The Dornish Letter

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

On 1/29/2018 at 5:26 AM, Fire Eater said:

The question on every reader's mind is "What was in that letter?"

I'm partial to the fourth explanation, but what about a sixth? It's said that Aegon's hand's clenched reading the letter, hard enough to bleed. This indicates rage rather than grief. In any case, I have a theory after listening to Sons of the Dragon. 

What it if it was Visenya who had Rhaenys killed and the Dornish revealed this to Aegon?

The dynamic of the three--Visenya, Aegon, and Rhaenys--have always been curious to me. Aegon marries Visenya out of duty, but Rhaenys out of love. While this may have been fine, it may have gone downhill when Rhaenys gets pregnant earlier, giving birth to an elder son who becomes heir. It was always supposed to be Visenya's son who becomes heir and she may not have forgotten that. 

In Sons of the Dragon, Visenya gets pregnant much later after Rhaenys is dead. It details the dynamic between Aegon and her as well. The relationship is not good. Instead of Rhaenys's death bringing the siblings and the last two Targs (at the time) together, it seems to have driven them apart. But she somehow gets pregnant, and throughout Sons, Visenya seems obsessed with making Maegor heir and king over Rhaeny's son and rightful heir. She doesn't seem to succeed when Aegon is alive, but when he dies, a plan forms and Maegor ends up on the throne. 

Back to Rhaeny's death. The Dornish seem to down her dragon shooting a poisoned arrow at Meraxes's eye, a dragon's weakest point. How did Dornish come to know about this weakness? It's very possible that the Dornish consulted with the old texts, perhaps also had info imported from Essos about how to kill a dragon, if it's available. Then again, how does a severely beleaguered nation accomplish this while anyone else can't? Isn't it possible that Visenya, in possibly jealousy or greed, struck a deal with the Yellow Toad? She gives them the instruments to kill her sister, and in return Dorne, or rather Sunspear, is left alone. 

After their sister's death, the year of Dragon's wroth follow. Every castle is burned, except  curiously for Sunspear, the one place Aegon should be motivated to burn considering they were responsible to Meraxes's death. But Aegon eventually leaves Dorne alone. And neither of the other dragons die like Meraxes. 

Perhaps, this is the bit of information the Dornish prince reveals to Aegon. That Visenya was the one who plotted Rhaenys's death. He would naturally be enraged. But there's nothing Aegon can actually do. Visenya is his sister, and being on only other Targ, he can't kill her or imprison her. In the chapters following, we know that Aegon's relationship with Visenya was seriously frayed. They live apart, him in KL and her on Dragonstone. He never seems to be with her afterwards and stays in Aegonfort taking care of Aenys. 

There's another aspect: Visenya was rumored to be a sorceress. From what happens in Sons, maybe it was true. In old Varlyia, the dragonlords seems to have been sorcerers as well. She seems to do magic to keep Maegor alive after he gets seriously hurt in some tourney. She is suspected of using magic in some other instances. Maybe it was this magic that went into what killed Meraxes and eventually Rhaenys. And perhaps Aeny's feebleness was caused by her spells as well, in a way to get Aegon to declare her more militarily capable son heir. 

Then there's the whole blood magic curse. Maegor cannot sire heirs. His wives end up giving birth to malformed babies, much like Dany's baby after Mirri Maaz Duur curses her. Yes, there was a Tyroshi woman (was it?) who later confesses to cursing Maegor's other wives. People speculate that Maegor has been cursed by gods or the Seven for his cruelty and injustice. Maybe this blood curse was not due to something Maegor did, but what Visenya did. Her line ends with Maegor, who dies without direct heirs. Ultimately, it's Rhaeny's grandson who ends up on the throne, rules for half a century and dies leaving a bunch of heirs. All the Targs following descend from Aegon-Rhanenys line, not Visenya's. 

(It's possible it was Aegon who placed this curse, but that's a different story. He may have known spells, just like his older sister). 

Anyway my point is, it's not entirely unreasonable that Visenya, called cold and cruel, had her sister rival killed. She curses or poisons Rhaenys' baby, so that her son would sit on the throne as she believed he rightfully should. Aegon's willingness to reconcile with Dorne may be because they divulged this information. If Rhaenys wrote the letter in dying moments, Aegon would grieve more, and perhaps become even more enraged enough to exact vengeance. If she were alive, wouldn't he rush to Dorne on dragonback to see her? The Dornish may have thought either Aegon picks a fight with Visenya, which would be good for Dorne, or in strikes a peace deal, after the letter is read. The fact that Aegon later flies to Dorne with his heir shows that he no longer has a beef with Dorne, and is indeed eager to reconcile. 

There's also the question as to how all of this bears down on the overall story we read in the main books. If Visenya did do blood magic or perform dark spells, this is probably what sows the seeds for Dance, and the Targs eventually losing the dragons. It was Maegor the Cruel's reign that results in the Targs being hated by the Faith and the maesters. One High Septon curses all the Targs when Maegor and Visenya is on their way to burn Oldtown. This could have led to deep distrust of dragons, and the reason for Oldtown to want to end all dragons, perhaps sowing the seeds to Dance. In Dance, there seem to be other forces at work, such as the princess miscarrying a deformed lizard baby, which makes her sort of crazy and more likely to pick a fight. The Queen is a Hightower, the house that teams up strongly with Maegor. Then there's the mysterious Shepherd at the end who calls on the smallfolk to kill the dragons in the pit. 

When the Others come, this would all seem pointless, The maesters don't believe in WW. If they or the Faith had a hand in ending the dragons, thy would definitely rue their plans once the Long Night comes. 

[Seams]

4 hours ago, Ghost+Nymeria4Eva said:

I'm partial to the fourth explanation, but what about a sixth? It's said that Aegon's hand's clenched reading the letter, hard enough to bleed. This indicates rage rather than grief. In any case, I have a theory after listening to Sons of the Dragon. 

What it if it was Visenya who had Rhaenys killed and the Dornish revealed this to Aegon?

Wow. This is really good. So diabolical but it certainly does fit the details.

[Ghost+Nymeria4Eva]

12 hours ago, Seams said:

Wow. This is really good. So diabolical but it certainly does fit the details.

TY. Wouldn't GRRM go all diabolical if he could?

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

I think it was something along the lines:

"Poor Rhaenys, she fell so fast she didn't even have time to clear her browser history. Shame if someone leaked it, you know what I'm sayin'?"

[Poupsi]

Maybe Rhaenys was still alive and wrote that letter. If I am not wrong the daughter of Rhaegar and Elia was named Rhaenys ?

Anyways, maybe she was still alive, she recovered but felt in love with the Dornish Way of (whatever...). There was a love story and she married Prince Nymor under a false identity. In the end, she wrote a letter for peace to Aegon, who got mad with jealousy and treason at that moment, and they both met at Dragonstone for a discussion which ended up with a peace treaty. It took them 10 years to be able to sit at the same table as friends with their own child.

 

I don't know, it happens sometimes.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I think Dorne is a metaphor for the Weirwoods, and the telling of the war against Dorne is the Targs trying to get control of the weirwood network.  First Rhaenys flew over the Red Mountains and the red and white sands, went from castle to castle and found only old men, old women, and children.  The castles are weirwoods and they are populated by the old people (bound in the roots?) and Children of the Forest.  Then she went to Sunspear (Isle of Faces) and found a single decrepit old woman in an abandoned castle, Meria* Martell who warned Rhaenys that Dorne cannot be conquered, and that the Targs would lose.

They disregard that warning and invade anyway.  They are met with guerrilla warfare tactics similar to what the Crannogmen employ (who are closely related to CotF, and Planky Town and Greywater Watch are both floating towns, Greywater can be "moved" or hidden like the Isle of Faces). The Targs are allowed to take castles almost unopposed, then the occupying forces are slaughtered in the night.  The Dornish love torturing people (because the weirwoods thrive on it).  The Targs start burning castles, and then the Dornish "bring down" Meraxes and Rhaenys.  I suspect that Rhaenys was plugged into the weirwood (perhaps willingly?), and the CotF drained the life-blood out of Meraxes and fed it to the trees.

After Rhaenys "death" Aegon decided that if he could not take control of Dorne he would destroy it, and torched all the castles except the Sunspear (perhaps he could not find it, which parallels all the weirwoods in the south being destroyed except the ones on the Isle of Faces), which did nothing to quell the insurgency.  Meria dies of old age and her son sends Princess Deria with the dragon skull and letter.  I think the letter was bait to get Aegon to fly off alone to Dragonstone and right into a trap.

When he returns he does a complete turnaround and agrees to peace with Dorne.  I have two ideas about this:

1) Is it possible that it wasn't Aegon that returned, but a face-swapped doppelganger?  Were there other changes in his personality or behavior that would indicate this? 

2) If the Dornish have Rhaenys in the network, they know everything she knew, and maybe they can skinchange a dragon now and that is why he ended the war.

 

Sidebar: Aenys I was born a sickly child, possibly fathered by a "singer" and his health only improved when he bonded with his dragon.  He sounds like a greenseer.  "Still, Aenys remained a dreamer, dabbler in alchemy, and patron of singers and mummers and mimes."  His mother "loved to fly"  and loved singers.

 

* Tour de Meria is a ruined tower on the island of Corsica located in the commune of Meria.  The tower was one of a series of coastal defences constructed by the Republic of Genoa between 1530 and 1620 to stem the attacks by Barbary pirates.  Meria Martell is named after a tower on an island built to protect a commune from invaders, sounds a lot like the Isle of Faces.  And in the text she is depicted in an empty tower that is getting invaded by foreigners. 

 

[Seams]

2 hours ago, By Odin's Beard said:

I think Dorne is a metaphor for the Weirwoods, and the telling of the war against Dorne is the Targs trying to get control of the weirwood network.  First Rhaenys flew over the Red Mountains and the red and white sands, went from castle to castle and found only old men, old women, and children.  The castles are weirwoods and they are populated by the old people (bound in the roots?) and Children of the Forest.  Then she went to Sunspear (Isle of Faces) and found a single decrepit old woman in an abandoned castle, Meria* Martell who warned Rhaenys that Dorne cannot be conquered, and that the Targs would lose.

...

2) If the Dornish have Rhaenys in the network, they know everything she knew, and maybe they can skinchange a dragon now and that is why he ended the war.

I like this theory, too! Maybe it's metaphor or maybe it's literal. If Rhaenys was plugged into a weirwood throne somewhere in a cave in Dorne, similar to Bloodraven rooted to a throne in a cave beyond the wall, that would explain why the Dornish returned the dragon skull, but not Rhaenys' bones. She may have outlived Aegon by 100 years, but did so underground.

[Prince Yourwetdream Aeryn]

I think the letter is about this:

One of the heirs to Iron Throne will become King Beyon the Wall.