thrust steep and sudden into the sky. There, amidst broken boulders, razor-sharp ridges, and needle spires, Drogon made his lair inside a shallow cave. He had dwelt there for some time, Dany had realized when she first saw the hill. The air smelled of ash, every rock and tree in sight was scorched and blackened, the ground strewn with burned and broken bones, yet it had been home to him.

Dany knew the lure of home.

When Drogo learns of the assassination attempt on Dany, and Jorah tells him more will come after because there's a lordship promised as reward, he goes on his epic rant about destroying Westeros and taking the Iron Chair, and they begin the journey to go west. Drogon is present when Dany learns of Robert's death, he responds to the news.

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"A gift of news. Dragonmother, Stormborn, I tell you true, Robert Baratheon is dead."

Outside her walls, dusk was settling over Qarth, but a sun had risen in Dany's heart. "Dead?" she repeated. In her lap, black Drogon hissed, and pale smoke rose before her face like a veil. "You are certain? The Usurper is dead?"

Drogon bites Irri on the hand. He doesn't like captivity, more so than the other dragons.

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"They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi," Irri told her. "Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit me." She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.

Perhaps too he holds a grudge against the hand that pleasured his wife.

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Dany knew her face was flushed, but in the darkness Irri surely could not tell. Wordless, the handmaid put a hand on her breast, then bent to take a nipple in her mouth. Her other hand drifted down across the soft curve of belly, through the mound of fine silvery-gold hair, and went to work between Dany's thighs. It was no more than a few moments until her legs twisted and her breasts heaved and her whole body shuddered. She screamed then. Or perhaps that was Drogon. Irri never said a thing, only curled back up and went back to sleep the instant the thing was done.

Dany thinks of Drogo's return. Then comes Drogon.
 

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Through the grass came a soft silvery tinkling.

Bells, Dany thought, smiling, remembering Khal Drogo, her sun-and-stars, and the bells he braided into his hair. When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, when the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves, when my womb quickens again and I bear a living child, Khal Drogo will return to me.

But none of those things had happened. Bells, Dany thought again. Her bloodriders had found her. "Aggo," she whispered. "Jhogo. Rakharo." Might Daario have come with them?

 

The green sea opened. A rider appeared. His braid was black and shiny, his skin as dark as burnished copper, his eyes the shape of bitter almonds. Bells sang in his hair. He wore a medallion belt and painted vest, with an arakh on one hip and a whip on the other. A hunting bow and a quiver of arrows were slung from his saddle.

 

One rider, and alone. A scout. He was one who rode before the khalasar to find the game and the good green grass, and sniff out foes wherever they might hide. If he found her there, he would kill her, rape her, or enslave her. At best, he would send her back to the crones of the dosh khaleen, where good khaleesi were supposed to go when their khals had died.

 

He did not see her, though. The grass concealed her, and he was looking elsewhere. Dany followed his eyes, and there the shadow flew, with wings spread wide. The dragon was a mile off, and yet the scout stood frozen until his stallion began to whicker in fear. Then he woke as if from a dream, wheeled his mount about, and raced off through the tall grass at a gallop.

 

Dany watched him go. When the sound of his hooves had faded away to silence, she began to shout. She called until her voice was hoarse … and Drogon came, snorting plumes of smoke.

The legends/beliefs relayed through Dany's AGOT chapters leading to the dragon's birth signals the occurance of Drogo's second life.

 

The Dothraki's beliefs concerning the death of a Khal.

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When a horselord dies, his horse is slain with him, so he might ride proud into the night lands. The bodies are burned beneath the open sky, and the khal rises on his fiery steed to take his place among the stars. The more fiercely the man burned in life, the brighter his star will shine in the darkness.

A Khal will rise after death on a fiery steed to ride the night lands. The fiercer the man burned in life the brighter he burns in death. Symbolism for rising as a dragon.

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"A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon," blond Doreah said as she warmed a towel over the fire. Jhiqui and Irri were of an age with Dany, Dothraki girls taken as slaves when Drogo destroyed their father's khalasar. Doreah was older, almost twenty. Magister Illyrio had found her in a pleasure house in Lys.

 

Silvery-wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious. "The moon?"

 

"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."

 

The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. "You are foolish strawhead slave," Irri said. "Moon is no egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known."

Dany, symbolically the moon as she is referred to by Drogo, and Drogo, symbolically the sun as he is Dany's sun and stars, coupled, symbolically kissed. The dragons drinking from the sun is the dragon taking Drogo's soul. After Drogo loses his soul he is left alive of a sorts.

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"Why is he out here alone, in the sun?" she asked them.

"He seems to like the warmth, Princess," Ser Jorah said. "His eyes follow the sun, though he does not see it. He can walk after a fashion. He will go where you lead him, but no farther. He will eat if you put food in his mouth, drink if you dribble water on his lips."

His soul is gone, his sun, his living fire, the dragon drank it.

 

What this one represents is pretty straight forward.

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"You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich with the smells of earth and death. Wind stirred the grasses, and they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong arms, and his hand stroked her sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, stars in a daylight sky. "Home," she whispered as he entered her and filled her with his seed, but suddenly the stars were gone, and across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took flame.

Drogo becomes a dragon, note the presence of the sun.

Moving onto the how of this. Before Varamyr dies his soul (that's the term the text uses) is thrown out of Thistle and into the sky. What MMD did in the tent by way of blood magic to Drogo was what happened to Varamyr. She separated his body and his soul, threw his soul into the sky. And she somewhat knew she was doing it too.

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Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. "Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone."

Drogo is left alive but without his soul, he is in the state a skinchanger is in when they slip their skin.

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"The wolf dreams are no true dreams. You have your eye closed tight whenever you're awake, but as you drift off it flutters open and your soul seeks out its other half. The power is strong in you."

Jojen to Bran about skinchanging. Same thing.

Unfortunately for MMD, instead of ending in oblivion as she seemed to have intended Drogo made his way into Drogon within his egg.

 

But that's not all MMD did, she took Rhaego too.

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"… don't want to wake the dragon …"

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo's copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as they touched her skin.

Rhaego went into the dragon too, the same dragon. I'll elaborate on that later, but it's how non Valyrian/Targ blooded Drogo could get into what is otherwise exclusively the domain of the Valyrians.

 

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All those he shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the same stars, and see such different things. The King's Crown was the Cradle, to hear her tell it; the Stallion was the Horned Lord;

 

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The west had gone the color of a blood bruise, but the sky above was cobalt blue, deepening to purple, and the stars were coming out. Jon sat between two merlons with only a scarecrow for company and watched the Stallion gallop up the sky. Or was it the Horned Lord?

Stallion and the Horned Lord, same thing. Stallion for Khal and horned lord for dragon, Drogo and Drogon. The Stallion gallops up into the sky, it is a constellation, stars, the same imagery as the Dothraki's beliefs concerning the death of a Khal and their afterlife.

Through the practice of blood magic, sacrifice and cremation a man became a dragon. And Dany, a relation by marriage and blood (to Rhaego) to the sacrifices, rides the dragon they became. If it were true one could expect the implication would expand further beyond Drogo and Dany.

 

VALYRIAN DRAGON LORDS SECOND LIFED DRAGONS AND THAT'S HOW THEY WERE ABLE TO RIDE THEM

 

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It was on the great peninsula across from Slaver's Bay that those who brought an end to the empire of Old Ghis—though not to all of their ways—originated. Sheltered there, amidst the great volcanic mountains known as the Fourteen Flames, were the Valyrians, who learned to tame dragons and make them the most fearsome weapon of war that the world ever saw. The tales the Valyrians told of themselves claimed they were descended from dragons and were kin to the ones they now controlled.

If Varamyr had say a sister, she could legitimately say she was kin to a wolf. If Varamyr had a child, the child could legitimately say they are descended from wolves.

 

If Drogo/Rhaego exist within Drogon, then Dany can be described as kin to the dragon she rides. This is how dragon riding was achieved, a blood bond formed with the dragon by a family member sacrificed to second life a dragon. It's a blood bond and so it persists through generations, the less diluted the bloodline the stronger the bond.

 

Consider the Targaryen words, Fire and Blood. Consider the meaning of blood of the dragon. Consider the practice of incest in not just Targs but the Valyrian riding families.

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"What feeds the flame?" asked Sam.

"What feeds a dragon's fire?" Marwyn seated himself upon a stool. "All Valyrian sorcery was rooted in blood or fire.

Blood and fire fuels Valyrian sorcery. MMD was a blood sorcerer, she accidentally did the part of the Valyrian sorcerers. What feeds the dragon's fire that Valyrian's rode are souls. The fiercer the sacrifice was in life the fiercer and bigger the dragon and the hotter the second lifed dragon's fire will burn.

A little bit sideways now, bear with, it will pay dividends later. What the Valyrians are doing is taking a life after death as the most powerful beast in the world which lives for multiple times the life span of a human. Varamyr thinks a second life inside of Ghost would be one fit for a king, so what would one inside a dragon be? It is akin to ascendancy, godhood. The text is playing to that angle.

The Valyrians were open to all religions, they didn't much care what the people they ruled believed, and the dragonlords perhaps believed in none. If you know how to become a dragon when you die, what need have you for gods?

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Many Valyrians worshipped more than one god, turning to different deities according to their needs; more, it is said, worshipped none at all.

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Some scholars have suggested that the dragonlords regarded all faiths as equally false, believing themselves to be more powerful than any god or goddess. They looked upon priests and temples as relics of a more primitive time, though useful for placating "slaves, savages, and the poor" with promises of a better life to come. Moreover, a multiplicity of gods helped to keep their subjects divided and lessened the chances of their uniting under the banner of a single faith to overthrow their overlords. Religious tolerance was to them a means of keeping the peace in the Lands of the Long Summer.

A few things to note here. It's the dragon lords who particularly are thought to hold no gods, and that they believe themselves more powerful than gods. And the connection to the afterlife is made. The dragon lords unlike everyone else don't need gods because they have no need to believe in a religion to provide them hope of a better life to come, they know there's another life coming and it's not achieved by religious worship. They name their dragons gods, because they are. And allowing their subjects religion might keep them content and from experimenting towards finding a real way to a second life, and possibly gaining the knowledge that is the secret of the dragonlords. You don't have to bite down hard on this yet, there will be more context for it later.

 

Back to the straightforward, Aerys.

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The Targaryens never bury their dead, they burn them. Aerys meant to have the greatest funeral pyre of them all. Though if truth be told, I do not believe he truly expected to die. Like Aerion Brightfire before him, Aerys thought the fire would transform him . . . that he would rise again, reborn as a dragon, and turn all his enemies to ash.

Aerion.

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Next after him was Prince Aerion, known as Brightflame or Brightfire—a most puissant knight but cruel and capricious, and a dabbler in the black arts. Both of these princes died before their father, though both had issue. Prince Daeron sired a daughter, Vaella, in 222 AC, but the girl sadly proved simple. Aerion Brightfire's son was born in 232 AC, and given the ominous name of Maegor by his sire, but the Bright Prince himself died that same year when he drank a cup of wildfire in the belief that it would allow him to transform himself into a dragon.

They're close, just not quite there.

 

And that's about the half of it in way of evidence, the other half comes in theorising forward as it provides meaning for most the big prophecies and legends.

 

SIDEBAR 01 SUMMERHALL

[chrisdaw]

EURON AND THE STONE BEAST

Now I'll start moving forward. Much of it I'm not going to back up, those things that will happen but are their own topic and stray from the purpose here, and from my point of view they're obvious or at least heavily theorised already in many threads, some of them mine.

Aegon will marry Arianne and take King's Landing and the Iron Throne. He will be loved by the Faith and most the realm.

Dany will head west, her dragons will come too, she will ally with Euron and there will exist a relationship between them.

Aegon is going to end up Rhaegal's rider. Trueborn Targaryen or bastard Blackfyre of the female line, it's all the same blood to the Targ bonded dragons.

Dany and Aegon will war against each other for the Iron Throne. Blacks and greens. Dany will defeat Aegon, he will die and so too will Rhaegal.

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Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies . . .

Euron will put into action his plan to get a child on Dany so that he may sacrifice it to second life Drogon. In getting a child on Dany and completing the ritual Euron will fail.

For why he will fail precisely I'll throw out some possibilities. Perhaps she in the end doesn't bed him. Perhaps she does but she doesn't fall pregnant, perhaps kraken and dragon blood doesn't mix so well. Perhaps she does fall pregnant but miscarries, and too early for him to get the plan up and running. I favour that one.

Lastly, perhaps he does get her pregnant but they fall out and she distances herself from him, and Dany simply gives birth and has the child but he can't get to her to get it. Unlikely that one because his character is such that I think he'd either steal the child or die in the attempt, and he's not doing either of those things.

And so Euron will seem to have failed. The last line of dragon blood, the only Targaryen womb left in the world, and he can't make it happen with her. But, of course, that is wrong, there's at least one other known womb out there with blood of the dragon.

I will start providing evidence again from here, a substantial amount, after I've laid out what's going to happen. I'd rather not do it this way for the reason that not backing it up as I go tends to lose people, however it is necessary to paint the whole picture first because many of the peices of explaining evidence span multiple parts or the whole thing. Bear with it.

Where Euron failed with Dany he is going to succeed with Arianne.

Newly widowed Arianne will probably be kept as a highborn hostage in KL while Dany rules and Euron hangs. She will hate Dany because Dany killed her husband and took their throne. And Arianne loves a pretty bad boy. Thus Arianne is going to get back at Dany in very Arianne style, she's going to fuck her lover. And to get his dragon blooded heir to sacrifice Euron is going to betray Dany and bed Arianne. Revenge for Arianne and betrayal for Euron are strong themes here and it's echoed in the foreshadowing.

Arianne is going to get greyscale. Probably it's sexually transmitted and Jon Connington is going to have sex with Daemon Sand and then Arianne will have sex with Daemon. Most likely after she loses Aegon.

Euron is going to impregnate Arianne. He's going to get greyscale too. He's going to take pregnant Arianne to the top of Storm's End. He's going to set the tower aflame. Arianne will likely burn, the child definitely will, in her womb or newly born, dead or alive. Then Euron is going to toot his horn. Drogon is going to be there or come there. Euron the man will die but succesfully second life Drogon. What emerges will be the stone beast of Dany's vision.

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From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies . . .

A beast is not a dragon, a dragon is not a beast. But GRRM is not cheating here, it's not a case of word obfuscation, the stone beast Drogon will become when Euron second lifes him will not look like a dragon, though it is a dragon underneath. What it will look like is this.

Spoiler

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The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood­-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles.

 

Why the stone beast that was once Drogon will turn into this is a result of the amalgamation of blood lines between Euron, Arianne and the child between them which was sacrificed. And their greyscale infection.

The stone beast will change form over time. It will become more kraken, less dragon, and more stone. It will lose the ability to fly. It will become more and more water based and dwell along the trident. It will foul the river, the lands and population with greyscale which it will breathe. Eventually will end up wholly stone at the bottom of the Narrow sea. It will begin black, fade to grey and eventually end up white and pale. As the dragons have secondary colours (highlights basically, the eyes, tips and weaved in it's fire, Drogon's is red), the stone beast's secondary colour will be green.

Now for the evidence.

Euron will attempt to marry Dany so that he can trick a dragon from her, what he brings to the table besides himself is the Iron fleet. Not the first time someone has tried this on Dany. It's the Xaro plot line come back, ships, marriage and hidden intentions to betray her for dragons.

Euron already has an understanding of how second lifing a dragon works. He knows all the parts he needs and is in the process of collecting them. With the knowledge of the above about second lifing dragons you can see Euron reveals himself in his conversation with Victarion.

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The Crow's Eye had taken Lord Hewett's bedchamber along with his bastard daughter. When he entered, the girl was sprawled naked on the bed, snoring softly. Euron stood by the window, drinking from a silver cup. He wore the sable cloak he took from Blacktyde, his red leather eye patch, and nothing else. "When I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly," he announced. "When I woke, I couldn't . . . or so the maester said. But what if he lied?"

When Euron says fly he means skinchange. It's 'fly' in the manner Bloodraven tells Bran he will fly.

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Victarion could smell the sea through the open window, though the room stank of wine and blood and sex. The cold salt air helped to clear his head. "What do you mean?"

Euron turned to face him, his bruised blue lips curled in a half smile. "Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower?" The wind came gusting through the window and stirred his sable cloak. There was something obscene and disturbing about his nakedness. "No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap."

And he's coming to the relisation that to fly he's going to have to jump from a tower, a euphemism for suicide. And it's a dragon specifically he wants to skinchange.

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Euron seated himself and gave his cloak a twitch, so it covered his private parts. "I had forgotten what a small and noisy folk they are, my ironborn. I would bring them dragons, and they shout out for grapes."

"Grapes are real. A man can gorge himself on grapes. Their juice is sweet, and they make wine. What do dragons make?"

"Woe."

It's clear he's coming to this realisation in the below passage.

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"Woe." The Crow's Eye sipped from his silver cup. "I once held a dragon's egg in this hand, brother. This Myrish wizard swore he could hatch it if I gave him a year and all the gold that he required. When I grew bored with his excuses, I slew him. As he watched his entrails sliding through his fingers he said, ‘But it has not been a year.'" He laughed. "Cragorn's died, you know."

"Who?"

"The man who blew my dragon horn. When the maester cut him open, his lungs were charred as black as soot."

Euron blurts out that Cragorn is dead, without prompting or seemingly reason. The reason is he didn't expect that or wasn't sure, and it's playing on his mind. The significance to Euron is the realisation that the horn isn't just going to allow him to skinchange a dragon like normal, it's a one way ticket, there's no return, it's a second life. He has Cragorn cut open, he's investigating, the conclusion is simple. Maybe he can fly, but he's going to have to jump off a tower to find out. That is maybe he can skinchange a dragon, become it, control it, but he's going to have to kill himself to find out. And that's why there's this contemplative tone to the conversation, why he's standing before the window looking out when Victarion answers his summons. He's coming to grips with the suicide aspect. The other parts he knows already.

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Balon was mad, Aeron is madder, and Euron is maddest of them all. Victarion was turning to go when the Crow's Eye said, "A king must have a wife, to give him heirs. Brother, I have need of you. Will you go to Slaver's Bay and bring my love to me?"

I had a love once too. Victarion's hands coiled into fists, and a drop of blood fell to patter on the floor. I should beat you raw and red and feed you to the crabs, the same as I did her. "You have sons," he told his brother.

"Baseborn mongrels, born of whores and weepers."

"They are of your body."

"So are the contents of my chamber pot. None is fit to sit the Seastone Chair, much less the Iron Throne. No, to make an heir that's worthy of him, I need a different woman. When the kraken weds the dragon, brother, let all the world beware."

"What dragon?" said Victarion, frowning.

"The last of her line. They say she is the fairest woman in the world. Her hair is silver-gold, and her eyes are amethysts . . . but you need not take my word for it, brother. Go to Slaver's Bay, behold her beauty, and bring her back to me."

He needs Dany, specifically for her dragon blood. She is the last of the dragon blooded line, and a woman. He needs to have a child with her, of her dragon blood and his blood, to sacrifice so that he can second life a dragon. He is attempting to recreate the circumstances in which Drogo was able to second life Drogon.

And in that is the explanation for this cryptic line.

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"So are the contents of my chamber pot. None is fit to sit the Seastone Chair, much less the Iron Throne. No, to make an heir that's worthy of him, I need a different woman. When the kraken weds the dragon, brother, let all the world beware."

The heir Euron needs to make is one of his own and the dragon's blood, for it to be worthy to sacrifice to him. The him is the dragon, Drogon. A heir of any other bloodline will not do for the sacrifice, it wouldn't work.

So he's putting together all the peices. Euron himself means to take Drogo's place. Dany plays the same role. Drogon is a dragon now instead of an egg but it will work just the same provided he can find him to enter him, so he'll just need him close, which is fine because he'll come where does Dany. He plans to make with Dany the child to sacrifice in Rhaego's place. The last thing left is the blood magic, something to play the role MMD did with her blood magic. And that's what the horn is for.

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That horn you heard I found amongst the smoking ruins that were Valyria, where no man has dared to walk but me. You heard its call, and felt its power. It is a dragon horn, bound with bands of red gold and Valyrian steel graven with enchantments. The dragonlords of old sounded such horns, before the Doom devoured them. With this horn, ironmen, I can bind dragons to my will.

The horn was used by Valyrian dragon riders to bind dragons to their will.

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I am Dragonbinder ... No mortal man should sound me and live ... Blood for fire, fire for blood.

What it does specifically is the part MMD played in Drogo's second lifing of Drogon. The Valyrian's have streamlined their blood and fire sorcery process for second lifing a dragon down to a magic horn. The horn will kill the person who blows it, but allow them a second life inside of a dragon. It is what it says, a dragon binder. It will kill the blower. But for that trade of blood, that blood sacrifice, it will grant fire, a second life inside a dragon.

I recommend reading the conversation between Euron and Victarion whole, while applying the above knowledge, and you'll see it all fits and perfectly explains Euron's words and motivations.

How Euron knows so much, as well as how he conveniently happened upon the horn is a question worth considering, and I'll try to provide an answer for it later.

In Falia Flowers GRRM gives us foreshadowing of Euron's mode of operation. What he's going to try and do with Dany, and what he will succeed in doing with Arianne.

Spoiler

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“Falia Flowers, Lord Hewett’s natural daughter. I am to be King Euron’s salt wife. You and I will be kin, then.”

Aeron Damphair raised his eyes to hers. His scabbed lips were crusted with wet porridge. “Woman.” His chains clinked when he moved. “Run. He will hurt you. He will kill you.”

She laughed. “Silly, he won’t. I’m his love, his lady. He gives me gifts, so many gifts. Silks and furs and jewels. Rags and rocks, he calls them.”

The Crow’s Eye puts no value in such things. That was one of the things that drew men to his service. Most captains kept the lion’s share of their plunder but Euron took almost nothing for himself.

“He gives me any gown I want,” the girl was prattling happily.  “My sisters used to make me wait on them at table, but Euron made them serve the whole hall  naked! Why should he do that, except for love of me?” She put a hand on her belly and  smoothed down the fabric of her gown.

“I’m going to give him sons. So many sons...”

“He has sons.”

“Baseborn boys and mongrels, Euron says. My sons will come before them, he has sworn, sworn by your own Drowned God!”

Aeron would’ve wept for her. Tears of blood, he thought. “You must bear a message to my brother. Not Euron, but Victarion, Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet. Do you know the man I mean?”

Falia sat back from him. “Yes,” she said. “But I couldn’t bring him any messages. He’s gone.”

“Gone?” That was the cruelest blow of all. “Gone where?”

“East,” she said, “with all his ships. He’s to bring the dragon queen to Westeros. I’m to be Euron’s salt wife, but he must have a rock wife too, a queen to rule all Westeros at his side. They say she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, and she has dragons. The two of us will be as close as sisters!”

It's all happy families, silks and marriage and shit. And children. Note GRRM has Falia draw a direct parallel between her and Dany, two of a kind, like sisters. And then when the time comes . . .

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When they were well out to sea, Euron returned to him. “Brother,” he said, “you look forlorn. I have a gift for you.” He beckoned, and two of his bastard sons dragged the woman forward and bound her to the prow on the other side of the figurehead. Naked as the mouthless maiden, her smooth belly just beginning to swell with the child she was carrying, her cheeks red with tears, she did not struggle as the boys tightened her bonds. Her hair hung down in front of her face, but Aeron knew her all the same.  

“Falia Flowers,” he called. “Have courage, girl! All this will be over soon, and we will feast together in the Drowned God’s watery halls.”

The girl raised up her head, but made no answer. She has no tongue to answer with, Damphair knew. He licked his lips, and tasted salt.

Happy families until the pregnant wife is far enough along to make the sacrifice. Sacrificing Falia's child is almost certainly going to allow Euron a kraken, not for her blood in the child but for his own kraken Greyjoy blood. But unlike dragons, krakens are not going to be a one way ticket, just a regular skinchanging. There may be something in the parents of the sacrifice having to be married, the text seems to suggest it by Euron's other bastards seemingly not being useful as sacrifices. Euron could have married Falia between her first conversation with Aeron and the end of the chapter. Anyway, Falia is GRRM seeding Euron's mode of operation and what he intends with Dany.

But as I said Euron is going to fail with Dany, for reasons I'm not entirely positive on, and so he will turn from Queen Dany's to Arianne's bed specifically for a dragon blooded child. The foreshadowing on Arianne's side points the way, I'll get to that after Euron.

Euron bedding Arianne and using their child as sacrifice is the treason for blood.

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three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . .

Or by another description, a blood betrayal. The Bloodstone Emperor is a parallel for Euron, a very clear one, much of what is attributed to him Euron has also done, what isn't yet is simply because Euron has yet to do it. He will.

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When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky. (Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world).

In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night.

Tiger woman as well as more foreshadowing, pretty substantial I think, suggests Euron is going to do some fucking with Cersei, but I don't think it will factor into this part, that comes farther and deeper down the road. So I'm not going to explore it.

Like the Bloodstone Emperor Euron practices dark arts, torture, not yet necromancy but he'll probably get there. He reinstated slavery. He hasn't yet been shown to consume flesh but did force others to do so and shade-of-the-evening has much association with flesh. He intends a reign of terror and to cast down all the other gods.

The Bloodstone Emperor slew his elder ruling sibling and claimed rule for himsef, Euron had Balon killed and claimed his throne for himself. But the usurpation by the Bloodstone Emperor known as the Blood Betrayal is a dual foreshadowing.

The Bloodstone Emperor's Blood Betrayal was committed against the Amethyst Empress. One named character is given an Amethyst descriptor - Dany, by Euron.

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"The last of her line. They say she is the fairest woman in the world. Her hair is silver-gold, and her eyes are amethysts . . . but you need not take my word for it, brother. Go to Slaver's Bay, behold her beauty, and bring her back to me."

Victarion then uses the description but he's only copying Euron. The Blood Betrayal foreshadows Euron, the parallel for the Bloodstone Emperor, betraying Dany, the parallel for the Amethyst Empress. It is Dany's treason for blood. The circumstances will be him bedding Arianne for his dragon blooded child to sacrifice to second life Drogon, allowing him to usurp Drogo within Drogon and causing the dragon's corruption by way of his blood.

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and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky.

The black stone represents the stone beast. Black as Drogon is black, stone as he will become when Euron second lifes him. Falling from the sky represents the stone beast losing its ability to fly as the greyscale spreads. Euron will not worship the black stone but he'll become it and be worshipped by others.

Consider the Bloodstone Emperor's very name. Blood and stone are key to this. Blood for the dragon blood Euron covets, the blood sacrifice he will make, the bloodlines he will infect Drogon with, his blood eye and the sea of blood he sails on. And the stone for greyscale which will strip Drogon's flight and ultimately sink him to the bottom of the sea and supplant his fire with greyscale.

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A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly.

Grey lips. As basically always grey (and stone) symbolises greyscale. And it's the lips, that part of him showing the corruption that blows the horn and allows him the second life, the act of betrayal.

[chrisdaw]

EURON AND THE STONE BEAST CONTINUED

Multiple Ironborn histories and legends foreshadow the events, as Euron is Ironborn and their king. In the Grey King legend there is the most straight forward foreshadowing for second lifing a dragon.

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On the crown of the hill four-and-forty monstrous stone ribs rose from the earth like the trunks of great pale trees. The sight made Aeron's heart beat faster. Nagga had been the first sea dragon, the mightiest ever to rise from the waves. She fed on krakens and leviathans and drowned whole islands in her wrath, yet the Grey King had slain her and the Drowned God had changed her bones to stone so that men might never cease to wonder at the courage of the first of kings. Nagga's ribs became the beams and pillars of his longhall, just as her jaws became his throne. For a thousand years and seven he reigned here, Aeron recalled. Here he took his mermaid wife and planned his wars against the Storm God. From here he ruled both stone and salt, wearing robes of woven seaweed and a tall pale crown made from Nagga's teeth.

But that was in the dawn of days, when mighty men still dwelt on earth and sea. The hall had been warmed by Nagga's living fire, which the Grey King had made his thrall. On its walls hung tapestries woven from silver seaweed most pleasing to the eyes. The Grey King's warriors had feasted on the bounty of the sea at a table in the shape of a great starfish, whilst seated upon thrones carved from mother-of-pearl. Gone, all the glory gone. Men were smaller now. Their lives had grown short. The Storm God drowned Nagga's fire after the Grey King's death, the chairs and tapestries had been stolen, the roof and walls had rotted away. Even the Grey King's great throne of fangs had been swallowed by the sea. Only Nagga's bones endured to remind the ironborn of all the wonder that had been.

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The Grey King's greatest feat, however, was the slaying of Nagga, largest of the sea dragons, a beast so colossal that she was said to feed on leviathans and giant krakens and drown whole islands in her wroth. The Grey King built a mighty longhall about her bones, using her ribs as beams and rafters. From there he ruled the Iron Islands for a thousand years, until his very skin had turned as grey as his hair and beard. Only then did he cast aside his driftwood crown and walk into the sea, descending to the Drowned God's watery halls to take his rightful place at his right hand.

The Grey King represents Euron, king of the Ironborn, grey for the greyscale Euron will catch. Nagga the great dragon represents in parts Dany and Drogon. The Storm God in parts Dany the Stormborn.

The Grey King slaying Nagga symbolises Euron second lifing and taking control of Drogon. The Grey King taking thrall of Nagga's living fire represents most particularly the same thing.

When Bran skinchanges Hodor, Hodor is still inside himself, just pushed way down inside and Bran has control.

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And suddenly he was not Bran, the broken boy crawling through the snow, suddenly he was Hodor halfway down the hill, with the wight raking at his eyes. Roaring, he came lurching to his feet, throwing the thing violently aside. It went to one knee, began to rise again. Bran ripped Hodor's longsword from his belt. Deep inside he could hear poor Hodor whimpering still, but outside he was seven feet of fury with old iron in his hand.

Hodor is essentially Bran's thrall. And this is what's going to happen inside of Drogon to Drogo when Euron second lifes Drogon. Drogo who represents Drogon's living fire, becomes Euron's thrall, Euron takes control and Drogo is pushed down deep, and so the beast takes on more of Euron's influence.

Consider the use of the word thrall in the text, a part of Ironborn culture, thralls are kept somewhat as slaves, and many below deck unseen to row for the ship captains. Like Bran pushes Hodor to the depths of his mind and Euron will do to Drogo inside Drogon.

Euron's blood will win out over Drogo to influence Drogon. Euron is of kraken blood, sea water.

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"The earth ends at the black salt sea," Drogo answered at once. He wet a cloth in a basin of warm water to wipe the sweat and oil from his skin. "No horse can cross the poison water."
...
Savage beasts he did not fear, nor any man who had ever drawn breath, but the sea was a different matter. To the Dothraki, water that a horse could not drink was something foul; the heaving grey-green plains of the ocean filled them with superstitious loathing. Drogo was a bolder man than the other horselords in half a hundred ways, she had found … but not in this.

To Drogon it's going to be poison.

A little tidbit on poison.

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Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester and poison the soul.

The blood betrayal is a poisoning of the soul inside of Drogon. The stone beast's limbs will in time, as the greyscale turns them to stone, break, shatter.

Back to the Grey King. He literally makes his home and throne within Nagga, and rules from there. This is very straightforward symbolism of Euron taking his second life within the Dragon, living on inside of it.

The Grey King had an unnaturally long life span compared to regular humans, as did the Bloodstone Emperor. As do dragons and those who second life them.

The Grey King turned more and more grey, this represents the spread of the greyscale, through Euron first and then the stone beast. It's going to happen gradually, the stone beast is going to turn more and more to stone and more and more sea based. The Drowned God turned Nagga's bones to stone, as the greyscale will turn the stone beast Drogon to stone. The bones are actually pale white, perhaps in it's final solidified rock form the stone beast will turn white. Black to grey to white.

The Grey King eventually died, returning to the sea, and his throne returned to the sea as well, as the stone beast will eventually end up on the bottom of the ocean.

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The deeds attributed to the Grey King by the priests and singers of the Iron Islands are many and marvelous. It was the Grey King who brought fire to the earth by taunting the Storm God until he lashed down with a thunderbolt, setting a tree ablaze. The Grey King also taught men to weave nets and sails and carved the first longship from the hard pale wood of Ygg, a demon tree who fed on human flesh.

The Grey king tricked the Storm God into giving him fire. Euron will trick Dany of a sorts and take her fire. The flesh eating is about the grey scale that the stone beast will breathe.

The Hoare Ironborn kings and particularly their last seat foreshadows Euron and the stone beast. Black stone, monstrous and twisted, Harrenhal is a likeness of the stone beast. Hoare beggared the Riverlands in making his the largest castle in Westeros which dominated the Riverlands and Trident. As the stone beast will spread disease and corruption over that same land.

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In his pride, Harren had desired the highest hall and tallest towers in all Westeros. Forty years it had taken, rising like a great shadow on the shore of the lake while Harren's armies plundered his neighbors for stone, lumber, gold, and workers. Thousands of captives died in his quarries, chained to his sledges, or laboring on his five colossal towers. Men froze by winter and sweltered in summer. Weirwoods that had stood three thousand years were cut down for beams and rafters. Harren had beggared the riverlands and the Iron Islands alike to ornament his dream. And when at last Harrenhal stood complete, on the very day King Harren took up residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come ashore at King's Landing.

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"How can we talk of peace while the Lannisters spread like a pestilence over my father's domains, stealing his crops and slaughtering his people? I say again, we ought to be marching on Harrenhal."

Harrenhal was a testament to Harren's pride, as the stone beast is testament to Euron's, his desire to become a sole god and be worshipped by all.

The blood corruption theme runs deep in this foreshadowing.

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Archmaester Hake tells us that the kings of House Hoare were, "black of hair, black of eye, and black of heart." Their foes claimed their blood was black as well, darkened by the "Andal taint," for many of the early Hoare kings took maidens of that ilk to wife. True ironborn had salt water in their veins, the priests of the Drowned God proclaimed; the black-blooded Hoares were false kings, ungodly usurpers who must be cast down.

Ungodly as Aeron harps on about Euron, amongst the rest.

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She remembered Old Nan's stories of the castle built on fear. Harren the Black had mixed human blood in the mortar, Nan used to say

As blood is the mortar for Harrenhal, the stone beast becomes the stone beast because of the bloodlines mixed inside of it.

Spoiler

On the same point but back to Aeron's dream.

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“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.”

Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.”

A charnel pit refers to a mass grave without order, just a multitude of bits and pieces tossed in together. From google, disarticulated human remains from many individuals. And that's what the stone beast is, a mix up of blood lines within the one entity. There is already the dragon blood, Euron himself brings kraken blood, greyscale also, and more which I'll get to.

Note GRRM saw fit to include the below in which the Ironborn are theorised to be their own distinct people as far as descent goes.

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According to their faith, the ironborn are a race apart from the common run of mankind. "We did not come to these holy islands from godless lands across the seas," the priest Sauron Salt-Tongue once said. "We came from beneath those seas, from the watery halls of the Drowned God who made us in his likeness and gave to us dominion over all the waters of the earth."

Even among the ironborn there are some who doubt this and acknowledge the more widely accepted view of an ancient descent from the First Men—even though the First Men, unlike the later Andals, were never a seafaring people. Certainly, we cannot seriously accept the assertions of the ironborn priests, who would have us believe that the ironmen are closer kin to fish and merlings than the other races of mankind.

Archmaester Haereg once advanced the interesting notion that the ancestors of the ironborn came from some unknown land west of the Sunset Sea, citing the legend of the Seastone Chair. The throne of the Greyjoys, carved into the shape of a kraken from an oily black stone, was said to have been found by the First Men when they first came to Old Wyk. Haereg argued that the chair was a product of the first inhabitants of the islands, and only the later histories of maesters and septons alike began to claim that they were in fact descended of the First Men. But this is the purest speculation and, in the end, Haereg himself dismissed the idea, and so must we.

They are their own distinct bloodline.

The stone beast is made up of multiple bloodlines, some associated with magical beasts. It is a sphinx. This is what sphinxes are, how they're created. And in that there is foreshadowing.

Alleras the sphinx is the daughter of a sea captain and prince of Dorne. The stone beast is the result of the union between Euron and Arianne, a sea captain and princess of Dorne. And Sarella is black skinned.

To round out the Harrenhal foreshadowing for now. Harren says to Aegon,

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"I built in stone," said Harren. "Stone does not burn."

It is symbolic of the stone beast losing the ability to breathe fire as explained far above. Stone supplants Drogo's fire within and no longer can it breathe fire. Stone does not burn, the dragon can not produce fire. What happens next at Harrenhal foreshadows beyond where I am now, I will get to it later.

And of course Harrenhal is cursed, like the stone beast is cursed with greyscale, Garin's curse.

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Harrenhal was cursed, everyone knew that
. . .
Next to perish were the elder Strongs. Lyonel Strong, Lord of Harrenhal and Hand of the King, accompanied his son and heir Ser Harwin on his return to the great, half-ruined castle on the lakeshore. Shortly after their arrival, a fire broke out in the tower where they were sleeping, and both father and son were killed, along with three of their retainers and a dozen servants. The cause of the fire was never determined. Some put it down to simple mischance, whilst others muttered that Black Harren’s seat was cursed

Note particularly the foreshadowing in second quote, both father and son killed, like the sacrifices required to second life the dragon.

Dany's visions come in threes, mounts, treasons and lies to slay all feature Euron. And three heads has the dragon. Euron by second lifing the dragon is apparently one of the heads, the second after Drogo, and the stone beast the result, and so the two headed water horse that rides up and down the trident foreshadows the stone beast.

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All that remained of Harroway town was the upper story of a daub-and-wattle inn, the seven-sided dome of a sunken sept, two-thirds of a stone roundtower, some moldy thatch roofs, and a forest of chimneys.
But there was smoke coming from the tower, Arya saw, and below one arched window a wide flat-bottomed boat was chained up tight.

A smoking tower to set the scene, as the stone beast takes flight from in Dany's vision.

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The boat had a dozen oarlocks and a pair of great carved wooden horse heads mounted fore and aft. The two-headed horse, she realized. There was a wooden house with a sod roof right in the middle of the deck, and when the Hound cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted two men came spilling out.

The oars are like kraken tentacles. Riding the Trident as the stone beast will terrorise. And making a guest appearance, a kraken.

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But a sudden shout snapped her head about before she could leap. The ferrymen were rushing forward, poles in hand. For a moment she did not understand what was happening. Then she saw it: an uprooted tree, huge and dark, coming straight at them. A tangle of roots and limbs poked up out of the water as it came, like the reaching arms of a great kraken. The oarsmen were backing water frantically, trying to avoid a collision that could capsize them or stove their hull in. The old man had wrenched the rudder about, and the horse at the prow was swinging downstream, but too slowly. Glistening brown and black, the tree rushed toward them like a battering ram.

 

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"Harroway town shouldn't be far," the Hound said. "Where Lord Roote stables Old King Andahar's two-headed water horse. Maybe we'll ride across."

Look up Andahar if you're interested in the possible origin of such things as Dany's silver, moon of my life and Drogo's braid. Anyway, from there a connection is made that as Andahar owns the two-headed water horse, Dany/Drogo owned or were the original owners of the stone beast.

It is not the point here to reference to other works, but in explaining the stone beast it would be remiss of me not to touch on Cthulhu, for it I'll pull straight from wiki.

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Cthulhu is a cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft and first introduced in the short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published in the American pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928.

The Church of Starry Wisdom is GRRM's in text nod to Lovecraft, and it is associated with the Bloodstone Emperor.

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(Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world).

Cthulhu is a god, part octopus, dragon and man. The stone beast is a combination and so the manifestation of kraken, dragon and human blood, GRRM's Cthulhu.

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In "The Call of Cthulhu", H. P. Lovecraft describes a statue of Cthulhu as "A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." Cthulhu has been described in appearance as resembling an octopus, a dragon and a human caricature, hundreds of meters tall, with webbed human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back. Cthulhu's head is depicted as similar to the entirety of a gigantic octopus, with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth.

Note the similarities between descriptions.

Spoiler

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He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles.

 

And the dread.

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Cthulhu has also been spelled in many other ways, including Tulu, Katulu and Kutulu. The name is often preceded by the epithet Great, Dead, or Dread.

 

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three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . .

For the mount to dread. Great too for Garin the Great parallel.

If you're not aware of Cthulhu then Google images will give you a good idea what the deal is, and why the stone beast is to Dany's eyes in her vision a beast and not a dragon.

Finally consider the very nature of what Euron is going to attempt, and the character and circumstances GRRM is cultivating. To kill oneself in hopes of becoming a dragon in a second life is crazy, madness. At least that's what they called Aerys and Aerion who had similar thoughts and attempts. But then Euron is,

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"Balon was mad, Aeron is madder, and Euron is maddest of them all."

As the texts repeats often. And this is why he had to be mad, to try this. But even then, it's still a great leap even for the mad. And so GRRM will give him a nudge in the form of greyscale. When Euron gets greyscale he'll have but only a short painful life left and horrible death to lose, and so putting it all on the line and taking the jump from the tower for the dragon second life will become all the more attractive.

[chrisdaw]

ARIANNE

The strongest foreshadowing on Arianne's side is this piece.

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The sun was gone, and the sky was full of stars. So many. She leaned her back against a fluted pillar and wondered if her brother was looking at the same stars tonight, wherever he might be. Do you see the white one, Quentyn? That is Nymeria's star, burning bright, and that milky band behind her, those are ten thousand ships. She burned as bright as any man, and so shall I. You will not rob me of my birthright!

Nymeria's star burns bright in the night sky because she burned bright in life. Recall this passage and the explanation provided earlier for it's meaning.

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When a horselord dies, his horse is slain with him, so he might ride proud into the night lands. The bodies are burned beneath the open sky, and the khal rises on his fiery steed to take his place among the stars. The more fiercely the man burned in life, the brighter his star will shine in the darkness.

Note the direct parallel. Arianne shall burn as bright as any man, she shall have the same fate.

Though Euron will take Arianne for her dragon blood, that's not the whole bargain, through Arianne comes another bloodline from the charnel pit of history, Greenblood. The Orphan's of the Greenblood are descendants of the Rhoynar, of Garin the Great and Arianne particularly of Nymeria.

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"They are the Rhoynar," Arianne explained, "and their Mother was the river Rhoyne."

Myrcella did not understand. "I thought you were the Rhoynar. You Dornishmen, I mean."

"We are in part, Your Grace. Nymeria's blood is in me, along with that of Mors Martell

 

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Sar Mell was raided and burned, yet emerged victorious when Rhoynish water wizards called up the power of the river and flooded Volon Therys

Water wizards, Water and river based blood, as the stone beast is going to dwell along the Trident and in time become less dragon and fire based and more kraken and waterborne.

The stone beast's greyscale comes by way of Arianne, she will have it and therefore so too will her child and she will give it to Euron, and so the greyscale foreshadowing runs deep on her side. But the chain of greyscale begins with Jon Connington at the Sorrows, where the tale of Garin the Great explains the mists, stone men and greyscale itself.
Garin was a Prince of the Rhoyanar, after his defeat by the Valyrians he cursed them, an act of defiance, a last ditch grasp at revenge.

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"We'd do well not to breathe the fog either," said Haldon. "Garin's Curse is all about us."

The only way not to breathe the fog is not to breathe. "Garin's Curse is only greyscale," said Tyrion. The curse was oft seen in children, especially in damp, cold climes. The afflicted flesh stiffened, calcified, and cracked, though the dwarf had read that greyscale's progress could be stayed by limes, mustard poultices, and scalding-hot baths (the maesters said) or by prayer, sacrifice, and fasting (the septons insisted). Then the disease passed, leaving its young victims disfigured but alive. Maesters and septons alike agreed that children marked by greyscale could never be touched by the rarer mortal form of the affliction, nor by its terrible swift cousin, the grey plague. "Damp is said to be the culprit," he said. "Foul humors in the air. Not curses."

"The conquerors did not believe either, Hugor Hill," said Ysilla. "The men of Volantis and Valyria hung Garin in a golden cage and made mock as he called upon his Mother to destroy them. But in the night the waters rose and drowned them, and from that day to this they have not rested. They are down there still beneath the water, they who were once the lords of fire. Their cold breath rises from the murk to make these fogs, and their flesh has turned as stony as their hearts."

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At Chroyane, the cage was hung from the walls, so that the prince might witness the enslavement of the women and children whose fathers and brothers had died in his gallant, hopeless war...but the prince, it is said, called down a curse upon the conquerors, entreating Mother Rhoyne to avenge her children. And so, that very night, the Rhoyne flooded out of season and with greater force than was known in living memory. A thick fog full of evil humors fell, and the Valyrian conquerors began to die of greyscale. (There is, at least, this much truth to the tale: in later centuries, Lomas Longstrider wrote of the drowned ruins of Chroyane, its foul fogs and waters, and the fact that wayward travelers infected with greyscale now haunt the ruins—a hazard for those who travel the river beneath the broken span of the Bridge of Dream.)

And in the stone beast so comes to pass Garin's curse. The greyscale comes by Arianne, she who is blood of the Rhoynar just like Garin. As explained previously Arianne's motivation for bedding Euron is revenge, revenge against Dany, the Valyrian blooded dragon, as Garin's curse is motivated by revenge. As Garin's curse turned the hearts of the Valyrian conquerors, they who were once the lords of fire, to stone, the cold stone of Arianne's greyscale will turn the dragon's fiery heart to stone. In place of the fire the dragon breathed, the stone beast will breathe greyscale. Everyone who breathes the stone beast's breath will get greyscale.

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They tell of pale blue mists that move across the waters, mists so cold that any ship they pass over is frozen instantly; of drowned spirits who rise at night to drag the living down into the grey-green depths; of mermaids pale of flesh with black-scaled tails, far more malign than their sisters of the south.

Some random stone beast foreshadowing. Of consequence the mists, grey, green, pale, black scales and dragging down to depths.

The Garin foreshadowing continues in Arianne's chapters. Her friend Garin.

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"Prince Oberyn was full of stories." Garin had been with them as well that day; he was Arianne's milk brother, and they had been inseparable since before they learned to walk.

"He told about Prince Garin, I remember, the one that I was named for."

"Garin the Great," offered Drey, "the wonder of the Rhoyne."

Inseparable with Arianne. And in Arianne's other friend more name association, Drey a letter from grey. I haven't looked far into Arianne's other companions but probably they're all foreshadowing in the same way. Spotted Sylva for instance, a play on Dany's mount she calls her Silver, spotted for disease. (Though maybe Spotted Sylva is COTF related.)

But Garin is my focus as by his name the connection is made clear, and he foreshadows multiple aspects of the stone beast plot.

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Myrcella split an orange with Spotted Sylva, whilst Garin ate olives and spit the stones at Drey.

Garin eats the olives and spits stones at Drey. Olives represent peace. The stone represents Garin's curse, greyscale. The stonebeast will destroy the peace and breathe greyscale.

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"Aye," Garin called out cheerfully, "and we sing and play and dance on water

Just more for the stone beast becoming waterborne.

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"They were taken to the Planky Town and will be conveyed by ship to Ghaston Grey, until such time as Prince Doran decides their fate."

Ghaston Grey was a crumbling old castle perched on a rock in the Sea of Dorne, a drear and dreadful prison where the vilest of criminals were sent to rot and die.

The "they' are all Arianne's friends in her plot, including Garin. There is a resembleance between Ghaston Grey and the stone beast. As the stone beast ages the greyscale will take hold, probably parts will crumble and it's movement will become cumbersome, eventually fading away completely. It will turn from a great powerful beast and become more like a horrible prison, the second lifers trapped inside when it sinks to the sea bottom. Euron particularly, the vilest criminal.

Locked in her tower Arianne tricks a girl smitten with Garin.

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During her next bath, she spoke of her imprisoned friends, especially Garin. "He's the one I fear for most," she confided to the serving girl. "The orphans are free spirits, they live to wander. Garin needs sunshine and fresh air. If they lock him away in some dank stone cell, how will he survive? He will not last a year at Ghaston Grey." Cedra did not reply, but her face was pale when Arianne rose from the water, and she was squeezing the sponge so tightly that soap was dripping on the Myrish carpet.

Even so, it was four more days and two more baths before the girl was hers. "Please," Cedra finally whispered, after Arianne had painted a vivid picture of Garin throwing himself from the window of his cell, to taste freedom one last time before he died. "You have to help him. Please don't let him die."

Here it's about Euron or perhaps Arianne herself. Garin throwing himself from his window to taste freedom before he died is straightforward foreshadowing of what Euron is going to do, in almost the same terms that Euron put it.

This foreshadowing suggests Arianne may actually fall in love with Euron, and will willingly sacrifice the child to save Euron's death by greyscale (and if she goes too, her own as well).

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"It has not been so long since you were playing in those pools. You used to ride the shoulders of an older girl . . . a tall girl with wispy yellow hair . . ."

"Jeyne Fowler, or her sister Jennelyn." It had been years since Arianne had thought of that. "Oh, and Frynne, her father was a smith. Her hair was brown. Garin was my favorite, though. When I rode Garin no one could defeat us, not even Nym and that green-haired Tyroshi girl."

Garin as an undefeatable mount particularly associated with Arianne.

There's some foreshadowing in the sex scene between Arianne and Arys.

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He did not die.

His desire was as deep and boundless as the sea, but when the tide receded, the rocks of shame and guilt thrust up as sharp as ever. Sometimes the waves would cover them, but they remained beneath the waters, hard and black and slimy. What am I doing? he asked himself. I am a knight of the Kingsguard. He rolled off of her to sprawl staring at the ceiling. A great crack ran across it, from one wall to the other. He had not noticed that before, no more than he had noticed the picture on the tapestry, a scene of Nymeria and her ten thousand ships. I see only her. A dragon might have been peering in the window, and I would never have seen anything but her breasts, her face, her smile.

Arys did not die after bedding Arianne, but Euron is going to, happily. A dragon might have been watching but he'd never have noticed, Dany is going to catch Euron and Arianne in the act. The crack wall to wall is relevant which I'll address later.

And in his death.

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The white knight raised his blade, too slowly. Hotah's longaxe took his right arm off at the shoulder, spun away spraying blood, and came flashing back again in a terrible two-handed slash that removed the head of Arys Oakheart and sent it spinning through the air. It landed amongst the reeds, and the Greenblood swallowed the red with a soft splash.

Greenblood swallows the red. As Arianne's greenblood in the dragon swallows the red fire of the dragon. First head of the dragon removed.

 

STORM'S END AND THE GODS

Storm's End is where Euron will second life Drogon. The stone beast takes flight from a great tower in Dany's vision, Euron contemplates on jumping from a tower, Arianne imagines the same for Garin and Arianne herself is by chapter title a princess locked in a tower.

Fitting for Euron.

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"I am the storm, my lord. The first storm, and the last.

Euron will take Arianne to Storm's End, either she's not going to know what Euron is planning, or will be torn in deciding if she should or shouldn't partake in his intentions.

Spoiler

The situation is foreshadowed on Arianne's part in her second sample chapter.

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“And how many men have died in battles they believed that they could win?”  Ser Daemon asked her.  “Refuse them, princess. I mistrust these sellswords. Do not go to Storm’s End.”

Don't go to Storm's End.

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Will we? Wondered Arianne. “Battle? Or siege?” She did not intend to let herself be trapped inside Storm’s End.

Don't get yourself trapped in Storm's End.

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Come the morrow, I sail to beard the dragon in its den.”

But she decides she will go to Storm's End, and there she will face the dragon.

 

Storm's End was raised by Durran, the first Storm King, styled Durran Godsgrief. First Storm King as Euron says he is the first storm.

Spoiler

Godsgrief is another nod to Euron, as per his intentions summed up again in the Aeron dream.

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Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith...even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath.

And there, swollen and green, half­-devoured by crabs, the Drowned God festered with the rest, seawater still dripping from his hair.

 

The Ironborn gods, the Drowned God and Storm God, are enemies, but in Euron they have a common enemy, Euron is defying all gods, but these two are particularly his.

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The songs said that Storm's End had been raised in ancient days by Durran, the first Storm King, who had won the love of the fair Elenei, daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. On the night of their wedding, Elenei had yielded her maidenhood to a mortal's love and thus doomed herself to a mortal's death, and her grieving parents had unleashed their wrath and sent the winds and waters to batter down Durran's hold.

And the Ironborn gods are echoed in the sea god and wind goddess in the legend of Durran and the raising of Storm's End.

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In their wroth, they sent howling winds and lashing rains to knock down every castle Durran dared to build, until a young boy helped him erect one so strong and cunningly made that it could defy their gales. The boy grew to be Brandon the Builder; Durran became the first Storm King. With Elenei at his side, he lived and reigned at Storm's End for a thousand years, or so the stories claim.

(Such a life span seems most unlikely, even for a hero married to the daughter of two gods. Archmaester Glaive, himself a stormlander by birth, once suggested that this King of a Thousand Years was in truth a succession of monarchs all bearing the same name, which seems plausible but must forever remain unproved.)

That Bran line is most interesting.

Euron taking Arianne and sacrificing their child is the defiant act, as the Ironborn are shunned for taking Andal wives, and generally what Euron is doing is betrayal and in the cause of evil. Euron and Arianne will live on past many normal lifespans, together inside the stone beast, as Durran and Elenei did inside the construction of their defiance.

SIDEBAR 02 GREEN

I'm not sure how exactly the stone beast will lose the ability to fly, if it will just be the result of it gradually turning to stone or a specific event will cause it. I'm not confident but do lean towards it being struck by lightning.

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Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really fooled her. Since his father would not forbid it, she turned to others. Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed. There were crows' nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went but him, and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he climbed up there and the crows ate it right out of his hand. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in pecking out his eyes.

Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed him in Bran's clothes and flung him off the wall into the yard below, to demonstrate what would happen to Bran if he fell. That had been fun, but afterward Bran just looked at the maester and said, "I'm not made of clay. And anyhow, I never fall."

Yes it's about Bran, his climbing a metaphor for his later magic abilities Bloodraven terms "flying". But building on the theory (that is not mine but I do believe) that Bloodraven first attempted to recruit Euron the same way as he did Bran, and that Euron was a failure and that's why he longs to fly, I think this passage is passively about Euron. Note all the associations for Euron, the pottery boy, as Euron gets greyscale and becomes the stone beast, the crows' nests and eyes, and the broken tower. Euron failed, he lost himself or was just always evil, and he is what Bran could become if Bran is not to make it through BR's training with his head screwed straight. Euron is the bad little boy, the clay boy, second lifing the dragon is him flying too high, and he will be struck down by lightning, and the damage it causes the stone beast will render it flightless. The punishment of the Storm God.

The Grey King taunted the Storm God into a lightning strike.

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It was the Grey King who brought fire to the earth by taunting the Storm God until he lashed down with a thunderbolt, setting a tree ablaze.

It worked out for the Grey King that time, this time not so much I don't think.

The Bloodstone Emperor story backs it too.

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When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky.

The falling part at least.

Stone dragon losing a wing.

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Nimble Dick pointed out a few as they climbed. "There's an ogre's head, see?" he said, and Brienne smiled when she saw it. "And that there's a stone dragon. T'other wing fell off when my father was a boy.

The stone beast will lose the ability to fly, as it's thematically fitting for Euron to have his specific dream of flying crushed first by one of his gods, before the second takes his revenge too.

It will be exactly as Aeron says.

Spoiler

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“He’s your god as well,” insisted the Damphair. “And when you die, he will judge you harshly, Crow’s Eye. You will spend eternity as a sea slug, crawling on your belly eating shit. If you do not fear to kill your own blood, slit my throat and be done with me. I’m weary of your mad boastings.”

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But Victarion insisted stubbornly that the god had raised their brother up and that god must cast him down.

 

The stone beast is going to end up completely waterborne, and then too much stone, and so it will sink, confined wholly to the bottom of the ocean. A prison. The drowned god's judgement.

In line with the Grey King's end.

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Only then did he cast aside his driftwood crown and walk into the sea, descending to the Drowned God's watery halls to take his rightful place at his right hand.

But it's not going to be a joyous descent for Euron.

The stone beast will end up on the sea floor near to Dragonstone, the where I'll explain later, the when of this in the scheme of things though I am not sure. Nor am I sure if it will simply sink, if there won't be some kind of battle to banish it from Westeros and out to sea. It would somewhat make sense in the scheme of things for Tyrion on Viserion to mastermind its defeat. Some things lend me to think Dany will play a role too in the banishment, and Davos's sunken fingers are all over the sunken dragon, but I think they're exclusively end game which I'll get to. But what I do believe is that under the waves Aeron will play a part in bringing it down, but I have to reach for that and it's not that important so I'll deal with it in a sidebar.

SIDEBAR 03 AERON'S REVENGE.

The storms that smash against Storm's End are the god's raging at Durran, trying to knock his castle down, but it continues to hold and they continue to rage.

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From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . .

A smoking tower, maybe it is destroyed and the gods finally have their revenge, as the other two will against Euron.

Some random peices of foreshadowing before moving on.

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"Dragons and krakens do not interest me, regardless of the number of their heads," said Lord Tywin. "Have your whisperers perchance found some trace of my brother's son?"

A play on the dragon has three heads, as mentioned earlier Euron will seemingly be the second head of the dragon.

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The next storm could sink or scatter us, a kraken could pull us under . . .

Euron will get hit by a storm, and ultimately it's his kraken blood that's going to do him in, ruining his dream to be a dragon and fly.

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The Isle of Cedars. Where were these cedars? Drowned four hundred years ago, it seemed. Victarion had gone ashore a dozen times, hunting fresh meat, and had yet to see a cedar.

The girlish master Euron had inflicted upon him back in Westeros claimed this place had once been called 'the Isle of a Hundred Battles,' but the men who had fought those battles had all gone to dust centuries ago. The Isle of Monkeys, that's what they should call it. There were pigs as well: the biggest, blackest boars that any ironborn had ever seen and plenty of squealing piglets in the brush, bold creatures that had no fear of man. They were learning, though. The larders of the Iron Fleet were filling up with smoked hams, salted pork, and bacon.

The boar, big and black and without fear of man foreshadow Drogon. The boars learn to fear the Ironborn, Drogon will learn to fear Euron. Drogo will learn to fear Euron.

[chrisdaw]

DANY'S RESPONSE

Euron has second lifed Drogon and the result is the dragon is in the process of turning to stone or has turned to stone, and is losing or lost the ability to breathe fire.

Drogon is Dany's mount with which she will have won the Iron Throne. Without a useful Drogon as a weapon of war Dany will not be able to hold her seat. Obviously she will want to fix Drogon, return him to his old self. Wake the dragon from stone.

And by this stage Dany, and us readers, are going to have a good idea how to do it. Afterall, she did it once, and saw how Euron did it.

She married and got pregnant by Drogo. Drogo died, his and her child died in her womb, and Drogo's body was burnt in a big fire. Possibly Rhaego's body was burnt too, we don't get that info. The result was a nice proper fire breathing dragon which would allow her to ride it, reflective of her blood more than anything, but also Drogo's ferocity and inoffensive blood.

Euron attempted at first to get a child on her, but when he failed turned to another woman with dragon blood, less dragon blood but dragon blood all the same. Euron died and the child died in a tower fire. He had a magic Valyrian dragon horn called dragonbinder that read blood for fire, fire for blood. The result was a changed Drogon for the worse, far from a dragon, reflective of the bloodlines of Euron, his mate and their child that was a sacrifice.

Whatever else has to happen, it begins with Dany getting pregnant. And now the context is explained most major prophecies and cryptic lines start making sense.

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. . . three heads has the dragon . . . the ghost chorus yammered inside her skull with never a lip moving, never a breath stirring the still blue air

For she needs a third head of the dragon. Having children because the dragon must have three heads, she's not the first to travel this path.

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Viserys, was her first thought the next time she paused, but a second glance told her otherwise. The man had her brother's hair, but he was taller, and his eyes were a dark indigo rather than lilac. "Aegon," he said to a woman nursing a newborn babe in a great wooden bed. "What better name for a king?"

"Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked.

"He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. "There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. "The dragon has three heads." He went to the window seat, picked up a harp, and ran his fingers lightly over its silvery strings. Sweet sadness filled the room as man and wife and babe faded like the morning mist, only the music lingering behind to speed her on her way.

She needs a Targaryen child to fix the stone beast, turn it back to Drogon, or in other words.

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It is written in prophecy as well. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone.

She needs to birth a child to wake the dragon from stone.

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"Robert did that. Not the boy. My daughter has grown fond of him. And he is mine own blood."

"Your brother's blood," Melisandre said. "A king's blood. Only a king's blood can wake the stone dragon."

Not of king's blood specifically, but dragon blood. As always with Mel, just a whisker off.

Qavo provides some foreshadowing.

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They say she is a sorceress who feeds her dragons on the flesh of newborn babes, an oathbreaker who mocks the gods, breaks truces, threatens envoys, and turns on those who have served her loyally. They say her lust cannot be sated, that she mates with men, women, eunuchs, even dogs and children, and woe betide the lover who fails to satisfy her. She gives her body to men to take their souls in thrall."

Waking dragons begins with Dany getting pregnant, but, it can not just be any father, seemingly. Drogo's blood, perhaps a neutral influence, got a decent dragon, but outright evil kraken Euron's blood turned the whole thing into a bloody mess. Besides, she's going to have difficulties with pregnancy, the dragon blood would not have mixed well with kraken blood. No, she needs good blood, dragon stock. Aurane Waters is the first candidate.

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Aurane Waters seemed as bored as Cersei by all this prattle about septons. Seen up close, his hair was more silvery than gold, and his eyes were grey-green where Prince Rhaegar's had been purple. Even so, the resemblance . . . She wondered if Waters would shave his beard for her. Though he was ten years her junior, he wanted her; Cersei could see it in the way he looked at her.

A happy coincidence the correct blooded candidate is also attractive.

In Dany's attempts to get pregnant, so that she may wake the dragon from stone and return it's fire, she is playing the part of Azhor Ahai.

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"A sword plucked from fire, yes. Men tell me things, it is my pleasant smile. How shall a burnt sword serve Stannis?"

"A burning sword," corrected Davos.

"Burnt," said Salladhor Saan, "and be glad of that, my friend. Do you know the tale of the forging of Lightbringer? I shall tell it to you. It was a time when darkness lay heavy on the world. To oppose it, the hero must have a hero's blade, oh, like none that had ever been. And so for thirty days and thirty nights Azor Ahai labored sleepless in the temple, forging a blade in the sacred fires. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold, oh, yes, until the sword was done. Yet when he plunged it into water to temper the steel it burst asunder.

The smithing here is symbolic for sex and pregnancy, note the word associations, sleepless, labor. Hammer and folding, plunging steel.

The sacred fires are Dany's womb.

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"… don't want to wake the dragon …"

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo's copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds.

Fiery womb.

Water, as the first forging was first tempered with, represents the man, Aurane Waters. There will be much hammering and folding, but in the end the steel will burst asunder. A miscarriage. Next.

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"Being a hero, it was not for him to shrug and go in search of excellent grapes such as these, so again he began. The second time it took him fifty days and fifty nights, and this sword seemed even finer than the first. Azor Ahai captured a lion, to temper the blade by plunging it through the beast's red heart, but once more the steel shattered and split. Great was his woe and great was his sorrow then, for he knew what he must do.

A lion. Tyrion, as he will ride Viserion, and . . .

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“Our uncle calls us Strongs, and claims that we are bastards, but when the lords see us on dragonback they will know that for a lie. Only Targaryens ride dragons.”

And he'll be willing, he's thought so already.

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She gives her body to men to take their souls in thrall."

Oh, good, thought Tyrion. If she gives her body to me, she is welcome to my soul, small and stunted though it is.

Less enthusiastic the hammering and folding on Dany's part this time I think. The pregnancy will survive longer, fifty days maybe to Aurane's thirty, but again Dany will miscarriage. Through the lion's heart, suggests Tyrion may form an attachment to Dany and she'll break his heart when she moves on, or perhaps it's the loss of the child that breaks his heart.

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"A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. 'Nissa Nissa,' he said to her, for that was her name, 'bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.' She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.

Note the sword begins white hot. The same as here.

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"… want to wake the dragon …"

Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. "Faster," they cried, "faster, faster." She raced, her feet melting the stone wherever they touched. "Faster!" the ghosts cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.

What is actually happening in Dany's wake the dragon dream is she too is on the verge of second lifing a dragon. The ghosts who are cheering her on are Targaryen's of the past who had second lifed a dragon, she is passing in their footsteps. But they have come and gone, that's why they're ghosts, why their raiments have faded, and why their swords are pale fire. Their swords were once red, they were once the dragon's fire, but their time has come and passed, their fires dwindled. That's what Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes represents, the dragon's fire.

Dany does not wake the dragon herself during her dream, she gets very close, but she does not die and so can not second life the dragon, she lives and wakes as herself in her own body. Drogo and Rhaego however did go the whole way.

Nissa Nissa, a name with no other ASOIAF relevance, the third and succesful father completely obscured, but by now everyone will know who the Nissa Nissa is in this equation. Dany's fiery womb proves too hot for water and a lion's blood, what will be needed is some cold, a preservative.

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Fire consumes, but cold preserves.

Three heads has the dragon, Drogo, Euron and . . .

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Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . .

A Song of Ice and Fire.

Dany will lose her throne. Without Drogon she can not rule by fear, and like the first dragon queen she will be forced to flee KL by the smallfolk. Eventually she will turn up in the north.

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. . . Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies

She may hear Stannis has a burning sword. Benerro is likely to be with Dany, and he may know or hear Mel has singled out Stannis. And Stannis has Targaryen lineage. So maybe she thinks Stannis is her third head, maybe she even associates Stannis with the vision of the wall of ice considering he's up there and saved the wall. There's some foreshadowing that may be interpreted to mean that Dany will in fact bed Stannis (inverse Night's King), but as a result of their union she'll get nothing but a shadow. But I won't explore that path here.

However, why ever, Dany is going north to the wall, exposing Stannis isn't really AA, and meeting Jon, and learning (correctly) he is the son of Rhaegar and Lyanna. I don't know how exactly, probably Howland, it seems his whole purpose, but really how doesn't matter, R+L=J isn't there to stay a secret forever, it's coming out and this is why it matters.

And then the blue flower growing from a wall of ice will make sense, and Dany will know exactly what needs to happen. And while in the north she will learn of the Others, and the need for what she must do grows exponentially. It's not just about her anymore, her glory, her throne, but the whole existence of life on Westeros that depends upon her waking the dragon from stone, that is getting Jon to put one up her.

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three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . .

Drogo to love, Euron to dread, which leaves Jon to bed. This is the business of saving the world, no room for love or feeling, Jon is simply the mount she must bed, a means to an end, the third head of her dragon.

But in this Dany is going to hit a wall of ice. To Jon she's his aunt and seemingly a rambling mad woman. After Stannis burnt Shireen and nothing came of it Jon's not going to have any time for this waking dragons prophecy nonsense, even coming from the mother of dragons. He's got shit to do, a world to save.

And it's more than that. It will be as per the conversation between Stonesnake and Ygritte about Bael the Bard, which as I'll explain a little farther down is a fitting place to put the foreshadowing.

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"I'll hear it all the same."

"Brave black crow," she mocked. "Well, long before he was king over the free folk, Bael was a great raider."

Stonesnake gave a snort. "A murderer, robber, and raper, is what you mean."

"That's all in where you're standing too,"

Dany is a lot of things, and by the time she gets to Jon she'll be even more things. From Jon's perspective, from where he stands, Dany is a conqueror who came and killed a loved king (Aegon) in a war that brought death and destruction to Westeros with dragon's flame. She stole the throne and ruled so brutally she was rejected by the people. And all the while she danced her dragon the true enemy, the enemy that threatened everyone and really needed burning, was at the wall. Instead of playing the game of thrones she could have saved the realm. She is no true queen. And now that she has arrived, finally, she has no fucking dragon.

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The Stark in Winterfell wanted Bael's head, but never could take him, and the taste o' failure galled him. One day in his bitterness he called Bael a craven who preyed only on the weak.

Jon's perspective on Dany. For many reasons Jon will refuse to bed Dany, but above all the reasons mentioned above is the simple fact that his heart still belongs to Ygritte. But Dany is no position to let that stop her.

[chrisdaw]

THE TREASON FOR LOVE

To Dany Jon is represented by this vision.

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A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . .

So she goes to the wall or Winterfell to pluck the blue flower. That's what Bael the Bard did, Bael is a parallel for Dany.

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"North or south, singers always find a ready welcome, so Bael ate at Lord Stark's own table, and played for the lord in his high seat until half the night was gone. The old songs he played, and new ones he'd made himself, and he played and sang so well that when he was done, the lord offered to let him name his own reward. 'All I ask is a flower,' Bael answered, 'the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o' Winterfell.'"

"Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o' the winter roses be plucked for the singer's payment. And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished . . . and so had Lord Brandon's maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain."

Bael plucked the blue rose of Winterfell, as Dany intends.

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"Lord Brandon had no other children. At his behest, the black crows flew forth from their castles in the hundreds, but nowhere could they find any sign o' Bael or this maid. For most a year they searched, till the lord lost heart and took to his bed, and it seemed as though the line o' Starks was at its end. But one night as he lay waiting to die, Lord Brandon heard a child's cry. He followed the sound and found his daughter back in her bedchamber, asleep with a babe at her breast."

And from it came a child.

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Be that as it may, what's certain is that Bael left the child in payment for the rose he'd plucked unasked, and that the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark. So there it is—you have Bael's blood in you, same as me."

Jon and Ygritte, lovers with the same blood according to the story. Jon and Dany, same blood.

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So he scaled the Wall, skipped down the kingsroad, and walked into Winterfell one winter's night with harp in hand, naming himself Sygerrik of Skagos. Sygerrik means 'deceiver' in the Old Tongue, that the First Men spoke, and the giants still speak."

And most importantly, Bael did it by deception, as Dany will have to. Specifically he took a false identity.

What Dany needs to do is steal Jon, as the wildlings do, quick and cunning. It's all a very wildling story.

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"And what if they do? I'd sooner be stolen by a strong man than be given t' some weakling by my father."

"You say that, but how can you know? What if you were stolen by someone you hated?"

"He'd have t' be quick and cunning and brave t' steal me. So his sons would be strong and smart as well. Why would I hate such a man as that?"

"Maybe he never washes, so he smells as rank as a bear."

"Then I'd push him in a stream or throw o' bucket of water on him. Anyhow, men shouldn't smell sweet like flowers."

"What's wrong with flowers?"

"Nothing, for a bee. For a bed I want one o' these." Ygritte made to grab the front of his breeches.

Jon caught her wrist.

Jon will hate Dany, but she will steal him all the same. Smelling as rank as a bear symbolises Jorah, who will be with Dany. And in Jorah will be another reason for Jon to hate Dany. Jorah fled Ned's justice, and brought dishonour on Jeor Mormont, father figures for Jon, yet Dany will have allowed Jorah a privileged place in her service.

Men shouldn't smell like flowers Ygritte says, yet to Dany Jon is symbolised by the sweet smelling flower.

And it is in the stars.

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the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their Smith up here was called the Thief. And when the Thief was in the Moonmaid, that was a propitious time for a man to steal a woman, Ygritte insisted. "Like the night you stole me. The Thief was bright that night."

Dany is the red wanderer, having wandered the Red Wastes. As she is the Theif trying to steal Jon and a Smith by way of playing the role of AA in the story of the forging of Lightbringer. Dany is associated with the moon as explained before but she is not the Moonmaid, different things, Jon is playing the feminine part and Dany the masculine. The wildling men steal the women, Bael stole the blue flower which was a daughter. Jon is the Moonmaid.

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The Moonmaid, shy as ever

Shying from Dany's sexual advances, as he did Ygritte's for a time, as he ignored Alys Karstark's subtlety and straight turned down Mel's invitation. The Moonmaid, unlike his mother, is no easy steal.

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Dunk need only lift his eyes to find familiar friends: the Stallion and the Sow, the King's Crown and the Crone's Lantern, the Galley, Ghost, and Moonmaid.

Ghost and Moonmaid, one after the other.

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The moon had crowned the Moonmaid as they set out from the dust-dry ruins of Shandystone, striking south and west.

Dany remains the moon. She crowns Jon. This may be literal, she may literally place the KITN crown on his head, but it's the symbolism that really matters.

A little sideways now to explain some of Dany's arc, I must as it will be relevant. Dany will have come to Westeros and killed an accepted and loved king in Aegon. And the realm will not forgive her for it. They'll call her a usurper, and believe she did it all for her own glory, for her love of power. They'll say she's her father's daughter, they'll call her a mad Targaryen. And in the failure of her rule she'll make many mistakes, leading to some of those who were very close to her turning from her. And after it all she will have lost her throne.

It's all cause for some self reflection. To consider some hard possibilities, such as if those who were so loyal and loved her so much would turn from her, then perhaps the fault was with her. And the most important question of all, one central to Dany's arc.

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"Is that meant to frighten me? I lived in fear for fourteen years, my lord. I woke afraid each morning and went to sleep afraid each night … but my fears were burned away the day I came forth from the fire. Only one thing frightens me now."

"And what is it that you fear, sweet queen?"

"I am only a foolish young girl." Dany rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. "But not so foolish as to tell you that. My men shall look at these ships. Then you shall have my answer."

The one thing Dany fears is that she may go mad. Or is mad. And when many of those closest to her lost faith in her and most the realm thinks she is mad, she'll have to consider it. But in the revelation of Jon's parentage comes her answer.

She will accept Jon as her king, regardless of what he considers himself. And when she does, she will prove to herself she is not mad. That when she warred and destroyed Aegon she truly did so because he was a false king, the mummer's dragon masquerading as something he was not. But Jon is the real deal, and she will accept it. Thus the moon crowns the Moonmaid, Dany accepts Jon as her king, the importance of which is that it will explain something else later.

And in the crowning quote the line about heading south, so she'll probably fall in line behind Jon when he begins his conquest south.

Back to Bael. Another character who somewhat plays the part of Bael is Mance, he takes the false identity of Able the Bard to infiltrate Winterfell and steal the daughter of WF. Able being an anagram of Bael.

In his false identity endeavours Mance has had an able ally, Melisandre. First she glamoured him as another to save his life, and set him free to send him on his Bael mission. In Melisandre, our other Bael parallel Dany will also find an ally.

To Jon Dany's ramblings about waking dragons from stone will seem crazy, but to Melisandre the words of Benerro's chosen one will all make perfect sense. Sacrificing children with king's blood and waking dragons from stone is her whole pitch. And very conveniently, she has all the information and tools to help Dany get the job done.

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"I have no sister." The words were knives. What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister?

Jon asks Mel what she knows of his heart. The answer a whole lot.

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"Do not be so certain." The ruby at Melisandre's throat gleamed red. "It is not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear, but those who smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. You would do well to keep your wolf close beside you. Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark. Blood frozen red and hard, and naked steel. It was very cold."

"It is always cold on the Wall."

"You think so?"

"I know so, my lady."

"Then you know nothing, Jon Snow," she whispered.

She knows Ygritte, what she meant to him, means to him.

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"No. I just need a breath of air." Jon stepped out into the night. The sky was full of stars, and the wind was gusting along the Wall. Even the moon looked cold; there were goosebumps all across its face. Then the first gust caught him, slicing through his layers of wool and leather to set his teeth to chattering. He stalked across the yard, into the teeth of that wind. His cloak flapped loudly from his shoulders. Ghost came after. Where am I going? What am I doing? Castle Black was still and silent, its halls and towers dark. My seat, Jon Snow reflected. My hall, my home, my command. A ruin.

In the shadow of the Wall, the direwolf brushed up against his fingers. For half a heartbeat the night came alive with a thousand smells, and Jon Snow heard the crackle of the crust breaking on a patch of old snow. Someone was behind him, he realized suddenly. Someone who smelled warm as a summer day.

When he turned he saw Ygritte.

She stood beneath the scorched stones of the Lord Commander's Tower, cloaked in darkness and in memory. The light of the moon was in her hair, her red hair kissed by fire. When he saw that, Jon's heart leapt into his mouth. "Ygritte," he said.

"Lord Snow." The voice was Melisandre's.

Surprise made him recoil from her. "Lady Melisandre." He took a step backwards. "I mistook you for someone else." At night all robes are grey. Yet suddenly hers were red. He did not understand how he could have taken her for Ygritte. She was taller, thinner, older, though the moonlight washed years from her face. Mist rose from her nostrils, and from pale hands naked to the night. "You will freeze your fingers off," Jon warned.

What Mel did here was glamour as Ygritte. Note that where she is standing, beneath the destroyed LC's tower, is about where Ygritte died.

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Outside, he found he had no idea where he was going. He walked past the shell of the Lord Commander's Tower, where once he'd saved the Old Bear from a dead man; past the spot where Ygritte had died with that sad smile on her face;

It serves as a connection for the glamour, as this passage about what she did to Rattleshirt/Mance explains is a requirement or at least helps. Remember what the shadow means here, that it is a person's image that becomes glamour.

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"The bones help," said Melisandre. "The bones remember. The strongest glamors are built of such things. A dead man's boots, a hank of hair, a bag of fingerbones. With whispered words and prayer, a man's shadow can be drawn forth from such and draped about another like a cloak. The wearer's essence does not change, only his seeming."

Note in the passage she appears as Ygritte the prevalence of the moon and stars in the sky. The moon a nod to Dany and stars the second life.

Melisandre knows Ygritte is in Jon's heart, and she can glamour as Ygritte, and more than that, Melisandre can glamour people other than herself to appear as someone else.

Melisandre will glamour Dany to appear as Ygritte so that she may seduce Jon, and it will work. Dany will appear to Jon as Ygritte where Dany died, and they'll do it against the wall. And Dany will conceive.

As she did with Mance, Melisandre will have Dany wear one of her blood red rubies for the glamour, which she will in a choker around her throat.

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"A watcher," said Stonesnake. "A wildling. Finish her."

Jon could see fear and fire in her eyes. Blood ran down her white throat from where the point of his dirk had pricked her. One thrust and it's done, he told himself. He was so close

Foreshadowing of the scene with Dany in this scene with Ygritte. Fire in her eyes, the blood at her throat for the ruby Dany will wear. One thrust and it will be done, the other type of thrust.

Because Mel was glamouring Rattleshirt as he was burned Mel somewhat felt what he did.

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She made it sound a simple thing, and easy. They need never know how difficult it had been, or how much it had cost her. That was a lesson Melisandre had learned long before Asshai; the more effortless the sorcery appears, the more men fear the sorcerer. When the flames had licked at Rattleshirt, the ruby at her throat had grown so hot that she had feared her own flesh might start to smoke and blacken. Thankfully Lord Snow had delivered her from that agony with his arrows. Whilst Stannis had seethed at the defiance, she had shuddered with relief.

And so too she will feel something of what Dany feels while she glamours her. Unbeknownst to her, she sees the scene in her fires.

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bodies locked together in lust, writhing and rolling and clawing.
...
The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover's hand.

Returning to Bael.

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"Brave black crow," she mocked. "Well, long before he was king over the free folk, Bael was a great raider."

Stonesnake gave a snort. "A murderer, robber, and raper, is what you mean."

In a harsh light one could make the case that's what Dany did. But . . .

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"That's all in where you're standing too," Ygritte said.

It's a matter of perspective.

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This was where the Rat Cook had served the Andal king his prince-and-bacon pie, where the seventy-nine sentinels stood their watch, where brave young Danny Flint had been raped and murdered.

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It was true. The Lord of White Harbor was the very picture of the jolly fat man, laughing and smiling, japing with the other lords and slapping them on the back, calling out to the musicians for this tune or that tune. "Give us 'The Night That Ended,' singer," he bellowed. "The bride will like that one, I know. Or sing to us of brave young Danny Flint and make us weep." To look at him, you would have thought that he was the one newly wed.

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It is not their fathers who concern me. "Did Mance ever sing of Brave Danny Flint?"

"Not as I recall. Who was he?"

"A girl who dressed up like a boy to take the black. Her song is sad and pretty. What happened to her wasn't." In some versions of the song, her ghost still walked the Nightfort.

"I'll send the girls to Long Barrow." The only men there were Iron Emmett and Dolorous Edd, both of whom he trusted. That was not something he could say of all his brothers.

Flint for fire association. Danny for Dany. Did Mance ever sing about Danny? The Mance/Abel/Bael/Dany connection as made previously. Danny took a false identity at the wall, as will Dany. Danny took a male identity, as Dany is going to take the masculine roles in the Bael story and otherwise. Manderly suggests the song for fake Arya, thinking of the bedding with Ramsay, relating to sleeping with the girl of the wrong identity. Danny was raped, but it's going to be the other way around for Dany, again a gender role swap. There will be no murder, an allusion to the child's fate maybe, or just a fitting conclusion to the story.

A less harsh but still unflattering description may be that of a whore, and in that there's plenty of foreshadowing. To begin the courtesan line of Black Pearls.

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A Westerosi prince took her for a lover and got a daughter on her, who grew up to be a courtesan. Her own daughter followed her, and her daughter after her, until you get to this one.
. . .
"The Black Pearl," she told them. Merry claimed the Black Pearl was the most famous courtesan of all. "She's descended from the dragons, that one,"

The Black Pearls have Targaryen blood, dragon blood, they represent dragons, the black one. Consider what a pearl is, a precious item encased by stone (well shell) in the sea. A pearl is calcium carbonite, it's a play on bone.

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The cold salt sea surrounded him, embraced him, reached down through his weak man's flesh and touched his bones. Bones, he thought. The bones of the soul. Balon's bones, and Urri's. The truth is in our bones, for flesh decays and bone endures. And on the hill of Nagga, the bones of the Grey King's Hall . . .

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No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could . . . nor memories, the bones of the soul.

Memories, the bones of the soul. The black pearl represents Drogo inside the stone beast, the memory of what he was, Drogon.

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What did she say to you Cat?"

"She said 'I'll take three cockles,' and 'Do you have any hot sauce, little one?" the girl had answered.

The Black Pearl wants hot sauce, symbolising fire. Drogon needs his fire breath back. He remembers what he was before the stone and shadow fire.

In WF Mance, as Abel, sends his washerwomen, refered to as whores by Theon, to seduce Theon to bring him to him. Theon rejects them, as Jon will reject Dany playing the Bael role. Fitting place then for some foreshadowing.

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Theon made his way deeper into the ruined parts of the castle. As he picked through the shattered stone that had once been Maester Luwin's turret, ravens looked down from the gash in the wall above, muttering to one another. From time to time one would let out a raucous scream. He stood in the doorway of a bedchamber that had once been his own (ankle deep in snow that had blown in through a shattered window), visited the ruins of Mikken's forge and Lady Catelyn's sept. Beneath the Burned Tower, he passed Rickard Ryswell nuzzling at the neck of another one of Abel's washerwomen, the plump one with the apple cheeks and pug nose. The girl was barefoot in the snow, bundled up in a fur cloak. He thought she might be naked underneath. When she saw him, she said something to Ryswell that made him laugh aloud.

Shattered stone, wall above, and beneath the burned tower. Foreshadowing of the LC's ruined tower on thr wall where Dany will take Jon, where Ygritte died. One of Abel's washerwomen, as Mance takes the name from Bael, the part Dany will play. A plump girl with apple cheeks and pug nose, recall Ygritte's features.

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Ygritte watched and said nothing. She was older than he'd thought at first, Jon realized; maybe as old as twenty, but short for her age, bandy-legged, with a round face, small hands, and a pug nose. Her shaggy mop of red hair stuck out in all directions. She looked plump as she crouched there, but most of that was layers of fur and wool and leather.

A nothern man takes the girl. She's barefoot in the snow but bundled in a fur cloak. Foreshadowing Jon Snow, a northman, the woman bare in snow but bundled in a fur cloak.

In Chataya's brothel there exists a prostitute named Dancy. A letter from Dany, two letters from Mance. This is Dancy's introduction.

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Two other girls sat playing at tiles before a leaded glass window. The freckled one wore a chain of blue flowers in her honeyed hair.

Blue flowers strikes straight at Jon, but note the sentence structure and word association in comparison to this.

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A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness.

Blue flower in common, chain for chink, honeyed hair for sweet air.

This is Dancy's other description.

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Tyrion had no doubt that Dancy would be a lively handful. She was pug-nosed and bouncy, with freckles and a mane of thick red hair that tumbled down past her waist. But he had Shae waiting for him at the manse.

Ygritte. Dancy, the whore named for Dany, wears Jon's symbol and looks just like Ygritte. This is Dancy's predicament.

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Tyrion gently disentangled himself from the other girl and stood. Dancy did not seem to mind. "Next time," she reminded him. She put a finger in her mouth and sucked it.
As the black-skinned girl led him up the stairs, she said, "Poor Dancy. She has a fortnight to get my lord to choose her. Elsewise she loses her black pearls to Marei."

Dancy has to get her lord to bed her or she'll lose her black pearls. Dany will first try Tyrion to get back her black pearl, Drogon. But it's for Jon this foreshadowing is really about as per all the above. Dancy's predicament is Dany's, she has to get her lord, her king in fact, Jon, to bed her, or she'll lose her black pearl, Drogon.

Marei, to whom Dancy is in danger of losing her black pearls to, has Stone Drogon foreshadowing.

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Marei was a cool, pale, delicate girl Tyrion had noticed once or twice. Green eyes and porcelain skin, long straight silvery hair, very lovely, but too solemn by half. "I'd hate to have the poor child lose her pearls on account of me."

Green eyes as per association in the green sidebar, pale skin, delicate because the stone beast will crumble, parallels to the stone beast.

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"My mother named me Hildy, ser." She pulled a soiled shift down over her head and shook her hair out. Her face was almost as dirty as her feet and she had enough hair between her legs to pass for Bracken's sister, but there was something appealing about her all the same. That pug nose, her shaggy mane of hair … or the way she did a little curtsy after she had stepped into her skirt. "Have you seen my other shoe, m'lord?"

Hildy, another whore with Ygritte association being rejected by a man, this time Jaime, for vows. Vows are probably another reason Jon won't be willing to bed Dany. Well Hindy's not really a whore, Jaime just mistakes her for one, and she's willing to sleep with him despite his vows seemingly because he has a gold hand. So maybe a bit of a whore, a matter of perspective again.

Recall this scene and it's meaning.

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"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."

Dareon in Braavos.

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Night belonged to the bravos and the courtesans. Dareon's new friends, Sam thought bitterly. They were all the singer could talk about of late. He was trying to write a song about one courtesan, a woman called the Moonshadow who had heard him singing beside the Moon Pool and rewarded him with a kiss. "You should have asked her for silver," Sam had said. "It's coin we need, not kisses." But the singer only smiled. "Some kisses are worth more than yellow gold, Slayer."

That made him angry too. Dareon was not supposed to be making up songs about courtesans. He was supposed to be singing about the Wall and the valor of the Night's Watch. Jon had hoped that perhaps his songs might persuade a few young men to take the black. Instead he sang of golden kisses, silvery hair, and red, red lips. No one ever took the black for red, red lips.

Dareon neglecting his NW vows, kissing whores called Moonshadow (Dany the moon, but recall what a shadow means with regards to a glamour) beside the Moon Pool. Silvery hair, red and red into the mix, Mel's influence, Ygritte's features. He's going to write a song, the Song of Ice and Fire would make sense. General foreshadowing.

A moon pool and Dany getting a cold lord's kiss, in the manner Jon gives Ygritte.

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The moon floated on the still black waters, shattering and re-forming as her ripples washed over it. Goose pimples rose on her pale skin as the coldness crept up her thighs and kissed her lower lips.

Then she and Drogo have sex.

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"The stallion who mounts the world," Drogo whispered hoarsely. His hands still smelled of horse blood. He bit at her throat, hard, in the moment of his pleasure, and when he lifted her off, his seed filled her and trickled down the inside of her thighs.

More blood and throat.

When Mel appears to Jon as Ygritte in the following conversation Mel says this.

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"I can show you." Melisandre draped one slender arm over Ghost, and the direwolf licked her face. "The Lord of Light in his wisdom made us male and female, two parts of a greater whole. In our joining there is power. Power to make life. Power to make light. Power to cast shadows."

"Shadows." The world seemed darker when he said it.

"Every man who walks the earth casts a shadow on the world. Some are thin and weak, others long and dark. You should look behind you, Lord Snow. The moon has kissed you and etched your shadow upon the ice twenty feet tall."
 
Jon glanced over his shoulder. The shadow was there, just as she had said, etched in moonlight against the Wall.

Dany, the moon, will kiss Jon against the wall. Dany will become pregnant, man and woman and the power of life. The power of light as the child represents Lightbringer as per Dany's whole motivation and the AA story parallel. The large shadow etched against the wall is representative of the importance, the influence of the child, but also of Jon's shame. Breaking his vows somewhat, but far more important to him is this side of things.

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Jon trembled. "I will never father a bastard," he said carefully. "Never!" He spat it out like venom.

Suddenly he realized that the table had fallen silent, and they were all looking at him. He felt the tears begin to well behind his eyes. He pushed himself to his feet.

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Ygritte was with him, laughing at him, shedding her skins till she was naked as her name day, trying to kiss him, but he couldn't, not with his father watching. He was the blood of Winterfell, a man of the Night's Watch. I will not father a bastard, he told her. I will not. I will not.

"You know nothing, Jon Snow,"

The moon cracks in the AA story.

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Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon,

So Jon's cock plays the smoking sword, the cracking of the moon symbolic of Dany being impregnated in the moment of anguish and ecstasy.

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"I looked at that book Maester Aemon left me. The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai. Lightbringer was his sword. Tempered with his wife's blood if Votar can be believed. Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle the blade burned fiery hot. Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame."

I should point out the consistency between these passages and what Mel sees in her fires.

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The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover's hand.

Transformation, burning, fire, blood, smoke, agony and ecstasy.

AA sticking his sword into this monster and the aftermath is foreshadowing for Jon sticking his cock into Dany and the pregnancy that results, the little baby dragon, Lightbringer. Note the correlation in imagery to Dany's dragon dream here too.

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Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

Note the dragon's blood is hers, this dream symbolised her first pregnancy, Rhaego.

General foreshadowing.

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Within the solar the air was warm. Lady Melisandre was seated near the fire, her ruby glimmering against the pale skin of her throat. Ygritte had been kissed by fire; the red priestess was fire, and her hair was blood and flame.

Ygritte, Mel, blood and flame, for fire and blood, Dany. There's a fixation with hair in a lot of this, I'm not sure if there's something specific in it. Perhaps that's where glamours and the like struggle, getting the hair to look right, perhaps it is half a give away. No other idea why.

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When the dreams took him, he found himself back home once more, splashing in the hot pools beneath a huge white weirwood that had his father's face. Ygritte was with him, laughing at him, shedding her skins till she was naked as her name day, trying to kiss him, but he couldn't, not with his father watching. He was the blood of Winterfell, a man of the Night's Watch. I will not father a bastard, he told her. I will not. I will not. "You know nothing, Jon Snow," she whispered, her skin dissolving in the hot water, the flesh beneath sloughing off her bones until only skull and skeleton remained, and the pool bubbled thick and red.

I trust this needs no explanation. The glamour is going to fall the instant the seed is planted.

So Dany tricks Jon into making love to her, by glamouring his actual love, and succeeds in making him father to a bastard. Jon who as I explained way above, Dany will accept as her rightful king. What she has done is,

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. . . three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . .

commit the treason for love.

SIDEBAR 4 - COSMIC & SEISMIC ACTIVITY, WALL FALL & DANY'S THROAT

[chrisdaw]

DRAGONSTONE

So Dany has her little promised prince of ice and fire melting away inside of her, first requirement met. Now she needs to make sure the baby becomes substantial enough to be of use and find the stone beast, Drogon. Drogon, the stone beast, will be wholly or almost stone and under the sea around Dragonstone. For why it will end up at Dragonstone there might be no good reason, but it will because it's foreshadowed.

The name foreshadows it to begin with, stone dragons on Dragonstone.

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while Sea Dragon Tower gazed serenely out across the waves. Smaller dragons framed the gates. Dragon claws emerged from walls to grasp at torches, great stone wings enfolded the smith and armory, and tails formed arches, bridges, and exterior stairs.

Davos had often heard it said that the wizards of Valyria did not cut and chisel as common masons did, but worked stone with fire and magic as a potter might work clay. But now he wondered. What if they were real dragons, somehow turned to stone?

Giving dragons greyscale may be how Valyrians built the place. I doubt it, seems a waste of dragons, but who knows.

Mel's right on the money here, again.

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I have seen it in the flames, read of it in ancient prophecy. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt."

She's still holding to Dragonstone even while she's at the wall.

Rhaenyra foreshadows Dany in this.

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Rhaenyra was forced to sell her crown to raise the coin to buy passage on a Braavosi merchantman, the Violande. Ser Harrold Darke urged her to seek refuge with Lady Arryn in the Vale, whilst Ser Medrick Manderly tried to persuade her to accompany him and his brother Ser Torrhen back to White Harbor, but Her Grace refused them both. She was adamant on returning to Dragonstone. There she would find dragon’s eggs, she told her loyalists; she must have another dragon, or all was lost.

Got to go to Dragonstone, last chance to get a dragon or else everything is lost.

Dany names the home Drogon makes for himself on the Dothraki sea Dragonstone.

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The hill loomed larger down here. Dany had taken to calling it Dragonstone, after the ancient citadel where she'd been born ...

He had dwelt there for some time, Dany had realized when she first saw the hill. The air smelled of ash, every rock and tree in sight was scorched and blackened, the ground strewn with burned and broken bones, yet it had been home to him.

Dany knew the lure of home ...

She would sooner have returned to Meereen on dragon's wings, to be sure. But that was a desire Drogon did not seem to share ...

And no matter how far the dragon flew each day, come nightfall some instinct drew him home to Dragonstone.

Some instinct draws Drogon to Dragonstone.

GRRM goes out of his way to foreshadow it again here.

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And there Aegon might have remained, hidden yet harmless, dulling his pain with wine and hiding his burn scars beneath a heavy cloak, had Sunfyre not made his way to Dragonstone. We may ask what drew him back to the Dragonmont, for many have. Was the wounded dragon, with his half-healed broken wing, driven by some primal instinct to return to his birthplace, the smoking mountain where he had emerged from his egg? Or did he somehow sense the presence of King Aegon on the island, across long leagues and stormy seas, and fly there to rejoin his rider? Some go so far as to suggest that Sunfyre sensed Aegon’s desperate need. But who can presume to know the heart of a dragon?

As the foreshadowing is so plain I don't really care to ponder on the why, Drogon come the stone beast that Dany must wake is going to Dragonstone. Somewhere close out in the ocean it will have sunk, very much stone, and Dany has to go to it.

So having plucked the blue flower in the north Dany must go south, to get her dragon so that she can fly north again and fight the Others. Probably all the way to the Heart of Winter.

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“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”

To go north she's first got to go south. Again it is as Jon says to Ygritte in the Bael conversation.

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"Bael the Bard made it," said Ygritte. "He was King-beyond-the-Wall a long time back. All the free folk know his songs, but might be you don't sing them in the south."

"Winterfell's not in the south," Jon objected.

"Yes it is. Everything below the Wall's south to us."

He had never thought of it that way. "I suppose it's all in where you're standing."

A matter of where Dany is standing.

Conveniently Jon will be headed south too, with an army to force the Iron Throne and whole realm to stand with the north against the Others. He'll go all the way to KL, and Dany will come with. On the way Viserion will die, not Jon's intention, he'd rather the dragon live and fight the Others, but Tyrion will turn it on him and his forces will have to fight it, and it will die. Rhaegal dead with Aegon, and Viserion dead too. Waking the dragon from stone will be the only chance left. So from KL Dany will have to,

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To reach the west, you must go east.

head east to Dragonstone, so she can come back west to fight the Others, with a dragon. She must go back

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To go forward you must go back,

to where the Targaryens began in Westeros. To where she will have began her own conquest. To where she was born. To go forward she must go back, to Dragonstone. And that's exactly what she'll do.

Dany will make it to Dragonstone, but there she'll hit a problem. Whether she knows it or not, the stone beast isn't quite there, it's a little ways away, sunken under the sea. Fortunately that's only a temporary problem as Dragonstone is going to change.

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"When will he be as he was?" Dany demanded.

"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," said Mirri Maz Duur. "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before."

Returning Drogo to her, as he was, is the name of the game here. That is returning Drogon as he was when he was second lifed by Drogo, back into a fire breathing dragon.

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"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,"

There are two references in the text to the sun being not where it should.

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He did. Hardhome had been halfway toward becoming a town, the only true town north of the Wall, until the night six hundred years ago when hell had swallowed it. Its people had been carried off into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on which version of the tale you believed, their homes and halls consumed in a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the Wall far to the south had thought the sun was rising in the north.

Both are associated with Doom like events. Plenty of foreshadowing in Hardhome associated with this event, salvation by the sea, dead things in the sea, Jon's decision to go there to save people despite a queen's protests, but I'm not going to delve deep into it. What's important here is the sun in the wrong spot associated with a doom event.

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Only the brightest stars were visible, all to the west. A dull red glow lit the sky to the northeast, the color of a blood bruise. Tyrion had never seen a bigger moon. Monstrous, swollen, it looked as if it had swallowed the sun and woken with a fever. Its twin, floating on the sea beyond the ship, shimmered red with every wave. "What hour is this?" he asked Moqorro. "That cannot be sunrise unless the east has moved. Why is the sky red?"

"The sky is always red above Valyria, Hugor Hill."

Note the moon, as represents Dany. Monstrous, swollen, a fever. Representing a very pregnant Dany. Looks like it swallowed the sun, rather than just kissing it this time. But again, sun in the wrong spot, caused by the Valyrian doom event.

Dragonstone is going to blow, it's going to go doom. It's a dormant volcanic island afterall and this is a fantasy series. Dragonstone is going to explode, and when it does the volcanic mountains will look like this.

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mountains blow in the wind like leaves.

And Dany will be pregnant, primed for giving birth.

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When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child.

And so of course the other proclamation of MMD is going to happen too.

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"When the seas go dry

GRRM went out of his way in the TWOIAF to speculate on a dried Narrow Sea. As with everything, it's not without reason.

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There is also much to suggest that the Sea of Dorne was once an inland freshwater sea, fed by mountain streams and much smaller than it is today, until the narrow sea burst its bounds and drowned the salt marshes that lay between.

The Dothraki Sea is actually a play on this. The dry sea, with the womb of the world in the middle, where was prophesised the stallion who mounts the world was Dany's child. The mountains feeding the streams I think is actually foreshadowing molten lava flowing from Dragonstone and pooling. The dothraki's mounts can not drink the poison salt water, but can a dragon drink molten lava?

I could speculate as to why Dragonstone dooms or the sea runs dry, but I don't think it's necessary, the foreshadowing is apparent when you understand the context. But I will suggest this possibility, Dany somehow does it, maybe she gets her hands on a horn that causes seismic activity, like giants waking from the earth, and she blows it on purpose to get to the stone dragon. Dragonstone's doom then would be one of the fires she must light.

And so in the salt of the dried out sea bed, as that's what happens when salt water runs dry, and beneath the smoke of an erupting dragonstone, the stone dragon is revealed.

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When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. The bleeding star has come and gone, and Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt. Stannis Baratheon is Azor Ahai reborn!"

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"Edric—" he started.

"—is one boy! He may be the best boy who ever drew breath and it would not matter. My duty is to the realm." His hand swept across the Painted Table. "How many boys dwell in Westeros? How many girls? How many men, how many women? The darkness will devour them all, she says. The night that never ends. She talks of prophecies . . . a hero reborn in the sea, living dragons hatched from dead stone . .

In the sea. Not on it or beside it or near it, in the sea.

Off will go pregnant Dany to the dried out sea to birth a hero in salt and smoke to wake the dragon from stone.

[chrisdaw]

DANY AND THE DECISION

And so Dany has arrived where she needs to be. And so will be Jon, arriving late probably, but not too late. And by now I assume everyone knows what's supposed to happen.

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Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings.

Three heads has the dragon,

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. . . Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . .

time for number three to step up. Jon needs to die, his and Dany's child too, and when their corpses burn Jon will second life the dragon and it'll transform from the stone beast into a regular fire breathing dragon again, hopefully. Red fire this time maybe specked black, instead of Drogon's black with red specks.

Jon sacrificing himself to save the realm is barely worth running over. He'd do that without second thought, it's not an issue. But the child most definitely is an issue, the central issue of both Jon's and Dany's character arcs, and representative of the core theme of the series.

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"Your Grace," said Davos, "the cost . . ."

"I know the cost! Last night, gazing into that hearth, I saw things in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning . . . burning, Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him into ash. Do you think I need Melisandre to tell me what that means? Or you?" The king moved, so his shadow fell upon King's Landing. "If Joffrey should die . . . what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?"

"Everything," said Davos, softly.

The cost. It was nothing to decry it when no-one believed a dragon would really wake from stone. But now everything says this has to happen, smoke, salt, stone dragons and everything else aligned. Who could doubt now that it will work? But even so, the cost. Is it one they're willing to pay? Is it one they should pay? That's the burning question, how far should one go down the dark path in service of a greater good? It has been debated in small councils, between Hands and kings, sorcerers and fathers, queens and their advisors. And so it comes again at the climax of the story in the most simple form, a bastard child against the survival of the realm.

Dany first.

She's danced this dance before.

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"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.

Note how GRRM manipulates the language to have Dany not deny the accusation that she sacrificed her child. If she looks back she is lost.

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If she had not been so sick and scared, that might have come as a relief. Instead she began to shiver violently. She rubbed her fingers through the dirt, and grabbed a handful of grass to wipe between her legs. The dragon does not weep. She was bleeding, but it was only woman's blood. The moon is still a crescent, though. How can that be? She tried to remember the last time she had bled. The last full moon? The one before? The one before that? No, it cannot have been so long as that. "I am the blood of the dragon," she told the grass, aloud.

Once, the grass whispered back, until you chained your dragons in the dark.

"Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her name …" Dany could not recall the child's name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. "I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons."

Aye, the grass said, but you turned against your children.

The cost of her dragons are children. To be the mother of dragons is to let children die. And after her ADWD arc Dany will not be chaining her dragons, she's embracing them, full fire and blood. She could have had her peace but it'd have meant allowing them to kill Drogon.

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Drogon raised his head, blood dripping from his teeth. The hero leapt onto his back and drove the iron spearpoint down at the base of the dragon's long scaled neck.
Dany and Drogon screamed as one.

The hero leaned into his spear, using his weight to twist the point in deeper. Drogon arched upward with a hiss of pain. His tail lashed sideways. She watched his head crane around at the end of that long serpentine neck, saw his black wings unfold. The dragonslayer lost his footing and went tumbling to the sand. He was trying to struggle back to his feet when the dragon's teeth closed hard around his forearm. "No" was all the man had time to shout. Drogon wrenched his arm from his shoulder and tossed it aside as a dog might toss a rodent in a rat pit.

"Kill it," Hizdahr zo Loraq shouted to the other spearmen. "Kill the beast!"

Ser Barristan held her tightly. "Look away, Your Grace."

"Let me go!" Dany twisted from his grasp. The world seemed to slow as she cleared the parapet. When she landed in the pit she lost a sandal. Running, she could feel the sand between her toes, hot and rough. Ser Barristan was calling after her. Strong Belwas was still vomiting. She ran faster.

That's why she jumped in the pit, not to save the people Drogon was killing, but to save Drogon from them.

Dany's waking the dragon dream.

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Wings shadowed her fever dreams.

"You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She could not look behind her, must not look behind her. There was a door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she saw that it was painted red. She walked faster, and her bare feet left bloody footprints on the stone.

Note how it begins as a question, she doesn't really want to do this, does she? She doesn't really want to sacrifice her child to wake the dragon, does she?

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"… don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

. . .

"… want to wake the dragon …"

. . .

"… wake the dragon …"

. . .

"… the dragon …"

And the doubt fades, the question becomes a confirmation, wake the dragon.

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Azor Ahai captured a lion, to temper the blade by plunging it through the beast's red heart, but once more the steel shattered and split. Great was his woe and great was his sorrow then, for he knew what he must do.

Great will be her woe and great will be her sorrow, for she knows the cost, but Dany is as committed as AA.

Burning children is for monsters, and Dany is a monster by way of being the mother of dragons. GRRM picks up the theme in ADWD.

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Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings. The words had been murmured by one of the queen's men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds. Jon had tried to dismiss them as his fever talking. Aemon had demurred. "There is power in a king's blood," the old maester had warned, "and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this." The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast? Only a monster would give a living child to the flames.

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Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.

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"Sweet?" Qavo laughed. "If even half the stories coming back from Slaver's Bay are true, this child is a monster. They say that she is bloodthirsty, that those who speak against her are impaled on spikes to die lingering deaths. They say she is a sorceress who feeds her dragons on the flesh of newborn babes, an oathbreaker who mocks the gods, breaks truces, threatens envoys, and turns on those who have served her loyally. They say her lust cannot be sated, that she mates with men, women, eunuchs, even dogs and children, and woe betide the lover who fails to satisfy her. She gives her body to men to take their souls in thrall."

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What have I done? she thought, huddled in her empty bed. I have waited so long for him to come back, and I send him away. "He would make a monster of me," she whispered, "a butcher queen." But then she thought of Drogon far away, and the dragons in the pit. There is blood on my hands too, and on my heart. We are not so different, Daario and I. We are both monsters.

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"Pets?" screeched Reznak. "Monsters, rather. Monsters that feed on children. We cannot—"
"Silence," said Daenerys. "We will not speak of that."

Dany is in fitting monstrous company. Gregor oft referred to as a monster, turned literally into a monster, gave Sandor to the flames as a child. Craster's child is called monster (as Jon and Dany's child is too in various foreshadowing), Craster sacrificed children to the Others to survive.

Dany, mother of dragons, monster. Her child that will have to die to wake the dragon, monster too.

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"Longspear's not your brother."

"He's of my village. You know nothing, Jon Snow. A true man steals a woman from afar, t' strengthen the clan. Women who bed brothers or fathers or clan kin offend the gods, and are cursed with weak and sickly children. Even monsters."

Inversed in more than one way. A long way will a true woman go to steal a man from the same clan, so she can birth her little monster.

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"He would know." Aemon Targaryen had seen nine kings upon the Iron Throne. He had been a king's son, a king's brother, a king's uncle. "I looked at that book Maester Aemon left me. The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai. Lightbringer was his sword. Tempered with his wife's blood if Votar can be believed. Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle the blade burned fiery hot. Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame."

More monster.

Dany will give birth to a living baby.

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When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child.

It will be a baby girl.

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"It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought . . . the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young, but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King's Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it."

He's right about the male and female thing at least, this is the point of that line.

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"Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her name …" Dany could not recall the child's name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. "I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons."

Wrong. Reverse foreshadowing.

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Jon had never heard this tale before. "Which Brandon was this supposed to be? Brandon the Builder lived in the Age of Heroes, thousands of years before Bael. There was Brandon the Burner and his father Brandon the Shipwright, but—"

"This was Brandon the Daughterless," Ygritte said sharply. "Would you hear the tale, or no?"

More reverse foreshadowing.
Rhaenyra the first dragon queen (often called queen whore) foreshadowing Dany again.

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On Dragonstone, no cheers were heard. Instead, screams echoed through the halls and stairwells of Sea Dragon Tower, and down from the queen's apartments where Rhaenyra Targaryen strained and shuddered in her third day of labor. The child had not been due for another turn of the moon, but the tidings from King's Landing had driven the princess into a black fury, and her rage seemed to bring on the birth, as if the babe inside her were angry too, and fighting to get out. The princess shrieked curses all through her labor, calling down the wroth of the gods upon her half brothers and their mother, the queen, and detailing the torments she would inflict upon them before she would let them die. She cursed the child inside her too, Mushroom tells us. "Get out," she screamed, clawing at her swollen belly as her maester and her midwife tried to restrain her. "Monster, monster, get out, get out, GET OUT!"

When the babe at last came forth, she proved indeed a monster: a stillborn girl, twisted and malformed, with a hole in her chest where her heart should have been, and a stubby, scaled tail. Or so Mushroom describes her. The dwarf tells us that it was he who carried the little thing to the yard for burning. The dead girl had been named Visenya, Princess Rhaenyra announced the next day, when milk of the poppy had blunted the edge of her pain. "She was my only daughter, and they killed her. They stole my crown and murdered my daughter, and they shall answer for it."

She gives birth in Sea Dragon Tower. Dany will give birth inside the stone beast, or as it could be referred to a sea dragon. Inside it, confident on that.

She gives birth to a monster, dragon like. As Dany's child is referred to as a monster in various foreshadowings, and is to wake the dragon.

Rhaenyra's child died, Dany's won't. Or will it? Is that what it's foreshadowing? Will she burn it as they did the corpse of Visenya. Following in Rhaego's place? Is that Dany's will?

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Many a young lord and noble knight had sought her favor then … though how many would still fight for her, now that she was a woman wed, her body aged and thickened by six childbirths, was a question none could answer.

The stillborn child was Rhaenyra's sixth and only daughter. Rhaego, Daario's miscarriage, Euron's miscarriage, Water's miscarriage, Tyrion's miscarriage and finally Jon's, a daughter.

So Dany will give birth to a living baby girl, if she intended to sacrifice it in the womb that won't work out as planned. Now the question becomes will she be willing to sacrifice it? Having come this far one would think so, but when she hears her bawl and holds her, her only living child, will she really be willing to do it?

I believe so. Mid ADWD Dany would not have, but by the end of ADWD she's there. Dany is a proud Targaryen, a true dragon, fire and blood. This is what Dragon lords did, how they became dragon riders, they willingly paid the cost for their power. And Dany is a saviour.

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"I told you, I know our little queen. Let her hear that her brother Rhaegar's murdered son is still alive, that this brave boy has raised the dragon standard of her forebears in Westeros once more, that he is fighting a desperate war to avenge his father and reclaim the Iron Throne for House Targaryen, hard-pressed on every side … and she will fly to your side as fast as wind and water can carry her. You are the last of her line, and this Mother of Dragons, this Breaker of Chains, is above all a rescuer.

Above all else. That's her drive, and all of Westeros and her dragon will need saving.

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What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness?

If I look back, I am doomed, Dany told herself … but how could she not look back? I should have seen it coming. Was I so blind, or did I close my eyes willfully, so I would not have to see the price of power?

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Much of the talk about the table was of the matches to be fought upon the morrow. Barsena Blackhair was going to face a boar, his tusks against her dagger. Khrazz was fighting, as was the Spotted Cat. And in the day's final pairing, Goghor the Giant would go against Belaquo Bonebreaker. One would be dead before the sun went down. No queen has clean hands, Dany told herself. She thought of Doreah, of Quaro, of Eroeh … of a little girl she had never met, whose name had been Hazzea. Better a few should die in the pit than thousands at the gates. This is the price of peace, I pay it willingly. If I look back, I am lost.

Price of power, no looking back.

She will not be the first willing to pay the price. Not the first Valyrian, not the first Targaryen, and not even the first of her siblings.

The mystery no-one knows is a mystery, why Rhaegar was Rhaegar.

Rhaegar was fuelled by a belief in prophecy, a belief so earnest he brought the realm crashing down following it. The Prince that was Promised, the dragon has three heads, Azor Ahai by way of placing importance on the bleeding star, the comet.

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"It is not for such as me to say what might have been in your brother's heart, Your Grace. The Princess Elia was a good and gracious lady, though her health was ever delicate."
 
Dany pulled the lion pelt tighter about her shoulders. "Viserys said once that it was my fault, for being born too late." She had denied it hotly, she remembered, going so far as to tell Viserys that it was his fault for not being born a girl. He beat her cruelly for that insolence. "If I had been born more timely, he said, Rhaegar would have married me instead of Elia, and it would all have come out different. If Rhaegar had been happy in his wife, he would not have needed the Stark girl."

"Perhaps so, Your Grace." Whitebeard paused a moment. "But I am not certain it was in Rhaegar to be happy."

"You make him sound so sour," Dany protested.

"Not sour, no, but . . . there was a melancholy to Prince Rhaegar, a sense . . ." The old man hesitated again.

"Say it," she urged. "A sense . . . ?"

". . . of doom. He was born in grief, my queen, and that shadow hung over him all his days."

Viserys had spoken of Rhaegar's birth only once. Perhaps the tale saddened him too much. "It was the shadow of Summerhall that haunted him, was it not?"

"Yes. And yet Summerhall was the place the prince loved best. He would go there from time to time, with only his harp for company. Even the knights of the Kingsguard did not attend him there. He liked to sleep in the ruined hall, beneath the moon and stars, and whenever he came back he would bring a song. When you heard him play his high harp with the silver strings and sing of twilights and tears and the death of kings, you could not but feel that he was singing of himself and those he loved."

It's not just Summerhall, it's bigger than that. Rhaegar had a better understanding of what has to happen than is supposed. This line particularly.

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When you heard him play his high harp with the silver strings and sing of twilights and tears and the death of kings, you could not but feel that he was singing of himself and those he loved."

Rhaegar understood the prophecies enough to know that sacrifice was required. That the Prince that is Promised is meant to die, needs to die. At first he thought it was himself that was to be the sacrifice.

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On Braavos, it had seemed possible that Aemon might recover. Xhondo's talk of dragons had almost seemed to restore the old man to himself. That night he ate every bite Sam put before him. "No one ever looked for a girl," he said. "It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought . . . the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young,

He thought he was to be sacrifice, hence why he's the way he is. He doesn't have it in him to be happy, he's melancholy, shadowed in a sense of doom, writes and sings sincerely songs about the death of kings, about himself.

But then,

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It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought . . . the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young, but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King's Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise!

he thinks it's Aegon. But not just Aegon,

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Viserys, was her first thought the next time she paused, but a second glance told her otherwise. The man had her brother's hair, but he was taller, and his eyes were a dark indigo rather than lilac. "Aegon," he said to a woman nursing a newborn babe in a great wooden bed. "What better name for a king?"

"Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked.

"He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Dany's, and it seemed as if he saw her standing there beyond the door. "There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to her or the woman in the bed she could not say. "The dragon has three heads." He went to the window seat, picked up a harp, and ran his fingers lightly over its silvery strings. Sweet sadness filled the room as man and wife and babe faded like the morning mist, only the music lingering behind to speed her on her way.

all three of them.

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When you heard him play his high harp with the silver strings and sing of twilights and tears and the death of kings, you could not but feel that he was singing of himself and those he loved."

Those he loves. He doesn't know the particulars of it but understands there's a sacrifice element. That is why his song at the birth of his child is sad, he believes the child is doomed. And thinks he needs a third. Hence Rhaegar had Jon in the belief that Jon's death was going to be required. He was producing heads of the dragon, sacrificial children, and Jon was to be one.

Dany's final vision in her waking the dragon dream.

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"… the dragon …"

And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.

After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars.

Rhaegar is not the last dragon. Rhaegar failed. Dany is the last dragon. Dany is going to succeed in what Rhaegar failed. 

This is House Targaryen's destiny, the dragon has three heads, the last dragon. As Maester Aemon said, fire consumes, and Dany is fire. She will be willing to make the sacrifice.

[chrisdaw]

JON AND THE DECISION

For this I have to go deep and wide into Jon's arc, and to get all the way there some other characters too. Jon's arc pertaining to this culmination will be in two parts, the first is the frozen heart of winter.

Jon's direction partly since getting to the wall but particularly after revival is firstly and succinctly run over in Bran's vision.

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Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him.

The symbolism here relates to Jon's mindset. Alone, cold, free from warmth, ice, all these are symbolic of Jon becoming unfeeling. That is Jon's arc, he is becoming cold, hard, unfeeling, merciless in judgement and decision.

In a vague manner, taking Aemon's advice to heart.

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It takes a man to rule. An Aegon, not an Egg. Kill the boy and let the man be born." The old man felt Jon's face. "You are half the age that Egg was, and your own burden is a crueler one, I fear. You will have little joy of your command, but I think you have the strength in you to do the things that must be done. Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born."

He is turning to ice in the same sense as these quotes associate with the Starks.

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They make no sound, Jaime realized. No splashing, no clink of mail nor clop of hoof. He remembered Eddard Stark, riding the length of Aerys's throne room wrapped in silence. Only his eyes had spoken; a lord's eyes, cold and grey and full of judgment.

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And with him stood the great lords her brother had named the Usurper's dogs, cold-eyed Eddard Stark with his frozen heart, and the golden Lannisters, father and son, so rich, so powerful, so treacherous.

The lesson Jon will take from his death is not that he needed to be more understanding and convincing, but somewhat the opposite, that he can't trust in people to see the cause or to do the right thing. He will not trust anyone. He must be harder and stronger, he must bend people to his will not with reason but with unfeeling force and the fear of merciless justice.

Jon stayed at the wall instead of going to help Robb. He stayed when Ned was killed. He stayed even though Arya was in peril. He left Ygritte to warn the NW, ensuring her death. He went to Mance's tent with whole-hearted intentions of assassinating Mance, even though it would certainly mean his death, because it would also mean him having saved the wall and the NW. When push came to shove he did his duty every time, and they killed him. Because they're stupid, because they can't be trusted to do their duty. He can only trust himself with what must be done.

And then the one time he lets down his guard and remembers life and love, when he sees Ygritte by the wall and gives in to his human urges, it'll turn out to be a major mistake. For it will really be Dany in disguise, and it will further push him down the path of ice.

As Aemon says to him.

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"So they will not love," the old man answered, "for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty."
 
That did not sound right to Jon, yet he said nothing.

Mormont too.

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"Doubtless you loved your father," Mormont said when Jon brought him his horn. "The things we love destroy us every time, lad. Remember when I told you that?"

"I remember," Jon said sullenly. He did not care to talk of his father's death, not even to Mormont.

Love has fucked him at every turn. Not just his honour and duty, but it's the cause of his pain. He loved Robb, he loved Ned and he loved Arya. And he loved Ygritte, and because he submitted to it again when Dany took her visage he's now going to father a bastard, his worst nightmare and greatest shame. The answer is simple, stop loving. A heart of winter. Aemon's words will not sound wrong to the resurrected Jon.
When Jon returns, he is returning colder, without warmth, seemingly joyless, incapable of love. And utterly dedicated to his cause. The one vow that truly matters, defeating the Others and saving the realm. Very Stannis.

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Lord Beric touched the spot above his left ear where his temple was caved in. "Here is where Ser Burton Crakehall broke helm and head with a blow of his mace." He unwound his scarf, exposing the black bruise that encircled his neck. "Here the mark the manticore made at Rushing Falls. He seized a poor beekeeper and his wife, thinking they were mine, and let it be known far and wide that he would hang them both unless I gave myself up to him. When I did he hanged them anyway, and me on the gibbet between them." He lifted a finger to the raw red pit of his eye. "Here is where the Mountain thrust his dirk through my visor." A weary smile brushed his lips. "That's thrice I have died at the hands of House Clegane. You would think that I might have learned . . ."

It was a jest, Arya knew, but Thoros did not laugh. He put a hand on Lord Beric's shoulder. "Best not to dwell on it."

"Can I dwell on what I scarce remember? I held a castle on the Marches once, and there was a woman I was pledged to marry, but I could not find that castle today, nor tell you the color of that woman's hair. Who knighted me, old friend? What were my favorite foods? It all fades. Sometimes I think I was born on the bloody grass in that grove of ash, with the taste of fire in my mouth and a hole in my chest. Are you my mother, Thoros?"

Jon will be reborn as Beric was. Beric dwells on his deaths. Beric continues to do that which he was doing when he was killed, the king's justice. He was sent in the name of king Robert to do the king's justice, and he keeps The Brotherhood doing just that, in Robert's name even, after Robert is dead. He can't remember those things which he loved, which made him human, which made him feel.

Jon is coming back the same way. He will dwell on his death, possibly to the exclusion of most else at first until he somewhat comes to grips with it. The betrayal will make him very bitter. He will devote himself to doing what he was doing when he died, saving people, rescuing them, defeating the Others. And he will forget that which made him human, that which made him feel, laughter, friends, family, love. Termed another way, he will forget all memories of warmth. Armoured against it by ice. A heart of winter.

Arya's arc in brief without evidence where it relates to Jon's.

Arya has a hole inside of her from loss and disenchantment with the world which she has filled with the desire for revenge. The desire for revenge is leading her down a dark loveless path. But it is a path she will break from. One major reason for this will be encountering Stoneheart.

Stoneheart is feulled by revenge and nothing else. She has no capacity left for mercy, compassion or love. She is Arya's end destination if Arya continues on her path of revenge. Arya will infiltrate the BWB with another identity (Wenda or a play on Wenda) and come into contact with Stoneheart, and through observation will eventually recognise that Stoneheart is without the capacity for love and compassion. Arya will conclude that such a life is no life at all, and such a person is not fit to be passing judgement. This thing that is not really her mother, as her mother without love could not be her mother, needs the gift of mercy, and Arya will provide it and destroy her.

Arya will learn from Stoneheart the following, mother died, what came back was a person without the capacity for love. A heartless shadow without warmth. And it needed to be destroyed.

Like Beric, Stoneheart is the prototype for resurrected Jon, particularly concerning Arya. After having dealt with Stoneheart, and rejected that part of Stoneheart which Arya herself reflected, Arya will reunite with resurrected Jon, and in him she will see much of what she saw in Stoneheart.

Arya will consider if Jon is really, deep down, the same as Stoneheart, and thus not fit for rule and in need of the gift of mercy. Against this there will be a major difference, Catelyn died at the bottom of a spiral of loss and betrayal, she's come back for revenge absent regard for anything else. Jon died trying to save his wall and thus the world from the Others, he's coming back to continue the fight, without regard for anything else. His goal is actually noble, whereas Arya will just have felt Stoneheart's goal was noble for a time, when she too was consumed with revenge. And so will burn the question of what Jon is.

Bran's arc in brief where it relates to Jon.

Similar will occur with Bran. His Stoneheart will be Bloodraven. In spite of the good opinion most have of Bloodraven he is poised to be a villain. He is utterly ruthless, more so than Tywin, Jojen paste is real and it's a theme, Bloodraven will sacrifice the innocent to ensure survival of the realm. He still bears his grudge against the Blackfyres and will punish the children for the crimes of the parents. Bloodraven is consumed still by his ghosts.

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"He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him, try as you might. I know. I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved, a brother that I hated, a woman I desired. Through the trees, I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it."

Contrary to his high words he hasn't moved on.

Bran will think at first Bloodraven is right and that he must follow in his footsteps. A hard truth he must accept, a part of growing up, learning responsibility. Except Bloodraven will prove himself hypocritical, the realm must survive at all costs, any sacrifice no matter how evil it seems, unless that cost is a Blackfyre or anyone other than a Targaryen sitting the throne. It will become apparent Bloodraven was responsible for the bridge of dreams, leading to the greyscale outbreak and the stone beast. He will have done it trying to kill Aegon, the Blackfyre pretender. Rather than trying to save the realm, which will require setting aside past transgressions, Bloodraven will have been playing the game of thrones and still holding to his grudges against the Blackfyres, and because of it he will cause mass death and destruction on Westeros. Bran will reject Bloodraven and Bran will kill him, and forge his own path to save the realm, one without sacrificing the innocent, where children are not punished for the crimes of their parents.

In resurrected Jon, Bran is going to see much of Bloodraven, and question if Jon's decisions are acts of righteousness or revenge. If he's really trying to save the realm or if he's still fighting the War of the Five Kings.

Arya and Bran are both going to fear Jon, the whole realm is. His rule is going to seem heartless, his path to KL merciless, he will prove the meaning of Winter is Coming.

And it will boil down to the decision regarding what Dany is intending to do with his child, if he would stop it. It could go two ways, he could prove he is not lost to the Heart of Winter, that his decisions are very harsh but necessary and fair, and righteously motivated. That he remains human, feeling, capable of love. Not another stone heart, not another Bloodraven. Not having lost all warmth.

Or he could prove the opposite.

The second part of Jon's arc leading to this culmination is Stark or Targ, Eddard or Rhaegar, ice or fire.

As I explained in the Dany portion Jon's biological father, Rhaegar Targaryen, fathered Jon with at best the belief Jon would die for dragons, to save the realm. Jon was fathered for the purpose of death, for sacrifice. And come the end, Jon will know this. Likely Dany will throw it in his face.

In Ned's short screen time there is a principle proved multiple times, his unwillingness to allow a child to die. It is defining, and Ned is defining to the series in terms of the Starks, their morality as a house, as people, who they are.

First there was Jon himself. Ned sacrificed his honour by lying to his friend and king and committed treason to hide Jon's parentage, to save the life of the child that was his blood. To keep Jon safe he even took the hit on his honour and marriage by claiming him as his own. Innocent children supercede honour.

Then there was Dany.

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Robert had shame enough to blush. "It was not the same," he complained. "Ser Barristan was a knight of the Kingsguard."

"Whereas Daenerys is a fourteen-year-old girl." Ned knew he was pushing this well past the point of wisdom, yet he could not keep silent. "Robert, I ask you, what did we rise against Aerys Targaryen for, if not to put an end to the murder of children?"

. . .

"Kinder," Varys said. "Oh, well and truly spoken, Grand Maester. It is so true. Should the gods in their caprice grant Daenerys Targaryen a son, the realm must bleed."

If the realm must bleed, so be it, do not murder children.

Ned screwed himself in KL by basically trying to save the Lannister children.

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"For fifteen years I protected him from his enemies, but I could not protect him from his friends. What strange fit of madness led you to tell the queen that you had learned the truth of Joffrey's birth?"

"The madness of mercy," Ned admitted.

By being merciful.

And finally.

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"So what is your answer, Lord Eddard? Give me your word that you'll tell the queen what she wants to hear when she comes calling."

"If I did, my word would be as hollow as an empty suit of armor. My life is not so precious to me as that."

"Pity." The eunuch stood. "And your daughter's life, my lord? How precious is that?"

A chill pierced Ned's heart. "My daughter …"

"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."

More important than his life, than his honour, than his word. His final act.

And it echoes in Jon's story, as it should, Ned raised him and raised him as a Stark. More opposed was Jon than anyone to Craster, to the act of sacrificing children for survival. But the decision wasn't Jon's to make.

Monster and Gilly's child, the baby switch.

It's a clear decision, one of ice and fire. Is he of House Stark or Targaryen? Does he follow in the footsteps of the father of fire? And act in the purpose he was conceived by Rhaegar Targaryen? Or does he follow in the footsteps of the father of ice? And in the manner he was saved and raised by Eddard Stark?

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Fire consumes, but cold preserves.

So what will Jon do? Perhaps nothing? He could just sit back and let it happen, tell himself it's not his decision, as he did with Craster, he didn't even want the child, was tricked into it.

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"No, but—"

"You're bastard-born yourself. And if Ygritte does not want a child, she will go to some woods witch and drink a cup o' moon tea. You do not come into it, once the seed is planted."

"I will not father a bastard."

Not even his problem, unless he makes it so.

We all know what he's going to do. And for this reason I think it's likely we may get very few or possibly just the one more Jon chapter, one of his death/resurrection, before the decision. If the decision is to be in doubt then we can't be in Jon's head, we need to be observing like Bran and Arya from the outside where we are unsure if he has the heart of winter or not. If we are with him while he internally agonises over the hard decisions he has to make then we will know they are hard, and that he's not completely unfeeling and loveless.

The father he will choose.

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He is not my father. The thought leapt unbidden to Jon's mind. Lord Eddard Stark is my father. I will not forget him, no matter how many swords they give me. Yet he could scarcely tell Lord Mormont that it was another man's sword he dreamt of …

Aemon is/was a Targaryen.

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"So they will not love," the old man answered, "for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty."
 
That did not sound right to Jon, yet he said nothing.

And he's not right. This time Jon will speak.

If the world ends then so be it, Starks don't sacrifice children, not since Jon's father Eddard Stark anyway.

The monster queen must be stopped.

[chrisdaw]

THE CENTRAL DILEMMA AND SEMI-FINAL CONFRONTATION

By now you should understand that who is AA, who is TPTWP and who weilds Lightbringer are the wrong questions to be asking. It is a climactic event and preceding events that are being foreshadowed, and the characters are interchangeable, sometimes in some ways Dany, others Jon or their child. It's a clever way to obfuscate the meaning of the prophesies and such for multiple decades.

And so we arrive at that climactic event of the story for which the series is named. It's a case of ice vs fire, preservation vs consumption.

Nothing can survive extreme fire or extreme ice, the trick is in finding the line between two. A moral line. What line the author believes in should be apparent. It is this simple, if the realm's best are willing to sacrifice an innocent child to save it, then that realm isn't worth saving.

After Dany births her dragons GRRM gives us this wording to end AGOT.

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As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

I wonder if he won't word the cries of the child of ice and fire as music too, and hence the song of ice and fire.

Jon will act to prevent Dany from sacrificing their child. Probably Jon and his sworn swords will clash with Dany's blood of her blood. A small scale fight, for symmetry sake it'll probably come down to three against seven. Jorah will be with Dany, as ever, and probably Rakharo and maybe some other bloodriders. Jon himself will fight and I think Davos will come with him, maybe one of the Ironborn siblings too. Could be Jon's swords are actually protecting Dany as Dany's swords under her command are trying to get to her to kill the child she's birthing. A little bit of foreshadowing suggests just that but it's so important or clear enough to detail.

Jon's forces will win, and the child will be saved. Dany will die. I am certain Dany will die, I am not certain of the circumstances. Maybe Jon kills her to prevent her killing the child, possibly she dies as a result of birthing the child as many people think she will. But I'm going to run with how I think it will happen.

For the crime of trying to murder a child, Jon will execute Dany.

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She meant to sleep afterward, to be well rested for the morrow, but an hour of restless tossing in the stuffy confines of the cabin soon convinced her that was hopeless. Outside her door she found Aggo fitting a new string to his bow by the light of a swinging oil lamp. Rakharo sat crosslegged on the deck beside him, sharpening his arakh with a whetstone. Dany told them both to keep on with what they were doing, and went up on deck for a taste of the cool night air. The crew left her alone as they went about their business, but Ser Jorah soon joined her by the rail. He is never far, Dany thought. He knows my moods too well.

"Khaleesi. You ought to be asleep. Tomorrow will be hot and hard, I promise you. You'll need your strength."

"Do you remember Eroeh?" she asked him.

"The Lhazareen girl?"

"They were raping her, but I stopped them and took her under my protection. Only when my sun-and-stars was dead Mago took her back, used her again, and killed her. Aggo said it was her fate."

"I remember," Ser Jorah said.

"I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn't have done that. He wasn't just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?"

"Some kings make themselves. Robert did."

"He was no true king," Dany said scornfully. "He did no justice. Justice . . . that's what kings are for."

Robert failed to punish Tywin for murdering the Targaryen children, he was no true king, he did not do justice. Protecting the innocent, protecting those that can't protect themselves, that is what a king is for. Jon is not just her family, he is her king. Jon protects their child from Dany who would murder her. When he executes her it is justice, thus Jon proves himself a true king, Dany's king.

I quoted back a bit to get the bloodriders in there as their presence here may be indicative of them being at the final showdown.

Jon will be KITN but I doubt he will ever sit the IT as king, if he does it will be short lived and he will soon renounce it, and it won't be as a Targaryen. He's not going to embrace that name, besides perhaps here, when he executes Dany.

Eddard stating by what authority he executes someone.

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Lord Eddard Stark dismounted and his ward Theon Greyjoy brought forth the sword. "Ice," that sword was called. It was as wide across as a man's hand, and taller even than Robb. The blade was Valyrian steel, spell-forged and dark as smoke. Nothing held an edge like Valyrian steel.

His father peeled off his gloves and handed them to Jory Cassel, the captain of his household guard. He took hold of Ice with both hands and said, "In the name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, I do sentence you to die." He lifted the greatsword high above his head.

When Jon does sentence and execute Dany I am sure he will state by what authority he does so. What he will style himself as though I am not sure. Dany will embrace Jon as her king when she's in the north and believe he should be not just the KITN but of the realm whole. Jon will join her forces to his and lead them in his war against the south, but he will rebuff that title, even when he takes KL, he will style himself as the KITN and a Stark. But here, for Dany's sake, he may style himself as the king of Westeros, and as a Targaryen, in keeping with her words concerning her relative and her king, her true king. If Howland drops that Lyanna named him Aegon he may even call himself Aegon Targaryen. Theon may be there and may bring forth his sword, ice, or a half at least.

SIDEBAR 05 DAVOS

Davos will be there, with his fingerbones he will have found in the dried out narrow sea. His luck, fitting, as this is what they represent.

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His hand reached for his throat, fumbling for the small leather pouch he always wore about his neck. Inside he kept the bones of the four fingers his king had shortened for him, on the day he made Davos a knight. My luck. His shortened fingers patted at his chest, groping, finding nothing. The pouch was gone, and the fingerbones with them. Stannis could never understand why he'd kept the bones. "To remind me of my king's justice," he whispered through cracked lips.

Stannis will have failed Davos, failed to do justice when he allows Mel to burn Shireen. And he failed him here too.

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I rowed Melisandre into the bowels of Storm's End and watched her birth a horror." He saw it still in his nightmares, the gaunt black hands pushing against her thighs as it wriggled free of her swollen womb. "She killed Cressen and Lord Renly and a brave man named Cortnay Penrose, and she killed my sons as well. Now it is time someone killed her."

"Someone," said Salladhor Saan. "Yes, just so, someone. But not you.

That someone should be, should have been, Stannis, the king, as justice is his duty to provide. It is his place to execute the baby sacrificing woman.

Davos's second sworn king is not going to fail him this time around.

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"Why do you keep them? I have often wondered."

 

"They remind me of what I was. Where I came from. They remind me of your justice, my liege."

 

"It was justice," Stannis said. "A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.

Jon executing Dany will be justice, her 'reward' for attempting to murder their child. BUT, it was in service of a greater good, Dany has done and sacrificed much to get to this point, to save the realm who rejected her. There is good in the attempt too. And each the good and the bad should have their own reward. For the attempt of murder she deserves to die, and will. For her attempt to save the realm she deserves to be rewarded too. And as I'll get to, she will be.

As explained earlier Danny Flint foreshadows Dany. Note the preceding conversation between Jon and Tormund to the Danny Flint story.

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"I'll need two boys to take their places."

"How's that?" Tormund scratched his beard. "A hostage is a hostage, seems to me. That big sharp sword o' yours can snick a girl's head off as easy as a boy's. A father loves his daughters too. Well, most fathers."

It is not their fathers who concern me. "Did Mance ever sing of Brave Danny Flint?"

A father loves his daughter, as Jon will prove when he saves his. Jon can take a female's head as easily as a male's, which Jon will prove when he takes Dany's.

Everything is crissed and crossed in the dark ending to Bael's story.

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She shrugged. "Might be it did, might be it didn't. It is a good song, though. My mother used to sing it to me. She was a woman too, Jon Snow. Like yours." She rubbed her throat where his dirk had cut her. "The song ends when they find the babe, but there is a darker end to the story. Thirty years later, when Bael was King-beyond-the-Wall and led the free folk south, it was young Lord Stark who met him at the Frozen Ford . . . and killed him, for Bael would not harm his own son when they met sword to sword."

"So the son slew the father instead," said Jon.

 

"Aye," she said, "but the gods hate kinslayers, even when they kill unknowing. When Lord Stark returned from the battle and his mother saw Bael's head upon his spear, she threw herself from a tower in her grief. Her son did not long outlive her. One o' his lords peeled the skin off him and wore him for a cloak."

But you can see it hits the right notes. Particularly relevant is the mother throwing herself off a tower, what that means I hope people understand by now.

Thematically when Jon saves the child and executes Dany he is disproving he has the Heart of Winter. He is disproving he is void of feeling and humanity, that all warmth has fled from him and that he has become ice.

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Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

Thus it makes sense thematically the sword he does justice with, that he pulls from Dany, burns.

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Melisandre cried, "We thank you for Stannis, by your grace our king. We thank you for the pure white fire of his goodness, for the red sword of justice in his hand, for the love he bears his leal people. Guide him and defend him, R'hllor, and grant him strength to smite his foes."

As it is the red sword of justice. For those unaware a flaming sword represents god's justice, or is thought to.

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"He would know." Aemon Targaryen had seen nine kings upon the Iron Throne. He had been a king's son, a king's brother, a king's uncle. "I looked at that book Maester Aemon left me. The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai. Lightbringer was his sword. Tempered with his wife's blood if Votar can be believed. Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle the blade burned fiery hot. Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame."

Double foreshadowing, sex scene and execution. Sex scene so we the reader apply it to that and don't see the execution coming.

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The king plunged into the fire with his teeth clenched, holding the leather cloak before him to keep off the flames. He went straight to the Mother, grasped the sword with his gloved hand, and wrenched it free of the burning wood with a single hard jerk. Then he was retreating, the sword held high, jade-green flames swirling around cherry-red steel. Guards rushed to beat out the cinders that clung to the king's clothing.

"A sword of fire!" shouted Queen Selyse. Ser Axell Florent and the other queen's men took up the cry. "A sword of fire! It burns! It burns! A sword of fire!"

Pulled from the mother.

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Stannis peeled off the glove and let it fall to the ground. The gods in the pyre were scarcely recognizable anymore. The head fell off the Smith with a puff of ash and embers. Melisandre sang in the tongue of Asshai, her voice rising and falling like the tides of the sea.

Recall Dany's parallel with the smith through the AA story. This suggests decapitation. Note the falling tides of the sea line, just more foreshadowing for the seas running dry.

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"A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. 'Nissa Nissa,' he said to her, for that was her name, 'bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.' She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.

Another double foreshadowing, the sex scene and the execution scene. Note Nissa Nissa goes willingly. Dany is going to be willingly executed, as that quote about a king doing justice is her's. She'll accept that she deserves her judgement.

Thematically Jon should reject the Blackfyre sword, as he rejects the Targaryen father and ways of House Targaryen for Ned and House Stark.

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That night she lay upon her thin blanket on the hard ground, staring up at the great red comet. The comet was splendid and scary all at once. "The Red Sword," the Bull named it; he claimed it looked like a sword, the blade still red-hot from the forge. When Arya squinted the right way she could see the sword too, only it wasn't a new sword, it was Ice, her father's greatsword, all ripply Valyrian steel, and the red was Lord Eddard's blood on the blade after Ser Ilyn the King's Justice had cut off his head. Yoren had made her look away when it happened, yet it seemed to her that the comet looked like Ice must have, after.

So he should have collected at least one half of ice by now. Hell maybe he or someone else there has the other half too and Dany cops both, and it reforges itself inside of her, it is very near the end now and so time for the fantastical and epic, no use pulling punches.

They killed Ned with this sword, makes sense this is how it happens, Ned living on in a way, his soul into the steel, coming to life when Jon chooses him as the father to follow. By this stage I would assume it is apparent to anyone reading this that Valyrian Steel is created by a person dying and second lifing steel.

SIDEBAR 06 VALYRIAN STEEL & DRAGONGLASS

But by now the Others are going to be well in the south, warring against realm's last stand in the dried narrow sea. A flaming sword isn't really going to mean much, not that type of flaming sword anyway.

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It is also written that there are annals in Asshai of such a darkness, and of a hero who fought against it with a red sword. His deeds are said to have been performed before the rise of Valyria, in the earliest age when Old Ghis was first forming its empire. This legend has spread west from Asshai, and the followers of R'hllor claim that this hero was named Azor Ahai, and prophesy his return. In the Jade Compendium, Colloquo Votar recounts a curious legend from Yi Ti, which states that the sun hid its face from the earth for a lifetime, ashamed at something none could discover, and that disaster was averted only by the deeds of a woman with a monkey's tail.

I allow one could interpret this multiple ways, but here's how I see it. Jon is the sun as the dragons must drink from, as Dany the moon must be impregnated by. The shame is Jon's for having done that which he considers the worst thing in the world, fathering a bastard. The woman with a monkey's tail is their child. The baby will probably have a little tail, not a very uncommon thing for Targs. But otherwise she'll be ok, premature but no serious defects.

The point of the story is when the child is born, when Jon sees the fruits of his dishonourable tryst with the woman he thought was Ygritte but wasn't, when he holds the child, hears her cry, all the shame he holds for having fathered a bastard will melt away. And that this deed, saving the child, averts disaster where prophesy suggests and Dany thinks it will cause it. That is because Dany is wrong, prophesy is a sword without a hilt, not to be trusted. Dany is underestimating herself.

[chrisdaw]

JON IS ICE & DANY IS EPIC

Jon is ice. He may have had the right father's blood for making a fire dragon, but he's got the wrong mother's blood for it. He is thematically ice. He commands a wall of ice. He is of the north. And he will have been revived by ice.

He's no fit father with which to have the child that's supposed to raise a fire breathing dragon from stone, more like you're going to get an ice dragon or some mess in between when Dany's own blood is factored in, unlikely good for fighting the Others with.

Probably why GRRM saw fit to give us this description.

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Of all the queer and fabulous denizens of the Shivering Sea, however, the greatest are the ice dragons. These colossal beasts, many times larger than the dragons of Valyria, are said to be made of living ice, with eyes of pale blue crystal and vast translucent wings through which the moon and stars can be glimpsed as they wheel across the sky. Whereas common dragons (if any dragon can truly be said to be common) breathe flame, ice dragons supposedly breathe cold, a chill so terrible that it can freeze a man solid in half a heartbeat.

Sailors from half a hundred nations have glimpsed these great beasts over the centuries, so mayhaps there is some truth behind the tales. Archmaester Margate has suggested that many legends of the north—freezing mists, ice ships, Cannibal Bay, and the like—can be explained as distorted reports of ice-dragon activity. Though an amusing notion, and not without a certain elegance, this remains the purest conjecture. As ice dragons supposedly melt when slain, no actual proof of their existence has ever been found.

Very possibly Dany will consider all this, but see no other way, after all his child will survive within her where no other man's will.

Anyway the death of the child and Jon will be thought the only chance for a dragon and when Jon refuses and saves his girl it will be thought the war for the dawn will be lost.

But Dany is epic.

By the time of her death she will have done all those things Tyrion lists to Aegon and so much more. Won the Iron Throne back, her family birthright, and lost it. Killed lords and kings, false and true. Seen her dragons die, killed one. Married and/or bedded kings, pirates, dwarfs, nephews and the undead, sometimes hazy on consent. Had six pregnancies and brought forth a living child. Ended slavery. Restored ancient proud houses to their holds. Lost those dearest to her and won them back. Lit fires, witnessed the doom of dragonstone, seen much of the known world. And through her strength consolidated the dothraki into a single khalasar under her command.

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When a horselord dies, his horse is slain with him, so he might ride proud into the night lands. The bodies are burned beneath the open sky, and the khal rises on his fiery steed to take his place among the stars. The more fiercely the man burned in life, the brighter his star will shine in the darkness.

And no-one in ASOIAF will have burned in life more fiercely than Dany.

All the rules I've relayed are looser than supposed, it's magic not science. And I doubt Dany ever needed a sacrifice. Certainly I don't think the Valyrian dragon lords sacrificed a child every time someone second lifed a dragon either. Definitely to kick start things off, to form the blood bond, and probably periodically when the blood bond weakened, but not every time. But if Dany did need a sacrifice, that's a cost she's already paid.

As stated before, Dany's wake the dragon dream is her on the verge of second lifing the dragon too, but she doesn't because she doesn't die.

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"… don't want to wake the dragon …"

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo's copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as they touched her skin.

If she needed a child of her blood, the blood of the dragon, to go before her and lead the way, then it is already done.

Something to understand with Dany is that she did/does truly love Drogo. Pay no mind to the stockholm nonsense, there's no merit to any of it in application to the text. Between Dany and Drogo it is just simple straightforward love. The mount to love.

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An hour later, her stomach began to cramp so badly that she could not go on. She spent the rest of that day retching up green slime. If I stay here, I will die. I may be dying now. Would the horse god of the Dothraki part the grass and claim her for his starry khalasar, so she might ride the nightlands with Khal Drogo? In Westeros the dead of House Targaryen were given to the flames, but who would light her pyre here? My flesh will feed the wolves and carrion crows, she thought sadly, and worms will burrow through my womb. Her eyes went back to Dragonstone. It looked smaller. She could see smoke rising from its wind-carved summit, miles away. Drogon has returned from hunting.

She's contemplating death, and the afterlife with Drogo is what she thinks about.

All that needs happen for Dany to join him now, is for the dothraki to do what they do to their dead khals, and the Targaryens to their dead.

Maybe the dothraki will do it. Maybe Jon.

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He had burned Ygritte himself, as he knew she would have wanted,

Might be they won't even have to.

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"He would know." Aemon Targaryen had seen nine kings upon the Iron Throne. He had been a king's son, a king's brother, a king's uncle. "I looked at that book Maester Aemon left me. The Jade Compendium. The pages that told of Azor Ahai. Lightbringer was his sword. Tempered with his wife's blood if Votar can be believed. Thereafter Lightbringer was never cold to the touch, but warm as Nissa Nissa had been warm. In battle the blade burned fiery hot. Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame."

Maybe when Dany dies her corpse will just magically start burning, because she's Dany.

But burn her corpse will, and when she does she will second life the dragon, and wake it from stone. She will wash away Euron's kraken sea water blood and Arianne's green blood, casting them into oblivion, and melt the stone of greyscale. What will be left is her, Drogo and Rhaego, inside the dragon.

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"The dragon has three heads," she sighed. "Do you know what that means, Jorah?"

And those are the three. The scene the show put in place of Dany's HOTU visions.

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The dragon has three heads. There are two men in the world who I can trust, if I can find them. I will not be alone then. We will be three against the world, like Aegon and his sisters.

The two men in the world she can trust. She will not be alone inside the dragon.

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"This is not life, for one who was as Drogo was. His life was laughter, and meat roasting over a firepit, and a horse between his legs. His life was an arakh in his hand and his bells ringing in his hair as he rode to meet an enemy. His life was his bloodriders, and me, and the son I was to give him."

Mirri Maz Duur made no reply.

"When will he be as he was?" Dany demanded.

"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," said Mirri Maz Duur. "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before."

All prerequisites fulfilled, Drogo will return to her, as he was. This is life.

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"To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."

Shadow of death and the light of the second life, her light. Lightbringer to the dragon, the dragon's fire.

And when she melts away the stone, all those cursed with the stone beast's greyscale will be cured.

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Haldon nodded. "Benerro has sent forth the word from Volantis. Her coming is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. From smoke and salt was she born to make the world anew. She is Azor Ahai returned … and her triumph over darkness will bring a summer that will never end … death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn …"

Death bends its knee, those who died fighting in her cause reborn, foreshadowing her curing greyscale. It's a curse, Garin's curse, like a vampire, kill the source and the curse is lifted.

And a new dragon will rise. The biggest and hottest fire breathing dragon known. Like Balerion.

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Dany leaned back into her pillow, and let the litter bear her onward, back to Balerion one last time to set her world in order. And back to Drogon. Her mouth set grimly.

Back to Balerion, back to Drogon, one last time to set the world in order.

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The Dothraki looked at her hatchlings uneasily. The largest of her three was shiny black, his scales slashed with streaks of vivid scarlet to match his wings and horns. "Khaleesi," Aggo murmured, "there sits Balerion, come again."

"It may be as you say, blood of my blood," Dany replied gravely, "but he shall have a new name for this new life.

Balerion come again.

Aegon IV and Bellegere, the Black Pearl, had three children. Their names Bellenora, Narha and the third, Balerion.

The story of Bael the bard, the role Dany plays, Bael for Balerion.
Harrenhal, as foreshadowed the stone beast, foreshadows its end.

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"Yield now," Aegon began, "and you may remain as Lord of the Iron Islands. Yield now, and your sons will live to rule after you. I have eight thousand men outside your walls."

"What is outside my walls is of no concern to me," said Harren. "Those walls are strong and thick."

"But not so high as to keep out dragons. Dragons fly."

"I built in stone," said Harren. "Stone does not burn."

To which Aegon said, "When the sun sets, your line shall end."

. . .

As the last light of the sun faded, Black Harren's men stared into the gathering darkness, clutching their spears and crossbows. When no dragon appeared, some may have thought that Aegon's threats had been hollow. But Aegon Targaryen took Balerion up high, through the clouds, up and up until the dragon was no bigger than a fly upon the moon. Only then did he descend, well inside the castle walls. On wings as black as pitch, Balerion plunged through the night, and when the great towers of Harrenhal appeared beneath him, the dragon roared his fury and bathed them in black fire, shot through with swirls of red.

Stone does not burn, Harren had boasted, but his castle was not made of stone alone. Wood and wool, hemp and straw, bread and salted beef and grain, all took fire. Nor were Harren's ironmen made of stone. Smoking, screaming, shrouded in flames, they ran across the yards and tumbled from the wallwalks to die upon the ground below. And even stone will crack and melt if a fire is hot enough. The riverlords outside the castle walls said later that the towers of Harrenhal glowed red against the night, like five great candles...and like candles, they began to twist and melt, as runnels of molten stone ran down their sides.

Balerion's fire so hot it melts the stone. Dany's fire so hot she'll melt the stone portion of the stone beast. She'll also end Euron's line. I'll call the dragon Dalerion.

The stone beast and this scene are what the mysterious mazes of the Mazemakers are about. The final form of the stone beast in the bottom of the ocean is hinted in multiple places as being like a structure, a great big stone castle type thing. A maze.

Such a thing would make sense thematically. Dany has to go inside the stone beast to wake it, has to find her way through it to its heart, to bring her fire. And dreams and foreshadowing of Dany being literally inside the dragon abound, walking down inside of it in her wake the dragon dream for example. The red door to the inside of a stone dragon at Dragonstone. Both of which I'll get to below.

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In ancient days, the isles were home to the mysterious race of men known as the mazemakers, who vanished long before the dawn of true history, leaving no trace of themselves save for their bones and the mazes they built.

. . .

Sprawling constructs of bewildering complexity, made from blocks of hewn stone, the mazemakers' constructions are scattered across the isles—and one, badly overgrown and sunk deep into the earth, has been found on Essos proper, on the peninsula south of Lorath. Lorassyon, the second largest of the Lorath isles, is home to a vast maze that fills more than threequarters of the surface area of the island and includes four levels beneath the ground, with some passages descending five hundred feet.

Scholars still debate the purpose of these mazes. Were they fortifications, temples, towns? Or did they serve some other, stranger purpose? The mazemakers left no written records, so we shall never know. Their bones tell us that they were massively built and larger than men, though not so large as giants. Some have suggested that mayhaps the mazemakers were born of interbreeding between human men and giant women. We do not known why they disappeared, though Lorathi legend suggests they were destroyed by an enemy from the sea: merlings in some versions of the tale, selkies and walrus-men in others.

Quarlon the Great (like Garin the Great) took one for his home, a fairly simple Euron/stone beast parallel. Lots of sphinxes, Euron's last stronghold is probably going to have monstrous guards, and I think literally rather than figuratively.

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Soon each island had its own king, whilst the largest boasted four. Ever a quarrelsome people, the Andals spent the next thousand years warring one upon the other, but at last a warrior styling himself Qarlon the Great brought all the islands under his sway. The histories, such as they are, claim he raised a great wooden keep at the center of Lorassyon's vast, haunted maze and decorated his halls with the heads of his slain foes.

It was Qarlon's dream to make himself King of All Andals, and to that end he went forth time and time again against the petty kings of Andalos. After twenty years and as many wars, the writ of Qarlon the Great extended from the lagoon where Braavos would one day rise all the way east to the Axe, and as far south as the headwaters of the Upper Rhoyne and Noyne.

All the way to the Rhoyne plays into the Garin the Great/Euron connection particularly. Note in the heart of the maze is something flammable, Quarlon's wooden stronghold.

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But his southward expansion brought him into conflict not only with other Andal kings but also the Free City of Norvos on the Noyne. When the Norvoshi closed the river against him, he left his hall in the maze to lead the attack against them, defeating them in two pitched battles in the hills. Unwisely, he took these victories too much to heart and marched against Norvos itself. The Norvoshi sent to Valyria for help, and the Freehold rose to the defense of its distant daughter, though all the lands of the Andals and the Rhoynar lay between them.

Distances meant little and less to the dragonlords in the summer of their power, however. It is written in The Fires of the Freehold that a hundred dragons took to the skies, following the great river north to descend upon the Andals as they lay siege to Norvos. Qarlon the Great burned with his army, and afterward the dragonlords flew onward, bringing blood and fire to the isles of Lorath. Qarlon's great keep went up in flames, as did the towns and fishing villages along his shores. Even the great stones of the mazes were scorched and blackened by the firestorms that swept across the islands. It is said that not a man, woman, or child survived the Scouring of Lorath, so hot did those fires burn.

The Valyrian's bring fire and blood, and with dragon's fire burn Quarlon, end his line, fire his keep at the centre of the maze, and scorch his stone maze, so hot was their flame. Dany ending Euron/stone beast with her fire.

The above and the black pearl symbolism suggests it's not the actual stone beast that's in play, but a physical trapping of Drogo's soul in the form of a black rock inside of it, at its heart. The Blood Emperor's black stone. Like the black oily stone substance of mystery.

And of course it would be black and oily.

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Drogo's braid was black as midnight and heavy with scented oil, hung with tiny bells that rang softly as he moved. It swung well past his belt, below even his buttocks, the end of it brushing against the back of his thighs.

"You see how long it is?" Viserys said. "When Dothraki are defeated in combat, they cut off their braids in disgrace, so the world will know their shame. Khal Drogo has never lost a fight. He is Aegon the Dragonlord come again, and you will be his queen."

As Drogo's black oiled braid represented his ferocity, his fire. In this case the oil will likely be whale oil, probably the whale of the Aeron sidebar bites the stone out of the stone beast which causes it to sink.

Dany has to get into that stone and the dragon will be reborn, and not from the stone beast, that'll stay as a maze/structure. Probably the dragon will draw from the burning flesh of the whale, hence the real purpose of the whale, GRRM needed a large source of flesh to make fire to create the largest dragon of all, a whale with it's oil for fuel fits the purpose.

And Dany isn't going to go through the maze, not successfully, not in life. She's going to die before and in death 'fly' like Varamyr, and simply fly over the walls of the maze and drop down inside of it where is the black stone. As Aegon on Balerion did in Harrenhal, hence the other part to that conversation.

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"What is outside my walls is of no concern to me," said Harren. "Those walls are strong and thick."

"But not so high as to keep out dragons. Dragons fly."

. . .

As the last light of the sun faded, Black Harren's men stared into the gathering darkness, clutching their spears and crossbows. When no dragon appeared, some may have thought that Aegon's threats had been hollow. But Aegon Targaryen took Balerion up high, through the clouds, up and up until the dragon was no bigger than a fly upon the moon. Only then did he descend, well inside the castle walls. On wings as black as pitch, Balerion plunged through the night, and when the great towers of Harrenhal appeared beneath him, the dragon roared his fury and bathed them in black fire, shot through with swirls of red.

SIDEBAR 07 FORMS OF THE STONE BEAST

Moving on, her wake the dragon dream in full.

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Wings shadowed her fever dreams.

"You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?

"She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She could not look behind her, must not look behind her. There was a door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she saw that it was painted red. She walked faster, and her bare feet left bloody footprints on the stone.

The stone hall is symbolic of the dragon's insides. Arches ribs, like Nagga. The red door is the way inside to the heart, to where should be its fire. She leaves her blood on the stone. This is her journey inside of the dragon, she's not there yet, she hasn't yet second lifed it but she's on the way.

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"You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich with the smells of earth and death. Wind stirred the grasses, and they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong arms, and his hand stroked her sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, stars in a daylight sky. "Home," she whispered as he entered her and filled her with his seed, but suddenly the stars were gone, and across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took flame.

She conceives Rhaego with Drogo and the dragon comes and the fire comes.

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"… don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

Ser Jorah's face was drawn and sorrowful. "Rhaegar was the last dragon," he told her. He warmed translucent hands over a glowing brazier where stone eggs smouldered red as coals. One moment he was there and the next he was fading, his flesh colorless, less substantial than the wind. "The last dragon," he whispered, thin as a wisp, and was gone. She felt the dark behind her, and the red door seemed farther away than ever.

Looks like Jorah's going to get greyscale, probably fighting the stone beast in her name,  and so if he doesn't die defending Dany she's going to cure him. Rhaegar was the last dragon, Rhaegar was dedicated to returning the dragons.

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"… don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

Viserys stood before her, screaming. "The dragon does not beg, slut. You do not command the dragon. I am the dragon, and I will be crowned." The molten gold trickled down his face like wax, burning deep channels in his flesh. "I am the dragon and I will be crowned!" he shrieked, and his fingers snapped like snakes, biting at her nipples, pinching, twisting, even as his eyes burst and ran like jelly down seared and blackened cheeks.

Viserys. Probably Viserion, fitting mount for another mad Targaryen betraying brother, Tyrion. But not really relevant here.

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"… don't want to wake the dragon …"

The red door was so far ahead of her, and she could feel the icy breath behind, sweeping up on her. If it caught her she would die a death that was more than death, howling forever alone in the darkness. She began to run.

Here we are straight told what happens if she doesn't make it inside the red door, that is if she doesn't make it inside to second the dragon. Basically she ends up in oblivion, alone forever. Drogo and Rhaego are inside, on the other side of the door. This is likely where MMD thought she was sending Drogo, but he got through the red door into the dragon.

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"… don't want to wake the dragon …"

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo's copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as they touched her skin.

Rhaego becomes fire inside the dragon, his fiery heart, soul, fuels the dragon's fire.

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"… want to wake the dragon …"

Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. "Faster," they cried, "faster, faster." She raced, her feet melting the stone wherever they touched. "Faster!" the ghosts cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.

She walks by the old kings, old Targaryens, old Valyrians, dragonlords, with their old faded Lightbringers of pale fire. They did this once and they're urging her forward to do it too, walk in their footsteps. Now the sacrifices have been laid out prior her feet melt the stone. Her feet are bloody from the first part, her Targaryen dragon blood is melting the stone. Representing her melting the stone of the stone beast with her own dragon blood, dragon blood destroying the greyscale infection. And she begins transforming into the dragon.

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"… wake the dragon …"

The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the door.

"… the dragon …"

And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.

After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars.

She's the dragon now. She opens the red door, and there's Rhaegar the last dragon. Only it's not Rhaegar, it's her. That's because she has succeeded where Rhaegar failed, in saving the world, in waking the dragon. She is fire in black armour, she is the last dragon, not him.

This is what Dany was always supposed to be, or maybe just since she birthed her dragons and almost second lifed Drogon then.

Dany is not a happy human, I cast no judgement here on if she's a good human, rather I would term it that she's not good at being human. She's not comfortable in her own skin. Not really suited for this world and certainly not suited for rule. She tried walking that tight rope of rule in Meereen, making the sacrifices required for peace and rule. It made her miserable, while ruling she was doubt and indecision. And she rejected bearing that burden when she jumped in the pit to save Drogon. She would not pay that price for peace, she'd rather hop on a dragon and fly away to leave it all behind. She'll come out of Meereen no longer willing to even try the rabbit ears, no tree planting, fire and blood all the way to Westeros.

Westeros, the red door, where she believes is her home, that which represents her home, where she'll find happiness. But she won't, they'll hate her for her ways of fire and blood, call her mad, turn on her and eventually kick her off the throne. She'll alienate those she loved and some she thought would never betray her.

The red door represents home and happiness, she thinks its Westeros, its not.

There are two sets of red doors of a kind in the series. This is the first.

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The doors to the Great Hall were set in the mouth of a stone dragon. He told the servants to leave him outside. It would be better to enter alone; he must not appear feeble. Leaning heavily on his cane, Cressen climbed the last few steps and hobbled beneath the gateway teeth. A pair of guardsmen opened the heavy red doors before him, unleashing a sudden blast of noise and light. Cressen stepped down into the dragon's maw.

Obvious where that one leads. Inside the stone dragon.
This is the second. The doors are not really red.

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At ground level the Great Pyramid of Meereen was a hushed place, full of dust and shadows. Its outer walls were thirty feet thick. Within them, sounds echoed off arches of many-colored bricks, and amongst the stables, stalls, and storerooms. They passed beneath three massive arches, down a torchlit ramp into the vaults beneath the pyramid, past cisterns, dungeons, and torture chambers where slaves had been scourged and skinned and burned with red-hot irons. Finally they came to a pair of huge iron doors with rusted hinges, guarded by Unsullied.

At her command, one produced an iron key. The door opened, hinges shrieking. Daenerys Targaryen stepped into the hot heart of darkness and stopped at the lip of a deep pit. Forty feet below, her dragons raised their heads. Four eyes burned through the shadows—two of molten gold and two of bronze.

In the bowels of the pyramid, in the hot heart of darkness she keeps her dragons behind two huge doors. They're locked there, she has imprisoned them. Iron doors, rusted shrieking hinges, means Euron.

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The sound of a door opening, the scream of a rusted iron hinge. Euron has come again. It did not matter. He was the Damphair priest, beloved of the god.

His depravity.

But the doors are not red.

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Dany did not want to talk about the dragons. Farmers still came to her court with burned bones, complaining of missing sheep, though Drogon had not returned to the city. Some reported seeing him north of the river, above the grass of the Dothraki sea. Down in the pit, Viserion had snapped one of his chains; he and Rhaegal grew more savage every day. Once the iron doors had glowed red-hot, her Unsullied told her, and no one dared to touch them for a day. "Astapor is under siege as well."

Until dragon's fire turn them red. And they're the only two red doors in the series besides those of Dany's memories and imagination.

The red door is death, her own, the other side is inside the dragon. Inside the hot heart of darkness, within and in the destruction of Euron's stone beast. The turning of Euron's rusted iron doors and all that represents, into a fiery red-hot burning door. With Drogo and Rhaego.

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Haggon's rough voice echoed in his head. "You will die a dozen deaths, boy, and every one will hurt … but when your true death comes, you will live again. The second life is simpler and sweeter, they say."

Simpler and sweeter, what Dany has always yearned for. This is the life Dany was meant for, just fire and blood, free of all doubt and struggle, injustice and pain.

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Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

Cleansed in fire, new, strong and fierce.

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Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. "Mother!" they cried. "Mother, mother!" They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them . . .

But then black wings buffeted her round the head,

They need her fire, her life. The simple saviour she always meant to be, by her fire, her life.

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"You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?"

She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich with the smells of earth and death. Wind stirred the grasses, and they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong arms, and his hand stroked her sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, stars in a daylight sky. "Home," she whispered as he entered her and filled her with his seed, but suddenly the stars were gone, and across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took flame.

The red door is home and happiness, and there it is, it's with Drogo.

This whole scene foreshadows Dany's end.

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"Some kings make themselves. Robert did."

"He was no true king," Dany said scornfully. "He did no justice. Justice . . . that's what kings are for."

Ser Jorah had no answer. He only smiled, and touched her hair, so lightly. It was enough.

That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper's rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened.

She woke suddenly in the darkness of her cabin, still flush with triumph. Balerion seemed to wake with her, and she heard the faint creak of wood, water lapping against the hull, a football on the deck above her head. And something else.

Someone was in the cabin with her.

"Irri? Jhiqui? Where are you?" Her handmaids did not respond. It was too black to see, but she could hear them breathing. "Jorah, is that you?"

"They sleep," a woman said. "They all sleep." The voice was very close. "Even dragons must sleep."

It's just a little out of order.

First Jon proves he is her true king. Unlike when Robert didn't punish Tywin for murdering the Targaryen children, Jon will do justice and execute Dany for attempting to murder their child. Dany dies.

Then the last part of the scene.

Dany wakes in darkness, inside the dragon. And with her Balerion wakes. Someone is in there with her. In the scene it's Quaithe, inside the dragon it will Drogo, she will sense him. The football above her head, on Balerion's deck, represents someone's feet above the dragon, their kicks, someone is mounting her, mounting the dragon. Jon.

Then the middle scene. She is Rhaegar, she has done what he intended but failed, she has become the last dragon. And with dragon's fire she goes forth and burns the enemy, they are ice, they are the Others, and she melts them.

This is how it was meant to be. What Dany was always meant to be. Even dragons must sleep Quaithe says. Dany is a sleeping dragon, her life as a human is her sleeping, a dream, the nightmare, her real life is the life as a dragon. Her second life as the dragon is her true awakening.

[chrisdaw]

AN ICE DRAGON ENDING

I believe there will be an ice dragon, and that Stannis will be the cause of the dragon. Less confident that it will be his second life. Or he becomes an Other and raises it and/or rides it. But I do lean towards one of those.

Whereas most the above has been developed over months if not years the following has been the result of days, thus I'll show my working out so to speak, the line of thinking that go me here.

Jon with his flaming sword on Dalerion strafing the Others from above and ending the Long Night lacks tension, challenge. And it shouldn't require an epic dragon like Dalerion, and provide no use for Jon's flaming sword. A simple victory lap like that seems an underwhelming ending. An ice dragon for Dalerion to fight solves that issue.

As the prevailing heroic act was that of not sacrificing to save their own kind, a rejection of what is thematically the heart of winter, then it would make sense the final evil would be that which did make such a sacrifice, and the final battle against it. Thus I run into Stannis and his impending sacrifice of Shireen.

For those that don't recall, the heart of winter represents the big bad.

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And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

Here's what we are given to work with.

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Of all the queer and fabulous denizens of the Shivering Sea, however, the greatest are the ice dragons. These colossal beasts, many times larger than the dragons of Valyria, are said to be made of living ice, with eyes of pale blue crystal and vast translucent wings through which the moon and stars can be glimpsed as they wheel across the sky. Whereas common dragons (if any dragon can truly be said to be common) breathe flame, ice dragons supposedly breathe cold, a chill so terrible that it can freeze a man solid in half a heartbeat.

Sailors from half a hundred nations have glimpsed these great beasts over the centuries, so mayhaps there is some truth behind the tales. Archmaester Margate has suggested that many legends of the north—freezing mists, ice ships, Cannibal Bay, and the like—can be explained as distorted reports of ice-dragon activity. Though an amusing notion, and not without a certain elegance, this remains the purest conjecture. As ice dragons supposedly melt when slain, no actual proof of their existence has ever been found.

Focussing on the eyes for now. For those Euron, Symeon Star Eyes, Shiera and Aemond Targaryen come to mind. And Stannis himself, but I'll go there last.

Euron I've run and done. He's over with when Dany becomes Dalerion and so I don't see him applying here. And thematically he's the heart of darkness (Dany is the heart of fire), not winter.For Symeon Star Eyes there is little information.

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"There was a knight once who couldn't see," Bran said stubbornly, as Ser Rodrik went on below. "Old Nan told me about him. He had a long staff with blades at both ends and he could spin it in his hands and chop two men at once."

"Symeon Star-Eyes," Luwin said as he marked numbers in a book. "When he lost his eyes, he put star sapphires in the empty sockets, or so the singers claim. Bran, that is only a story, like the tales of Florian the Fool. A fable from the Age of Heroes." The maester tsked. "You must put these dreams aside, they will only break your heart."

. . .

The Nightfort had figured in some of Old Nan's scariest stories. It was here that Night's King had reigned, before his name was wiped from the memory of man. This was where the Rat Cook had served the Andal king his prince-and-bacon pie, where the seventy-nine sentinels stood their watch, where brave young Danny Flint had been raped and murdered. This was the castle where King Sherrit had called down his curse on the Andals of old, where the 'prentice boys had faced the thing that came in the night, where blind Symeon Star-Eyes had seen the hellhounds fighting.

I can't make much on him. The Nightfort for Stannis. The stories will break Bran's heart.
In the double edged weapon there may be something, as it could run into this.

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"Dalla told me something once. Val's sister, Mance Rayder's wife. She said that sorcery was a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it."

"A wise woman." Melisandre rose, her red robes stirring in the wind. "A sword without a hilt is still a sword, though, and a sword is a fine thing to have when foes are all about.

A sword without a hilt. Thematically this works well, if Stannis is to give rise to an ice dragon I think Mel would be involved, and that it'd be accidental. A misguided attempt to raise a dragon to save the realm, formed from sacrifice, the heart of winter, and giving rise to the worst enemy instead.

With Shiera the symbolism and some themes carry nicely, some particularly in line with Aemond, but I can't (yet) see a link back through her back to any present character besides Euron or get a read on anything that may pertain to an ice dragon event from her. So I won't explore her further here.

Aemond. So he lost an eye and put a sapphire in it, easy connection to make. And he lost his eye and so gained his sapphire eye when he won Vhagar as his mounth. As the rise of an ice dragon should see the rise of its sapphire like eyes.

A lot more information on Aemond and so a lot more to work with.

Aemond was a dragon rider so if the trail is hot I'd expect there to be some connection between his dragon Vhagar and an ice dragon. In that there's a big problem though, the most simple method of connection would be colour and GRRM has given us neither primary or secondary colours for Vhagar. There's no way that's not deliberate, GRRM knows the colours, and it's not an oversight, he's holding it back for a reason.

In Vhagar's size we get a nice comparison to Balerion.

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By the time of the Dance of the Dragons, Vhagar was the hardened survivor of a hundred battles, had grown almost as large as Balerion and was the oldest and largest of the dragons in Westeros.

Next biggest. Fits. As Dalerion is the Balerion parallel, and the ice dragon will fall to it.

The name I think is taken from the biblical Hagar, and in her son Ishmael may be some Stannis nods (war with his family, live to their east) but not too much in it (Maegor nods too by way of his mother, Vhagar's first rider Visenya.)

Aemond (and Vhagar) met his end in a dragon battle above the God's Eye, in this passage.

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And it was then, the tales tell us, that Prince Daemon Targaryen swung a leg over his saddle and leapt from one dragon to the other. In his hand was Dark Sister, the sword of Queen Visenya. As Aemond One-Eye looked up in terror, fumbling with the chains that bound him to his saddle, Daemon ripped off his nephew’s helm and drove the sword down into his blind eye, so hard the point came out the back of the young prince’s throat. Half a heartbeat later, the dragons struck the lake, sending up a gout of water so high that it was said to have been as tall as Kingspyre Tower.

Now in this there's a lot to work with.

Aemond cops a Valyrian sword through the eye, through the blind eye, that's the sapphire eye. First off it gives a purpose for why Lightbringer the sword is even needed. If winning the Long Night is simply Dalerion torching the Others from the sky, then Jon's Lightbringer has no purpose, nor does it if there's an ice dragon and it simply falls to Dalerion's fire. But an ice dragon requiring a flaming sword through the eye to kill it gives Lightbringer a very fitting purpose.

Running into Stannis now.

Thematically it fits perfectly, the sword of justice, becoming such because it was the instrument used to prevent a child's sacrifice, and provided justice to those who attempted it, being the sword to slay that which came into being by one who did make that same sacrifice. The sacrifice which will likely in some way give rise to the ice dragon.

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In King's Landing, the High Septon would prattle at me of how all justice and goodness flowed from the Seven, but all I ever saw of either was made by men."

If the ice dragon is Stannis, then fitting this line, as after he's betrayed his own sense of justice, the last thing he'll see is its representation, be it god's or man's, as it rams through his eye.

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the dragons struck the lake, sending up a gout of water so high that it was said to have been as tall as Kingspyre Tower.

GRRM describing the mammoth splash plays well to the death of an ice dragon.

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As ice dragons supposedly melt when slain, no actual proof of their existence has ever been found.

Mention of the Kingspyre perhaps a nod to my theorised combatants, and at least one of their deaths.

Back to Aemond with a turn to Stannis rather than an ice dragon. I'll quote from the wiki where I can be bothered to quote at all, which I shouldn't as often the foreshadowing is in the wording of the text, but at this stage I'm getting lazy.

Aemond is a good parallel for Stannis in many events, too many and in a such a way that there's really no chance it is not intended.

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King Viserys had suggested traveling to Dragonstone after the funeral, and informed Aemond, who out of all his siblings was the only one yet without a dragon of his own, that he could claim a dragon egg or hatchling on Dragonstone for his own, if he was "bold enough". Annoyed by his father's comment, Aemond resolved to claim Vhagar

Stannis is somewhat preoccupied with having a dragon. Mel's fault, but it's there and became his. Probably that will intensify when word reaches him of Dany's dragons.

He's the middle brother of three. The eldest was king, Aemond thinks the crown suited him better than his elder brother. The youngest Daeron plays well to Renly in ways.

Had a rivalry with the other three royal boys, Jacarys, Lucerys and Joffrey. Lannister children parallels, as Stannis wars against Joff. Aemond alludes to the children being bastards, it goes a way to kickstarting the enmity that leads to war. Parallel with Stannis obvious, he wars Joff because he believes he is illegitimate.

Aemond kills Lucerys in an act treachery, and for it becomes known as a kinslayer. Stannis kills Renly in an act of duty and justice which some misguided people mistake for an act of treachery, though it is certainly kinslaying.

The location and circumstances of Aemond's murder of Lucerys echoes the death of Stannis's parents. Off of Storm's End, Shipbreaker Bay, during a storm. If not for the stom Stannis's parents would have lived, if not for a storm Lucerys probably would have escaped Aemond.

Point here in linking Aemond to Stannis is simply if Aemond parallels the ice dragon and Aemond parallels Stannis then so stronger must grow a connection between Stannis and the ice dragon.

Back to the ice dragon, this language jumps at me.

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with eyes of pale blue crystal and vast translucent wings through which the moon and stars can be glimpsed as they wheel across the sky.

When GRRM writes dragon's wings he thinks shadows. Wings shadowed her fever dreams, fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. It's all through the text. As he often uses shadows as a way of representing the reach of something. The extent of its influence.

Given how often he refers to the shadow beneath the wings of a dragon it should be obvious that's what he's thinking with this ice dragon line. What the line is actually saying is that there is no shadow, or an unusual, may say perverse shadow. The wings are translucent, one can see the moon and stars through them, light travels through them.

This reeks of Stannis for the obvious, but before that, there is this.

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King Stannis pointed a finger. "There you err, Onion Knight. Some lights cast more than one shadow. Stand before the nightfire and you'll see for yourself. The flames shift and dance, never still. The shadows grow tall and short, and every man casts a dozen. Some are fainter than others, that's all. Well, men cast their shadows across the future as well. One shadow or many. Melisandre sees them all."

As an ice dragon flies, and translucent wings, multiple connected prisms of ice, move before the pale moonlight, the resulting shadow(s) are going to look like what Stannis describes here. Pale moving shadows of varying darkness.
Sort of the opposite of what Mel more than once says is good news.

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"Shadow?" Davos felt his flesh prickling. "A shadow is a thing of darkness."

"You are more ignorant than a child, ser knight. There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows."

And from that there's the obvious assoiciation regarding Stannis and shadow babies. His seemingly failing health because of it and Mel's unwillingness to make another.

Very relevant I think is this from Brienne about Renly's death.

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"Cold," her king said, puzzled, and a shadow moved without a man to cast it, and her sweet lord's blood came washing through the green steel of his gorget to drench her hands. He had been a warm man, but his blood was cold as ice. This is not real, she told herself. This is another bad dream, and soon I'll wake.

Cold as ice.

And the obvious.

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Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow.

It'd give a new and very distinct meaning for Dany's HOTU vision regarding blue eyed and casting no shadow.

Turning to likely other dragons for foreshadowing.

Tessarion the blue queen, ridden by the Renly parallel I mentioned upwards Daeron Targ. Blue dragon, blue fire, secondary colour beaten copper (Renly reference). Mortally wounded at night but lived past daybreak. Perhaps a reference to the ending of the Long Night. Killed, or put out of its misery by arrows through the eye. Death through the eye suits.

Silverwing has colouring (assuming it actually is named for its colour) for some foreshadowing. Ridden by blue eyed Alysanne. Visited the wall. Sam speculates she may have laid an egg there, for seemingly no reason. Ridden by the betrayer Ulf the White, possible wight connection. Unknown how she died.

Vermax is rumoured to have laid eggs at Winterfell by Mushroom (really it's supposed to be about the dragon rider knocking up a WF woman), nothing much else in that one.

Meraxes was silver and gold. Also died from a bolt through the eye, interesting GRRM went as far as to tell us it was an iron bolt. Which reminds me of this quote.

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The armorer considered that a moment. "Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he's copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day."

There's been much discussion of Stannis becoming the Night's King, and I'm not totally across it to be honest but in looking into the above I imagine I've seen much of why the theorising exists. It seems fairly strong. In at least one passage the ice dragon star is referred to as not the dragon's eye but the dragon rider's eye. Basically I hold out the possibility Stannis could be both the Night's King (or what the Night's King is foreshadowing, just a powerful Other) and responsible for raising the ice dragon, which he could ride. But I don't really want to go down the Night's King angle in detail here.

There's plenty of foreshadowing for Stannis never giving up, fighting on, even after death. He's the energizer bunny of Westeros. And this description I think is particularly telling, a sort of key.

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Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends.

My reading of this has always been that the point is Stannis is going to not just break, but he's going out spectacularly. Not quietly into the night (like he did in the show) like Renly. He is going to fall, (unfortunately because he's great) because GRRM says no to child sacrifice and he is going to sacrifice at least Shireen. And that fall is going to be spectacular, he's going break, shatter, and it's going to be epic.

Simply dying in battle doesn't suit. Simply being defeated doesn't suit. He has to give way to the worst in himself, the poor me attitude he is susceptible to but keeps at bay while he keeps on keeping on in the name of duty.

Its a series staple even at this stage, not just where magic is concerned but especially so, to not go exceeding your boundaries, you just do you and let that shit sort itself out. Don't go chasing prophecy, just keep your own house in order. Varys for example is playing the game of thrones to try and sit a just king on the throne, and the result is going to be a royal fuck up when he partly causes the second dance and thousands of deaths, and his perfect king dies anyway. And specifically with magic there's the Rhaegar lesson. Jon and Farya.

Even without that logic, I don't think it would take much convicing for people to consider Mel is on a path to fuck something up, on a massive scale, huge. It seems her destiny. Sword without a hilt is probably as blatant as foreshadowing goes.

So to try and rough it altogether into some theoretical possiblities.

The straightest line to an ice dragon would be one killed and raised by the Others as a wight dragon. I don't lean this way, because I first theorised this possibility back in 2013 and since then, with the idea in mind, I've come across nothing in the text to substantiate it. I can't see when or where or how things would get to that, and I've got the dragons dying/being elsewhere.

Show stuff.

Spoiler

Yes I am aware what the show is doing, and don't think it will happen in the book. The show is the straight line version, if even that.

For location of the rise of the ice dragon I think the wall. Reasons are that there are multiple instances of the wall being likened to an ice dragon, the only place GRRM does that with. He likes to describe Stannis's and Mel's shadow on the wall, large. And we have that Sam line about a possible dragon egg being laid underneath the wall by Silverwing. Not saying that is literally correct, but just that an ice dragon coming from the wall gives that line relevance at a minimum as foreshadowing.

A possibility is Stannis takes the black. There is foreshadowing that could suggest this and it ties into him becoming the Night's King. This has been theorised before I think since after ADWD and I think it fits in part with Stannis's character. It's a legal means for him to accept defeat while still doing his duty to the realm. And he's all about the law and doing his duty.

To speculate, something along these lines. Stannis ultimately fails in the war in the north, retreats back to the wall, he burns Shireen and nothing comes of it, people lose faith in him morally and don't think he can win. While on the other hand Jon rises from the dead, like a god, is released from his vows and the KITN will becomes known. Jon's star is rising, Stannis's waning. He makes the sacrifice of his crown for the realm, steps aside lawfully by taking the black where he can still do his duty, so that Jon who has the following and is therefor better placed than Stannis to lead and consolidate the realm's forces against the Others can do just that. But if it is to be the case Stannis's story wouldn't just end at taking the black.

A possibility, it needn't happen to make the ice dragon, but it could put some things in a line. Then whatever Stannis does can be seen as the NW not holding true, which Old Nan says is when/why the Wall will fail.

I think the wall will fall, and I think the ice dragon will come from its ice. Not necessarily straight away, possibility it falls and an ice dragon rises (is raised) from its ice wreckage at a later time.

The first option I lean towards in Stannis and the ice dragon is that it is somehow his second life, and thus the basic rules of those applied all through the above should apply. Stannis should die, and a child of his blood should die. In that Shireen could play the part. Shireen's greyscale could become relevant, but I doubt it would be like Euron/Arianne in the stone beast, for the reason her's is dormant and their's will be malignant.

I don't lean the Shireen direction to be honest, I think it might play a part but I don't see Stannis dying at the same time she burns. I think he will survive that, her and Mel have to feel that impact. It would be fitting to start a desperate downard spiral.

An option that occurs to me is Selyse may yet become pregnant (got there initially from what I think is an association to Genesis, Sarah and Hagar). And maybe the prevailing wisdom with Mel is that Shireen didn't work because the mother didn't die too, because the child wasn't a newborn or in the womb, because Stannis didn't die too, etc. Possibly information learned from what happened to Dany or otherwise more revelations. And the new idea comes up that Selyse has to burn with the child and maybe Stannis die too, and so they try that.

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He glanced at Queen Selyse. There must have been a blizzard the day she and Stannis wed. Huddled beneath her ermine mantle and surrounded by her ladies, serving girls, and knights, the southron queen seemed a frail, pale, shrunken thing. A strained smile was frozen into place on her thin lips, but her eyes brimmed with reverence. She hates the cold but loves the flames. He had only to look at her to see that. A word from Melisandre, and she would walk into the fire willingly, embrace it like a lover.

I don't mind this option as a possibility. The language surrounding Selyse, and in fact her very existence and prominence in the story makes it appeal. Why is Selyse even a character with screen time and not just a name? Why is she around? She didn't need to be, she could have just been ignored and spared barely a sentence like many other wives in the text are. She does say something about Stannis, his instincts towards women, but it still feels far beyond what is necessary. Particularly as she's being given a life of her own outside of Stannis.

Stannis and Selyse aren't fucking, but if he returns from the campaign that may be reason enough. Also if Stannis takes the black a final night of bed duty before he takes the oath seems reasonable.

Another possibility is it comes about as a result of another shadow baby attempt. Before I go there I'll add another speculative possibility.As Stannis falls from grace in the north, so too may Mel. It would fit.

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After the warmth of the king's solar, the turnpike stair felt bone-chillingly cold. "Wind's rising, m'lady," the serjeant warned Melisandre as he handed Jon back his weapons. "You might want a warmer cloak."

"I have my faith to warm me." The red woman walked beside Jon down the steps. "His Grace is growing fond of you."

Mel is noted constantly as being always warm, her skin, breath, presence. If her faith were to wane, so too should her warmth according to the above. It would play into the NK story.

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As the sun began to set the shadows of the towers lengthened and the wind blew harder, sending gusts of dry dead leaves rattling through the yards. The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan's stories, the tale of Night's King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night's Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. "And that was the fault in him," she would add, "for all men must know fear." A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.

He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night's King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night's King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.

The woman of the NK story is inverse to Mel, ice where she was fire, so maybe Mel turns into her. Maybe she loses faith after Stannis loses or Shireen's sacrifice fails, maybe a particular event drains her of her power, like glamouring Dany, and red becomes blue, red eyes blue eyes, magic red rubies blue sapphires, warmth becomes cold, and her true age begins to show. A possibility.

So shadow babies. Mel won't make another one because she fears it could kill Stannis. Suppose a Stannis dwelling as a NW member or otherwise at the wall, learning of all the progress and victories Jon is achieving. He's there brooding on all the unjustices he's had to endure, jealous, cursing the realm and world for his lot. Suppose he turns to Mel, a last ditch effort for the glory he believes should be his, another shadow baby. And suppose it does kill him like Mel fears, what then? Does he just die and the shadow too? Or does the shadow live on?

A shadow Stannis at the wall would play into a lot of the NK's stories. The thing that comes in the night, Mad Axe, the night his to rule.

Also, at Storm's End Mel had to get inside the walls to use the shadow baby, as the walls were magically protected the shadow baby couldn't pass. The wall has magic protection too, the same type of magic perhaps if you go by the legends. Inside the SE's walls she could do it, maybe inside the Wall a shadow Stannis could exist but never leave?

It'd give a reason for establishing the whole magic ward premise, particularly with the shadow baby at Storm's End. For association the Wall's and Storm's End's raising with the same magic.

Maybe Stannis does sacrifice a real child of his and dies, and instead of "flying" in his second life, he becomes shadow Stannis again, permanently.

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She was stronger at the Wall, stronger even than in Asshai. Her every word and gesture was more potent, and she could do things that she had never done before. Such shadows as I bring forth here will be terrible, and no creature of the dark will stand before them. With such sorceries at her command, she should soon have no more need of the feeble tricks of alchemists and pyromancers.

I think what is going to happen, however we get there, is shadow Stannis is going to get trapped inside the wall. If Stannis dies and just the shadow exists, preying in the night, or if he lives by day and becomes the shadow when he sleeps or otherwise it just exists at night, I have no particular leaning. But this I think is how it's going to go, shadow Stannis trapped in the wall, doing all the worst things he's capable of, without his memory. Same as he doesn't remember what happened with Renly's death. Perhaps at first he's just making nightly shadow babies before it gets trapped, from him dying while the shadow roams or otherwise.

His weakened, frozen, cold soul of a shadow gets inside the wall and turns it at some point into an ice dragon, perhaps the cause of the wall falling or otherwise it happens when the wall falls. Perhaps when the wall falls the Others raise the dragon from the wall and his shadow. Maybe shadow Stannis does literally find a dragon's egg beneath the wall, and hops inside.

So that's where I'm at. Stannis becomes an ice dragon or raises it. Dany becomes Dalerion, Jon rides her and has a flaming sword. The two do battle in the sky. And that much I'm positive on for reasons before and because it is so strongly foreshadowed in the sequence below.

Before Jon escapes the wildlings he refuses to murder a man. An elderly man, one who will surely die even if Jon refuses to do it himself. Doesn't matter to Jon, he'll not murder an innocent man by his own hand, not for his own life or for anything else. It foreshadows his child he will not sacrifice. A short time later come these three paragraphs to end the chapter.

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He rested for a while to let the horse graze. She did not wander far. That was good. Hobbled with a bad leg, he could never have caught her. It was all he could do to force himself back to his feet and climb onto her back. How did I ever mount her before, without saddle or stirrups, and a sword in one hand? That was another question he could not answer.

It is foreshadowing him mounting Dalerion. How did he ever mount the dragon, without saddle or stirrups, a sword in one hand, a flaming sword?

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Thunder rumbled softly in the distance, but above him the clouds were breaking up. Jon searched the sky until he found the Ice Dragon, then turned the mare north for the Wall and Castle Black. The throb of pain in his thigh muscle made him wince as he put his heels into the old man's horse. I am going home, he told himself. But if that was true, why did he feel so hollow?

He will search the sky for the ice dragon's eye. And ride for it. He feels hollow in this scene because he knows he has abandoned Ygritte, his love, forever. In the final scenes he will feel hollow because he knows he's abandoning his newly born daughter, his new love. He knows he will never see her again, he knows he's not coming back from this.

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He rode till dawn, while the stars stared down like eyes.

He will ride at the dragon to the ice dragon's eye, it is like a star down at him in the sky. He will ride to end the Long Night, until he brings the dawn.

I think the ice dragon regenerates, Dalerion's flame melts it but it just freezes more water with its own breath to peice itself back together. Perhaps Dalerion melts it until the glowing blue eyes fall into the ocean, then it simply rises again. To kill it proper, Jon sticks his Lightbringer into the dragon's blue crystal eye, and the blue flames die and ice dragon turns wholly to water.

What next? Probably Jon's end is left ambiguous, he falls from the sky from the ice dragon, maybe time to second life something before he hits? Daemon's ambiguous ending, and the one the singers give him some probably foreshadowing.

Dalerion flies off, job done, no need for a dragon on Westeros anymore, maybe to Asshai?

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I am still at war, Dany realized, only now I am fighting shadows. She had hoped for a respite from the killing, for some time to build and heal.
. . .
"You are fighting shadows when you should be fighting the men who cast them," Daario went on.
. . .
Tormund turned back. "You know nothing. You killed a dead man, aye, I heard. Mance killed a hundred. A man can fight the dead, but when their masters come, when the white mists rise up … how do you fight a mist, crow? Shadows with teeth … air so cold it hurts to breathe, like a knife inside your chest … you do not know, you cannot know … can your sword cut cold?"

We will see, Jon thought,

 

[chrisdaw]

SIDEBAR 1 - SUMMERHALL

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The last years of Aegon's reign were consumed by a search for ancient lore about the dragon breeding of Valyria, and it was said that Aegon commissioned journeys to places as far away as Asshai-by-the-Shadow with the hopes of finding texts and knowledge that had not been preserved in Westeros.

What became of the dream of dragons was a grievous tragedy born in a moment of joy. In the fateful year 259 AC, the king summoned many of those closest to him to Summerhall, his favorite castle, there to celebrate the impending birth of his first great-grandchild, a boy later named Rhaegar, to his grandson Aerys and granddaughter Rhaella, the children of Prince Jaehaerys.

It is unfortunate that the tragedy that transpired at Summerhall left very few witnesses alive, and those who survived would not speak of it. A tantalizing page of Gyldayn's history—surely one of the very last written before his own death—hints at much, but the ink that was spilled over it in some mishap blotted out too much.

the blood of the dragon gathered in one …
… seven eggs, to honor the seven gods, though the king's own septon had warned …
… pyromancers …
… wild fire …
… flames grew out of control … towering … burned so hot that …
… died, but for the valor of the Lord Comman …

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Treason and turmoil followed, as night follows day, ending at Summerhall in sorcery, fire, and grief.

So the run down, Egg is trying to restore dragons and somehow it got morphed into a dragon awakening attempt and a celebration of Rhaegar's impending birth. Pyromancers present, wildfire, big fire grows out of control, Barristan says sorcery and treason occurs. Egg and his eldest Duncan die presumably in the fire, and Rhaegar very nearly does too but is seemingly somehow saved by Dunk, who unfortunately doesn't make it himself.

So a small assumption, someone caused a fire to get out of control which was presumably part of the innocent attempt to wake dragons. They've got pyromancers and wildfire there after all, standard fare for previous dragon waking attempts. All attempts which failed with a whimper.

Consider what happened here with relation to what happened when Dany successfully raised dragons. The elements are there but for one thing, Rhaego died, Rhaegar didn't. Had Rhaegar died all the elements would be the same, and Rhaegar very nearly did die.

The sabotage at Summerhall was not an attempt to prevent Egg from waking dragons. It wasn't going to work, it never did before and there's no reason it would have this time. To wake dragons you need blood and you need sacrifice. The saboteur at Summerhall was not trying to prevent dragons from returning, the saboteur was trying to do the opposite, they were providing the missing ingredient, Targ blood sacrifice, child sacrifice. An ingredient that Egg would have never consented to so they had to do it covertly. They had a clue how this all works, and they very nearly succeeded, but for Dunk saving Rhaegar.

Who the hidden hand is trying to wake dragons is a question. Bloodraven and Shiera playing a hidden hand role my possibilities, as there was sorcery and they're our two given sorcerers. It'll be Shiera, she's a trickster, she doesn't care about people but enjoys tormenting them, enjoys pushing boundaries just for no reason other than the fun of mayhem.

It would have worked had Rhaegar died, but Dunk saved him.

Something to watch for come more releases, where originated the idea for a dragon awakening to be combined with a celebration of Rhaegar's impending birth? That is what ensured Rhaella's all important presence at the event at the point in her pregnancy that the saboteur needed. If we get that information it may point to the culprit.

 

SIDEBAR 2 - THE PREVALENCE OF GREEN

There is a lot of green in all this. It'll be the stone beast's secondary colour, it's highlights, and the colour of it's shadow breath which will be greyscale. Like the dragons all have primary and secondary colours.

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Savage beasts he did not fear, nor any man who had ever drawn breath, but the sea was a different matter. To the Dothraki, water that a horse could not drink was something foul; the heaving grey-green plains of the ocean filled them with superstitious loathing. Drogo was a bolder man than the other horselords in half a hundred ways, she had found … but not in this.

It's the grey and green ocean that is foul to the dothraki.

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Garin was next, a loose-limbed, swarthy, long-nosed fellow with a jade stud in one ear. "Here is gay Garin of the orphans, who makes me laugh," said Arianne. "His mother was my wet nurse."
. . .
Beyond a line of stony hills the grass grew greener and more lush, and there were lemon orchards watered by a spider's web of old canals. Garin was the first to spy the river glimmering green. He gave a shout and raced ahead.

Garin and green.

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The ships bring casks of freshwater too. The waters of the Ash glisten black beneath the noonday sun and glimmer with a pale green phosphorescence by night, and such fish as swim in the river are blind and twisted, so deformed and hideous to look upon that only fools and shadowbinders will eat of their flesh.

Pretty clear foreshadowing of the stone beast in the deformed, blind (a greyscale associated encumberance) and twisted. Phosphorescence means light without heat. Where Drogon breathed black-red hot fire, the stone beast will breathe heatless pale-green greyscale. Shadowfire. Recall the stone beast is grouped with lies Dany must slay such as Stannis with his heatless Lightbringer. Recall the faded Valyrian ghosts with their pale fire swords in Dany's waking the dragon dream, represented spent flames.

Two possible explanations for why green. Well it needs no explanation, green light is eery, green is disease and rot and mould and horror ambience. It's green because it suits the beast, that's the explanation, and rather two possible justifications.

Green blood would be the first. Arianne's green blood makes up part of the stone beast.

The second is that I believe Euron is going to use wildfire to make the tower smoke, probably burn it down. Not the first time someone has burnt down a tower with wildfire, and wildfire has that association with the unnatural and dark arts that fits the whole scenario.

And there's this foreshadowing.

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The best berths had been taken by the largest vessels: Stannis's flagship Fury rocking between Lord Steffon and Stag of the Sea, Lord Velaryon's silver-hulled Pride of Driftmark and her three sisters, Lord Celtigar's ornate Red Claw, the ponderous Swordfish with her long iron prow.

Basically all the ships of the battle of Blackwater are foreshadowing, but I'll not run through them all here as they don't refer to this, besides the one I'm concerned with, Swordfish. It foreshadows Euron and/or the stone beast. Big iron prow for the Ironborn king.

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Yes, there, far to the south, that could only be Swordfish, lagging as ever. She dipped two hundred oars and mounted the largest ram in the fleet, though Davos had grave doubts about her captain.

Slow and cumbersome, as the mess that will be the stone beast. Grave doubts about it's captain, representing Euron.

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Even Swordfish was closing, lumbering and rolling through a thickening sea under both oars and sail. A ship of that many oars ought to be much faster, Davos reflected with disapproval. It's that ram she carries, it's too big, she has no balance.

Lumbering, ungainly, poorly weighted. Thickening under the sea, as the stone beast will turn to stone beneath the sea. It's the iron portion of it that's the problem, as Euron is the problem in the stone beast.

Swordfish lumbers in comparison to other ships flying.

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The drumbeats blurred into a long fevered hammering, and Black Betha flew, the water turning white as milk as it parted for her prow.

As swordfish can't 'fly' like the other ships, the stone beast will lose the ability to fly.

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the ungainly Swordfish—so far behind now that she was nearer the third line than the second

Second head.
Swordfish has something of a transformation during the battle.

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"Captain ser!" Matthos touched his shoulder.

It was Swordfish, her two banks of oars lifting and falling. She had never brought down her sails, and some burning pitch had caught in her rigging. The flames spread as Davos watched, creeping out over ropes and sails until she trailed a head of yellow flame. Her ungainly iron ram, fashioned after the likeness of the fish from which she took her name, parted the surface of the river before her. Directly ahead, drifting toward her and swinging around to present a tempting plump target, was one of the Lannister hulks, floating low in the water. Slow green blood was leaking out between her boards.

When he saw that, Davos Seaworth's heart stopped beating.

"No," he said. "No, NOOOOOO!" Above the roar and crash of battle, no one heard him but Matthos. Certainly the captain of the Swordfish did not, intent as he was on finally spearing something with his ungainly fat sword. The Swordfish went to battle speed. Davos lifted his maimed hand to clutch at the leather pouch that held his fingerbones.

With a grinding, splintering, tearing crash, Swordfish split the rotted hulk asunder. She burst like an overripe fruit, but no fruit had ever screamed that shattering wooden scream. From inside her Davos saw green gushing from a thousand broken jars, poison from the entrails of a dying beast, glistening, shining, spreading across the surface of the river . . .

A transformation by wildfire.

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Then he heard a short sharp woof, as if someone had blown in his ear. Half a heartbeat later came the roar. The deck vanished beneath him, and black water smashed him across the face, filling his nose and mouth. He was choking, drowning. Unsure which way was up, Davos wrestled the river in blind panic until suddenly he broke the surface. He spat out water, sucked in air, grabbed hold of the nearest chunk of debris, and held on.

Swordfish and the hulk were gone, blackened bodies were floating downstream beside him, and choking men clinging to bits of smoking wood. Fifty feet high, a swirling demon of green flame danced upon the river. It had a dozen hands, in each a whip, and whatever they touched burst into fire. He saw Black Betha burning, and White Hart and Loyal Man to either side. Piety, Cat, Courageous, Sceptre, Red Raven, Harridan, Faithful, Fury, they had all gone up, Kingslander and Godsgrace as well, the demon was eating his own. Lord Velaryon's shining Pride of Driftmark was trying to turn, but the demon ran a lazy green finger across her silvery oars and they flared up like so many tapers. For an instant she seemed to be stroking the river with two banks of long bright torches.

And what emerges is a green demon.

The other possibility in all this green is that it represents Cersei's role in all this. And I do consider this a very real possibility, I just can't grasp where/how she'd fit.

[chrisdaw]

SIDEBAR 3 - AERON'S REVENGE

 

Aeron will die at sea, but he will second life a leviathan. When the stone beast that is Euron's second life descends into the ocean, Aeron leviathan will battle it and win, dragging or condemning it to the bottom of the ocean. Possibly even he will eat him, part of him.

 

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They had built a shelter for the priest just above the tideline. Gladly he crawled into it, after he had drowned his newest followers. My god, he prayed, speak to me in the rumble of the waves, and tell me what to do. The captains and the kings await your word. Who shall be our king in Balon's place? Sing to me in the language of leviathan, that I may know his name. Tell me, O Lord beneath the waves, who has the strength to fight the storm on Pyke?

Aeron asks the Drowned God to sing to him in the language of the leviathan. That is the Drowned God's language. It tells him no godless man may sit the seastone chair.

 

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And gaunt and pale and shivering, Aeron Damphair struggled back to the shore, a wiser man than he had been when he stepped into the sea. For he had found the answer in his bones, and the way was plain before him. The night was so cold that his body seemed to steam as he stalked back toward his shelter, but there was a fire burning in his heart, and sleep came easily for once, unbroken by the scream of iron hinges.

Note the fire in his heart, as has been previously associated with second lifing. And that it helps him overcome the scream of iron hinges, Euron.

 

Aeron's story is one of faith.

Spoiler

And in the Foresaken chapter his faith is most tested.

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A weaker man might have wept, but Aeron Damphair prayed, waking, sleeping, even in his fever-dreams he prayed. My god is testing me. I must be strong, I must be true.
. . .
Last were two warlocks of the east, with flesh as white as mushrooms, and lips the purplish­-blue of a bad bruise, all so gaunt and starved that only skin and bones remained. One had lost his legs. The mutes hung him from a rafter. “Pree,” he cried as he swung back and forth. “Pree, Pree.”

Perhaps that was the name of the demon that he worships. The Drowned God protects me, the priest told himself. He is stronger than the false gods these other worship, stronger than their black sorceries. The Drowned God will set me free.

But his faith stays true. And at chapter's end there's this.

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“Falia Flowers,” he called. “Have courage, girl! All this will be over soon, and we will feast together in the Drowned God’s watery halls.”

The girl raised up her head, but made no answer. She has no tongue to answer with, Damphair knew. He licked his lips, and tasted salt.

It's defiance, it's faith. In a dark chapter it ends on a note of determination and strength. It's a case of him having passed the test.

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Aeron Damphair hardly heard her. Victarion is gone, half a world away or dead. Surely the Drowned God was testing him. This was a lesson for him. Put not your trust in men. Only my faith can save me now.

That night, when the tide came rushing back into the prison cell, he prayed that it might rise all night, enough to end his torment. I have been your true and leal servant, he prayed, twisting in his chains. Now snatch me from my brother’s hand, and take me down beneath the waves, to be seated at your side!

And that's what will happen.

Now consider what circumstances have conveniently provided him. If to second life something one needs a sacrifice of a child of their own blood, then he's got that. Not his own child, but of his blood all the same, as the text points out.

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“And who are you, child?”

 

“Falia Flowers, Lord Hewett’s natural daughter. I am to be King Euron’s salt wife. You and I will be kin, then.”

He needs to die too, and the odds on that are pretty good. If to second life a dragon the person's body needs to drown, then it'd make sense that to second life a seaborne creature that a person would need drown. Valyrian custom is to burn their dead, that relates to second lifing a dragon, Ironborn culture is to drown and be reborn. So if he needs to drown, and I think he does, then there's a pretty good chance of that happening too.

 

Note specifically the wording here.

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“Falia Flowers,” he called. “Have courage, girl! All this will be over soon, and we will feast together in the Drowned God’s watery halls.”

He and Falia. Makes sense, as the foreshadowing for Euron and Arianne both getting into the dragon together. So Falia is coming too, and too will get revenge on Euron.
 

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The sea. I can smell the sea. The Drowned God has not abandoned me. The sea will make me whole again! That which is dead can never die, but rises again harder and stronger...

His god has not abandoned him. The sea will make him whole again. He'll die but rise again, harder and stronger.
 

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“That which is dead cannot die,” said Aeron fiercely. “For he who has tasted death once need never fear again. He was drowned, but he came forth stronger than before, with steel and fire.”

 

“Will you do the same, brother?” Euron asked. “I think not. I think if I drowned you, you’ll stay drowned. All gods are lies, but yours is laughable. A pale white thing in the likeness of a man, his limbs broken and swollen and his hair flipping in the water while fish nibble at his face. What fool would worship that?”

Note the use of the word fierce, same as with Drogo.
 

Euron is wrong, the exact opposite is going to happen. Note how thick this chapter is laying it all on, the Drowned God, Aeron's faith and his afterlife. Nothing is without purpose.

 

Euron's mocking of the Drowned God here is more reverse foreshadowing, a kind of joke. Euron is turning himself to a god, but eventually he's going to end up pale and white, limbs crumbled and broken, helpless at the bottom of the ocean. He's going to become just like the Drowned God in the qualities he mocks about it.

In the Grey King there is dual foreshadowing.

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Nagga had been the first sea dragon, the mightiest ever to rise from the waves. She fed on krakens and leviathans and drowned whole islands in her wrath, yet the Grey King had slain her and the Drowned God had changed her bones to stone so that men might never cease to wonder at the courage of the first of kings.

By the time Aeron's grey leviathan gets to the stone beast it will be much like a sea dragon, part kraken and dragon and dwelling in the waters. He will slay it.

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From there he ruled the Iron Islands for a thousand years, until his very skin had turned as grey as his hair and beard. Only then did he cast aside his driftwood crown and walk into the sea, descending to the Drowned God's watery halls to take his rightful place at his right hand.

And Aeron will return to the sea at the right hand of the Drowned God, fiting for his most loyal subject. And an extended life for him.

The leviathan will fight Euron's stone beast, foreshadowed as a kraken here.

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Behind the dais a kraken and grey leviathan were locked in battle beneath the painted waves.

And do what Leviathan's do, drag it to the bottom of the ocean.

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"What the kraken grasps it does not lose, be it longship or leviathan."

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When longships learn to row through trees, perhaps. A fisherman may hook a grey leviathan, but it will drag him down to death unless he cuts it loose. The north is too large for us to hold, and too full of northmen."

Euron's stone beast is a new creation, eventually seaborne, a new god.

Spoiler

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“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.”

 

Leviathans are the oldest creatures in the world.

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and the mighty leviathans, the oldest and largest of all the living creatures of the earth.

And so the meaning of one of Patchface's mutterings to Davos.

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"Under the sea the old fish eat the young fish," the fool muttered at Davos. He bobbed his head, and his bells clanged and chimed and sang. "I know, I know, oh oh oh."

Aeron, Patchface and Davos are three of a kind, spat out by the ocean. And all three since being drowned hear voices. Aeron and Davos attribute the voices to gods. That Patchface hears voices is actually an assumption, I'm assuming that's where he gets his gear from. And Davos' role plays into Aeron's, but I'll address that elsewhere in turn.

Spoiler

General Aeron second lifing and becoming a whale or Drowned god like foreshadowing.

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It was always midnight in the belly of the beast.

Note the similarity to this line.

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She woke suddenly in the darkness of her cabin, still flush with triumph. Balerion seemed to wake with her,

It's symbolising the second life inside the beast.

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His feet had grown huge and soft and puffy, shapeless things as big as hams.

Flippers.

This is what the Old Man of the River and the Crab King foreshadow, battling under the waves for dominance. Aeron/Leviathan for the old and Euron the crab, lesser gods, waiting for mother Dany to come sort the both of them out.

The stone beast / Euron isn't really going to die, it's going to sink and be Euron's prison. But he'll still be there ticking away, waiting.

 

SIDEBAR 4 - COSMIC & SEISMIC ACTIVITY, WALL FALL & DANY'S THROAT

Eclipse imagery.

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"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."

Moon wandering too close to the sun. Moon kissing the sun.

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a curious legend from Yi Ti, which states the sun hid its face from the earth for a lifetime, ashamed at something none could discover, and that disaster was averted only by the deeds of a woman with a monkey's tail.

Sun hiding its face.

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How long the darkness endured no man can say, but all agree that it was only when a great warrior - known variously as Hyrkoon the Hero, Azor Ahai, Yin Tar, Neferion and Eldric Shadowchaser -- arose to give courage to the race of men and lead virtuous into battle with his blazing sword Lightbringer.

Shadow chaser, as in one who follows after shadows. During an eclipse the world is all in shadow, the moon's.

When Dany takes Jon it will be in darkness, maybe an eclipse, maybe the Long Night has begun, maybe they're the same thing.

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There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of the light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows.

But there will be some light. The Red Wanderer in Westeros, the Theif to the free folk, represents Dany, best time to steal someone is when it is bright. It's also foreshadowing the comet, which Jon refers to as a wanderer. It is fitting, all the other stars stay put, comet wanders.

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He shared my belief when he was young, but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King's Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet.

There will be an eclipse, and the comet.

Dancy had two weeks to save her black pearls.

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As the black-skinned girl led him up the stairs, she said, "Poor Dancy. She has a fortnight to get my lord to choose her. Elsewise she loses her black pearls to Marei."

About how long the comet was around? Two weeks?

Dany is going to have a timetable to work to, she's going to believe (rightly or wrongly I don't know) either she has to conceive, or can only conceive, while the comet is out. She's going to be on the same gear as Rhaegar. And she'll succeed.

There is associated with the conception of dragons and their birth/second lifing a great crack, associated often with the world breaking.

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With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children.

The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.

When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon.

 

Spoiler

Euron in Aeron's dream

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“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.”

 

And that's what the crack in Arianne's sex scene is foreshadowing, her doing the second life thing. The whole paragraph is actually rife with foreshadowing.

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His desire was as deep and boundless as the sea, but when the tide receded, the rocks of shame and guilt thrust up as sharp as ever. Sometimes the waves would cover them, but they remained beneath the waters, hard and black and slimy. What am I doing? he asked himself. I am a knight of the Kingsguard. He rolled off of her to sprawl staring at the ceiling. A great crack ran across it, from one wall to the other. He had not noticed that before, no more than he had noticed the picture on the tapestry, a scene of Nymeria and her ten thousand ships. I see only her. A dragon might have been peering in the window, and I would never have seen anything but her breasts, her face, her smile.

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"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."

Moon cracks in that one, and one this one.
 

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She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel.

It is all pretty standard sort of fare for signifying the enormity of the event(s). Birth, conception or the actual second life. And as Dany is the moon by symbolism, it cracking can be made for straight-forward foreshadowing in multiple ways but all relating to the same thing. But I lean heavily towards it foreshadowing something else too. Take this one again.

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a curious legend from Yi Ti, which states the sun hid its face from the earth for a lifetime, ashamed at something none could discover, and that disaster was averted only by the deeds of a woman with a monkey's tail.

The shame is Jon's from fathering a bastard, his greatest fear. But it's also a breaking of the Night's Watch vows.

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Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory.

Very possibly by the time this happens Jon might have broken all the rest. Maybe not, it is still a break of the vow.

Associated with Dany stealing Jon is heat, fire. It is the forging of Lightbringer by the symbolism. Dany's womb the sacred temple flames. Mel who will provide the glamour feels the fire inside of her, seering her womb.

Dany will glamour as Ygritte below the wall where Ygritte died, Jon will take her against the wall. And there I think the wall is going to crack. It almost certainly not going to fall in that instance, but the crack there may lead to it falling. I doubt it is going to crack because of this, just that it will crack there at about that time, and Jon will feel responsible.

And so the doubling of Jon's shame, he can add felling the wall to fathering a bastard. His shame etched by the moon against the wall, the shadow of his sins. And the realisation of the world cracking in all the foreshadowing. And, as Ygritte's glamour is why Jon will do the deed, Ygritte, posthumously, in the end, fulfils her ardent wish.

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When all of them were in place, the Magnar shouted a brusque command in the Old Tongue, and five of his Thenns started up together. Even with the ladders, it was no easy climb. Ygritte watched them struggle for a while. "I hate this Wall," she said in a low angry voice. "Can you feel how cold it is?"

"It's made of ice," Jon pointed out.

"You know nothing, Jon Snow. This wall is made o' blood."

Nor had it drunk its fill. By sunset, two of the Thenns had fallen from the ladder to their deaths, but they were the last. It was near midnight before Jon reached the top. The stars were out again, and Ygritte was trembling from the climb. "I almost fell," she said, with tears in her eyes. "Twice. Thrice. The Wall was trying t' shake me off, I could feel it." One of the tears broke free and trickled slowly down her cheek.

"The worst is behind us." Jon tried to sound confident. "Don't be frightened." He tried to put an arm around her.

Ygritte slammed the heel of her hand into his chest, so hard it stung even through his layers of wool, mail, and boiled leather. "I wasn't frightened. You know nothing, Jon Snow."

"Why are you crying, then?"

"Not for fear!" She kicked savagely at the ice beneath her with a heel, chopping out a chunk. "I'm crying because we never found the Horn of Winter. We opened half a hundred graves and let all those shades loose in the world, and never found the Horn of Joramun to bring this cold thing down!"

The throat comes up a lot in this. When Jon nicked Ygritte's throat he was contemplating killing her. The ruby choker of Mel's burns her. Drogo bites at Dany's throat. It's a pearl necklace Dancy is set to lose. I connected it to foreshadowing of the ruby choker Dany will wear during the glamour. Also it could be about restoring the fire to the dragon's throat. But I think it likely is also about Jon choking Dany after the glamour falls.

The glamour will fall the instant Jon has done the deed. As per the Ygritte evaporated before Jon in his dream. It won't be needed anymore, and it will probably be very taxing on Mel, as per her vision, so she'll let got as soon as it is done. Also, take a step back and look it simply from a narrative perspective, if the glamour doesn't fall in that instant it is a missed opportunity to maximise the drama.

When the glamour falls and Jon realises it is Dany he's inside of and not Ygritte, that he's finished inside of, it would not be surprising for him to fly off the hook. Likely even.This passage.

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When they were alone, Ser Jorah drew his dagger. Deftly, with a delicacy surprising in such a big man, he began to scrape away the black leaves and dried blue mud from Drogo's chest. The plaster had caked hard as the mud walls of the Lamb Men, and like those walls it cracked easily. Ser Jorah broke the dry mud with his knife, pried the chunks from the flesh, peeled off the leaves one by one. A foul, sweet smell rose from the wound, so thick it almost choked her. The leaves were crusted with blood and pus, Drogo's breast black and glistening with corruption.

"No," Dany whispered as tears ran down her cheeks. "No, please, gods hear me, no."

Note the imagery. Wall cracking. Peeling of leaves and a sweet smell. HArking back to Dany's vision of the blue flower. The sweet smell almost chokes Dany, no she pleads with the gods.

So the glamour falls as soon as he spills his seed, and Ygritte turns to Dany in his arms, his cock still inside her, and lost in his emotions, shame, confusion and rage, he begins to choke her.

But doesn't kill her.

 

SIDEBAR 5 - DAVOS
 

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Surely the gods did not bring me safe through fire and sea only to kill me with a flux.

. . .

"Just so, and burned them, as she will burn you. If you kill the red woman, they will burn you for revenge, and if you fail to kill her, they will burn you for the trying. She will sing and you will scream, and then you will die. And you have only just come back to life!"

"And this is why," said Davos. "To do this thing. To make an end of Melisandre of Asshai and all her works. Why else would the sea have spit me out? You know Blackwater Bay as well as I do, Salla. No sensible captain would ever take his ship through the spears of the merling king and risk ripping out his bottom. Shayala's Dance should never have come near me."

"A wind," insisted Salladhor Saan loudly, "an ill wind, is all. A wind drove her too far to the south."

"And who sent the wind? Salla, the Mother spoke to me."

. . .

Twice his maimed fingers slipped on the damp stone and he almost fell, but somehow he managed to cling to his perch. If he fell he was dead, and he had to live. For a little while more, at least. There was something he had to do.

Like Aeron the sea returned Davos for a purpose, he thinks it's to kill Mel but he's wrong. Like Aeron, and probably Patchface, he hears voices.

Dany is going to need to find the stone beast at the bottom of the ocean, particularly that part which is Drogon. This black oily stone. Maybe Jon will be with her on the journey, maybe he won't. I'm not sure how it's all going to play out, but I think it's going to be a case of Dany getting to the stone beast herself and Jon arriving after. However it plays out, I know this much, Davos is going to find the oily stone for someone. I think for Jon so he can stop Dany making the sacrifice who will have made her own way there.

Finding the dragon is Davos' great purpose, for why the sea gave him back his life. He'll need some luck to find it, and thankfully the sea will give him that back as well.

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His hand reached for his throat, fumbling for the small leather pouch he always wore about his neck. Inside he kept the bones of the four fingers his king had shortened for him, on the day he made Davos a knight. My luck. His shortened fingers patted at his chest, groping, finding nothing. The pouch was gone, and the fingerbones with them. Stannis could never understand why he'd kept the bones. "To remind me of my king's justice," he whispered through cracked lips. But now they were gone. The fire took my luck as well as my sons.

When the sea goes dry Davos is going to find his luck, washed out of the blackwater into the sea, somewhere somehow.

Tom Tangletongue parallels Davos. Speech, communication, language, is a theme with Davos, him not feeling worthy of his position, being lowborn and not having a lord's tongue with which to speak. And yet providing the more effective counsel for it.

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Yet somehow he had crossed the waters of Blackwater Bay … for it was Sunfyre that the sailors on the Nessaria had seen attacking Grey Ghost. Ser Robert Quince had blamed the Cannibal … but Tom Tangletongue, a stammerer who heard more than he said, had plied the Volantenes with ale, making note of all the times they mentioned the attacker’s golden scales. The Cannibal, as he knew well, was black as coal. And so the Two Toms and their “cousins” (a half-truth, as only Ser Marston shared their blood, being the bastard son of Tom Tanglebeard’s sister by the knight who took her maidenhead) set sail in their small boat to seek out Grey Ghost’s killer.

Tom Tangletongue finds the dragon for his king at dragonstone. He does so because he listens more than he talks, paralleling Davos. Specifically he did the same thing Davos did in Sisterton, listening to drunk sailors.

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Davos blew the candle out as soon as the proprietor moved off, and sat back in the shadows. Seamen were the worst gossips in the world when the wine was flowing, even wine as cheap as this. All he need do was listen.

Most of what he heard he'd learned in Sisterton, from Lord Godric or the denizens of the Belly of the Whale.

In the Belly of the Whale.

In the belly of a leviathan is where I have the stone beast ending up as per the Aeron sidebar. And so where I think Davos is going to find him in the dried out sea. I assume its dried by this stage and Davos isn't getting swallowed by the whale, but who knows.

Davos hears voices, as Aeron does and presumably Patchface too. The language of the leviathan? Are the voices going to guide him.

It makes sense that a whale would be there from another angle too, as what's going to happen is going require a big fire and a lot of material to burn.

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Castle Stair was a street with steps, a broad white stone way that led up from the Wolf's Den by the water to the New Castle on its hill. Marble mermaids lit the way as Davos climbed, bowls of burning whale oil cradled in their arms.

White stone, new castle, burning whale oil.

Davos is going to find the stone beast/Dany for Jon, in the belly of a whale, Aeron's second lifed leviathan, or near it at least.

[chrisdaw]

WIP 14

[chrisdaw]

WIP 15

[chrisdaw]

WIP Done

[Lord Varys]

In light of the fact that Drogo's spirit actually literally hatches the dragon eggs as a sort of farewell gift for Daenerys and then rides off into the nightlands I'm pretty sure you entire case is built on sand. If George wanted Drogo to become Drogon in a literal or figurative sense the man's spirit would have have merged with the dragon. He would not have disappeared.

In addition, there is no reason to believe the dragonlords bonding with their dragons is sort of similar to the skinchanger thing. Nothing indicates that anything of a former rider remains in a dragon that's mounted by somebody else. Else Balerion most likely wouldn't have killed Quicksilver and Prince Aegon, nor would Vhagar and Caraxes have turned against each other.

[Bowen 747]

George is on record stating that bonding with a dragon is like riding a horse that has never been ridden.  There is always that element of risk and the risk must be taken.  In other words, it will never be easy nor safe.  Thus ruling out the possibility of Bran skin changing a dragon.  Skin changing a dragon is a cheap way to bond with one and it's not something that I wish to see in the story. 

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

I skimmed what you wrote so far @chrisdaw. I have 4 main issues with your theories off the top of my head:

1) Euron almost certainly already had greyscale and is probably immune. His brother died of greyscale, and Euron probably lost use of his eye to greyscale, which is likely what opened his "third eye" in the first place.

2) Varamyr did not simply die. His blood was absorbed into the weirnet. This may be necessary to live a second life.

3) Arianne is almost certainly not going to marry Aegon. He is not her type, he has offered Dorne literally nothing in exchange for the marriage, and Doran has sent Daemon Sand along with her to shit talk fAegon and make sure she doesn't agree to a marriage. Arianne will probably end up sending back messages with Chekov's code word "War" which, according to Doran, is code for wait. What will probably happen is Doran's loyal forces will in fact wait, while the rival Ironwood forces, ignorant of the code word, will march off to war. And besides, it is foreshadowed that Sansa will marry Aegon.

4) The horn Dragonbinder works on people, not dragons. It is not for binding dragons to people, but for binding slaves to "dragons", aka Valyrians. We have already witnessed Euron use the horn, and he certainly didn't use it on a dragon. He used it to control the Ironborn and win the kingsmoot.

But I will say that the idea of Drogo's soul being inside Drogon is a huge possibility, and I especially liked your point about "jumping from a tall tower" alluding to suicide.