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Battle for Mereen Speculation


MikeL

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I've been doing a bit of reading here and I hit upon a theory of how the battle for Mereen might pan out.

1) We know Barristan Selmy attacks the Yunkai and Ghiscari legions, but is the weaker of the two sides.

2) The Ironborn arrive, turning the tide against the Yunkai.

-here follows my speculation-

3) The huge Volantyne fleet arrives behind the Ironborn, turning the tide back in Yunkai's favour.

4) Dany arrives on Drogon, supported by Khal Pono and his khalisaar (how could she win him over? She might promise him the riches of Yunkai - she does want vengeance against the slavers after all). Viseryon and Rhaegal join them in decimating the Volantyne fleet. This turns the tide back against the Yunkai.

5) Victorion has the dragon horn blown - it gets the attention of the dragons - but I suspect this will result in him getting torched/eaten.

6) In any case, I think Dany will "win" the battle, but lose Mereen (probably because of dragon caused collateral damage), and this will be the catalyst for her unsullied (+Khal Pono khalisaar?) to head west - presumably through Valyria. There is too much land between her and Westeros for her not to have at least one more delay somewhere in Essos. I think the plan is for her to arrive in Westeros by the end of TWOW.

For extra credit, I predict that at some point during the battle Tyrion will come face to face with either Viseryon or Rhaegal. I really want him to get a dragon, but knowing GRRM he may also get eaten - I just think there has been too much foreshadowing of Tyrion and dragons for him not to have some kind of interaction with them.

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I'm not sure if it will be as simple as Danny just returning to Mereen, i got the feeling that she may be stuck with this Khalasar for a little while longer.

However if she does return promptly then i agree that she will win the battle, i can't see Ser Barristan dying!

I don't think Tyrion will die, i also think there always seems to be this sense that he will have some interaction with a dragon. Maybe he will somehow get the horn off Victarion?? Just a thought, but that could be how he gets control of a dragon.

What do you think of Ser Jorah's fate?? I think surely one of these characters could die in this battle, he is definitely the most dispensable. But then again why would GRRM have kept him alive up until this point. Clearly he still has a purpose but i think if anyone's gonna die in this battle it could be him!

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Everyone expects either Barristan, Tyrion, Victarion, or Jorah to die. I don't think any of them will just yet. Something important is going to happen in Volantis. There's no way GRRM made that slave woman tell Tyrion that her people are waiting for Dany for no reason. I think Dany will win the battle and it will cause a massive slave rebellion in all of the free cities. Dany will find a solution to all of the riddles that go through her head all the time and she'll head whatever way she feels is the right way.

There's so many factors involved in the battle for Mereen it's too hard to predict what will really happen. There's the dragons, Tyrion turning the Second Sons to Dany's side, Daario imprisoned, Dany away with the khalasar, Victarion on his way with a red priest and a dragonhorn, Marwyn (I assume) nearby, and there's also the fact that Tyrion is the only one that knows about Aegon.

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I sincerely doubt that both Khal Pono and Daenerys can survive their encounter. If he is fast enough with his bow to precede her "Drakarys" he can live, otherrwise he will die screaming, as Dany promised of her enemies.

Being this a story that invested a lot of pages on Dany's history, I wouldn't bet much money on Pono's fast draw.

But I do not know if Dany will take part in the battle.

Maybe she will try to win the Khalassar after Pono's death, and recieve infos of the betrayal of the meerenese (led by the Harpy, and the most dolorous Harpy would Missandrei) that closed their doors on Barristan's army's back. Dany will be taken for dead for a while, her army will panic and be scattered, Barristan will save a core of Unsullied and some other rest but loose most of the slaves and refugees.

Victarion will seek his queen, but will not find her. The Horn won't work as descripted, but it will have some other effect. Maybe Euron (or it has been suggested, the Undieing) has a particularily nasty agenda on Dany. The mercenaries' planned betrials will go awry in the face of strange surprises, and be prudently postponed. Tyrion will organize his survival and plant seeds for a reversal of fortune in the case Daenerys still lives.

a thousand pages later, voices of the death and resurrection of Daenerys riding with the host of the end of times on a black dragon will reach the other characters, while the red cult is organizing the ultimate continent-wide revolution, and all of the Freee Cities (the World of the Dothrakis, ending at the salty water) will be conquered by the Stallion who Mounts the World, helped by Tytion's mercenaries, Barristan's Unsullied and some young knight, the Tattered Prince, the remaining Ironborns, the re-enslaved adn re-rebelled gladiators, the whole red cult and a very large lot of red children of the Mother of Dragons.

All of these in a plague ridden ("first come the Pale Mare then the others" is a whole phrase, separate from what follows, and refers to other plural plagueS) war torn and civil war torn continent, in an orgasmic apocalipsis of the known Free Cities equilibrium.

Maybe even the Winter will show himself, to cause famine and complete the deal. Maybe even remitting in the miles around the Mother of Dragons, trueborn children of the Storm. (Ouch! No, maybe the Ironborn drowned men will not follow a "stormborn", someone born by the nemesis of their god)

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Dany was very weak at the end of ADWD and had either had a miscarriage, the pale mare or both. She will need to recover somewhat before doing anything significant. It is for this reason I think she will return to the aftermath not the battle itself.

Tyrion and Jorah noted at the end of ADWD that the Yunkai are actually weaker than the Mereen forces. It is Baristan's chapter & so his belief when we here the Yunkai are stronger than but as we've seen before POVs can be mistaken. I think Barry can and will defeat the slavers on his own, perhaps with the Second Sons turning their cloaks becoming vital. With Tyrion instigating this Barristan will find it hard to have him locked up as he would surely like to.

As for the Volentese fleet, Victarian will be vital against them but I wonder with them being manned mainly by slaves and from Tyrion and Jorah experience of Volantis there might be some sort of slave uprising on the boat. Will the slaves that row and fight be happy about fighting Dany?

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I think that the Volantene navy is still some way off, but that some, or all, of it will revolt in Daenerys' favour.

I agree, there's a reason for the old woman's comment, along with Tyrion's watching Bennero preaching that Dany is Azhor Ahai reborn, and that Volantis will be destroyed if it fights her.

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On a sidenote, Dany has and possible will gain some distinctive and quite menacing troops. She has the Unsullied with their unique and quite menacing look, added to that the Brazen Beasts with their animal masks, also very menacing, and if/when she takes Volantis she'll have the slave tigers Tyrion saw who are branded with Tiger stipes. She may poss win over one or more Khalisars as well. When she invades Westeros she is going to look very much like the foreign conqueror and unwesterosi at that

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Dany was very weak at the end of ADWD and had either had a miscarriage, the pale mare or both. She will need to recover somewhat before doing anything significant. It is for this reason I think she will return to the aftermath not the battle itself.

I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion. We are told Targ's are immune from plagues, it's one of the reasons a lot of people started thinking Tyrion is a Targ. Also given Dany's lack of food, warmth, water, and sleep, the pale mare would have been almost certainly fatal if she had gotten it. GRRM writes in how Dany knows she is drinking unclean water but has no choice, this just makes me think food poisoning is a much more likely reason for her being sick. I'm also not sure how you came to miscarriage. Possible, yes. Likely, no. I say this because Dany was away from Mereen for a while, and if you don't eat for several days while pregnant even at the beginning a miscarriage isn't going to take 2 weeks. Finally it is my own theory that Dany went through a lot in the Dothraki sea and that when she bled she regained her fertility.

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My theory is that Pono cuts off his own braid to save himself from Drogon's fire, and the khalasar accepts Dany as the MWMTW. That, or A LOT of them will die screaming.

ETA: Getting on top of Drogo during sex could have been foreshadowing of her "mounting" his entire Khalasar eventually.

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I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion. We are told Targ's are immune from plagues, it's one of the reasons a lot of people started thinking Tyrion is a Targ. Also given Dany's lack of food, warmth, water, and sleep, the pale mare would have been almost certainly fatal if she had gotten it. GRRM writes in how Dany knows she is drinking unclean water but has no choice, this just makes me think food poisoning is a much more likely reason for her being sick. I'm also not sure how you came to miscarriage. Possible, yes. Likely, no. I say this because Dany was away from Mereen for a while, and if you don't eat for several days while pregnant even at the beginning a miscarriage isn't going to take 2 weeks. Finally it is my own theory that Dany went through a lot in the Dothraki sea and that when she bled she regained her fertility.

Lots of Targs died during the great spring sickness so they are not immune to plagues. Unless you think Bloodraven had them killed.

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Victarion will address the problem of the Volatene fleet decisively. There are a few potential ways as to how he could do this:

- Tactically: While the Volantene fleet is extremely large and heavy amounts of money were spent in building the ships, the Iron Fleet is more determined/megalomanicial, more experienced, and is already present in the area. Victarion has been contemplating how to learn from his past battles and is absolutely determined to destory his enemies, no matter how powerful they are. He wanted to arrive their first in part to enable his fleet to exploit the situation and setup a suprise for the enemy.

- Turning much of the slave crews toward his side. He has started to experiment with this technique and Moqorro could provided further advice on how to do it in this particular case.

- The Dragon Horn. It is possibly that Victarion might successfully employ the horn and have a dragon help devastate the enemy side. Alternately, one of the two dragons might decide to prefer to attack Volantene ships of their own accord rather focus on land combatants.

The mercenary khalasar is one of the greater problems facing the Meerenese defenders. It is large, has quality in combat, and will not break as easily as most of the other enemies. It is unclear whether Daenerys will participate in the battle, however, if she does, a likely role is for her to crush the Dothraki allied to the slavers.

Barristan's survival in the Battle of Fire is not completely certain, although his crucial command position means he must live at least a decent ways into it. Jorah, though seemingly dispensable, may get another chance to see his Dragon Queen.

Marwyn will show up at some point, though it remains unknown when that will happen.

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I think Barristan will survive the battle. I'm sure he is destined to die in Westeros protecting Dany.

In the end the Ironborn and Volantene fleets will most likely be used/captured by Dany to transport her armies, this will help hurry the story along. I predict her path will be Volantis, Pentos, Dragonstone, and then Kings Landing. With ships they could reach Kings Landing by the end of WoW.

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I think the two likeliest scenarios between Khal Pono and Dany are as such: Dany realizing the shear amount of numbers she would be against will appeal to the barbarian nature of the Khals and promise Pono all of Mereen, Yunkai, Astapor, and Ghis, in exchange for help in the battle of Mereen. I believe she would do this to avoid a big battle and to allow her to finally put all this crap behind and go to Westeros, Khal Pono would then become one of the most powerful Khals ever and wouldn't have to get on a wooden horse. Having an ironborn fleet and army combined with the Unsullied and her sellswords would be enough to take to Westeros.

The second scenario, Dany just has Drogon melt/eat Khal Pono and she assumes control of his khalasar.

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I don't know how tha battle will turn out, but this is the current state of the forces after ADWD as I see it:

-Barristans forces are actually already stronger than the Yunkai ones, though not necessarily strong enough to crush them without heavy losses.

-The Red Priests from Volantis see Dany as AA, so I realy doubt they would give Vic the power to steal/whatever her dragons.

-The fleet from Volantis (= 99,9% slaves) have a high probability to revolt.

-Jhaqo can't survive if Dany doesn't survive. He might be able to kill her but Drogon would finish him in return.

Points with more speculation:

-Jhaqo is sent by the crones.

-Vic is also double-crossed by his brother (dusty wife?).

Very speculative:

-Jhaqo is sent by the crones because they already realized Dany always was the Stallion Who Mounts the World (=AA=PtwP ?) and not her son.

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After the barristan reading and what i've heard of it pointing to mereen winning it makes me think they wont......

I think victarions horn will only antagonise the dragons coz blowing it to try control themis one thing but in the middle of a battle, this could be more disastrous than he thinks seemings he dont know alot bout dragons from what i've read, hes dependin on moqorro

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After the barristan reading and what i've heard of it pointing to mereen winning it makes me think they wont......

I think victarions horn will only antagonise the dragons coz blowing it to try control themis one thing but in the middle of a battle, this could be more disastrous than he thinks seemings he dont know alot bout dragons from what i've read, hes dependin on moqorro

It's definitely a possibility that the dragons just get irritated by the horn and start burning shit everywhere.

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I don't think Danny will reach Mereen by the time of the battle. She will have to link up with the relevant characters in the future, so I'd say she'll arrive after the battle.

The Volantene fleet is a wild card, and it's weird they don't show up for the battle - did Victarion defeat them before the battle, or would they show up behind the Iron Fleet to ruin the day? Also, let's remember the Iron Fleet is also manned by slaves. While the thralls don't know much about Danny yet, I think rebellion is on the cards once/if they start mingling with the locals after the battle and they hear about Danny releasing slaves.

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I don't think Tyrion will die as he is Georges favorite character and he has a fondness for the little fellow ...as for the horn ....Victarion can't blow or he will die ....the only person who can blow it is Dany,, as she has an immunity to fire . I think they win the battle of slavers bay and the dragons make short work of the volanteen fleet ....the Dothraki are given Ynkai and Astapor as their reward....Mereen is given back to the freedmen and the slavers put to death...

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I think the two likeliest scenarios between Khal Pono and Dany are as such: Dany realizing the shear amount of numbers she would be against will appeal to the barbarian nature of the Khals and promise Pono all of Mereen, Yunkai, Astapor, and Ghis, in exchange for help in the battle of Mereen. I believe she would do this to avoid a big battle and to allow her to finally put all this crap behind and go to Westeros, Khal Pono would then become one of the most powerful Khals ever and wouldn't have to get on a wooden horse. Having an ironborn fleet and army combined with the Unsullied and her sellswords would be enough to take to Westeros.

The second scenario, Dany just has Drogon melt/eat Khal Pono and she assumes control of his khalasar.

He could already take any of those cities.

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