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Jenny, the GoHH and the False Prophecy


Lady Barbrey

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There was something that bothered me about the Ghost of High Heart's grief over Jenny of Oldstones, 40 or more years after her death.  It felt like guilt played a part, maybe because the Ghost does not see Jenny's death coming?  She loved her devotedly regardless, as seems obvious, but something struck me - when the Ghost made her prophecy that the Prince that was Promised will come from Aerys and Rhaella's line, Duncan's brother and sister, Jahaeris immediately withdraws his ban on Duncan and Jenny's marriage, knowing Duncan won't matter in that case to the family line, and forces Aerys and Rhaella to marry.

So I pictured the Ghost who loved Jenny like a daughter, and that daughter's happiness was all bound up with Duncan.  We've seen how accurate her prophecies are - no one would doubt them.  So what if she told one little lie that would ensure Jenny's happiness?  What if she said the PtwP would come from Aerys and Rhaella's line, so the king would leave his first-born heir alone, let him abdicate and live happily ever after with Jenny?

The PtwP was an old prophecy, not unique to the Ghost, she's just the one who says he/she must come from Aerys and Rhaella.

So what happens?  Based on her prophecy, Summerhall happens because everyone is sure that dragons will be reborn at the same time as Rhaegar so they try to force the issue.  And everyone dies, including poor Jenny, who the Ghost was trying to protect with her lie.  A tragic irony.

Why would this matter? Everyone we know or suspect might be the PtwP comes from Aerys/Rhaella's line anyway.  Dany, Jon.

What I like about this theory is that it opens that question up to more than just which one is it?  Most of us have our money on one, the other, or both.  Dany seems to be the one fulfilling the prophecy most closely, but not quite -hers isn't the song of ice and fire - that has to be Jon as primary.  But there really should be a third if the dragon has three heads, and Aemon himself seemed to think of that as three human dragons, three Targs all connected by this prophecy even if one was primary.  He even wants to go to help Dany, perhaps to be one of those heads, as he assumes no other Targs are living at that time.  

So I believe this theory opens up that prophecy just a bit wider to admit someone as part of our three not a descendant of Aerys/Rhaella, but still a Targ.  My money would be on Tyrion.

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I think you have your generations wrong. I think Jaehaerys and Duncan were brothers not father and son. As for the rest of it, I have always said that if all three heads need to be descendent from Aerys and Rhaella, then Aegon  will be the son of Rhaegar, if not then it is probably Tyrion who is the third head.

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I'm pretty sure that Duncan had to renounce the throne in order to be with Jenny in the first place. I don't think the timeline is exact though I think the GoHH only came into the picture when Lady Jenny brought her to court after the marriage, and she was introduced to the Targs that way. 

So, with Duncan renouncing the throne, his younger brother Jaehaerys became heir - but his older brother's defiance of the arranged marriage for the sake of love incited him to incestuously marry his sister Shaera. So, the GoHH would have already come on the scene around the time all this was taking place.

Given that the tragedy of Summerhall didn't happen until many years later when Rhaella and Aerys were teenagers and Rhaegar was born at Summerhall, I would say that the GoHH would have by that point had nearly twenty years of correct prophecies under her belt which is why when she said the PTwP would be born of Aerys and Rhaella's line, they took her so seriously.

Bottom line, the marriage of Duncan and Jenny very likely preluded the PTwP prophecy by a good 10-15 years. Duncan would have long been out of the line of succession by then.

That isn't to say the GoHH wasn't somehow wrong about what she was seeing. Her dreams can be parallel to Jojen's green dreams - subjective and easy to call correct with the benefit of hindsight. The classic Jojen Dream that has him going for a while was the image of Ramsay slicing off Bran and Rickon's faces; it turned out this was the Miller's boys he was seeing. Same with the sea coming to Winterfell etc. The green dreams are very, very metaphorical and subjective.

So, unless the GoHH actually comes out and explains what she actually saw that made her conclude that Aerys and Rhaella's line would spawn the PTwW, we should take her word with a pinch of salt no matter how sincerely she believed her interpretation or how accurate we might think her word is.

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Your timeline is wonky. That said, there's the possibility that the PtwP prediction would come from Aerys and Rhaella's line and whatever she said about Summerhall may be two separate things. I seem to recall reading that she said a dragon would be born at Summerhall, but I could never find that line again, so I don't know if it's from an SSM or some fan theory.

In any case, whatever she predicted, Rhaegar came into the world much like Dany's dragons. If she predicted the birth of a dragon, then she wasn't wrong. I think Rhaegar is as dragon as they come.

The GoHH's visions are accurate, but they're also complete gibberish for the characters that are hearing them since she's kind of talking in code and the characters have to know everything that's happening in every corner of Westeros to be able to make sense of them. So I do wonder how she gave her Aerys/Rhaella vision to them, if it was like the ones she gave the BwB and Jaehaerys jumped to the conclusion that his children have to be married, or if she explicitly gave their names and their father did the rest.

It's interesting though, that the GoHH tells Beric & Co that the old gods stir and won't let her rest before she gives them a set of visions. Were the visions of Rhaella/Aerys and possibly Summerhall the only visions she received or were they part of a much broader vision?

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4 hours ago, Widow's Watch said:

So I do wonder how she gave her Aerys/Rhaella vision to them, if it was like the ones she gave the BwB and Jaehaerys jumped to the conclusion that his children have to be married, or if she explicitly gave their names and their father did the rest.

[...]Were the visions of Rhaella/Aerys and possibly Summerhall the only visions she received or were they part of a much broader vision?

Now that you mention it, we really don't know, do we? The GoHH could have provided the typical metaphorical green dream and Jaehaerys decided it had to refer to his children. I wish we could know exactly what it was she saw in her dream or whether there were others parts to the dream that might put the TPtwP section in a whole other light.

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It's always seemed to me that the Ghost of Highheart with her red eyes, was a greenseer or COTF at the very least.  She isn't described as your garden variety dwarf.   Now that that is out of the way I wonder why an agent of ice, a greenseer or COTF would prophecise an agent of fire--any dragon--to agents of fire, dragons?  Always seemed like a set up to me.   

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2 hours ago, Faera said:

Now that you mention it, we really don't know, do we? The GoHH could have provided the typical metaphorical green dream and Jaehaerys decided it had to refer to his children. I wish we could know exactly what it was she saw in her dream or whether there were others parts to the dream that might put the TPtwP section in a whole other light.

No, we don't. It's an offhanded comment by Barristan to Dany about why her parents were forced to marry each other by their father.

Incidentally, what I find interesting was that Aegon was against the Aerys/Rhaella union even though one of their descendant was going to be the PtwP, but it didn't stop him from trying to manipulate the prophecy and hatching the dragons. I really wonder if there were omens that made him change his mind and if Summerhall was chosen because of the GoHH or for another reason. As far as we know, Summerhall is not a place of salt and smoke.

I have no idea if this made sense.

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52 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

It's always seemed to me that the Ghost of Highheart with her red eyes, was a greenseer or COTF at the very least.  She isn't described as your garden variety dwarf.   Now that that is out of the way I wonder why an agent of ice, a greenseer or COTF would prophecise an agent of fire--any dragon--to agents of fire, dragons?  Always seemed like a set up to me.   

I have argued for some time now that there is no difference between green dreams and the prophetic dreams of the Targaryens. If you look at the fan constructed definition of "dragon dreams" in the wiki, it is apparent that "dragon dreams" are only dreams of the Targaryens. When GRRM used the term "dragon dream" he literally meant a dream about a dragon. Anyhow, I don't see why the greenseers  and COTF can't send dreams to anyone who is susceptible to them, Targaryen or no. And anyway, isn't the whole PTWP a prophecy about the coming battle for the dawn? Why wouldn't the greenseers and COTF be interested in the hero of this battle? The prophecy is obviously referring to a Targaryen who will come to the north to fight the battle of the dawn. To draw a line between fire and ice is really pointless in this instance, I think.

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On 2/23/2018 at 11:10 PM, Lady Barbrey said:

Why would this matter? Everyone we know or suspect might be the PtwP comes from Aerys/Rhaella's line anyway.  Dany, Jon.

What I like about this theory is that it opens that question up to more than just which one is it?  Most of us have our money on one, the other, or both.  Dany seems to be the one fulfilling the prophecy most closely, but not quite -hers isn't the song of ice and fire - that has to be Jon as primary.  But there really should be a third if the dragon has three heads, and Aemon himself seemed to think of that as three human dragons, three Targs all connected by this prophecy even if one was primary.  He even wants to go to help Dany, perhaps to be one of those heads, as he assumes no other Targs are living at that time.  

So I believe this theory opens up that prophecy just a bit wider to admit someone as part of our three not a descendant of Aerys/Rhaella, but still a Targ.  My money would be on Tyrion.

Tyrion isn't a targ. The prophecies are not literal. What they show are roles a character will play. Jon would be TPTWP, being from the line of Rhaella and Aerys, and he is literally the song of ice and fire. Dany is the Azor Ahai role, sacrificing her true love to forge (hatch) her flaming weapon(s), the dragons. 

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