Frey family reunion

Rebirth = a baptism. So when one is supposed to be reborn in smoke and salt, I think we have to think of a character or characters who have been baptized in smoke and salt. The clearest parallel to a a Christian baptism is what we see in the Iron Islands. But the Ironborn are baptized in salt water. And we have a major character in Theon who returns to his roots in the Iron Islands and half-heartedly allows himself to be baptized in salt. Then we have Stannis who also half-heartedly allows himself to be baptized as AA by Melisandre in the smoking ruins of the statues of the Seven. So here we clearly have two different characters one baptized or reborn in salt, and the other in smoke. Interestingly enough both characters have been brought together in Winds of Winter. We also have two characters in Davos and Tyrion who have even more literally been reborn in a salt water bay, which had been set on fire. And both seem to have some type of metaphysical experience after their near death experiences. Davos hears a disembodied voice while Tyrion has his dream/memory invoking a post apocalyptic waste land, which may or may not have been the aftermath of the Blackwater battle.

It’s actually the theory I was the most confident about, because you can see the groundwork being laid back in AGOT. The basic premise is that Jon’s consciousness (or part of it) transferred to Ghost during his stabbing. Leaving Jon’s “shadow self” behind. So we have Jon/Ghost as the hilt of the sword, and UnJon resurrected (perhaps by Melisandre or through a sacrifice of Melisandre) returning as a darker version of himself, the blade of the sword (or the pointy end). So perhaps Jon’s true role isn’t AA or TPTWP, but as an embodiment of Lightbringer. And as swords are wont to do in mythology, he gets broken in half ( a la the Norse sword Gram or the LOTR sword Anduril or perhaps ASOIAF’s Ice). But it’s Jon’s consciousness/psyche that gets broken in two. It’s also a bit of a nod to Jungian psychology. In Jungian psychology we are composed of our animus/psyche and our shadow self. Our shadow self is our darker impulses that we try to disassociate ourselves from. It’s only when we are able to integrate our animus with our shadow selves do we obtain self actualization. So perhaps Martin is using these themes in a fantasy setting, which would require the two halves of Jon to reintegrate, like the sword Gram was forged back together creating a more powerful weapon than before. (And a weapon that was used to slay the dwarf turned dragon Fafnir, a role that could very well be played by Tyrion). I’m less confident about this theory now because of the rumors that Martin was dissatisfied with the direction he took a major character and was rewriting a good part of the book. Which makes me wonder if Martin planned on taking Jon down this route, but found that it didn’t work in the execution.

However, the Targaryens are only tied to the prophecy fairly recently as far as I can tell, in the time of Aegon V. There is no mention at all of the prophecy in Fire & Blood for example. So the prophecy could have been adopted by House Targaryen from their maternal line of Martells. Aemon claims that they have been trying to decipher the prophecy for a thousand years. So let's look back a thousand years ago and see what notable event was happening: A thousand years ago was the height of the Rhoynish conflict with the Valyrians, a conflict that saw the Rhoynish civilization crushed but for the exiles led by Nymeria who landed in Dorne. So if the prophecy first started a thousand years ago, what might the prince that was promised reference? Adopting perhaps the legend of Azor Ahai, it would seem logical that the prince that was promised might refer to a Rhoynish prince that would return amidst salt and smoke under a bleeding star. Now fast forward to the time of Aegon V, and Aemon. Their grandmother was a Dornish princess, and their mother Dornish as well. It seems clear that at this point in Targaryen history they may have been influenced not just by their Targaryen ancestry but by their Martell ancestry as well. So perhaps a Targaryen/Valyrian legend (the Dragon or the Dragon has three heads) is merged with a Rhoynish legend, the Prince that was Promised.

I know, that’s what Aemon comes up with, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to me. If you want to set everything else aside and look at the characters who were the most closely “reborn” in salt and smoke, I would look to Davos and Tyrion. Both had near death experiences at the Battle of the Blackwater, where the salt water bay was set on fire.

Well they did have to translate the prophecy from some foreign language presumably, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the prophecy possibly dealt with a foreign ruler as opposed to a Westeros one. Unless of course the translation came from the runes of the First Men, which I think is very possible. It certainly could explain the possible trouble they had in translating it. ETA as for GRRM, lazy and deliberate may be two sides of the same coin for him.

Heh,

Well to be fair, when the woods witch prophecy came about, Martell blood was already present in the Targaryen line. And while under the belief that the prince that was promised would come from the line of Aerys and Rhaella, Rhaegar is then married to another Martell. So one can make an inference. In a way, Aemon is acting very much like Melisandre (and pretty much everyone on this forum), taking one piece of evidence, in this case the dragons, and then making everything else fit, whether it really fits the prophecy or not. A slight issue I have with Dany being AA reborn, is if we assume her rebirth came at the funeral pyre, where is the salt? I can see the smoke certainly, but not the salt. Kind of the same issue with Rhaegar’s birth at Summerhall, the smoke is easy to see, but the salt being the tears of grief? That seems a bit of a stretch. It would have also been an easier fit, if Dany was actually a princess at the time of her “rebirth”. Yet she wasn’t, she was a Queen, as she was quick to remind Jorah. (Assuming that we can believe Dany’s origin story as told by Viserys). I suppose the counter argument, if you were a Jon as the legitimate son of Rhaegar believer, was that Jon was the King at the time of the birth of dragons, which I guess would still make her a princess? And perhaps it’s enough that Dany was born a princess even if during her “rebirth” she was a queen. Of course I have a much harder issue with Jon being tptwp for the same reason. I mean, Jon would have never actually been a prince, if once again we believe he was the legitimate son of Rhaegar and Lyanna. Jon would have been born a king in that scenario. So shouldn’t the prince that was promised be an actual prince or princess? This is kind of why I lean towards the prophecy being a Rhoynish one. I mean every child of House Martell is called a prince or princess. And that status presumably never changes, it’s their highest title their sovereign. Unlike princes in the rest of Westerosi, where later they can morph into being a king. Unless perhaps, the prophecy is predicated on being the younger sibling of a king.

Maybe, but we haven’t been given any indication that the Valyrians ever had a single sovereign whether called Dragon or any other name. At least not until Aegon conquered Westeros. The closest hint we have about the Valyrian’s power structure probably comes from Volantis, where we have three elected rulers, none of which are titled Dragon. Yet we’ve never heard the phrase, the Dragon that was promised. As far as I can tell it’s always been the Prince that was Promised dating back a thousand years. I suppose claiming that Prince = Dragon in some language could cure this, but there is no justification for this interpretation in the text. I disagree. It seems very like the Targaryens to come to the conclusion that a Rhoynish prophecy can only be fulfilled when the Rhoynish bloodlines marry into their bloodline. If the Rhoynes appropriated the Asshai messiah as theirs, the Targaryens in turn appropriated it for themselves. Which bring me to my final point. I think what we may be seeing is a synthesis of messianic legends from several different cultures. It starts with the Asshai legend of Azor Ahai, and the prediction of his rebirth (a la Jesus and King Arthur) during a time when the world is in need of a savior. The Rhoynes may have coopted this legend to tell of their own messiah, a Prince of Princes, who like the legend of Azor Ahai will come in salt and smoke under a bleeding star. While the Valyrians may have their own obsession with The Dragon. My personal thought is that this may be tied into an obsession of dying and being reborn as a dragon. And if the Valyrians maintained a psychic link with dragons, then this would probably be a logical next step in the evolution of the relationship. Becoming one with the dragon and leaving your frail,short lived mortal body behind. If the Asshai prophecy dealt with dragons, and the Rhoynish prophecy is based on the Asshai prophecy, then it would be a logical conclusion for the Targaryens to assume that their bloodlines and past connection with dragons would be necessary for the fulfillment of the prophecy. So the messianic figure is slated to be a Rhoynish sovereign, a Prince (or Princess, those progressive Rhoynes) which in turn is slated to be The Dragon. Which may be very literal indeed. And the possibility of this messianic figure becoming an actual fire breathing dragon, may explain why Septon Barth’s writing on the gender of biological dragons is referenced by Aemon.

Yet the Targaryens never referred to themselves as Kings and Princes until they conquered Westeros, where they promptly took up the feudal titles of their host land. So it really doesn’t make sense that any Valyrian prior to Aegon’s conquest would have translated the word dragon to Prince. Princes were the sovereigns of their arch nemesis the Rhoynes. (And notably there seems to be zero evidence of any mention of the Prince that was Promised prophecy associated with the Targaryens until the reign of Aegon V. ) Nor does it make any sense that a prophecized Valyrian messiah would have been given the title of Prince. For examples, Jesus was given the sobriquet the “King of Kings”. Which makes sense, because the head sovereign of the Israelites were historically referred to as Kings. If the Asshai legend of Azor Ahai was adopted by another culture to reference a future messiah as a Prince, it makes more sense that the culture that would have appropriated the legend would have been the Rhoynes and not the Valyrians. Now if we fast forward to the first reference of the Prince that was Promised prophecy with House Targaryens, we find ourselves in the reign of Aegon V. Which is notable because in addition to being a descendant of House Targaryen, Aegon V was also descended from two Dornish houses, House Dayne and House Martel. House Martel in particular was known for carrying on the tradition of their Rhoynish ancestors including the tradition of naming their sovereign a Prince. So perhaps the Targaryens became convinced that their household was destined to produce the Prince that was Promised, not because of their paternal ancestors but instead because of their maternal ones. Which might also explain why Rhaegar was married to a Dornish wife, and partly why he became convinced that his half Dornish son Aegon, was the one destined to become the Prince that was Promised. ETA: one other point to consider. Aemon bemoans their mistake in assuming that TPTWP had to be a Prince, a male. Now consider the Dorne’s practice of making the first born the head sovereign no matter the gender. A practice that I believed they carried over from the Rhoynes. So once again if the Prince that was Promised is an allusion to a head sovereign, a sovereign that can be either male or female, once again the prophecy being one of Rhoynish descent makes the most sense.

HBO nonsense aside, do we have any evidence that the language that they (whoever they refers to) mistranslated was Valyrian? I know that this theory is popular but where did we come up with the notion that dragon and prince were the same word in Valyrian? I mean the Valyrians were a freehold they didn't have kings or princes. However, their most notable enemy did refer to their own sovereign as a prince. It would then seem odd that the Valyrians would then use the same word for both princes and dragons. For example, I doubt they would have referenced Prince Garin as a dragon.

Aemon certainly conflates the two prophecies, as does Rhaegar: Now unless both prophecies deal with a savior who comes amidst bleeding stars and born amidst smoke and salt, then Aemon is conflating the prophecies. And if both prophecies just happened to contain the same signs of bleeding stars and smoke and salt, then the two prophecies should be conflated.

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I don’t know. Aemon at least seems to equate the hatching of dragons as proof that Dany was the prince that was promised:

I don't know if it's as simple as dying around a dragon or dragon egg. I think it might take a voluntary action to establish a telepathic link with the dragon before death. Drogo or Rhaego or Mirri's lives may have been necessary to hatch the eggs, and their "spirits" may very well have been transferred to give life to the dragons, but that may not be the same as transferring a consciousness into the dragon. Otherwise (if my theory is correct) than it shouldn't matter that Aemon was old or infirmed to be the head of a dragon. All that should matter was that in death Aemon's consciousness can be transferred. Which makes me think that perhaps the "dragon head" needs to make a voluntary act to establish a psychic link with the dragon before death. And if it requires a near death experience to unleash this psychic ability (like it did with Bran) then it makes sense that Aemon would think he's too old and frail. Aemon would not be able to survive the long enough to open his third eye and establish a psychic connection with the dragon before his death.

I personally think the explanation that the heads of a dragon = dragon riders is a tad prosaic, for GRRM at least. I mean we've seen dragon riders, and there have been a ton of dragon riders in the past, especially among Targaryens. But I also don't think it's as mundane as a counselor either. So looking at the nature of magic in these books (especially magic centered around Westeros) ask yourselves, what magical feat have we never seen before? After all, Aemon said that they have been trying to piece together this puzzle for at least a 1,000 years. Dragon riders and counselors have come and gone in a thousand years. But what we haven 't seen is someone who's consciousness has entered and melded with that of a dragon. My thought is that being the head of a dragon may be more literal than we think. The head = the consciousness of the dragon. After all, it seems to be an obsession among some Targaryens about dying and being reborn as a dragon. So the question is, what is the process that this transformation could occur? I think the opening of Bran's third eye might be a clue. We have Bran surviving a near death experience before his latent telepathic powers were fully awakened. Powers which were awakened while Bran lay in his sick bed. Now do we have a recent example of a Targaryen or Targaryen descendant who had a similar fate? Let's turn to Quentyn Martell, who may not be a Targaryen (even though I have a theory that he may very well be Elia's son Aegon), but he is descendant from a Targaryen line. So Quentyn gets himself burned, but interestingly enough he doesn't die right away. Instead Martin puts him in a sick bed for a time where he is tended to by Missendei (an interesting character who appears to hear the scratching of the dragons in their pit, when no one else could). Perhaps like Bran, Quentyn's extended period, hovering between the thin line of life and death triggered the opening of his third eye, which in turn allowed him to come in telepathic contact with one of the two dragons left in Mereen. So when it came time for Quentyn's mortal body to finally expire, his consciousness finally let go and took up a permanent residence inside one of the dragons. Perhaps making Quentyn the first actual head of the dragon.