King's Blood

[falcotron]

Melisandre's gone off to Volantis, but she's coming back next season, and presumably that's important. Maybe she's just bringing the Fiery Hand or something (if Beric teaches them his blood magic, 1000 flaming spears could be useful in the battle), but if not, I assume it's some kind of powerful magic.

All of Melisandre's magic so far, except for visions and glamors, involves king's blood. Gendry just reminded us of the whole leeches thing a week ago, so there's still that possibility. And the shadow baby thing. But it seems like they're going to need to go big to defeat the army of the dead. Burning Shireen did work  (as in it cleared the storm and banished the snows—it lost them the battle, of course). And maybe sacrificing a king or heir in dragonfire instead of just a bonfire works even better.

So, who could they sacrifice?

The obvious possibility is Jon offering himself up. He's got double king's blood as the Targaryen heir and his own election, and those thousands of years of Stark kings might not hurt either, even if they're a lot more diluted. And maybe having been raised from the dead by Melisandre was just a temporary thing to gather the people together to fight (and knock up Dany), and now she can send him back to death to power the magic they need.

Or, if they capture Cersei, they could burn her. (Stannis's ghost would approve, but I'm not sure ghosts can demonstrate their grim satisfaction through teeth-grinding.) Or, if she burns KL with herself in residence, could Melisandre use that to power her magic? (Would the hundreds of thousands of innocent people help her magic, or pervert it into something else?)

In fact, half of the characters left seem to be possibilities:

• Dany, Targaryen and also Queen of Meereen, although there's always the worry she'll just walk out the other side of the bonfire, even if she's trying to sacrifice herself.
• Cersei's as-yet-unborn baby.
• Dany's likely as-yet-unborn baby from boatsex.
• Yara, Balon's daughter and heir, and pretender in her own right.
• Theon, Balon's son.
• Euron, if Theon captures him instead of killing him.
• Gendry, of course.
• Night King, although if you can sacrifice him on a bonfire you've probably already won.
• Bran, Sansa, and Arya, if being a king's sibling or half-sibling counts (the cast list for this season called them Prince/Princess, and one of them must have been Jon's heir presumptive).

But none of them seem as likely as Jon or Cersei. I could maybe see Theon volunteering to sacrifice himself, or Euron being killed, but even they're a stretch.

[falcotron]

Oh, one more: If Bran, Sansa, and Arya count as princes, surely Jaime does as well—he's Queen Cersei's heir presumptive until she gives birth to a live child. Even less likely than the others, but hey, we have no idea how blood knows whether or not it's king's blood.