Dany is a Red Herring for AA

[Ghost's Shadow]

^ I like that post. Especially the building on rotten foundations part. That's an excellent way to put it.

[Belisarius09]

There is no foreshadowing for Jon killing Dany. Drogon has red eyes like Ghost most likely because he was sent to Dany by Bloodraven or the same type of magical entity the gifted the Starks with the wolves.

I think there is foreshadowing, yo just have to look in the right places. AA slew Nissa Nissa in order to forge lightbringer. Maybe Dany will be Jon's Nissa Nissa, and Drogon will be Lightbringer, and he cannot ride Drogon while Dany lives, AA could not forge Lightbringer until after he had killed Nissa Nissa...

[GrumpkinsAndStarks]

It seems unlikely that Dany's sole purpose is to be the sacrifice/forge of some Northern Bastard so that he may fulfill the prophecies of his own.

Although, GRRM does seem deliberate in his writing, which is to say he is sure to include information throughout the series so one may, upon review, find foreshadowing and textual evidence after an event or prophecy has come to fruition. IIRC, Dany tells Quentyn that " a dragon may have more than one rider". Why include this history lesson unless it would have had to have been established prior to it playing itself out?

[HexMachina]

^ I like that post. Especially the building on rotten foundations part. That's an excellent way to put it.

Thank you :) I dislike Jon personally, but that is how I view this whole thing. Trying not to be biased :p

[RoamingRonin]

I think there is foreshadowing, yo just have to look in the right places. AA slew Nissa Nissa in order to forge lightbringer. Maybe Dany will be Jon's Nissa Nissa, and Drogon will be Lightbringer, and he cannot ride Drogon while Dany lives, AA could not forge Lightbringer until after he had killed Nissa Nissa...

I don't see this as foreshadowing. Any other examples?

Dany did love Drogo, however. His death helped her hatch her dragon eggs.

[Jô Maltese]

For all those believing that Dany is AAR, allow me to raise the following points:

- tStwMtW very strongly points to a male hero;

- Since aSoS, AAR and tPtwP are considered to be the same person by different POVs (Mel, Davos, Aemon)

- tPtwP - oh come on! Promise me, Ned, - is Jon.

For those who have not seen it, Schmendrick, with the help of J. Stargaryen, has posted an awesome piece of work about the whole AAR, tPtwP and LB mystery: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/103266-r-l-lightbringer-updated-with-part-ii/. He is yet to conclude, but I guess his thesis is that Dany is AAR and that Jon is LB. Well, his thread has actually convinced me of the opposite: Jon is AAR / tPtwP and Dany is Nissa Nissa / LB.

In Smendrick's thread, there are quite convincing ideas of Jon being the Moon / Ice (Lyanna) and the Sun /Fire (Rhaegar)'s son. On the other hand, Dany is often associated with the Moon and she married her "Sun and stars". Her son was prophesied to become tStwMtW. But Rhaego died, and she is now barren.

My feel is that somehow, her son, tStwMtW = tPtwP = AAReborn, will be Jon : Dany the Moon will bring light to the Night, she will be the light bringer (it's not the Sun that enlightens the night, but the Moon), the mother of dragon, the one who kills the boy (Direwolves can only bound with children, compare with Sansa or Robb) and let the man (the dragon) be born. Then Jon will yield her Fire /Light power (her dragons and army - I could do with a dragon or three...) to defeat the Others, having Dany killed (sacrificed) in the process (in a battle, like Rhaenys, the Princess 'Aunt in tPatQ?).

The glitch is in my somehow... :ohwell:

[Ghost's Shadow]

There has been nothing in the prophecy of AAR so far that says Nissa Nissa is something that has to be repeated (in the literal sense, that is).

[the trees have eyes]

There is no AAR. This isn't the story of one hero saving the world as GRRM has plainly stated. It is the fun to speculate about it and try to tie the clues together but I am guessing by the time these books are finished we will still be debating it as there will be no clear answer.

IMO the Three Heads are all different Prophetic entities

Daenerys is the TSTMTW and will unite Westeros and march them North to aid Jon in the BOTD, where she will die.

Bran is the Last Hero Reborn and will be the one who delivers the nail into the coffin for the Others, but no one will know of it, but him and maybe Jon

Jon is the PTWP and will help Ice(House Stark) and "Fire(Targaryen) reach a peaceful resolution, or harmony(The Song). He will also lead the fight alongside Dany and will be the ruler in the end after Dany's death.

Each head fulfills their respective prophecies but will all contribute to the Song in the end.

I'm with El Guapo. Just as every society on earth has its creation myth and religion and its saviours or Last Battle / Gotterdammerung / Ragnarök GRRM has created different myths for Westeros & Essos. It's interesting to conjecture how much of this is actually going to happen - prophecy as Marwyn memorably told us "will bite your prick off every time"

Gorghan of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with the pleasure of it and think, how sweet, how fine, how good this is... and then her teeth snap shut and your moans turn to screams. That is the nature of prophecy, said Gorghan. Prophecy will bite your prick off every time.

but I don't think any one character is the Chosen One. Literal fulfilment of the conditions in each mythology (Dothraki Stallion, Rhollor's Azor Ahai, Valyrian(?) / Westerosi Promised Prince ) seems impossible and itself the red herring.

What will really play out is still a mystery but as for who is going to be instrumental: the dragon has three heads. There has been too much symbolism around this and it doesn't need to be Team Jon or Team Dany who does the business, it's going to be both of them plus, I suspect, a certain potty-mouthed dwarf, with The last Greenseer, Bran the Tree, guiding them.

[The Mother of The Others]

prophecy as Marwyn memorably told us "will bite your prick off every time"

Then why are we so horny for prophecy? (As readers.) If this ^ is what we have to look forward to? Prophecy has never helped anyone except maybe the prophet, but more often than not they got killed or beaten with a pimp stick. And even then they only make a name for themselves long after they're dead. It certainly doesn't help the living to focus on it. Case in point, Cersei. The event must first come to pass before you can check it against the prophecy for accuracy and say "Whoot, there it is!" So even a true believer in the prophecy wasn't helped by it, they just got the "joy" of verifying that yes, the hurricane did in fact come and wipe out their village, just as Hetero the Great predicted!

I fear we're warping our reading experience by focussing on AA so much, just as Cersei is warping her reign as queen by being so paranoid and prophecy-driven, which just leads to flailing decision making that undermines her and creates the bad karma that could take real world events in the direction of fulfilling the damn prophecy. Whereas we get flailing theories that bend around and around until.... look, it's started making sense!!!! Well, yeah, because you bent the hands of a broken clock around until they matched up with the currently accurate time of day. Shouldn't we apply the moral of Cersei's prophecy fiasco as a character to ourselves as wayward readers who're becoming likewise obsessed? The moral is don't become obsessed because it undercuts your formerly robust fate and draws the attention of the negative fate you were hoping to avoid by going to Damascus because you'd heard Death was looking for you in...... oh crap!

Prophecy is as prophecy does. ----Forrest Gump.

......No, it isn't. Hold on a sec, Forrest. Because prophecy doesn't DO jack shit. So what we've got here, all along, is not a story of prophetic heroes but rather a story about gritty characters who actually go out and do stuff, leaving all the book learning and prophecy mumbo jumbo to Sam and some nightshade-lipped undying pervs (who died right away, ironically, underscoring the point of how little good all their prophesizing did them!).

It doesn't matter who AA is. That's an extra title for historians to slap onto someone AFTER they've done something impressive, after all is said and done. The meat and potatoes of the story, however, is the doing of great things, which ironically has nothing to do with INERT titles like Azor Ahai Reborn. Just do it, and the AA title will come in the mail. Prophecy doesn't put a crown on your head, you do, and then people crown you again by matching your name up with AA. Because of what you did while Prophecy just sat there waiting for someone to match it. The prophecy doesn't decide the outcome of ASOIAF (and the outcome of ASOIAF won't repeat the AA legend verbatim, because that would be stupid). No, Prophecy simply announces the outcome----and in a useless way. True, it announces it before it happens. That's tantalizing, in a way. But it's just as useless as if the announcement had waited until the end of the series. Because if nobody can understand it ahead of time and profit from the prophet, then the prophets may as well have remained silent.

There's no big huge magic symbolism finale coming. No glowing armies of ice and lava wearing shimmering armors like in the dream visions of AA going up against some other entity. That'd be a betrayal of all that's come before, which has all hummed with a visceral reality that doesn't lower itself to the level of sing-song magic quackery. It's the grit that rules in the trenches of this world, not the glamours. It's the grit that'll decide things. (Shadow babies apparently are all worn out as a gimmick now that Stan has no animus left to lend to them). And you've got a front row seat of all the gritty action just by reading the POVs.... So why are we so intent on pulling a Cersei and screwing up our eyes to see these distant hazy signs of AA reborn ahead of time, when the proper place to look for those signs is in the past because AA is a historical figure who isn't coming back (for the same reason there isn't really a Great Other waiting up north to fight Melisandre---It's a legend specific to one religion or culture---it doesn't accurately reflect the situation these current heroes will have to grapple with). (AA is a legend which doesn't even make sense because the myth isn't helpful or properly inspiring, so I don't know why it inspires all these digital reams of inquest on here.) It'd be damn irresponsible for anyone on the front line to lose their focus & start wondering who they should Nissa-sacrifice to appease the powers that be. I'd not wish that frame of mind on Jon, Danny, or Aegon; Sansa, Petyr, or Doran. In fact, it annoys me that Varys and Stannis seem to be slipping into this frame of mind where sacrifice is cool, and I hope to see better from them than to burn folks ceremonially on a pyre altar or remove people's tongues and/or kidneys as Varys sacrifices people on some "altar of the greater good." That's a shame. Shame on you both! Poopers!

[cade]

Yes. It goes from plural to singular, but when the actual prophesy is mentioned, including Aemon's (potentially skewed) confirmation about Dany's dragons, those dragons are "woken" by Azor Ahai. Like, the idea that the woken dragon is also Azor Ahai does not exist in the text. The dragon is AA's weapon, not Azor Ahai himself. Which is the point I'm making-- that if we put any stock at all into these prophesies, we can't start rewriting them to say that the "stone dragon" is also Azor Ahai or anything.

An excellent, widely overlooked point. Perhaps people will now say, as one poster did previously, that "wake dragons from stone" isn't really part of the prophecy, that Melisandre made it up, but the dragons are a major reason why Benerro and Moqorro believe Dany is AA. Benerro is interpreted or paraphrased as saying "The dragons have come to carry her to glory." While Melisandre is unreliable, Benerro and Moqorro have been very accurate so far.

I don't want anyone to be AA. Despite his reputation in these parts as a righteous figure, he sounds very ominous to me. If AA ever even existed, imo he's dead and not reincarnating as anyone, but the prophecies attached to this mythical figure seem to be somewhat legit. The similarities between Dany's story and the AA prophecies are too striking for me to dismiss as a series of incredibly coincidental red herrings. That works on a meta level if you think GRRM's main objective is to trick readers, but I think he cares more about telling an organic story with internal coherence. The reason for Dany fitting the prophecy so well shouldn't be "because the author wanted a red herring." What's the in-universe reason if not the fulfillment of prophecy? Random chance?

I don't think any one character is the Chosen One. Literal fulfilment of the conditions in each mythology (Dothraki Stallion, Rhollor's Azor Ahai, Valyrian(?) / Westerosi Promised Prince ) seems impossible and itself the red herring.

Agreed. I think/hope GRRM is commenting on how people like to hero worship and distort history accordingly. Maybe Jon will go down in HIStory as The Three-Headed Dragon Man Who Saved the World, but I think the reality will have been somewhat different.

<snip>

:cheers:

[GrumpkinsAndStarks]

Here it goes.

Bran is the reincarnation of The Last Hero. Seeking out the CotF in order to defeat the enemy. As promised by Bloodraven he will fly. But he will not be moseying around in some washed up crow. No. He will warg the Ice Dragon, which is lying dormant in the wall. The wall will crumble when the Horn of Joramun aka The Horn of Winter (Stark=Kings of Winter) is found in the Crypts of Winterfell.

Lord Commander Mormont's raven is in fact currently being warged by The Night's King, who was a Stark by Old Nan's account, and therefor a candidate for warging. He has been manipulating the black brothers to position Jon Snow to be The Lord Commander. Jon has been "groomed for command".

Ygritte will reanimate as an Other.

" strange, beautiful… think, oh… the Sidhe made of ice, something like that… a different sort of life… inhuman, elegant, dangerous"

The ice princess "kissed by fire" what a song to sing?! Jon will be temporarily entranced by her, but will ultimately temper long-claw in her still, unbeating, icy heart, fulfilling the prophecy of AAR.

Here is where it gets tricky.

The PtwP and TStwMtW are one in the same, Drogon.

Dany will succumb to her Targeryen madness and turn toward the dark side = fire and blood fuckers.

She will travel to the shores of Westeros, leaving the Doom in her wake. First, she will take vengance on Dorne. For it was a son of Dorne who set in motion the events that would ultimately lead to the gruesome deaths of two of her beloved dragons. That has yet to come, but . . . I'm pulling it out of my ass anyway so . . .

In the end Jon Snow, 14,267th of his name, King of the pile of ice that was formerly a 700' wall, Lord of the Dolorous Edd, Protector of the Sam will lead an army of White Walkers, Wights, CotF, Direwolves and a bad ass Ice Dragon against Daenerys Stormborm . . . ensuing titles . . ., her unsullied, her Dothraki hoard, her freedman (who will be not entirely unlike wights due to the fact that they haven't eaten anything but their own hands in weeks) to determine the fate of man and giant kind, much to the chagrin of the Ironborn who, as usual, will accomplish nothing.

[HexMachina]

Thread is probably going to be locked for length soon so I have started version 2 if anyome would like to.continue the discussion

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/105495-azor-ahai-and-red-herrings-discussion-part-ii/