[Spoilers] The Princess and the Queen, complete spoilers discussion

[dotheknifefight]

found this post on 4chan

http://i.imgur.com/P3DEEPz.jpg?1

:frown5: :bawl:

is this a rewrite of Rhaenyra's death ?

(It's time for me to buy the book)

HAH. Yes it was.

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

/facepalm. Good point. But why would they associate the kids with Laenor if they think the kids are really Harwin Strong's?

:D That's what I have been wondering for several pages on this thread.

A two-prong defamation, IMHO: Rhaenyra's boys are bastards and even if they were true-born, they would be despoilers of boys, like their father. This way, somebody who doesn't believe in their bastardy would still have reasons not to want them in line for the throne.

That might be an option. The most logical one I've read until now :) So when they said "Even the boys... We all know what Laenor was" the term "the boys" might have referred to Jace, Luke and Joff.

As in "No daughter, nor the wife of any man will be safe should Rhaenyra and Daemon sit the throne (since Daemon will be there). And even Jace, Luke and Joff,..We all know what their father was like. Not even boys would be safe in KL."

Or something like this?

[Dark Flame]

HAH. Yes it was.

Thanks for the answer

Stan ... Rhaenyra died like a real kin ... queen

[History of Westeros]

On Vhagar's color.

She is described as "hoary, old bitch".

Hoary has 2 dictionary definitions:

1) grey/silvery white.

2) old/trite (trite means "out of fashion", so we can probably eliminate that meaning, I don't really see how it can possibly be applied to a dragon unless it means "has-been". But Vhagar is clearly not a has-been. Vermithor perhaps could be described that way since he was retired for over 20 years).

If #2 is meant, the quote reads "old, old bitch".

Thus, it is strongly indicated that Vhagar is silvery/greyish-white.

However there is a wrinkle...

Vermithor is *also* described as "hoary, old Vermithor". But Vermithor is clearly described as bronze.

Either Vermithor has a lot of white/silver on him in addition to his bronze coloring, or this is a very hard quote to explain.

[History of Westeros]

Ran,

Any chance you can tell us what "Queen" means in reference to Meleys and Tessarion? I doubt it is some sort of spoiler, so I'm hoping it is safe to tell.

We had a small debate about it before the story came out, and it seems that no one's guesses were accurate.

One theory was that they are siblings but this probably doesn't work because Meleys seems to be 30-40 yrs older than Tessarion.

Another (my favorite) was that they were egg-layers, but there's no evidence for this at all in tPatQ, and indeed we hear of Syrax laying eggs and she does not seem to have the "queen" moniker. We know young dragons can lay eggs, so this is still possible but I no longer consider it a strong theory like I did before the story came out.

I considered that a female dragon with golden horns could acquire the nickname "Queen" as those horns might look a bit like a crown. Both Tessarion and Meleys have copper horns iirc, which I suppose could pass well enough for gold, especially if they are shiny.

As an aside, if Tessarion ever did lay eggs this could be interesting, as Daeron was a squire to Lord Ormund. This could indicate any eggs laid by Tessarion were laid in or near Oldtown.

[Hardstone]

Maybe they were prolific egg layers? A dragon needs to lay a certain amount of eggs to gain the title or say more than 6 eggs per clutch. I know Tessarion is young but she could have been the Ros of the dragon community. ;)

Syrax's clutch could have been her first or she just doesn't lay as many eggs in a single sitting as Meleys or Tessarion.

[Anath]

That might be an option. The most logical one I've read until now :) So when they said "Even the boys... We all know what Laenor was" the term "the boys" might have referred to Jace, Luke and Joff.

As in "No daughter, nor the wife of any man will be safe should Rhaenyra and Daemon sit the throne (since Daemon will be there). And even Jace, Luke and Joff,..We all know what their father was like. Not even boys would be safe in KL."

Or something like this?

This. Or "Well, they are Strongs, so they should not inherit!"

Whichever suited them for the moment. They kept both options opened.

[History of Westeros]

Maybe they were prolific egg layers? A dragon needs to lay a certain amount of eggs to gain the title or say more than 6 eggs per clutch. I know Tessarion is young but she could have been the Ros of the dragon community. ;)

Syrax's clutch could have been her first or she just doesn't lay as many eggs in a single sitting as Meleys or Tessarion.

That was part of my original guess, but yeah her youth makes it a bit dubious. Possible, though!

[dotheknifefight]

I considered that a female dragon with golden horns could acquire the nickname "Queen" as those horns might look a bit like a crown. Both Tessarion and Meleys have copper horns iirc, which I suppose could pass well enough for gold, especially if they are shiny.

This fits beautifully. They are the only two described as Queens and the only two with bright beaten copper horns and crest.

[History of Westeros]

This fits beautifully. They are the only two described as Queens and the only two with bright beaten copper horns and crest.

I hadn't realized they were the only two with that description. In that case, this is probably our best guess unless Ran corrects us.

[dotheknifefight]

I hadn't realized they were the only two with that description. In that case, this is probably our best guess unless Ran corrects us.

My Notes on characters, dragons and descriptions

[Ser Lepus]

I have just gotten and read the book.

An interesting point is that the Targayrens of old didn't do a thing to hatch their eggs. They just carried them around and waited for them to hatch...unless the Maester who writes the account has no idea about dragon hatching, of course.

Also: A little black-haired brown girl that didn't seem to have any Targayren blood tamed Sheepstealer...Did she have some remote Targayren ancestry? COTF ancestry? Or maybe all that talk about the Targayren being special is bollocks and anybody can tame a dragon?

Also: It is possible to fight dragons. The trick is to kill the rider. And younger dragons (and sometimes older ones too) can be hurt and killed with normal weapons.

Also: Dragonflesh is NOT impervious to flame? But their blood is hot enought to melt steel! How can they not be entirely fireproof and live? :wacko:

Also...Lys, Myr and Tyrosh were an unified kingdom once! :eek:

[dotheknifefight]

It is possible to fight dragons. The trick is to kill the rider. And younger dragons (and sometimes older ones too) can be hurt and killed with normal weapons.

Seems to me, you should also aim for the eyes.

[tze]

The Stark family tree from the MUSH has Cregan Stark being born in 108, putting him in his twenties during the Dance, which could indicate that he remained in the North because he had problems to deal with there (wildling attacks? Ironborn douchebaggery?). I'd been wondering if maybe he was just too young to go to war, particularly given that he's confirmed to be the Cregan Stark who fought the Dragonknight, but it looks like that's not the case.

However, the MUSH also has Viserys being born in 119, which can't be true, as he's seven years old in 129, which would require his birthdate be around 122. It is possible other dates are incorrect there.

The Blood/Cheese incident, while obviously quite disgusting, did have a certain brilliance to it (from a tactical standpoint). By forcing Helaena to choose a son to die, while making sure that a son lived to always remind Helaena of her choice, the assassins pretty much guaranteed Helaena would be driven round the bend, thus removing Dreamfyre from the Greens' arsenal. Killing Helaena wasn't an option because the last thing Daemon would have wanted was to free up Aegon to be able to make a marriage alliance with some powerful House (or free up Dreamfyre to be tamed by someone else). And he might have believed that forcing Alicent to watch her grandson die, and her daughter be traumatized, would cause her to go mad as well (or at the least, would be a more fitting punishment for her actions than just killing her).

For that matter, I don't think Rhaenyra sparing Alicent necessarily paints Rhaenyra in a positive light, any more than Aegon II sparing Aegon the Younger later on paints him in a positive light. Let's not forget that at that point, the only enemy dragonrider(s) in the field were Alicent's children, and there was an army in the field led by Alicent's Hightower kin. Killing Alicent would have deprived Rhaenyra of a valuable hostage. Had Daeron or Aemond (or Aegon) headed to King's Landing, Rhaenyra could have threatened them with Alicent's life (the same with any Hightower army). The way things worked out, Rhaenyra ended up losing the city due to internal foes, not external foes, but she had no way of knowing that would happen when she first took King's Landing.

Agreed. I also took note that two smaller dragons can be enough to take a larger one. Rhaegal and Viserion against Drogon, anyone?

What I took away from TPatQ is that Drogon isn't actually guaranteed to win against Rhaegal or Viserion, even if the fight was one-on-one. Larger is stronger, but larger is also slower and less nimble, and in an aerial battle swiftness and speed can win out over pure strength. Moreover, the size difference between Drogon and Rhaegal (and Drogon and Viserion) actually has to be pretty small, especially when compared to the size difference between Vhagar and Arrax, Vhagar and Caraxes, Vermithor and Seasmoke/Tessarion, etc. The difference in size of the three "modern" dragons might actually be kind of negligible by this point in the dragons' growth, as we don't really have any objective way of comparing the three dragons' sizes as of the end of ADWD (people make comments, but as the three dragons are never viewed together, those comments could easily be biased or incorrect).

The reason why I still believe that Targaryen blood may play an important role in the dragonbonding process is that we have yet to hear about the great number of Targaryen princes who were killed, maimed, or severely burnt while trying claim one of the older dragons of the family. Maegor was not rejected by Balerion. Aemond did claim Vhagar (and we should assume that he had neither the brains nor the patience to win the trust of 'the hoary old bitch'). Helaena did claim Dreamfyre (despite the fact that she does not seem to have a very strong personality). Aegon I and his sisters did claim Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes who have been ridden before by other Targaryens.

We've yet to hear about a large number of Targaryens, so I don't think that lack of info is indicative of anything. What happened to (all of) the children of Jaehaerys and Alysanne? What happened to the (full) siblings of Aenys? Did Jaehaerys/Alysanne/Rhaena have any other siblings that died young? What happened to the Targs in the generations between Aenar and Aegon the Conqueror? For all we know, Targ family members had been killed by older dragons when trying to ride them, and that's why later generations seem to have preferred raising hatchlings over going out and taming fully-grown dragons. There were three dragons on Dragonstone that had never been ridden, and three that were ignored in favor of hatchlings until the Dance came around. Rhaena was given an egg, she wasn't sent out to try and tame Seasmoke. The Targ weren't turning to the hatchlings only when they ran out of adult dragons, and there must have been a reason for that. (And I wouldn't be surprised if Alicent actually encouraged her children to tame older dragons over hatchlings because she felt it was necessary to prepare them to help Aegon take on Rhaenyra's faction once Viserys eventually died. It's clear the whole "Aegon over Rhaenyra" idea wasn't a new one to Alicent, as she'd been trying to get Viserys to change his will for quite a while. This could be a case where riding older dragons was actually generally discouraged by the Targs, but Alicent pushed her second son (the spare, not the heir) and daughter simply because she was desperate for her oldest son to have the dragon superiority he'd need in order to take the throne.)

Thus far the only people (more or less) confirmed to have ridden formerly-ridden dragons are Maegor on Balerion, Aemond on Vhagar, Helaena on Dreamfyre, and the "original" trio on their three dragons. (As an aside I don't think we can assume Helaena was somehow "weak" in personality, as we don't really get a good "look" at her prior to the trauma of Blood and Cheese.) We don't have any idea how Aemond succeeded with Vhagar, Maegor with Balerion, or Helaena with Dreamfyre. Maybe they got extremely lucky. Maybe they, as children, actually did spend time with those dragons when they were ridden by prior riders. Maegor was almost certainly well-known to his father's dragon, and maybe Aegon spent time with Vhagar and Helaena with Dreamfyre when those dragons were controlled by other people. This could very well be a case where certain Targs had an "easier time" (if in fact they did) only due to prior access to a specific dragon, not blood.

Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the entire situation looks very, very different if the Targs did secretly have a dragon horn.

If the maestars really did arrange for the dragons to die off, then this civil war justified it. A lot of posters (maybe even me, can't recall) seem to take Marwyn at his word that the meastars moved against the dragons because "magic" beasts have no place in their world of reason and research. However, the long list of towns destroyed makes it clear the dragons were a humanitarian crisis waiting to happen, again.

This is a very, very interesting point.

Hoary has 2 dictionary definitions:

1) grey/silvery white.

2) old/trite (trite means "out of fashion", so we can probably eliminate that meaning,

[snip]

Either Vermithor has a lot of white/silver on him in addition to his bronze coloring, or this is a very hard quote to explain.

"Hoary" is a term meaning "ancient". Note that Jon calls Old Flint and The Norrey "Hoary old warriors" in ADWD. "Hoary" is very clearly being used in TPatQ to indicate extreme age, not to designate the color of either Vermithor or Vhagar. We're never told what color Vhagar was.

[History of Westeros]

My Notes on characters, dragons and descriptions

I saw it earlier and added it to my sources for a future podcast episode. Looking good. If you could add age ranges (since we don't know exact dates) that would be amazing. I realize you have some of that detail in there, but we can add more. Sheepstealer and Cannibal we have some clues to their age, for example. Most are likely very close to the age of their riders.

[History of Westeros]

"Hoary" is a term meaning "ancient", not "out of fashion". Note that Jon calls Old Flint and The Norrey "Hoary old warriors" in ADWD. "Hoary" is very clearly being used in TPatQ to indicate extreme age, not to designate the color of either Vermithor or Vhagar. We're never told what color Vhagar was.

I was directly quoting a dictionary. "Ancient" could be another term that I missed, but it does not fit because it would be repetitive. "Trite" and "out of fashion" are technically correct synonyms.

Nor do I agree that "Hoary old warriors" means ancient in that case. That is a repetitive statement... "ancient, old warriors" ? I don't think so. It is synonymous with "greybeard" in that case.

Straight from the dictionary:

"(of a person) having gray or white hair; aged."

More straight from the dictionary:

"used in names of animals and plants covered with whitish fur or short hairs, e.g.,hoary bat, hoary cress."

Vhagar's color is strongly hinted at, but it was done with subtlety. It could also be a poor choice of words by the maester. I'm not saying we can be certain, just saying using the word "hoary" strictly to mean "old" here does not fit.

It could mean that she has gone grey/white in some places, for example. I don't feel terribly strong about her being white/silver all over, but I do think it very likely that she's at least got some of that coloring. We don't even know if dragons lose some color when they age.

[Ran]

Hrmph. Thought we had changed Viserys's age -- the 119 date was from a much older family tree, before the writing of all this, but making him a bit younger was something George did in the course of changing up details. Now corrected.

[Hugor Stone]

Maybe these were answered but i dont wanna look through 40 pages, sorry,
1. Ser Arryck and Erick, did i miss the part where they kill each other? They were hardly in the novella
2. Why was Joff and his brothers "bastards"?
3. Didn't the Mage tell Sam that Maesters killed dragons?
4. Is Prince Aegon the 3rd of his name? How can that be if he's 10
5. What happend to Dalton Greyjoy?
6. Did the queen really write that letter to her uncle?
7. Who "wrote" this? A Maester or historian or just GRRM no breakin the 4th wall involved?

[Ser Lepus]

2. Why was Joff and his brothers "bastards"?

Their mom was said to have taken lovers. Their (deceased) dad was a Velaryon, but some people claimed that their father was Harwin Strong, who was said to be Rhaenyra's lover.

3. Didn't the Mage tell Sam that Maesters killed dragons?

I think he means that they poisoned the few surviving dragons to make sure they went extinct.

4. Is Prince Aegon the 3rd of his name? How can that be if he's 10

The guy who got his legs broken and his arm burnt is king Aegon II. Rhaenyra's last surviving son would eventually become the king Aegon III "Dragonbane".

[dotheknifefight]

Maybe these were answered but i dont wanna look through 40 pages, sorry,

1. Ser Arryck and Erick, did i miss the part where they kill each other? They were hardly in the novella

2. Why was Joff and his brothers "bastards"?

3. Didn't the Mage tell Sam that Maesters killed dragons?

4. Is Prince Aegon the 3rd of his name? How can that be if he's 10

5. What happend to Dalton Greyjoy?

6. Did the queen really write that letter to her uncle?

7. Who "wrote" this? A Maester or historian or just GRRM no breakin the 4th wall involved?

1. Cut out. Purportedly, Gardner didn't feel it fit the theme of the anthology, or something.

2. Rumor has it Rhaenyra actually had her first three children with Harwin Strong, apparently a lover of hers. And there were also rumors of Laenor being a danger around young boys...

3. Marwyn to Sam:

“Who do you think killed all the dragons the last time around? Gallant dragonslayers armed with swords?” He spat. “The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.”

“But say nothing of prophecies or dragons, unless you fancy poison in your porridge.”

From Aegon III's entry on woiaf:

Although the maesters may have played a part in the death of the last dragons, Aegon III became known as "Aegon the Dragonbane," despite his later efforts to obtain Dragon eggs. At some point he had nine mages cross the sea to attempt to hatch his remaining cache of eggs.

(Fun fact: Aegon III died the same year as the last dragon)

4. Alicent's son Aegon becomes the second of his name around the age of 22. He dies half a year later. Aegon the younger becomes the king after that, probably at the age of 11. He is married to Jaehaera, about three years his younger. There would have been a regent. I guess it would make sense if Maelor inherited the throne... but who knows what happened to him? maybe that's also why Jaehaera was married to Aegon III, to lend legitimacy to his kingship?

5. He just wanted to reave, man.

6. Which letter?? The one to her uncle/husband Daemon to bring Nettles to Kings Landing? What makes you think she didn't?

7. Archmaester Gyldyne wrote this from a collection of accounts by the maesters involved, it seems. If you notice, the narrative switches between calling Rhaenyra a Princess or a Queen. Other places, too, sympathies sort of change.